THE NEW YORK PREPAREDNESS PARADE OF MAY, 1916 One of the earliest notable demonstrations of the growing popular conviction that a break with Germany was inevitable 9

V. IV-2

A second memorandum which followed from the German embassy, on instructions from Berlin, said that Germany would meet the activities of her enemies by forcibly preventing, in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the eastern Mediterranean, all navigation, that of neutrals included, from and to England, and from and to France. "All ships met within that zone," said the memorandum,

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INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE, N. Y.

JAMES W. GERARD

"will be sunk." The Imperial Government was confident that this measure would result "in a speedy termination of the war and in the restoration of peace which the Government of the United States has so much at heart"-a statement which to most Americans seemed still more a piece of sarcasm, or insolent irony rather than a grave diplomatic

utterance.

Three days later President Wilson sent to Count von Bernstorff his passports and recalled the American Ambassador, Mr. Gerard, from Berlin -an act which met with much

American Ambassador to Germany popular approval. When Bernstorff learned that he was to

until 1917

go home he said: "I am not surprized. My Government will not be surprized either. The people of Berlin knew what was bound to happen if they took the action they have taken" -a statement seen later to have been strictly true. Germany really believed she could starve England before the United States could become effective, should we choose to go to war, and hence Germany was safe in defying us. President Wilson told Congress on February 3 that the United States Government had announced, after the sinking of the Sussex, that it would break off diplomatic relations with Germany unless she abandoned certain features of her submarine warfare. As she had now declared her purpose

to resume these methods-in fact was greatly to intensify and extend them-our Ambassador at Berlin had been recalled and passports had been handed to the German Ambassador at Washington. President Wilson had informed. Germany that if American ships and American lives should again be sacrificed by. German submarine commanders "in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law

and the obvious dictates of humanity," he would go again before the Congress and ask that authority be given him to use any means that might be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas.

PRESS ILLUSTRATING SERVICE.

Germany's action as to submarine warfare was interpreted in neutral countries as in one sense due to her having virtually reached the end of her land victories. Brusiloff's advance in 1916 had been stopt only after a pro-German minister, Protopopoff, had become the Russian Minister of the Interior and virtually master of the Government, just as the year before the Grand Duke Nicholas, like Brusiloff, had swept all before him, only to find, when he got into the enemy's territory, that another pro-German minister, Sukhomlinoff, had deprived him of ammunition and other supplies. Germany had been able to keep up the illusion of victory for a while longer when Roumania, in the late autumn of 1916, dashed gayly and light-headedly into the eagle's talons, but meanwhile she had found it impossible to defeat her real adversaries. It had been easy enough to grab little kingdoms and conquer them-easy in the case of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro, easy in the case of

Roumania, when Germany had Bulgaria, Austria and Turkey to help her, but her people at home were losing faith in the fiction of an irresistible and all-conquering Imperialism, based on successful invasions of four small kingdoms, each having only a minor fraction of her own military resources. With the supply of Roumanias, Serbias, Montenegros, and Belgiums exhausted, Germany at last saw around her the real adversaries whom she had to overcome; they had been growing continually and were now stronger than she was. She saw that the Turks could not long resist the Russians and the British; that she must give up her foremost line in France; that her allies in the Petrograd Government would not last much longer; that, in several trials of strength on the Western Front, she had failed to reach any success that suggested an ultimate decision in her favor; on the contrary, she had had terrible losses on the Somme.

In these conditions Germany proposed that peace be arranged in secret around a table at which the shrewdest manipulator would come off best. When the Allies refused to be drawn into her trap and announced their peace terms openly, a complete discomfiture came to the German plan and Germany had to put forth a second plan which meant that she had cut loose from the restrictions of civilized warfare and declared a war of "frightfulness" on all the world, in the hope that by starving England she could halt the Allied military operations before spring was far advanced. She had thus far failed completely in her effort to starve England, and her submarine war had become less terrible as it went on, altho it was still terrible enough.

Meanwhile the Allied military operations she had hoped to check had not been checked. The British had taken Bagdad and were pursuing the demoralized Turks into the jaws of the Grand Duke Nicholas's army, which was coming on from Persia without serious opposition and driving another Turkish army before it. Defeat for the Turks was certain; the only question was whether it would involve the capture of Turkey as well. In the west the Germans had retired to the Aisne, giving up before the Allied spring drive began more than Joffre and Haig had aimed at in their Somme campaign. On the 1,300-mile Russian front the weather still

held armies fast bound; but the commander of those armies, Brusiloff, no longer was in fear of a ministerial traitor in his rear at Petrograd. The events which Germany foresaw in December, the events which prompted her haughty but anxious offer of peace, and her desperate swing loose from the bonds of civilization on the sea were moving more swiftly even than her statesmen had expected. They had expected to give up the Ancre sometime, but not in March; they had expected to lose their Petrograd alliance, but not in one day.

The destruction by a German submarine of the Cunard passenger-steamship Laconia, off the coast of Ireland, on February 25, violated every principle of humanity and almost every principle of international law for which the American Government in its written statements to Germany had contended. If this were not an overt act of the kind which the President had in mind when he broke off diplomatic relations, and said he would go to Congress in case further hostilities were committed against us by Germany, it was difficult to say what would meet any definition of the term. The Laconia was sunk in the night, without warning, by two torpedoes from a German submarine. She was a merchant ship and carried many passengers, including women and children. In the crew were ten or more Americans. Two Americans were among the dead, while one other of the dead was believed to have been a naturalized American.

The story of the disaster was pitiful and moving. Seventythree passengers, men, women, and children, were startled at half-past ten at night by the sudden lurching of the ship as the first torpedo struck. Forty minutes later the Laconia went down. There was time only to lower and fill the boats with no delay for provisions or extra clothing. The sea was running high, the water was icy cold, the danger to small boats imminent. The submarine which had committed this act appeared on the surface, and its officer, in cold blood, left the boats to themselves, after saying that they might expect to be picked up by a British patrol-boat. The loss of life was occasioned chiefly by the overturning of one boat. Those who were thus cast into the sea were rescued by other boats, when in a desperate condition, some of them in a