by German and Austrian submarines and other Teutonic commerce raiders since the outbreak of the war, according to data compiled at the State Department. Ten had been destroyed by submarines, one, the William P. Frye, by the German converted cruiser and raider Prinz Eitel Freidrich, and one, the Cushing, by a German airship. On March 23 survivors of an American oil-steamship, the Healdton, sunk by a German submarine, arrived at Rotterdam. Seven Americans had perished. The captain described how he had been in his cabin when aroused by a terrific concussion. All the lights went out and he rushed on deck to stop the engines only to find that a torpedo had gone through amidships at the spot where the ship's name was illuminated brightly, and had wrecked the engine-room. The light clearly had served as a target. He rushed back to the cabin in the dark and was just able to grab a coat and his sextant before a second explosion shook the ship. This time it had been torpedoed aft, setting the tanks ablaze. Burning oil ran in all directions. The Healdton was settling fast by the stern. One or two men never came up. The submarine came forward at once and was facing the sinking ship but no men could be seen on the submarine. She soon dived under the water again. In twenty minutes all was over. Then came twelve hours in open boats, every one insufficiently clad, and exposed to bitter hail and snow until picked up by the trawler Java. According to the captain's calculations he was well within the so-called safe channel when the Healdton was torpedoed. Two sloops with thirteen and seven men respectively, succeeded in getting away, but the third, containing twenty-one men, capsized and nearly all were drowned.

The Healdton was an American ship; she was flying an American flag, and in her crew were thirteen American citizens. Without warning she was torpedoed twenty-five miles off the coast of Holland, outside the German barred zone and within the limits of the safety-zone. A score of human lives were lost. The act was one of the cumulative provocations that could make no change in our growing resolve to take up arms against Germany, save that it would stir the American people to a firmer determination. The

only adequate explanation of Germany's behavior, the only one that really explained, was the assumption that she was afflicted with some hitherto unobserved and monstrous variety of rabies.3

3 Principal Sources: The Independent, The Outlook, New York; The Chicago Tribune; The Times, The Evening Post, The Literary Digest, New York; Associated Press dispatches.

THE HOSTILE GERMAN U-53 THAT CAME TO AMERICA IN 1916 In the period when relations between the United States and Germany were growing more and more critical. but six months before we declared war on Germany, the German U-53 suddenly made its appearance in Newport Harbor and off Nantucket on October 8, sark the Newfoundland liner Stephano and some smaller boats, the result as to marine insurance rates being that they were advanced about 500 per cent. It was not until the late summer and autumn of 1918 that U-boats again visited the Atlantic coast. Both visits were accepted at the time as German efforts to repress the war spirit in the United States

II

"A STATE OF WAR" WITH GERMANY DECLARED April 2, 1917-April 6, 1917

THUS in the first two months of Germany's unrestricted

and intensified submarine warfare-the period ending on March 31-several "overt acts' against the United States had been committed by her in February, when the Cunarder Laconia was sunk and two Americans lost; in March when four American ships-the Vigilancia, the City of Memphis, Illinois, and Healdton-went down, involving the loss of several more American lives. Since the war began some twenty-five American ships had been sunk by the Teutonic powers, fifteen of them by submarines. On these and on belligerent passenger-ships, including the Lusitania, more than 230 Americans had perished-many of them women and children. When Congress assembled in special session on April 2, in response to the President's summons, the whole country was stirred to the depths by these acts of war and looked eagerly for a formal declaration by Congress that war existed with Germany. Congress had scarcely begun its session-indeed, President Wilson was on his way to the Capitol to read his address-when news was printed that another American ship, the freighter Aztec, had been torpedoed at the entrance to the English Channel, and that 28 of her crew were missing. Nothing at that time could have prevented a prompt declaration except a decision by Germany to discontinue her unrestricted submarine warfare, and that she failed to make. The Senate on April 4, by a vote of 82 to 6, the House on April 6, by a vote of 373 to 50, passed the declaration.

Impressive scenes marked the assembling of Congress on April 2. Streets and public places in Washington were thronged with visitors, thousands of them clamorous for war; others, in

considerable number pacifists, to whom no patient hearing was granted anywhere. One of the latter came from Massachusetts, and, in a corridor of the Senate wing of the Capitol, assaulted with ill-timed words Senator Lodge of that State, who speedily knocked him down. Outside the Capitol probably 50,000 citizens witnessed the arrival and departure of the President, and, during the delivery of his address, echoed with cheers the sounds of applause that came through the open windows of the Capitol. A squadron of cavalry had escorted the President along Pennsylvania

Avenue, now brilliantly lighted, the hour being 8 P.M., while from every window fronting the avenue fluttered the national flag. The President entered the Capitol through troops of cavalry crowded within the shadow of the great white dome, the building elsewhere bathed in a flood of moonlight that brought out every feature of its architecture. and from the top of which the figure of Liberty flourished the flag and a torch of gold.