"On August 26, the Secretary of the British Admiralty announced that Squadron Commander Arthur W. Bigsworth in a single-handed attack bombed and destroyed a German submarine off Ostend.
"Lieutenant Viney received the Victoria Cross and Lieutenant de Sincay was recommended for the Legion of Honour for having flown over a German submarine and destroyed it with bombs off the Belgian coast on November 18, 1915.
"Early in 1916 an Austrian seaplane sank the French submarine Foucault in the southern Adriatic. Lieutenant Calezeny was the pilot and the observer was Lieutenant von Klinburg. After crippling the submarine they then performed the remarkable feat of calling another Austrian seaplane and rescuing the entire French crew, two officers and twenty seven men, in spite of the fact that a high sea was running at the time."
It will be noted that Admiral Peary lays great stress on the supreme value of aircraft as foes of the submarine. This was due to the fact that at about the time of his appearance before the Senate Committee the world was fairly panic-stricken by the vigour and effect of the German submarine campaign and its possible bearing upon the outcome of the war. Of that campaign I shall have more to say in the section of this book dealing with submarines. But the subject of the undersea boat in war became at this time inextricably interwoven with that of the aërial fleets, and the sudden development of the latter, together with the marked interest taken in it by our people, cannot be understood without some description of the way in which the two became related.
From the very beginning of the war the Germans had prosecuted a desultory submarine warfare on the shipping of Great Britain and had extended it gradually until neutral shipping also was largely involved. All the established principles of international law, or principles that had been supposed to be established, were set at naught. In bygone days enemy merchant ships were subject to destruction only after their crews had been given an opportunity to take to the boats. Neutral ships bearing neutral goods, even if bound to an enemy port, were liable to destruction only if found upon visit to be carrying goods that were contraband of war. The list of contraband had been from time immemorial rigidly limited, and confined almost wholly to munitions of war, or to raw material used in their construction. But international law went by the board early in the war. Each belligerent was able to ascribe plausible reasons for its amendment out of recognizable form. Great Britain established blockades two hundred miles away from the blockaded ports because the submarines made the old practice of watching at the entrance of the port too perilous. The list of contraband of war was extended by both belligerents until it comprehended almost every useful article grown, mined, or manufactured. But the amendment to international law which acted as new fuel for the flames of war, which aroused the utmost world-wide indignation, and which finally dragged the United States into the conflict, was that by which Germany sought to relieve her submarine commanders of the duty of visiting and searching a vessel, or of giving its people time to provide for their safety, before sinking it.
© U. & U.
An Air Battle in Progress.
The German argument was that the submarine was unknown when the code of international law then in force was formulated. It was a peculiarly delicate naval weapon. Its strength lay in its ability to keep itself concealed while delivering its attack. If exposed on the surface a shot from a small calibred gun striking in a vital point would instantly send it to the bottom. If rammed it was lost. Should a submarine rise to the surface, send an officer aboard a ship it had halted, and await the result of his search, it would be exposed all the time to destruction at the hands of enemy vessels coming up to her aid. Indeed if the merchantman happened to carry one gun a single shot might put the assailant out of business. Accordingly the practice grew up among the Germans of launching their torpedoes without a word of warning at their helpless victim. The wound inflicted by a torpedo is such that the ship will go down in but a few minutes carrying with it most of the people aboard. The most glaring, inexcusable, and criminal instance of this sort of warfare was the sinking without warning of the great passenger liner, Lusitania, by which more than eleven hundred people were drowned, one hundred and fourteen of them American citizens.