The German argument was that the submarine was unknown when the code of international law then in force was formulated. It was a peculiarly delicate naval weapon. Its strength lay in its ability to keep itself concealed while delivering its attack. If exposed on the surface a shot from a small calibred gun striking in a vital point would instantly send it to the bottom. If rammed it was lost. Should a submarine rise to the surface, send an officer aboard a ship it had halted, and await the result of his search, it would be exposed all the time to destruction at the hands of enemy vessels coming up to her aid. Indeed if the merchantman happened to carry one gun a single shot might put the assailant out of business. Accordingly the practice grew up among the Germans of launching their torpedoes without a word of warning at their helpless victim. The wound inflicted by a torpedo is such that the ship will go down in but a few minutes carrying with it most of the people aboard. The most glaring, inexcusable, and criminal instance of this sort of warfare was the sinking without warning of the great passenger liner, Lusitania, by which more than eleven hundred people were drowned, one hundred and fourteen of them American citizens.
[Illustration: Photo by U. & U.
A Curtis Hydroaėroplane.]
Against this policy--or piracy--the United States protested, and people of this country waxed very weary as month after month through the years 1915 and 1916 Germany met the protests with polite letters of evasion and excuse continuing the while the very practice complained of. But late in January, 1917, her government announced that there would be no longer any pretence of complying with international law, but that with the coming month a campaign of unlimited submarine ruthlessness would be begun and ships sunk without warning and irrespective of their nationality if they appeared in certain prohibited zones. Within twenty-four hours the United States sent the German Ambassador from the country and within two months we were at war.
At once the submarine was seen to be the great problem confronting us. Its attack was not so much upon the United States, for we are a self-contained nation able to raise all that we need within our own borders for our own support. But England is a nation that has to be fed from without. Seldom are her stores of food great enough to avert starvation for more than six weeks should the steady flow of supply ships from America and Australia to her ports be interrupted. This interruption the Germans proposed to effect by means of their underwater boats. Von Tirpitz and other leaders in the German administration promised the people that within six weeks England would be starved and begging for peace at any price. The output of submarines from German navy yards was greatly increased. Their activity became terrifying. The Germans estimated that if they could sink 1,000,000 tons of shipping monthly they would put England out of action in two or three months. For some weeks the destruction accomplished by their boats narrowly approached this estimate, but gradually fell off. At the same time there was no period in 1917 up to the time of Admiral Peary's statement, or indeed up to that of the preparation of this book, when it was not felt that the cause of the Allies was in danger because of the swarms of German submarines.
It was that feeling, coupled with the wide-spread belief that aircraft furnished the best means of combating the submarine, that caused an irresistible demand in the United States for the construction of colossal fleets of these flying crafts. Congress enacted in midsummer the law appropriating $640,000,000 for the construction of aircraft and the maintenance of the aėrial service. The Secretaries of War and the Navy each appealed for heavy additional appropriations for aėrial service. The arguments which have already been set forth as supporting the use of aircraft in military service were paralleled by those who urge its unlimited use in naval service.
