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Show MATHIAS ERZBERGER, Centrist party leader in German reiehstag, who again tears off government's mask and exposes admiralty's falsehoods about U-boat operations. op-erations. :':.'.: -' :"v-C ; ' r '" "rr----nf5?1?: . -' 15, ; Wpi i"-: U-BOAT FEUD SPLITS HHQir Erzberger Shows How Admiral Ad-miral Capelle Has Been Falsifying Losses. By IRWIN BAREOUR. Staff correspondent of the International Interna-tional News Service. WASHINGTON, Sept. 1. Confidential Confiden-tial information of a serious rupture in the German government between the main bloc of the reiehstag and the admiralty ad-miralty authorities over the subma-i subma-i rine warfare has reached Washington. ; The situation, described as critical, followed a violent denunciation of Ad-: Ad-: miral Capelle, head of the German admiralty, ad-miralty, by Dr. Mathias Jrzberger, j leader of the centrum, before the main committee of the reiehstag. Dr. Erzberger is the man who brought about the recent crisis which resulted in the overthrow of Bethmann-Hollweg as chancellor and led to an imperial rescript promising the democratization of the Prussian electoral system. He is one of the leading peace workers in Germany. The outburst against Capelle is only one evidence, according to these dispatches, dis-patches, of the growing unrest among the German masses. The admiralty chief was accused of falsifying figures of enemy tonnage losses in order to keep down the wrath of the Germans, which would have overwhelmed the men who promised them victory through the submarine and then failed to make good. The dispatch containing details of the clash between Erzberger and Capelle Ca-pelle was sent by American special agents. ft was received in administration adminis-tration circles several days ago, but no hint of it has been permitted to be made public. According to excerpts obtained today. to-day. Dr. Erzberger during a discussion of the submarine situation flatly accused ac-cused Admiral von Capelle of falsification, falsi-fication, and defied him to deny it. Capelle was unable to make a satisfactory satis-factory answer. Nor could he give the methods by which the figures had been arrived at showing a large destruction of English tonnage, whirh he had presented pre-sented to the main committee, Erzberger then described the method of the admiralty in drawing up figures of British losses for dissemination to the public. He declared they were " ridicwlous ' ' and a plain falsehood. "When any ship was sunk,' he said, "the admiralty has been in the habit of giving not the registered tonnage of the ship, but the dead weight, and, in addition, adding the weight of the cargo to the tonnage of the ship. In other words, if a o000-ton ship were sunk and it carried -000 tons of cargo, the admiralty would count it .""000 or I more tons of shipping destroyed.'' In addition, Erzberger charged, the admiralty, ad-miralty, to convince the people that heavy inroads were being made into the English mercantile fleet, was listing list-ing all tonnage destroyed as British. No matter whether a torpedoed ship was French, Italian, American or even neutral, it was added to the British tonnage loss. This information and similar other dispatches of growing distrust and disturbances dis-turbances against the German military and naval loaders are said to have played a large part in determining the attitude of President Wilson toward the pope's peace proposal. Officials here expressed the opinion that the estimate of L3O0.0OO tons as the amount of shipping which would be destroyed in the first year of unrestricted unre-stricted submarine warfare h- Germany Ger-many was in consonance with figures so far at hand. This is in contrast to the German boast that SOOumI to 1 .Oi0,00il tons a month would be destroyed. It was pointed out at the uavv department de-partment today that the losses thrmih submarines have been ent in half since j (Continued on rage I'wo.) U-BOAT FEUO SPLITS GERMAN WHSEIT - (Continued from Page One.) March. American destroyers have plaved a great part in this result, it was declared, the addition of a large squadron of. the American ships to the allied fleet's already in the war zone having operated to keep down the depredations dep-redations of the undersea raiders, to which the destroyer is the natural en-emv. en-emv. Figures reaching here indicate that, Germany is producing two and a half to three submarines a week, and that she has more than 250 in active service. ser-vice. Most of tJiem are of the SOO-ton standardized type. |