WHAT WILL THE HORRORS AND ATROCITIES OF THE GREAT WAR LEAD TO? 314 [Illustration: THE GIANT STEAMSHIP “LUSITANIA” TORPEDOED BY THE GERMANS OFF THE COAST OF IRELAND. The English Cunarder, “Lusitania,” one of the largest and fastest passenger vessels in the world, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in a few minutes with the loss of two-thirds of her passengers and crew, among whom were more than one hundred American citizens. The vessel was entirely unarmed and a noncombatant. (_Copyright by Underwood and Underwood._)] [Illustration: THE GERMAN SUBMARINE AND HOW IT WORKS. Upper left picture shows a section at center of the vessel. Upper right view shows the submarine at the surface with two torpedo tubes visible at the stern. The large picture illustrates how this monster attacks a vessel like the Lusitania by launching a torpedo beneath the water while securing its observation through the periscope, just above the waves.] CHAPTER I THE SUPREME CRIME AGAINST CIVILIZATION: THE TRAGIC DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA AN UNPRECEDENTED CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY -- THE LUSITANIA: BUILT FOR SAFETY -- GERMANY’S ANNOUNCED INTENTION TO SINK THE VESSEL -- LINER’S SPEED INCREASED AS DANGER NEARED -- SUBMARINE’S PERISCOPE DIPS UNDER SURFACE -- PASSENGERS OVERCOME BY POISONOUS FUMES -- BOAT CAPSIZES WITH WOMEN AND CHILDREN -- HUNDREDS JUMP INTO THE SEA -- THE LUSITANIA GOES TO HER DOOM -- INTERVIEW WITH CAPTAIN TURNER. No thinking man--whether he believes or disbelieves in war--expects to have war without the horrors and atrocities which accompany it. That “war is hell” is as true now as when General Sherman so pronounced it. It seems, indeed, to be truer today. And yet we have always thought--perhaps because we hoped--that there was a limit at which even war, with all its lust of blood, with all its passion of hatred, with all its devilish zest for efficiency in the destruction of human life, would stop. Now we know that there is no limit at which the makers of war, in their frenzy to pile horror on horror, and atrocity on atrocity, will stop. We have seen a nation despoiled and raped because it resisted an invader, and we said that was war. But now out of the sun-lit waves has come a venomous instrument of destruction, and without warning, without respite for escape, has sent headlong to the bottom of the everlasting sea more than a thousand unarmed, unresisting, peace-bent men, women and children--even babes in arms. So the Lusitania was sunk. It may be war, but it is something incalculably more sobering than merely that. It is the difference between assassination and massacre. It is war’s supreme crime against civilization. AN UNPRECEDENTED CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY