BEHIND THE SCENES IN WARRING GERMANY
[Illustration: Captain Tzschirner of Hindenburg's staff and Edward
Lyell Fox in Eydtkuhnen after the battle.]
BEHIND THE SCENES
IN WARRING GERMANY
BY
EDWARD LYELL FOX
Special Correspondent with the Kaiser's Armies
and in Berlin
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1915
Copyright, 1915, by
ILLUSTRATED SUNDAY MAGAZINES
NEW YORK AMERICAN
WILDMAN MAGAZINE AND NEWS SERVICE
Copyright, 1915, by
MCBRIDE, NAST & CO.
_Published May, 1915_
To
E. W. F.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE THRESHOLD OF WAR 1
II "THE BELOVED KING" 26
III TO THE WEST FRONT 39
IV ON THE BACK OF THE BIRD OF WAR 55
V BEHIND THE BATTLELINE 73
VI A NIGHT BEFORE YPRES 100
VII IN THE TRENCHES 126
VIII CAPTURED BELGIUM AND ITS GOVERNOR GENERAL 160
IX PRISONERS OF WAR 170
X ON THE HEELS OF THE RUSSIAN RETREAT 194
XI THE BATTLE OF AUGUSTOWO WALD 222
XII THE WAR ON THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER 254
XIII THE HERO OF ALL GERMANY 274
XIV WITH THE AMERICAN RED CROSS ON THE RUSSIAN
FRONTIER 290
XV THE SECRET BOOKS OF ENGLAND'S GENERAL
STAFF 312
XVI THE FUTURE--PEACE OR WAR 324
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
Capt. Tzschirner and the author _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Notifications from the German Foreign Office 28
Court filled with drilling soldiers 80
Ober-lieutenant Herrmann 80
With French prisoners at Zossen 182
Burying Russians on East Prussian frontier 196
Reenforcements following our motor car into Russia 196
Photographs of alleged British staff books 312
Aviator's guide book 316
Aviator's key map 320
BEHIND THE SCENES IN WARRING GERMANY
I
THE THRESHOLD OF WAR
In the lingering twilight, the Baltic's choppy swells turned dark and
over the bow I saw a vague gray strip of land--Germany! I was at the
gateway of war.
For two hours the railway ferry had plowed between the mines that strew
the way to Denmark with potential death, and as slowly the houses of
Warnemunde appeared in shadow against the darkening day, some one
touched my arm.
"Safe now."
He was the courier. He had traveled with me from New York to Copenhagen,
a bland, reserved young man, with a caution beyond his years. I had come
to know he was making the trip as a German courier, and he was an
American with no Teutonic blood in his veins! Knowing the ropes, he had
suggested that he see me through to Berlin.
"It's good we came over the Baltic," he remarked, "instead of making
that long trip through Jutland. We save eight hours."
"Yes," I agreed, "nothing like slipping in the back door."
And being new to it then, and being very conscious of certain letters I
carried, and of the power implied in the documents which I knew he
carried, I wondered what the frontier guard would do. During the two
hours we ferried from the Danish shore the passengers talked in a
troubled way of the military search given every one at Warnemunde and I
smiled to myself in a reassuring way. Yes, they would be searched, poor
devils!... But the courier and I? I wondered if the German Lieutenant at
Warnemunde would ask us to take coffee with him. I even took out my
watch. No, it could hardly be done, for by the time the soldiers had
finished searching all these passengers the train would be leaving. Too
bad! Coffee and a chat with some other lieutenant, then.
"Yes," the courier was saying as the ferry docked and we caught, under
the glint of the sentries' rifles, a glimpse of the _Landwehr_ red and
blue, "it will be so easy here--just a formality, whereas if we had
taken the other route it no doubt would have been harder. You see," he
explained, "when a train crosses the Kiel canal a soldier is posted in
every compartment, the window shades are pulled down and the passengers
are warned not to look out on penalty of instant death. Of course that
is necessary for military reasons. Naturally the whole inspection at
that frontier is more severe because of the Kiel canal."
By this time the big boat had been made fast to a long railroad pier and
as we crossed the gang plank we made out in the bluish haze of an arc
lamp, a line of soldiers who seemed to be herding the passengers into
what appeared to be a long wooden shed newly built. Crowds are the same
the world over, so no one held back, all pushing, luggage and passports
in hand, into the frame structure built, I realized, for purposes of
military inspection.
Sluggishly the mass moved forward. Presently I saw it divide halfway
down the room, to pause before two openings at which six soldiers
waited, like ticket takers in a circus. I was near enough now to observe
the lantern light dimly shining upon two crude desk tops, slanting down
from the wall which gave entrance through a doorway to a larger room
beyond; and everywhere gleamed the glint of gun barrels, the red and
blue or gray of military hats, while an increasing flow of German,
punctuated with "_Donnerwetter!_" and "_Das ist genug_," was heard above
the shuffle of feet and the thumping of trunks and bags on the counters
in the room beyond. I wondered what two men in civilian clothes were
doing among the soldiers; I saw them dart about, notebooks in hand.
Later I learned more of these men who seemed to have it in their power
to make the passengers they challenged either comfortable or
uncomfortable.
And then it was my turn. Having seen the passenger in front throw both
hands over his head, unconsciously inviting the kind of search given a
criminal, I decided such submissiveness a blunder. As I expected, the
soldier was a perfectly sane human being who did not begin punching a
revolver against me--which certain printed words I had read in New York
implied was the usual prelude to a German searching party--rather this
soldier most courteously asked to see my wallet. I gave it to him. I
would have given him anything. Our cooperation was perfect. There was no
need for me to bring my exhaustive knowledge of the German language into
play. Talking fluently with my hands, now and then uttering "_danke_," I
tried to assist his search, meanwhile hopelessly looking about for the
courier. I was depending not only upon his fluent German but also upon
his superior knowledge of the situation to help me to pass serenely
through this ordeal. Alas, the crowd hid him.
Suddenly my soldier grunted something. Until now we had been getting
along splendidly and I could not conceal my surprise when he took from
my wallet a handful of letters and stared at them in bewilderment. The
more he stared the more his regard for me seemed to vanish. Although he
could not understand English he could recognize a proper name, for the
letters bore the addresses of decidedly influential men in Germany. They
challenged his suspicion. Thoroughly puzzled he opened the letters and
tried to read them. When he compared my passport with a letter I saw his
face light up. I realized that he had recognized my name in the
contents. Whereupon, greatly relieved, assured now that everything was
all right, I held out my hand for both letters and wallet. Not yet. A
rumble of words and the soldier called one of those busy civilians with
the notebooks.
This person spoke a little English. The letters interested him. Where
had I found them?... My spine began to feel cold. I replied that they
had been given me in New York and remembering that I had the courier to
rely on, I suggested that they have a word with him. It was then that I
heard an excited deluge of words and, glancing over my shoulder, I
observed that the courier was thoroughly flanked and surrounded by five
_Landwehr_ who apparently were much in earnest about something.
Concluding that some cog had slipped I racked my wits to make the best
of what was rapidly becoming a difficult situation.
The soldier having turned me over to the civilian I noticed several
suspicious glances in my direction, and blessed the luck that had
impelled me to go to the American Legation and the German Consulate in
Copenhagen for visés. That the civilian who was taking such an interest
in me belonged to the secret service, I was certain. I appealed to his
sense of discretion.
"Your passport seems all right," he thoughtfully observed, and opened a
little book. "Where are you going?"
I told him to Hamburg but could not tell him where I would stay, for the
excellent reason that not the name of a single Hamburg hotel was known
to me.
"Only for a few days, though," I said, adding hopefully; "after that I
go to Berlin to Hotel Adlon."
As fast as his pencil could move he wrote the address in his book.
"These letters," he said reluctantly, tapping them on his hand, "I must
take now. If everything is all right, they will be sent to you in
Berlin."
"But it is important that I have them," I protested, "they are my
introductions. You cannot tell me how long I may have to wait for them?
You can see from them that I am a responsible person known to your
people."
"I know," he replied, "but they are written in English, and to bring
letters written in English into Germany is forbidden. I am sorry."
He was thus politely relieving me of all my credentials when I happened
to think that in my inner waistcoat pocket lay a letter I had yet to
show them--a communication so important to me that I had kept it
separate from the others. Moreover I remembered it was sealed and that
properly used it might save the day. It was worth a trial.
Realizing that the thing had to be staged I impressively drew the police
spy aside and employing the familiar "stage business" of side glances
and exaggerated caution I slowly took the note--it was a mere letter of
introduction to the Foreign Office--from my waistcoat. If the soldier's
eyes had opened wide at the other addresses, the police agent's now
fairly bulged. Handing him the envelope I pointed to what was typed in
the upper left hand corner--_Kaiserliche Deutsche Botschaft, Washington,
D. C._--and simply said "_Verstehen sie?_"
He _verstehened_. Being an underling he understood so well that after a
few moments he returned all the letters he had appropriated and
instantly changing his manner, he facilitated the rest of the
inspection. After my baggage was examined by more soldiers (and those
soldiers did their duty, even going through the pockets of clothes in my
trunks) I was told I might go.
"_Gute reise_," the police agent called--"Good journey."
Although treated with all courtesy I was afraid somebody might change
his mind, so hurrying out of the last room of the long wooden shed I
proceeded down the platform to the train at a pace that must have shown
signs of breaking into a run. There in my compartment the thoughts that
came to me were in this order:
There must be reason for such a rigid inspection; no doubt spies must
have been caught recently trying to enter Germany at Warnemunde.
If I hadn't lost the courier in the crowd there would have been plain
sailing.
The minutes passed. It was nearly time for the train to start. Where was
the courier? Presently, rather pale, nervous in speech, but as reserved
and cool as ever he limply entered the compartment and threw himself on
the cushions.
"They took everything," he announced. "All they left me was a pair of
pajamas."
"What! You mean they have your papers?"
"All of them," he smiled. "Likewise a trunk full of letters and a
valise. Oh, well, they'll send them on. They took my address. Gad, they
stripped me through!"
I began laughing. The courier could see no mirth in the situation.
"You," I gasped, "you, who by all rights should have paraded through,
from you they take everything while they let me pass."
"Do you mean to say," he exclaimed, "that they didn't take your
letters."
"Not one," I grinned.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he said.
Locked in the compartment we nervously watched the door, half expecting
that the police spy would come back for us. We could not have been
delayed more than a few minutes, but it seemed hours, before, with
German regard for comfort, the train glided out of the shed. It must
have been trying on my companion's good humor, but the absurdity of
stripping a courier of everything he carried, was irresistible. Perhaps
it was our continued laughter that brought the knock on the door.
Pushing aside the curtains we saw outside--for it was one of the new
German wagons with a passageway running the entire length of one side of
the car--a tall, broad-shouldered, lean man with features and expression
both typical and unmistakable.
"An Englishman!"
We saw him smile and shake his head. I hesitatingly let fall the curtain
and looked at the courier.
"Let him in," he said. "He's got the brand of an English university boy
all over him. We'll have a chat with him. You don't mind, do you?"
"Mind!" In my eagerness I banged back the compartment doors with a crash
that brought down the conductor. I saw my companion hastily corrupt that
official whose murmured "_Bitteschon_" implied an un-Teutonic disregard
for the fact that he had done something _verboten_ by admitting a second
class passenger into a first class coupé; and the stranger entered.
We were gazing upon a strikingly handsome fair-haired man not yet
thirty. His eyes twinkled when he said that he supposed we were
Americans. His manner and intonation made me stare at him.
"And you?" we finally asked.
"I'm going first to Berlin, then to Petrograd," he said, perhaps
avoiding our question. "Business trip."
We chatted on, the obvious thought obsessing me. Of course the man was
an English spy. But how absurd! If his face did not give him away to any
one who knew--and my word for it, those police spies do know!--he would
be betrayed by his mannerisms. His accent would instantly cry out the
English in him. Of what could Downing Street be thinking? It was sending
this man to certain death. One began to feel sorry for him.
Feeling the intimacy brought by the common experience at Warnemunde, I
presently said:
"You certainly have your nerve with you, traveling in Germany with
_your_ accent."
"Why?" he laughed. "A neutral is safe."
Expecting he would follow this up by saying he was an American I looked
inquiring and when he sought to turn the subject I asked:
"Neutral? What country?"
"Denmark," he smiled.
"But your accent?" I persisted.
"I do talk a bit English, do I not? I had quite a go at it, though;
lived in London a few years, you know."
Nerve? I marveled at it. Stark foolhardy courage, or did a secret
commission from Downing Street make this the merest commonplace of duty?
Charming company, he hurried along the time with well told anecdotes of
the Russian capital and Paris, in both of which places he said he had
been since the war began. As we drew near Lübeck, where a thirty-five
minute stop was allowed for dinner in the station, and the stranger
showed no signs of going back to his own compartment, I could see that
the courier was becoming annoyed. Relapsing into silence he only broke
it to reply to the "Dane" in monosyllables; finally, to my surprise, the
courier became downright rude. As the stranger, from the start, had been
extremely courteous, this rudeness surprised me, more so, as it seemed
deliberate. Bludgeoned by obvious hints the stranger excused himself,
and as soon as he was gone my companion leaned towards me.
"You were surprised at my rudeness," he said, and then in an undertone;
"it was deliberate."
"I saw that. But why?"
"Because," he explained, "seeing we are Americans that fellow wanted to
travel with us all the way through. He must have known that American
company is the best to be seen in over here these days. He might have
made trouble for us."
"Then you also think he's English?"
"Think! Why they must have let him through at Warnemunde for a reason.
He has a Danish passport right enough. I saw it in the inspection room.
But I'll bet you anything there's a police spy in this train,
undoubtedly in the same compartment with him."
One felt uncomfortable. One thought that those police spies must dislike
one even more now.
"That means we may be suspected as being confederates," I gloomily
suggested.
Whether he was getting back for my having guyed him about losing his
papers I do not know, but the courier said we probably were suspected.
Whereupon the book I tried to read became a senseless jumble of words
and our compartment door became vastly more interesting. When would it
open to admit the police spy?... Confound the luck! Everything breaking
wrong.
But at Lübeck nothing happened--nothing to us. A train load of wounded
had just come in and our hearts jumped at the sight of the men in the
gray-green coats of the firing line, slowly climbing the long iron steps
from the train platforms. Hurrying, we saw them go clumping down a long
airy waiting room and as they approached the street their hobbling
steps suddenly quickened to the sharper staccato of the canes upon which
they leaned. Hurrying too, we saw there a vague mass of pallid faces in
a dense crowd; some one waved a flag;--it stuck up conspicuously above
that throng;--some one darted forth;--"_Vater!_"--"_Liebes Mütterchen!_"
Past the burly Landsturm, who was trying his utmost to frown his jolly
face into threatening lines that would keep back the crowd, a woman was
scurrying. One of the big gray-green wounded men caught her in his
arm--the other arm hung in a black sling--and she clung to him as though
some one might take him away, and because she was a woman, she wept in
her moment of happiness. Her _Mann_ had come home....
Forgetting the dinner we were to have eaten in the Lübeck station, we
finally heeded a trainman's warning and turned back to our car. There
remained etched in my mind the line of pallid, apprehensive faces, the
tiny waving flags, the little woman and the big man. It was my first
sight of war.
From Lübeck to Hamburg the ride was uneventful. The hour was not late
and beyond remarking that the towns through which we passed were not as
brilliantly lighted as usual, the courier could from the car window
observe no difference between the Germany of peace and of war. Here and
there we noticed bridges and trestles patroled by _Landwehr_ and outside
our compartment we read the handbill requesting every passenger to aid
the government in preventing spies throwing explosives from the car
windows. From the conductor we learned that there had been such
attempts to delay the passage of troop trains. Whereupon we
congratulated ourselves upon buying the conductor, as we had the
compartment to ourselves. One thought of what would have happened had
there been an excitable German in with us and while the train was
crossing a bridge, we had innocently opened a window for air!
It was almost ten when the close, clustered lights of Hamburg closed in
against the trackside and we caught our first glimpse of the swarming
_Bahnhof_. Soldiers everywhere. The blue of the Reservists, the
gray-green of the Regulars--a shifting tide of color swept the length of
the long platforms, rising against the black slopes of countless
staircases, overrunning the vast halls above, increasing, as car after
car emptied its load. And then, as at Lübeck, we saw white bandages
coming down under cloth-covered helmets and caps, or arms slung in black
slings; the slightly wounded were coming in from the western front.
All this time we had forgotten the Englishman, and it was with a start
that we recalled him.
"If he spots us," advised my companion, "we've got to hand him the cold
shoulder. Mark my words, he'll try to trail along to the same hotel and
stick like a leech."
Again he was right. At the baggage room the Englishman overtook us,
suggesting that we make a party of it--he knew a gay café--first going
to the hotel. He suggested the _Atlantic_. Bluntly he was informed we
were visiting friends, but nothing would do then but we must agree to
meet him in, say, an hour. Not until he found it an impossibility did he
give us up and finally, with marvelous good nature, he said good night.
The last I saw of him was his broad back disappearing through a door
into a street.
The courier nudged me.
"Quick," he whispered, "look,--the man going out the next door."
Before I could turn I knew whom he meant. I saw only the man's profile
before he too disappeared into the street; but it was a face difficult
to forget, for it had been close to me at Warnemunde; it was the face of
the police spy.
"I told you they purposely let him get through," continued my friend.
"That police fellow must have come down on the train from Warnemunde. I
tell you it's best not to pick up with any one these days. Suppose we
had fallen for that Englishman and gone to a café with him to-night--a
nice mess!"
It was in a restaurant a few hours later that I saw my first Iron Cross,
black against a gray-green coat and dangling from a button. In
_Bieber's_, a typical better class café of the new German type,
luxurious with its marble walls and floors, and with little soft rugs
underfoot and colored wicker tables and chairs, one felt the new spirit
of this miracle of nations. On the broad landing of a wide marble
staircase an orchestra played soldier songs and above the musicians,
looking down on his people, loomed a bust of Wilhelm II, _Von Gottes
Gnaden_, _Kaiser von Deutschland_. About him, between the flags of
Austria-Hungary and Turkey, blazed the black, white and red, and there
where all might read, hung the proclamation of August to the German
people. We had read it through to the last line: "_Forward with God who
will be with us as he was with our Fathers!_"--when we heard an excited
inflection in the murmurings from the many tables--"_Das Eiserne
Kreuz!_" And we saw the officer from whose coat dangled the black
maltese cross, outlined in silver. His cheeks flushed, proud of a
limping, shot-riddled leg, proud of his Emperor's decoration, but
prouder still that he was a German; he must have forgotten all of battle
and suffering during that brief walk between the tables. Cheers rang
out, then a song, and when finally the place quieted everybody stared at
that little cross of black as though held by some hypnotic power.
So! We were Americans, he said when we finally were presented. That was
good. We--that is--I had come to write of the war as seen from the
German side. Good, _sehr gut_! He had heard the Allies, especially the
English,--_Verfluchte Englanderschwein!_--were telling many lies in the
American newspapers. How could any intelligent man believe them?
In his zeal for the German cause his Iron Cross, his one shattered leg,
the consciousness that he was a hero, all were forgotten. Of course I
wanted to hear his story--the story of that little piece of metal
hanging from the black and white ribbon on his coat--but tenaciously he
refused. That surprised me until I knew Prussian officers.
So we left the man with the Iron Cross, marveling not at his modesty but
that it embodied the spirit of the German army; whereas I thought I knew
that spirit. But not until the next night, when I left Hamburg behind,
where every one was pretending to be busy and the nursemaids and
visitors were still tossing tiny fish to the wintering gulls in the
upper lake; not until the train was bringing me to Berlin did I
understand what it meant. At the stations I went out and walked with the
passengers and watched the crowds; I talked with a big business man of
Hamburg--bound for Berlin because he had nothing to do in Hamburg; then
it was I faintly began to grasp the tremendous emotional upheaval
rumbling in every Germanic soul.
My first impression of Berlin was the long cement platform gliding by, a
dazzling brilliance of great arc lamps and a rumbling chorus of song.
Pulling down the compartment window I caught the words "_Wir kämpfen
Mann für Mann, für Kaiser und Reich!_" And leaning out I could see down
at the other end of the Friederichstrasse Station a regiment going to
the front.
Flowers bloomed from the long black tubes from which lead was soon to
pour; wreaths and garlands hung from cloth covered helmets; cartridge
belts and knapsacks were festooned with ferns. The soldiers were all
smoking; cigars and cigarettes had been showered upon them with prodigal
hand. Most of them held their guns in one hand and packages of
delicacies in the other; and they were climbing into the compartments
or hanging out of the windows singing, always singing, in the terrific
German way. Later I was to learn that they went into battle with the
"Wacht am Rhein" on their lips and a wonderful trust in God in their
hearts.
I felt that trust now. I saw it in the confident face of the young
private who hung far out of the compartment in order to hold his wife's
hand. It was not the way a conscript looks. This soldier's blue eyes
sparkled as with a holy cause, and as I watched this man and wife I
marveled at their sunny cheer. I saw that each was wonderfully proud of
the other and that this farewell was but an incident in the sudden
complexity of their lives. The Fatherland had been attacked: her man
must be a hero. It was all so easy, so brimming with confidence. Of
course he would come back to her.... You believed in the Infinite
ordering of things that he would.
Walking on down the platform I saw another young man. They were all
young, strapping fellows in their new uniforms of field gray. He was
standing beside the train; he seemed to want to put off entering the car
until the last minute. He was holding a bundle of something white in his
arms, something that he hugged to his face and kissed, while the woman
in the cheap furs wept, and I wondered if it was because of the baby she
cried, while that other childless young wife had smiled.
Back in the crowd I saw a little woman with white hair; she was too
feeble to push her way near the train. She was dabbing her eyes and
waving to a big, mustached man who filled a compartment door and who
shouted jokes to her. And almost before they all could realize it, the
train was slipping down the tracks; the car windows filled with singing
men, the long gray platform suddenly shuffling to the patter of men's
feet, as though they would all run after the train as far as they could
go. But the last car slipped away and the last waving hand fell weakly
against a woman's side. They seemed suddenly old, even the young wife,
as they slowly walked away. Theirs was not the easiest part to play in
the days of awful waiting while the young blood of the nation poured out
to turn a hostile country red.
I thought I had caught the German spirit at Lübeck and at the café in
Hamburg when the hero of the Iron Cross had declined to tell me his
tale; but this sensation that had come with my setting foot on the
Berlin station--this was something different. Fifteen hundred men going
off to what?--God only knows!--fifteen hundred virile types of this
nation of virility; and they had laughed and they had sung, and they had
kissed their wives and brothers and babies as though these helpless ones
should only be proud that their little household was helping their
Fatherland and their Emperor. Self? It was utterly submerged. On that
station platform I realized that there is but one self in all Germany
to-day and that is the soul of the nation. Nothing else matters; a
sacrifice is commonplace. Wonderful? Yes. But then we Americans fought
that way at Lexington; any nation can fight that way when it is a thing
of the heart; and this war is all of the heart in Germany. As we walked
through the station gates I understood why three million Socialists who
had fought their Emperor in and out of the Reichstag, suddenly rallied
to his side, agreeing "I know no parties, only Germans." I felt as I
thought of the young faces of the soldiers, cheerfully starting down
into the unknown hell of war, that undoubtedly among their number were
Socialists. In this national crisis partizan allegiance counted for
nothing, they had ceased dealing with the Fatherland in terms of the
mind and gave to it only the heart.
Even in Berlin I realized that war stalks down strange by-paths. It
forever makes one feel the incongruous. It disorders life in a monstrous
way. I have seen it in an instant make pictures that the greatest artist
would have given his life to have done. It likes to deal in contrasts;
it is jolting....
With General von Loebell I walked across the Doeberitz camp, which is
near Berlin. At Doeberitz new troops were being drilled for the front.
We walked towards a dense grove of pines above which loomed the sky,
threateningly gray. Between the trees I saw the flash of yellow flags; a
signal squad was drilling. Skirting the edge of the woods we came to a
huge, cleared indentation where twenty dejected English prisoners were
leveling the field for a parade ground. On the left I saw an opening in
the trees; a wagon trail wound away between the pines. And then above
the rattling of the prisoners' rakes I heard the distant strains of a
marching song that brought a lump to my throat. Back there in the woods
somewhere, some one had started a song; and countless voices took up the
chorus; and through the trees I saw a moving line of gray-green and down
the road tramped a company of soldiers. They were all singing and their
boyish voices blended with forceful beauty. "In the Heimat! In the
Heimat!" It was the favorite medley of the German army.
The prisoners stopped work; unconsciously some of those dispirited
figures in British khaki stiffened. And issuing from the woods in squads
of fours, all singing, tramped the young German reserves, swinging along
not fifteen feet from the prison gang in olive drab--"In the Heimat!"
And out across the Doeberitz plains they swung, big and snappy.
"They're ready," remarked General von Loebell. "They've just received
their field uniforms."
And then there tramped out of the woods another company, and another,
two whole regiments, the last thundering "Die Wacht am Rhein," and we
went near enough to see the pride in their faces, the excitement in
their eyes; near enough to see the Englishmen, young lads, too, who
gazed after the swinging column with a soldier's understanding, but
being prisoners and not allowed to talk, they gave no expression to
their emotions and began to scrape their rakes over the hard ground....
I stood on the Dorotheenstrasse looking up at the old red brick building
which before the second of August in this year of the world war was the
War Academy. I had heard that when tourists come to Berlin they like to
watch the gay uniformed officers ascending and descending the long
flights of gray steps; for there the cleverest of German military youths
are schooled for the General Staff. Like the tourists, I stood across
the street to-day and watched the old building and the people ascending
or descending the long flights of gray steps. Only I saw civilians, men
alone and in groups, women with shawls wrapped around their heads, women
with yellow topped boots, whose motors waited beside the curb, and
children, clinging to the hands of women, all entering or leaving by the
gray gate; some of the faces were happy and others were wet with tears,
and still others stumbled along with heavy steps. For this old building
on Dorotheenstrasse is no longer the War Academy; it is a place where
day after day hundreds assemble to learn the fate of husband, kin or
lover. For inside the gray gate sits the Information Bureau of the War
Ministry, ready to tell the truth about every soldier in the German
army! I, too, went to learn the truth.
I climbed a creaking staircase and went down a creaking hall. I met the
Count von Schwerin, who is in charge. I found myself in a big,
high-ceilinged room the walls of which were hung with heroic portraits
of military dignitaries. My first impression was of a wide arc of desks
that circling from wall to wall seemed to be a barrier between a number
of gentle spoken elderly gentlemen and a vague mass of people that
pressed forward. The anxious faces of all these people reminded me of
another crowd that I had seen--the crowd outside the White Star offices
in New York when the _Titanic_ went down. And I became conscious that
the decorations of this room which, the Count was explaining, was the
Assembly Hall of the War Academy, were singularly appropriate--the
pillars and walls of gray marble, oppressively conveying a sense of
coldness, insistent cold, like a tomb, and all around you the subtle
presence of death, the death of hopes. It was the Hall of Awful Doubt.
And as I walked behind the circle of desks I learned that these men of
tact and sympathy, too old for active service, were doing their part in
the war by helping to soften with kindly offices the blow of fate. I
stood behind them for some few moments and watched, although I felt like
one trespassing upon the privacy of grief. I saw in a segment of the
line a fat, plain-looking woman, with a greasy child clinging to her
dress, a white haired man with a black muffler wrapped around his neck,
a veiled woman, who from time to time begged one of the elderly clerks
to hurry the news of her husband, and then a wisp of a girl in a cheap,
rose-colored coat, on whose cheeks two dabs of rouge burned like coals.
Soldiers from the Berlin garrison were used there as runners. At the
bidding of the gentle old men they hastened off with the inquiry to one
of the many filing rooms and returned with the news. This day there was
a new soldier on duty; he was new to the Hall of Awful Doubt.
"I cannot imagine what is keeping him so long," I heard an elderly
clerk tell the woman with the veil. "He'll come any minute.... There he
is now. Excuse me, please."
And the elderly clerk hurried to meet the soldier, wanting to intercept
the news, if it were bad, and break it gently. But as he caught sight of
the clerk I saw the soldier click his heels and, as if he were
delivering a message to an officer, his voice boomed out: "_Tot!_" ...
Dead!
And the woman with the veil gave a little gasp, a long, low moan, and
they carried her to another room; and as I left the gray room, with the
drawn, anxious faces pushing forward for their turns at the
black-covered desks, I realized the heartrending sacrifice of the women
of France, Belgium, Russia, England, Servia, and Austria, who, like
these German mothers, wives, and sweethearts, had been stricken down in
the moment of hope.
That night I went to the Jägerstrasse, to Maxim's. The place is
everything the name suggests; one of those Berlin cafés that open when
the theaters are coming out and close when the last girl has smiled and
gone off with the last man. I sat in a white and gold room with a
cynical German surgeon, listening to his comments.
"It is the best in town now," he explained. "All the Palais de Danse
girls come here. Don't be in a hurry. I know what you want for your
articles. You'll see it soon."
Maxim's, like most places of the sort, was methodically banal. But one
by one officers strolled in and soon a piano struck up the notes of a
patriotic song. When the music began the girls left the little tables
where they had been waiting for some man to smile, and swarmed around
the piano, singing one martial song upon another, while officers
applauded, drank their healths, and asked them to sing again.
Time passed and the girls sang on, flushed and savage as the music
crashed to the cadenzas of war. What were the real emotions of these
subjects of Germany; had the war genuine thrills for them? I had talked
with decent women of all classes about the war; what of the women whose
hectic lives had destroyed real values?
"Get one of those girls over here," I told the surgeon, "and ask her
what she thinks of the war."
"Do you really mean it?" he said with a cynical smile.
"Surely. This singing interests me. I wonder what's back of it?"
He called one of them. "Why not sing?" Hilda said with a shrug. "What
else? There are few men here now and there are fewer every night. What
do I think of this war? My officer's gone to the front without leaving
me enough to keep up the apartment. _Krieg?_ _Krieg ist schrecklich!_
War is terrible!"
My German friend was laughing.
"War?" he smiled. "And you thought it was going to change that kind."
But I was thinking of the woman with the veil whom I had seen in the
Hall of Awful Doubt; and outside the night air felt cool and clean....
But my symbol of Berlin is not these things--not bustling streets filled
with motors, swarming with able-bodied men whom apparently the army did
not yet need. Its summation is best expressed by the varied sights and
emotions of an afternoon in mid-December.
Lódz has fallen; again Hindenburg has swept back the Russian hordes.
Black-shawled women call the extras. Berlin rises out of its calmness
and goes mad. Magically the cafés fill.... I am walking down a side
street. I see people swarming toward a faded yellow brick church. They
seem fired with a zealot's praise. I go in after them and see them fall
on their knees.... They are thanking Him for the Russian rout....
Wondering I go out. I come to another church. Its aisles are black with
bowed backs; the murmur of prayer drones like bees; a robed minister is
intoning:
"Oh, Almighty Father, we thank Thee that Thou art with us in our fight
for the right; we thank Thee that--"
It is very quiet in there. War seems a thing incredibly far away. The
sincerity of these people grips your heart. I feel as I never felt in
church before. Something mysteriously big and reverent stirs all
around.... Then outside in the street drums rattle, feet thump. A
regiment is going to the front! I hurry to see it go by, but back in the
church the bowed forms pray on.
II
"THE BELOVED KING"
_Being impressions gained during my talk with His Majesty King Ludwig of
Bavaria_
Knowing what was in the wind when the summons came that night, I hurried
down Unter den Linden and through Wilhelmstrasse to the Foreign Office.
Several days before, Excellence Freiherr von Mumm had discussed the
possibilities with me and as the old-fashioned portal of the Foreign
Office swung back to admit me, I wondered if the news would be good or
bad. Without delay I was ushered into the office of Dr. Roediger. He was
just laying the telephone aside.
"It has been arranged," he said. "I was just talking with München. You
are to leave Berlin to-night on the 10.40 train. Upon your arrival in
München in the morning, you will go to the Hotel Vierjahrzeiten. At ten
in the morning present yourself to Excellence Baron von Schön at the
Prussian Embassy in München. He will inform you as to the details. At
twelve o'clock His Majesty, the King of Bayern, will be pleased to
receive you.... Adieu and good luck."
Thanking Dr. Roediger for the arrangement--with true German thoroughness
they had laid out a perfect schedule for me, even to the hotel at which
I was to stop in München--I had a race of it to get packed and catch the
train. But once in the compartment, with the train whirling away from
Berlin, I had a chance to collect my thoughts. So, His Majesty would no
doubt talk with me upon some subject of interest to Americans. I ran
over half a dozen of these in my mind, but King Ludwig's personality
kept obtruding. What sort of a man was he? I had seen an excellent
colored photograph of him in a gallery in Unter den Linden. It was one
of those pictures which make you wonder at the reality and in this case
made me anticipate the meeting with unrestrained keenness. I remembered
that he had waited long for the throne, that it had not descended to him
until September of 1913, that he had been crowned King of his beloved
Bayern at the regal age of sixty-eight. I recalled that his house, the
house of Wittelsbacher, was the oldest in Germany, the line going back
to the year 907. King Ludwig, ruler of that southern German land where
so many Americans like to go, his home in Munich, which every American
sooner or later comes to admire for its famous galleries and golden
brown Münchener beer; King Ludwig, what would be his message to the
United States?
Ten o'clock the following morning found me shaking hands with Baron von
Schön, the Prussian Ambassador to Bavaria. It was the Baron who was
Germany's Ambassador to France at the outbreak of war, and how I
regretted that obligations of his diplomatic position forbade a
discussion of those frantic nights and days in Paris before the war. We
could talk of other things, however, and as there were two hours before
the appointed time of my presentation to King Ludwig, Baron von Schön
helped me to get my bearings. To my consternation I learned that the
King spoke only a little English. I informed the Baron that I spoke only
a little German. Whereupon immediately the Geheimrat's office in the
Embassy began to ring with one telephone call after another, for an
interpreter had to be secured, a man whom His Majesty would be pleased
to receive with me. And finally such a man was found in Counselor of
Legation von Stockhammern.
After motoring down a long avenue, lined with pretty residences, the car
turned in, approaching a rather old, unpretentious but severely
dignified building of faded yellow brick, suggesting Windsor. This was
the Wittelsbacher Palast, the home of King Ludwig. I remembered having
seen that morning on my way to the Embassy, a far more imposing looking
palace, the Residence, and contrasting its ornateness with the
simplicity of the building which we were approaching, I wondered at
royalty living there. It was typical of the democratic King I came to
know.
As our motor rolled up, I saw two blue and white striped sentry boxes
marking the entrance and through an arched driveway I had a glimpse of
an inner court paved with stones, where an official automobile waited.
Then I was escorted through the entrance to the right wing of the
palace. Here Staatsrat (Secretary of the Royal Cabinet) von Dandl, a
tall, soldierly looking man in uniform, greeted us, after which I was
taken to an antechamber, where Counselor of Legation von Stockhammern,
my interpreter, was waiting. There appeared a young Bavarian officer in
full dress uniform, whom I was told was the Adjutantour to the King.
Upon being introduced he left as quickly as he had come. It lacked a
quarter hour of the time of reception, and Von Stockhammern and I were
talking about München, when the young Adjutantour as quickly returned
and said that His Majesty would receive me.
[Illustration: Reproduction of the author's notifications from the
German Foreign Office.]
I climbed with Von Stockhammern several flights of a wooden staircase;
the tan and red bordered corded runaway reminded you of a church, as did
the bare white walls, and you felt a solemn silence, accentuated by the
jangling of the sword; and then turning with a last flight of steps, I
saw above two guards in the uniform of the Hartschier Regiment, two
white coated, blue trousered, plumed statues standing beside a wide
entrance door. The click of presenting arms and the statues came to
life, and passing between them we found ourselves in what was evidently
an antechamber of the Audience Saal, a comfortably furnished room; the
walls covered with small oil paintings. I remember a silk-stockinged,
stooping doorman who wore black satin breeches, like a character that I
had seen sometime in a French romantic play. He was standing with his
hand upon the knob of two brown oaken doors as if awaiting a signal.
Apparently it came, although I heard nothing, for suddenly the brown
doors swung back, and I found myself gazing into the long
high-ceilinged room, the Audience Saal, and in the middle of this room
stood an elderly man, in the dress uniform of an officer in the Second
Bavarian Infantry. The uniform was blue and red and braided with gold,
and the man had a white beard and a wonderfully kind face. It was His
Majesty King Ludwig of Bavaria.
My first thought, as I walked towards him, was of how closely he
resembled the picture I had seen of him in the gallery on Unter den
Linden. But as I drew nearer, I saw that the picture had not caught the
man. You were conscious of kind eyes smiling a welcome through silver
spectacles. You instantly felt that kindness seemed to be a dominant
note of his character, and you realized the intellectual power behind
that wide, thoughtful forehead; and you saw a firm mouth and chin
suggesting determination, kindness, brains, force, every inch a king!
But somehow, had I not known he was a king, the military regimentals
which he wore might have been a little incongruous; he impressed me as
being the kind of man you might expect to see in the black coated garb
of a professor; a man of great, grave and forceful dignity and learning,
and utterly foreign to the popular American conception of a monarch.
This impression was borne out a moment later, when as Staatsrat von
Dandl came forward to present me, King Ludwig showed me a delightful
courtesy. Casting court etiquette aside, he welcomed me in true American
fashion, his hand outstretched.
There began then the usual preliminaries to a conversation and while we
exchanged greetings, I noticed that His Majesty was wearing a great
number of minor orders, strung in a bright ribboned line across his
chest, and beneath them, on the left side, the Iron Cross, the Star of
St. Hubertus, and the Order of the Crown. Presently, in a pleasantly
modulated voice, King Ludwig told me that through his people he had long
felt a great friendship for America.
"All Germany has been deeply touched by the many kindnesses of your
country since the beginning of the war. You have been so thoughtful," he
said. "You have sent us your wonderful Red Cross doctors and nurses.
Throughout the empire we have heard expressions of good will from your
visiting countrymen. We have felt the spirit that prompted the gifts of
the American children which came through your Mr. O'Loughlin to the
children of Germany. Especially have we been touched here in München,
where your wonderful hospital is, and where we have so many Americans.
Between Germany and the United States there exists a strong bond through
commercial relations, but between your country and Bavaria there is
something more intimate. It is because so many of your countrymen come
here. They like the Wagner-festspiel, they are so fond of German music
and our Bavarian art. They like to spend their summers among us. They
get to know us and we them. You have no idea how many Americans live
here in München. And they find here the high regard in which your
country is held. They find that two of the best artists of their own
nation, Miss Fay and Miss Walker, both Americans, are regarded as the
best artists in the München Opera, and our people hold them in great
esteem. They are received in court society, and are very well seen."
The subject of America made the King enthusiastic and the sincere ring
of his voice and the warmth of his smile increased as he spoke. So I
took the opportunity of asking His Majesty a question so many of my
countrymen are thinking. What of America and war?
"America need fear no war," he replied quickly, adding, "No war on your
own soil. Geographically you are safe. You have only two neighbors,
Canada and Mexico." And the King smiled. "We, on the other hand, are
surrounded by enemies who are powerful. You have the Pacific between you
and your adversaries."
King Ludwig's omission of the Atlantic Ocean struck me as being
significant. He seemed to take it for granted that we could have but one
adversary--that yellow octopus of the Far East. Whereupon I mentioned
something which had come to me in Berlin concerning certain islands in
the Pacific. For a moment King Ludwig looked grave, and then he said
slowly: "America needs no large army; if she should need one she can
make it quickly. She has already shown that. To attack her on her home
soil is not practical, but she should have a large navy. I have heard
many compliments of your American navy, of its equipment, discipline and
gunnery; but it must be kept large."
"So you think, Your Majesty, that we are safe from war?"
"On your home soil, yes," he repeated, "but your navy must be strong.
When war will come, you can never tell. But you must never fear war. We
knew over here that this war was coming. We have long known it. We have
always wanted peace. For forty-one years I myself have been working for
peace, but we have always been surrounded by jealous neighbors. Last
January I spoke at a dinner given in honor of the anniversary of the
birthday of His Majesty Emperor Wilhelm II. I said then that we do not
wish a war, but that the German people have always shown that they do
not fear war."