Chapter IV

Roulette And Liberty

Our morning toilet was completed with the aid of one small, flimsy towel for thirty of us. Hot water tinctured with coffee and milk was served from a bucket with two or three cups. Bread which had been saved from the previous day was brought forth from pockets and hiding-places, and for some unaccountable reason a piece of good butter was brought in. Apparently the Germans were trying to escape the stigma of mistreating or underfeeding their prisoners.

Orders were given to get ready to move out. After an hour, they were changed to "Clean up the room." When we had accomplished this, an inspecting officer entered and began to sniff and snort until his eyes fairly blazed with wrath, and then in a torrent of words he expressed his private and official opinion of us. So fast and freely did his language flow that I couldn't catch all the compliments he showered upon us; but "Verdammte!" "Donnerwetter!" and "Schwein!" were stressed frequently enough for me to retain a distinct memory of the same. One did not have to be a German linguist to get the drift of his remarks.

They had an electric effect upon the prisoners, who with one accord got busy picking up microscopic and invisible bits from the floor. To see these men crawling around upon their stomachs must have been highly gratifying to His Self-inflated Highness. The highly gratifying thing to myself now is the fact that I did not do any crawling, but sat stolidly in my chair and stared back at him, letting my indignation get enough the better of my discretion even to sneer—at least I persuade myself now that I did. Outside of this little act of gallantry I am heartily ashamed of my conduct at the German Staff Headquarters. It was too acquiescent and obsequious for some of those bureaucrats rough riding it over those helpless, long-suffering, beaten Belgians.

Having called us "Schwein," at high noon they brought in the swill. It was a gray, putrid-looking mess in a big, battered bucket. They told us that it came dried in bags and all that was necessary was to mix the contents with hot water. The mixture was put up in 1911 and guaranteed to keep for 20 years. It looked as though it might have already forfeited on its guarantee. There was nothing to serve it with, and search of the room uncovered no implements of attack. Our discomfiture furnished a young soldier with much entertainment.

"Nothing to eat your stew with? Well, just stand on that table there and dive right into the bucket."

He was quite carried away with his own witticism, so that in sheer good nature he went and returned with six soup plates which were covered over with a thick grease quite impervious to cold water. I had my misgivings about the mess and dreaded its steaming odors. At last I summoned up courage and approached the bucket, using my fingers in lieu of a clothes-pin as a defense for my olfactory nerves. A surprise was in store for me; its palatability and quality were quite the opposite of its appearance. While I wouldn't enjoy that stew outside of captivity, and while the Brussels men refused in any way to succumb to its charm, it was at least very nutritious and furnished the strength to keep fighting.

But it is hard to battle against the blues, especially when all one's comrades capitulate to them. Each man vied with the other in radiating a blue funk, until the air was as thick as a London fog.

Picture, if you will, the scene. By a fine irony, the books on the shelves were on international law, and by a finer irony the book in green binding that caught my eye as it stood out from the black array of volumes was R. Dimmont's "The Origins of Belgian Neutrality." The Belgians who were enjoying the peculiar blessings of that neutrality were sprawled over the floor or pacing restlessly up and down the room, or, in utter despair, buried their heads in their arms flung out across the table.

About three o'clock the name "Herr Peters" was called. He had been found guilty of mumbling to his comrades that their captain was pushing them too hard in an advance. One could believe the charge, for, as his name was called, he was sullen and unconcerned. "You are sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor in a fortress. You must go at once."

He muttered in an undertone something about "being luckier in prison in winter than out there on the cold, freezing ground," and, flinging his knapsack upon his shoulder, lumbered off. In how many such hearts is there this sullen revolt against the military system, and how much of a factor will it be to reckon with in the future?

There were four prisoners quite separated from the rest of us. It was said that they were sentenced to be shot. I am not sure that they were; but we were strictly forbidden any intercourse with them. They were the most crestfallen, terror-stricken lot of men that ever I had laid eyes upon, and at four o'clock they were led away by a cordon of soldiers. There was enough mental suggestion about it to plunge the room into a deep silence. It was oppressive.

At last Obels, the reporter, walked over and asked me if there were proofs of the immortality of the soul, excusing himself by saying that up to this time he had never had any particular time nor reason for reflection on this subject. That was the only psychological blunder that he made. However, it at last broke the heavy, painful silence, and we speculated together, instead of singly, how it might feel to have immortal bliss thrust upon us from the end of a German musket.

I related to him my experience of the previous week. Some war photographers wanted a picture of a spy shot. I had volunteered to play the part of a spy, and, after being blindfolded, was led over against a wall, where a Belgian squad leveled their rifles at me. I assured him that the sensation was by no means terrible; but he would not be comforted. Death itself he wouldn't mind so much, if he could have found it in the open fighting gladly for his country; but it seemed a blot on his good name to be shot for just snooping around the German lines.

On the whole, after weighing all the pros and cons, we decided that our pronounced aversion to being shot had purely an altruistic origin. It was a wicked, shameful loss to the human race. That point was very clear to us. But there was the arrant stupidity of the Germans to be reckoned with. They have such a distorted sense of real values. Rummaging through my pockets during these reflections, I fished up an advertising folder out of a corner where I had tucked it when it was presented to me by Dr. Morse. The outside read, "How We Lost Our Best Customer." Mechanically I opened it, and there, staring back at me from big black borders on the inside, were the two words, "HE DIED."

These ruminations upon matters spiritual were interrupted by the strains from a brass band which went crashing by, while ten thousand hobnailed boots of the regiment striking the pavements in unison beat out time like a trip-hammer.

"Perhaps the Germans are leaving Brussels," whispered a companion; "and wouldn't we grow wild or faint or crazy to see those guards drop away and we should find ourselves free men again!"

The passing music had a jubilating effect upon our guards, who paraded gayly up and down the room. One simple, good-hearted fellow harangued us in a bantering way, pointing out our present sorry plight as evidence of the sad mistake we had made in not being born in Germany. He felt so happy that he took a little collection from us, and in due time returned with some bread and chocolate and soda water. But even the soda water, as if adjusting itself to the spiritlessness of the prisoners, refused to effervesce. The music had by contrast seemed only to increase the general depression.

Only one free spirit soared above his surroundings. He was a young Belgian—Ernest de Burgher by name—a kindly light amidst the encircling gloom. He took everything in life with a smile. I am sure that if death as a spy had been ordered for him at the door, he would have met that with the same happy, imperturbable expression. He had quite as much reason as I, if not more, for joining our gloom-party. He, too, was waiting sentence. For six days his wild, untamed spirit had been cabined in these walls; but he had been born a humorist, and even in bonds he sought to play the clown. He went through contortions, pitched coins against himself, and staggered around the room with a soda-water bottle at his lips, imitating a drunkard. But ours was a tough house even for his irrepressible spirit to play to. Despite all his efforts, we sat around like a convention of corpses, and only once did his comic spirit succeed.

One prisoner sunk down in a comatose condition in his chair, as though his last drop of strength and life had oozed away. Now de Burgher was one of those who can resist anything but temptation. He stole over and tied the man's legs to his chair. Then he got a German soldier to tap the hapless victim on the shoulder. Roused from his stupor to see the soldier standing over him like a messenger of doom, the poor fellow turned ashen pale. He sprang to his feet, but the chair bound to his legs tripped him up and he fell sprawling on the floor. He apparently regarded the chair as some sort of German infernal machine clutching him, and he lay there wrestling with his inanimate antagonist as though it were a demon. As soon as the victim understood the joke he joined in the burst of merriment that ran round the room; but it was of short duration. The gloom got us again, despite all that de Burgher could do, and finally he succumbed to the prevailing atmosphere and gave us up as a bad job.

He was a diminutive fellow, battered and rather the worse for wear. Ever shall I think of him not only as the happy-souled, but as the great-souled. My introduction into the room was at the point of a steel bayonet. With him, that served me far better than any gilt- edged introduction of high estate. He didn't know what crime was charged against, me, but he felt that it must have been a sacrifice for Belgium's sake. The fact that I was persona non grata to the Germans was a lien upon his sympathy, and gave me high rank with him at once. He instinctively divined my feelings of fear and loneliness, and straightway set out to make me his ward, his comrade, and his master.

Never shall I forget how, during that long night in prison, he crawled over and around the recumbent forms to where I lay upon the floor courting sleep in vain. I was frightened by this maneuver, but he smiled and motioned me to silence. Reaching up beneath my blanket, he unlaced one shoe and then the other. At first I really thought that he was going to steal them, but the reaction from the day had set in and I was too tired and paralyzed to make any protest. Laying the shoes one side, he remarked, "That will ease your feet." Then stripping off his coat and rolling it into a bundle, he placed it as a pillow beneath my head.

A great, big hulking American, treated tenderly by this little Belgian, how could I keep the tears from my eyes? And as they came welling up—tears of appreciation for the generous fineness of his spirit—he took them to be tears of grief, brought on by thoughts of home and friends and all those haunting memories. But he was equal to the occasion.

In a little vacant space he made a circle of cigarettes and small Belgian coins. In the center he placed a small box, and on it laid a ruler. "This is the roulette wheel at Monte Carlo, and you are the rich American," he whispered, and with a snap of the finger he spun the ruler round. Whenever it stopped, he presented me my prize with sundry winkings and chucklings, interrupted by furtive glances towards the door.

Rouge-et-noir upon a prison floor! To him existence was such a game—red life or black death, as the fates ordained. His spirit was contagious, and I found myself smiling through my tears. When he saw his task accomplished, gathering in his coins, he crawled away.

His was a restless spirit. Only once did I see him steadfastly quiet. That was the next morning, when he sat with his eyes fixed upon an opening in the shutter. He insisted upon my taking his seat, and adjusting my angle of vision properly. There, framed in a window across the forbidden courtyard, was a pretty girl watering flowers. She was indeed a distracting creature, and de Burgher danced around me with unfeigned glee. His previous experience with Americans had evidently led him to believe that we were all connoisseurs in pretty girls. I tried valiantly to uphold our national reputation, but my thoughts at the time were much more heavenly than even that fair apparition framed in the window, and I fear I disappointed de Burgher by my lack of enthusiasm.

My other comrade, Constance Staes, must not be forgotten. For some infraction of the new military regulations he had been hustled off to prison, but he, too, was born for liberty, a free-ranging spirit that fetters could never bind. He made me see the Belgian soul that would never be subservient to German rule. The Germans can be overlords in Belgium only when such spirits have either emigrated or have been totally exterminated.

To Constance Staes every rule was a challenge. That's the reason he had been put in jail. He had trespassed on forbidden way in front of the East Station. Here in prison smoking was forbidden. So Staes, with one eye upon the listless guard, would slip beneath a blanket, take a pull at his cigarette, and come up again as innocent as though he had been saying his prayers. I refused the offer of a pull at his cigarette, but not the morsel of white bread which he drew from behind a picture and shared with me. That bread, broken and shared between us in that upper room, is to me an eternal sacrament. It fed my body hunger then; never shall it cease to feed the hunger of my soul.

Whenever temptation to play the cynic or think meanly of my fellow-man shall come, my mind will hark back to those two unpretending fellows and bow in reverence before the selflessness and immensity of the human soul. Needing bread, they gave it freely away; needing strength, they poured themselves out unsparingly; needing encouragement, they became the ministers thereof. For not to me alone, but to all, they played this role of servant, priest, and comforter.

As I write these lines I wonder where their spirits are now. Speeded thence, they may have already made the next world richer by their coming. I do not know that; but I do know that they have made my soul infinitely richer by their sojourn here; I do not know whether they were Catholic or Atheist, but I do know how truly the Master of all souls could say to these two brave little Belgians: "When I was an hungered, ye gave me food; when I was thirsty, ye gave me drink; when I was a stranger, ye took me in; when I was sick and in prison, ye visited me."

The prison is the real maker of democracy. I saw that clearly when, at five o'clock, joy came marching into the room. It was an officer who was its herald with the simple words, "The theater manager is free." That was a trumpet blast annihilating all rank and caste. The manager, forgetting his office and his dignity, and embracing with his right arm a peasant and with his left an artisan, danced round the room in a delirium of delight. Twenty men were at one time besieging him to grasp his hand, and tears, not rhetorically, but actually, were streaming down their faces—Russian, German, Belgian, and American, high and low, countrymen and citymen, smocked and frocked. We were fused altogether in the common emotion of joy and hope. For hope was now rampant. "If one man can be liberated," we argued, "why not another? Perhaps the General was thus giving vent to a temporary vein of good humor." Each man figured that he might be the fortunate one upon whom this good luck would alight.

At five-thirty there was much murmuring in the corridor, and presently my Ehrenwort lad of the previous night came bursting into the room, crying, "The American! The American!" I do not have to describe the thrill of joy that those words shot through me; but I wish that I might do justice to the beaming face of my young officer friend. I am sure that I could not have looked more radiant than he did when, almost like a mother, he led me forth to greet de Leval and two other assistants from the American Ambassador. Now de Leval is not built on any sylph-like plan, but he looked to me then like an ethereal being from another world—the angel who opened the prison door.

I presumed that I was to walk away without further ado; but not so easy. We proceeded into another office, where the whole assemblage was standing. I have no idea who the high superior officer was; but he held in his hand a blue book which contained a long report of my case, with all the documents except the defense I had written. Again I was cross-examined, and my papers were carefully passed upon one by one.

One they could not or would not overlook, and to it throughout all this last examination they kept perpetually referring. When I had made my thirty-seven-mile journey into Liege on August 20,1 had secured this paper at Maastricht signed by the Dutch and German authorities. Over the Dutch seal were the words, "To the passing over the boundary into Belgian-Germany of Mr. Albert Williams there exists on the part of the undersigned no objection. Signed, The Commissioner of Police Souten." Over the German seal were the words, "At the Imperial German Vice-Consulate the foregoing signature is hereby attested to be that of Souten, the Police Commissioner of Maastricht." For this beautifully non-committal affair I had delivered up six marks. I would have cheerfully paid six hundred to disown it now.

"What explanation is there for his possession of that paper?" asked the General sternly.

De Leval pleaded cleverly, dilating upon the natural inquisitiveness and roaming disposition of the American race.

"I know what the Wanderlust is," said the General, "but I fail to understand the peculiar desire of this man to travel only in dangerous and forbidden war zones."

"In the second place," the General continued, "there is no doubt that he has made some remark to the effect that in the long run Germany cannot win. That was overheard by an officer in a cafe and is undeniable. The other charges we will for the time waive," said the General, drawing himself up with a fine hauteur. "But his identifying evidence is very flimsy. Can you produce any better?"

Suddenly I bethought me of the gold watch in my pocket. It was a presentation from some two hundred people of small means in an industrial district in Boston. Three of the aides successively and successfully damaged their thumbnails in their eagerness to pry open the back cover. That is a source of considerable satisfaction to me now; but it was embarrassing in that delicate situation when my fate hung almost by a thread, and a trifle could delay my release for days. If the General damaged his own thumb on it, I feel sure that I would have been remanded back to prison. But, luckily, the cover sprang open and revealed to the eyes the words: "From friends at Maverick."

De Leval adroitly turned this to the best advantage. It was the last straw. The General capitulated. Walking over into the adjoining room, he wrote on the blue folder: "Er ist frei gelassen." I would give lots for those folders; but, though safety was by no means certain, I found I yet had nerve enough to take a venture. When I was bidden to pick up my papers strewn across the desk, I tried my best to gather in some of the other documents. Besides the copies of the letter I wrote to the Ambassador the only thing I got on my case was this letter, written by Mr. Whitlock to Baron von de Lancken, the official German representative in charge of the dealings with the American Embassy. It has the well-known Whitlock straight-from-the-shoulder point and brevity to it.

BRUXELLES, le 29 Septembre, 1914, EXCELLENCE:

J'apprends a l'instant que Mr. Williams, citoyen Americain residente a l'Hotel Metropole, aurait ete arrete lundi par les Autorites allemande.

Pour le cas ou il n'aurait pas encore ete mis en liberte, je vous saurais gre de me faire connaitre les raisons de cette arrestation, et de me donner le moyen de communiquer aussitot avec lui, pour pourvoir eventuellement lui fournir toute protection dont il pourrait avoir besoin.

Veuillez agreer, Excellence, la nouvelle assurance de ma haute consideration.

(S) BRAND WHITLOCK. A Son Excellence Monsieur le Baron von der Lancken, Bruxelles.

Before my final liberation I was escorted into the biggest and busiest office of all.

Here I was given an Erlaubnis to travel by military train through Liege into Germany, and from there on out by way of Holland. The destination that I had in mind was Ghent, but passing through the lines thereto was forbidden. Instead of going directly the thirty miles in three hours, I must go around almost a complete circle, about three hundred miles in three days. But nothing could take the edge off my joy. A strange exhilaration and a wild desire to celebrate possessed me. With such a mood I had not hitherto been sympathetic; on the contrary, I had been much grieved by the sundry manifestations of what I deemed a base spirit in certain Belgians. One of them had said, "Just wait until the Allies' army comes marching into Brussels! Oh, then I am going out on one glorious drunk!" In the light of the splendid sacrifices of his fellow- Belgians, this struck me as a shocking degradation of the human spirit.

I could not then understand such a view-point. But I could now. In the removal of the long abnormal tension one's pent-up spirits seek out an equally abnormal channel for expression. I, too, felt like an uncaged spirit suddenly let loose. I didn't get drunk, but I very nearly got arrested again. In my headlong ecstasy I was deaf to the warnings of a German guard saying, "Passage into this street is forbidden." I checked myself just in time, and in chastened spirit made my way back to the Metropole.

Three times I was offered the prohibited Antwerp papers that had been smuggled into the city and once the London Times for twenty-five cents. The war price for this is said often to have run up to as many dollars.

An English, woman, or at any rate a woman with a beautiful English accent, opened a conversation with the remark that she was going directly through to Ghent on the following day and that she knew how to go right through the German lines. That was precisely the way that the Germans had just forbidden me to go. But this accomplice (if such she was) got no rise out of me. To all intents I was stone-deaf. Compared to me, she would have found the Sphinx garrulous indeed. She may have been as harmless as a dove but, after my escapade, I wouldn't have talked to my own mother without a written permit from the military governor. The Kaiser himself would have found it hard work breaking through my cast-iron spy-proof armor of formality. I had good reason, too, not to let down the bars, for I was trailed by the spy-hunters. Not until ten days later when I passed over the Holland border did I feel release from their vigilant eyes. My key at the Metropole was never returned to me and I know that my room was searched once, if not twice, after my return to the hotel.

It would be interesting to see how all this tallies with the official report of my case in the archives at Berlin. Perhaps some of these surmises have shot far wide of the mark. Javert, for instance, may not be a direct descendant of the ancient Inquisitor who had charge of the rack and the thumb screws, as I believed. In his own home town he may be a sort of mild-mannered schoolmaster and probably is highly astounded as well as gratified to find himself cast as the villain in this piece. Perhaps I may have been at other times in far greater danger. I do not know these things. All I know is that this is a true and faithful transcript of the feelings and sights that came crowding in upon me in that most eventful day and night.

PART II On Foot With The German Army

Chapter V

The Gray Hordes Out Of The North

The outbreak of the Great War found me in Europe as a general tourist, and not in the capacity of war-correspondent. Hitherto I had essayed a much less romantic role in life, belonging rather to the crowd of uplifters who conduct the drab and dreary battle with the slums. The futility of most of these schemes for badgering the poor makes one feel at times that these battles are shams and unavailing. This is depressing. It is thrilling, then, suddenly to acquire the glamorous title of war-correspondent, and to have before one the prospect of real and actual battles.

Commissioned thus and desiring to live up to the code and requirement of the office, I naturally opined that war- correspondents rushed immediately into the thick of the fight. Later I discovered what a mistake that was. Only very young and green ones do so. The seasoned correspondent is inclined to view the whole affair more dispassionately and with a larger perspective. But being of the verdant variety, I naturally figured that if the Germans were smashing down through Belgium onto Liege that that was where I should be. By entering gingerly through the back door of Holland, I planned to join them in their march down the Meuse River.

To The Hague came descriptions of the hordes pressing down out of the north through the fire-swept, blood-drenched plain of northern Belgium. This could be seen from the Dutch frontier at Maastricht. But passage thereto was interdicted by the military authorities. Ambassador Van Dyke's efforts were unavailing. Possessing a red-card, I enlisted the help of Troelstra, the socialist leader of the Netherlands.

He had just returned from an audience with the Queen. The government, seeking to rally all classes to face a grave crisis, was paying court to the labor leaders. Accordingly, the war department, at Troelstra's behest, received me with a handsome show of deference. I was escorted from one gold-laced officer to another. Each one smiled kindly, listened attentively and regretted exceedingly that the granting of the desired permission lay outside his own particular jurisdiction. They were polite, ingratiating, obsequious even, but quite unanimous. At the end I came out by the same door wherein I went—minus a permission.

Up till now my progress through the fringes of the war zone had been in defiance of all orders and advice. Having failed here officially, I took the matter in my own hands. Finding a seat in a military train, I stuck steadfastly by it so long as our general direction was south. At Eindhoven hunger compelled me to alight. As I was stepping up to the hotel-bar, I felt a tap on my shoulder and some one in excellent English said:

"You are under suspicion, sir. Follow me. Don't look around. Don't get excited. If you are all right you don't need to get excited; if you aren't it won't do you any good to get excited."

With this running fire of comment he led me into a side-room where a half-hour's examination satisfied him of my good intent. Without further untoward incident I came to Maastricht in Limbourg. Limbourg is the name of the narrow strip of Dutch territory which runs down between Germany and Belgium. At one place this tongue of land is but a few miles wide. If the Germans could have marched their troops directly across this they might have been spared the two weeks' slaughter at the forts of Liege and Paris, in all probability, would have fallen before them. It was a great temptation to the Germans. That's the reason the Dutch troops had been massed here by the tens of thousands—to prevent Germany succumbing to that temptation.

At our approach to the great Meuse bridge an officer shouted into each compartment:

"Every window closed. All cigars and pipes extinguished."

"Why?" we asked.

"The bridge is mined with explosives and a stray spark might set them off," a soldier informed us.

The first German attempt to set foot on the bridge would be the signal for sending the great structure crashing skywards.

The end of the run was Maastricht, now become a town of crucial interest. It was like a city besieged. Barricades of barbed wire and paving stones ripped from street ran everywhere. Iron rails and ties blocked the exits and the small cannon disconcertingly thrust their nozzles down upon one out of the windows.

I lingered here long enough to secure a carriage and with it made quick time across the harvest fields. We were soon up on the little hill back of Meuse. The sun was sinking and for the first time war, in all its terrible spectacular splendor, smote me hard. From the hill at my feet there stretched away a great plain filled with a dense mass of German soldiery. One could scarcely believe that there were men there so well did their gray-green coats blend with the landscape. One would think that they were indeed a part of it, could he not feel the atmosphere vibrant with the mass personality of the myriad warriors tramping down the crops of the peasants. In the rear the commissariat vans and artillery still came lumbering up, while in the very front pranced the horses of the dreaded Uhlans, who looked with contempt, I imagined, on the Dutch soldiers as they stood there with the warning that here was Netherlands soil.

In the fighting German and Belgian troops had already been pushed up against this line. Here they were greeted with the challenge: "Lay down your arms. This is the neutral soil of Holland." Thus many were interned until the end of the war.

As even darkened into night, the endless plain became stippled over with points of flame from countless campfires. There were beauty and mystery in this vast menace sweeping the soul of the onlooker now with horror, and now with admiration. There was a terrible background to the spectacle—glowing red and luminous. It was made of the still blazing towns of Mouland and Vise, burned to the ground by order of the invaders. The fire had been set as a warning to the inhabitants round about. They were taking the warning and hastening by the thousands across the border into Holland, their only haven of safety.

When we drove down from the hill into Eysden, we were in the midst of these peasants, fleeing before the red wrath rolling up into the sky. They came shambling in with a few possessions on which they had hurriedly laid their hands, singly or in families, a pitiful procession of the disinherited.

Some of the men were moaning as they marched along, but most of them were taking it with the tragic oxlike resignation of the peasant, stupefied more than terrified, puzzled why these soldiers were coming down into their quiet little villages to fight out their quarrels. The women were crying out to Mary and all the saints. Indeed all the little crosses along the waysides or in the walls were decked with flowers in gratitude for what had been spared them. In most cases it was little more than their lives, their brood of children, and their dogs that followed on.

My driver finally landed me in a shack on the outskirts of Eysden, which boasted the name of a hotel. It had the worst bed I ever slept in, and the only window was a hole in the roof.

I wandered out among the unfortunates, now herded in halls and schools and packed in the homes of the friendly villagers. They were full of the weirdest tales of loot and murder. And while there were no tears in their eyes there was tragedy in their voices.

"It would be worth while getting over to the sources and verifying the truth of these stories," I remarked.

"A sheer impossibility, and only a fool would want to go," was one laconic commentary.

I kept up my plaint and was overheard by Souten, head of the
Limbourg police.

"American, aren't you?" he interjected. "Well, I have done more work here in the last five days than I did in the five years that I lived in New York. Had the best time in my life there. If you want to go sight-seeing in Belgium, take this paper and get it countersigned at the German consulate. It's the only one I've given out to-day."

I hurried off to the consul who, in return for six marks, duly impressed it with the German seal. Later on I would gladly have given six hundred marks to disown it.

"Of course you understand that this is simply a paper issued by the civil authorities," said the consul, as he passed it out. "Use it at your own risk. If you go ahead and get shot by the military authorities, don't come back and blame us."

I promised that I wouldn't and was off again to my hotel.

As darkness deepened, with two Hollanders come to view the havoc of war, I sat on the stoop of our little inn. A great rumbling of cannon came from the direction of Tongres. A sentry shot rang out on the frontier just across the river which flowed not ten rods away. This was the Meuse, which ran red with the blood of the combatants, and from which the natives drew the floating corpses to the shore. Now its gentle lapping on the stones mingled with the subdued murmur of our talk. In such surroundings my new friends regaled me with stories of pillage and murder which the refugees had been bringing in from across the border. All this produced a distinct depreciation in the value that I had hitherto attached to my permit to go visiting across that border. Souten's declarations of friendship for America had been most voluble. It began dawning on me that his apparently generous and impulsive action might bear a different interpretation than unadulterated kindness.

At this juncture, I remember, a great light flared suddenly up. It was one of the fans of a wind-mill fired by the Germans. In the foreground we could see the soldiers standing like so many gray wolves silhouetted against the red flames. In that light it did seem that motives other than pure affection might have prompted the Police Commissioner's action. The hectic sleep of the night was broken by the endless clatter of the hoofs of the German cavalry pushing south.

My courage rose, however, with the rising sun. In the morning I climbed to the lookout on the hill. The hosts had vanished. A trampled, smoldering fire-blackened land lay before me. But there was the lure of the unknown. I walked down to where the great Netherlands flag proclaimed neutral soil. The worried Dutch pickets honored the signature of Souten and with one step I was over the border into Belgium, now under German jurisdiction. The helmeted soldiers across the way were a distinct disappointment. They looked neither fierce nor fiery. In fact, they greeted me with a smile. They were a bit puzzled by my paper, but the seal seemed echt-Deutsch and they pronounced it "gut, sehr gut." I explained that I wished to go forwards to Liege.

"Was it possible?"

For answer they shrugged their shoulders.

"Was it dangerous?"

"Not in the least," they assured me.

The Germans were right. It was not dangerous—that is, for the Germans. By repeatedly proclaiming the everlasting friendship of Germany and America, and passing out some chocolate, I made good friends on the home base. They charged me only not to return after sundown, giving point to their advice by relating how, on the previous night, they had shot down a peasant woman and her two children who, under the cloak of darkness, sought to scurry past the sentinels. They told this with a genuine note of grief in their voices. So, with a hearty hand-shake and wishes for the best of luck, they waved adieu to me as I went swinging out on the highroad to Liege.

Chapter VI

In The Black Wake Of The War

A half mile and I came for the first time actually face to face with the wastage of war. There was what once was Mouland, the little village I had seen burning the night before. The houses stood roofless and open to the sky, like so many tombstones over a departed people. The whitewashed outer walls were all shining in the morning sun. Inside they were charred black, or blazing yet with coals from the fire still slowly burning its way through wood and plaster. Here and there a house had escaped the torch.

By some miracle in the smashed window of one of these houses a bright red geranium blossomed. It seemed to cry for water, but I dared not turn aside, for fear of a bullet from a lurking sentry. In another a sewing-machine of American make testified to the thrift and progressiveness of one household. In the last house as I left the village a rocking-horse with its head stuck through the open door smiled its wooden smile, as if at any rate it could keep good cheer even though the roofs might fall.

My road now wound into the open country; and I was heartily glad of it, for the hedges and the houses at Mouland provided fine coverts for prowling German foragers or for Belgians looking for revenge. Dead cows and horses and dogs with their sides ripped open by bullets lay along the wayside. The roads were deep printed with the hoofs of the cavalry. The grain-fields were flattened out. Nine little crosses marked the place where nine soldiers of the Kaiser fell.

This smiling countryside, teeming with one of the densest populations in the world, had been stripped clean of every inhabitant. Along the wasted way not the sign of a civilian, or for that matter even a soldier, was to be seen. I was glad even of the presence of a pig which, with her litter, was enjoying the unwonted pleasure of rooting out her morning meal in a rich flower-garden. She did not reciprocate, however, with any such fellow feeling. Perhaps of late she had seen enough of the doings of the genus homo. Surveying me as though I had been the author of all this destruction, she gave a frightened snort and plunged into a nearby thicket.

I craved companionship of any living creature to break the spell of death and silence. I was destined to have the wish gratified in abundance. Fifteen minutes brought me to the outskirts of Vise, and there, coming over the hills and wending their way down to the river, were two long lines of German soldiers escorting wagons of the artillery and the commissariat. They came slowly and noiselessly trudging on and I was upon them as they crossed the main road before I realized it. The men were covered with dust; so were the horses. The wagons were in their somber paint of gray. There was something ominous and threatening in the long sullen line which wound down over the hill. The soldiers were evidently tired with the tedious uneventful march, and the drivers were goaded to irritability by the difficulty of the descent. Could I have retreated I would have done so with joy and would never have stopped until my feet were set on Holland soil.

But I dared not do it. As the train came to a stop, I started bravely across the road. A soldier, dropping his gun from his shoulder, cried:

"Halt!"

"Is this the way to Vise?" I asked.

"Perhaps it is," he replied, "but what do you want in Vise?"

As he spoke, he kept edging up, pointing his bayonet directly at me. A bayonet will never look quite the same to me again. Total retreat, as I remarked, was out of the question. My inward anatomy, however, did the next best thing. As the bayonet point came pressing forward, my stomach retired backward. I could feel it distinctly making efforts to crawl behind my spine. At my first word of German his face relaxed. Ditto my stomach.

"You are an American," he said. "Well, good for that. I don't know what we would have done were you a Belgian. Our orders are to suffer no Belgian in this whole district."

Then he began an apologia which I heard repeated identically again and again, as if it were learned by rote: "The Germans had peacefully entered the land; boiling hot water was showered on them from upper stories; they were shot at from houses and hedges; many soldiers had thus been killed; the wells had been poisoned. Such acts of treachery had necessarily brought reprisals, etc., etc." It was the defense so regularly served up to neutrals that we learned in time to reproduce it almost word for word ourselves.

We all rise to the glorification of suffering little Belgium. Whatever brief we may hold for her though, we ought not to picture even her peasant people as a mild, meek and inoffensive lot. That isn't the sort of stuff out of which her dogged and continuing resistance was wrought. That isn't the mettle which for two weeks stopped up the German tide before the Liege forts, giving the allies two weeks to mobilize, and all they had asked the Belgians for was two or three days of grace. But before the German avalanche hurled itself on Liege it was this peasant population which bore the first brunt of the battle.

A mistake in the branching roads brought this home to me. I turned off in the direction of Verviers and was puzzled to see the road on either side strewn with tree-trunks, their sprawling limbs still green with leaves. It was along this highway that the invaders first entered Belgium. The peasants, turning their axes loose on the poplars and the royal elms that lined the road, had filled it with a tangle of interlocking limbs.

The Imperial army arrived with cannon which could smash a fort to pieces as though it were made of blue china, but of what avail were these against such yielding obstructions? Maddened that these shambling creatures of the soil should delay the military promenade through this little land, officers rushed out and held their pistols at the heads of the offenders, threatening to blow their brains out if they did not speedily clear the way. Many a peasant did not live to see his house go up in flames—his dwelling dyed by his own blood was now turned into a funeral pyre. These were the first sacrificial offerings of Belgium on the altar of her independence.

I now entered Vise, or rather what once had been the little city of Vise. It was almost completely annihilated and its three thousand inhabitants scattered. Through the mass of smoking ruins I pushed, with the paving-stones still hot beneath my feet. Quite unawares I ran full tilt into a group of soldiers, looking as ugly and dirty as the ruins amongst which they were prowling.

The green-gray field-uniform is a remarkable piece of obliterative coloration. I had seen it blend with grass and trees, but in this instance it fitted in so well with the stones and debris they were poking over that I was right amongst them without warning. They straightened up with a sudden start and scowled at me. Hollanders and Belgians had faithfully assured me that such marauding bands would shoot at sight. Here was an excellent test-case. Three hundred marks, a gold watch and a lot of food which crammed my pockets would be their booty.

I took the initiative with the bland inquiry, "What are you hunting for, corpses?"

"No," they responded, pointing to their mouths and stomachs, "awful hungry. Hunting something to eat."

I bade a mental farewell to my food-supplies as I emptied out my pockets before these ravagers. I expected everything to be grabbed with a summary demand for more. From these despoilers of a countryside I was ready for any sort of a manifestation—any, except the one that I received. With one accord they refused to take any of my provisions. I recovered from my surprise sufficiently to understand that they were thanking me for my good will while they were constantly reiterating:

"It is your food and you will need every bit of it."

In the name of camaraderie I persuaded each to take a piece of bread and chocolate. They received this offering with profound gratitude. With much cautioning and many solemn Auf Wiedersehens bestowed upon me, I was off again.

Below Vise an entirely new vista opened to me. Tens of thousands of soldiers were marching over the pontoon bridges already flung across the river. Perhaps five hundred more were engaged in building a steel bridge which seemed to be a hurried but remarkable piece of engineering. It was replacing the old structure which had been dynamited by the Belgians, and which now lay a tangled mass of wreckage in the river.

For the next eight miles to Jupilles the country was quite as much alive as the first four miles were dead. It was swarming with the military. Through all the gaps in the hills above the River Meuse the German army came pouring down like an enormous tidal wave—a tidal wave with a purpose, viz: to fling itself against the Allies arranged in battle line at Namur, and with the overwhelming mass of numbers to smash that line to bits and sweep on resistlessly into Paris. I thought of the Blue and Red wall of French and English down there awaiting this Gray-Green tide of Teutons.

By the hundreds of thousands they were coming; patrols of cavalry clattering along, the hoof-beats of the chargers coming with regular cadence on the hard roads; silent moving riders mounted on bicycles, their guns strapped on their backs; armored automobiles rumbling slowly on, but taking the occasional spaces which opened in the road with a hollow roaring sound and at a terrific pace; individual horsemen galloping up and down the road with their messages, and the massed regiments of dust-begrimed men marching endlessly by.

I was glad to have the spell which had been woven on me broken by strains of music from a wayside cafe, or rather the remains of a cafe, for the windows had been demolished and wreckage was strewn about the door, but the piano within had survived the ravages. Though it was sadly out of tune, the officer, seated on a beer keg, was evoking a noise from its battered keys, and to its accompaniment some soldiers were bawling lustily:

"Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles!"

The only other music that echoed up along those river cliffs came from a full-throated Saxon regiment.

Evidently the Belgians from Vise to Liege had not roused the ire of the invaders as furiously as had the natives on the other side of Vise. They had as a whole established more or less friendly relations with the alien hosts.

On the other side of Vise nothing had availed to stay the wrath of the Germans. Flags of truce made of sheets and pillow-cases and white petticoats were hung out on poles and broom handles; but many of these houses before which they hung had been burned to the ground as had the others.

One Belgian had sought for his own benefit to conciliate the Germans, and as the Kaiser's troops at the turn of the road came upon his house, there was the Kaiser's emblem with the double- headed eagle raised to greet them. The man had nailed it high up in an apple tree, that they might not mistake his attitude of truckling disloyalty to his own country, hoping so to save his home. But let it be said to the credit of the Germans, that they had shown their contempt for this treachery by razing this house to the ground, and the poor fellow has lost his earthly treasures along with his soul.

I now came upon some houses that were undamaged and showed signs of life therein. Below Argenteau there was a vine- covered cottage before which stood a peasant woman guarding her little domain. Her weapon was not a rifle but several buckets of water and a pleasant smile. I ventured to ask how she used the water. She had no time to explain, for at that very moment a column of soldiers came slowly plodding down the dusty road. She motioned me away as though she would free herself from whatever stigma my presence might incur. A worried look clouded her face, as though she were saying to herself: "I know that we have been spared so far by all the brigands which have gone by, but perhaps here at last is the band that has been appointed to wipe us out."

This water, then, was a peace-offering, a plea for mercy.

As soon as the soldiers looked her way she put a smile on her face, but it ill concealed her anxiety. She pointed invitingly to her pails. At the sight of the water a thirsty soldier here and there would break from the ranks, rush to the pails, take the proffered cup, and hastily swallow down the cooling draught. Then returning the cup to the woman, he would rush back again to his place in the ranks. Perhaps a dozen men removed their helmets, and, extracting a sponge from the inside, made signs to the woman to pour water on it; then, replacing the sponge in the helmet, marched on refreshed and rejoicing.

A mounted officer, spying this little oasis, drew rein and gave the order to halt. The troopers, very wearied by the long forced march, flung themselves down upon the grass while the officer's horse thrust his nose deep into the pail and greedily sucked the water up. More buckets were being continually brought out. Some of them must surely have been confiscated from her neighbors who had fled. The officer, dismounting, sought to hold converse with his hostess, but even with many signs it proved a failure. They both laughed heartily together, though her mirth I thought a bit forced.

I do not remember witnessing any finer episode in all the war than that enacted in this region where the sky was red with flames from the neighbors' houses, and the lintels red with blood from their veins. A frail little soul with only spiritual weapons, she fought for her hearth against a venging host in arms; facing these rough war- stained men, she forced her trembling body to outward calm and graciousness. Her nerve was not unappreciated. Not one soldier returned his cup without a word of thanks and a look of admiration.

Nor did this pluck go unrewarded. Three months later, passing again through this region as a prisoner, I glimpsed the little cottage still standing in its plot by the flowing river. I want to visit it again after the war. It will always be to me a shrine of the spirit's splendid daring.

Chapter VII

A Duelist From Marburg

A squad of soldiers stretched out on a bank beckoned me to join them; I did so and at once they begged for news. They were not of an order of super-intelligence, and informed me that it was the French they were to fight at Liege. Unaware that England had entered the lists against Germany, "Belgium" was only a word to them. I took it upon myself to clear up their minds on these points. An officer overheard and plainly showed his disapproval of such missionary activity, yet he could not conceal his own curiosity. I sought to appease him by volunteering some information.

"Japan," I blandly announced, "is about to join the foes of Germany." As the truth, that was unassailable; but as diplomacy it was a wretched fluke.

"You're a fool!" he exploded. "What are you talking about? Japan is one of our best friends, almost as good as America. Those two nations will fight for us—not against us. You're verruckt."

That was a severe stricture but in the circumstances I thought best to overlook the reflection upon my mentality. One of the soldiers passed some witticism, evidently at my expense; taking advantage of the outburst of laughter, I made off down the road. They did not offer to detain me. The officer probably reasoned that my being there was guarantee enough of my right to be there, taking it for granted that the regular sentries on the road had passed upon my credentials. However, I made a very strong resolution hereafter to be less zealous in my proclamation of the truth, to hold my tongue and keep walking.

In the midst of my reflections I was startled by a whistle, and, looking back, saw in the distance a puff of steam on what I supposed was the wholly abandoned railway, but there, sure enough, was a train rattling along at a good rate. I could make out soldiers with guns sitting upon the tender, and presumed that they were with these instruments directing the operations of some Belgian engineer and fireman. In a moment more I saw I was mistaken, for at the throttle was a uniformed soldier, and another comrade in his gray-green costume was shoveling coal into the furnace. One of the guards, seeing me plodding on, smilingly beckoned to me to jump aboard. When I took the cue and made a move in that direction he winked his eye and significantly tapped upon the barrel of his gun. The train was loaded with iron rails and timbers, and I speculated as to their use, but farther down the line I saw hundreds of men unloading these, making a great noise as they flung them down the river bank to the water's edge. They were destined for a big pontoon bridge which these men were, with thousands of soldiers, throwing across the stream. Ceaselessly the din and clangor of hammerings rang out over the river. My way now wound through what was, to all purposes, one German camp, strung for miles along the Meuse. The soldiers were busy with domestic duties. Everywhere there was the cheer and rhythm of well-ordered industry in the open air. In one place thousands of loaves of black bread were being shifted from wagon to wagon. In another they were piling a yard high with mountains of grain. The air was full of the drone of a great mill, humming away at full speed, while the Belgian fields were yielding up their golden harvests to the invaders. Apples in great clusters hung down around the necks of horses tethered in the orchards. With their keepers they were enjoying a respite from their hard fatiguing exertions.

Here and there among the groves, or along the wayside, was a contrivance that looked like a tiny engine; smoke curled out of its chimney and coals blazed brightly in the grate. They were the kitchen-wagons, each making in itself a complete, compact cooking apparatus. Some had immense caldrons with a spoon as large as a spade. In these the stews, put up in dry form and guaranteed to keep for twenty years, were being heated. A savory smell permeated the air and at the sound of the bugle the men clustered about, each looking happy as he received his dish filled with steaming rations.

Through this scene the native Belgians moved freely in and out. Tables had been dragged out into the yard, and around them officers were sitting eating, drinking, and chatting with the peasant women who were serving them and with whom they had set up an entente cordiale. Indeed, these Belgians seemed to be rather enjoying this interruption in the monotony of their lives, and a few were making the most of the great adventure. In one case I could not help believing that a certain strikingly-pretty, self-possessed girl was not altogether averse to a war which could thus bring to her side the attentions of such a handsome and gallant set of officers as were gathered round her. At any rate, she was equal to the occasion, and over her little court, which rang with laughter, she presided with a certain rustic dignity and ease.

The ordinary soldier could make himself understood only with motions and sundry gruntings, and consequently had to content himself with smoking in the sun or sleeping in the shade. Everywhere was the atmosphere of physical relaxation after the long journey. So far did my tension wear off, that I even forgot the resolution to hold my tongue. Two officers leaning back in their chairs at a table by the wayside surveyed me intently as I came along. Rather than wait to be challenged, I thought it best to turn aside and ask them my usual question, "How does one get to Liege?"

One of them answered somewhat stiffly, adding, "And where did you learn your German?" "I was in a German university a few months," I replied. "Which one?" the officer asked. "Marburg," I replied.

"Ah!" he said, this time with a smile; "that was mine. I studied philology there."

We talked together of the fine, rich life there, and I spoke of the students' duels I had witnessed a few miles out.

"Ah!" he said, uncovering his head and pointing to the scars across his scalp; "that's where I got these. Perhaps I will get some deeper ones down in this country," he added with a smile.

Ofttimes in the early morning hours I had trudged out to a students' inn on the outskirts of Marburg. As many times I had heard the solemn announcement of the umpire warning all assembled to disperse as the place might be raided by the police and all imprisoned. That was a mere formality. No one left. The umpire forthwith cried "Los," there was a flash of swords in the air as each duelist sought, and sometimes succeeded, in cutting his opponent's face into a Hamburg steak. It was a sanguinary affair and undoubtedly connived at by the officials. When I had asked what was the point of it all, I was told that it developed Mut and Enschlossenheit—a fine contempt of pain and blood. That dueling was not without its contribution to the general program of German preparedness. Only now the bloodletting was gone at on a colossal scale.

"Yes, that's where I received these cuts," this young officer said, "and if I do not get some too deep down here I'll write to you after the war," he added with another smile. As I gave him my address, I asked for his.

"It's against all the rules," he answered. "It can't be done. But you shall hear from me, I assure you," he said with a hearty handshake.

Only once all the way into Liege did I feel any suspicion directed towards me. That was when I presented my paper to the next guard, a morose-looking individual. He looked at it very puzzled, and put several questions to me. His last one was,

"Where is your home?"

"I come from Boston, Massachusetts," I replied.

Encouraged with my success with the last officers, I ventured to ask him where he came from.

Looking me straight in the eyes, he replied very pointedly, "Ich komme aus Deutschland."

Good form among invading armies, I found, precluded the guest making inquiry into anyone's antecedents. I made a second resolution to keep my own counsel, as I hurried down the road.

There was no release from his searching eyes until a turn in the highway put an intervening obstacle between myself and him. But this relief was short-lived, for no sooner had I rounded the bend than a cry of "Halt!" shot fear into me. I turned to see a man on a wheel waving wildly at me. I thought it was a summons back to my inquisitor, and the end of my journey. Instead, it was my officer from Marburg, who dismounted, took two letters from his pocket, and asked me if I would have the kindness to deliver them to the Feld Post if I got through to Liege. He said that seemed like a God- given opportunity to lift the load off the hearts of his mother and his sweetheart back home. Gladly I took them, with his caution not to drop them into an ordinary letter-box in Liege, but to take them to the Feld Post or give them to an officer. I went on my way rejoicing that I could add these letters to my credentials. I now passed down the long street of Jupilles, which was plastered with notices from the German authorities guaranteeing observance of the rights of the citizens of Jupilles, but threatening to visit any overt acts against the soldiers "with the most terrible reprisals."

I arrived on the outskirts of Liege with the expectation of seeing a sorry-looking battered city, as the reports which had drifted to the outer world had made it; but considering that it had been the center around which the storm of battle had raged for over two weeks, it showed outwardly but little damage. The chief marks of war were in the shattered windows; the great pontoon bridge of barges, which replaced the dynamited structure by the Rue Leopold, and hundreds of stores and public buildings, flying the white flag with the Red Cross on it. The walls, too, were fairly white with placards posted by order of the German burgomaster Klyper. It was an anachronism to find along the trail of the forty-two centimeter guns warnings of death to persons harboring courier pigeons.

Another bill which was just being posted was the announcement of the war-tax of 50,000,000 francs imposed on the city to pay for the "administration of civil affairs." That was the first of those war- levies which leeched the life blood out of Belgium.

The American consul, Heingartner, threw up his hands in astonishment as I presented myself. No one else had come through since the beginning of hostilities. He begged for newspapers but, unfortunately, I had thrown my lot away, not realizing how completely Liege had been cut off from the outer world. He related the incidents of that first night entry of German troops into Liege. The clatter of machine gun bullets sweeping by the consulate had scarcely ceased when the sounds of gun-butts battering on the doors accompanied by hoarse shouts of "Auf Steigen" (get up) reverberated through the street. As the doors unbolted and swung back, officers peremptorily demanded quarters for their troops, receiving with contempt the protests of Heingartner that they were violating precincts under protection of the American flag.

On the following day, however, a wholehearted apology was tendered along with an invitation to witness the first firing of the big guns.

"Put your fingers in your ears, stand on your toes, and open your mouth," the officer said. There was a terrific concussion, a black speck up in the heavens, and a ton of metal dropped down out of the blue, smashing one of the cupolas of the forts to pieces. That one shot annihilated 260 men. I shuddered as we all do. But it should not be for the sufferings of the killed. For they did not suffer at all. They were wiped out as by the snapping of a finger.

The taking of those 260 bodies out of the world, then, was a painless process. But not so the bringing of these bodies into the world. That cost an infinite sum of pain and anguish. To bring these bodies into being 260 mothers went down into the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. And now in a flash all this life had been sent crashing into eternity. "Women may not bear arms, but they bear men, and so furnish the first munitions of war." Thus are they deeply and directly concerned in the affairs of the state.

The consul with his wife and daughter gave me dinner along with a cordial welcome. At first he was most appreciative of my exploits. Then it seemed to dawn on him that possibly other motives than sheer love of adventure might have spurred me on. The harboring of a possible spy was too large a risk to run in the uncertain temper of the Germans. In that light I took on the aspects of a liability.

The clerks of the two hotels to whom I applied assumed a like attitude. In fact every one with whom I attempted to hold converse became coldly aloof. Holding the best of intents, I was treated like a pariah. The only one whom I could get a raise from was a bookseller who spoke English. His wrath against the spoilers overcame his discretion, and he launched out into a bitter tirade against them. I reminded him that, as civilians, his fellow- countrymen had undoubtedly been sniping on the German troops. That was too much.

"What would you do if a thief or a murderer entered your house?" he exploded. "No matter if he had announced his coming, you would shoot him, wouldn't you?"

Realizing that he had confided altogether too much to a casual passerby, he suddenly subsided. The only other comment I could drag out of him was that of a German officer who had told him that "one Belgian could fight as good as four Germans." My request for a lodging-place met with the same evasion from him as from the others.