PART VIII—THE UNITED STATES AND GERMANY
CHAPTER LXI
THE INTERIM
The cessation of diplomatic relations between the American and German Governments was an inevitable consequence of the latter's submarine decree abrogating the undertaking it gave in the Sussex case. The world knew it. Germany knew it. Her ambassador at Washington, Count von Bernstorff, knew it best of all, and accepted his dismissal in a fatalistic spirit. The rupture had to come. He had done his best to avert it, and his best had availed nothing.
The long-feared break having become a reality, the American people looked wide-eyed at the unexampled international situation. What now? When two parties enter into a bargain and one breaks it, there is usually a parting of the ways, a personal conflict perhaps, when there is not also a lawsuit. But no court could settle the differences between the United States and Germany. The nation squarely faced the fact that the two countries were officially not on speaking terms; they were on the dangerous ground of open enmity, when the least provocation would be as a spark to a powder magazine. Sparks there were in plenty; but the explosion waited. President Wilson guarded the magazine. He waited an "overt act" before giving up his vigil and letting events take their course.
Germany began her announced ruthless submarine warfare against neutral shipping with caution. Apparently she was loath to precipitate matters by acting in the letter and spirit of the new decree which warned that any neutral vessel found in the new danger zone "perished." On February 3, 1917, when the decree was in operation, one of her submarines encountered an American freighter, the Housatonic, off the Scilly Isles, which came within the proscribed area. It sank her, but first gave warning, permitted the crew to take to the boats, and actually towed the boats ninety miles toward land. A British patrol vessel then appeared; the submarine fired a signal to attract its attention and vanished under water, leaving the patrol vessel to rescue the Housatonic's crew. According to the new order given the submarines the Housatonic ought to have been sunk without warning.
This unwonted chivalry looked promising; but it was deemed to be merely an act of grace extended to neutral vessels on the high seas which had left their home ports before the date (February 1, 1917) when the new policy of ruthlessness went into effect. It was not repeated.
No such shrift was accorded British vessels, whether Americans were on board them or not. About the same time the merchantman Eavestone was sunk by a submarine, which also shelled the crew as they took to the boats. The captain and three seamen—one an American—were killed by the gunfire. This action was debated as an "overt act," but apparently the Administration did not regard isolated fatalities of this character as providing ground for a casus belli.
What came nearer to a flagrant violation of the Sussex agreement was the destruction by submarine torpedoes of the Anchor passenger liner California without warning off the Irish coast with 230 persons on board. The vessel sailed from New York for Glasgow on January 28, 1917, and its crew and passengers included a sprinkling of Americans. There were no American casualties; but attacks on passenger liners without warning, regardless of the menace to American life, formed the crux of the various crises between the United States and Germany, and the sinking of the California, as an "overt act," therefore brought the breaking point nearer and nearer. The loss of life was forty-one, thirteen passengers and twenty-eight of the crew being drowned. The vessel sank in nine minutes and the submarine made no effort to save the lives of its victims.
The loss of two British steamers, the Japanese Prince and the Mantola, sunk without warning, added to the growing indictment against Germany in the consequent jeopardizing of American lives. There were thirty American cattlemen on board the Japanese Prince. With the remainder of the crew they took to the boats, and after drifting about for several hours were saved by a passing ship. An American doctor on board the Mantola was among the latter's survivors.