BOSTON OFFERS DESPERATE AND BLOODY RESISTANCE TO THE INVADERS
Our wing of the advancing German army remained in Hartford for four days,
at the end of which all signs of disorder had ceased; in fact, there was
little disorder at any time. The lesson of New Haven’s resistance had
been taken to heart, and there was the discouraging knowledge that a row
of German six-inch siege-guns were trained on the city from the heights
of Elizabeth Park, their black muzzles commanding the grey towers and
golden dome of State House, the J. Pierpont Morgan Memorial, the gleaming
white new City Hall, the belching chimneys of the Underwood typewriter
works, and the brown pile of Trinity College.
There was the further restraining fact that leading citizens of Hartford
were held as hostages, their lives in peril, in James J. Goodwin’s
palatial home, among these being ex-Governor Morgan G. Buckley, Mayor
Joseph H. Lawler, Bishop Chauncey B. Brewster, Dr. Flavel S. Luther,
Bishop John J. Nilan, Mrs. Richard M. Bissell, Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn,
the Rev. Rockwell Harmon Potter, Charles Hopkins Clark, Rolland F.
Andrews, the Rev. Francis Goodwin, Thomas J. Spellacy, and Sol
Sontheimer.
So the invaders’ march through New England continued. It is a pitiful
story. What could Connecticut and Massachusetts do? With all their wealth
and intelligence, with all their mechanical ingenuity, with all their
pride and patriotism, what could they do, totally unprepared, more
helpless than Belgium, against the most efficient army in Europe?
Three times, between Hartford and Springfield, unorganised bands of
Americans, armed with shotguns and rifles, lay in ambush for the
advancing enemy and fired upon them. These men declared that they would
die before they would stand by tamely and see the homes and fields of New
England despoiled by the invader. Whereupon the Germans announced, by
means of proclamations showered upon towns and villages from their
advance-guard of aeroplanes, that for every German soldier thus killed by
Americans in ambush a neighbouring town or village would be burned by
fire bombs dropped from the sky. And they carried out this threat to the
letter, so that for every act of resistance by the fathers and brothers
and sons of New England there resulted only greater suffering and
distress for the women and the children.
The average man, especially one with a wife and children, is easily cowed
when he has no hope; and presently all resistance ceased. What feeble
opposition there was in the first week dwindled to almost nothing in the
second week and to less than nothing in the third week. Stamford paid two
million dollars in gold, Bridgeport five million, New Haven five million,
Hartford twenty million, Fall River three million, Springfield five
million, Worcester two million, Providence ten million, Newport fifty
million. The smaller cities got off with half a million each, and some of
the towns paid as little as one hundred thousand dollars. But every
community paid something, and the total amount taken from New England,
including a hundred million from New Hampshire, a hundred million from
Vermont, and a hundred million from Maine, was eight hundred million
dollars, about a third of which was in gold.
With a battle-front fifty or seventy-five miles long, von Kluck’s forces
strolled across this fertile and populous region, living off the land,
leaving small holding forces with artillery at every important point, a
few hundred or a few thousand, while the main army swept relentlessly and
resistlessly on. It was a delightful four weeks’ picnic for von Kluck and
his men; and at the end of four weeks everything in New England had
fallen before them up to the city of Boston, which had been left for the
last. _And the total German losses in killed and wounded were less than
twenty!_
On July 2, General von Kluck’s army, sweeping forward unopposed, reached
the western and southwestern suburbs of Boston, passing through Newton
and Brookline, and making a detour to avoid ruining the beautiful golf
links where Ouimet won his famous victory over Ray and Vardon. This
sportsmanlike consideration was due to the fact that several of the
German officers and the Crown Prince himself were enthusiastic golfers.
Meantime there was panic in the city. For days huge crowds had swarmed
through Boston’s great railway stations, fleeing to Maine and Canada; and
across the Charles River bridge there had passed an endless stream of
automobiles bearing away rich families with their jewels and their
silver. Among them were automobile trucks from the banks, laden with tons
of gold. No boats left the harbour through fear of a grim German
battleship that lay outside, plainly visible from the millionaire homes
of Nahant and Manchester.
Even now there was talk of resistance, and German Taubes looked down upon
a mass meeting of ten thousand frantic citizens gathered in Mechanics
Hall on Huntington Avenue; but prudent counsels prevailed. How could
Boston resist without soldiers or ammunition or field artillery? Brooklyn
had resisted, and now lay in ruins. New Haven had tried to resist, and
what had come of it?
At three o’clock on this day of sorrow, with banners flying and bands
playing, the German forces--horse, foot, and artillery--entered the
Massachusetts capital in two great columns, the one marching down Beacon
Street, past the homes of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Julia Ward Howe, the
other advancing along Commonwealth Avenue, past the white-columned
Harvard Club, past the statues of Alexander Hamilton and William Lloyd
Garrison, on under the shade of four rows of elms that give this noble
thoroughfare a resemblance to the Avenue de la Grande Armée in Paris.
It was a perfect summer’s day. The sun flashed from the golden dome of
the State House on the hill over Boston Common, and from the great white
Custom House tower that rose impressively in the distance above the green
of the Public Gardens. Boston looked on, dumb with shame and stifled
rage, as the invaders took possession of the city and ran up their flags,
red, white, and black, above the Old South Meeting House on Washington
Street, where Benjamin Franklin was baptised, and above the sacred, now
dishonoured, shaft of the Bunker Hill Monument.
Hostages were taken, as usual, these including Major Henry L. Higginson,
President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, Major James M.
Curley, Edward A. Filene, Margaret Deland, William A. Paine, Ellery
Sedgwick, Mrs. John L. Gardner, Charles W. Eliot, Louis D. Brandeis,
Bishop William Lawrence, Amy Lowell, T. Jefferson Coolidge, Thomas W.
Lawson, Guy Murchie, and Cardinal O’Connell.
A proclamation was made in the _Transcript_ (now forced to be the
official German organ and the only newspaper that was allowed to appear
in Boston) that these prominent persons would be held personally
responsible for any public disorder or for any failure of the city to
furnish the army of occupation with all necessary food and supplies.
On the night of occupation there were scenes of violence, with rioting
and looting in various parts of Boston, notably in Washington Street and
Tremont Street, where shops were wrecked by mobs from the South End,
several thousand of the unruly foreign element, crazed with drink and
carrying knives. Against this drunken rabble the American police, sullen
and disorganised, could do nothing or would do nothing; and the situation
was becoming desperate, when German troops advanced along Washington
Street, firing into the crowd and driving back the looters, who surged
through Winter Street, a frantic, terrified mass, and scattered over
Boston Common.
Here, in front of the Park Street Church, another huge mob of citizens
had gathered--five thousand wildly patriotic Irishmen. Armed with clubs,
rifles, and pistols, and madly waving the Stars and Stripes, they cursed,
cheered, and yelled out insults to the Germans. Suddenly a company of
German soldiers with machine-guns appeared on the high ground in front of
the State House. Three times a Prussian officer, standing near the St.
Gaudens Shaw Memorial, shouted orders to the crowd to disperse; but the
Irishmen only jeered at him.
“They want it; let them have it,” said the Prussian. “Fire!”
And three hundred fell before the blast of rifles and machine-guns.
At which the mob of Irish patriots went entirely mad, and, with yells of
hatred and defiance, swarmed straight up the hill at the battery that was
slaughtering them, shouting: “To hell with ‘em!” “Come on, boys!”
charging so fiercely and valiantly, that the Germans were swept from
their position, and for a short time a victorious American mob held the
approaches to the State House.
Alas, it was for only a short time! The enemy quickly brought forward
reinforcements in overwhelming strength, and an hour later there were
only dead, wounded and prisoners to tell of this loyal but hopeless
effort.
In other parts of the city during this night of terror there were similar
scenes of bloodshed, the Germans inflicting terrible punishment upon the
people, innocent and guilty suffering alike for every act of disobedience
or resistance. There were a few cases of sniping from houses; and for
these a score of men, seized indiscriminately in the crowds, were hanged
from windows of the offending or suspected buildings. As a further lesson
to the city, two of the hostages, chosen by lot, were led out into the
Public Gardens the next morning at sunrise and shot near the statue of
Edward Everett Hale.
Machine-guns were now placed on the high ground before the Soldiers’
Monument and at other strategic points, and ten thousand soldiers were
encamped on Boston Common, the main part of the army being withdrawn,
after this overwhelming show of force, to Franklin Park on the outskirts,
where heavy siege-guns were set up.
The _Transcript_ appeared that day with a black-lettered proclamation,
signed by General von Kluck, to the effect that at the next disorder five
hostages would be shot, and six beautiful buildings--the State House, the
Custom House, the Boston Public Library, the Opera House, the Boston
Art Museum, and the main building of the Massachusetts School of
Technology--would be wrecked by shells. This reduced the city to absolute
submission.
Mrs. John L. Gardner’s fine Italian palace in the Fenway, with its wealth
of art treasures, was turned into a staff headquarters and occupied by
the Crown Prince, General von Kluck, and Count Zeppelin. The main body of
officers established themselves in the best hotels and clubs, the Copley
Plaza, the Touraine, the Parker House, the Somerset, the St. Botolph, the
City Club, the Algonquin, the Harvard Club, paying liberally for the
finest suites and the best food by the simple method of signing checks to
be redeemed later by the city of Boston.
Non-commissioned officers made themselves comfortable in smaller hotels
and in private houses and boarding-houses to which they were assigned. A
popular eating-place was Thompson’s Spa, where a crush of brass-buttoned
German soldiers lunched every day, perched on high stools along the
counters, and trying to ogle the pretty waitresses, who did not hide
their aversion.
It is worthy of note that the Tavern Club was burned by its own members
to save from desecration a spot hallowed by memories of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton, and George William
Curtis.
I must mention another instance of the old-time indomitable New England
spirit that came to my knowledge during these sad days. The Germans
levied upon the city of Boston an indemnity of three hundred million
dollars, this to be paid at the rate of three million dollars a day; and
on the morning of July 4, two of von Kluck’s staff officers, accompanied
by a military escort, marched down State Street into the now deserted
region of banks and vaults and trust companies, to arrange for the
regular payment of this sum. Entering the silent halls of a great banking
house, they came to a rear office with the door locked. A summons to open
being unanswered, they broke down this door; whereupon a shot, fired from
within, killed the first soldier who crossed the threshold. A German
volley followed, and, when the smoke cleared away, there sat a prominent
Boston financier, his father’s Civil War musket clutched in his hands and
the look of a hero in his dying eyes. All alone, this uncompromising
figure of a man had waited there in his private office ready to defy the
whole German army and die for his rights and his convictions.