Jekyll_text

248 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND SINK THE LUSTTANIA! 249
military cargo. Thus, the Lusitania became one of the most important
carriers of war materials—including munitions—from the
United States to England. On March 8, 1915, after several close calls
with German submarines, the captain of the Lusitania turned in his
resignation. He was willing to face the U-boats, he said, but he was
no longer willing "to carry the responsibility of mixing passengers
with munitions or contraband/'
CHURCHILL SETS A TRAP
From England's point of view, the handwriting on the wall was
clear. Unless the United States could be brought into the war as her
ally, she soon would have to sue for peace. The challenge was how
to push Americans off their position of stubborn neutrality. How
that was accomplished is one of the more controversial aspects of
the war. It is inconceivable to many that English leaders might have
deliberately plotted the destruction of one of their own vessels with
American citizens aboard as a means of drawing the United States
into the war as an ally. Surely, any such idea is merely German
propaganda. Robert Ballard, writing in National Geographic, says:
"Within days of the sinking, German sympathizers in New York
came up with a conspiracy theory. The British Admiralty, they said,
had deliberately exposed Lusitania to harm, hoping she would be
attacked and thus draw the U.S. into the war."
Let's take a closer look at this conspiracy theory. Winston
Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty at that time, said:
There are many kinds of maneuvers in war.... There are
maneuvers in time, in diplomacy, in mechanics, in psychology; all of
which are removed from the battlefield, but react often decisively
upon it.... The maneuver which brings an ally into the field is as
serviceable as that which wins a great battle. The maneuver which
gains an important strategic point may be less valuable than that
which placates or overawes a dangerous neutral.
The maneuver chosen by Churchill was particularly ruthless.
Under what was called the Cruiser Rules, warships of both England
and Germany gave the crews of unarmed enemy merchant ships a
1 Sunpson, p. 87.
2. "Riddle of the Lusitania/' by Robert Ballard, National Geographic, AprU, 1994,
p. 74.
3. Winston Churchill, The World Crisis (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1949), p. 300.
This appears on p. 464 of the Barnes & Noble 1993 reprint.
chance to take to the lifeboats before sinking them. But, in October
of 1914, Churchill issued orders that British merchant ships must no
longer obey a U-boat order to halt and be searched. If they had
armament, they were to engage the enemy, If they did not, they
were to attempt to ram the sub. The immediate result of this change
was to force German U-boats to remain submerged for protection
and to simply sink the ships without warning.
Why would the British want to do such a stupid thing that
would cost the lives of thousands of their own seamen? The answer
is that it was not an act of stupidity. It was cold blooded strategy.
Churchill boasted:
The first British countermove, made on my responsibility,... was to
deter the Germans from surface attack. The submerged U-boat had to
rely increasingly on underwater attack and thus ran the greater risk of
mistaking neutral for British ships and of drowning neutral crews and
thus embroiling Germany with other Great Powers. 1
To increase the likelihood of accidentally sinking a ship from a
neutral "Great Power," Churchill ordered British ships to remove
their names from their hulls and, when in port, to fly the flag of a
neutral power, preferably that of the United States. As further
provocation, the British navy was ordered to treat captured U-boat
crew members not as prisoners of war but as felons. "Survivors/'
wrote Churchill, "should be taken prisoner or shot—whichever is
the most convenient."
Other orders, which now are an embarrassing
part of official navy archives, were even more ruthless: "In a)]
actions, white flags should be fired upon with promptitude/
The trap was carefully laid. The German navy was goaded into
a position of shoot-first and ask questions later and, under those
conditions, it was inevitable that American lives would be lost
A FLOATING MUNITIONS DEPOT
After many years of investigation, it is now possible to identify
the cargo that was loaded aboard the Lusitania on her last voyage. It
included 600 tons of pyroxyline (commonly called gun cotton), 4
I Churchill, pp. 274-75.
2. Taken from the Diaries of Admiral Sir Hubert Richmond, Feb. 27, 1915, National
Maritime Museum, Greenwich, as quoted by Simpson, p. 37.
3- P.R.O., ADM/116/1359, Dec. 23, 1914, quoted by Simpson, p. 37.
4. Gun cotton explodes with three-times the force of gunpowder in a confined
space and can be ignited at a much lower flash point. See Eissler, Manuel, Modern
Higt
High Explosives (New York John Wiley & Sons, 1914), pp. 110, 112, 372.