# VFW Volume 11 "Delivery Of The German Ultimatum To Belgium"



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This post is to introduce the Kindle version of Volume 11 of the series entitled "AMERICA Great Crises In Our History Told by Its Makers" which was published as a print version by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. This 11th volume covers the first two years (1914-1916) of the Great War (WW1). This Kindle version is published in partnership with the VFW who receive 50% of sales revenue.

*
REVIEWERS WANTED! If you would like to review any of the books in this series, PM me with your Amazon email address and I will gift copies to you.*

This is the publisher description of Volume 11.

This volume deals with the first half of the Great War, 1914-16. To help you
understand the war's origins, you'll read letters and telegrams between Emperor
Franz Josef, Kaiser Wilhelm, the Czar of Russia and the King of England. They're
followed by an eye-witness report of Germany's ultimatum to Belgium, and
accounts of critical events by Winston Churchill, Georges Clemenceau, Sir Edward
Grey and Brand Whitlock, the American Minister to Belgium. There are accounts of
the battles of Mons, Ypres, and Verdun; reports of naval conflicts at the
Falklands and Jutland; Marshal Joffre's review of the Marne campaign; Admiral
Graf von Spee's account of a sea fight near Chile; and Lord Kitchener's report
of the Gallipoli disaster. The sinking of the Lusitania is described by an
American survivor and a German U-boat commander, the execution of Edith Cavell
by a British chaplain who witnessed it. Finally comes the Memorandum approved by
President Wilson proposing American intervention in the war.

Introduction To The Series

"After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident, you begin to
worry about history." This observation, attributed to the comedian Henny
Youngman, summarizes the dilemma you face when you want to find out what really
happened in the past. When you read a history book, the "facts" are actually the
author's own interpretation, often colored by a conscious or unconscious wish to
have you share a particular point of view. You're one step (or many steps)
removed from the original source material.

That's why the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States compiled this 12-
volume collection of writings of people who actually witnessed the key events in
American history - the actual actors in the events or contemporary observers of
them. Past historians have spent decades locating, studying and consulting vast
amounts of material such as this. This meticulously chosen selection brings you
the essence of history as originally recorded by those who participated in it.

You'll be reading mostly eye-witness accounts, by people contemporary with the
events they describe, including many significant historical figures themselves.
So you can make your own assessments, draw your own conclusions and gain an
understanding of past events undistorted by the prejudices, assumptions and
selectivity of professional historians. In some instances where there aren't
reliable or easily accessible eye-witness accounts, the compilers have chosen
extracts from objective, authoritative historians of past generations such as
Francis Parkman whose judgements have stood the test of time. Through these
accounts, your knowledge of American history will be immeasurably greater, your
understanding of the key events in the building of the nation immensely
increased.

Founded in 1899, the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW) is a
nonprofit organization dedicated to foster camaderie among United States
veterans of overseas conflicts, from the Spanish-American War to Iraq and
Afghanistan, and to ensure that they receive due respect and entitlements for
the sacrifices they and their loved ones have made on behalf of the nation. With
this mission, the VFW has a natural desire to encourage a broad understanding
and appreciation of American history, and this essential collection of
historical documents makes a huge contribution to that aim.

This reissue was scanned, formatted and converted to e-book format by
Library4Science.com with the permission and encouragement of the VFW, to make
the series more accessible to a wider public. The VFW receives 50% of all
royalty revenue from these e-books. This book is about 300 print pages.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11: The Great War 1914-1916

*Italy Joins The Allies*

By Premier Antonio Salandra.

_ON May 23, 1915, Italy declared war on Austria (omitting to name Germany in the declaration), for the reasons given here by Premier Salandra, whom King Victor Emanuel, a week before, had invited to resume the Italian premiership. Since the outbreak of the war Germany had spent millions of money in propaganda work in Italy, buying newspapers and bribing politicians, even tempting the Roman Government with promises "to be kept after the war was won by the Central Powers." The paymaster was a former German Imperial Chancellor, Prince von Bu1ow.

Italy put no faith in such promises, and despite the defensive alliance between herself and the Central Powers, concluded, as the United States was soon to do, that she must fight them with the aid of the Allies, or be left to fight them alone eventually. Signor Salandra takes it for granted that the above stated facts are known._

I ADDRESS myself to Italy and to the civilized world in order to show not by violent words, but by exact facts and documents, how the fury of our enemies has v a i n I y attempted to diminish the high moral and political dignity of the cause which our arms will make prevail. I shall speak with the calm of which the King of Italy has given a noble example, when he called his land and sea forces to arms. I shall speak with the respect due to my position and to the place in which I speak. I can afford to ignore the insults written in Imperial, Royal, and Archducal proclamations. Since I speak from the Capitol, and represent in this solemn hour the people and the Government of Italy, I, a modest citizen, feel that I am far nobler than the head of the house of the Hapsburgs.

The commonplace statesmen who, in rash frivolity of mind and mistaken in all their calculations, set fire last July to the whole of Europe and even to their own hearths and homes, have now noticed their fresh colossal mistake, and in the Parliaments of Budapest and Berlin have poured forth brutal invective of Italy and her Government with the obvious design of securing the forgiveness of their fellow-citizens and intoxicating them with cruel visions of hatred and blood. The German Chancellor said he was imbued not with hatred, but with anger, and he spoke the truth, because he reasoned badly, as is usually the case in fits of rage. I could not, even if I chose, imitate their language. An atavistic throwback to primitive barbarism is more difficult for us who have twenty centuries behind us more than they have.

The fundamental thesis of the statesmen of Central Europe is to be found in the words "treason and surprise on the part of Italy toward her faithful allies." It would be easy to ask if he has any right to speak of alliance and respect for treaties who, representing with infinitely less genius, but with equal moral indifference, the tradition of Frederick the Great and Bismarck proclaimed that necessity knows no law, and consented to his country trampling under foot and burying at the bottom of the ocean all the documents and all the customs of civilization and international law. But that would be too easy an argument. Let us examine, on the contrary, positively and calmly, if our former allies are entitled to say that they were betrayed and surprised by us.

The horrible crime of Serajevo was exploited as a pretext a month after it happened this was proved by the refusal of Austria to accept the very extensive offers of Serbia nor at the moment of the general conflagration would Austria have been satisfied with the unconditional acceptance of the ultimatum. Count Berchtold on July 31st declared to the Duke of Avarna that, if there had been a possibility of mediation being exercised, it could not have interrupted hostilities, which had already begun with Serbia. This was the mediation for which Great Britain and Italy were working. In any case, Count Berchtold was not disposed to accept mediation tending to weaken the conditions indicated in the Austrian note, which, naturally, would have been increased at the end of the war.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11: The Great War, 1914-1916.

*The Abandonment Of Paris*

Official Proclamations.

_ACTING on the advice of General Joffre, on September 3, 1914, President Poincare and his Ministers vacated Paris and established the French seat ,of government at Bordeaux. In the first of the accompanying documents, General Gallieni briefly informs the army and inhabitants of Paris that, as commandant of the French capital, he will resolutely defend it.

Following his proclamation is that of the French Government, signed by all the civil and military authorities, including Gallieni, and addressed to the "People of France." Both then and later Gallieni achieved merited fame as one of the ablest and most courageous defenders of France. A not over-sympathetic English eye-witness of the official evacuation does not believe that "any human society in time of peril could display in a higher degree than Paris was doing the virtues of calmness, courage, loyalty and endurance."_

THE members of the Government of the Republic have left Paris to give a fresh impulse to national defense.

I have been intrusted with the task of defending Paris against the invader.

That task I will fulfill to the end. GALLIENI, Commandant of the Army of Paris.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE! For several weeks relentless battles have engaged our heroic troops and the army of the enemy. The valor of our soldiers has won for them, at several points, marked advantages ; but in the north the pressure of the German forces has compelled us to fall back.

This situation has compelled the President of the Republic and the Government to take a painful decision.

In order to watch over the national welfare, it is the duty of the public powers to remove themselves temporarily from the city of Paris.

Under the command of an eminent Chief, a French army, full of courage and zeal, will defend the capital and its patriotic population against the invader.

But the war must be carried on at the same time on the rest of its territory.

Without peace or truce, without cessation or faltering, the struggle for the honor of the nation and the reparation of violated rights must continue.

None of our armies is impaired. If some of them have sustained very considerable losses, the gaps have immediately been filled up from the reserves, and the appeal for recruits assures us of new reserves in men and energy tomorrow.

Endure and fight! Such must be the motto of the Allied British, Russian, Belgian and French armies.

Endure and fight, while at sea the British aid us, cutting the communication of our enemy with the world.

Endure and fight, while the Russians continue to advance to strike the decisive blow at the heart of the German Empire.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*Clemenceau Calls France To Arms*

His Speech at the Outbreak of the War.

_GEORGES Benjamin Eugene Clemenceau made this speech in Paris, August 5, 1914, the day Russian troops began the invasion of East Prussia and Germany invaded Belgium. Two days before Germany had declared war on France, in the manner here described.

At the beginning of the Great War, Clemenceau, although seventy-three years of age, was chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of the Army. His early criticisms of the French conduct of the war caused his newspapers, "L'Homme Libre" (The Free Man) and "L'Homme Enchaine" (The Man in Chains), to be periodically suppressed. Nevertheless he kept up his attacks, as and when he thought them justified, and in 1917 he caused the fall of the Painleve Ministry and was himself called to the French Premiership. Urging the nation to a more energetic prosecution of the war, his ruthlessness in overriding opposition earned for him the sobriquet of "The Tiger."_

WLLIAM II has willed it. The cannon must speak. The German Ambassador has decided to depart, tired of waiting in Paris for acts of violence which do not occur. Do you know the official reasons for his departure? It is that a French aviator is alleged to have thrown bombs on Nuremberg. In courteous language M. Viviani replied that this was an untruth, although it was only too true that a German troop had come into our territory and killed a French soldier; and the Ambassador, finding nothing to say, slipped away only to return a few minutes later to repair a slight omission. He had forgotten to deliver to the Minister a declaration of war. One cannot think of everything at once.

England, be it said to her honor, did not hesitate. Germany has had many friends, even in important places, in the British Government, and she has not recoiled before any method of impressing public opinion in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the statesmen of England, and the English people themselves, have too clear a vision of their own interests, coinciding at every point with those of European civilization, for them to entertain the thought of taking miserable refuge in a waiting policy. This whole nation is composed of men who possess peculiarly that superior quality of knowing their own wills and of acting when once they have spoken. They do not give themselves up to enthusiasms, as sometimes happens to us, but they advance carefully step by step and they are easier to kill than to drive back. Moreover it was impossible for them to do, in so little time, more than they have done in the time since all dissimulation disappeared from Germany's intentions.

With a prudence for which no one can reproach them they painfully exhausted the last chances of peace, without ever letting themselves be entrapped by the fallacious proposals of the German Ambassador. They carefully guarded their liberty of action in case of developments of which no one can calculate the consequences. But Germany has not left them the chance to preserve this liberty long, and they have quickly shown that their decision, once it was necessary, would not be delayed.

Italy has issued her formal declaration of neutrality. By the way in which French opinion received it, our brothers beyond Piedmont can see that the absurd quarrels of governments insufficiently authoritative have left no trace in our hearts. They have often told us that the Triple Alliance could not act together, in whatever concerned the Italians, unless we were the aggressors, and that they refused to believe that such would ever be the case, since our policy was wholly defensive. They have shown that they were wholly sincere. We cannot but be thankful to them for it.

It is for the Latin cause, for the independence of nationalities in Europe, that we are going to fight, for the greatest ideas that have honored the thought of mankind, ideas that have come to us from Athens and Rome and of which we have made the crowning work of that civilization which the Germany of Arminius pretends to monopolize, like those barbarians who melted into ingots the marvels of ancient art after the pillaging of Rome in order to make savage ornaments out of them.

Anticipating the time which possibly is near, I proclaim to the men who have revived Italy and who have had the glory to bring Rome back to her destiny that they have themselves marked out their place in this great struggle. I am not afraid to say that, without them, we shall conquer, because we are resolved to dare and endure anything, because a peace resulting from our defeat could not be made except over the corpses of all the men worthy of the name of French. But what supreme joy would overflow our hearts if the name of the great Italy of history should be associated with ours in a heroic adventure in which the greatest men of Rome would have been proud to claim an important part. Whenever their sons wish it we shall be able to make a place of honor for them at our side. Behold Belgium in action, Holland with arms in hand, Russia pregnant with new purpose to revive our fatigued hopes, the peoples of the Balkans being born anew, the American republics, with the greatest in the lead, incapable by tradition of seconding a brutal attack upon liberty, all Europe indignant at monstrous treachery, and even Asia, in astonishment, speaking of lending her redoubtable legions to the cause.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Grand Fleet Goes To Sea*

By Winston Spencer Churchill, First Lord of the British Admiralty.

_CHURCHILL, from whose "World Crisis" (Copyright, 1923) this account is taken, by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, had been First Lord of the Admiralty for three years, when, July 29, 1914, the British Grand Fleet, acting on his sole order, slipped out of Portland Harbor and into the North Sea. Occurring a week before Britain declared war on Germany, it was one of the decisive events of history and served to insure control of the seas to the Allies. As a result surprise attack was forestalled and the safe transport of the British Expeditionary Forces to France was guaranteed. The Grand Fleet and its adjuncts comprised 200 fighting ships, manned by 70,000 men.

Albert Ballin, who inadvertently (?) warned Churchill of Germany's warlike intentions, was director-general of the Hamburg-American Line and a confidant of the Kaiser. Prince Louis of Battenburg, German-born grandson-in-law of Queen Victoria, but a naturalized Briton, was First Sea Lord at the time._

THE Cabinet on Friday afternoon sat long revolving the Irish problem. . . . The discussion had reached its inconclusive end, and the Cabinet was about to separate, when the quiet grave tones of Sir Edward Grey's voice were heard reading a document which had just been brought to him from the Foreign Office. It was the Austrian note to Serbia. He had been reading or speaking for several minutes before I could disengage my mind from the tedious and bewildering debate which had just closed. We were all very tired, but gradually as the phrases and sentences followed one another impressions of a wholly different character began to form in my mind. This note was clearly an ultimatum ; but it was an ultimatum such as had never been penned in modern times. As the reading proceeded it seemed absolutely impossible that any State in the world could accept it, or that any acceptance, however abject, would satisfy the aggressor. The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible gradations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe. . . . I went back to the Admiralty apprehending real danger and that it might be war. For the moment, however, there was nothing to do. At no time in all these last three years were we more completely ready.

The test mobilization had been completed, and with the exception of the Immediate Reserve, all the reservists were already paid off and journeying to their homes. But the whole of the 1st and 2nd Fleets were complete in every way for battle and were concentrated at Portland, where they were to remain till Monday morning at 7 o'clock, when the 1st Fleet would disperse by squadrons for various exercises and when the ships of the 2nd Fleet would proceed to their Home Ports to discharge their balance crews. Up till Monday morning therefore, a word instantaneously transmitted from the wireless masts of the Admiralty to the "Iron Duke" would suffice to keep our main force together. If the word were not spoken before that hour, they would begin to separate. During the first twenty-four hours after their separation they could be reconcentrated in an equal period; but if no word were spoken for forty-eight hours (i.e. by Wednesday morning), then the ships of the 2nd Fleet would have begun dismissing their balance crews to the shore at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham, and the various gunnery and torpedo schools would have recommenced their instruction. If another forty-eight hours had gone before the word was spoken, i.e., by Friday morning, a certain number of vessels would have gone into dock for refit or repairs.

Thursday night (July 24, 1914), at dinner, I had met Herr Ballin. He had just arrived from Germany. We sat next to each other, and I asked him what he thought about the situation. With the first few words he spoke, it became clear that he had not come here [to London] on any mission of pleasure. He said the situation was grave. "I remember," he said, "old Bismarck telling me the year before he died that one day the great European War would come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans." These words, he said, might come true. It all depended on the Czar. What would he do if Austria chastised Serbia? A few years before there would have been no danger, as the Czar was too frightened for his throne, but now again he was feeling himself more secure upon his throne, and the Russian people besides would feel very hardly anything done against Serbia. Then he said, If Russia marches against Austria, we must march; and if we march, France must march, and what would England do?" I was not in a position to say more than that it would be a great mistake to assume that England would necessarily do nothing, and I added that she would judge events as they arose. He replied, speaking with very great earnestness, "Suppose we had to go to war with Russia and France, and suppose we defeated France and yet took nothing from her in Europe, not an inch of her territory, only some colonies to indemnify us. Would that make a difference in England's attitude? Suppose we gave a guarantee beforehand." I stuck to my formula that England would judge events as they arose, and that it would be a mistake to assume that we should stand out of it whatever happened.

I reported this conversation to Sir Edward Grey in due course, and early in the following week I repeated it to the Cabinet. On the Wednesday following the exact proposal mooted to me by Herr Ballin, about Germany not taking any territorial conquests in France but seeking indemnities only in the colonies, was officially telegraphed to us from Berlin and immediately rejected. I have no doubt that Herr Ballin was directly charged by the Emperor with the mission to find out what England would do.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The "Scrap Of Paper"*

Sir Edward Goschen's Official Report.

_THUS the British Ambassador to Germany reported to his Government the breaking of diplomatic relations between Germany and England and the violation by Germany of the Treaty of 1839, in which Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia and Russia guaranteed Belgium as a perpetually neutral state. The British diplomat recounts his ineffectual interview With Secretary of State von Jagow with respect to German troops crossing Belgium, followed by his historic interview, August 4, 1914, with Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, who said that "the step taken by His (British) Majesty's Government was terrible to a degree. Just for a word neutrality a word which in war time had so often been disregarded just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation. . . ." Subsequently Bethmann-Hollweg admitted having been "excited and aroused" at seeing his cherished dream of a German-British-American coalition come to nothing._

IN accordance with the instructions contained in your telegram of the 4th instant, I called upon the Secretary of State that afternoon and inquired, in the name of His Majesty's Government, whether the Imperial Government would refrain from violating Belgian neutrality. Herr von Jagow at once replied that he was sorry to say that his answer must be "No," as in consequence of the German troops having crossed the frontier that morning, Belgian neutrality had been already violated. Herr von Jagow again went into the reasons why the Imperial Government had been obliged to take this step, namely, that they had to advance into France by the quickest and easiest way, so as to be able to get well ahead with their operations and endeavor to strike some decisive blow as early as possible. It was a matter of life and death for them, as if they had gone by the more southern route they could not have hoped, in view of the paucity of roads and the strength of the fortresses, to have got through without formidable opposition entailing great loss of time. This loss of time would have meant time gained by the Russians for bringing up their troops to the German frontier. Rapidity of action was the great German asset, while that of Russia was an inexhaustible supply of troops. I pointed out to Herr von Jagow that this fait accompli of the violation of the Belgian frontier rendered, as he would readily understand, the situation exceedingly grave, and I asked him whether there was not still time to draw back and avoid possible consequences, which both he and I would deplore. He replied that, for the reasons he had given me, it was now impossible for them to draw back.

This interview took place at about 7 o'clock. In a short conversation which ensued Herr von Jagow expressed his poignant regret at the crumbling of his entire policy and that of the Chancellor, which had been to make friends with Great Britain, and then, through Great Britain, to get closer to France. I said that this sudden end to my work in Berlin was to me also a matter of deep regret and disappointment, but that he must understand that under the circumstances and in view of our engagements, His Majesty's Government could not possibly have acted otherwise than they had done.

I then said that I should like to go and see the Chancellor [von Bethmann-Hollweg] , as it might be, perhaps, the last time I should have an opportunity of seeing him. He begged me to do so. I found the Chancellor very agitated. His Excellency at once began a harangue, which lasted for about twenty minutes. He said that the steps taken by His Majesty's Government was terrible to a degree; just for a word "neutrality," a word which in war time had so often been disregarded just fora scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her. All his efforts in that direction had been rendered useless by this last terrible step, and the policy to which, as I knew, he had devoted himself since his accession to office had tumbled down like a house of cards. What we had done was unthinkable; it was like striking a man from behind while he was fighting for his life against two assailants. He held Great Britain responsible for all the terrible events that might happen. I protested strongly against that statement, and said that, in the same way as he and Herr von Jagow wished me to understand that for strategical reasons it was a matter of life and death to Germany to advance through Belgium and violate the latter's neutrality, so I would wish him to understand that it was, so to speak, a matter of "life and death" for the honor of Great Britain that she should keep her solemn engagement to do her utmost to defend Belgium's neutrality if attacked. That solemn compact simply had to be kept, or what confidence could any one have in engagements given by Great Britain in the future? The Chancellor said, "But at what price will that compact have been kept? Has the British Government thought of that?" I hinted to his Excellency as plainly as I could that fear of consequences could hardly be regarded as an excuse for breaking solemn engagements, but his Excellency was so excited, so evidently overcome by the news of our action, and so little disposed to hear reason that I refrained from adding fuel to the flame by further argument.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Willy-Nicky Telegrams*

Exchanged Between the Kaiser and the Czar and Others.

THE KAISER TO THE CZAR

_THESE are the concluding telegrams that passed between William II (Willy) of Germany and Nicholas II (Nicky) of Russia, each exonerating himself and holding the other responsible for starting the World War. They were among the documents found in the Wilhelmstrasse archives after the German Revolution, and were arranged and edited for official publication by Karl Kautsky, who was assassinated in consequence.

With them are two other telegrams, one from Prince Henry of Prussia to King George of England; the other from the Princess of Pless to the Kaiser.

Receiving no response to his last telegram, the Kaiser ordered the mobilization of the entire German army and navy at 5 p. m., August 1, 1914. As a fact, all the European chancelleries were aware that Russia regarded an armed attack on Serbia as an act of war on herself._

IT is with the gravest concern that I hear of the impression which the action of Austria against Serbia is creating in your country. The unscrupulous agitation that has been going on in Serbia for years has resulted in the outrageous crime, to which Archduke Franz Ferdinand fell a victim. The spirit that led Serbians to murder their own king and his wife still dominates the country. You will doubtless agree with me that we both, you and me, have a common interest as well as all Sovereigns to insist that all the persons morally responsible for the dastardly murder should receive their deserved punishment. In this case politics play no part at all.

On the other hand I fully understand how difficult it is for you and your Government to face the drift of your public opinion. Therefore, with regard to the hearty and tender friendship which binds us both from long ago with firm ties, I am exerting my utmost influence to induce the Austrians to deal straightly to arrive at a satisfactory understanding with you. I confidently hope you will help me in my efforts to smooth over difficulties that may still arise.

Your very sincere and devoted friend and cousin.

WILLY.

Berlin, July 28, 1914.

THE CZAR TO THE KAISER

Peterhof, July 29, 1914.

Am glad you are back. In this most serious moment I appeal to you to help me. An ignoble war has been declared on a weak country. The indignation in Russia, shared fully by me, is enormous. I foresee that very soon I shall be overwhelmed by the pressure brought upon me and be forced to take extreme measures which will lead to war. To try and avoid such a calamity as a European war, I beg you in the name of our old friendship to do what you can to stop your allies from going too far. NICKY.

THE KAISER TO THE CZAR

Berlin, July 29, 1914.

I received your telegram and share your wish that peace should be maintained. But as I told you in my first telegram, I cannot consider Austria's action against Serbia an ignoble war. Austria knows by experience that Serbian promises on paper are wholly unreliable. I understand its action must be judged as tending to get full guarantee that the Serbian promises shall become real facts. This reasoning is borne out by the statement of the Austrian Cabinet that Austria does not want to make any territorial conquests at the expense of Serbia. I therefore suggest that it would be quite possible for Russia to remain a spectator of the Austro-Serbian conflict without involving Europe in the most horrible war she ever witnessed. I think a direct understanding between your Government and Vienna possible and desirable, and, as I already telegraphed to you, my Government is continuing its exertions to promote it. Of course military measures on the part of Russia, which would be looked upon by Austria as threatening, would precipitate a calamity we both wish to avoid and jeopardize my position as mediator, which I readily accepted on your appeal to my friendship and my help. WILLY.

THE CZAR TO THE KAISER

Peterhof, July 29, 1914.

Thanks for your telegram conciliatory and friendly. Whereas official message presented to-day by your Ambassador to my Minister was conveyed in a very different tone. Beg you to explain this divergency. It would be right to give over the Austro-Serbian problem to the Hague Conference. Trust in your wisdom and friendship. Your loving NICKY.

THE CZAR TO THE KAISER

Peterhof, July 30, 1914.

Thank you heartily for your quick answer. Am sending Tatischtschew this evening with instructions. The military measures which have now come into force were decided five days ago for reasons of defense on account of Austria's preparations. I hope from all my heart that these measures won't in any way interfere with your part as mediator, which I greatly value. We need your strong, pressure on Austria to come to an understanding with us.

NICKY.

PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA TO THE KING OF ENGLAND

Berlin, July 30, 1914.

Am here since yesterday. Have informed William of what you kindly told me at Buckingham Palace last Sunday, who gratefully received your message.

William, much preoccupied, is trying his utmost to fulfill Nicky's appeal to him to work for maintenance of peace and is in constant telegraphic communication with Nicky, who today confirms news that military measures have been ordered by him equal to mobilization, measures which have been taken already five days ago.

We are furthermore informed that France is making military preparations, whereas we have taken no measures, but may be forced to do so at any moment, should our neighbors continue, which then would mean a European war.

If you really and earnestly wish to prevent this terrible disaster, may I suggest you using your influence on France and also Russia to keep neutral, which seems to me would be most useful.

This I consider a very good, perhaps the only, chance to maintain the peace of Europe.

I may add that now more than ever Germany and England should lend each other mutual help to prevent a terrible catastrophe, which otherwise seems unavoidable.

Believe me that William is most sincere in his endeavors to maintain peace, but that the military preparations of his two neighbors may at last force him to follow their example for the safety of his own country, which otherwise would remain defenseless.

I have informed William of my telegram to you, and hope you will receive my informations in the same spirit of friendship which suggested them.

HENRY.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*England On The Brink Of War*

Speech by Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary.

_GREY, who later was made First Viscount of Fallodon, as a tribute to his eminent statesmanship, was English Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs when he delivered this masterly address in the House of Commons, August 3, 1914. In it he summarizes the story of the negotiations carried on since July 23, in which he earnestly strove to preserve the peace of Europe. Sir Edward is described as having been really "more devoted to fishing than to politics," that "the transparent honesty of his aims, his entire freedom from artifice . . . gave him a certain isolation and authority unique in European statesmanship."

Great Britain acted swiftly when the purport of this speech was known. It clarified much that was obscure in a very obscure situation. Within a few hours British public opinion had mobilized in favor of war and the war was on, in spite of Grey's studied efforts to prevent it._

LAST week I stated that we were working for peace not only for this country, but to preserve the peace of Europe. To-day events move so rapidly that it is exceedingly difficult to state with technical accuracy the actual state of affairs, but it is clear that the peace of Europe cannot be preserved. Russia and Germany, at any rate, have declared war upon each other.

Before I proceed to state the position of his Majesty's Government I would like to clear the ground so that, before I come to state to the House what our attitude is with regard to the present crisis, the House may know exactly under what obligations the government is, or the House can be said to be, in coming to a decision on the matter. First of all, let me say, very shortly, that we have consistently worked with a single mind, with all the earnestness in our power, to preserve peace. The House may be satisfied on that point. We have always done it. During these last years, as far as his Majesty's Government are concerned, we would have no difficulty in proving that we have done so. Throughout the Balkan crisis, by general admission, we worked for peace. The cooperation of the great powers of Europe was successful in working for peace in the Balkan crisis. It is true that some of the powers had great difficulty in adjusting their points of view. It took much time and labor and discussion before they could settle their differences, but peace was secured, because peace was their main object, and they were willing to give time and trouble rather than accentuate differences rapidly.

In the present crisis it has not been possible to secure the peace of Europe: because there has been little time, and there has been a disposition at any rate in some quarters on which I will not dwell to force things rapidly to an issue, at any rate to the great risk of peace, and, as we now know, the result of that is that the policy of peace as far as the great powers generally are concerned is in danger. I do not want to dwell on that, and to comment on it, and to say where the blame seems to us to lie, which powers were most in favor of peace, which were most disposed to risk war or endanger peace, because I would like the House to approach this crisis in which we are now from the point of view of British interests, British honor, and British obligations, free from all passion as to why peace has not yet been preserved.

The situation in the present crisis is not precisely the same as it was in the Morocco question. . . . It has originated in a dispute between Austria and Serbia. I can say this with the most absolute confidence no government and no country has less desire to be involved in war over a dispute with Austria than the country of France. They are involved in it because of their obligation of honor under a definite alliance with Russia. Well, it is only fair to say to the House that that obligation of honor cannot apply in the same way to us. We are not parties to the Franco-Russian alliance. We do not even know the terms of the alliance. So far I have, I think, faithfully and completely cleared the ground with regard to the question of obligation.

I now come to what we think the situation requires of us. For many years we have had a long-standing friendship with France. I remember well the feeling in the House and my own feeling for I spoke on the subject, I think, when the late Government made their agreement with France the warm and cordial feeling resulting from the fact that these two nations, who had had perpetual differences in the past, had cleared these differences away ; I remember saying, I think, that it seemed to me that some benign influence had been at work to produce the cordial atmosphere that had made that possible. But how far that friendship entails obligation it has been a friendship between the nations and ratified by the nations how far that entails an obligation, let every man look into his own heart, and his own feelings, and construe the extent of the obligation for himself. I construe it myself as I feel it, but I do not wish to urge upon any one else more than their feelings dictate as to what they should feel about the obligation. The House, individually and collectively, may judge for itself. I speak my personal view, and I have given the House my own feeling in the matter.

The French fleet is now in the Mediterranean, and the northern and western coasts of France are absolutely undefended. The French fleet being concentrated in the Mediterranean, the situation is very different from what it used to be, because the friendship which has grown up between the two countries has given them a sense of security that there was nothing to be feared from us. My own feeling is that if a foreign fleet, engaged in a war which France had not sought, and in which she had not been the aggressor, came down the English Channel and bombarded and battered the undefended coasts of France, we could not stand aside and see this going on practically within sight of our eyes, with our arms folded, looking on dispassionately, doing nothing. I believe that would be the feeling of this country. There are times when one feels that if these circumstances actually did arise, it would be a feeling which would spread with irresistible force throughout the land.

But I also want to look at the matter without sentiment, and from the point of view of British interests, and it is on that that I am going to base and justify what I am presently going to say to the House. If we say nothing at this moment, what is France to do with her fleet in the Mediterranean? If she leaves it there, with no statement from us as to what we will do, she leaves her northern and western coasts absolutely undefended, at the mercy of a German fleet coming down the Channel to do as it pleases in a war which is a war of life and death between them. If we say nothing, it may be that the French fleet is withdrawn from the Mediterranean. We are in the presence of a European conflagration ; can anybody set limits to the consequences that may arise out of it? Let us assume that to-day we stand aside in an attitude of neutrality, saying, "No, we cannot undertake and engage to help either party in this conflict." Let us suppose the French fleet is withdrawn from the Mediterranean ; and let us assume that the consequences which are already tremendous in what has happened in Europe even to countries which are at peace in fact, equally whether countries are at peace or at war let us assume that out of that come consequences unforeseen, which make it necessary at a sudden moment that, in defense of vital British interests, we shall go to war; and let us assume which is quite possible that Italy, who is now neutral because, as I understand, she considers that this war is an aggressive war, and the Triple Alliance being a defensive alliance her obligation did not arise let us assume that consequences which are not yet foreseen and which, perfectly legitimately consulting her own interests, make Italy depart from her attitude of neutrality at a time when we are forced in defense of vital British interest ourselves to fight what then will be the position in the Mediterranean? It might be that at some critical moment those consequences would be forced upon us because our trade routes in the Mediterranean might be vital to this country.

Nobody can say that in the course of the next few weeks there is any particular trade route, the keeping open of which may not be vital to this country. What will be our position then? We have not kept a fleet in the Mediterranean which is equal to dealing alone with a combination of other fleets in the Mediterranean. It would be the very moment when we could not detach more ships to the Mediterranean, and we might have exposed this country from our negative attitude at the present moment to the most appalling risk. I say that from the point of view of British interests. We feel strongly that France was entitled to know and to know at once whether or not in the event of attack upon her unprotected northern and western coasts she could depend upon British support. In that emergency, and in these compelling circumstances, yesterday afternoon I gave to the French Ambassador the following statement:

"I am authorized to give an assurance that if the German fleet comes into the Channel or through the North Sea to undertake hostile operations against the French coasts or shipping, the British fleet will give all the protection in its power. This assurance is, of course, subject to the policy of his Majesty's Government receiving the support of Parliament, and must not be taken as binding his Majesty's Government to take any action until the above contingency of action by the German fleet takes place."

I read that to the House, not as a declaration of war on our part, not as entailing immediate aggressive action on our part, but as binding us to take aggressive action should that contingency arise. Things move very hurriedly from hour to hour. French news comes in, and I cannot give this in any very formal way; - but I understand that the German Government would be prepared, if we would pledge ourselves to neutrality, to agree that its fleet would not attack the northern coast of France. I have only heard that shortly before I came to the House, but it is far too narrow an engagement for us. And, Sir, there is the more serious consideration becoming more serious every hour there is the question of the neutrality of Belgium.

I will read to the House what took place last week on this subject. When mobilization was beginning, I knew that this question must be a most important element in our policy a most important subject for the House of Commons. I telegraphed at the same time in similar terms to both Paris and Berlin to say that it was essential for us to know whether the French and German Governments, respectively, were prepared to undertake an engagement to respect the neutrality of Belgium. These are the replies. I got from the French Government this reply:

"The French Government are resolved to respect the neutrality of Belgium, and it would only be in the event of some other power violating that neutrality that France might find herself under the necessity, in order to assure the defense of her security, to act otherwise. This assurance has been given several times. The President of the Republic spoke of it to the King of the Belgians, and the French Minister at Brussels has spontaneously renewed the assurance to the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs to-day."


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Sea Fight Off Coronel, Chile*

Vice Admiral Graf von Spee's Report.

_MYSTERY still surrounds this naval engagement between German and British squadrons off the coast of Chile, November 2, 1914, owing to the sinking of the British flagship, "Good Hope," together with Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock and crew of 800 men. His fighting force was, as he knew, much inferior to that of the Germans under von Spee who, in addition, displayed superior strategy. The battle was fought at nightfall in a heavy sea, and, in addition to the flagship, the British cruiser "Monmouth" was sunk.

Following von Spee's report is that of Captain Luce, of H. M. S. "Glasgow," which had a narrow and lucky escape under cover of darkness. There were no casualties on the German side, and von Spee reports but two men slightly wounded._

WIND and swell were head on and the vessels had heavy going, especially the small cruisers on both sides. Observation and distance estimation were under a severe handicap because of the seas which washed over the bridges. The swell was so great that it obscured the aim of the gunners at the six-inch guns on the middle deck, who could not see the sterns of the enemy ships at all and the bows but seldom. At 6.20 p.m., at a distance of 13,400 yards, I turned one point toward the enemy, and at 6.34 opened fire at a distance of 11,260 yards. The guns of both our armored cruisers were effective, and by 6.39 already we could note the first hit on the "Good Hope." I at once resumed a parallel course instead of bearing slightly toward the enemy.

The English opened their fire at this time. I assume that the heavy sea made more trouble for them than it did for us. Their two armored cruisers remained covered by our fire, while they, so far as could be determined, hit the "Scharnhorst" but twice and the "Gneisenau" only four times.

At 6.53, when 6,500 yards apart, I ordered a course one point away from the enemy. They were firing more slowly at this time, while we were able to count numerous hits. We could see, among other things, that the top of the "Monmouth's" forward turret had been shot away and that a violent fire was burning in the turret. The "Scharnhorst,"it is thought, hit the "Good Hope" about thirty-five times.

In spite of our altered course the English changed theirs sufficiently so that the distance between us shrunk to 5,300 yards. There was reason to suspect that the enemy despaired of using his artillery effectively and was maneuvering for a torpedo attack. The position of the moon, which had risen at 6 o'clock, was favorable to this move. Accordingly, I gradually opened up further distances between the squadrons by another deflection of the leading ship at 7.45. In the meantime it had grown dark. The range-finders on the "Scharnhorst" used the fire on the "Monmouth" as a guide for a time, though eventually all range-finding, aiming, and observation became so inexact that firing was stopped at 7.26.

At 7.23 a column of fire from an explosion was noticed between the stacks of the "Good Hope." The "Monmouth" apparently stopped firing at 7.20. The small cruisers, including the "Nurnberg,"received by wireless at 7.30 the order to follow the enemy and to attack his ships with torpedoes. Vision was somewhat obscured at this time by a rain squall. The light cruisers were not able to find the "Good Hope," but the "Nurnberg" encountered the "Monmouth," and at 8.58 was able by shots at closest range to capsize her without a single shot being fired in return. Rescue work in the heavy sea was not to be thought of, especially as the "Nurnberg" immediately afterward believed she had sighted the smoke of another ship and had to prepare for a new attack.

The small cruisers had neither losses nor damage in the battle. On the "Gneisenau" there were two men slightly wounded. The crews of the ships went into the fight with enthusiasm, every one did his duty and played his part in the victory.

THE REPORT OF CAPTAIN JOHN LUCE, OF THE "GLASGOW"

GLASGOW" left Coronel 9 a.m. on November 1 to rejoin "Good Hope" (flagship), "Monmouth" and "Otranto" at rendezvous. At 2 p.m. flagship signaled that apparently from wireless calls there was an enemy ship to northward. Orders were given for squadron to spread N.E. by E. in the following order : "Good Hope," "Monmouth," "Otranto," and "Glasgow," speed to be worked up to 15 knots. 4.20 p.m., saw smoke; proved to be enemy ships, one small cruiser and two armored cruisers. "Glasgow" reported to admiral, ships in sight were warned, and all concentrated on "Good Hope." At 5 p.m. "Good Hope" was sighted.

5.47 p.m. squadron formed in line-ahead in following order : "Good Hope," "Monmouth," "Glasgow," "Otranto." Enemy, who had turned south, were now in single line-ahead 12 miles off, "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" leading. 6.18 p.m., speed ordered to 17 knots, and flagship signaled "Canopus," "I am going to attack enemy now." Enemy were now 15,000 yards away, and maintained this range, at the same time jambing wireless signals.

By this time sun was setting immediately behind us from enemy position, and while it remained above horizon we had advantage in light, but range too great. 6.55 p.m., sun set, and visibility conditions altered, our ships being silhouetted against afterglow, and failing light made enemy difficult to see.

7.3 p.m., enemy opened fire 12,000 yards, followed in quick succession by "Good Hope," "Monmouth," "Glasgow." Two squadrons were now converging, and each ship engaged opposite number in the line. Growing darkness and heavy spray of head sea made firing difficult, particularly for main deck guns of "Good Hope" and Monmouth." Enemy firing salvos got range quickly, and their third salvo caused fire to break out on fore part of both ships, which were constantly on fire till 7.45 p.m. 7.50 p.m., immense explosion occurred on "Good Hope" amidships, flames reaching 200 feet high. Total destruction must have followed. It was now quite dark.

Both sides continued firing at flashes of opposing guns. "Monmouth" was badly down by the bow, and turned away to get stern to sea, signaling to "Glasgow" to that effect. 8.30 p.m., "Glasgow" signaled to "Monmouth": "Enemy following us," but received no reply. Under rising moon enemy's ships were now seen approaching, and as "Glasgow" could render "Monmouth" no assistance, she proceeded at full speed to avoid destruction. 8.50 p.m., lost sight of enemy. 9.20 p.m., observed 75 flashes of fire, which was no doubt final attack on "Monmouth."

Nothing could have been more admirable than conduct of officers and men throughout. Though it was most trying to receive great volume of fire without chance of returning it adequately, all kept perfectly cool, there was no wild firing, and discipline was the same as at battle practice. When target ceased to be visible, gunlayers spontaneously ceased fire. The serious reverse sustained has entirely failed to impair the spirit of officers and ship's company, and it is our unanimous wish to meet the enemy again as soon as possible.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The First Submarine Blow Is Struck*

By Lieutenant Otto Weddigen, Commander of the "U-9".

_IT is significant that this first triumph of the German submarine, in which three British warships, "Aboukir," "Hogue" and "Cressy," were sunk, September 22, 1914, by the "U-9," as related by her commander, was never repeated in the duel between submarines and warships. It was a "stroke of luck," and its repetition was prevented by the development on the part of the Allies of new tactics to meet new weapons.

As the U-boat commander states, sea and weather favored the attack, the British cruisers being unaccompanied by torpedo destroyers, and when the first cruiser was torpedoed and sunk, the other two, instead of fleeing, as their own safety demanded, remained to rescue the survivors and were helpless targets.

Weddigen and his crew were decorated by the Kaiser. Later he himself perished when commanding a less lucky submarine, the "U-29," which was destroyed at sea._

IT was ten minutes after 6 on the morning of last Tuesday when I caught sight of one of the big cruisers of the enemy. I was then eighteen sea miles northwest of the Hook of Holland. I had then traveled considerably more than 200 miles from my base. My Boat was one of an old type, but she had been built on honor, and she was behaving beautifully. I had been going ahead partly submerged, with about five feet of my periscope showing. Almost immediately I c a u g h t sight of the first cruiser and two others. I submerged completely and laid my course so as to bring up in the center of the trio, which held a sort of triangular formation. I could see their gray-black sides riding high over the water.

When I first sighted them they were near enough for torpedo work, but I wanted to make my aim sure, so I went down and in on them. I had taken the position of the three ships before submerging, and I succeeded in getting another flash through my periscope before I began action. I soon reached what I regarded as a good shooting point.

Then I loosed one of my torpedoes at the middle ship. I was then about twelve feet under water, and got the shot off in good shape, my men handling the boat as if she had been a skiff. I climbed to the surface to get a sight through my tube of the effect, and discovered that the shot had gone straight and true, striking the ship, which I later learned was the "Aboukir," under one of her magazines, which in exploding helped the torpedo's work of destruction.

There were a fountain of water, a burst of smoke, a flash of fire, and part of the cruiser rose in the air. Then I heard a roar and felt reverberations sent through the water by the detonation. She had been broken apart, and sank in a few minutes. The "Aboukir" had been stricken in a vital spot and by an unseen force; that made the blow all the greater.

Her crew were brave, and even with death staring them in the face kept to their posts, ready to handle their useless guns, for I submerged at once. But I had stayed on top long enough to see the other cruisers, which I learned were the "Cressy" and the "Hogue," Hogue," turn and steam full speed to their dying sister, whose plight they could not understand, unless it had been due to an accident.

The ships came on a mission of inquiry and rescue, for many of the "Aboukir's" crew were now in the water, the order having been given, "Each man for himself."

But soon the other two English cruisers learned what had brought about the destruction so suddenly.

As I reached my torpedo depth I sent a second charge at the nearest of the oncoming vessels, which was the "Hogue." The English were playing my game, for I had scarcely to move out of my position, which was a great aid, since it helped to keep me from detection.

On board my little boat the spirit of the German Navy was to be seen in its best form. With enthusiasm every man held himself in check and gave attention to the work in hand.

The attack on the "Hogue" went true. But this time I did not have the advantageous aid of having the torpedo detonate under the magazine, so for twenty minutes the "Hogue" lay wounded and helpless on the surface before she heaved, half turned over and sank.

But this time, the third cruiser knew of course that the enemy was upon her and she sought as best she could to defend herself. She loosed her torpedo defense batteries on boats, starboard and port, and stood her ground as if more anxious to help the many sailors who were in the water than to save herself. In common with the method of defending herself against a submarine attack, she steamed in a zigzag course, and this made it necessary for me to hold my torpedoes until I could lay a true course for them, which also made it necessary for me to get nearer to the "Cressy." I had come to the surface fora view and saw how wildly the fire was being sent from the ship. Small wonder that was when they did not know where to shoot, although one shot went unpleasantly near us.

When I got within suitable range I sent away my third attack. This time I sent a second torpedo after the first to make the strike doubly certain. My crew were aiming like sharpshooters and both torpedoes went to their bull's-eye. My luck was with me again, for the enemy was made useless and at once began sinking by her head. Then she careened far over, but all the while her men stayed at the guns looking for their invisible foe. They were brave and true to their country's sea traditions. Then she eventually suffered a boiler explosion and completely turned turtle. With her keel uppermost she floated until the air got out from under her and then she sank with a loud sound, as if from a creature in pain.

The whole affair had taken less than one hour from the time of shooting off the first torpedo until the "Cressy" went to the bottom. Not one of the three had been able to use any of its big guns. I knew the wireless of the three cruisers had been calling for aid. I was still quite able to defend myself, but I knew that news of the disaster would call many English submarines and torpedo boat destroyers, so, having done my appointed work, I set my course for home.

My surmise was right, for before I got very far some British cruisers and destroyers were on the spot, and the destroyers took up the chase. I kept under water most of the way, but managed to get off a wireless to the German fleet that I was heading homeward and being pursued. I hoped to entice the enemy, by allowing them now and then a glimpse of me, into the zone in which they might be exposed to capture or destruction by German warships, but, although their destroyers saw me plainly at dusk on the 22d and made a final effort to stop me, they abandoned the attempt, as it was taking them too far from safety and needlessly exposing them to attack from our fleet and submarines.

How much they feared our submarines and how wide was the agitation caused by good little "U-9" is shown by the English reports that a whole flotilla of German submarines had attacked the cruisers and that this flotilla had approached under cover of the flag of Holland.

These reports were absolutely untrue. "U-9" was the only submarine on deck, and she flew the flag she still flies the German naval ensign. . . . The Kaiser conferred upon each of my coworkers the Iron Cross of the second class and upon me the Iron Cross of the first and second classes.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*"Strict Accountability"*

President Wilson's First Warning to Germany.

_PRESIDENT WILSON sent this note to Germany, February 10, 1915, six days after Berlin had issued its decree of a submarine blockade. On the same date a note was sent to London declaring that the United States would expect the British Government to "do all in their power to restrain vessels of British nationality in the deceptive use of the United States flag in the sea area defined by the German declaration." The use of neutral flags thus protested against had been defended in England on the ground of numerous precedents.

Following the reception of the note in Germany, on February 13, the German Legation at The Hague issued a warning to all naval vessels to keep out of a ..war zone" around England and Ireland. Torpedoing of the "Falaba," "Gulflight" and an attack on the "Cushing" followed, and on May 1 the German warning was repeated by advertisements in American newspapers, signed by the German Embassy._

THE Government of the United States views those possibilities with such grave concern that it feels it to be its privilege, and, indeed, its duty, in the circumstances, to request the Imperial German Government to consider, 'before action is taken, the critical situation in respect of the relation between this country and Germany which might arise were the German naval forces, in carrying out the policy foreshadowed in the Admiralty's proclamation, to destroy any merchant vessel of the United States or cause the death of American citizens.

It is, of course, not necessary to remind the German Government that the sole right of a belligerent in dealing with neutral vessels on the high seas is limited to visit and search, unless a blockade is proclaimed and effectively- maintained, which this Government does not understand to be proposed in this case. To declare or exercise a right to attack and destroy any vessel entering a prescribed area of the high seas without first certainly determining its belligerent nationality and the contraband character of its cargo would be an act so unprecedented in naval warfare that this government is reluctant to believe that the Imperial Government of Germany in this case contemplates it as possible.

The suspicion that enemy ships are using neutral flags improperly can create no just presumption that all ships traversing a prescribed area are subject to the same suspicion. It is to determine exactly such questions that this Government understands the right of visit and search to have been recognized.

This Government has carefully noted the explanatory statement issued by the Imperial German Government at the same time with the proclamation of the German Admiralty, and takes this occasion to remind the Imperial German Government very respectfully that the Government of the United States is open to none of the criticisms for unneutral action to which the German Government believes the governments of certain other neutral nations have laid themselves open ; that the Government of the United States has not consented to or acquiesced in any measures which may have been taken by the other belligerent nations in the present war which operate to restrain neutral trade, but has, on the contrary, taken in all such matters a position which warrants it in holding those governments responsible in the proper way for any untoward effects on American shipping which the accepted principles of international law do not justify; and that it, therefore, regards itself as free in the present instance to take with a clear conscience and upon accepted principles the position indicated in this note.

If the commanders of German vessels of war should act upon the presumption that the flag of the United States was not being used in good faith and should destroy on the high seas an American vessel or the lives of American citizens, it would be difficult for the Government of the United States to view the act in any other light than as an indefensible violation of neutral rights, which it would be very hard, indeed, to reconcile with the friendly relations now happily subsisting between the two governments.

If such a deplorable situation should arise, the Imperial German Government can readily appreciate that the Government of the United States would be constrained to hold the Imperial Government of Germany to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities, and to take any steps it might be necessary to take to safeguard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the high seas.

The Government of the United States, in view of these considerations, which it urges with the sincere purpose of making sure that no misunderstandings may arise, and no circumstances occur, that might even cloud the intercourse of the two governments, expresses the confident hope and expectation that the Imperial German Government can and will give assurance that American citizens and their vessels will not be molested by the naval forces of Germany otherwise than by visit and search, though their vessels may be traversing the sea area delimited in the proclamation of the German Admiralty.

It is stated for the information of the Imperial Government that representations have been made to his Britannic Majesty's Government in respect to the unwarranted use of the American flag for the protection of British ships.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*Russians Hurled Back On The Dunajec*

By Bernard Pares.

_PARES, the English war correspondent, who reported the Russian capture of Przemysl, was also an eye-witness to the frenzied fighting in Galicia where and when the Germans, under Mackensen, reversed the situation in that theater of war. Combining with the rallying Austrians, the Germans fell like a thunderbolt on the armies of Grand Duke Nicholas and swept them from the plains of Galicia with devastating effect.

This vivid account, dated May 3, 1915, was written when the Teuton tide was at its height on the Dunajec River, and the Russians were grimly disputing the enemy advance across Galicia a from Austria._

THE advance of the Russians over the Carpathians was sure to draw a counter-stroke and it has come just where many have expected it, but with tremendous force. This is because it is not so much the work of the tired Austrians, but rather the biggest effort that Germany has yet put forth in her attempts to bolster her ally. We have all been preparing for May, and Germany and even Austria have evidently made great preparations. The food supply in the Austrian army has been much improved ; the proportion of Germans on the Austrian front has been enormously increased ; heavy artillery has been concentrated ; and the Emperor and Hindenburg have been reported to be here.

I set out with a nice bright-eyed chauffeur who did a splendid day's work with me. We had the main road for some distance, and none of the varieties later seemed to trouble him. We went along a valley, and in a house standing high up by a church we found the staff of the Division. I had friends ; and I was soon dispatched with a tall, determined Cossack to the point where the road climbed the hill. Here we left our machine, and in a hundred yards or so we had the whole scene before us.

There was a hut on the top of the hill ; sitting in front of it one could see for at least ten miles in either direction. The Division was holding a front of eight miles with the Z's on the left, the O's in the middle, the R's on the right and the I's in reserve. The O's, who were just beyond a hollow, occupied a low line of wooded heights a thousand yards in front of me. The Z's held a lower wooded ridge, the R's connected with the O's over a valley and were posted along a less defined line, of which the most marked feature was a village with a little church tower. Against these three regiments were nine, mostly German, and backed by the most formidable artillery. Beyond each of the flanks of the Division one could see at intervals black clouds of smoke; one thick stream of smoke that stretched into the skies came from some distant petroleum works.

The whole line of the R's was being pounded with crash after crash, sometimes four black columns rising almost simultaneously at intervals along it; under each would break out little angry teeth of sparkling flame; the only thing that seemed not to be hit was the church tower, which, as each cloud died down, came out simple again in the bright sunshine. The Z's were in patches of smoke that sometimes disappeared for a time.

What was happening to the O's was not so clear; so after watching the shells and shrapnel bursting along the line and on the slope for some hours, we descended by some winding gullies, drawing a shrapnel as we passed over a low shoulder, and soon reached the staff of the O's. Under the nearer wall of a hut, a group of officers was working the telephones, while a number of soldiers lay on logs around. The colonel came forward to me with a preoccupied smile: "A convoy for the flag," he explained, and turning to his men: "you have the flag there?" Then he took me into the open and pointed at the ridge some six hundred yards away; all his left was at grips with the enemy, who had come through at several points, and on the right his men were fighting at the close range of two hundred yards in the wood beyond the crest.

A message came that his right flank was open and being turned. He seized the telephone and called to the reserve regiment : "Two companies forward at the double," reporting his action directly to the staff of the division. There was a peculiar humanness about all these messages; in form they were just ordinary courteous conversation. The Z Colonel reported that his line was penetrated at more than one point, but was holding out. The R telephone gave no answer at all. Life there was unlivable, the trenches were destroyed, and on my way I had heard from soldiers a report that when taking ammunition to the R's they had seen the Austrians in our lines. Shells and shrapnel were crashing all round us, especially on our rear ; a great cloud rose where I had sat at the top, and a hut that I had passed on the way down broke out in full flame. Nearer down there fell four black explosives at regular distances of fifty yards, "the four packets" as one officer called it. Our cover would all have gone with a single shot, and the men crouched to avoid the falling splinters from each shell. In this depressing atmosphere there went on the conversation between the colonel and the divisional staff : "I can get no contact with the R's. Cavalry is reported on both of my flanks. The R's have had to retreat." The answer was an order to retire at nightfall. Three hours at least had to run. The order was communicated in French over each battalion telephone. The colonel apologized for his elementary French; anyhow it was the French of a brave man. As disquietudes increased, the permission came to retire at once; but the colonel answered that this could not be done: he was in hot defensive action, and the enemy would follow on his heels; at present he was holding his own.

Twice on the telephone the fatal word "surrounded" had been used. My hosts urged me to go. "We have each a different duty," they said. It was with little heart that I faced for the slope, turning a few yards off to salute these brave men once more.

They were some wounded struggling up the gullies, one with a maimed foot, whom we helped along but who had to sit down at times and smoke. As we began to approach shelter, we suddenly saw on the hills to the west of us men coming down the slope towards us. "Perhaps ours, perhaps the enemy," said my Cossack, who never turned a hair throughout the day. We got our lame man up the big hill, but as soon as we had passed the crest he said that his strength failed him, and sat down with several others round a well.

The next thing was to look for the motor. We were now in comparative safety ; for we were out of the line of fire, and the valley to the north of us was full of our own people. Officers galloped forward, looking at the line of our retreating field trains. In the valley there was a long train of wounded. I at last found our motor in the midst of it. We packed in the men with the worst wounds that we noticed; they lay without a groan, and one soldier said: "Thanks to Thee, O Lord; and eternal gratitude to you." A young soldier with an eager face pressed forward with a litter, begging us to take his wounded officer, whom he had brought five miles from the distant lines of the R's. Harchin that was his name was like a loving son, with his captain, walking by our side or standing on our step for mile after mile and all the while helping to hold the litter in position. He told us that no living man could have driven the R's from their position: but that the whole area was covered with shells till trenches and men were leveled out of existence. The companies left comparatively intact had all joined on to the O's. Of the O's themselves we could only hear vague rumors ; it was said that most of them had made their way back.

There was no panic, no hurry in the great throng, as it retired. Each was ready to help his neighbor. Crossing a long hill we had to transfer some of our wounded to an empty cart which we commandeered, the men moving without a word. In the night Harchin kept holding up his officer and giving any comfort he could. "It's quite close now, your nobility, it's a good road now," he would say. We reached a hut where the kind Polish hostess showed us beds for our wounded ; Harchin was constant and tender in his care, and I left the two together to await the arrival of the doctor. A private with a crushed face refused to lie on his bed for fear of spoiling it, and sat holding his bleeding head in his hands.

Through the darkness and past an incessant train of army carts, which, without any shouting on our part, did all they could to give us passage, I made my way to the corps of the staff and to the next Division; where I slept long into the morning. It was only later that we knew the full scope of our losses. The Division had against it double its number of infantry and an overwhelming mass of artillery. It had held its trenches till it was almost annihilated.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*"They Shall Not Pass" At Verdun*

By Lord Northcliffe.

_NORTHCLIFFE, the great British newspaper proprietor, was a witness to the German assault on Verdun, as here described in a dispatch he wrote and sent to the London "Times," March 4, 1916. This mightiest effort of German artillery began February 21 and was kept up steadily for more than a month. The Germans were commanded by the Crown Prince. General Petain took command of the defense March 1, and his cheery assurance, "Now, we shall have them!" has become almost as noted as that other Verdun battle-cry, "They shall not pass!"

Answering a question asked here, Count de Souza, the French military authority, states that the Germans "lost 100,000 men (as compared with 20,000 French) in this vain effort to command the Heights of the Meuse, the key to the whole region." Ludendorff, of the German High Command, states that the success of the Verdun operation would have forestalled the American Argonne-Meuse attack in 1918._

WHAT is the secret motive underlying the German attempt to break the French line at Verdun, in which the Crown Prince's army is incurring such appalling losses? Is it financial, in view of the coming war loan? Is it dynastic? Or is it intended to influence doubting neutrals? From the evidence of German deserters it is known that the attack was originally intended to take place a month or two hence, when the ground was dry. Premature spring caused the Germans to accelerate their plans. There were two final delays owing to bad weather, and then came the colossal onslaught of February 21st.

The Germans made a good many of the mistakes we made at Gallipoli. They announced that something large was pending by closing the Swiss frontier. The French, who were not ready, were also warned by their own astute Intelligence Department. Their avions were not idle, and, if confirmation were needed, it was given by deserters, who, surmising the horrors that were to come, crept out of the trenches at night, lay down by the edge of the Meuse till the morning, and then gave themselves up, together with information that has since proved to be accurate. Things went wrong with the Germans in other ways. A Zeppelin that was to have blown up important railway junctions on the French line of communications was brought down at Revigny, and incidentally the inhabitants of what remains of that much-bombarded town were avenged by the spectacle of the blazing dirigible crashing to the ground and the hoisting with their own petard of 30 Huns therein. It is not necessary to recapitulate that the gigantic effort of February 21st was frustrated by the coolness and tenacity of the French soldiers and the deadly curtain fire of the French gunners.

Though a great deal of calculated nonsense has been sent out in official communiques and dilated upon by dithyrambic Berlin newspaper correspondents as to the taking by storm of the long-dismantled fort at Douaumont, nothing whatever has been admitted by the Germans as to the appalling price in blood they have paid since February 21st and are still paying. The French losses are, and have been, insignificant. I know the official figure. It has been verified by conversations with members of the British, French and American Red Cross Societies, who are obviously in a position to know. The wounded who pass through their hands have, in many cases, come straight from where they have seen dead Germans, as has been described by scores of witnesses, lying as lay the Prussian Guard in the first Battle of Ypres. The evidence of one army as to another army's losses needs careful corroboration. This exists amply in the evidence of many German prisoners interrogated singly and independently at the French Headquarters.

The case of one man, belonging to the 3rd Battalion of the 12th Regiment in the 5th Division of the 3rd Army Corps, may be taken as characteristic. On the morning of February 28th this prisoner reached the fort of Douaumont and found there one battalion of the 24th Regiment, elements of the 64th Regiment and of the 3rd Battalion of Jagers. The strength of his company had been, on February 21st, 200 rifles with four officers. On February 22nd it had fallen to 70 rifles, with one officer. The other companies had suffered similar losses. On February 23rd the prisoner's company was reenforced by 45 men, bearing the numbers of the 12th, the 52nd, the 35th, and the 205th Regiments. These men had been drawn from various depots in the interior. The men of the 12th Regiment believed that five regiments were in reserve in the woods behind the 3rd Corps, but, as time went on and losses increased without any sign of the actual presence of these reserves, doubt spread whether they were really in existence. The prisoner declared that his comrades were no longer capable of fresh effort.

None of the prisoners questioned estimated the losses suffered by their companions at less than one-third of the total effectives. Taking into account all available indications, it may safely be assumed that, during the fighting of the first 13 days, the Germans lost in killed, wounded, and prisoners at least 100,000 men.

The profits as the soldier speaks of such matters being so small, what then were the overwhelming motives that impelled the attack on Verdun, and the chicanery of the German communiques? Was it any of the reasons I have given above, or was it an effect of economic pressure which led to the miscalculation that the possible taking over of the French line at Verdun was a means of ending the war? The Germans are so wont to misread the minds of other nations that they are quite foolish enough to make themselves believe this or any other foolish thing. It cannot be pretended that the attack had in it anything of military necessity. It was urged forward at a time of year when weather conditions might prove, as they proved, a serious handicap in such matters as the moving of big guns and the essential observation by aeroplanes.

The district of Verdun lies in one of the coldest and also the most misty sectors in the long line between Nieuport and Switzerland. Changes of temperature, too, are somewhat more frequent here than elsewhere ; and so sudden are these changes that not long ago here occurred, on a part of the front, one of nature's furious and romantic reminders of her power to impose her will. The opposing French and German trenches, their parapets hard frozen, were so close that they were actually within hearing of each other. Towards dawn a rapid thaw set in. The parapets melted and subsided, and two long lines of men stood up naked, as it were, before each other, face to face with only two possibilities wholesale murder on the one side or the other, or a temporary unofficial peace for the making of fresh parapet protections.

The situation was astounding and unique in the history of trench warfare. The French and German officers, without conferring and unwilling to negotiate, turned their backs so that they might not see officially so unwarlike a scene, and the men on each side rebuilt their parapets without the firing of a single shot.

This instance serves to illustrate the precarious weather in which the Germans undertook an adventure in the quick success of which the elements play such a part. That the attack would certainly prove more costly to them than to the French the German Staff must have known. That the sufferings of the wounded lying out through the long nights of icy wind in the No Man's Land between the lines would be great did not probably disturb the Crown Prince. It is one of the most gruesome facts in the history of the War that the French, peering through the moonlight at what they thought to be stealthily crawling Germans, found them to be wounded men frozen to death.

The vast battle of Verdun might have been arranged for the benefit of interested spectators, were it not that the whole zone for miles around the great scene is as tightly closed to the outer world as a lodge of Freemasons. Furnished with every possible kind of pass, accompanied by a member of the French Headquarters Staff in a military car driven by a chauffeur whose steel helmet marked him as a soldier, I was nevertheless held up by intractable gendarmes at a point twenty-five miles away from the great scene. Even at that distance the mournful and unceasing reverberation of the guns was insistent, and, as the sentry examined our papers and waited for telephonic instructions, I counted more than 200 of the distant voices of Kultur.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Germans Enter Brussels*

By Richard Harding Davis.

_ON August 20, 1914, the vanguard of the German army marched into Brussels, which had capitulated after a siege of twelve days. Richard Harding Davis, the famous novelist and war correspondent, was in the Belgian capital at the time and thus described the historic event in a memorable dispatch to the New York "Tribune.

Experienced as he was in reporting wars, Davis confesses that the spectacle of the mighty German military "steam-roller" crunching over Belgium was awe-inspiring. For three days and nights the German hosts were on the march. Clad in gray-green uniforms, the apparently interminable columns were like "a fog that melted into the stones, blended with the ancient house fronts, that shifted and drifted . . . and became a river of steel flowing onward gray and ghostlike." On the day preceding the entrance of the German army into Brussels, the seat of the Belgian Government had been transferred to Antwerp._

THE entrance of the German army into Brussels has lost the human quality. It was lost as soon as the three soldiers who led the army bicycled into the Boulevard du Regent and asked the way to the Gare du Nord. When they passed, the human note passed with them.

What came after them, and twenty-four hours later is still coming, is not men marching, but a force of nature like a tidal wave, an avalanche or a river flooding its banks. At this minute it is rolling through Brussels as the swollen waters of the Conemaugh Valley swept through Johnstown.

At the sight of the first few regiments of the enemy we were thrilled with interest. After they had passed for three hours in one unbroken steel-gray column we were bored. But when hour after hour passed and there was no halt, no breathing time, no open spaces in the ranks, the thing became uncanny, inhuman. You returned to watch it, fascinated. It held the mystery and menace of fog rolling toward you across the sea.

The gray of the uniforms worn by both officers and men helped this air of mystery. Only the sharpest eye could detect among the thousands that passed the slightest difference. All moved under a cloak of invisibility. Only after the most numerous and severe tests, with all materials and combinations of color that give forth no color, could this gray have been discovered. That it was selected to clothe and disguise the German when he fights is typical of the German Staff in striving for efficiency to leave nothing to chance, to neglect no detail.

After you have seen this service uniform under conditions entirely opposite you are convinced that for the German soldier it is his strongest weapon. Even the most expert marksman cannot hit the target unless he can see. It is a gray-green, not the blue-gray of our Confederates. It is the gray of the hour just before daybreak, the gray of unpolished steel, of mist among green trees.

I saw it first in the Grand Place in front of the Hotel de Ville. It was impossible to tell if in that noble square there was a regiment or a brigade. You saw only a fog that melted into the stones, blended with the ancient house fronts, that shifted and drifted, but left you nothing at which you could point.

Later, as the army passed below my window, under the trees of the Botanical Park, it merged and was lost against the green leaves. It is no exaggeration to say that at a hundred yards you can see the horses on which the Uhlans ride, but cannot see the men who ride them.

If I appear to overemphasize this disguising uniform it is because of all the details of the German outfit it appealed to me as one of the most remarkable. The other day, when I was with the rear guard of the French Dragoons and Cuirassiers and they threw out pickets, we could distinguish them against the yellow wheat or green gorse at half a mile, while these men passing in the street, when they have reached the next crossing, become merged into the gray of the paving stones and the earth swallows them. In comparison the yellow khaki of our own American Army is about as invisible as the flag of Spain.

Yesterday Major General von Jarotsky, the German Military Governor of Brussels, assured Burgomaster Max that the German army would not occupy the city, but would pass through it. It is still passing. I have followed in campaigns six armies, but excepting not even our own, the Japanese or the British, I have not seen one so thoroughly equipped. I am not speaking of the fighting qualities of any army, only of the equipment and organization. The German army moved into this city as smoothly and as compactly as an Empire State Express. There were no halts, no open place, no stragglers.

This army has been on active service three weeks, and so far there is not apparently a chin-strap or a horseshoe missing. It came in with the smoke pouring from cookstoves on wheels, and in an hour had set up post office wagons, from which mounted messengers galloped along the line of column distributing letters and at which soldiers posted picture post-cards.

The infantry came in in files of five, two hundred men to each company; the lancers in columns of four, with not a pennant missing. The quick-firing guns and field pieces were one hour at a time in passing, each gun with its caisson and ammunition wagon taking twenty seconds in which to pass.

The men of the infantry sang "Fatherland, My Fatherland." Between each line of song they took three steps. At times two thousand men were singing together in absolute rhythm and beat. When the melody gave way the silence was broken only by the stamp of ironshod boots, and then again the song rose. When the singing ceased the bands played marches. They were followed by the rumbles of siege guns, the creaking of wheels and of chains clanking against the cobble-stones and the sharp bell-like voices of the bugles.

For seven hours the army passed in such solid column that not once might a taxicab or trolley car pass through the city. Like a river of steel it flowed, gray and ghostlike. Then, as dusk came and as thousands of horses' hoofs and thousands of iron boots continued to tramp forward, they struck tiny sparks from the stones, but the horses and men who beat out the sparks were invisible.

At midnight pack wagons and siege guns were still passing. At seven this morning I was awakened by the tramp of men and bands playing jauntily. Whether they marched all day or not I do not know; but for twenty-six hours the gray army rumbled with the mystery of fog and the pertinacity of a steam roller.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Fall Of Liege*

By General Leman.

_THIS account of the heroic Belgian defense of Liege, before which the German army appeared on August 4, 1914, and whose last fort (Loncin) fell eleven days later, is taken from the diary of the Belgian General Leman, written while a prisoner of war at Magdeburg.

The military value of this check to the first great German onrush toward France is disputed, but of its high moral effect there is no question. Even the Germans were moved to admiration at the bravery of the garrisons. Of the 500 defenders of Fort Loncin, here mentioned in particular, 350 were killed and more than 100 severely wounded. Such heroism thrilled the world. Independence was shown to be treasured still, and honor more than an empty word. The first shining event of the war was that the little Belgian army at Liege resisted "to the uttermost." The French conferred the Legion of Honor upon Liege._

ON the 11th the Germans started bombarding us with 7- and 10-centimeter cannon. On the 12th and 13th they brought their 21-centimeter guns into action. But it was not until the 14th that they opened their heaviest fire and began their destruction of the outer works. On that day, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a German officer approached to within 200 yards of the fort with a signaling flag in his hand; and shortly afterwards, the siege gunners, having adjusted their range, began a fearful firing, that lasted a couple of hours. The battery on the left slope was destroyed, the enemy keeping on pounding away exclusively with their 21-centimeter cannons.

The third phase of the bombardment began at 5 o'clock in the morning of the 15th, firing being kept up without a break until two in the afternoon. A grenade wrecked the arcade under which the general staff were sheltering. All light was extinguished by the force of the explosion, and the officers ran the risk of asphyxiation by the horrible gases emitted from the shell. When firing ceased, I ventured out on a tour of inspection on the external slopes, which I found had been reduced to a rubble heap. A few minutes later, the bombardment was resumed. It seemed as though all the German batteries were together firing salvoes. Nobody will ever be able to form any adequate idea of what the reality was like. I have only learned since that when the big siege mortars entered into action they hurled against us shells weighing 1,000 kilos (nearly a ton), the explosive force of which surpasses anything known hitherto. Their approach was to be heard in an acute buzzing; and they burst with a thunderous roar, raising clouds of missiles, stones and dust.

After some time passed amid these horrors, I wished to return to my observation tower ; but I had hardly advanced a few feet into the gallery when a great blast passed by, and I was thrown violently to the ground. I managed to rise, and continued on my way, only to be stopped by a choking cloud of poisonous gas. It was a mixture of the gas from an explosion and the smoke of a fire in the troop quarters. We were driven back, half-suffocated. Looking out of a peep-hole, I saw to my horror that the fort had fallen, slopes and counter-slopes being a chaos of rubbish, while huge tongues of flame were shooting forth from the throat of the fortress. My first and last thought was to try and save the remnant of the garrison. I rushed out to give orders, and saw some soldiers, whom I mistook for Belgian gendarmes. I called them, then fell again. Poisonous gases seemed to grip my throat as in a vise.

On recovering consciousness, I found my aide-de-camp, Captain Colland, standing over me, also a German officer, who offered me a glass of water. They told me I had swooned, and that the soldiery I had taken for Belgian gendarmes were, in fact, the first band of German troops who had set foot inside the forts. In recognition of our courage, the Germans allowed me to retain my sword.

GENERAL LEMAN'S LETTER TO ALBERT, KING OF THE BELGIANS

Sir: After honorable engagements on August 4th, 5th and 6th, I considered that the forts of Liege could only play the "role" of "forts d'arret." I nevertheless maintained military government in order to coordinate the defense as much as possible, and to exercise moral influence upon the garrison.

Your Majesty is not ignorant that I was at Fort Loncin on August 6th at noon. You will learn with grief that the fort was blown up yesterday at 5.20 p.m., the greater part of the garrison being buried under the ruins. That I did not lose my life in that catastrophe is due to the fact that my escort, Commandant Collard, a sub-officer of infantry who unfortunately perished, the gendarme, Thevenim, and my two orderlies, Vanden Bossche and Jos Lecocq, drew me from a position of danger, where I was being asphyxiated by gas from the exploded powder. I was carried into a trench, where a German captain named Guson gave me a drink, after which I was made prisoner and taken to Liege in an ambulance. I am convinced that the honor of our arms has been sustained. I have not surrendered either the fortress or the forts. Deign, Sire, to pardon my defects in this letter. I am physically shattered by the explosion of Loncin. In Germany, whither I am proceeding, my thoughts will be, as they have ever been, of Belgium and the King. I would willingly have given my life the better to serve them, but death was denied me.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Battle Of Neuve Chapelle*

By Count Charles de Souza.

_DE SOUZA, one of the foremost French War correspondents and an approved military authority, here recounts the first great assault with artillery that the war developed. It Was made by the Allies on March 10, 1915, and the movement came as a relief after a winter of intolerable trench life. To their cost, the British learned that their preparations were insufficient to break the strongly fortified German positions, and costly blunders were made.

An impetuous advance carried the British under their own shellfire, where they suffered heavily. This account, like most of the others of French and English sources, is rather optimistic since the true story of the operation would have been too discouraging to publish at that time. This assault revealed that the Germans had so extended trenches behind trenches that their defensive Was even stronger than their offensive._

THE battle of Neuve Chapelle was an action in which, through a surprise attack, the British reconquered the position which the Germans had occupied in October and powerfully organized in front of the British pivot at La Bassee. This position formed a salient in the British line, and in order to preserve the integrity of that line (in other words to make it stronger), it was necessary to take the village of Neuve Chapelle which had been once before attacked unsuccessfully (October 28th).

The former attempt had failed because it had been made with inadequate means. This time the operation was carried out by two army corps, the 4th Corps and the Indian Corps, which were swiftly and secretly concentrated on the line Rue d' Enfer-Richebourg St. Vast, their forward movement being covered and supported by the fire of 350 guns, British and French.

The Germans were surprised, outnumbered, outflanked on both sides, and, after a stubborn struggle, they were ousted from the position. The victory was complete, and would have been more satisfactory had it been less costly. The British casualties exceeded 12,000 out of 50,000 men engaged on that occasion.

This was due to the impetuosity of the new troops and of some officers who misunderstood the object of the attack, advanced too quickly and too far, and thus uselessly exposed their men to the effects of the severe counterblows which the Germans, with their accustomed thoroughness, did not fail to deliver. There also was confusion in the matter of bringing up reinforcements. The position, however, remained in the possession of the British, although their opponents did all they could to recapture it a fact which when contrasted to the previous engagement makes it clear that the enemy was inferior both on the defense and the attack.

The French offensive in Champagne, which synchronized with the battle of Neuve Chapelle, was a more lengthy and methodical affair ; it had also a totally different object. It started at the beginning of February and reached its climax at the date of Neuve Chapelle; it was carried out ostensibly to relieve the "pressure" exercised at the time by the Germans on the Russians in East Prussia and Suwalki; and for that reason it may be characterized as the first attempt at a coordination of movements between the two fronts. Locally it yielded good results; it displayed once more the offensive qualities of the French troops and gave them good practice in the newly adopted methods of artillery preparation and the combination of infantry and artillery assaults on a large scale; but its primary object was not attained, simply because it was sought on a wrong assumption. Hindenburg's contemporaneous move in East Prussia was a false one, meant mainly to distract the attention of the Russians from another sector of their front.

It was part of the enemy's plan to exaggerate the number of their forces in that quarter, and they succeeded so far as to lead the Allies to believe that strong German units were being withdrawn from the Western front. It was computed in many quarters that Hindenburg had fifteen army corps with him in East Prussia, whereas he could not have had more than a third of that number.

Nevertheless, General d'Esperey's movement in Champagne was brilliant. The artillery bombardment was heavy and effective. Strong hostile positions were stormed between Souain, Perthes and Beausejour, and the French made many captures, the Germans admitting in their communiques that their losses in that part of France were greater than those they had suffered in East Prussia, which were computed by themselves at 15,000.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*A German Defense Of Belgium*

Statement of Dr. William Muehlon, a former Krupp Director.

_ANGERED by the universal reprobation of Germany for having violated Belgian territory, the German Government attempted to justify its action by declaring that Belgium had forfeited its neutrality by unneutral agreements with England, and that France had already violated that neutrality before the German invasion. Dr. Muehlon, however, in revelations that appeared during the war, admitted that Germany had long planned to invade Belgium.

His admission is supported by the Krupp records, corroborated by those of the Solvay Institute of Brussels, of transactions with the Belgian Government which, as this former Krupp director says, "believed that by giving large orders to the Krupps, rather than to French munition makers, it could keep Germany in good humor; whereas France, whose industry enjoyed little government support, was expected to understand Belgium's reasons for favoring Germany and to be content with general signs of industry._

BEFORE the war Belgium had ordered from the Krupp Company in Essen four large modern guns (twenty-eight centimeters) for the fortifications of Antwerp. At the beginning of 1914 the guns were completed, accepted, paid for in full, and ready for shipment; but the work on the fortifications of Antwerp had not yet been carried so far that the guns could be set up. The debates on this subject in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies will perhaps be recalled. At this point the Belgian Government requested Krupp to keep the guns in storage for the time being. Krupp agreed, but not willingly. Such storage is unusual, and it entails many inconveniences. Krupp repeatedly took steps, both by word of mouth and in writing, to get rid of the guns; the Belgian Government continually repeated its request that Krupp be kind enough to keep them, and was even ready to pay for the accommodation. A modus vivendi was repeatedly found, but the attitude of both parties remained unchanged until the war broke out, when the Prussian Ministry of War at once seized these guns in Essen as booty (value four million marks).

From this I draw the following conclusion : Had the Belgian Government had any evil intentions whatsoever against Germany; or had it expected a German attack, it would, at the very latest when war threatened, have secured possession of its expensive guns, instead of insisting that they should remain in Krupp's care.

A few months before the war Belgium established another and particularly important connection between itself and Krupp. For its supply of a new (scarcely tested) ammunition for field artillery it placed itself entirely in the hands of this company. After securing large direct orders, Krupp conceded the privilege of manufacturing this ammunition to the Belgian firm of Cockerill, with the cooperation, of course, of the competent (Belgian) authorities, who saw to it that their own works also secured the same privilege. For Cockerill and the Belgian Ministry of War this arrangement meant active and sustained cooperation with Krupp's representatives, engineers,etc., and a corresponding dependence on the grantor of the licenses. At that time one of Cockerill's directors paid me frequent visits ; and I do not consider it superfluous to note that, at the moment of the outbreak of the war, a letter from Cockerill lay before me, informing me that he was just sending a payment on the license amounting to one million francs.

Consider the close dependency of the war-material business on governmental intentions, and then, on the basis of the occurrences I have here recounted, which are matters of public knowledge, pass judgment on the alleged mala fides of the Belgian Government towards Germany.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Burning Of Louvain*

By Richard Harding Davis.

_A SHUDDER ran through the civilized world when the news came that the Germans had put the torch to the historic Belgian city of Louvain, with its priceless treasures of architecture and learning. It had been occupied by the German soldiery on August 19, and a week later was in smoking ruins. As a veteran war correspondent, who had reported every war since the 1897 conflict between Greece and Turkey, Davis was in Louvain and witnessed the scenes here described in a news dispatch. It was later incorporated in a volume, "With the Allies," copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.

Shortly after penning this vivid picture of Teutonic "frightfulness," Davis was captured by the Germans and narrowly escaped being shot as a spy. A high type of American journalism is exhibited in his war correspondence, concluding with his report of the withdrawal of the Franco-British forces from Serbia._

AT seven o'clock in the evening we arrived at what for six hundred years had been the city of Louvain. The Germans were burning it, and to hide their work kept us locked in the railroad carriages. But the story was written against the sky, was told to us by German soldiers incoherent with excesses; and we could read it in the faces of women and children being led to concentration camps and of citizens on their way to be shot.

The day before the Germans had sentenced Louvain to become a wilderness, and with German system and love of thoroughness they left Louvain an empty, blackened shell. The reason for this appeal to the torch and the execution of non-combatants, as given to Mr. Whitlock and myself on the morning I left Brussels by General von Lutwitz, the military governor, was this: The day before, while the German military commander of the troops in Louvain was at the Hotel de Ville talking to the burgomaster, a son of the burgomaster, with an automatic pistol, shot the chief of staff and German staff surgeons.

Lutwitz claimed this was the signal for the civil guard, in civilian clothes on the roofs, to fire upon the German soldiers in the open square below. He also said the Belgians had quick-firing guns, brought from Antwerp. As for a week the Germans had occupied Louvain and closely guarded all approaches, the story that there was any gun-running is absurd.

"Fifty Germans were killed and wounded," said Lutwitz, "and for that Louvain must be wiped out so!" In pantomime with his fist he swept the papers across his table.

"The Hotel de Ville," he added, "was a beautiful building; it is a pity it must be destroyed."

Were he telling us his soldiers had destroyed a kitchen-garden, his tone could not have expressed less regret.

Ten days before I had been in Louvain, when it was occupied by Belgian troops and King Albert and his staff. The city dates from the eleventh century, and the population was forty-two thousand. The citizens were brewers, lace-makers and manufacturers of ornaments for churches. The university once was the most celebrated in European cities and was the headquarters of the Jesuits.

In the Louvain College many priests now in America have been educated, and ten days before, over the great yellow walls of the college, I had seen hanging two American flags. I had found the city clean, sleepy and pretty, with narrow twisting streets and smart shops and cafes. Set in flower gardens were the houses, with red roofs, green shutters and white walls.

Over those that faced south had been trained pear-trees, their branches heavy with fruit, spread out against the walls like branches of candelabra. The town hall was an example of Gothic architecture in detail and design more celebrated even than the town hall of Bruges or Brussels. It was five hundred years old and lately had been repaired with taste and at great cost.

Opposite was the church of St. Pierre, dating from the fifteenth century, a very noble building, with many chapels filled with carvings of the time of the Renaissance in wood, stone and iron. In the university were one hundred and fifty thousand volumes.

On the night of the 27th these buildings were empty, exploded cartridges. Statues, pictures, carvings, parchments, archives all these were gone.

No one defends the sniper. But because ignorant Mexicans, when their city was invaded, fired upon our sailors, we did not destroy Vera Cruz. Even had we bombarded Vera Cruz, money could have restored that city. Money can never restore Louvain. Great architects and artists, dead these six hundred years, made it beautiful, and their handiwork belonged to the world. With torch and dynamite the Germans turned those masterpieces into ashes, and all the Kaiser's horses and all his men cannot bring them back again.

When our troop train reached Louvain, the entire heart of the city was destroyed, and the fire had reached the Boulevard Tirlemont, which faces the railroad station. The night was windless, and the sparks rose in steady, leisurely pillars, falling back into the furnace from which they sprang. In their work the soldiers were moving from the heart of the city to the outskirts, street by street, from house to house.

In each building they began at the first floor and, when that was burning steadily, passed to the one next. There were no exceptions whether it was a store, chapel, or private residence, it was destroyed. The occupants had been warned to go, and in each deserted shop or house the furniture was piled, the torch was stuck under it, and into the air went the savings of years, souvenirs of children, of parents, heirlooms that had passed from generation to generation.

The people had time only to fill a pillow case and fly. Some were not so fortunate, and by thousands, like flocks of sheep, they were rounded up and marched through the night to concentration camps. We were not allowed to speak to any citizen of Louvain, but the Germans crowded the windows of the train, boastful, gloating, eager to interpret.

In the two hours during which the train circled the burning city war was before us in its most hateful aspect.

In other wars I have watched men on one hilltop, without haste, without heat, fire at men on another hill, and in consequence on both sides good men were wasted. But in those fights there were no women or children, and the shells struck only vacant stretches of veldt or uninhabited mountain sides.

At Louvain it was war upon the defenseless, war upon churches, colleges, shops of milliners and lace-makers; war brought to the bedside and the fireside; against women harvesting in the fields, against children in wooden shoes at play in the streets.

At Louvain that night the Germans were like men after an orgy.

There were fifty English prisoners, erect and soldierly. In the ocean of gray the little patch of khaki looked pitifully lonely, but they regarded the men who had outnumbered but not defeated them with calm uncurious eyes. In one way I was glad to see them there. Later they will bear witness. They will tell how the enemy makes a wilderness and calls it war.

Outside the station in the public square the people of Louvain passed in an unending procession, women bareheaded, weeping, men carrying the children asleep on their shoulders, all hemmed in by the shadowy army of gray wolves. Once they were halted, and among them were marched a line of men. These were on their way to be shot. And, better to point the moral, an officer halted both processions, and, climbing to a cart, explained why the men were to die. He warned others not to bring down upon themselves a like vengeance.

As those being led to spend the night in the fields looked across to those marked for death they saw old friends, neighbors of long standing, men of their own household. The officers bellowing at them from the cart was illuminated by the headlights of an automobile. He looked like an actor in a spotlight on a darkened stage.

It was all like a scene upon the stage, unreal, inhuman. You felt it could not be true. You felt that the curtain of fire, purring and crackling and sending up hot sparks to meet the kind, calm stars, was only a painted backdrop, that the reports of rifles from the dark ruins came from blank cartridges, and that these trembling shopkeepers and peasants ringed in bayonets would not in a few minutes really die, but they themselves and their homes would be restored to their wives and children.

You felt it as only a nightmare, cruel and uncivilized. And then you remembered that the German Emperor has told us what it is. It is his Holy War.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Marne*

By Louis Madelin, Contemporary French Historian.

_HAVING checked the Germans on the Ourcq, the next step of the Allies the breaking of the German line was achieved at its very center on September 9, 1914, by the Ninth French Army under General Foch, as recounted by Madelin, an eye-witness of many of the events here recorded. By September 11, the retreat of the Germans to a new line of defense was begun all along the front. Weary but victorious, the Allies were unable to accomplish the rout and ruin of the enemy.

Here ended the first stage of the war. The great drive for Paris was foiled. A new war began, with new plans and strategies trench warfare on an unprecedented scale. Engaged in the Battle of the Marne were 41 German divisions (about 1,000,000 men) opposed by 46 incomplete Allied divisions, all told.

Following this account is the terse commentary of Marshal Joffre and the pronouncement of the victory by President Poincare._

ON the morning of September 9th the situation is extremely critical. The enemy obviously aimed at taking the higher ground which, with the marshes, separates the Petit-Morin valley from the plain of theAube. Had our line been forced back on the Aube, the results would have been incalculable, probably obliging d'Esperey, who was advancing north, to fall back and exposing de Langle de Cary who continued to hold on desperately in the valley of the Saulx and Ornain. That is why the struggle for Saint-Prix was so fierce; during the first four days of the battle it was taken and retaken five times, so was the Castle of Mondement, which, according to a witness attached to General Humbert who commanded the Morocco division, was lost, retaken, lost and retaken again and again. The 10th corps of the 5th Army came to the help of the 9th Army on the morning of September 9th, but in vain; the Prussian Guards intending to keep up their reputation hurl themselves on Fere-Champenoise, our line gives way under the assault: Fere-Champenoise is lost. General Foch shows no discouragement. Fere is lost, but Fere will be recaptured. "The situation is excellent," he writes on the 9th. Excellent! what faith there is in such optimism! And he adds: "I command that the offensive be resumed."

In truth, such optimism was not only on the surface. With his quick eye the Commander of the 9th Army had just perceived a break in the German line. Von Bulow influenced by Von Kluck, had to his great disappointment been forced to fall back in this maneuver, and, as happens sometimes in improvised retrograde movements, a gap occurred between Hausen and himself. Foch in his turn thought of driving a wedge into the weak spot.

The first thing was to reconstitute our line. The 42nd division attack and carry Fere-Champenoise. Then Mondement becomes the center of a deadly struggle. General Humbert has butted himself against it. This old castle, torn by our shells, and the enemy's, becomes for a moment the center of the battle. "Forward, boys," cries Colonel Lestoquoi, to his men who are storming for the third time; "and we shall succeed." And we did succeed. General Humbert once again took up his post of observation in the old tower, now a mass of ruins, while 3,000 German corpses strewed the avenue of the park.

"One last effort and we shall succeed!" General Foch might have used Colonel Lestoquoi's cheering words to his entire army. The high ground above the marshes is now ours, the enemy is giving way, the valley is open to us and we rush through it.

By the evening of the 10th he held the marshes, and thanks to the energy with which he had transformed his difficult defensive movement into a victorious offensive, the troops advanced northwards and at a blow carried the line Vertus-Vatry. Foch took up his headquarters in La Fere-Champenoise, occupied a few hours previously by the Prussian Guard, who gorged themselves and drank to the certain destruction of the French army. "Let the troops eat the bread made for the enemy," wrote Napoleon to Mura; "that bread will taste better to them than cake." Our soldiers not only found bread baked by the enemy, but thousands of empty bottles, the sight of which made them smile and explained certain shortcomings. Many drunken soldiers belonging to the Guard and other corps, the victims of champagne, were taken prisoner that day.

While Maunoury on the Ourcq was making a "bulge" and the armies of Sir John French and d'Esperey threatening to envelop Von Kluck, so contributed to his retreat, d'Esperey's right wing seconded the valiant 9th Army which repulsed the great piercing movement attempted against our center. The two armies on the right meanwhile fulfilled their mission, which was to protect the "pivot" by hurling the enemy back from the triangle formed by the heights of Verdun, Bar and Vitry.

On the 10th, the Imperial Crown Prince was obliged to relinquish his great dream. Sarrail had shaken his army and was pushing it to the north of Verdun.

But with what confidence in his own powers had the Crown Prince attacked! Bearing down in the neighborhood of Revigny, he intended to seize the bridges of the Ornain as far as Bar and enter the little ducal town in a few hours. It is reported that on the 6th, an officer informed an inhabitant of Vaubecourt that "Tomorrow we shall burn Poincare's town." And in fact the XVI corps intended to occupy, if not destroy Bar, while the IV cavalry corps, no doubts being entertained as to victory, would move south, towards Saint-Dizier, Langres, and la Bourgogne.

A great danger had threatened Sarrail's flank; it caused the last incident in the huge battle. German forces were reported to be massing near Woevre and preparing to attack Saint-Mihiel. This is very serious news, for if the Germans should succeed in piercing through to Saint-Mihiel and cross the Meuse there, Verdun would be cut off from the 3rd Army and the latter would be turned. Once again our pivot is threatened. The danger does not, however, divert the Commander of the 3rd Army from his first duty; at daybreak on the 8th, he sends forward troops who dislodge the German corps from the valley of the Ornain and push them on to Vassincourt, Villers-aux-Vents, Triaucourt, while the 6th artillery corps crushes the XV corps at Aire. The menace is, however, increasing on the Heights of the Meuse, the enemy glides towards Saint-Mihiel; at 1 p. m. he has begun to bombard Fort Troyon. In the meantime, General Sarrail, in order to protect his right flank, gives the order to destroy the bridges at Saint-Mihiel. This, though it did not paralyze the attack of the 3rd Army, made things harder. The repulse, on the 9th, of the enemy's advance on every side had to suffice for the time being. The situation becomes worse in the rear; after Troyon, Genicourt is bombarded, and the guns at Troyon now seem silent. General Coutanceau, who had just sent an urgent appeal to the 2nd Army (under Castelnau), telegraphs to the Commander of the fort: "General situation of our armies excellent. It is of consequence that the fall of Troyon should not open a way to the Germans. Hold indefinitely." But the German columns continue to advance on Saint-Mihiel. On the 10th Sarrail's army holds the whole day through, the battle rages and spreads destruction among the enemy (7,000 casualties) from Revigny to Vaubecourt. The situation is extremely critical, a defeat in the Saint-Mihiel direction may jeopardize everything at a moment when things are turning in our favor from the Ourcq to the Ornain.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The "Lusitania" Sinking*

Accounts by an American Survivor and the German U-Boat Commander.

_ON May 1, 1915, American newspapers printed this German warning to prospective trans-Atlantic travelers, especially passengers of the "Lusitania," which was preparing to sail from New York. Six days later the British liner was torpedoed by a German submarine, as described by a survivor, E. C. Cowper, in a letter to a son of Elbert Hubbard, who was drowned with his wife. Cowper swam with a child for three hours before they were rescued. There follows an extract from the diary of the U-boat commander, Lieutenant Schwieger, who subsequently was lost, with all his crew, off Zeebrugge.

The sinking of the "Lusitania," with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 124 Americans, stirred the American people profoundly. It moved President Wilson to make his famous declaration, in a speech at Philadelphia, May 10, "There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right."_

NOTICE: Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies ; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British isles ; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY. Washington, D. C., April 22, 1915.

THE SINKING DESCRIBED BY ERNEST C. COWPER, A SURVIVOR

A SHORT time before the torpedo hit us I called the attention of Elbert Hubbard and Mrs. Hubbard to the extra watch which had been put on for submarines, and walked them forward to where two men were right at the stem with glasses. Two were on each side of the navigating-bridge, and three were in the crow's-nest, which is half way up the foremast. He [Hubbard] expressed surprise at this, for he was sure a submarine would never make any effort to torpedo a ship filled with women, children and non-combatants. He mentioned the fact that there were no guns on board, and that there was no place to put them. I agreed that there were no guns, but pointed out that there were places to put them, and walked both round to the places which were built with the vessel for the mounting of guns if required. Nobody but one having a close acquaintance with a ship would know what the round, elevated patch on the deck was for; but I come from a seafaring family (my father having been drowned at sea while in command), and so I knew what they were for.

We then parted to go to our cabins before taking lunch. On finishing mine I went to the top deck, and was smoking . . . when I saw the torpedo coming toward us. I sought the shelter of the companionway until after the explosion, when I saw another coming and again took shelter. After the second one . . .the vessel took a terrible list right away. . . . They [Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard] emerged from their room, which was on the port side of the vessel, and came on to the boat-deck. Neither appeared perturbed in the least. They linked arms the fashion in which they always walked the deck and stood apparently wondering what to do. I passed him [Hubbard] with a baby which I was taking to a lifeboat when he said "Well, they have got us. They are a damn-sight worse than I ever thought they were." They did not move very far away from where they originally stood. As I moved to the other side of the ship, in preparation for a jump when the right moment came, I called to him, "What are you going to do?" and he just shook his head, while Mrs. Hubbard smiled and said, "There does not seem to be anything to do."

The expression seemed to produce action on the part of Elbert Hubbard, for then he did one of the most dramatic things I ever saw done. He simply turned with Mrs. Hubbard and entered a room on the top deck, the door of which was open, and closed it behind him. It was apparent that his idea was that they would die together, and not risk being parted on going into the water.

There was a preponderance of women and children on board. This fact is accounted for owing to the number of wives and children of men belonging to the Canadian contingents (which were almost wholly composed of Old-Country men) who were going to England, where they could live cheaper and be near to the hospitals where their dear ones would be taken in case of injury.

Some of the horrors of the disaster can never be committed to print. I can say this: There were a surprisingly large number of women on board who were in advanced stages of pregnancy presumably English women who were going to their parents for the birth of their children. I saw the corpses of four of these in the mortuary at Queenstown, and they had been delivered of their infants in the water, precipitated labor owing to shock being the cause. . . . Because Great Britain was at war there should be stretched out on the cold flagstones of the mortuary at Queenstown the bodies of four women in a condition which even animals respect, and this for the furtherance of the Kultur which Emperor William would impose on Europe, and America next, I suppose, were he not stopped (and he is stopped). And this is but one of the many horrors.

FROM THE DIARY OF LIEUTENANT SCHWEIGER, THE U-20 COMMANDER

RIGHT ahead appear four funnels and two masts of a steamer. . . . Clean bow shot from 700 meters range. . . . Shot hits starboard side right behind bridge. An unusually heavy detonation follows with a very strong explosion cloud. (High in the air over first smokestack.) Added to the explosion of the torpedo there must have been a second explosion. (Boiler or coal or powder.)

The superstructure over point struck and the high bridge are rent asunder, fire breaks out and smoke envelops the high bridge. The ship stops immediately and quickly heels to starboard, at the same time diving deeper at the bows. She has the appearance of being about to capsize. Great confusion on board, boats being cleared and part being lowered to water. They must have lost their heads. Many boats crowded come down bow first or stern first in the water, and immediately fill and sink.

Fewer lifeboats can be made clear on the port side, owing to the slant of the ship. The ship blows off. In the front appears the name "Lusitania" in gold letters. . . . It seems as if the vessel will be afloat only a short time. Submerge to twenty-four meters and go to sea. I could not have fired a second torpedo into this throng of humanity attempting to save themselves.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*Mons-The First British Battle*

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

_SHORTLY before this first contact between the British and Germans, August 23, 1914, the Kaiser issued his celebrated order from his Aix-la-Chapelle headquarters: "It is my Royal and Imperial command that you concentrate your energies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valor of my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and walk over General French's contemptible little army." The British seized the phrase "contemptible little army" and used it as a badge of honor.

The British Expeditionary Forces had landed in France only one week before this engagement. While the Germans were driving the French and British backward in Belgium, the Russians, under Rennenkampf, were defeating the Germans at Gumbinnen. This account is taken from Doyle's "History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders," George H. Doran Co._

HAVING reached their ground, the troops, with no realization of immediate danger, proceeded to make shallow trenches. Their bands had not been brought to the front, but the universal singing from one end of the line to the other showed that the men were in excellent spirits. Cheering news had come in from the cavalry, detachments of which had ridden out as far as Soignies, meeting advance patrols of the enemy and coming back with prisoners and trophies. The guns were drawn up in concealed positions within half a mile of the line of battle. All was now ready, and officers could be seen on every elevation peering northwards through their glasses for the first sign of the enemy.

Thrilling with anticipation, the men waited for their own first entrance upon the stupendous drama. They were already weary and footsore, for they had all done at least two days of forced marching, and the burden of the pack, the rifle, and the hundred and fifty rounds per man was no light one. They lay snugly in their trenches under the warm August sun and waited.

A hovering aeroplane had just slid down with the news that the roads from the north were alive with the advancing Germans, but the estimate of the aviator placed them at two corps and a division of cavalry. This coincided roughly with the accounts brought in by the scouts and, what was more important, with the forecast of General Joffre. Secure in the belief that he was flanked upon one side by the 5th French Army, and on the other by a screen of French cavalry, whilst his front was approached by a force not appreciably y larger than his own, General French had no cause for uneasiness. Had his airmen taken a wider sweep to the north and west, or had the French commander among his many pressing preoccupations been able to give an earlier warning to his British colleague, the trenches would, no doubt, have been abandoned before a gray coat had appeared, and the whole army brought swiftly to a position of strategical safety. Even now, as they waited expectantly for the enemy, a vast steel trap was closing up for their destruction.

It was after ten o'clock when scouting cavalry were observed falling back. Then the distant sound of a gun was heard, and a few seconds later a shell burst some hundreds of yards behind the British lines. The British guns one by one roared into action. A cloud of smoke rose along the line of the woods in front from the bursting shrapnel, but nothing could be seen of the German gunners. The defending guns were also well concealed. Here and there, from observation points upon buildings and slagheaps, the controllers of the batteries were able to indicate targets and register hits unseen by the gunners themselves. The fire grew warmer and warmer as fresh batteries dashed up and unlimbered on either side. The noise was horrible, but no enemy had been seen by the infantry, and little damage done.

But now an ill-omened bird flew over the British lines. Far aloft across the deep blue sky skimmed the dark Taube, curved, turned, and sailed northwards again. It had marked the shells bursting beyond the trenches. In an instant, by some devilish cantrip of signal or wireless, it had set the range right. A rain of shells roared and crashed along the lines of the shallow trenches. . . . The minutes seemed very long, and still the shells came raining down. The men shoved the five-fold clips down into their magazines and waited with weary patience. A senior officer peering over the end of a trench leaned tensely forward and rested his glasses upon the grassy edge. "They're coming !" he whispered to his neighbor. It ran from lip to lip along the line of crouching men. Heads were poked up here and there above the line of broken earth. Soon, in spite of the crashing shells overhead, there was a fringe of peering faces. And there at last in front of them was the German enemy. After all the centuries, Briton and Teuton faced each other at last for the test of battle.

The men, still fingering their triggers, gazed expectantly at their officers, who measured intently the distance of the approaching swarms. The Germans had already begun to fire in a desultory fashion. Shrapnel was bursting thickly along the head of their columns but they were coming steadily onwards. Suddenly a rolling wave of independent firing broke out from the British position. At some portions of the line the enemy were at eight hundred, at others at one thousand yards. The men, happy in having something definite to do, snuggled down earnestly to their work and fired swiftly but deliberately into the approaching mass. Rifles, machine-guns, and field-pieces were all roaring together, while the incessant crash of the shells overhead added to the infernal uproar. Men lost all sense of time as they thrust clip after clip into their rifles. The German swarms staggered on bravely under that leaden sleet. Then they halted, vacillated, and finally thinned, shredded out, and drifted backwards like a gray fog torn by a gale. The woods absorbed them once again; whilst the rain of shells upon the British trenches became thicker and more deadly.

There was a lull in the infantry attack, and the British, peering from their shelters, surveyed with a grim satisfaction the patches and smudges of gray which showed the effect of their fire. But the rest was not a long one. With fine courage the German battalions reformed under the shelter of the trees, while fresh troops from the rear pushed forward to stiffen the shaken lines. "Hold your fire!" was the order that ran down the ranks. With the confidence bred of experience, the men waited and still waited, till the very features of the Germans could be distinguished. Then once more the deadly fire rippled down the line, the masses shredded and dissolved, and the fugitives hurried to the woods. Then came the pause under shell fire, and then once again the emergence of the infantry, the attack, the check, and the recoil.

A rush of German troops came between eleven and twelve o'clock across the Aubourg Station Bridge. It was so screened up to the moment of the advance that neither the rifles nor the machine-guns of the Middlesex could stop it. It is an undoubted fact that this rush was preceded by a great crowd of women and children, through which the leading files of the Germans could hardly be seen. At the same time, or very shortly afterwards, the other two bridges were forced in a similar manner, but the Germans in all three cases as they reached the farther side were unable to make any rapid headway against the British fire, though they made the position untenable for the troops in trenches between the bridges.

By the late afternoon the general position was grave, but not critical. The enemy had lost very heavily, while the men in the trenches were, in comparison, unscathed. Here and there, as we have seen, the Germans had obtained a lodgment in the British position, especially at the salient which had always appeared to be impossible to hold, but, on the other hand, the great part of the Army, including the whole First Corps, had not yet been seriously engaged, and there were reserve troops in the immediate rear of the fighting line who could be trusted to make good any gap in the ranks before them. The German artillery fire was heavy and well-directed, but the British batteries had held their own. Such was the position when, about 5 p.m., a telegram from General Joffre was put into Sir John French's hand, which must have brought a pang to his heart. From it he learned that all his work had been in vain, and that far from contending for victory, he would be fortunate if he saved himself from utter defeat.

There were two pieces of information in this fatal message, and each was disastrous. The first announced that instead of the two German corps whom he had reason to think were in front of him, there were four the Third, Fourth, Seventh and Fourth Reserve Corps forming, with the second and fourth cavalry divisions, a force of nearly 200,000 men, while the Second Corps were bringing another 40,000 round his left flank from the direction of Tournai. The second item was even more serious. Instead of being buttressed up with French troops on either side of him, he learned that the Germans had burst the line of the Sambre, and that the French armies on his right were already in full retreat, while nothing substantial lay upon his left. It was a most perilous position. The British force lay exposed and unsupported amid converging foes who far outnumbered it in men and guns.

But it is no easy matter to disengage so large an army which is actually in action and hard-pressed by a numerous and enterprising enemy. The front was extensive and the lines of retreat were limited. That the operation was carried out in an orderly fashion is a testimony to the skill of the General, the talents of the commanders, and the discipline of the units. If it had been done at once and simultaneously it would certainly have been the signal for a vigorous German advance and a possible disaster. The positions were therefore held, though no efforts were made to retake those points where the enemy had effected a lodgment. There was no possible use in wasting troops in regaining positions which would in no case be held. As dusk fell, a dusk which was lightened by the glare of burning villages, some of the regiments began slowly to draw off to the rear. In the early morning of the 24th the definite order to retire was conveyed to the corps commanders, whilst immediate measures were taken to clear the roads.

After a night of flames and of uproar the day dawned, a day of great anxiety to the British commanders and of considerable pressure upon a portion of the troops. Sir John French had given instructions that the First Corps, which had been only slightly engaged the day before, should pretend to assume the offensive upon the extreme right wing in the direction of Binche, whilst the Second Corps began its retirement. The enemy was following up rapidly, however, along the whole length of the British line, both flanks of which were exposed. Shortly after dawn the evacuated positions had been occupied, and Mons itself was in the hands of the Germans. The Second Corps began its retreat, helped by the feint which was carried out by General Haig upon the right, and by the bulk of the batteries of both corps, but the pursuit was vigorous and the shell-fire incessant.

As the army fell back, the border fortress of Maubeuge with its heavy guns offered a tempting haven of rest for the weary and overmatched troops, but not in vain had France lost her army in Metz. Sir John French would have no such protection, however violently the Germans might push him towards it. "The British army invested in Maubeuge" was not destined to furnish the head-line of a Berlin special edition. The fortress was left to the eastward, and the tired troops snatched a few hours of rest near Bavaye, still pursued by the guns and the searchlights of the persistent foe. Early on the 25th the columns were again on the march for the south, and for safety.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*President Wilson Protests To Germany*

_INAUGURATING his policy of "watchful waiting," President Wilson did not formally protest to the Imperial German Government on the sinking of the "Lusitania" until May 13, 1915, when the first of his "Lusitania" notes stated, "The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment."

Receiving no satisfactory answer to the foregoing or to a second note of protest, on July 21, 1915, the President sent the accompanying instructions, through Secretary of State Robert Lansing, to James W. Gerard, American Ambassador at Berlin.

For a few weeks the Germans apparently desisted from their ruthless submarine warfare, scrupulously warning ships and giving their crews and passengers some chance to escape. But in August it was resumed, with a defiant challenge to the American Government._

THE Government of the United States is not unmindful of the extraordinary conditions created by this war or of the radical alterations of circumstances and method of attack produced by the use of instrumentalities of naval warfare which the nations of the world can not have had in view when the existing rules of international law were formulated, and it is ready to make every reasonable allowance for these novel and unexpected aspects of war at sea; but it can not consent to abate any essential or fundamental right of its people because of a mere alteration of circumstance. The rights of neutrals in time of war are based upon principle, not upon expediency, and the principles are immutable.

It is the duty and obligation of belligerents to find a way to adapt the new circumstances to them.

The events of the past two months have clearly indicated that it is possible and practicable to conduct such submarine operations as have characterized the activity of the Imperial German Navy within the so-called war zone in substantial accord with the accepted practices of regulated warfare. The whole world has looked with interest and increasing satisfaction at the demonstration of that possibility by German naval commanders. It is manifestly possible, therefore, to lift the whole practice of submarine attack above the criticism which it has aroused and remove the chief causes of offense.

In view of the admission of illegality made by the Imperial Government when it pleaded the right of retaliation in defense of its acts, and in view of the manifest possibility of conforming to the established rules of naval warfare, the Government of the United States can not believe that the Imperial Government will longer refrain from disavowing the wanton act of its naval commander in sinking the "Lusitania" or from offering reparation for the American lives lost, so far as reparation can be made for a needless destruction of human life by an illegal act.

The Government of the United States, while not indifferent to the friendly spirit in which it is made, can not accept the suggestion of the Imperial German Government that certain vessels be designated and agreed upon which shall be free on the seas now illegally proscribed. The very agreement would, by implication, subject other vessels to illegal attack, and would be a curtailment and therefore an abandonment of the principles for which this government contends, and which in times of calmer counsels every nation would concede as of course.

The Government of the United States and the Imperial German Government are contending for the same great object, have long stood together in urging the very principles upon which the Government of the United States now so solemnly insists. They are both contending for the freedom of the seas. The Government of the United States will continue to contend for that freedom, from whatever quarter violated, without compromise and at any cost. It invites the practical co6peration of the Imperial German Government at this time, when co6peration may accomplish most and this great common object be most strikingly and effectively achieved. . . . Repetition by the commanders of German naval vessels of acts in contravention of those [neutral] rights must be regarded by the Government of the United States, when they affect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*Sea Fighting Off Heligoland*

Admiral Sir David Beatty's Report.

_WHAT is known as the Battle of Heligoland Bight, fought August 28, 1914, was the first and last time that any British squadron operated at close quarters with the German naval bases. The actual fighting took place about seven miles north of Heligoland. Under Admiral Beatty, who made this report from his flagship "Lion," September 1, were some 60 British craft, only four of which were hit. The Germans lost three cruisers and two destroyers, while other vessels were damaged. The British casualties were 32 killed and 52 wounded; about 700 Germans perished, and 300 were rescued and taken prisoners.

The brunt of this engagement was borne by the British light cruiser "Arethusa," which narrowly escaped destruction, but which later distinguished herself again in the action off Dogger Bank. The killing of the captain of the German cruiser "Ariadne" by a shell from the "Fearless" prompted the German ships to withdraw._

I HAVE the honor to report that on Thursday, August 27, at 5 a. m., I proceeded with the First Battle Cruiser Squadron and First Light Cruiser Squadron in company, to rendezvous with the Rear Admiral, "Invincible."

At 4 a. m., August 28, the movements of the flotillas commenced, as previously arranged, the Battle Cruiser Squadron and Light Cruiser Squadron supporting. The Rear Admiral, "Invincible,"with "New Zealand" and four destroyers, having joined my flag, the squadron passed through the prearranged rendezvous.

At 8.10 a.m. I received a signal from the Commodore (T), informing me that the flotilla was in action with the enemy. This was presumably in the vicinity of their prearranged rendezvous. From this time until 11 a. m. I remained about the vicinity ready to support as necessary, intercepting various signals, which contained no information on which I could act.

At 11 a. m. the squadron was attacked by three submarines. The attack was frustrated by rapid maneuvering, and the four destroyers were ordered to attack them. Shortly after 11 a. m. various signals having been received indicating that the Commodore (T) and Commodore (S) were both in need of assistance, I ordered the Light Cruiser Squadron to support the torpedo flotillas.

Later I received a signal from the Commodore (T), stating that he was being attacked by a large cruiser, and a further signal informing me that he was being hard pressed, and asking for assistance. The Captain (D), First Flotilla, also signaled that he was in need of help.

From the foregoing the situation appeared to me critical. The flotillas had advanced only two miles since 8 a. m., and were only about 25 miles from two enemy bases on their flank and rear respectively. Commodore Goodenough had detached two of his light cruisers to assist some destroyers earlier in the day, and these had not yet rejoined. (They joined at 2.30 p.m.) As the reports indicated the presence of many enemy ships one a large cruiser I considered that his force might not be strong enough to deal with the situation sufficiently rapidly, so at 11.30 a. m. the battle cruisers turned to east-southeast and worked up to full speed. It was evident that to be of any value the support must be overwhelming, and carried out at the highest speed possible.

I had not lost sight of the risk of submarines, and possible sortie in force from the enemy's base, especially in view of the mist to the southeast.

Our high speed, however, made submarine attack difficult, and the smoothness of the sea made their detection comparatively easy. I considered that we were powerful enough to deal with any sorties except by a battle squadron, which was unlikely to come out in time, provided our stroke was sufficiently rapid.

At 12.15 p.m. "Fearless" and First Flotilla were sighted retiring west. At the same time the Light Cruiser Squadron was observed to be engaging an enemy ship ahead. They appeared to have her beat.

I then steered northeast to sounds of firing ahead, and at 12.30 p.m. sighted "Arethusa" and Third Flotilla retiring to the westward engaging a cruiser of the "Kolberg" class on our port bow. I steered to cut her off from Heligoland, and at 12.37 p.m. opened fire. At 12.42 the enemy turned to northeast, and we chased at 27 knots.

At 12.56 p.m. sighted and engaged a two-funneled cruiser ahead. "Lion" fired two salvos at her, which took effect, and she disappeared into the mist, burning furiously and in a sinking condition. In view of the mist and that she was steering at high speed at right angles to "Lion," who was herself steaming at 28 knots, the "Lion's" firing was very creditable.

Our destroyers had reported the presence of floating mines to the eastward, and I considered it inadvisable to pursue her. It was also essential that the squadrons should remain concentrated, and I accordingly ordered a withdrawal. The battle cruisers turned north and circled to port to complete the destruction of the vessel first engaged. She was sighted again at 1.25 p.m. steaming southeast, with colors still flying. "Lion" opened fire with two turrets, and at 1.35 p.m., after receiving two salvos, she sank.

The four attacked destroyers were sent to pick up survivors, but I deeply regret that they subsequently reported that they searched the area but found none.

At 1.40 p.m. the battle cruisers turned to the northward, and "Queen Mary" was again attacked by a submarine. The attack was avoided by the use of the helm. "Lowestoft" was also unsuccessfully attacked. The battle cruisers covered the retirement until nightfall. By 6 p. m., the retirement having been well executed and all destroyers accounted for, I altered course, spread the light cruisers, and swept northwards in accordance with the Commander-in-Chief's orders. At 7.45 p.m. I detached "Liverpool" to Rosyth with German prisoners, seven officers and 79 men, survivors from "Mainz." No further incident occurred.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Battle Of The Falklands*

Vice Admiral Sturdee's Official Report.

_WHEREAS the German Admiral, von Spee, had displayed superior strategy to the British in the engagement off Coronel, Chile, the reverse was the case on December 8, 1914, when he encountered another British squadron under Admiral Sturdee in the Battle of the Falklands. It had been a race on the part of the British ships to reach the Falkland Islands ahead of the German squadron, and von Spee played into the hands of Sturdee by arriving a day late and being caught completely off guard. This time, however, the Britons excelled the Germans in speed and gun-power, as well as strategy.

In the memorable battle as here reported to the British Admiralty, the British lost 6 killed and had 16 wounded. Of the 5 German warships engaged, all were sunk except the "Dresden," which escaped and became a sea raider. Only 180 German officers and men were saved from a total complement of 2,200._

THE following dispatch has been received from Vice-Admiral Sir F. C. Doveton-Sturdee, K.C.B., C.V.O., C.M.G., reporting the action off the Falkland Islands on Tuesday, the 8th of December, 1914:

The squadron, consisting of H. M. ships "Invincible," flying my flag; "Inflexible," "Carnarvon," flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Archibald P. Stoddart; "Cornwall," "Kent," "Glasgow," "Bristol," and "Macedonia," arrived at Port Stanley, Falkland Island, at 10.30 a.m. on Monday, the 7th December, 1914. Coaling was commenced at once, in order that the ships should be ready to resume the search for the enemy's squadron the next evening, the 8th December.

At 8 a.m. on Tuesday, the 8th December, a signal was received from the signal station on shore: "A four-funnel and two-funnel man-of-war in sight from Sapper Hill, steering northwards."

At this time the positions of the various ships of the squadron were as follows: "Macedonia": At anchor as look-out ship. "Kent" (guard ship: At anchor in Port William. "Invincible" and "Inflexible": In Port William. "Carnarvon": In Port William. "Cornwall": In Port William. "Glasgow": In Port Stanley. "Bristol": In Port Stanley.

The "Kent" was at once ordered to weigh, and a general signal was made to raise steam for full speed.

At 8.20 a.m. the signal station reported another column of smoke in sight to the southward, and at 8.43 a.m. the "Kent" passed down the harbor and took up a station at the entrance.

The "Canopus" reported at 8.47 a.m. that the first two ships were 8 miles off, and that the smoke reported at 8.20 a.m. appeared to be the smoke of two ships about 20 miles off.

At 8.50 a.m. the signal station reported a further column of smoke in sight to the southward.

The "Macedonia" was ordered to weigh anchor on the inner side of the other ships, and await orders.

At 9.20 a.m. the two leading ships of the enemy ("Gneisenau" and "Nurnberg"), with guns trained on the wireless station, came within range of the "Canopus," who opened fire at them across the low land at a range of 11,000 yards. The enemy at once hoisted their colors and turned away. At this time the masts and smoke of the enemy were visible from the upper bridge of the "Invincible" at a range of approximately 17,000 yards across the low land to the south of Port William.

A few minutes later the two cruisers altered course to port, as though to close the "Kent" at the entrance to the harbor, but about this time it seems that the "Invincible" and "Inflexible" were seen over the land, as the enemy at once altered course and increased speed to join their consorts.

The "Glasgow" weighed and proceeded at 9.40 a.m. with orders to join the "Kent" and observe the enemy's movements.

At 8.40 a.m. the squadron less the "Bristol" weighed, and proceeded out of harbor in the following order: "Carnarvon, inflexible, invisible, and "Cornwall." On passing Cape Pembroke Light, the five ships of the enemy appeared clearly in sight to the southeast, hull down. The visibility was at its maximum, the sea was calm, with a bright sun, a clear sky, and a light breeze from the northwest.

At 10.20 a.m. the signal for a general chase was made. The battle cruisers quickly passed ahead of the "Carnarvon" and overtook the "Kent." The "Glasgow" was ordered to keep two miles from the "Invincible," and the "Inflexible" was stationed on the starboard quarter of the flagship. Speed was eased to 20 knots at 11. 15 a.m. to enable the other cruisers to get into station.

At this time the enemy's funnels and bridges showed just above the horizon.

Information was received from the "Bristol" at 11.27 a.m. that three enemy ships had appeared off Port Pleasant, probably colliers or transports. The "Bristol" was therefore directed to take the "Macedonia" under his orders and destroy transports.

The enemy were still maintaining their distance, and I decided, at 12.20 p.m., to attack with the two battle cruisers and the "Glasgow."

At 12.47 p.m. the signal to "Open fire and engage the enemy" was made.

The "Inflexible" opened fire at 12.55 p.m. from her fore turret at the right-hand ship of the enemy, a light cruiser; a few minutes later the "Invincible" opened fire at the same ship.

The deliberate fire from a range of 16,500 to 15,000 yards at the right-hand light cruiser, who was dropping astern, became too threatening, and when a shell fell close alongside her at 1.20 p.m. she (the "Leipzig") turned away, with the "Nurnberg" and "Dresden" to the southwest. These light cruisers were at once followed by the "Kent," "Glasgow" and "Cornwall," in accordance with my instructions.

The action finally developed into three separate encounters, besides the subsidiary one dealing with the threatened landing.

The fire of the battle cruisers was directed on the "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau." The effect of this was quickly seen, when at 1.25 p.m., with the "Scharnhorst" leading, they turned about 7 points to port in succession into line ahead and opened fire at 1.30 p.m. Shortly afterwards speed was eased to 24 knots, and the battle cruisers were ordered to turn together, bringing them into line ahead, with the "Invincible" leading.

The range was about 13,500 yards at the final turn, and increased, until, at 2 p.m., it had reached 16,450 yards.

The enemy then (2.10 p.m.) turned away about 10 points to starboard and a second chase ensued, until, at 2.45 p.m., the battle cruisers again opened fire; this caused the enemy, at 2.53 p.m., to turn into line ahead to port and open fire at 2.55 p.m.

The "Scharnhorst" caught fire forward, but not seriously, and her fire slackened perceptibly; the "Gneisenau" was badly hit by the "Inflexible."


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*From The Frontiers To The Marne*

Official French Review by Marshal Joseph Joffre.

_THIS official report of the French Commander-in-Chief concerns the strategic retreat of the Allies, ending with the stand taken on the Orcq and Marne, September 5, 1914. So vast and complex was this campaign, like some mighty chess game between chosen masters of the military art, that it may be best comprehended in the words of Marshal Joffre, the ultimate victor in the game.

The German commanders issued no such formal report, although the first huge clash of the armies was decisively in their favor. Joffre realized that the only hope of saving Paris lay in concentrating his armies, leading his adversary to a field of his own selection, and there giving battle. This he did, by sacrificing Belgium and that part of France north of the line from Paris to Verdun. Liege and Namur had taught the French to mistrust fortresses as death-traps.

This report is open to criticism for exonerating the commanders of the retiring armies._

THE first month of the campaign began with successes and finished with defeats for the French troops. Under what circumstances did these come about? Our plan of concentration had foreseen the possibility of two principal actions, one on the right between the Vosges and the Moselle, the other on the left to the north of Verdun-Toul line, this double possibility involving the eventual variation of our transport. On August 2nd, owing to the Germans passing through Belgium, our concentration was substantially modified by Marshal Joffre in order that our principal effort might be directed to the north.

From the first week in August it was apparent that the length of time required for the British army to begin to move would delay our action in connection with it. This delay is one of the reasons which explain our failures at the end of August.

Awaiting the moment when the operations in the north could begin, and to prepare for it by retaining in Alsace the greatest possible number of German forces, the Commander-in-Chief ordered our troops to occupy Mulhouse, to cut the bridges of the Rhine at Huningue and below, and then to flank the attack of our troops, operating in Lorraine.

The purpose of the operations in Alsace was to retain a large part of the enemy's forces far from the northern theater of operations. Our offensive in Lorraine was to pursue the same purpose still more directly by holding before it the German army corps operating to the south of Metz.

This offensive began brilliantly on August 14th. On the 19th we had reached the region of Saarburg and that of the Etangs (lakes), and we held Dieuze, Morhange, Delme and Chateau Salins.

On the 20th our success was stopped. The cause is to be found in the strong organization of the region, in the power of the enemy's artillery, operating over ground which had been minutely surveyed, and, finally, in the default of certain units.

On the 22nd, in spite of the splendid behavior of several of our army corps, notably that of Nancy, our troops were brought back on the Grand Couronne, while on the 23rd and 24th the Germans concentrated reenforcements three army corps, at least in the region of Luneville and forced us to retire to the South.

This retreat, however, was only momentary. On the 25th, after two vigorous counter-attacks, one from south to north and the other from west to east, the enemy had to fall back. From that time a sort of balance was established on this terrain between the Germans and ourselves. Maintained for fifteen days, it was afterward, as will be seen, modified to our advantage.

There remained the principal business, the battle of the north postponed owing to the necessity of waiting for the British army. On August 20th the concentration of our lines was finished and the Commander-in-Chief gave orders for our center and our left to take the offensive. Our center comprised two armies. Our left consisted of a third army, reenforced to the extent of two army corps, a corps of cavalry, the reserve divisions, the British army, and the Belgian army, which had already been engaged for the previous three weeks at Liege, Namur and Louvain.

The German plan on that date was as follows: From seven to eight army corps and four cavalry divisions were endeavoring to pass between Givet and Brussels, and even to prolong their movements more to the west. Our object was, therefore, in the first place, to hold and dispose of the enemy's center and afterward to throw ourselves with all available forces on the left flank of the German grouping of troops in the north.

On August 21st our offensive in the center began with ten army corps. On August 22nd it failed, and this reverse appeared serious.

The reasons for it are complex. There were in this affair individual and collective failures, imprudences committed under the fire of the enemy, divisions ill-engaged, rash deployments, precipitate retreats, a premature waste of men and, finally, the inadequacy of certain of our troops and their leaders, both as regards the use of infantry and artillery.

In consequences of these lapses the enemy, turning to account the difficult terrain, was able to secure the maximum of profit from the advantages which the superiority of his subaltern complements gave him.

In spite of this defeat our maneuver had still a chance of success, if our left and the British army obtained a decisive result. This was unfortunately not the case. On August 22nd, at the cost of great losses, the enemy succeeded in crossing the Sambre and our left army fell back on the 24th upon Beaumont-Givet, being perturbed by the belief that the enemy was threatening its right.

On the same day (the 24th), the British army fell back after a German attack upon the Maubeuge-Valenciennes line. On the 25th and 26th its retreat became more hurried. After Landrecies and Le Cateau it fell back southward by forced marches. It could not from this time keep its hold until after crossing the Marne.

The rapid retreat of the English, coinciding with the defeat sustained in Belgian Luxemburg (at the Sambre), allowed the enemy to cross the Meuse and to accelerate, by fortifying it, the action of his right.

The situation at this moment may be thus summed up: Either our frontier had to be defended on the spot under conditions which the British retreat rendered extremely perilous, or we had to execute a strategic retirement which, while delivering up to the enemy a part of the national soil, would permit us, on the other hand, to resume the offensive at our own time with a favorable disposition of troops, still intact, which we had at our command. The Commander-in-Chief determined on the second alternative.

Henceforward the French command devoted its efforts to preparing the offensive. To this end three conditions had to be fulfilled:

1. The retreat had to be carried out in order under a succession of counter-attacks which would keep the enemy busy.

2. The extreme point of this retreat must be fixed in such a way that the different armies should reach it simultaneously, ready at the moment of occupying it to resume the offensive all together.

3. Every circumstance permitting of a resumption of the offensive before this point should be reached must be utilized by the whole of our forces and the British forces.

The counter-attacks, executed during the retreat, were brilliant and often fruitful. On August 26th we successfully attacked St. Quentin to disengage the British army. Two other corps and a reserve division engaged the Prussian Guard and the Tenth German Army Corps, which was debouching from Guise. By the end of the day, after various fluctuations, the enemy was thrown back on the Oise and the British front was freed.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*German Admission Of Responsibility*

By Prince Lichnowsky

_PRINCE LICHNOWSKY was the German Ambassador in London from 1912 to the outbreak of the war. He then retired to his estate in Germany and devoted himself to the preparation of an elaborate "Memorandum," from which the accompanying passage is taken.

In this famous document are many observations of a highly sensational character.

Only two copies of it were prepared, but one of them got into print by accident or design, and soon many thousand copies were struck off and circulated extensively throughout the civilized world. A movement was started in the Prussian Upper House to expel Prince Lichnowsky from membership in that body, and irate demands for his punishment came from German militarists, but ultimately the matter Was hushed up. Count Berchtold, who figures as one of the authors of the war, was the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister at the time._

SIR EDWARD GREY [the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs] begged us to come forward with a proposal of our own. We insisted on war. . . . The impression grew continually stronger that we desired war under any circumstances. In no other way was it possible to interpret our attitude.

Then, on July 29 [1914], Sir Edward decided to give his famous warning. I replied that I had invariably reported that we should have to reckon with English opposition if it came to a war with France. Repeatedly the Minister said to me: "If war breaks out, it will be the greatest catastrophe the world has ever seen.

Soon after this events were precipitated. Until this time, following the directions he received from Berlin, Count Berchtold had played the part of the strong man. When at last he decided to change his course, and after Russia had negotiated and waited a whole week in vain, we answered the Russian mobilization with the ultimatum and the declaration of war.

It is shown by all official publications and is not disproved by our White Book, which, owing to the poverty of its contents and to its omissions, constitutes a grave indictment against ourselves, that:

1. We encouraged Count Berchtold to attack Serbia, although no German interest was involved and the danger of a World War must have been known to us. Whether we were acquainted with the wording of the ultimatum is completely immaterial.

2. During the period between the 23rd and the 30th of July, 1914, when M. Sazonof emphatically declared that he could not tolerate an attack on Serbia, we rejected the British proposals of mediation, although Serbia, under Russian and British pressure, had accepted almost the whole of the ultimatum, and although an agreement about the two points at issue could easily have been reached and Count Berchtold was even prepared to content himself with the Serbian reply.

3. On the 30th of July, when Count Berchtold showed a disposition to change his course, we sent an ultimatum to St. Petersburg merely because of the Russian mobilization and though Austria had not been attacked; and on the 31st of July we declared war against the Russians, although the Czar pledged his word that he would not permit a single man to march as long as negotiations were still going on. Thus we deliberately destroyed the possibility of a peaceful settlement.

In view of these incontestable facts, it is no wonder that the whole civilized world outside of Germany places the sole responsibility for the World War upon our shoulders.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*Where Von Kluck Failed*

By Louis Madelin.

ON August 30th Von Kluck was nearing Paris, he was at Chantilly, only twenty-two and a half miles distant. The great town, encouraged and comforted by Gallieni's words, which will become historic, but abandoned by the Government, awaited the barbarous hordes with outward calm, just as in former days, Genevieve de Nanterre had calmed the people of Lutetia menaced by Attila's Huns.

But already on September 3rd it seemed as if Von Kluck, heading towards Meaux and Coulommiers, was turning away from Paris for the time being. It is said that he was applying Moltke's doctrine: "Defeat and throw back the French beyond the Marne, the Yonne and the Loire, and only then march upon Paris." Was this posthumous order necessary? Had Von Kluck attempted to enter the capital without fighting, it would have been a great risk Maunoury would have barred the way and Gallieni was there behind Maunoury, what magnificent strength wasted just when it was going to be proved that the entire German army massed together could not withstand the French army! Of what worth would Von Kluck's troops have been, hampered as they were by conquest, and drunk with something that did not resemble pride, before our armies so easily victorious?

Nevertheless, Von Kluck pushed on towards the Marne, possessed with the idea that he would attack our left, the British army and d'Esperey's, and enveloping it, turn the entire French army. The maneuver was an obvious one and imposed itself on strategy, it would have succeeded had not Maunoury been on Von Kluck's right flank. But, curiously enough, and most inexplicable, the German general who prided himself on his knowledge of everything seems to have ignored the existence of a French army on his right, or if he knew of it, he underestimated its strength and continued marching south, while Maunoury let him get encircled and spread out his own forces fan-wise from north to south, facing east.

The mistake was all the graver since Von Kluck, and the other German generals, were going to encounter an army no longer in retreat, but an army which by order of its chief was ready to hold and determined to attack.

The mistake rested mainly with Von Kluck and was due in a measure to his misconception of the opponent and to his unbounded audacity. Gallieni had warned Joffre on the 4th of Von Kluck's daring advance, and everything since had confirmed the news received from Paris. In agreement with the Governor of the city, our Generalissimo clearly saw what steps the event immediately necessitated. He wants the battle fought on our left. Kluck hopes to envelop Sir John French and d'Esperey, but it is Maunoury, disregarded by Kluck, who will attempt to envelop Von Muck with the help of Sir John and d'Esperey.

The mission of the armies on the left is thus already defined by General Joffre's order of the 4th:

"1st. It is expedient to take advantage of the foolhardy position of the 1st German Army and hurl against it the strength of our left flank. All steps will be taken on the 5th for an attack on the 6th."

The first days are more especially Maunoury's. The latter has scarcely moved, threatening to envelop and crush the 40,000 men of Schwerin's corps, when the Prussian general, alarmed, calls for help. Von Kluck, at the very moment when he engages the four-fifths of his army against Sir John French and d'Esperey, learns that a recently formed army is menacing his left flank. With a promptitude that enhances his reputation as a strategist, he does not hesitate to abandon his plan in order to break the attack prepared against him. He turns round and faces Maunoury, certain that after having crushed him, he can turn again south and finish off Sir John French and d'Esperey.

Everything will therefore depend on Maunoury's resistance. If he is able to hold, Sir John French and d'Esperey can repulse the troops left against them and in their turn menace Von Kluck, not on his right, but on his left flank. And menaced he was on the third day, obliged to admit he is vanquished and beat a retreat for fear of being caught between Maunoury, French and d'Esperey.

This battle is the Battle of the Ourcq. By losing it and retreating prudently, . Von Kluck laid Von Bulow's front bare and weakened the entire German front, which could not be strengthened owing to Foch's violent attacks elsewhere. That is why the Battle of the Ourcq has been termed the decisive factor in the victory of the Marne. . . . The German High Command, we have proof of it today, knew then that the game was up. The Emperor, abandoning France, had gone to Luxemburg ; on every hand Von Kluck's mistake aroused the fiercest anger.

"With a heavy heart," says a German account, "he gave the order for a general retreat northwards." He and his many thousand soldiers were vanquished and so as to avoid imminent and terrible disaster, this general, who had the greatest reputation for strategy in the German army, fell back defeated to the north. From every side, mournfully, German columns are pouring forth; some in bad array having suffered heavily and all now experiencing a fatigue not felt the day before when they hoped to carry all before them. No more cries of "Nach Paris," but everywhere stupefying silence. They were unable to pick up their wounded or bury their dead, for they had to give way as they went. The earth was strewn with dead. To quote one instance: The Magdeburg regiment was torn almost to shreds in a desperate struggle near d'Acy-en-Multien.

Maunoury helps to clear up the field; he sends from right to left wing the necessary reenforcements to dislodge the German detachments from Nanteuil. He presses closely on the rear of the retiring columns, following both banks of the Ourcq, while the Germans retreat hastily towards the forest of Villers-Cotterets, whence they are obliged to push on towards Soissons the next day.

The 6th Army, having forced Von Kluck to abandon abruptly his offensive against the British and the 5th Army, had in this way attracted the attention of the greater bulk of the powerful German army and for four days had offered a firm front to a formidable attack. Finally, helped by the menacing advance of the armies of the Marne, it forced the "incomparable" army and its eminent chief to beat a hasty retreat in order to avoid utter ruin.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*Trench Warfare Begins On The Aisne*

By Colonel (later Major-General) Edward D. Swinton, D.S.O.

_RETIRING to prepared elevated positions north of the River Aisne, closely pursued by the Franco-British Army, the Germans made a determined stand and under cover of terrific artillery fire, September 12-20, 1914, firmly entrenched themselves. Swinton, on the staff of Field Marshal French, here recounts the frenzied opening week of the engagement, which became ultimately a perpetual trench battle. His day by day narrative of the movements of the British Army was at first issued anonymously, under the pen-name of "Eye-Witness." It was considered the clearest, most honest and most valuable of all the records kept by the Allies.

Repeatedly the British endeavored to cross the Aisne River and drive the enemy farther north toward the frontier. But the heavier Teutonic artillery soon taught them the impossibility of advance against modern gunfire and barbed-wire entrenchments, as were here originated._

SEPTEMBER 14th, the Germans were making a determined resistance along the River Aisne. Opposition, which it was at first thought might possibly be of a rear-guard nature, not entailing material delay to our progress, developed and proved to be more serious than was anticipated.

The action, now being fought by the Germans along their line, may, it is true, have been undertaken in order to gain time for some strategic operation or move, and , may not be their main stand. But, if this is so, the fighting is naturally on a scale which as to extent of ground covered and duration of resistance, makes it undistinguishable in its progress from what is known as a "pitched battle," though the enemy certainly showed signs of considerable disorganization during the earlier days of their retirement phase.

Whether it was originally intended by them to defend the position they took up as strenuously as they have done, or whether the delay, gained for them during the 12th and 13th by their artillery, has enabled them to develop their resistance and force their line to an extent not originally contemplated cannot be said.

So far as we are concerned the action still being contested is the Battle of the Aisne. The foe we are fighting is just across the river along the whole of our front to the east and west. The struggle is not confined to the valley of that river, though it will probably bear its name.

The progress of our operations and the French armies nearest us for the 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th will now be described:

On Monday, the 14th, those of our troops which had on the previous day crossed the Aisne, after driving in the German rear guards on that evening, found portions of the enemy's forces in prepared defensive positions on the right bank and could do little more than secure a footing north of the river. This, however, they maintained in spite of two counter-attacks delivered at dusk and 10 p. m., in which the fighting Was severe.

During the 14th, strong reenforcements of our troops were passed to the north bank, the troops crossing by ferry, by pontoon bridges, and by the remains of permanent bridges. Close cooperation with the French forces was maintained and the general progress made was good, although the opposition was Vigorous and the state of the roads, after the heavy rains, made movements slow. One division alone failed to secure the ground it expected to.

The First Army Corps, after repulsing repeated attacks, captured 600 prisoners and twelve guns. The cavalry also took a number of prisoners. Many of the Germans taken belong to the reserve and Landwehr formations, which fact appears to indicate that the enemy is compelled to draw on other classes of soldiers to fill the gaps in his ranks.

There was a heavy rain throughout the night of September 14th-15th, and during the 15th. The situation of the British forces underwent no essential change. But it became more and more evident that the defensive preparations made by the enemy were more extensive than was at first apparent.

In order to counterbalance these, measures were taken by us to economize our troops and to secure protection from the hostile artillery fire, which was very fierce; and our men continued to improve their own intrenchments. The Germans bombarded our lines nearly all day, using heavy guns, brought, no doubt, from before Maubeuge, as well as those with the corps.

All their counter-attacks, however, failed, although in some places they were repeated six times. One made on the Fourth Guard Brigade was repulsed with heavy slaughter.

An attempt to advance slightly, made by part of our line, was unsuccessful as regards gain of ground, but led to the withdrawal of part of the enemy's infantry and artillery.

Further counter-attacks made during the night were beaten off. Rain came on toward evening and continued intermittently until 9 a.m. on the 16th. Besides adding to the discomfort of the soldiers holding the line, the wet weather to some extent hampered the motor transport service, which was also hindered by broken bridges.

On Wednesday, the 16th, there was little change in the situation opposite the British. The efforts made by the enemy were less active than on the previous day, although their bombardment continued throughout the morning and evening. Our artillery fire drove the defenders off one of the salients of their position, but they returned in the evening. Forty prisoners were taken by the Third Division.

On Thursday, the 17th, the situation still remained unchanged in its essentials. The German heavy artillery fire was more active than on the previous day. The only infantry attacks made by the enemy were on the extreme right of our position, and, as had happened before, were repulsed with heavy loss, chiefly, on this occasion, by our field artillery.

In order to convey some idea of the nature of the fighting it may be said that along the greater part of our front the Germans have been driven back from the forward slopes on the north of the river. Their infantry are holding strong lines of trenches among and along the edge of the numerous woods which crown the slopes. These trenches are elaborately constructed and cleverly concealed. In many places there are wire entanglements and lengths of rabbit fencing.

Both woods and open are carefully aligned, so that they can be swept by rifle fire and machine guns, which are invisible from our side of the valley. The ground in front of the infantry trenches is also, as a rule, under crossfire from the field artillery placed on neighboring features and under high-angle fire from pieces placed well back behind the woods on top of the plateau.

A feature of this action, as of the previous fighting, is the use by the enemy of their numerous heavy howitzers, with which they are able to direct long-range fire all over the valley and right across it. Upon these they evidently place great reliance.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*Antwerp Capitulates*

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

_ANTWERP was taken by the Germans, October 8, 1914, after a defense of twelve days, as described by Doyle, in his popular "History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders," from which this account is taken by permission of George H. Doran Company. Antwerp, famous for its fortifications, had been regarded as "impregnable."

This distinguished novelist-historian criticizes Winston Churchill, First Lord of the British Admiralty, for having accompanied a strong force of British marines to assist in the defense of Antwerp, to which Churchill is on record as saying that "in holding Antwerp for the five days preceding its fall, the Anglo-Belgian forces rendered important service to the French and British left wing by keeping from the main battle to the south more than five German divisions."

Antwerp lost, the Belgians retired to the Yser, and the British to Ypres. From now on Belgium, in German hands, was the chief military and naval base of operations against the Allies in the west._

THE Belgians, after the evacuation of Brussels in August, had withdrawn their army into the widespread fortress of Antwerp, from which they made frequent sallies upon the Germans who were garrisoning their country. Great activity was shown and several small successes were gained, which had the useful effect of detaining two corps which might have been employed upon the Aisne. Eventually, towards the end of September, the Germans turned their attention seriously to the reduction of the city, with a well-founded confidence that no modern forts could resist the impact of their enormous artillery. They drove the garrison within the lines, and early in October opened a bombardment upon the outer forts with such results that it was evidently only a matter of days before they would fall and the fine old city be faced with the alternative of surrender or destruction. The Spanish fury of Parma's pikemen would be a small thing compared to the furor Teutonicus working its evil deliberate will upon town-hall or cathedral, with the aid of fire-disc, petrol-spray, or other products of Kultur.

The main problem before the Allies, if the town could not be saved, was to insure that the Belgian army should be extricated and that nothing of military value which could be destroyed should be left to the invaders. No troops were available for a rescue, for the French and British old formations were already engaged, while the new ones were not yet ready for action.

The Marine Brigade of the Naval Division under General Paris was dispatched from England in the early morning and reached Antwerp during the night of October 3. They were about 2,000 in number. Early next morning they were out in the trenches, relieving some weary Belgians. The Germans were already within the outer enceinte and drawing close to the inner. For forty-eight hours they held the line in the face of heavy shelling. The cover was good and the losses were not heavy. At the end of that time the Belgian troops, who had been a good deal worn by their heroic exertions, were unable to sustain the German pressure, and evacuated the trenches on the flank of the British line. The brigade then fell back to a reserve position in front of the town.

On the night of the 5th the two other brigades of the division, numbering some 5,000 amateur sailors, arrived in Antwerp, and the whole force assembled on the new line of defense. Mr. Winston Churchill showed his gallantry as a man, and his indiscretion as a high official [First Lord of the British Admiralty], whose life was of great value to his country by accompanying the force from England.

The bombardment was now very heavy, and the town was on fire in several places. The equipment of the British left much to be desired, and their trenches were as indifferent as their training. None the less they played the man and lived up to the traditions of that great service upon whose threshold they stood. For three days these men, who a few weeks before had been anything from schoolmasters to tram-conductors, held their perilous post. They were very raw, but they possessed a great asset in their officers, who were usually men of long service. But neither the lads of the naval brigades nor the war-worn and much enduring Belgians could stop the mouths of those inexorable guns. On the 8th it was clear that the forts could no longer be held. The British task had been to maintain the trenches which connected the forts with each other, but if the forts went it was clear that the trenches must be outflanked and untenable. The situation, therefore, was hopeless, and all that remained was to save the garrison and leave as little as possible for the victors.

Some thirty or forty German merchant ships in the harbor were sunk and the great petrol tanks were set on fire. By the light of the flames the Belgians and British forces made their way successfully out of the town, and the good service rendered later by our Allies upon the Yser and elsewhere is the best justification of the policy which made us strain every nerve in order to do every thing which could have a moral or material effect upon them in their darkest hour. Had the British been able to get away unscathed, the whole operation might have been reviewed with equanimity if not with satisfaction, but, unhappily, a grave misfortune, arising rather from bad luck than from the opposition of the enemy, came upon the retreating brigades, so that very many of our young sailors after their one week of crowded life came to the end of their active service for the war.

On leaving Antwerp it had been necessary to strike to the north in order to avoid a large detachment of the enemy who were said to be upon the line of the retreat. The boundary between Holland and Belgium is at this point very intricate, with no clear line of demarcation, and a long column of British somnambulists, staggering along in the dark after so many days in which they had for the most part never enjoyed two consecutive hours of sleep, wandered over the fatal line and found themselves in firm but kindly Dutch custody for the rest of the war. Some fell into the hands of the enemy, but the great majority were interned. These men belonged chiefly to three battalions of the 1st Brigade. The 2nd Brigade, with one battalion of the 1st, and the greater part of the Marines, made their way to the trains at St. Gilles-Waes, and were able to reach Ostend in safety. The remaining battalion of Marines, with a number of stragglers of the other brigades, were cut off at Morbede by the Germans, and about half of them were taken, while the rest fought their way through in the darkness and joined their comrades. The total losses of the British in the whole misadventure from first to last were about 2,500 men a high price, and yet not too high when weighed against the results of their presence at Antwerp. On October 10th the Germans under General Von Beseler occupied the city. Mr. Powell, who was present, testifies that 60,000 marched into the town, and that they were all troops of the active army.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Battle Of Dogger Bank*

Described by two British Man-of-War's Men and a German Survivor.

NEWS ACCOUNT BY A GUNNER OF THE "ARETHUSA"

_A GERMAN squadron, under Rear-Admiral von Hipper, consisting of three battle cruisers "Derfflinger," "Seydlitz," "Moltke" and the protected cruiser "Blucher," together with light cruisers and destroyers, was encountered in the North Sea, January 24, 1915, by the British battle cruisers "Lion," "Tiger," "Princess Royal," "New Zealand" and "Indomitable," under Vice-Admiral Beatty, in company with four light cruisers, including the famous "Arethusa," one of whose gunners gives this introductory account of the battle. In a running fight, the "Blucher" was torpedoed and sunk in the tragic manner described here by one of her crew. The description is preceded by the account of an officer on the British destroyer "Sandfly," which was published in the London "Times" a few days after the action.

This was the first action of the war between big battleships._

I MIGHT mention that we were well within range of the Germans during this time, who apparently could not spare one of their 11-inch guns for us, which was a good thing, as one from them would not leave much of the "Arethusa," I think. Their shells were beginning to fall a little too near us for safety, and we really thought we were in for it as first one big one fell just short this was my side (port). The next came with a horrible, shrieking noise and passed over the ship just abaft the mast and damaged our port aerial. I then began to think that the next would find the range, but fortunately it passed just astern. We had a very warm time for a while, as you must understand that the "Arethusa" is quite unprotected, and we have no protection but only light shields at our guns in fact, the shield of my gun has twice been burst in by the seas.

The German ships appeared to be on fire more than once, and at last there was no doubt about one of them the "Blucher." It was then that our turn came, and as her fire slackened we quickly came up with her and started with our bow six-inch with lyddite. This is a terribly destructive shell, and when our big ships were firing, their shells on exploding caused clouds of yellow smoke. Our starboard battery of four-inch also came into play, but unfortunately all this time I had to stand idly by with a shell in my arms, as none of the guns on our side got a chance; this was rather trying.

The "Blucher" was now out of action, and the "Arethusa" gave the coup de grace by slipping in two torpedoes at her just as we slewed around. These caused frightful havoc, one bursting in the engine-room and the other just below the fore turret, and rapidly caused her to capsize. She was before this a battered wreck on deck, practically all her gun crews were killed, and her officers drove the men from the stoke-hole at their sword-points to reman the guns. This was told us by the German prisoners aboard, and one or two of them have wounds which they said had been caused by their own officers' swords.

The "Blucher," which had capsized, was lying awash, with her side just out of the water and men standing on it, while all around there seemed hundreds swimming and drifting in cork jackets toward us. We were very close; in fact, it seemed dangerously so. I shall never forget the sight, nor what followed later. I think it was more affecting than anything. Anyway, we started to drag them in up the ship's side, and in this way and by the boats we got 123 on board, while the destroyers also saved a lot. Some were badly burned. We got six officers in the above.

Shortly after we got our boats a terrible sight came along, which was a lot of Germans being swept along in the water and who had evidently drifted off in another direction when we picked the others up. In this case they were sweeping by the ship, and we could only save one or two several drowned before our eyes, although having life-belts on. Then the destroyers came up and picked up a lot. By this time our battle cruisers had disappeared after the Germans, and we turned about and started to go for all we were worth back to the "Lion," the "Indomitable" having already gone back. There was, of course, great danger to her from submarines, and it was a very anxious time from Sunday night until we got to Rosyth about 4 a.m. on Tuesday.

BY AN OFFICER OF THE "SANDFLY"

We had a beastly night on Saturday; you could not see a thing except at intervals and you had to look out as best you could. Our next ahead's stern light went out and it was an awful job to keep touch with the flotilla. We joined up with the flotilla at 6.50 and at 7 a.m. we sighted some craft in the demilight on our starboard bow. As the light got better we made out the enemy battle cruisers making our way, and none of us felt very happy as we appeared to be up against a strong force of battle and light cruisers and torpedo craft. I was wet through, having come up quickly without an oil-skin, which I won't do again even though I am a bit late on the forecastle; also suffering a bit from seasickness. I suppose at a pinch one can fight well even though it's on an empty stomach and no sleep and wet through, but I am blowed if you can if you are feeling seasick.

A bit later we made out some heavy ships on our port side (we were steaming north). These might have been Germans for all we knew in the "Sandfly." The German ships came on for a bit as we were screening the big ships, being between them and the enemy, but as soon as they caught sight of the "Lion" and that lot they altered course 16 points and made off towards the Fatherland as quick as they could. We could not get at their flotilla, so we had to form astern of our battle cruisers and leave it to them. After this we were only spectators of the fight.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*The First Battle Of Ypres*

By John Buchan.

_COMING to the Battle of Ypres (October 31 to November 17, 1914), Field Marshal French, the British commander, says bluntly that the stake was the very existence of the British Empire. Possession of the Channel ports would have provided the Germans with such submarine bases as would have "nullified all efforts of the British Navy to guard against an invasion of England." The desperate character of the fighting is indicated in the statement that "scarcely a house famous in England's stormy history but mourned a son."

In his "History of the Great War," from which this account is taken, by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Buchan, who was on the Headquarters Staff of the British Army, dramatizes the eventful November 11th, when the Prussian Guard pierced the British front, being subsequently dislodged and driven back to their own lines. Trench warfare followed._

BETWEEN two and three o'clock on Saturday, the 31st, was the most critical hour in the whole battle. The 1st Division had fallen back from Gheluvelt to a line resting on the junction of the Frezenberg road with the Ypres-Menin highway. It had suffered terribly, and its general had been sorely wounded. On its right the 7th Division had been bent back to the Klein Zillebeke ridge, while Bulfin's two brigades were just holding on, as was Moussy on their right. Allenby's cavalry were fighting an apparently hopeless battle on a long line, and it seemed as if the slightest forward pressure would crumble the Ypres defense. The enemy was beginning to pour through the Gheluvelt gap, and at the same time pressed hard on the whole arc of the salient.

There were no reserves except an odd battalion or two and some regiments of cavalry, all of which had already been sorely tried during the past days. French sent an urgent message to Foch for reenforcements, and was refused. At the end of the battle he learned the reason. Foch had none to send, and his own losses had been greater than ours. Between 2 and 2.30 Haig was on the Menin road, grappling with the crisis. It seemed impossible to stop the gap, though on its northern side some South Wales Borderers were gallantly holding a sunken road and galling the flank of the German advance. He gave orders to retire to a line a little west of Hooge and stand there, though he well knew that no stand, however heroic, could save the town. He foresaw a retirement west of Ypres, and French, who had joined him, agreed.

And then suddenly out of the void came a strange story. A white-faced staff officer reported that something odd was happening north of the Menin road. The enemy advance had halted! Then came the word that the 1st Division was reforming. The anxious generals could scarcely believe their ears, for it sounded a sheer miracle. But presently came the proof, though it was not for months that the full tale was known. Brigadier-General Fitz-Clarence, commanding the 1st (Guards) Brigade in the 1st Division, had sent in his last reserves and failed to stop the gap. He then rode off to the headquarters of the division to explain how desperate was the position. But on the way, at the southwest corner of the Polygon Wood, he stumbled upon a battalion waiting in support. It was the 2nd Worcesters, who were part of the right brigade of the 2nd Division. Fitz-Clarence saw in them his last chance. They belonged to another division, but it was no time to stand on ceremony, and the officer in command at once put them at his disposal. The Worcesters, under very heavy artillery fire, advanced in a series of rushes for about a thousand yards between the right of the South Wales Borderers and the northern edge of Gheluvelt. Like Cole's fusiliers at Albuera, they came suddenly and unexpectedly upon the foe. There they dug themselves in, broke up the German advance into bunches, enfiladed it heavily, and brought it to a standstill. This allowed the 7th Division to get back to its old line, and the 6th Cavalry Brigade to fill the gap between the 7th and the 1st Divisions. Before night fell the German advance west of Gheluvelt was stayed, and the British front was out of immediate danger.

On Sunday, 1st November, the wearied British line received reenforcements. Divisions from the French 16th and 20th Corps arrived to take over part of the line held by Allenby's cavalry. With them came Conneau's 2nd Cavalry Corps, transferred from its place between the 2nd and 3rd British Corps. That day was remarkable for the hard shelling or our front, and two isolated attacks, one against Bulfin's 2nd and 4th Brigades at Klein Zillebeke, and the other against Allenby on the Messines Ridge. The first was beaten back with the assistance of Byng's cavalry, who continued for the next few days to act as a general reserve and support to the Gheluvelt salient. But the assault on Allenby was a serious matter. During the night the Germans, breaking through on the left flank of the 1st Cavalry Division, reached the edge of Wytschaete, on the Ypres-Armentieres road. In spite of a most gallant defense by the French the Bavarians carried the village before the evening. Messines, too, had been since early morning in German hands, making an ugly dent in our line, which now ran from Le Gheir to the west of Messines, west of Wytschaete, by St. Eloi and Klein Zillebeke to west of Gheluvelt.

For five days the battle slackened into an artillery duel, and our weary men had a breathing space. On 5th November the line was readjusted, and some relief was given to the 7th Division, which was now reduced from 12,000 men and 400 officers to a little over 3,000. Fourteen battalions from the 2nd Corps, two Territorial battalions, and two regiments of Yeomanry now took their share of the line. The enemy also rearranged his plans. The Fabeck group had failed in its main purpose, and must be strengthened both with guns and troops. The two minor groups under Gerok and Urach on the Messines Ridge had also exhausted their impetus. Accordingly a new group was formed under Linsingen, consisting of the 15th Corps and a corps under Baron von Plattenberg, which included a composite division of the Prussian Guard. This group was to attack on the 11th north of the Ypres-Comines canal. Meantime, on Friday the 6th, a sudden assault was made on the Klein Zillebeke position, held by Bulfin's 2nd and 4th Brigades and Moussy's French division. In the afternoon the French on the right towards the canal were driven in, and Cavan's 4th Brigade was left in the air. The only reserve available was Byng's cavalry north of the Zillebeke-Klein Zillebeke road. Kavanagh deployed the 1st and 2nd Life Guards, with the Blues in reserve behind the center, and his advance assisted the French to resume their trenches.

But the German attack was being pressed in force, and the French came back again upon the Household Cavalry, a couple of whose squadrons were doubled across the road to stem the rush. For a moment there was wild confusion French, British and the oncoming Germans being mingled together in the village street. Major the Hon. Hugh Dawnay, who had come from the Headquarters Staff to command the 2nd Life Guards, led his men to the charge, and inflicted heavy losses upon the foe. Two hundred years before, the French Maison du Roi had charged desperately in Flemish fields, the splendid Gants glaces, with their lace and steel, their plumed hats and mettled horses. Very different was the attack of the British Household Cavalry mud-splashed men in drab charging on foot with the bayonet. In this action Hugh Dawnay fell, but not before his advance had saved the position. In him Britain lost one of the most brilliant of her younger soldiers, most masterful both in character and in brain, who, had he lived, would without doubt have risen to the highest place. He would wish no better epitaph than Napier's words: "No man died that night with more glory yet many died, and there was much glory."

Once more came a period of ominous quietness. It lasted through the 8th, 9th, and 10th, when nothing happened but a little shelling. Then on Wednesday, the 11th, came the supreme effort. As Napoleon had used his Guards for the final attack at Waterloo, so the Emperor used his for the culminating stroke at Ypres. The 1st and 4th Brigades of the Prussian Guard were launched on both sides of the Menin road. At first they used their parade march, and our men, rubbing their eyes in the darkness of the small hours, could scarcely credit the portent. Long before they reached the shock our fire had taken toll of them, but so mighty is discipline that their impact told. The 1st Brigade and the left brigade of the 3rd Division bore the brunt of the charge, and at several points the enemy pierced our front and won the woods to the west. Thence he was presently driven out with heavy losses, and his 1st Regiment, which had got beyond the Nonne Bosch Wood, was checked and routed by the 2nd Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry. A line of strong-points prepared by Haig's engineers was the high-water mark of the attack. On that day fell Brigadier-General Charles Fitz-Clarence, V.C., commanding the 1st Brigade, the hero of October 31st, a soldier whose military skill was not less conspicuous than his courage.

With the failure of the Prussian Guard the enemy seemed to have exhausted his vitality. His tide of men had failed to swamp the thin Allied lines, and, wearied out, and with terrible losses, he slackened his efforts and fell back upon the routine of trench warfare. To complete the tale we must glance at what had been happening on the extreme left of the Ypres salient, where the bulk of Dubois' 9th Corps held the line from Zonnebeke to Bixschoote, and linked up with the battle on the Yser. He had with him to complete his front Bidon's Territorial divisions and most of Mitry's 1st Cavalry Corps, and against him came, as we have seen, the bulk of the new German formations. The enemy tried to press beyond the ruins of Bixschoote to the canal, the winning of which would have turned the Ypres position on the north and objective much the same as the corner of the Ypres-Comines canal at Klein Zillebeke. In spite of desperate efforts he failed to advance at that critical point, and Langemarck remained untaken. By 15th November the vigor of the assault was ebbing, as it had ebbed four days before at the point of the Ypres bastion.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*American Intervention Proposed In 1916*

Historic Memorandum Approved by President Wilson and Initialed by Sir Edward Grey.

_THE accompanying "Memorandum" drawn up by Sir Edward Grey, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Colonel Edward M. House, confidential representative of President Wilson, is a most interesting revelation in Grey's memoirs, "Twenty-five Years, 1892-1916," fro tn Which this account is taken by permission of Frederick A. Stokes Company. As Grey states, President Wilson explicitly approved of this document, dated February 22, 1916 (three years before the war ended), which provided that the United States should call a peace conference, should suggest certain terms, including the return of Alsace-Lorraine, and "if it failed to secure peace, the United States should leave the conference on the side of the Allies, if Germany Was unreasonable."

Visiting Berlin shortly after this memorandum was made, Colonel House quickly learned, and so informed President Wilson, that Germany would consent to no such terms of peace except under compulsion._

IN February, 1916, House drafted with me a memorandum to define as precisely as could be done in advance the action that President Wilson would be prepared to take, and the terms of peace that he would use all the influence of his country to secure. A copy was left with me, and House took the memorandum to Washington to get the text confirmed by the President. From Washington he cabled confirming it, with the alteration of only one word. The following is the final form of the document as authorized by President Wilson:

MEMORANDUM

Colonel House told me that President Wilson was ready, on hearing from France and England that the moment was opportune, to propose that a conference should be summoned to put an end to the war. Should the Allies accept this proposal, and should Germany refuse it, the United States would probably enter the war against Germany.

Colonel House expressed the opinion that, if such a Conference met, it would secure peace on terms not unfavorable to the Allies; and, if it failed to secure peace, the United States would leave the Conference as a belligerent on the side of the Allies, if Germany was unreasonable. Colonel House expressed an opinion decidedly favorable to the restoration of Belgium, the transfer of Alsace and Lorraine to France, and the acquisition by Russia of an outlet to the sea, though he thought that the loss of territory incurred by Germany in one place would have to be compensated to her by concessions to her in other places outside Europe.

If the Allies delayed accepting the offer of President Wilson, and if, later on, the course of the war was so unfavorable to them that the intervention of the United States would not be effective, the United States would probably disinterest themselves in Europe and look to their own protection in their own way.

I said that I felt the statement, coming from the President of the United States, to be a matter of such importance that I must inform the Prime Minister and my colleagues; but that I could say nothing until it had received their consideration. The British Government could, under no circumstances, accept or make any proposal except in consultation and agreement with the Allies. I thought that the Cabinet would probably feel that the present situation would not justify them in approaching their Allies on this subject at the present moment; but, as Colonel House had had an intimate conversation with M. Briand and M. Jules Cambon in Paris, I should think it right to tell M. Briand privately, through the French Ambassador in London, what Colonel House had said to us; and I should, of course, whenever there was an opportunity, be ready to talk the matter over with M. Briand, if he desired it.

(Initialed) E. G. Foreign Office,

February 22, 1916.

At present there was no use to be made of it. We believed and the French believed, that defeat of the German armies was the only sure overthrow of Prussian militarism, and to the French the recovery of the lost provinces of 1870 had become an object to be fought for. Before 1914 France had given up the idea of going to war to recover them, but once war was forced upon her, she was determined to fight on to win them. Both France and Russia had up to this time suffered more heavily in the war than we had. We could never be the first to recommend peace to them. We still had large reserves of men to train, group and bring into action. We were bound to go on till we had used all our yet undeveloped strength to support our Allies, and in the effort to defeat Germany. We all felt that we could take no initiative in the American direction.

The communication to the French was a matter of extreme delicacy. If nothing was said to them, and if things took a sudden turn for the worse, I should be open to the gravest reproach; the French would say with justice that they ought to have been told that this means of terminating the war had been open to the Allies. The imputation would be that I had kept the knowledge of it from them, lest they should be disposed to take advantage of the opportunity offered by it. The memorandum was in effect an offer by President Wilson to end the war in the terms described, and, if Germany refused, then to bring the United States into the war against her. If we ignored President Wilson's offer, the Allies might forfeit his sympathy, and for that we alone should be held responsible, if the French had not known of what had passed between House and ourselves.

On the other hand, to recommend the memorandum to the French was to suggest that we were weakening and to undermine their confidence in our determination to support them. Furthermore, to have made such a recommendation without the approval of the Cabinet or at least the War Committee would have been disloyal to colleagues; and the War Committee, with my full concurrence, had decided not to take the matter up. I therefore let M. Briand, then French Prime Minister, know of it without recommending it.

It appears from recent German disclosures that in the autumn of 1916, if not before, the German Government became aware of the intention of President Wilson to approach them, and that they eventually countered this by an intimation to him of their terms of peace that may well have made him despair of anything like a just peace being secured except by the use of force. If so, the House Memorandum, by the time I sent it to Balfour, had ceased to have importance for President Wilson, who knew now that even such terms as he thought just could not be obtained from Germany except by force; and that, if the United States was to take any part in securing them, it must be by the use of force. The German defiance in the submarine warfare precipitated war between America and Germany, but the German manner of countering his mediation policy must surely have turned President Wilson's thoughts in the direction of war.

How does it all look now? In the light of after-events, it is clear that Germany missed a great opportunity of peace. If she had accepted the Wilson policy, and was ready to agree to a Conference, the Allies could not have refused. They were dependent on American supplies; they could not have risked the ill-will of the Government of the United States, still less a rapprochement between the United States and Germany. Germans have only to reflect upon the peace that they might have had in 1916 compared with the peace of 1919.

Did the Allies also miss an opportunity? The notion would have been scouted when the Treaty of Versailles was signed; judged by that, and in the light of victory, the terms of the House Memorandum seem preposterously inadequate. But now, some years after the mighty peace of 1919, the condition of Europe is sufficiently disappointing to make it interesting to imagine what the course of events might conceivably have been if the Allies and Germany in 1916 had told President Wilson that they were ready for the Conference he was prepared to summon.


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## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from Volume 11 of America, Great Crises in our History.

*How The German Raider Was Destroyed*

Report of Captain John C. T. Glossop, of the "Sydney".

I HAVE the honor to report that while on escort duty with the convoy under the charge of CaptainSilver, H. M. A. S. "Melbourne," at 6:30 a.m., on Monday, November 9, a wireless message from Cocos was heard reporting that a foreign warship was off the entrance. I was ordered to raise steam for full speed at 7 a.m., and proceeded thither. I worked up to 20 knots, and at 9.15 a.m., sighted land ahead and almost immediately the smoke of a ship which proved to be H. I. G. M. S. "Emden," coming out toward me at a great speed. At 9.40 a.m. fire was opened, she firing the first shot. I kept my distance as much as possible to obtain the advantage of my guns. Her fire was very accurate and rapid to begin with, but seemed to slacken very quickly, all casualties occurring in this ship almost immediately. First the foremost funnel of her went, secondly the foremast and she was badly on fire aft; then the second funnel went and lastly the third funnel, and I saw she was making for the beach on North Keeling Island, where she grounded at 11.20 a.m. I gave her two more broadsides and left her to pursue a merchant ship which had come up during the action.

Returning to the "Emden," she still had her colors up at mainmast head. I inquired by signal, international code, "Will you surrender?" and received a reply in Morse "What signal?" "No signal books." I then made in Morse, "Do you surrender?" and subsequently, "Have you received my signal?" to neither of which did I get an answer. The German officers on board gave me to understand that the captain would never surrender, and therefore, though very reluctantly, I again fired at her at 4.30 p.m., ceasing at 4.35 p.m., as she showed white flags and hauled down her ensign by sending a man aloft.

I lay on and off all night and communicated with Direction Island at 8 a.m., November 10, to find that the "Emden's" party, which had landed on Keeling Island, consisting of 3 officers and, 40 men, 1 launch and 2 cutters, had seized and provisioned a 70-ton schooner, the "Ayesha," having 4 Maxims with 2 belts to each. They left the previous night at six o'clock. The wireless station was entirely destroyed, 1 cable cut, 1 damaged, and 1 intact. I borrowed a doctor and two assistants and proceeded as fast as possible to the "Emden's" assistance.

I sent an officer on board to see the captain, and in view of the large number of prisoners and wounded and lack of accommodation, etc., in his ship, and the absolute impossibility of leaving them where they were, he agreed that if I would receive his officers and men and all wounded, then as for such time as they remained in the "Sydney" they would cause no interference with ship or fittings, and would be amenable to the ship's discipline. I, therefore, set to work at once to tranship them a most difficult operation, the ship being on the weather side of the island and the sand alongside very heavy. The conditions in the "Emden" was indescribable. I received the last word from her at 5 p.m., then had to go round to the lee side to pick up 30 more men who had managed to get ashore from the ship.


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