Part 42

It was the first sea duel of its kind. Never before had two floating hotels played at gun fire with each other, each intent on sending the other to Davy Jones’s locker if possible. When the action began the vessels were separated by about 8,000 yards, and their nearest approach was about 4,000 yards. As the sinking of its enemy was the aim, the guns of each combatant were directed at the water line of the other. Of the first few shells fired by the _Cap Trafalgar_, three made holes in the _Carmania_ at and above the water line, one tore through the stewards’ quarters, one smashed the lower deck galley and carried away the fire main leading to the bridge and fore-part of the ship, the latter the most serious damage.

A report of the engagement written two hours after, by one who took part in it was published in the _War Album De-Luxe_, from which the following is taken:

A DISTURBED LUNCHEON

“One never saw such a scatter as when we sat down to lunch and ‘Action!’ was sounded! Feeling ran high that this time we were in earnest; everyone was at his post in the twinkling of an eye. Ten minutes afterwards the conflict started, at a range of about six miles, both ships closing rapidly. The din that followed was unnatural and terrifying, and men’s hearts leaped to their mouths, for here was death amongst us. But the heat of work changed white faces to red. Blood once seen revives savagery in the human breast, and all our thoughts, after those first few moments, were concentrated in the grim work at hand, which was to sink as speedily as possible the monster that was vomiting red and steaming arrogantly towards us.

“By a clever maneuver our captain turned the ship round just as the enemy was bringing his pom-poms into play as well as the big guns, and brought our starboard battery, fresh and eager, to bear. Then we turned into demons, in a scene that had turned diabolical. Screaming shrapnel, returned by salvos of common shell, splinters everywhere, lumps of iron, patches of paint, a hurricane of things flying, hoarse shouting, and unintelligible sounds from dry throats, men discarding garments, and laughing with delirium—over all a white pall hiding the ghastly work.

“What matter that a shot cannoned down the after companion and laid low three of the whip party? Volunteers were not wanting to close in the breach and keep up a brisk supply of ammunition to the hungry guns. Or that a shot glanced off the shield of No. 1 gun, past the officer in charge, and blew away the neck of a corporal of Marines passing projectiles along the deck, leaving him leaning over the magazine hatchway, head dangling down, and dripping blood on to the madmen working below? Or that a shell burst by the feet of a man carrying another one in his hands?

“Word went round that we were on fire forward—the bridge, in fact, was blazing. A shell had torn through the cabins below, setting them alight, and the flames by this time reached and enveloped the bridge, since water could not be turned on in the first instance, as the main on the lower deck had been shot away. But the ill news was more than compensated for by the frenzied announcement that the enemy was also on fire and listing, moreover, on his side. So our main control was gone. The captain, first lieutenant, and navigating party had to leave the bridge to the flames—not before gaining us victory, however, by the splendid way they handled the ship in heading off the enemy, preventing him from turning round and bringing his idle guns on the port side to bear, and by keeping him on our starboard quarter so we were able to use five of our guns to his four.

[Illustration:

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Major William A. Snow

_2nd Division, 2nd Engineers, Company “E”_

He was cited four times in Division orders and twice recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross. He went into the first line at Verdun March, 1918. When the British were attacked by the Germans in the vicinity of Beauvais, in April, he received his majority in time to be in command of a battalion at Château-Thierry.]

“The enemy listed a little more, and our work was done; his shooting became higher and more erratic, then stopped altogether. We ceased firing, and turned our attention to fighting the flames roaring up on high in the fore part of the ship. Luckily, we were able to stop the engines and keep the ship before the wind. The bridge and all its precious fittings and contents were doomed, as also the cabins below it; the officers who occupied them lost all their effects. A fireproof door in the staircase leading to the lower cabins effectually kept the fire from spreading in this direction, otherwise there might not have been very much left of the _Carmania_. The action raged hotly for an hour; after that, desultory firing was continued until the end.

“Of the two colliers that accompanied the enemy, one steamed away at the commencement of the action and was never seen again. The other, and smaller of the two, followed suit until he noticed the plight of his escort, and returned to pick up the survivors. Anon, an order went round the decks: ‘All firemen down below.’ The firemen had been doing yeoman service, running hoses and buckets of water to the scene of the fire, just as the stewards had distinguished themselves by taking round water and limejuice to the guns’ crews under shell fire, and also helping with carrying away the wounded. The reason for this order was ominous. The yeoman of signals had sighted smoke on the horizon to the north, and made out a bunch of funnels. It could not but be the _Dresden_, or whatever German cruiser the armed merchantman we fought was in company with, returning to the assistance of her consort, who had been signaling to her during the action. A great pity, indeed, one of our cruisers was not in touch with us at the time. What a fine haul it would have been!

_Vale_, CAP TRAFALGAR!

“Just as we got the fire well in hand, and were starting to run to the American coast, we beheld the most awe-inspiring sight of our lives—the last moments of an ocean leviathan. The wounded ship, distant from us about five miles, suddenly lurched over on the starboard beam-ends, looking for all the world as if she were about to turn turtle. Lower and lower she went, until her huge funnels were level with the water, pointing in our direction like two tunnels side by side, and dense clouds of smoke and steam escaped from all parts of her as from a volcano in a high state of activity. As quickly again, the mammoth righted herself; down, down went her bows; up and up her stern, till quite one-third of the hull stood upright to the sky; then, with a majestic plunge, she slid beneath the waves, game to the end, for the last to disappear was the German flag.

“A ring of foam and half a dozen boats crowded with dark forms were all that were left at 2 p.m. of the brave _Cap Trafalgar_ and her ornate saloons and winter gardens, the ship that conveyed Prince Henry of Prussia on his triumphant tour of the South American Republics.”

The casualties of the _Carmania_ are reported to have amounted to nine men killed and twenty-six wounded out of four hundred and twenty-one hands all told, a low percentage owing to the wide distribution of the various parties. The survivors of the _Cap Trafalgar_ landed at Buenos Ayres consisted of eighteen officers and two hundred and ninety-two men, which would give her casualties at about eight officers and one hundred men if she carried the same number of men as the _Carmania_.

Seventy-nine direct hits were counted on the _Carmania_, and innumerable small holes from splinters; her boats were riddled, as also masts and ventilators; her rigging and wireless aerial were shot away.

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

The Men Who Captained the Merchant Ships Are Among the Heroes of the War

By telling the story of Captain Frank M. Custance, of the Royal Navy Reserve, as typical of the stories of a coterie of merchant ship men in the service, Mr. Ralph E. Cropley most interestingly reminds the public that the war was not altogether won by the men in the trenches. The merchant ship commanders played some small part in the winning. Indeed, Mr. Cropley goes somewhat further. He concludes his story of Captain Custance, which appeared in the New York _Evening Post_, with this paragraph:

“Without their valor this war would have been over long ago and Germany would have won. I say this without reserve, for it is the truth. It has only been by their untiring sacrifices that the soldiers have gotten to the trenches at all and been kept supplied with munitions and food. The merchant ship men have done work which gold cannot pay for and never have thought of themselves—simply of the great cause which to them has meant the end of cruelty.”

Though Captain Custance is an English seaman he is familiarly known to Americans who have sailed between New York and Bermuda in the winter or to the Land of the Midnight Sun in summer, for he was Captain of the tourist boat _Arcadian_ that made those trips in the different seasons. He was up among the Norwegian fords when England entered the war, and it was a question whether he could save his ship by evading the Germans. Not that he personally had any question about it. He proceeded to act with the calm assurance characteristic of his conduct in normal sailings, quietly determined to get safely away. So, excellent seaman that he was, “in the darkness of that famous Monday night of Aug. 4, 1914, without a pilot, he took her through the dangerous ford to sea. ’Twas indeed a feat.”

But there were dangers at sea, too, for it was necessary to avoid any ship or craft that heaved in sight, and constant vigilance, with much dodging, was necessary before he got into Liverpool with his American passengers saved from anything so unpleasant and perilous as drifting in open boats on the high seas. With equal success he landed them in New York some days later, their number having been added to by Americans stranded in England.

TURNED TO MINE-SWEEPING

Then the _Arcadian_ was dismantled and turned into a transport, and Captain Custance took her back to England filled with Canadian troops. But wanting a more war-like job he appealed to the Admiralty and eventually was assigned to the perilous duty of mine-sweeping, to keep the sea about the Orkneys free from the floating or sunk mines, to the sowing and planting of which the Germans were devoting their devilish activities. When it is borne in mind that Captain Custance was then 46 years old, with wife and several children, one may appreciate the patriotic zeal that kept him in this dangerous employ for two years. During that time he stuck at it with never a glimpse at his family until he was called to London to have the King confer on him the D. S. O.

Those broad-beamed boats known as trawlers in which the fishermen ply their calling were the instruments employed in mine-sweeping, and admirable they were for the business, but comfortless enough for other purposes. Said the Captain in a letter: “It’s no joke monkeying about in a tiny craft hunting ‘tin fishes.’ In daylight it’s bad enough, but at night it’s extremely dangerous, as one can’t see the sea, and one is liable to half swamp oneself in turning. And as far as any comfort below goes, there isn’t any. Everything is damp and cold, and the steward loses the greater part of your food in bringing it to you, and what you finally receive is a cold, unpalatable mess. Yet, by God! it’s something to be out here having a chance to bag a bally German swine.”

[Illustration:

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Sergeant William Herren

_58th Infantry, Machine-Gun Company_

His company was fighting near Villa Savage. The majority of their machine guns were destroyed. On the morning of April 7, 1918, Sergeant Herren went through a deathly artillery bombardment in order to get more machine guns and ammunition for his company. With his reinforcements and bravery he enabled the right flank of his company to advance, and capture a German machine-gun position and repulse counter-attacks.]

Besides the danger from mines there was the excitement of submarine shelling of the fleet every now and then. In one attack of that kind Custance’s trawler struck a mine and sank. After that the Captain was given a steam yacht, no longer at her best, the _Mingary_, in which he did patrol work, visited and overhauled neutral ships, and kept a weather eye out for submarines and mines.

The performance that gained him the D. S. O. was the day after the Jutland naval fight, when the German fleet had fled, leaving only the submarines to prowl and finish off the wounded if possible. The dreadnought _Warspite_ was one of the wounded and poorly protected by destroyers as she toiled along with deranged steering gear. The Captain saw three submarines maneuvering against the _Warspite_, and despite the fact that the chances were all against him in an attempt to beat off three submarines with his little yacht and its tiny guns Custance rushed the _Mingary_ pell mell to the rescue, acting with such suddenness that he took one submarine by surprise and was able to ram it, got so close that he could use his guns on the next one and sink it and so thoroughly scared the third one that it submerged instantly without an offer of fight.

Later the Captain was in command of the _Maid of Honor_ in convoying colliers across the English Channel by night. There were no lights, there was no signaling by whistle, there was traffic both ways, troop ships, darkness everywhere. Skilled navigators were necessary—men of the merchant ship sort. Out of all his convoys going or coming, only three ships were torpedoed, only two being lost.

In the final part of the war he crossed and recrossed the Atlantic in convoy. It was then that the _Justicia_ was torpedoed. “She remained afloat for twenty-four hours, and Custance would have saved her if a German had not dived under the ring of patrol boats that surrounded her and fired a finishing torpedo.”

In getting off the dying _Justicia_ Custance nearly lost his life, yet, says Mr. Cropley, “I received a very apologetic letter saying he was sorry he hadn’t been able to save the cigarettes he was bringing over to me.”

CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES

(_An Incident_)

_By_

Dan Burnet

I

Still the guns! There’s a ragged music on the air, A priest had climbed the ruined temple’s stair, Ah, still the guns! It’s Christmas morning. Had ye all forgot? Peace for a little while, ye battle-scarred— Or do ye fear to cool those minds grown hot? Up the great lovely tower, wracked and marred, An old priest toils— Men of the scattered soils, Men of the British mists, Men of France! Put by the lance. Men of Irish fists, Men of heather, Kneel together— Men of Prussia, Great dark men of Russia, Kneel, kneel! Hark how the slow bells peal. A thousand leagues the faltered music runs, Ah, still the wasting thunder of the guns, Still the guns!

II

Out of the trenches lifts a half-shamed song, “Holy Night” Here, where the sappers burrowed all night long To bring the trench up for the morrow’s fight, A British lad, with face unwonted white, Looks at the sky and sings a carol through, “God rest you merry, gentlemen!” It was the only Christmas thing he knew. And there were tears wrung out of hard-lipped men, Tears in the strangest places, Tears on troopers’ faces!

III

They had forgotten what a life was for, They had been long at suffering and war, They had forgot old visions, one by one, But now they heard the tolling bell of Rheims, Tolling bell of Rheims; They saw the bent priest, white-haired in the sun, Climb to the hazard of the weakened spire, They saw, and in them stirred their hearts’ desire For Streets and Cities, Shops and Homes and Farms, They only wanted space to love and live; They felt warm arms about them—women’s arms, And such caresses as a child might give Coming all rosy in the early day To kiss his world awake.... The British lad Broke off his carol with a sob. The play Of churchly musics, solemn, strange, and sad, Fluttered in silver tatters down the wind, Flung from the tower where the guns had sinned Across the black and wounded fields.... The bell Sang on—a feeble protest to the skies, Until the world stood like a halted hell, And men with their dead brothers at their feet Drew dirty sleeves across their tired eyes, Finding the cracked chimes overwhelming sweet.

IV

Aye, still the guns! And heed the Christmas bell, Ye who have done Death’s work so well, Ye worn embattled ones, Kneel, kneel! Put by the blood-stained steel, Men from the far soils and the scattered seas, Go down upon your knees, While there lives one with peace upon his eyes, While hope’s faint song is fluttered to the skies, In that brief space between the Christmas suns, Still the guns!

SPYING AT ITS WORST

The German Secret Service System the Scrap Basket of Official Honor

Though the knowledge of an enemy’s plans, purposes and preparatory measures is of the highest importance in military campaigning, and though the utmost of courage and daring are often necessary to obtain the required information, the office of the spy has, from time immemorial, been contemned of men. There was but one fate for the captured spy under military rule. Even when the bravery and devotion of the adventuring spy have been admitted to admiration there has remained the instinctive aversion to the office. The reason for the almost universal mental attitude is that spying usually, if not invariably, involves treachery, the betrayal of trust and confidence gained by professions of friendship and sympathetic opinion. The word “spies” stirs the spleen of wholesome minded persons. It implies craft, duplicity, perversity. Few men have been willing to confess themselves spies. However greedily the sensational or adventure-loving reader may follow the narrative of the experiences, the desperate chances, the hazards, the daring risks, the narrow escapes of the successful spy, there is nevertheless a regretful wish that the valor, the intelligence, had found a nobler medium of expression.

But because there is such a thing as fearless, generous self-sacrifice in the performance of undertakings or obligations that come under the general classification of spying, it is perhaps unfortunate that no attempt has been made to discriminate what may be termed honorable (in a military sense) espionage from ignoble spying. Surely there is a vast distinction between the soldier who volunteers to penetrate an enemy’s lines to ascertain particular facts and the person who under the protection of social or official privilege wins trust only to betray it. In the second class there probably is no more despicable violation of moral responsibility recorded in the history of nations than the German intrigue against the United States when this country was still at peace with Germany. The indictment is clearly drawn in a few words in the Flag Day address of President Wilson, June 14, 1917. He said speaking of the German Government:

“They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance—and some of these agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital.”

ITS DIPLOMATIC AIDS

Their Ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff; their military attaché, Capt. Franz von Papen; their naval attaché, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed; their financial agent, Dr. Heinrich Albert, were the diplomatic and social spies who engineered and supplied with necessary information the vicious under-agents of the spy system of which sedition and violence were the shameful instruments.

With patient diligence, John Price Jones, a newspaper man, attached to the New York _Sun_, collected—from documentary evidence, from Secret Service officials and by means of his own investigation over a period of eighteen months—a vast amount of valuable and exact information, the vital part of which Small, Maynard and Company subsequently published in book form, under the title _The German Secret Service in America_. The information in that book, substantiated by governmental and other evidence, is authoritative, and we are indebted to it for much of the matter in this article.

Of the organization of the spy system he says:

“Count von Bernstorff, once his nation had declared war upon France and England, went to war with the United States. As ambassador, diplomatic courtesy gave him a scope of observation limited only by the dignity of his position. A seat in a special gallery in the Senate and House of Representatives was always ready for his occupancy; he could virtually command the attention of the White House; and senators, congressmen and office-holders from German-American districts respected him. Messengers kept him in constant touch with the line-up of Congress on important issues, and two hours later that line-up was known in the Foreign Office in Berlin. As head and front of the German spy system in America, he held cautiously aloof from all but the most instrumental acquaintances: men and women of prominent political and social influence who he knew were inclined, for good and sufficient reasons, to help him. One woman, whose bills he paid at a Fifth Avenue gown house, was the wife of a prominent broker and another woman of confessedly German affiliations who served him lived within a stone’s throw of the Metropolitan Museum and its nearby phalanx of gilded dwellings (her husband’s office was in a building at 11 Broadway, of which more anon); a third, woman intimate lived in a comfortable apartment near Fifth Avenue—an apartment selected for her, though she was unaware of it, by secret agents of the United States.

BAIT FOR INGÉNUES

“During the early days of the war the promise of social sponsorship which any embassy in Washington could extend proved bait for a number of ingénues of various ages, with ambition and mischief in their minds, and the gracious Ambassador played them smoothly and dexterously. Mostly they were not German women, for the German women of America were not so likely to be useful socially, nor as a type so astute as to qualify them for von Bernstorff’s delicate work. To those women whom he chose to see he was courteous, and superficially frank almost to the point of naïveté. The pressure of negotiation between Washington and Berlin became more and more exacting as the war progressed, yet he found time to command a campaign whose success would have resulted in disaster to the United States. That he was not blamed for the failure of that campaign when he returned to Germany in April, 1917, is evidenced by his prompt appointment to the court of Turkey, a difficult and important post, and in the case of Michaelis, a stepping-stone to the highest post in the Foreign Office.

[Illustration:

© _Underwood and Underwood._

Count Johann von Bernstorff.