Being a Guest of the Kaiser
You know how four of us blundered into the German lines in a taxicab;
and how, getting out of German hands after three days and back to
Brussels, we undertook, in less than twenty-four hours thereafter, to
trail the main forces then shoving steadily southward with no other goal
before them but Paris.
First by hired hack, as we used to say when writing accounts of funerals
down in Paducah, then afoot through the dust, and finally, with an
equipment consisting of that butcher's superannuated dogcart, that
elderly mare emeritus and those two bicycles, we made our zigzagging way
downward through Belgium.
We knew that our credentials were, for German purposes, of most dubious
and uncertain value. We knew that the Germans were permitting no
correspondents--not even German correspondents--to accompany them. We
knew that any alien caught in the German front was liable to death on
the spot, without investigation of his motives. We knew all these
things; and the knowledge of them gave a fellow tingling sensations in
the tips of his toes when he permitted himself to think about his
situation. But, after the first few hours, we took heart unto
ourselves; for everywhere we met only kindness and courtesy at the hands
of the Kaiser's soldiers, men and officers alike.
There was, it is true, the single small instance of the excited noncom.
who poked a large, unwholesome-looking automatic pistol into my
shrinking diaphragm when he wanted me to get off the running board of a
military automobile into which I had climbed, half a minute before, by
invitation of the private who steered it. I gathered his meaning right
away, even though he uttered only guttural German and that at the top of
his voice; a pointed revolver speaks with a tongue which is understood
by all peoples. Besides, he had the distinct advantage in repartee; and
so, with no extended argument, I got down from there and he pouched his
ironmongery. I regarded the incident as being closed and was perfectly
willing that it should remain closed.
That, however, though of consuming interest to me at the moment, was but
a detail--an exception to prove the standing rule. One place we dined
with a Rittmeister's mess; and while we sat, eating of their midday
ration of thick pea soup with sliced sausages in it, some of the younger
officers stood; also they let us stretch our wearied legs on their
mattresses, which were ranged seven in a row on the parlor floor of a
Belgian house, where from a corner a plaster statue of Joan of Arc gazed
at us with her plaster eyes.
Common soldiers offered repeatedly to share their rye-bread sandwiches
and bottled beer with us. Not once, but a dozen times, officers of
various rank let us look at their maps and use their field glasses; and
they gave us advice for reaching the zone of actual fighting and swapped
gossip with us, and frequently regretted that they had no spare mounts
or spare automobiles to loan us.
We attributed a good deal of this to the inherent kindliness of the
German gentleman's nature; but more of it we attributed to a newborn
desire on the part of these men to have disinterested journalists see
with their own eyes the scope and result of the German operations, in
the hope that the truth regarding alleged German atrocities might reach
the outside world and particularly might reach America.
Of the waste and wreckage of war; of desolated homes and shattered
villages; of the ruthless, relentless, punitive exactness with which the
Germans punished not only those civilians they accused of firing on them
but those they suspected of giving harbor or aid to the offenders; of
widows and orphans; of families of innocent sufferers, without a roof to
shelter them or a bite to stay them; of fair lands plowed by cannon
balls, and harrowed with rifle bullets, and sown with dead men's bones;
of men horribly maimed and mangled by lead and steel; of long mud
trenches where the killed lay thick under the fresh clods--of all this
and more I saw enough to cure any man of the delusion that war is a
beautiful, glorious, inspiring thing, and to make him know it for what
it is--altogether hideous and unutterably awful.
As for Uhlans spearing babies on their lances, and officers sabering
their own men, and soldiers murdering and mutilating and torturing at
will--I saw nothing. I knew of these tales only from having read them
in the dispatches sent from the Continent to England, and from there
cabled to American papers.
Even so, I hold no brief for the Germans; or for the reasons that
inspired them in waging this war; or for the fashion after which they
have waged it. I am only trying to tell what I saw with my own eyes and
heard with my own ears.
Be all that as it may, we straggled into Beaumont--five of us--on the
evening of the third day out from Brussels, without baggage or
equipment, barring only what we wore on our several tired and drooping
backs. As in the case of our other trip, a simple sight-seeing ride had
resolved itself into an expeditionary campaign; and so there we were,
bearing, as proof of our good faith and professional intentions, only
our American passports, our passes issued by General von Jarotzky, at
Brussels, and--most potent of all for winning confidence from the casual
eye--a little frayed silk American flag, with a hole burned in it by a
careless cigar butt, which was knotted to the front rail of our creaking
dogcart.
Immediately after passing the ruined and deserted village of Montignies
St. Christophe, we came at dusk to a place where a company of German
infantrymen were in camp about a big graystone farmhouse. They were
cooking supper over big trench fires and, as usual, they were singing.
The light shone up into the faces of the cooks, bringing out in ruddy
relief their florid skins and yellow beards. A yearling bull calf was
tied to a supply-wagon wheel, bellowing his indignation. I imagine he
quit bellowing shortly thereafter.
An officer came to the edge of the road and, peering sharply at us over
a broken hedge, made as if to stop us; then changed his mind and
permitted us to go unchallenged. Entering the town, we proceeded,
winding our way among pack trains and stalled motor trucks, to the town
square. Our little cavalcade halted to the accompaniment of good-
natured titterings from many officers in front of the town house of the
Prince de Caraman-Chimay.
By a few Americans the prince is remembered as having been the cousin of
one of the husbands of the much-married Clara Ward, of Detroit; but at
this moment, though absent, he had particularly endeared himself to the
Germans through the circumstance of his having left behind, in his wine
cellars, twenty thousand bottles of rare vintages. Wine, I believe, is
contraband of war. Certainly in this instance it was. As we speedily
discovered, it was a very unlucky common soldier who did not have a swig
of rare Burgundy or ancient claret to wash down his black bread and
sausage that night at supper.
Unwittingly we had bumped into the headquarters of the whole army--not
of a single corps, but of an army. In the thickening twilight on the
little square gorgeous staff officers came and went, afoot, on horseback
and in automobiles; and through an open window we caught a glimpse of a
splendid-looking general, sitting booted and sword-belted at a table in
the Prince de Caraman-Chimay's library, with hunting trophies--skin and
horn and claw--looking down at him from the high-paneled oak
wainscotings, and spick-and-span aides waiting to take his orders and
discharge his commissions.
It dawned on us that, having accidentally slipped through a hole in the
German rear guard, we had reached a point close to the front of
operations. We felt uncomfortable.
It was not at all likely that a Herr Over-Commander would expedite us
with the graciousness that had marked his underlings back along the line
of communication. We remarked as much to one another; and it was a true
prophecy. A staff officer--a colonel who spoke good English--received
us at the door of the villa and examined our papers in the light which
streamed over his shoulder from a fine big hallway behind him. In
everything, both then and thereafter, he was most polite.
"I do not understand how you came here, you gentlemen," he said at
length. "We have no correspondents with our army."
"You have now," said one of us, seeking to brighten the growing
embarrassment of the situation with a small jape.
Perhaps he did not understand. Perhaps it was against the regulations
for a colonel, in full caparison of sword and shoulder straps, to laugh
at a joke from a dusty, wayworn, shabby stranger in a dented straw hat
and a wrinkled Yankee-made coat. At any rate this colonel did not
laugh.
"You did quite right to report yourselves here and explain your
purposes," he continued gravely; "but it is impossible that you may
proceed. To-morrow morning we shall give you escort and transportation
back to Brussels. I anticipate"--here he glanced quizzically at our
aged mare, drooping knee-sprung between the shafts of the lopsided
dogcart--"I anticipate that you will return more speedily than you
arrived.
"You will kindly report to me here in the morning at eleven. Meantime
remember, gentlemen, that you are not prisoners--by no means, not. You
may consider yourselves for the time being as--shall we say?--guests of
the German Army, temporarily detained. You are at perfect liberty to
come and go--only I should advise you not to go too far, because if you
should try to leave town tonight our soldiers would certainly shoot you
quite dead. It is not agreeable to be shot; and, besides, your great
Government might object. So, then, I shall have the pleasure of seeing
you in the morning, shall I not? Yes? Good night, gentlemen!"
He clicked his neat heels so that his spurs jangled, and bowed us out
into the dark. The question of securing lodgings loomed large and
imminent before us. Officers filled the few small inns and hotels;
soldiers, as we could see, were quartered thickly in all the houses in
sight; and already the inhabitants were locking their doors and dousing
their lights in accordance with an order from a source that was not to
be disobeyed. Nine out of ten houses about the square were now but
black oblongs rising against the gray sky. We had nowhere to go; and yet
if we did not go somewhere, and that pretty soon, the patrols would
undoubtedly take unpleasant cognizance of our presence. Besides, the
searching chill of a Belgian night was making us stiff.
Scouting up a narrow winding alley, one of the party who spoke German
found a courtyard behind a schoolhouse called imposingly L'Ecole Moyenne
de Beaumont, where he obtained permission from a German sergeant to
stable our mare for the night in the aristocratic companionship of a
troop of officers' horses. Through another streak of luck we preempted
a room in the schoolhouse and held it against all comers by right of
squatter sovereignty. There my friends and I slept on the stone floor,
with a scanty amount of hay under us for a bed and our coats for
coverlets. But before we slept we dined.
We dined on hard-boiled eggs and stale cheese--which we had saved from
midday--in a big, bare study hall half full of lancers. They gave us
rye bread and some of the Prince de Caraman-Chimay's wine to go with the
provender we had brought, and they made room for us at the long benches
that ran lengthwise of the room. Afterward one of them--a master
musician, for all his soiled gray uniform and grimed fingers--played a
piano that was in the corner, while all the rest sang.
It was a strange picture they made there. On the wall, on a row of
hooks, still hung the small umbrellas and book-satchels of the pupils.
Presumably at the coming of the Germans they had run home in such a
panic that they left their school-traps behind. There were sums in
chalk, half erased, on the blackboard; and one of the troopers took a
scrap of chalk and wrote "On to Paris!" in big letters here and there.
A sleepy parrot, looking like a bundle of rumpled green feathers,
squatted on its perch in a cage behind the master's desk, occasionally
emitting a loud squawk as though protesting against this intrusion on
its privacy.
When their wine had warmed them our soldier-hosts sang and sang,
unendingly. They had been on the march all day, and next day would
probably march half the day and fight the other half, for the French and
English were just ahead; but now they sprawled over the school benches
and drummed on the boards with their fists and feet, and sang at the
tops of their voices. They sang their favorite marching songs--Die
Wacht am Rhein, of course; and Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles!
which has a fine, sonorous cathedral swing to it; and God Save the
King!--with different words to the air, be it said; and Haltet Aus!
Also, for variety, they sang Tannenbaum--with the same tune as Maryland,
My Maryland!--and Heil dir im Sieges-kranz; and snatches from various
operas.
When one of us asked for Heine's Lorelei they sang not one verse of it,
or two, but twenty or more; and then, by way of compliment to the guests
of the evening, they reared upon their feet and gave us The Star
Spangled Banner, to German words. Suddenly two of them began dancing.
In their big rawhide boots, with hobbed soles and steel-shod heels, they
pounded back and forth, while the others whooped them on. One of the
dancers gave out presently; but the other seemed still unimpaired in
wind and limb. He darted into an adjoining room and came back in a
minute dragging a half-frightened, half-pleased little Belgian scullery
maid and whirled her about to waltz music until she dropped for want of
breath to carry her another turn; after which he did a solo--Teutonic
version--of a darky breakdown, stopping only to join in the next song.
It was eleven o'clock and they were still singing when we left them and
went groping through dark hallways to where our simple hay mattress
awaited us. I might add that we were indebted to a corporal of lancers
for the hay, which he pilfered from the feed racks outside after
somebody had stolen the two bundles of straw one of us had previously
purchased. Except for his charity of heart we should have lain on the
cold flagging.
The next morning was Thursday morning, and by Thursday night, at the
very latest, we counted on being back in Brussels; but we were not
destined to see Brussels again for nearly six weeks. We breakfasted
frugally on good bread and execrable coffee at a half-wrecked little
café where soldiers had slept; and at eleven o'clock, when we had
bestowed Bulotte, the ancient nag, and the dogcart on an accommodating
youth--giving them to him as a gracious gift, since neither he nor
anyone else would buy the outfit at any price--we repaired to the villa
to report ourselves and start on our return to the place whence we had
come so laboriously.
The commander and his staff were just leaving, and they were in a big
hurry. We knew the reason for their hurry, for since daylight the sound
of heavy firing to the south and southwest, across the border in the
neighborhood of Maubeuge, had been plainly audible. Officers in long
gray overcoats with facings of blue, green, black, yellow and four
shades of red--depending on the branches of the service to which they
belonged--were piling into automobiles and scooting away.
As we sat on a wooden bench before the prince's villa, waiting for
further instructions from our friend of the night before--meaning by
that the colonel who could not take a joke, but could make one of his
own--a tall, slender young man of about twenty-four, with a little silky
mustache and a long, vulpine nose, came striding across the square with
long steps. As nearly as we could tell, he wore a colonel's shoulder
straps; and, aside from the fact that he seemed exceedingly youthful to
be a colonel, we were astonished at the deference that was paid him by
those of higher rank, who stood about waiting for their cars. Generals,
and the like, even grizzled old generals with breasts full of
decorations, bowed and clicked before him; and when he, smiling broadly,
insisted on shaking hands with all of them, some of the group seemed
overcome with gratification.
Presently a sort of family resemblance in his face to some one whose
picture we had seen often somewhere began to impress itself on us, and
we wondered who he was; but, being rather out of the setting ourselves,
none of us cared to ask. Two weeks later, in Aix-la-Chapelle, I was
passing a shop and saw his likeness in full uniform on a souvenir
postcard in the window. It was Prince August Wilhelm, fourth son of the
Kaiser; and we had seen him as he was about getting his first taste of
being under fire by the enemy.
Pretty soon he was gone and our colonel was gone, and nearly everybody
else was gone too; Companies of infantry and cavalry fell in and moved
off, and a belated battery of field artillery rumbled out of sight up
the twisting main street. The field postoffice staff, the field
telegraph staff, the Red Cross corps and the wagon trains followed in
due turn, leaving behind only a small squad to hold the town--and us.
A tall young lieutenant was in charge of the handful who remained; and,
by the same token, as was to transpire, he was also in charge of us. He
was built for a football player, and he had shoulders like a Cyclops,
and his family name was Mittendorfer. He never spoke to his men except
to roar at them like a raging lion, and he never addressed us except to
coo as softly as the mourning dove. It was interesting to listen as his
voice changed from a bellow to a croon, and back again a moment later to
a bellow. With training he might have made an opera singer--he had such
a vocal range and such perfect control over it. This Lieutenant
Mittendorfer introduced himself to our attention by coming smartly up
and saying there had been a delay about requisitioning an automobile for
our use; but he thought the car would be along very shortly--and would
the American gentlemen be so good as to wait? There being nothing else
to do, we decided to do as he suggested.
We chose for our place of waiting a row of seats before a taverne, and
there we sat, side by side, keeping count of the guns booming in the
distance, until it began to rain. A sergeant came up then and invited
us to go with him, in order that we might escape a wetting. He waved us
into the doorway of a house two doors from where we had been sitting, at
the same time suggesting to us that we throw away our cigars and
cigarettes. When we crossed the threshold we realized the good intention
behind this advice, seeing that the room we entered, which had been a
shop of sorts, was now an improvised powder magazine.
From the floor to the height of a man it was piled with explosive shells
for field guns, cased in straw covers like wine bottles, and stacked in
neat rows, with their noses all pointing one way. Our guide led us
along an aisle of these deadly things, beckoned us through another
doorway at the side, where a sentry stood with a bayonet fixed on his
gun, and with a wave of his hand invited us to partake of the
hospitalities of the place. We looked about us, and lo! we were hard-
and-fast in jail!
I have been in pleasanter indoor retreats in my time, even on rainy
afternoons. The room was bedded down ankle-deep in straw; and the
straw, which had probably been fresh the day before, already gave off a
strong musky odor--the smell of an animal cage in a zoo.
For furnishings, the place contained a bench and a large iron pot
containing a meat stew, which had now gone cold, so that a rime of gray
suet coated the upper half of the pot. But of human occupants there was
an ample sufficiency, considering the cubic space available for
breathing purposes. Sitting in melancholy array against the walls, with
their legs half buried in the straw and their backs against the
baseboards, were eighteen prisoners--two Belgian cavalrymen and sixteen
Frenchmen--mostly Zouaves and chasseurs-a-pied. Also, there were three
Turcos from Northern Africa, almost as dark as negroes, wearing red
fezzes and soiled white, baggy, skirtlike arrangements instead of
trousers. They all looked very dirty, very unhappy and very sleepy.
At the far side of the room on a bench was another group of four
prisoners; and of these we knew two personally--Gerbeaux, a Frenchman
who lived in Brussels and served as the resident Brussels correspondent
of a Chicago paper; and Stevens, an American artist, originally from
Michigan, but who for several years had divided his time between Paris
and Brussels. With them were a Belgian photographer, scared now into a
quivering heap from which two wall-eyes peered out wildly, and a negro
chauffeur, a soot-black Congo boy who had been brought away from Africa
on a training ship as a child. He, apparently, was the least-concerned
person in that hole.
The night before, by chance, we had heard that Gerbeaux and Stevens were
under detention, but until this moment of meeting we did not know their
exact whereabouts. They--the Frenchman, the American and the Belgian--
had started out from Brussels in an auto driven by the African, on
Monday, just a day behind us. Because their car carried a Red Cross
flag without authority to do so, and because they had a camera with
them, they very soon found themselves under arrest, and, what was worse,
under suspicion. Except that for two days they had been marched afoot
an average of twenty-five miles a day, they had fared pretty well,
barring Stevens. He, being separated from the others, had fallen into
the hands of an officer who treated him with such severity that the
account of his experiences makes a tale worth recounting separately and
at length.
We stayed in that place half an hour--one of the longest half hours I
remember. There was a soldier with a fixed bayonet at the door, and
another soldier with a saw-edged bayonet at the window, which was
broken. Parties of soldiers kept coming to this window to peer at the
exhibits within; and, as they invariably took the civilians for
Englishmen who had been caught as spies, we attracted almost as much
attention as the Turcos in their funny ballet skirts; in fact I may say
we fairly divided the center of the stage with the Turcos.
At the end of half an hour the lieutenant bustled in, all apologies, to
say there had been a mistake and that we should never have been put in
with the prisoners at all. The rain being over, he invited us to come
outside and get a change of air. When we got outside we found that our
two bicycles, which we had left leaning against the curb, were gone. To
date they are still gone.
Again we sat waiting. Finally it occurred to us to go inside the little
taverne, where, perhaps, we should be less conspicuous. We went in, and
presently we were followed by Lieutenant Mittendorfer, he bringing with
him a tall young top-sergeant of infantry who carried his left arm in a
sling and had a three weeks' growth of fuzzy red beard on his chops. It
was explained that this top-sergeant, Rosenthal by name, had been
especially assigned to be our companion--our playfellow, as it were;--
until such time as the long-delayed automobile should appear.
Sergeant Rosenthal, who was very proud of his punctured wrist and very
hopeful of getting a promotion, went out soon; but it speedily became
evident that he had not forgotten us. For one soldier with his gun
appeared in the front room of the place, and another materialized just
outside the door, likewise with his gun. And by certain other
unmistakable signs it became plain to our perceptions that as between
being a prisoner of the German army and being a guest there was really
no great amount of difference. It would have taken a mathematician to
draw the distinction, so fine it was.
We stayed in that taverne and in the small living room behind it, and in
the small high-walled courtyard behind the living room, all that
afternoon and that evening and that night, being visited at intervals by
either the lieutenant or the sergeant, or both of them at once. We
dined lightly on soldiers' bread and some of the prince's wine--
furnished by Rosenthal--and for dessert we had some shelled almonds and
half a cake of chocolate--furnished by ourselves; also drinks of pale
native brandy from the bar.
During the evening we received several bulletins regarding the mythical
automobile. Invariably Mittendorfer was desolated to be compelled to
report that there had been another slight delay. We knew he was
desolated, because he said he was. During the evening, also, we met all
the regular members of the household living under that much-disturbed
roof. There was the husband, a big lubberly Fleming who apparently did
not count for much in the economic and domestic scheme of the
establishment; his wife, a large, commanding woman who ran the business
and the house as well; his wife's mother, an old sickly woman in her
seventies; and his wife's sister, a poor, palsied half-wit.
When the sister was a child, so we heard, she had been terribly
frightened, so that to this day, still frightened, she crept about, a
pale shadow, quivering all over pitiably at every sound. She would
stand behind a door for minutes shaking so that you could hear her
knuckles knocking against the wall. She seemed particularly to dread
the sight of the German privates who came and went; and they, seeing
this, were kind to her in a clumsy, awkward way. Hourly, like a ghost
she drifted in and out.
For a while it looked as though we should spend the night sitting up in
chairs; but about ten o'clock three soldiers, led by Rosenthal and
accompanied by the landlady, went out; and when they came back they
brought some thick feather mattresses which had been commandeered from
neighboring houses, we judged. Also, through the goodness of his heart,
Mittendorfer, who impressed us more and more as a strange compound of
severity and softness, took pity on Gerbeaux and Stevens, and bringing
them forth from that pestilential hole next door, he convoyed them in to
stay overnight with us. They told us that by now the air in the
improvised prison was absolutely suffocating, what with the closeness,
the fouled straw, the stale food and the proximity of so many dirty
human bodies all packed into the kennel together.
Ten of us slept on the floor of that little grogshop--the five of our
party lying spoon-fashion on two mattresses, Gerbeaux and Stevens making
seven, and three soldiers. The soldiers relieved each other in two-hour
spells, so that while two of them snored by the door the third sat in a
chair in the middle of the room, with his rifle between his knees, and a
shaded lamp and a clock on a table at his elbow. Just before we turned
in, Rosenthal, who had adopted a paternal tone to the three guards, each
of whom was many years older than he, addressed them softly, saying:
"Now, my children, make yourselves comfortable. Drink what you please;
but if any one of you gets drunk I shall take pleasure in seeing that he
gets from seven to nine years in prison at hard labor." For which they
thanked him gratefully in chorus.
I am not addicted to the diary-keeping habit, but during the next day,
which was Friday, I made fragmentary records of things in a journal,
from which I now quote verbatim:
Seven-thirty a. m.--about. After making a brief toilet by sousing our
several faces in a pail of water, we have just breakfasted--sketchily--
on wine and almonds. It would seem that the German army feeds its
prisoners, but makes no such provision for its guests. On the whole I
think I should prefer being a prisoner.
We have offered our landlady any amount within reason for a pot of
coffee and some toasted bread; but she protests, calling on Heaven to
witness the truth of her words, that there is nothing to eat in the
house--that the Germans have eaten up all her store of food, and that
her old mother is already beginning to starve. Yet certain appetizing
smells, which come down the staircase from upstairs when the door is
opened, lead me to believe she is deceiving us. I do not blame her for
treasuring what she has for her own flesh and blood; but I certainly
could enjoy a couple of fried eggs.
Nine a. m. Mittendorfer has been in, with vague remarks concerning our
automobile. Something warns me this young man is trifling with us. He
appears to be a practitioner of the Japanese school of diplomacy--that
is, he believes it is better to pile one gentle, transparent fiction on
another until the pyramid of romance falls of its own weight, rather
than to break the cruel news at a single blow.
Eleven-twenty. One of the soldiers has brought us half a dozen bottles
of good wine--three bottles of red and three of white--but the larder
remains empty. I do not know exactly what a larder is; but if it is as
empty as I am at the present moment it must remind itself of a haunted
house.
Eleven-forty. A big van full of wounded Germans has arrived. From the
windows we can see it distinctly. The more seriously hurt lie on the
bed of the wagon, under the hood. The man who drives has one leg in
splints; and of the two who sit at the tail gate, holding rifles
upright, one has a bandaged head, and the other has an arm in a sling.
Unless a German is so seriously crippled as to be entirely unfitted for
service he manages to do something useful. There are no loose ends and
no waste to the German military system; I can see that. The soldiers in
the street cheer the wounded as they pass and the wounded answer by
singing Die Wacht am Rhein feebly.
One poor chap raises his head and looks out. He appears to be almost
spent, but I see his lips move as he tries to sing. You may not care
for the German cause, but you are bound to admire the German spirit--the
German oneness of purpose.
Noon. As the Texas darky said: "Dinnertime fur some folks; but just
twelve o'clock fur me!" Again I smell something cooking upstairs. On
the mantel of the shabby little interior sitting room, where we spend
most of our time sitting about in a sad circle, is a little black-and-
tan terrier pup, stuffed and mounted, with shiny glass eyes--a family
pet, I take it, which died and was immortalized by the local
taxidermist. If I only knew what that dog was stuffed with I would take
a chance and eat him.
I have a fellow feeling for Arctic explorers who go north and keep on
going until they run out of things to eat. I admire their heroism and
sympathize with their sufferings, but I deplore their bad judgment.
There are grapes growing on trellises in the little courtyard at the
back, but they are too green for human consumption. I speak
authoritatively on this subject, having just sampled one.
Two p.m. Tried to take a nap, but failed. Hansen found a soiled deck
of cards behind a pile of books on the mantelpiece, and we all cheered
up, thinking of poker; but it was a Belgian deck of thirty-two cards,
all the pips below the seven-spot being eliminated. Poker with that deck
would be a hazardous pursuit.
McCutcheon remarks casually that he wonders what would happen if
somebody accidentally touched off those field-gun shells in the house
two doors away. We suddenly remember that they are all pointed our way!
The conversation seems to lull, and Mac, for the time being, loses
popularity.
Two-thirty p.m. Looking out on the dreary little square of this town
of Beaumont I note that the natives, who have been scarce enough all
day, have now vanished almost entirely; whereas soldiers are noticeably
more numerous than they were this morning.
Three-fifteen p.m. Heard a big noise in the street and ran to the
window in time to see about forty English prisoners passing under guard
--the first English soldiers I have seen, in this campaign, either as
prisoners or otherwise. Their tan khaki uniforms and flat caps give
them a soldierly look very unlike the slovenly, sloppy-appearing French
prisoners in the guardhouse; but they appear to be tremendously
downcast. The German soldiers crowd up to stare at them, but there is no
jeering or taunting from the Germans. These prisoners are all
infantrymen, judging by their uniforms. They disappear through the
gateway of the prince's park.
Three-forty. I have just had some exercise; walked from the front door
to the courtyard and back. There are two guards outside the door now
instead of one. The German army certainly takes mighty good care of its
guests.
This day has been as long as Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," and much more
tiresome. No; I'll take that back; it is not strong enough. This day
has been as long as the entire Christian Era.
Four p.m. Gerbeaux, who was allowed to go out foraging, under escort
of a guard, has returned with a rope of dried onions; a can of alphabet
noodles; half a pound of stale, crumbly macaroons; a few fresh string
beans; a pot of strained honey, and several clean collars of assorted
sizes. The woman of the-house is now making soup for us out of the
beans, the onions and the noodles. She has also produced a little
grated Parmesan cheese from somewhere.
Four-twenty p.m. That was the best soup I ever tasted, even if it was
full of typographical errors from the jumbling together of the little
alphabet noodles. Still, nobody but a proofreader could have found
fault with that. There was only one trouble with that soup: there was
not enough of it--just one bowl apiece. I would have traded the finest
case of vintage wine in the Chimay vaults for another bowl.
Just as the woman brought in the soup Mittendorfer appeared, escorting a
French lieutenant who was taken prisoner this morning. The prisoner was
a little, handsome, dapper chap not over twenty-two years old, wearing
his trim blue-and-red uniform with an air, even though he himself looked
thoroughly miserable. We were warned not to speak with him, or he with
us; but Gerbeaux, after listening to him exchanging a few words with the
lieutenant, said he judged from his accent that the little officer was
from the south of France.
We silently offered him a bowl of the soup as he sat in a corner fenced
off from the rest of us by a small table; but he barely tasted it, and
after a bit he lay down in his corner, with his arm for a pillow, and
almost instantly was asleep, breathing heavily, like a man on the verge
of exhaustion. A few minutes later we heard, from Sergeant Rosenthal,
that the prisoner's brother-in-law had been killed the day before, and
that he--the little officer--had seen the brother-in-law fall.
Five p.m. We have had good news--two chunks of good news, in fact.
We are to dine and we are to travel. The sergeant has acquired, from
unknown sources, a brace of small, skinny, fresh-killed pullets; eight
fresh eggs; a big loaf of the soggy rye bread of the field mess; and
wine unlimited. Also, we are told that at nine o'clock we are to start
for Brussels--not by automobile, but aboard a train carrying wounded and
prisoners northward.
Everybody cheers up, especially after ma-dame promises to have the fowls
and the eggs ready in less than an hour.
The Belgian photographer, who, it develops, is to go with our troop, has
been brought in from the guardhouse and placed with us. With the
passing hours his fright has increased. Gerbeaux says the poor devil is
one of the leading photographers of Brussels--that by royal appointment
he takes pictures of the queen and her children. But the queen would
have trouble in recognizing her photographer if she could see him now--
with straw in his tousled hair, and his jaw lolling under the weight of
his terror, and his big, wild eyes staring this way and that. Nothing
that Gerbeaux can say to him will dissuade him from the belief that the
Germans mean to shoot him.
I almost forgot to detail a thing that occurred a few minutes ago, just
before the Belgian joined us. Mittendorfer brought a message for the
little French lieutenant. The Frenchman roused up and, after they had
saluted each other ceremoniously, Mittendorfer told him he had come to
invite him to dine with a mess of German officers across the way, in the
town hall.
On the way out he stopped to speak with Sergeant Rosenthal who, having
furnished the provender for the forthcoming feast, was now waiting to
share in it. Using German, the lieutenant said:
"I'm being kept pretty busy. Two citizens of this town have just been
sentenced to be shot, and I've orders to go and attend to the shooting
before it gets too dark for the firing squad to see to aim."
Rosenthal did not ask of what crime the condemned two had been
convicted.
"You had charge of another execution this morning, didn't you?" he said.
"Yes," answered the lieutenant; "a couple--man and wife. The man was
seventy-four years old and the woman was seventy-two. It was proved
against them that they put poisoned sugar in the coffee for some of our
soldiers. You heard about the case, didn't you?"
"I heard something about it," said Rosenthal.
That was all they said. After three weeks of war a tragedy like this
has become commonplace, not only to these soldiers but to us. Already
all of us, combatants and onlookers alike, have seen so many horrors
that one more produces no shock in our minds. It will take a wholesale
killing to excite us; these minor incidents no longer count with us. If
I wrote all day I do not believe I could make the meaning of war, in its
effects on the minds of those who view it at close hand, any clearer. I
shall not try.
Six-fifteen p.m. We have dined. The omelet was a very small omelet,
and two skinny pullets do not go far among nine hungry men; still, we
have dined.
My journal breaks off with this entry. It broke off because immediately
after dinner word came that our train was ready. A few minutes before
we left the taverne for the station, to start on a trip that was to last
two days instead of three hours, and land us not in Brussels, but on
German soil in Aix-la-Chapelle, two incidents happened which afterward,
in looking back on the experience, I have found most firmly clinched in
my memory: A German captain came into the place to get a drink; he
recognized me as an American and hailed me, and wanted to know my
business and whether I could give him any news from the outside world.
I remarked on the perfection of his English.
"I suppose I come by it naturally," he said. "I call myself a German,
but I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and partly reared in New Jersey,
and educated at Princeton; and at this moment I am a member of the New
York Cotton Exchange."
Right after this three Belgian peasants, all half-grown boys, were
brought in. They had run away from their homes at the coming of the
Germans, and for three days had been hiding in thickets, without food,
until finally hunger and cold had driven them in.
All of them were in sorry case and one was in collapse. He trembled so
his whole body shook like jelly. The landlady gave him some brandy, but
the burning stuff choked his throat until it closed and the brandy ran
out of his quivering blue lips and spilled on his chin. Seeing this, a
husky German private, who looked as though in private life he might be a
piano mover, brought out of his blanket roll a bottle of white wine and,
holding the scared, exhausted lad against his chest, ministered to him
with all gentleness, and gave him sips of the wine. In the line of duty
I suppose he would have shot that boy with the same cheerful readiness.
Just as we were filing out into the dark, Sergeant Rosenthal, who was
also going along, halted us and reminded us all and severally that we
were not prisoners, but still guests; and that, though we were to march
with the prisoners to the station, we were to go in line with the
guards; and if any prisoner sought to escape it was hoped that we would
aid in recapturing the runaway. So we promised him, each on his word of
honor, that we would do this; and he insisted that we should shake hands
with him as a pledge and as a token of mutual confidence, which we
accordingly did. Altogether it was quite an impressive little
ceremonial--and rather dramatic, I imagine.
As he left us, however, he was heard, speaking in German, to say sotto
voce to one of the guards:
"If one of those journalists tries to slip away don't take any chances--
shoot him at once!"
It is so easy to keep one's honor intact when you have moral support in
the shape of an earnest-minded German soldier, with a gun, stepping
along six feet behind you. My honor was never safer.