leum from New York to Rotterdam, flying the American flag, was attacked by German aeroplanes near the North Hinder Lightship, afternoon April 29. Three bombs dropped, one struck ship, causing damage, but no life lost.

The report of Captain Lars Larsen Herland, master of the American tank steamer Cushing, made upon his arrival in Philadelphia, Penn., on May 19, 1915, is as follows:

The airmen swept in narrow circles over the tanker, trying to get directly over the funnel, with the idea, apparently, of dropping a bomb into it and wrecking the engine room.

When attacked the Cushing was about twenty-five miles from Antwerp and eight miles from the North Hinder Lightship. It was near 7 o'clock in the evening, but the sun had barely touched the horizon, and there was ample light for the pilot of the biplane to see the words, Cushing, New York, United States of America," painted on each side of the vessel in letters eight feet high, and to note the Stars and Stripes at the masthead and the taffrail.

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When the airship was first noted it was several thousand feet in the air, but dropped as it approached the ship, and soon was only about 500 feet up. Suddenly it swooped down to about 300 feet above the Cushing. Then there was a tremendous explosion, and a wave flooded the stern deck. A second bomb missed the port quarter by a foot or so, and sent another wave over the lower deck.

The biplane swung up into the wind, hung motionless for a second or so, then came the third bomb, which just grazed the starboard rail and shot into the sea.

The airship hung around for a few minutes, then headed toward the Dutch coast. She was flying a white flag, with a black cross in the centre, the pennant of the German air fleet.

CASE OF THE GULFLIGHT. Official confirmation of the attack on May 1, 1915, by a German submarine on the American oil tank steamer Gulflight off the Scilly Islands came to the State Department at Washington on May 3 in

dispatches from Joseph G. Stephens, the United States Consul at Plymouth, England. Two members of the crew were drowned, the Captain died of heart failure, and thirty-four members of the crew were saved. Following is the sworn statement of Ralph E. Smith, late chief officer and now master of the Gulflight, received from Ambassador Page and published by the State Department at Washington on May 11:

I am Ralph E. Smith, now master of the steamship Gulflight. At the commencement of the voyage I was chief officer. The ship left port at Port Arthur on the 10th day of April, 1915, about 4 P. M., laden with a tank cargo of gasoline and wooden barrels of lubricating oil. The voyage was uneventful.

When about half way across the Atlantic the wireless operator told me there was a British cruiser in our vicinity and that he had heard messages from this ship the whole time since leaving Port Arthur, but she made no direct communication with or to our ship. From the sound of the wireless messages given cut by the British ship, she seemed to maintain the same distance from us until about three days before we reached the mouth of the English Channel.

On the first day of May, about 11 o'clock in the forenoon, we spoke two British patrol vessels named Iago and Filey. We were then about twenty-two miles west of the Bishop Lighthouse. The patrol vessels asked where we were bound. After informing them we were bound for Rouen, they ordered us to follow them to the Bishop. The Filey took up a position a half mile distant on our port bow, the Iago off our starboard quarter close to us. We steered as directed, and at about 12:22, the second officer being on watch, sighted a submarine on our port bow-slightly on the port bow-steaming at right angles to our course. The submarine was in sight for about five minutes, when she submerged about right ahead of us. I saw her, but could not distinguish or see any flag flying on her.

The Gulflight was then steering about true east, steaming about eight miles an

cisely its complete encirclement by the sea has become the greatest danger for the existence of the British Nation.

The writer explains that England cannot be self-supporting, and, strangely enough, admits that recognition of this fact justifies British naval policy. He proceeds:

The time, however, has passed in which even the strongest squadron of battleships or cruisers can protect England's frontiers and secure imports from oversea. Technical progress, in the shape of submarines, has put into the hands of all England's enemies the means at last to sever the vital nerve of the much-hated enemy, and to pull him down from his position of ruler of the world, which he has occupied for centuries with everincreasing ruthlessness and selfishness. What science has once begun she continues, and for every shipbuilder in the whole world there is now no sphere which offers a stronger stimulus to progressive activity than the sphere of the submarines. Here an endless amount of work is being, and will be, done, because the reward which beckons on the horizon is an extraordinarily high one, an extraordinarily profitable one, a reward containing the most ideal blessings for humanity-the destruction of English world supremacy, the liberation of the seas. This exalted and noble aim has today come within reach, and it is German intellect and German work that have paved the way.

It will be noted that Professor Flamm, as other contemporary German writers, believes that submarines, like Shakespeare, are a German invention. He is also, notwithstanding the experience of two and a half months, confident that the German "submarine blockade " will both be successful and become popular with neutrals. Building upon the German myth that Captain Weddigen's submarine, U-29, was destroyed while saving life, Professor Flamm expects that the neutrals will stop all traffic with England, "in view of the cowardly and cunning method of fightng of the English."

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Professor Flamm then discusses Germany's prospects, as follows:

Anybody who wants to fight England must not attempt it by striving to bring against England larger and more numerous battleships and cruisers. That would be not only unwise but also very costly. He must try another method, which makes England's great sea power completely illusory, and gives it practically no opportunity for activity. This method is the

cutting-off of imports by submarine fleets. Let it not be said that the attainment of this end requires a very great deal of material. England, as can easily be seen from the map, possesses a fairly limited number of river mouths and ports for rapid development of her great oversea trade. Beginning in the northeast, those on the east coast are mainly the Firth of Forth, the mouths of the Tyne and Humber, and then the Thames; in the south, Portsmouth, Southampton, and Plymouth, with some neighboring harbors; in the west, the Bristol Channel, the Mersey, the Solway, and the Clyde. These are the entries that have to be blocked in order to cut off imports in a way that will produce the full impression. For this purpose 150 of the submarines of today fully suffice, so that the goal is within reach. Moreover, the development of this arm will enormously increase its value, and so, come what may, England must reckon with the fact that her world supremacy cannot much longer exist, and that the strongest navy can make no difference. When once the invisible necktie is round John Bull's neck, his breathing will soon cease, and the task of successfully putting this necktie on him is solely a question of technical progress and of time, which now moves so fast.

Professor Flamm ends with a passage about German submarine bases. It would be more intelligible if he had made up his mind whether Germany is going to take Calais or whether, according to another popular German theory, England is going to annex the north coast of France. He writes:

"The eyes of France also will one day be opened when, having been sufficiently weakened, she is compelled to leave the north coast of France, including Calais, to her friend of today. Precisely this coast which England has seized may be expected now to remain in English possession, for the purpose of better and surer control of the Channel, for there can be no doubt that this control renders, and will render, difficult for the German submarines effective activity in the Irish Sea-an activity which will become all the easier as soon as Calais has been freed of the enemy, or is even in German possession.

"Thus before very long a world fate should befall England. The trees do not grow up to heaven. England, through her criminal Government, has stretched the bow too tight, and so it will snap."

I.

"AMERICA FIRST."

[President Wilson's address on April 20, 1915, to the members of The Associated Press at their annual luncheon in New York:]

I am deeply gratified by the generous reception you have accorded me. It makes me look back with a touch of regret to former occasions when I have stood in this place and enjoyed a greater liberty than is granted me today. There have been times when I stood in this spot and said what I really thought, and I pray God that those days of indulgence may be accorded me again. But I have come here today, of course, somewhat restrained by a sense of responsibility that I cannot escape.

For I take The Associated Press very seriously. I know the enormous part that you play in the affairs not only of this country, but the world. You deal in the raw material of opinion and, if my convictions have any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world.

It is, therefore, of very serious things that I think as I face this body of men. I do not think of you, however, as members of The Associated Press. I do not think of you as men of different parties or of different racial derivations or of different religous denominations, I want to talk to you as to my fellow-citizens of the United States. For there are serious things which as fellow-citizens we ought to consider.

The times behind us, gentlemen, have been difficult enough, the times before us are likely to be more difficult because, whatever may be said about the present condition of the world's affairs, it is clear

that they are drawing rapidly to a climax, and at the climax the test will come, not only of the nations engaged in the present colossal struggle, it will come for them of course, but the test will come to us particularly.

Do you realize that, roughly speaking, we are the only great nation at present disengaged? I am not speaking, of course, with disparagement of the greater of those nations in Europe which are not parties to the present war, but I am thinking of their close neighborhood to it. I am thinking how their lives much more than ours touch the very heart and stuff of the business; whereas, we have rolling between us and those bitter days across the water three thousand miles of cool and silent ocean.

Out atmosphere is not yet charged with those disturbing elements which must be felt and must permeate every nation of Europe. Therefore, is it not likely that the nations of the world will some day turn to us for the cooler assessment of the elements engaged?

I am not now thinking so preposterous a thought as that we should sit in judgment upon them. No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation, but that we shall some day have to assist in reconstructing the processes of peace. Our resources are untouched; we are more and more becoming by the force of circumstances the mediating nation of the world in respect to its finances. We must make up our minds what are the best things to do and what are the best ways to do them.

We must put our money, our energy, our enthusiasm, our sympathy into these things; and we must have our judgments

prepared and our spirits chastened against the coming of that day. So that I am not speaking in a selfish spirit when I say that our whole duty for the present, at any rate, is summed up in this motto, "America first." Let us think of America before we think of Europe, in order that America may be fit to be Europe's friend when the day of tested friendship comes. The test of friendship is not now sympathy with the one side or the other, but getting ready to help both sides when the struggle is over.

The basis of neutrality, gentlemen, is not indifference; it is not self-interest. The basis of neutrality is sympathy for mankind. It is fairness, it is good-will at bottom. It is impartiality of spirit and of judgment. I wish that all of our fellow-citizens could realize that.

There is in some quarters a disposition to create distempers in this body politic. Men are even uttering slanders against the United States as if to excite her. Men are saying that if we should go to war upon either side there will be a divided America-an abominable libel of ignorance. America is not all of it vocal just now. It is vocal in spots.

But I for one have a complete and abiding faith in that great silent body of Americans who are not standing up and shouting and expressing their opinions just now, but are waiting to find out and support the duty of America. I am just as sure of their solidity and of their loyalty and of their unanimity, if we act justly, as I am that the history of this country has at every crisis and turning point illustrated this great lesson.

We are the mediating nation of the world. I do not mean that we undertake not to mind our own business and to mediate where other people are quarreling. I mean the word in a broader sense. We are compounded of the nations of the world. We mediate their blood, we mediate their traditions, we mediate their sentiments, their tastes, their passions; we are ourselves compounded of those things.

We are, therefore, able to understand all nations; we are able to understand them in the compound, not separately, as partisans, but unitedly, as knowing and

comprehending and embodying them all. It is in that sense that I mean that America is a mediating nation. The opinion of America, the action of America, is ready to turn and free to turn in any direction.

Did you ever reflect upon how almost all other nations, almost every other nation, has through long centuries been headed in one direction? That is not true of the United States. The United States has no racial momentum. It has no history back of it which makes it run all its energies and all its ambitions in one particular direction; and America is particularly free in this, that she has no hampering ambitions as a world power.

If we have been obliged by circumstances, or have considered ourselves to be obliged by circumstances, in the past to take territory which we otherwise would not have thought of taking, I believe I am right in saying that we have considered it our duty to administer that territory, not for ourselves, but for the people living in it, and to put this burden upon our consciences not to think that this thing is ours for our use, but to regard ourselves as trustees of the great business for those to whom it does really belong, trustees ready to hand over the cosmic trust at any time when the business seems to make that possible and feasible. That is what I mean by saying we have no hampering ambitions.

We do not want anything that does not belong to us. Isn't a nation in that position free to serve other nations, and isn't a nation like that ready to form some part of the assessing opinion of the world?

My interest in the neutrality of the United States is not the petty desire to keep out of trouble. To judge by my experience I have never been able to keep out of trouble. I have never looked for it, but I have always found it. I do not want to walk around trouble. If any man wants a scrap-that is, an interesting scrap and worth while-I am his man. I warn him that he is not going to draw me into the scrap for his advertisement, but if he is looking for trouble—that is, the trouble of men in general-and I can help a little, why, then, I am in for it. But I am interested in neutrality because there