SEVENTH SERIES } No. 3710 August 14, 1915 FROM BEGINNING VOL. CCLXXXVI. CONTENTS I. Outlawry at Sea: An Indictment of the German Navy. By Archibald Hurd. FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 387 II. Paris in War Time. By Claire de Pratz. CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 398 III. The Happy Hunting Ground. Chapter VI. By Alice Perrin. (T› be continued.) 404 IV. Waterloo in Romance. By Lilian Rowland-Brown (Rowland Grey.) NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER 411 POETRY REVIEW 422 V. Mysticism in Verse. 427 NEW STATESMAN 435 For SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks. express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO. Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents. All wind and rain, the clouds fled fast across the evening skyWhitehall aglimmer like a beach the tide has scarce left dry; And there I saw the figurehead which once did grace the bow Of the old bold Orion, In the days that are not now. And I wondered did he dream at all With the old bold Orion, When Victory led the van. Old ships, their ribs are ashes now; but still the names they bore And still the hearts that manned them live to sail the seas once more, To sail and fight, and watch and ward, and strike as stout a blow As the old bold Orion, The fighting old Orion, In the wars of long ago. They watch, the gaunt gray fighting ships, in silence bleak and stern; The OUTLAWRY AT SEA: AN INDICTMENT OF THE GERMAN NAVY. youngest navy in Europe, all restraints on its conduct at sea. whose supreme officer until recently was an honorary Admiral of the Fleet in the British service, and professed his respect for British naval traditions, has reverted to the most ancient, repellent, and irreparable crimes of war, for life can never be given back. We are confronted with an atavistic throwback to the methods of barbarism of the fifteenth century, practised with the most complicated and delicate instruments of war of the twentieth century. The new type of warfare is pursued by a Power which boasts of its "Kultur," has brought to its assistance every refinement of mechanics and chemistry, and-crowning evidence of moral degradation-claims in the eyes of the world that its very acts of "frightfulness" are fruits of virtue signs of courage, virility, and fitness to win, and proof, above all, of its right to rule the rest of the world. "We are," it is, in effect, declared, "the only nation with the stomach to commit such acts, and, therefore, we are superior to other nations and entitled to govern them." The contagion of crime is like that of a plague; a crime applauded by a whole nation, as the acts of the German Navy have been applauded, is peculiarly dangerous to virtue. Burke once remarked that "war suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated." Hitherto, even in war time, belligerent nations have preserved certain decencies. The Japanese were so determined to observe the conventions that an international lawyer accompanied the main fleet at sea; the Navy of Germany, the parvenu among European nations, has ignored international law and abandoned As a New York newspaper recently remarked, the fingers of many of its officers and men are dripping with the blood of the innocent. If its policy of brigandage and murder should succeed, even in a minor degree, what then? The peril to the souls of the nations of the world must increase in exact proportion as the Germans by their wrongful acts at sea attain their ends-psychological, economic, or military. The moral sense of the world shows a distinct tendency to become benumbed and dull owing to the repeated shocks, on a continually rising scale, received since Germany inaugurated her reign of terror at sea by laying mines in the pathway of peaceful commerce, contrary to her pledged word. Excess has encouraged excess, and one by one all the generally accepted customs of warfare between civilized nations have been dethroned, and Germany has claimed the right to ignore not merely the conventions of the Hague, which attempted to codify the rules and regulations which were regarded as axioms less than a year ago, but the ordinary sentiments of our common humanity. The present purpose is to deal with acts contrary to international law and the dictates of our common decency which have been committed by the enemy at sea. The record of the German Army is familiar, but less attention has been given to the series of outrages committed by the Germans at sea. Napoleon once declared that war is "the trade of barbarians"; but sailors, even more than soldiers perhaps, have always admitted that there are certain acts which are inexcusable, even in the height of war, when the passions of combatants are excited and their moral judgment tends to lose its balance. "Your nation, Sir, and mine," Nelson wrote to a French naval officer, "are made to show examples of generosity as well as of valor to all the peoples of the world." Nelson, who declared for “not victory, but annihilation,” was "the man to love," and he won, by his humanity and kindness of heart, the admiration of those whom he fought with all his brilliant powers. He never committed an act which even his brave antagonist at Trafalgar, the unfortunate Villeneuve, could denounce as unfair; and when Gravina, the Spanish admiral, was passing from this world, he exclaimed, "I am a dying man, but I hope and trust that I am going to join the greatest hero the world almost ever produced." Will any sailor in the world ever express such a wish with reference to Grand Admiral von Tirpitz? When the bitterness of the conflict which so long divided France and England is recalled, we and our Ally of to-day may be proud of the mutual feelings of regard and respect which existed in the hearts of the commanders of the opposing fleets, who remained faithful to a code of conduct which, in point of fact, has never been ignored in modern times, until the past few months, by the commissioned offi. cers serving under any naval ensign. For the first time since Europeans ceased to be little better than savages, the officers of a great fleet have emulated the worst acts ever attributed to Barbary pirates or the brave, but unprincipled, outlaws, which it was the pride of the British Navy to banish from the sea. In modern times, at least, the standards of honor and chivalry in the navies of the world have been kept high because sailors themselves realized the terrible results of license-worse on sea than on land. There has always been a strong objection on the part of seamen to the use of any instruments giving those attacked no sporting chance of safety. We do not hear of Boscawen, Rodney, Howe, Anson, Jervis, Collingwood, or Nelson serving in fire ships. These vessels were employed in the British Navy, but officers of the highest standing did not apparently care to be closely associated with them. Admiral Gambier regarded fireships as "a horrible and anti-Christian mode of warfare." Lord Cochrane, a man of dare-devil courage, declared that if fire ships attacked the British squadron under his orders, they would be "boarded by the numerous rowboats on guard, the crews murdered, and the fire ships turned in a harmless direction." What were fire ships in comparison with the modern mine and submarine! When submarines were coming on the horizon as practicable ships of war, it was urged in some quarters that the practice of no quarter advocated in the case of the crews of fire ships should be extended to the officers and men of submarines. In a work written by James Kelly, and published in 1818, the author comments with great severity on "some infamous and insidious attempts to destroy British men-of-war upon the coasts of America by torpedoes and other explosive machinery." He referred to the attacks on H.M.S. Ramillies by one of Fulton's boats, attacks which failed, but which caused Sir Thomas Hardy to notify the American Government that he had ordered on board from fifty to one hundred American prisoners of war, "who, in the event of the effort to destroy the ship by torpedoes or other infernal inventions being successful, would share the fate of himself and his crew." So frightened were the relations and friends of prisoners of war by these threats that public meetings were held, and petitions were presented to the American executive against the further employment of torpedoes in the ordinary course of warfare.1 Down to comparatively recent times naval opinion throughout the world was, indeed, much exercised on the question of the use of the torpedo, and many British officers not merely regarded it as unEnglish, but hoped that it would never reach a stage of development seriously to influence naval tactics. Contrast this attitude of mind with that of the Germans. They began the war by laying mines, or torpedoes, as they would have been described fifty years ago, in the pathway of peacefu! commerce, contrary to their pledged word at the Hague, and they have since pursued, exclusively with the aid of torpedo and mine, a course of outrage and brigandage, their shameless acts culminating on May 7th in the massacre of twelve hundred undefended and innocent men, women, and children who were travelling from the United States to this country on board the great Cunarder Lusitania. The excuse has been made that the Lusitania was armed, and that she was being employed as a transport. Both statements, as American official witnesses have attested, are false; the ship was pursuing her ordinary peace routine. The destruction of this vessel stands out from the background of naval history as the most callous and consummate criminal act ever committed at sea. The enormity of a crime can sometimes be most effectually visualized by the method of contrast. Germany has claimed that the sinking of the Lusitania constitutes "a great triumph for German sea power.' 192 The claim challenges comparison. With what historical victory can this success of the 1 "Submarine Warfare." by Herbert Fyfe. (London Grant Richards, 1902.) 2 A committee has been formed for collecting money as a national gift to the guilty officers and men of the submarine. German Fleet be compared? The last triumph of the British Navy carries us back for more than a century. The British Fleet was about to go into action when Nelson, all his preparations completed, left the quarter deck and retired to his cabin. There he was found shortly afterwards by Lieutenant Pasco. The cabin was bare, in readiness for the coming action. Nelson was on his knees writing in the private diary in which he was in the habit of noting passing naval events and placing on record his thoughts in reference to himself and his country's welfare. When Lieutenant Pasco entered the cabin, Nelson had just reduced to writing his great prayer before going into action: "May the great God whom I worship grant to my country and for the benefit of Europe in general a great and glorious victory; and may no misconduct in anyone tarnish it; and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet. For myself individually I commit my life to Him Who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavors for serving my country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen, amen, amen." These words embodied the culture of the British Navy on the eve of one of the greatest and most sanguinary battles in history. The prayer was penned by the great man of action, who had exhibited his humanity in a conspicuous manner on many occasions, and notably at the battle of the Nile. The story of that encounter is familiar. In an early stage Nelson was wounded, mortally as he believed. Blinded though he was, the Admiral, on learning of the fate which had overtaken practically the whole French Fleet and of the approaching destruction of the Orient, demanded that he should be led on deck. His first order on resuming active command was that the only |