Peru breaks off relations with Germany

On 5 October 1917 the Congress of Peru, by 105 votes to 6, backed the motion of President José Pardo’s government to break off diplomatic relations with the German Empire. The prime minister and foreign minister, Francisco Tudela y Varela, at once instructed the Peruvian minister in Berlin to ask for his passports and to hand the care of Peru’s affairs to the Spanish minister. The German minister in Lima received his passports at noon the next day. According to the American consul general he was to leave for neighbouring Chile. For this reason some accounts, as well as State Department correspondence, give 6 October as the date of the break.

The dispute concerned a single ship. The Lorton was a steel barque of about 1,400 GRT, built at the end of the 1880s in Belfast and owned by shipowners from Callao. She was carrying a cargo of Chile saltpetre from Chile to Spain. At the beginning of February 1917, in the first days of unrestricted submarine warfare, she was stopped off the coast of Cantabria by the submarine U-67 of Kapitänleutnant Hans Nieland. The Germans ordered the crew to abandon ship and sank her with explosive charges. According to uboat.net this happened on 5 February about 11 miles east of Santander, while Peruvian sources also give 4 February and the vicinity of Suances. The government in Lima maintained that the barque had been in Spanish territorial waters and had sailed from Callao long before the announcement of the German barred zone, of which she could not have known. As early as 12 February Peru protested in Berlin against submarine warfare and called the Lorton affair “abhorrent”.

Berlin held that the barque had been carrying contraband and referred the case to a prize court. In August Peru declared that it would not accept this, since the sinking was unjustified in view of the ship’s flag, the nature and destination of the cargo and the place of the attack. It demanded compensation, estimated at more than £55,000. The Germans procrastinated, pleading among other things difficulties with the post between Amsterdam and Berlin. Tudela, who had taken office at the end of July, declared in the Chamber of Deputies that the aim of Peru’s foreign policy was Pan-American solidarity based on the principles proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson. On 25 September he sent an ultimatum to Berlin by three routes at once: if the German government did not give satisfaction within eight days of receiving the dispatch, Peru would be unable to maintain relations with it. The Germans replied that settling the matter within the set time was absolutely impossible. Tudela then turned to Congress.

Lima’s decision came at a moment when the whole continent was watching its neighbours. In Argentina, after the affair of the Luxburg telegrams, both houses of parliament came out in favour of a break, but President Hipólito Yrigoyen maintained neutrality. Peru went further and became the third South American state, after Brazil and Bolivia, to break with Germany. The governments of the United States, Britain and France sent Lima their congratulations. Some historians link the decision not only to the Lorton affair but also to the hope of American support in the dispute with Chile over the provinces of Tacna and Arica, which had dragged on since the War of the Pacific.

Peru did not declare war on Germany. Since the beginning of the war, however, several interned German ships had been lying in the port of Callao. In June 1918 the government seized eight of them, steamers and sailing ships, on the grounds that Germany had still not paid for the Lorton.