Part 10

"Oh, yes, there will be an end of Japan and of England, too! Willy will teach them the lesson they need. How glad I am that no child of mine ever learned English!" By this time we were literally roaring with laughter, and he paused in surprise. "What are you all laughing at? Am I not right?" He had forgotten my nationality.

"Quite," I said, hoping he would continue. But Aunt Sharolta looked up from the chest-protector she was sewing and said--

"It is useless for you to talk like that, Pista, when we are being annihilated in Galicia and Serbia. Oh, yes, I know the newspapers are very encouraging, but those who know say otherwise."

"Have patience! Have patience," said the Admiral. "Trust in Willy. And mark my words, to-morrow we shall hear something from the sea."

(This English companion to a royal Hungarian family continues to relate her experiences until the spring of 1915, when, despite the efforts of her kind host and hostess, she escaped from the War-cursed country. She tells how she made her way to Switzerland, via Vienna and Innsbruck, and arrived safely at her home in London.)

FOOTNOTES:

[5] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the original sources.

"FORCED TO FIGHT"--THE TALE OF A SCHLESWIG DANE

"_What My Eyes Witnessed in East Prussia_"

_Told by Erich Erichsen, A Soldier in the German Army Translated from the Danish by Ingebord Lund_

This is a tragic story of a Dane who was forced to fight in the German Army. He was mobilized at the beginning of the War and forced to serve on the Western and Eastern fronts. He wrote the first revelations of life in the German trenches. This is the first authentic account of how Germany makes war from the lips of a German soldier. After being wounded, disfigured for life, and a cripple, he went home where his own father and mother hardly knew him. Twenty editions of his book have appeared in Danish but for obvious reasons, its sale in Germany has been prohibited. The experiences herein related are by permission of his American publishers, _Robert M. McBride and Company_.

[6] I--STORY OF SUFFERING ON THE RUSSIAN FRONT

On the East front I took part in the great offensive against the Russians. My old comrade was there also; he was still alive. But there were many new faces in my division. The bloody days before Liège, the horrors of the fight through Belgium, and the long strife in the trenches of Flanders, had cost many men their lives or their reason....

I remember how Belgium was laid waste. But to tell the truth, things were much the same in East Prussia. Before the invasion, it was in many parts a melancholy country. But it looked more pitiable than ever, as we marched through it, with the Russians retreating before us. Trampled fields, ploughed up by shells, burnt farms, property wantonly injured or destroyed, towns in ruins and human beings in despair, robbed of all they had, their happiness, their joy, their future. It was an indescribable scene of misery and woe. But at the same time it was exceedingly touching to see how the greater number of the people clung to the devastated home, whose master was probably in the fighting line, if he were not already killed. The wretched hovels and the ruined farms still sheltered human creatures, who did their work as best they could, and hid themselves from the night and the rain in some cramped space, between half-charred boards and ends of beams, or whatever they could find to hand.

It was misery. It was poverty. It was wretchedness. But it was home--the one fixed point in their existence. If they once forsook that, they were exposed to the merciless uncertainty of life. So they clung to it obstinately and faithfully in spite of all they had to bear and suffer, both when the Russians advanced, and when they retreated. Among their other miseries they had also learnt to know famine. When the Russians advanced, they did not leave much behind. Many a time these people begged our last slice of bread from us, to stay the worst of their hunger.

We gave to them willingly. I felt at times, that their lot was far worse than ours. We indeed might lose our lives in many different ways, and we also knew what it was to be hungry. But we had not to listen to our children crying for food, or see our tiny infants sicken and die because there was no milk to be had and the mother's breasts were empty.

I can well understand why wherever we came, the people greeted us as their deliverers.

I understand their joy and their often boundless gratitude in word and deed. I understand why the old men and the trembling women so often fell upon our necks with tears of joy.

It must be heart-breaking to see the plot of ground you love laid waste and trampled down, without being able to do anything to save it. It must be still more heart-breaking to see the home that you have cherished devoured by flames, and then, on dark and stormy nights, taking your children by the hand or on your back, and followed by terror-stricken women and bewildered old people, to flee from that home and wander along toilsome roads to uncertainty, in company with hundreds of others who know just as little where to go for help or safety.

We met many such crowds of homeless wayfarers on our march, people who could hardly drag themselves along for hunger and cold and terror.

There were miserable carts drawn by miserable, starved horses and wretched bits of furniture, piled up anyhow in haste and fear. There were people huddled together under the lee of a hedge or in a wood, or sheltering in the holes they had dug into banks of earth or dykes, wrapped in rags, starving with cold and still terror-stricken. Men gazing towards the homes from which they had fled, looking in bewilderment and despair at the down-trodden and ruined country; women lying down and trying to warm their little ones at a naked, impoverished breast, or groaning in misery and hopelessness over the dying eyes of a child; old men and old women with only one wish in the world--the sum and substance of their prayers from hour to hour being that God would take them away from all this misery, which they could not in the least comprehend and which they had not strength enough to bear.

II--"WHAT APPALLING THINGS THEY TOLD US"

And what appalling things they told us, in trembling voices and shaking with sobs!

Not only their homes, their domestic animals and their furniture had been harried by fire and sword--it cannot be otherwise in war, I suppose, for it has no mercy.

It had been here as it had been in Belgium--the soldiers were intoxicated with savagery and the lust of destruction. In such an army there may be a thousand scoundrels amongst a hundred thousand decent men; but scoundrels create new scoundrels, drink begets coarseness, and coarseness begets violence. Old men are mocked and tortured, women outraged without mercy, and innocent little children are made to suffer without pity. Men have to pay for their hate and their defiance, even though honest and justifiable, with military retribution, merely because one of them has been impudent. He has stirred up and set ablaze passionate instincts that no one can quench.

I knew what might happen--I had been through the whole affair in Belgium. I knew from experience all that they told me, and a great deal more.... But I can assure you now, and I shall dare to say it on the day I have to stand before my Eternal Judge, I have never of my own impulse harmed any civilian; I have no murder or other deed of shame on my conscience. The guilt of whatever I have had a share in doing is entirely on the heads of those who could demand it of me. They could demand of me that I should do my duty and whip me into doing it, or shoot me if I refused. I had long since sworn loyalty to the colours. That oath is sacred, like any other oath. And I was a subject of the country I served and had to serve.

That being so, may I not be allowed to say that while I was appalled at what I now saw, I was at the same time filled with a certain satisfaction. It appalled me because all horror appals, yet at the same time there was a certain satisfaction about it, because I saw in it a just retribution for all that we had done in Belgium--a mild and very lenient retribution, by the way.

Don't you think one may be allowed to say that without being stamped as cruel and merciless?

There is, amongst my Russian experiences, an incident which I shall always be glad to cherish with the warmest gratitude, because it represents to me what we mortals usually call Nemesis--that is, chastising justice, or whatever name you prefer to give it.

I call it the judgment of God because it seemed as if there was a leading and guiding hand in it--a hand that struck one who was guilty and gave atonement for two whose lives had been taken.

The rearguard to which I belonged--I think we were only a couple of thousand men--had been billeted for a day in a fairly large village not far from the Russian frontier. It was one of the first places to be laid waste. There were not many farms or houses left that were not in ruins. The cattle had been taken and the corn trodden down. Many homes were quite deserted, and no one knew where the inmates were. Besides, who could know at such a time, when each one had enough to do to save himself and those belonging to him. Perhaps they were dead; perhaps terror had driven them to madness; perhaps they had dragged themselves along, weary to death, in the train of the fleeing crowds and had fallen by the wayside in a ditch or at the edge of a forest, left behind by the others who continued their insensate flight and took heed of naught but themselves and their own affairs.

Perhaps they lay by the roadside gazing towards the home that was now a ruin, at the fires blazing over the flat country, and up to the heavens where it seemed to them that everything was forgotten--mercy, goodness, justice.

Perhaps they murmured a prayer, the last, the very last, and then lay down and waited for what was to come--for silent, reconciling death, that would bring them peace and alleviation for all that they had not been able to endure in a world that seemed to them to have been quite forsaken by God.

I know that old men were found with their hands folded on their breasts and the reconciling peace of death on their wasted, rigid faces.

I know that young women were found with their infants pressed close to their bare breasts, as if trying to give them their last warmth, until they had both gone into the land of everlasting peace, slain by cold and hunger and terror.

III--STORY OF A PRUSSIAN MOTHER

In one of the poorest of the small houses in the village lived a young woman. She had been beautiful, as women in villages often are, a radiant figure of health and strength, with the perfume and sweetness of the fields and their sunshine on her lips and in her eyes. She seemed to be about half-way through her twenties. But now her face was drawn and pale, and she dragged herself wearily about as if she were ill.

I remember her home distinctly. It had been a little six-windowed thatched house near the end of the village. Two of the windows belonged to a room with an alcove and the kitchen. The other part of the house had been allotted to the cow, the pigs, and the hens.

It was now almost in ruins. The roof was gone, the woodwork charred, and the walls had tumbled down in a crumbling heap where the animals had been. Only the little room with the alcove and the kitchen were intact, but the window-panes were smashed, the door battered in, and rags had been stuck in here and there as a slight protection against wind and weather.

Behind the house there was a small, down-trodden garden, hedged about with a dyke of willows and elders.

On the day when the Russians entered the village they ravaged it with fire and sword in their savage exultation. It was said that many of them were drunk. However that may have been, they forced their way into farmsteads and houses, took what there was of cattle and fodder, smashed everything to bits here and set on fire there, and did not deal gently with the women in the houses.

The little house at the end of the village was also visited by a soldier. He stormed and raged and shouted and spared nothing of the little that could be spared. Finally he threw himself upon the young wife and tried to take her by force.

Then the husband rushed upon him to save his wife's honour. He did not succeed, and it cost him his life. He fell within the room, killed by the blow of a sword on his head.

The soldier's savagery increased, and at last it completely mastered him. He kicked the young woman till she was nearly beside herself with terror, and stabbed her little boy, who was lying in the bed, with a bayonet thrust.

Then only, and not till then, was he satisfied with his achievements.

The poor woman buried her husband and child the next day in a corner of the garden and covered the little mound with flowers.

There was no one who could have helped her to give them Christian burial. It then became clear to everyone that she had lost her reason. She went about muttering continually, with a remote and strange look in her tearworn eyes, that sometimes looked as if they were blind. She would often sit for hours on the garden dyke beside the grave of her husband and child.

It was extremely sad and pathetic, and heart-rending to see her sitting there, sometimes till late at night, as if she were waiting for the two to come back.

Sometimes she would lie down on the grave, pressing one cheek against the ground, and she would lie a long time like that--sometimes until she fell asleep. If anyone asked her why she lay there she stared vacantly with a pair of bewildered, tear-bright eyes and answered through her sobs that she could hear her little boy crying and calling to her.

IV--"MY LOVELY LITTLE BOY--THEY KILLED HIM"

Every time a convoy of prisoners passed through the village she was seized with restlessness. She was eager and quick in her movements and she stood staring intently at those who passed by.

It seemed as if she were looking for one particular face amongst the many hundreds, but when they had passed by she collapsed again and dragged herself back to the house, or out to the dyke and the mound in the corner of the garden.

Towards evening, on the day that we had entered the village, I was standing outside her house with one of my comrades. She was going about that evening moaning as she had never moaned before. Her hair was hanging in matted strands about her face, and her clothes were nothing but torn rags. It seemed as if she had torn them in her horror.

All the time she went on murmuring, between her moans: "My lovely little boy--my lovely little boy!..."

Now and then she clenched one hand in the other or struck them both against her forehead.

While we were standing by looking at her my lieutenant came up. He tried to soothe her and patted her shoulder, but every time he touched her she shuddered and seemed to shrink in sudden terror.

"My poor little boy!" she moaned. "They killed him. He was only six years old and was lying in his bed. 'Pray to God,' I cried to him; 'pray to God.' I was lying on the floor by his bed and saw him fold his hands in prayer, while he gazed at me in terror.

"But he who was standing over him did not spare him. He stabbed him in the breast with his bayonet, and he kicked me along the floor. My husband was lying murdered on the doorstep; his face was red with blood; his forehead was cut open."

Her words came in rapid, violent gasps, while she pressed her hands against her eyes as if to shut out all the horror she saw before her.

"But there _is_ justice in the world," she screamed. "There is justice. I shall find him; I shall find him; I shall find him!..."

Then she grew a little calmer, and the lieutenant and I stood whispering to each other about what we had just seen and about what we had heard about her.

V--SHE FINDS AT LAST THE MAN WHO MURDERED

Some time after a convoy of prisoners passed by. There were about two hundred men.

The instant the young woman saw the prisoners she rushed out on the road. Meanwhile my captain had come up, too. He stood by her side and closely watched her movements. She looked like an animal ready to spring. Every muscle was tense, every nerve tightened, and meanwhile her eyes scrutinized the prisoners as they passed by.

There was a strange, penetrating force in her eyes. They burned like live coals. They flashed like rapiers.

Suddenly she rushed out and almost threw herself upon one of the prisoners in the convoy. It stopped, and as she clenched her hands threateningly in the air she screamed in mingled exultation and agony: "It's he! It's he! I knew I should find him!"

At first the captive soldier stared at her in surprise. Suddenly a wave of deep red suffused his face, and then he turned ashy grey and bent his head. It looked as if he were slowly sinking on his knees.

The young woman went on crying: "It's he! It's he! I knew I should find him!"

At last she laughed wildly, a laugh that was more like a mad shriek, and then collapsed on the roadside while the froth oozed through her tightly-closed lips.

VI--THE GUILTY MAN--AND JUSTICE

My friend ceased speaking for a moment, and I felt a prickling and tingling all over me. It was emotion and uneasiness both in one.

I looked at him. His eyes had suddenly become bright and clear, and there was a smile about his narrow lips of mingled sadness and joy.

I will not tell you anything more about it. I will not go further into what happened. I will only add that half an hour later that man was no longer among the living.

_We shot him._

Was it honourable and just? Is it never permissible to shoot a prisoner? Perhaps--perhaps not. I don't wish to dispute about it with anybody. In this case that question does not interest me in the least. I don't care whether it was lawful or not.

I will only honestly and openly declare that to me this little incident stands out, amongst all the appalling things I saw, as something infinitely beautiful and exalted.

I felt that at that moment I had seen cold, stern Justice face to face.

VII--STORY OF A GERMAN SOLDIER'S HOME-COMING

The day I went home was terribly long. It seemed to me as if my journey would never come to an end....

I was so deeply stirred that I could have wept. My lips quivered and my breast was as empty as if all the air had been pumped out of my lungs.

As the train glided into the small station I pulled down the window and looked out.

It was all so joyously familiar. The name with the foreign, snarling sound. The station-master, erect and stiff, like the old non-commissioned officer with a big German beard that he was. The flowers on the window-sills of the station-house. The faces of the station-master's wife and children against the window-panes. The smell of asphalte from the sun-baked platform.

And over there--why, that was my father, _my_ dear, dear old father! He seemed to me to have aged a good deal. His broad back, which before had been so straight and so proudly erect, was bent and tired; and his face looked worn as if after a long illness.

His glance went down the train from carriage to carriage. I waved my hand to him and called out:

"Father!"

He turned at the sound and stared at me a moment.

At first a startled look seemed to pass over his face. A sudden wonder, as when you see something you have not expected, and then it seemed to me that he tottered backwards a step or two when he understood who it was that had called. He bent his head and pressed his hand to his eyes.

I think he was weeping.

Then I jumped out of the carriage, and the next instant I was beside him.

VIII--"MY FATHER THANKED GOD"

He threw his arms round my neck and kissed me fervently on both cheeks as he whispered in a trembling voice:

"Oh, thank God we've got you back again! Welcome home, my dear boy--welcome--welcome! Thanks be to God from your mother and me and all of us! O my God, my God!--it has been a hard time!"

He shook me as you shake a friend in exuberant joy. And then he took my arm. "Why, I could not recognize you at first," he said with a little smile. "You have changed--somewhat.... But on the whole you are looking quite well."

"Yes, am I not?" I said. "Quite well--I think so myself."

I smiled.

I remembered that that was what they always said at the hospital....

Then we drove along the road to my home, and in thirsty eagerness my mind drank in all the old, familiar and beautiful luxuriance: the white road with the perfume of the poplars; the hedges with the wild roses; the white-washed, thatched farmsteads; the bright, summer gleam of the blue fjord.

It was all just the same as when I left home nearly two years ago--so it seemed to me, at any rate. I could not see any change.

My father had sat silent awhile and had now and then stolen a glance at me, and I understood why. He had to feel at home with my face first before he could feel quite at home with myself. He was never at any time one to speak much, by the way.

We drove past one of the big farms. The house stood close up to the road, and looked so peaceful, so bathed in sunshine; and the blossoms from the fruit trees sprinkled their pure white snow over the bright lawns.

"The farmer in there fell last September," said my father; "and his two sons are also gone. There are no more men left now in that family....

"The husband is gone over there, and yonder the son. Both sons from that place are gone. And over there they have lost a son-in-law--you know, the one who had just got married. At the farm yonder the husband came home a cripple last Christmas; and the son in that one is blind."