Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward полностью

Following in the footsteps of the Rothschilds of centuries past, he quickly learned the profitable skills of war-time smuggling. Colin Simpson, author of The Lusitania, describes the operation: Throughout the period of America's neutrality, British servicemen in civilian clothes worked at Morgan's. This great banking combine rapidly established such a labyrinthine network of false shippers, bank accounts and all the paraphernalia of smuggling that, although they fooled the Germans, there were also some very serious occasions when they flummoxed the Admiralty and Cunard, not to speak of the unfortunate passengers on the liners which carried the contraband.2

1. Chernow, pp. 100-01.

2. Colin Simpson, The Lusitania (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1972), p. 50.

SINK THE LUSITANIA!

247

THE LUSITANIA

The Lusitania was a British passenger liner that sailed regularly between Liverpool and New York. She was owned by the Cunard C o m p a n y , which, as previously mentioned, was the only major ship line which was a competitor of the Morgan cartel. She left New York harbor on May 1, 1915, and was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland six days later. Of the 1,195 persons who lost their lives, 195 were Americans. It was this event, more than any other, that provided the advocates of war with a convincing platform for their views, and it became the turning point where Americans reluctantly began to accept, if not the necessity of war, at least its inevitability.

The fact that the Lusitania was a passenger ship is misleading.

Although she was built as a luxury liner, her construction specifications were drawn up by the British Admiralty so that she could be converted, if necessary, into a ship of war. Everything from the horsepower of her engines and the shape of her hull to the place-ment of ammunition storage areas were, in fact, military designs.

She was built specifically to carry twelve six-inch guns. The construction costs for these features were paid for by the British government. Even in times of peace, it was required that her crew include officers and seamen from the Royal Navy Reserve.

In May of 1913, she was brought back into dry dock and outfit-ted with extra armor, revolving gun rings on her decks, and shell racks in the hold for ammunition. Handling elevators to lift the shells to the guns were also installed. Twelve high-explosive cannons were delivered to the dry dock. All this is a matter of public record at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, but whether the guns were actually installed at that time is still hotly debated. There is no evidence that they were. In any event, on September 17, the Lusitania returned to sea ready for the rigors of war, and she was entered into the Admiralty fleet register, not as a passenger liner, but an armed auxiliary cruiser] From then on, she was listed in Jane's Fighting Ships as an auxiliary cruiser and in the British publication, The Naval Annual, as an armed merchant man.1

Part of the dry dock modification was to remove all the passenger accommodations in the lower deck to make room for more 1- Simpson, pp. 17-28, 70.

248 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

military cargo. Thus, the Lusitania became one of the most important carriers of war materials—including munitions—from the United States to England. On March 8, 1915, after several close calls with German submarines, the captain of the Lusitania turned in his resignation. He was willing to face the U-boats, he said, but he was no longer willing "to carry the responsibility of mixing passengers with munitions or contraband."

CHURCHILL SETS A TRAP

From England's point of view, the handwriting on the wall was clear. Unless the United States could be brought into the war as her ally, she soon would have to sue for peace. The challenge was how to push Americans off their position of stubborn neutrality. How that was accomplished is one of the more controversial aspects of the war. It is inconceivable to many that English leaders might have deliberately plotted the destruction of one of their own vessels with American citizens aboard as a means of drawing the United States into the war as an ally. Surely, any such idea is merely German propaganda. Robert Ballard, writing in National Geographic, says: