WHAT IS THE VERDICT?
"_The German Government attaches no less importance to the sacred
principles of humanity than the Government of the United States._"[F]
Can anything be said in extenuation of the German submariner?
Germany declares that she is fighting for her existence, and that
unrestricted U-boat warfare is a necessity. Adopting for a moment the
enemy's point of view, we are still entitled to ask two questions,
which can be answered by anyone who knows what has taken place.
In the first place, even if the necessity of unrestricted submarine
warfare should be admitted, must it be attended by acts of savagery?
Secondly, when a nation fights for its existence, is there any standard
by which it can be judged, or does it stand outside all law, whether
human or divine?
The exploits described in this book provide Germany's answer to both
these questions. That is why she stands condemned before the eyes of
the world.
The German submarine commanders have proved by their deeds that they
commit excesses from sheer love of cruelty, and not from any national
necessity. Over and over again they have shelled defenceless seamen
while abandoning ship, disregarded drowning men when rescue would have
been easy, sunk ships at sight when a few minutes' grace would have
meant the saving of many lives. The security of Germany demanded none
of these deeds. It is possible to carry out submarine warfare without
barbarity; but the German submarine service appears deliberately to
have chosen the methods of the barbarian.
Another damning point in the evidence here collected is that it stamps
the whole German submarine service. The excesses described are not mere
exceptions to the general rule of German submarine methods. They could
be multiplied almost indefinitely; they cover every ocean in which the
German U-boats have appeared; and they are not recent developments of
sea-frightfulness, for they date back almost to the beginning of the
war.
We have attempted to judge Germany by her own standards as far as
possible, but the difficulty is to fix any standard upon which she
orders her actions. The conclusion is irresistible. The German
submarine commander stands convicted upon evidence unassailable as
a thief, a murderer, and a barbarian. If it could be argued that by
committing these acts he was performing his work more efficiently,
criticism would be to some extent disarmed; but no single ship went to
the bottom more completely on account of the outrages of the U-boat
commander who was responsible for her sinking. The acts of these men
were mere asides, something in the nature of recreation to relieve the
monotony of the submariner's life. The impartial mind cannot escape
from this conclusion.
Meanwhile, behind the sinister figure of the U-boat commander rises
up the grim outline of the faithless Imperial German Government. This
is the Government that declared she would not molest Belgian Relief
ships, and then sent the _Harpalyce_, _Ashmore_, and _Euphrates_ to the
bottom without warning. This is the Government which has often declared
that she respected the rights of neutrals, but has behaved to neutral
shipping as a pirate denying all rights to others.
Finally, what of the possibilities opened up by the system under which
the German _Chargé d'Affaires_ at Buenos Ayres communicated with the
Foreign Office in Berlin, sending cypher telegrams which passed as
Swedish official messages? "I beg that the small steamers _Oran_ and
_Guazo_, now nearing Bordeaux, may be spared, or else sunk without
a trace being left," he telegraphed on the 19th May, 1917. Precise
information as to the position, cargo, and destination of a vessel
often reaches the U-boat commander, and more than one very suggestive
instance of this appears in these pages. On such an occasion, after
the submarine has appeared, a certain member of the steamer's crew
announces that he is a German, and the U-boat commander takes the spy
away with him. These sailor-spies sign on under the cloak of some
neutral nationality.
Surely the members of the German Submarine Service stand convicted
by their own deeds as unscrupulous pirates, with whom even savages
might well hesitate to claim any fellowship. The verdict of civilised
humanity has been pronounced against these men who have destroyed the
Brotherhood of the Sea and horrified Civilisation.
Printed in Great Britain by Messrs. ALABASTER, PASSMORE & SONS, Ltd.,
London and Maidstone.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] _Great Germany_, 1911 (page 231).
[B] _Patriotism, Art, and Art-Handicraft_ (p. 23).
[C] _Politics_, 1916 (p. 230).
[D] _German Speeches in Difficult Days_, 1914 (p. 13).
[E] _Hurrah and Hallelujah_, by J. P. Bang, 1916 (p. 83).
[F] _German Note to America, 4th May, 1916._
Transcriber's Note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including inconsistent hyphenation. Some minor corrections
of punctuation and spelling have been made. Misspellings in the
letter from the Japanese prisoner on page 42 have been retained.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.