Three days later the magnificent imperial army entered the fallen
metropolis, its scarlet, gold-embossed standards flying, its bands
playing.
Waldron marched to meet them at the head of twenty-five thousand picked
men of his garrison. His division more than made good the losses of
battle.
When the grand march began at the entrance of the Queensboro Bridge--one
hundred and sixty-five thousand men were in line. The immensity of the
spectacle stunned the imagination of the curious thousands that pressed
close to the curbs and watched them pass. When the German army entered
Antwerp in the world war, the streets were absolutely deserted save for
stray dogs and cats that howled from wrecked buildings. New York was
consumed by a quenchless eagerness to look on their conquerors.
All day from seven o’clock in the morning until dark the torrent of
brown kahki poured through Fifty-ninth Street and down Fifth Avenue.
When the Avenue was filled by the solid ranks from Central Park to the
Washington Arch, the imperial host at a given signal raised their shout
of triumph.
“For God and Emperor!”
Until this moment they had moved in a silence that was uncanny. Their
long-pent feelings gave the united yell of a hundred and sixty thousand
an unearthly power. They shouted in chorus first from every regiment in
one grand burst of defiant pride. And then they shouted by regiments,
beginning with the first. The shout leaped from regiment to regiment
until it swept the entire line far out on the plains of Long Island.
Each marching host tried to lift the note higher until the frenzied
bursts came with the shock of salvos of artillery.
And then they sang the songs of their grand army on the march. For an
hour their voices rang the death knell of freedom while conquered
thousands stood in awed silence.
Waldron moved at the head of the column on his white horse in gorgeous
uniform. Beside him rode in service suit the Commander-in-chief on a
black Arabian stallion with arched neck and sleek, shining sides.
The ceremonies at the City Hall were brief. The grand procession never
paused. Timed to a dot, the lines had divided as they passed the cross
streets leading to our great tunnels. At Forty-second Street a division
swung into the Grand Central Station to entrain for service in the
interior. The cars were waiting with steam up and every man at his place
under the command of army officers.
At Thirty-fourth Street another division swung into the Pennsylvania
Station. At Twenty-third Street another swept toward the Lackawanna and
the Erie. At Fourteenth Street another swung toward the Chelsea piers,
where transports were waiting to bear them to Baltimore, Norfolk,
Charleston, New Orleans, Jacksonville and Galveston.
These transports had been seized in the harbor. The great armada was
already loading the second division of a hundred and sixty thousand more
men at the wharves of Europe. The imperial army of occupation would
consist of a million veterans. They would be landed now without pause
until the work was done. A fleet of a hundred submarines lay in wait for
our Pacific fleet in the Straits of Magellan. Its end was sure.
The conquest was complete, overwhelming, stunning. The half-baked
desperate rebellions that broke out in various small towns where
patriotism was a living thing were stamped out with a cruelty so
appalling they were not repeated. At the first ripple of trouble the
town was laid in ashes, its population of males massacred, its women
outraged and driven into the fields to crawl to the nearest village and
tell the story. One short-lived victory marked the end.
The Virginians raised an army of volunteer cavalry, led by a descendant
of Jeb Stuart raided and captured Washington. The garrison were taken by
complete surprise at three o’clock before daylight. The fight was at
close quarters and the enemy was annihilated.
A battle cruiser promptly swept up the Potomac from the Chesapeake Bay,
opened with her huge guns and reduced our capital to a pile of broken
stone. Incendiary shells completed the work and two days later the most
beautiful city in America lay beneath the Southern skies a smouldering
ash-heap. The proud shaft of shining marble to the memory of George
Washington was reduced to a mass of pulverized stone. A crater sixteen
feet in depth gaped where its foundations had rested.
An indemnity was levied on New York that robbed the city of every dollar
in every vault and sent its famous men into beggared exile. Waldron’s
list of proscription for banishment included every leader in the world
of finance, invention and industry.
He had marked every man with a genius for political leadership for a
term of ten years’ imprisonment. Exile was too dangerous an experiment
for these trouble-makers. They were safer in jail. Ten years in darkness
and misery would bring them to reason.
The world’s war had cost the Imperial Federation a staggering total of
thirty billions. Waldron promised his royal master to replace every
dollar of this loss within five years by a system of confiscation and
taxes. His first acts of plunder sent treasure ships to Europe bearing
fifteen billions. The revenue from all the confiscated railroads, mines,
and great industries taken over by the new government would reduce
taxation in Europe to a trifle.
When the conquest was complete the net result was that Imperial Europe
had fenced in a continent with bristling cannon. Inside the inclosure
were a hundred million of the most intelligent and capable slaves the
world had seen since the legions of Rome conquered Greece and enslaved
her artists and philosophers.
There was no pause in the ruthless work until the last spark of
resistance had been stamped out.
By one of the strange ironies of fate the fiercest of the futile
rebellions broke out on the East Side of New York, where the attempt was
made completely to disarm our half-baked foreign population. The men who
sulked in the tenement districts below the Bowery had been accustomed to
fight constituted authority in the Old World from habit. The first
squad of soldiers sent into this quarter to disarm them had never
returned. Not one of their bodies were found.
When a regiment with machine guns rushed in they found the side streets
below Fourteenth barricaded with piles of trucks and lumber. From every
window they received a hail of bullets.
A battery of artillery cleared the barricades and the slaughter began.
After four hours of butchery in the streets, the commander discovered
that the old Tenth Regiment Armory was crowded. More than a thousand
women and children accustomed to attend Vassar’s school of patriotism
had sought refuge there.
The children had found the flags and their mothers in foolish
superstition had pinned them on their breasts for protection--the flag
they had been taught to love!
The Imperial Guard turned their artillery on the armory and tore the
flimsy front wall into fragments. When the screaming children and
frantic women rushed through the breach, a withering fire from the
pompoms piled their writhing bodies on the blood-soaked pavements.
Benda had been killed in the second intrenchments on Long Island. Angela
faced the storm of lead at the door, holding her boy behind her back to
shield him from the bullets.
A shell exploded inside and a fragment buried itself in the child’s
breast. The mother felt the stinging shock and heard the thud of the
iron crash into the soft flesh.
The boy made no cry. The iron had torn through his heart. The little
hand was lifted feebly and clutched the tiny flag that covered his
breast.
With a cry of anguish she clasped the bleeding bundle of flesh in her
arms, ran through the building and found her way into the darkened
basement.
When the building was cleared the commander entered with a squad of
soldiers, lighted a cigarette and inspected the ruins.
On the blackboards still were standing in clear white chalk the
sentences and mottoes Vassar had written:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
The Commander laughed and wrote beneath it:
BUT YOU COULDN’T STOP A SIXTEEN-INCH SHELL WITH HOT AIR!
The men cheered.
On the next blackboard stood the words:
LIBERTY--EQUALITY--FRATERNITY.
The officer struck a line through each word and wrote beneath:
AUTHORITY--OBEDIENCE--EFFICIENCY.
[Illustration: “A battery of artillery cleared the barricades and the
slaughter began”]
Again the soldiers cheered.
Within three months the fallen nation had been completely disarmed and
rendered helpless.
The penalty of death was enforced against everyone who dared to conceal
a pistol, rifle, shotgun or piece of explosive. The manufacturing plants
making arms and ammunition were under the control of the invaders.
They not only controlled these gun and shell factories, they took
possession of every chemical laboratory and every piece of machinery
that could be used to make explosives. It was no more possible to buy a
piece of dynamite for any purpose than to buy a forty-two centimeter
siege gun. All blasting for building and commercial purposes was done by
an officer, who charged well for his services.
Every street railway and trunk line was manned by the army. The
ammunition factories were all working with double shifts of American
laborers, compelled by their conquerors to turn out shells for future
use against their fellow-countrymen.
Every newspaper, magazine and publishing-house had installed an Imperial
censor. Not a line was allowed to be printed under penalty of death
except by his order.
Freedom of speech and press was relegated to the dust heap as dead
heresies against constituted authority. The people were only told what
their masters permitted them to hear. Our press, of course, was
unanimous in its praise of the new Imperial régime. “Law,” “Order,” and
“Efficiency” were the new watchwords of America. The people were not
asked to do any thinking. Their masters did it for them, their part was
to obey.
Waldron determined to make Virginia Holland the leader of a new woman’s
party to proclaim the blessings of the imperial and aristocratic form of
government.
He honored her with an invitation to his palace to discuss his scheme.
When Virginia received the perfumed, crested note, her cheeks flushed
with joy.
“Thank God!” she murmured fervently.