The Bombardment Of Antwerp
There was something typically British in the way those Englishmen went about the defense of Antwerp. In the streets and barracks, and more especially at the Hotel St. Antoine, British Staff Headquarters, where I stayed until its doors were closed, I saw them at close range during that week of horror. Once when I was eating with a company of marines near their temporary barracks, they gave me the password to the trenches, and, although I only got out as far as the inner line of forts on that day, it gave me an opportunity to observe the work of the men under long-range firing. At the St. Antoine, ten or a dozen officers were quartered; others clanked in and out for hurried conferences in the corridors or disappeared into the smoking-room, whose heavy doors with the sign, "Reservee pour la Gouvernement Anglaise," hid Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the English Admiralty, and his portmanteau of war maps.
Here was Belgium's last stronghold on the verge of downfall: the outer line of forts had already fallen; Forts Wavre, St. Catherine, Waelham, and Lierre were already prey to the Krupp mortars; the German hosts were swarming across the River Nethe, six miles to the city's south, and the cowering populace in their flight made the streets terrible to look upon.
Yet at the St. Antoine there was no particular flurry—so far, at least, as the officers were concerned. At night they worked over their war maps; in the daytime they went out to the forts. They would get up in the morning, an hour or two earlier than the average business man, have a comfortable breakfast, smoke a cigar for half an hour or so, and talk things over. Then their military automobiles came trembling and sputtering to the doorsteps, and in groups of fours and fives they went out to the firing line. If only two or three of a group returned, you would naturally have to draw your own conclusions as to the fate of the rest.
Those English gentlemen went about their jobs of life and death with the same detached coolness as if their hunters were being saddled, or they were waiting for the referee's whistle in Rugby football. Their attitude was infernally exasperating; yet you couldn't help taking off your hat to their sublime nerve and indifference.
I overheard a typical remark when matters were in this critical state. It came from a handsome, curly-headed officer, noticeable not only for his apparent efficiency, but because he didn't let the game of war interfere with his attentions to the little Princess de Ligne. The latter was nursing her brother, who had been shot through the back of the neck during a raid through German lines. She was a princess in rank, and a queen in looks. Thirty hours before the first shell burst into the Place Verte—Monday morning, it was—this fellow rapped at my door. He had wandered into the wrong pew, for his words were obviously intended to hurry up a brother officer with whom he was to take the morning ride to the firing line. Sticking his curly, sunburnt head around the corner he drawled in inimitable British intonation:-
"I say, old chap, do hurry along; this is no ORDINARY occasion, you know."
In the Royal Belgian Palace there happened a few hours before the bombardment an incident revealing the simplicity and kindliness of King Albert's character. In connection with it, it is necessary to speak of Harold Fowler, a New Yorker and Columbia College graduate, who helped to save the public buildings of Antwerp, and later entered the Allied ranks as a fighter. When the war broke out, Fowler was private secretary to Ambassador Page in London. In November he got a commission in the Royal Horse Guards, known as the "Blues." While the Germans were pressing hard on Antwerp, the German commander, as I have mentioned elsewhere, asked that a diagram of the city of Antwerp, with plans and location of the cathedral, the Hotel de Ville, and the more important works be sent to him in order that he might find the range and avoid firing on them. Neutrals were to carry the plans through; and Fowler and Hugh Gibson, secretary to the American Minister at Brussels (Brand Whitlock), volunteered.
Two days before the bombardment Gibson went to the Royal Palace at Antwerp where General de Guise and his staff were in conference. Fowler trailed along, but, not liking to enter, walked up and down the hallway, hands in his pockets, admiring the portraits half-hidden in the darkness of the foyer. A tall figure approached and in French asked who he was. Fowler replied that he was an American and was waiting for Gibson.
"I see," said the figure, then speaking in English, "that you are interested in pictures."
"Very much," answered Fowler.
"Then, would you like to see those in the Royal Chambers upstairs?"
Fowler hesitated, feeling like an intruder, but the figure insisted upon leading him upstairs. When they got into the light, Fowler turned to examine his kind friend. To his utter astonishment he saw that it was Albert, King of the Belgians!
By that time we of Antwerp were getting a very fair imitation of a city besieged. Water supply had already been cut off for some days. There was just enough for cooking purposes; bathing and such pleasantries were out of the question—even for Royalty. According to the French maid in my corridor, Winston Churchill managed to get a shave by ordering tea sent to his room and using the hot water for shaving lather.
Monday, October 5th, the night before the city emptied itself of non-combatants, was almost a festive occasion at the St. Antoine. The British entry gave tremendous confidence to the stricken city and the tired Belgian soldiers—a bit of pride before the fall. New faces turned up, friends in the English army met, shook hands, and discussed the outlook. One was even reminded of lighter occasions, such as the Copley-Plaza in Boston or the Hotel Taft in New Haven before an annual Harvard-Yale battle. At the head of a long table in the center of the dining-room sat the First Lord of the British Admiralty, looking rather thoughtful, his baldish head and Trinity House uniform standing out in contrast to the service uniforms of the younger men around him. At the same table were commissary officers, sergeants, aide-de-camps, Hugh Gibson, Harold Fowler, and somewhat farther down the Russian Minister and my curly-headed officer, chatting over his coffee with little Princess de Ligne.
In the flash of an eye these scenes changed to scenes of terror.
The news leaked out, and spread like wildfire, that the Kaiser's men had crossed the River Nethe and had placed their big guns within range of the city. It was not until forty-eight hours later that the populace saw a handful of Flemish posters pasted in out-of-the-way corners—posters signed by the Civil Government—which thanked the populace "for retaining until the present time their praiseworthy sangfroid, and regretting that the responsibilities of their office necessitated their own removal to a neighborhood more safe."
Queen Elizabeth, whom danger made a democrat, walked right into my hotel, if you please, and stopped casually to say good-bye to the Russian Minister. The crowd outside did not know she was leaving for Ostend under cover of darkness—they cheered her loudly just the same. She is a spunky sort of queen.
Then came the flight. You knew the fear of the Germans had got into their blood when waiters dropped their plates and dishes and ran; when shops, houses, hotels closed and the people melted away; when the French chambermaid besought with frightened eyes that Monsieur take her away to England, and when the hotel proprietor disappeared without even asking for his bill.
There were other sights that did one good to see: such as gray-haired Mrs. Richardson, venerable figure of a British nurse, with six wars to her credit and a breastful of decorations from four different governments, who refused to leave her hospital even if it was blown to pieces, so long as there were men to help and wounds to heal.
When the St. Antoine closed I took her to the American Consulate to find a house where she could stay. That night and the next loads of English Red Cross busses with their households of pain and ether rumbled over the pontoon bridge across the Scheldt, went past Fort Tete de Flandre, and disappeared in the swampy meadows on the road to Ghent. I never saw her again, but I have always hoped that Mrs. Richardson was among the nurses who went with them.
When on Wednesday morning I was turned out of my room, I made my way past a pressing throng of foreign faces to the Queen's Hotel on the water front. There I found Arthur Ruhl and James H. Hare, who had just come over from England. The hotel overlooked the River Scheldt, forming a wide crescent on the city's north, and was within fifty yards of one of the longest pontoon bridges constructed in modern warfare.
Here was a sight to come again and rend the memory. The crowds were endeavoring to get away over one of the two avenues of escape still open. I estimated that between five in the afternoon and the following dawn three hundred thousand persons must have passed through the city's gates. They were the people of Antwerp itself, swelled by exiles from Alost, Aerschot, Malines, Termonde, and other cities to the south and west. Intermittently for two days and nights I watched them from my room in the Queen's. From five yards beneath my window ledge came the shuffle, shuffle of unending feet, the creak and groans of heavy cart wheels, the talk and babble of guttural tongues, the yelp of hounds, as the thousands moved and wept and surged and jostled along throughout the night and into the uncertain mist of that October morning. They were so close I could have jumped into their carts or dropped a pebble on their heads. Infinitely more impressive than the retreat of the allied armies or the victorious entry of the Germans a little later, was the pageant of this pitiful army without guns or leaders.
The twenty-foot entrance to that pontoon bridge seemed to me like the mouth of a funnel through which poured the dense misery of an entire nation. Think of this army's composition: a great city was emptying itself of human life; not only a great city, but all the people driven to it from the outside, all who had congregated in Belgium's last refuge and its strongest fort. They bore themselves bravely, the greater number plodding along silently in the footsteps of those who went ahead, with no thoughts of their direction, some of them even chatting and laughing. You saw great open wagons carrying baby carriages, perambulators, pots and kettles, an old chair, huge bundles of household goods, and the ubiquitous Belgian bicycle strapped to the side. There were small wagons, and more great wagons crowded with twenty, thirty, forty people: aged brown women, buried like shrunk walnuts in a mass of shawls, girls sitting listlessly on piles of straw, and children fitfully asleep or very much awake and crying lustily.
Sometimes the men and boys mounted their bicycles, rode for a dozen yards, were stopped by the procession, and then, for want of better occupation, rang their bells. One saw innumerable yelping dogs: big Belgian police hounds harnessed to the cart and doing their share of work, others sniffing along the outskirts and plainly advertising for an owner. There were noisy cattle, too, some of which escaped. Long after the city was evacuated I saw a cow bellowing under an archway of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
In this way the city emptied itself, but so slowly that the very slowness of the movement wore the marchers out. Each family group was limited to the speed of its oldest member. Hundreds gave it up and lay by the road, or formed little gypsy camps under the trees. At night these were lighted by fires, overshadowed by the greater fire from the distant burning city, and beside them stretched dumb-looking souls, watching vaguely those who still had strength to move.
Watching these wretches got so on my nerves that I had to get out and do something. With a British intelligence officer, formerly of Sir John French's staff, I wandered down to the southern quarter of the city known as Berchem. As usual, the guns at the outer forts had been booming throughout the evening. From the city's ramparts you could not only feel the shudder of the earth, but you could see occasional splashes of flame from the Belgian batteries, answered, in the dim distance to the south, by smaller, less vivid splashes issuing from the mouths of the German instruments of "Culture" which throughout the night pounded ruthlessly on the unprotected houses without the city limits.
On the way home we stopped in at the British field hospital to see a wounded British friend.
The Surrender Of Antwerp
As we left the British field hospital, on the Rue de Leopold, a shrieking skyrocket whizzed by above us and buried its hissing head in the river to the north. One or two more fell at a distance of several hundred yards, and in the southern part of the city flames from several houses shot up into the quiet, windless night.
The bombardment was on—the time was 12.07 Wednesday midnight.
For a moment I did not realize that this was the beginning of the end of Antwerp. I had heard so much gun-fire and seen so many bombs dropping from aeroplanes that I did not fully appreciate the significance of these shells. I scribbled a few notes in my diary, unstrapped my money belt, and then picked out an empty bed at the Queen's Hotel and tumbled in. I must have slept for six or seven hours.
When I arose everything was quiet. The hotel was apparently deserted. I remember being particularly irritated because there was no one in the kitchen who would give me breakfast, so I made myself some tea and then strolled into the street. It so happened that the Germans had been pumping lead steadily into the city for six hours and that this was the morning lull. The Germans are methodical in everything. When they bombard a city they stop for breakfast.
As I walked down the Avenue de Keyser I thought at first it was Sunday—or rather a year of Sundays all rolled into one. Overnight the city had been transformed into a tomb. Shops were closed; iron shutters were pulled down everywhere; trolley cars stood in the street as they had been left. My own footsteps resounded fearfully on the pavement, and I walked five blocks before I saw a human being.
I stopped at the American Consul's office on the Place de Meir, only to find the place was locked. A frightened face behind the grating told me that the consul had taken his wife to the country—good place to be in, I thought.
Things began to seem lonely. I heard shells falling and saw flames in the southern quarter of the city, and decided to go in that direction to look up an American correspondent and two photographers who had asked me to bunk with them in the cellar of a little abandoned house at 74 Rue de Peage.
Turning down a little side street leading toward the Boulevard de Leopold, I was greeted by a clap of thunder overhead. A shell demolished a house across the street and about thirty yards down. The concussion knocked over a couple of babies. I picked them up, put them back in the doorway of the house where they seemed to belong, saying over and over again mechanically, "There, there, don't cry. There is nothing to be frightened about"; and then, just to show how little I myself was frightened I began to run. I ran for all I was worth. I ran right into the fire. The shells were falling fairly thick on the Boulevard de Leopold; every two or three hundred yards a house was partially destroyed; bricks and glass littered the pavement, and occasionally, every quarter of a mile or so, I saw a figure skulking along under the eaves of a building, crouching and ducking in time to the nasty music of the shells. But I decided that the middle of the street was the safest part.
When I had gone about a quarter of a mile I got my nerve again. I put my hands in my pockets, lighted a cigarette, and was just saying to myself, "This is pretty good fun, after all," when CRASH!! CRASH!! two, or possibly three, shells, bursting in rapid succession, tore down houses a hundred yards ahead of me. Then one struck in the street, and jagged fragments of angry shrapnel skidded along the pavement like a thrown stone skipping along the surface of the water. I was again trembling all over.
Was the game worth the candle, I asked myself. "I've come three thousand miles and overcome every obstacle just to get into this horrible mess. If I get disfigured—no, I'd much rather be killed—will it—"
"Crash!! Bang!!" went a monster shell as I turned the corner.
Two doors from the corner of a narrow street covered with bricks and mortar fluttered a United States flag, and beneath it the door of 74 Rue de Peage. This place was later spoken of as "Thompson's fort," because Donald C. Thompson, a Kansas photographer, took possession of it after the Belgian family fled, and plundered the neighborhood for coffee, rolls, and meat, with which he stocked his little cellar. The house next door had already been struck, and shattered glass littered the pavement. The doorstep of 74 was covered by a couple of mattresses and sand-bags. Beneath this, in a dingy sort of coal-bin, heaped with straw, I found crouching the tenants of "Thompson's fort."
Next to Berchem, the southern quarter of the city, where theGermans were approaching, the Rue de Peage was the worst spot inAntwerp. We sat for a time listening to the shells. There were here, inaddition to Thompson, Edwin Weigel, a Chicago photographer;Edward Eyre Hunt, of "Collier's Weekly"; and the Dutch Vice-Consul.
We heard the distant resounding Boom … Boom … Boom … ed …Boom … Boom … Boom.
An interval of perhaps a second's silence, then a faint moaning, a crescendo wail, the whirr and rush of a snarling, shrieking skyrocket overhead, and a crash, like all the thunders of the universe rolled into one, when the shell struck, followed by the roar of falling brick as a neighboring house came pouring into the street.
"Whee…..wheee…..Hi…..HIOU UIOUW," we heard. "Whee … whEEE … whEEE … UIOUW … OUWW … SSH … SSHSHHH … BANG … BANG!!!!!!"
"Whee…..wheee…..Hi…..HIOUUIOUW," we heard. "Whee … whEEE … whEEE … UIOUW… OUWW… SSH … SSHSHHH… BANG… BANG!!!!!!"
I tried to persuade the other fellows to come up to the Queen's Hotel along the Scheldt waterfront on the northern side of the city, where I was then encamped. It was a safer locality because the Germans had not yet got the range of the northern end of the city. Weigel and Thompson, having to look out for their kodaks and moving-picture paraphernalia, decided to wait a while, as did Hunt. Hare, who came in later, had two big kodaks which he wanted to get back to his room in the Queen's. I offered to carry one of them for him.
We shook hands all around and one or two of us exchanged messages to be taken back in case there was any trouble—that is to say, in case, as seemed likely at the time, some of us should get out alive and some should not. Hunt gave me a letter to his family, and later, with watch in hand, started to walk around the burning city to calculate the number of falling shells per minute! I slung Hare's kodak over my shoulder and we started back, taking separate streets. It was a dash of three quarters of a mile and nothing fell particularly close to us, although the buildings on all sides were in flames. Near a pile of discarded uniforms of the garde civique, I saw what was left of the figure of a man with his insides oozing out, his eyes still open, staring vacantly upwards, and all around him the horrible odor of decaying horses. By this time I was calm and was getting quite accustomed to the bursting of shells. I suppose I had been through my "baptism of fire."
About half an hour later, when we were sitting in the Queen's, Thompson, pale as a sheet, staggered into the deserted lobby closely followed by Weigel and Hunt and the Dutch Vice-Consul, the latter somewhat out of his head. Just after I left 74 Rue de Peage, a 32 cm. shell burst on the roof, tearing off the two top floors of the house, throwing Thompson's bed into the street, and setting the place on fire. At sundown the house was in ashes. Somehow or other the men all got out, rescuing a portion of their paraphernalia.
All Thursday afternoon the German Taubes circled above the city— mostly along the waterfront. Below them puffed little clouds of smoke where shells from the Belgian anti-aircraft guns were exploding. I fancy the airmen were locating the pontoon bridge and signaling to the Prussian battery commanders six miles away; but during Wednesday and Thursday, when the crowds of refugees were assembled on the waterfront, not a single bomb dropped among them. A few shells, well placed, would have slaughtered them like sheep. Before and during the bombardment I am quite certain that the Germans intended to frighten, rather than injure, non-combatants. Report to the contrary notwithstanding, it is equally true that, so far as possible, the invaders kept to their promise to spare such buildings as the Cathedral, the Palais de Justice, the Hotel de Ville, the Castle Steen, and other historic landmarks.
The bombardment lasted forty hours. That night,—Thursday, October 8th,—the second and last night which the town held out, all of the Americans who were left gathered at the Queen's. The firing by this time was terrific. Except for the lurid glare of the burning buildings which lit up the streets, the city was in total darkness. For weeks martial law had been in effect and there were no lights after sundown. An unearthly feeling it was, to be locked in the darkness of this strange city, unable to speak a word of the language, not knowing whether the garrison had evacuated the forts or whether the city had been surrendered, believing there would be street righting or an insurrection of franc-tireurs. At times we heard through the darkness the tramp of squads of soldiers. Surely, we thought, there come the Germans. We remembered the atrocities at Louvain.
About an hour after darkness settled on us I climbed to the roof of the Queen's Hotel, from which, for a few minutes, I looked out upon the most horrible and at the same time the most gorgeous panorama that I ever hope to see. The entire southern portion of the city appeared a desolate ruin; whole streets were ablaze, and great sheets of fire rose to the height of thirty or forty feet.
The night, like the preceding, was calm and quiet, without a breath of wind. On all sides rose greedy tongues of flame which seemed to thirst for things beyond their reach. Slowly and majestically the sparks floated skyward; and every now and then, following the explosion of a shell, a new burst of flame lighted up a section hitherto hidden in darkness. The window panes of the houses still untouched flashed the reflection in our eyes.
Even more glorious was the scene to the north. On the opposite side of the Scheldt the oil tanks, the first objects to be set on fire by bombs from the German Taubes, were blazing furiously and vomiting huge volumes of oil-laden smoke. Looking over on this side of the river, too, I could see the crackling wooden houses of the village of St. Nicolas, lighting with their glow all of northern Antwerp and the water-front. In the swampy meadows on the farther bank we could see the frightened refugees as they hurried along the still protected road to Ghent. They passed on our side of the burning village, not five hundred yards away. Every now and then as a fitful flame lighted the meadow I could see the figures silhouetted against the red background.
They appeared to be actually walking through the flames like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It was all a glorious and fascinating nightmare.
There was at this time an ominous lull in the moaning pound of shrapnel.
Out of the darkness in the direction of West Antwerp came a new sound-the low methodical beat of feet. The noise became gradually louder and louder until one could hear the rumble of heavy wheels and distinguish the sound of voices above the crowd. This was the beginning of the British and Belgian retreat, which started at about eight o'clock Thursday night, and, under cover of darkness, continued unbroken for eight hours. Following the line taken by the escaping populace this retreat went past our position on the water-front. Before dawn on Friday morning, when the light became strong enough for the advancing army to make out the enemy's position, practically the entire Belgian army plus ten thousand Royal British Naval Marines had got across the pontoon bridge and were well along the road to Ghent. During all these hours squads of gendarmes with fixed bayonets held back such remaining townsfolk as attempted to get near the bridge. To these wretches it seemed that their last avenue of escape had been cut off. There were now at the Queen's, Arthur Ruhl, Hare, and myself, in addition to an English intelligence officer and the recruits from "Fort Thompson." We talked over our plans for the next day. The intelligence officer volunteered to get up with me at sunrise and scour the river for a barge. It was my idea, in case we could make any kind of arrangements for a get-away, to come back and report to the other fellows. I remember that Arthur Ruhl was uncertain as to whether he would come with us or wait for the German entry. He was worried about some friends in the British field hospital, and he decided not to leave without looking them up,—a pretty white thing to do, it seemed to me.
I tried to sleep, but the rumble of artillery wagons and shouts of the marchers prevented. So I spent most of the night of the British and Belgian retreat beneath my window. At daybreak the intelligence officer came to my room and we started out along the water-front, moving in the direction of the Dutch border. With the rising sun on Friday morning the German Taubes again swept over the city. When the Germans saw that the whole British and Belgian army had got away from them they moved up their 42 cm. guns and literally gave us hell. This time they had no mercy on the few remaining noncombatants.
The intelligence officer's baggage delayed us a long time. When we got up nearly as far as Fort St. Philippe, we separated. We saw a barge anchored in the river and he had an idea it would leave about seven o'clock, and that we might be able to get on it. I gave him my knapsack containing my gold belt, which, in the confusion, I had not had time to strap on, and started to make a dash back to the Queen's, because I considered that I ought to let the other fellows know what had happened to us.
I had fifteen minutes to cover the distance.
I ran. The shells, at that time, were falling at a rate, I should judge, of five a minute. Opposite the Castle Steen I had a narrow escape—just concussion, I suppose. Directly above me came a crash of thunder. A few moments later I found myself lying in the street, head pointing north—dazed. A bomb crashed through the eaves and tore a hole as big as a small cellar in the street directly before the old castle, bursting with the concussion of a tornado. For a few moments I sat on the street feeling weak in the legs and unable to move.
Again I started back to the Queen's. Two hundred yards east of the bridge some soldiers held me up.
"Get back!" they shouted, believing that I was making for the pontoon. They turned me back, and I hesitated a moment. A terrible explosion, louder than anything I had yet heard, rocked the city to its foundations. For a moment the walls of the houses trembled and every window on the waterfront was broken. The retreating Belgian army had blown up that pontoon bridge and with it what then seemed the last hope of escape for the few remaining survivors. For a few moments wreckage writhed in midstream like a great sea creature in agony of death.
Past me rushed groups of Belgian soldiers, the remainder of a few hundred who had been left to cover the British and Belgian retreat, fire the last shots from the forts, and spike the guns as the Germans approached. Pitiable was the terror of these fellows when they saw the bridge gone. Many of them were out of their heads through exposure and exhaustion; not a few of them wept. One sergeant tore off his uniform and fatigue cap and tried to exchange them for my citizen's clothes.
The worst fire of the entire bombardment was concentrated during these moments; the racket was stupendous. Because gunboats, barges, lighters, tenders, rowboats, were commandeered by the military authorities to ferry across soldiers and wounded there was slim chance for noncombatants. Above the noise of bomb and shrapnel Belgian gunboats added to the confusion by cannonading big boats along the quay. This was done in order that the Germans might not make use of them for the pursuit. It speaks volumes for my military knowledge that for a brief moment I imagined the Germans had embarked upstream and were going to make a river battle of it.
By this time the American correspondents had left the Queen's, going in different directions for different purposes. Hunt and Thompson, I later learned, went to the American Consulate, where they stayed during the German entry.
For a moment I see-sawed up and down the river bank, remembering I had left my handbag at the Queen's, but, infinitely more important, that my knapsack with money belt and diary were in the keeping of a peripatetic acquaintance somewhere along the crowded piers downstream. Without that gold, the thousands of miles to New York seemed doubly long. When I at last got back to the barge office a dock-hand pointed to a bench in the corner; there to my intense relief lay the knapsack, where my kind English intelligence officer had left it.
A little later I managed to clamber on a river barge laden nearly to the sinking point with Antwerp's peaceful burghers and their dumb-looking women and children. Slowly—very slowly—we steamed out of the haze of powder and oil-laden smoke, through long lines of gunboats and a flotilla of drifting scows packed to the gunwales like our own, and past Fort St. Philippe, whose garrison were at that moment heaving tons of powder into the river.
A few miles farther downstream they landed us on the northern bank of the Scheldt near the little town of Liefkenshack. Here I began a few miles of walking, occasionally varied by ox-cart locomotion.
I was traveling with nothing but a knapsack (my suitcase had to be abandoned) and therefore moving faster than the crowd. At one point, for the sake of company, I joined a group and took a turn at shoving the family wheel-barrow. They poured out thanks in the guttural Flemish tongue, then loaded me with bread and bits of mouldy pie. When that was not accepted they feared for their hospitality. They talked and I talked, with a result that was hardly worth the effort. Finally, after a conference, one of the group disappeared into the crowd and returned leading an eight-year-old boy.
"Me talk American," said the boy. "We two speak together?"
And so we talked, for the road was long and weary.
Their advance was so gradual that, although I did not leave Antwerp until the bombardment was over, I caught up with the army of refugees before Roosendaal, just across the Dutch border.
Here Holland opened out her arms. The kindness of the Dutch—as yet personal, unorganized endeavor—was beyond conception.
Churches, houses, public halls, stations were thrown open to the multitude. You saw hundreds of Dutch soldiers join in the procession, lift babies and bundles, and walk with them for miles. At Dordrecht, when the trains came through, peasants passed scores of babies' milk-bottles into the cars. When a jolly-looking Dutch girl, with a great big gleaming smile that reminded me of some one, gave me milk and chocolate, the tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I suppose it was the reaction, or because I was tired, or, perhaps, because the crowd was cheering and waving at us. For the others there were piles of bread, Dutch cake, and, best of all, some good, long drinks of water. For ten days Antwerp's water supply had been cut off. Von Beseler, German siege commander, had seen to that.
At Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal people used the walls of the houses for post-offices. They wrote their names in chalk letters, giving directions to relatives lost in the scramble.
After ox carts, rowboats, and river barges had done their share, a Dutch-Belgian "Stoom Tram" joggled us along for a few miles. Some more walking and a little running before I at last crawled aboard a twenty-car freight and passenger train moving slowly toward the east.
At the first telegraph office across the Dutch border, I filed a cable story to the "Boston Journal"; and later started an account for the "New York Evening Post." I had an idea that I would score a "beat" or "scoop" so that the people of the Back Bay could read of Antwerp's fall over their coffee-cups the next morning. My cable account had too much inside information. There were in it too many facts concerning Winston Churchill's visit, also information about the number of Royal Marines engaged, none of which it was thought proper to give out at that time. So the English censor refused to let it through. That, however, did not prevent the Dutch Cable Company from pocketing my two hundred guilders.
By the time I reached Rotterdam the word "refugee" had assumed a new and altogether nearer meaning. I had been in a besieged and captured city; I had mixed with homeless and starving people; I had seen houses crumble and burn; and ghastly human figures with their insides oozing away and the eyes staring vacantly.
As I lay in bed that night I could hear, and I still can hear, the scruff, scruff, and shuffle of feet as the compact body of this army—the army without guns or leaders—dragged slowly past my window at the Queen's, the tinkle of ox-cart bells, the talk and babble of guttural tongues; the curses of the team drivers, the frantic cries of mothers who had lost their children in the scramble, the cries of young children who didn't know what was wrong, but realized in their vague, childish way that something terrible was happening.
I could see, and I still can see, those big Belgian hounds sniffing along the outskirts of the crowd and plainly advertising for an owner; I can see other hounds with their heads thrown back wailing at the door of their deserted and abandoned homes. And I can see the Dutch border where Holland opened out her arms, and the Dutch peasants gave us rye bread and sandwiches and good long drinks of welcome milk.
Sometimes I can sit with my legs dangling over the stern of that old towboat barge on which I finally made my escape, and can visualize the blue-gray spire of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, standing, it seemed to me, a quiet sentinel over the ruins of the tortured city; and, then, as the old barge sweeps around the river's bend, I can look back upon the last of Antwerp's story written in flaming letters of red against the early morning sky.
Spying On Spies
Less than forty-eight hours after the fall of Antwerp the wave of helpless humanity whose crest broke on the Belgian border had rolled over the entire length and breadth of Holland. Thousands of Belgian refugees wandered as far north as The Hague, where various Dutch relief committees and the American Legation at The Hague did their best to house the homeless and relieve the suffering. Dr. van Dyke rolled up his sleeves still farther and strained to solve the problem of the unemployed, sometimes, when a case interested him, turning his own pocket inside out.
Eight days after the Antwerp bombardment, I left The Hague for my second trip into Germany.
Just before my start Captain Sunderland, U.S.A., at the head of the American Relief Committee at The Hague, asked me to help him in taking charge of two carloads of grain, which were to go across the German border and be distributed among the starving Belgians at Liege. England had agreed not to interfere with food supplies, provided the United States saw that they did not fall into German hands in Belgium. The present job required sleeping in the freight cars and saying, in one form or another, "Hands off!" to every spiked helmet that tried to interfere. Captain Sunderland could speak no German, and as I had already been over the same territory and had had some experience with the military authorities, he wished me to accompany him.
I decided, however, to go into the interior of Germany. I had already seen three armies in the field, and had watched, more or less closely, the people of two warring nations. I was now particularly anxious to study the German point of view, and if possible get to the front with the Crown Prince's army.
For such a purpose I considered that I carried good enough credentials. In addition to a packet of mail for Ambassador Gerard, my letter from ex-President Roosevelt, and my United States passport, which had been vised by Herr von Mueller, German Ambassador at The Hague, I now carried a special laissez-passer which Mr. Marshall Langhorne had been kind enough to secure for me from the same legation. I had a letter from Count von Bernstorff, whom I had seen the night he arrived in America, and a letter from Herr von Biel, Secretary of the German Embassy at The Hague, recommending me to the Foreign Office in Berlin. Professor Hugo Munsterberg had taken the trouble to send me a note to Dr. R. W. Drechsler, head of the American Institute in Berlin, and I had also a letter to the head of the University of Berlin.
It was a five-hours' run from The Hague to Bentheim, a small country village on the German frontier. The train stopped a quarter of a mile north of the border. Dutch officials came aboard to examine passports and baggage of every passenger. They were good-natured and talkative, and did not go minutely into details, as those leaving the country were less carefully watched than "immigrants." Me, however, they mistook for an Englishman (as was usually the case in Germany) and told me I could not cross the frontier. A Dutch manufacturer, with whom I had struck up an acquaintance, explained my identity, and the official, who looked astonished, waved me ahead with a doubtful expression, as much as to say, "On your own head be it, young man."
That first night passed without trouble. At the border station we lined up, immigrant fashion, and went through an inspection by a number of the businesslike German militariat attached to the Zollamt, or customs service. For ten minutes I stood in suspense while a fiery-looking officer, with a snapping blue eye, looked through my credentials in silence. He wrote my name in a notebook, looked through my eye as if he would read my very soul, and then, without a remark, passed me on. I filed through a narrow gate—and so into the Realms of the Kaiser.
It was now eleven o'clock at night and the Berlin express came through Bentheim at 7.45 the next morning. We stayed at a little inn, somewhat resembling the Wayside Inn, at Sudbury, Massachusetts. Here I fell in with a German manufacturer whom I had seen several weeks before as we were bringing the good news from Ghent to Aix. I was surprised at this man's change of opinion regarding the conflict. On the first occasion he laughed outright at the idea of an extended fight. Now, all through his arguments, he repeated such phrases as, "Well, if Germany doesn't win," or, "Suppose the war does last two years," etc., etc.
In the morning I had a peculiarly disagreeable experience at Lohne, some distance from the German frontier, where we had again to change trains en route to the capital. Experience had by this time taught me, when thrown with people on the road, to show them my papers and make my identity known as soon as possible.
I therefore clung pretty closely to my argumentative German acquaintance of Bentheim and Aix. During the melee of changing cars I was, however, separated from him, and became engaged in conversation (spoken in English) with a Dutch chocolate merchant. The argument must have been interesting, for I did not at first notice a crowd of twenty or thirty travelers and villagers gathering around us: I did, however, notice when they began to push and jostle in a manner obviously intended for insult. When I tried to retreat the exits were locked. The crowd, convinced that I was an English spy, closed more compactly and manhandled me off toward an officer on the street behind the platform. My hat was knocked off, and for a brief moment I recalled the lynching anger which I had seen in the eyes of Belgian mobs, as German spies in Antwerp were being led to the police station.
At the last moment my rescuer came in the shape of the German friend of Bentheim, who broke through the mob and whispered in my ear, "Speak German. Always speak in German, you fool!"
I admitted the soft impeachment.
"Ich bin ein Amerikaner—ein correspondent," I explained to the row of angry faces; and while my German friend soothed and reassured his testy compatriots, I moved away, glad enough to escape another visit to jail. Those personally conducted jail tours were not so bad, I had found, with a handsome gendarme at your side; but a howling crowd was altogether another matter.
I reached the capital that night. One of my letters says, a few days later:—
"The atmosphere is oppressive to the Anglo-Saxon visitor. His looks, his manner, his accent betray him as one of the English-speaking pest, and the crowd, with its mind so full of English hatred, does not readily distinguish the American. So drop into a word of English in a cafe: your neighbor glowers and draws away. You face it out with a nonchalant air, but gradually the tension grows, especially when, as happened to-day at the prisoners' camp at Zossen, twenty miles south of Berlin, a great burly Prussian puts a menacing eye on you and says, without introduction: 'It is very dangerous for an Englishman here!'
"Day by day here the hatred grows of England and things English: judging from the press and the temper of the people, one would think that England is the only foe. As a nation and as individuals they bear no particular malice toward France. They even feel sorry for 'misguided' Belgium—betrayed by the British, they say. But England they look upon as the root of all their trouble, the despicable, retreating enemy they cannot touch, the enemy, they maintain, whose clever, but selfish, diplomacy has forced the brunt of the fighting on the others, while she sits back to wait for the spoils."
On my arrival in Berlin I delivered the mail packet to Ambassador Gerard. Two days later I presented my credentials at the Auswartige Amt, or Foreign Office, hoping to get permission to go to the western front with the Crown Prince's army. I was told to see Baron von Mumm Schwartzenstein, who was officially designated by Von Jagow to handle neutral correspondents, and who, unofficially, I have reason to believe, is connected with the Secret Service. He is a pudgy sort of man, with a watery skin, and decidedly not of military build or bearing. When, after much red tape, I was finally admitted to an outer office, he stepped out to see me, merely taking my name and the names of the papers I represented. I was told to come back in the evening. When I did so and was admitted to His Holy of Holies, he said to me at once:—
"I was expecting you to come yesterday. Why did you not?"
This was rather startling, but his next remark altogether took away my breath.
"Were you satisfied with your treatment by the War Office in Brussels, Herr Green? And why, if you have already been wiss ze army in scenes of war, do you now come to me for permission?"
Mind you, I had at this time spoken scarcely a word, and had certainly told nothing of my age or previous condition of servitude in Brussels. But the Government that never forgets knew all about my movements. He smiled at my discomfiture, and, within the next few minutes, proved to be such a genial German (for war-time) that I soon told him all about my adventures, including the fact that I had gone back into Antwerp and entered Belgian lines, after escaping from German surveillance at Aix. I happened to speak of the marvelous efficiency and preparedness of the German army in Belgium.
"Yes, that iss quite so," remarked His Excellency, with a smile. "You see, we were prepared for everysing—except," he added after a pause,—"except ze invasion of ze American newspaperman. When he iss out of our sight, zen we do not feel secure."
Several weeks later, after I had come out of the Kaiser's realm, a representative of the "Boston Journal," who had been looking for me all over the Continent, ran me down just as I was leaving The Hague for England.
"The Foreign Office in Berlin told me where to find you," he said. "They told me that in Berlin you had stayed first at the Esplanade, and then you had moved to the Kaiserhof. They said you had left the city [this was when I went out toward Poland], that you had returned to Berlin, and that on such and such a date at 8.45 you had departed for The Hague."!!
The military and civil authorities looked upon the correspondent as an embryo spy. And if the correspondent's sympathies were foreign, he was a thousand times worse than the ordinary spy, because he could make use of the cable and press to spread his information.
While waiting in Berlin for a chance to go to the front, I became, therefore, more and more conscious of surveillance. Whether it was the fact of being so much alone, or due perhaps to an unfortunately English-like appearance, I do not know. At all events, the long arm of the Secret Service continuously cast a shadow over my shoulder: I even became suspicious of myself.
For one who has not been through the experience it is difficult to appreciate the strain of such constant, unending suspicion. On July 17,1912, I stood beside the body of Herman Rosenthal, the gambler, as it lay in the coffin in the parlor of his house in the Tenderloin. My newspaper had sent me to "cover" the funeral, and I managed, because of some previous knowledge of the household, and by giving the impression of a mourner, to gain access. The murderers had not yet been caught. Because the public knew nothing of "Lefty" Louie, or "Gyp the Blood," or even of the late Lieutenant Becker, it was common gossip that the criminals lurked in the neighborhood, and that, in order to avoid suspicion, they would appear among the chief mourners. Therefore, each eye was turned against its neighbor, and each man, as he passed you, asked the silent question,—"Did you shoot Herman Rosenthal?" During all the months on the Continent, and particularly in Germany, I felt myself at Rosenthal's funeral.
To a greater or less degree other correspondents had similar experiences. I must mention one or two of them, in spite of the fact that they may dim the importance of my own adventures. There was Swing, of Chicago, German by relationship and sympathy, who championed the Kaiser's cause and in his dispatches blew the Teuton horn in the Middle West of America. Swing was given exceptional privileges, including a typewriter and telephone near the Foreign Office. Yet Swing himself was constantly shadowed, and it is a fact that every time he used the telephone (and he was never permitted to speak in English) a Secret Service agent cut in on the wire to listen to the conversation.
An anecdote which I have heard in connection with the same correspondent, although I do not vouch for its accuracy, shows that "keeping the lid" on newspaper men had its humorous side. It likewise indicates the initiative and aggressiveness of many American correspondents, who, as a rule, went right ahead in the face of military regulations, in some cases risking their lives, and in almost every case refusing to be "bluffed out," even where the threatened penalty was death. Swing had made his way to the battle front near—- ——-, where he was taken into custody and brought before Von Mumm, then on a visit to Staff Headquarters.
"I find one of your countrymen wizin ze army lines," is the way Excellency von Mumm is reported as telling the story, "and I say to him, 'Herr Swing, it iss strongly forbidden zat a newspaper man come to ze front. It is not permitted zat any one come here; you must go away.'
"Very goot, Excellency," said Swing.
"Ze next day I am extr-r-remely sorry to encounter ze same chentleman, and I say to him, 'Go away at once. If you are not gone in one hour you will be shot!'
"Very goot, Excellency," answered Herr Swing. "Auf wiedersehn."
"Zat Very afternoon, to my sur-r-r-prise and gr-r-reat astonishment, I see him again. He was still in ze army lines. And I say to him, 'Now I have you! This time you will be shot at sunrise!'
"And he look at me and say:—
"'Very goot, Excellency. Zat make perfectly bully story for my paper.'
"And I look at him for a minute, and I do not know whether to shoot him or to laugh.
"And you know, I cannot help myself but to laugh."
And finally there was the case of Cyril Brown, staff correspondent of the "New York Times" in Berlin, with whom I floundered through the maze of official red tape and military snares that entangled the reporter at the German capital. Brown is an individual with a sense of humor and a Mark Twain penchant for ten-pfennig cigars. He takes his work seriously, but, unlike most war correspondents, not himself. After some interesting freight-car adventures of his own planning, he reached the Grosser Hauptquartier, a small city on the Meuse, where at that time the brain of the German fighting machine was located. This most vulnerable spot of the entire German Empire was, paradoxically, in France. The Kaiser, the King of Saxony, the Crown Prince of Germany, and Field Marshal von Moltke were here holding council of war. It was therefore of utmost importance to conceal the locality. Neutral correspondents were not allowed: the German press, even if it knew, would not dare to breathe its whereabouts. When Brown by strategy got inside the red-and-white striped poles which marked the entrance to the Over War Lord's quarters, he was at once arrested and taken before Major Nikolai, head of the Kaiser's bodyguard and chief of the field detectives.
It was late at night, and it was determined that Brown should go on the first military Postzug, which left at 7 A.M. If he was not gone by that time there were terrible threats of what would happen to him.
It so happened that the day was the Crown Princess's birthday. Soldiers, grenadiers, and servants of the Kaiser's household celebrated the fact. Brown evaded his intoxicated sentinels and deliberately missed the train. The following morning Major Nikolai discovered him behind the guardhouse, himself feigning intoxication. Major Nikolai was about to throw Brown into jail "for the duration of the war" when the young man answered:—
"But, Major, I overslept. What loyal German could possibly remain sober on the Crown Princess's birthday?"
"Gott im Himmel!" exclaimed the major, bursting into a laugh; "vatever can be done mit such a man?"
To-day Brown has free run of the Foreign Office and the War Office in Berlin, and is sending to his paper, in my humble opinion, the best information obtainable in this country on the way in which the German civil and military mind views the "crisis" with the U. S. A.
The Sorrow Of The People
I was conscious of a distinct break between the crisp, official atmosphere of Berlin—where the war hurts least and the mechanical appearance of success is strong—and the sentiment of the rank and file of people whose suffering, as the war continued, became a more and more important factor.
On the night of my second arrival in the capital I sat in the rear of a motion-picture theater, just off the Friedrichstrasse. It was a long, dark hallway, such as one may see in any of the cheaper "movies" on Washington Street or Broadway, where the audience sits in silence broken by the whirr of the cinematograph and in darkness pierced by the flickering light upon the screen. The woman in the seat beside mine was the typical Hausfrau of the middle class. She was, of course, dressed in mourning: the heavy veil, which was thrown back, revealed the expression so common to the German widow of to-day —that set, defiant look which begs no pity, and seems to say: "We've lost them once; we 'd endure the same torture again if we had to."
It was a sad enough story that the reel clicked off, and about as melodramatic as "movies" usually are. But the woman kept herself well in hand, since the public display of grief is forbidden and they who sorrow must sorrow alone.
A Bavarian boy, as I recall it,—the youngest son,—runs away from home to join his father's regiment in Poland. When his captain calls for volunteers for a dangerous mission, the boy steps forward. For hours they trudge over the snow until surrounded by a Cossack patrol. The Bavarian boy, although having a chance to escape, goes back under fire to succor his wounded comrade. Just as he is about to drag the comrade into the zone of safety, a bullet pierces his lung. For two days he suffers torture on the snow. The body is found and brought home to his mother.
Now and then the widow next me bit her lip and clenched her fist, but she gave no other sign of emotion. Another film was thrown on the screen, humorous, I believe. Suddenly the woman began to laugh. She did not stop laughing. It was a long, mirthless, dry, uncanny sort of cackle. People stared. She laughed still louder. An usher came down the aisle, and stood there, uncertain what to do. Hysterics had given way to weeping: the tears were now streaming down the woman's face. She tried to control herself, but could not, and then arose and between choking sobs and laughter fled from the darkened room out into the Friedrichstrasse.
I mention this incident—the sort of thing that must have existed everywhere, if one had eyes to see it—merely because it gave a glimpse through the veil of public optimism into the wells of sorrow hidden for the sake of public duty. Military and official Berlin was "staged," one might almost say. It was on show to impress the neutral stranger, no less than its own inhabitants, with the glorious sense of victory.
But beneath it lay untold suffering which could be endured only because of such united loyalty and team play as the world has seldom seen.
This undercurrent of suffering, which increased week by week as the writing on the wall grew longer, was in pitiful contrast to the enthusiasm with which the women sent their men and sons away to war. More than once I watched troops drilling at Spandau Hof, the great barracks and training-grounds, a few kilometers west of the city. When, on the evening of my first visit, a half dozen battalions of Landwehr, just whipped into shape, entrained for the front, the people threw bits of earth upon them, and, according to custom, stuck green twigs in the end of every Mauser barrel, that each man might carry a bit of the Vaterland with him on to the enemy's soil. In unspotted field uniforms, and helmets still without the green-gray canvas service covering, they clattered past the reviewing officers, each right leg coming down with the thumping goose-step salute, until halls and barracks echoed with the staccato tread of thousands of hob-nailed boots. The lusty military band blazoned out "Die Wacht am Rhein" and other martial airs, until the creepers began to run up and down your back and you felt a lump rising in your throat. Friends, relatives, widows, mothers already in black for other sons, and more than the usual hurrahing crowd had gathered under the arch leading to the railway track. As the close-locked fours went through the gate, the people broke the ranks and pounded each man on the back, while all the time the crowd was shouting.
I asked my neighbor what they were calling.
A German friend in the group explained: "The people shout 'congratulations!'"
At that moment a Red Cross train returning with twenty carloads of wounded stood on the siding. Scores of bandaged heads and limp arms stuck out of the windows,—these were the slightly wounded, —and even the half-dead figures strapped to the cots turned feebly toward the marching troops. Most of these also waved, and those who were physically able shouted the same words—"Bravo!" "Congratulations!" "Bravo!!"
That is the way after many months of war that the women and children send their men away—no regrets, no holding back. "Good luck! Good work! You've got a chance to die for Germany!!"
Such a spirit, and with it a sincerity of purpose that could only come from the conviction of right, is typical of the rank and file of citizens. It cannot fail to impress the neutral stranger, though he has traveled far in other countries at war and seen and lived with their citizens and soldiers. One was forced to believe that the militarists acted in conformity with the feelings of the whole people, and that this hideous war was not merely the result of personal ambition. Except, of course, among the soldiers the belief was most noticeable among the lower classes. One found it among the peasants, one's neighbor in the day coach, the artisan, the shopkeeper. You might reason with a professor, a doctor, or perhaps an official in the Foreign Office at Berlin. But it was not safe to try it on a sturdy peasant with three sons on the firing line. It was like telling a man his mother is no better than she should be.
From the Log
"Among both fighters and those left at home, there is distinctly less of the matinee hero business than in either England or France. The high official in the civil government who said that the women were the best fighters in the German army was not so far from the truth. The pluck of the women is astonishing. There isn't the slightest display of sorrow or call for sympathy. You see them everywhere in the streets, cafes, and shops of Berlin; not in such great numbers, however, as in the lesser provinces and the smaller towns, where the drain of men is enormously heavier.
"Later: Have been twice to the Casualty List Office, or Information Bureau, where the names of the verwundet und gefallen are posted — column after column, company after company, regiment after regiment of fine black type—nothing more or less than a printer's morgue, crowding into one dark hallway the cemetery of a nation. There were fathers, mothers, brothers, and children quietly and unemotionally scanning the lists. It took me back to the terrible week at the White Star offices, after the Titanic went down. At that time the relatives wept (some of them) and nearly all harangued the officials, asking questions, sending telegrams, begging for news. Here they look for the names of their dead,—that's all,—and then go out without a question. You can't ask questions of a Government! The Titanic lasted a week, and this goes on— God knows how long!
"Had supper with Brown. Later a mother in black and a girl, also in black (the daughter, or daughter-in-law, I should judge), came into the Heiniger ( ?) Cafe while I was sitting there. For three quarters of an hour they listened to the music, neither of them, I'll swear, speaking a word. Then they paid twenty-five pfennigs for their beer and went out, —still silent,—and the Ober bowed low and very respectfully. I asked the waiter who they were, and he said the woman had that day heard of the death of C… her fourth son. Something like the Bixby woman to whom Lincoln wrote his famous letter. And there must be, literally, thousands of them.
"This people is terribly in earnest,—deluded, of course, with devotion to a false idea, but it is the delusion that spells accomplishment. The country is earnestly and honestly possessed with an Idea, and the idea is that Might is Right. That is the awful pity of it. When will the awakening come?
"Later: To-day I had an interview of three quarters of an hour with Herr Dr. R. W. Drechsler, head of the American Institute, attached to the University of Berlin. To-morrow I hope to see Excellency von Harnach, president of the University of Berlin, to whom I have a letter. Dr. Drechsler was kind, agreeable, extremely interesting. He showed me some New York newspapers—the first real news of the war I have had for weeks. The 'Tribune' and 'Times' had an account of us fellows down in the cellar at Antwerp. Drechsler and I had an interesting argument, and before I left he deluged me with pamphlets and literature for the improvement of my mind and sympathies. Even so he was unlike the average German. As a rule they have attempted to cram their arguments down my throat. These Teutons think they can force you to believe.
"Dr. Drechsler and the proprietor of the Kaiserhof, and, of course, the Foreign Office warned me that it was forbidden to go to the prisoners' camps, either at Zossen or Doeberitz. Some correspondents had been taken on 'personally conducted' tours; but because of misinformation sent out the tours were no longer in vogue. So I thought that I would risk it, without permit, and, wishing to take a swing through rural Germany, I decided to visit the camp at Zossen, twenty-five kilometers south of the capital. When the guards weren't looking, I slipped boxes of cigarettes through the barbed-wire fence to Irish privates, and listened to the talk of captured Cossacks, and watched the British Tommies kicking around a 'soccer' football, squabbling about fouls and penalties, and as much excited about the score as if they were at home on Hampstead Heath."
It was chiefly in my wanderings through rural Germany that I was able to rub elbows with the rank and file of citizens, and to get that barometer of public feeling which Colonel Roosevelt, I believe, has called the barber-shop opinion. I think I am justified in saying that during the winter there were many evidences, too many to be overlooked, that a growing minority, suffering through loss of life and realizing the territorial advantages which are now Germany's, earnestly longed for peace on any reasonable terms. The sooner peace came, they felt, the better would be the strategic position of the Vaterland. Some of this minority, in addition to the women, were business men, or professors, or merchants, or doctors.
It was not far from Hanover, where you change cars for Cologne and Aix- la-Chapelle, dispatching-centers of the troops for the northern line of battle, that the Frankfort doctor in the seat next mine began to talk. He was an oldish man over sixty, dressed in mourning, and careworn. He had been to Berlin, he said, to verify the report of his son's death, and was now headed for Aix, where the body lay.
After Uhlman, the fat merchant, left, we were alone in the second-class compartment, and the doctor got up and shut the door on the noise of Landwehr soldiers singing in the section of the troop train attached behind the car. Presently he showed me two postals from his boy. They were the stereotyped cards allotted to the men on the field: on one side space for the address, on the other side the printed word "well," space for the date (but no locality), and the signature. The third card was a casualty report, signed, probably, by the company captain, with the three printed words "slightly wounded," "wounded," and "severely wounded." The first and last were scratched out, but after the word "wounded" was written, "condition low."
The boy must have held out—because the body was sent to Aix—until well along the homeward Red Cross trip. During the Antwerp bombardment, at Brussels, Liege, and Louvain, I had seen scores of the wounded, and had myself slept on those trains with their households of blood and pain and ether, and their long lines of mail cars, box cars, and converted tram cars fitted with their triple rows of berths, one above another. As the old doctor talked, I could see the wheeled hospitals stealing into the city in the darkness—for the troops go off with bands and holiday accompaniment, but the return is made at dead of night, that the public may not know the human cost.
"We must have peace," the doctor finished, "and we must have it soon. I do not say this because I have lost a son, and I do not say it alone. There are thousands who feel it just as much, but they are afraid to speak what is in their mind. You are a traveler from the great city [Berlin], and you do not know what war means. All you have heard is the talk of fight and victory and glory, and that is all you see if you do not look close. You must live in the smaller cities, must see the villages and farms without men, and you must come with me and see the homes without husband or son." For the third time he interrupted himself to ask:—"You are Amerikaner—yes? And why do you come?"
"To see the war and find out what the German people think."
"Then go home and tell your country what I think and say, and many others like me."
It was not easy to forget his tears and final words as he came up on the platform at Hanover, and, looking around to see that no one overheard, whispered hoarsely: "Fangen sie ihre Propagande an, junger Mann, und Gott starke ihre Bemuhungen"—"Start your peace propaganda, young man, and Heaven help the undertaking."
The southern part of this trip was not without its crop of stories, some humorous, and some atrocious. It was impossible to verify the statement of the Bavarian travelers who boasted of the treatment of English prisoners en route to the detention camp. On one occasion sixty were captured, they said, and only five brought home alive. The Bavarian soldiers guarding them said with a laugh, "But they were tired, so we had to shoot the rest"; and the officer answered with a wink, "What happens to English prisoners need never be reported." One never needed more one's sense of the probabilities.
And there was the good-natured cavalry lieutenant who said the Germans had found a way to keep their prisoners in training. "You see," he explained, "we lock twenty of the 'red-trousers' [Frenchmen] and twenty Englishmen in the same room at night and shut the windows. You know a Frenchman can't stand air, and a Kitchener will die without it. So we stand outside to watch the fun. First a window goes up, and then it goes down, and pretty soon there are growls, grumbles, and oaths. In ten minutes a terrible fight ensues; in half an hour the Frenchmen are badly beaten,—they always are,—and twenty battered English heads come sticking out the window for a breath of air."
And finally there was the Landwehr captain's letter, a thing in keeping with the tales which come across the Polish border. Westward, in Belgium and in France, the fight was modern and of the day. Move eastward from Berlin and you got the mediaeval note. It was not to be found at the English prisoners' camp at Doeberitz, where the Germans stare with infinite contempt and satisfaction at Tommy Atkins behind his triple row of wire gratings. But wander among the thousands of captured Cossacks building their own prisons at the camp at Zossen, hear them muttering "Nichevo"—"this is fate"—"I do not care," and, listening to the stories of their captors, you felt the atmosphere of centuries gone by. One such was called to my attention in the form of a Prussian captain's letter, which was, I believe, published in Berlin. Here is his letter of the war in Poland, not long ago received by relatives. So much as is not private is given as he wrote it:—
"The inhabitants go out of our way like frightened dogs, with childish fear. When they wish to ask a question, they kneel down and kiss the border of our coats, as in the days of the serf system. We are stationed here in Poland, about eight kilometers from the so-called road, in a so-called village far from all civilization. The village consists of a number of tumble-down cottages, with rooms which we should not consider fit for stables for our horses. The rain is streaming down unceasingly, as if Heaven wished to wash away all the sins of the world. Our horses sink into the mud up to their knees.
"We took up our quarters in this village after fifty-four hours' marching, and came just in time to witness the end of a strange and tragic romance. When I was about to open the door of a farm, it was opened from the inside, and a subaltern came out, with a face beaming with satisfaction. He reported that a little while ago he, with a few of his men, partly captured and partly shot down half a company of Russians.
"'We were concealed' he told me. 'We let them come quite near, and then we started firing.'
"We entered a low-ceilinged room, or pen, sparsely lighted by wax candles. The first object which caught my attention was a youthful Russian soldier, almost a child, lying on a straw mattress, smiling as if asleep. I approached; I put my hand on his forehead … ice-cold— dead. Some of the men approached to take off the clothing; others stood around in a half-circle, silently looking on. Suddenly there was a murmur… They seemed awe-stricken, these brave fellows, who are not daunted even by overwhelming odds. They hesitated, and one of them, advancing a few paces to me, reports: 'This Russian soldier is a girl.'
"This happened in the year 1914.
"We found out that the girl was the betrothed of a Russian officer, and fought side by side with him throughout the campaign, until killed by a shot in the breast. The officer was taken prisoner. I buried her myself that same day…"
In order to make clear what happened when I crossed the German border for the last time, I should explain that I now had with me several trophies which I had obtained with great difficulty and was correspondingly anxious to bring home. Among them was a German private's helmet and an original Iron Cross of the second degree. The marking on the temple band of the helmet said, "48th Regiment, 4th Army Corps, Company 7, No. 57, 1909-1914,"—meaning that the owner started service in 1909 and the helmet was issued to him in 1914. It is believed it belonged to a soldier who was either wounded or killed outside of Antwerp. The Iron Cross has on it: "1870" (when the order was started), and the letter "F" (Friedrich), and the date of its issuance. I should add that I did not rob a dead or dying soldier of these trophies, but I was asked not to show them in either Belgium or England, nor to state how I came by them. And I have kept my promise.
I had also a fragment of shrapnel casing from a 32 cm. shell—the only bomb which hit the Antwerp Cathedral during the German attack. It was given to me by Mr. Edward Eyre Hunt, who picked it up on the morning of the German entry. There were also some Belgian bullet clips and a bit of shrapnel picked up near the spot where I was knocked down by the concussion of a bursting shell on that same morning.
When I reached Bentheim we were put through the usual search by the border patrol and military officials of the Zollamt. I had pinned the Iron Cross to my undershirt, but the helmet was a bit bulky for such treatment.