Word: athenia
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...continued insistence of official Berlin that the torpedo must have been British, fired to arouse U. S. indignation. Most charitable theory entertained by neutrals about "Atrocity No. 1" of World War II was that, while Germany's U-boats may have had orders to prey like gentlemen, the Athenia's destroyer was a Nazi hothead who could not control his trigger finger. Suspicion that a sharp order to other U-boat captains may have been issued by Berlin was aroused by the contrasting conduct of a captain who, last week, sank the British sugar freighter Olivegrove, 200 miles...
...censor to the U. S. before the War Office's own propaganda agency (under oldtime Hackwriter Ian Hay) got out the third or "official version" (see p. 15). Foreign correspondents were driven into a frenzy by the slow and clumsy handling of news of the torpedoing of the Athenia; Britain's feat-of-the-week, the bombings of German naval bases, was announced as laconically as the results of target practice; in line with British belief that false hopes should not be raised, French troop movements on the Western Front were reported with so little detail they sounded...
Some papers, like the Nashville Tennesseean, went shouting out into the street at the sinking of the Athenia: "German frightfulness . . . again roams the seas. . . . This nation wants no war, but there is no question where its sentiments lie." Others, like the Baltimore Evening Sun, remained stiffly in the parlor: "Neutral, as a nation, we are. And neutral we must be. A nation cannot afford the luxury of living-room emotions...
...London office of the New York Times one day last week a little bearded man stood glaring at a cablegram. Twenty hours earlier the British liner Athenia, with 300-odd American war refugees aboard, had been torpedoed off the coast of Scotland. In the dead of night, as the news reached London, correspondents, scenting the biggest German "atrocity" story since the sinking of the Lusitania, had descended on cable companies, roused up nodding operators to file their dispatches. It was now late afternoon, and the message in Times Correspondent Frederick T. Birchall's hand (from his home office) read...
...deadline, along with other U. S. correspondents in London. Since the day war began, censors have been reading all news that goes out of Britain by radio or cable. They find little to suppress, but cause long delays that madden newswriters in hours of crisis. The night the Athenia went down they were all in bed. had to be routed out and brought blear-eyed to their posts before reading could begin. By that time radio commentators had got their own texts censored, had told late listeners in America the whole story...