(Reprinted by permission of the author and of the Boston Transcript )      ...

6, New Oxford Street, London, W. C. , May 12, 1915 Our voyage from New York had been uneventful and in fact it was quite a “Lauriat Crossing”; fine weather, smooth sea, and after the first few hours of Sunday (May 2) there had been no fog up to Friday morning (May 7), when it came in for a short time. The speed of the boat had not been what I had expected it would be, for after the first full run of 24 hours, in which we covered 501 miles, the run dropped each day to well below the 500 mark, and

The foregoing is the crude Narrative practically verbatim as I sent it home to my people. My first thought was to rewrite it and embody it in the following, but I prefer to let it stand as I gave it to the typist in our London office, reciting the tale to her as the events, still vivid in my mind, passed mentally before me. In this second part I have tried to round out the Narrative by adding details which would answer questions arising from reading Part One.   On boarding the Lusitania on May 1

    One who has read this Narrative cannot help but being interested in the following account, taken from the “Frankfurter Zeitung” of Sunday, May 9, 1915, issued two days after the tragedy. I saw several German papers of about that date, but I selected this as a representative one. This article is much saner than others I saw, and I feel gives a fairer idea of what the German press published at that time. I print the German text, that those who can read it may judge for themselves, and on the o

Sonntag, 9 Mai 1915. Was haben wir getan? Ein deutsches Kriegsschiff hat an der Küste Irlands die “Lusitania” vernichtet. Ein gewaltiger Wert, der gegen uns auf der Wagschale des Feindes lag, ist zerstört. Viele Millionen an materiellem Gut sind vernichtet, und ein unermessbarer Besitz an moralischer Kraft und an Gefühlswert eines Volkes, dessen ganzes Leben auf das Blühen seiner Schiffahrt und seines Handels eingestellt ist, sank mit dem stolzen Schiff zu Grunde. Dieses Seevolk ist in seinem He

    I wrote parts I and II before reading a word of the Official Inquiry held by Lord Mersey and his Assessors, or even the meagre newspaper accounts of the investigation that were published in the London papers while I was there. I wished to write with an open mind and did not want to know a word of the Court’s Findings until I had finished mine. I held my own little Court of Inquiry, with my own eyes and brain offering the evidence. My findings as written in the first two parts are as diametri