History of the American Negro in the Great World War - William Allison Sweeney

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arguments and events were of the greatest importance in connection with the great European struggle. America was rapidly awakening, and the role of a passive onlooker became increasingly irksome. It was pointed out that Washington's message said we must not implicate ourselves in the "ordinary vicissitudes" of European politics. This case rapidly was assuming something decidedly beyond the "ordinary." As the carnage increased and outrages piled up, the finest sensibilities of mankind were shocked and we began to ask ourselves if we were not criminally negligent in our attitude; if it was not our duty to put forth a staying hand and use the extreme weight of our influence to stop the holocaust.

       From August 4 to 26, Germany overran Belgium. Liege was occupied August 9; Brussels, August 20, and Namur, August 24. The stories of atrocities committed on the civil population of that country have since been well authenticated. At the time it was hard to believe them, so barbaric and utterly wanton were they. Civilized people could not understand how a nation which pretended to be not only civilized, but wished to impose its culture on the remainder of the world, could be so ruthless to a small adversary which had committed no crime and desired only to preserve its nationality, integrity and treaty rights.

       Germany did not occupy Antwerp until October 9, owing to the stiff resistance of the Belgians and engagements with the French and British elsewhere. But German arms were uniformly victorious. August 21–23 occurred the battle of Mons-Charleroi, a serious defeat for the French and British, which resulted in a dogged retreat eventually to a line along the Seine, Marne and Meuse rivers.

       The destruction of Louvain occurred August 26, and was one of the events which inflamed anti-German sentiment throughout the world. The beautiful cathedral, the historic cloth market, the library and other architectural monuments for which the city was famed, were put to the torch. The Belgian priesthood was in woe over these and other atrocities. Cardinal Mercier called upon the Christian world to note and protest against these crimes. In his pastoral letter of Christmas, 1914, he thus pictures Belgium's woe and her Christian fortitude:

      "And there where lives were not taken, and there where the stones of buildings were not thrown down, what anguish unrevealed! Families hitherto living at ease, now in bitter want; all commerce at an end, all careers ruined; industry at a standstill; thousands upon thousands of workingmen without employment; working women; shop girls, humble servant girls without the means of earning their bread, and poor souls forlorn on the bed of sickness and fever crying: 'O Lord, how long, how long?'—God will save Belgium, my brethren; you can not doubt it. Nay, rather, He is saving her—Which of us would have the heart to cancel this page of our national history? Which of us does not exult in the brightness of the glory of this shattered nation? When in her throes she brings forth heroes, our mother country gives her own energy to the blood of those sons of hers. Let us acknowledge that we needed a lesson in patriotism—For down within us all is something deeper than personal interests, than personal kinships, than party feeling, and this is the need and the will to devote ourselves to that most general interest which Rome termed the public thing, Res publica. And this profound will within us is patriotism."

      Meanwhile there was a slight offset to the German successes. Russia had overrun Galicia and the Allies had conquered the Germany colony of Togoland in Africa. But on August 26 the Russians were severely defeated in the battle of Tannenburg in East Prussia. This was offset by a British naval victory in Helgoland Bight. (August 28.) So great had become the pressure of the German armies that on September 3 the French government removed from Paris to Bordeaux. The seriousness of the situation was made manifest when two days later Great Britain, France and Russia signed a treaty not to make peace separately. Then it became evident to the nations of the earth that the struggle was not only to be a long one, but in all probability the most gigantic in history.

       The Germans reached the extreme point of their advance, culminating in the Battle of the Marne, September 6–10. Here the generalship of Joffre and the strategy of Foch overcame great odds. The Germans were driven back from the Marne to the River Aisne. The battle line then remained practically stationary for three years on a front of three hundred miles.

       The Russians under General Rennenkampf were driven from East Prussia September 16. Three British armored cruisers were sunk by a submarine September 22. By September 27 General Botha had gained some successes for the Allies, and had under way an invasion of German Southwest Africa. By October 13 Belgium was so completely occupied by the Germans that the government withdrew entirely from the country and established itself at Le Havre in France. By the end of the year had occurred the Battle of Yser in Belgium (October 16–28); the first Battle of Ypres (decisive day October 31), in which the British, French and Belgians saved the French channel ports; De Wet's rebellion against the British in South Africa (October 28); German naval victory in the Pacific off the coast of Chile (November 1); fall of Tsingtau, German possession in China, to the Japanese (November 7); Austrian invasion of Serbia (Belgrade taken December 2, recaptured by the Serbians December 14); German commerce raider Emden caught and destroyed at Cocos Island (November 10); British naval victory off the Falkland Islands (December 8); South African rebellion collapsed (December 8); French government returned to Paris (December 9); German warships bombarded West Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby on the coast of England (December 16). On December 24 the Germans showed their Christian spirit in an inauguration of the birthday of Christ by the first air raid over England. The latter part of the year 1914 saw no important action by the United States excepting a proclamation by the president of the neutrality of the Panama canal zone.

       The events of 1915 and succeeding years became of great importance to the United States and it is with a record of those having the greatest bearing on our country that this account principally will deal.

       On January 20 Secretary of State Bryan found it necessary to explain and defend our policy of neutrality. January 28 the American merchantman William P. Frye was sunk by the German cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich. On February 10 the United States dispatched a note to the German government holding it to a "strict accountability if any merchant vessel of the United States is destroyed or any American citizens lose their lives." Germany replied February 16 stating that her "war zone" act was an act of self-defense against illegal methods employed by Great Britain in preventing commerce between Germany and neutral countries. Two days later the German official blockade of Great Britain commenced and the German submarines began their campaign of piracy and pillage.

       The United States on February 20 sent an identic note to Germany and Great Britain suggesting an agreement between them respecting the conduct of naval warfare. The British steamship Falaba was sunk by a submarine March 28, with a loss of 111 lives, one of which was an American. April 8 the steamer Harpalyce, in the service of the American commission for the aid of Belgium, was torpedoed with a loss of 15 lives. On April 22 the German embassy in America sent out a warning against embarkation on vessels belonging to Great Britain. The American vessel Cushing was attacked by a German aeroplane April 28. On May 1 the American steamship Gullflight was sunk by a German submarine and two Americans were lost. That day the warning of the German embassy was published in the daily papers. The Lusitania sailed at 12:20 noon.

       Five days later occurred the crime which almost brought America into the second year of the war. The Cunard line steamship Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine with a loss of 1,154 lives, of which 114 were Americans. After the policy of frightfulness put into effect by the Germans in Belgium and other invaded territories, the massacres of civilians, the violation of women and killing of children; burning, looting and pillage; the destruction of whole towns, acts for which no military necessity could be pleaded, civilization should have been prepared for the Lusitania crime. But it seems it was not. The burst of indignation throughout the United States was terrible. Here was where the terms German and Hun became synonomous, having in mind the methods and ravages of the barbaric scourge Attilla, king of the Huns, who in the fifth century sacked a considerable portion of Europe and introduced some refinements in cruelty which have never been excelled.

       The Lusitania went down twenty-one minutes after the attack. The Berlin government pleaded in extenuation of the sinking that the ship was armed, and German agents in New York procured testimony which was subsequently proven in court to have been perjured, to bolster up the falsehood. In further justification, the German government adduced

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