Germany, The Next Republic? Part 15

It was often said in Berlin that the greatest loss when a submarine failed to return was the crew. It required more time to train the men than to build the submarine. According to Germany's new method of construction, a submarine can be built in fifteen days. Parts are stamped out in the factories and a.s.sembled at the wharves. But it takes from sixty to ninety days to educate the men and get them accustomed to the seasick motion of the U-boats. Besides, it requires experienced officers to train the new men.

To meet this demand Germany began months ago to train men who could man the newest submarines. So a school was established--a School of Submarine Murder--and for many months the man who torpedoed the _Lusitania_ was made chief of the staff of educators. It was a new task for German kultur.

For the German people the lessons of the _Lusitania_ have been exactly opposite those normal people would learn. The horror of non-combatants going down on a pa.s.senger liner, sunk without warning, was nothing to be compared to the heroism of aiming the torpedo and running away.

Sixty-eight million Germans think their submarine officers and crews are the greatest of the great.

When the Berlin Foreign Office announced, after the sinking of the _Suss.e.x_, that the ruthless torpedoing of ships would be stopped the German statesmen meant this method would be discontinued until there were sufficient submarines to defy the United States. At once the German navy, which has always been anti-American, began building submarines night and day. Every one in the Government knew the time would come when Germany would have to break its _Suss.e.x_ pledge.

The German navy early realised the need for trained men, so it recalled, temporarily, for educational work the man who sank the _Lusitania_.

"But, who sank the _Lusitania_?" you ask.

"The torpedo which sank the _Lusitania_ and killed over one hundred Americans and hundreds of other noncombatants was fired by Oberleutnant zur See (First Naval Lieutenant) Otto Steinbrink, commander of one of the largest German submarines."

"Was he punished?" you ask.

"Kaiser Wilhelm decorated him with the highest military order, the Pour le Merite!"

"Where is Steinbrink now?"

"On December 8, 1916, the German Admiralty announced that he had just returned from a special trip, having torpedoed and mined twenty-two ships on one voyage."

"What had he been doing?"

"For several months last summer he trained officers and crews in this branch of warfare, which gained him international notoriety."

It is said that Steinbrink has trained more naval men than any other submarine commander. If this be true, is there any wonder that Germany should be prepared to conduct a ruthless submarine warfare throughout the world? Is it surprising that American ships should be sunk, American citizens murdered and the United States Government defied when the German navy has been employing the man who murdered the pa.s.sengers of the _Lusitania_ as the chief instructor of submarine murderers?

The Krupp interests have played a leading role in the war, not only by manufacturing billions of sh.e.l.ls and cannon, and by financing propaganda in the United States, but by building submarines. At the Krupp wharves at Kiel some of the best undersea craft are launched.

Other shipyards at Bremen, Hamburg and Danzig have been mobilised for this work, too. Just a few weeks before diplomatic relations were broken a group of American doctors, who were investigating prison camp conditions, went to Danzig. Here they learned that the twelve wharves there were building between 45 and 50 submarines annually. These were the smaller type for use in the English Channel. At Hamburg the Hamburg-American Line wharves were mobilised for submarine construction also. At the time diplomatic relations were severed observers in Germany estimated that 250 submarines were being launched annually and that preparations were being made greatly to increase this number.

Submarine warfare is a very exact and difficult science. Besides the skilled captain, competent first officers, wireless operators and artillerymen, engineers are needed. Each man, too, must be a "seadog."

Some of the smaller submarines toss like tubs when they reach the ocean and only toughened seamen can stand the "wear and tear." Hence the weeks and months which are necessary to put the men in order before they leave home for their first excursion in sea murder.

But Germany has learned a great deal during two years of hit-and-miss submarine campaigns. When von Tirpitz began, in 1915, he ordered his men to work off the coasts of England. Then so many submarines were lost it became a dangerous and expensive military operation. The Allies began to use great steel nets, both as traps and as protection to warships. The German navy learned this within a very short time, and the military engineers were ordered to perfect a torpedo which would go through a steel net. The first invention was a torpedo with knives on the nose. When the nose hit the net there was a minor explosion. The knives were sent through the net, permitting the torpedo to continue on its way. Then the Allies doubled the nets, and two sets of knives were attached to the German torpedoes. But gradually the Allies employed nets as traps. These were anch.o.r.ed or dragged by fishing boats. Some submarines have gotten inside, been juggled around, but have escaped. More, perhaps, have been lost this way.

Then, when merchant ships began to carry armament, the periscopes were shot away, so the navy invented a so-called "finger-periscope," a thin rod pipe with a mirror at one end. This rod could he shoved out from the top of the submarine and used for observation purposes in case the big periscope was destroyed. From time to time there were other inventions. As the submarine fleet grew the means of communicating with each other while submerged at sea were perfected. Copper plates were fastened fore and aft on the outside of submarines, and it was made possible for wireless messages to be sent through the water at a distance of fifty miles.

A submarine cannot aim at a ship without some object as a sight. So one submarine often acted as a "sight" for the submarine firing the torpedo. Submarines, which at first were unarmed, were later fitted with armour plate and cannon were mounted on deck. The biggest submarines now carry 6-inch guns.

Like all methods of ruthless warfare the submarine campaign can be and will be for a time successful. Germany's submarine warfare today is much more successful than the average person realises. By December, 1916, for instance, the submarines were sinking a half million tons of ships a month. In January, 1917, over 600,000 tons were destroyed. On February nearly 800,000 tons were lost. The destruction of ships means a corresponding destruction of cargoes, of many hundreds of thousands of tons. When Germany decided the latter part of January to begin a ruthless campaign German authorities calculated they could sink an average of 600,000 tons per month and that in nine months nearly 6,000,000 tons of shipping could be sent to the bottom of the ocean,--then the Allies would be robbed of the millions of tons of goods which these ships could carry.

In any military campaign one of the biggest problems is the transportation of troops and supplies. Germany during this war has had to depend upon her railroads; the Allies have depended upon ships.

Germany looked at her own military situation and saw that if the Allies could destroy as many railroad cars as Germany expected to sink ships, Germany would be broken up and unable to continue the war. Germany believed ships were to the Allies what railroad carriages are to Germany.

The General Staff looked at the situation from other angles. During the winter there was a tremendous coal shortage in France and Italy.

There had been coal riots in Paris and Rome. The Italian Government was so in need of coal that it had to confiscate even private supplies.

The Grand Hotel in Rome, for instance, had to give up 300 tons which it had in its coal bins. In 1915 France had been importing 2,000,000 tons of coal a month across the Channel from England. Because of the ordinary loss of tonnage the French coal imports dropped 400,000 tons per month. Germany calculated that if she could decrease England's coal exports 400,000 tons a month by an ordinary submarine campaign that she could double it by a ruthless campaign.

Germany was looking forward to the Allied offensive which was expected this Spring. Germany knew that the Allies would need troops and ammunition. She knew that to manufacture ammunition and war supplies coal was needed. Germany calculated that if the coal importations to France could be cut down a million tons a month France would not be able to manufacture the necessary ammunition for an offensive lasting several months.

Germany knew that England and France were importing thousands of tons of war supplies and food from the United States. Judging from the German newspapers which I read at this time every one in Germany had the impression that the food situation in England and France was almost as bad as in Germany. Even Amba.s.sador Gerard had somewhat the same impression. When he left Germany for Switzerland on his way to Spain, he took two cases of eggs which he had purchased in Denmark. One night at a reception in Berne, one of the American women in the Gerard party asked the French Amba.s.sador whether France really had enough food! If the Americans coming from Germany had the impression that the Allies were sorely in need of supplies one can see how general the impression must have been throughout Germany.

When I was in Paris I was surprised to see so much food and to see such a variety. Paris appeared to be as normal in this respect as Copenhagen or Rotterdam. But I was told by American women who were keeping house there that it was becoming more and more difficult to get food.

After Congress declared war it became evident for the first time that the Allies really did need war supplies and food from the United States more than they needed anything else. London and Paris officials publicly stated that this was the kind of aid the Allies really needed.

It became evident, too, that the Allies not only needed the food but that they needed ships to carry supplies across the Atlantic. One of the first things President Wilson did was to approve plans for the construction of a fleet of 3,000 wooden ships practically to bridge the Atlantic.

During the first three months of 1917 submarine warfare was a success in that it so decreased the ship tonnage and the importations of the Allies that they needed American co-operation and a.s.sistance. _So the United States really enters the war at the critical and decisive stage_. Germany believes she can continue to sink ships faster than they can be built, but Germany did not calculate upon a fleet of wooden bottom vessels being built in the United States to make up for the losses. Germany did not expect the United States to enter the war with all the vigour and energy of the American people. Germany calculated upon internal troubles, upon opposition to the war and upon the pacifists to have America make as many mistakes as England did during the first two years of the war. But the United States has learned and profited by careful observation in Europe. Just as England's declaration of war on Germany in support of Belgium and France was a surprise to Germany; just as the shipment of war supplies by American firms to the Allies astonished Germany, so will the construction of 3,000 wooden vessels upset the calculations of the German General Staff.

While American financial a.s.sistance will be a great help to the Allies that will not affect the German calculations because when the Kaiser and his Generals decided on the 27th of January to d.a.m.n all neutrals, German financiers were not consulted.

Neither did the German General Staff count upon the Russian Revolution going against them. Germany had expected a revolution there, but Germany bet upon the Czar and the Czar's German wife. As Lieutenant Colonel von Haeften, Chief Military Censor in Berlin, told the correspondents, Germany calculated upon the internal troubles in Russia aiding her. But the Allies and the people won the Russian Revolution.

Germany's hopes that the Czar might again return to power or that the people might overthrow their present democratic leaders will come to naught now that America has declared war and thrown her tremendous and unlimited moral influence behind the Allies and with the Russian people.

Rear Admiral Hollweg's calculations that 24,253,615 tons of shipping remained for the world freight transmission at the beginning of 1917, did not take into consideration confiscation by the United States of nearly 2,500,000 tons of German and Austrian shipping in American ports. He did not expect the United States to build 3,000 new ships in 1917. He did not expect the United States to purchase the ships under construction in American wharves for neutral European countries.

The German submarine campaign, like all other German "successes," will be temporary. Every time the General Staff has counted upon "ultimate victory" it has failed to take into consideration the determination of the enemy. Germany believed that the world could be "knocked out" by big blows. Germany thought when she destroyed and invaded Belgium and northern France that these two countries would not be able to "come back." Germany thought when she took Warsaw and a great part of western Russia that Russia would not he able to continue the war.

Germany figured that after the invasion of Roumania and Servia that these two countries would not need to be considered seriously in the future. Germany believed that her submarine campaign would be successful before the United States could come to the aid of the Allies. German hope of "ultimate victory" has been postponed ever since September, 1914, when von Kluck failed to take Paris. And Germany's hopes for an "ultimate victory" this summer before the United States can get into the war will be postponed so long that Germany will make peace not on her own terms but upon the terms which the United States of Democracy of the Whole World will dictate.

One day in Paris I met Admiral LeCaze, the Minister of Marine, in his office in the Admiralty. He discussed the submarine warfare from every angle. He said the Germans, when they figured upon so many tons of shipping and of supplies destroyed by submarines, failed to take into consideration the fact that over 100 ships were arriving daily at French ports and that over 5,000,000 tons of goods were being brought into France monthly.

When I explained to him what it appeared to me would be the object of the German ruthless campaign he said:

"Germany cannot win the war by her submarine campaign or by any other weapon. That side will win which holds out one week, one day or one hour longer than the other."

And this Admiral, who, dressed in civilian clothes, looked more like a New York financier than a naval officer, leaned forward in his chair, looked straight at me and concluded the interview by saying:

"The Allies will win."

CHAPTER X

THE OUTLAWED NATION

During the Somme battles several of the American correspondents in Berlin were invited to go to the front near Peronne and were asked to luncheon by the Bavarian General von Kirchhoff, who was in command against the French. When the correspondents reached his headquarters in a little war-worn French village they were informed that the Kaiser had just summoned the general to decorate him with the high German military order, the Pour le Merite. Luncheon was postponed until the general returned.

The correspondents watched him motor to the chateau where they were and were surprised to see tears in his eyes as he stepped out of the automobile and received the cordial greetings and congratulations of his staff. Von Kirchhoff, in a brief impromptu speech, paid a high tribute to the German troops which were holding the French and said the decoration was not his but his troops'. And in a broken voice he remarked that these soldiers were sacrificing their lives for the Fatherland, but were called "Huns and Barbarians" for doing it. There was another long pause and the general broke down, cried and had to leave his staff and guests.

These indictments of the Allies were more terrible to him than the war itself.

General von Kirchhoff in this respect is typical of Germany. Most Germans, practically every German I knew, could not understand why the Allies did not respect their enemies as the Germans said they respected the Allies.

A few weeks later, in November, when I was on the Somme with another group of correspondents, I was asked by nearly every officer I met why it was that Germany was so hated throughout the world. It was a question I could not easily answer without, perhaps, hurting the feelings of the men who wanted to know, or insulting them, which as a guest I did not desire to do.

A few days later on the train from Cambrai to Berlin I was asked by a group of officers to explain why the people in the United States, especially, were so bitter. To get the discussion under way the Captain from the General Staff who had acted as our escort presented his indictment of American neutrality and asked me to reply.

This feeling, this desire to know why Germany was regarded as an outlawed nation, was not present in Germany early in 1915 when I arrived. In February, 1915, people were confident. They were satisfied with the progress of the war. They knew the Allies hated them and they returned the hate and did not care. But between February, 1915, and November, 1916, a great change took place. On my first trip to the front in April, 1915, I heard of no officers or men shedding tears because the Allies hated them.