Killing Time, The - German U-Boats 1914-1918

The explosion which followed Commander Schweiger's curt order to fire on the afternoon of 7 May 1915 far exceeded even his most fervid imaginings. For the torpedo which streaked away from the U 20 in response to his command sent to the bottom of the sea the liner Lusitania and with her 1,195 innocent men, women, and children, many of them citizens of neutral America. The howl of indignation which followed this cold-blooded atrocity resounded throughout the world.

In his earlier book, A Damned Un-English Weapon, Edwyn Gray told the story of the British submarine service in the First World War. Now he looks at the German side of the picture and in the process raises some very topical moral issues. When two countries are at war is it to be total or limited war and if the latter, who is to define the limits? The problem was to bedevil the German submarine service throughout the First World War as the Kaiser and his Admirals weighed and reweighed the effects of the British blockade against the value of American neutrality and no incident, except perhaps the invasion of Belgium, more clearly defines the problem than the sinking of the Lusitania.

Edwyn Gray tells the thrilling story of these extraordinarily brave submariners, some, like Schweiger, utterly ruthless, others the very paragon of chivalry. The reader must make his own judgement as to the ethics of their behavior in a moral situation remarkably similar to that facing Americans in Vietnam today.