to the other
belligerents.

PART VI--THE UNITED STATES AND THE BELLIGERENTS

CHAPTER L

THE OLD MENACE

A welcome period of quiet in the submarine controversy with Germany
followed the settlement of the _Sussex_ case recorded in the previous
volume. But neither the Administration nor the country was deluded
into resting in any false security. The dragon was not throttled; it
merely slumbered by the application of a diplomatic opiate. While the
war lasted the menace of its awaking and jeopardizing German peace
with the United States was always present.

The achievements of the _Deutschland_, a peaceful commercial submarine
which inaugurated an undersea traffic between the United States and
Germany, provided an interesting diversion from the tension created by
the depredations of her armed sisters. After safely crossing the
Atlantic and finding a safe berth in an American port in the summer of
1916, she showed such hesitation in setting out on the return trip
that doubts were general as to whether the dangers of capture by alert
Allied cruisers were not too great to be risked. The attempt
nevertheless was finally made on August 2, 1916, when she darted under
water after passing out of the three-mile limit at the Virginia Capes
and was successful. She arrived at Bremen on August 23, 1916, with a
cargo of rubber and metal, and apparently found no difficulty in
eluding the foes supposedly in wait for her on the high seas. When she
left her Baltimore berth, so the story went, eight British warships
awaited her, attended by numerous fishing craft hired to spread nets
to entangle her. Near the English coast dense fogs aided by obscuring
the vision of her foes' naval lookouts, and in rounding Scotland to
reach the North Sea she had to evade a long line of warships and
innumerable auxiliary craft extended far north.

Germany found occasion for exultation in her return without mishap.
The blockade was broken. Berlin was bedecked with flags and the whole
country celebrated the event as though Marshal von Hindenburg had won
another victory. The _Deutschland_ again left Bremen on October 10,
1916, and found her way into New London, Conn., on November 1, 1916,
leaving for Germany three weeks later with a rubber and metal cargo
said to be worth $2,000,000 and a number of mail pouches. She was
reported to have arrived safely off the mouth of the Weser on December
10, 1916.

A repetition of the _Deutschland's_ ex