Chinese laborers working under the direction of German supervisors on a hill above the city of Tsingtau, China. The card was sent from Earl's Court in London, January 6, 1905, and cancelled in Teichel, Germany two days later. From a painting by K. Hei...
"On February 24 [1917] a French liner, the Athos, was torpedoed in the Mediterranean.Among those drowned on the Athos were 543 Chinese labourers, recruited in China to work as part of a large labour force on the Western Front. When the news of the sinking reached China it acted as a deterrent to recruiting, but by the end of the war almost 100,000 Chinese were employed on menial tasks throughout the zone of the armies."
Germany resumed its campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, 1917, with the Mediterranean Sea as a primary hunting ground.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 311, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
1917-02-24, 1917, February, sinking, China, Chinese laborer
