Queenstown, _April_, 1919.--_Rather more than a week ago the bodies
of a young man and a young woman, tightly strapped together, closely
clasped in each other’s arms, and floating out towards the ocean, were
picked up by Kinsdale fishermen as they were returning to harbour in
the early hours of morning. Inquiries into identity appear to show that
the young man was a German of good family and superior education, who,
until recently, was a prisoner at Knockaloe, the well-known internment
camp for alien civilians in the Isle of Man, and that the young woman
was a native of the island, a girl of fine character, the owner of a
farm which is connected with the camp and called by the same name._
_It is known that, in spite of the difference of race and
notwithstanding the difficulties of their position, they became
strongly attached, and that when, shortly after the Armistice, the
order was given that prisoners of war should be returned to the
countries of their origin, the young German tried, first, to remain in
England with the girl, whom he wished to marry, and afterwards to be
allowed to take her back with him to Germany. Failing in both efforts,
he fell into a deep melancholy, which seems to have communicated itself
to the young woman, and to have resulted in a death-pact._
_When the time came for the camp to be closed the young man had
disappeared, and later it was discovered that the young woman was also
missing. How they escaped is unknown, but it is assumed that they threw
themselves into the sea from the cliffs of Contrary, the most westerly
headland in Man, and, being caught in the Gulf stream, which flows
close to the island at that point, were carried down to the waters in
which they were found._
_The mackerel fishers of Kinsdale (simple, but imaginative and often
religious men, belonging to many nationalities--Irish, Scotch,
French, and even German) have been deeply touched by the fate of the
young lovers who, finding their love doomed by the hatred between
their races, and nothing left to them in life, preferred death to
separation. A few days ago they asked permission to bury the bodies,
and yesterday they did so, choosing as the place of rest the summit of
Cape Clear, which looks out on the Atlantic. To-day they have built
over the spot a broad and lofty cairn, which will henceforth be the
first thing seen by the passengers on the great liners who are coming
in from the New World to the Old, and the last by those who are going
out from the Old World to the New._--The Times.
“_Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.... Many
waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it._”