r I am anxious about now is this. Atmospheric
pressure is increasing, and I feel as if my tympanum were
breaking. At 12.30 o'clock respiration is extraordinarily
difficult. I am breathing gasoline. I am intoxicated with
gasoline. It is 12.40 o'clock.

Could there be a more touching record of the way in which a brave
man met death?

* * * * *

More interest in submarine warfare than ever before was aroused in
this country when the German war submarine U-53 unexpectedly made
its appearance in the harbour of Newport, R. I., during the
afternoon of October 7, 1916. About three hours afterwards, without
having taken on any supplies, and after explaining her presence by
the desire of delivering a letter addressed to Count von Bernstorff,
then German Ambassador at Washington, the U-53 left as suddenly and
mysteriously as she had appeared.

This was the first appearance of a foreign war submarine in an
American port. It was claimed that the U-53 had made the trip from
Wilhelmshaven in seventeen days. She was 213 feet long, equipped
with two guns, four torpedo tubes, and an exceptionally strong
wireless outfit. Besides her commander, Captain Rose, she was manned
by three officers and thirty-three men.

Early the next morning, October 8, it became evident what had
brought the U-53 to this side of the Atlantic. At the break of day,
she made her re-appearance southeast of Nantucket. The American
steamer _Kansan_ of the American Hawaiian Company bound from New
York by way of Boston to Genoa was stopped by her, but, after
proving her nationality and neutral ownership was allowed to
proceed. Five other steamships, three of them British, one Dutch,
and one Norwegian were less fortunate. The British freighter
_Strathend_, of 4321 tons was the first victim. Her crew were taken
aboard the Nantucket shoals light-ship. Two other British
freighters, _West Point_ and _Stephano_, followed in short order to
the bottom of the ocean. The crews of both were saved by United
States torpedo boat destroyers who had come from Newport as soon as
news of the U-53's activities had been received there. This was also
the case with the crews of the Dutch _Bloomersdijk_ and the
Norwegian tanker, _Christian Knudsen_.

Not often in recent years has there been put on American naval
officers quite so disagreeable a restraint as duty enforced upon the
commanders of the destroyers who watched the destructi