WITH THE ALLIES
by
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
Preface
I have not seen the letter addressed by President Wilson to the
American people calling upon them to preserve toward this war the
mental attitude of neutrals. But I have seen the war. And I feel sure
had President Wilson seen my war he would not have written his
letter.
This is not a war against Germans, as we know Germans in America,
where they are among our sanest, most industrious, and most
responsible fellow countrymen. It is a war, as Winston Churchill has
pointed out, against the military aristocracy of Germany, men who are
six hundred years behind the times; who, to preserve their class
against democracy, have perverted to the uses of warfare, to the
destruction of life, every invention of modern times. These men are
military mad. To our ideal of representative government their own
idea is as far opposed as is martial law to the free speech of our town
meetings.
One returning from the war is astonished to find how little of the true
horror of it crosses the ocean. That this is so is due partly to the strict
censorship that suppresses the details of the war, and partly to the
fact that the mind is not accustomed to consider misery on a scale so
gigantic. The loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the wrecking of
cities, and the laying waste of half of Europe cannot be brought home
to people who learn of it only through newspapers and moving
pictures and by sticking pins in a map. Were they nearer to it, near
enough to see the women and children fleeing from the shells and to
smell the dead on the battle-fields, there would be no talk of
neutrality.
Such lack of understanding our remoteness from the actual seat of
war explains. But on the part of many Americans one finds another
attitude of mind which is more difficult to explain. It is the cupidity
that in the misfortunes of others sees only a chance for profit. In
an offer made to its readers a prominent American magazine
best expresses this attitude. It promises prizes for the essays
on "What the war means to me."
To the American women Miss Ida M. Tar-bell writes: "This is her time
to learn what her own country's industries can do, and to rally with all
her influence to their support, urging them to make the things she
wants, and pledging them her allegiance."
This appeal is used in a periodical with a circulation of over a million,
as an advertisement for silk hose. I do not agree with Miss Tarbell
that this is the time to rally to the support of home industries. I do not
agree with the advertiser that when in Belgium several million women
and children are homeless, starving, and naked that that is the time
to buy his silk hose. To urge that charity begins at home is to repeat
one of the most selfish axioms ever uttered, and in this war to urge
civilized, thinking people to remain neutral is equally selfish.
Were the conflict in Europe a fair fight, the duty of every American
would be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But it
is not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect,
to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levy
blackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals is
not to fight fair.
That is the way Germany is fighting. She is defying the rules of war
and the rules of humanity. And if public opinion is to help in
preventing further outrages, and in hastening this unspeakable
conflict to an end, it should be directed against the one who offends.
If we are convinced that one opponent is fighting honestly and that
his adversary is striking below the belt, then for us to maintain a
neutral attitude of mind is unworthy and the attitude of a coward.
When a mad dog runs amuck in a village it is the duty of every farmer
to get his gun and destroy it, not to lock himself indoors and toward
the dog and the men who face him preserve a neutral mind.
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
NEW YORK, Dec. 1st, 1914.
Contents
I. The Germans In Brussels
II. "To Be Treated As A Spy"
III. The Burning Of Louvain
IV. Paris In War Time
V. The Battle Of Soissons
VI. The Bombardment Of Rheims
VII. The Spirit Of The English
VIII. Our Diplomats In The War Zone
IX. "Under Fire"
X. The Waste Of War
XI. The War Correspondents
Chapter I
The Germans In Brussels
When, on August 4, the Lusitania, with lights doused and air-ports
sealed, slipped out of New York harbor the crime of the century was
only a few days old. And for three days those on board the Lusitania
of the march of the great events were ignorant. Whether or no
between England and Germany the struggle for the supremacy of the
sea had begun we could not learn.
But when, on the third day, we came on deck the news was written
against the sky. Swinging from the funnels, sailors were painting out
the scarlet-and-black colors of the Cunard line and substituting a
mouse-like gray. Overnight we had passed into the hands of the
admiralty, and the Lusitania had emerged a cruiser. That to possible
German war-ships she might not disclose her position, she sent no
wireless messages. But she could receive them; and at breakfast in
the ship's newspaper appeared those she had overnight snatched
from the air. Among them, without a scare-head, in the most modest
of type, we read: "England and Germany have declared war." Seldom
has news so momentous been conveyed so simply or, by the
Englishmen on board, more calmly accepted. For any exhibition they
gave of excitement or concern, the news the radio brought them
might have been the result of a by-election.
Later in the morning they gave us another exhibition of that
repression of feeling, of that disdain of hysteria, that is a national
characteristic, and is what Mr. Kipling meant when he wrote: "But oh,
beware my country, when my country grows polite!"
Word came that in the North Sea the English war-ships had
destroyed the German fleet. To celebrate this battle which, were the
news authentic, would rank with Trafalgar and might mean the end of
the war, one of the ship's officers exploded a detonating bomb.
Nothing else exploded. Whatever feelings of satisfaction our English
cousins experienced they concealed.
Under like circumstances, on an American ship, we would have tied
down the siren, sung the doxology, and broken everything on the bar.
As it was, the Americans instinctively flocked to the smoking-room
and drank to the British navy. While this ceremony was going
forward, from the promenade-deck we heard tumultuous shouts and
cheers. We believed that, relieved of our presence, our English
friends had given way to rejoicings. But when we went on deck we
found them deeply engaged in cricket. The cheers we had heard
were over the retirement of a batsman who had just been given out,
leg before wicket.
When we reached London we found no idle boasting, no vainglorious
jingoism. The war that Germany had forced upon them the English
accepted with a grim determination to see it through and, while they
were about it, to make it final. They were going ahead with no false
illusions. Fully did every one appreciate the enormous task, the
personal loss that lay before him. But each, in his or her way, went
into the fight determined to do his duty. There was no dismay, no
hysteria, no "mafficking."
The secrecy maintained by the press and the people regarding
anything concerning the war, the knowledge of which might
embarrass the War Office, was one of the most admirable and
remarkable conspiracies of silence that modern times have known.
Officers of the same regiment even with each other would not discuss
the orders they had received. In no single newspaper, with no matter
how lurid a past record for sensationalism, was there a line to suggest
that a British army had landed in France and that Great Britain was at
war. Sooner than embarrass those who were conducting the fight, the
individual English man and woman in silence suffered the most cruel
anxiety of mind. Of that, on my return to London from Brussels, I was
given an illustration. I had written to The Daily Chronicle telling where
in Belgium I had seen a wrecked British airship, and beside it the
grave of the aviator. I gave the information in order that the family of
the dead officer might find the grave and bring the body home. The
morning the letter was published an elderly gentleman, a retired
officer of the navy, called at my rooms. His son, he said, was an
aviator, and for a month of him no word had come. His mother was
distressed. Could I describe the air-ship I had seen?
I was not keen to play the messenger of ill tidings, so I tried to gain
time.
"What make of aeroplane does your son drive?" I asked.
As though preparing for a blow, the old gentleman drew himself up,
and looked me steadily in the eyes.
"A Blériot monoplane," he said.
I was as relieved as though his boy were one of my own kinsmen.
"The air-ship I saw," I told him, "was an Avro biplane!"
Of the two I appeared much the more pleased.
The retired officer bowed.
"I thank you," he said. "It will be good news for his mother."
"But why didn't you go to the War Office?" I asked.
He reproved me firmly.
"They have asked us not to question them," he said, "and when they
are working for all I have no right to embarrass them with my personal
trouble."
As the chance of obtaining credentials with the British army appeared
doubtful, I did not remain in London, but at once crossed to Belgium.
Before the Germans came, Brussels was an imitation Paris--
especially along the inner boulevards she was Paris at her best. And
her great parks, her lakes gay with pleasure-boats or choked with lily-
pads, her haunted forests, where your taxicab would startle the wild
deer, are the most beautiful I have ever seen in any city in the world.
As, in the days of the Second Empire, Louis Napoleon bedecked
Paris, so Leopold decorated Brussels. In her honor and to his own
glory he gave her new parks, filled in her moats along her ancient
fortifications, laid out boulevards shaded with trees, erected arches,
monuments, museums. That these jewels he hung upon her neck
were wrung from the slaves of the Congo does not make them the
less beautiful. And before the Germans came the life of the people of
Brussels was in keeping with the elegance, beauty, and joyousness
of their surroundings.
At the Palace Hotel, which is the clearing-house for the social life of
Brussels, we found everybody taking his ease at a little iron table on
the sidewalk. It was night, but the city was as light as noonday--
brilliant, elated, full of movement and color. For Liege was still held by
the Belgians, and they believed that all along the line they were
holding back the German army. It was no wonder they were jubilant.
They had a right to be proud. They had been making history. In order
to give them time to mobilize, the Allies had asked them for two days
to delay the German invader. They had held him back for fifteen. As
David went against Goliath, they had repulsed the German. And as
yet there had been no reprisals, no destruction of cities, no murdering
of non-combatants; war still was something glad and glorious.
The signs of it were the Boy Scouts, everywhere helping every one,
carrying messages, guiding strangers, directing traffic; and Red
Cross nurses and aviators from England, smart Belgian officers
exclaiming bitterly over the delay in sending them forward, and
private automobiles upon the enamelled sides of which the transport
officer with a piece of chalk had scratched, "For His Majesty," and
piled the silk cushions high with ammunition. From table to table
young girls passed jangling tiny tin milk-cans. They were supplicants,
begging money for the wounded. There were so many of them and
so often they made their rounds that, to protect you from themselves,
if you subscribed a lump sum, you were exempt and were given a
badge to prove you were immune.
Except for these signs of the times you would not have known
Belgium was at war. The spirit of the people was undaunted. Into their
daily lives the conflict had penetrated only like a burst of martial
music. Rather than depressing, it inspired them. Wherever you
ventured, you found them undismayed. And in those weeks during
which events moved so swiftly that now they seem months in the
past, we were as free as in our own "home town" to go where we
chose.
For the war correspondent those were the happy days! Like every
one else, from the proudest nobleman to the boy in wooden shoes,
we were given a laissez-passer, which gave us permission to go
anywhere; this with a passport was our only credential. Proper
credentials to accompany the army in the field had been formerly
refused me by the war officers of England, France, and Belgium. So
in Brussels each morning I chartered an automobile and without
credentials joined the first army that happened to be passing.
Sometimes you stumbled upon an escarmouche, sometimes you fled
from one, sometimes you drew blank. Over our early coffee we would
study the morning papers and, as in the glad days of racing at home,
from them try to dope out the winners. If we followed La Dernière
Heure we would go to Namur; L'Etoile was strong for Tirlemont.
Would we lose if we plunged on Wavre? Again, the favorite seemed
to be Louvain. On a straight tip from the legation the English
correspondents were going to motor to Diest. From a Belgian officer
we had been given inside information that the fight would be pulled off
at Gembloux. And, unencumbered by even a sandwich, and too wise
to carry a field-glass or a camera, each would depart upon his
separate errand, at night returning to a perfectly served dinner and a
luxurious bed. For the news-gatherers it was a game of chance. The
wisest veterans would cast their nets south and see only harvesters
in the fields, the amateurs would lose their way to the north and find
themselves facing an army corps or running a gauntlet of shell-fire. It
was like throwing a handful of coins on the table hoping that one
might rest upon the winning number. Over the map of Belgium we
threw ourselves. Some days we landed on the right color, on others
we saw no more than we would see at state manoeuvres. Judging by
his questions, the lay brother seems to think that the chief trouble of
the war correspondent is dodging bullets. It is not. It consists in trying
to bribe a station-master to carry you on a troop train, or in finding
forage for your horse. What wars I have seen have taken place in
spots isolated and inaccessible, far from the haunts of men. By day
you followed the fight and tried to find the censor, and at night you sat
on a cracker-box and by the light of a candle struggled to keep awake
and to write deathless prose. In Belgium it was not like that. The
automobile which Gerald Morgan, of the London Daily Telegraph, and
I shared was of surpassing beauty, speed, and comfort. It was as
long as a Plant freight-car and as yellow; and from it flapped in the
breeze more English, Belgian, French, and Russian flags than fly
from the roof of the New York Hippodrome. Whenever we sighted an
army we lashed the flags of its country to our headlights, and at sixty
miles an hour bore down upon it.
The army always first arrested us, and then, on learning our
nationality, asked if it were true that America had joined the Allies.
After I had punched his ribs a sufficient number of times Morgan
learned to reply without winking that it had. In those days the sun
shone continuously; the roads, except where we ran on the blocks
that made Belgium famous, were perfect; and overhead for miles
noble trees met and embraced. The country was smiling and
beautiful. In the fields the women (for the men were at the front) were
gathering the crops, the stacks of golden grain stretched from village
to village. The houses in these were white-washed and, the better to
advertise chocolates, liqueurs, and automobile tires, were painted a
cobalt blue; their roofs were of red tiles, and they sat in gardens of
purple cabbages or gaudy hollyhocks. In the orchards the pear-trees
were bent with fruit. We never lacked for food; always, when we lost
the trail and "checked," or burst a tire, there was an inn with fruit-trees
trained to lie flat against the wall, or to spread over arbors and
trellises. Beneath these, close by the roadside, we sat and drank red
wine, and devoured omelets and vast slabs of rye bread. At night we
raced back to the city, through twelve miles of parks, to enamelled
bathtubs, shaded electric light, and iced champagne; while before our
table passed all the night life of a great city. And for suffering these
hardships of war our papers paid us large sums.
On such a night as this, the night of August 18, strange folk in
wooden shoes and carrying bundles, and who looked like emigrants
from Ellis Island, appeared in front of the restaurant. Instantly they
were swallowed up in a crowd and the dinner-parties, napkins in
hand, flocked into the Place Rogier and increased the throng around
them.
"The Germans!" those in the heart of the crowd called over their
shoulders. "The Germans are at Louvain!"
That afternoon I had conscientiously cabled my paper that there were
no Germans anywhere near Louvain. I had been west of Louvain,
and the particular column of the French army to which I had attached
myself certainly saw no Germans.
"They say," whispered those nearest the fugitives, "the German
shells are falling in Louvain. Ten houses are on fire!" Ten houses!
How monstrous it sounded! Ten houses of innocent country folk
destroyed. In those days such a catastrophe was unbelievable. We
smiled knowingly.
"Refugees always talk like that," we said wisely. "The Germans would
not bombard an unfortified town. And, besides, there are no Germans
south of Liege."
The morning following in my room I heard from the Place Rogier the
warnings of many motor horns. At great speed innumerable
automobiles were approaching, all coming from the west through the
Boulevard du Regent, and without slackening speed passing
northeast toward Ghent, Bruges, and the coast. The number
increased and the warnings became insistent. At eight o'clock they
had sent out a sharp request for right of way; at nine in number they
had trebled, and the note of the sirens was raucous, harsh, and
peremptory. At ten no longer were there disconnected warnings, but
from the horns and sirens issued one long, continuous scream. It was
like the steady roar of a gale in the rigging, and it spoke in abject
panic. The voices of the cars racing past were like the voices of
human beings driven with fear. From the front of the hotel we
watched them. There were taxicabs, racing cars, limousines. They
were crowded with women and children of the rich, and of the nobility
and gentry from the great châteaux far to the west. Those who
occupied them were white-faced with the dust of the road, with
weariness and fear. In cars magnificently upholstered, padded, and
cushioned were piled trunks, hand-bags, dressing-cases. The women
had dressed at a moment's warning, as though at a cry of fire. Many
had travelled throughout the night, and in their arms the children,
snatched from the pillows, were sleeping.
But more appealing were the peasants. We walked out along the
inner boulevards to meet them, and found the side streets blocked
with their carts. Into these they had thrown mattresses, or bundles of
grain, and heaped upon them were families of three generations. Old
men in blue smocks, white-haired and bent, old women in caps, the
daughters dressed in their one best frock and hat, and clasping in
their hands all that was left to them, all that they could stuff into a
pillow-case or flour-sack. The tears rolled down their brown, tanned
faces. To the people of Brussels who crowded around them they
spoke in hushed, broken phrases. The terror of what they had
escaped or of what they had seen was upon them. They had
harnessed the plough-horse to the dray or market-wagon and to the
invaders had left everything. What, they asked, would befall the live
stock they had abandoned, the ducks on the pond, the cattle in the
field? Who would feed them and give them water? At the question the
tears would break out afresh. Heart-broken, weary, hungry, they
passed in an unending caravan. With them, all fleeing from the same
foe, all moving in one direction, were family carriages, the servants on
the box in disordered livery, as they had served dinner, or coatless,
but still in the striped waistcoats and silver buttons of grooms or
footmen, and bicyclers with bundles strapped to their shoulders, and
men and women stumbling on foot, carrying their children. Above it all
rose the breathless scream of the racing-cars, as they rocked and
skidded, with brakes grinding and mufflers open; with their own terror
creating and spreading terror.
Though eager in sympathy, the people of Brussels themselves were
undisturbed. Many still sat at the little iron tables and smiled pityingly
upon the strange figures of the peasants. They had had their trouble
for nothing, they said. It was a false alarm. There were no Germans
nearer than Liege. And, besides, should the Germans come, the civil
guard would meet them.
But, better informed than they, that morning the American minister,
Brand Whitlock, and the Marquis Villalobar, the Spanish minister, had
called upon the burgomaster and advised him not to defend the city.
As Whitlock pointed out, with the force at his command, which was
the citizen soldiery, he could delay the entrance of the Germans by
only an hour, and in that hour many innocent lives would be wasted
and monuments of great beauty, works of art that belong not alone to
Brussels but to the world, would be destroyed. Burgomaster Max,
who is a splendid and worthy representative of a long line of
burgomasters, placing his hand upon his heart, said: "Honor requires
it."
To show that in the protection of the Belgian Government he had full
confidence, Mr. Whitlock had not as yet shown his colors. But that
morning when he left the Hôtel de Ville he hung the American flag
over his legation and over that of the British. Those of us who had
elected to remain in Brussels moved our belongings to a hotel across
the street from the legation. Not taking any chances, for my own use I
reserved a green leather sofa in the legation itself.
Except that the cafés were empty of Belgian officers, and of English
correspondents, whom, had they remained, the Germans would have
arrested, there was not, up to late in the afternoon of the 19th of
August, in the life and conduct of the citizens any perceptible change.
They could not have shown a finer spirit. They did not know the city
would not be defended; and yet with before them on the morrow the
prospect of a battle which Burgomaster Max had announced would
be contested to the very heart of the city, as usual the cafés blazed
like open fire-places and the people sat at the little iron tables. Even
when, like great buzzards, two German aeroplanes sailed slowly
across Brussels, casting shadows of events to come, the people
regarded them only with curiosity. The next morning the shops were
open, the streets were crowded. But overnight the soldier-king had
sent word that Brussels must not oppose the invaders; and at the
gendarmerie the civil guard, reluctantly and protesting, some even in
tears, turned in their rifles and uniforms.
The change came at ten in the morning. It was as though a wand had
waved and from a fête-day on the Continent we had been wafted to
London on a rainy Sunday. The boulevards fell suddenly empty.
There was not a house that was not closely shuttered. Along the
route by which we now knew the Germans were advancing, it was as
though the plague stalked. That no one should fire from a window,
that to the conquerors no one should offer insult, Burgomaster Max
sent out as special constables men he trusted. Their badge of
authority was a walking-stick and a piece of paper fluttering from a
buttonhole. These, the police, and the servants and caretakers of the
houses that lined the boulevards alone were visible. At eleven
o'clock, unobserved but by this official audience, down the Boulevard
Waterloo came the advance-guard of the German army. It consisted
of three men, a captain and two privates on bicycles. Their rifles were
slung across their shoulders, they rode unwarily, with as little concern
as the members of a touring-club out for a holiday. Behind them, so
close upon each other that to cross from one sidewalk to the other
was not possible, came the Uhlans, infantry, and the guns. For two
hours I watched them, and then, bored with the monotony of it,
returned to the hotel. After an hour, from beneath my window, I still
could hear them; another hour and another went by. They still were
passing.
Boredom gave way to wonder. The thing fascinated you, against your
will, dragged you back to the sidewalk and held you there open-eyed.
No longer was it regiments of men marching, but something uncanny,
inhuman, a force of nature like a landslide, a tidal wave, or lava
sweeping down a mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious,
ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling toward
you across the sea. The uniform aided this impression. In it each man
moved under a cloak of invisibility. Only after the most numerous and
severe tests at all distances, with all materials and combinations of
colors that give forth no color, could this gray have been discovered.
That it was selected to clothe and disguise the German when he
fights is typical of the General Staff, in striving for efficiency, to
leave nothing to chance, to neglect no detail.
After you have seen this service uniform under conditions entirely
opposite you are convinced that for the German soldier it is one of his
strongest weapons. Even the most expert marksman cannot hit a
target he cannot see. It is not the blue-gray of our Confederates, but
a green-gray. It is the gray of the hour just before daybreak, the gray
of unpolished steel, of mist among green trees.
I saw it first in the Grand Place in front of the Hôtel de Ville. It was
impossible to tell if in that noble square there was a regiment or a
brigade. You saw only a fog that melted into the stones, blended with
the ancient house fronts, that shifted and drifted, but left you nothing
at which to point.
Later, as the army passed under the trees of the Botanical Park, it
merged and was lost against the green leaves. It is no exaggeration
to say that at a few hundred yards you can see the horses on which
the Uhlans ride but cannot see the men who ride them.
If I appear to overemphasize this disguising uniform it is because, of
all the details of the German outfit, it appealed to me as one of the
most remarkable. When I was near Namur with the rear-guard of the
French Dragoons and Cuirassiers, and they threw out pickets, we
could distinguish them against the yellow wheat or green corse at half
a mile, while these men passing in the street, when they have
reached the next crossing, become merged into the gray of the
paving-stones and the earth swallowed them. In comparison the
yellow khaki of our own American army is about as invisible as the
flag of Spain.
Major-General von Jarotsky, the German military governor of
Brussels, had assured Burgomaster Max that the German army
would not occupy the city but would pass through it. He told the truth.
For three days and three nights it passed. In six campaigns I have
followed other armies, but, excepting not even our own, the
Japanese, or the British, I have not seen one so thoroughly equipped.
I am not speaking of the fighting qualities of any army, only of the
equipment and organization. The German army moved into Brussels
as smoothly and as compactly as an Empire State express. There
were no halts, no open places, no stragglers. For the gray
automobiles and the gray motorcycles bearing messengers one side
of the street always was kept clear; and so compact was the column,
so rigid the vigilance of the file-closers, that at the rate of forty miles
an hour a car could race the length of the column and need not for a
single horse or man once swerve from its course.
All through the night, like the tumult of a river when it races between
the cliffs of a canyon, in my sleep I could hear the steady roar of the
passing army. And when early in the morning I went to the window
the chain of steel was still unbroken. It was like the torrent that swept
down the Connemaugh Valley and destroyed Johnstown. As a
correspondent I have seen all the great armies and the military
processions at the coronations in Russia, England, and Spain, and
our own inaugural parades down Pennsylvania Avenue, but those
armies and processions were made up of men. This was a machine,
endless, tireless, with the delicate organization of a watch and the
brute power of a steam roller. And for three days and three nights
through Brussels it roared and rumbled, a cataract of molten lead.
The infantry marched singing, with their iron-shod boots beating out
the time. They sang "Fatherland, My Fatherland." Between each line
of song they took three steps. At times two thousand men were
singing together in absolute rhythm and beat. It was like the blows
from giant pile-drivers. When the melody gave way the silence was
broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the song
rose. When the singing ceased the bands played marches. They
were followed by the rumble of the howitzers, the creaking of wheels
and of chains clanking against the cobblestones, and the sharp, bell-
like voices of the bugles.
More Uhlans followed, the hoofs of their magnificent horses ringing
like thousands of steel hammers breaking stones in a road; and after
them the giant siege-guns rumbling, growling, the mitrailleuse with
drag-chains ringing, the field-pieces with creaking axles, complaining
brakes, the grinding of the steel-rimmed wheels against the stones
echoing and re-echoing from the house front. When at night for an
instant the machine halted, the silence awoke you, as at sea you
wake when the screw stops.
For three days and three nights the column of gray, with hundreds of
thousands of bayonets and hundreds of thousands of lances, with
gray transport wagons, gray ammunition carts, gray ambulances,
gray cannon, like a river of steel, cut Brussels in two.
For three weeks the men had been on the march, and there was not
a single straggler, not a strap out of place, not a pennant missing.
Along the route, without for a minute halting the machine, the post-
office carts fell out of the column, and as the men marched mounted
postmen collected post-cards and delivered letters. Also, as they
marched, the cooks prepared soup, coffee, and tea, walking beside
their stoves on wheels, tending the fires, distributing the smoking
food. Seated in the motor-trucks cobblers mended boots and broken
harness; farriers on tiny anvils beat out horseshoes. No officer
followed a wrong turning, no officer asked his way. He followed the
map strapped to his side and on which for his guidance in red ink his
route was marked. At night he read this map by the light of an electric
torch buckled to his chest.
To perfect this monstrous engine, with its pontoon bridges, its
wireless, its hospitals, its aeroplanes that in rigid alignment sailed
before it, its field telephones that, as it advanced, strung wires over
which for miles the vanguard talked to the rear, all modern inventions
had been prostituted. To feed it millions of men had been called from
homes, offices, and workshops; to guide it, for years the minds of the
high-born, with whom it is a religion and a disease, had been solely
concerned.
It is, perhaps, the most efficient organization of modern times; and its
purpose only is death. Those who cast it loose upon Europe are
military-mad. And they are only a very small part of the German
people. But to preserve their class they have in their own image
created this terrible engine of destruction. For the present it is their
servant. But, "though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind
exceeding small." And, like Frankenstein's monster, this monster, to
which they gave life, may turn and rend them.