Слике страница
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

THE Government of the United States

has notified the allied Governments, in discussing the submarine merchant vessel Deutschland, that it cannot subscribe to the doctrine that all submarines shall be treated as vessels of war. The United States holds that the determination of the status of a submarine must be based on consideration of the facts in each individual case, and that the rule of conduct for a neutral Government must be the same with respect to this type of vessel that it is for other craft. Submarines may be merchant ships or warships, and their status is determined by the character and purpose of their armament, the ownership of the vessel, and whether they are privately owned or owned by a Government and commissioned as part of the naval forces of that Government.

[blocks in formation]

previous maximum in twelve months. The British Empire is our best customer, representing nearly half the total. Our balance of trade with the United Kingdom alone in seven months is $854,000,357. Our trade with Japan is nearly twice as large as last year. In seven months our trade with Germany was only $5,931,635, and with Austria $564,593. We imported from Germany in the first seven months of 1915 goods valued at $36,094,099, but the figures fell to $4,813,452 in the same period of 1916. Our sales to the A B C South American republics increased 100 per cent., and our imports from those countries increased over 50 per cent.

IN the first ten weeks-up to Aug. 12

of the Russian drive in Bukowina and Galicia, the Austro-Germans lost as prisoners to the Russians 7,757 officers and 350,000 men, besides 405 guns, 1,326 machine guns, 338 bomb throwers, and 292 caissons. Adding the losses of the next eighteen days-up to Sept. 1, 1916— the total number of prisoners captured by the Russians since the beginning of the drive is considerably in excess of 400,000. The British and French up to Sept. 10, 1916, in the drive in Picardy, which began July 1, captured 54,000 prisoners.

* * *

EMILE VANDERVELDE, Belgian

Minister of State, recently told a London audience that on the day after the battle of the Yser the Belgian Army was reduced to a few thousands; the country, all save a little corner, was occupied by the invader, its finances were in ruin, and most of its young men of military age were on the other side of the German lines. Yet today Belgium has an army of 200,000 men, well armed and equipped, which is doing its share, pro rata, on the western front, holding the twenty-odd miles of trenches from the North Sea to Bixschoote.

Submarine War

By Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes, whose fame as poet is enshrined in English and American literature, served for a while at the Dardanelles and later visited the United States, where he was warmly received. On his return to England he began studying the British Admiralty methods for coping with the German submarines. With the co-operation of the Admiralty, he has been able to shed the first real light on this mystery. His articles, which are given here in abbreviated form, are copyrighted in America by The New York Tribune Association.

[blocks in formation]

it is now possible to give a glimpse of the far-reaching method that destroyed the menace of the German submarine.

It was done in silence, and silence was one of the weapons. Submarines went out and never returned. Other submarines went out, perplexed, against a mystery; and these, too, never returned, or returned in mysteriously diminishing numbers. Nothing was said about it till the destruction of the fiftieth was quietly celebrated at a small gathering in London; and then neutrals began to inquire, with a new note of curiosity, "What is England doing?" We heard tales of steel nets-as vague as the results would have been but

[graphic]

ALFRED NOYES

land is doing" began in the first fortnight of the war. Neutral countries even wondered why the first month of the war had produced no great historian. In the meantime, England was making the history of the next thousand years; and that can only be done on vast and deeply sunken foundations, which must be laid in silence. Results, and solid results, of granite and oak were England's aim. These are now appearing; and while her great new armies are demonstrating what England has created on that side,

for certain great preliminaries of which we never heard. A few days ago I had the opportunity of seeing the finished system, and this threw a flood of light on the immense work that must have gone before in even this one branch of our sea warfare.

A Mysterious Fleet

To begin with, a body of men, larger than the United States Army, was chosen from the longshore fishermen and trawler crews. They were gradually drilled, disciplined, and trained and put into naval

uniforms. This force is now over 100,000 strong. They were chosen, of course, on an entirely different principle from that of the army. They were tough seadogs, of all ages, inured to all the ways of the sea, but not at all to any form of discipline. This in itself implies very great preliminaries, for the finished product is fit to man a battleship.

In the meantime, their fishing-boats, trawlers, and drifters were gradually taken over by the Government and fitted out for the hunt, some three thousand of them. To these were added a fleet of fast motor boats, specially built for scouting purposes. They were stationed at various points all round the island. Night and day, in all weathers, section replacing section, these trawlers and drifters string themselves out from coast to coast; while on shore thousands of workers are turning out their own special munitions and equipment-nets, mines, and a dozen mysteries which may not be mentioned.

From one of their bases a patrol-boat took me out along one of the longest lines of the flotilla. This innocent line of trawlers, strung out for some fifty miles, had more nightmares in store for the German submarines than a fleet of battleships. It was an odd sensation to approach trawler after trawler and note the one obviously unusual feature of each -the menacing black gun at bow and stern.

They were good guns, too-English, French, and Japanese. The patrolboat carried a Hotchkiss, and most of the trawlers had equally efficient weapons. There were other unusual features in every trawler, drifter, and whaler, features that made one catch one's breath when their significance was realized. About this I may say very little; but in the matter of the nets it was demonstrated to me that within twenty-five minutes any submarine reported in most of our home waters can be inclosed in a steel trap from which there is no escape. The vague rumors that we heard in the earlier stages of the war led one to suppose that these nets might be used perhaps in the English Channel and other narrow waters. But I have seen traps a hundred miles long, traps that could

shift their position and change their shape at a signal.

A submarine may enter their seas, indeed, and even go to America. She may even do some damage within their lines. But, if she does this, her position is known, and, if there be any future damage done, it will probably have to be done by another submarine. For she has called upon a thousand perils, from every point of the compass, to close upon her return journey. I have actually seen the course of a German submarine-which thought itself undiscovered-marked from day to day on the chart at an English base. The clues to all the ramifications of this work are held by a few men at the Admiralty in London. Telephone and telegraph keep them in constant touch with every seaport in the kingdom. But let the reader consider the amount of quiet organization that went before all this. Even the manufacture of the nets-which do not last forever, even when made-is an industry in itself; and that is one of the least of a thousand activities.

Sailors' Awful Ordeal

[Mr. Noyes refers to the three English sailors who were captured from a trawler by a German submarine:]

They endured eighty hours' nightmare under the sea that shattered the mind of one and left permanent traces on the other two. Periodically revolvers were put to their heads, and they were ordered, on pain of death, to tell all they knew of our naval dispositions. They saw a good deal of the internal routine of the German submarine also; and noted, characteristically, that the German crew -on this boat, at any rate-were very "jumpy," too "jumpy " even to take a square meal. They munched biscuits at their stations at odd moments. On the third morning they heard guns going overhead, and watched the Germans handing out shells to their own guns. Finally a torpedo was fired, and they heard it take effect. Then they emerged into the red wash of dawn and saw only the floating wreckage of the big ship that had been sunk, and, among the wreckage, a small boat. They were

bundled into this, told they were free to row to England or Nineveh, and the submarine left them-three longshore fisherman, who had passed through the latest invention of the modern scientific devil, two who could still pull at the oars, but the other too crazy to steer, as his little personal part of the price paid by England for sweeping and patrolling the seas of civilization.

Many were the tales of neutrals, towed to port, battered but safe, by these indefatigable auxiliaries. One was towed in, upside down, by fixing an English anchor in one of her German-made shell holes; she was towed for a hundred miles, at a quarter of a knot an hour, and arrived for the Admiral at the base to make his inspection.

Attack on the Gulflight

The attack on the American steamship Gulflight was narrated to me as follows by the skipper of his Majesty's drifter Contrive:

"We had shot our nets, and about noon we saw a large tank steamer coming up channel at a good pace. She was coming in our direction, and I soon saw her colors, the Stars and Stripes, at the stern-a fine big ensign it was and spread out like a board. When she was about two miles off, to my horror I saw a submarine emerge from the depths and come right to the surface. There was no sign of life on the submarine, but she lay stationary, rising and falling in the trough, and I knew instinctively that she was watching the steamer. She had undoubtedly come from the same direction as that in which the steamer was going, and it did not take me long to realize what had actually happened. I took in the situation at a glance. The submarine had passed the Gulflight, (for that proved to be her name.) She had deliberately increased speed to lie in wait for her and get a sure target rather than attempt to fire a torpedo when overhauling her, with the possible chance of missing and wasting one of those expensive weapons, even American.

on an

"The submarine was painted light gray and had two guns; but I could not

see any number. For five minutes she lay motionless-and then, having fixed the position of her prey, and taken her speed into consideration, she slowly submerged in its direction. I knew what was coming, and it came-a dull, heavy explosion and a silence, and then, as if to see the result of her handiwork, the submarine again appeared. She did not stay up long, as smoke was soon seen on the horizon, and I knew the patrols had been looking for her. She knew it, tooand submerged. I hauled in my nets and proceeded at full speed to the sinking ship to try and save the lives of the crew. Our boat was launched, and I went aboard. By this time the Gulflight's bows were well down and her fore decks awash, and she looked as if she would sink at any minute. She was badly holed in her fore part. The Huns, I thought, had done their work well.

"Ten minutes later I saw the patrol vessels racing up for all they were worth, and one of these vessels took off the crew, two of whom were drowned. The Captain of the Gulflight died of shock. Soon four patrol vessels were on the spot, and three of these vessels put men aboard with wires in double quick time. The fourth-a big trawler, with wireless (which I now know in naval language 'trawler a leader')— steamed round and round in the vicinity, keeping a careful watch. In less than two hours the Gulflight, her Stars and Stripes still flying above water, was being towed at a good speed to port, with the trawlers in attendance."

as

Frightfulness Frightened

[Mr. Noyes tells how the trawlers have driven German submarines out of English waters, and narrates as follows a moving story of submarine frightfulness, which is an epic of unspeakable cruelty.]

It was on a fine Summer morning that the fishing trawler Victoria left a certain port beloved of Nelson to fish on the Labadie Bank. She carried a crew of nine men, together with a little boy named Jones-a friend of the skipper. He held under his arm a well-thumbed copy of "Treasure Island." Perhaps it was this book that had inspired him to

the adventure, for, though nobody quite believed at that time in the existence of the twentieth-century pirate, there was adventure in the air, and it was only after much pleading that he was allowed to go. This vessel, of course, was unarmed and used only for fishing. For a week all went well. There was a good catch of fish, splashing the rusty-red old craft with shining scales from bow to stern, and piling up below like mounded silver. The crew were beginning to think of their women at home and their accustomed nooks in the Lord Nelson and Blue Dolphin Taverns.

They were about 130 miles from land when the sound of a gun was heard by all hands. The boy Jones shut his book on his thumb and ran up to the bridge, where he stood by the skipper. In the distance, against the sunset, they saw the silhouette of a strange-looking ship. At first it looked like a drifter, painted gray, with mizzen set. But the flash of another gun revealed it as a submarine. The skipper hesitated. Should he stop the ship and trust to the laws of war and the good faith of the enemy? The lives of the crew and the little boy, who had been left in his charge, were his first thought. Yes, he would do so, and the order was given. The engines ceased to throb. Then, as the ship rolled idly, he was disillusioned. The gun flashed again, and he knew that he was facing an implacable determination to sink and destroy.

It was only a forlorn hope, but he would risk it, and not a man demurred at his decision. The engines rang "full speed ahead" and the Victoria began to tear through the green water for home. The submarine opened a rapid fire from two powerful guns, and the first to fall was the little lad Jones. The skipper kept steadily on his course, with the boy dead at his feet. But the submarine gained rapidly and continued to pour a devastating fire on the helpless craft. The skipper was struck next and blown to pieces. The bridge was a mass of bloody wreckage and torn flesh. The next shell shattered the tiny engine room and killed the engineman. The Victoria lay at the mercy of the enemy.

The

[blocks in formation]

Careless of the men in the water, the submarine steamed up alongside the Victoria and sealed her fate by placing bombs aboard her. There was a violent explosion, and her wreckage, strewn over the face of the waters far and near, was the only relic of her existence. Not till nearly two hours after this were the four numbed and helpless men in the water taken aboard the submarine. They were placed down below, and, one by one, closely examined by the commander as to the system of patrols in the neighborhood. Dazed as they were, and hardly responsible for their actions, they one and all refused to answer their captors. Late that night they were told that the submarine was about to submerge, and, so far as they could gather, they proceeded below the surface for over twelve hours. They knew enough about the system of netting to know that they were in constant danger of being trapped in the belly of the sea and drowned, hideously, in the darkness, but not a man spoke. During the night they were given some coffee and a biscuit each, and the wound of one man, who had been badly lacerated by a shell, was dressed by the ship's surgeon. They lay in the semi-darkness, listening to the steady beat and hum of the engines and wondering what kind of a miracle could bring them to the light of day again.

Abandoned at Sea

On the next morning the trawler Hirose fell a victim to the same submarine. She was no sooner sighted than she was greeted with a hail of shot. She stopped and lowered a boat, while the enemy dashed up. The commander of the submarine shouted through a megaphone: "Leave your ship. I give you five minutes." The crew complied

-there were ten hands all told-and were ordered aboard the submarine, while the Hirose was blown up. After being

« ПретходнаНастави »