ON CHRISTMAS EVE BOSTON THEILLS THE NATION WITH AN ACT OF MAGNIFICENT
HEROISM
Now all over America came a marvellous spiritual awakening. The sacrifice
of the President’s noble life, and his wife’s thrilling effort to shield
her husband, was not in vain. Once more the world knew the resistless
power of a martyr’s death. Women and men alike were stirred to warlike
zeal and a joy in national sacrifice and service. The enlistment officers
were swamped with a crush of young and old, eager to join the colours;
and within three days following the President’s assassination a million
soldiers were added to the army of defence and a million more were turned
away. It was no longer a question how to raise a great American army, but
how to train and equip it, and how to provide it with officers.
Most admirable was the behaviour of the great body of German-Americans;
in fact it was a German-American branch of the American Defence Society,
financed in America, that started the beautiful custom, which became
universal, of wearing patriotic buttons bearing the sacred words: _“The
Union! The Flag!”_
“It was one thing,” wrote Bernard Ridder in the Chicago _Staats-Zeitung_,
“for German-Americans to side with Germany in the great European war
(1914-1919) when only our sympathies were involved. It is quite a
different thing for us now in a war that involves our homes and our
property, all that we have in the world. When Germany attacks America,
she attacks German-Americans, she attacks us in our material interests,
in our fondest associations; and we will resist her just as in 1776 the
American colonists, who were really English, resisted England, the mother
country, when she attacked them in the same way.”
I was impressed by the truth of this statement during a visit that I
made to Milwaukee, where I found greatly improved conditions. In fact,
German-Americans themselves were bringing to light the activities of
German spies and vigorously opposing German propaganda.
In Allentown, Pennsylvania, which has a large German population, I heard
of a German-American mother named Roth, who was so zealous in her loyalty
to the United States that she rose at five o’clock on the day following
the President’s assassination and enlisted her three sons before they
were out of bed.
In Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland and other cities women
volunteered by thousands as postmen, street-car conductors, elevator
operators and for service in factories and business houses, so as to
release the men for military service. Chicago newspapers printed pictures
of Mrs. Harold F. McCormick, Mrs. J. Ogden Armour, Mrs. J. Clarence
Webster and other prominent society women in blue caps and improvised
uniforms, ringing up fares on the Wabash Avenue cars for the sake of the
example they would set to others.
In San Francisco, Denver, Portland, Oregon, Omaha, and Salt Lake City a
hundred thousand women, at gatherings of women’s clubs and organisations,
formally joined the Women’s National War Economy League and pledged
themselves as follows:
“We, the undersigned American women, in this time of national need and
peril, do hereby promise:
“(1) To buy no jewelry or useless ornaments for one year and to
contribute the amount thus saved (from an average estimated allowance) to
the Women’s National War Fund.
“(2) To buy only two hats a year, the value of said hats not to exceed
ten dollars, and to contribute the amount thus saved (from an average
estimated allowance) to the Women’s National War Fund.
“(3) To buy only two dresses a year, the value of said dresses not to
exceed sixty dollars, and to contribute the amount thus saved (from an
average estimated allowance) to the Women’s National War Fund.
“(4) To forego all entertaining at restaurants, all formal dinner and
luncheon parties and to contribute the amount thus saved (from an average
estimated allowance) to the Women’s National War Fund.
“(5) To abstain from cocktails, highballs and all expensive wines, also
from cigarettes, to influence husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and men
friends to do the same, and to contribute the amount thus saved to the
Women’s National War Fund.
“(6) To keep this pledge until the invader has been driven from the soil
of free America.”
I may mention that Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, in urging her sister
women at various mass meetings to sign this pledge, made the impressive
estimate that, by practising these economies during a two years’ war, a
hundred thousand well-to-do American women might save a _thousand million
dollars_.
Other American women, under the leadership of Mrs. Mary Logan Tucker,
daughter of General John A. Logan, prepared themselves for active field
service at women’s military camps, in several states, where they were
instructed in bandage making, first-aid service, signalling and the use
of small arms.
As weeks passed the national spirit grew stronger, stimulated by rousing
speeches of Roosevelt, Russell and Bryan and fanned into full flame by
Boston’s immortal achievement on December 24, 1921. On that day, by
authorisation of General von Beseler, commanding the German force of
occupation, a great crowd had gathered on Boston Common for a Christmas
tree celebration with a distribution of food and toys for the poor of the
city. In the Public Gardens near the statue of George Washington, Billy
Sunday was making an address when suddenly, on the stroke of five, the
bell in the old Park Street church and then the bells in all the churches
of Boston began to toll.
It was a signal for an uprising of the people and was answered in a way
that will fill a proud page of American history so long as human courage
and love of liberty are honoured upon earth. In an instant every
telephone wire in the city went dead, leaving the Germans cut off from
communication among themselves. All traffic and business ceased as if by
magic, all customary activities were put aside and, with the first
clangour of the bells, the whole population poured into the streets and
surged towards Boston Common by converging avenues, singing as they went.
Already a hundred thousand citizens were packed within this great
enclosure, and guarding them were three thousand German, foot soldiers
and a thousand horsemen in formidable groups, with rifles and machine
guns ready--before the State House, before the Soldiers’ Monument, along
Tremont Street and Boylston Street and at other strategic points. Never
in the history of the world had an unarmed, untrained mob prevailed over
such a body of disciplined troops. The very thought was madness. And
yet--
Hark! That roar of voices in the Public Gardens! What is it? A band
playing in the distance? Who ordered a band to play? German officers
shout harsh commands. “Back!” “Stand back!” “Stop this pushing of the
crowd!” “_Mein Gott!_ Those women and children will be trampled by the
horses!”
Alas, that is true! Once more the cause of American liberty requires that
Boston Common be hallowed by American blood. The people of this New
England city are tired of German rule. They want their city for
themselves and are going to take it. Guns or not, soldiers or not, they
are going to take their city.
Listen! They are coming! Six hundred thousand strong in dense masses that
choke every thoroughfare from wall to wall the citizens of Boston, women
and children with the men, are coming! And singing!
“Hurrah! Hurrah! We sound the jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that set us free.”
They are practically unarmed, although some of the men carry shot-guns,
pistols, rifles, clubs, stones; but they know these will avail little
against murderous machine guns. They know they must find strength in
their weakness and overwhelm the enemy by the sheer weight of their
bodies. They must stun the invaders by their willingness to die. That is
the only real power of this Boston host, their sublime willingness to
die.
It is estimated that five thousand of them did die, and ten thousand were
wounded, in the first half hour after the German machine guns opened
fire. And still the Americans came on in a shouting, surging multitude, a
solid sea of bodies with endless rivers of bodies pouring in behind them.
It is not so easy to kill forty acres of human bodies, even with machine
guns!
Endlessly the Americans came on, hundreds falling, thousands replacing
them, until presently the Germans ceased firing, either in horror at this
incredible sacrifice of life or because their ammunition was exhausted.
What chance was there for German ammunition carts to force their way
through that struggling human wall? What chance for the fifteen hundred
German reserves in Franklin Park to bring relief to their comrades?
At eight o’clock that night Boston began her real Christmas eve
celebration. Over the land, over the world the joyful tidings were
flashed. Boston had heard the call of the martyred President and answered
it. The capital of Massachusetts was free. The Stars and Stripes were
once more waving over the Bunker Hill Monument. Four thousand German
soldiers were prisoners in Mechanics Hall on Commonwealth Avenue. _The
citizens of Boston had taken them prisoners with their bare hands!_
This news made an enormous sensation not only in America but throughout
Europe, where Boston’s heroism and scorn of death aroused unmeasured
admiration and led military experts in France and England to make new
prophecies regarding the outcome of the German-American war.
“All things are possible,” declared a writer in the Paris _Temps_, “for a
nation fired with a supreme spiritual zeal like that of the Japanese
Samurai. It is simply a question how widely this sacred fire has spread
among the American people.”