And for all these three
things to contradict one another in the same life is unequaled in
the legends of any people."
The Baronet went on in a deep level voice.
"There was a vicious vitality behind the whole desperate
business. Every visible impression of the thing was wrong.
Every conception of it held today by the English people is wrong!
"The German submarine didn't overhaul the hospital transport in
the Channel by accident. The Hun commander didn't fail to sink
the transport out of any humane motives. He didn't fail to shoot
St. Alban because he was moved by the heroism of the man. It was
all grim calculation!
"He thought it was safe to let St. Alban go ahead. And he would
have been right if St. Alban had been the great egotist that he
was.
"The commander of that submarine was Plutonburg of Prussia. He
was the right-hand man of old Von Tirpitz. He was the one man in
the German navy who never ceased to urge its Admiralty to sink
everything. He loathed every fiber of the English people. We
had all sorts of testimony to that. The trawlers and freightboat
captains brought it in. He staged his piracies to a theatrical
frightfulness.
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