at a distance of about five feet, to the one upon which "Hindy" was
slithering along, he trotted out opposite the latter, reached across,
lifted that protesting bundle of anatomy to his feet, and then, leading
him by the hand, started back for the beach. The German followed
like Mary's Little Lamb as long as he had the dynamic pressure of
the American's fingers to give him courage, but when Commander C----
withdrew his guiding hand after he had led his fellow tight-rope walker
in above the sand, "Hindy's" nerve went with it. Trying to sludder down
astride the timber again after tottering drunkenly for a moment, he
lost his balance and tried to jump. The drop was not over five feet,
and to soft sand at that; but the remains of a riveter I once saw fall
to the pavement of Broadway from the fortieth story of the new Singer
building looked less inert than the shivering pancake that fat Prussian
made when he hit the beach of Rügen. There was really very little to
choose between it and a flatulent jelly-fish slowly dissolving in the
embrace of a mass of stranded seaweed a few yards away; indeed, the
subtle suggestion of that comparison may have had something to do with
the reflex action behind a kick I saw some one aim at the jelly-fish in
passing.
That was the last we saw of "Hindy" (except as a wavering blur on the
rearward horizon) for nearly two hours.
Striking inland through the dunes and a plantation of young pine trees,
we emerged at a crossroad where a signboard conveyed the information
that Wiek (our immediate objective) was six and four-tenths kilometres
distant. "If we can hike that four miles inside of an hour there's a
fair chance of cleaning up the whole job today," said Commander C----,
striking out along the lightly metalled highway with a swinging stride.
"'Hindy' will have to get along as best he can. We won't need him for
the inspection anyhow."
Passing several rather dismal summer hotels (one of which was called
the "Strand Palace"), we came to a picturesque little village of brick
and thatch houses, with brightly curtained windows, and standing in
well-kept flower gardens. The villagers evidently a half-agricultural,
half-fisher folk--could have had no warning of our coming, as even
the station at Wiek was expecting us from the opposite direction, and
by launch. Quite uninstructed in the matter of adopting "conciliatory"
tactics (as those of so many of the places previously visited had so
plainly been), they simply went their own easy way, displaying neither
fear, resentment, nor even a great amount of curiosity. Most of the
shops, except those of the butchers, were fairly well stocked, the
displays of Christmas toys (among which were some very ingeniously
constructed "working" Zeppelins) being really attractive.
Beyond the village the Wiek road, which turned off at right angles from
the main highway, became no more than a muddy track. Deeply rutted and
slippery with the last of the snow which had drifted into it from a
recent storm, walking in it became so laborious that we finally took
to the fields, across the light sandy loam of which we just managed to
maintain the four-miles-an-hour stride necessary to keep from falling
behind schedule. The several peasants encountered (mostly women with
baskets of beets or cabbages on their backs) regarded us with stolid
impersonal disinterest, and seemed hardly equal to the mental effort of
figuring out where the motley array of uniforms came from.
A tall spire gave us the bearing for Wiek, and we passed close by the
ancient stone church which it surmounted in skirting the village on a
short-cut to the air station. This took us to the rear entrance of the
latter (instead of the main one where we were naturally expected to
come) and had the interesting sequel of bringing us face to face with a
sentry wearing a red band on his sleeve, the first of that particular
brand of revolutionist we had encountered. Although failing to stand at
attention as we approached, he was otherwise quite respectful in his
demeanour and made haste to dispatch a messenger informing the Commander
of the station of our arrival. A number of other "red-banders" were seen
in passing through the barracks area on the way to the sheds, one of
them even going so far as to click heels and salute.
In spite of the flutter of red at the rear, there was no evidence of
anything Bolshevik in the display set out for us in the shop-window.
The men lounging about the sheds fell in at once on the order of the
Commander, paraded smartly, and when dismissed showed no disposition
to hang about the doors, as had occasionally been the case at other
stations. They apparently had not even insisted on one of their
representatives being present during the inspection. None but the five
or six officers receiving the party conducted it around. These were
all keen-eyed, quick-moving youngsters, but the fact that they were
comparatively sparsely decorated seemed to indicate that the station was
not of an importance to command the services of the "star turn" men we
had seen at Norderney, Borkum, and other North Sea bases.
There was one thing which turned up in the course of the inspection
which was not upon the list furnished us by the Germans, and that was
a large stack of second-hand furniture which I stumbled across in an
out-of-the-way corner of the first shed visited. An unmistakable French
name on the back of a red plush-upholstered divan first suggested
the lot was an imported one, and looking closer I discovered a
half-obliterated maker's mark, with the letters "Brux-l-s" following
it. Diverting one of the inspecting officers in that direction as
opportunity offered, I asked him what he thought the word had been.
"Probably the Belgian spelling of Brussels," he replied promptly, "and
certainly the English spelling of loot." When the German Commander
chanced to mention, a few minutes later, that his flight had only
recently come from Zeebrugge, both conjectures seemed to be confirmed.
The inspection was over by the time "Hindy" arrived, and we departed
for Büg immediately he had completed the wash-down and brush-up that
his brother officers, who treated him with a good deal of deference,
insisted on his having. He was too dead beat to display temper when he
had been bundled into the launch, and he impressed me as telling the
bare literal truth when he said it was the hardest walk he had ever
taken in his life.
A half-hour's run brought the launch alongside the landing-stage at
Büg, which ideally located station occupied a quarter of a mile of the
narrow spit of sand separating the broad, shallow lagoon we had just
crossed from the open Baltic. Concrete runways sloped down to both
strands, so that seaplanes could be launched in either direction. It
was an admirably planned and equipped station in every respect. An
hour's inspection showed that the provisions of the armistice, here as
at all of the other stations visited, had been satisfactorily carried
out. A novel feature of the visit was the presence of a couple of
photographers--evidently official ones, judging from the fine machines
they had--who waylaid the party at every corner and exposed a large
number of plates.
"Hindy," who had disappeared shortly after we landed, turned up again
about the time the inspection of the last hangar was completed,
picking his teeth and considerably restored in aplomb by the hearty
_mittagessen_ he had regaled himself with at the Commander's mess.
Not until then were we informed that the station had no launch or
boat of any kind available on the Baltic side. This meant that
the _Viceroy_--she had now come to anchor three or four miles
off-shore--would have to send a boat in for us, and that an hour's time
had been wasted before making a signal for it. Hastily writing a message
requesting that the motor launch or whaler be sent in to the landing,
Commander C---- handed it to the Commander of the station, suggesting
that it be made by "Visual" to the _Viceroy_ in International Morse.
Here "Hindy," brave with much beer, asserted his authority again.
Snatching the paper from the station Commander's hand, he read over the
signal with a frown of disapproval, and then handed it back to Commander
C----.
"That is much too long and complicated for a German signalman to send in
English," he growled. "You should write only, 'Send boat immediately.'
That is quite enough."
There was a look in Commander C----'s face like that it had worn when he
turned and left "Hindy" in a heap on the beach by the jelly-fish, but he
controlled himself and spoke with considerable restraint.
"Since the _Viceroy_ is not my private yacht," he said quietly, "any
signal I make to her will begin 'Request.' I might add that if I were
her captain, and a passenger of mine made me a signal like the one you
suggest, he could wait till--till the Baltic froze over before I'd
send a boat to take him off. Unless you're prepared to wait that long,
you can't do better than see that the signal is made exactly as I have
written it."
In spite of its "length and complication," that signal, as we saw it
later in the _Viceroy_, was identical with the original to a T.
It was rather hard luck that Büg, which was the first station we
visited without carrying our own lunch in the form of sandwiches, was
also the only one where we were not offered shelter and refreshment.
"Hindy" disappeared again during the next hour of waiting, and even
had to be sent for when the whaler finally did arrive. The rest of
us were so thoroughly chilled from standing out in the biting Baltic
wind that we were only too glad to warm up a bit by "double-banking"
the oars with the whaler's crew on the pull back to the destroyer.
The sight of American and British officers bending to the sweeps with
common bluejackets created a tremendous furore at the station. The
photographers rushed out to the end of the jetty to make a permanent
record of the astonishing sight, and from the significant glances all
of the Germans were exchanging one gathered that they thought that
theirs was not the only Navy in which there had been a revolution.
Climbing up to the bridge shortly after the _Viceroy_ got under weigh
for the run back to Kiel, I found the captain on watch with a hulking
Number 8-bore shot-gun under his arm, at which vicious weapon the German
pilot, pressing as far away from it as the restricted space allowed,
kept stealing apprehensive sidelong glances with eyes ostensibly
searching the horizon through his binoculars. On asking the captain
what the artillery was for, he motioned me back beside the range-finder
stand, where he presently joined me.
"I'm watching for ducks--great place for them along here," he said in a
low voice; "but don't give it away to the Hun. He seems to think it's
for _him_. It's old B----'s gun. He shot ducks with it from the bridge
of his E-boat all over the Bight during the war."
"You don't mean to say that you'd stop the destroyer and circle back to
pick up a duck in case you happened to wing one?" I asked incredulously.
"Wouldn't I?" he laughed. "Just tumble up if you hear a shot and see.
There's no finer duckboat in the world than a destroyer if you got the
sea room to handle her in."
It was an hour or two later that I was shaken out of a doze on a
ward-room divan by a sudden jar, followed by the threshing of reversed
screws. "The skipper's got his bird," I thought, and forthwith scrambled
out and up the ladder, especially anxious to arrive in time to see
the expressions on the face of the Germans when they realized that
the "mad Englander" was going back in his warship to pick up a duck.
Compared to that it turned out to have been an event of no more than
passing interest which had happened. The pilot (perhaps because his
mind was absorbed in the menace of that terrible 8-bore) had merely
missed--by three or four miles as it transpired presently--the gate of
the anti-submarine net fencing off that neck of the Baltic, with the
result that the _Viceroy_ had barged into that barrage at something like
seventeen knots. Cutting through the first of what proved to be a double
net, she brought up short against the second, the while her spinning
propellers wound in and chewed to bits a considerable length of the
former.
The seas were agitated for a half-mile on either side by the straining
of the outraged booms, while from the savagely slashing screws floated
up a steady stream of mangled metal floats like _wienerwursts_ emerging
from a sausage machine. Luckily, the cables of the nets were rusted and
brittle, so that the propellers readily tore loose from them without
injury. Backing off clear, the pilot ran down the boom until the buoys
marking the gate were sighted, and from there it was comparatively open
going to Kiel, which we reached at nine-thirty that evening.
X
JUTLAND AS A GERMAN SAW IT
It must have been the unspeakable position of humiliation he found
himself in as a consequence of being ignored, flouted, and even
openly insulted by the men he had once treated as no more worthy of
consideration than the deck beneath his feet that was responsible for
the fact that the German naval officer with whom the members of the
staff of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission were thrown in contact
almost invariably assumed an air of injured martyrdom, missing no
opportunity to draw attention to, and endeavour to awaken sympathy in,
his sad plight. He took advantage of any kind of a pretext to "tell his
troubles," and when nothing occurred in the natural course of events
to provide an excuse, he invented one. Thus, a Korvettenkapitän in one
of the ships searched at Wilhelmshaven took advantage of the fact that
a man to whom he gave an order about opening a water-tight door in a
bulkhead slouched over and started discussing with the white-banded
representative of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council, to speak at some
length of the "terrible situation" with which he had been faced at the
time when the High Sea Fleet had been ordered out last November for a
decisive naval battle. The filthy condition his ship was in furnished
the inspiration for another officer to tell at some length of how he
had hung his head with shame since the day he had been baulked of "The
Day." An ex-submarine officer--acting as pilot in one of the British
destroyers in the Baltic--did not feel that he could leave the ship
without setting right some comments on German naval gunnery, which he
had found in a London paper left in his cabin.
And so it went. Now and then one of them, after volunteering an account
of something in his own naval experience, would counter with some more
or less shrewdly interpolated query calculated to draw a "revealing"
reply; but for the most part they were content with a passive listener.
That fact relieved considerably the embarrassment this action on the
part of the Germans placed Allied officers, who were under orders
to hold no "unnecessary conversation" in the course of their tours
of inspection. A "monologue" could in no way be construed as a
"conversation," and when, as was almost invariably the case, it was up
on a subject in which the "audience" was deeply interested, it was felt
that there was no contravention of the spirit of the order in listening
to it. The statements and comment I am setting down in this article
were heard in the course of such "monologues" delivered by this or that
German naval officer with whom I was thrown--often for as long as two or
three days at stretch--in connection with the journeys and inspection
routine of the party to which I chanced to be attached at the moment. In
only two or three instances--notably in the case of an officer in the
flying service who endeavoured to dissuade us from visiting the Zeppelin
station at Tondern by giving a false account of the damage inflicted in
the course of the British bombing raid of last summer--did statements
made under these circumstances turn out to be deliberate untruths. On
the contrary, indeed, much that I first heard in this way I have later
been able to confirm from other sources, and to this--statements which
there is good reason to believe are quite true--I am endeavouring to
confine myself here. In matter of opinions expressed, the German naval
officer has, of course, the same right to his own as has anybody else,
and, as one of the few things remaining to him at the end of the war
that he _did_ have a right to, I did not, and shall not, try to dispute
them.
Perhaps the one most interesting fact brought out in connection with
all I heard in this way--it is confirmed, directly and indirectly,
from so many different sources that I should consider it as definitely
established beyond all doubt--was that _at no time from August, 1914,
to November, 1918, did the German seriously plan for a stand-up,
give-and-take fight to a finish with the British Fleet_. Never, not
in the flush of his opening triumphs on land, nor yet even in the
desperation of final defeat, did the hottest heads on the General Naval
Staff at Berlin believe that there was sufficient chance of a victory
in a gunnery duel to make it worth while trying under any conditions
whatever. The way a number of officers referred to their final attempt
to take the High Sea Fleet to sea after it became apparent that
Ludendorff was beaten beyond all hope of recovery in France, gave the
impression at first that an "all out" action was contemplated, that all
was to be hazarded on a single throw, win or lose. It is probable, even,
that the great majority of the officers afloat, and certainly all of the
men (for fear of the results of such an action is the reason ascribed
by all for the series of mutinies which finally put the navy out of the
reckoning as a fighting force) believed this to be the case. But those
officers who, either before or after the event, were in a position to
know the details of the real plans, were in substantial agreement that
it was not intended to bring the High Sea Fleet into action with
the Grand Fleet, but rather to use it as a bait to expose the latter
to a submarine "ambush" on a scale ten times greater than anything of
the kind attempted before, and then to lure such ships as survived the
U-boat attack into a minefield trap. Should a sufficiently heavy toll
have been taken of the capital ships of the Grand Fleet in this way,
then--but not until then--would the question of a general fleet action
have been seriously considered.
[Illustration: VIEW OF KIEL CANAL FROM NEARMOST TURRET OF THE "HERCULES"]
But although the General Naval Staff, and doubtless most of the senior
officers of the German navy, realized from the outset that the High Sea
Fleet would certainly be hopelessly outmatched in a gunnery battle and
that their only chance of victory would have to come through a reduction
of the strength of the Grand Fleet in capital ships by mine or torpedo,
the greatest efforts were made to prevent any such comprehension of the
situation finding its way to the lower decks. The men were constantly
assured that their fleet was quite capable of winning a decisive victory
at any time that the necessity arose, and there is not doubt that they
believed this implicitly--until the day after Jutland. Then they knew
the truth, and they never recovered from the effects of it. That was
where Jutland marked very much more of an epoch for the German navy
than it did for the British. The latter, cheated out of a victory
which was all but within its grasp, was more eager than ever to renew
the fight at the first opportunity. The several very salutary lessons
learned at a heavy cost--and not the least of these was a very wholesome
respect for German gunnery--were not forgotten. Structural defects were
corrected in completed ships and avoided in those building. Technical
equipment, which had been found unequal to the occasion, was replaced.
New systems were evolved where the old had proved wanting. Great as was
the Grand Fleet increase in size from Jutland down to the end of the
war, its increase of efficiency was even greater.
With the High Sea Fleet, though several notable units were added to its
strength during the last two years of the war, in every other respect
it deteriorated steadily from Jutland right down to the mutinies
which were the forerunners of the great surrender. This was due, far
more than to anything else, to the fact that the real hopelessness of
opposing the Grand Fleet in a give-and-take fight began to sink home
to the Germans from the moment the first opening salvoes of the latter
smothered the helpless and disorganized units of the High Sea Fleet
in that last half-hour before the shifting North Sea mists and the
deepening twilight saved them from the annihilation they had invited
in trying to destroy Beatty's battle-cruisers before Jellicoe arrived.
What the most of their higher officers had always known, the men knew
from that day on, and, cowed by that knowledge, were never willing to
go into battle again. From what I gathered from a number of sources I
have no hesitation in affirming that, up to Jutland, the men of the
High Sea Fleet would have taken it out in the full knowledge that it
was to meet the massed naval might of Britain, and, moreover, that they
would have gone into action confidently and bravely, just as they did
at Jutland. But it is equally clear that, after Jutland, any move which
the men themselves knew was likely to bring them into action with the
British battle fleet would instantly have precipitated the same kind of
revolt as that which started at Kiel last November and culminated in
the surrender. It was the increasing "jumpiness" of the men, causing
them to suspect that every sally out of harbour might be preliminary
to the action which they had been living in increasing dread of every
day and night for the preceding two years and a half, which finally
made it practically impossible for the Germans to get out into the
Bight sufficient forces to protect even their mine-sweeping craft. As
a consequence, it is by no means unlikely that the continuation of
the war for another few months might well have found the German navy,
U-boats and all, effectually immobilized in harbour behind ever-widening
barriers of mines.
By long odds the most reasoned and illuminative discussion I heard of
German naval policy, from first to last, was that of an officer who
was Gunnery Lieutenant of the _Deutschland_ at Jutland, and whom I met
through his having had charge of the arrangements of the visits of the
airship party of the Allied Naval Commission to the various Zeppelin
stations in the North Sea littoral. Of a prominent militarist family--he
claimed that his father was a director of Krupps--and a great admirer
of the Kaiser (whom I once heard him refer to as an "idealist who did
all that he could to prevent the war"), he was extremely well informed
on naval matters, both those of his own country and--so far as German
information went--the Allies. Harbouring a very natural bitterness
against the revolution, and especially against the mutinous sailors of
the navy, he spoke the more freely because he felt that he had no future
to look forward to in Germany, which (as he told me on a number of
occasions) he intended to leave as soon as the way was open for him to
go to South America or the Far East. Also, where he confined himself to
statements of fact rather than opinion or conjecture, he spoke truly. I
have yet to find an instance in which he made an intentional endeavour
to create a false impression.