“I have just come out of Germany and perhaps the predominating impression I bring with me is Germany’s hatred of America. Germany feels that war with America is only a matter of time. Everywhere I went I found the same sentiment, and the furthest distance away I found the war put was ten years. It was said to me: ‘We must settle with England first, but then will come America’s turn. If we don’t make war on you ourselves we will get Japan into a war with you, and then we will supply arms and munitions to Japan.’” At this point, I remember, I had turned to order an orange liqueur, when the crash came. It was terrific. Every window in the hotel was shattered, and some scores of labourers working near the Gatun Locks were killed instantly. Six hundred tons of dynamite, secreted in the hold of a German merchantman, had been exploded as the vessel passed through the locks, and ten thousand tons of Portland cement had sunk in the tangled iron wreck, to form a huge blockading mass of solid rock on the floor of the narrow passage. Needless to say, every man on the German ship thus sacrificed died at his post. The Admiral stared in dismay when the news was brought to him. “Germany!” he muttered. “And our fleet is in the Pacific!” “Does it mean war?” I asked. “Yes, of course. Unquestionably it means war. We have been misled. We were thinking of one enemy, and we have been struck by another. We thought we could send our fleet through the Canal and get it back easily; but--now we cannot get it back for at least two months!” CHAPTER II AMERICAN AEROPLANES AND SUBMARINES BATTLE DESPERATELY AGAINST THE GERMAN FLEET A week later--or, to be exact, on May 4, 1921--I arrived in New York, following instructions from my paper, and found the city in a state of indescribable confusion and alarm. War had been declared by Germany against the United States on the day that the Canal was wrecked, and German transports, loaded with troops and convoyed by a fleet of battleships, were known to be on the high seas, headed for American shores. As the Atlantic fleet had been cut off in the Pacific by that desperate piece of Panama strategy (the Canal would be impassable for months), it was evident that those ships could be of no service for at least eight weeks, the time necessary to make the trip through the Straits of Magellan; and meanwhile the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Florida was practically unguarded. No wonder the newspapers shrieked despairingly and bitterly upbraided Congress for neglecting to provide the country with adequate naval defences. Theodore Roosevelt came out with a signed statement: “Four years ago I warned this country that the United States must have two great fleets--one for the Atlantic, one for the Pacific.”