ences:

HE Gravina was struck by a torpedo

THE

amidships, and broke in halves. The fifteen survivors were able to keep afloat by clinging to two bales of corkwood. In about half an hour's time we saw a submarine coming toward us. We shouted, "We are Spaniards, we are Spaniards! Save us!" The submarine came near to us, and many of the crew were on its platform looking at us and laughing at our struggles. We expected to be picked up quickly, but, no, we still had to remain in the water another ten minutes while the submarine officers prepared their cameras to photograph us. Having done this, they proceeded to save us. They threw lifebelts attached to ropes and got us on board. We had been fighting against death for three-quarters of an hour.

We were immediately made to go below through the afterhatch to the part of the submarine used for discharging torpedoes and storing ammunition. In this floating prison we found two companions in misfortune, the Captains of two English steamers sunk by the same submarine.

The monotonous but not tranquil life was disturbed from time to time by a rapid manoeuvre. Some vessel was in sight, and it was necessary to sink it. They forced us to load the torpedo, an operation which was performed with all the repugnance of honorable men. They opened the chamber of the tube, made us lift the torpedo and put it in. Afterward they gave the order to fire, and after a few seconds of anxiety we heard a formidable explosion. The German seamen jumped, laughed, and sang. They had hit the target. During the twelve days that we were on board they sank five vessels, among them a Swedish sailing ship which was sunk by cannon shots.

Generally speaking, we went down at night time, and, although submerged, we always navigated. In the daytime we came up on to the surface of the sea, which, however, they never allowed us to see. We were aware of it by the change of motors. Our region of operation (that is, of the submarine) was for nine days south of Ireland.

66

On Feb. 15, 1917, we started on the homeward trip to the naval base, as the German seamen informed us. We went up the west side of England, round the north, and then to Jutland, always on the surface, and in three days arrived in the waters of Heligoland. One of us managed to see the engineer's diary, where the following particulars appeared: 'Eighteen miles speed on the surface and thirteen miles submerged; 12,000 tons. Crew of thirty," and in each page was noted U-81. Four hours before arriving at the Island of Heligoland they made all the prisoners go up on the deck platform, and they photographed us. They then ordered us down below again to the torpedo room. The port where we landed was not very large. There were about a dozen submarines and four or five destroyers there, but all the quays and jetties bristled with seamen with bayonets fixed.

* * *

Three days after our arrival in prison camp we were awakened by cries from the Russians who slept in the hut. Fire had broken out in one hut apart from the others, which served as a dungeon where they shut up prisoners who were rebellious. That day six Russians, one Frenchman, and one Englishman were undergoing this punishment. The prisoners naturally called to be let out, but in vain. The sentry remained unmoved. No doubt he was awaiting orders from his superiors. Those inside the dungeon were being stifled. The Englishman broke the panes of a small window, with the idea of freeing himself and his companions. The sentry, seeing him leaning out of the window, gave him a tremendous bayonet thrust in the chest. The wounded man

fell like lead. A small but revolting struggle then took place. The prisoners attempted to get out, and the German soldier reddened his bayonet again and again with the blood of the men shut up, who saw with horror that the fire was increasing. The conflagration could not be extinguished by the other prisoners until it had done its work. The eight unhappy individuals who occupied the dungeon were corpses. For an hour afterward nothing was heard but shouts of indignation. It looked as if a formidable outbreak would take place. The guards were immediately reinforced, and we were surrounded by a number of German soldiers. The commander of the camp issued an order stating that he was sorry for what had occurred, and that on the following day he would allow the funeral of the victims to take place with ceremony.

It was not all the prisoners who resigned themselves to suffer what was imposed on them. The English, above all, were the most rebellious. One day we were present at a scene which was celebrated with great rejoicing in all the camp. An English seaman, who already had one eye blind as a result of blows they had given him on a previous occasion, refused to obey two officers who ordered him to go to work. They reviled

one another mutually, and finally the Englishman invited them to fight, giving them such punches that as a consequence we saw them for days afterward with their heads bandaged. The German soldiers were the first to scoff at the cowardice of their superiors. The English sailor was condemned to bread and water until the end of the war.

What saddened me most were the seventy old men and thirty children of 12 to 14 years of age, all English except one, who was French; they were youngsters who had been captured on board the vessels sunk, and ran from hut to hut asking for sweets and tobacco. Another day I also suffered a great shock on seeing the English Captain of our steamer Gravina, who had so far received no news from his family, who came up to us to beg bread. "I have always been good to you. Have compassion on me. Give me a little piece of bread, if you can spare it." We certainly had no reason to complain of his treatment of us, and we respected him. We gave him all we could.

[On April 14 the eight Spanish seamen were entrained for the Swiss frontier. All the way they were much struck by the number of wounded and by the general air of depression among the people.]

"The perennial conflict between land and water transport, between natural and artificial conditions, in which the victory is likely to rest, as heretofore, with nature's own highway, the seas.' "-Mahan.

GR

ERMANY attained one of her most coveted aims-the "bridge to the East"-when, early in the war, Turkey and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, and General von Mackensen swept through Serbia, opening up the last European section of the Berlinto-Bagdad railway. The world at once recognized a menace in Germany's possession of this coveted commercial weapon. It so happens that Admiral Mahan has left on record a dispassionate estimate of the measure of this menace, and his words are of vital interest at this stage of the war.

The Teutonic desire to control the Near East is only a modern form of one of the oldest problems in the world, a legacy of the ancient empires and of the Middle Ages, the dream of Napoleon. Seizure of this source of power by some rival has long been the dread of England. To combat imagined attempts at such control on the part of Russia was Great Britain's self-imposed task for three generations.* The great Slavic Empire, though vainly attempting to find an outlet to the sea, was never a real danger; yet to guard against the imaginary threat of this impending avalanche England unwisely built up Germany into a dominating power and retained Turkey in Constantinople, both designed to be barriers against Russia. Both are now united against Great Britain.

It is this union of Germany and Turkey that makes the present Teutonic control of the passage to the East a serious matter for the whole commercial world. No longer is it a question of the great undeveloped Slavic empire seeking an outlet to the sea; it is a new military and trade weapon already firmly in the grasp

*British Foreign Policies and the Present War. CURRENT HISTORY, May, 1917.

of the most efficient military power ever developed. The Teutons at present dominate the whole Balkan Peninsula, as well as the Dardanelles; Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania have been overcome in detail and are out of the running. Russia has passed through a revolution, and at present is not to be considered as an active military factor.

The Russian Empire, before the sudden collapse of its armies that came with the revolution, had given promise of checking, and even cutting off, Teutonic domination through the Russian advance in Asia Minor and north of Bagdad. Now all this is at an end-at least for the present. It is true that Bagdad is in British hands, but the consolidation of the great strip of territory from Germany, through Austria-Hungary, the Balkan States, and Asia Minor, to the East may be called an accomplished fact from a military point of view.

Teutonic control of these territories implies ownership of long lines of land transportation and domination of commerce through them. What danger is there for the rest of the commercial world in this situation, with so great a power ready to use such control to its own advantage? Even under such efficient control, can artificial conditions of land transportation compete with the great natural lanes of the sea? Never in history has this proved possible, yet here are all the elements of the most efficient machinery ever devised to build up such a structure. The foundation of this Germanic edifice is the Bagdad Railroad, originally projected as a line from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, now enlarged into the railway systems reaching from Hamburg on the North Sea to the Euphrates and Tigris Valleys in Asia Minor.

In a paper by Admiral Mahan, published in 1902, from which was taken the quotation at the head of this article, is a most interesting discussion of the military and commercial values of this rail

road as originally planned. He sums up the merits of the railway in words that are well worthy of study in the present circumstances:

This new line will have over the one now existing the advantage which rail travel always has over that by water, of greater specific rapidity. It will, therefore, serve particularly for the transport of passengers, mails, and lighter freights. On the other hand, for bulk of transport, meaning thereby not merely articles singly of great weight or size, but the aggregate amounts of freight that can be carried in a given time, water will always possess an immense and irreversible advantage over land transport for equal distances. A water route is, as it For were, a road with numberless tracks. these reasons, and on account of the first cost of construction, water transport has a lasting comparative cheapness, which, so far as can be foreseen, will secure to it forever a commercial superiority over that by land. It is also, for large quantities, much more rapid; for, though a train can carry its proper load faster than a vessel can, the closely restricted number of trains that can proceed at once, as compared to the numerous vessels, enables the latter in a given time, practically simultaneously, to deliver a bulk of material utterly beyond the power of the road.

These wise conclusions were drawn from the first project of the railway from the Levant to the Persian Gulfand these fixed conditions, with which a railway has to contend, are multiplied by length. So it must be kept in mind that even German efficiency has a hard problem to solve in the railroad from Berlin to the East.

A study of the map will show that the proper economic uses of these railway systems are the normal functions of any railroads, to distribute goods brought by water, to deliver goods for shipment by water, and to connect neighboring countries. Under such natural commercial conditions, as pointed out by Admiral Mahan, the great bulk of freight shipped for long distances would not use the railways, but no matter what concessions might be made in rates, would be carried over the seas. Railways can never compete with waterways.

So the conclusion is obvious that, under natural conditions, even though these railways may be under Teutonic control, they are of great value to the countries through which they run; but that, while

of great advantage to German trade, they are not a source of undue power to Germany. Such power, which Germany has unquestionably sought, can therefore only be founded on artificial conditions. Is there, then, any dangerous power in the conditions which have been created by Germany? That there is a danger would only be denied by one who is blind to German methods and German ambitions. This should be stated as baldly

as possible. Germany aims to establish such a control over these regions that all commercial gains shall be hers, and the other nations be excluded. The ruthlessness and tenacity of purpose of Germany have been so plainly shown that it is no wonder Germanic control of "Mittel-Europa " is widely held to be the greatest menace of the war.

But, as is often the case, this dread has become exaggerated. In fact, it has been allowed to grow out of all proportion to the other great interests at stake in this war. There are counteracting forces that tend to make the situation normal. There has been so much fear of Germanic control of the passage to the East that the hardships for Germany and her allies of such enforced conditions have not been considered.

Germany's commerce would suffer from this restricted traffic. To hold their own, even with all possible favoritism shown to them, the German merchants must make proper use of the waterways or submit to a ruinous tax on their trade. The same is true of Germany's friends and allies-and this leads at once to natural conditions of commerce.

With German merchants and the merchants of her friendly States the worst sufferers, how is it possible to attempt. to confine traffic to the railways? Yet such must be the basis of any abnormal German domination in the East. Consequently, leaving all the other nations out of consideration, the interests of Germany and her allies are against the misuse of control that has been so widely considered the dangerous threat in the present conditions.

There is another restraint on this much-feared Teutonic influence. To be