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Page 90
In this action we lost two seaplanes.
Now General Wood, white-faced, re-entered the cabin.
"Has Your Imperial Highness anything to say?" asked the American
commander.
Silent and rigid sat the heir to the German throne, his hands clenched,
his nostrils dilating, his lips hard shut.
"If not," continued General Wood, "I shall, with great regret, signal
Commodore Tower to sink that transport, which means, I fear, the loss of
many thousands of German lives." He pointed to an immense dark grey
vessel of about the tonnage of the _Vaterland_.
The Crown Prince neither answered nor stirred and again the American
Commander nodded to the assistant pilot. Once more the smoke ball fell,
the signal of attack was given and a third group of seaplanes sped
forward on their deadly mission. The men aboard this enormous transport
equalled in numbers the entire male population of fighting age in a city
like New Haven and of these not twenty were saved. And we lost two more
seaplanes.
We had now used eighteen of our hundred available torpedoes and had sunk
three ships of the enemy.
At this moment the sun's glory burst through a rift in the dull sky,
whereupon our fleet, welcoming the omen, threw forth the stars and
stripes from every flyer and sailed nearer the stricken fleet hungry for
further victories. I counted twenty transports and half a dozen
battleships. Proudly we circled over them, knowing that our power of
destruction meant safety and honour for America.
In the observation chamber General Wood watched, frowning while the
wireless crackled out another message from Commodore Tower. Where should
we strike next?
In the cabin sat the Crown Prince, his face like marble and the anguish
of death in his heart.
Suddenly, a little thing happened that turned Frederick William towards a
decision which practically ended the war. The little thing was a burst of
music from the _Koenig Albert_, steaming at the head of the nearer
battleship column two miles distant. On she came, shouldering great waves
from her bows while hundreds of blue-jackets lined her rails as if to
salute or defy the tragic fate hanging over them.
As General Wood appeared once more before his tortured prisoner, there
floated over the sea the strains of "Die Wacht Am Rhein," whereupon up on
his feet came the Crown Prince and, head bared, stood listening to this
great hymn of the Fatherland, while tears streamed down his face.
"I yield," he said in broken tones. "I cannot stand out any longer. I
will do as you wish, sir."
"My terms are unconditional surrender," said the American commander, "to
be followed by a truce for peace negotiations. Does Your Imperial
Highness agree to unconditional surrender?"
"Those are harsh terms. In our talk at Chicago Your Excellency only asked
that I prevent this expedition from sailing. I am ready to order the
expedition back to Germany."
General Wood shook his head.
"Conditions are different now. Your Imperial Highness refused my Chicago
suggestion and chose the issue of battle which has turned in our favour.
To the victors belong the spoils. These battleships are our prizes of
war. These German soldiers in the troopships are our prisoners."
"Impossible!" protested the Prince. "Do you think five hundred men in
aeroplanes can make prisoners of a hundred and fifty thousand in
battleships?"
"I do, sir," declared General Wood with grim finality. "There's a
perfectly safe prison--down below." He glanced into the green abyss above
which we were soaring. "I must ask Your Imperial Highness to decide
quickly. The Commodore is waiting."
Every schoolboy knows what happened then, how the Prince, in this crisis,
turned from grief to defiance, how he dared General Wood to do his worst,
how the American commander sank the _Koenig Albert_ and two more
transports in the next half hour with a loss of five seaplanes, and how,
finally, Frederick William, seeing that the entire German expedition
would be annihilated, surrendered absolutely and ran up the stars and
stripes above German dreadnoughts, transports and destroyers. For the
first time in history an insignificant air force had conquered a great
fleet. The Widding-Edison invention had made good.
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