Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights. Kelly Miller

torpedoed off the coast of Ireland, went to the bottom of the ocean, carrying to death more than 1150 persons, many of them prominent Americans. With an audaciousness which has no counterpart in the history of civilized warfare, German agents in the United States had caused advertisements to be printed in the public press, warning citizens against sailing on the vessel, and advised that she was in danger of being destroyed.

      The world stood aghast and believed it impossible that Germany should carry out her threat, but they were soon to be disillusioned. Because the handsome vessel passed through a zone of the seas which the Teuton war lords declared blockaded, they sent a torpedo from an underseas boat into her bowels. The horrors of that event are still fresh in the minds of millions. No such ruthless and wanton destruction of innocent human beings had been accomplished by a so-called civilization at war.

      THE DUTIES OF WAR CAST ASIDE.

      Articles of The Hague agreement defining the rights and duties of nations at war, and which Germany had accepted, were thrust aside and disregarded by Imperial Germany. The Hohenzollern dynasty was above rules and regulations. International law and the rights of non-combatants at sea were as nothing. That all nations had agreed that the enemy ship must give the captain of the vessel attacked opportunity to land innocent passengers was forgotten. There had not been a word of warning.

      And Germany, and the adherents of the Imperial Government, expressing regret that Americans should have been sacrificed, professed deep sorrow on one hand and on the other shouted with glee. America protested vigorously, quoting the laws and demanding that Germany recognize them—not merely that she leave American vessels alone—and give assurance that no such further acts would be committed.

      Contending that the sinking of the ship was justifiable, in the exigencies of war, Germany ceased for a short time her wanton sinking of boats without warning. For almost a year her underseas crafts had been preying upon the small British coasting vessels, and sunk hundreds of fishing boats, trawlers and steamships. England's mercantile marine was the object of the Teuton's attacks, and no one had anticipated any danger to Americans or American interests.

      Germany had no reasons for desiring to attack American boats and she promised to mend her ways. There followed a brief period in which no vessels were sunk on which were Americans, and then without warning the campaign against all vessels was renewed. A dozen were sunk on which were American seamen or non-combatant passengers, none of whom was given warning or time to land before a torpedo sent the boat to the bottom of the ocean. Threats on the part of President Wilson to take action against Germany finally brought another cessation.

      GROWING DISTRESS AND AMAZEMENT.

      "The sinking of the British passenger steamship Fabala and other German acts constitute a series of events which the Government of the United States has observed with growing concern, distress and amazement," said President Wilson in a note on the submarine warfare. "This Government cannot admit the adoption of such measures or such a warning of danger as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights of American shipmasters or American citizens, bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality. It must hold the Imperial German Government to a strict accountability for any infringement of those rights, international or incidental.

      "The objection to their present method of attack lies in the practical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice and humanity which all modern opinions regard as imperative.

      "American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their ships and traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them upon the high seas.

      "No warning that an unlawful and an inhuman act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act, or as an abatement of the responsibility for its commission. * * *

      "The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty or the inalienable rights of the United States and its citizens, and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment."

      WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF VESSELS.

      Apparently Germany modified her submarine policy for a period of upward of a year, or until in February, 1917, when to the astonished world she threw aside all pretense and declared her intention of destroying any vessel which attempted to cross or sailed into a zone which she established along the English coast and around English and French ports. America's further protests availed not; her citizens, many of them, went to the bottom of the seas, and some of them suffered almost unbelievable cruelties or neglect, when the captain of a German sea raider with some humanitarian instincts permitted these innocent passengers or seamen to be rescued from the torpedoed vessels on which they were.

      Even the Red Cross vessels and Belgian relief ships carrying supplies and food to the maimed or sick at war and the starving children of Belgium did not escape the torpedo from the submarine. English hospital ships were attacked, and men unable to protect themselves were subjected to danger because the Germans feared that something might be carried on the boat which would prove valuable to the Allied forces in making war.

      Dozens—even hundreds of vessels of all sorts—were sunk from week to week. Food and supplies for the Allied forces were destroyed, until both England and France were threatened with starvation.

      All this was the work of the submarine.

      One smiled twenty-five years ago when he read that highly imaginative story of Jules Verne, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and wondered if it would ever be possible for man to create such a marvelous underseas craft as that which the famous French writer described. Today the imaginative detail of the submarine which the novelist described has been crystallized, and the world has learned that dreams sometimes come true.

      Marvelous things have been developed by the war which is involving the peace and security of the world, but no single device has had such an effect upon the warfare and upon the methods of waging it as the diabolical submarine, which, like an assassin in the night, sneaks upon the great ships along the water highways of the world and sends them with their human freight to the bottom of the ocean.

      TORPEDO'S DEADLY WORK.

      A giant cigar-shaped missile, whose nose is pointed with guncotton and filled with high explosives—and which the world knows as the torpedo—launches forth from the submarine, and speeding under the drive of a propeller at the stern steers its way into the side of the battleship or great steamship. The torpedo plunges into the bowels of the vessel. There is a tremendous explosion, and the water-tight compartments of the vessel are torn open; the boat fills, and the pride of the seas is no more.

      Had the vessel's master and her crew any warning? No; unless the vigilant officer on the bridge should note a thin pole with a hooked end projecting above the surface of the ocean some miles away, and turning his glasses upon it discover that it is the "eye" of a submarine—the periscope—which is protruding above the surface. Then he may turn his larger vessel and ram the submarine, or change the course of his craft so that the torpedo launched by the submarine will miss its mark, or perhaps expert gunners may turn the muzzles of their rapid-fire guns upon the underseas craft and riddle it before it can get far enough below the surface of the water to make the attack upon it futile.

      EFFICIENCY OF THE SUBMARINE.

      The enormous inroads on the world's shipping made by German submarines during the war shows the efficiency of this diabolical device. In the first two years and a half of the war statistics were compiled to show that more than 10 per cent of the world's merchant marine was destroyed by Germany's underseas craft of the U-boat type. Incidentally, the name U-boat as applied to submarines developed because Germany, instead of naming these slinking boats, as is the custom with surface-cruising vessels, painted upon the conning tower or nose of the craft the letter U, representing the word "underseas," coupled with the numeral denoting