CHAPTER XIVVICTORY
TheHun was beaten at last.
Those white flags meant surrender, defeat.
The bully of Europe was whipped.
Germany’s wild and wicked adventure was ended. She had appealed to force and force had answered her.
The pirate flag, the flag of the skull and crossbones, had been hauled down. In its place was the white flag that admitted defeat and sued for terms.
The cars drove up to where Colonel Pavet and his officers were standing. There they came to a stop.
One by one, the German peace delegates descended from the car. They were received with cold and ceremonious politeness.
One of the men, the leader of the party, was in civilian dress. The others were in military or naval uniforms.
The formalities were soon over. They had reached the French lines and from now on wouldbe in the custody of French officers. One by one the delegates were blindfolded, so that they might gain no information of military importance as they passed through the French lines. Then the delegates were helped into their seats, the French officers who were to accompany them gave the signal, and the cars started off on their long journey to the forest of Compiegne, where in a railroad car, drawn up on a siding, there was waiting for them the grave, stern soldier, whose genius had struck a deathblow to the German cause just when its prospects seemed brightest, and who had kept hammering at the crumbling lines until the end had come in the blackness of utter and absolute defeat.
Frank drew a long breath as the last of the line of cars faded from sight in the darkness. So many sensations had come crowding in upon him in the last few minutes that his brain was in a whirl. He knew that he had been privileged to see one of the most momentous happenings in the history of the world.
So engrossed was he in his thoughts that it was almost as in a dream that he exchanged cordial greetings with Colonel Pavet and the young lieutenant and started on his ride homeward. He had anticipated a hilarious time in narrating to Tom and Billy all he had felt and seen, but he was really glad when he arrived athis quarters that they were sound asleep. Ordinarily he would have wakened them without ceremony, but just now he wanted to snuggle down in his blanket and go over and over again in his mind the events of that night of nights.
His first and controlling thought was that of his country. Above everything else he was an American through and through. He was proud of his country, of its traditions, of its history, of its glorious flag. For that flag he had risked his life again and again. He loved it with a consuming passion. Old Glory! The tears came to his eyes as he thought of it. The flag that had always stood for human freedom and human rights, the flag that had never covered an ignoble cause, the flag that had never been sullied by stain, had never been smirched by defeat, had never been dragged in the dust. Now once more it was triumphant in the greatest war that had ever been waged on earth. God bless it!
Later his thoughts took a more personal turn. It meant that soon he would be back with that dear mother of his whose love for him had kept him clean and straight through all this terrible conflict. He saw the little house in Camport, embowered in roses, saw himself going back there, saw his mother running to the gate to meet him.
It was a long time before he fell asleep.
In the morning he was his own jolly care-free self again and it was well that he was, for he was besieged with questions by his chums concerning all the details of his experience.
“Well, you haughty diplomat,” was Billy’s greeting, “have you settled the terms of the armistice? Have you ordered the Kaiser to be shot? Out with it, now.”
“Hardly that,” laughed Frank. “I was simply a looker-on among a thousand others. But I tell you what, fellows, it was something worth looking at. It was something I sha’n’t forget as long as I live.”
“I bet you won’t,” returned Tom. “How did the Huns look?”
“They didn’t look as though they enjoyed it much,” returned Frank. “In fact, they looked very much like men who were going to be stood up before a firing squad. One of them reached out his hand to Colonel Pavet, but the colonel was looking over his head just at that moment and somehow failed to see it. He was very polite though. You know the Frenchmen are great sticklers when it comes to matters of etiquette and form.”
“How long have the Heinies got to decide whether they’ll sign the armistice or not?” asked Tom.
“The colonel told me that they’d have threedays,” answered Frank. “Let’s see, yesterday was the seventh of November. Today’s the eighth. They’ll get there some time this morning. That will give them till the eleventh to sign, next Monday morning.”
“Suppose they don’t sign it?” suggested Tom gloomily.
“So much the worse for them then,” answered Frank. “Instead of losing their boots and shirts they’ll lose their hides as well. But they’ll sign all right, never fear. The colonel says that they’re running around in Berlin like wild men. Ludendorff has resigned and the Kaiser has left Berlin to go to the army headquarters at Spa for protection. The Crown Prince is afraid to be seen in the streets. You see the Heinies have been fed up on lies so long that now they’re learning they’re licked they’re going crazy. And naturally they’re turning on the men who have been lying to them. Oh, it’s quite a different Berlin now from the one that hung out the flags and rang the bells when they heard that theLusitaniahad been sunk and a lot of women and babies drowned.”
“Well nowwe’vegot some news,” said Tom with a sober face, “and it isn’t very good news either.”
“What is it?” asked Frank in quick alarm as his thoughts turned instantly to his absent chum.“Don’t tell me that anything has happened to Bart.”
“He isn’t dead,” Billy hastened to explain. “But he’s disappeared from the hospital.”
“Disappeared?” replied Frank in dismay. “What do you mean by that?”
“Why,” said Billy, “it seems that he has been out of his head. You know he was delirious the last time we saw him. Well, one of the fellows who was in the hospital with him came back to duty last night and told us that about three days ago when the nurse’s back was turned, Bart slipped out of a door or a window, and when the nurse came back he wasn’t there. Nobody saw him go and nobody has the least idea what has become of him.”
Frank was unspeakably shocked by the news. Bart had become to him little less than a brother and the various experiences they had been through together since they had been in the army had strengthened and deepened this feeling.
“But what could have happened to him?” he asked desperately. “What will become of him? It’s horrible to think of his wandering around in this forsaken stretch of country. He may wander into the German lines and be shot or taken prisoner.”
“I don’t think that,” said Billy soothingly. “The chances are all against it. He’d have to passthrough our lines to do it and it’s dollars to doughnuts that he couldn’t do it without being seen. At any minute we may hear that he’s been found and taken back to the hospital. At any rate, we know that the wound he got didn’t kill him and while there’s life there’s hope.”
“Yes,” said Tom, who for once felt that it was up to him to look on the bright side of things in view of his friend’s evident distress, “Bart’s worth a dozen dead men yet. Think how many things he’s been through and yet turned up as right as a trivet. Keep up your spirits and hope for the best.”
They spoke with a confidence that they were far from feeling, for they knew what they refrained from telling Frank that a most careful search had already been made without disclosing the slightest trace of Bart’s whereabouts.
Frank was badly shaken by the news he had heard and it was fortunate for him that the work that yet lay before the army was such as to engross his mind and keep him from brooding.
For the Allied commanders were taking no chances. They knew too much of German duplicity to rely on their good faith in any matter. The nation that regarded solemn treaties as “scraps of paper” was not to be trusted in the slightest particular. Only when the mad dog of Europe should be finally tied and muzzled couldthe Allies afford to relax their efforts in any degree.
So the word had gone forth that for the next three days the fighting should be pushed as sternly and unrelentingly as ever.
The Germans on their side had an especial reason to make as good a showing as possible while the terms were being debated. If they could show that they were further from collapse than the Allies had supposed, the latter might be willing to moderate their demands.
So for three days more the fighting continued with unabated bitterness. And the Allies were not to be denied. In every part of the wide-flung battle line they kept on winning. And in the Argonne and on the Meuse, where the Americans were winding up their task, those days marked a succession of victories. The war was ending in a blaze of glory for the forces of civilization.
Monday morning came at last, the 11th of November, 1918, when the whole world was listening for news. And the news came. It sped across the ocean cables, it flashed through the air by wireless, it set the bells ringing and the whistles shrieking in every part of the Allied world, it sent the people of Paris and London and Rome and New York into the streets in thankful and rejoicing throngs, it thrilled both hemispheres and all the continents. Only in the capitalsof the Central Powers did it sound like the knell of doom.
It came, too, to the battlefronts, came in a clarion note of bugles that woke the men from sleep.
“What is it?” asked Tom sleepily.
“It’s too early for reveille,” grumbled Billy.
“Wake up, you boobs!” cried Frank joyously. “The armistice is signed! The war is over!”