overdone was proved by the total failure of the second aerial raid on
Antwerp, in the latter part of September, when a dirigible again
sailed over the city under cover of darkness. Owing to the total
absence of street-lights, however, the dirigible's crew were evidently
unable to get their bearings, for the half-dozen bombs that they
discharged fell in the outskirts of the city without causing any loss of
life or doing any serious damage. This time, moreover, the Belgians
were quite prepared--the fire of their "sky artillery," guided by
searchlights, making things exceedingly uncomfortable for the
Germans.
I have heard it stated by Belgian officers and others that the bombs
were dropped from the dirigibles by an ingenious arrangement
which made the airship itself comparatively safe from harm and at
the same time rendered the aim of its bombmen much more
accurate. According to them, the dirigible comes to a stop--or as
near a stop as possible--above the city or fortification which it wishes
to attack, at a height out of range of either artillery or rifle-fire.
Then, by means of a steel cable a thousand feet or more in length,
it lowers a small wire cage just large enough to contain a man and a
supply of bombs, this cage being sufficiently armoured so that it is
proof against rifle-bullets. At the same time it affords so tiny a mark
that the chances of its being hit by artillery-fire are insignificant. If
it should be struck, moreover, the airship itself would still be
unharmed and only one man would be lost, and when he fell his
supply of bombs would fall with him. The Zeppelin, presumably
equipped with at least two cages and cables, might at once lower
another bomb-thrower. I do not pretend to say whether this
ingenious contrivance is used by the Germans. Certainly the
Zeppelin which I saw in action had nothing of the kind, nor did it drop
its projectiles promiscuously, as one would drop a stone, but
apparently discharged them from a bomb-tube.
Though the Zeppelin raids proved wholly ineffective, so far as their
effect on troops and fortifications were concerned, the German
aviators introduced some novel tricks in aerial warfare which were
as practical as they were ingenious. During the battle of Vilvorde, for
example, and throughout the attacks on the Antwerp forts, German
dirigibles hovered at a safe height over the Belgian positions and
directed the fire of the German gunners with remarkable success.
The aerial observers watched, through powerful glasses, the effect
of the German shells and then, by means of a large disc which was
swung at the end of a line and could be raised or lowered at will,
signalled as need be in code "higher--lower--right--left" and thus
guided the gunners--who were, of course, unable to see their mark
or the effect of their fire--until almost every shot was a hit. At
Vilvorde, as a result of this aerial fire-control system, I saw the
German artillery, posted out of sight behind a railway embankment,
get the range of a retreating column of Belgian infantry and with a
dozen well-placed shots practically wipe it out of existence. So
perfect was the German system of observation and fire control
during the final attack on the Antwerp defences that whenever the
Belgians or British moved a regiment or a battery the aerial
observers instantly detected it and a perfect storm of shells was
directed against the new position.
Throughout the operations around Antwerp, the Taubes, as
the German aeroplanes are called because of their fancied
resemblance to a dove, repeatedly performed daring feats of
reconnaissance. On one occasion, while I was with the General
Staff at Lierre, one of these German Taubes sailed directly over the
Hotel de Ville, which was being used as staff headquarters. It so
happened that King Albert was standing in the street, smoking one
of the seven-for-a-franc Belgian cigars to which he was partial.
"The Germans call it a dove, eh?" remarked the King, as he looked
up at the passing aircraft. "Well, it looks to me more like a hawk."
A few days before the fall of Antwerp a Taube flew over the city in
the early afternoon, dropping thousands of proclamations printed in
both French and Flemish and signed by the commander of the
investing forces, pointing out to the inhabitants the futility of
resistance, asserting that in fighting Germany they were playing
Russia's game, and urging them to lay down their arms. The
aeroplane was greeted by a storm of shrapnel from the high-angle
guns mounted on the fortifications, the only effect of which,
however, was to kill two unoffending citizens who were standing in
the streets and were struck by the fragments of the falling shells.
Most people seem to have the impression that it is as easy for an
aviator to see what is happening on the ground beneath him as
though he were looking down from the roof of a high building. Under
ordinary conditions, when one can skim above the surface of the
earth at a height of a few hundred feet, this is quite true, but it is
quite a different matter when one is flying above hostile troops who
are blazing away at him with rifles and machine-guns. During
reconnaissance work the airmen generally are compelled to ascend
to an altitude of a mile or a mile and a quarter, which makes
observation extremely difficult, as small objects, even with the aid of
the strongest glasses, assume unfamiliar shapes and become fore-
shortened. If, in order to obtain a better view, they venture to fly at a
lower height, they are likely to be greeted by a hail of rifle fire from
soldiers in the trenches. The Belgian aviators with whom I talked
assured me that they feared rifle fire more than bursting shrapnel,
as the fire of a regiment, when concentrated even on so elusive an
object as an aeroplane, proves far more deadly than shells.
The Belgians made more use than any other nation of motor-cars.
When war was declared one of the first steps taken by the military
authorities was to commandeer every motor-car, every motor-cycle
and every litre of petrol in the kingdom. As a result they depended
almost entirely upon motor-driven vehicles for their military
transport, which was, I might add, extremely efficient. In fact, we
could always tell when we were approaching the front by the
amazing number of motor-cars which lined the roads for miles in the
rear of each division.
Anything that had four wheels and a motor to drive them--diminutive
American run-abouts, slim, low-hung racing cars, luxurious
limousines with coronets painted on the panels, delivery-cars
bearing the names of shops in Antwerp and Ghent and Brussels,
lumbering motor-trucks, hotel omnibuses--all met the same fate,
which consisted in being daubed with elephant-grey paint, labelled
"S.M." (Service Militaire) in staring white letters, and started for the
front, usually in charge of a wholly inexperienced driver. It made an
automobile lover groan to see the way some of those cars were
treated. But they did the business. They averaged something like
twelve miles an hour--which is remarkable time for army transport--
and, strangely enough, very few of them broke down. If they did
there was always an automobile des reparations promptly on hand
to repair the damage. Before the war began the Belgian army had
no army transport worthy of the name; before the forts at Liege had
been silenced it had as efficient a one as any nation in Europe.
The headquarters of the motor-car branch of the army was at the
Pare des Automobiles Militaires, on the Red Star quays in Antwerp.
Here several hundred cars were always kept in reserve, and here
was collected an enormous store of automobile supplies and
sundries. The scene under the long, low sheds, with their
corrugated-iron roofs, always reminded me of the Automobile Show
at Olympia. After a car had once been placed at your disposal by
the Government, getting supplies for it was merely a question of
signing bons. Obtaining extra equipment for my car was Roos' chief
amusement. Tyres, tools, spare parts, horns, lamps, trunks--all you
had to do was to scrawl your name at the foot of a printed form and
they were promptly handed over. When I first went to Belgium I was
given a sixty horse-power touring car, and when the weather turned
unpleasant I asked for and was given a limousine that was big
enough to sleep in, and when I found this too clumsy, the
commandant of the Parc des Automobiles obligingly exchanged it
for a ninety horse-power berline. They were most accommodating,
those Belgians. I am sorry to say that my berline, which was the
envy of every one in Antwerp, was eventually captured by the
Germans.
Though both the French and the Germans had for a number of
years been experimenting with armoured cars of various patterns,
the Belgians, who had never before given the subject serious
consideration, were the first to evolve and to send into action a
really practical vehicle of this description. The earlier armoured cars
used by the Belgians were built at the great Minerva factory in
Antwerp and consisted of a circular turret, high enough so that only
the head and shoulders of the man operating the machine-gun
were exposed, covered with half-inch steel plates and mounted on
an ordinary chassis. After the disastrous affair near Herenthals, in
which Prince Henri de Ligne was mortally wounded while engaged
in a raid into the German lines for the purpose of blowing up
bridges, it was seen that the crew of the auto-mitrailleuses, as the
armoured cars were called, was insufficiently protected, and, to
remedy this, a movable steel dome, with an opening for the muzzle
of the machine-gun, was superimposed on the turret. These grim
vehicles, which jeered at bullets, and were proof even against
shrapnel, quickly became a nightmare to the Germans. Driven by
the most reckless racing drivers in Belgium, manned by crews of
dare-devil youngsters, and armed with machine-guns which poured
out lead at the rate of a thousand shots a minute, these wheeled
fortresses would tear at will into the German lines, cut up an outpost
or wipe out a cavalry patrol, dynamite a bridge or a tunnel or a
culvert, and be back in the Belgian lines again almost before the
enemy realized what had happened.
I witnessed an example of the cool daring of these mitrailleuse
drivers during the fighting around Malines. Standing on a railway
embankment, I was watching the withdrawal under heavy fire of the
last Belgian troops, when an armoured car, the lean muzzle of its
machine-gun peering from its turret, tore past me at fifty miles an
hour, spitting a murderous spray of lead as it bore down on the
advancing Germans. But when within a few hundred yards of the
German line the car slackened speed and stopped. Its petrol was
exhausted. Instantly one of the crew was out in the road and, under
cover of the fire from the machine-gun, began to refill the tank.
Though bullets were kicking up spurts of dust in the road or
ping-pinging against the steel turret he would not be hurried. I,
who was watching the scene through my field-glasses, was much more
excited than he was. Then, when the tank was filled, the car refused
to back! It was a big machine and the narrow road was bordered on
either side by deep ditches, but by a miracle the driver was able--
and just able--to turn the car round. Though by this time the German
gunners had the range and shrapnel was bursting all about him, he
was as cool as though he were turning a limousine in the width of
Piccadilly. As the car straightened out for its retreat, the Belgians
gave the Germans a jeering screech from their horn, and a parting
blast of lead from their machine-gun and went racing Antwerpwards.
It is, by the way, a curious and interesting fact that the machine-gun
used in both the Belgian and Russian armoured cars, and which is
one of the most effective weapons produced by the war, was
repeatedly offered to the American War Department by its inventor,
Major Isaac Newton Lewis, of the United States army, and was as
repeatedly rejected by the officials at Washington. At last, in despair
of receiving recognition in his own country, he sold it to Russia and
Belgium. The Lewis gun, which is air-cooled and weighs only
twenty-nine pounds--less than half the weight of a soldier's
equipment--fires a thousand shots a minute. In the fighting around
Sempst I saw trees as large round as a man's thigh literally cut
down by the stream of lead from these weapons.
The inventor of the Lewis gun was not the only American who
played an inconspicuous but none the less important part in the War
of Nations. A certain American corporation doing business in
Belgium placed its huge Antwerp plant and the services of its corps
of skilled engineers at the service of the Government, though I
might add that this fact was kept carefully concealed, being known
to only a handful of the higher Belgian officials. This concern made
shells and other ammunition for the Belgian army; it furnished
aeroplanes and machine-guns; it constructed miles of barbed-wire
entanglements and connected those entanglements with the city
lighting system; one of its officers went on a secret mission to
England and brought back with him a supply of cordite, not to
mention six large-calibre guns which he smuggled through Dutch
territorial waters hidden in the steamer's coal bunkers. And, as
though all this were not enough, the Belgian Government confided
to this foreign corporation the minting of the national currency. For
obvious reasons I am not at liberty to mention the name of this
concern, though it is known to practically every person in the United
States, each month cheques being sent to the parent concern by
eight hundred thousand people in New York alone.
Incidentally it publishes the most widely read volume in the world. I
wish that I might tell you the name of this concern. Upon second
thought, I think I will. It is the American Bell Telephone Company.
IV. Under The German Eagle
When, upon the approach of the Germans to Brussels, the
Government and the members of the Diplomatic Corps fled to
Antwerp, the American Minister, Mr. Brand Whitlock, did not
accompany them. In view of the peculiar position occupied by the
United States as the only Great Power not involved in hostilities, he
felt, and, as it proved, quite rightly, that he could be of more service
to Belgium and to Brussels and to the cause of humanity in general
by remaining behind. There remained with him the secretary of
legation, Mr. Hugh S. Gibson. Mr. Whitlock's reasons for remaining
in Brussels were twofold. In the first place, there were a large
number of English and Americans, both residents and tourists, who
had been either unable or unwilling to leave the city, and who, he
felt, were entitled to diplomatic protection. Secondly, the behaviour
of the German troops in other Belgian cities had aroused grave
fears of what would happen when they entered Brussels, and it was
generally felt that the presence of the American Minister might deter
them from committing the excesses and outrages which up to that
time had characterized their advance. It was no secret that
Germany was desperately anxious to curry favour with the United
States, and it was scarcely likely, therefore, that houses would be
sacked and burnt, civilians executed and women violated under the
disapproving eyes of the American representative. This surmise
proved to be well founded. The Germans did not want Mr. Whitlock
in Brussels, and nothing would have pleased them better than to
have had him depart and leave them to their own devices, but, so
long as he blandly ignored their hints that his room was preferable to
his company and persisted in sitting tight, they submitted to his
surveillance with the best grace possible and behaved themselves
as punctiliously as a dog that has been permitted to come into a
parlour. After the civil administration had been established,
however, and Belgium had become, in theory at least, a German
province, Mr. Whitlock was told quite plainly that the kingdom to
which he was accredited had ceased to exist as an independent
nation, and that Anglo-American affairs in Belgium could
henceforward be entrusted to the American Ambassador at Berlin.
But Mr. .Whitlock, who had received his training in shirt-sleeve
diplomacy as Socialist Mayor of Toledo, Ohio, was as impervious to
German suggestions as he had been to the threats and pleadings
of party politicians, and told Baron von der Golz, the German
Governor, politely but quite firmly, that he did not take his orders
from Berlin but from Washington. "Gott in Himmel!" exclaimed the
Germans, shrugging their shoulders despairingly, "what is to be
done with such a man?"
Before the Germans had been in occupation of Brussels a fortnight
the question of food for the poorer classes became a serious and
pressing problem. The German armies, in their onset toward the
west, had swept the Belgian country-side bare; the products of the
farms and gardens in the immediate vicinity of the city had been
commandeered for the use of the garrison, and the spectre of
starvation was already beginning to cast its dread shadow over
Brussels. Mr. Whitlock acted with promptness and decision. He sent
Americans, who had volunteered their services, to Holland to
purchase food-stuffs, and at the same time informed the German
commander that he expected these food-stuffs to be admitted
without hindrance. The German replied that he could not comply
with this request without first communicating with his Imperial
master, whereupon he was told, in effect, that the American Government
would consider him personally responsible if the food-stuffs were
delayed or diverted for military use and a famine ensued in
consequence. The firmness of Mr. Whitlock's attitude had its
effect, for at seven o'clock the next morning he received word
that his wishes would be complied with. As a result of the German
occupation, Brussels, with its six hundred thousand inhabitants, was
as completely cut off from communication with the outside world as
though it were on an island in the South Pacific. The postal,
telegraph and telephone services were suspended; the railways
were blocked with troop trains moving westward; the roads were
filled from ditch to ditch with troops and transport wagons; and so
tightly were the lines drawn between that portion of Belgium
occupied by the Germans and that still held by the Belgians, that
those daring souls who attempted to slip through the cordons of
sentries did so at peril of their lives. It sounds almost incredible
that a great city could be so effectually isolated, yet so it was.
Even the Cabinet Ministers and other officials who had accompanied the
Government in its flight to Antwerp were unable to learn what had
befallen the families which they had in many cases left behind them.
After nearly three weeks had passed without word from the American
Legation, the Department of State cabled the American Consul-General
at Antwerp that some means of communicating with Mr. Whitlock must be
found. Happening to be in the Consulate when the message was received,
I placed my services and my car at the disposal of the Consul-General,
who promptly accepted them. Upon learning of my proposed jaunt into
the enemy's lines, a friend, Mr. M. Manly Whedbee, the director of the
Belgian branch of the British-American Tobacco Company, offered to
accompany me, and as he is as cool-headed and courageous and
companionable as anyone I know, and as he knew as much about driving
the car as I did--for it was obviously impossible to take my Belgian
driver--I was only too glad to have him with me. It was, indeed, due
to Mr. Whedbee's foresight in taking along a huge quantity of
cigarettes for distribution among the soldiers, that we were able to
escape from Brussels. But more of that episode hereafter.
When the Consul-General asked General Dufour, the military
governor of Antwerp, to issue us a safe conduct through the Belgian
lines, that gruff old soldier at first refused flatly, asserting that as
the German outposts had been firing on cars bearing the Red
Cross flag, there was no assurance that they would respect one
bearing the Stars and Stripes. The urgency of the matter being
explained to him, however, he reluctantly issued the necessary
laisser-passer, though intimating quite plainly that our mission
would probably end in providing "more work for the undertaker,
another little job for the casket-maker," and that he washed his
hands of all responsibility for our fate. But by two American
flags mounted on the windshield, and the explanatory legends
"Service Consulaire des Etats-Unis d'Amerique" and "Amerikanischer
Consular dienst" painted in staring letters on the hood, we
hoped to make it quite clear to Germans and Belgians alike
that we were protected by the international game-laws so far
as shooting us was concerned.
Now the disappointing thing about our trip was that we didn't
encounter any Uhlans. Every one had warned us so repeatedly
about Uhlans that we fully expected to find them, with their
pennoned lances and their square-topped schapskas, lurking
behind every hedge, and when they did not come spurring out to
intercept us we were greatly disappointed. It was like making a
journey to the polar regions and seeing no Esquimaux. The smart
young cavalry officer who bade us good-bye at the Belgian
outposts, warned us to keep our eyes open for them and said,
rather mournfully, I thought, that he only hoped they would give us
time to explain who we were before they opened fire on us. "They
are such hasty fellows, these Uhlans," said he, "always shooting first
and making inquiries afterward." As a matter of fact, the only Uhlan
we saw on the entire trip was riding about Brussels in a cab,
smoking a large porcelain pipe and with his spurred boots resting
comfortably on the cushions.
Though we crept along as circumspectly as a motorist who knows
that he is being trailed by a motor-cycle policeman, peering behind
farmhouses and hedges and into the depths of thickets and
expecting any moment to hear a gruff command, emphasized by
the bang of a carbine, it was not until we were at the very outskirts
of Aerschot that we encountered the Germans. There were a
hundred of them, so cleverly ambushed behind a hedge that we
would never have suspected their presence had we not caught the
glint of sunlight on their rifle-barrels. We should not have gotten
much nearer, in any event, for they had a wire neatly strung across
the road at just the right height to take us under the chins. When we
were within a hundred yards of the hedge an officer in a trailing grey
cloak stepped into the middle of the road and held up his hand.
"Halt!"
I jammed on the brakes so suddenly that we nearly went through
the windshield.
"Get out of the automobile and stand well away from it," the officer
commanded in German. We got out very promptly.
"One of you advance alone, with his hands up."
I advanced alone, but not with my hands up. It is such an
undignified position. I had that shivery feeling chasing up and down
my spine which came from knowing that I was covered by a
hundred rifles, and that if I made a move which seemed suspicious
to the men behind those rifles, they would instantly transform me
into a sieve.
"Are you English?" the officer demanded, none too pleasantly.
"No, American," said I.
"Oh, that's all right," said he, his manner instantly thawing. "I know
America well," he continued, "Atlantic City and Asbury Park and
Niagara Falls and Coney Island. I have seen all of your famous
places."
Imagine, if you please, standing in the middle of a Belgian highway,
surrounded by German soldiers who looked as though they would
rather shoot you than not, discussing the relative merits of the hotels
at Atlantic City and which had the best dining-car service, the
Pennsylvania or the New York Central!