Part 9 (1/2)
At the time when I am writing this (September 24, 1917) the moral character of the tools of the Potsdam gang has again been stripped naked by the disclosure of the treachery by which the German Legation in Argentina has utilized the Swedish Legation in that country to transmit, under diplomatic privilege, messages inciting to murder on the high seas. Argentina has already taken the action to be expected from an American Republic by dismissing the German Minister. What Sweden will do to vindicate her honor remains to be seen. Her att.i.tude may affect our opinion of her as a victim or a va.s.sal of Potsdam.
There are two points in the disclosures made on September 23 by the Department of State which bear directly upon this simple narrative of experiences at The Hague.
The fetching female comic-opera star, Ray Beveridge, discreetly alluded to in the third chapter (p. 71), was secretly paid three thousand dollars by the Imperial German Emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton to finance her artistic activities. So, you see, I was not far wrong in forwarding her divorce papers to Germany and refusing to transmit her newspaper correspondence to America. She was a paid soubrette in the Potsdam troupe.
The affable and intelligent Mr. Archibald, alluded to in this chapter (p. 169), received on April 21, 1915, according to these disclosures, five thousand dollars from the Imperial German Emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton for ”propaganda” services. If I had known this when he came to me in September, it is possible that I should have been less careful to spare his feelings.
III
The record of the German submarine warfare on merchant s.h.i.+pping is one of the most extraordinary chapters in history. Americans have read it with appropriate indignation, but not always with clear understanding of the precise issues involved. Let me try to make those issues plain, since the submarine campaign was one of the causes which forced this war upon the United States. (President's Message to Congress, April 2, 1917, paragraphs 2-10.)
In war all naval vessels, including of course submarines, have the right to attack and destroy, by any means in their power, any war-s.h.i.+p of the enemy. In regard to merchant-s.h.i.+ps the case is different, according to international law. (See G. G. Wilson, International Law, paragraphs 1l4, 136, New York, 1901-1909.)
The war-vessel has the right of ”visit and search” on all merchant-s.h.i.+ps, enemy or neutral. It has also the right, in case the cargo of the merchant-s.h.i.+p appears to include more than a certain percentage of contraband, to capture it and take it into a port for adjudication as a prize. The war-vessel has also the right to sink a presumptive prize under conditions (such as distance, stress of weather, and so forth) which make it impossible to take it into port.
But here the right of the war-vessel stops. It has absolutely no right to sink the merchant-s.h.i.+p without warning and without making efficient provision for the safety of the pa.s.sengers and crew. That is the common law of civilized nations. To break it is to put one's self beyond the pale.
Some Germanophile critics have faulted me for calling the Teutonic submarines ”Potsdam pirates.” A commissioned vessel, these critics say, which merely executes the orders of its government, cannot properly be called a pirate.
Why not? Take the definition of piracy given in the New Oxford Dictionary: ”The crime of robbery or depredation on the sea by persons not holding a commission from an established civilized state.”
There's the point! Is a nation which orders its servants to commit deeds forbidden by international law, a nation which commands its naval officers to commit deliberate, wanton, dastardly murder on the high seas (case of Belgian Prince, July 31, 1917, and others), is such a nation to be regarded as ”an established civilized state”?
Were Algiers and Tunis and Tripoli ”civilized states” when they sent out the Barbary pirates in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? We thought not, and we sent our war-s.h.i.+ps to whip the barbarism out of them.
Commodore Stephen Decatur, in 1815, forced the cruel and cowardly Dey of Algiers to sign a deed of renunciation and a promise of good conduct, on the deck of an American frigate, under the Stars and Stripes.
A hundred years ago the glory of the American navy was made clear to the world in the suppression of the pirates of North Africa. To-day that glory must be maintained by firm, fearless, unrelenting war against the pirates of North Germany.
A commission to do a certain thing which is in itself unlawful does not change the nature of the misdeed. No nation has a right to commission its officers to violate the law of nations.
But the Germans say their submarines are such wonderful, delicate, scientific machines that it is impossible for them to give warning of an attack, or to do anything to save the helpless people whose peaceful vessel has been sunk beneath their feet. The precious, fragile submarine cannot be expected to observe any law of humanity which would imperil its further usefulness as an instrument of destruction.
Marvellous argument--worthy of the Potsdam mind in its highest state of Kultur! By the same reasoning any a.s.sa.s.sin might claim the right to kill without resistance because he proposed to commit the crime with a dagger so delicately wrought, so frail, so slender, that the slightest struggle on the part of his victim would break the costly, beautiful, murderous weapon.
Again, these extraordinary Germans say that merchant-s.h.i.+ps ought not to carry weapons for defense; it is too dangerous for the dainty U-boat; every merchantman thus armed must be treated as a vessel of war. But the law of nations for more than two centuries has sanctioned the carrying of defensive armament by merchant-s.h.i.+ps, and precisely because they might need it to protect themselves against pirates.
Shall the United States be asked to rewrite this article of international law, in the midst of a great war on sea and land? Shall the government at Was.h.i.+ngton be seduced by cajolery, or compelled by threats, to rob the merchantmen of the poor protection of a single gun in order that they may fall absolutely helpless into the black hands of the prowling Potsdam pirates? That would be neutrality with a vengeance!
Yet that is just what the Imperial German Government tried to persuade or force the United States to do. Thank G.o.d the effort was vain.
These were the matters under discussion when I was called to Was.h.i.+ngton in February, 1916, for consultation with the President. The long and wearing controversy had been going on for months. Every month notes were coming from Berlin, each more evasive and unsatisfactory than the last.
Every week Count Bernstorff and his aides were coming to the State Department with new excuses, new subterfuges, and the same old lies. The President and Secretary Lansing, both of whom are excellent international lawyers, found their patience tried to the uttermost by the absurdity of the arguments presented to them and by the veiled contempt in the manner of the presentation. But they kept their tempers and did their best to keep the peace.
On two points they were firm as adamant. First, the law of nations should not and could not be changed in the midst of a war to suit the need of one of the parties. Second, ”the use of submarines for the destruction of commerce is of necessity, because of the very character of the vessels employed and the very methods of attack which their employment of course involves, incompatible with the principles of humanity, the long-established and incontrovertible rights of neutrals, and the sacred immunities of non-combatants.” (President Wilson's Address to Congress, April 19, 1916.)
It was on my return from this visit to Was.h.i.+ngton that I had an opportunity of observing at close range the crooked methods of the Potsdam gang in regard to the U-boat warfare. Arriving at The Hague on March 24, 1916, I found Holland aflame with helpless rage over the recent sinking of the S.S. Tubantia, the newest and best boat of the Netherlands-Lloyd merchant-fleet. She was torpedoed by an unseen submarine on March 15.
An explanation was promptly demanded from the German Government, which denied any knowledge of the affair. Holland, lacking evidence as to the perpetrator of the crime, would have had to swallow this denial but for an accident which furnished her with the missing proof. One of the Tubantia's small boats drifted ash.o.r.e. In the boat was a fragment of a Schwarzkopf torpedo--a type manufactured and used only by Germany. This fragment was forwarded to Berlin, with another and more urgent demand for explanation, apology, and reparation.
The German newspapers coolly replied with the astounding statement that there had been two or three Schwarzkopf torpedoes in naval museums in England, and that this particular specimen had probably been given to a British submarine and used by her to destroy the good s.h.i.+p Tubantia.