thousand prisoners. That's only one per cent., you see. And then over
there," and he pointed to a tall wooden scaffolding, "we are going to
have a searchlight on that, and another on the other side of the camp,
so if everything happens to go wrong with the electric plant we can
sweep the searchlights on the camp streets. Also in case of a
disturbance we are going to have some rapid firers and a big gun. Over
there, now," and he led me towards the fences, triple fences of barbed
wire, "one of those wires on the inner fence--you see the soldiers and
prisoners are protected from it by the outer wires--one of those wires
is charged heavily with electricity, so that anybody trying to escape
will be electrocuted. The prisoners have been warned."
As we continued on up the street, we were impressed by the number of
Frenchmen. Everywhere one saw the baggy red trousers and the Baron told
us that they were all prisoners from Maubeuge and Rheims. I noticed that
squads of Frenchmen were marching up and down in command of a corporal
and extending their ranks to go through the military setting-up drill.
They seemed to move with a jaunty air, which contrasted with their
nondescript appearance, and which spoke wonders for their spirit.
"They weren't like that at Doeberitz," I said to Captain Stutterheim.
"There everybody slouched around. Here they have some life. How do you
explain it?"
The Captain didn't know. "They are taken the best of care of. They have
plenty of money. We give them all the privileges we can and they seem to
have made up their minds to enjoy themselves."
Whereupon one decided that this marked difference in the spirit of the
two camps was due to the fact that here they were nearly all Frenchmen,
ready to enjoy life no matter where they were.
"Yesterday," remarked the Captain, "there were 6000 marks sent in the
mail for these prisoners, and last week we had a day when 9000 marks
were received. We are careful to do everything we can to make them
comfortable; for instance, the French Catholics have streets to
themselves; so have the Protestants. We also separate the Russians and
the Poles. We have to be very careful to keep the Turcos in a street of
their own. They don't like the French, now, since they've heard that a
Holy War has been decreed in Constantinople."
Eating is one of the best things the Germans do, so it did not surprise
me when the Captain led the way to the prisoners' kitchen. It looked the
same as at Doeberitz, only here the huge cauldrons were filled with a
whitish semi-liquid substance that made you wonder, until the cook
explained that it was rice. I was deciding that the prisoners were fed
more substantially over at Doeberitz, when the Captain remarked, "We
have many Catholics here, you know, and to-day is Friday, so we give
them rice instead of a meat stew." He went on to explain that the men
received a pound and a half of bread every third day, as well as
receiving the sausage and soup diet of Doeberitz. The men were doing
things, not slouching around. They were either making little articles or
playing games. I saw them weaving slippers of straw and cutting out
things with pocket knives; in one corner of the room a bit of gay color
met the eye. A soldier was making paper flowers. In poor French I asked
him what the flowers were for.
"They are for the chapel altar," he replied with dancing eyes.
I turned to the Captain. "What! Have you got a chapel here for these
fellows?"
"You will soon see it," he said. "They built the altar themselves, and
among the captured soldiers are three French priests."
At the end of the kitchen street I noticed an adjoining structure, which
the Captain explained was the canteen. In there I found a wonderfully
equipped little place, where all sorts of articles were for sale.
Soldiers were sitting around just as farmers hang around a country store
and talk. There was a gossipy air of snugness about the little place
that made one think it belonged in the midst of a well fed garrison and
not in a prison camp. There was a counter behind which stood a German
salesman, assisted by a French interpreter, and this little canteen bore
no relation whatever to the system of company stores in vogue in the
mining camps of America. In other words, it was run to give the men the
best possible for their money.
On a blackboard I saw chalked different prices, 10 Cigarettes for 10
Pfg., which is almost five for a cent. I saw sponges strung on a string,
which convinced me that the men in the camp were doubly anxious to keep
clean. I was reminded of Coney Island by a little griddle of sizzling
hot dogs, which could be bought for two cents each. I saw a basket full
of segments of thick German wurst, 5 cents for a piece 2 inches in
diameter and 4 inches long. They even sold butter in that little store ½
lb. for 12 cents, cheaper than you can get it in America. Sides of
bacon, hams and long dangling wurst hung from the ceiling, and near them
a wooden aeroplane tried to fly, while below on the floor, a pair of
wooden shoes waited the owner who had the necessary 45 cents. On a table
in a corner I saw where the games came from, checkers and cards,
absurdly cheap. They even sold beer. I remarked on this.
"It's not an intoxicating beer," the Captain explained. "It's what we
call in Germany--Health Beer. It is used in cases of illness when a
doctor wants to give a patient strength."
It was after we had inspected a little room which one of the French
soldiers had converted into a barber shop, where one might be shaved for
10 centimes, and where if one had 50 centimes he might be tempted by a
sign that read, "Latest Parisian Haircut here"; it was after we had
talked with the sparkling-eyed barber, happy these days--was not money
plentiful among the prisoners?--that we came upon the sculptor.
Opening a wooden door upon which was written in French that only
officers might enter, the Captain bowed us into the last place that you
would expect to find in a prison camp. Had the damp odor of clay not
told you, you would have seen from the unfinished gray pedestal that
stood by the window, that this little twelve by twelve room was a
studio. There, standing beside his work, a make-shift sculptor's apron
over his soiled red and blue uniform, stood a young French soldier. The
Baron explained to me that in 1908 this man had won the second prize at
Rome. He told me that his name was Robert L'Aryesse, and in my notebook
he wrote his autograph so that I might not misspell his name. I asked
him if he knew Paul Manship, the young American sculptor, who only a few
years ago took the prize at Rome. At Manship's name the Frenchman's
face lit up and he began eagerly to talk of the quarter where they had
all lived in Italy. How was Manship? What was he doing? Oh, he had been
very wonderful, that young American! The admiration of Monsieur
L'Aryesse was great.
The Frenchman was so happy to hear news from an old comrade that he
forgot that my command of his language was elementary and launched forth
in a glowing appreciation of Manship which left me far behind.
A photographer meanwhile caught sight of the statue of a Turk standing
on the shoulders of a Russian soldier with arm extended (the Baron
explained it was to be used as a guidepost to the Zossen prison), and
with a keen sense for a good human interest picture began to focus his
camera.
M. L'Aryesse was in alarm; it would never do to take a picture. What if
his friends should see it! He began wringing his hand and then nervously
running his fingers through his hair. To think of such a specimen of his
work being photographed and published in America. But the photographer
assured him that the statue was wonderful, and in an incredibly short
time a flashlight powder boomed in the room and the job was done.
From the studio we walked up to the end of the street and entered a shed
where a swarm of roughly-clad prisoners divided into groups were
standing around a post pulling at something. They were braiding straw.
One of them exhibited a round mat made of braided straw about five
inches in diameter, which, it appeared, were mats to put in the hoofs of
the horses to keep out the snow.
And again you marveled at the German system, this obvious weeding out of
men who knew how to braid straw and putting them to work making a winter
supply for the army horses. These men were the worst type of Belgians
from the Antwerp slums and from the farms. One black-haired,
evil-looking fellow had two yellow bands sewn to the sleeve of his coat,
the badge of their spokesman and officer.
This black-haired gentleman was known as Lulu. Lulu was very proud of
his rank. I doubted at first whether the man had a forehead; his black
hair hung low; he was of the type--and there were many more in that room
like him--of the hereditary criminal. Our gunmen would look like saints
in comparison with this apache of the slums. Through an interpreter I
was permitted to talk to the Belgians, and I chose the mildest looking
man of them all. He said that he was perfectly satisfied to be where he
was. The other men in the room nodded assent. This puzzled me a little,
for they looked sullen enough to be unafraid to speak their minds even
in the presence of a gray coated Prussian officer. But the Belgian
explained, "Here we have a place to sleep, we get food, and we are not
in danger of being killed."
Another black-browed fellow volunteered his story. "When the war began I
was a reserve. I was told to hide my uniform and shoot at the Germans
whenever I got a chance. Then I was called into regular service, and I
put on my uniform and fought in the ranks. After that, with hundreds of
my comrades, I was told to put on my civilian clothes again and go back
home or any place where I could hide and take shots at any stray German
soldiers I could see."
This seemed to me to be a confirmation of the German charges, that
soldier civilians had been making war upon them.
At the other extremity of the street I found the other feature of the
camp. Here were the Turcos. Dressed in outlandish costumes I saw some
still wearing the burnooses of their tribes, others natty little, light
blue, gold-embroidered jackets, some with the red fez, others with
turbans, a motley collection that did not look at all the terrible Turco
we had heard about. It happened to be what Captain Stutterheim called
"Lice day," and thoroughly enjoying it the Turcos were standing in the
street beating their blankets.
The leader of the Belgians was Lulu; but the Turks had a handsome
gentleman who looked as if he would cut your throat for two cents, who
answered to the name of Jumbo. Like Lulu, Jumbo was very proud of the
two yellow stripes sewn on his arm. It was Lulu who posed his comrades
for the photographer, arranging them with a nice sense of values. And
when I looked the length of that line, glanced from one brutish face to
another, I need no other confirmation of the statement that out of two
hundred Turcos at the Zossen camp one in every four had been captured
with ghastly trophies in his possession. The same charge of savagery has
been made against the Turk, but from everything I can learn about the
Turkish soldier--and here in Berlin I have talked to three American
correspondents who have traveled with Turkish armies--there is a vast
difference between the German trained Turkish soldier, and the French
Turco.
Presently we selected a grinning, black villain and the most dapper
Frenchman in the camp. All his comrades roared with laughter when they
understood, and the whole procession came up the camp street as if they
were going to a workman's Sunday picnic. Nicely posed, they made a
splendid picture, which provoked the Baron's _"Allies!"_ and roars of
deep-throated Germanic laughter.
Possibly with a stage-manager's instinct to relieve the setting, the
Captain walked us a short distance to a model little hospital camp in
the pine woods. The surgeon in charge amazed us by saying that fifty per
cent. of the captured French soldiers were tubercular. After walking
with the wounded through the pines, we returned to the camp. We passed
Frenchmen busy at landscape gardening. It seemed incredible. On every
camp street they had made a long box design of evergreen and lettered to
read the name of the company and the regiment.
It was then that I saw the man who had been making the paper flowers
leave his shed and cross the street. Remembering what he had told me
that the flowers were made for the chapel, I suggested that we go
there. Following the soldier, we found ourselves in an anteroom at one
end of a scrupulously clean shed. From the anteroom a door opened into a
long unpainted room, at the far end of which I saw a crude altar. I
noticed a square of red cloth of some cheap material, half covering the
wall, and against this, in white and gold relief stood different figures
of worship, candles, crucifixes, a host covered with a roughly cut piece
of the same red muslin, and surmounting it all, high on the wall, an
Almighty crown.
I saw the soldier with the flowers enter by a distant door and give them
to the priests. When the priest handed him a plain vase and let him fill
it himself, the soldier seemed ready to cry out with happiness. Silently
the three figures at the altar went about their devotions. Again the
door opened, a line of prisoners appeared, walking on tip-toe, their
rough boots creaking; they filed across the room, and making two lines
before the altar, dropped on their knees, their lips moving in a
monotonous monotone of prayer. Rising, they tip-toed out and another
file came in, and among them the vivid garments of a Turco. Making a
sign to the Captain, I left the chapel. Presently they brought the Turco
to me. He could speak French. I asked him why he had turned Christian
and he said something to the effect that he had seen the way to the one
real religion. He was explaining volubly about his conversion just
before a battle in France, when the Captain pulled off the Turco's fez
and grabbed a little braided pigtail concealed beneath.
"Christian, eh?" laughed the Captain. "What are you still wearing that
thing for, then?"
The Turco began to grin.
"This religion," he said, "makes it pleasant among the Frenchmen, and
then when I get home--well, how can I be a good Mohammedan without
this?" and lovingly he patted his braided hair.
Prisoners of war? Are they ill or well treated? I leave my reader to
judge the facts. I have tried to give you accurate pictures of the
varied camps, typical of the German system. Of the camps in England and
France, I do not know; of the camps in Russia no man knows. To silence
the stories of ill-treatment that official press bureaus intermittently
produce, why not apply a remedy?
Why not standardize the prison camps? As it is a task for humanitarians
why should not the suggestions come from Switzerland, the home of the
Red Cross, with the tacit understanding and backing up of the United
States. A standard set of prison camp recommendations could be drafted
recommending certain quantities and kinds of food, certain conditions
for sleeping quarters, certain limitations to the enforced labor. The
old Geneva document is out of date; its compilers could not foresee a
World War; no nation to-day could meet its recommendations; the problem
of handling prisoners of war has become too vast.
X
ON THE HEELS OF THE RUSSIAN RETREAT
The Russians were retreating! In Pschoor's our waiter told us; on the
Linden great pennants began to appear; an hour and Berlin had bedecked
itself in flags.... The Russians were retreating! In front of the
newspaper offices the crowds stood twenty deep, their faces turned to a
bulletin which said that Hindenburg was driving the enemy from East
Prussia. Magically, vendors selling little photographic buttons of the
German hero, swarmed on to the streets. _"Bilder von Hindenburg! Bilder
von Hindenburg!"_
The great cafés which an hour ago had been empty, were suddenly filled.
The air was tense with excitement. At every table the "beer strategists"
were discussing this newest of great victories, which they were calling
a second Tannenberg. Unable even to get a place of vantage from which to
overlook this ecstasy of patriotism, I returned to Adlon just in time to
receive a message from a blue-coated page boy; Major von Herwarth, of
the General Staff, wanted me at the telephone.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Fox," the Major was saying. "I am very happy to say
that everything has been arranged and that you start to-night for the
East." Thanking Major von Herwarth, who has done everything in his power
to help every open-minded American correspondent locate the facts, I
hurried to my room to get my luggage together.
And an hour later we were completing arrangements for the most amazing
piece of reporting done in this war. With the cooperation of the Foreign
Office, the Staff had decided to permit Herbert Corey and myself to send
collaborated reports from the front to America. Subsequently filed at
different points on the battle line, they went by military telegraph
into Germany, thence by the regular Government lines to Berlin, thence
by the great wireless to Sayville, Long Island. Only a limited number of
words a day are sent by the transatlantic wireless but the Foreign
Office gave us one hundred and fifty of these which is why thirty-seven
American cities read as swiftly as science could bring it to them, the
truth of the terrific smash of Hindenburg's army.
That night, my only luggage, a change of clothing wrapped in a sleeping
bag--for we had been cautioned to reduce what we had brought to the
barest necessities--I went at eleven to the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof
where I met the officer who was to take me to the front. I found Baron
von Stietencron, a captain in the 5th Regiment of the Prussian Guards,
the crack infantry of Germany, to be a light spirited devil-may-care
type of officer, gifted with a touch-and-go sense of humor, high strung
and imaginative. Since the war he had let a reddish beard grow around
his chin but one could see he was young and never happy in the field
unless he was leading a charge. Indeed, later that night I learned that
Baron von Stietencron had been shot through the throat when the Germans
stormed at St. Quentin!
Troops swarmed on the platform; new recruits going out to fill the gaps
in the line, officers rejoining their regiments. The train for
Königsberg glided into the arc lighted shed; we managed to get a first
class compartment.
"I tried to get sleeping accommodation," apologized Baron von
Stietencron, who spoke good American, "but we were too late."
To the waving and calling of good-bys, the train glided past the pallid
faces of soldiers' loved ones, and clanking over the switches, turned
its headlight towards the Eastern night. It was near three before any of
us thought of sleeping. In that short space of time we came to know
Baron von Stietencron amazingly well. And I heard some things of war
that made my blood run cold.
"The Russians are in retreat now at this point," explained the Baron,
tracing his finger over one of those marvelously minute staff maps. "We
arrive at Königsberg in the morning and from there we shall go south to
Lyck. It was at Lyck that the first big engagement of the battle took
place."
Lyck from which only a few days ago the Russians had been sent flying!
There was no bed that night; we slept sitting but the drowsy rumble of
the car wheels seemed to be the clatter of the Russian retreat and when
the big light glared through the window into my eyes, I had to awake
fully before realizing that it was not a searchlight seeking out the
retreating soldiers of the Czar, but only the station lamp at Dirschau.
[Illustration: Burying Russians on the East Prussian frontier.]
[Illustration: Reinforcements following our motor into Russia.]
Morning found us in the beery dining-room of the old station at
Königsberg, breakfasting on coffee and wurst, and watching through the
window a bivouac of young soldiers who had spent the night outside. We
were walking down the platform to take the train for Korschen, when we
saw a little boy tug at his mother's arm and stare with mouth agape into
the sky. There to the south what seemed to be a stub of black pencil was
slowly dissolving into the snow gray clouds. "Zeppelin! Zeppelin!" In a
clamor the waiting rooms emptied but already the great bag was a thing
of the mists, vanishing, with its cargo of death, towards Warsaw.
Half an hour and we were on the train for Korschen.
Running almost due south from Königsberg, the railroad enters
Masurenland where swamps and lakes still hold the Russian dead of those
terrible August days, when Tannenberg turned East Prussia red. There the
empty yellowish fields, undulating from hillock to gully, across the
picture that the car window framed, bristled but five days before with
Russian lines. There at Korschen where we changed cars, they had burned
the station. There we saw on flat cars, ready to be pulled to some point
behind the front, three black painted motors that the Russians had
abandoned in their flight; coupled to them a heavy truck, bearing a long
German howitzer; beside that a Belgian freight car, marked Louvain.
Somehow it seemed quite natural that they all should be there--the
Russian motors, the Belgian car, the German gun.
It was just as we were leaving Korschen that a smiling slender young man
who wore glasses, bowed outside the compartment door, and said: "You're
an American, aren't you?" And when I told him yes, he said: "I am too."
He went on to say that he was from Passaic, and I found myself recalling
Gus Schwing of Newark, the Lieutenant Brevet whom we had met in Brussels
and wondering if all the Americans in the German army came from New
Jersey.
"I am an architect in Passaic," he said. "I happened to be in Germany on
August 3rd. Before coming to America I had served my time in the army,
but I, being born in Germany, offered my services at the outbreak of war
to the government. They are using me to go behind the army, building up
what has been destroyed. I have just come from France where we're
rebuilding everything behind our battle line."
Captain von Stietencron, who had noticed my amazement, smiled and added,
"In France and Belgium our soldiers planted the fields with a winter
crop, last fall, and they're planting an autumn crop now."
Which seems to be a case of harvesting machines following the
howitzers. At Stürlack where the railroad strikes due east for Lötzen we
were made to feel the growing intimacy of the front, by being shunted on
a side while troop trains rumbled by for an hour. It being four o'clock
then and not having been able to eat since morning, the Baron led a
foraging expedition into a track-side farmhouse, which resulted in more
wurst and heavy black bread. I can still see the expression in that old
farmer's eyes as, opening the cottage door, he saw the Baron outside. It
was as if the gray officer's cape, hanging over the Baron's broad
shoulders, at once made him in the eyes of that old man, something
superhuman and to be idolized. And I did not wholly understand this
until I learned that the Russians had spent a rioting night in the
farmer's house and that thenceforth to him, the German troops had become
avengers and deliverers.
"They are swine, these Russians," he told the Baron. "Further on you
will see."
Beginning with Lötzen, the railroad became wholly military. No passenger
cars went further than Lötzen, a direct feeding point to the front.
Learning, upon leaving our car that a military train would pull out for
Lyck in a few minutes, we ran down the tracks, stumbling on the ties,
for it had become dark, trying to find a place to get on. But every
freight car filled with food and ammunition was sealed and even on the
flat cars there was not room to stand between the caissons and guns.
"Next to the engine," some one shouted, but even as we ran towards that
car, where we now saw the pale glow of lantern light framed by an open
door, the train pulled out.
"It's an hour," remarked Captain von Stietencron, "before there's
another."
Picking our way back over the rails we made towards the dimly lighted
station, its platform swarming with soldiers, gleaming with bayonets as
they moved in a path of light. Entering a dingy waiting room, we stood
beside a crowded lunch counter while the Baron went in to see the
station Kommandant. Around the little stained topped table officers were
eating dinner.