"We saw the other boats showing their lights and drifting further and further away from us. We had no lights. And then, towards morning, we saw the rescuing ship come up into the cluster of other life-boats that had drifted so far away from us. One by one we saw their lights disappear as they were taken on board. "We shouted and screamed and shrieked at the tops of our voices, but could not attract the attention of any of the other boats or the rescuing ship, and soon we saw its lights blink out. We were left there in the darkness with the wind howling and the sea rolling higher every minute. "The women got weaker and weaker. Maybe they had been dead for some time. I don't know, but a wave came and washed both Mrs. Hoy and her daughter out of the boat. There were life-belts around their bodies and they drifted away with their arms locked about one another." With such stories ringing in our ears, with exchanges of experiences pathetic and humorous, we steamed into Queenstown harbour shortly after ten o'clock that night. We had been attacked at a point two hundred miles off the Irish coast and of our passengers and crew, thirteen had been lost. As I stepped ashore, a Britisher, a fellow-passenger aboard the _Laconia_, who knew me as an American, stepped up to me. During the voyage we had had many conversations concerning the possibility of America entering the war. Now he slapped me on the back with this question, "Well, old Casus Belli," he said, "is this your blooming overt act?" I did not answer him, but thirty minutes afterward I was pounding out on a typewriter the introduction to a four thousand word newspaper article which I cabled that night and which put the question up to the American public for an answer. Five weeks later the United States entered the war. CHAPTER II PERSHING'S ARRIVAL IN EUROPE Lean, clean, keen--that's the way they looked--that first trim little band of American fighting men who made their historic landing on the shores of England, June 8th, 1917. I went down from London to meet them at the port of arrival. In my despatches of that date, I, nor none of the other correspondents, was permitted to mention the name of the port. This was supposed to be the secret that was to be religiously kept and the British censor was on the job religiously. The name of the port was excluded from all American despatches but the British censor saw no reason to withhold transmission of the following sentence--"Pershing landed to-day at an English port and was given a hearty welcome by the Mayor of Liverpool." So I am presuming at this late date of writing that it would serve no further purpose to refrain from announcing flatly that General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces overseas, and his staff, landed on the date above mentioned, at Liverpool, England.