The Conquest of America Part 2

"By the way," continued the Admiral, "I must show you some things in my sc.r.a.p book. You will be astonished. Wait a minute. I'll get it."

The old fellow hurried off and presently returned with a heavy volume bound in red leather.

"Take it up to your room to-night and look it over. You will find the most overwhelming ma.s.s of testimony to the effect that to-day, in spite of all that has been said and written and all the money spent, the United States is totally unprepared to defend its coasts or uphold its national honour. Just open the book anywhere--you'll see."

I obeyed and came upon this statement by Theodore Roosevelt:

What befell Antwerp and Brussels will surely some day befall New York or San Francisco, and may happen to many an inland city also, if we do not shake off our supine folly, if we trust for safety to peace treaties unbacked by force.

"Pretty strong words for an ex-President of the United States to be using," nodded the Admiral. "And true! Try another place."

I did so and came upon this from the pen of Gerhard von Schulze-Gaevernitz, professor of political economy at the University of Freiburg and a member of the Reichstag:

Flattered and deftly lulled to sleep by British influence, public opinion in the United States will not wake up until the 'yellow New England' of the Orient, nurtured and deflected from Australia by England herself, knocks at the gates of the new world. Not a patient and meek China, but a warlike and conquest-bound j.a.pan will be the aggressor when that day comes. Then America will be forced to fight under unfavourable conditions.

The famous campaigner's eyes flashed towards the Pacific.

"When that day comes! Ah! Speaking of j.a.pan," he turned over the pages in nervous haste. "Here we are! You can see how much the j.a.panese love us!

Listen! This is an extract from the most popular book in j.a.pan to-day. It is issued by j.a.pan's powerful and official National Defence a.s.sociation with a view to inflaming the j.a.panese people against the United States and preparing them for a war of invasion against this country. Listen to this:

"Let America beware! For our cry, 'On to California! On to Hawaii!

On to the Philippines!' is becoming only secondary to our imperial anthem!... To arms! We must seize our standards, unfurl them to the winds and advance without the least fear, as America has no army worthy the name, and with the Panama Ca.n.a.l destroyed, its few battles.h.i.+ps will be of no use until too late.

"I tell you, Mr. Langston," pursued the Admiral, "we Americans are to-day the most hated nation on earth. The richest, the most arrogant, the most hated nation on earth! And helpless! Defenceless! Believe me, that's a bad combination. Look at this! Read this! It's a cablegram to the New York _Tribune_, published on May 21, 1915, from Miss Constance Drexel, an American delegate to the Woman's Peace Conference at The Hague:

"I have just come out of Germany and perhaps the predominating impression I bring with me is Germany's hatred of America. Germany feels that war with America is only a matter of time. Everywhere I went I found the same sentiment, and the furthest distance away I found the war put was ten years. It was said to me: 'We must settle with England first, but then will come America's turn. If we don't make war on you ourselves we will get j.a.pan into a war with you, and then we will supply arms and munitions to j.a.pan.'"

At this point, I remember, I had turned to order an orange liqueur, when the crash came.

It was terrific. Every window in the hotel was shattered, and some scores of labourers working near the Gatun Locks were killed instantly. Six hundred tons of dynamite, secreted in the hold of a German merchantman, had been exploded as the vessel pa.s.sed through the locks, and ten thousand tons of Portland cement had sunk in the tangled iron wreck, to form a huge blockading ma.s.s of solid rock on the floor of the narrow pa.s.sage.

Needless to say, every man on the German s.h.i.+p thus sacrificed died at his post.

The Admiral stared in dismay when the news was brought to him.

"Germany!" he muttered. "And our fleet is in the Pacific!"

"Does it mean war?" I asked.

"Yes, of course. Unquestionably it means war. We have been misled. We were thinking of one enemy, and we have been struck by another. We thought we could send our fleet through the Ca.n.a.l and get it back easily; but--now we cannot get it back for at least two months!"

CHAPTER II

AMERICAN AEROPLANES AND SUBMARINES BATTLE DESPERATELY AGAINST THE GERMAN FLEET

A week later--or, to be exact, on May 4, 1921--I arrived in New York, following instructions from my paper, and found the city in a state of indescribable confusion and alarm.

War had been declared by Germany against the United States on the day that the Ca.n.a.l was wrecked, and German transports, loaded with troops and convoyed by a fleet of battles.h.i.+ps, were known to be on the high seas, headed for American sh.o.r.es. As the Atlantic fleet had been cut off in the Pacific by that desperate piece of Panama strategy (the Ca.n.a.l would be impa.s.sable for months), it was evident that those s.h.i.+ps could be of no service for at least eight weeks, the time necessary to make the trip through the Straits of Magellan; and meanwhile the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Florida was practically unguarded.

No wonder the newspapers shrieked despairingly and bitterly upbraided Congress for neglecting to provide the country with adequate naval defences.

Theodore Roosevelt came out with a signed statement:

"Four years ago I warned this country that the United States must have two great fleets--one for the Atlantic, one for the Pacific."

Senator Smoot, in a sensational speech, referred to his vain efforts to secure for the country a fleet of fifty sea-going submarines and twenty-five coast-defence submarines. Now, he declared, the United States would pay for its indifference to danger.

In the House of Representatives, Gardner and Hobson both declared that our forts were antiquated, our coast-defence guns outranged, our artillery ridiculously insufficient, and our supply of ammunition not great enough to carry us through a single month of active warfare.

On the night of my arrival in Manhattan I walked through scenes of delirious madness. The town seemed to reel in a sullen drunkenness.

Throngs filled the dark streets. The Gay White Way was no longer either white or gay. The marvellous electrical display of upper Broadway had disappeared--not even a street light was to be seen. And great hotels, like the Plaza, the Biltmore, and the new Morgan, formerly so bright, were scarcely discernible against the black skies. No one knew where the German airs.h.i.+ps might be. Everybody shouted, but n.o.body made very much noise. The city was hoa.r.s.e. I remembered just how London acted the night the first Zeppelin floated over the town.

At five o'clock the next morning, Mayor McAneny appointed a Committee of Public Safety that went into permanent session in Madison Square Garden, which was thronged day and night, while excited meetings, addressed by men and women of all political parties, were held continuously in Union Square, City Hall Park, Columbus Circle, at the Polo Grounds and in various theatres and motion-picture houses.

Such a condition of excitement and terror necessarily led to disorder and on May 11, 1921, General Leonard Wood, in command of the Eastern Army, placed the city under martial law.

And now on every tongue were frantic questions. When would the Germans land? To-day? To-morrow? Where would they strike first? What were we going to do? Every one realised, when it was too late, the hopeless inadequacy of our aeroplane scouting service. To guard our entire Atlantic seaboard we had fifty military aeroplanes where we should have had a thousand and we were wickedly lacking in pilots. Oh, the shame of those days!

In this emergency Rodman Wanamaker put at the disposal of the government his splendid air yacht the _America II_, built on the exact lines of the _America I_, winner of across-the-Atlantic prizes in 1918, but of much larger spread and greater engine power. The America II could carry a useful load of five tons and in her scouting work during the next fortnight she accommodated a dozen pa.s.sengers, four officers, a crew of six, and two newspaper men, Frederick Palmer, representing the a.s.sociated Press, and myself for the London _Times._

What a tremendous thing it was, this scouting trip! Day after day, far out over the ocean, searching for German battles.h.i.+ps! Our easy jog trot speed along the sky was sixty miles an hour and, under full engine pressure, the _America II_ could make a hundred and twenty, which was lucky for us as it saved us many a time when the slower German aircraft came after us, spitting bullets from their machine guns.

On the morning of May 12, a perfect spring day, circling at a height of half a mile, about fifty miles off the eastern end of Long Island, we had our first view of the German fleet as it ploughed through smooth seas to the south of Montauk Point.

We counted eight battle cruisers, twelve dreadnoughts, ten pre-dreadnoughts, and about sixty destroyers, in addition to transports, food-s.h.i.+ps, hospital-s.h.i.+ps, repair-s.h.i.+ps, colliers, and smaller fighting and scouting vessels, all with their full complement of men and equipment, moving along there below us in the pleasant suns.h.i.+ne. Among the troops.h.i.+ps I made out the _Kaiserin Auguste Luise_ and the _Deutschland,_ on both of which I had crossed the summer following the Great Peace. I thought of the jolly old commander of the latter vessel and of the capital times we had had together at the big round table in the dining-saloon. It seemed impossible that this was war!

I subsequently learned that the original plan worked out by the German general staff contemplated a landing in the sheltered harbour of Montauk Point, but the lengthened range (21,000 yards) of mortars in the American forts on Fisher's Island and Plum Island, a dozen miles to the north, now brought Montauk Point under fire, so the open sh.o.r.e south of East Hampton was subst.i.tuted as the point of invasion.

"There's no trouble about landing troops from the open sea in smooth weather like this," said Palmer, speaking through his head-set. "We did it at Santiago, and the j.a.ps did it at Port Arthur."

"And the English did it at Ostend," I agreed. "h.e.l.lo!"

As I swept the sea to the west with my binoculars I thought I caught the dim shape of a submerged submarine moving slowly through the black depths like a hungry shark; but it disappeared almost immediately, and I was not sure. As a matter of fact, it was a submarine, one of six American under-water craft that had been a.s.signed to patrol the south sh.o.r.e of Long Island.

The United States still had twenty-five submarines in Atlantic waters, in addition to thirty that were with the absent fleet; but these twenty-five had been divided between Boston Harbour, Narragansett Bay, Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, and other vulnerable points, so that only six were left to defend the approaches to New York City. And, of these six, five were twenty-four hours late, owing, I heard later, to inexcusable delays at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where they had been undergoing repairs.

The consequence was that only the K-2 was here to meet the German invasion--one lone submarine against a mighty fleet.

Still, under favourable conditions, one lone submarine is a force to be reckoned with, as England learned in 1915.

The K-2 attacked immediately, revealing her periscope for a minute as she took her observations. Then she launched a torpedo at a big German supply-s.h.i.+p not more than a thousand yards away.

"Good-bye, s.h.i.+p!" said Palmer, and we watched with fascinated interest the swift white line that marked the course of the torpedo. It struck the vessel squarely amids.h.i.+ps, and she sank within five minutes, most of the men aboard being rescued by boats from the fleet.

It now went ill with the K-2, however; for, having revealed her presence, she was pursued by the whole army of swift destroyers. She dived, and came up again two miles to the east, bent on sinking a German dreadnought; but, unfortunately, she rose to the surface almost under the nose of one of the destroyers, which bombarded her with its rapid-fire guns, and then, when she sank once more, dropped on her a small mine that exploded under water with shattering effect, finis.h.i.+ng her.