"not to have invaded Belgium. It would have been an unforgivable
military blunder. I justified the invading of Belgium on absolutely
military grounds. What other grounds are there worth while talking about
when a nation is in a war for its existence? If we had not sent our
troops into Belgium the English would have landed their entire
expeditionary army at Antwerp, and cut our line of communication. How
do I know that? Simply because England would have been guilty of the
grossest blunder if she had not done that, and the man who is in charge
of England's army has never been known as a blunderer. It was the only
way. Subsequent events, the finding of diplomatic documents, have proven
the English agreements with Belgium. In the captured fortresses at
Namur, Lüttich (Liége), and Antwerp, we found stores of French guns and
ammunition. Germany would have been much worse off than she is to-day if
she had not gone through Belgium. A great state like Germany could not
permit holding back at such a time in its history."
This led us into talking about the situation in America. We talked about
the burning of Louvain, which I later saw and found to be comparatively
little damaged, roughly, but one-twelfth was destroyed, and I saw the
paintings that German officers risked their lives in fire to save. We
talked about Louvain and then about General Sherman's march from Atlanta
to the sea, when a whole state was burned and laid waste.
"The truth will come out," said Von Bissing slowly. "Your country is
renowned for fair play. You will be fair to Germany, I know. Your
American Relief Commission is doing excellent work. It is in the highest
degree necessary. At first the German army had to use the food they
could get by foraging in Belgium, for the country does not begin to
produce the food it needs for its own consumption, and there were no
great reserves that our troops could use. But the German army is not
using any of Belgian food now."
I asked the Governor General if the Germans had not been very glad that
America was sending over food. I told him that when I left New York, the
number of unemployed there was huge--largest, so Mayor Mitchell had
said, in the city's history--and that some Americans were so
unsentimental as to think that this food for Belgium might better be
distributed in their own country. This seemed to disturb General von
Bissing.
"It is most important," he repeated, "that America regularly sends
provisions to Belgium. Your country should feel very proud of the good
it has done here." Somehow I had the idea that His Excellency was
indulging in quiet amusement at my expense. He impressed me as being far
too clever to make such a statement in entire sincerity. "I welcome the
American Relief Committee," he said. "We are working in perfect harmony.
Despite reports to the contrary, we never have had any misunderstanding.
Through the American Press, please thank your people for their kindness
to Belgium."
General von Bissing held out his hand; the interview was over. In the
next room I saw on a little table a pot of tea and a plate of little
cakes. I wondered if the Governor General really ate cakes. I bowed my
way out of the rose and French gray room and walked with Ober-Lieutenant
Herrmann down the marble stairs. I was thinking of a story that I had
heard of His Excellency. A few years ago he was having great difficulty
in keeping orderlies; they all found him too strict. Finally he obtained
a new orderly, a grim looking individual.
"What were you before you entered the army?" Von Bissing asked him.
"A lion tamer," replied the orderly.
"Good," exclaimed Von Bissing, "you stay."
Try to think of a slender, slightly stooped military man, perhaps a
trifle foppish, with his sleek, brilliantined hair, sitting in a
delicate gold and tapestried chair, and directing the affairs of a
captured nation. His face is sallow, and his sunken eyes always seemed
to smolder, and his mouth is so thin and straight, as almost to be
cruel, but you feel that he is absolutely fair, and it is hard to think
of him as breaking his word. I cannot imagine Governor General von
Bissing doing that. I think he is ruthlessly honest, ruthlessly just,
hard, a rigid disciplinarian, and scrupulously fair, and if reprisals
are necessary no sentimentality will stay his hand. "They are only
needle pricks," he says of seditious Belgians,--"they know why." The
ideal man for a military government, his is an Iron Fist; but if the
fist were of softer stuff, all Belgium would be in chaos.
IX
PRISONERS OF WAR
Promptly at two o'clock the gray army automobile emblazoned with
Prussian eagles in black, left Wilhelmstrasse. Half an hour's run--and
the drivers of those army motor cars know not a speed law--and we were
at garrison headquarters on Doeberitz Road. One saw a fence of white
palings, a lawn surprisingly green for winter, symmetrically laid out
among gray gravel walks that lead up to a square business-like house of
brown stucco, over the door of which was printed "_Kaiser Wilhelm
Soldatenheim, 1914_." Off to the right loomed a long weather-beaten line
of huge tents, one of which was open, showing the tail of a Taube
monoplane. Across the road behind us, unpainted barrack sheds and
soldiers showed through a grove of pine trees, and then while Dr.
Roediger of the Foreign Office, my escort, went to find Major General
von Loebell, commanding the entire Doeberitz camp and garrison, I heard
something that reminded me of the riveting machines on the skyscrapers
in New York. Imagine your state of mind with twenty riveting machines,
all making their infernal clatter at the same time, only each capable of
double the usual noise. That is the sound that suddenly broke in upon us
at Doeberitz Road, and off in the fields we saw battery after battery
of machine gun men, learning their deadly trade. While we waited Dr.
Roediger's return, more guns broke loose, and by the time the General
came, he could scarcely make himself heard. He began by explaining from
his military point of view the Doeberitz camp.
"We have seventeen thousand prisoners here," he said, "and there are
more coming every day. The war office thinks it fine to take so many
Russian prisoners. Out here we don't like it," he smiled. "They are
coming too fast for us. Every day we are building more houses for them,
but each house costs $2500. Already we have spent nearly $800,000 in
this one camp on sleeping quarters alone, and we've got twenty other
prison camps in Germany, and nearly three quarters of a million
prisoners. Here at Doeberitz we are building a bathing place for the
prisoners that is costing $17,500, and when you figure up what it costs
to feed those fellows, the expense of this camp runs up into the
millions."
Perhaps to put us in the proper mental state before visiting the prison
camp proper, Major General von Loebell went on to say something about
the prisoners.
"The French and Russians," he explained, "are easy to handle. They don't
mind working. In fact, they are always asking for something to do. And
remember that whenever a prisoner does any municipal work, labor on the
roads, for instance, he is paid for it, thirty or fifty pfennigs a day,
and he can use the money to buy tobacco." And for an instant the
General grew wrathy. "In France and England, though, they don't pay
German prisoners a cent, no matter what work they do. Our English
prisoners, though"--and the General dolorously shook his head--"Oh, they
are more difficult. Always they have a grievance. The first thing they
asked for was a place to wash. We were glad to give it to them," and the
General grinned. "The Russians never bother you for a luxury like that.
Then we gave the English coffee in the morning, and they protested
again; they wanted tea. Gott, I was glad enough to give them tea; it is
cheaper. But when we want them to work, they sulk. Really, the Frenchmen
work for us as if they enjoy it. So do the Russians. On the whole,
though, we don't have much trouble here at Doeberitz." Pausing, he
added: "I shall now put you in charge of Lieutenant Colonel Alberti, who
will show you around the camp." And with the usual German military bow,
the General bade us adieu. With the Lieutenant Colonel, a most
accommodating man, we proceeded by motor down the Doeberitz Road. Near
the prison sheds my cigarette burned down, and I opened the limousine
window to throw out the stump. Four Russians, guarded by a soldier, were
passing, and suddenly I heard an excited clamor. There, on their hands
and knees, punching and cursing each other, while the soldier prodded
them with his bayonet, the Russians fought for that inch of tobacco,
oblivious to everything, bayonet and all, until it was won.
Leaving them, we came to a gate in the barbed wire fences, and passed on
foot through a double line of sentries into the main street of the
prison camp. One saw on either side rows of long, newly erected,
unpainted sheds, separated by side streets of muddy ground and fenced
off from the main camp street by more barbed wire. One's first
impression was that prisoners of war are among the piteous objects on
the face of the earth. You see swarms of shuffling men who before the
fortunes of war went against them must have looked smart and soldierly.
Now in their uniforms they seemed self-conscious and absurd, sheepish
almost because they had to wear regimentals in the presence of the
enemy. What must have been a trim-looking British marine caught my eye.
His olive drab was tattered and stained; he must have lost his cap or
sold it to buy tobacco. What he wore was a battered derby, picked up
Heaven knows where! It was characteristic, I afterwards learned, of the
entire camp.
As we walked up the main street, groups of prisoners ran down the side
streets and gathering by the barbed wire fences, stared curiously. We
saw a whole battalion of English jackies, more marines, and then swarms
of Russians, heavy and stupid looking. Only one enclosure, the Colonel
explained, was filled with Frenchmen.
The first place that Lieutenant Colonel Alberti put at our disposal was
the camp kitchen. We entered one of the long sheds and came into a
steaming room, where instantly the chief cook and his assistants stood
at attention. The chief cook, following the fashion of his kind, was
dressed in white from head to foot, but his assistants wore the field
uniforms of Russia, smeared with grease. The eye took in a cement floor
that supported three enormous caldrons, each one big enough for three
men to hide in and brimming with a white-looking mixture.
"They are getting supper ready," explained the Lieutenant Colonel, and
he went on to say how the prisoners were fed. "That is a stew made of
cabbage and meat; you can see the pieces of meat in it. At four o'clock
in the afternoon, and at six-thirty in the morning, the prisoners are
given a soup similar to this. Then in the middle of the day they get
sausage and bread. Of course we change the diet; very often they have
coffee in the morning, also."
It did not sound very promising; nor did the stuff in the caldrons look
inviting. I asked the Lieutenant Colonel if I might taste some of the
stew. To my surprise he was perfectly willing; and to my further
surprise I found it to be excellent. Far from being tasteless, it was
evidently prepared by a good chef, and there were sufficient pieces of
meat to provide ample nourishment for a man partaking of that dish twice
a day; certainly he would not be underfed, and in a prison camp one does
not expect delicacies.
As we left the cookroom, the Lieutenant Colonel told us that the eight
thousand five hundred men in this particular section of the camp were
fed in fifty minutes, a statistic suggestive of German efficiency. From
the kitchen we visited one of the sheds where the prisoners sleep.
Leading the way, the officer threw open a wooden door. Instantly some
one shouted a command in Russian; there was a scuffling of feet and the
prisoners jumped up from their mattresses, struck attention and saluted.
At the thought of being compelled to sleep in that room, cold chills ran
up one's spine. In justice to the Germans it must be said that they
build the place clean; they furnished it with new clean bedding; they do
everything humanly possible to keep it clean.
Given that same number of Russians, two hundred and fifty, put them in
that same sized room, their mattresses in four rows, each mattress flush
against the other, transport that shed into Russia and leave those men
there without German supervision to make them keep reasonably clean, and
you would get one result--cholera. As it is, every prisoner at the
Doeberitz camp and every other prison camp in Germany--and I later
visited many of them--can thank fortune that he was taken prisoner by a
nation that knows how to keep things clean.
Passing through the long room with the Russians standing on either side,
bewildered at the sight of foreigners, noting the many windows for
ventilation, one was glad to get out into the open air. There the
Lieutenant Colonel confirmed something you had been thinking.
"It's best not to get too near those fellows," he said. "We do our best
to make them keep clean, but they've all got lice." Then the officer had
his little joke. "For a few days before we had these quarters ready we
had to keep all nationalities together, so the Englishmen caught it from
the Russians. They've been scrubbing ever since, but then they should
share everything. Are they not allies?"
Walking up and down the side streets of the Russian section one saw
faces pressed against the window panes, others peering from behind the
doors, while others boldly came out to view the Lieutenant Colonel's
guest. Here one noticed the difference in the Russian soldier. Two
distinct types, one with the predominance of Tatar blood, heavy faced
and tiny eyed, as devoid of expression as a pudgy Japanese; but there
was the other Russian, the man from the North, more alert looking, who
grinned at you as you went by, and seemed to see something funny in it.
We next came upon a temporary tent where two hundred men were quartered
in a place a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. It was dark inside
the tent, but by the aid of a candle that probably burned with
difficulty in that air, one could see rows of excelsior mattresses
packed in as close together as possible on the bare ground. The place
was a nightmare, and the thought of two hundred and fifty men sleeping
there was incredible. What impressed one, though, was not so much the
conditions in that tent, for we could see near by a new shed, intended
for them, needing only a day's work to complete it, but the policy of
entire sincerity on the part of the War Ministry in permitting an
American correspondent to see this section of the camp.
We then came upon the Englishmen. Their quarters were just the same as
the Russians, and as we later saw, equally as good as those occupied by
the comparatively few Frenchmen at Doeberitz. The Germans had given them
their quarters clean, and they had kept them clean. It was a relief to
go among them. It was with an odd sensation, too, that an American heard
these men, these prisoners of war, speak his own language. Like the
Russians, those who had been sitting, sprang on to their feet, but there
was no salute. There was none of the unctuous servility noticeable among
the Slavs. There was no attempt to curry favor with the officers of the
camp, and one admired the English tremendously for that. They had played
the game of war, lost, and they were taking their medicine. Their
attitude, you saw, as you looked down their line of faces, was
admirable.
To my amazement the Lieutenant Colonel turned to me and said, "You can
talk to these men if you like," adding, "I know now what they'll say to
you."
And standing off he listened to the conversation with a smile.
"Well, boys, how do you like it here?"
"Rotten," was the answer given together.
I looked at the officer; he seemed not surprised.
"Where were you captured?" I asked a particularly boyish marine.
"At Antwerp, sir."
"Then you fellows are the new recruits that were sent over there?"
They all said, "Yes."
"How long were you drilled?"
"About two weeks, sir."
And one was struck with the pitiful side of the blunder that made the
First Lord of England's Admiralty the laughing stock of military experts
the world over. In America we had read and only half believed that
Winston Churchill had taken five thousand young men, practically
greenhorns, and thrown them into Antwerp, a mere handful compared to the
German hosts. That needless sacrifice of men, that useless waste of five
thousand, their number making them practically useless, came home now in
another way. Every boy there--and they nearly all look like boys--could
blame the high-hatted strategist of the Admiralty for their predicament.
And many of them openly did.
"The grub here," said a voice from their ranks, "is swill; it's nothing
but skilley, and poor stew at that. Slops, I calls it, sir."
Having tasted the "slops," I could not agree with him and put it down to
his inherent animosity towards all things German. I should have said
that Dr. Roediger of the Foreign Office seems more the good-looking,
young Englishman of the university type than German; also his accent and
intonation is entirely English. I noticed that when he spoke to me, the
prisoners looked at him queerly. Then I saw two of them go off into a
corner of the room and begin whispering; the chances are that they
decided he was an English journalist who in some miraculous way had been
granted permission to enter Germany and visit the Doeberitz camp. Hope
is eternal with any one who is a prisoner. As we left the room, the
officer going first, this was confirmed; beckoning Dr. Roediger, the two
prisoners who had been whispering said to him, "When you go to England,
won't you tell them over there that we get their letters all right, but
that we're afraid the Germans are not going to let us have our parcels?"
Dr. Roediger asked them what they meant.
"Why, the folks write us that they are going to send us packages as
Christmas presents--tobacco and things a chap can't get here. Now it
would be a rotten Christmas if a chap didn't get those, wouldn't it?
Can't you help us?"
Dr. Roediger assured them if any packages came they would be delivered,
but the prisoners seemed to doubt this, and when we left them their
faces fell. As we were going out, one of them whispered to me, "See if
you can get us our Christmas packages, won't you?"
Christmas in a place like that....
Drawn up outside another of the unpainted sheds, we saw two men whose
appearance instantly contrasted with the half slouch of those about
them.
"You're a regular, aren't you?" I asked a tall, powerfully built man who
wore the chevrons of a sergeant.
"Yes," he replied. "The boys here are just new recruits."
I caught the sympathy in his voice when he spoke of "the boys." His very
manner, his stiff, unyielding, soldierly bearing, made me understand
better than ever before what Kipling meant when he called the British
soldier a king. More than ever one marveled at the system that takes men
out of the London gutters and transforms them into regulars, into a
sergeant who could stand amid the humiliation of that prison camp and
not once forget that he was a soldier of England. That single man was
one of the greatest tributes to the regular army of England that I have
ever seen.
I found myself talking to a browned, deep-chested sailor, whose red
insignia told me he was a gunner's mate.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, surprised, not knowing how a man
from a war ship could have been made a prisoner.
"I was with one of the English naval guns at Antwerp," he said. Then he
made his complaint. It was different from the way the younger men had
talked, based on a different thing, a different way of thinking; in
fact, his one way--the question of discipline.
"The Germans expect me to keep good discipline here. I try to, but if
they would feed us a little better, it would be easier. Every so often
the lads kick on the grub."
"It isn't really bad," I said to him. "I tasted some of it."
His manner was earnest. I knew he was sincere.
"Well," he said, "I can bear up under it, but with some of the lads here
it is pretty hard. They are used to better."
"But," I argued, "they can't expect what they get at home, can they?"
He agreed with this himself, but persisted, "If they'd give us better
grub, I could give them better discipline."
It seemed to be the thing that concerned him most.
As we went along talking to these English people, one heard all kind of
stories. There was the marine, who, when he was captured, had seven
pounds, and in ten weeks he had spent it all but one mark, buying
himself little luxuries at the camp; now he was wondering what he was
going to do with his money nearly all gone. There was another marine
who, when I asked him why he had enlisted, did not say, "Because my
country needed me," but rather, "Because I thought it would be a bit of
a lark, you know." There was another fellow who had a grouch because the
Germans would not let him write long letters home.
"Yes, that's the fellow," Lieutenant Colonel Alberti commented. "The
first day he was here, he wrote an eighteen-page letter. The officer in
charge of the camp has to read every letter sent out by the prisoners.
For the first few days these fellows had nothing else to do but to sit
down and write. You can imagine the result. We were inundated with
letters, so we had to put a limit on them. You see they all have to be
translated. Now they are allowed to write every so often."
The camp at Doeberitz Road only opened my eyes a little. Two days later
I was watching the gray shape of a Zeppelin soaring two thousand meters
above our motor, as we hurried down the Kaiser Wilhelm Road towards
Zossen. This time a good friend had gone to General von Lowenfeld, the
Commander of Berlin, and from him had been secured the exceptional
privilege to take photographs in the prison camp at Zossen.
If my first sight of Doeberitz was sinister, Zossen was farce. As our
motor drew up before a gate similar to Doeberitz, we were put into a
light mood by the spectacle of a baggy, red-trousered Frenchman
balancing himself on a little box and nailing a gap in the wall of his
own prison. He was busy nailing a strand of barbed wire to a post and
near him stood another Frenchman, who looked up at him, poked him in the
ribs with his stick when the sentry wasn't looking, and made faces like
a mischievous boy. The humor of the situation was not out of the
picture, so we afterwards learned, for the Zossen camp has a
surprisingly good time of it. A handsome white-haired baron, who spoke
excellent English, and who was introduced to us as the Lieutenant Baron
von Maltzahn, was as genial as the spirits of the prisoners. With
Captain von Stutterheim, who has charge of the Weinberger section of the
huge camp, they made an escort that was willing to do everything
possible to show us every detail of Zossen. One quickly saw that the
Captain and the Baron, who was the aide of the General in Command of the
Zossen garrison, were proud of the camp.
[Illustration: Calisthenics instead of rifle practice.]
[Illustration: Prisoner making flowers for the chapel altar.]
[Illustration: Luncheon is served at twelve.
WITH FRENCH PRISONERS AT ZOSSEN.]
One saw at once that to all exterior appearances Weinberger camp was
just like Doeberitz. There were the same dirt center street, same side
streets, the same rows of unpainted sheds. But there was a difference
that we later saw. At Doeberitz, as far as the eye can see, the flat
land stretches away unrelieved only here and there by trees, but this
Weinberger section of the Zossen camp is set down in a pine forest, as
the Captain boasted, "One of the healthiest places near Berlin." Here,
although the same number of men live in a shed--two hundred and
fifty--they seem cleaner, which is because here they are mostly
Frenchmen, although, to our delight, we later found a streetful of their
black allies, the Turcos. At Zossen, too, I found a few Russians and
Belgian civilians, although in Belgium, as I came to know, civilians and
soldiers are synonymous--both firing upon the Germans. As we walked up
the street, we were surprised at the few German soldiers.