The hospital ship Llandovery Castle,' homeward bound from Canada, was
torpedoed without warning and sunk by a German submarine at half-past ten in the evening of Thursday week, when she was out in the Atlantic one hundred and sixteen miles west of the Fastnet. She carried a crew of one hundred and sixty-four, eighty members of the Canadian Medical Corps, and fourteen. women nurses. The captain, with seventeen of his officers And men, and six men of the Medical Corps, in one boat, were picked up by a destroyer last Saturday morning. The remainder of the ship's company, including the women, got away in boats, but have not been seen again. There is reason to believe that the submarine, which dashed about among the wreckage and almost rammed the captain's boat, sank the other boats by ramming or by gunfire in an endeavour to efface all traces of the crime. The submarine commander, before this, took the captain on board and tried to excuse his action by asserting that the hospital ship carried eight American. airmen. This was, of course, untrue. Afterwards he said that the explosion as the ship sank—due to the bursting of the boilers—proved that she carried munitions. Mr. Boner Law's comment on this deliberate act of murder was to the point. " A wild beast is at large. There is no use arguing or reasoning with it. There is only one thing to do—namely to destroy it." It is to be hoped that hospital ships will no longer be sent to sea without an escort. The Germans have ceased to respect the Red Cross either at sea or on land.
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