NAZIS TRUE TO TYPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 June 1940, Page 2

NAZIS TRUE TO TYPE

INCIDENTS OF LAST WAR. On the night of August 18, 1915. H.M. Submarine E. 13, Lieutenant-Comman-der G. Layton, ran ashore on the coast of Denmark, between Malmo and Copenhagen, says “The Times.” The Danish authorities at once informed the captain that unless he could get his ship off and leave Danish waters within twenty-four hours she and her crew would be interned. Danish tor-pedo-boats remained with her on guard. The rest of the story is best told in the words of "Official History":—

Two German destroyers were seen approaching from the southward. The leading one, when within half a mile, hoisted a commercial flag signal; but, before there was time to read it, she fired a torpedo. It hit the bottom close to E. 13 and did no harm, but simultaneously she opened fire with all her guns at 300 yards. The submarine was in flames in a moment, and the men were warned to take to the water and swim for the shore or the Danish boats. As they did so the Germans opened fire on them with shrapnel and machine-guns, and kept it up remorselessly till one of the Danish boats steamed in between the Germans and the swimmers.

Both the destroyers then made off, while the Danes did all they could to rescue; but in spite of their efforts 15 petty officers and men were lost by shrapnel and drowning. The outrage was perpetrated in cold blood, by men well under control of their officers, upon a helpless wreck on a neutral shore. BRITISH “BRUTALITY” In view of the recent German outcry against alleged British "brutality” in Josing Fior.d and their sanctimonious horror at British violation of the sanctity of neutral waters, it is pertinent to recall how little they were restrained by such considerations when it was a British ship that was the target of German attack, says “The Times.” In the case of the Altmark, the conduct of the British boarding party gave no justification for any of the German accusations or complaints. The “Cossacks” were not attacking the Altmark or her crew; they were bent merely on liberating their countrymen, and there would have been no firing at all if the Germans had not started it. The prisoners freed, the Cossack took no further action against the Altmark, but left her unharmed. On the other hand, all the German accusations and complaints, wild as they were, might justly have been applied to the German action at Malmo twenty-five years ago.

Germans evidently breed true to type. Neutral seamen of today will recognise, in the foregoing excerpt from history, a true description of how the German still acts at sea, when he has got a helpless boat or a swimmer on which to turn his machine-gun.