Toward the end of January, 1917, the severity of submarine warfare was noticeably increased. Day by day the number of vessels sunk grew larger, and some of them were of especially large tonnage. On January 28, 1917, a French transport, carrying 950 soldiers to Saloniki, the Amiral Magon, was sunk in the Mediterranean with a loss of about 150 men.
Then came on January 29, 1917, the official announcement that the British Government had decided to lay new mine fields in the North Sea in order to cope more successfully with the ever-growing submarine menace. According to this announcement the British Government warned all neutrals that from this date the following area in the North Sea was to be considered dangerous to shipping:
The area comprising all the waters, except the Netherlands and Danish territorial waters, lying southwestward and eastward of a line commencing four miles from the coast of Jutland in latitude 56 degrees N., longitude 8 degrees E.
As a result of this new policy it was announced by Lloyd's that eleven vessels of about 15,000 tons were sunk on the first day of the blockade. During the first week of the blockade, February 1 to 8, 1917, according to British figures, which, however, were claimed by German officials to be much lower than the actual figures, there were sunk 58 vessels of 112,043 tons, of which 1 was American, 20 belonged to other neutrals, 32 to Great Britain, and 5 to the other belligerents.[Back to Contents]
PART VI—THE UNITED STATES AND THE BELLIGERENTS
CHAPTER L
THE OLD MENACE
A welcome period of quiet in the submarine controversy with Germany followed the settlement of the Sussex case recorded in the previous volume. But neither the Administration nor the country was deluded into resting in any false security. The dragon was not throttled; it merely slumbered by the application of a diplomatic opiate. While the war lasted the menace of its awaking and jeopardizing German peace with the United States was always present.
The achievements of the Deutschland, a peaceful commercial submarine which inaugurated an undersea traffic between the United States and Germany, provided an interesting diversion from the tension created by the depredations of her armed sisters. After safely crossing the Atlantic and finding a safe berth in an American port in the summer of 1916, she showed such hesitation in setting out on the return trip that doubts were general as to whether the dangers of capture by alert Allied cruisers were not too great to be risked. The attempt nevertheless was finally made on August 2, 1916, when she darted under water after passing out of the three-mile limit at the Virginia Capes and was successful. She arrived at Bremen on August 23, 1916, with a cargo of rubber and metal, and apparently found no difficulty in eluding the foes supposedly in wait for her on the high seas. When she left her Baltimore berth, so the story went, eight British warships awaited her, attended by numerous fishing craft hired to spread nets to entangle her. Near the English coast dense fogs aided by obscuring the vision of her foes' naval lookouts, and in rounding Scotland to reach the North Sea she had to evade a long line of warships and innumerable auxiliary craft extended far north.
Germany found occasion for exultation in her return without mishap. The blockade was broken. Berlin was bedecked with flags and the whole country celebrated the event as though Marshal von Hindenburg had won another victory. The Deutschland again left Bremen on October 10, 1916, and found her way into New London, Conn., on November 1, 1916, leaving for Germany three weeks later with a rubber and metal cargo said to be worth $2,000,000 and a number of mail pouches. She was reported to have arrived safely off the mouth of the Weser on December 10, 1916.