"1683-1920". Frederick Franklin Schrader
Nor was this all that Bancroft accomplished. The Northwestern boundary, having been settled by treaty, Bancroft, while United States Minister in Great Britain, had perceived an incipient effort of a great English interest to encroach on the territory which had been acknowledged by the treaty to be a part of the United States.
By and by the importunities of interested persons in England, who possessed a great party influence, began to make themselves heard, and the British government by degrees supported the attempt to raise a question respecting the true line of the boundary of the Northwest and finally formulated a perverse claim of their own, with a view of obtaining what they wanted as a compromise.
The American administration had of course changed, and the President and his cabinet, having had no part in the negotiations, agreed to refer the question to an arbiter. They made the mistake of consenting that the arbiter, if there was uncertainty as to the true boundary line, might himself establish a boundary of compromise. The person to whom the settlement of the dispute was to be referred was the president of the Swiss Republic.
The American Secretary of State chanced to die while the method of arrangement was still inchoate. Bancroft at once wrote to the new Secretary, urging him not to accept a proposal of compromise, because that would seem to admit an uncertainty as to the American title, and to sanction and even invite a decision of the arbiter in favor of a compromise, and would open the way for England, under an appearance of concession, to obtain all that she needed.
Being at the time minister to the court of Prussia, he advised the government to insist on the American claim in full, not to listen to a proposal of compromise, but to let each party formulate its claim, and to call on the arbiter to decide which was right, and urged it to select for that arbiter the Emperor of Germany.
The Department of State at once consented that the arbiter should be the Emperor of Germany, and left the whole matter of carrying out the American argument to Bancroft. The conduct of the question, the first presentation of the case, as well as the reply to the British, were every word by him, and the decision of the Emperor was unreservedly in favor of the United States. (Prof. William M. Sloane, in “The Century,” for January, 1887.)
Bancroft has been pronounced one of the greatest historians of the past century; he was one of the most distinguished statesmen of his time, and as former minister to London and a student at Göttingen and minister to Germany, he was qualified as no other famous American to form an appraisal of German, French and English policies, especially in regard to ourselves. We may be pardoned, therefore, in taking more than a cursory interest in some expressions which occur in a letter of Bancroft’s, addressed to Hamilton Fish, then Secretary of State, and written at Berlin during the Franco-Prussian war.
In summing up his reasons for preferring Germany over England and France, he says: “If we need the solid, trusty good will of any government in Europe, we can have it best with Germany; because German institutions and ours most resemble each other; and because so many millions of Germans have become our countrymen. This war will leave Germany the most powerful State in Europe, and the most free; its friendship is therefore most important to us, and has its foundation in history and in nature.” (“Life and Letters of George Bancroft,” by M. A. De Wolfe Howe, II, 245.)
Baralong.
Baralong.—An English pirate ship commanded by Capt. William McBride, which sailed under the American flag, with masked batteries, and sank a German submarine which had been deceived by the Stars and Stripes and the American colors painted on both sides of her hull. On August 19, 1915, the “Nicosian,” an English ship loaded with American horses and mules and with a number of American mule tenders aboard, was halted by a German submarine about 70 miles off Queenstown. The men took to the boats and the U-boat was about to sink the “Nicosian” when a ship flying the American flag came alongside. Without suspecting anything, the submarine allowed the ship to approach, when suddenly the American flag was lowered and the English ensign hoisted, and a destructive fire was opened on the U. The latter soon sank. Half a dozen German sailors swam alongside of the “Nicosian” and clambered on deck, concealing themselves in the holds and engine rooms as the English followed them aboard. They were dragged out and murdered in cold blood. The German captain swam toward the “Baralong” and held up his hand in token of surrender but while in the water was first shot in the mouth and then repeatedly hit by bullets aimed at him by the English, and killed without compunction. The story of the “Baralong” is one of the most brutal in the history of the seas and illuminates the inhuman character of English warfare toward a weaker foe in the most glaring light. The history of the tragedy first came to light through a letter written by Dr. Charles B. Banks, the veterinary surgeon aboard the “Nicosian,” to relatives in Lowell, Mass., giving some of the gruesome details as follows: “A number of German sailors were swimming in the water. Some swam to our abandoned ship and climbed up to the deck. Shots from the patrol boat (the ‘Baralong’) swept several from the ropes. We were taken aboard the patrol boat, and then the boat steamed slowly around our ship while the marines shot and killed all the Germans in the water. As we had left three carbines and cartridges aboard the ‘Nicosian,’ we had reason to believe the Germans had found them. So marines went on our ship and killed seven men there. We were then towed to port.” The infamous wretch who performed this murder, Capt. McBride, later wrote a letter to the captain of the “Nicosian,” warning him not to speak of the affair, and requesting that the Americans aboard especially be cautioned to keep the matter from the public. But one of the American mule tenders made an affidavit to the truth at Liverpool and forwarded it to the American Embassy in London and three others made affidavit to the same facts on their return to New Orleans. The affidavits were sent to the State Department, but neither President Wilson nor Secretary Lansing complied with the request of the German Ambassador to demand an inquiry into the misuse of the American flag, and the cold-blooded murder of German sailors. Dr. Bank’s letter was published in the N. Y. “Times” of September 7, 1915, but that paper was among the most active in preventing an investigation.
Berliner, Emile.
Berliner, Emile.—One of the most important inventors in the United States, distinguished for his improvements of the telephone; born at Hanover, Germany, May 20, 1851; came to the United States in 1870. Invented the microphone and was first to use an induction coil in connection with the telephone transmitters; patentee of other valuable inventions in telephony. Invented the Gramophone, known also as the Victor Talking Machine, for which he was awarded John Scott Medal and Elliott Crosson Gold Medal by Franklin Inst. First to make and use in aeronautical experiments light weight revolving cylinder internal combustion motor, now extensively used on aeroplanes.
The Boers—England’s Record of Infamy.
The Boers—England’s Record of Infamy.—The success in causing the surrender of the Boers by exterminating their women and children by slow starvation and disease is the incentive which prompted the British nation to violate international law by stopping the shipment of non-contraband goods, Red Cross supplies and milk for babies, to Germany and contiguous countries. The number of deaths (in the Boer concentration camps) during the month of September, 1901, was 1,964 children and 328 women. There were then 54,326 children and 38,022 women under Kitchener’s tender care. The “Daily News” on November 9, 1901, said: “The truth is that the death rate in the camps is incomparably worse than anything Africa or Asia can show. There is nothing to match it even in the mortality figures of the Indian famines, where cholera and other epidemics have to be contended with.” “Reynold’s Newspaper” (London) of October 20, 1901, spoke of “the women and children perishing like flies from confinement, fever,