is reluctant to believe that the Imperial German Government in this
case contemplates it as possible."


I sailed from New York February 13th, 1915, on the first American
passenger liner to run the von Tirpitz blockade. On February 20th we
passed Queenstown and entered the Irish Sea at night. Although it was
moonlight and we could see for miles about us, every light on the ship,
except the green and red port and starboard lanterns, was extinguished.
As we sailed across the Irish Sea, silently and cautiously as a muskrat
swims on a moonlight night, we received a wireless message that a
submarine, operating off the mouth of the Mersey River, had sunk an
English freighter. The captain was asked by the British Admiralty to
stop the engines and await orders. Within an hour a patrol boat
approached and escorted us until the pilot came aboard early the next
morning. No one aboard ship slept. Few expected to reach Liverpool
alive, but the next afternoon we were safe in one of the numerous snug
wharves of that great port.

A few days later I arrived in London. As I walked through Fleet street
newsboys were hurrying from the press rooms carrying orange-coloured
placards with the words in big black type: "Pirates Sink Another
Neutral Ship."

Until the middle of March I remained in London, where the wildest
rumours were afloat about the dangers off the coast of England, and
where every one was excited and expectant over the reports that Germany
was starving. I was urged by friends and physicians not to go to
Germany because it was universally believed in Great Britain that the
war would be over in a very short time. On the 15th of March I crossed