IV.
AFTER BARBARISM, WHAT?
One morning at dawn--it was at Amberieu--I saw the long trains go by carrying the German wounded and the German prisoners, who had been taken in the battles of the Vosges. There were 2,400 taken on toward the south. There were French nurses with the wounded. I saw water and fruit and chocolate given to the prisoners.
This was early in the war. The sheer lapse into barbarism had not yet come. Soon the German newspapers announced:
"Great concern is expressed in press and public utterances lest prisoners of war receive anything in the line of favored treatment. Newspapers have conducted an angry campaign against women who have ventured at the railway station to give coffee or food to prisoners of war passing through; commanding officers have ordered that persons 'demeaning themselves by such unworthy conduct' are to be immediately ejected from the stations, and in response to public clamor official announcements have been issued that such prisoners in transport receive only bread and water."
And the French followed suit; no "coddling" of prisoners; back to barbarism, the lessons of humanity forgot and savagery come again.
Civilization in the old world is smashed. I have traversed the ruins; and my feet are still dirty with mud and blood. But I can tell you what is going to come out of that welter of ruin. There will come a sane and righteous hatred of militarism. What will be surely destroyed is Caesarism. Prophecy? This is not prophecy; I am stating an assured fact. Even at this hour of hysterical and relentless warfare there lies deep in the heart of the democracy of Europe a consuming hatred of militarism.
Drops of water (or blood) do not more naturally flow into each than did the English hatred of Caesarism blend with the high French hatred of the evil thing; and when the palaces have done fighting, the cottages of Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and from the Black Sea to the Hebrides, will proclaim its destruction.
And you will see it; you will see Caesarism drowned in the very blood it has shed. And the German, mark you, will not be the least bitter of the foes of militarism. He will be indeed a relentless foe.
Reversal to barbarism, say you? A shuddering lapse into savagery?
Quite true; that is the state of Europe over the fairest and most highly civilized provinces. The picture of Sir John French strolling up and down the battle line smoking a cigarette does not give a fair idea of it; nor do you get it from the Kaiser on a hilltop surveying his massed war bullocks surging forth patiently to battle; all that belongs to the picture books of war.
The real thing is dirtier.
Civil Life in Berlin
[From The London Times, Oct. 17, 1914.]
_A gentleman, the subject of a neutral country, who has just returned from a visit to Germany, has furnished The Times with the following statement as to his impressions. He says:_
I did not hear any boasting over German successes. When I spoke to Germans of their victories they would reply: "Yes, we have had victories--but what of the dead?" This thought is present even in places where one might think that for the time being every effort would be made to prevent its intrusion. In Berlin, for example, where all the theatres are open and attracting crowded audiences, it is the burden of a song sung during one of the patriotic plays, of which several are now being performed.
I went to a theatre on the night of the fall of Antwerp. A play entitled "1914" was acted, in the course of which many topical allusions were made by the well-known comedian Thielscher. Even in these serious times the Berliner, who is famous for the form of humor known as Berliner Witze, cannot refrain from his jokes. One of these was the question: "Why does Germany understand war so well? Because it has been declared upon her eight times!"--the point of the jest lying in the fact that the German word _Erklaren_, "to declare," means also "to explain." Another pun of the same kind was made out of the word _Niederlage_, which means both "defeat" and "dêpot." "Germany," said one of the characters, "is surrounded by enemies on all sides." "Yes," was the reply, "she is the head establishment, while England, France, and Russia only have the _Niederlage_."
There were some serious scenes in this play, in the middle of one of which some one stepped quickly on to the stage and, interrupting the actors, exclaimed: "One moment, one moment, if you please! Antwerp has fallen!" Of course, there was tremendous enthusiasm at this announcement, but when it had subsided, one of the company came forward and sang:
Nicht zu laut! Nicht zu laut! Denkt g'rad' jetzt wo Ihr jubelt und lacht; Nicht zu laut! Nicht zu laut! Fiel ein Krieger vielleicht in der Schlacht Und er liegt beim zerschossenen Pferde Und nimmt Abschied von Mutter und Braut-- Nicht zu laut! Nicht zu laut!
(Not too loud! Not too loud! Think just now while you laugh and cheer; Not too loud! Not too loud! Perchance a warrior fallen in the battle lies beside his shot down steed, and bids farewell to mother and bride; Not too loud! Not too loud!)
I have mentioned this to give an idea of the kind of life which the Berliners are living just now. There are other popular theatres in which similar plays are now running with titles such as "Der Kaiser Rief" ("The Emperor Called") and "Fest d'Rauf" ("Hit Hard!") the latter being borrowed from the words of the famous telegram sent by the Crown Prince at the time of the Zabern incident. These theatres are crowded. At the principal theatres classical plays such as "Hamlet" and Lessing's "Minna von Barnhelm" were being played while I was in Berlin.
Berlin keeps open many places of amusement until the early hours of the morning, and the war has not made any difference in this respect. What is known as the "night life" of Berlin continues. For years past the fast element in Berlin has been one of its most notorious features. This accompaniment of the prosperity of the capital since the war of 1870 has struck with surprise many observers of German life accustomed to the idea of German simplicity and purity of morals, rendered classical by Tacitus and exemplified by many representatives of German national life in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, when Germany was rallying from the blows inflicted by Napoleon. All that need be said upon this head is that, as far as report can be accepted as evidence, vice is the only commodity which has become less expensive since the war began.
The spy fever seems somewhat to have abated. At present, however, the public are not allowed to walk on the footway beside the headquarters of the army or the General Telegraph Office, obviously with a view to protecting these buildings against damage from hostile persons. The Germans still think that many spies exist in their country. The presence of women acting as tramcar conductors struck me as strange. These are the wives of men summoned to the colors. Notices are affixed to the interior of the cars stating the reason for the presence of these women, and requesting the public to be considerate toward them, and to help them over any little difficulties they might encounter in the discharge of their duty. Traffic in Berlin is absolutely regular. There are as many taxicabs as before, but instead of benzine, which is wanted for the army, they now use other spirit. The streets are as brilliantly lighted as ever. Riding exercise is taken by gentlemen in the Thiergarten every morning as usual. Sport is reviving, and there are a good many football matches. Two recently played were those between Berlin and Vienna and Berlin and Leipsic, the latter for the Red Cross. The universities will open on the 25th inst., the regular date.
The population, as a whole, is serious and confident of victory; but the war is by no means the sole topic of conversation. England is the enemy most bitterly hated, the Germans maintaining that her only reason for entering on the war was to destroy German trade. England's desire to preserve the neutrality of Belgium is scouted. The common people in Germany say that having fought the Belgians and defeated them they will retain their country. This, however, is not the attitude of the more educated section of the population, who express the opinion that the difficulty of ruling Belgium would be greater than the advantage to be derived from it.
[Illustration: ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ, GERMAN NAVAL MINISTER,
As Head of the Naval Administration He Is Second in Authority to the Major Admiral in Chief, the Kaiser.
(_Photo_ © _by Brown Bros._)]
[Illustration: PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA,
In Supreme Command of the German Battleship Fleet.
(_Photo from Bain._)]
The fierce hatred of England in Germany is due in large measure to what the Germans call "the shopkeepers' warfare" of the English. They maintain that the English confiscation of German patents is a wholly unfair method of fighting, and it has caused the deepest resentment. When asked as to the future, they reply that they will do all in due time. After Belgium will come France, and then the turn of England will arrive. They are not discouraged by the failure to reach Paris, since the strategy adopted by the French would have rendered the possession of Paris of little value. It will still be taken.
With regard to England not much is said of an army of invasion, but German confidence is evidently reposed in her Zeppelins, of which a large number is being constructed with all possible speed. They are to be employed against England, whose part in the war is the least honorable of all. Belgium's attitude at the outset they can understand, France's desire for _la revanche_ is natural, but England's only motive was jealousy of Germany's industrial development and the desire to cripple her trade and commercial prosperity. Therefore, Woe to England!
Belgian Boy Tells Story of Aerschot
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Nov. 18, 1914.]
_The following letter from an American civil engineer, lately in business in Belgium, whose reliability is vouched for by the person named in his letter as having been associated with him in business in Pittsburgh, has been received by_ THE TIMES:
B----, ----shire, England, Oct. 3, 1914.
_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
I have just read an article in your issue of Sept. 16 on the German killings at Aerschot, Belgium. You suggest an investigation into this crime. I happen to have a first-hand contribution, which I herewith inclose.
The writer is an American citizen, civil engineer, late partner of ---- ---- of Pittsburgh, Penn., to whom you can refer. When war was declared I had an engineering office in Belgium. As the use of telegraph and telephone was suddenly stopped there remained nothing but to close the office. I therefore paid off my employes, among whom was a young office boy, a Belgian, about 16 years old, frail stature, small build, almost childlike appearance, but well educated and intelligent.
The inclosed narrative is a strict translation of a letter received from the boy. This is, therefore, first-hand information, and my knowledge of the character of the boy, as well as the ring in what he has to tell, justifies me in vouching for the correctness of his narrative.
In reading these pages, you will note a weak point in our administration of charity, which has been repeatedly brought to my attention. England has every intention to act generously and warm-heartedly with the Belgian people, who you may say have been sacrificed for the Allies. They tender homes for refugees and transportation from Belgian shores to England. They give out money liberally, but when this boy, utterly without means, friends or papers arrived in Antwerp, there is no help for him. If he had been smaller, somebody would have treated him as a child and brought him along. If his father had not been dragged off into slavery in Germany he might with an old aunt have represented a family. Had he been able to preserve his legitimatization papers the Belgian authorities would have given him some support. Had he been older, he would have been enlisted in the defense of his country.
Here, therefore, is an individual, not small enough, not large enough, not having relations enough and not having any documents. He was worthy of help, but did not fit in anywhere. I am now doing my best to get money over to him through the Belgian National Bank, also to get him some sort of a paper, through the Belgian Legation in London, which will enable him at least to cross the frontier to Holland, whence he might be able to pay for his way to England.
I hope you will publish the boy's letter, _but it is necessary that you suppress both his and the writer's name_. Should either be given and the boy remain in Belgium, _it may cost him his life_. The mention of my own may later on cause me difficulties with our German friends of liberty. Yours truly,
---- ----.
[Inclosure.]
Translation of letter received from one of my employes, a young Belgian boy of about 16 years of age. Received in England Sept. 28, 1914.
ANTWERP, Sept. 23, 1914.
Dear Sir: As you correctly said in my testimonial when you were closing the office, the war has isolated Belgium. Really I can well say that I have been painfully struck by this scourge, and I permit myself, dear Sir, to give you a little description of my Calvary.
Your offices were closed in the beginning of August. As I did not know what to do and as the fatherland had not enough men to defend its territory I tried to get myself accepted as a volunteer.
On Aug. 10 I went to Aerschot, my native town, to get my certificate of good conduct. Then I went to Louvain to have same signed by the commander of the place. This gentleman sent me to St. Nicholas and thence to Hemixem, where I was rejected as too young. I then decided to return to Brussels, passing through Aerschot. Here my aunt asked me to stay with her, saying that she was afraid of the Germans.
I remained at Aerschot. This was Aug. 15. Suddenly, on the 19th, at 9 o'clock in the morning, after a terrible bombardment, the Germans made their entry into Aerschot. In the first street which they passed through they broke into the houses. They brought out six men whom I knew very well and immediately shot them. Learning of this, I fled to Louvain, where I arrived on Aug. 19 at 1 o'clock.
At 1:30 P.M. the Germans entered Louvain. They did not do anything to the people in the beginning. On the following Saturday, Aug. 22, I started to return to Aerschot, as I had no money. (All my money was still in Brussels.) The whole distance from Louvain to Aerschot I saw nothing but German armies, always Germans. They did not say a word to me until I suddenly found myself alone with three of the "Todeshusaren," (Death's Head Hussars,) the vanguard of their regiment. They arrested me at the point of the revolver, demanded where I was going, and why I had run away from Aerschot. They said that the whole of Aerschot was now on fire, because the son of the Burgomaster had killed a General. Finally they searched me from head to foot, and I heard them discuss the question of my fate.
Finally the non-commissioned officer told me that I could continue on my way; that they would certainly take care of me in Aerschot, as I had been firing at Germans, and they would shoot me when I arrived. I would have liked better to return to Louvain, but with an imperious gesture he pointed out my road to Aerschot, and I continued. On arriving within a few hundred meters of the town I was arrested once more.
I forgot to tell you that of all the houses which I passed between Louvain and Aerschot, there were only a few left intact. Upon these the Germans had written in chalk in the German language: "Please spare. Good people. Do not burn." Lying along the road I saw many dead horses putrefying. There were also to be seen pigs, goats, and cows which had nothing to eat, and which were howling like wild beasts. Not a soul was to be seen in the houses or in the streets. Everything was empty.
I was then arrested when a short distance from Aerschot. There were with me two or three families from Sichem, a village between Diest and Aerschot. We remained in the fields alongside the road, while the Prussian regiments with their artillery continued to pass by. When the artillery had passed we were marched at the point of the bayonet to the church in Aerschot. On arrival at the church the families of Sichem (there were at least twenty small children) were permitted to continue on their way, and the non-commissioned officer, delighted that I could speak German, permitted me to go to my aunt's house.
The aspect of the town was terrible. Not more than half the houses were standing. In the first three streets which the Germans traversed there was not a single house left. There was not a house in the town but had been pillaged. All doors had been burst open. There was nothing, nothing left. The stench in the streets was insupportable.
I then went home, or, rather, I should say, I went to the house where my father had always been boarding. You know, perhaps, that my mother died twelve years ago. I did not find my father, but according to what the people told me he had been arrested, and, with five other Aerschot men, taken to Germany--I do not know for what purpose.
I got into this house without any difficulty, because the door was smashed in. I stayed there from Saturday, Aug. 22, up to Wednesday, the 26th, a little more comfortable. There was nothing to eat left in the house. I lived on what a few women who remained in Aerschot could give me. I was forced to go with the soldiers into the cellars of M.X., director of a large factory, to hunt for wine. As recompense I got a loaf. It was not much, but at this moment it meant very much for me.
On Wednesday, Aug. 26, we were all once more locked up in the church. It was then half-past four in the afternoon. We could not get out, even for our necessities. On Thursday, about 9 o'clock, each of us was given a piece of bread and a glass of water. This was to last the whole day. At 10 o'clock a Lieutenant came in, accompanied by fifteen soldiers. He placed all the men who were left in a square, selected seventy of us and ordered us out to bury the corpses of Germans and Belgians around the town, which had been lying there since the battle of the 19th. That was a week that these bodies had remained there, and it is no use to ask if there was a stench. Afterward we had to clean the streets, and then it was evening.
They just got ready to shoot us. There were then ten of us. The guns had already been leveled at us, when suddenly a German soldier ran out shouting that we had not fired on them. A few minutes before we had heard rifle firing and the Germans said it was the Aerschot people who were shooting, though all these had been locked up in the church and we were the only inhabitants then in the streets, cleaning them, under surveillance of Germans. It was this German who saved our lives.
Picture to yourself what we have suffered! It is impossible to describe. On Aug. 28 we were brought to Louvain, always guarded by German soldiers. There were with us about twenty old men, over eighty years of age. These were placed in two carts, tied to one another in pairs. I and about twenty of my unfortunate compatriots had then to pull the carts all the way to Louvain. It was hard, but that could be supported all the same.
On arriving at Louvain I saw with my own eyes a German who shot at us. The Germans who were at the station shouted "The civilians have been shooting," and commenced a fusillade against us. Many of us fell dead, others wounded, but I had the chance to run away.
I now took the road to Tirlemont, marching all the time among German camps. Once I was arrested. Again they wanted to shoot me, insisting that I was a student of the University of Louvain. The Germans pretend it was the student who had caused the population in Louvain to shoot at them. However, my youth saved me, and I was set at liberty.
I arrived in this way, making small marches, sleeping under the stars, at a small village, St. Pierre Rhode, six miles from Aerschot. This village had not been occupied by the Germans. A benevolent farmer took me in, and I lived there peacefully until Wednesday, Sept. 9. On that day the Germans arrived. They took us all with them and we had to march in front of them to prevent the Belgians from shooting. After one hour they gave us our liberty.
The Belgians had now retaken Aerschot. I returned there as quickly as I could. Only a few houses were still burning. It was Sept. 10. I left again in the afternoon at 4 o'clock, taking a train, together with the railway officials, and arrived at 6 P.M. in Antwerp, where I now stay without any resources.
All my money, the 20 francs which you presented me and my salary for five weeks, as well as my little savings, are lying in Brussels, and I cannot get at them. I cannot work, because there is no work to be got. I cannot cross over to England, as, to do this, it is necessary that there should be a whole family. In these horrible circumstances, I respectfully take the liberty of addressing you, and I hope you will aid me as best you can. I swear to you that I shall pay you back all that you give me. I have here in Antwerp no place, no family. The town will not give me any aid, because I have no papers to prove my identity. I threw all my papers away for fear of the Germans. I count then on you with a firm hope to pay you back later.
Please accept, dear Sir, my respectful greetings.
---- ----.
* * * * *
_Special to The New York Times._
PITTSBURGH, Penn., Oct. 17.--The Pittsburgh civil engineer mentioned as the former partner of the writer of the letter to THE TIMES citing acts of the Germans in Belgium, is well known here. He was informed by THE TIMES correspondent tonight that he had been named by the writer of the letter as likely to testify to his trustworthiness and was asked if he cared to say anything regarding this. He replied:
"While I have no idea what my former partner has written to THE TIMES, I would credit his statements, whatever they might be."
THE NEUTRALS.
By BEATRICE BARRY.
Ours is the "neutral nation" In this war that the white men wage, And we on the Reservation Care naught how the white men rage.
Where are the forest spaces That the red man was free to roam? And what of the woodland places Where the red man made his home?
Gone! There's a paleface house Where the brave had his strong tepee, And the white man's cattle browse Where the wild herds used to be.
For our power sites he reaches While both smoothly he speaks and well Of the God whose love he teaches And whose justice he would tell.
O Great White Spirit who rideth On the wings of the Winter gale, Though thy children's faith abideth, Alas! they have lost the trail.
Fifteen Minutes on the Yser
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
IN BELGIUM, Dec. 12, (Dispatch to The London Daily News.)--Fighting of an exceedingly desperate character has been taking place during the latter portion of the week along the line which extends between the Yser and the Lys. Success has attended the efforts of both Germans and French in turn; but the losses of the enemy have been by far the greater, and the French have in places gained a slight advantage. This is particularly noteworthy when it is considered that the Germans on Thursday especially attacked in overwhelming force time after time. Their movement was concentrated on a zigzag line of trenches not far from the village of Dichebusch, which, as it happened, was not particularly strongly held by the French.
A terrific prelude to the attack was made by the German artillery, which concentrated a furious shrapnel fire upon the French position. At this point the trenches of the Germans were only seventy yards from the French, and for fear of hitting their own men the German guns were aimed fairly high, so that the Frenchmen in the rear trenches suffered most heavily. Those in the front trench huddled against its sides while the storm of shot and shell raged over them. There was nothing else for them to do at the moment, and, as it proved, it was extremely fortunate for the Allies that the German guns spared these men.
The French seventy-fives raked the German batteries in answer, and things were going hot and strong when the German infantrymen suddenly became active. From their trenches seventy yards away a shower of hand grenades came bowling over toward the first French trench. Many of them fell short, and few did any damage; but hardly had this second plague come to an end when out from the trenches climbed a swarm of Germans rushing furiously toward the Frenchmen. At last the men in that first trench had something to do. They jumped to their loopholes and blazed magazine fire into this raging, tearing attack. Every bullet seemed to find its mark; it could hardly have done otherwise at such a range.
The advance line wavered, stumbled over prostrate parts of itself, and then swept onward again. There was no time for the Frenchmen to reload their rifles; besides they did not want to do so. They simply climbed out of the trenches and met the Germans with the bayonet. The German guns were still roaring to prevent the arrival of French reinforcements; but the reinforcements came quickly, suffering heavily in coming.
The few Frenchmen still struggled sturdily with their enemies, who outnumbered them three to one, and eventually the Germans who survived the attack turned and bolted back to their trenches, with the Frenchmen, seeing red, at their heels.
It was as furious a fifteen minutes as could be conceived. The No Man's Land between the trenches was heaped with men tangled and twisted in death or writhing with wounds which unmercifully let them live. Neither side dared venture across to aid these sufferers, so they were left in their agony.
But this one desperate charge did not end the day's work. The French mortars thumped away incessantly, and showers of hand grenades were exchanged. One more attack was made by the Germans in daylight, with a like result. The ground was piled high in places with bodies. Then, when night had fallen, yet another attack was made. One mighty mass of Germans came charging over the narrow space. By sheer weight of numbers they overwhelmed the French and took the trench for which they had paid such a ghastly price. They held it only for a few hours. By converging on it from three points at once the French retook it soon after midnight.
On Friday morning a wonderful French bayonet charge at length drove out the Germans, who had fought most gallantly and stubbornly throughout the day and during the night, and the terrible morning which followed. The Red Cross workers were busy without ceasing; but many men had bled to death, lacking surgical aid, in that strip of ground between the trenches.
This is the kind of warfare which is going to be waged in this seemingly inevitable battle between the two rivers. It may last as long as the battle of the Yser or the Aisne, and we may wait day after day again for the verdict. If the Allies can press forward just three or four miles before the year is out they will have done extraordinarily well. Hereabout the German artillery is in greater strength than anywhere else along the whole line of battle.
Progress will undoubtedly be slow because the Germans have taken such tremendous pains to pave (in a literal sense) with concrete trenches the way of retreat. British airmen report line upon line of intrenchments where the Germans have defensively furrowed the land behind them for miles. As the Allies advance--and they indubitably will advance--these trenches will in turn be stubbornly defended. It is going to be, I am afraid, a long, weary, and bloody business. Those in England who sometimes complain at the absence of decisive victories may have to wait a long time yet before it can be said that the Germans are in full retreat; for full retreat is the very thing they have guarded against most carefully.
In the semi-circle of slaughter around Ypres the trenches of the Allies and the Germans are at nearly all points extraordinarily close together. This means an immense strain on the men. They remain for hours together in cramped, unnatural positions, knowing from experience that an unwise move will bring a bullet from crack marksmen told off to snipe them.
This close proximity of the rival forces confounds all the theories of the military writers of the past. According to the army textbooks this war is being conducted in a grossly unprofessional manner. For bringing his men so close to the enemy many a young company commander has received a severe dressing down on manoeuvres.
Of course under such circumstances abuse and badinage is continually being bandied across the intervening spaces between the trenches, and the quick-witted Frenchmen generally get the better of it in the war of words.
One of them, who came back from the Ypres neighborhood a few days ago, told me a delightful story of a practical joke played upon the Germans, who were entrenched only about thirty or forty yards away from his platoon. One bright spirit was lecturing the enemy and making dialectical rings round them.
"Hola, bosches," he cried, "your Kaiser is very brave, isn't he? He wears the Iron Cross, but he doesn't come into your trenches. Tomorrow M. Poincaré, our President, will visit us. He does not wear an Iron Cross, but he isn't afraid."
On the morrow the Germans saw a top hat come bobbing and bowing along the French trench and heard loud cries of "Vive le President!" Time after time they riddled that top hat with bullets, and still it went bobbing along until the French took it off the spade handle, threw it into the air and howled in derision.
Seeing Nieuport Under Shell Fire
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
FURNES, Dec. 21, (Dispatch to The London Daily News.)--For several days I have been in possession of an authorization from the French commandant permitting me to penetrate to Nieuport. This town has been under bombardment by the Germans since Oct. 20. There were days, however, when no shells fell in the town and a walk in the streets presented no danger, though this was by no means the case last week, when, after a period of calm, an event of considerable importance occurred. The Allies took up the offensive in an effort to drive the Germans from the coast and recapture Ostend and Zeebrugge.
Along the whole front from the Yser to the sea there were important movements of troops. These I am not at liberty to describe, but they have for the most part only a small significance in relation to the events described in this letter. For eight days the struggle has been very severe on the Yser, and night and day hundreds of guns have been sending shells across the space dividing the two armies. Since the end of October the Germans had been established at St. Georges and Lombartzyde, close to Nieuport, and their trenches between Nieuport and Nieuport-les-Bains were separated from those of the French and Belgians only by a canal twenty yards wide running from Furnes through Nieuport to the sea.
I left Furnes on a French motor truck carrying bread and meat to the troops at Nieuport. For about three miles the truck followed the canal, passing the village of Wulpen, and then came to a stop. We had arrived near the bridge over which we must pass to reach Nieuport. As we slowly approached the bridge I asked the chauffeur: "What is delaying us?" "It is a little too warm for the moment," he replied.
When a soldier admits that things are warm it is certain that there is serious fighting afoot. To the right and left over the fields we could see the inundations. On the roads our soldiers were moving and the guns of the Allies were filling the air with thunder. In the intervals one could hear the spitting of quick-firers and the lesser chorus of rifle fire. Just ahead on a little bridge were a few soldiers of the engineer corps busily at work under the direction of a Lieutenant.
Suddenly I saw them fall flat on the ground. At the same moment a shell whistled over their heads and buried itself in the canal bank only forty yards from us.
"Shelter your machine behind the house," shouted the Lieutenant, and the chauffeur did not want a second telling. He backed the truck a few yards to place it against a house opposite the bridge at the corner of the road from Ramscapelle.
I left the truck and stood with some soldiers close against the wall. In five minutes fifteen shells fell within a radius of 100 yards of the bridge, but not one struck the bridge itself. We could hear them come shrieking toward us, and the only comment of the soldiers each time was "Here comes another."
We passed over the bridge and advanced along the canal bank in the direction of the Germans. As we approached the trenches near the Dixmude railway bridge we were able to survey the plain of St. Georges, which is now completely under water. For a moment the firing between the trenches had ceased, and we were able to take a leisurely view of the scene from the height of the bridge over an area half a mile square. The water is three feet deep, and in the centre of the lake stands a farmhouse surrounded by trees. French and Belgian soldiers had crossed the water, advancing under the protection of artillery fire, and had captured the houses standing on the far side.
Returning to our motor, we quickly reached Nieuport. The aspect of the place was strange. The houses, as in all ancient fortified towns, press closely one against another. The streets, however, are wide and regular. They were as empty as the streets of a dead city. In the roofs of the houses were large holes. Windows and doors had been destroyed, and blinds and curtains were floating out on the wind.
To my great surprise I learned that four or five houses were still occupied. About twenty inhabitants, I was told, were still living in their cellars after the two months' bombardment. The soldiers did what they could to feed these people, who said that rather than leave their homes they would perish in the ruins. The rest of the inhabitants, about 4,000, had fled, taking with them only what they could carry in their hands. In every house one could see broken furniture covered with dust. In many of them gaping holes had been torn by shells, while some of the front walls had been carried clean away. Bedsteads and wardrobes were seen standing awry on the upper floors, ready to fall into the street. Of other houses, reduced, one may say, to powder, only heaps of rubbish remain, in which one can distinguish among pieces of tiles and bricks and plaster chests of drawers, pianos, sideboards, sewing machines, and so forth, broken and mixed with what is left of household linen and crockery. Family portraits, as if in mockery, remain hanging in places and contemplate the scene of ruin. The contents of the shops have been scattered over the floors, and whatever has not been destroyed by shells, shrapnel, and bombs, has been left to rot under the rain which comes through the roofs and ceilings. All sorts of merchandise was lying about in confusion on the pavements.
The church, one of the oldest Gothic monuments in the country, has been completely demolished. The belfry tower is torn open, and one broken bell is lying on the ground at the edge of a pit some thirty feet in width, made by the explosion of an enormous German shell. A large wooden crucifix by the side of the church has been torn from the ground and lies in a ditch.
There is a layer three feet deep of pieces of wood covering the floor of the church. This was once the roof and furniture of the old Gothic temple.
The cemetery, furrowed by shells, contains fresh graves covered with flowers. These are graves of officers and soldiers. On one of them are a soldier's coat and cap; on another a small Belgian flag. The second grave was dug only this morning, the young soldier, I was told by a Sergeant, having arrived at 8 o'clock and having been killed by a German shell at 10.
Only one structure in Nieuport remained intact, the Templars' Tower, a very solid piece of masonry, five centuries old.
Groups of officers and men were moving about among the ruins of the town. They were all young men, whose laughter and jokes contrasted grimly with the terrible howl of the guns and the crash of the projectiles which were still falling in the town. The French batteries added to the noise. Nothing can describe the terrible power of the heavy French artillery. The voice of the guns pierced my ear drums. Though they were posted at a considerable distance, one might almost think them close at hand. As a shell passes over your head it reminds you of a hurricane blowing through the bare branches of a forest.
Accompanied by my chauffeur, I ran through streets which he pointed out as being more dangerous than others. They were being shelled from the flank by the Germans, and sometimes, I was told, accidents would occur; that is, somebody would be killed by a shell flying along the street from one end to the other. One feels one's self much more at ease in the streets which intersect these thoroughfares at right angles.
In one spot I met a Red Cross motor ambulance laden with wounded, and going in the midst of the gravest danger, in the direction of Furnes. At another point we saw a French Captain, who, in a stern voice, ordered his soldiers to keep away from the middle of the street. These men were not on duty for the moment and were chatting as merrily as if they were in no danger.
Raid on Scarborough Seen from a Window
By Ruth Kauffmann.
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
CLOUGHTON, Scarborough, England, Dec. 17.--It's a very curious thing to watch a bombardment from your house.
Everybody knew the Kaiser would do it. But there was a little doubt about the date, and then somehow the spy-hunting sport took up general attention. When the Kaiser did send his card here yesterday morning it was quite as much of a surprise as most Christmas cards--from a friend forgotten.
Eighteen people were killed yesterday morning between 8 o'clock and 8:30 in the streets and houses of Scarborough by German shrapnel, 200 were wounded, and more than 200 houses were damaged or demolished.
A little before 8 o'clock three dreadnought cruisers were seen to cut through the light fog, which was just lifting, and, hugging the cliffs opposite our house, scuttle south to Scarborough. From our windows we could not at that hour quite make out the contours of the ruined castle, which is generally plainly visible. Our attention was called to the fact that there was "practicing" going on, and we could, at 8:07, see quick flashes. That these flashes pointed directly at Scarborough we did not for a few minutes comprehend. Then, the fog slowly lifting, we saw a fog that was partly smoke. The castle grew into its place in the six miles distance. It seemed for a moment that the eight-foot-thick Norman walls tottered; but no, whatever tottered was behind the keep. Curiously enough we could barely hear the cannonading, for the wind was keen in the opposite direction, yet we could, as the minutes crept by and the air cleared, see distinctly the flashes from the boats and the flashes in the city.
After about fifteen minutes there was a cessation, or perhaps a hesitation, that lasted two minutes; then the flashes continued. Ten minutes more and the boats began to move again. One cruiser disappeared completely from sight, sailing south by east. The other two rushed, like fast trains, north again, again close to our cliffs; and in another half hour we heard all too plainly the cannonading which had almost escaped our ears from Scarborough. We thought it was Robin Hood's Bay, as far north of us as Scarborough is south; but afterward we learned that the boats omitted this pretty red-roofed town and concentrated their remaining energy on Whithy, fifteen miles north; the wind blowing toward us brought us the vibrating boom.
We drove to Scarborough. We had not gone one mile of the distance when we began to meet people coming in the opposite direction. A small white-faced boy in a milk cart that early every morning makes its Scarborough rounds showed us a piece of shell he had picked up and said it had first struck a man a few yards from him and killed the man. A woman carrying a basket told us, with trembling lips, that men and women were lying about the streets dead. The postman assured us that Scarborough was in flames. A road worker told us we should be turned back, and another man warned us to beware of a big hole in the road further along, large enough to swallow our horse and trap; yet we could certainly see no flames issuing from Scarborough, which now lay directly before us.
We put up the horse at a stable on the very edge of the city and walked up the steep hill. The hotelkeeper and his wife, we were told, were already "refugees."
Scarborough is a sprawling town that stretches a length of about three miles from the extreme north end to the extreme south. Inland about a mile and a half is a wireless station, and on the cliff, 300 feet high, stands the ruined castle and its walled-in grounds, in the midst of which is--or was, for it was yesterday blown clean away--a signal station. Although there are barracks the town is unfortified. A seaside resort of considerable importance, its population varies by many thousands in Winter and Summer, with a stationary population of 45,000. But to compensate for its Summer losses are the numerous fashionable schools for both boys and girls.
We did not meet a deserted city when we entered. The streets were thronging. There was a Sunday hush over everything without the accompanying Sunday clothes, but people moved about or stood at their doorways. Many of the shop fronts were boarded up and shop windows were empty of display. The main street, a narrow passageway that clambers up from the sea and points due west, was filled with a procession that slowly marched down one side and up the other. People hardly spoke. They made room automatically for a group of silent boy scouts, who carried an unconscious woman past us to the hospital. There was the insistent honk of a motor car as it pushed its way through; all that struck me about the car was the set face of an old man rising above improvised bandages about his neck, part of the price of the Kaiser's Christmas card.
The damage to property did not first reach our attention. But as we walked down the main street and then up it with the procession we saw that shops and houses all along had windows smashed next to windows unhurt. At first we thought the broken windows were from concussion, but apparently very few were so broken; there was not much concussion, but the shells, splintering as they exploded, had flown red-hot in every direction. The smoke we had seen had come from fires quickly extinguished. Scarborough was not "in flames."
We left the main business street and picked our way toward the Foreshore and the South Cliff, the more fashionable part of town as well as the school section. Here there was a great deal of havoc, and we had to climb over some of the débris. Roofs were half torn off and balancing in mid-air; shells had shot through chimneys, and some chimneys tottered, while several had merely round roles through the brickwork; mortar, bricks, and glass lay about the streets; here a third-story room was bare to the view, the wall lifted out as for a child's dollhouse and disclosing a single bedroom with shaving materials on the bureau still secure; there a drug store lay fallen into the street, and the iron railing about it was torn and twisted out of shape. A man and a boy had just been carried away dead. All around small pieces of iron rail and ripped-up asphalt lay scattered. Iron bars were driven into the woodwork of houses; there were great gaps in walls and roofs; the attack had not spent itself on any one section of the city, but had scattered itself in different wards. The freaks of the shells were as inexplicable as those of a great fire that destroys everything in a house except a piano and a mantelpiece with its bric-a-brac, or a flood that carries away a log cabin and leaves a rose bush unharmed and blooming.
Silent pedestrians walked along and searched the ground for souvenirs, of which there were aplenty. Sentries guarded houses and streets where it was dangerous to explore, and park benches were used as barriers to the public. All the cabs were requisitioned to take away luggage and frightened inhabitants. During the shelling hundreds of women and children, breakfastless, their hair hanging, hatless, and even penniless, except for their mere railway fares, had rushed to the station and taken tickets to the first safe town they could think of. There was no panic, these hatless, penniless women all asserted, when they arrived in York and Leeds. A wealthy woman whom I slightly know nearly rushed into my arms, her face very flushed, and told me that she had left the servants to pack her china and vases, and was now on her way to find a workman to dig a hole in the garden to receive them; as for herself, she would eat from kitchen dishes henceforth.
A friend of mine hurried into Scarborough by motor to rescue her sister, who was a pupil at one of the boarding schools. But it appeared that when the windows of the school began to crash the teachers hurried from prayers, ordered the pupils to gather hats and coats and sweet chocolate that happened to be on hand as a substitute for breakfast, and made them run for a mile and a half, with shells exploding about them, through the streets to the nearest out-of-Scarborough railway station. My friend, after unbelievable difficulties, finally found her sister in a private house of a village near by, the girl in tears and pleading not to be sent to London; she had been told that her family's house was probably destroyed, as it was actually on the seacoast.
On the other hand, instances of self-possession were not lacking. Another school hardby took all its children to the cellars, where the teachers made light of the matter, and the frightened father of one very nervous child was pleasantly amazed to find his child much calmer than himself--and quite delighted with the experience. In St. Martin's Church, the Archdeacon was celebrating communion. Shells struck the roof of the church. The Archdeacon stopped the service for a brief moment to say:
"We are evidently being bombarded. But we are as safe here as we can be anywhere," and proceeded calmly with the service.
We left Scarborough at night. The exodus of inhabitants, school children, whose Christmas holidays began earlier by one day on account of the raid, and visitors continued steadily. The cabmen, so idle in Winter, were rejoiced to find that work for today would not be lacking.
"At this rate," said one of them to me as he lighted the carriage candles for our trap and handed me the reins, "if the Germans come again there'll be no one left for them to kill."
There is, the Admiralty tells us, no military significance in this event, and, from the British point of view, I doubt if a woman will ever be considered worthy of a hearing in anything military; but I presume there is some sort of significance from a real estate point of view in the holes made in the hotels and houses, and from the hospital point of view in the sad procession of stretchers. But however little significance the December bombardment of Scarborough has, it is certainly a surprise to be wakened by three hostile cruisers, and one must admit that the Kaiser has at least left his greetings of the season on the east coast.
How the Baroness Hid Her Husband on a Vessel
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
LONDON, Dec. 7.--The story of how Baroness Hans Heinrich von Wolf, who was Miss Humphreys, well known in New York society, smuggled her husband into Germany after the beginning of the war past a British cruiser and two sets of British shipping inspectors so that he could fight for the Fatherland is revealed in news received here giving details as to the bestowal upon the Baron of the Iron Cross of the First Class.
Baron von Wolf and his wife, who is the daughter of a wealthy patent medicine manufacturer and whose stepfather is Consul General St. John Gaffney, at Munich, were on their plantation in German Southwest Africa, when the Kaiser ordered the mobilization. Being a reserve officer, the Baron started homeward on board a German steamship on July 29, and, fortunately for him, the Baroness accompanied him.
On receipt of wireless information that war had been declared, their ship promptly put into Rio Janeiro toward the middle of August, and it was two weeks later before the Wolfs found a neutral vessel headed for Holland.
In South American waters they were halted by a British cruiser, but although there were many German reservists among the passengers, the cruiser was so full of Germans already that she could not carry any more, so they were permitted to proceed.
Baron von Wolf left the ship "officially" at Vigo, Spain, his wife waving a tearful farewell to his imaginary figure on the tender. He was really secreted, through the connivance of a generously bribed steward, in a tiny closet, where he remained for twenty-four hours. Finally he was spirited into his wife's state-room, and during the rest of the voyage spent most of his time lying under her berth. All his meals, drinks, and cigarettes were brought in by the steward, who was in the plot, and, as the Baroness remarked laughingly to friends afterward, "I gained a frightful reputation as a heavy drinker and smoker, and one Mrs. Grundy even spread the scandalous report that I had a man in my room."
British warships compelled the Dutch vessel to enter Falmouth, where the authorities searched her for contraband and reservists. Knowing that the Baroness was a German officer's wife, naval officials called upon her several times in the course of the two weeks during which the ship was forced to remain at Falmouth, but each time they found her either doing up her hair, whereupon they retreated hastily with apologies for the intrusion, or lying in her bunk, feigning illness. The ship manifest, of course, showed that Capt. von Wolf had disembarked at Vigo, and the Captain of the vessel, ignorant of the truth, swore that he had seen Capt. von Wolf on board the tender, waving to his wife on deck.
There was a further search at Dover, but von Wolf's hiding place was never discovered.
The Kaiser awarded the Iron Cross to von Wolf for capturing seven English soldiers single-handed near Ypres and for carrying dispatches in an automobile under a fire so hot that his chauffeur and two officers in a car following were killed.
As far as his neutrality will permit, Consul General Gaffney, in whose Munich residence the Baroness is living during the war, has indicated to friends his delight over the valor of his stepson-in-law.
Warsaw Swamped With Refugees
By H.W. Bodkinson of The London Standard.
WARSAW, Oct. 15.--Thousands of fugitives crowd the city. They come from all parts of Poland, but principally from the frontier towns and villages which the Germans have been ravaging for over six weeks.
It rends one's heart to hear of the sufferings of these poor refugees, who are mostly Jews, but with a considerable sprinkling of Poles and Lithuanians. Every available hall and every empty warehouse is filled with them. They must have shelter and food, and Warsaw has risen heroically to the task of providing them with these necessities. Yet how they suffer and what a struggle is theirs for bare existence!
My first visit was to the largest hall in Warsaw, called the Swiss Valley, where the large Philharmonic concerts are usually held and which in ordinary times is the gathering place of society. It is now converted into a refuge for 600 or 700 homeless fugitives, who have left their all behind them and fled in terror, frequently on foot, for many miles, and carrying their possessions on their backs. The majority are old men, women, and children. In the babel of voices are frequently heard pitiful cries of poorly fed children, shrieks of more lusty ones, and groans and wailings of mothers who still seem stunned and stupefied by their frightful experiences.
Dinner was being served when I arrived. At several tables sat women, many with babies in arms, and children, while men were being served in one of the large corridors. Standing in endless rows, they took their turn at the steaming pots. In the main hall many fugitives were crouching on the floor, some on mattresses, and piled about them were little mounds of household effects that they had succeeded in saving from their wrecked and ruined homes. It was truly a picture of direst misery, and in the faces of young and old one could read calamity.
Kalisch is probably a heap of ruins, these recent arrivals tell me, and of the usual population of 65,000 barely 2,000 are left. German soldiers have abandoned the city, but are quartered three or four miles away, in the village of Oputook. Kalisch is only a fortified camp, visited daily, however, by German cavalry, who use it as a reconnoitring base. All gardens have been destroyed and trees cut up for barricades, and even crosses from the cemetery have been displaced and used in fortification work.
Refugees tell dreadful stories of what they saw on their flight through this unfortunate part of Poland. Everywhere are burned and pillaged villages, towns destroyed, and gardens that are heaps of ashes and ruins.
One old man, formerly a country school teacher, saw three peasants hanging from a tree, with all the signs of having been frightfully tortured, as their arms and legs were broken in several places. They evidently had been accused of espionage and summarily executed. While telling me of this sight the old man fairly shook with the terror of reminiscence, and when he finished he was sobbing aloud.
How Warsaw is going to take care of these poor unfortunates is still an unsolved problem. Already a wave of unemployment is spreading in the city, and it will be impossible to find work for this enormous increase in the town's population. Some are being sent to the southern coal mines and others are being employed on fortification works at Novo Georgieoak, but they are the pick of the lot. It is the old and infirm, the women and children, who must be provided for, and though contributions come in steadily, yet there is not half enough relief for all, and appeals are being made both to Petrograd and Moscow, cities which still are practically free from the horrors of war, for speedy help.
After the Russian Advance in Galicia
[From The London Times.]
LWOW (Lemberg), Oct. 17.
I have returned from a trip of several hundred kilometers through Galicia, covering the zone of the Russian conquest and subsequent occupation. I believe it is fair to consider the district traversed as typical of the general conditions in the existing conquered zones and of those prevailing during and after the fighting.
The portion traversed lies from Lwow in a southeasterly direction to Bessarabia, along the Carpathians and the line of retreat of the heavy Austrian column and the subsequent advance of Gen. Brussiloff. The situation at Halicz offers an opportunity to judge of the conduct of the Russians, as this position was occupied after considerable severe fighting nearby. Gen. Brussiloff's advance was preceded by heavy masses of Cossacks, and two checks were experienced before this point was reached, and therefore it may be assumed that their blood was roused when Halicz was reached and any excesses or lack of control were to be expected here, where there are many Jews. The facts, which are obvious and not dependent upon hearsay or official confirmation, are that though this country was swept by a huge army, three divisions of Cossacks crossing the river at Halicz, besides a mass of infantry, there is in the rural districts no sign to indicate this deluge of a few weeks earlier. The fields have at present an absolutely normal aspect, with stock grazing contentedly everywhere, while in every village there are quantities of geese, chickens, and pigs. There are acres and acres of rich farming land, with grain still stacked, while the Autumn plowing and belated harvesting are proceeding as usual.
Nine villages through which the Russian armies swept give no sign of war having passed this way. At an occasional station or village a few destroyed buildings are seen, but these in every instance appear to have been places where the retreating Austrians halted or attempted to make stands, and the fire even at these points seems to have been carefully concentrated on strategic points--for instance, a town where the railway dêpot and a warehouse have been leveled. I was particularly impressed by the village of Botszonce, near Halicz. A few versts from there a stubborn fight lasting several days resulted in the abandonment of the Austrian line of resistance and a retreat, with a halt at Botszonce.
Hence the town was shelled, and the municipal offices and big buildings in the centre were utterly destroyed, but three buildings stand conspicuously among the ruins. These are two churches, and the Town Hall, with a spire resembling that of a church. The fact that the building next to the latter was leveled utterly, while not a single shell entered the supposed church, indicates that the Russian practice at 5,000 meters was sufficiently accurate to insure the protection of sacred edifices, while neighboring buildings were wrecked. It is also significant of the Russian restraint following a hard battle where losses were substantial.
It is universally observable that where villages were shelled attempts were made to spare the peasants' houses, few of which were damaged, save by fires spreading from other buildings. Everywhere wanton destruction has obviously been avoided, and the percentage of towns in this zone where any damage whatever was done is small. The foregoing facts signify the restraint and soberness exercised both by the Cossacks and the following infantry. The natives were not unfriendly to the Russians, which would partially account for this, but such discipline as was exhibited is significant even in a friendly country, when one considers the size and extent of the invading armies.
Other conclusions based on conversations with Russian officials, which were obviously prejudiced, and with peasants, whose evidence was given to a correspondent who accompanied these officers, must be accepted guardedly. Such information as was obtained from these sources indicated no complaint against the Russian soldier. Little material was taken, and this, it is said, has been paid for. This I personally believe, as the merchants and natives appear to be genuinely friendly, the occupying troops stating that even the Cossacks were docile. Many Austrian officials are wearing their old uniforms with Russian colors on their arms.
It would be unwise to attempt to estimate the underlying feelings of the population, but I believe it is a safe assumption that Russia's Galician Government will be the most progressive and liberal of all her experiments, and will probably prove an easy yoke for all those who do not attempt to interfere politically. It is obvious that an exceptional effort has been made throughout the campaign and the occupation to keep the inhabitants friendly and establish the Government here as a demonstration of Russian progressive tendencies. I believe, too, that this time the tendencies are distinctly liberal, but it is futile to attempt to estimate the future.
Officer in Battle Had Little Feeling
[Correspondence of The Associated Press.]
ROTTERDAM, Dec. 1.--The psychology of the battlefield gets a rather thorough and able treatment by an Austrian reserve officer, who, after having been wounded in an engagement with the Russians, gave the following interview to a Hungarian journalist. The officer in question was with Gen. Dankl in the fighting southeast of Krasnik.
"You feel little or nothing while in battle," he said. "At least, you forget how things affect your mind. The eyes see and the ears hear, but those are perceptions which do not result in impressions one could co-ordinate. They do not even affect your sentiments. But it is not cynicism, for all that; merely the lack of appreciation of what takes place. My Captain, a most lovable fellow, whom I did not alone respect as an officer, but of whom I also thought a great deal personally, was leading his company into fire when three bullets hit him in the abdomen. I saw him fall, but thought nothing of it and marched on.
"In spite of the fact that you have no ill-feelings against the enemy, and may not even fear him, you destroy him as best you can. On the evening before our first battle we were sitting about the mess table--most of us officers of the line. None of us had ever killed a man. I said: 'Friends, when I meet the first Russian officer tomorrow my impulse will be to shake his hand.' My comrades agreed with me. But on the following day I was obliged to lay a number of Russians low.
"My Slovacs are the most phlegmatic people in the world, but excellent soldiers. They shoot without anger, but simply because they are fired upon. One fights because one is on the battlefield and cannot do any different. The terrible thing is that often you are shot at without being able to return the fire. But this is not as fear-inspiring as it is discouraging. You learn to know what fear is when you begin to realize that you might be killed without killing somebody first.
"Of course I have been scared. That was after I had been wounded. We had been firing a long time, and when next we advanced we came into a deep and sandy road, out of which we could not get because of the enemy's terrible fire. We had to lie perfectly still while bullets simply poured over us. That was awful."
The officer omitted to state that while in this position he was shot three times in the arm, but continued to lead his troops throughout the action.
"It is a well-known fact that the soldier sees very little of the battle. On Aug. 24, early in the morning, we re-received [Transcriber's Note: so in original] orders to occupy a low hill at the edge of a tract covered with brushwood. Forming part of the reserve, we were expected to remain under cover. In front of us was a large open battlefield. To each side of us were batteries which had thundered away since early morning. The result of this was that many of the enemy's shells dropped right in front of us. I remember noticing that while the smoke of our shells had a lilac color that of the enemy's was white.
"So far we had not been disquieted by the shells at all. On the edge of the brushwood had been planted a yellow-black flag, showing that somewhere in that vicinity was to be found our General Staff. Our Colonel left us and walked toward it, possibly to get orders, but just as he got there a shrapnel exploded a little ahead of him in the air and we saw our commanding officer, in whom we placed all our confidence, go down. After that it was a terrible feeling to lie still. From that moment on, too, a veritable hail of shells began to come. Some sappers, who had been busy digging a trench for the protection of the General Staff, started to run. I feared that my soldiers would follow the example, and began to make fun of the poor sappers, scolding them at the same time. Thank God, my battalion found that funny and began to laugh. They lived through a terrific shrapnel fire with not a care and even found occasion for laughter.
"A Major took command of the regiment and we received orders to retake a hill which the enemy had captured under heavy fire. But of the enemy nothing at all was to be seen as we neared the position, though the hail of shell and shrapnel increased in fury. The flag bearer marched about 300 paces off my side. By accident I looked in his direction, saw the white cloud of smoke of a Russian shell, and where the flag bearer had been there was nothing more to be seen.
"The enemy meanwhile had taken to flight, and later we saw the Russians wading through a swamp. Then they got to the River Por and crossed it--we after them, shooting, wading, out of breath. Of a sudden a village behind us went up in flames, the light falling on us like the rays of a huge reflector. Then and there we received a rain of fire, and saw the enemy had taken possession in good order of the other bank. We had to fall back, not because we were afraid, but because those were the orders. The sensation of being in danger of death we did not have.
"Flags and drums are useless things in warfare. What is the use of a flag which by its bright colors reveals your position, which, as the brown paint on my sabre shows, it has been intended to conceal? In the one case even the slightest reflection of light is guarded against, while in the other a large field of colors undoes all that it has been wished to accomplish. The drummer, on the other hand, must beat his drum as he goes to the attack, yet he is expected to run into the enemy unarmed. He would prefer exchanging his drum for a rifle, so that he would be able to shoot down a soldier.
"One feels nothing of the presence of the enemy in battle and on the marches. To be wounded is also not such a bad experience. But you begin to think after the battle. To bear the horrors of war a sort of ideal is necessary. Once, when I took my Slovacs into an attack, we passed a cross by the wayside. Many of them knelt down for a moment and said a prayer. That was sincere and sublime. The ideal which makes it possible for me to bear everything is to be a good officer on the battlefield--under the circumstances my duty toward the social aggregate to which I belong."
The Battle of New Year's Day
By Perceval Gibbon.
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
ZYRARDOW, Poland, Jan. 3, via London, Jan. 8, (Dispatch to The London Daily Chronicle.)--The lines of trenches, the position of which I am able to observe from here, are those extending south from Sochaczew, and to the west of Msczonow. The chief German efforts are being directed against the centre of this line.
They have made a concentration of their best troops opposite our positions west of the village of Guzow, against the trenches of the second army at a point where an army corps of veterans have turned their position into an earthen fortress. Here within the last few days the Germans have brought up guns of all but the largest calibre and generally displayed considerable increases in their artillery. Here also their infantry attacks, those tragic and wasteful assaults in force which send so many thousand German corpses down the streams of the Rawka and Bzura to the Vistula, and so home, are most intense.
During the last few days a certain lull in the frequency of these attacks has been observable and has been construed by the Russians as prefatory to renewed endeavors to force the line and advance a short stage on the dangerous road to Warsaw. This premonition was justified on New Year's Day when the enemy's attacks were renewed east of Guzow. The armies are facing each other across their breastworks at a distance varying from 200 to 300 yards. The dawn of 1915, the Germans roused themselves again to the dreary energy of the hopeless battle. I watched the shelling from the headquarters of a regiment which is occupying a trench in the centre of the front line.
It was impossible to approach the trench more nearly during daylight, as the grassless brown flats were noisy with bullets from the German lines. They shoot with wasteful prodigality shrapnel and even heavier shells on any single figure that is discernible; but when early dark came down the attempt was made successfully and the first line held by the Bielojevsky Regiment was reached. I had the advantage of the company up to the zone of fire of Prince Peter Volkonsky, who is leader of a Red Cross motor column. Throughout our journey the Germans were firing rockets. A slow, green ball of fire ascends as gradually into the air as a loaded balloon, seems to poise aloft for a moment, then sinks slowly to earth, lighting the country for a long way around with a ghastly green illumination. Each rocket is followed by a prompt fire from the field batteries and a short spurt of rifle fire.
The trench to which I finally came at midnight was that in almost the mathematical centre of the Guzow positions. Here behind an eight-foot-high breastwork the famous regiment, which invariably has been in the front line during the five months of the war, has made itself efficiently at home. Since the war began the regiment, whose normal strength is 4,000 men, has lost 5,500, making good its losses out of the reserves, so that now again it is at its full strength.
The Germans have made a routine of their attacks, always making them at night and always ineffectually. They advance as far as the barbed wire, 30 yards in front of the trench. There they encounter the full force of the Russian rifle fire and fall back again. The Germans shell without ceasing. All the Russians speak of their profuse expenditure of ammunition. The commander of the trench told me that at the lowest they fired over 3,000 shells on a single day.
Although intermittent firing continued through the night, no attack was made. With the morning the German guns resumed their exhaustive questing along the rear of the trenches, and a big factory to the southward once more became their target. Its great chimney began to acquire a kind of sporting significance, it was so obviously the object of fire in that direction; and bets were going in the trench backing the chimney against the German gunners.
I counted in an hour thirty-six shells directed at the factory, but the chimney, like the steeple of a persecuted but triumphant religion, was cocking its unbowed head to the skies.
Now began the shelling of the trench, while the German rifle bullets searched along the front. This, however, is a game at which the Russian riflemen are specially proficient. They can in a few moments organize a combined murderous fire which forces every German who is not weary of life to keep his head down. After a few minutes the German rifle fire goes wild, their bullets no longer striking about our loopholes.
Toward late afternoon their fire increased, and the Russian long-range battery came into position behind us. The gun out of sight astern of us roared grandly. A shell traveled over us, whistling in its flight, then splashed in brief fire, and a great cloud of smoke arose a hundred yards ahead of us and the same distance short of the German trenches. A second shell burst about the same distance beyond the German line. Then, after careful sighting, and the position having been verified, came a third shell and landed superbly and within easy sight upon the very lip of the trench, blowing a great gap in the earthwork. It was gunnery of the most exact and expert kind.
Shell after shell under our eyes, timed to a fraction, raked the trench; then came the reply to it. A German heavy battery out of sight in a dip toward the river came into action. From horizon to horizon the world was noisy with the stupendous drum of artillery, while at each brief interval the rending reverberation of rifle fire from trench to trench tore at one's ears.
The dreary, icy night darkened over the desolate fields which in this war have seen their crops trampled and have been sown with dead men. The darkness was lit by gun flashes and brief moons of shrapnel winking aloft, while from the opposite trench issued a ghostly, flickering blaze of rifles at their work.
The attack developed after all to the left of the trench in which we were. It was part of a great attack along a line which extended from near Gradow southward to Rawa, and was unsuccessful everywhere.
When dark came I made my way out of the trench in the same way I had previously entered it--under fire; but this time the moon was showing frostily clear over the horrible levels, so that as we went we were silhouetted against her vacant face. We obviously were plainly visible to the Germans, for besides bullets, which were beginning to become commonplace and unremarkable, a shrapnel shell came screaming up and burst on the ground about twenty feet away.
We gained the road to Chervonaneva. The road was white and straight, bare as one's empty hand. Here I endured the most curious experience of my life. Myself and companion, John Bass, correspondent of The Chicago Daily News, were walking in our heavy furs between the glaring moon and the German gunners, who will fire extravagantly at anything. Their guns got to work along the road and a shell came screaming up and burst perhaps twenty feet away, followed by three or four others.
Our attempt to take to the fields, where we would not be so conspicuous, was thwarted by the Russian barbed wire and other preparations for the enemy. There was nothing for it but to continue along the naked road till we got out of range. Further on low trees began at the side of the road. We hastened toward them, hoping to make them serve as cover, but shell after shell arrived, each bursting close by. The trees were of no use.
There was not another soul upon the road for over two miles. Each time we heard a shell coming toward us we cowered with our arms covering neck and face. After each shot we inquired of each other if either had been hit. The shooting of the gunners with such a small and distant target appeared to me superb.
At last a shell exploded overhead, smashing the branches and sending a load of metal flying. I felt blows of flying earth and twigs on my back. Bass asked, "Have they got you?"
"Are you all right?" I inquired.
"Think they have got me in the face," was the reply.
I had an electric pocket lamp, with which I made an examination. He was cut across the jaw with a fragment of shell and bleeding freely. I bandaged him with our handkerchiefs, Bass, as always, uncomplaining and treating the wound humorously.
Several shells followed, each too near for comfort, but we were now reaching the limit of the guns' range, and we came without further incident clear of their fire.
Bass's Story
[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
CHICAGO, Jan. 7.--John F. Bass, the staff correspondent of The Chicago Daily News, who with Perceval Gibbon had a remarkable escape from being blown to pieces by German shells while returning from a visit to a Russian first-line trench in Poland, cables to his paper his version of their experiences, which duplicates largely that by Perceval Gibbon cabled to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Recounting their arrival at the trench held by the Bielojevski Regiment, in the centre of the battle line, he says:
"The officers, in small underground bomb-proofs, gave us a hospitable welcome. The men had cut small recesses in the front wall of the trench, where they were comfortably housed in straw with bagging in front to keep out the cold. The trenches were in good condition and clean for war time.
"In the loopholes rifles lay ready for firing. One man in every four watched while the other three slept. As we walked through the trench we stepped over dead bodies of men who had recently fallen. Two of the regiment's battalions are commanded by Staff Capt. Podjio, one of the finest specimens of a conscientious, hard-working line officer I have met. He passed the night traveling the trenches, keeping a vigilant watch and encouraging the men, who seemed to be in fine condition.
"It was bitterly cold, so we lay for a time on the straw of a bomb-proof, watching by candlelight a giant orderly sending and receiving messages on a buzzing telephone from different parts of the line. It is a habit of Germans to make night attacks that bring them within fifty yards of the Russian trenches before they are driven off.
"We saw indistinctly across the trenches the Russian videttes in front. It is reported that the Germans do not take the precaution of posting a line of sentinels before their trenches. Just before morning the videttes came running to report activity in the German trenches. Quickly the sleeping soldiers were roused to man the loopholes. The machine guns cracked and the rifles rolled out volleys in the cold morning light. The Germans answered and bullets kicked the top of our trench. Some of the bullets seemed to crack on striking and it was reported to us that the Germans were using explosive missiles. Under the Russian fire the Germans failed to leave their trench.
"When the light swelled into day the German artillery began shelling the houses, the tall chimney, and the trenches. Black clouds of smoke rose from the spots where the shells struck. On our trench they used shrapnel, which burst for the most part beyond us in white puffs. The German infantry continued a heavy fusillade, but our machine gun fire, which seemed to sweep the dust from the top of the German trench, caused their rifle fire to go high and the bullets hissed overhead.
"Two German aeroplanes swept down the line above the Russian trench, but retired when chased by a Russian biplane. In the distance a German observation balloon hung in the sky like a huge sausage."
[Illustration: H.S.H. PRINCE LOUIS ALEXANDER OF BATTENBERG,
Who Was Forced to Resign as First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty.
(_Photo_ © _by Pach Bros., N.Y._)]
[Illustration: FIELD MARSHAL LORD ROBERTS,
From a Photograph Taken on His Eighty-second Birthday.
(_Photo by L.N.A._)]
The Waste of German Lives
By Perceval Gibbon.
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
ZYRARDOW, Poland, Jan. 5, (Dispatch to The London Daily Chronicle.)--Once again Poland has seen a great German general attack along the whole line of the Bzura and Rawka positions from Gradow to Rawa. For thirty-six hours the battle has shifted like a moving flame in a long line. Now that its intensity is abated, it is clear that the German purpose has again failed of accomplishment, and at several points the Russian line has advanced.
We have no key to the German mentality which inspires these attacks so wasteful in lives of soldiers, so ineffectual in their general result. In the records of this struggle along the courses of the two little rivers I have notes of upward of 100 attacks in considerable force, of which not a single one resulted in shifting the imperturbable Russian infantry from a trench, but each of which has been accompanied by ghastly loss to the Germans.
A fight characteristic of the operations on this front took place west of Gradow, where the German attack was exceptionally heavy throughout New Year's Day, culminating in an assault by infantry on the same night. Throughout the day they shelled the Russian trenches, spending ammunition with their customary lavishness. The day's shelling justified the Russian opinion that of the German forces their artillery and cavalry are the weakest arm and their infantry is the best. The positions are not greatly disturbed by the day-long aspersion with shrapnel, and the Russians are more than ready for the attack. On this front the infantry attacks usually in line, but this night they came up in dense columns. The Russian guns were at work promptly with the fuses of the shells reduced, so that they burst almost at the gun's mouth, and from the trenches a steady, schooled infantry fire tore gaps in the masses of the enemy.
At Gradow the Russians were utterly outnumbered. To this extent the German concentration of forces was successful, but no further. They succeeded in reducing the Russians' tactics from a mere defense of the trenches to delivering a counter-attack; but this was the limit of their success.
I have talked with three Russian officers here who were wounded during the counter-attack. Five machine guns were at work on them as they left their trenches in a charge. One of the officers was shot through the chest as he climbed the bank of the trench; the second got perhaps twenty yards before being hit in the head; the third, however, led his men home into the German trench. Of the Russians who set out only eighty were alive and unhurt when they reached the German trench, but this eighty took it with the bayonet, killing about five times their own number of Germans.
At Gradow, on the morning of Jan. 2, the ground resembled the strewn battlefield of Brzezny or the body-littered valleys between the woods of Augustowo in October. As in those other tragic defeats where the ruthless Generals sacrificed their soldiers like water, there were heaps and ridges of gray-clad dead. Gradow is only one single point in the line which the Germans assaulted, yet here alone they lost upward of 6,000 killed. The same night they attacked positions corresponding at the villages of Guzow, Radziwillow, Msczonow, and Rawa. In every place they were beaten back with heavy losses. The estimates from various sources, some official, state that their losses for the single night's abortive fighting, giving them nowhere an advance of a single yard of territory, were assuredly not fewer than 30,000 dead on the ground and three times as many wounded or dead within their own lines.
I am cured of prophecy, but through the fog of imminent events certain happenings are dimly indicated. Roughly speaking, the next fortnight is Germany's final opportunity. During that time they may pour out lives with the same hope as hitherto of making an impression on the steadfast line of the Bzura and Rawka. Then that last glamour of hope of success in Poland vanishes.
In the highest opinions the Austrian Army is finished, and it remains only to clear up the mess they have made and then again the great advance on poor, dim, beautiful Cracow will proceed. Przemysl is at its last gasp, and then the Russian armies will be in Silesia, the source and headquarters of Prussia's industrial wealth, the one province she cannot afford to see invaded. Within a time, which I hear estimated between three and six weeks, these wind-swept, icy plains of Poland must see a stage in the war completed.
Germans have been captured lately in whose possession was found the last proclamation of the Kaiser that "if compelled to retire from Poland, leave standing neither house nor town; leave only the bare earth underfoot." Well, the road to Berlin does not end at the Polish frontier.
The Flight Into Switzerland
By Ethel Therese Hugli.
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Jan. 10, 1915.]
BERNE, Nov. 18.--Question: What is Switzerland?
Answer: A small neutral State entirely surrounded by war!
At the first glance such would seem to be the actual state of affairs, for neutral Italy, our southern neighbor, takes up but a small part of our border; to the west we have France, to the north Germany, and to the east Austria, all engaged in deadly combat, all realizing that this time the loser will go down, never to come up again as a power of the first class. The drawback in being so neutral and so near the stage of all these dramatic proceedings, is that we are overwhelmed with "latest dispatches." Our papers bristle with the victories, defeats, denials, assertions, protests, accusations, blame, as contained in the dispatches of the various news agencies.
Reuter is the official English agency. His news is taken with a generous pinch of salt. The German agency is Wolff, whose proud boast it is never to have announced a single German defeat. As a consequence, he is also taken with a large pinch. The French pin their faith to Havas, whose rose-colored dispatches have earned for themselves the name of "Havas-Lies." The Austrians believe in the Wiener agency, whose dispatches are too busy saying: "The reports of Austrian defeats, spread by the enemy, are absolutely untrue," to have time for any real news; while in Italy--"neutral Italy"--the Italian news agency shows such unholy glee over German reverses as to make an impartial person sniff rather suspiciously at its "neutrality." The Wesbuick agency in Russia, severely censored from Petrograd, gives a dry, business-like view of the White Bear's progress in the east. And so it goes.
Of course, officially, Switzerland is absolutely neutral, but it is asking too much of human nature to expect the individual to have no opinion. The fact, therefore, that French Switzerland sympathizes unofficially with France, and German Switzerland with Germany, has had its effect on the Swiss mobilization, which has called the French-speaking Swiss to the German border and the German-speaking to the French. This fact is about the only one that has leaked out of the movements of our army. The secrecy maintained is absolute, reigning even in the ranks of mothers and sweethearts, to say nothing of wives, who all of them are proud to show their loyalty by at least refraining from saying where their men are posted. It is said that Switzerland is armed, mined, and barb-wired along every foot of her frontier, and it has lately transpired that this perfect defense, and the fact that practically every soldier is a sharpshooter, led the Germans to give up their plan of breaking through Switzerland to get at France, and made them choose Belgium instead.
Switzerland has always been a sort of sanctuary for refugees, principally political, and now, especially, she is full of all kinds of strangers. In the first days of the war there were streams of Italians, suddenly thrown out of work in Germany and Austria and packed off home, who passed through Switzerland in every stage of want and despair. Every big town organized its soup kitchens at the railway station; women of the best families took the matter in hand, and so the huddling, apprehensive columns were passed from one town to another, fed, clothed, and comforted, finally landing in their own country, safe and sound. An enthusiastic letter of thanks has been published in the papers, emanating from these grateful "Chinks," (Swiss for "Dago,") and ending up with "Eviva la Svizzera!" ("Long live Switzerland!")
Germany began to clean out the Russians on the first day of the war. Hordes of them poured into our country with fistfuls of ruble notes that no one would take, and with a growing hunger that they could not appease. A doctor was called to visit a band of twelve that were herded together in two rooms of a cheap hotel here. He expected to find emigrants; instead, they were people of the highest refinement. Their story was pitiful. They had been inmates of a private sanatorium in Germany and were summarily dismissed at the outbreak of the war. Separated from their trunks, ill and weak, and too confused to think clearly, they arrived in Berne with nothing but their piles of ruble notes, that no one would take, and the fear of death in their hearts.
They were quartered in the hotel by the committee, and the physician was called. One woman of the party begged him to take a ring, worth many hundred dollars, and give her $10 for it, so that she might buy some comforts for herself and daughter. Of course, the whole party was immediately removed to a private sanatorium, where its members were cared for, and where, little by little, they recovered their calm and gathered up their scattered wits.
Very far from calm is a Swiss who has just returned from captivity in the interior of Morocco on account of being mistaken for a German. The day of the declaration of war the French authorities ordered him out of his beautiful Moroccan home, giving him forty-eight hours to pack up. His wife was visiting her mother here in Berne, and one can fancy her state of mind on receiving a telegram to the effect that her husband and babies, twins of 7 and a little fellow of a year and a half, were ordered off, with the nurse, to parts unknown, as political prisoners. In vain the man protested he was Swiss. His name was German, and he was in a German firm; therefore he was a "canaille d'allemand"; so off they went. At first they were packed on a little steamer whose capacity was thirty people--there were 150 of them, and they cruised along the Mediterranean for a night and a day.
At last they lay before Casa Blanca, and, on asking why they were not landed, received the reply that the authorities must first of all clear the pier, as the boatload of refugees landed there the day before had been received with showers of stones and vile epithets from the mob, whose hate of the Germans knew no bounds. When they finally landed they were quartered in a riding school with 150 others, where they all slept on the tanbark. They had coffee for breakfast, and during the three days they were there had a thick soup each day for dinner, and nothing more. One day it was bean soup, one day peas, and the third day lentils. They were finally transported to the interior of Morocco and assigned to the barracks of the Foreign Legion, the members of which are now fighting in France, and here they passed strange, uncomfortable, heart-breaking days.
Finally, when summoned to deliver up his money, the man said: "I shall telegraph this outrage to Berne."
"What, are you Swiss?" was the officer's surprised question.
"Yes."
"Well, keep your money," said the officer; and a few days later Mr. X., through the efforts of our State Department and our Minister to France, was released and joined his wife in Switzerland. This story was told me by the agonized grandmother, whose tears flowed fast at the thought of the hardships to which her daughter's babies had been exposed.
And now come the Belgian refugees to us, a most pitiable band. French Switzerland has the honor of beginning the movement which has made possible the bringing to Switzerland and placing in hundreds of households these innocent victims of this hideous war. In addition, subscriptions have been opened in various papers, and thousands of francs have been gathered and sent to this most unfortunate of nations. The movement to receive Belgian refugees is gaining ground, too, in German-speaking Switzerland, though here the sympathy for Germany stands somewhat in the way of a full and open hospitality. Some papers write:
"Let the Belgians stay in their country. The Germans will take care of them. Let those that have fled return to their hearths and take up their daily vocations. In this way the misery of the country--which is certainly not entirely the fault of Germany (a hit at England)--will be alleviated. Furthermore, Switzerland's harboring of Belgian refugees is a demonstration against Germany. Let Switzerland beware of doing anything to prejudice her neutrality. Finally, there are in our own country plenty of miserable poor people to exercise our charity upon, and every one knows that charity begins at home."
Articles have appeared in the German papers expressing surprise at Switzerland's hospitality, and to all of these carpers, at home and abroad, these people who have acted out of the purest motives of charity and love for their neighbor, answer somewhat as follows:
The Belgians that have come to take refuge in Switzerland wished nothing better than to stay in their own land. They were driven out in hordes, at the point of the sword, by the Germans. It would be hard to convince them that they ought to go back and that the Germans will take care of them. Some of these miserable beings did return, hoping to pick up their life again after the great shock. They found their village a heap of stones, their business ruined. How could they, therefore, "return to their hearths and take up their daily vocations"? If Switzerland's charitable impulse is to be construed as a demonstration against Germany, then must Switzerland reflect that any excuse will do, and that her neutrality has the same validity in Germany's eyes as had Belgium's. No country, thinking and acting objectively, could find in this movement anything to "prejudice Switzerland's neutrality."
As for charity beginning at home, one might add that it does not end there. It would be hard to find a country whose charitable organizations are so all-embracing as here. In times of peace there are committees who sew for and otherwise look after every kind of human misery. There are the tuberculous poor, the girl-mothers, the creches, the new-born babies, the soup kitchens, the visiting trained nurses, the clinics, the blind, the vicious, the vacation colonies, the swimming lessons, the gymnastics, the tramps and their woodyard, &c., and every organization has its Christmas tree, with distribution of presents when the season of rejoicing comes around. Now that the war is here, and every available man is standing at the frontier guarding his Fatherland from invasion, the soldiers have been added to the list of charities, and none of the old has been stricken off.
In addition to babies' socks, every one has time to knit a pair of soldiers' socks, and in every dainty work basket, lying next to neglected fancy work, there are sure to be some half-finished warm woolen gloves or wristlets or knee warmers for the boys at the frontier. If Switzerland can keep up her home charities and look out so splendidly for her soldiers at the same time, and still have the means and the will to welcome and care for the poor and unhappy of a sister folk whose fate might very well have been her own, it is surely not a subject for adverse criticism, but, on the contrary, for encouragement. And who was it who said: "For as much as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me"?
Once Fair Belgrade Is a Skeleton City
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
LONDON, Jan. 11.--Z.D. Ferriman, special correspondent of The Daily Chronicle with the Servian Army and the first English journalist to enter Belgrade since the Austrian occupation, sends a long dispatch describing the Servians' re-entry into their capital, in the course of which he says:
"On the first view Belgrade does not seem to have suffered to any great extent from the bombardment. Walking up the broad thoroughfare of the Rasia, you arrive nearly at the top before you see a house with the upper story blown away and with a fragment of what appears to have been the roof--an imminent peril to passers-by.
"But appearances are specious. Many buildings whose facades are intact are skeletons. Projectiles with high trajectory have fallen through the roof and wrought destruction within. This is the case with a wing of the Royal Palace. The windows are shattered, but the masonry has not suffered. Within, however, all is devastated. Among the public buildings the museum is a shapeless heap of débris, and the university is so much knocked about that the plainest and cheapest remedy will be an entirely new edifice.
"The higher part of the city has suffered most, with the exception, perhaps, of the district around the station, which is completely battered down. Rents in the pavement show that shells charged with very high explosives were employed. One huge gulf I noticed at least twelve feet deep by fifteen long and eight wide.
"There are many instances of the vagaries of these missiles of destruction. I visited a house in which M. Nikovitz, who accompanied me in my peregrinations, had occupied an apartment. There was nothing the matter with the front, but a neat hole in the side marked the passage of a projectile which had traversed the building and exploded in the adjoining house, now a mound of brick-bats and matchwood. One half of a large establishment in Prince Michael Street was completely wrecked, but the other half was undamaged, and rolls of textile fabrics were in order on their shelves or piled on counters. The best shops are in this street, and much havoc has been wrought.
"I picked up spherical shrapnel bullets on several premises. Shrapnel has no battering force. Its object is to kill or disable men. It can do no harm to walls. Its employment in this instance was a wanton act intended to inspire terror and doubtless augmented the loss of life among the citizens.
"The principal hotel, the Moskwa, situated at the highest part of the town, has been devastated partially within, but the framework of the building is intact. On the other side of the street a row of houses far less conspicuous has been demolished. In one street we met a little girl of 12 coming out of a house opposite to one which was a heap of ruins. We asked her if she had seen it destroyed. She said she had and was very frightened. Shortly afterward a shell fell in their own garden; then they ran away and took refuge with friends at the other end of the town. An old woman had a stall containing tins of shoe polish and other trifles. A jumble of charred wood and twisted iron behind had been her shop. The caretaker at the house occupied by M. Nikovitz, a cheerful old dame, told us how she had hid herself at the other end of the long garden, but it was terrible.
"We asked some urchins, who would be at school in normal times, but whose occupation and delight are now to hold officers' horses, if they were not frightened. 'At first,' they replied, 'but not afterward. They make a great noise, but they never catch us, and we do not mind them--the shells.' A boy of 12, who was carrying on his father's hair-dressing business single-handed during the latter's absence on service, expressed a similar opinion.
"I am told that about 3,000 people remained, out of the normal population of 100,000, during the bombardment. I cannot ascertain the number of killed and injured, but it certainly runs into the hundreds. Those of the inhabitants who left the city but remained in the neighborhood returned after the bombardment and were here during the eleven days of the Austrian occupation.
"The practice of taking hostages, which it has been reserved for this twentieth century civilized war to revive, was resorted to at Belgrade. I am assured on unimpeachable authority, supported by accounts of several eyewitnesses, that not fewer than 1,000 persons were carried off to Austria. Among them were boys of 15 and 16. Nor were foreign residents immune. M. Bissers, the Belgian Consul, who is also a Director of the electric tram and light company, was of the number. He was handcuffed like a common criminal. Neither the fate nor whereabouts of these civilian prisoners of war is known.
"The plate-glass fronts of many shops in the principal thoroughfares are smashed, and the interiors present a picture of desolation, overturned cash registers and objects that have not been stolen lying broken and scattered on the floor, but the majority of the establishments that have been ransacked do not show outward signs of it. The system seems to have been to obtain ingress from the back.
"In the Rasia there is a stately mansion. Its owner, M. Kersmanovitz, died a short time ago, leaving large sums for charitable purposes. The house was occupied by his widow when the war broke out. Chalked on the door were names distinguished in the Austro-Hungarian peerage--Baron Zichy, Graf Festetics, and Graf Vanderstraten, all Lieutenants on the staff, who had been its denizens during occupation. Though their tenure was brief they had made the most of their time. The place was gutted, carpets torn up, tapestry torn down, and pictures destroyed. It was also indescribably filthy. This may have been the work of the soldiery after the departure of the young noblemen.
"The poor suffered equally with the rich. A humble restaurant used by the working classes, one of two or three still open, was despoiled of its linen and cutlery. Small shops had been sacked as well as the larger establishments. It was all fish that came to the Austrian net. I have not yet met any one whose dwelling escaped. The Russian Legation is wrecked.
"The Royal Palace was thrown open to the people. 'It is yours,' said the Austrian liberators in the generosity of their hearts; but they had gone over it with care first."
[Illustration: decoration]
Letters and Diaries
A Group of Soldiers' Letters
A German cavalry division was pursuing a division of English infantry. The English ranks were suddenly reinforced; they turned and charged the Germans, who fled in disorder.
All the Germans fled--but one. Says an English soldier, Trooper S. Cargill:
When they saw us coming they turned and fled, at least all but one, who came rushing at us with his lance at the charge. I caught hold of his horse, which was half mad with terror, and my chum was going to run the rider through when he noticed the awful glaze in his eyes, and we saw that the poor devil was dead.
That ghastly vision of the mounted corpse can find no place in histories of this war. It has no historical significance even if it did receive a place in the cable dispatches from the front. Only from the lips of soldiers or from their pens when they snatch a few moments from the business of war to write to their people at home come such naïvely graphic accounts of trivial but illuminative incidents.
In many an American family is treasured a packet of yellow papers, on which are written, in ink fast fading away, brief and intimate impressions of the civil war by men who waged it. Every war has thus its unknown, unhonored chroniclers, who send to their little home circles narratives that for startling realism no highly paid special correspondent could surpass.
Trooper Cargill's letter is one of a number contained in an extraordinary volume just published by the George H. Doran Company of New York, with the title "In the Firing Line," (50 cents net.) Mr. A. St. John Adcock collected a large number of letters sent home during the last few weeks by English soldiers fighting in France and has arranged them to form what is perhaps the most essentially human account of the great war that has yet appeared.
Consider, for instance, the narrative of Private Whitaker of the Coldstream Guards. He fought through the terrific four-day battle near Mons, and his account of it follows. It must be remembered that the British troops who took part in that battle had sailed from Southampton only four days before:
You thought it was a big crowd that streamed out of the Crystal Palace when we went to see the Cup Final. Well, outside Compiègne it was just as if that crowd came at us. You couldn't miss them. Our bullets plowed into them, but still they came for us. I was well intrenched, and my rifle got so hot I could hardly hold it. I was wondering if I should have enough bullets when a pal shouted, "Up, Guards, and at 'em!" The next second he was rolled over with a nasty knock on the shoulder. He jumped up and hissed, "Let me get at them!" His language was a bit stronger than that.
When we really did get the order to get at them we made no mistake, I can tell you. They cringed at the bayonet, but those on our left wing tried to get around us, and after racing as hard as we could for quite five hundred yards we cut up nearly every man who did not run away.
You have read of the charge of the Light Brigade. It was new to our cavalry chaps. I saw two of our fellows who were unhorsed stand back to back and slash away with their swords, bringing down nine or ten of the panic-stricken devils. Then they got hold of the stirrup-straps of a horse without a rider and got out of the mêlée. This kind of thing was going on all day.
In the afternoon I thought we should all get bowled over, as they came for us again in their big numbers. Where they came from goodness knows; but as we could not stop them with bullets they had another taste of the bayonet. My Captain, a fine fellow, was near to me, and as he fetched them down he shouted, "Give them socks, my lads!" How many were killed and wounded I don't know; but the field was covered with them.
It is also of the four days' battle that Private J.R. Taft of the Second Essex Regiment wrote. How typical of real life, as distinct from romance, is his ready transition from his devout thanksgiving for his safety to his amused recollection of the popular song that rose above the crash of shot and shell:
We were near Mons when we had the order to intrench. It was just dawn when we were half way down our trenches, and we were on our knees when the Germans opened a murderous fire with their guns and machine guns.
We opened a rapid fire with our Maxims and rifles; we let them have it properly, but no sooner did we have one lot down than up came another lot, and they sent their cavalry to charge us, but we were there with our bayonets, and we emptied our magazines on them. Their men and horses were in a confused heap. There were a lot of wounded horses we had to shoot to end their misery.
We had several charges with their infantry, too. We find they don't like the bayonets. Their rifle shooting is rotten; I don't believe they could hit a haystack at 100 yards.
We find their field artillery very good; we don't like their shrapnel; but I noticed that some did not burst; if one shell that came over me had burst. I should have been blown to atoms. I thanked the Lord it did not. I also heard our men singing that famous song, "Get Out and Get Under." I know that for an hour in our trench it would make any one keep under, what with their shells and machine guns. Many poor fellows went to their death like heroes.
The writer of the following letter, too, was telling of Mons. To friends far away, at peaceful Barton-on-Humber, he wrote:
Just a line to tell you I have returned from the front, and I can tell you we have had a very trying time of it. I must also say I am very lucky to be here. We were fighting from Sunday, 23d, to Wednesday evening, on nothing to eat or drink--only the drop of water in our bottles which we carried.
No one knows--only those that have seen us could credit such a sight, and if I live for years may I never see such a sight again. I can tell you it is not very nice to see your chum next to you with half his head blown off. The horrible sights I shall never forget. There seemed nothing else only certain death staring us in the face all the time. I cannot tell you all on paper. We must, however, look on the bright side, for it is no good doing any other.
There are thousands of these Germans, and they simply throw themselves at us. It is no joke fighting seven or eight to one. I can tell you we have lessened them a little, but there are millions more yet to finish.
Of the battle that reddened the foam of the North Sea during the last days of August many a seaman recorded his impressions. And what curious things stuck in the memories of the weary, powder-stained survivors! "The funny thing which you should have seen," wrote Midshipman Hartley to his parents, "was all the stokers grubbing around after the action looking for bits of shell." And a seaman on H.M.S. Hearty wrote:
Two cooks were in the galley of the Arethusa, just having their rum, when a shell killed one and blew the other's arm off. A funny thing, they've got a clock hanging up; it smashed the glass and one hand, but the blooming thing's still going.
There is fine realism in Seaman Gunner Brown's letter to the parents who waited for tidings in their cottage on the Isle of Wight:
We and another ship in our squadron came across two German cruisers. We routed one and started on the second, but battle cruisers soon finished her off. Another then appeared, and after we had plunked two broadsides into her she slid off in flames.
Every man did his bit, and there was a continuous stream of jokes. We penciled on the projectiles, "Love from England," "One for the Kaiser," and other such messages. The sight of sinking German ships was gloriously terrible, funnels and masts lying about in all directions, and amidships a huge furnace, the burning steel looking like a big ball of sulphur. There was not the slightest sign of fear, from the youngest to the oldest man aboard.
[Illustration: ENGLAND'S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR, FIELD MARSHAL EARL KITCHENER.
(_From the Painting by Angelo._)]
[Illustration: GEN. VON BISSING,
Recently Made Military Governor of Belgium to Succeed Field Marshal von der Goltz.
(_Photo from Ruschin._)]
But it remained for a naval Lieutenant, whose name is not given, to describe, in a letter to a friend, one of the most remarkable incidents of the war, an incident which might have occurred in the imagination of Jules Verne or of H.G. Wells in his youth. He wrote:
The Defender having sunk an enemy, lowered a whaler to pick up her swimming survivors; before the whaler got back an enemy's cruiser came up and chased the Defender, and thus she abandoned her whaler. Imagine their feelings--alone in an open boat without food, twenty-five miles from the nearest land, and that land the enemy's fortress, with nothing but fog and foes around them. Suddenly a swirl alongside and up, if you please, pops his Britannic Majesty's submarine E-4, opens his conning tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives, and brings them home, 250 miles!
In his introduction to the book St. John Adcock calls the private letters of the soldiers "the most potent of recruiting literature." Undoubtedly this is true of some of them. The casual, almost flippant, records of splendid heroism, the reflection of a spirit of gay courage, the description of the most picturesque and romantic aspects of battle--these tend, certainly, to fill the mind of the stay-at-home readers with a desire for participation in this great adventure.
But, on the other hand, such passages as "The dead were piled up in the trenches about ten deep, and there were trenches seven miles long," and "Our Maxim gun officer tried to fix his gun up during their murderous fire, but he got half his face blown away," are not likely to make fighting seem a pleasant occupation. It is true that the dead referred to in the first of these passages are the enemy's dead; still, there is a wholesale quality about those seven-mile trenches filled with dead ten deep that is not a recruiting allurement.
Nor is this letter, vivid in its realism, likely to make those not already warlike eager to enlist. It was sent to his parents at Ilfracombe by Private William Burgess of the Royal Field Artillery:
We left our landing place for the front on the Tuesday and got there on Saturday night. The Germans had just reached Liége then, and we got into action on the Sunday morning. The first thing we did was to blow up a bridge to stop the Germans from crossing. Then we came into action behind a lot of houses attached to the main street. We were there about ten minutes when the houses started to fall around us. The poor people were buried alive. I saw poor children getting knocked down by bursting shells.
The next move was to advance across where there was a Red Cross hospital. They dropped shells from airships and fired on it until the place was burned down to the ground. Then they got a big plan on to retire and let the French get behind them. We retired eight miles, but we had to fight until we were forced to move again. We got as far as Le Cateau on Tuesday night. We camped there until 2 o'clock next morning.
Then we all heard there was a big fight coming off, so we all got together and cleared the field for action. [The letter mentions the numbers of men engaged, and states that the Germans were in the proportion of three to one.] We cut them down like rats. We could see them coming on us in heaps and dropping like hail. The Colonel passed along the line and said, "Stick it, boys."
I tell you, mother, it was awful to see your own comrades dropping down--some getting their heads blown off and others their legs and arms. I was fighting with my shirt off. A piece of shell went right through my shirt at the back and never touched me. It stuck into a bag of earth which we put between the wheels to stop bullets.
We were there, all busy fighting, when an airship came right over the line and dropped a bomb, which caused a terrible lot of smoke. Of course, that gave the Germans our range. Then the shells were dropping on us thick. We looked across the line and saw the German guns coming toward us. We turned our two centre guns on them and sent them yards in the air. I reckon I saw one German go quite twenty yards in the air.
Just after that a shell burst right over our gun. That one got me out of action. I had to get off the field the best way I could. The bullets were going all around me on the way off; you see, they got completely around us. I went about two miles and met a Red Cross cart. I was taken to St. Quentin Hospital. We were shelled out of there about 2 in the morning, and then taken in a train and taken down to a plain near Rouen. Next morning we were put on a ship for dear old England.
The First German Prisoners
[From The London Times.]
_The following letter from a soldier at the front who has taken part in the first fighting appears in the Temps of Paris, Aug. 16:_
We are now able to realize the state of mind in which they arrive. The army corps to which I belong has already brought its guns into action. We have seen prisoners, and we have observed battlefields, and we have noticed a thing or two. First of all, these prisoners are not the least bit fanatics. Many of them don't know what they are fighting about. They have been told a thousand phantasmagoria--that France had declared war, that the Belgians and the Italians were helping the Germans, &c.; and one of them was tremendously proud at having the Czar Nicholas as his honorary Colonel! They were taken for the most part in isolated patrols, and it happened so often that it was impossible to get others to start off on reconnoissances, since their comrades never came back and they had no desire to share a like fate.
The prisoners are gentle and calm, and follow with their eyes the bits of bread which are passed about near them and which one gives them, and they eat them voraciously. For two days they have only received two rations of coffee. Their appetite is so great that, though in presence of a French officer they will click their heels together properly, they never cease at the same time to munch noisily and to fill out their hollow cheeks.
One feels that they believe us French to be up to every sort of devilment, that we are going to undress them, to take their papers, and they tremble from head to foot in fear of being shot. Even when you give them a cigarette, it does not seem to allay their mistrust. One of them, who was dying of thirst, would not drink the water that was offered him before the gendarme had tasted it in front of him.
They are all astonished at their adventure. They had been told that they were going to enter Maubeuge in company with the Belgians; to seize Maubeuge would be as easy as taking a _café au lait_--and there they are without their _café au lait_!
The officers are absolutely different. Prussian pride gave them an assurance which their mishap has transformed into irritation. A young Baron Lieutenant, like von Forstner, pretended that he couldn't make his bed, and refused to answer before simple soldiers. He couldn't feel anything but the humiliation of being a prisoner, and couldn't get accustomed to his new situation.
We found on the field of battle the medicine chest of a vet., who jotted down his impressions from minute to minute. When he was killed he was writing: "I see the shells bursting with a white smoke in the sky, which is lighted up from the south; luckily my helmet protects me from sunstroke." Evidently he was on an excursion, this veterinary surgeon, and was counting on coming to Paris, and had taken the most minute precautions of hygiene and of elegance. He was provided with scent and eau de cologne. He had even brought with him a rose ointment for the nails, and a superb gilt shoulder-belt which was to raise his prestige for when he passed under the Arc de Triomphe. The battery to which he belonged is annihilated now. We could observe on the spot the terrific effect of our artillery, which was very well commanded. Six abandoned guns, of which three are impossible to move, are there on the ground with all their crews, all their officers, all their horses--the pieces still mounted, riddled with splinters. They were taken back to the rear, and attracted all the way along the curiosity of the soldiers, with their sumptuous armorial bearings and their motto, _Ultima regis ratio_.
But this lesson seems to have made a bit of an impression on the Germans who have fled, and it has given a new energy to our troops, because the battery to which we owe this success did not have a single man wounded. The Germans seem to be forty years behind the times. They go on just as in 1870. With childish and barbarous imagination they see _francs-tireurs_ everywhere and can't yet believe that we have a regular army quite close to the frontier.
They arrive in a village toward 8 in the morning; three French dragoons are there as patrols. When the German column is within range, the three dragoons bring down the Colonel and dash off at full gallop from the other end of the village. The Germans are furious and swear that they have been attacked by _francs-tireurs_, and that they are going to inflict punishment. They seize the curé, a notable inhabitant, and two or three peasants, and take them off to be present at the burning of their houses, while waiting to be executed themselves.
I have this story from the curé, who arrived to us absolutely done, with his cassock in rags, without a hat on, after a day of shocks such as he has certainly never had in his life before. Although he has got the superb beard of a missionary, they made him march with the chasseurs, hitting him with the butts of their rifles till the moment when the French shrapnel arrived. Then it was _sauve qui peut_. Our brave curé saw all his butchers fall around him. When the noise had finished, five unarmed German chasseurs rushed toward him crying with their great, thick accent, "Catholics, Catholics!" They were Poles who were flying from the army and coming over to our lines. "With my own arms," said the curé proudly, "I made five prisoners."
Altogether bewilderment, softness, and indifference on the part of the men; vanity, cruelty, and foolery on the part of the officers. Those are the virtues which they offered us on first acquaintance. Just compare them with ours!
Two Letters From the Trenches
[From The London Times, Oct. 25, 1914.]
_A Canadian officer attached to the British forces writes as follows on Sept. 27:_
It has been very fortunate for me having a recommendation to Gen. C. He said that he would welcome all the French-speaking Canadians with military knowledge that crossed the Atlantic. I keep my rank of Lieutenant and am attached to the ---- Guards, which does scouting, patrol, and reconnoissance duty in areas prescribed by the Brigadier. We have plenty of most interesting work, which suits me down to the ground. Nothing could exceed the kindness shown to Canadian officers by their English brethren. We are all one in aim, in spirit, and in that indefinable quality of loyal co-operation which holds together the British Army fighting against enormous odds in France, as it binds together the British Empire by bonds not less strong because they are invisible.
This afternoon we are taking a good sound rest at the house of a retired French farmer, who has three sons fighting in the country. He is as game as game, and says he is just holding things together until the war is over. He is 75 and remembers the horrors of the last war, in which he fought in the artillery.... Our "look-out" men are ever on the alert, for we never take a meal or rest altogether. Sentries and signalers are always posted before we dismount. The curé joined us at the farmer's house and we enjoyed an excellent repast, with the honor of two local gendarmes who had brought in a German spy caught red-handed robbing the house of a peasant the night before and attempting to murder her. The man was dressed as a French peasant. Upon him we found evidence that he was a spy. Summary procedure made it easy to decide that the sentence of drumhead court-martial was death. And here again is an instance of the extraordinary clemency of the French clergy. The curé pleaded that the spy should not be shot and the extreme penalty inflicted. So I consented (not being a man of blood) to the prisoner being sent to the nearest French military post, to be executed or not, as the General shall order.
I really believe that all of the evidence which crowds into me supports the charge that this is not a campaign which has proved attractive to the German rank and file. Prisoners we have taken say that they have no relish for the fighting. They have been well plied with drink, and seem to urge that drunkenness may be pleaded as an excuse for crime.
_An officer whose letter from the trenches we published a few days ago has since written a letter, dated Oct. 8, from which we take extracts:_
Last week I wrote that we had been in the trenches ten days. Now we have been in them nearly three weeks, and still the fight goes on. We don't mind it now. We hated it at first. The inaction made us ill. But we recovered and began to make jokes about it. And now we don't care. We eat and sleep, and eat again; and we dig, eternally dig, grubbing our way deeper and deeper into the earth, and making covered ways that lead hundreds of yards back from the firing line into safety.
And at the end of one of these I sit at this moment; away on the rear slope of the hill which is our fortress. The sun is sinking far away down the valley of the Aisne, and the river flickers in the distance between lines of trees, while the little villages at the foot of the slopes are gradually losing themselves in the evening mist. How lovely to sit here in time of peace! Could one bear it after this, I wonder? With all the beauty, there are sad things around me; signs of war every way I look. To the right, a few yards off, are new-cut graves, and they are putting up headstones, made by a reservist who is a mason in private life. One man was killed yesterday, and we buried him after dark. There was no service, because we had neither light nor book; but I said the Lord's Prayer before the earth was thrown in, thinking there could be no harm.
Then away across a bend of the valley are more of our trenches, with the German parapets 200 yards away beyond. And over these our shells are bursting, fired by guns on the slope of the hill beneath me; they whistle softly as they skim through the air over my head, and I hear the burst as they land. Further away to the west is one of the enemy's strongholds, and there bigger shells are bursting, throwing up clouds of black smoke and dust. These pass by with a louder purring whistle like the sound of surplus air escaping from the pipes of an organ in church. They come from our big guns up in the woods across the river, hidden from view. And always up in the sky the German aeroplanes circle round and round, seeking for the guns, their engines buzzing and the sun shining on their wings. Now and then they dash away, perhaps to carry news, perhaps because a British or French machine has come upon the scene. When they spot our positions they drop little silvery packets, which unfold and show their gunners where to shoot. Sometimes they drop bombs, but these do little harm. At times the weather is foggy, so that the aeroplanes can do nothing at all, and warfare becomes suddenly ten years out of date.
[Illustration: ARCHDUKE FREDERICK,
Commander in Chief of Austrian Armies Operating Against the Russians.
(_Photo from Paul Thompson._)]
[Illustration: DR. VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR,
In His Field Uniform, Showing the Helmet in Its New Weatherproof Cover.
(_Photo by Brown & Dawson, From Underwood & Underwood._)]
Now the enemy are firing on the little village behind our lines, dropping shell among the houses, and always near the house where certain staff officers are at work. A curious point this--how close they get to the house when they can't possibly see the result of their fire. The explanation must be "spies." They are everywhere here; they wear British uniform and French uniform, and, most dangerous of all, civilian dress. It is our own fault; we allow the French population to return to the village right in our midst, and who in these times can question every one's rights? The other day three men in civilian dress were found near our lines sitting in trees; they were armed with wire-cutters, and said they were engaged in cutting vines. Now there are no vineyards near, but our wire entanglements were just beyond the wood. Again, one night we were to attack a small position at a given hour, but the order was afterward canceled. However, at the appointed time the enemy opened fire upon the ground we should have crossed and lighted the scene with rockets.
Nighttime is a period of continuous strain. The sentry peers into the darkness, imagining every bush to be an approaching enemy. Distant trees seem to change their position; bunches of grass, really quite close, seem to be men coming over the sky-line. One man questions another; the section commander is called upon. He in turn explains his fears to an officer. A single shot is ordered at the suspected object, and no sound is heard. So the night goes on. When we were new to the game a single shot was enough to alarm the whole line, and thousands of rounds were fired into the darkness. Now we know better. So also do the enemy. And it was satisfactory to find that our ammunition had not all been wasted, for a patrol recently discovered more than a hundred dead Germans in a wood in front of us. The ammunition had not been wasted that time. But, oh, what a wasteful war!
The Baptism of Fire
[From The London Times, Nov. 4, 1914.]
_The following letter, thoroughly characteristic of the pluck and cheerfulness of the young British officer, was received from a cavalry subaltern at the front:_
October 27.
Your two boxes of cigarettes were heaven. We've been in the trenches two days and nights, but no excitements, except a good dose of shrapnel three times a day, which does one no harm and rather relieves the monotony. I've got my half troop, 12 men, in this trench in a root field, with the rest of the squadron about 100 yards each side of us, and a farmhouse, half knocked down by shells, just behind. We get our rations sent up once a day in the dark, and two men creep out to cook tea in the quiet intervals. Tea is the great mainstay on service, just as it was on manoeuvres. The men are splendid, and as happy as schoolboys, and we've got plenty of straw at the bottom of the trench, which is better than any feather bed. We only had one pelting night, and we've had three or four fine days. We have not seen any German infantry from this trench, only one patrol and a sniper or two. Their guns, too, are out of sight, but hardly a mile away.
Our first day's real close-up fighting was the 19th. We cavalry went on about a day and a half in front of the infantry. We got into a village, and our advanced patrols started fighting hard, with a certain amount of fire from everywhere in front of us. Our advanced patrols gained the first group of houses, and we joined them. Firing came from a farm in front of us, and then a man came out of it and waved a white flag. I yelled, "Two hundred; white flag; rapid fire." But ---- wouldn't let us fire. Then the squadron advanced across the root fields toward the farm (dismounted, in open order), and they opened a sharp fire on us from the farm. We took three prisoners in the roots, and retired to the houses again. That was our first experience of the white flag dodge; we lost two killed and one wounded.
Then I got leave to make a dash across a field, for another farm where they were sniping at us. I could only get half way, my Sergeant was killed and my Corporal hit. We lay down; luckily it was high roots and we were out of sight; but they had fairly got our range, and the bullets kept knocking up the dirt into one's face and all round. We just lay doggo for about half an hour, and then the fire slackened, and we crawled back.
I was pleased with my troop, under bad fire. They used the most awful language, talking quite quietly, and laughing all the time, even after the men were knocked over within a yard of them. I longed to be able to say that I liked it, after all one has heard about being under fire for the first time. But it is beastly. I pretended to myself for a bit that I like it, but it was no good. But when one acknowledged that it was beastly, one became all right again and cool.
After the firing had slackened we advanced again a bit, into the next group of houses, the edge of the village proper. I can't tell you how muddling it is. We did not know which was our front, we did not know if our own troops had come round us on the flanks, or whether they had stopped behind and were firing into us. And besides, a lot of German snipers were left in the houses we had come through, and every now and then bullets came singing by from God knows where. Four of us were talking in the road when about a dozen bullets came with a whistle. We all dived for the nearest door, and fell over each other, yelling with laughter. ---- said, "I have a bullet through my new Sandon twillette breeches." We looked, and he had; it had gone clean through. He didn't tell us till two days after that it had gone through him too; but there it was, like the holes you make to blow an egg, only about 4 inches apart.
We stopped about two hours. Then the cavalry regiment on our left retired. Then we saw a lot of Germans among the fires they had lit (they set the houses on fire to mark their line of advance.) They were running from house to house. We were told not to fire, for fear of our own people on the other side. Then came a lot of them, shouting and singing and advancing down the street, through the burning houses. One felt a peculiar hatred for them. We heard afterward that there was a division of infantry, at first we thought there were only a few patrols.
We retired about two miles and dismounted for action. Soon they began to come up from three sides, and we retired again. They were pretty close, advancing higgledy-piggledy across the fields and firing. They shot abominably (nothing like the morning, from the houses, when they had all the ranges marked to a yard). We lost only about 20 horses, no men killed. "Hellfire Herbert" got his horse shot under him when they were within about 200 yards. He was next troop in front of me. He suddenly got complete "fou-rires" when he saw me. I got him a spare horse, and he was still laughing, and cursing them with a sort of triumph. We only trotted away. A man in my troop kept touching his cap to the Germans, saying "Third-class shots, third-class shots."
The next day we went forward to another places and intrenched against a very big German force, but we only had to face their guns. Poor ---- was killed. They pushed us pretty hard back to our infantry. We were supposed to have done well.
Since then we have been doing infantry work in the trenches. We have been out of work in our trenches; only shrapnel and snipers. Some one described this war as "Months of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." It is sad that it is such a bad country for cavalry. Cavalry work here against far superior forces of infantry, like we had the other day, is not good enough. The Germans are dashing good at that house-to-house fighting business.
It is horrible having to leave one's horses; it feels like leaving half oneself behind, and one feels the dual responsibility all the time. I hope we get them on the run soon, then will come our chance. They have been having terrific fighting on the line on each side of us, and it has gone well.
I adore war. It is like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic. I've never been so well or so happy. Nobody grumbles at one for being dirty. I've only had my boots off once in the last ten days, and only washed twice. We are up and standing to our rifles at 5 A.M. when doing this infantry work, and saddled up by 4:30 A.M. when with our horses. Our poor horses don't get their saddles off when we are in trenches.
The dogs and cats left in the deserted villages are piteous, and the wretched inhabitants trekking away with great bundles and children in their hands.
I can't make out what has happened to the Battle of the Aisne; it seems to have got tired and died.
The Indians had two men killed directly, and said, "All wars are good, but this is a bot'utcha war. Now we advance." A Colonel of a French regiment on our flank was sitting in a pub. in the village when the Germans came around that flank and started firing their Maxim gun. The Colonel and his orderly rushed into the street, and each discharged ten rounds quick, and then went back and finished their drinks. It's horrible when they put "Jack Johnsons" into your bivouac at night from about twelve miles off. You can hear them coming for about 30 seconds, and judge whether they are coming for you or a little to one side.
An All-Night Attack
[From The New York Tribune.]
PARIS, Jan. 9.--The most picturesque description of night fighting in the trenches written by any French correspondent at the front is published today in Le Figaro. It comes from Charles Tardieu, Corporal in an infantry regiment, and is a detailed record, half hour by half hour, of a night of attacks and counter-attacks from 6 o'clock in the evening until dawn. After describing three successive German assaults, during which searchlights and flashlights played important parts, the Corporal notes:
2:25 A.M.--All the Corporals run back for ammunition. We had expended a hundred rounds each. Away we go to our ammunition reserve, hid in a big hole twenty yards to the rear, and we come running back and distribute packages of cartridges. Each man cleans his rifle. An hour passes in silence, broken only by the intermittent volleys and by the moaning of the wounded and dying, some of whom exclaim: "Kamarades, kamarades, drink, drink!" We will look after them when the day breaks.
3:15--Here they come at us again. Bullets whistle over our heads. Our Captain passes the order in whispers not to open fire until the bouches sales reach our wire network, then to shoot like hell. We smile grimly and keep still. Every minute the firing draws nearer. We await behind our loopholes, now and then risking a peep through them. These loopholes are only fifteen or twenty centimeters wide, but if a bullet comes through them it is a skull pierced and certain death. This silent waiting is a tremendous mental and nervous strain.
We keep still as mice, with clenched teeth. Luminous fuses, like roman candles, burst forth in every direction, exploding in dust over our heads. A moment later a dazzling signal light rocket bursts fifty yards high, just above our trenches, lighting them up as clear as day for several seconds. We crouch down under the lower parapet like moles. Immediately afterward a mad fusillade, and the German .77 guns, having got a better range than during the previous attacks, throw shells that burst, luckily for us, nearly one hundred yards behind our trenches. This attack must be general, for we hear fusillades cracking far away to the right and left.
Suddenly we tremble in spite of ourselves. The hoarse sound of the short German bugles pierces the night with four lugubrious notes in a minor key, funereal, deathly. It is their charge. Yells, oaths, and vociferations are heard in front of us. Our Captain commands us to fire by volleys: "Aim! Fire!" "They must have felt something," drawls out some one of us in a nasal, Montmartre-like voice. Then again: "Aim! Fire!" What sport! Then comes the cric-crac-cric-crac, sewing machine-like hammering of our mitrailleuses. Our Captain passes the word: "Fire low! fire low! Aim! Fire!" Volley follows volley. The enemy's dash seems checked. Their fire slackens. We hear their officers swearing and yelling at their men in shrill, high-pitched, penetrating voices. Joyful exaltation gives us a sort of fever. "Aim! Fire!" But the bouches sales make another rush at us. Driven on by their infuriated officers, they again reach our wire network. Our Captain commands, "Fire at will." Then, "Fire at repetition, fire until the magazine is exhausted." Just as the Germans, in wavering, hesitating groups, presenting vague outlines, try to cut our networks they tumble over like marionettes. Already some of our men, intoxicated with fury, stand up in the trenches.
Our Captain commands, "En avant à la baionnette!" ("At them with bayonet.") A fierce roar from our chests, and the only bugler left alive in our company sounds the charge. Away we go with our bayonets. We scarcely reach them when the bouches are put to rout. Some of them escape helter-skelter, throwing down rifles and knapsacks. "Halt!" commands our Captain. We lie down and keep up the firing on the retreating remnants of the enemy. "Back to the trenches!" is the next command. A few more volleys in the direction of the Germans, then comes the command, "Cease firing. Take your haversacks, eat, and rest." All becomes silent again except for the harrowing moans of the wounded. We learn that the German assault has been repulsed all along the line. Their losses must have been awful.
5 A.M.--Gray, misty dawn breaks from behind the orme trees. Soon we are able to see what has happened. Over three hundred bouches are on the ground in front of our company's trench, lying dead or wounded. Our cooks with their soup pots get out of our hole and go to the rear to prepare in the underground kitchens our well-earned coffee and cabbage soup. Our Captain rubs his hands with satisfaction. A strong patrol goes out of our trenches to reconnoitre the enemy's positions in the pine wood. The rest of us try to get some sleep.
The Germans as Seen from a Convent
[From The London Times, Aug. 16, 1914.]
_Some interesting sidelights on the events of the past fortnight in Belgium are provided by extracts from the diary of a young English girl, Miss Lydia Evans, who has just returned from a convent school at Fouron, near Visé. The following are among the entries in this graphic narrative, published in The Evening News:_
Aug. 2.--All the people of the village passed down with cows, calves, horses, hay, &c., which they were obliged to send in for the Belgian Army near Liége. The first troop of Prussians came into the village this afternoon on the pretense of having a horse shod.
Aug. 3.--Two more troops of soldiers arrived. The Prussians slept at our convent, some in the park, others on beds in the recreation room. The reverend mother put everything at their disposal. They asked nicely, but gave the impression that if refused they would take more. We all went to bed at 10 o'clock. Everybody got an alarm to dress half an hour afterward. We came down and found the place full of Germans, who were exceedingly polite. They are magnificent. The meanest soldier is perfectly equipped, everything perfectly new, and splendid horses. They are like theatre soldiers, they are so perfect. They were awfully nice, and talked a lot.
Aug. 4.--Between Monday and Tuesday there was a terrible fight between the Germans and Belgians at Visé because the Belgians would not let the Germans pass to get to Liége. The Belgians blew up several big bridges between Visé and Liége, also the one at Visé.
Aug. 5.--One man told us all the villagers had left except himself. The German soldiers were here all day, but are very polite. They always bow and salute. We hear a terrible noise at Visé of bombardment, and a great fusillade in the convent. A wounded man was brought to the convent.
Aug. 6.--A curate near here has been shot. The Germans are very nice if you give them what they want, but if they are refused the pistol comes out. Old Mother Thérèse was at the door when a soldier asked her for a kettle. She refused, and he nearly shot her.
Aug. 7.--A most fearful noise was heard about 2 o'clock. They say that it was a fort blown up. A German aeroplane passed yesterday. The soldiers are camping in the woods. There are seven wounded here. Nearly all the others are taken to Aix-la-Chapelle.
Aug. 8.--Went to mass in the village. A man told us that the Germans had burned two big farms at Warsage (the next village.) Two women and two men arrived from Liége. They said that the people had been living in caves for the last two days and nights. These poor people saw awful sights in coming across the fields, which were covered with dead. We have heard that Berneau is burned and the women and children hung. The Germans are furious at having lost such a number of men before seeing the French. A soldier passed last night, and Maria lifted up a corner of the curtain. In a minute he had out his revolver and threatened to shoot her. Some of the soldiers opposite the convent were drunk.
Aug. 9.--An aeroplane passed right over us, and seemed to drop something white. The soldiers are going about in bands destroying and laying waste every house and garden. They pass with bottles of wine and their pockets bulging out with things they have stolen. They set a house on fire just near the convent. There are 40,000 soldiers between here and Niouland.
Aug. 10.--There was a terrific crash at the door. Four German officers, who had come in a motor, pointed their revolvers and asked for wine. They looked as if they had been drinking. We had a fearful fright after dinner. An officer, followed by a soldier, came to ask us where the curé was, and threatened to shoot us because we could not tell him. Miss MacMahon had to lead him to the rector's house, with a revolver pointed at her back all the way. The houses on either side are burning. The nuns asked the German officers if they would spare the convent. They laughed and said they would make it a cemetery for their dead. They took away the wounded, and as soon as they had gone the nuns woke us up, and we started out, following all the back roads.
* * * * *
A postcard has been received from Miss Agnes Holliday, daughter of a Hammersmith builder, who is at a convent school near Liége, in which she states that on Tuesday night last "the convent was full of German soldiers, to whom we spoke. At Fouron they have had a terrible time."
War-Time Scenes in Rouen
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 8, 1914.]
_The following is a literal translation of a letter just received in New York by a French lady's maid from her sister at Rouen, and gives the point of view of the modest laboring classes in France:_
ROUEN, Aug. 21, 1914.
My Dear Sister Henriette:
If I judge according to our impatience to get your news, I understand you are anxious for ours. I hope that you made a good voyage and that nothing disagreeable has happened to you during the journey. There is a little change in life in Rouen. Numerous factories are closed, for the reason that the men are gone to war, and women are powerless to operate the machinery. As for me, the sewing is still going a little, but I do not think that it will last long. Business stops little by little; the most of the stores are closing, which gives the city a sad appearance. Per contra, there is a big bustle in and around the railroad station of the Rue Verte. Hundreds of persons stand on the square near the station, to assist the passing of the English troops on their way to Paris; they are acclaimed by the cry of "Vive la France!" "Vive l'Angleterre!" "Down with Germany and the barbarians!"
Numerous trains bring hundreds of young wounded English, French, and Belgian soldiers. Many offices of the Red Cross are settled in the largest hotels of the city. Many citizens have asked to take some of the wounded into their homes. We are going to have several of them at our home. Mother is already preparing two rooms. She has moved Lili's bed into the kitchen. As for us, we are going to sleep in the armchairs. Lili talks of the war like a grown-up person, and so seriously! She also wants to take care of the wounded. She will divert them. She made dresses for all her dolls and put them to bed. She set on the table all the history books to interest the soldiers. Of course she will do the reading herself. Then she collected all the pieces of old sheets to make some lint out of them, but she will do that in the kitchen when the wounded are sleeping, so as not to worry them. If you were in Rouen now you would be proud of your god-child. Maman had to have made for her a big white table "for nurse." She goes to school every day, and I promised that I would take her with me this afternoon to see an English warship which arrived in the Seine yesterday. It seems that the ship had narrowly escaped capture by the Germans, but I cannot give you much information. We don't have any news from our own soldiers. I do not know where father is. George and Maurice must be artillerymen in Belfort. Jeanne and Helene are in despair, thinking of their husbands. Maurice's baby is always so sweet; he does not suspect that his father is at war. Our aunt has no news from Leon, André, and Joseph.
This is all the news. I hope that my letter will reach you. Do not worry. But if the Germans arrive in Rouen they will find somebody to receive them. If the men are not strong enough the women will help them.
For my share I would like to kill one of them, and it is the Kaiser himself; I assure you that I would do it gladly. My dear Henriette, I say "au revoir" to you today.
Maman and Lili send you their best kisses. A big kiss from your fragile
MADELEINE.
P.S.--It is a good thing that I am always so cheerful and contented. It happens sometimes that I can make Jeanne and Helene forget, and I give them a little hope.
"It Is for Us and for France"
[From The New York Sun.]
_LONDON, Oct. 14.--To those who believe, as Germans would have the world believe, that the French Nation is decadent, fit only to disappear from the face of the earth, the following letter, simple as any letter can be, yet full of the Spartanlike qualities that even a German must admire, will serve as an inspiration.
It was written to a French soldier by his sister. The soldier showed it to his officer, who was so pleased that he had it published anonymously for the troops. One of the men at the front has sent the letter to The Times. A translation of it follows:_
Sept. 4, 1914.
My dear Edward: I hear that Charles and Lucien died on Aug. 28; Eugene is very badly wounded; Louis and Jean are dead also. Rose has disappeared.
Mamma weeps. She says that you are strong, and begs you to go to avenge them.
I hope your officers will not refuse you permission. Jean had the Legion of Honor; succeed him in this.
Of the eleven of us who went to the war eight are dead. My dear brother, do your duty, whatever is asked of you. God gave you your life, and He has the right to take it back; that is what mamma says.
We embrace you with all our heart and long to see you again.
The Prussians are here. Young Joudon is dead; they have pillaged everything. I have come back from Gerbervillers, which is destroyed. The brutes!
Now, my dear brother, make the sacrifice of your life. We have hope of seeing you again, for something gives me a presentiment and tells me to hope.
We embrace you in all our hearts. Adieu and au revoir, if God permits.
THY SISTER.
It is for us and for France.
Think of your brothers and of grandfather in '70.
"Chant of Hate Against England"
How Ernst Lissauer's Lines Were "Sung to Pieces" in Germany.
[From The Basler Nachrichten.]
_The ever-increasing hatred in Germany against England and the constantly diminishing bitterness expressed in German circles toward the French is commented upon at considerable length by the Basler Nachrichten, one of the leading German newspapers of Switzerland, which publishes excerpts of utterances of leading Germans to illustrate its deductions. The Swiss paper's article follows:_
It pays to take a birdseye view of a phenomenon which, in a most interesting fashion, is becoming more and more apparent: the increase of the German hatred against Englishmen and the diminution of the German hatred against the Frenchmen.
The most eloquent examples of this white-hot wrath against the English are the now well-known army orders of the Bavarian Crown Prince, Rupprecht. Under date of Oct. 29 the text of the first order was made public. It reads:
Soldiers of the Sixth Army! We have now the good luck to have also the Englishmen opposite us on our front, troops of that race whose envy was at work for years to surround us with a ring of foes and to throttle us. That race especially we have to thank for this war. Therefore, when now the order is given to attack this foe, practice retribution for their hostile treachery and for the many heavy sacrifices! Show them that the Germans are not so easily to be wiped out of history. Show them that, with German blows of a special kind. (_Mit deutsche Hiebe von ganz besouderer Art!_) Here is the opponent who most blocks a restoration of the (Drauf,) peace. Up and at him!
RUPPRECHT.
Under date of Nov. 11 an order of similar purport issued by the same army commander was made public:
Soldiers! The eyes of the whole world are upon you. It is now imperative that in the battle with our most hated foe we shall not grow numb, and that we shall at last break his arrogance. Already he is growing pliable, (mürbe.) Numerous officers and men have surrendered voluntarily, but the great decisive blow is still to be struck. Therefore you must persevere to the end. The enemy must be downed; you must not let him loose from your teeth. (_Ihr musst ihn nicht aus den Zahnen lessen._) We must, will and shall conquer!
At the same time the Bavarian Crown Prince had the "Song of Hate Against England" of Ernst Lissauer distributed among the troops as an army order. This poem, which was issued as early as Sept. 1 in the "Kultur-Beiträgen," published by R. Dammert in Berlin, reads in full:
HASSGESANG GEGEN ENGLAND.
Was schiert uns Russe und Franzos'? Schuss wider Schuss und Stoss um Stoss, Wir lieben sie nicht, Wir hassen sie nicht, Wir schützen Weichsel und Wasgaupass, Wir haben nur einen einzigen Hass, Wir lieben vereint, wir hassen vereint, Wir haben nur einen einzigen Feind: Denn ihr alle wisst, denn ihr alle wisst, Er sitzt geduckt hinter der grauen Flut, Voll Neid, voll Wut, voll Schläue, voll List, Durch Wasser getrennt, die sind dicker als Blut. Wir wollen treten in ein Gericht, Einen Schwur zu schwören, Gesicht in Gesicht. Einen Schwur von Erz, den verbläst kein Wind, Einen Schwur für Kind und für Kindeskind, Vernehmt das Wort, sagt nach das Wort, Es wälzt sich durch ganz Deutschland fort: Wir wollen nicht lassen von unserem Hass, Wir haben alle nur einen Hass, Wir lieben vereint, wir hassen vereint, Wir haben alle nur einen Feind: _ENGLAND!_
In der Bordkajüte, im Feiersaal, Sassen Schiffsoffiziere beim Liebesmahl, Wie ein Säbelhieb, wie ein Segelschwung, Einer riss grüssend empor den Trunk, Knapp hinknallend wie Ruderschlag, Drei Worte sprach er: "Auf den Tag!" Wem galt das Glas? Sie hatten alle nur einen Hass. Wer war gemeint? Sie hatten alle nur einen Feind: _ENGLAND!_
Nimm du die Völker der Erde in Sold, Baue Wälle aus Barren von Gold, Bedecke die Meerflut mit Bug bei Bug, Du rechnetest klug, doch nicht klug genug. Was schiert uns Russe und Franzos'! Schuss wider Schuss, und Stoss um Stoss. Wir kämpfen den Kampf mit Bronze und Stahl Und schliessen Frieden irgend einmal, Dich werden wir Hassen mit langem Hass, Wir werden nicht lassen von unserem Hass, Hass zu Wasser und Hass zu Land, Hass des Hauptes und Hass der Hand, Hass der Hämmer und Hass der Kronen, Drosselnder Hass von siebzig Millionen, Sie lieben vereint, sie hassen vereint, Sie alle haben nur einen Feind: _ENGLAND!_
[Following is a translation of the song by Barbara Henderson, appearing in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 15, 1914:]
French and Russian, they matter not, A blow for a blow and a shot for a shot! We love them not, we hate them not, We hold the Weichsel and Vosges gate. We have but one and only hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone. He is known to you all, he is known to you all, He crouches behind the dark gray flood, Full of envy, of rage, of craft, of gall, Cut off by waves that are thicker than blood. Come, let us stand at the Judgment Place, An oath to swear to, face to face, An oath of bronze no wind can shake, An oath for our sons and their sons to take. Come, hear the word, repeat the word, Throughout the Fatherland make it heard. We will never forego our hate, We have all but a single hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone-- _ENGLAND!_
In the Captain's Mess, in the banquet hall, Sat feasting the officers, one and all, Like a sabre blow, like the swing of a sail, One seized his glass and held high to hail; Sharp-snapped like the stroke of a rudder's play, Spoke three words only: "To the Day!" Whose glass this fate? They had all but a single hate. Who was thus known? They had one foe and one alone-- _ENGLAND!_
Take you the folk of the Earth in pay, With bars of gold your ramparts lay, Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow, Ye reckon well, but not well enough now. French and Russian, they matter not, A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot, We fight the battle with bronze and steel, And the time that is coming Peace will seal. You we will hate with a lasting hate, We will never forego our hate, Hate by water and hate by land, Hate of the head and hate of the hand, Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown, Hate of seventy millions choking down. We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone-- _ENGLAND!_
This poem, according to the Tägliche Rundschau, has already had the fate of every folksong--the version of it that was circulated among the Bavarian troops lacks the middle stanza and has in other ways also been "sung to pieces." But it has also been worked over artistically. The Chemnitz Director of Church Music, Prof. Mayerhoff, has set the "Chant of Hate Against England" to music for male voices. The song was rendered publicly at a great meeting in a concert in the Alberthalle at Leipsic, and was taken up in roaring chorus by the audience. The composer himself accompanied his composition on the piano.
As can be seen, therefore, the popularity of the song and its sentiment is by no means confined to Bavaria. It extends throughout the entire empire. Of hundreds of voices in the press, let us mention only one. Councilor of Justice Eschenbach of Berlin, in the Neue Gesellschaftliche Korrespondenz writes:
To honor our immortal heroes of Tsing-tau, and for the eternal shame and reproach of the scoundrel nations, Japan and England, I propose the following: Let the entire German press scorn in the next fourteen days to permit the words "Englishmen" or "Japanese" to appear in its columns and before the eyes of our people and of the entire civilized world; but instead, and invariably, let the word "Mörder" (murderers) be used for "Englishmen" and the word "Raubmörder" (highway assassins) for "Japanese." For no other name will there be hereafter among us for these greatest scoundrels of history. Thereby care will be taken both for the present throughout the world as far as the German language is heard and the results of the German spirit are known, and also for future historians, that the proper point of view shall be given throughout eternity for the condemnation of these murderous gangs accursed of God.
How different is the attitude of the Germans toward the French!
From a trench on the Aisne the following was written to the Heidelberger Zeitung:
Four hundred meters from where we lie, likewise intrenched, lie these wretched Englishmen, toward whom our people feel a holy fury, while they regard the battle with the Frenchmen, on the other hand, rather as a member of a university student corps regards an honorable duel. I, too, am entirely of that view.
The well-known psychologist, Prof. W. Hellpach of Karlsruhe, writes to the Berliner Tageblatt from the field:
The German soldier, too, does not hate the French people. Indeed, no one hates it. That is one of the most amazing phenomena of this war--our inner relation to France. Daily and hourly we hear words of disgust concerning the Russians, see gestures of hatred against the Britons--but toward France there is expressed amid all purely warlike antagonism a sort of sympathy resembling almost a smiling love for a naughty child which one feels obliged to punish because it has been guilty of stupid but very serious misbehavior.
We must force France to its knees--perhaps more completely than any of our other foes--but every one seems to hope that after this, after this last lesson, France will come to her senses and conclude a real peace with her German neighbor. Even among the common men in our ranks there has developed almost plant like a certain realization of a common duty of these two nations, a feeling of certain virtues which they, complementing one another, can preserve only by co-operation. But for the cultured ones among us, the idea of a hereditary feud has given way to a clear consciousness that there is a middle European Continental culture, supported by German, Austrian, and French genius in common, and that the preservation, development, and continuation thereof as against a hasty and superficial Anglization must be the task of the future. All, all now learn through experience that this matter with France is a woe of civilization (kulturjammer), and that now at last it is going to change, that it could change, if--
In the same newspaper the Berlin National Economist, Prof. Werner Sombart, writes:
Against France we probably experience the least aversion or hatred. At bottom we have really nothing "against the Frenchmen," but they have a great deal against us. But we find them, in spite of their fanatical hatred of the Germans (which we honor and respect) chivalrous antagonists, who in their wrath of battle are certainly quite our peers; and in them, we find, there is far more force and will for victory than we were in the beginning wont to believe. They die for their fatherland, and their final reason for fighting is after all an ideal one, the faith in the glory and greatness of a super-individual, the self-sacrifice to a whole that is higher than the personal. Thus, at least, does that France stand opposed to us, that is fighting for its existence in the trenches along the Aisne.
With the rabble that shouts "à bas la guerre" in Paris, we need reckon just as little as with the rather doubtful citizens that constitute the immediate Government of France and whose heroism seems to show great rents these days. Yes, for the heroic race of Frenchmen we feel almost a sort of pity, as with a noble wild game of the forest, wounded unto death. And this pity finds expression in wistful sympathy when we think of the quixotic strain in this wrestling with an overwhelming foe, when we see the childlike faith with which the people have grasped at every unplausible hope of rescue from its anguish of death and still grasps at it, as a drowning man grasps at a wisp of straw. Don Quixote still remains the "noble knight" for whom--if he appears in the age of firearms--we still fire three salvos of honor over his grave.
And then, when we mention the word "France," there arise all the memories of the imperishable cultural values which its people have given to us. I believe that there are many, very many among us, who in their hearts hope that there may once again be something like a co-operative understanding and journeying together of Germans and Frenchmen, even if in a distant future which the youngest among us will probably not live to see--an agreement which through a union of German and French elements of culture will promise vast achievements for the purposes of humanity. In the last analysis--for that has in these very days been more frequently expressed--these two nations belong together; they are of equal worth, of equal spirit, of equal fineness, and yet so different that they can give each other infinitely much.
Just as has the hate against England, so has this friendship for France found poetic expression. In the Hamburger Kriegsblatt we read a poem by Wilhelm Höhne, the final stanza of which reads:
Ma pauvre France! Wann siehst du es ein Dass all deine Bündnisse Trug und Schein? Was meinst du, wärst du mit dem vereint, Der dich niederringt heute--ein ehrlicher Feind! Auf "Deutsche Treue" da könntest du zählen! Mit uns im Bund könnt'st der Welt du befehlen. Dem Briten, dem Russen, dem Asiaten! Deutschland hat nie einen Freund verraten!
(Translation.)
Ma pauvre France, when wilt thou see That all thy allies are cheating thee? What, though if thou with him wouldst go Who now overwhelms thee--an honest foe! On German faith thou couldst reckon sure; With us, thou couldst rule the world secure, The Briton, the Russian, the Asian, bend. Germany has never betrayed a friend!
[Illustration: decoration]
ANSWERING THE "CHANT OF HATE."
By BEATRICE M. BARRY.
French and Russian, they matter not, For England only your wrath is hot; But little Belgium is so small You never mentioned her at all-- Or did her graveyards, yawning deep, Whisper that silence was discreet?
For Belgium is waste! Ay, Belgium is waste! She welters in the blood of her sons, And the ruins that fill the little place Speak of the vengeance of the Huns. "Come, let us stand at the Judgment place," German and Belgian, face to face. What can you say? What can you do? What will history say of you? For even the Hun can only say That little Belgium lay in his way. Is there no reckoning you must pay? What of the Justice of that "Day"? Belgium one voice--Belgium one cry Shrieking her wrongs, inflicted by _GERMANY!_
In her ruined homesteads, her trampled fields, You have taken your toll, you have set your seal; Her women are homeless, her men are dead, Her children pitifully cry for bread; Perchance they will drink with you--"To the Day!" Let each man construe it as he may. What shall it be? They, too, have but one enemy; Whose work is this? Belgium has but one word to hiss-- _GERMANY!_
Take you the pick of your fighting men Trained in all warlike arts, and then Make of them all a human wedge To break and shatter your sacred pledge; You may fling your treaty lightly by, But that "scrap of paper" will never die! It will go down to posterity, It will survive in eternity. Truly you hate with a lasting hate; Think you you will escape that hate? "Hate by water and hate by land; Hate of the head and hate of the hand." Black and bitter and bad as sin, Take you care lest it hem you in, Lest the hate you boast of be yours alone, And curses, like chickens, find roost at home _IN GERMANY!_
England Caused the War
By T. von Bethmann-Hollweg, German Imperial Chancellor.
_Following is the full text of the speech delivered by the German Chancellor at the session of the Reichstag in Berlin on Dec. 2, 1914:_
The Emperor, who is absent with the army, has charged me to transmit his best wishes and cordial greetings to the German Reichstag, with whom he is known to be united till death in the stress of danger and in the common concern for the weal of the Fatherland.
Our first thought goes out to the Kaiser and the army and navy--our soldiers who are fighting for the honor and greatness of the empire. Full of pride and unshakable confidence, we look to them and to our Austro-Hungarian comrades in arms, who are firmly united to us, to fight great battles with brilliant bravery.
Our most recent ally in battle who has been obliged to join us is the Ottoman Empire, which knows well that with the destruction of the German Empire it, too, would lose its national right to control its own destiny. As our enemies have formed a powerful coalition against us, they will, I hope, find that the arm of our brave allies reaches the weak spots in their world position.
On Aug. 4 the Reichstag expressed the firm resolution of the whole people to undertake the war which had been forced upon them and to defend their independence to the utmost.
Since then great deeds have been accomplished. The incomparable gallantry of our troops has carried the war into the enemy's country. There we still stand firm and can regard the future with every confidence, but the enemy's resistance is not broken.
We are not yet at the end of our sacrifices. The nation will continue to support those sacrifices with the same heroism as hitherto, for we must and will fight to a successful end our defensive war for right and freedom. We will then remember how our defenseless compatriots in hostile countries were maltreated in a manner which is a disgrace to all civilization. The world must learn that no one can hurt a hair on the head of a German subject with impunity.
It is evident to us who is responsible for this--the greatest of all wars. The apparent responsibility falls on those in Russia who ordered and carried out the mobilization of the Russian Army; the real responsibility, however, falls on the British Government. The Cabinet in London could have made the war impossible if it had without ambiguity declared at Petrograd that Great Britain would not allow a Continental war to develop from the Austro-Servian conflict.
Such a declaration would also have obliged France to take energetic measures to restrain Russia from undertaking warlike operations. Then our action as mediators between Petrograd and Vienna would have been successful, and there would have been no war.
But Great Britain did not act thus. Great Britain was aware of the bellicose machinations of the partly irresponsible but powerful group around the Czar. She saw how the ball was rolling, but placed no obstacle in its path. In spite of all its assurances of peace London informed Petrograd that Great Britain was on the side of France and, consequently, on the side of Russia.
The Cabinet of London allowed this monstrous worldwide war to come about hoping, with the help of the Entente, to destroy the vitality of England's greatest European competitor in the markets of the world. Therefore, England and Russia have before God and men the responsibility for the catastrophe which has fallen upon Europe. Belgian neutrality, which England pretended to defend, was nothing but a disguise.
On the evening of Aug. 2 we informed Brussels that we were obliged, in the interest of self-defense and in consequence of the war plans of France, which were known to us, to march through Belgium, but already, on the afternoon of the same day, Aug. 2, before anything of our action in Brussels could have been known in London, the British Government promised France unconditional assistance in case the German fleet should attack the French coast. Nothing was said about Belgium neutrality.
How can England maintain that she drew the sword because we violated Belgian neutrality? How could the British statesmen, whose past is well known, speak at all of Belgian neutrality? When, on Aug. 4, I spoke of the wrong which we were committing with our march into Belgium it was not yet established whether the Belgian Government at the last moment would not desire to spare the country and retire under protest to Antwerp. For military reasons I cannot go into whether there was the possibility of such a development on Aug. 4.
As to the guilt of the Belgian Government, many indications were already known at that time, but there were no positive and written proofs. Now, however, that it is demonstrated by documents found in Brussels how the Belgians surrendered their neutrality to England the entire world knows two facts.
One is that when our troops on the night of Aug. 3-Aug. 4 entered Belgian territory they were on the ground of a State which had given up its neutrality long ago. The other is that, not for the sake of the neutrality of Belgium, which she had herself undermined, did England declare war on us, but because she believed that she would be able to master us with the help of two great Continental powers.
Since Aug. 2, since her promise to assist France, England was no longer neutral, and was actually at war with us, and the argument that the declaration of war was a sequel to the violation of Belgian neutrality is nothing but a piece of play-acting performed to mystify the English people and neutral States.
Now that the Anglo-Belgian war plans are unveiled in their smallest details, the policy of British statesmen is branded before the tribunal of history for all time.
But British diplomacy went further. At England's request Japan snatches away heroic Kiao-Chau and violates the neutrality of China. Has England interfered in this violation of neutrality? Has England shown a care for neutral States in this case?
When, five years ago, I was called to office the Triple Alliance was opposed by a firmly united Entente. England's work was designed to serve the known principle of the balance of power, which means in plain German that the principle, followed for centuries by British policy and directed against the strongest Continental power, should find its strongest tool in the Triple Entente. This proves from the beginning the aggressive character of the Entente toward the plainly defensive tendencies of the Triple Alliance.
This was the germ of the forcible explosion. German policy was obliged to try to avert the danger of war by an understanding with the individual powers of the Entente. At the same time she was obliged to strengthen her defensive forces so that she should be prepared if war should come all the same. We did both. In France we always encountered ideas of revanche felt by ambitious politicians. With Russia some agreements were concluded, but Russia's firm alliance with France, her antagonism to us and our ally, Austria-Hungary, her Pan-Slavistic desire for power, her artificial hatred for Germany, made it impossible to conclude an agreement which in the case of a political crisis would exclude the danger of war.
England was comparatively free. Here the best attempt at an understanding could be made which would have effectively guaranteed the peace of the world. I acted accordingly. The way was narrow, which I knew well. For decades the British insular intellect has been evolving the political principle, the dogma that the arbitrament of the world is due to England, which she can only maintain by undisputed supremacy on the sea and the much-quoted balance of power on the Continent.
I never hoped to break the old principle by persuasion. What I believe possible was that the growing power of Germany and the growing danger of war could be made to compel England to perceive that this old principle was untenable and unpractical, and that a peaceable arrangement with Germany was preferable, but that dogma always paralyzed the possibility of an understanding. After the crisis of 1911 public opinion forced British rulers to a rapprochement toward Germany. By wearisome work an understanding was finally reached in different disputed questions of economic interest which related to Africa and Asia Minor. This understanding should have diminished possible political friction if the free development of our strength were not impeded. Both peoples had sufficient space to measure their strength in peaceful competition.
This was the principle always upheld by German policy. But while we were negotiating England was always thinking of strengthening her relations with Russia and France. The decisive factor was that more binding military agreements for the case eventually of a Continental war were concluded outside the political sphere. England negotiated, if possible, secretly. If anything leaked out of importance it was minimized in press and Parliament. It could not be concealed from us. The whole situation was as follows:
England was willing to come to an understanding with us in individual questions, but the first principle always was that Germany's free development of strength must be checked by the balance of power.
We did not fail to warn the British Government. As recently as the beginning of July I notified the British Government that we knew of the secret naval negotiations with Russia concerning the Naval Convention. I pointed out the serious danger which British policy meant for the peace of the world. A fortnight later what I predicted occurred. When war had broken out England dropped her disguise. She loudly announced that she would fight till Germany was conquered in an economical and military sense. We have only one answer. Germany cannot be destroyed. As her military strength has stood the test so has her financial strength.
Look at the diminution in the number of unemployed. The unemployed of yesterday are the army of today--their spirit is that of the soldier of yesterday and of today--the one spirit that animates us all.
When this spirit, this moral greatness of the people, when the proved heroism of our troops is called by our enemies militarism, if they call us Huns and barbarians, we can be proud enough and need not worry. This wonderful spirit in the hearts of the German people, this unprecedented unity, must and will be victorious. When a glorious and happy peace is concluded we will maintain this spirit as the holiest legacy of this terrible and serious and great time. I repeat the words of the Emperor:
"I know no parties. I know only Germans. When the war is ended parties will return without parties, without a political fight. There is no political life, not even for the freest and most united people."
Many seats are vacant here. Where are their holders? You know. There is the vacant seat of Herr Frank, (Socialist member;) but he will return no more. The spirit of cheerful self-sacrifice which animates us here as the guardians of the people's weal inspires the entire people.
Japan joined our enemies from a desire to seize as booty the monument of German culture in the Far East. On the other hand, we have found an ally in Turkey, as all the Moslem peoples want to throw off the English yoke and shatter the foundations of England's colonial power. Under the banner of our army and the flag of our fleet we shall conquer.
This, then, is our inspiration--our vow! Germany shall fight on and continue to sacrifice herself on the altar of civilization and progress and patriotism until she shall have secured a guarantee from all that none henceforth shall disturb--shall dare to disturb--the peace of this, our German land.
A SONG OF THE SIEGE GUN.
By KATHERINE DRAYTON MAYRANT SIMONS, Jr.
Welded in the devil-workshop of the Essen blacksmith's stall, There conceived and consecrated to the nations' final fall, In the iron of my entrails, in my thews of shrunken steel, In my mighty bore of barrel, in the claw of cleated wheel, Through the travail of my forging, was there bred the ancient hate-- Primal blood-feud of the races, which the races' blood must sate!
You, the Empress of the Ocean--did your statesmen ne'er foretell That your fortresses should crumble at the hot kiss of my shell? While the garnered greed of ages lay in leash beneath my breast, Did you deem an oath of honor more than is a royal jest? While you slept my masters labored! In the metal of my frame Molded they the mighty promise of a continent in flame! In the casting of my carriage, in the boring of my sheath, They have riveted my armor with the dormant dragon teeth!
By my twelve-mile range projectile, by my weight of forty tons, Do I mock the slender playthings which Allies now call their guns! Ever angry and unglutted, when the rocking fight is red, Then my slogan stirs all sleepers save the still and dreamless dead!
Lo! The past is but a promise! When my Saturnalia comes, Then the Saxon stands uncovered to a march of muffled drums, Then the northern snows are trampled where the Slavic horsemen sleep, And the Latin women tremble for their lovers as they weep!
[Illustration: GEN. LIMAN VON SANDERS PASHA,
Commander in Chief of the Turkish Army.
(_Photo_ © _by American Press Assn._)]
[Illustration: GEN. KAMIO,
Commander in Chief of the Japanese Tsing-Tau Expedition.
(_Photo from Paul Thompson._)]
Why England Fights Germany
By Hilaire Belloc.
[_Copyright, 1915, by The New York Times Company._]
_Hilaire Belloc has for years been among the most prominent of English writers, his political and economic opinions being widely quoted. As a historian he has given special attention to the French Revolution, being the author of "Danton," "Marie Antoinette," "The Girondins," and other studies which are regarded by scholars as standard works. Mr. Belloc's military knowledge and experience (he served in the Eighth Regiment of French Artillery) and his understanding of history have made him an acute and interesting chronicler of the present war. The following article appeared in_ THE NEW YORK TIMES _of Jan. 17, 1915._
I shall attempt in what follows to answer the question "Why is England at war with Germany?" It is perhaps the most important question upon which neutral countries, and especially neutral English-speaking countries, should have a true answer. Upon their just appreciation of England's position in this war a great deal of the immediate future of the world will depend.
But before proceeding to answer the question directly, we must get rid of certain misconceptions.
The question must be, as the French say, not only "put," but "put in its due proportion." It is not enough to answer the question "Why is England at war with Germany?" unless we know to begin with what that event means to this gigantic war as a whole.
Let us begin, then, by saying that this great war is not primarily a war between England and Germany at all. England and Germany are not the two chief combatants. The issue is not a victory to be achieved by Germany on the one side, or England upon the other. The victory of one of the parties in the great struggle would not produce a much stronger England, though it certainly would produce a much stronger Germany.
The struggle is primarily and essentially a struggle between two conflicting theories of life and government, which have the Continent of Europe for their theatre, and of which the Prussians upon the one hand, the French upon the other, are the protagonists and have been the protagonists for now more than three generations.
All human conflicts have spiritual roots, and the underlying spiritual forces which by their contrast have led to this war are the forces of the old Latin and Christian civilization, with its doctrines of human equality and the rest, and the North German reaction against that tradition. Of the first the French are the guardians and have always been. Of the second the North Germans of the Baltic plain, and particularly the Prussians, have been the exponents; and one may survey Europe as a whole and say that the conflict spreads through the minds of all Europeans, dividing them between those who would prefer their posterity to live, consciously or unconsciously, under the ancient and continuous tradition of the civilization inherited from Rome or under some reversal of that tradition.
That conflict is apparent in every department of life; in the arts, in the customs of society, and, most important of all, in philosophy.
The direct, immediate, and perceptible issue of the struggle is again something different. It is an issue between the German-speaking peoples and the Slav. If you were to ask an acute, well-traveled observer, say a European diplomat, what, at bottom, this war was, he would answer you thus:
"This war is an armed conflict provoked by the German-speaking peoples under the leadership of Prussia against the Slavs under the leadership of the Russian Empire. It has been provoked by Prussia as leader of the German peoples, not in a spirit of aggression but in a spirit of self-defense. The German peoples have for centuries regarded themselves as the bulwark of European civilization against Slav barbarism. They believe that the Slav power is rapidly getting so great as to be an immediate peril. They think it must be fought now or never. On this account Austria was induced by Prussia to challenge the Russian Government over the Servian question.
"Either that challenge would be accepted, with the result of war, or Russia would give way, thereby obtaining for the German peoples a victory without bloodshed. And Austria would proceed to administrate the Servian Slavs and to control them--driving a wedge into the whole Slav power and rendering it innocuous for the future.
"In this struggle between Teuton and Slav France comes in as an accessory, having made an alliance with Russia long ago for her own ends, and having nothing to do with the quarrel between Teuton and Slav. The German-speaking peoples regret the interference of France, but are prepared to take on the burden of a French war rather than abandon the moment for restricting the growing power of the Slav.
"Now, in all this," (your experienced man with a wide view of Europe would add,) "England was not concerned. Her position was quite subsidiary in all this quarrel. She had far less to do with it even than France had, and it was in every Cabinet of Europe doubted whether England would come in at all. By the Prussian Government it was taken for granted that England would have no reason to come in. By the French it was feared in spite of the recent relations between the two countries that England would remain neutral. And, in general, the fact that England is at war at all is a fact on one side of the original quarrel and its original motives, though it is a fact that will profoundly affect the progress and the results of the war."
Such a statement would be no more than the plain truth as educated men know and see it in Europe today. The entry of England into the field of conflict was an entry from one side. It did not fall into line with the general motives of the people. It was, among all English statesmen, a matter of debate; it was decided by but a narrow majority of those responsible for so enormous a decision.
When we have clearly grasped these two fundamental facts--first, that the war is not on its mechanical side mainly a war between England and Germany, but mainly a war between two contrasting European and Continental ideals; secondly, the correlative fact that the entry of England into the war was not certain until the last hour, and was, when it was made, made only after doubtful consideration and after a division among the politicians, responsible for the conduct of her affairs, something almost accidental, as it were--we can proceed to consider the three causes which converging were sufficiently strong in their combination to produce that result, and when we know what those three causes were, their strength and the accidents of their convergence, at this moment we shall have answered the question, "Why is England at war with Germany?"
These three causes are:
1. The fixed cardinal point for English policy upon which no English patriot worthy of the name would hesitate for a moment, and which no historian with any sense of justice can condemn, to wit, that no one, if England can help it, shall have naval predominance over the British fleet, particularly in the narrow seas.
2. The effect of certain undertakings, a whole network of diplomatic actions, particularly in connection with France, engaged in by the English Foreign Office during the last ten years.
3. A certain vague attachment to the Western, or Latin, tradition of civilization with its routine of conventions in war and peace, and particularly of treaties as between first-class powers. This tradition was still sufficiently strong to act as a motive converging with the two others mentioned above to produce a sufficient moral stream in favor of war as, though sluggish, to help to turn the scale.
I say that these three things combined, upon the whole and doubtfully, discovered a sufficient strength between them to make the English politicians, after serious hesitation and close division, determine upon war.
Let me take them in their order:
1. The cardinal point of statesmanship upon which all English foreign policy has turned for two hundred years, that no one shall be more powerful at sea than England, especially upon the shores of the narrow seas, appears to foreigners unarguably arrogant.
It is, indeed, of its nature a challenge to the rest of the world, but if the reader will consider a moment he will see that it is a challenge to which modern England, at any rate, is inexorably condemned. However much such a position may clash with the temperament of chivalrous and peaceable men--and it does clash with the temperament of many an English statesman of the past and of the present--no one with a respect for his country, or paying the common duty of allegiance to it, can compromise upon the matter. It is here with England precisely as it has been with all her parallels, the great oligarchic commercial commonwealths of the past; she lives by the sea, and the closing of the sea would be to her not inconvenience, but death.
It is, I think, this very sentiment that England can live only on condition that the English fleet is supreme which has led England to use that supremacy so sparingly. It is true to say that there has been no force of so much superiority to its rivals as the British Navy which in all history has been used for such purely defensive purposes as the British Navy has been used during the present generation, and this moderation I conceive to be due to a clear recognition that morally the claim to supremacy at sea is a challenge which the great rival nations must feel acutely, and which they have a right to feel acutely, and which, therefore, must be softened in every possible way.
But if it is necessary that Great Britain should brook no rival at sea it is still more necessary that such a rival, should he arise, should not have naval bases within striking distance of her coast. The great exception has, of course, been France, and for two centuries at least that fact has molded the whole of British policy. Had Germany remained a Continental power and rejected maritime ambition that would still continue to mold British policy.
The French have, and Europe being what it is, will always continue to have the aptitude for the sea, the genius in mechanical invention and the superabundant wealth which between them are the three factors of the great modern fleet. A lengthy coast line training millions of her workers to a seafaring life, a long tradition of naval families, and pioneer in every form of modern naval war from the armor plate to the submarine, is the proof of this, if proof were needed.
As against the presence of some part of the French naval power on an opposing coast across a narrow armed water, the English Channel, Great Britain proceeded, generation after generation, to keep her control an essentially defensive naval force. She did it upon the position that her military effort, and therefore expenditure, should be slight; that her economic as her other energies should be chiefly devoted to her marine.
And though the French in the moments of their greatest prosperity were able, for all their constant military effort, to produce navies that rivaled those of Great Britain, yet Great Britain's effort was the more constant. She never engaged large bodies of men in war; she could take advantage of every French reverse during the two centuries when the French were perpetually engaged in huge Continental conflicts.
Great Britain, in a word, by ceaseless vigilance and at a great expense of energy, managed upon the whole to dominate one branch of the narrow seas, the channel. Upon the other branch, the North Sea, she felt nearly always secure. An exception to this security was found during the brief Dutch period in the seventeenth century and again, much more acutely, when the French were the masters of the Low Countries, and when Napoleon took control of the shipbuilding yards not only from Brest to Dunkirk, but from Dunkirk to the Bight of Heligoland.
This presence of the French power in Holland, Belgium, and Frisia, in particular the French control of Antwerp, was the true cause of violent anxiety, and the no less violent efforts in reply which Britain made during the Napoleonic wars. For twenty-three years she fought, with but two short intervals of repose, upon a dozen nominal pleas, but with one plain piece of statesmanship at the back of her mind--that no one should control the narrow seas against herself.
And especially that if she could not prevent the existence in normal times of a very powerful, dangerous French fleet, rendering her anxious for one-half of those seas, at least the other half should be free from such anxiety.
In the midst of such a secular determination, successfully maintained, Germany began to build her new great modern fleet.
The German Empire had a most unquestioned right thus to challenge the power of Great Britain. It was indeed the most effective challenge which a nation jealous of Britain's commerce could deliver, but it is none the less true that the plain policy of self-preservation compelled Britain to take up that challenge.
For the first time in three hundred years Britain found herself beginning to support French trades, in the general policy of the world.
The French, for reasons which had nothing to do with England and with which the mass of the English governing classes in no way sympathized, had maintained for more than thirty years a determination to restore their own power at the expense of Prussia. Because modern Germany was building her fleet, modern Britain, in order to check that movement, began thus in novel fashion and against all the old English traditions to support the French.
The thing was done at the bottom with reluctance. All Englishmen felt the common bond of religion which united their country with that which governs modern Germany. Many Englishmen believed that there was some vague bond of race between the two countries. Not a few worthy, ignorant men, and even one or two men of great ability, attempted to direct negotiations whereby a fixed ratio should exist between the two fleets; in other words, whereby the German Empire should pledge itself to a permanent inferiority at sea.
That empire would indeed have been more foolish even than cowardly had it listened to any such proposals. The position, therefore, was one of inevitable and increasing friction. It was a matter of life and death to England that no other great Western fleet should exist besides the French, and it was a matter of national existence to Germany once she had undertaken a policy not to give up that policy at the dictation of any other power--for, among other things, modern Germany lived on prestige; her whole internal structure depended upon it, and for Prussia to lose faith before Europe would be the end of the Germany that Prussia had made.
There are those who say that a Germany conducted by some Richelieu, or even by a surviving Bismarck, would never have attempted the building of a great fleet until accounts had been finally settled with France. There are those who say that the elements of statesmanship required the German Empire first to settle herself politically upon the shores of the Straits of Dover and the Netherlands, first to destroy the danger of a great war in the west on land, then and then only to begin building that fleet which must inevitably challenge Great Britain. It is no part of this criticism to consider the statesmanship of another nation, but at any rate once the policy of building the fleet was begun conflict with England was in sight.
2. The second cause of England's joining in this war is the effect of a number of internal arrangements, some of them of minor importance, but all leading in one direction and ultimately placing the Government of Great Britain in a position from which it was difficult to retire. In general terms these arrangements were based upon the idea of joining the group of powers, French and Russian, which formed the counterpoise to the Germanic group in Europe, the German Empire and Austria. At the same time there was running through these arrangements the idea of detaching Italy, whose Government was firmly attached to Germany, but whose population was very doubtful, from the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, which had been the cardinal point in European affairs for a generation.
The various steps by which Great Britain approached this position are well known. In the first place, she came to an arrangement with France whereby she should have a free hand in Egypt and France should be supported by England in the occupation of Morocco. This was done behind the back of Germany to the manifest loss of Germany's colonial ambition and, what is more noticeable, England was openly paying a very high price for the new state of affairs she hoped to create, for she had pretty well a free hand in Egypt, already, while France's opportunity of going to Morocco and exploiting a very large area of valuable territory--something quite new and additional to her--depended upon England's withdrawing her opposition.
That opposition was withdrawn; and though the most violent effect was produced in Germany, though there were threats of war, pitiable quarrels within the French Cabinet and a moment of grave danger, the pact was accomplished, and Morocco, all save the strip opposite Gibraltar, became French, while all that Germany had to show for her share was an irregularly shaped and not valuable couple of slices cut out of tropical Africa in the Congo Basin from the vast French possessions there, and added to her own still insufficient share.
Another group of arrangements was that with Russia, and here again England willingly paid a heavy price, and again completely reversed her traditional policy. She gave all that is vital in Persia to Russian control. She forgot her old anxiety about the Indian frontier; she lost her old and hitherto unbroken policy of supporting Turkey in Europe. When the war came she was with the French in supporting the Balkan powers, "The Little Nations."
Finally, in the matter of Italy, she supported or permitted the Italian attack upon and annexation of Turkish territory in North Africa, and consistently, before and after that event, worked for the strengthening of Italy in the Triple Alliance and for securing the neutrality of that country, at least in case of a European war.
There were many other arrangements besides these three principal and typical ones, but all, small or great, were based upon the same idea, and pointed in the same direction. England was leaning upon the Russian side against Germany. The most important in the minor details in this new policy, the one which has had most effect perhaps in producing the war, was an understanding whereby the French fleet should virtually evacuate the Northern Seas and undertake for England the policing of the Mediterranean trade routes, and the guardianship of that source of food supply to Great Britain, thus leaving the whole weight of the British Navy free to guard the North Sea, and to face the new and growing German naval force.
Now, it must always be borne in mind that these arrangements, large and small, detailed and general, whereby Great Britain gradually involved herself in a network of French and Russian supports and reciprocal duties, never took the form of an alliance. The utmost pains were taken by English diplomatists and permanent officials at the English Foreign Office, experts and servants, to state that England remained free in spite of all to act as her conscience or her interest might dictate, whenever, or if, war should break out between the two groups of Continental powers. No one can read the conflict of evidence between the German Ambassador and Sir Edward Grey in the highly typical telephone incident which took place immediately before the recent declaration of war without seeing that liberty of action was maintained by the Government of Great Britain until the very last moment.
But one cannot do a number of things, each weighted with a similar tendency, without one's whole conduct and fate being determined in the direction to which those actions tend. To preserve one's legal or technical independence is not enough. In this specific case, for instance, the naval arrangement proved an exceedingly weighty thing. France could say:
"Relying on your explicit, though not expressed, support of myself and Russia, I guarded your trade routes in the Mediterranean and left my northern coasts undefended. Here is war about to break out with those northern coasts of mine bare against the overwhelming attack from the German fleet, and with nothing wherewith I can guard it; and that nakedness is entirely due to having trusted you. You may not have a legal obligation, but the moral one is not to be shirked."
At any rate, I insist upon the tendency of all these various diplomatic acts, because it has been they that might have dragged the most reluctant Government into this conflict, and it was they which, in combination with the cardinal policy of preventing maritime rivalry in the narrow seas, decided the present policy of this country.
3. But, as I have said, there was a third cause, much vaguer and, until war actually broke out, of little effect. Though there had existed for thirty years from 1880 until after the beginning of the new century such strong bonds of sympathy between Great Britain and North Germany--bonds riveted by Court influence and much more strengthened by the influence of the universities and of religious leaders--though some contempt for and alienation from the French had become of increasing note in English public utterances and literature, yet Great Britain retained upon the whole the Western doctrine of civilization and of its traditions.
The increasing German reaction against those traditions, particularly in morals, was not wholly sympathetic to the temper of the gentry, at least in England, and was sometimes exasperating.
All nations have cynically violated treaties at one time or another, but there is about a solemnly undertaken treaty by the great European powers and affecting the happiness of the smaller neutral States something particularly sacred. And though it must not for one moment be regarded