A final revocation of its provisions by both sides did not put an end to the military operations of the Central Powers in Russia, nor did the Russians cease to make feeble and sporadic attempts at resistance. Germany was forced to keep large bodies of troops along the Russian front, but formally Russia’s part in the war had come to an end. CHAPTER VII GERMANY’S OBJECT LESSON TO THE UNITED STATES During the first two years of the war many Americans, especially those in the West, observed the great events which were happening with great interest, no doubt, but with a feeling of detachment. The war was a long way off. The Atlantic Ocean separated Europe from America, and it seemed almost absurd to think that the Great War could ever affect us. In the year 1916, however, two events happened which seemed to bring the war to our door. The first was the arrival at Baltimore, on July 9th, of the Deutschland, a German submarine of great size, built entirely for commercial purposes, and the second was the appearance, on the 7th of October, of a German war submarine in the harbor at Newport, Rhode Island, and its exploit on the following day when it sunk a number of British and neutral vessels just outside the three-mile line on the Atlantic coast. [Illustration: _© G. V. Buck, Washington, D. C._ THE CARGO SUBMARINE “DEUTSCHLAND” Shortly before the United States entered the war, Germany sent over a merchant submarine with a cargo of dye stuffs and drugs, an implied threat which was later realized in the U-boat attacks on the American coast.] The performances of these two vessels were equally suggestive, but the popular feeling with regard to what they had done was very divergent. The voyage of the Deutschland roused the widest admiration but the action of the U-53 stirred up the deepest indignation. Yet the voyages of each showed with equal clearness that, however much America might consider herself separated from the Great War, the new scientific invention, the submarine, had annihilated space, and America, too, was now but a neighbor of the nations at war. The voyage of the Deutschland was a romance in itself. It was commanded by Captain Paul Koenig, a German officer of the old school. He had been captain of the Schleswig of the North German Lloyd, and of other big liners. When the power of the British fleet drove German commerce from the seas, he had found himself without a job, and, as he phrased it, “was drifting about the country like a derelict.” One day, in September, 1915, he was asked to meet Herr Alfred Lohmann, an agent of the North German Lloyd Line, and surprised by an offer to navigate a submarine cargo ship from Germany to America. Captain Koenig, who seems to have been in every way an admirable personage, at once consented. He has told us the story of his trip in his interesting book called “The Voyage of the Deutschland.”