FROM THE ARCHIVES:A month before the end of the first World War, the mid-morning mail boat from Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead, the Leinster, was hit by two torpedoes from a German submarine. More than 500 people drowned, most of them members of the British military forces. This was
The Irish Times's editorial comment the following day. –
JOE JOYCE
AT THE very moment of asking the Allies for peace and uttering copious promises of reform Germany has committed one of her foulest crimes against humanity. The Lusitaniawas the first of her hideous landmarks in this war; the Leinster, we hope and pray, will be among the last. Both crimes were committed in Irish waters; from both of the stricken vessels the murdered bodies of men, women, and children were landed on Irish soil. The hand that sank the Leinsterhas plunged hundreds of Irish homes into the blackest sorrow. For four years the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company's mail boats defied the terrors of the German submarine with a success which is a splendid tribute to the skill and gallantry of their officers and crews. Perhaps, the public had begun to under-rate the ever-present dangers of these daily runnings of the gauntlet. The abolition of night sailings from the beginning of the present month must have increased the general feeling of security. This blow is all the more terrible, therefore, because it was so little expected. The Leinstersailed from Kingstown yesterday with a crew and passenger list of about seven hundred souls. Later reports of further rescues may reach us, but it is, we fear, almost certain that some four hundred of these souls now stand before their Maker. We shall not dwell here on the harrowing scenes which followed the sinking of the ship or on the tragedy of those awful homecomings. The German commander must have foreseen them all, for his crime was utterly deliberate. When he launched his first torpedo he knew that the Leinstercarried women and children. When he launched the second he knew that in a few minutes the sea would be full of their corpses. So Germany wages war. The coast of County Dublin yesterday offered to the Irish people some hundreds of proofs of the glory of Prussian kultur. The loss of the Leinsteris certainly the heaviest blow that the war has inflicted on civilian Ireland: we may say, perhaps, that it is the first really heavy blow. Hitherto the might of the British Navy and the grand courage of the British Armies have protected our homes from harm. No air raids have devastated our cities; the roar of the great guns has never reached us; our farmers have gathered their war profits with absolute peace of mind. This security has established in Ireland a shameful apathy. It has made us indifferent to the vast issues of the world-conflict, and to the duty which those issues imposed on us. It has enabled wicked or merely foolish men to persuade many others that this was not "Ireland's war," that Ireland had no grievance against Germany.
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