On the whole, the year 1916 was a difficult one for the German people. The objections of America to the practice of piracy were becoming uncomfortably urgent; promises had to be made under compulsion, and the ‘joyful pride’ of the nation would have been much diminished if it had not been reinforced by two successes of a new kind. On March 17, 1916, the Russian hospital ship Portugal was torpedoed off the Turkish coast in the Black Sea. She carried no wounded, but had on board a large crew and a staff of Red Cross nurses and orderlies. It was a clear morning, the ship was flying the Red Cross flag, and had a Red Cross conspicuously painted on every funnel; but she was deliberately destroyed, with 85 of those on board, including 21 nurses and 24 other members of the Red Cross staff. On November 21, a British hospital ship, the Britannic, was sunk in the same way. She was a huge vessel, and had on board 1,125 people, of whom 25 were doctors, 76 nurses, and 399 medical staff. The outrage was said by the Germans to be justified by ‘the suspicion of the misuse of the hospital ship for purposes of transport.’ This suspicion was wholly unfounded, and the submarine commander had taken no steps to enquire into the truth.
In 1917 and 1918, the ‘proudest’ and most ‘joyful’ period in the short history of the German Navy, there was no longer any need for the humiliation of excuses. On January 31, 1917, Germany proclaimed her intention of sinking at sight every ship found in the waters around the British Isles and the coast of France, or in the Mediterranean Sea. It was at the same time announced—quite falsely—that the German Government had conclusive proof of the misuse of hospital ships for the transport of munitions and troops, and that therefore the traffic of hospital ships within certain areas ‘would no longer be tolerated.’ President Wilson dealt promptly with this infamous proclamation. On February 3, he told Congress that he had severed diplomatic relations between America and Germany; on April 6, he formally declared war.
The savages were now entirely free to take their own way, and they took it. On the night of March 20, 1917, the hospital ship Asturias, steaming with all navigating lights, and with all the proper Red Cross signs brilliantly illuminated, was torpedoed and sunk without warning. Of the medical staff on board, 14 were lost, including one nurse, and of the ship’s company 29, including one stewardess. On March 30, the Gloucester Castle was torpedoed without warning, but her wounded were all got off in safety. On April 17, the Donegal and the Lanfranc were both sunk while bringing wounded to British ports. In the Donegal, 29 wounded were lost, and 12 of the crew. The Lanfranc carried, besides 234 British wounded and a medical staff of 52, a batch of wounded German prisoners to the number of 167, including officers. ‘The moment the torpedo struck the Lanfranc,’ wrote a British officer on board, ‘the Prussians made a mad rush for the life-boats. One of their officers came up to a boat close to which I was standing. I shouted to him to go back, whereupon he stood and scowled, “You must save us.” I told him to wait his turn. Other Prussians showed their cowardice by dropping on their knees and imploring pity. Some cried “Kamarad,” as they do on the battle-field. I allowed none of them to pass me.... In these moments, while wounded Tommies lay in their cots unaided, the Prussian moral dropped to zero. Our cowardly prisoners made another crazy effort to get into a life-boat. They managed to crowd into one—it toppled over. The Prussians were thrown into the water, and they fought with each other in order to reach another boat containing a number of gravely wounded British soldiers.... The behaviour of our own lads I shall never forget!’—but there is no need to tell that part of the story; it is old, centuries old, and is repeated unfailingly whenever a British ship goes down.
In July 1917, a new type of ‘heroic deed’ was added to the ‘proud and joyful’ list. At 8 P.M., on July 31, the Belgian Prince was torpedoed without warning; the crew escaped in three boats. The submarine then ordered the boats to come alongside, took the master on board and sent him below. ‘Then,’ says Mr. Thomas Bowman, chief engineer, ‘all the crew and officers were ordered aboard, searched, and the life-belts taken off most of the crew and thrown overboard. I may add, during this time the Germans were very abusive towards the crew. After this the German sailors got into the two life-boats, threw the oars, bailers, and gratings overboard, took out the provisions and compasses, and then damaged the life-boats with an axe. The small boat was left intact, and five German sailors got into her and went towards the (sinking) ship. When they boarded her, they signalled to the submarine with a flash-lamp, and then the submarine cast the damaged life-boats adrift and steamed away from the ship for about two miles, after which he stopped. About 9 P.M. the submarine dived, and threw everybody in the water without any means of saving themselves.’
Mr. Bowman swam till daylight, and was picked up by a chance patrol-boat. The only other survivors were a man named Silessi, and an American named Snell, who had succeeded in hiding a life-belt under his overcoat.
The intention here was, of course, that the Belgian Prince should be ‘spurlos versenkt’; and in other cases the same result was aimed at by ramming and sinking the boats with the shipwrecked men in them. The crews of the French steamers Lyndiane and Zumaya were destroyed in this way in the summer of 1918; and on June 27 the case of the Llandovery Castle marked, perhaps, the highest pitch of German ‘pride.’ This hospital ship was torpedoed and sunk without warning, though she was showing all her distinguishing lights. After she had gone down, the pirate commander took his U-boat on a smashing-up cruise among the survivors; and by hurling it hither and thither, he succeeded in ramming and sinking all the boats and rafts except one, which escaped. The survivors in this boat heard the sound of gunfire behind them for some time; it can only be conjectured that the murderers were finishing their work with shrapnel. The number of those cruelly done to death in this massacre was 244.
The deeds here enumerated form a small but characteristic part of the German submarine record. The total number of women, children, and non-combatants, murdered in the course of the U-boat blockade, is more than seventeen thousand. It has been a failure as a blockade; nine million tons of British, and six million of allied and neutral shipping have been sunk; but the U-boats have never, for a day, held the control of the sea. The policy was a device of savages, and of a nation of savages. There is no escape from this charge; for the policy was approved and deliberately adopted, by the representatives of the whole German people, with the exception only of the few despised and detested Minority Socialists. In October 1918, Herr Haase testified in the Reichstag: ‘Most of the Parties are now trying to get away from the accentuated submarine war ... in reality all the Parties, except the Socialist Minority, share the guilt. The first resolution in favour of submarine war was drafted by all the leaders, including Herr Scheidemann and Herr Ebert. The accentuation of submarine warfare was a natural consequence. You Socialists are also guilty because, to the very last, you gave the old regime the credits for carrying on the War.’
The Germans do not yet realise the crime they confess; they have corrupted one of the oldest and noblest bonds in human life—the brotherhood of ‘them that go down to the sea in ships, and have their business in great waters.’ And this they have done because they are, by nature, not seamen but savages.