Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/289

Rh with death; that of publishing or secretly distributing anything, whether printed or written, bearing on the war, and that of calling or attending a public meeting, unless permitted, with prison or deportation." These rules they declared applied to Americans and English as well as natives, including the consuls.

The British consul flung back a flat defiance and three American warships arrived very quickly under Captain Hand to discuss the affair. What the end might have been, nobody knows. For a while the brokers on 'change were watching the tickers in New York and London for news of the first shot meaning war, when a hurricane came out of the West and threw practically the whole flotilla in splinters on the beach, and Bismarck was put to the necessity of disavowing the whole game. Still there is no record of iron crosses being distributed to the warriors of the chivalrous Mataafa, who, when they saw their enemies drowning before their eyes, plunged in and saved them by the hundred.