GENERAL VON HINDENBURG TEACHES NEW YORK CITY A LESSON
On May 24, 1921, the situation of New York City was seen to be desperate,
and most of the newspapers, even those that had clamoured loudest for
resistance and boasted of American valour and resourcefulness, now
admitted that the metropolis must submit to a German occupation.
Even the women among the public officials and political leaders were
inclined to a policy of nonresistance. General Wood was urged to
surrender the city and avoid the horrors of bombardment; but the
commander replied that his first duty was to defend the territory of the
United States, and that every day he could keep the enemy isolated on
Long Island was a day gained for the permanent defences that were
frantically organising all over the country.
It was vital, too, that the immense stores of gold and specie in the
vaults of the Federal Reserve and other great New York banks should be
safely transported to Chicago.
All day and all night, automobile trucks, operated under orders from
William G. McAdoo, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank, loaded with
millions and millions of gold, passed unprotected and almost unheeded
through the crowded section between Wall Street and the Grand Central
Station. The people stared at them dumbly. They knew what was going on.
They knew they could have a fortune by reaching out their hands. But at
this moment, with their eternities in their eyes, they had no thought of
gold. Hour after hour the work went on. Finally, subway trains and street
cars were pressed into service as treasure-carriers.
By night $800,000,000 had started West and the next morning Chicago was
the financial capital of America.
At midnight General Wood gave final orders for resistance to the last gun
and the last man; and, when early the next morning the German general
again sent officers with a flag of truce demanding the surrender of
Manhattan Island, Wood’s reply was a firm refusal. He tried, however, to
gain time in negotiations; and a few hours later I accompanied a
delegation of American staff officers with counter-proposals across the
East River in a launch. I can see von Hindenburg now, in his high boots
and military coat, as he received the American officers at the foot of
the shattered Brooklyn Bridge. A square massive head with close-cropped
white hair, brushed straight back from a broad forehead. And sad
searching eyes--wonderful eyes.
“Then you refuse to surrender? You think you can fight?” the Field
Marshal demanded.
At which the ranking American officer, stung by his arrogance, declared
that they certainly did think they could fight, and would prove it.
“Ah! So!” said von Hindenburg, and he glanced at a gun crew who were
loading a half-ton projectile into an 11.1-inch siege-gun that stood on
the pavement. “Which is the Woolworth Building?” he asked, pointing
across the river.
“The tallest one, Excellency--the one with the Gothic lines and gilded
cornices,” replied one of his officers.
“Ah, yes, of course. I recognise it from the pictures. It’s beautiful.
Gentlemen,”--he addressed the American officers,--“I am offering
twenty-dollar gold pieces to this gun crew if they bring down
that tower with a single shot. Now, then, careful!...
“Ready!”
We covered our ears as the shot crashed forth, and a moment later the
most costly and graceful tower in the world seemed to stagger on its
base. Then, as the thousand-pound shell, striking at the twenty-seventh
story, exploded deep inside, clouds of yellow smoke poured out through
the crumbling walls, and the huge length of twenty-four stories above the
jagged wound swayed slowly toward the east, and fell as one piece,
flinging its thousands of tons of stone and steel straight across the
width of Broadway, and down upon the grimy old Post Office Building
opposite.
_“Sehr gut!”_ nodded von Hindenburg. “It’s amusing to see them fall.
Suppose we try another? What’s that one to the left?”
“The Singer Building, Excellency,” answered the officer.
“Good! Are you ready?”
Then the tragedy was repeated, and six hundred more were added to the
death toll, as the great tower crumbled to earth.
“Now, gentlemen,”--von Hindenburg turned again to the American officers
with a tiger gleam in his eyes,--“you see what we have done with
two shots to two of your tallest and finest buildings. At this time
to-morrow, with God’s help, we shall have a dozen guns along this bank of
the river, ready for whatever may be necessary. And two of our
_Parsevals_, each carrying a ton of dynamite, will float over New York
City. I give you until twelve o’clock to-morrow to decide whether you
will resist or capitulate. At twelve o’clock we begin firing.”
Our instructions were to return at once in the launch by the shortest
route to the Battery, where automobiles were waiting to take us to
General Wood’s headquarters in the Metropolitan Tower. I can close my
eyes to-day and see once more those pictures of terror and despair that
were spread before us as we whirled through the crowded streets behind
the crashing hoofs of a cavalry escort. The people knew who we were,
where we had been, and they feared what our message might be.
Broadway, of course, was impassable where the mass of red brick from the
Singer Building filled the great canyon as if a glacier had spread over
the region, or as if the lava from a man-made Aetna had choked this great
thoroughfare.
Through the side streets we snatched hasty impressions of unforgetable
scenes. Into the densely populated regions around Grand and Houston
Streets the evicted people of Brooklyn had poured. And into the homes of
these miserably poor people, where you can walk for blocks without
hearing a word in the English tongue, Brooklyn’s derelicts had been
absorbed by tens of thousands.
Here came men and women from all parts of Manhattan, the rich in their
automobiles, the poor on foot, bearing bundles of food and eager to help
in the work of humanity. And some, alas, were busy with the sinister
business of looting.
Above Fourteenth Street we had glimpses of similar scenes and I learned
later that almost every family in Manhattan received some Brooklyn
homeless ones into their care. New York--for once--was hospitable.
In Madison Square the people waited in silence as we approached the great
white tower from which the Commander of the Army of the East, unmindful
of the fate of the Woolworth and the Singer buildings, watched for
further moves from the fortified shores of Brooklyn. Not a shout greeted
our arrival at the marble entrance facing the square, not even that
murmur of expectancy which sweeps over a tense gathering. The people knew
the answer of von Hindenburg. They had read it, as had all the world for
miles around, in the cataclysm of the plunging towers.
New York must surrender or perish!
Scarcely three blocks away, the Committee of Public Safety, numbering one
hundred, sat in agitated council at the Madison Square Garden, while
enormous crowds, shouting and murmuring, surged outside, where five
hundred armed policemen tried vainly to quell the spirit of riot that was
in the air. Far into the night the discussion lasted, while overhead in
the purple-black sky floated the two _Parsevals_, ominous visitors, their
search-lights playing over the helpless city that was to feel their wrath
on the morrow unless it yielded.
Meantime, on the square platform within the great Moorish building, a
hundred leading citizens of Manhattan, including the ablest and the
richest and a few of the most radical, spoke their minds, while thousands
of men and women, packed in the galleries and the aisles, listened
heart-sick for some gleam of comfort.
And there was none.
Among the Committee of Public Safety I recognised J. P. Morgan, Jacob H.
Sehiff, John D. Rockefeller, Charles F. Murphy, Andrew Carnegie, Vincent
Astor, Cardinal Farley, Colonel Jacob Ruppert, Nicholas Murray Butler, S.
Stanwood Menken, Paul M. Warburg, John Finley, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont,
James E. Gaffney, Ida Tarbell, Norman Hapgood, William Randolph Hearst,
Senator Whitman, Bernard Ridder, Frank A. Munsey, Henry Morgenthau, Elihu
Root, Henry L. Stimson, Franklin Q. Brown, John Mitchell, John Wanamaker,
Dr. Parkhurst, Thomas A. Edison, Colonel George Harvey, Douglas Robinson,
John Hays Hammond, Theodore Shonts, William Dean Howells, Alan R. Hawley,
Samuel Gompers, August Belmont, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the Rev. Percy
Stickney Grant, Judge E. H. Gary, Emerson McMillin, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
and ex-Mayor Mitchel.
Former President Wilson motored over from Princeton, accompanied by
Professor McClellan, and was greeted with cheers. Ex-President Taft was
speaking at the time, advocating a dignified appeal to the Hague Tribunal
for an adjudication of the matter according to international law. Nearly
all of the speakers favoured non-resistance, so far as New York City was
concerned. With scarcely a dissenting voice, the great financial and
business interests represented here demanded that New York City
capitulate immediately.
Whereupon Theodore Roosevelt, who had just entered the Garden with his
uniform still smeared with Long Island mud, sprang to his feet and cried
out that he would rather see Manhattan Island sunk in the Bay than
disgraced by so cowardly a surrender. There was still hope, he declared.
The East River was impassable for the enemy. All shipping had been
withdrawn from Brooklyn shores, and the German fleet dared not enter the
Ambrose Channel and the lower bay so long as the Sandy Hook guns held
out.
“We are a great nation,” Roosevelt shouted, “full of courage and
resourcefulness. Let us stand together against these invaders, as our
forefathers stood at Lexington and Bunker Hill!”
During the cheers that followed this harangue, my attention was drawn to
an agitated group on the platform, the central figure being Bernard
Ridder, recognised leader of the large German-American population of New
York City that had remained staunchly loyal in the crisis. Presently a
clamour from the crowd outside, sharper and fiercer than any that had
preceded it, announced some new and unexpected danger close at hand.
White-faced, Mr. Ridder stepped to the edge of the platform and lifted
his hand impressively.
“Let me speak,” he said. “I must speak in justice to myself and to half a
million German-Americans of this city, who are placed in a terrible
position by news that I have just received. I wish to say that we are
Americans first, not Germans! We are loyal to the city, loyal to this
country, and whatever happens here tonight--”
At this moment a tumult of shouts was heard at the Madison Avenue
entrance, and above it a shrill purring sound that seemed to strike
consternation into an army officer who sat beside me.
“My God!” he cried. “The machine-guns! The Germans are in the streets!”