Retreating armies must reach defenses.
What happened in the Russian effort to support Rumania is exactly what has occurred in nearly all the drives that I have been in during this war. An army once started in retreat in the face of superior forces can hold only when supporteden blocor when it reaches a fortified line. The Germans with all their clevernessand efficiency were not able to stop the Russian offensive of 1916 until they had fallen back on the fortified lines of the Stokhod in front of Kovel. In the Galician drive against the Russians in 1915, the armies of the Tsar were not able to hold until they reached the San River, on which they fought a series of rear-guard actions.
Russian corps on Sereth line.
So it was in Rumania. The Russian corps arriving on the installment plan were swept away by the momentum of the advancing enemy, who could not be halted until the fortified line of the Sereth was reached.
Rumanians played the game.
Russia in chaos.
Whether one blames the Allies for lack of vision or not, I think one must at least acquit Rumania of any responsibility for her own undoing. Her case as represented by the King seems a just and sufficient reason for her having entered the war. Her action during the war has been straightforward and direct, and I have never heard of any reason to believe that the King or the Rumanian High Command has ever looked back in the furrow since they made the decision to fight on the side of the Allies. They followed the advice given them as to their participation in the war. They have played the game to the limit of their resources and to-day stand in a position almost unparalleled in its pathos and acuteness. In front of them, as they struggle with courage and desperation for the small fragment of their kingdom that remains, are the formations of the Turks, Bulgars, Austrians, Hungarians, and Germans, with Mackensen striving to give them a death-blow. Behind them is Russia in chaos. German agitators and irresponsible revolutionists have striven in vain to destroy the morale of their army and shake their faith in their government and their sovereign. It is estimated that three million Rumanian refugees have taken shelter behind their lines. Theircivil population, or that portion of it which remains, will this winter be destitute of almost every necessity of life.
Obligation of Allies to Rumania.
This, then, is the case of Rumania, and if we and the other Allies have not a moral obligation to the King and Queen and the government of that little country, to support them in every way possible, then surely we have no obligation to any one.
Sentiment, however, is not the only factor in the Rumanian case. There is also the problem of sound policy. In spite of all her distress and her discouragements Rumania has been able to save from the wreckage, and to reconstruct, an army which it is said can muster between three and four hundred thousand men.
Rumanian army well drilled.
These soldiers are well drilled by French officers, filled with enthusiasm and fighting daily, and are even now diverting enemy troops toward Rumania which would otherwise be available for fighting British, French, and American troops in the west.
The Rumanians are the matrix of the Russian left flank, and if, through lack of support and the necessities of life, they go out of the war, the solidity of the Russian left is destroyed and the capture of Odessa probably foreordained.
A few hundred million dollars would probably keep Rumania fighting for another year. It is a conservative estimate to state that it will take ten times that amount, and at least six months' delay, to place the equivalent number of trained American troops on any fighting front.
Every assistance should be given.
It is, I think, obvious that from the point of view of sound military policy, as well as moral and ethical obligation, every American whose heart is in this war should be behind the President of the United States without reserve, inany effort he may make or recommend, in extending assistance to Rumania in this the hour of her greatest peril.
Copyright, Atlantic Monthly, December, 1917.
Germany's treatment of prisoners of war.
Prisoners taken by the Germans were overworked and disciplined with much insolence and cruelty. For infractions of their iron rules the Germans inflicted the severest penalties. The food supplied was insufficient and of very poor quality, so that men might actually have starved had it not been for boxes sent from home through the Red Cross. In the following chapter, a Canadian soldier, who finally escaped after three unsuccessful attempts, describes the life of prisoners and other workers in the Westphalian coal mines.
I was in Germany as prisoner of war from June, 1916, to September, 1917.
Captured at third battle of Ypres.
A giant shell blows up the dugout.
My story starts with my capture at the third battle of Ypres. The Fourth Canadian Mounted Rifles were in the front line at Zillebeke. We had been terribly pounded by German artillery, in fact, almost annihilated. After a hideous night, morning, June 2, 1916, dawned beautiful and clear. At 5.30 I turned in for a little sleep with four other fellows who made up the machine-gun crew with me. Lance Corporal Wedgewood, in charge of the gun, remained awake to clean it. I had just got into a sound sleep when it seemed as if the whole crust of the earth were torn asunder in one mammoth explosion, and I found myself buried beneath sandbags and loose earth. I escaped death only by a miracle and managed to dig my way out. A giant shell had blown up our dugout. Two of the boys were killed.
"We're in for it," said Wedgewood. "They'll keep this up for a while and they'll come over. We must get the gun out."
German barrage almost wipes out the Fourth.
The gun had been buried by the explosion, but we managed to get it out and were cleaning it up again when another trench mortar shell came over. It destroyed all but 300 rounds of ammunition. Then the bombardment started in earnest. Shells rained on us like hailstones. The German artillery started a barrage behind us that looked almost like awall of flame; so we knew that there was no hope whatever of help reaching us.
Our men dropped off one by one. The walls of our trench were battered to greasy sand heaps. The dead lay everywhere. Soon only Wedgewood, another chap, and myself were left.
"They've cleaned us out now. The whole battalion's gone," he said.
As far as we could see along the line there was nothing left, not even trenches—just churned-up earth and mutilated bodies. The gallant Fourth had stood its ground in the face of probably the worst hell that had yet visited theCanadianlines and had been wiped out!
It was not long before the other fellow was finished by a piece of shrapnel. I was wounded in the back with a splinter from a shell which broke overhead and then another got me in the knee. I bled freely, but luckily neither wound was serious. About 1.30 we saw a star shell go up over the German lines.
"They're coming!" cried Wedgewood, and we jumped to the gun.
The two men remaining fire the machine gun.
The Germans were about seventy-five yards off when we got the gun trained on them. We gave them our 300 rounds and did great damage; the oncoming troops wavered and the front line crumpled up, but the rest came on.
Captured by Germans.
What followed does not remain very clearly in my mind. We tried to retreat. Every move was agony for me. We did not go far, however. Some of the Germans had got around us and we ran right into four of them. We doubled back and found ourselves completely surrounded. A ring of steel and fierce, pitiless eyes! I expected they would butcher us there and then. The worst we got, however, was a series of kicks as we were marching throughthe lines in the German communication trenches.
The night in a stable at Menin.
We were given quick treatment at a dressing station and escorted with other prisoners back to Menin by Uhlans. The wounded were made to get along as best they could. We passed through several small towns where the Belgian people tried to give us food. The Uhlans rode along and thrust them back with their lances in the most cold-blooded way. We reached Menin about 10 o'clock that night and were given black bread and coffee—or something that passed by that name. The night was spent in a horse stable with guards all around us with fixed bayonets. The next day we were lined up before a group of German officers, who asked us questions about the numbers and disposition of the British forces, and we lied extravagantly. They knew we were lying, and finally gave it up.
In cattle trucks to Dülmen camp.
During the next day and a half, traveling in cattle trucks, we had one meal, a bowl of soup. It was weak and nauseating. We took it gratefully, however, for we were nearly starved.
Food bad and insufficient.
Finally we arrived at Dülmen camp, where I was kept two months. The food was bad, and very, very scanty. For breakfast we had black bread and coffee; for dinner, soup (I still shudder at the thought of turnip soup), and sometimes a bit of dog meat for supper, a gritty, tasteless porridge, which we called "sand storm." We used to sit around with our bowls of this concoction and extract a grim comfort from the hope that some day Kaiser Bill would be in captivity and we might be allowed to feed him on "sand storm."
The American Ambassador's visit.
While I was at Dülmen we had quite a number of visitors. One day Mr. Gerard, the American Ambassador, appeared. He looked us over with great concern and asked us anumber of questions. "Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked as he was leaving.
"See if you can get them to give us more food," one of us begged.
"I shall speak to the camp commander about it," promised Mr. Gerard.
I do not doubt that he did so—but there was no change in the menu and no increase in the quantities served.
Arrival at the coal mine.
After two months at Dülmen prison camp we got word that we were to be sent to work on a farm. We conjured up visions of open fields and fresh air and clean straw to sleep in and perhaps even real food to eat. They loaded fifty of us into one car and sent us off, and when we reached our farm we found it was a coal mine!
As we tumbled off the train, stiff, weary, and disappointed, we were regarded curiously by a small group of people who worked in the mines. They were a heavy looking lot—oldish men with beards, and dull, stolid women. They regarded us with sullen hostility, but there was no fire in their antagonism. Some of the men spat and muttered "Schweinhunds!" That was all.
The prison camp.
We were marched off to the "Black Hole." It was a large camp with large frame buildings, which had been erected especially for the purpose. There was one building for the French prisoners, one for the Russians, and one for the British and Canadian contingent. Barbed wire entanglements surrounded the camp and there were sentries with drawn bayonets everywhere.
Heavy work and slender rations.
We were greeted with considerable interest by the other prisoners. There were about two hundred of our men there and all of them seemed in bad shape. They had been subjected to the heaviest kind of work on the slenderest rations and were pretty well worn out.
A strike for safeguards.
Some of us were selected for the mine and some were told off for coke making, which, as we soon learned, was sheer unadulterated hell. I was selected for the coke mine and put in three days at it—three days of smarting eyes and burning lungs, of aching and weary muscles. Then my chum, Billy Flanagan, was buried under an avalanche of falling coal and killed. There were no safeguards in the mine and the same accident might occur again at any time. So we struck.
Kept at "attention" thirty-six hours.
The officers took it as a matter of course. We were lined up and ordered to stand rigidly at "attention." No food was served, not even a glass of water was allowed us. We stood there for thirty-six hours. Man after man fainted from sheer exhaustion. When one of us dropped he was dragged out of the ranks to a corner, where a bucket of water was thrown over him, and, as soon as consciousness returned, he was yanked to his feet and forced to return to the line. All this time sentries marched up and down and if one of us moved he got a jab with the butt end of the gun. Every half hour an officer would come along and bark out at us:
"Are you for work ready now?"
Finally, when some of our fellows were on the verge of insanity, we gave in in a body.
Awakened at 4 a. m.
Turnip soup the chief article of diet.
After that things settled down into a steady and dull routine. We were routed out at 4 o'clock in the morning. The sentries would come in and beat the butts of their rifles on the wooden floor and roar "Raus!" at the top of their voices. If any sleep-sodden prisoners lingered a second, they were roughly hauled out and kicked into active obedience. Then a cup of black coffee was served out to us and at 5 o'clock we were marched to the mines. There was a dressing room at the mine where we stripped off our prisoners' garb and donnedworking clothes. We stayed in the mines until 3.30 in the afternoon and the "staggers"—our pet name for the foremen—saw to it that we had a busy time of it. Then we changed back into our prison clothes and marched to barracks, where a bowl of turnip soup was given us and a half pound of bread. We were supposed to save some of the bread to eat with our coffee in the morning. Our hunger was so great, however, that there was rarely any of the bread left in the morning. At 7 o'clock we received another bowl of turnip soup and were then supposed to go to bed.
If it had not been for the parcels of food that we received from friends at home and from the Red Cross we would certainly have starved. We were able to eke out our prison fare by carefully husbanding the food that came from the outside.
Citizen miners also complain about food.
The citizens working in the mines when I first arrived were mostly middle-aged. Many were quite venerable in appearance and of little actual use. They were willing enough to work and work hard; but they complained continually about the lack of food.
That was the burden of their conversation, always, food—bread, butter, potatoes, schinken (ham)! They were living on meager rations and the situation grew steadily worse. The people that I worked with were in almost as bad a plight as we prisoners of war. In the course of a few months I could detect sad changes in them.
German miners also severely disciplined.
The German miners were quite as much at the mercy of the officers as we were. Discipline was rigid and they were "strafed" for any infraction of rules; that is, they were subjected to cuts in pay. Lateness, laziness, or insubordination were punished by the deduction of so many marks from their weekly earnings, and all on the say-so of the "stagger" in charge ofthe squad. At a certain hour each day an official would come around and hand each civilian a slip of paper. I asked one of my companions what it was all about.
No bread tickets for those who do not work.
"Bread tickets," he explained. "If they don't turn up for work, they don't get their bread tickets and have to go hungry."
The same rule applied to the women who worked around the head of the mine, pushing carts and loading the coal. If they came to work, they received their bread tickets; if they failed to turn up, the little mouths at home would go unfed for a day.
German women at the mines.
I often used to stop for a moment or so on my way to or from the pit head and watch these poor women at work. Some of them went barefoot, but the most of them wore wooden shoes. They appeared to be pretty much of one class, uneducated, dull, and just about as ruggedly built as their men. They seemed quite capable of handling the heavy work given them. There were exceptions, however. Here and there among the gray-clad groups I could pick out women of a slenderer mold. These were women of refinement and good education who had been compelled to turn to any class of work to feed their children. Their husbands and sons were at the front or already killed.
The food restrictions caused bitterness among all the mine workers. There were angry discussions whenever a group of them got together. For several days this became very marked.
"There's going to be trouble here," my friend, the English Tommy, told me. "These people say their families are starving. They will strike one of these days."
The very next day, as we marched up to work in the dull gray of the early morning, we found noisy crowds of men and women aroundthe buildings at the mine. A ring of sentries had been placed all around.
Bread strike of the citizen miners.
"Strike's on! There's a bread strike all through the mining country!" was the whispered news that ran down the line of prisoners. We were delighted, because it meant that we would have a holiday. The authorities did not dare let us go into the mines with the civilians out; they were afraid we might wreck it. So we were marched back to camp and stayed there until the strike was over.
The strikers win and new rules are formulated.
The strike ended finally and the people came back to work, jubilant. The authorities had given in for two reasons, as far as we could judge. The first was the dire need of coal, which made any interruption of work at the mines a calamity. The second was the fact that food riots were occurring in many parts and it was deemed wise to placate the people.
But the triumph of the workers was not complete. The very next day we noticed signs plastered up in conspicuous places with the familiar word "Verboten" in bold type at the top. One of our fellows who could read German edged up close enough to see one of the placards.
"There won't be any more strikes," he informed us. "The authorities have made it illegal for more than four civilians to stand together at any time or talk together. Any infringement of the rule will be jail for them. That means no more meetings."
There was much muttering in the mine that day, but it was done in groups of four or less. I learned afterward, when I became sufficiently familiar with the language and with the miners themselves to talk with them, that they bitterly resented this order.
Strike leaders disappear from the mine.
I found that the active leaders in the strike shortly afterward disappeared from the mine. Those who could possibly be passed for militaryservice were drafted into the army. This was intended as an intimation to the rest that they must "be good" in future. The fear of being drafted for the army hung over them all like a thunder cloud. They knew what it meant and they feared it above everything.
When I first arrived at the mine there were quite a few able-bodied men and boys around sixteen and seventeen years of age at work there. Gradually they were weeded out for the army. When I left none were there but the oldest men and those who could not possibly qualify for any branch of the service.
Talks with the German miner.
In the latter stages of my experience at the mine I was able to talk more or less freely with my fellow workers. A few of the Germans had picked up a little English. There was one fellow who had a son in the United States and who knew about as much English as I knew German, and we were able to converse. If I did not know the "Deutsch" for what I wanted to say, he generally could understand it in English. He was continually making terrific indictments of the German Government, yet he hated England to such a degree that he would splutter and get purple in the face whenever he mentioned the word. However, he could find it in his heart to be decent to isolated specimens of Englishmen.
I first got talking with Fritz one day when the papers had announced the repulse of a British attack on the western front.
Fritz's view of British attacks.
"It's always the same. They are always attacking us," he cursed. "Of course, it's true that we repulse them. They are but English and they can't break the German army. But how are we to win the war if it is always the English who attack?"
"Do you still think Germany can win?" I asked.
"No!" He fairly spat at me. "We can't beat you now. But you can't beat us! This war will go on until your pig-headed Lloyd George gives in."
"Or," I suggested gently, "until your pig-headed Junker Government gives in."
"They never will!" he said, a little proudly, but sadly too. "Every man will be killed in the army—my two sons, all—and we will starve before it is all over!"
The Germans no longer hope for a big victory.
The German citizens, in that section at least, had given up hope of being able to score the big victory that was in every mind when the war started. What the outcome would be did not seem to be clear to them. All they knew was that the work meant misery for them, and that, as far as they could see, this misery would continue on and on indefinitely. They had lost confidence in the newspapers. It was plain to be seen that the stereotyped rubber-stamped kind of official news that got into the papers did not satisfy them. Many's the time I heard bitter curses heaped upon theHohenzollernsby lips that were flabby and colorless from starvation.
News of unrestricted submarine warfare.
There was much excitement among them when, early in 1917, the news spread that unrestricted submarine warfare was to be resumed. Old Fritz came over to me with a newspaper in his hand and his eyes fairly popping with excitement.
"This will end it!" he declared. "We are going to starve you out, you English."
"You'll bring America in," I told him.
"No, no!" he said, quite confidently. "The Yankees won't come in. They are making too much money as it is. They won't fight. See, here it is in the paper. It is stated clearly here that the United States will not fight. It doesn't dare to fight!"
But when the news came that the United States had actually declared war they were asad lot. I took the first opportunity to pump old Fritz about the views of his companions.
"It's bad, bad," he said, shaking his head dolefully.
"Then you are afraid of the Americans, after all?" I said.
Why Fritz was sorry to have America in the war.
Fritz laughed, with a short, contemptuous note. "No, it is not that," he said. "England will be starved out before the Americans can come in and then it will all be over. But—just between us, you and me—most of us here were intending to go to America, after the war, where we would be free from all this. But—now the United States won't let us in after the war!"
I shall never forget the day that the papers announced the refusal of the English labor delegates to go to Stockholm. One excited miner struck me across the face with the open newspaper in his hand.
Hatred of the English.
"Always, always the same!" he almost screamed. "The English block everything. They will not join and what good can come now of the conference? They will not be content and the war must go on!"
Shortage in necessities of life.
The food shortage reached a crisis about the time that I managed, after three futile attempts, to escape. Frequently, when the people took their bread tickets to the stores they found that supplies had been exhausted and that there was nothing to be obtained. Prices had gone sky-high. Bacon, for instance, $2.50 and more a pound. A cake of soap cost 85 cents. Cleanliness became a luxury. These prices are indicative of the whole range and it is not hard to see the struggle these poor mine people were having to keep alive at all.
Prisoners receive food from England.
Germans wonder at food of starving England.
At this time our parcels from England were coming along fairly regularly and we were better off for food than the Germans themselves. Owing to the long shift we were compelled todo in the mines we fell into the habit of "hoarding" our food parcels and carrying a small lunch to the mines each day. These lunches had to be carefully secreted or the Germans would steal them. They could not understand how it was that starving England could send food abroad to us. The sight of these lunches helped to undermine their faith in the truth of the official information they read in the newspapers.
Wages spent for soap.
Our lot at the mines was almost unendurable. We were supposed to receive four and a half marks (90 cents) a week for our labor, but there was continual "strafing" to reduce the amount. If we looked sideways at a "stagger," we were likely to receive a welt with a pick handle and a strafe of several marks. Sometimes we only received a mark or two for a week's work. Most of this we spent for soap. It was impossible to work in the mine and not become indescribably dirty, and soap became an absolute necessity.
Uncomfortable quarters.
We lived under conditions of great discomfort in the camp, 250 of us in 30 x 30 quarters. There were two stoves in the building in which coke was burned, but the place was terribly cold. The walls at all seasons were so damp that pictures tacked up on them mildewed in a short time. Our bunks contained straw which was never replenished and we all became infested with fleas. Some nights it was impossible to sleep on account of the activity of these pests. On account of the dampness and cold we always slept in our clothes.
Cruelty of discipline.
Seven plan to escape.
Discipline was rigorous and cruel. We were knocked around and given terms of solitary confinement and made to stand at attention for hours at the least provocation. Many of the prisoners were killed—murdered by the cruelty. It became more than flesh and blood could stand. One day seven of us got togetherand made a solemn compact to escape. We would keep at it, we decided, no matter what happened, until we got away. Six of us are now safely at home. The seventh, my chum, J. W. Nicholson, is still a prisoner.
I made four attempts to escape before I finally succeeded. The first time a group of us made a tunnel out under the barricade, starting beneath the flooring of the barracks. We crawled out at night and had put fifteen miles between us and the camp before we were finally caught. I got seven days' "black" that time, solitary confinement in a narrow stone cell, without a ray of light, on black bread and water.
Two attempts to escape fail and are punished.
The second attempt was again by means of a tunnel. A chum of mine, William Raesides, who had come over with the 8th C. M. R.'s, was my companion that time. We were caught by bloodhounds after twenty miles and they gave us ten days' "black."
The third attempt.
The third attempt was made in company with my chum Nicholson, and we planned it out very carefully. Friends in England sent through suits of civilian clothes to us.
The next day we dressed up for the attempt by putting on our "civies" first and then drawing our prisoner's uniform over them. When we got to the mine we took off the uniform and slipped the mining clothes on over the others. We worked all day. Coming up from work in the late afternoon, Nick and I held back until everyone else had gone. We went up alone in the hoist and tore off our mining clothes as we ascended, dropping each piece back into the pit as we discarded it.
It was fairly dark when we got out of the hoist and the guards did not pay much attention to us. There was a small building at the mine head where we prisoners washed and dressed after work and a separate exit for thecivilians. Nick and I took the civilian exit and walked out into the street without any interference.
Near the Dutch border.
We could both speak enough German to pass, so we boldly struck out for the Dutch border, which was about 85 miles away, traveling only during the night. We had a map that a miner had sold to us for a cake of soap and we guided our course by that. We got to the border line without any trouble whatever, but were caught through overconfidence, due to a mistake in the map. Close to the line was a milepost indicating that a certain Dutch town was two miles west. The map indicated that this town was four miles within the Dutch border.
Captured and punished again.
"We're over!" we shouted when we saw that welcome milepost. Throwing caution aside, we marched boldly forward, right into a couple of sentries with fixed bayonets!
It was two weeks' "black" they meted out to us that time. The Kommandant's eyes snapped as he passed sentence. I knew he would have been much more strict on me as the three-time offender had it not been that the need for coal was so dire that labor, even the labor of a recalcitrant prisoner, was valuable.
"No prisoner has yet escaped from this Kommando!" he shouted, "and none shall. Any further attempts will be punished with the utmost severity."
A new method of getaway planned.
Nevertheless they took the precaution to break up my partnership with Nicholson, putting him on the night shift. I immediately went into partnership with Private W. M. Masters, of Toronto, and we planned to make our getaway by an entirely new method.
The building at the mine where we changed clothes before and after work was equipped with a bathroom in one corner, with a window with one iron bar intersecting. Outside the window was a bush and beyond that open country.A sentry was always posted outside the building, but he had three sides to watch and we knew that, if we could only move that bar, we could manage to elude the sentry. So we started to work on the bar.
Four months' steady work.
I had found a bit of wire which I kept secreted about me and every night, after washing up, we would dig for a few minutes at the brickwork around the bar. It was slow, tedious and disappointing work. Gradually, however, we scooped the brick out around the bar and after nearly four months' application we had it so loosened that a tug would pull it out.
Night in a bog.
The next day Masters and I were the last in the bathroom, and when the sentry's round had taken him to the other side of the building, we wrenched out the bar, raised the window and wriggled through head first, breaking our fall in the bush outside. We got through without attracting attention and ran across the country into a swamp, where we soon lost our way and wallowed around all night up to our knees in the bog, suffering severely from the cold and damp. Early in our flight the report of a gun from the camp warned us that our absence had been discovered. Our adventure in the swamp saved us from capture, for the roads were patrolled by cavalry that night.
We found our way out of the swamp near morning, emerging on the western side. By the sale of more soap to miners we had acquired another map and a compass, so we had little difficulty in determining our whereabouts and settling our course for the border. For food we had each brought along ten biscuits, the result of several weeks' hoarding.
That day we stayed on the edge of the swamp, never stirring for a moment from the shelter of a clump of bushes. One slept while the other watched. No one came near us and we heard no signs of our pursuers. Night cameon most mercifully dark and we struck out along the roads at a smart clip.
We traveled all night, making probably twenty-five miles. It was necessary, we knew, to make the most of our strength in the earlier stages of the dash. As our food gave out we would be less capable of covering the ground. So we spurred ourselves on to renewed effort and ate the miles up in a sort of frenzy.
This kept up for four days and nights. We kept going as hard as our waning strength would permit and we were cautious in the extreme. Even at that we had many narrow escapes.
Crossing the Lippe River.
Our greatest difficulty was when we struck the Lippe River. Our first plan was to swim across, but we found that we had not the strength left for this feat. We lost a day as a result. The second night we found a scow tied up along the bank and got across that way.
Rapid progress, though starving.
By this time we were slowly starving on our feet, we were wet through continuously, and such sleep as we got was broken and fitful. Before we had been four days out we were reduced to gaunt, tattered, dirty scarecrows. We staggered as we walked and sometimes one of us would drop on the road through sheer weakness. Through it all we kept up our frenzy for speed and it was surprising how much ground we forced ourselves to cover in a night. And, no matter how much the pangs of hunger gnawed at us, we conserved our fast dwindling supply of biscuit. Less than two biscuits a day was our limit!
Finally we reached a point that I recognized from my previous attempt to escape. It was about four miles from the border. We had two biscuits left between us. The next day we feasted royally and extravagantly on those two biscuits. No longer did we need to hoard our supplies, for the next night would tell the tale.
Safe past the German sentries.
By the greatest good fortune night came on dark and cloudy. Not a star showed in the sky. We crawled cautiously and painfully toward the border. At every sound we stopped and flattened out. Twice we saw sentries close at hand, but both times we got by safely. Finally we reached what we judged must be the last line of sentries. We had crawled across a ploughed field and reached a road lined on both sides with trees where sentries were passing up and down.
"It's the border!" we whispered.
When the nearest sentry had reached the far end of his beat we doubled up like jack-knives and dashed across that road, plunging through the trees on the other side. Not a sound camefromthe sentries. We struck across fields with delirious speed, we reeled along like drunken men, laughing and gasping and sometimes reaching out for a mutual handshake.
Across the border in Holland.
Then we got a final scare. Marching up the road toward us was what looked like a white sheet. Our nerves were badly shattered, and that moving thing froze my blood, but it was a scare of brief duration. The sheet soon resolved itself into two girls in white dresses, walking up the road with a man. We scurried to the side of the road as soon as we made them out. Then I decided to test the matter of our whereabouts and stepped out to accost them.
"Have you a match?" I asked in German.
The man did not understand me!
We were in Holland—and free!
Copyright, Forum, May 1918.
Little was heard from the Belgians themselves of the hardships and suffering endured by them under the rule of the Germans. Occasionally, however, an eye-witness from the outside was able to present some aspects of the terrible picture. The narrative of such an eye-witness is given in the following pages.
The German iron heel on Roubaix.
Toward the end of March, 1915, a distinct change became noticeable in the policy of the German military authorities, and for the first time the people of Roubaix began to feel the iron heel. The allied Governments had formally declared their intention of blockading Germany and the German Army had been given a sharp lesson at Neuve Chapelle. Whether these two events had anything to do with the change, or whether it was merely a coincidence, I do not know; the fact remains that our German governors who had hitherto treated us with tolerable leniency chose about this time to initiate a régime of stringent regulation and repression.
Identification papers.
The first sign of the new policy was the issue of posters calling on all men, women, and children over the age of 14 to go to the Town Hall and take out identification papers, while all men between 17 and 50 were required also to obtain a control card.
Up to this time I had escaped any interference from the Germans, perhaps because I scarcely ventured into the streets for the first two months of the German occupation, and possibly also because, from a previous long residence in Roubaix, I spoke French fluently. Strangely enough, though I went to the Town Hall with the rest and supplied true particulars of my age and nationality, papers were issued to me as a matter of course, and neverduring the whole two years and more of my presence in their midst did the enemy molest me in any way.
Control cards for men of military age.
The only incident which throws any light on this curious immunity occurred about the middle of 1915. Like all other men of military age, I was required to present myself once a month at a public hall, in order to have my control card, which was divided into squares for the months of the year, marked in the proper space with an official stamp "Kontrol, July," or "August," or whatever the month might be. We were summoned for this process by groups, first those from 17 to 25, then those from 25 to 35, and so on. Hundreds of young fellows would gather in a room, and one by one, as their names were called, would take their cards to be stamped by a noncommissioned officer sitting at a table on the far side of the room. On the occasion I have in mind, the noncommissioned officer said to me, "You are French, aren't you?" I answered, "No." "Are you Belgian?" "No," again. "You are Dutch, then?" A third time I replied "No."
At this stage an officer who had been sauntering up and down the room smoking a cigarette came to the table, took up my card, and turning to the man behind the table, remarked, "It's all right. He's an American." I did not trouble to enlighten him. That is probably why I enjoyed comparative liberty.
The German policy of enslavement.
Enslavement is part of the deliberate policy of the Germans in France. It began by the taking of hostages at the very outset of their possession of Roubaix. A number of the leading men in the civic and business life of the town were marked out and compelled to attend by turns at the Town Hall, to be shot on the spot at the least sign of revolt among the townspeople.
Treatment of girl mill operatives who refuse to work.
Not a few of the mill owners were ordered to weave cloth for the invaders, and on their refusal were sent to Germany and held to ransom. Many of the mill operatives, quite young girls, were directed to sew sandbags for the German trenches. They, too, refused, but the Germans had their own ways of dealing with what they regarded as juvenile obstinacy. They dragged the girls to a disused cinema hall, and kept them there without food or water until their will was broken.
Barbarity reached its climax in the so-called "deportations." They were just slave raids, brutal and undisguised.
The deportations or slave raids.