ween
Germany and Switzerland. After a four-hour crawl on hands and knees I
was able to elude the sentries along the Rhine. Plunging in, I made for
the Swiss shore. After being carried several miles down the stream,
being frequently submerged by the rapid currents, I finally reached the
opposite shore and gave myself up to the Swiss gendarmes, who turned me
over to the American legation at Berne. From there I made my way to
Paris and then London and finally Washington, where I arrived four weeks
after my escape from Germany."

The accounts and incidents heretofore mentioned are but a few of the
exceptionally meritorious cases, of the many, in which the devotion to
duty and the unquestioned heroism characterized the conduct of the Negro
under the galling fire of danger and death.

CAN NOT SPECIFY THE WORK OF THE NEGRO SEAMEN.

Primarily due to the difference in organization between the army and
navy of the United States, it is well nigh impossible to point out and
record with any degree of accuracy the signal and patriotic sacrifices
of any great body of Negroes as a unit in the naval service. While in
the army, where segregation and discrimination of the rankest type force
the Negro into distinct Negro units; the navy, on the other hand, has
its quota of black men on every vessel carrying the starry emblem of
freedom on the high seas and in every shore station. The operations of
the navy of the United States during the World War has covered the
widest scope in its history without a doubt. It carried the Negro in
European waters from the Mediterranean to the White Sea. At Corfu,
Gibraltar, along the French Bay of Biscay, in the English Channel, on
the Irish coast, in the North Sea, at Murmansk and Archangel, he was
ever present to experience whatever of hardships were necessary and to
make whatever sacrifices demanded, that the proud and glorious record of
the navy of the United States should remain untarnished.

WORK OF COLORED SEAMEN.

He formed a part of the crew of nearly two thousand vessels that plied
the briny deep, on submarines that feared not the under sea peril, and
wherever a naval engagement was undertaken or the performance of a duty
by a naval vessel, the Negro, as a part of the crew of that vessel,
necessarily contributed to the successful prosecution of that duty; and,
whatever credit or glory is achieved for American valor, it was made
possible by the faithful execution of his duty, regardless o