prevent the export of pictures which might reveal the war secrets of the
United States, which might be distorted and used as enemy propaganda, or
which might give a wrong impression of the conditions prevailing in this
country. For example, no pictures dealing with the influenza epidemic
were permitted to leave the country, for the German Government would
almost certainly have used them as proof that the man-power of America
was seriously impaired, thus encouraging the German people to prolong
their resistance. An export license was refused to a picture showing the
effects of a cyclone in Tyler, Texas, because, had it reached Germany,
it would, in all probability, have been given a caption something like
this: “American city after bombardment by German aircraft.” The fact that
there were no German aircraft on this side of the Atlantic would have
made no difference; the credulous German public would have greeted such
a picture with wild applause. As a matter of fact, thousands of pictures
of crumbling castles in England and of French ruins dating from the
Crusades were used in such manner by the Germans. For a similar reason,
the beautiful poster drawn by Joseph Pennell for the Fourth Liberty
Loan, depicting New York City in ruins as the result of a raid by German
aircraft, was not permitted to go abroad, for it would have been only too
easy for the German Government to publish it as an official picture of
the devastation wrought by German airmen in the American metropolis. I
have wondered, indeed, why the German propaganda bureau did not publish
a picture of Pompeii with a caption to the effect that it was an Italian
city destroyed by the Austrian fleet.
Some curious schemes were perfected by German agents in the United States
to convey messages to Germany in spite of the censorship. A set of
films depicting cannibal life in the South Seas aroused the suspicions
of the censors because of the irregularity of the perforations and
because of certain mysterious numbers appearing along the edges. The
films were finally passed for export, but not until the perforations
and numbers had been trimmed off. On another occasion the censor seized
an advertising folder, issued by a famous New York department store,
which contained a photograph of an exceedingly good-looking young woman
wearing an embroidered blouse and a plaid skirt, such as the store was
offering for sale. The picture showed the young woman standing beside a
table, holding in one hand a volume which, upon close inspection, was
found to bear the peculiar title _The Laborer’s Catechism_. Some bright
mind in the Censorship Section deduced that this title was really the
key to a code message, and that the message itself was contained in
the embroidery on the blouse. The story, which appeared to have all
the elements of a first-class spy tale, was spoiled, however, by the
unromantic code experts of M I 8, who professed themselves unable to
find any message concealed in the embroidery. Both the department store
and the photographers who took the picture were entirely absolved of any
attempt to communicate with the enemy, and the young woman herself was
found in a hospital, desperately ill with influenza. When the agents of
the Department of Justice visited the hospital some time later for the
purpose of interrogating her, it was found that she had left for parts
unknown. Whether the message was embroidery or imaginary I do not pretend
to say. I merely repeat the story because it illustrates the extreme
caution exercised by the Censorship Section. Knowing the cunning of the
Teuton, it was taking no chances.
Speaking of false scents in the tracking of spies, I remember being told
in England of an old lady, apparently a woman of some means, living in a
suburb of London, who was accustomed to write several times a week to her
daughter in Austria. The letters, being addressed to an enemy country,
were, of course, opened by the censor. Though there was nothing in the
communications themselves which could, by any stretch of the imagination,
be interpreted as treason, the suspicions of the officials were
instantly aroused by the discovery that each letter contained three new
playing-cards. One letter might contain, for example, the ace of hearts,
the ten of clubs, and the king of diamonds; in the next letter, posted a
few days later, would be the seven and the nine of spades and the king of
hearts. Here was a code which baffled every expert in the United Kingdom.
British Intelligence, the Censor’s Bureau, and the Criminal Investigation
Department of Scotland Yard all tried to ferret out the mystery of the
cards, but without success. Every conceivable test was applied to both
the letters and the cards for codes, ciphers, and invisible writing,
but without an atom of success. At length the old lady, whose every
movement had been shadowed for weeks, was summoned to Scotland Yard and
questioned. When the chief inquisitor suddenly demanded of her why she
enclosed playing-cards in her letters to her daughter, she replied: “My
daughter is a great bridge-player, and when I read in the newspapers that
it was impossible to get cards in Austria, I thought I would slip three
or four cards into every letter. In that way, you see, I would be able to
send her a pack every five or six weeks.”
To another subsection of M I 10 was delegated the censorship of mail to
and from the prisoners of war in the various internment camps in the
United States. As there were nearly 6,000 of these interned enemies, and
as they were permitted, by the regulations, to send nearly 40,000 letters
and post-cards a month, no limit being placed on the amount of mail they
could receive, the task of censoring this mass of correspondence, most of
it in languages other than English, was very far from being a sinecure.
The primary object of this censorship was to prevent the passing of
objectionable communications, such as attacks on the government or
information which might be of value to the enemy. The censors were
also constantly on the watch to prevent the prisoners from acting as
correspondence intermediaries; that is, from transmitting messages from
Germany to German sympathizers in the United States, or _vice versa_.
The kind of paper to be used by the prisoners for their correspondence
was selected by the subsection with a view to making difficult, if
not impossible, the use of secret inks. Thousands of letters, both to
and from the prisoners, were submitted to chemical tests for invisible
writing, and hundreds of others, which aroused suspicion because of
their peculiar wording or unusual marking, were examined for possible
messages in code. One prisoner endeavored to communicate with his wife
by writing in lemon-juice under the flap of the envelope, and at Fort
Douglas a scheme was discovered whereby German sympathizers communicated
with the prisoners by means of dots placed under the letters of words in
newspapers sent into the internment camp.
In the days before the Great War revolutionized our customs and
restricted the amazing liberty of action which we had enjoyed, it was
as easy for any one who had the price of a ticket in his pocket to
leave the United States as it was for him to leave his own dwelling.
To-day—by which I mean the summer of 1919—it is about as easy for an
American to leave the United States as it is for a convict to leave
Sing Sing. This condition of affairs, so unfamiliar to Americans, is
due to the barrier which has been thrown around these shores by rigid
enforcement of the passport regulations of the Department of State in
co-operation with the Passport Section of Military Intelligence. Prior
to the passport regulations of September, 1918, no law of this country
required an American travelling abroad to have a passport. In fact, the
only countries where passports were needed were Russia and Turkey. But
upon the breaking of the war-cloud in the summer of 1914, passports
were required everywhere, and the person who could not produce one upon
demand, immediately became an object of suspicion and investigation.
Under the regulations now in force, the Department of State, by its
authority to exercise discretion in the issuance of passports, is in a
position to control travel. And, thanks to the facilities of M I 11 for
investigating the loyalty and character of applicants, the department is
able to form a remarkably accurate opinion as to whether the applications
it receives should be refused or granted.
It must be perfectly obvious that, had the old system of non-interference
with travel been permitted to continue, German agents could easily have
come to the United States through neutral countries, gathered such
information as they required, and departed as they came. When war was
declared on April 6, 1917, it was not necessary for Congress to pass
a law restricting travel by alien enemies, for the law was already in
existence, having been framed in 1798, at a time when France was our
enemy instead of our ally, and handed down to us by the Fathers. As a
result of the authority conferred by this forgotten statute, the German
agent who counted on the law’s delay, habeas corpus proceedings, and a
long-drawn-out trial by jury, received the surprise of his life, for he
found himself seized by a long, swift arm which, waiting for neither
indictment nor trial, placed him where he could do no further mischief.
The seaman presented perhaps the most perplexing problem in the control
of travel. He rarely remains on the same vessel for more than a few
voyages and he seldom has a real home where his antecedents can be looked
up. Moreover, under the Seaman’s Act, he is permitted, if not, indeed,
encouraged, to desert in an American port in order to be re-engaged
at the higher American rates of pay. So long as seamen from neutral
countries, particularly those adjacent to Germany, could come ashore at
will in American ports, no really effective control was possible. So,
following the example of England and the advice of our military attachés
in the countries of northern Europe, an order was issued by the Secretary
of State—though not until seventeen days before the signing of the
Armistice—forbidding seamen from neutral countries to leave their ships
while in American ports. The presence of naval guards on the vessels
insured the enforcement of the order, which was withdrawn, however,
shortly after the signing of the Armistice.
By an arrangement with the State Department, all passport applications,
both from citizens and aliens, are referred to M I 11 for investigation.
The files of the Military Intelligence Division now contain a vast amount
of information, much of it of a very detailed character, concerning
persons and business firms in the United States and foreign countries. By
referring to these files, therefore, or by directing its agents to make
special investigations, it is an easy matter for the Passport Section to
decide whether the applicant is the sort of a person to whom a passport
should be granted. The passenger-list of every vessel bound for an
American port is cabled to the Passport Section by the American consul
upon the departure of the vessel from the last port of call. These lists
are checked in the suspect files of the Military Intelligence Division,
and if there is found anything which makes a passenger objectionable
or suspicious, the intelligence officer at the port where the ship
will arrive is promptly notified, whereupon the passenger in question
is either denied entry to the United States or placed under arrest,
according to his nationality and other circumstances. A somewhat similar
system of control is in operation along the Mexican and Canadian borders,
the immigration and intelligence officers who are stationed in the towns
along the international boundaries making it difficult, though by no
means impossible, for undesirables to enter or leave the country. It will
thus be seen that the Passport Section, aided by a small army of military
attachés, consuls, customs officials, immigration officers, secret
agents, and intelligence police, has succeeded in establishing a highly
effective control of travel, thus preventing the entry or departure of
persons whose expressions or actions might prove detrimental to the
interests of the United States.
Military control of travel is, of course, a war-time measure, and
with the passing of the emergency which gave it birth it will almost
certainly disappear, along with most of the other activities of Military
Intelligence. Though I am heartily in favor of completely restoring
the country to a peace-time basis, and of abolishing the many highly
arbitrary measures made necessary by the war, it seems to me that it
might be a good idea to continue some form of travel control which would
prevent the entry into the United States of undesirable aliens. We have
quite enough of them as it is.
VIII
“TREAT ’EM ROUGH!”
It is rather a curious circumstance that the idea from which was
evolved one of the most formidable weapons of the war, and one which
proved a prime factor in bringing Germany to her knees, was obtained
by an Englishman in Germany, from under the very noses of the Germans
themselves, who did not have the vision to recognize its amazing military
possibilities. About a year before the Teutonic wave surged across the
frontiers of France, the representative of a California manufacturing
concern was giving demonstrations in the larger German cities of a
singular device known as the Holt caterpillar tractor. Though this
contrivance, in spite of its grotesque and clumsy appearance, could
cross ditches and surmount obstacles with amazing agility, it did not
arouse particular interest among the Germans, for it was intended for
the pursuits of peace, whereas they were even then seeking new means
for making war. But it chanced that among the onlookers at one of the
demonstrations was an English traveller, who had the imagination to see
in the clumsy machine, as it waddled across an apparently impassable
terrain with the relentlessness of fate, something more than an
agricultural appliance. Upon his return to England he described the
tractor to Colonel E. D. Swinton, who evinced the liveliest interest
in the subject, closely examining the pictures and asking countless
questions. I might add that General Swinton, for he has since been
promoted, has, unlike most professional soldiers, a highly developed
imagination, as is shown in the stories he has written, the best known
of which is entitled _The Green Curve_. Colonel Swinton, who had served
in the South African campaign, had long had in mind an idea for an
armored fighting-machine, a sort of small fort on wheels, which could be
propelled by its own power over ground impassable to any other type of
vehicle. The caterpillar tractor gave him the means of propulsion which
he had been seeking. But, as might have been expected, the hidebound,
brassbound officials of the War Office condemned the suggestion as
fantastic and impractical, it not being until 1915, when the gloom of
despondency overhung the land and people snatched at straws of hope, that
Swinton’s plans were taken from their pigeonhole for reconsideration
and he was reluctantly given permission to show what he could do.
Upon caterpillar tractors brought from America he proceeded to mount
armored hulls built according to his own designs, the land battleships
thus created being armed with both field and machine guns. They were
tested under conditions of the greatest secrecy, the trials proving so
successful that the construction of a considerable number was immediately
authorized. In order that the public might obtain no hint of the true
nature or purpose of these terrible new weapons they were referred to
as “tanks,” the impression being given that they were intended for
transporting water. Painted in dull colors and swathed in tarpaulins,
fifty tanks were landed at Le Havre on August 29, 1916, and were moved
up to the Somme front under cover of darkness. At dawn on September 15,
everything being in readiness for the launching of the great Somme drive,
they were entered in battle on a most astonished foe.
Though I saw one of the tanks in action on this occasion—it was named, if
I am not mistaken, “_Crème de Menthe_”—I was not permitted to photograph
it or to write about it. It has repeatedly been asserted that these
tanks were the first vehicles of their kind in the history of warfare,
and that is true, so far as the method used for their propulsion is
concerned, yet it is interesting to note that, ten years before the
Great Navigator set foot on the beach of San Salvador, Leonardo da Vinci
had written as follows to the Duke Ludovico Sforza: “I am also building
secure and covered chariots which are invulnerable, and when they advance
with their guns into the midst of the foe, even the largest army masses
must retreat, and behind them infantry may follow in safety and without
opposition.”
Everything considered, the tanks were not of much assistance to the
infantry on the occasion of their first appearance, though they
unquestionably caused considerable consternation in the German lines.
Owing to delay in production, the British were obliged to employ at
the battle of Arras, on April 9, 1917, tanks identical with those
which had been used on the Somme and which were, in reality, fit only
for training purposes, having only 8-mm. armor. Nevertheless, two
battalions were launched on a two-kilometre front, and there is no doubt
that they rendered valuable service, the capture by twelve tanks of a
German stronghold known as “The Harp” being a particularly noteworthy
achievement. Eighty-eight tanks of an improved model, protected with
12-mm. armor, were used in the attack on Messines Ridge, June 7, 1917,
but the success of the infantry was so complete on that occasion that the
tanks had only an unimportant rôle to play. The torrential rains which
fell during the early stages of the Ypres offensive on July 31 turned the
battle-field into a broad and treacherous morass, in which tanks were of
but little use. The following figures, which were doubtless as well known
to Hindenburg as to Haig, explain why the tanks did not sweep everything
before them, as it was confidently expected that they would do, and why
the Germans were no longer particularly alarmed by their appearance:
Battle of Tanks in action Ditched Hit by shells
{ Arras 60 33 (55%) 7 (2%)
First day’s fighting { Messines 88 7 (19%) 4 (5%)
{ Ypres 133 60 (45%) 37 (28%)
It was my understanding at the time that the use of tanks by the British
during the fighting on the Somme caused great annoyance to the French
High Command, it being asserted that the British had agreed not to
make use of their machines until the tanks which the French had under
construction were ready, when both armies would make a combined tank
attack on a large scale. How much foundation there was for this assertion
I do not know, but perhaps it was as well that the British tanks made
their début when they did, for the French did not make use of tanks until
April 16, 1917, when 132 Schneider tanks attacked between Rheims and
the Aisne. “In spite of the congratulations of the commander-in-chief,”
reads a French report, “the results did not meet expectations, although
wherever tanks were used they led the infantry beyond the advance of the
rest of the front of attack.”
It would seem that it was not until the British victory at Cambrai,
when 430 tanks were used to lead a large attack, in the course of which
8,000 prisoners and 100 guns were taken, that the German High Command
realized that the use of tanks could no longer be postponed, for shortly
thereafter the German Tank Corps was formed, an Antitank School of
Instruction was established, and orders were placed for a large number
of antitank rifles. The Germans experienced numerous manufacturing
difficulties, however, in the construction of their tanks, and when
Marshal Hindenburg inspected the first fifteen _panzerkraftwagens_, as
they were called, at Charleroi, in March, 1918, he damned them with the
faint praise: “They probably won’t be of much use, but since they are
made we might as well employ them.” This discouraging send-off apparently
had its effect, for the original of the _Elfriede_ type—_Elfriede_
herself—was ditched and captured near Villers-Brettoneux a few weeks
later. By contriving to unite in this one model all the faults of the
British and French tanks, the Germans once again proved the truth of the
old saying: “Success has many imitators, but sometimes they copy only her
defects.” According to a German deserter, the German Tank Corps in July,
1918, consisted of 25 German tanks and 50 repaired British machines.
This same authority stated that 250 light tanks had been ordered for
delivery in September, 1918, and that in April construction had been
begun on a monster 38 feet long, weighing 110 tons, carrying four
77-mm. cannon and 13 machine-guns. This formidable war-engine, called a
“_Fahrbarer Sefechtsunterstand: ver dunden mit Artillerie unt Infanterie
Beebachtung_,” boasted contrivances for creating artificial mists
(probably similar to our own smoke-producing devices), for laying and
covering its own telephone-wires en route, was equipped with wireless,
and carried a crew of an officer and twenty-eight men. If this supertank
was ever constructed, it certainly never went into action.
The Germans were more successful, however, when it came to devising
protective measures against tank attacks. These consisted of trenches of
peculiar construction and design, some of them from 15 to 20 feet wide
and 6 to 8 feet in depth; “tank traps,” consisting of deep pits with
camouflaged covers; bridges so built as not to support a tank’s weight;
mine-fields; special tank observation-posts; _Tank Goschutz Batterie_,
as the Germans called their groups of 77-mm. antitank cannon; 55-mm.
tank batteries, which were kept in pits about a thousand metres from the
front line and were only brought up when tanks were signalled; trench
mortars mounted for horizontal fire; machine-guns firing armor-piercing
bullets; hand-grenades with concentrated charges, and antitank rifles.
The antitank rifle was a single-shot Mauser, mounted on a bipod, weighing
32 pounds and firing an armor-piercing ball of 13-mm. caliber. At close
range this weapon penetrated the British heavy and the French light
tanks. Had it been used in groups it might well have proved extremely
formidable, but the unpopularity it enjoyed because of its heavy recoil
combined with a well-founded reluctance on the part of its users to
await the near approach of a tank, in a large measure neutralized its
effectiveness. Toward the close of the struggle it seems to have fallen
into general disuse, and when the Armistice was signed the enemy was
preparing to supplant it with a 22-mm. machine-gun, a few of which had
already been used with considerable success.
* * * * *
When the United States entered the war in April, 1917, the value of the
tank as a weapon of offense had been so thoroughly established that steps
were immediately taken to form a tank organization of our own, a special
regiment—the 65th Engineers—being raised for the purpose. The units
of this regiment were recruited at Camp Upton, New York; Camp Devens,
Massachusetts; Camp Meade, Maryland; Camp Lee, Virginia, and Camp Cody,
New Mexico, the entire regiment being assembled in March, 1918, at Camp
Colt, on the battle-field of Gettysburg, which then became the general
concentration and preliminary training-camp for the tank organization.
The tanks passed from the control of the Corps of Engineers on March
6, 1918, when the Secretary of War directed the organization of the
Tank Corps as a separate arm of the service, Lieutenant-Colonel Ira C.
Welborn, a regular infantry officer, being commissioned as colonel and
appointed director of the Tank Corps in the United States.
The structural organization of the corps, as it existed at the close
of the war, consisted of General Tank Headquarters, with 15 officers
and 60 men; Army Tank Headquarters (one for each field army), with 7
officers and 27 men; Brigade Headquarters, 4 officers and 47 men; a Heavy
Battalion, with a strength of 68 officers and 778 men; a Light Battalion,
consisting of 20 officers and 375 men; a repair and salvage company, 4
officers and 146 men; a Depot Company, 4 officers and 138 men. To each
Army Tank Headquarters were assigned 5 brigades, each brigade being
composed of 3 battalions, 1 heavy and 2 light, and 1 repair and salvage
company. A battalion consists of three companies, each company having
three platoons. As five fighting-tanks are assigned to each platoon, it
will thus be seen that a field army has 675 tanks at its disposal.