In a book, recently published, called _Espions, Espionnage_, one
story has to do with a windmill: “Celebrated along the whole Aisne
front, there existed at Craonne a mill boldly designated, ‘Mill of
the Spy.’... The miller, devoted to the interests of our enemies, had
found the means of informing them of the movements of our troops by
disposing the arms of the mill in different positions.” The French has
a beautifully final sound—“the miller, devoted to the interests of our
enemies.” “But to tell the truth, neither the miller himself nor the
actual information which he was able to impart, made a great deal of
difference in the fighting. What it was, that made, or almost made,
the difference, I believe, has never been satisfactorily ascertained.
The miller at least was not there, then. Of course he may have had
confederates, but if so, the destruction of the mill was so sudden, so
complete, that there was left no trace of them.”
The information given by the mill to the Germans was almost entirely
negligible, and would have penetrated to them anyway through the medium
of the spies with which both lines were always swarming. Of course,
at first, before they realized the agency of the mill, the French
were not a little troubled and disconcerted by the amount of data the
Germans seemed to possess, and the speed with which it was acquired.
For instance, for a while the Boches amused themselves with knowingly
greeting each regiment as it moved up to take its turn in the front
line trench. There was a measure of clairvoyance implied in the big
white board with black lettering that would go up on top of the German
barbed wire as surely as there was a change of guard on the French
side: “Bonjour, 77e!” or the number of French trench casualties: “Morts
——,” “Blessés ——.” And so it went on day after day.
A week of this, in dull, rainy weather, was enough to set nerves on
edge, but then they caught the miller, whose execution put, it was
thought, the quietus on the mill. And upon the morning of the 27th of
November, they moved forward stealthily to the surprise attack.
Then a poilu looked back. It was a miserable, gray, shrouded morning,
when the shadow cast by any object is merely a blur around that
object—the whole a blot upon a cloudy plain. The mill stood, a black,
spectral shape in the fog, on a slight eminence, the most commanding
point in the surrounding country. As he looked, suddenly a long, black
arm fell, abruptly, while the corresponding one, lighter in color,
rose a foot or two. Besides the troops, it was the only moving thing
in that breathless landscape. “Sacré-bleu!” a poilu exclaimed. As one
and another began to gape behind them at his sudden start of surprise,
slowly the whole motion was reversed. Light arm down, black arm up.
Nothing more occurred. The mill was as motionless as they, though
afterwards some of them declared that they had been able to see Tom
Bene himself, hanging, with a ghastly face, athwart the arms, as men
are sometimes hung to the spokes of a wheel. Then, as a sound came
from the German trenches, as with one impulse, the men rushed—back
toward the mill, which they literally, by means of fire and bombs, tore
shred from shred. Then they turned to meet the Germans, who, warned
by this extraordinary wigwagging, by whatever agency or agencies, had
instituted a counter-attack. The French were not driven, but they stood
the attack in their own trenches. “Afterwards, to those who had been
there to see, more vivid than the angels at Mons, more vivid than the
vision of the Little Corporal, to those who thought they saw it, was
that gray morning, the foiled attack, and this malevolent motion of a
secret intelligence in a dream landscape.”
[Illustration:
© _Century._