The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days/The Soul of the Man Who Sank the Lusitania
THE SOUL OF THE MAN WHO SANK THE LUSITANIA
The crowning horror of Germany's barbarities
came with the sinking of the Lusitania. Perhaps
nothing less shocking could have made us see
how much less cruel Nature is at her worst than
man in his madness may be. Three years before
the Titanic had been sunk on a clear and quiet
night, because a great iceberg formed in the
frozen north had floated silently down to where,
crossing the ship's course in mid-Atlantic, it
struck her the slanting blow that sent her to the
bottom. Thus a great, blind, irresistible force,
operating without malice or design, had in that
case destroyed more than a thousand human
lives. But when the Lusitania was sunk in
broad daylight, and nearly as many persons
perished, it was because our brother man, in
the bitterness of his heart and the cruelty of his
fear, had been bent on committing wilful murder.
What is the present state of the soul of the person who perpetrated that crime? Can he excuse himself on the ground that he was obeying orders, or does his conscience refuse to be chloroformed into silence by that hoary old subterfuge? When he first saw the great ship sailing up in the sunshine, its decks crowded with peaceful passengers, and he rose like a murderer out of his hiding-place in the bowels of the sea, what were the feelings with which he ordered the torpedo to be fired? When, having launched his bolt, he sank and then rose again, and heard the drowning cries of his victims struggling in the water, what were the emotions with which he ran away? And when he returned to tell his story of the work he had done, with what dignity of manhood did he hold up his head in the company of Christian men? God knows—only God and one of his creatures.
Ten years after Christ a Latin author (Velleius Paterculus) said, "The character of the Germans shows a terrible mixture of ferocity and infamy. It is a people born to lie."