Baraboo weekly news. [volume] (Baraboo, Wis.) 1912-197?, 1917-10-25


who landed on rocky African shore,
only to be killed or captured by hos
tile natives-thus duplicating an adj
venture of American sailors nearly
one hundred years ago. And on top
of all this come now the facts to show
that we have gone back to the days of
Drake and Nelson and are sailing
ships in great fleets under great con-
voys. Four separate instances in
which these conveys have been sue
cessfully attacked since August 10
now lie before us. Just as daring
French corsairs in the Napoleonic days
cut rich prizes out of the great fleets
Of East Indiamen in sight of home
shores, so the German submarines
travelling now in company have sunk
as many as five ships in a convoy
guarded by destroyers, cruisers and
armed trawlers and sailing in plain
sight of the Irish coast.
And despite all secrecy, the fact
is that there are still German rovers
abroad in the Atlantic and Indian
oceans, or were until little time
back. Thus the Mongolia was sunk
in the Indian ocean by mine dropped
by German raider called the Wolf,
and the British government refuses
to answer the question asked in the
Commons whether the raider is still
af1oat or not. Only today comes the
narrative of how a German rover
sailed for day and half behind it's
victim in the Atlantic while the Eng
lishman's crew rejoiced in being safe
ly beyond the limits of danger from
submarines and in the company of the
friendly stranger astern. Today there
are sailing the seas majestic German
vessels flying the flag of the United
States, and many others soon will be.
/ VrYI skYTa& ION ~
and what will be the feeling of the
first German submarine officer to fire
on one of these vessels so lately the
pride of his own country? And then
we have the new camoufage Of the
sea-new today, yet as old as the hills
the submarines lurking behind a
captured victim, or rugged as trawiers,
as innocent schooners, hosting signals
of distress, and Turing their victims by
every trick that the last of the priya-
teers employed to bring them along
side of their prey. Truly, it would
take the genius of Kipling to set it
all forth; to tell us of new McAndrews
driving their limping, half-sunk craft
to British beaches, of captains on their
bridges six days and nights; of one
who saw three ships go down off his
port bow on a single voyage, and yet
himself escaping through beholdlng
countless periscopes rising up out OF
the seas about him; Of days and
nights in open boats with suffering un-
heard-of in it's frequency; Of men tor
pedoed twice in a day, and, most ter
rible of ALL those dreadful tales OF the
violation of the finest and oldest law
of the sea-that every mariner shall
save the life that is in danger no mat
ter what the risk to his own. Liter
has the ocean witnessed what was
done to the crew of the Belgian Prince
made to stand upon the deck OF a
submarine while their boats were de-
stroyed, their life-belts flung into the
ocean, and then the craft they stood
upon submerged under them. Walk
ing the plank before the pirates pls-
tol was not SO -blooded or so mer-
CHESS. And as for the Luxburg dis
patch, it has been suspected that some
of the mysterious disappearance the
seas have recorded was due to fixed
policy, but surely never before in the
history of civilization has govern
ment given orders that merchant ships