NEWS OF THE WEEK.
OUR record of the week must open with another deed of shame. On Wednesday news reached England that the Italian steamer ' Ancona,' a liner engaged in emigrant traffic between Italy and the United States, was sunk by a submarine flying the Austrian flag off Cape Carbonara, a promontory on the south-eastern coast of Sardinia. The ' Ancona' was going from Naples to New York with a crew and passengers numbering about five hundred persons, among whom were many women and children. The survivors, numbering some three hundred and twenty persons, managed to escape in boats. The Ancona' was a ship of over eight thousand tons, built in Belfast in 1908. It appears that the submarine first fired about a hundred shots at the ' Ancona' and then torpedoed her. go attempt apparently was made to secure the safety of the passengers, of whom some twenty-five were American citizens. They were sent to their sea graves with as ;such eallousness and brutality as if they had been forced to walk the plank. We shall very likely be told that the ship committed an unpardonable act of aggres- sion by trying to escape from the tender mercies of the sub- marine, and that, therefore, she could be lawfully sunk without any regard for her civilian freight—for that, of course, is the German theory. A submarine is supposed to offer the passengers and crew the safety to be secured by taking to open boats in November, and if they reject that place of safety, their blood is on their own heads
