For the crew of the submarine “der Tag” had come.  Without a thought of the innocents and neutrals aboard; reckless alike of immediate results and ultimate consequences, animated only by the deadly designs of a war-madness and a deliberate campaign of frightfulness, the firing signal was flashed from the German commander’s station and the fatal torpedo was launched against the unsuspecting and unprotected leviathan.  Traveling true to its mark, it tore its frightful way through the thin sheathing of the ship and, exploding on impact, pierced her vitals and sealed her doom. * * *

Barely a quarter of an hour elapsed before the giant vessel disappeared from sight, plunging bow foremost to the bottom in waters scarcely more than one-third of her length in depth, so that the shock of her bow striking the bottom of the sea was felt by the gallant captain on the bridge before he was torn loose from his ill-fated vessel.

And when the waters of the Atlantic closed over the hull of the Lusitania, within sight of the Irish coast on that fatal Friday, the lives of over eleven hundred non-combatant men, women and children, including more than a hundred American neutrals, were ruthlessly sacrificed to the Teuton god of war.

CHAPTER XXIV

A SUMMER OF SLAUGHTER

Submarine Activities—­Horrors in Serbia—­Bloody Battles East and West—­Italy Enters the War and Invades Austria—­Russians Pushed Back in Galicia.

The Lusitania was the twenty-ninth vessel to be sunk or damaged in the first week of May, 1915, in the war zone established by Germany about the British isles.  Most of these vessels were torpedoed by German submarines, although in some cases it has not been established whether the damage was inflicted by mines or underwater boats.

Sixteen of the twenty-nine vessels were British trawlers.  There were four British and one French merchantman in the list.  The others were vessels of neutral nations.

One of them was the American steamer Gulflight, torpedoed off Scilly islands on May 1, with the loss of three lives.  There were three Norwegian, two Swedish, and one Danish merchant vessel sunk.

BLOODY BATTLES EAST AND WEST.

The second week in May saw minor German successes on the western front, but these were immediately succeeded by determined efforts on the part of the Allies to retrieve lost ground.  The week of May 10 to 15 was marked by fierce assaults by the British and French upon the German positions in Flanders and northern France.  Thousands of lives were sacrificed on both sides.  At one point on the Yser where the Germans were beaten back, they left 2,000 dead on the field, but this was only a small percentage of the total losses during this series of engagements in May.  Around Ypres early in the month the Canadians lost heavily, but made a splendid record for gallantry and endurance in the face of odds.  The Germans began at this time the use of asphyxiating gases in their attacks.  The results were horrifying in the extreme, and as these inhuman assaults with gas were continued, the Allies prepared to adopt the use of similar noxious gases by way of retaliation.