CARRYING DISPATCHES FROM BERLIN TO LONDON
_Thursday, December 10th._ Soon after the train left Berlin this
morning I judged that I was being shadowed. When it pulled out of the
station there were four people, including myself, in the six-place
compartment, the two middle seats being vacant, one on my left as I
sat next the window and the other diagonally facing me. Soon after the
train was well started two men came in and occupied these seats. This
in itself was suspicious, since people do not seek seats while a train
is in motion. Both moreover had the air of being detectives. I, by
this time, know the type well, for I have been constantly shadowed
ever since my arrival in Germany and am perfectly certain that my
rooms have several times been searched while I was absent. I simply
continued to behave with the greatest possible circumspection, the
two detectives meanwhile staring at me constantly with fixed
intensity.
It was a bit unpleasant because I did not certainly know the nature of
the dispatches I carried, but realized that they were extremely
important. They were in a small leather mail pouch, padlocked and
sealed, which I had set on the floor between my feet and knees.
Everything went quietly for some two hours. I could not look out of
the window in towns and yards because I might have seen troop-trains,
factories, etc., and that would have been "indiscreet." The part of
Germany from Berlin to Holland is utterly flat and uninteresting, so
that there was no pleasure in looking at the countryside between
stations. I pretended to doze, or read three German weeklies which I
had bought. One of these finally precipitated matters. It was the
_Fliegende Blätter_, a comic paper of about the class of _Life_ or
_Punch_. There was in it a joke in German argot which had been too
much for my scant knowledge of the language and the courier who had
escorted me from the Embassy had by the merest hazard translated it
for me. In my desperate efforts to amuse myself I was looking through
this sheet again and encountering this joke thought, "If I don't
write down the English I shall forget it." Whereupon I took out a
pencil and wrote the translation interlinearly.
Soon afterwards one of the detectives got up, went out into the
corridor, and came back with three conductors who, in Germany, of
course, are military officials. The three civilians who had shared the
compartment left us as if they had been rehearsed. One of the
detectives then suddenly burst into a perfect berserker rage, getting
quite purple in the face, and snatching up the _Fliegende Blätter_
proceeded carefully to turn over the pages again and again, holding
each page against the light. It was altogether melodramatically
ridiculous. Taking the paper from me in this way, although offensive,
was perhaps within his rights since it concerned me only in a personal
and not in an official way, and so I sat quite calmly in my seat and,
biding my time, made no move of any kind. I paid no attention to the
conductors, judging the detective to be the kingpin and the conductors
merely dragged in as a matter of routine. None of them could read
English and they chose to regard the interlineation (one line of
about ten words) as extraordinarily suspicious.
The detective asked me for my passports and did so without going
through the customary formality of showing his police card. I demanded
as a matter of routine that he do this and began to draw out of my
pocket the large envelope in which I keep all my documents in order to
take out my Eagle-stamped German courier's paper. Without complying
with my request he grabbed for this envelope, while at the same moment
someone jerked at the bag which was between my knees. All this was an
affair totally different from that of the _Fliegende Blätter_. I had
thoroughly thought out what I would do in an emergency if German
officials should attempt to take my pouch from me, and had decided
that I should make enough of a resistance so that there should be no
possibility of disputing the fact that physical force had been used
and an assault committed. This would "let me out," since a
dispatch-bearer cannot be expected successfully to defend himself
against the whole Germany army. Incidentally I might add that
interference in any way with the dispatch-bearer of a neutral country
is a very heinous international and diplomatic sin. I therefore
jerked my envelope of papers rudely out of the detective's hand and
gave him a vigorous shove, resisting an almost overwhelming temptation
to hit him with all my might on his fat, unprotected jaw. I had half
risen to my feet, meanwhile keeping a grip on the dispatch bag with my
knees, and at the same time I vigorously swung my hips and freed
myself from the man below. The detective struck the opposite wall of
the compartment and bounced off toward the doorway, where he and the
conductors stood jabbering and waving their arms and ever getting more
and more purple in the face.
Finally the detective showed his police card, and I then extended to
them my Eagle-stamped courier passport, following it with my Embassy
credential and my certificate of identity or personal passport. These
three made a complete case and I refused to show anything more,
insisting that my status had been adequately established. The
officials continued to jabber and argue, having been continuously
impolite during the entire episode, a mode of behavior which was a
notable divergence from my previous experiences with agents of the
Imperial Secret Service. The chief detective, whose name was Werther,
continued to hang around, trying to talk with me, evidently determined
to get further information about my plans.
I do not pretend to judge whether all this was mere accidental
clumsiness and rudeness on the part of stupid detectives or if it was
something very much deeper, prompted by someone higher up. One is,
however, inclined to doubt inefficiency in the Prussian Secret Service
and there may have been reasons why German authorities would count it
of great importance to know the contents of my pouch.
At the Embassy in Berlin I had been told to change trains at a place
called Löhne where I was to arrive at two o'clock. Just before
reaching this point, the conductor came through and told me that it
would be much more convenient for me to stay on the train until Essen,
that this would give me one less change in my journey to Flushing, and
that it was altogether a better route. (I must remark that, besides
the bag in hand, I had in the baggage car all the routine mail for the
State Department in Washington, amounting to some two hundred and
fifty pounds in two big leather mail-sacks.) Although I replied that I
thought it better to change at Löhne anyway, the conductor insisted
upon my following his plan. He was backed up by the detective, who,
except for various goings out and in, had remained facing me. They
informed me that in any event my mail-bags in the baggage car would go
through to Essen. As by this time the train was already slowing up for
the station at Löhne, I accepted the inevitable.
Essen is not on the most direct route to Goch where one crosses the
German border into Holland, and in consequence I arrived in Goch via
Essen much too late to catch the last train from there to Flushing.
Since boats leave Flushing only once a day, early in the morning, I
had to lose one whole day and was compelled to remain another night on
German soil.
I do not pretend to offer any explanation for these strange
happenings. I was followed constantly thereafter, as previously, the
men being cleverly changed at every opportunity. My every step was
dogged. At Wesel a detective sat at the same table in the station
restaurant while I ate dinner. Such being the case I was, to say the
least, a bit annoyed.
At Essen during a fifteen-minute wait for a change of trains, I
withdrew to one end of the platform after having rechecked the two big
mail-sacks. I was standing alone, with a detective, as usual, off in
the background, when a man who looked a typical raw-boned Englishman
drew near and hung around, staring at me. I looked him up and down and
then turned my back thinking, "Another detective!" It was impossible
to believe that an Englishman could be, of all places, in Essen. He
finally approached me, saying in English of a most perfect and
pronounced British accent, "Are you an American?" I replied, "Yes, are
you a police officer? If so, please show me your card." He replied,
"No, I am in a delicate position. I am trying to go to England this
evening. I have American papers. You must see me through. I am ----."
I cut him short by saying that I regretted, etc., and deliberately
walked away. From that time on this man dogged me everywhere, trying
to pass through gates with me and to get into the same compartments,
even following me to the same hotels and restaurants, and trying to
make anything he could out of my presence. I never lost sight of him
for long until we finally set foot in England, where he did finally
arrive, in spite of some very close shaves. I last saw him giving me a
very ugly look as I landed at Folkestone. Whatever his nationality, he
certainly was a spy in the German service.
An uneventful journey of some four hours across Holland brought me to
Vlissingen, as the Dutch call Flushing, and there I spent the
afternoon, wandering about in boredom, trying to pass away the slow
hours until the boat arrived and I could climb into my berth.
* * * * *
_London, Saturday, December 12th._ We had an exciting trip across the
North Sea, taking zigzag courses to avoid mine-fields and sighting
numerous destroyers and one sunken ship. We successfully avoided
either hitting a mine or running into a torpedo. The boat was packed
down with Belgian and French refugees. One Luxembourger had been a
whole month getting to Flushing from his home in Belgium. I was much
relieved when I arrived at Victoria Station with my pouch and found a
clerk from the Embassy waiting for me, and still more relieved when we
had deposited all the bags safely at their destination.
* * * * *
_Sunday, December 13th._ I went to the Embassy this morning for a
conference with the American Military Attachés; and later took
luncheon with one of the Secretaries. I had cabled to Paris to have my
mail sent on to meet me in London, but it did not arrive; I have,
therefore, had no letters from home in some weeks. I cannot telegraph
to America details of my future plans. Imagine the face of any British
telegraph operator if I were to hand him a cable saying: "I am leaving
again for Berlin and Vienna," which is exactly what I am to do. I
return immediately with dispatches from England to our Embassies in
Germany and Austria. My plans are subject to modification by official
orders, but I shall probably remain in Berlin only one day and then go
to Vienna and Budapest. The bag I am to take to Berlin contains not
only official dispatches, but a large sum of money.
England has well prepared herself for a Zeppelin raid. Every skylight
and the top of every street lamp in London is painted black.
* * * * *
_Tuesday, December 15th._ An officer of the staff has given me an
interesting theory as to the disconcerting effect produced by the
bursting of the big German shells on the morale of the troops--how
disconcerted no one can imagine who has not himself experienced it. He
was himself near such a shell when it exploded. It rendered him
unconscious. He was blind for some time, deaf for two weeks, and
suffered from loss of memory for over a month,--and all this without
any surgical wound. He thinks the nervous effect produced by the
explosions at a distance is due in a lesser degree to the same sort of
shock. On one occasion a number of big shells exploded in succession a
hundred yards from a trench; and although no one was wounded or
suffered any physical injury, such was the demoralizing effect of the
nervous shock that all the men in the trench fled and did not recover
balance until they had run a quarter of a mile. Meeting a staff
officer and receiving from him a stiff reprimand they all returned to
their posts. The whole episode took place without any casualties.
[Illustration: THE BRITISH DESTROYER ON THE NORTH SEA
[Just after she "brought us to" with a blank shot]]
I leave for Folkestone this evening, where I spend the night on board
ship. The boat sails for Flushing after daybreak.
* * * * *
_On the North Sea, December 16th._ It has been a wonderful stormy day
today; as an officer said: "a typical North Sea winter day"--a leaden
sky, roaring wind, smothers of rain, great black-green waves all
flecked and blotched in white, big sea birds and little gulls dipping
down the wave valleys and soaring up the wave mountains, and the ship
taking the most foolish and impossible angles. It was an odd thing to
see the gulls which followed the ship, all pointing the other way, in
order to maintain their position relatively to the boat and against
the heavy wind coming up from astern. At lunch the dishes jumped the
racks and smashed along the floor; on the return heave all the
fragments rushed back the entire width of the dining saloon. Eating
was difficult.
Two hours out a British destroyer came dashing up in our wake, making
two feet to our one. She was a most picturesque sight, long, low, and
speedy, painted black; her towering knife-prow thrust out in front
and the long, low hull strung out behind. She "brought us to" with a
shot across the bows, and as we wallowed in the trough of the sea, she
went by to starboard fairly shaving our side. The officer on her
bridge, over which great waves of spray and water broke at every
moment, "looked us over" and then bellowed orders to our Captain
through a megaphone. My unpractised ear could not through the roar of
the wind and the slap of the waves catch all he had to say, but it was
something about submarines and a naval battle to the northward and
orders to change and take a different course through the mine
fields.[3] Whereupon we pursued a very zigzag course. In a moment we
would turn 120 degrees and proceed for miles on the new tack. We took
at one time or another nearly all directions of the compass. Sometimes
the smoke from the funnels went off straight at right angles to our
course; at others it preceded us.
[Footnote 3: It was on this morning that the German fleet bombarded
the towns on the east coast of England.]