BRITAIN'S "DER TAG"

Evening Star, Issue 16990, 12 March 1919, Page 2

BRITAIN'S "DER TAG"

STRANGEST NAVAL SURRENDER IN HISTORY.

DESCRIBED BY AN AMERICAN EVE-WITNESS.

"One may have been around this war, from Lapland to Bagdad, and from St. Nazaire to Moscow, as I hare been," writes the special commissioner of the ' New York World,' " and he may have seen the most impressive happenings: but the few moments following 9.45 on the morning of November 21, on the bridge of the Texas, will always remain the almost unforgetable." It was a day primarily of shattering human humiliation. Even among the British and American sailors there was little of the rejoicing and uplift of heart that might have accompanied a sea victory bought and paid for in the old way. " British and American seamen felt as if their own profession were being held up to ignominy, and they themselves were directly compromised." For the sea-fighters' logic ran in this fashion : There had never been in naval history a surrender like this. Spaniards. Fren-cli. Russians all came out, in similar circumstances of certain doom, and fought their ships to the. end. They might, have fought these ships: they might have scuttled them; at least a few brave souls might have put up a death or glory "show" in the waters of the North Sea. But no! "There's no use in it. It won't help us; so don't let us do it," was how the Germans argued.

certainly had an extraordinarily good view of the Grand Fleet. All around them, east and west, south, north. The part that Bolshevism among the German crews played in the surrender is touched upon in "these significant paragraphs, written after a visit to the surrendered ships: On board, owing to the presence of Bolshevism, the position was an extraordinary one. The German crews lounged about, smoking, eating, and spitting in front of their officers. They only obeyed British officers! "Order these men out of this cabin," said a British officer to a German captain, pointing to a group of Soviet sailors sporting their distinctive- whits arm-bands. "Order them:" sobbed the German at his desk, his head in his Hands. " Order them ! They'd take no notice. Fvo be-en a prisoner in my cabin all the way across —like all the other officers.

The. British officer took in the situation at a glance, faced the Soviet sailors, and in fierce, rasping German, ordered " Achtunff!" The Germans drew themselves to attention. " Umkehren!" The Germans turned about, facing the cabin exit. " Ein zwei, drei —vorwarts!" The Germans left the cabin. "They mutinied," explained the German officer, " because they heard your Grand Fleet was going to go in for Bolshevism, too." Bolshevism in the Grand Fleet! Bed flags on the British and American Dreadnoughts—l wonder how much tfte British j Admiralty Intelligence had to do with cirj dilating in Kiel and Cuxhaven those tales of British Fleet Bolshevism! One never knows. Saying good-bye to the Texas, I turned to Captain Blue. "Your ship's company, sir, would, I gather, have preferred a iifrht." "Well, I wouldn't. Thfs has been the most signal victory in naval history, and T'd much prefer to bring my boys homo to thc;r mothers and sweethearts than leave them at the bottom of the North Sen." If the German sailors imagined they were on a jby ride to these shores they are by now vastly disillusioned men. Three-quarters of them are to be sent back in German transports whence they came, the other quarter are going to spend a frown winter of internment up in the Orkneys at Scapa. the most desolate, uninhabited, icy region of the British Ts'es. Tn due course they, too. will return to Germany—but not in their present ships. And so ends Der Tag. I have come away from the Grand Fleet with one dominant impression: Beatty has set out to show tho Germans that they arc outside the pale. Every word and act of this drama has been devoid of the faintest suggestion of camaraderie as between victor and vanquished. It must be'a. very terrible awakening for the late enemy. For, should Beatty's doctrine be widely accepted, this world is going to be a perfectly rotten place for Germans to live in for generations ahead.

The British Fleet lay in the Firth of Forth very nearly under the great bridge that spans the waterway, and was joined by the sixth battle squadron of the United States Grand Fleet, comprising the New York. Texas, Arkansas, Wyoming, and Florida. Beattv's famous " operation order No. 22," showing that the "British commander was going to take no chances with tierman trickery, was received and commented on. A young American officer explained to the correspondent : "What we fear most is a stunt by a submarine, manned entirely by ,officers. They might easily get a couple of our ships before being done in themselves. Any battle squadron that should be attacked has orders to scatter. The rest of the line will continue as if nothing had happened. But if a solitary gun turret moves on the German surface ships. why_ the whole durned lot will be blown ont of the water. . . . The whole business makrs you want to sit up and rub yonr temples. First people I've ever met who couldn't hi even kicked into a fight!" Five minutes later we were watching ' A Princess of the Blnnd ' on the kinema and discussing movie stars. But this night of nights it was impossible to get away from the business in hand. " One of our patrol boats has picked them up 150 miles east of May Island. Quite behaving themselves," announces a newcomer from the bridge. And one's thoughts going wandering again. Here was the Kaiser's dream vanishing every minute into th? Scottish mists. "" A dying navy—a navy that had kept Europe from -deeping peacefully in its bed for nigh 20 years—a navy built for trouble complete from its intrisate IT boat microphones to its pretty women agents dotted around the capitals of Europe. And this was the end—steaming methodically roward us out of the in complete surrender. So dawned The Day—a bloodless Trafalgar—in which 47 battleships and battlecruisers, 35 cruisers and light cruisers, and 200 destrovers of the proud fleet, totalling perhaps ICO.QCO oersonne! and covering a stretch of water 40 miles long by six wide. received the capitulation of 15 German battleships and battle-cruisers, 6 light cruisers/and 49 destrovers—manned by perhaps 17,000 officers and men under the . nominal command of Admiral Yon Renter, i the real people in control being the lower ; deck. . \ The first ships left the Firth of Forth in ; the chill mist of 2 a.m., and for the next < four hours we passed out to sea- in one ' incessant stream, Beatty bringing up the rear, and weighing anchor on his flagship : at 6 a.m. Throughout those memorable hours the Commander-in-Chief kept the , most intimate control of his armada by ; wirefess. Not a ship of that, vast grey ;

company changed speed or dut-ehim wit lift tit Beatty'a permission. We sailed out line ahead' in a dozen e!u.-tors. e:v:h series of vessels separated perhaps by two nr three miles of water, and_ each ship by some five hundred yards. Trie speed was uniform—l2 knots an hour. In the raw, icy darkness of dawn conditions on the Texas were just as on anv other cruiser. In the ward room after breakfast officers were scanning 'Life' or the ' Cornhill' or Ihe 'Saturday Evening Post.' At i.zo a.m. came the order "General quarters. The decks were swept clear for action, the guns fully manned, with ammunition held readv for ramming home, the mystic antimine* device, the Paravanos. swung out in front of the great ship. U boat watch was mounted and the United States battle ensign, the Stars and Stripes, was hoisted on high for. the first time in this war. Every precaution, in fact, was ta.ien against treachery. _ Dav break revealed an icy mist ami choppv sea, ideal for U boats. The first to meet the Germans, far out to sea. were kinema men, the official programme beginning toward 9 a.m., when a screen ol deatrovers, then the leader of the pageant, the'light cruiser Cardiff, came up with; the eiiemv 40 miles east of May Island. ''Unknown number of unknown ships, steaming line ahead," she signalled, after a quaint naval custom, to the Queen Elizabeth. A few minutes later she began talking to the leading German ship, the Seydlitz: "Steam 12 knots an hour and follow me." ■'W r e can only do 10," replies the German. At the same moment Beatty wirelessed to the Admiralty the bare facts that the surrender was a* fait accompli. I was on the bridge ot the Texas nt the time the historic message came in. All this time we had not vet seen the enemy. According to r>lan. "the Cardiff then turned about and'headed back for harbor, leading in the Germans, while the Grand Fleet, likewise turning for home, divided into two giant columns six miles apart, the lane m the middle allowing for the Germans. Less than two miles separated the ships. In the gun turrets the men cursed and stamped their feet as they saw sail under their rm-e* the verv vessels they had chased and searched for and studied and nsver for a moment had out of their minds, night and dav. for four terrible yenrs of strain. " It'i a wonder no British gun went or by accident!" .In the turrets little Mark silhouettes of each typo of German war Ship had been painted up. We compared them with the originals before us. Officers -»nd men discussed technicalities intently. "See that mast camouflage on the Hindenburg? Foremast higher than the mainCnastT Gives the impression at a that she's going away when she's really coming toward you." " Much harder to pick up than we were tautdit. Low on the water Some of 'em look fine ships. Out of repair, though." Meanwhile flagship talked to flagsnin—they were 20 in all at sea, not counting th» Friedrich der Grosse. The German ship flew, for the last time, as Beatty subsequently decreed, the imperial ensign from the mainmast, white with a black cross. A white flag had been hoisted on tho flairship. The decks of the surrendering ships were almost deserted. For 10 miles and out of sight the grey line of Germany s fleet extended. Far behind again the German destroyers were being shepherded in groups. No ceremonial took place, nor were compliments oi any kind paid. I asked one or two of the crew of the Texaa what they thought about it. "Durned yellow of them to come out like this without a scrap." And they went on skipping and singimr rag tunes and chewing, these American boys, while the Hoch See Flotte sailed on, in'shame. a few cable lengths away. I suppose the Germans ■were peering" out of jßrt-holes at us just as fixedly as we were scanning them. They