A SECRET OF THE WAR.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 11931, 29 October 1919, Page 6

A SECRET OF THE WAR.

SUBMARINE BREMEN’S FATE

CREW ISOLATED FOR 8 YEARS,

Light is thrown upon a three-year-old war mystery by the following telegram from Berlin : “The Yossische learns from a usually well-informed source that the entire crew of the German mercantile submarine ;Bremen, which disappeared three years ago, has arrived in The paper says that Great Britain kept them prisoners for three years, and shut them off completely from the outside world, in order to keep the whereabouts of the vessel secret. ’ ’ i If this German story' is true, the ingenious way in which the British authorities appear to have avoided disclosing the capture of tho Bremen’s crew must be noted. if they had been the crrew of a combatant submarine, we were bound to disclose their capture within a stated period under tho rules of the Geneva Convention. But they were not combatants; the Bremen was a mercantilo liner, and those rules did not apply. The Germans interned all the merchant sailors they could get hold of, and the British, no doubt, acted on tho same principle in regard to the simple German sailormen on tho Bremen. The U-boat liner Bremen attempted to make Jthe voyage to America after her sister ship the Deutschland had crossed safely. The Bremen put to sea in July, 1916, and from that day to this notniug further was heard of her, and he-’ fate was a mystery. A fortnight after she had sailed uneasiness regarding her fate began to ho expressed in Germany. It was feared that she had been trapped or met with Three weeks late* 1 the Berne Tageblatt said it was probable tho vessel had been lost as a result of an accident to the machinery. At the end of September it was falsely reported in Germany that the Bremen had arrived safely in America, but this was promptly denied in a telegram from New York, which said: “It is understood here that the first Bremen was captured or destroyed on your side of the Atlantic, and that the second Bremen, according to the German agents here is two weeks overdue. On October 2nd, 1916, it was reported that a lifeboatjjmarked “Bremen,” and below the words Schutzmarke Y., Eppinghoven, Wilhelmshaven, ” had been found on the shore at Cape Elizabeth, near Portland, Maine. On October 16th the Pommersche Tagesport was suspended tor reporting that the vessel had been destroyed, but on October 19th a telegram from Washington stated that the German Diplomatic Body there “virtually admitted” its loss. At the beginning of November Captain Konig, of the Deutschland, who had again reached America, put the loss of the Bremen beyond doubt in an interview in New York.