Part 25
“On hearing of von Tirpitz’s dismissal I perpetrated the following letter, which a newspaper contrived to print in one of its editions. I can’t say why, but it didn’t appear any more, nor was it copied by any other paper:”
Dear old Tirps,
We are both in the same boat! What a time we’ve been colleagues, old boy! However, we did you in the eye over the battle cruisers, and I know you’ve said you’ll never forgive me for it when bang went the Blucher and von Spee and all his host!
Cheer up, old chap! Say “Resurgam!” You’re the one German sailor who understands war! Kill your enemy without being killed yourself. =I don’t blame you for the submarine business.= I’d have done the same myself, only our idiots in England wouldn’t believe it when I told ‘em.
Well! So long!
Yours till hell freezes, FISHER. 29/3/16.
An interview with the former German Ambassador, Count Bernstorff, which Hayden Talbot had in Berlin, as printed in the New York “American” of October 26, 1919, casts an interesting sidelight on the question. Count Bernstorff is quoted as follows:
Do you know what Col. House told me one day? We had been discussing the submarine issue. This was early in the war. I had defended the German use of submarines on the ground that it was our only possible method against the British blockade, illegal and inhuman as it was. I had pointed out that Great Britain had given the United States repeatedly greater cause for declaring war than in 1812.
“But we can’t declare war on England,” Col. House said. “A war with England would be too unpopular in this country.”
American vessels in the War of 1812 sank and destroyed 74 English merchant ships under instructions to the commanders of our squadrons “to destroy all or capture, unless in some extraordinary cases that shall clearly warrant an exception.... Unless your prize should be very valuable and near a friendly port it will be imprudent and worse than useless to attempt to send them in.... A single cruiser destroying every captured vessel has the capacity of continuing in full vigor her destructive power.” This, we think, disposes of the question involved whether a submarine should be required to abstain from sinking a captured vessel of the enemy.
Admiral Sir Perry Scott in the London “Times” of July 16, 1914, justified the work of destruction of the submarines, and quoting reports on the treatment of vessels which tried to break the blockade of Charleston during the Civil War, said: “The blockading cruisers seldom scrupled to fire on the ships which they were chasing or to drive them aground and then overwhelm them with shell and shot after they were ashore.”
=Schurz, Carl.=--The most distinguished German American, author, diplomat, Union general, United States Senator, Cabinet officer and founder of the Civil Service system. Born March 2, 1829, at Liblar, near Cologne. Educated at Bonn. Participated in the Baden revolution, and after the romantic rescue of Prof. Gottfried Kinkel from Spandau, he and his old instructor escaped to London, and in 1853 came to Philadelphia with his wife. Later moved to Watertown, Wisconsin, completed his law studies at the State University at Madison, and was admitted to practice.
His eloquent speeches in the campaign of 1857 made him the leader of the German Americans. At twenty-eight he became a candidate for vice-governor and came within 107 votes of election. In 1858 he delivered his famous speech in English, “The Irrepressible Conflict,” and stumped Illinois to send Lincoln to the Senate against Douglas. In the Republican Convention of 1860 at Chicago he led the Wisconsin delegation in nominating Lincoln for President and stumped the country for his election.
Schurz was sent to Madrid as American Minister, but resigned and entered the Union army, rising to rank of major general. After the war he was elected to the United States Senate (1869) from Missouri. After a temporary estrangement from the Republican Party he supported General Hayes for President in the campaign of 1876, and was appointed Secretary of the Interior; in this office he introduced many reforms which have been adopted. Later he became editor of the New York “Evening Post,” and associate editor of “Harper’s Weekly,” then the leading periodical in America. His “Life of Henry Clay” is one of the standard books of American biographies. After the Spanish American War he was bitterly assailed for his uncompromising hostility to the policy of expansion, the acquisition of colonies, etc. He died May 14, 1906, in New York City, rated one of the greatest political thinkers and statesmen.
A strong misconception has been created with regard to Schurz and the German revolutionists who came to the United States in 1848 as to the cause of their grievance. It is generally represented that they were fighting to establish a German republic, whereas the truth is, they were primarily fighting for German unity. The facts are contained in “The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz,” Vol. I, Chap. XIV, p. 405:
The German revolutionists of 1848 ... fought for German unity and free government, and were defeated mainly by Prussian bayonets. Then came years of stupid political reaction and national humiliation, in which all that the men of 1848 had stood for seemed utterly lost. Then a change. Frederick William IV, who more than any man of his time had cherished a mystic belief in the special divine inspiration of kings--Frederick William IV fell insane and had to drop the reins of government. The Prince of Prussia, whom the revolutionists of 1848 had regarded as the bitterest and most uncompromising enemy of their cause, followed him, first as regent, then as king--destined to become the first Emperor of the new German empire. He called Bismarck to his side as prime minister--Bismarck who originally had been the sternest spokesman of absolutism and the most ardent foe of the revolution. And then German unity with a national parliament was won, not through a revolutionary uprising, but through monarchical action and foreign wars.
Thus, if not all, yet a great and important part of the objects struggled for by the German revolutionists of 1848, was accomplished--much later, indeed, and less peaceably, and less completely than they had wished, and through the instrumentality of persons and forces originally hostile to them, but producing new conditions which promise to develop for the united Germany political forms and institutions of government much nearer the ideals of 1848 than those now (1852) existing. And many thoughtful men now frequently ask the question--and a very pertinent question it is--whether all these things would have been possible had not the great national awakening of the year 1848 prepared the way for them. But in the summer of 1852 the future lay before us in a gloomy cloud. Louis Napoleon seemed firmly seated on the neck of his submissive people. The British government under Lord Palmerston shook hands with him. All over the European continent the reaction from the liberal movements of the last four years celebrated triumphant orgies. How long it would prove irresistible nobody could tell. That some of its very champions would themselves become the leaders of the national spirit in Germany even the most sanguine would in 1851 not have ventured to anticipate.
We think this extract speaks for itself and needs no comment. The chief aim of the revolutionists was to see Germany unified, and Schurz is not remiss in expressing his esteem for the “leaders of the national spirit in Germany” who had once been the champions of reaction.
=Scheffauer, Herman George.=--One of the foremost American poets, translators, and dramatists, born in San Francisco 1878, traveled in Europe and Africa and spent two years in London. Author of “Of Both Worlds” (poems); “Looms of Life” (poems); “Sons of Baldur,” forest play; “Masque of the Elements,” “Drake in California,” “The New Shylock,” a play. Translator of Heine’s “Atta Troll” and “The Woman Problem,” both from the German.
=Schell, Johann Christian and His Wife.=--One of the most inspiring stories of the Revolutionary war centers around this brave Palatine couple and their six sons, who tenanted a lonely cabin three miles northeast of the town of Herkimer, N. Y., and who in August, 1781, while at work in the fields were attacked by 16 Tories and 48 Indians. The marauders captured two of the younger boys, the remainder of the family gaining the shelter of the cabin. Here they successfully defended their home all day. With dusk the chief of the raiders, Capt. McDonald, succeeded in evading the vigilance of the defenders and to reach the door, which he tried to pry open with a lever. A shot struck him in the leg, and before he could effect his escape Schell opened the door and dragged the wounded man inside, where he held him as a hostage against the attempt to fire the house. The defenders now awaited the next move of the enemy and burst into singing Luther’s famous battle hymn of the Reformation, “Eine Feste Burg ist unser Gott.” In the midst of the song the attacking party rushed toward the house, gained the walls so that they were able to thrust their guns through the loopholes to fire at those within. Quick as thought Mrs. Schell seized an axe and beat upon the gun barrels until they were useless, while the men directed their fire so well that the miscreants were driven to flight, leaving eleven dead and twelve seriously wounded on the field.
=Schley, Winfield Scott.=--American admiral who conquered Cervera’s Spanish Squadron in Santiago Bay during the Spanish-American war, was descended from Thomas Schley, who immigrated into Maryland in 1735 at the head of 100 German Palatines and German Swiss families. Founded Friedrichstadt, afterwards Frederickstown, Md. Thomas Schley was a schoolmaster, and Pastor Schlatter of St. Gall, in the story of his travels (1746-51), wrote: “It is a great advantage of this congregation that it has the best schoolmaster whom I have met in America.” Admiral Schley graduated from the Naval Academy and participated immediately upon his leaving the Academy in numerous naval engagements during the Civil War. He was then attached to various squadrons and distinguished himself during the Corean Revolution in the bombardment of the forts.
When the Greeley North Pole expedition was practically given up for lost Captain Schley one day modestly presented himself to Secretary of the Navy Chandler and said: “Mr. Secretary, I realize that by rank I am not entitled to the honor of commanding a relief expedition, but, seeing that no volunteers have offered themselves for such command, I want to offer my services in order that it may not be said that the navy was found wanting.” Schley’s manner made a strong impression on the Secretary, and in a short time he received orders to head an expedition. The relief of Lieutenant Greeley by Schley when the exploring expedition was practically down to a few starving survivors forms one of the heroic chapters in the history of the American navy. Schley’s rapid rise and success at Santiago, together with his popularity with the rank and file of the navy, raised a cabal against him among the bureaucrats, and he was brought to trial for his manouvering of the Brooklyn in the Santiago battle. Cervera, the Spanish commander, when taken prisoner, attributed the failure of the Spanish squadron to escape to the famous “loop” of the Brooklyn, but a court martial found a contrary verdict. Admiral Dewey dissented. The verdict had no perceptible effect on Schley’s popularity, and the American people give him unqualified credit for the battle.
=Steinmetz, Charles P.=--One of the greatest scholars and scientists in the electrical field of today, Chief Consulting Engineer of the General Electric Company, and professor of electro-physics at Union College; Socialist president of the City Council and president Board of Education of Schenectady. Intimate associate and collaborator of Thomas A. Edison, and to whose genius many of the most important developments in electrical science are due. A native of Breslau, Germany; born April 9, 1865.
The New York “Times” of March 12, 1916, says: “Everybody knows that applied industrial chemistry would be a comparatively barren thing if everything that had come to it as the result of this man’s research should be taken away.” Fled Germany to escape prosecution for his Socialist writings. Came over in the steerage and worked as a draughtsman at $2 a day. In the “Times” he was quoted as having buried all resentment for his experience of thirty years ago. “Germany,” he said, “is so different now. I would not know the country if I went back to it. When I left it was merely an agricultural country. Now it is the greatest industrial country in the world.”
=Sauer, Christopher.=--The first to print a book (the Bible) in a foreign tongue (German) on American soil; famous printer and publisher of German and American books. Born in Germany, arrived in the Colonies in the fall of 1724, settling in Germantown. Published the first newspaper in the German language, “Der Hochdeutsche Pennsylvanische Geschichts Schreiber, oder Sammlung Wichitiger Nachrichten aus dem Natur und Kirchen Reich.” His magnificent quarto edition of the Bible, issued in 1743, after three years of endless toil, has never, in completeness and execution, been excelled in this country. He died in September, 1758, leaving an only son, also named Christopher, who continued his father’s business but gave it additional importance by employing two or three mills in manufacturing paper, casting his own type, making his own printers’ ink and engraving his own woodcuts as well as binding his own books, many of which passed through five or six editions. (Simpson’s “Lives of Eminent Philadelphians.”)
=Starving Germany.=--(Lord Courtney in Manchester “Guardian”)--“The attempt of England to starve Germany is a violation of the Declaration of London and a brutal offense against humanity. For these two reasons--if not for many others--it is a dishonorable proceeding.” (Dispatch of March 21, 1915.)
The silent policy of starving people into subjection is eloquently shown in the history of Ireland, of India, of the South African republics and of the Central Powers, and, strangely, the one country that has achieved this distinction is England.
We said that the blockade of Germany was “illegal, ineffective and indefensible,” but Sir Robert Cecil about the same time declared that England and the United States had an understanding, and he boasted that “we have our hands at the throat of Germany” and scorned the suggestion to relax a grip that meant the starvation of women, children and the aged. Germany was told to give up her U-boat sinking of merchant ships and answered that she had no other weapon to make England take her grip off the German throat, and when she was forced to surrender, the full magnitude of the policy of starving non-combatants was revealed. The picture is presented in the uncolored official statements of unprejudiced observers. The Stockholm “Tidningen” of March 29, 1919:
The Swedish Red Cross delegates sent to Germany in order to make arrangements for getting over to Sweden underfed German children have now returned to Stockholm. The first transport will contain 500 Berlin children.
The delegates describe the want in Germany as appalling. During the revolution days =nothing at all could be got for the babies in some places except hot water, and many died, but this was nothing unusual in Berlin=. The children were underfed, feeble and rachitic everywhere. Often children four or five years old were unable to walk. In many places the schools had had to be closed because of the general want. =Tuberculosis has increased by 60 per cent.= Because of this older children than at first proposed must be sent to Sweden.... There are also negotiations going on regarding children from the other famishing countries. The German Government has promised to transport the Belgian children free of charge from Belgium to Sassnitz.
The interest in Sweden for the war children is immense. One thousand five hundred invitations have already been made from single peasants’ homes, and about £3,000 has been collected, mostly in small contributions from the poorer classes. Thus willingness to sacrifice is great, but, of course, much more money is still needed.
Henry Nevison, an eminent journalist, recently presented in the London “Daily News” a tragic description of what he saw in the hospitals of Cologne: “Although I have seen many horrible things,” he writes, “I have seen nothing so pitiful as these rows of babies, feverish from want of food, exhausted by privations to the point that their little limbs were slender wands, their expressions hopeless and their eyes full of pain.”--“The Nation.”
Prof. Johansson, of the Neutral Commission, who visited Germany in January, reports: “About 1,600,000 people were killed in the war, but almost half this number, or rather =700,000, fell victims to the food shortage produced by the blockade=. The population has decreased in an unprecedented degree by reason of the declining birth-rate. At the present moment Germany has 4,000,000 fewer children than in normal pre-war times.”--“Dagens Nyheter,” Stockholm, Lib., March 30, 1919.
Dr. Rubner writes in the “German Medical Weekly” on the effects of the blockade. He gives the figures of deaths of army and civil population since 1914 as:
Army, all causes, 1,621,000.
Civil population, through blockade, 763,000, of which 260,000 is for 1917 and 294,000 to the end of 1918. He comes to the conclusion that even now any improvement in the condition, as regards nourishment of the German people, will be possible only in a very partial degree; above all, capacity for work will not increase to the needed extent.--“Vorwaerts,” April 11, 1919.
In a report made by five doctors of neutral lands, Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch, dated April 11, 1919, after they had collected information in Berlin, Halle and Dresden, they say: “The food concessions under the Brussels agreement are altogether inadequate. The most they do is to maintain the present necessitous food conditions.... Immediate help is necessary. Every day of delay risks immeasurable injury not only to the whole of Europe, but to the whole world.”
Evidence of the same import is furnished by Jane Adams and charitable English persons, and the liberal periodicals, as distinct from the daily newspapers, have printed columns showing the terrible ravages of an illegal and indefensible blockade which inflicted the horrors of war upon the feeble and helpless, those recognized by the laws of nations and humanity as entitled to protection when not within the sphere of military operations and in no way responsible for or contributing to them.
The armistice was signed November 11, 1918, but so relentless was the English policy of crushing the German people that Winston Churchill, on March 3, 1919, declared in the House of Commons: “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor.... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and children, upon the old, the weak, and the poor, after all the fighting has stopped.” (“The Nation,” June 21, 1919; p. 980.)
The appalling heartlessness which, not content with inflicting starvation on a whole nation--for we will not mention Austria in this connection--designed to add to its horrors still added injuries, is exposed in the terms of the treaty, by which the German people were required to give up 140,000 milch cows and other livestock. Witness the following Associated Press dispatch:
Paris, July 24 (Associated Press).--Germany will have to surrender to France 500 stallions, 3,000 fillies, =90,000 milch cows=, 100,000 sheep and 10,000 goats, according to a report made yesterday before the French Peace Commission, sitting under the presidency of Rene Viviani, by M. Dubois, economic expert for the commission, in commenting on the peace treaty clauses.
Two hundred stallions, 5,000 mares, 5,000 fillies, =50,000 cows, and 40,000 heifers=, also are to go to Belgium from Germany. The deliveries are to be made monthly during a period of three months until completed.
A total of 140,000 milch cows! Forty thousand heifers! To be surrendered by a country in which little children were dying for lack of milk, and babies were brought into the world blind because of the starved conditions of the mothers!
=Steuben, Baron Frederick William von.=--Major General in the Revolutionary army. Descended from an old noble and military family of Prussia. Entered the service of Frederick the Great as a youth, and fought with distinction in the bloodiest engagements of the Seven Years War, being latterly attached to the personal staff of the great King. After the war, was persuaded by friends of the American Colonies and admirers of his ability in France to offer his services to Congress, and on September 26, 1777, set sail aboard the twenty-four gun ship “l’Heureaux” at Marseilles, arriving at Portsmouth, N. H., December 1, 1777.
Found the American army full of spirit and patriotism, but badly disciplined, and was appointed Inspector General. Wrote the first book of military instruction in America, which was approved by General Washington, authorized by Congress and used in the drilling of the troops. Distinguished himself especially in perfecting the light infantry, his method being subsequently copied by several European armies and by Lord Cornwallis himself during the Revolution.
With General DeKalb and other foreign-born officers he encountered much opposition and annoyance from native officers on account of jealousy and prejudice, and though supported by General Washington, Hamilton and other influential men, had difficulty in obtaining from Congress what he was legally entitled to claim, not as a reward for his conspicuous services, but to enable him to support life. When threatening to take his discharge, Washington sought to dissuade him on the ground that his service was well-nigh indispensable to the cause of the colonists, and in justifying a memorandum of sums advanced to Steuben in excess of the $2,000 per annum promised him, the commander-in-chief wrote to Congress:
“It is reasonable that a man devoting his time and service to the public--and by general consent a very useful one--should at least have his expenses borne. His established pay is certainly altogether inadequate to this,” showing that Steuben was not actuated by mercenary motives in serving the Colonists.
“Your intention of quitting us,” wrote Col. Benjamin Walker, March 10, 1780, to Steuben, “cannot but give me much concern, both as an individual and as a member of the Commonwealth, convinced as I am of the necessity of your presence to the existence of order and discipline in the army. I cannot but dread the moment when such event shall take place, for much am I afraid we should again fall into that state of absolute negligence and disorder from which you have in some manner drawn us.”