SUBMISSION
It was true. A dozen Uhlans rode into the village, trotting along on
their big, rawboned horses, as coolly as if they had been on parade in
Berlin. Only these men did not look like parade soldiers. Their
uniforms were of the neutral gray that faded into the background at
short distances, and they were dirty and travel worn, besides. Their
horses, however, were still in fine condition, for it was a part of
their training to see to it, wherever they were, that their mounts were
properly cared for.
The soldiers ignored entirely the few people who still remained outside
their houses. Most of the villagers, impressed by what Paul had said,
or, like Raymond, the blustering butcher, more afraid of their wives
than of the foreign enemy, had gone within, and the place was very
quiet. But those who had not gone in greeted the Germans with sullen
looks, which did not provoke so much as a smile.
One of the Uhlans, evidently detailed in advance for the duty, produced
proclamations and orders, like the ones the refugees had described.
These he affixed to posts and buildings in conspicuous places. Then he
joined his fellows, and the little troop rode on, with a clattering of
hoofs to the mairie, the official centre of Hannay. There stood the
maire, a small, spectacled, frightened man, with the parish priest to
support him, waiting for them. Paul and Arthur drew near to listen.
"Which is the burgomeister?" asked a young lieutenant with closely
cropped head and a tiny blonde moustache, which he had tried in vain to
cultivate so that it would resemble the moustache that the German
Kaiser's pictures have made famous. Paul noticed that this young
officer spoke excellent French, with hardly a trace of an accent. It
impressed him as showing how well the Germans had prepared for this war
that apparently only they had known was bound to come.
"It is I," said the little man very promptly.
"Say 'Sir!' when you speak to a German officer!" thundered the
lieutenant. "And salute! Tell all your people to do so, also."
"Yes, sir," said the maire. "But how are we to know it is an officer
we see? We poor people do not understand all about your uniforms."
"If you are in doubt, salute every German soldier," said the officer
contemptuously. "They are worthy of your salutes in any case, and it
will be better for your people to salute a thousand soldiers without
the necessity of doing so than to fail to salute one officer who is
entitled to the honor."
"Yes, sir," said the maire, meekly.
"Hannay is occupied by the German army," said the lieutenant, then,
smiling a little at the maire's timidity. Was he wondering if a German
burgomeister would submit as tamely were it a German village that had
witnessed the arrival of invading troops? Probably not! Few German
officers in those days thought it possible that an enemy's foot would
ever tread the soil of the fatherland. No such fear had yet assailed
them.
"You and your people," the lieutenant went on, "must observe exactly
the rules that are posted in the proclamations, especially with regard
to arms. We shall not remain here, but other troops will arrive before
nightfall. When they come all arms must be piled here, waiting for
them. Five hundred loaves of bread, a hundred hams, twenty-five
barrels of flour, five steers and ten barrels of wine are
requisitioned, and must be turned over to the commissary department
upon its order."
The maire threw up his hands in horror.
"But, sir, we are poor people!" he cried. "We shall starve if all
those things are required of us! We shall not have enough for our own
needs."
"That is your concern," said the German officer indifferently. "The
German army must be supplied; it is delayed in Belgium because of the
unwarranted resistance of the Belgian government to its peaceable
passage."
"But--"
"Silence! No argument! You will provide the supplies that are
required. In addition all gasoline in the place is to be collected and
turned over to the proper authorities. Payment will be made for all
private property that may be taken."
He barked out a sharp order then, and the Uhlans rode on. Paul turned
to Arthur, whose eyes were blazing.
"Did you hear that?" he cried. "He talks as if we were to be blamed
for defending ourselves! Is that the way the Germans mean to talk?"
"I suppose so," said Paul. "I have heard before that they would do
that. They say, you see, that all they wanted was permission to send
their troops across Belgium to reach France. Perhaps they really
believed that we should not resist. If we had not, they would not have
damaged the country, and perhaps if they had won in the war, they would
have paid for whatever injury was done. But how absurd! If we had
allowed that, without making any further attempt to stop them, we
should really have been just as badly off."
"I don't understand that, Paul. I would rather see the whole country
ruined than have it act so, but if we had made no resistance they could
not have done things like this, could they?"
"No, perhaps not. But think a minute, Arthur. The French, then, would
have come over the border on their side. The French and German armies
would have met in Belgium, and neither would have considered our poor
country. They would have fought in our fields, and seized our forts.
Each would have bombarded our cities, and neither would have been our
friend. Now, as it is, we are suffering for France, and France and her
ally, England, must take our part. Perhaps they will not be strong
enough to save us at once, but they will be obliged to stand by us, for
the sake of their own honor."
"Yes, that is true. We shall have friends, at least. Oh, Paul, I
suppose it was right not to attack those Germans, but when that officer
spoke so, I could have tried to kill him with my bare hands!"
"He is a bully, Arthur. I suppose there are officers like that in
every army. But all the Germans are not like him. You must remember
that there are some, at least, like Colonel Schmidt who gave us our
freedom after we had been caught. He was kind to us, and he would have
been courteous here, had he been in the place of this lieutenant."
Now, when the Uhlans had gone, the people began to come out of their
houses again. News of the demand that had been made upon Hannay spread
rapidly, and after a little while there was a great deal of bustle and
confusion as efforts were made to obtain what was required. The maire
came to Paul and asked him what the Germans would do if the things were
not provided.
"I don't know," said Paul. "And I think it would be better not to find
out, if you can possibly get them. Have them ready, and then when the
new force comes, see if the commander is not more reasonable than the
officer who was here. But it is better to take no chances. And he
said that they would pay."
"Yes, that is so," said the distracted little man. "Eh? Well, I
suppose we had better do as you say. Our lives and our homes are worth
more than the food to us."
But there were sullen, angry looks among the villagers as they went
about their preparations. There seemed to be a revulsion of feeling in
favor of the plan of resistance of Raymond, the butcher, and there were
scowls for Paul, who had spoiled that plan.
"I think there is nothing more that we can do here," said Paul to
Arthur. "Let's go on. It's just as important as ever for us to get
somewhere where the information we have can be of use. Everything I
see makes me more and more certain that the principal German attack
will be delivered in this direction. And I am not sure that that is
generally known yet. I heard officers in Liege, when we were waiting
to see General Leman, say that the French were planning a great
movement from Belfort, that they thought the Germans were likely to
make a powerful attack from Alsace and Lorraine. If so, their
information is wrong."
"But they must know by this time that the Germans are coming through
Belgium instead, in great force, I should think."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. They may think it is a feint. It might be,
too. You see, they are throwing out their cavalry. We saw a dozen
Uhlans, but there must be two or three thousand dozen of them. They
are like a great human screen, thrown in front of the army. A screen
with eyes. They hide what is going on behind them from the enemy, but
they themselves can see plainly."
"But even if it is true, I should think it might work both ways, Paul.
If the French advance from Belfort, and the main body of the Germans is
in this quarter, won't the French in Alsace win very easily?"
"Perhaps, just at the beginning. But this is the great danger. If the
Germans could advance on this line without meeting any great
resistance, they would be able to swing around and get in the rear of a
French army that had crossed the border into Alsace, but the French
army could not come into a position to threaten the rear or the
communications of the Germans. There might be a great disaster. And
just because it was believed that Germany would find the road through
Belgium the quickest and the easiest for an invasion of France, some
French and Belgian officers believed that if war came, Germany would
only make a threat through Belgium, and would start her real attack on
some other line."
"Well, we ought to give the information, whether it will be of any
great use or not. It isn't for us to think about that."
"You're right there, Arthur! Let's slip away quietly. We have done
these people here a great service, but they don't quite understand, and
I think that instead of being grateful they're almost ready to be
suspicious. Perhaps they think we were really trying to help the
Germans."
So they slipped out of the village. If any of the villagers of Hannay
noticed, they said nothing. They had enough to keep them busy and to
occupy their minds, as well. They were learning that this war, of
which they knew so little, was affecting them almost as much as if they
were actually fighting.
Outside of Hannay, as they moved along toward the north the ground rose
gradually, and the road brought them, in less than a mile, to the top
of a hill that gave them an excellent view of the surrounding
countryside. From Liege there still came the thunder of the big guns,
but from other directions they gathered evidence that the fortress was
no longer guarding the country. It was still holding out, and was
undoubtedly keeping a great many Germans busy. But more Germans had
swept around it, and the evidences of their activities were plain.
On all sides smoke was rising, marking burned farmhouses, even whole
villages that for one reason or another had been given to the flames.
They could see now the smoking ruins of the village whence the refugees
who had really caused them to stop in Hannay had come, a scene of
desolation that looked all the worse for the bright sunlight in which
it was bathed. That same sunlight, too was reflected ever and again on
tiny points of steel.
"Uhlans--the sun shines on their lance heads," explained Paul. He
looked gloomily at the scene. "Ah, they will have to pay! Perhaps an
enemy will cross the Rhine and carry fire and sword into their lands,
too. I hope so--for the sake of the poor, homeless ones."
"But you said it was wrong for them to defend themselves--that the
Germans had the right to do like that!" said Arthur, wonderingly.
"I said it was wrong for them to give the Germans an excuse to destroy
their homes and kill their men," said Paul. "Wrong only because it is
useless."
The descending road turned just below the crest of the hill on which
they stood. And suddenly a bugle sounded, startlingly near. The two
scouts had been so occupied in watching the country for miles about
that they had given no heed to what might be going on close by. And so
now while they stood in amazement and dismay, German soldiers began to
appear over the hilltop, and in a moment they were surrounded by
hundreds of the men whose uniforms were so familiar. It was a
battalion of German infantry, and in a minute more they had been
seized, and were being escorted to the rear, where in a few moments a
burly major, plainly a soldier of the old school, and the commander of
the battalion, questioned them.
They told their story plainly and truthfully, though they omitted, of
course, all the incidents of the adventurous period between their
discovery of the spy Ridder and their first capture.
"We are only doing what Colonel Schmidt told us to do, sir," said Paul.
"We explained to him that we would try to reach Brussels, and after we
got to Huy, we were compelled to come this way."
The major nodded.
"Pfadfinder, hein?" he said. This, as both Paul and Arthur knew, was
what the Boy Scouts were called in Germany, just as in France and
Belgium they were called Eclaireurs Francais or Eclaireurs Belges, as
the case might be. "You can go no further this way. We shall take you
to Hannay, and there you will have to stay for a time. No civilians
are allowed at this time to leave their own villages. The whole
country beyond here is a battleground, for we shall soon be in touch
with the enemy on the way to Brussels. Still, you shall be safe
enough. I have a boy of my own, who is a Pfadfinder with a troop in
Eisenach."