The achievements of the _Deutschland_, a peaceful commercial submarine which inaugurated an undersea traffic between the United States and Germany, provided an interesting diversion from the tension created by the depredations of her armed sisters. After safely crossing the Atlantic and finding a safe berth in an American port in the summer of 1916, she showed such hesitation in setting out on the return trip that doubts were general as to whether the dangers of capture by alert Allied cruisers were not too great to be risked. The attempt nevertheless was finally made on August 2, 1916, when she darted under water after passing out of the three-mile limit at the Virginia Capes and was successful. She arrived at Bremen on August 23, 1916, with a cargo of rubber and metal, and apparently found no difficulty in eluding the foes supposedly in wait for her on the high seas. When she left her Baltimore berth, so the story went, eight British warships awaited her, attended by numerous fishing craft hired to spread nets to entangle her. Near the English coast dense fogs aided by obscuring the vision of her foes' naval lookouts, and in rounding Scotland to reach the North Sea she had to evade a long line of warships and innumerable auxiliary craft extended far north. Germany found occasion for exultation in her return without mishap. The blockade was broken. Berlin was bedecked with flags and the whole country celebrated the event as though Marshal von Hindenburg had won another victory. The _Deutschland_ again left Bremen on October 10, 1916, and found her way into New London, Conn., on November 1, 1916, leaving for Germany three weeks later with a rubber and metal cargo said to be worth $2,000,000 and a number of mail pouches. She was reported to have arrived safely off the mouth of the Weser on December 10, 1916. A repetition of the _Deutschland's_ exploits was looked for from her sister undersea craft, the _Bremen_, about whose movements the widest speculation was centered. She was reported to have left Germany for the United States on September 1, 1916, but did not appear, nor was any trace of her seen en route. She never arrived, and became a mystery of the sea. A story circulated that she had been captured by a British patrol boat in the Straits of Dover and thirty-three of her crew of thirty-five made prisoners, the remaining two having been killed when the boat was caught in a steel net. The British admiralty preserved its customary silence as to the truth of this report. Her German owners finally acknowledged their belief that she had been lost probably through an accident to her machinery. At any rate a life preserver bearing the name _Bremen_ was picked up off the Maine coast about the end of September, 1916.