With its entire western
shore in British possession and with a goodly part of its waters
within the territory of German East Africa, it was not unnatural
that fighting should take place there. Both countries maintained
small armed vessels on the lake. The British ship _Gwendolen_,
a 350-ton craft, had been built on the Clyde and had been sent
to Nyassa Lake in sections and there assembled and launched in
1898. During August she fought with a German ship and captured
it. The fighting on the lake could not, however, determine the
success of the military operations taking place in those regions.
The preponderance of British naval strength was beginning to tell
severely upon German trade by the end of 1914, and her boast that
through her navy she would starve out Germany aroused the German
Government greatly. In answer to these British threats, Grand Admiral
von Tirpitz, German Secretary of Marine, in an interview given
to an American newspaper correspondent, hinted that Germany's
retaliation would be a war on British merchant ships by German
submarines.
The interview at the time aroused but mild comment; the idea was
a new one, and the question immediately arose as to whether such
action would be within the limits of international law. For the
time being, however, Von Tirpitz's words remained nothing more
than a threat. It was not until months later that the threat was
made good, and the consequences must form a separate part of this
narrative, to be given in Volume III.
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