If other reinforcements were hurrying up to take their places on
the firing line, the boys did not happen to meet them on this road.
It seemed to be given over almost entirely to vehicles of every
description speeding forward to carry off the bleeding forms of those
whose lives might yet be saved.
There were some queer-looking vans among the rest, for every available
motorcar had been pressed into the service of removing the injured to
Dunkirk and Calais, where later on they could be transported to Havre
and across the Channel.
“I was just wondering,” Amos remarked after some time had elapsed,
“why both Germans and the Allies seem to set so great a store on the
holding of Ypres. From all the information I’ve been able to pick up,
as a place it doesn’t amount to a row of beans. And yet, Brussels,
Antwerp and a whole lot of other cities fell without one-quarter of the
fighting that’s been taking place around here. How do you make it out,
Jack?”
“The only thing I can see,” replied the other, “is that it must be a
railroad center, and from Ypres there’s a good road to Dunkirk and
Calais. You know how set the Kaiser has been right along on getting
his big guns stationed on the French coast, where the Channel is only
twenty miles across. He’ll never be happy until he can watch one of
those monsters hurling shells that fall on England’s shore.”
“And the British are just as bent on keeping him from doing it, seems
like,” observed Amos. “Queer how a little thing like that brings about
many desperate fights. Tens of thousands of Germans have been killed,
wounded or captured just because of a pet whim of the Kaiser’s; for I
don’t believe anything very great would come of it even if they did
take Calais. The British battleships would pour in such a smashing
amount of shells that they’d wreck any gun emplacement the Germans
might build.”
“It’s a queer war all around, I think,” said Jack. “It started with
a match in the powder magazine, when that murder occurred in Servia;
and by degrees it’s getting to be the most terrible thing that ever
happened on this old earth, barring none. We’re living in wonderful
times, Amos.”
“Seems so, Jack, when you stop to think of all that’s being done, in
the air with dirigibles and aeroplanes, and under the sea with the
submarines.”
“Our fathers laughed at Jules Verne when they read some of his books,”
ventured the other boy, seriously; “but let me tell you most of what
he described there has already come to pass. We may live to see his
account beaten to a frazzle, as Teddy says, the way things are going on
nowadays.”
“It’s a blessed good thing that America’s three thousand miles away,
and that the whole big Atlantic Ocean rolls between,” remarked Amos,
reflectively.
“By which you mean we’re not likely to get into this scrap, I take it,”
said his cousin. “Just go a little slow there, my boy.”
Amos stopped short to look at him in wonder and uneasiness.
“Whatever do you mean, Jack?” he started to say. “From the way you
speak it looks as if you wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see the United
States get mixed up in this awful business, after all.”
“Which would be what I meant,” explained Jack, soberly, “much as I hate
to admit it. Stop and think for a minute, no matter how much the main
body of Americans may want to keep out, remember that we’ve got some
six millions of Germans who are supposed to be naturalized citizens,
but whose hearts still beat fondly for the Fatherland. Besides, there
might be a whole lot of reasons why Germany would really want to see
war declared between herself and our country.”
“Why, they must be crazy to want that, Jack! We have a hundred million
people, and could do them all sorts of harm.”
“Could we?” asked Jack, shrewdly. “In what way, I want to know? As
there isn’t any vessel today carrying food or anything else from
America to Germany they wouldn’t feel it there. We wouldn’t send an
army over, nor yet our battleships to take chances of being torpedoed.
We might send forty or eighty torpedo boats and destroyers, but that is
all. Can’t you see that if our country were at war it would shut off
the great supply of arms and ammunition that is flowing across to Great
Britain and Russia and France? We’d need it all at home for six months.”
Amos stared as well he might. He had not bothered looking below the
surface when he figured that war with the United States would mean
the overwhelming of the Teutonic race. It took Jack to consider what
lay underneath the exterior, and see signs of a deep game wonderfully
played by the Kaiser’s Strategy Board.
“If that ever happens,” reflected Amos, “it’s bound to be a world
war in fact, and every nation going will be drawn into it. But after
Turkey I don’t know of even one country that stands back of Germany and
Austria. That alone makes it seem as if they must be in the wrong; but
of course no German will admit that, even if ten thousand neutrals were
against him.
“You remember the obstinate Irishman on the jury that disagreed, who
claimed that there were ‘eleven pig-headed men’ locked up with him, the
most stubborn lot he had ever run across?” laughed Amos.
“One thing sure,” Jack added, “if Germany is beaten in the end it’ll
only be the same way our South was whipped, by sheer force of superior
numbers, wearing them away until they have to hoist the white flag and
surrender. Great Britain is already fighting on that policy of Grant’s,
that man for man the Allies can stand equal losses better than their
enemies.”
“Why, I’ve been beaten at checkers by the same dodge, Jack. The other
fellow having managed to get one of my men by some accident insisted
in facing others and compelling an equal exchange, till it got down to
his having two to my one; which odds proved too much for me. I’ve quit
playing the game on that account.”
“Well, I’m going to predict that the chances are Germany, if she ever
does quit, will do it from the same reason, that as the war goes on
the ratio against her will keep on increasing steadily until she is
overwhelmed. Perhaps Holland will be dragged into it, and the Allied
army will pass through the Netherlands to invade Germany from the west.
We may live to see the end, and I want you to remember what I’m saying.”
So they talked as they went on, not as careless boys, but with the air
of observers deeply impressed by what they had witnessed of the great
war. Rubbing up against such impressive sights is bound to be a great
educator, and those two wideawake American boys had progressed by great
leaps and bounds since coming abroad a short time before.
“Is that smoke rolling overhead, or clouds, Jack?” asked Amos, a short
time later, as he chanced to look up.
“Clouds, because they are coming from another quarter than the fighting
line,” the experienced Western boy announced.
“Then perhaps we’ll get some rain before long, though it feels pretty
cold for that, when you come to think of it,” replied Amos.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if we did,” said Jack. “They say that after a
big battle it nearly always does rain, whether from the great noise,
or something else I can’t tell you. If it comes it means more mud, and
goodness knows we’ve had enough of that before now.”
“If only it’s heavy enough it may put a stop to the fighting for today,
which would mean some lives saved,” ventured the other.
“Only to be sacrificed tomorrow, so what difference does that make?”
Jack returned. “I’m getting kind of cynical about these things. There
will be just so many men killed in this war, you see, and so the sooner
they reach that number the better. Then perhaps America can patch up
an enduring peace.”
“Jack, I really felt a big drop of rain then!”
“Yes, I’m afraid we’re in for a storm that may last the rest of this
day, Amos.”
“And no shelter in sight,” groaned the second boy. “I wish we could
only run across another ruined chateau like that one we visited this
morning. It might seem a little hard to go hungry all night, but we
could build a fire, and keep comfortable anyhow, and that’d count for a
lot.”
“Let’s start out and run for it,” suggested Jack.
“What’s the use, if we have to get soaked anyway? See here, Jack,
have you glimpsed any haven of refuge? Is there a cottage in sight, a
friendly cave, or even a big hollow tree into which we might push?”
Jack laughed at the way his cousin said this.
“I think I sighted something like a cottage ahead of us, several of
them in fact,” he admitted. “If that was a fact, why, we may be coming
to the outskirts of the town of Ypres, which isn’t a very big place.”
At that Amos looked pleased.
“Hurrah! who knows but what we may get something to eat in the bargain,
even if sour black bread is all they’ve got to spare. I can run faster
than this, if you say the word, Jack!”
“Then whoop it up for keeps!” Jack told him, immediately setting a good
example by increasing his own pace.
There were houses ahead. The drops began to come down faster, and it
seemed to be an open question as to whether Jack and his cousin would
reach shelter fairly dry or not until the rain had drenched them.
Almost winded with their exertions, they presently arrived in the midst
of the cottages, which like nearly all others in Belgium of that day
showed positive signs of having been under artillery fire.