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Wilson was now compelled by the recent course of events to take action, although the excitement of public opinion was this time undoubtedly less than was the case after the torpedoing of the Lusitania and the Arabic. In the meantime, the discovery in the hull of the Sussex of a piece of a German torpedo placed the matter beyond all doubt.
"The three important questions still in dispute, as mentioned above, are the following: " The German Government's responsibility for American lives lost in the torpedoing of British Ships. " The responsibility for the payment of compensation for the American lives so lost. " The American demand that all merchant ships should be warned by our submarines before being attacked.
But that day we had to put up with Conrad here. They offered to let me drop it, but I declined. I told 'em I hadn't much practice with Go-devils in the newspaper syndicate business, and I wasn't very well myself, anyway. Astonishing," Fulkerson continued, with the air of relieving his explanation by an anecdote, "how reckless they get using dynamite when they're torpedoing wells.
I was never informed beforehand as to the real intentions of Berlin, and I cannot understand, even to-day, why I was not told, until after the Arabic incident, that the German submarine commanders had been instructed immediately after the torpedoing of the Lusitania not to attack liners. A knowledge of this fact at the time would have assisted me greatly in my dealings with Washington.
Nothing save verbal protests had followed the sinking of the Lusitania, and even those had led Mr. Bryan, President Wilson's Secretary of State, to resign for fear lest they might prove too strong. That crime was accordingly succeeded by others, and further American lives were lost by the torpedoing of the Arabic on 19 August, the Ancona on 7 November, and the Persia on 30 December.
Jimmie Higgins had read about the torpedoing of scores of ocean-liners, but in all that reading he had learned less about the matter than he learned in a few minutes while he clung half-dazed to a stay rope, and watched the life-boats swing out over the sides and disappear. "Women first!" was the cry; but the women would not go until the wounded had been taken, and this occasioned delay.
Then, since the people were not all saved, he carried out the torpedoing in such a manner that the ship would remain above water the longest possible time, doing this with the purpose of making possible the abandonment of the vessel on boats still in hand.
The submarine campaign was in the end gradually and unwillingly sacrificed, owing to our desire to placate the United States. If we had made a clean sweep of it, once and for all, after the Lusitania incident, or, at any rate, after the sinking of the Arabic, as we actually did after the torpedoing of the Sussex, considerable advantages would have been gained from the diplomatic point of view.
The torpedoing of the liner upon which Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., had taken passage for France to join the American Ambulance was a well-known fact, and I had further substantiated by wire to the New York office of the owners, that a Miss La Rue had been booked for passage. Further, neither she nor Bowen had been mentioned among the list of survivors; nor had the body of either of them been recovered.
Fortunately, as already mentioned, orders had been given before the torpedoing of the Arabic, to all submarine commanders that no liner should be sunk before preliminary warning had been given, and the non-combatants had been placed in safety, unless any ships tried to escape or offered resistance.
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