THE WAR REACHES ME
"We are not barbarians, my dear Wile!" exclaimed Guenther Thomas, when
we met in the Adlon after the Reichstag sitting, in reply to my query
about the safety of correspondents of English newspapers, now that
Germany was about to annex Great Britain as an enemy in addition to
Russia and France. I had found Thomas during ten years of acquaintance
the best-informed German journalist I ever knew. His long residence in
Park Row had grafted a "news nose" on him, which, coupled with a
profound knowledge of the history and present-day undercurrents of his
own country, made him an ideal and valuable colleague. I treasure my
relations with him in grateful recollection. One required occasionally
to dilute both his news and views with a strong solution of skepticism,
for Thomas was both a Prussian patriot and representative of Mr.
Ridder's _New-Yorker Staatszeitung_. But nine times out of ten his
counsel and information were like Caesar's wife. His assurance to me on
the evening of August 4, 1914, that his countrymen "were not barbarians"
was the most misleading piece of news he ever supplied me.
The imminence of hostilities with England revived irresistibly in my
mind the qualms which had filled the Germans for a week previous on this
very point. "What will the English do?" was the question they constantly
flung at any one they thought likely to be able to answer it
intelligently. It was the thing which gave themselves the most anxious
heart-searching. The "war on two fronts," the purely Continental affair
with the Dual Alliance, filled the average German with no concern. The
Kaiser's military machine had been constructed to deal with France and
Russia combined, and no German ever for a moment doubted its ability to
do so. Events of the past year, I think it may fairly be said, have
justified that confidence, for I suppose no expert anywhere in the world
doubts but that for the presence of British sea power on France and
Russia's side, the German eagle would in all probability now be
screaming in triumph over Paris and Petrograd. But with the British
"in," dozens of Germans confessed, as my own ears can bear testimony,
their case was "hopeless." Few of them were persuaded that Germany
could, in Bismarck's picturesque phrase, "deal with the British Navy in
Paris." While the prospect of having to fight France and Russia did not
disturb the Germans, the possibility of having to battle with Britain
simultaneously filled them with undisguised alarm. They would not admit
it now, but in the fading hours of July, 1914, and the opening days of
August, it was a nightmare which pressed down so heavily upon their
consciousness that they never spoke of it except in accents of dread.
The Hate cult had not yet toppled their reason. Lissauer's demoniacal
ballad was still unwritten. In those anguished moments they talked of
England, when not in terms of outright fear, as the "brother nation" of
kindred blood and ideals with whom war was unthinkable because it would
be nothing short of "civil war." Doctor Hecksher, a well-known National
Liberal member of the Reichstag and _Stimmungsmacher_ (henchman) of the
Foreign Office, busily assured English newspaper correspondents of the
"horror" with which the mere idea of conflict with England filled the
German soul. I thought it queer that one of my last dispatches to
London, before Anglo-German telegraphic communication snapped,
containing Doctor Hecksher's views and mentioning him by name, was
ruthlessly censored in Berlin and returned to me as untransmissible.
That meant one of two things--that Doctor Hecksher was wrong in
attributing to Germany overweening desires of peace with England, or
that it was unwise to let me indicate that Teuton knees were quaking at
the prospect of war with her. Certainly lachrymose expressions of hope
that England would not feel called upon to "intervene" in Germany's
"just quarrel" with her neighbors were common to the point of
universality in Berlin on the eve of the clash. They were born of
inherent conviction that German aspirations of imposing Hohenzollern
hegemony on the Continent must and would be wrecked by England's
adherence to her century-old policy of opposing so vital a disturbance
in the balance of European power.
Uppermost in my mind just now was how to transmit at least the vital
passages of the Chancellor's "Necessity knows no law speech" to _The
Daily Mail_. A merely informative bulletin about it to the editor had
just been brought back from the Main Telegraph Office by my faithful
young German secretary, Arthur Schrape, with the message that "no more
dispatches to England are being accepted." That was about six o'clock
P.M., at least three hours before Berlin or the world generally had any
knowledge that England and Germany were actually at grips.
Communication with the United States, Schrape had been told, was still
open, so the most natural thing in the world was to attempt to get
Bethmann Hollweg's crucial statements to London by way of New York.
Then followed a decision on my part which was to prove my undoing--I
committed the diabolical and treasonable crime of calling up my friend
and colleague, Mackenzie, the able correspondent of the _London Times_
(like my own paper, _The Daily Mail_, the property of Lord Northcliffe),
and discussing with him the feasibility of cabling the New York
representatives of our respective papers to relay to London the news
which we were unable to send directly from Berlin. We were telephoning
in German, of course, as every one for three days past had been required
to do, and we realized that practically every conversation, especially
between highly suspicious characters like long-accredited Berlin
newspaper correspondents, was being overheard by some spy with an ear
glued to a receiver. Knowing all this perfectly well, we talked with
entire freedom of our nefarious scheme for undermining the safety of the
German Empire. Finally it was agreed that Mackenzie should come to my
rooms in the Adlon and arrange with me there the text of a cablegram to
New York which should bottle up the German fleet, encircle the Crown
Prince's army and generally wreck the Kaiser's plans for subjugating
Europe, even before the ink on the General Staff's plans was dry. We
agreed that the surest way of striking this blow for England was to
cable to New York a message whose veiled language would disclose to even
the most stupid eye that it concealed a plot of heinous proportions. It
was decided that we should concoct in cable language a cablegram reading
like this:
"Chancellor just delivered importantest speech Reichstag. As
communication England unlonger possible suggest your cabling Newyorks
news."
Mackenzie, accompanied by his assistant, Jelf, now a volunteer-officer
in Kitchener's army, arrived at the Adlon; we canvassed the New York
suggestion in detail--amid such secrecy that Schrape, a very keen-eared
German of twenty-two and a patriot, who is also serving his Kaiser and
Empire in field-gray, was permitted to participate in our deliberations.
Then we came to the most treacherous decision of all, viz., not to carry
out our grandiose project for confounding the German War Party's plot.
But we had gone far enough. We were discovered. Our machinations,
though we knew it not, were seen through, our guns were spiked, and all
that remained was to put us, as soon as possible, where we could do no
further harm. Any number of Frenchmen and Russians were already in the
same place.
Carelessly leaving behind me my typewriting-machine, fifty-pfennig map
of the North Sea, copies of my preceding week's cablegrams, scissors,
paste-pot, carbon-paper, the latest Berlin newspapers, and other
telltale emblems of my infamy, I went to the American Embassy to discuss
the latest and obviously greatest turn of the war kaleidoscope with
Judge Gerard. There were a thousand and one questions to level at him.
Was it true that Sir Edward Goschen had already asked him to take charge
of Great Britain's interests? What would panic-stricken American war
refugees do now, with British warships blockading the German coasts?
Would it any longer be safe in Berlin for our people to talk their own
language in public? Would the United States Government be making any
declaration of neutrality, or something of that sort, to the German
Government? Was the Embassy still in direct communication with
Washington? Could it facilitate the transmission of our news-cablegrams
to New York or Chicago? These were the things the journalistic brethren
_en masse_ were anxious to know--and I recall vividly that the
Ambassador and his staff, despite a week of worries unprecedented, were
still smiling and managing to reply to every question, however abstract
or unanswerable, with invincible equanimity. I have since heard that
there were fellow citizens who found Gerard, Grew, Harvey and Ruddock
"inattentive." I suppose they were the patriots who couldn't understand
why local checks on the First National Bank of Roaring Branch,
Pennsylvania, "weren't good" at the Embassy, and who were "peeved"
because the Ambassador couldn't tell them why Uncle Sam hadn't already
started a fleet of dreadnoughts and liners-_de-luxe_ to Hamburg and
Bremen to rescue his stranded tourist family. Or one of the
complainants, who was "going to write to Bryan" about our "inefficient
diplomatic service," may have been that plutocratic dame from Boston who
demanded that Gerard should at least be able to commandeer "a special
train" for the Americans, even if every military line in all Germany was
at that hour choked with troop-transports. And yet we Yankees rank in
effete Europe as a cool-headed and common-sense race!
What dominated my thoughts, of course, was whether, after all, I was now
to be allowed to remain in Germany. My desire to do so was never
stronger--to sit on the edge of history in the making at such a moment.
Judge Gerard resolved my doubts. I should "cheer up" and hope for the
best. I tarried for a moment longer, to chat over the day's
overwhelming developments with Mrs. Gerard, with whom I had not had my
usual daily cup of tea and war conference. We wondered how long it would
be before a formal declaration of war between England and Germany would
be declared. I spoke of my pleasurable anticipation at being permitted
to live through the mighty days ahead of us in Berlin with herself and
the Ambassador. They would be experiences worthy of transmission to
grandchildren. We agreed we should be privileged mortals, in a way, to
be vouchsafed so tremendous an opportunity. I commented on Mrs.
Gerard's amazing lack of fatigue after four days and nights of trials
and tribulations with terror-stricken compatriots. She spoke of the
lively satisfaction it had given her to be of service of so homely and
homespun a character, and remarked that young Mrs. Ruddock had been "a
perfect brick" through it all, an _aide-de-camp_ whom a field-marshal
might have envied....
Eight o'clock. Dusk had just fallen as I quitted the Embassy. A trio
of servants clustered at the entrance was examining in the dim light a
_Tageblatt_ "Extra" which, they said, was just out. I fairly snatched
at it. This is what it said:
+------------------------------------------------+
| |
| ENGLAND BREAKS OFF DIPLOMATIC |
| RELATIONS WITH GERMANY |
| |
| The English Ambassador in Berlin, Sir |
| Edward Goschen, appeared this evening in |
| the German Foreign Office and demanded his |
| passports. That denotes, in all probability, |
| war with England! |
| |
+------------------------------------------------+
I ought not to have been surprised, yet I was shocked. So England now,
at last and really, was "in it." The realization was almost numbing. I
stood reading and reading the _Extrablatt_, over and over again. "Joe"
Grew came hurrying up in his automobile. He, too, had the _Tageblatt_
in his hand. He was hastening to tell the Ambassador the news. It was
true, Grew said, beyond any doubt. Ye Gods! What next? The world's
coming to an end, one thought, was about all there was left. And that
seemed nearer at hand than any of us ever felt it before.
[Illustration: Berlin Mob Attacking British Embassy on the night of Aug.
4, 1914. (Drawn for the Illustrated London News from a description by
the author.)]
I started now for the English Embassy, across the Wilhelms Platz and
down the Wilhelmstrasse four or five blocks to the north. From afar I
heard the rumble of a mob, not a singing cheering mob such as had been
turning Berlin into bedlam for a week before, but a mob obviously bent
on more serious business. I reached the Behrenstrasse, two hundred feet
away from the English Embassy. Though quite dark, I could see plainly
what was happening. The Embassy was besieged by a shouting throng,
yelling so savagely that its words were not distinguishable. They were
not chanting _Rule, Britannia!_ I was sure of that. It was
imprecations, inarticulate but ferocious beyond description, which they
were muttering. I saw things hurtling toward the windows. From the
crash of glass which presently ensued, I knew they were hitting their
mark. The fusillade increased in violence. When there would be a
particularly loud crash, it would be followed by a fiendish roar of
glee. The street was crammed from curb to curb. Many women were among
the demonstrators. A mounted policeman or two could be seen making no
very vigorous effort to interfere with the riot. It was no place for an
Englishman, or anybody who, being smooth-shaven, was usually mistaken
for one in Berlin. I did not dream of trying to run the blockade. The
rear, or Wilhelmstrasse, entrance of the Adlon adjoins the Embassy. It
would be easy to gain access to the hotel that way. I tried the door.
It was locked. I rang. One of the light-blue uniformed page-boys came,
peered through the glass, recognized me and fled without letting me in.
I rang again. No one came. Wilhelmstrasse now was roaring with the
mob's rage. Ambassador Goschen's subsequent report on this classic
manifestation of _Kultur_ described how he and his staff, seated in the
front drawing-room of the Embassy, narrowly escaped being stoned to
death by missiles which now flew thick and fast through every paneless
window of the building.
[Illustration: Extra Edition of _Berliner Tageblatt_ Announcing War With
England]
I hailed a passing horse-cab and told the driver to make for the Adlon
by the circuitous route of the Voss-strasse, Koeniggraetzer-strasse and
Brandenburg Gate. Ten minutes later I reached the hotel. I stepped to
the desk and asked for Herr Adlon, Sr., or Louis Adlon, his son; said
the Wilhelmstrasse mob might soon decide to hold an overflow meeting and
attack the hotel premises, and that certain precautionary measures might
be useful. The lobby of the hotel, I noticed, was rapidly filling up
with American war refugees, of whom there was to be a meeting. I
recognized a dozen or more anxious compatriots whom I had seen encamped
at the Embassy during the preceding two or three days. The Ambassador
was expected, they said, and they were hoping and praying to hear from
him that the Government had at last effected adequate rescue
arrangements. The frock-coated menial at the hotel desk, only a few
hours previous servility itself, was unusually curt when I asked where
the Adlons were. I did not think of it at the time, but his rudeness
assumed its proper importance in the scheme of things as they later
developed. I stopped to chat with Ambassador Gerard, who had just
strolled in. Then I met another acquaintance, Count von Oppersdorff,
the urbane Silesian Roman Catholic political leader, a familiar and
welcome figure on our Berlin golf links. "So England has come in,"
remarked the Count. "Yes," I rejoined, "you hardly expected her to keep
out, did you?" "Well," said Oppersdorff, with a meaningful look in his
mild blue eye, "there will be many surprises--many surprises." That was
a war prophecy which has come true.
I dashed up to my room to write a dispatch to _The Times_ in New York
and _The Tribune_ in Chicago, which should tell briefly of the outbreak
of war between England and Germany, and of the extraordinary scenes in
front of His Britannic Majesty's embassy. A _Lokal-Anzeiger_ "extra" was
now available, with this "cooked" summary of the events which had
precipitated the climacteric decision:
+----------------------------------------------------+
| |
| ENGLAND HAS DECLARED WAR ON GERMANY! |
| |
| OFFICIAL REPORT. |
| |
| This afternoon, shortly after the speech of |
| the Imperial Chancellor, in which the offense |
| against international law involved in our |
| setting foot on Belgian territory was frankly |
| acknowledged and the will of the German Empire |
| to make good the consequences was affirmed, |
| the British Ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen, |
| appeared in the Reichstag to convey to |
| Foreign Secretary von Jagow a communication |
| from his Government. In this communication |
| the German Government was asked to make an |
| immediate reply to the question whether it could |
| give the assurance that no violation of Belgian |
| neutrality would take place. The Foreign |
| Secretary forthwith replied that this was not |
| possible, and again explained the reasons which |
| compel Germany to secure herself against an |
| attack by the French army across Belgian soil. |
| Shortly after seven o'clock the British |
| Ambassador appeared at the Foreign Office to |
| declare war and demand his passports. |
| |
| We are informed that the German Government |
| has placed military necessities before all |
| other considerations, notwithstanding that it |
| had, in consequence thereof, to reckon that |
| either ground or pretext for intervention would |
| be given to the English Government. |
| |
+----------------------------------------------------+
It was this news--reiterating by the printed word what the Chancellor
had unblushingly announced in the Reichstag: that military necessities
had taken precedence of "all other considerations," including
honor--which aroused the ferocity of the mob and incited it, amid mad
maledictions on "perfidious Albion," to vent its fury by attempting to
wreck the English Embassy. This German "official report," moreover,
besides distorting the facts so as to place the onus for the outbreak of
hostilities exclusively upon England, deliberately misstated the object
of Sir Edward Goschen's visit to the Foreign Office. As we know from
his famous dispatch on the last phase, he did not "appear" there "to
declare war." England's declaration of war, as a matter of historical
record, was not made until eleven P.M., or midnight Berlin time. The
assault on the Embassy by _Kultur's_ knife-throwing, stone-hurling and
window-breaking cohorts was in full progress by nine o'clock. It began
almost immediately after Sir Edward Goschen's return from his celebrated
farewell interview with the Imperial Chancellor--the torrid quarter of
an hour in which von Bethmann Hollweg, incapable of concealing Germany's
rage over the wrecking of her war scheme, blackened the Teutonic
escutcheon for all time by branding the Belgian treaty of neutrality as
a "scrap of paper." Of all egregious words which have fallen from the
lips of German "diplomats," von Bethmann Hollweg's immortal
indiscretions of that day will live longest, to his own and his
country's ineffaceable shame.
While at work on my dispatches in my hotel room--it was now about nine
o'clock--I could hear _Unter den Linden_ below my windows roaring with
mob fury against Britain. "_Kraemer-volk!_" (Peddler nation!)
"_Rassen-Verrat!_" (Race treachery!) "_Nieder mit England!_" (Down with
England!) "_Tod den Englaender!_" (Death to the English!) were the
shouts which burst forth in mad chorus. I have never hunted beasts in
the jungle. Never have my ears been smitten with the snarl and growl of
wild animals at bay. I never heard the horizon ring with the tumult of
howling dervishes plunging fanatically to the attack. But the populace
of Berlin seemed to me at that moment to be giving a vivid composite
imitation of them all. Certainly no civilized community on earth ever
surrendered so completely to all-obsessing brute fury as the war mob
which thirsted for British blood in "Athens-on-the-Spree" on the night
of August 4, 1914. It gave vent to all the animal passions and breathed
the murder instinct said to be inherent in the average human when
unreasoning rage temporarily supplants sanity. If it had caught sight
of or could have laid hands on Sir Edward Goschen, or any one else
identifiable as an Englaender, it would undoubtedly have torn him limb
from limb. The Germans may not be the modern personification of the
Huns, but the savagery to which their Imperial capital ruthlessly
resigned itself on the threshold of war with England justifies the
belief that they have inherited some of the characteristics of Attila's
fiends. Next morning's Berlin papers explained in all seriousness, on
police authority, that the mob "infuriated" because persons in the
English Embassy had thrown "beggars' pennies" from the windows--a
ludicrous falsehood.
Half an hour later I came down-stairs to motor to the Main Telegraph
Office with my American cables. No sooner had I stepped to the threshold
of the hotel than three policemen grabbed me--one pinioning my right
arm, another my left, and the third gripping me by the back of the neck.
All around the hotel entrance stood gesticulating Germans yelling, like
Comanche Indians, "_Englischer Spion! Nach Spandau mit ihm!_" (English
spy! To Spandau with him!) In far less time than it takes me to tell
it, my captors, who had now drawn their sabers to "protect" me, as they
explained, from the murderous intentions of the mob, tossed me into the
rear seat of an open taxicab waiting at the curb. They allowed
sufficient time to elapse for the mob, which now encircled the cab
shouting "_Englischer Hund!_" (English dog!) "_Schiesst den Spion!_"
(Shoot the spy!) and other cheery greetings, to cool its passions on my
hapless head and body with fisticuffs and canes, while a misdirected
upper-cut from a youth, aimed squarely at my jaw, did nothing but knock
my hat into the bottom of the car and send my eye-glasses splintered and
spinning to the same destination. The police, still covering me with
their sabers, shoved me to the floor of the car and gave orders to the
driver to make post-haste for the Mittel-strasse police station, half a
dozen blocks away. The power of speech having temporarily returned--I
wonder if my readers will regard it a humiliating confession if I
acknowledge that cold chills were now chasing up and down my spine?--I
ventured to ask the policemen to whom or to what I was indebted for this
"striking" token of their solicitude.
"You know perfectly well why you're here," replied the giant who was
gripping me by the right arm as if I might be contemplating escape from
the lower regions of the taxi by falling through or flying away. "The
mob heard the Adlon was full of English spies, and they were waiting for
you to come out. They'd have killed you on the spot if we hadn't been
there to rescue you." That was, of course, simply an absurd lie, as
fast-crowding events of the succeeding night were to demonstrate. I was
arrested because I had been denounced, in all formality, as a spy. If
the German authorities are inclined to assert the contrary, I refer
them, without permission, to the document reproduced opposite this
page--the official and original denunciation obligingly slipped by
mistake into my handbag of personal belongings at the Police-Presidency
later in the night, when, on the demand of the American Ambassador, I
was precipitately released from custody. Doctor Otto Sprenger, of
Bremen, was one of the police spies stationed either in the Hotel Adlon,
or at a wire therewith connected, to overhear conversations, and who, in
the hour of his country's extremities, struck a herculean blow for
Kaiser and Empire by catching Mackenzie (Kingsley is as near as he could
get the name) and myself in our telephonic plot to frustrate Germany's
war plans.
I was still remonstrating with the police about the absurdity of my
arrest when the taxi pulled up in front of Mittel-strasse station.
Evidently news of our impending arrival had preceded us, for another
gang of shouting patriots was assembled in front of the station and
proceeded to bestow upon me the same sort of a welcome as I received at
the hands of the mob in Unter den Linden. Still "protecting" me with
their drawn sabers, my guardians contrived to push and drag me into the
station-house and up one flight of stairs to headquarters before the
crowd had done anything more serious than crack me over the head and
shoulders half a dozen times. I was then led into the back room of the
station, where, as I soon saw, pickpockets and other criminals are taken
to be stripped and searched, and was ordered to sit down in the midst of
a group of twenty policemen, who eyed me with glances mingling contempt
and murderous intent.
[Illustration: Facsimile of Original Denunciation of the Author as an
"English Spy"]
I had partially recovered my equilibrium after my somewhat exciting
experiences of the previous ten minutes and found myself able to talk
dispassionately to a courteous young lieutenant of police who was in
charge of the station. I told him I was not only an American, but a
long-time resident of Berlin, with a home of my own in Wilmersdorf, and
that if he would communicate with his superior, Doctor Henninger, chief
of the political police, who had known me for years, he would soon be
able to convince himself that a grotesque mistake had been made in
arresting me as an "English spy." The lieutenant, who, I should think,
was the only man in all Berlin who had not yet entirely lost his reason,
asked me politely for my papers and other credentials. I handed him my
American passport, newly-issued at the Embassy a few days before, a
visiting-card bearing my Berlin home address, one or two copies of my
most recent news telegrams to London and New York, which I happened to
have with me, my correspondent's identification card stamped by the
Berlin police department, and finally a letter which I had been carrying
with me during the war crisis for precisely some such emergency--a
communication sent me from the Imperial yacht in the summer of 1913,
acknowledging in gracious terms a copy of _Men Around the Kaiser_, which
William II had deigned to accept at my hands. The police lieutenant
almost clicked heels and came to the salute when he saw that his
prisoner was the possessor of so priceless a document. He asked me to
"calm" myself and await developments. "_Es wird schon gut sein._"
Which in real language means that "everything will be all right."
As their superior officer had not lopped off my head on sight, and even
condescended to hold courteous converse with the "spy," the group of
policemen in whose midst I found myself now warmed up to me perceptibly.
"You are an American, eh?" ejaculated one of them. "I wonder if you
know my brother in Minnesota? His name is Paul Richter."
I was genuinely sorry I had never met Herr Richter--probably he did not
live in the Red River Valley, which was the only part of Minnesota I
knew, I explained. I knew some Richters in my native county of La
Porte, Indiana, but they had never claimed the honor, to my knowledge,
of having a brother in the Kaiser's police. While _Schutzmann_ Richter
and I were doing our best to discover that the world is small, noise of
fresh commotion, such as had greeted my own arrival at the station,
ascended from the street. Apparently a fresh "bag" had come in. A
second later, of all people on earth, who should be pushed into the
room, with three policemen at his neck and arms, but my very disheveled
friend, Tower. He was hatless, his collar and tie were awry, every hair
of his Goethe-like blond head was on end, and he cut altogether the
figure of a very much perturbed young man. There were no mirrors about,
so I can not say with certainty how I myself looked, but I am sure I
could have easily been mistaken for Tower's twin at that moment.
Partners in misery and anxiety we certainly were. Tower, it appeared,
was denounced to the spy-hunters at the Adlon by a chauffeur he had
engaged to drive him a day or two before--the man who piloted the
machine which was hired out to Adlon guests at fancy rates per hour.
Presently the chauffeur himself bounded into the room, shouting like a
madman. "Now we've got him--the damned English cur!" he snarled, shaking
his fist, first in Tower's face, and then, recognizing me, in mine, with
an oath and a "You, too, pig-dog!" The chauffeur now ranted his reasons
for denouncing both Tower and me. "I'm an old African soldier!" he
yelled. "I know these contemptible _Englaender_. This Tower (he called
it Toever, which was the way Germans used phonetically to pronounce a
former American ambassador's name) is the notorious _Times_
correspondent!" Tower impetuously denied this soft impeachment, and
pointed out that instead of being the Thunderer's representative, he was
the correspondent of the _Daily News_, "the only Germanophile English
newspaper." Tower himself was never Germanophile, but it was grasping
at a legitimate straw so to describe his London paper. I could not
conscientiously identify _The Daily Mail_ as _deutschfreundlich_, or, I
regretfully mused, it might be the means of saving my neck.
Now there was more noise from the lower regions. Whom had they nabbed
this time. Astonished as I was to see Tower marched in, I fairly gasped
when the newest batch of prisoners was shoved into the room, for it was
headed by my young secretary, Schrape, and included Mrs. Hensel, a
gray-haired German-American lady and an old Berlin friend of my family,
and Miles Bouton, of the local staff of the Associated Press. Schrape
and Mrs. Hensel had been denounced at the Adlon as my accomplices in
espionage--Schrape for obvious reasons, and Mrs. Hensel because she had
called to see me at the hotel a few minutes after my arrest,
undoubtedly, of course, to bring me illicit information or receive her
"orders." She had come, as a matter of fact, as countless acquaintances
of mine had been doing throughout the week, to ask for advice or
assistance in the midst of the topsy-turvy conditions into which life in
Berlin had been so suddenly plunged. Schrape was remarkably cool. So
was Bouton, who insisted upon expressing himself with such freedom about
the indignities heaped upon him that I momentarily expected to witness
his decapitation. Mrs. Hensel, poor soul, was frightened speechless and
between her tears could only incoherently make me understand that she
had no sooner asked for my name at the Adlon desk than the clerks handed
her over to the police. Bouton seemed to owe his arrest to the fact
that he was in Tower's company in the Adlon lobby, attending the meeting
of American war refugees. Tower had been savagely cracked over the head
by an Adlon waiter armed with a tray while being hustled out of the
hotel by the police. Mrs. Bouton, tearfully protesting against her
husband's arrest, had herself been threatened with arrest or something
worse if she did not instantly "hold her mouth." Just what part the
Adlon staff of clerks, porters, waiters and page-boys played in our
arrest was not made clear to me until the next day; of which more in the
succeeding chapter.
As soon as the "gang of spies," as the policemen in the room now
pleasantly called us, was complete, Tower, Schrape and Bouton were lined
up against the wall and ordered to raise their hands above their heads,
while their clothes were searched for concealed weapons or incriminating
espionage evidence. While my fellow prisoners (except Mrs. Hensel) were
undergoing examination, a typical young Berlin thug, evidently a thief,
was brought in, and took his place adjacent to my colleagues, also to be
searched. The room was now resounding with encouraging shouts from
overwrought policemen that "the English dogs ought to be hanged."
Others suggested that "Spandau," the spy-shooting gallery, was a more
appropriate place for us than the gallows. For some God-willed or other
mysterious reason I was not searched. That gave me only temporary
relief, for we were presently informed that we would be taken to the
Police-Presidency (central station) for the night and "dealt with
there." That meant searching of everybody, I felt morally sure, and it
was then that the tongue of me began cleaving to the roof of my mouth,
while my throat parched with terror. For in a leather card-case in my
inside pocket I carried a telegraph code, utterly innocuous in itself--a
make-shift affair got up during the preceding forty-eight hours and of
which I posted a duplicate to London, with a view to explaining to my
editor in cipher my movements and whereabouts if I had suddenly to leave
Berlin. It was a quite harmless string of phrases reading like this:
"My wife's condition has become critical, and physicians recommend
immediate departure if catastrophe is to be avoided."
All this was, of course, in German, and meant (as the code explained)
that I was proceeding to the Hotel Angleterre in Copenhagen. Another
phrase substituted "boy's" for "wife's" and meant that I was leaving for
the Hotel Amstel in Amsterdam, etc., etc. It dawned instantly upon me
that if the Berlin political police, at such a witching hour, discovered
on a suspected spy a telegraphic code of so "incriminating" a character,
he could hardly look forward to anything beyond the regulation thrill at
sunrise. I might have been able to explain in prosaic peace-times, I
soliloquized, that many newspaper correspondents use private codes in
communicating with their editors, but to convince a Berlin police
official at that moment that my code was of innocent import struck me as
the quintessence of physical impossibility.
I was undergoing, I think, all the emotions of fear and trembling when
our quintette of prisoners was now marched down to the street and piled
into taxis for transportation to the _Polizei-Praesidium_ in
Alexander-Platz, two miles across town. An enormous throng filled the
Mittel-strasse, snarling with rage. The sight of us maddened them into
a fiendish scream. Tower and I were pushed into the first car, which
happened to be the Adlon machine he had hired and was doubtless still
paying for, and which was driven by his infuriated chauffeur. The
"covering" sabers of the police, one each of whom guarded Tower and
myself, respectively in the front and back seats, did not prevent the
mob from belaboring us once more with fists and sticks, to the
accompaniment of unprintable epithets and curses. My mind, however, was
occupied completely with how to get rid of that code nestling in my
inside pocket. Nothing short of entire insensibility could have
deflected my thoughts from that all-absorbing issue. I was thinking
hard and quickly.
Tower's chauffeur, proud to be serving the Kaiser on so historic an
occasion, did not drive us, as he would naturally and ordinarily have
done, through the darkened side streets leading from Mittel-strasse to
Alexander-Platz, but decided to drag us in triumph like the victims
chained to Nero's chariots, down the brilliantly illuminated _Unter den
Linden_, which, though it was now nearly eleven o'clock, was packed with
war demonstrators. Crossing to the more crowded southern side, at a
point near the Hotel Bristol, the driver threw on his top-speed and
whirled us down the glittering boulevard at breakneck pace. As for
himself, with a policeman at his side, and two behind him pinioning
Tower and myself, he was frantic with super-patriotic joy. Now steering
with his left hand, he waved his right madly through space at the gaping
curb crowds, and yelled, so that they might know what it all meant:
"English spies! Now we've got 'em! Now we've got 'em! Hurrah!
Hurrah!" It was a great moment in that illustrious Kraftwagenfuehrer's
career. Nothing in his greasy past had ever approached it in
tremendousness. He saw the Iron Cross dangling in certain outlines
before his ecstatic vision--the reward for valor in the hour of his
Fatherland's need.
I was still brooding over that code, but even while being paraded past
the Berliners, I was actively at work on a scheme for its removal.
Necessity is, indeed, the mother of invention, and to this hour I do not
fully comprehend how I came to find the courage or ingenuity to do what
I was now successfully accomplishing. We had reached the Opera, were
approaching the Castle, and Alexander-Platz was less than five minutes
away. The need for quick work was growing more urgent from second to
second. My policeman held me firmly by the right arm. My left was
entirely free. With it I was able easily to reach the right-hand inside
pocket of my coat, wherein the card-case containing the code was lodged.
I contrived to finger my way into the case without attracting the
attention of my jailer, who, Allah be praised, was still too fascinated
by the plaudits of the crowds to be more than mildly interested in me.
I could "feel" the code now. It was of flimsy tissue paper and could be
easily torn into shreds. A sufficiently long interval had elapsed since
my last visit to the manicure to make my finger-nails highly effective
for the purpose, and by degrees which seemed infinitely slow I managed
to crumple and dessicate the "guilty" document and by "palming" and
working the bits into the spaces between my fingers the whole thing was
effectually destroyed. I withdrew my hand, stuck it into the outside
left-hand pocket of my coat to withdraw a handkerchief, blew my nose
and, while in that unforbidden act, let I don't know how many hundreds
of tissue paper particles fly back of me into the wind of Berlin's
bristling night air. I was saved. They could search me now to their
hearts' content. I found that, somehow or other, the power of speech
had suddenly returned, and a moment later I was saying cheerily to my
_Schutzmann_ friend, "Well, we're here now."
The details of what happened in the big room of the Police-Presidency
into which we were now ushered--my friend Simons, of the _Amsterdam
Telegraaf_, and Nevinson, special correspondent of _The Daily News_, who
were found in Tower's room at the Adlon and arrested on that "evidence,"
had arrived there before us--are brief and unessential. What had been
taking place during the preceding two hours is vastly more to the point.
Ambassador Gerard, who was at the Adlon when we were arrested, seems to
have cleared for action in his typically shirt-sleeves diplomatic
fashion. He dispatched First Secretary Grew to the Foreign Office to
demand our instantaneous release. Grew informed Under-Secretary
Zimmermann that if Germany continued to treat American citizens and
newspaper correspondents in accordance with the practises of the Middle
Ages (Conger was still languishing in jail at Gumbinnen) the Fatherland
was dangerously likely to lose the esteem of the only first-class Power
in the world which seemed still to be on speaking terms with her. Herr
Zimmermann, who understands plain English when it is spoken to him, was
apologetic in the extreme. He told Grew that immediate steps would be
taken to liberate me and my friends and that the Foreign Office
"regretted" that such indignities should have been heaped upon innocent
persons. Mr. Gerard evidently determined to take no chances, for the
first secretary was dispatched to the Police-Presidency with the embassy
automobile, and with instructions to demand our delivery in the flesh
and stay there till it was made. Meantime the Foreign Office had sent
urgent telephonic instructions to the police to let us out. We were
asked to fill up certain identification forms and exhibit some more
papers, and then, in accents of courteous explanation, were assured that
an "error" had unfortunately been made. We should "not hesitate, if
anybody molested us again," to call up Police Headquarters, and matters
would be speedily set right. It was not probable, we were assured, that
we would have any more trouble. If we desired, a police escort was at
our service, so that we might return to the hotel or to the Embassy in
certain safety.
We had just been bowed out of the place of our brief detention when the
familiar outlines of "Joe" Grew loomed into view, down the corridor, and
with him "Fritz," the German "life-guard" of the Embassy. It is not
customary for American men to kiss each other, but I confess here to
having been momentarily inspired with a strong temptation to lavish some
form of osculatory gratitude upon Grew. Certainly I felt that there was
nothing quite so good on God's footstool just then as to be an American
citizen. When Grew insisted on packing all five of us--Tower, Mrs.
Hensel, Bouton, Schrape and myself--into the car and driving us back to
the Embassy (it was now the romantic hour of one A.M.) behind the
protecting folds of the Stars and Stripes flapping defiantly at the
windshield, I vowed a solemn, silent oath--to aspire in such days as
might still be left to me for an opportunity some day to reciprocate in
kind the service the Ambassador and Grew had that night rendered me, the
supreme service men can render a fellow man--to save his life.
They were to be called upon, though I did not then know it, to rescue me
once again before either they or I were twenty-four hours older.