soldier telephones it to some one at the outpost. The Ober-Lieutenant
looks inquiring. "You would like to see?" he asks. As we hurry out of
the room, a soldier with a rifle, runs down the street. It is dark. The
low roofed houses are smothered in a thickening loom of woods and sky.
In a window a candle burns but to the end of the street it is dark. The
door of the last house is open and I hear a mumbling monotone of prayer.
The flash of a pocket torch shows an ancient Hebrew kneeling in the open
door. From his shoulders hang a brown vestment of prayer and caught
full, his patriarchal, wrinkled face seems almost divine in the halo of
the torch. On the heavy air a rifle cracks.
We are running forward. From the woods come a scattered sound, as of
monstrous frogs croaking in the night; a bullet sucks in a whistle as it
passes by. To the left of the road, behind the little cemetery, is a hut
where we will be reasonably safe. Leaving the road and running along the
edge of the trees, so as to keep the hut between us and the direct fire
we press on. I never knew the sound of bullets could so aid one's
speed....
The firing has become general now and as we peer around the edges of the
hut ahead and to our right, I can hear the soldiers moving in the
trench. It is too dark to see much. Nearby I can discern crouched
shadows running through the night and above the place of graves, the
great brown cross makes its stiff gesture of peace.
Where are the Russians? Way down among the trees, I see the occasional
flashes of their fire. But this is only an exchange of shots. The
Germans are not bothering to reply, only with spasmodic shots, I think
of the black winged birds; has the noise frightened them away?
Still there is a tension that seems to be tightening. Down in the trench
I see the flash of an officer's lamp; it is like a firefly. Other
fireflies, glimmer toward the right of the line, flashing and going out.
Somewhere in the darkness a young voice laughs nervously.
Where are the Russians? They may be crossing the open field for from the
woods the shots no longer come. Everything is silent, everything but the
orders that are being given in hushed but distinct tones--almost you
think, as though the damp wind might pick up some secret and bear it to
the Russian hordes. Where are they? This silence seems interminable.
And then one hears the faint scuffling of their feet; and out of the
silence of the night comes a roar as of animals let loose, and across
the fields we can see a vague moving mass. They are firing now but they
are making as much noise with their voices as with their guns. To hoarse
throaty yells they storm up the road. It occurs to me that they are like
the Chinese whose idea of war is making a noise. Their bullets are
raining through the pines and falling like hail on the houses beyond.
"Why don't your men open fire?"
"It is too soon," whispers the Ober-Lieutenant. Why did he have to
whisper?
And then I see the Russians. I see them in the great blinding flash of
dusty light. I see them revealed as pausing, blinking things, to whom
the searchlights point with fingers of pitiless white. I see them--while
all about me becomes the clamor of guns--stumble and fall; they stagger
and crawl as if the long dusty flashes were lightning, striking them
down; and wherever the white fingers point, there death comes; and their
hoarse throaty shouts, become the wails of death; and that open belt
between the pines becomes lumpy with men, while the night grows horrid
with the rattle of rifles and the quick croaking beat of the guns.
They are being slaughtered out there; they are as bewildered as animals,
blinking, then dying, in the glare of the lights that they knew not
could come. And now the lights are throwing their dusty glimmer on the
distant trees.
"They are retreating!" The Ober-Lieutenant still talks in a whisper.
And, as sweeping this way and that, making their monstrous gestures over
the moaning field, the searchlights hold up as targets the scattering
Russian retreat; as one after another shadowy form I see cross a beam of
light only to fall, and the crash of the rifles seems to have become an
unceasing din and in the sweeping flashes of white I see the piles upon
the field.
The Ober-Lieutenant gives his opinion of it. "Very fine," he says.
"There are many dead." And then, as if after all, this were the
important thing, he adds: "To-morrow, I think we can build our
entanglements."
* * * * *
7:00 _A. M._ I have slept little. All night I thought I heard groans
from afar. Toward dawn I imagine I hear a screech, but of course it
cannot be that.... When we take coffee in the candlelight, the Colonel
seems to have lost the distraction he showed at dinner. He laughs and
jokes.... It is rapidly growing light when I climb up on the transport
that is to take me to Tilsit.... Down over the pines, the black winged
birds are flying--a screech? One wonders.
XIII
THE HERO OF ALL GERMANY
_Field Marshal von Hindenburg_
To the accompaniment of heels clicking in salute we passed the Saxonian
sentries and hurrying through the darkened gateway were met by an
orderly. Field Marshal von Hindenburg was expecting us. Down the
corridors of the castle into a great hall into which opened many doors
ever opening and closing to the passage of hurrying soldier clerks; here
a telegraph was chattering, there a telephone buzzing, messengers coming
and going, staff officers gliding from one room to another, the warm
stuffy air vitalized with magic import--this was my first impression of
the headquarters of the commander in chief of the German armies of the
East.
I was looking at a placard written with a pen and fastened to one of the
unpretentious doors, opening into little ante rooms from the great hall,
which read--"Commander in Chief." On the other side of that door was the
sixty-eight-year-old warrior who has become the national hero of
Germany. To name the town where this took place would be a breach of
military etiquette. I am, however, permitted to say that the Field
Marshal has had his headquarters at Posen, Allenstein, Insterburg, and
another place south of Insterburg about one hundred and fifty kilometers
which the officers of General von Eichorn's Tenth Army spoke of as "a
place unnamed." The reason for this secrecy was reflected in "the town."
Plunged in total darkness, save for a few lanterns, it was impossible to
locate from the sky. Russian aviators could not steal over it by night
and drop bombs to kill the man who is so utterly a master of the armies
that the Czar sends against Germany.
There came Captain Cammerer, first adjutant of Hindenburg, a Prussian
officer of artillery, who said that the Field Marshal would soon receive
us. One gleaned that although the Captain appreciated the distinction,
he longed for the battlefield; one heard him talk eagerly of Tannenberg
where he had made some Russian prisoners. "But now my fingers are
covered with corns," and Cammerer smiled in a melancholy way. "I have to
write much." And then the door that bore the sign, "Commander in Chief,"
opened, and the officer bowed us in. Field Marshal von Hindenburg had
risen to meet us.
My first impression was that Von Hindenburg's pictures have done him an
injustice. There is no denying that his photographs create the
impression of a tremendously strong face ruthless almost to the point of
cruelty. But the camera fails utterly to catch the real Hindenburg. His
is a face tremendously strong, with a chin that is like a buttress and a
forehead of the width that means power and there is a firmness to his
little blue eyes; all these things the camera shows. It does not show
the twinkle in these eyes; nor does it show the kindness that lurks in
the wrinkles of his warty weather-beaten skin. It fails utterly to
depict the pleasant smile that his small sharply cut mouth can show.
Sixty-eight years you are thinking in amazement. This man does not look
more than fifty. All his faculties seem at their zenith. His nose is the
nose of the eagle and it impresses you with wonderful alertness. There
is much color in his mustache, a tawny shade, a large curving but rather
peaceful looking mustache that has not the aggressive angle of the
Emperor's. So massive are his shoulders that I thought at first that his
close cropped gray head was perhaps a little small. But it is a
typically round German head of the strong mold that you see in the
pictures of Durer and Holbein.
Von Hindenburg impressed me as being a big man, physically and mentally
big, the embodiment of what the conqueror of the Russian armies should
be, though I had heard of his suffering with the gout and every known
ill; that he was a decrepid invalid who was called from a sick bed to
save East Prussia. But simply dressed in field gray, wearing only the
order Pour le Merite bestowed upon him by the Emperor for his marvelous
skill in the Russian drive, Paul von Beneokendorff und Von Hindenburg
has the directness and simplicity of men of real greatness. He is wholly
without ostentation, and easier to engage in conversation than many a
younger officer who only sports the second class of the Iron Cross.
He eats simply and he works hard. Dinner at Von Hindenburg's
headquarters consists of soup and one course around an undecorated table
with ten officers. He likes a good wine; when he is drinking a toast he
takes his glass of champagne at one gulp to the despair of some of his
younger officers. The dinner hour showed him to be very lively. He likes
stories where the wit is keen; also he is not a Puritan. He avoids
talking military matters and seems at dinner to have thrown off all
responsibilities. This light inconsequential converse sounds almost
incongruous when you can hear the ta ta of the horns of military
automobiles outside. Indeed it is with difficulty that Von Hindenburg
can be induced to say anything about the war. His very able assistants,
the silent Ludendorff, Chief of Generality, and the lively gesturing
brilliant Hoffman, also avoid talking shop. After he has agreed with you
that the French are fighting bravely, better than one expected them to,
and that everybody in Germany is sorry for them; after he has urged with
exaggerated seriousness that the Austrian officers are efficient; after
he has uttered his contempt of Belgium and echoed the curse of the
German nation for England, he will discuss the Russians.
"The Russians are good soldiers," he says. "They are well disciplined.
But there is a difference between their discipline and ours. The
discipline of the German army is the result of education and moral. In
the Russian army it is the dumb obedience of an animal. The Russian
soldier stands because he is told to; but he stands like one
transfixed. Napoleon was right when he said 'it does not do to kill a
Russian; he must also be thrown down.' The Russians have learned a good
deal since the Japanese war. They are very strong in fortifying their
positions on the battlefield and understand excellently how to dig
trenches and holes. As soon as they have chosen their position they
disappear under the ground like moles. Our soldiers had to learn how to
do that too. Our soldiers did not like it. They like to fight in the
open, to storm and have it over with. But I had to make them wait in
position until I was ready. We are not afraid of the Russian superiority
of numbers. Russia is vast, but not as dangerous as it looks. The modern
war is not decided by numbers. In East Prussia we have broken two
Russian invasions. Each time they are outnumbered as three to one. An
army is not a horde of uniformed men. An army must have good guns,
ammunition, and brains."
The lively Hoffman, a wonderful strategist, adds, "We have absolute
confidence in our superiority to the Russians. We have to win and
therefore we will win. It is very simple."
And the silent Lieutenant General Ludendorff, a hero of Liége, says
shortly, "We will manage it."
When the dinner is over and it is drawing near to eleven o'clock, you
get ready to go, for you have heard that around midnight Von Hindenburg
generally has "something to do." It is said that he works hardest at
that hour. And as you leave the quiet house, it dawns upon you that the
little threads of wires leading out from the windows connect with
different army corps headquarters and that somewhere to the east under
the Russian night gigantic armies are advancing and that the officers
with whom you have been talking so peacefully, are the leaders of these
armies and that the thing they are making is called The History of the
World.
I have seen the likeness of Hindenburg a thousand times. In Houthem,
which is a little shell torn village where the Bavarians come to from
the firing line in front of Ypres and get a few days' rest, I saw Von
Hindenburg's photograph pasted on the window of the canteen. I have seen
it in every big city in Germany; I dare say, it is in most houses. I was
in the Winter Garden one night when a Berlin crowd went mad over an
impersonation of the Field Marshal by one of the actors. The crowd
thumped its beer steins on the backs of chairs and got up and cheered.
An American "movie man" finally induced Von Hindenburg to stand before a
camera. He did it in a way that made you think of the old J. P. Morgan
who wanted to smash every camera he saw. For only a few seconds did
Hindenburg walk in front of the movie machine but when that picture was
shown in a Berlin theater the audience broke into wild applause. Von
Hindenburg is the big man in Germany to-day. As a popular idol he rivals
the Kaiser. The Germans have a new war poem that you hear recited in the
music halls. It tells of different German generals, heroes of the war,
and it ends "but there is only one Hindenburg."
Idol of the people, colossus of the battlefield, Von Hindenburg goes
quietly about his work, unconcerned with any of the popular clamor. It
is said that one of his staff officers was in great indignation because
a high order of war had been conferred upon a general who had not done
any actual fighting or big battle-direction in the West. The loyal
officer mentioned this to Hindenburg and the old warrior said, "I don't
care how many orders they give out, so long as they let me alone out
here."
His task is to keep Russia from invading Germany. It is obviously a huge
undertaking. It is a bigger job than is held by the head of the great
corporation in the world. As with all popular figures, writers have
romanced about Hindenburg. When the correspondents in Berlin couldn't
get out to the front in the early part of this war, they made copy out
of the first idea in sight. So they made a Cincinnatus out of
Hindenburg. It pleased them to imagine him ill at his home, with the
gout, when there came a special telegram from the Emperor ordering him
to take charge of the army of East Prussia. They pictured him getting up
from a sick bed, limping on a cane to an automobile and saving Germany.
When you mention this to Hindenburg, he gets so red in the face that you
think the blood vessels are going to burst and when he can speak, he
roars, "Do I look like a sick man?"
Graduated from a military academy at sixteen, appointed to the infantry
as a lieutenant before 1866, he fought in the war against Austria. He
first came to the attention of the eyes of the German army at the
Battle of Königgrätz when with fifty of his men he charged an Austrian
battery. A grape shot grazed his skull and he fell stunned. Lifting
himself up, he saw that his men had gone on and had captured two of the
Austrian guns. The other three field pieces were being dragged away by
the Austrians. Staggering to his feet, young Von Hindenburg, his face
streaming with blood, rallied his men and with a wave of his sword
charged after the fleeing Austrians. On their heels for more than a
mile, he finally attacked them, although outnumbered three to one, and
captured them. For this he was decorated with the Red Eagle Order.
There came the Franco Prussian war. Von Hindenburg was now an
Ober-Lieutenant. He came through the battles of Gravelotte and Sedan; he
was in the siege of Paris and when LeBourget was stormed, the young
officer led a charge--and they gave him the Iron Cross. From that time
on his rise was rapid. A captain on the General Staff, then Major, so up
through the grades of the Chief of Staff of the Eighth Army Corps to the
Commander of the Fourth Army Corps to a General of Infantry, which high
office he held until 1911.
During the period of his retirement which came in 1911, he began to
study the farm lands of East Prussia socketed with the lakes and swamps.
This was to be the battleground of an inevitable war with Russia. He
began to study the region until he knew every square mile by heart from
Königsberg on the Baltic down through the network of lakes south of
Tannenberg. On paper he fought there a thousand different campaigns. It
is said that he became almost fanatical on the subject. In his classes
at the War Academy where he was an instructor he became known as The Old
Man of the Swamps. He used to go round Berlin with a folder of maps, and
any officer whom he could buttonhole, he drew him aside and talked of
the Masurian lakes. He became so obsessed with this subject that
officers fled at his approach. They began to call him Swampy Hindenburg.
But as he rose in rank and as he commanded troops during the maneuvers
in East Prussia, the General Staff realized that Hindenburg knew the
country.
There came a day when Von Hindenburg was appointed umpire of a big
maneuver in East Prussia. The Army of the Red--so the story runs--was
commanded by the German Emperor, opposing him was the Army of the Blue.
The sham battle ended rather undecisively. The Emperor and all the
lesser generals met in the center of the field at the Grosse Kritic to
hear the criticisms of umpire Von Hindenburg. Hindenburg was unmerciful.
He tore the reputation of the General of the Blues to tatters. He
demonstrated that this officer had made the grossest blunders. For half
an hour in unsparing language Hindenburg, who had his own ideas about
how every battle in East Prussia should be fought, criticized the
General. It occurred to the Emperor that Von Hindenburg was
concentrating his criticism upon the Army of the Blue and that he had
said nothing whatever about the Army of the Red, which the Kaiser
himself commanded. The Kaiser asked Von Hindenburg about this, remarking
that it was noticeable that nothing had been said about his army and
adding that for the benefit of all the officers the Army of the Red
should also be criticized. Von Hindenburg continued to say nothing about
it. Again the Emperor asked him.
"Your Majesty," Von Hindenburg said bluntly, "I deliberately refrained
from criticizing your army. That is why I took the leader of the Blues
so severely to task. For if I had been he, with his opportunities, I
would have driven Your Majesty's troops into the Baltic Sea."
The Emperor concealed his displeasure. Presently Von Hindenburg was
retired. Though retired, Von Hindenburg managed to obtain a detachment
of grumbling troops from Königsberg and led them down into the Masurian
swamp region to work out his problems. He would insist upon the cannon
being pulled through the muddiest parts of the lake district and when
they became mired fast it always seemed to please him. After several
days he would bring the exhausted soldiers and horses and muddy guns
back to Königsberg where the officers would tell each other that the
"old man" was quite mad.
In those few years Von Hindenburg got the reputation for being a bore.
All he would talk about was the swamps. They even say in Berlin that he
would pour the blackest of beer on a table top to indicate swamp water,
and then would work out a military problem during his dinner. Absurd
exaggerations obviously, but still there must have been some basis for
it. One day one of those members of the Reichstag who believe that all a
country has to do is to make money, proposed that the Masurian lakes be
filled in, and that the ground be given over to intensive farming. Von
Hindenburg read the news that night in Posen and caught a train for
Berlin. He was in a rage. Fill in his pet lakes and swamps!
_Unglaublich!_ Not to be thought of! They say he went to see the Emperor
about it, that he brought with him all his maps and battlelines.
They say that he told the Emperor that if Masurenland was filled in it
would be the greatest military crime in the history of the German
nation. He did not go away until the Emperor promised that the swamps
should remain.
Then came the war. The Russians were mobilized. They were on the
frontier. The Old Man of the Swamps offered his services to the Emperor.
He was a retired general, though. The Emperor had his regular generals
to the army of East Prussia. There was General von Prittwitz, for
instance. The Russians got into East Prussia. General von Prittwitz was
soon deposed. Everybody in military Germany knows that through the
blunders of certain high officers the small army that the Germans had in
the field against Russia early in August was very nearly annihilated. I
personally know of one atrocious blunder when a single unsupported
cavalry division was sent from Insterburg to rescue a Landwehr division
that was outnumbered eight to one by the Russians. The cavalry knew that
there was so few that they could do nothing. Still the orders were to go
and they had to go. Such was the campaign of East Prussia.
The Emperor went to Moltke, then his Chief of Staff. The Emperor said
that the German troops in East Prussia were not being handled properly.
He demanded another general. Moltke named one man after another and the
Emperor shook his head. Moltke was at the end of his list. "Is there no
one else you can recommend?" asked the Emperor.
"There is one man, Your Majesty, but, knowing your feelings in the
matter, I have purposely refrained from mentioning his name."
"Who is he?" asked the Emperor quickly.
"Von Hindenburg," replied Moltke.
"It is not to be thought of," declared the Emperor.
But the Emperor went away to think it over. Like a vast tidal wave the
Russians were breaking over his beloved East Prussia. The Emperor turned
it over in his mind. There could be no delay. He sent a laconic message
to Moltke. "Appoint Von Hindenburg."
So they took Cincinnatus away from the plow.
"I was not sick in bed," says Von Hindenburg in telling about the
summons. "I was just sitting at the table having coffee when this
important telegram came. Ludendorff my Chief of Generality had been
summoned from Belgium and he came by special train."
And then began the ride to the East Prussian front traveling all the
night in one of the high powered army automobiles discussing as he went
the position of the troops. Von Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrived at the
place that had been chosen as headquarters and he took command of the
Army of the East. You know what happened, you know how the Russian
invasion poured in across East Prussia, past the Masurian lakes in a
semi-circle from Tilsit southwards.
You know that Hindenburg elected to give battle on a field that was four
times as large as Sedan. Back of the German line Hindenburg and his
staff were watching the big maps. Like a great pair of tongs his
soldiers were closing in from north and south. When they had surrounded
the Russians, Von Hindenburg would order the battle begun, not before.
Field telephones buzzed, the telegraph clicked, the staff officers were
ever changing the positions on the big maps, the black lines, signifying
the German soldiers were ever drawing closer together. Soon the Russians
would be surrounded. And then an aeroplane with black iron crosses
painted under its wings dropped down out of the clouds and landed in
front of Hindenburg's headquarters. And its observer dashed up to
report, "The enemy is surrounded!"
"Begin the battle," ordered Hindenburg.