“A friend of mine hurried into Scarborough by motor to rescue her sister, who was a pupil at one of the boarding schools. But it appeared that when the windows of the school began to crash the teachers hurried from prayers, ordered the pupils to gather hats and coats and sweet chocolate that happened to be on hand as a substitute for breakfast and made them run for a mile and a half, with shells exploding about them, through the streets to the nearest out-of-Scarborough railway station. My friend, after unbelievable difficulties, finally found her sister in a private house of a village near by, the girl in tears and pleading not to be sent to London; she had been told that her family’s house was probably destroyed, as it was actually on the sea-coast.” CHAPTER XXIV GERMANY’S FATAL WAR ZONE THE WARNING TO NEUTRAL NATIONS -- UNITED STATES REFUSED TO RECOGNIZE WAR ZONE -- A VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS -- AIMED AT NEUTRAL SHIPPING -- AN INHUMAN POLICY. The German imperial decree making all of the waters surrounding the British Isles a war zone and threatening to destroy ships and crews found therein after February 18, 1915, whether they were English or neutral, raised a storm of protest in the United States. The decree read: “The waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole English Channel, are declared a war zone from and after February 18, 1915. “Every enemy ship found in this war zone will be destroyed, even if it is impossible to avert dangers which threaten the crew and passengers. “Also, neutral ships in the war zone are in danger, as in consequence of the misuse of neutral flags ordered by the British government on January 31 and in view of the hazards of naval warfare it cannot always be avoided that attacks meant for enemy ships shall endanger neutral ships. “Shipping northward, around the Shetland Islands, in the eastern basin of the North Sea, and in a strip of at least thirty nautical miles in breadth along the Dutch coast, is endangered in the same way.” As plainly as words could state it, this was a warning that American and other neutral vessels might be sunk by German submarines and that Germany would repudiate responsibility for such action. The American press denounced the declaration and its intent, and the United States government made public a note to Germany, containing the following paragraph: UNITED STATES REFUSED TO RECOGNIZE WAR ZONE “If the commanders of German vessels of war should act upon the presumption that the flag of the United States was not being used in good faith and should destroy on the high seas an American vessel, or the lives of American citizens, it would be difficult for the government of the United States to view the act in any other light than as an indefensible violation of neutral rights which it would be very hard indeed to reconcile with the friendly relations now happily subsisting between the two governments.”