WITH THE ALLIES

by

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

Preface

I have not seen the letter addressed by President Wilson to theAmerican people calling upon them to preserve toward this war themental attitude of neutrals. But I have seen the war. And I feel surehad President Wilson seen my war he would not have written hisletter. 

This is not a war against Germans, as we know Germans in America, where they are among our sanest, most industrious, and mostresponsible fellow countrymen. It is a war, as Winston Churchill haspointed out, against the military aristocracy of Germany, men who aresix hundred years behind the times; who, to preserve their classagainst democracy, have perverted to the uses of warfare, to thedestruction of life, every invention of modern times. These men aremilitary mad. To our ideal of representative government their ownidea is as far opposed as is martial law to the free speech of our townmeetings. 

One returning from the war is astonished to find how little of the truehorror of it crosses the ocean. That this is so is due partly to the strictcensorship that suppresses the details of the war, and partly to thefact that the mind is not accustomed to consider misery on a scale sogigantic. The loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the wrecking ofcities, and the laying waste of half of Europe cannot be brought hometo people who learn of it only through newspapers and movingpictures and by sticking pins in a map. Were they nearer to it, nearenough to see the women and children fleeing from the shells and tosmell the dead on the battle-fields, there would be no talk ofneutrality. 

Such lack of understanding our remoteness from the actual seat ofwar explains. But on the part of many Americans one finds anotherattitude of mind which is more difficult to explain. It is the cupiditythat in the misfortunes of others sees only a chance for profit. Inan offer made to its readers a prominent American magazinebest expresses this attitude. It promises prizes for the essayson "What the war means to me. "

To the American women Miss Ida M. Tar-bell writes: "This is her timeto learn what her own country's industries can do, and to rally with allher influence to their support, urging them to make the things shewants, and pledging them her allegiance. "

This appeal is used in a periodical with a circulation of over a million, as an advertisement for silk hose. I do not agree with Miss Tarbellthat this is the time to rally to the support of home industries. I do notagree with the advertiser that when in Belgium several million womenand children are homeless, starving, and naked that that is the timeto buy his silk hose. To urge that charity begins at home is to repeatone of the most selfish axioms ever uttered, and in this war to urgecivilized, thinking people to remain neutral is equally selfish. 

Were the conflict in Europe a fair fight, the duty of every Americanwould be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But itis not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levyblackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals isnot to fight fair. 

That is the way Germany is fighting. She is defying the rules of warand the rules of humanity. And if public opinion is to help inpreventing further outrages, and in hastening this unspeakableconflict to an end, it should be directed against the one who offends. If we are convinced that one opponent is fighting honestly and thathis adversary is striking below the belt, then for us to maintain aneutral attitude of mind is unworthy and the attitude of a coward. 

When a mad dog runs amuck in a village it is the duty of every farmerto get his gun and destroy it, not to lock himself indoors and towardthe dog and the men who face him preserve a neutral mind. 

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. NEW YORK, Dec. 1st, 1914. 

Contents

 I. The Germans In Brussels II. "To Be Treated As A Spy" III. The Burning Of Louvain IV. Paris In War Time V. The Battle Of Soissons VI. The Bombardment Of Rheims VII. The Spirit Of The EnglishVIII. Our Diplomats In The War Zone IX. "Under Fire" X. The Waste Of War XI. The War Correspondents

Chapter IThe Germans In Brussels

When, on August 4, the Lusitania, with lights doused and air-portssealed, slipped out of New York harbor the crime of the century wasonly a few days old. And for three days those on board the Lusitaniaof the march of the great events were ignorant. Whether or nobetween England and Germany the struggle for the supremacy of thesea had begun we could not learn. 

But when, on the third day, we came on deck the news was writtenagainst the sky. Swinging from the funnels, sailors were painting outthe scarlet-and-black colors of the Cunard line and substituting amouse-like gray. Overnight we had passed into the hands of theadmiralty, and the Lusitania had emerged a cruiser. That to possibleGerman war-ships she might not disclose her position, she sent nowireless messages. But she could receive them; and at breakfast inthe ship's newspaper appeared those she had overnight snatchedfrom the air. Among them, without a scare-head, in the most modestof type, we read: "England and Germany have declared war. " Seldomhas news so momentous been conveyed so simply or, by theEnglishmen on board, more calmly accepted. For any exhibition theygave of excitement or concern, the news the radio brought themmight have been the result of a by-election. 

Later in the morning they gave us another exhibition of thatrepression of feeling, of that disdain of hysteria, that is a nationalcharacteristic, and is what Mr. Kipling meant when he wrote: "But oh, beware my country, when my country grows polite!"

Word came that in the North Sea the English war-ships haddestroyed the German fleet. To celebrate this battle which, were thenews authentic, would rank with Trafalgar and might mean the end ofthe war, one of the ship's officers exploded a detonating bomb. Nothing else exploded. Whatever feelings of satisfaction our Englishcousins experienced they concealed. 

Under like circumstances, on an American ship, we would have tieddown the siren, sung the doxology, and broken everything on the bar. As it was, the Americans instinctively flocked to the smoking-roomand drank to the British navy. While this ceremony was goingforward, from the promenade-deck we heard tumultuous shouts andcheers. We believed that, relieved of our presence, our Englishfriends had given way to rejoicings. But when we went on deck wefound them deeply engaged in cricket. The cheers we had heardwere over the retirement of a batsman who had just been given out, leg before wicket. 

When we reached London we found no idle boasting, no vaingloriousjingoism. The war that Germany had forced upon them the Englishaccepted with a grim determination to see it through and, while theywere about it, to make it final. They were going ahead with no falseillusions. Fully did every one appreciate the enormous task, thepersonal loss that lay before him. But each, in his or her way, wentinto the fight determined to do his duty. There was no dismay, nohysteria, no "mafficking. "

The secrecy maintained by the press and the people regardinganything concerning the war, the knowledge of which mightembarrass the War Office, was one of the most admirable andremarkable conspiracies of silence that modern times have known. Officers of the same regiment even with each other would not discussthe orders they had received. In no single newspaper, with no matterhow lurid a past record for sensationalism, was there a line to suggestthat a British army had landed in France and that Great Britain was atwar. Sooner than embarrass those who were conducting the fight, theindividual English man and woman in silence suffered the most cruelanxiety of mind. Of that, on my return to London from Brussels, I wasgiven an illustration. I had written to The Daily Chronicle telling wherein Belgium I had seen a wrecked British airship, and beside it thegrave of the aviator. I gave the information in order that the family ofthe dead officer might find the grave and bring the body home. Themorning the letter was published an elderly gentleman, a retiredofficer of the navy, called at my rooms. His son, he said, was anaviator, and for a month of him no word had come. His mother wasdistressed. Could I describe the air-ship I had seen?

I was not keen to play the messenger of ill tidings, so I tried to gaintime. 

"What make of aeroplane does your son drive?" I asked. 

As though preparing for a blow, the old gentleman drew himself up, and looked me steadily in the eyes. 

"A Blériot monoplane, " he said. 

I was as relieved as though his boy were one of my own kinsmen. 

"The air-ship I saw, " I told him, "was an Avro biplane!"

Of the two I appeared much the more pleased. 

The retired officer bowed. 

"I thank you, " he said. "It will be good news for his mother. "

"But why didn't you go to the War Office?" I asked. 

He reproved me firmly. 

"They have asked us not to question them, " he said, "and when theyare working for all I have no right to embarrass them with my personaltrouble. "

As the chance of obtaining credentials with the British army appeareddoubtful, I did not remain in London, but at once crossed to Belgium. 

Before the Germans came, Brussels was an imitation Paris--especially along the inner boulevards she was Paris at her best. Andher great parks, her lakes gay with pleasure-boats or choked with lily-pads, her haunted forests, where your taxicab would startle the wilddeer, are the most beautiful I have ever seen in any city in the world. As, in the days of the Second Empire, Louis Napoleon bedeckedParis, so Leopold decorated Brussels. In her honor and to his ownglory he gave her new parks, filled in her moats along her ancientfortifications, laid out boulevards shaded with trees, erected arches, monuments, museums. That these jewels he hung upon her neckwere wrung from the slaves of the Congo does not make them theless beautiful. And before the Germans came the life of the people ofBrussels was in keeping with the elegance, beauty, and joyousnessof their surroundings. 

At the Palace Hotel, which is the clearing-house for the social life ofBrussels, we found everybody taking his ease at a little iron table onthe sidewalk. It was night, but the city was as light as noonday--brilliant, elated, full of movement and color. For Liege was still held bythe Belgians, and they believed that all along the line they wereholding back the German army. It was no wonder they were jubilant. They had a right to be proud. They had been making history. In orderto give them time to mobilize, the Allies had asked them for two daysto delay the German invader. They had held him back for fifteen. AsDavid went against Goliath, they had repulsed the German. And asyet there had been no reprisals, no destruction of cities, no murderingof non-combatants; war still was something glad and glorious. 

The signs of it were the Boy Scouts, everywhere helping every one, carrying messages, guiding strangers, directing traffic; and RedCross nurses and aviators from England, smart Belgian officersexclaiming bitterly over the delay in sending them forward, andprivate automobiles upon the enamelled sides of which the transportofficer with a piece of chalk had scratched, "For His Majesty, " andpiled the silk cushions high with ammunition. From table to tableyoung girls passed jangling tiny tin milk-cans. They were supplicants, begging money for the wounded. There were so many of them andso often they made their rounds that, to protect you from themselves, if you subscribed a lump sum, you were exempt and were given abadge to prove you were immune. 

Except for these signs of the times you would not have knownBelgium was at war. The spirit of the people was undaunted. Into theirdaily lives the conflict had penetrated only like a burst of martialmusic. Rather than depressing, it inspired them. Wherever youventured, you found them undismayed. And in those weeks duringwhich events moved so swiftly that now they seem months in thepast, we were as free as in our own "home town" to go where wechose. 

For the war correspondent those were the happy days! Like everyone else, from the proudest nobleman to the boy in wooden shoes, we were given a laissez-passer, which gave us permission to goanywhere; this with a passport was our only credential. Propercredentials to accompany the army in the field had been formerlyrefused me by the war officers of England, France, and Belgium. Soin Brussels each morning I chartered an automobile and withoutcredentials joined the first army that happened to be passing. Sometimes you stumbled upon an escarmouche, sometimes you fledfrom one, sometimes you drew blank. Over our early coffee we wouldstudy the morning papers and, as in the glad days of racing at home, from them try to dope out the winners. If we followed La DernièreHeure we would go to Namur; L'Etoile was strong for Tirlemont. Would we lose if we plunged on Wavre? Again, the favorite seemedto be Louvain. On a straight tip from the legation the Englishcorrespondents were going to motor to Diest. From a Belgian officerwe had been given inside information that the fight would be pulled offat Gembloux. And, unencumbered by even a sandwich, and too wiseto carry a field-glass or a camera, each would depart upon hisseparate errand, at night returning to a perfectly served dinner and aluxurious bed. For the news-gatherers it was a game of chance. Thewisest veterans would cast their nets south and see only harvestersin the fields, the amateurs would lose their way to the north and findthemselves facing an army corps or running a gauntlet of shell-fire. Itwas like throwing a handful of coins on the table hoping that onemight rest upon the winning number. Over the map of Belgium wethrew ourselves. Some days we landed on the right color, on otherswe saw no more than we would see at state manoeuvres. Judging byhis questions, the lay brother seems to think that the chief trouble ofthe war correspondent is dodging bullets. It is not. It consists in tryingto bribe a station-master to carry you on a troop train, or in findingforage for your horse. What wars I have seen have taken place inspots isolated and inaccessible, far from the haunts of men. By dayyou followed the fight and tried to find the censor, and at night you saton a cracker-box and by the light of a candle struggled to keep awakeand to write deathless prose. In Belgium it was not like that. Theautomobile which Gerald Morgan, of the London Daily Telegraph, andI shared was of surpassing beauty, speed, and comfort. It was aslong as a Plant freight-car and as yellow; and from it flapped in thebreeze more English, Belgian, French, and Russian flags than flyfrom the roof of the New York Hippodrome. Whenever we sighted anarmy we lashed the flags of its country to our headlights, and at sixtymiles an hour bore down upon it. 

The army always first arrested us, and then, on learning ournationality, asked if it were true that America had joined the Allies. After I had punched his ribs a sufficient number of times Morganlearned to reply without winking that it had. In those days the sunshone continuously; the roads, except where we ran on the blocksthat made Belgium famous, were perfect; and overhead for milesnoble trees met and embraced. The country was smiling andbeautiful. In the fields the women (for the men were at the front) weregathering the crops, the stacks of golden grain stretched from villageto village. The houses in these were white-washed and, the better toadvertise chocolates, liqueurs, and automobile tires, were painted acobalt blue; their roofs were of red tiles, and they sat in gardens ofpurple cabbages or gaudy hollyhocks. In the orchards the pear-treeswere bent with fruit. We never lacked for food; always, when we lostthe trail and "checked, " or burst a tire, there was an inn with fruit-treestrained to lie flat against the wall, or to spread over arbors andtrellises. Beneath these, close by the roadside, we sat and drank redwine, and devoured omelets and vast slabs of rye bread. At night weraced back to the city, through twelve miles of parks, to enamelledbathtubs, shaded electric light, and iced champagne; while before ourtable passed all the night life of a great city. And for suffering thesehardships of war our papers paid us large sums. 

On such a night as this, the night of August 18, strange folk inwooden shoes and carrying bundles, and who looked like emigrantsfrom Ellis Island, appeared in front of the restaurant. Instantly theywere swallowed up in a crowd and the dinner-parties, napkins inhand, flocked into the Place Rogier and increased the throng aroundthem. 

"The Germans!" those in the heart of the crowd called over theirshoulders. "The Germans are at Louvain!"

That afternoon I had conscientiously cabled my paper that there wereno Germans anywhere near Louvain. I had been west of Louvain, and the particular column of the French army to which I had attachedmyself certainly saw no Germans. 

"They say, " whispered those nearest the fugitives, "the Germanshells are falling in Louvain. Ten houses are on fire!" Ten houses!How monstrous it sounded! Ten houses of innocent country folkdestroyed. In those days such a catastrophe was unbelievable. Wesmiled knowingly. 

"Refugees always talk like that, " we said wisely. "The Germans wouldnot bombard an unfortified town. And, besides, there are no Germanssouth of Liege. "

The morning following in my room I heard from the Place Rogier thewarnings of many motor horns. At great speed innumerableautomobiles were approaching, all coming from the west through theBoulevard du Regent, and without slackening speed passingnortheast toward Ghent, Bruges, and the coast. The numberincreased and the warnings became insistent. At eight o'clock theyhad sent out a sharp request for right of way; at nine in number theyhad trebled, and the note of the sirens was raucous, harsh, andperemptory. At ten no longer were there disconnected warnings, butfrom the horns and sirens issued one long, continuous scream. It waslike the steady roar of a gale in the rigging, and it spoke in abjectpanic. The voices of the cars racing past were like the voices ofhuman beings driven with fear. From the front of the hotel wewatched them. There were taxicabs, racing cars, limousines. Theywere crowded with women and children of the rich, and of the nobilityand gentry from the great châteaux far to the west. Those whooccupied them were white-faced with the dust of the road, withweariness and fear. In cars magnificently upholstered, padded, andcushioned were piled trunks, hand-bags, dressing-cases. The womenhad dressed at a moment's warning, as though at a cry of fire. Manyhad travelled throughout the night, and in their arms the children, snatched from the pillows, were sleeping. 

But more appealing were the peasants. We walked out along theinner boulevards to meet them, and found the side streets blockedwith their carts. Into these they had thrown mattresses, or bundles ofgrain, and heaped upon them were families of three generations. Oldmen in blue smocks, white-haired and bent, old women in caps, thedaughters dressed in their one best frock and hat, and clasping intheir hands all that was left to them, all that they could stuff into apillow-case or flour-sack. The tears rolled down their brown, tannedfaces. To the people of Brussels who crowded around them theyspoke in hushed, broken phrases. The terror of what they hadescaped or of what they had seen was upon them. They hadharnessed the plough-horse to the dray or market-wagon and to theinvaders had left everything. What, they asked, would befall the livestock they had abandoned, the ducks on the pond, the cattle in thefield? Who would feed them and give them water? At the question thetears would break out afresh. Heart-broken, weary, hungry, theypassed in an unending caravan. With them, all fleeing from the samefoe, all moving in one direction, were family carriages, the servants onthe box in disordered livery, as they had served dinner, or coatless, but still in the striped waistcoats and silver buttons of grooms orfootmen, and bicyclers with bundles strapped to their shoulders, andmen and women stumbling on foot, carrying their children. Above it allrose the breathless scream of the racing-cars, as they rocked andskidded, with brakes grinding and mufflers open; with their own terrorcreating and spreading terror. 

Though eager in sympathy, the people of Brussels themselves wereundisturbed. Many still sat at the little iron tables and smiled pityinglyupon the strange figures of the peasants. They had had their troublefor nothing, they said. It was a false alarm. There were no Germansnearer than Liege. And, besides, should the Germans come, the civilguard would meet them. 

But, better informed than they, that morning the American minister, Brand Whitlock, and the Marquis Villalobar, the Spanish minister, hadcalled upon the burgomaster and advised him not to defend the city. As Whitlock pointed out, with the force at his command, which wasthe citizen soldiery, he could delay the entrance of the Germans byonly an hour, and in that hour many innocent lives would be wastedand monuments of great beauty, works of art that belong not alone toBrussels but to the world, would be destroyed. Burgomaster Max, who is a splendid and worthy representative of a long line ofburgomasters, placing his hand upon his heart, said: "Honor requiresit. "

To show that in the protection of the Belgian Government he had fullconfidence, Mr. Whitlock had not as yet shown his colors. But thatmorning when he left the Hôtel de Ville he hung the American flagover his legation and over that of the British. Those of us who hadelected to remain in Brussels moved our belongings to a hotel acrossthe street from the legation. Not taking any chances, for my own use Ireserved a green leather sofa in the legation itself. 

Except that the cafés were empty of Belgian officers, and of Englishcorrespondents, whom, had they remained, the Germans would havearrested, there was not, up to late in the afternoon of the 19th ofAugust, in the life and conduct of the citizens any perceptible change. They could not have shown a finer spirit. They did not know the citywould not be defended; and yet with before them on the morrow theprospect of a battle which Burgomaster Max had announced wouldbe contested to the very heart of the city, as usual the cafés blazedlike open fire-places and the people sat at the little iron tables. Evenwhen, like great buzzards, two German aeroplanes sailed slowlyacross Brussels, casting shadows of events to come, the peopleregarded them only with curiosity. The next morning the shops wereopen, the streets were crowded. But overnight the soldier-king hadsent word that Brussels must not oppose the invaders; and at thegendarmerie the civil guard, reluctantly and protesting, some even intears, turned in their rifles and uniforms. 

The change came at ten in the morning. It was as though a wand hadwaved and from a fête-day on the Continent we had been wafted toLondon on a rainy Sunday. The boulevards fell suddenly empty. There was not a house that was not closely shuttered. Along theroute by which we now knew the Germans were advancing, it was asthough the plague stalked. That no one should fire from a window, that to the conquerors no one should offer insult, Burgomaster Maxsent out as special constables men he trusted. Their badge ofauthority was a walking-stick and a piece of paper fluttering from abuttonhole. These, the police, and the servants and caretakers of thehouses that lined the boulevards alone were visible. At eleveno'clock, unobserved but by this official audience, down the BoulevardWaterloo came the advance-guard of the German army. It consistedof three men, a captain and two privates on bicycles. Their rifles wereslung across their shoulders, they rode unwarily, with as little concernas the members of a touring-club out for a holiday. Behind them, soclose upon each other that to cross from one sidewalk to the otherwas not possible, came the Uhlans, infantry, and the guns. For twohours I watched them, and then, bored with the monotony of it, returned to the hotel. After an hour, from beneath my window, I stillcould hear them; another hour and another went by. They still werepassing. 

Boredom gave way to wonder. The thing fascinated you, against yourwill, dragged you back to the sidewalk and held you there open-eyed. No longer was it regiments of men marching, but something uncanny, inhuman, a force of nature like a landslide, a tidal wave, or lavasweeping down a mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious, ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling towardyou across the sea. The uniform aided this impression. In it each manmoved under a cloak of invisibility. Only after the most numerous andsevere tests at all distances, with all materials and combinations ofcolors that give forth no color, could this gray have been discovered. That it was selected to clothe and disguise the German when hefights is typical of the General Staff, in striving for efficiency, toleave nothing to chance, to neglect no detail. 

After you have seen this service uniform under conditions entirelyopposite you are convinced that for the German soldier it is one of hisstrongest weapons. Even the most expert marksman cannot hit atarget he cannot see. It is not the blue-gray of our Confederates, buta green-gray. It is the gray of the hour just before daybreak, the grayof unpolished steel, of mist among green trees. 

I saw it first in the Grand Place in front of the Hôtel de Ville. It wasimpossible to tell if in that noble square there was a regiment or abrigade. You saw only a fog that melted into the stones, blended withthe ancient house fronts, that shifted and drifted, but left you nothingat which to point. 

Later, as the army passed under the trees of the Botanical Park, itmerged and was lost against the green leaves. It is no exaggerationto say that at a few hundred yards you can see the horses on whichthe Uhlans ride but cannot see the men who ride them. 

If I appear to overemphasize this disguising uniform it is because, ofall the details of the German outfit, it appealed to me as one of themost remarkable. When I was near Namur with the rear-guard of theFrench Dragoons and Cuirassiers, and they threw out pickets, wecould distinguish them against the yellow wheat or green corse at halfa mile, while these men passing in the street, when they havereached the next crossing, become merged into the gray of thepaving-stones and the earth swallowed them. In comparison theyellow khaki of our own American army is about as invisible as theflag of Spain. 

Major-General von Jarotsky, the German military governor ofBrussels, had assured Burgomaster Max that the German armywould not occupy the city but would pass through it. He told the truth. For three days and three nights it passed. In six campaigns I havefollowed other armies, but, excepting not even our own, theJapanese, or the British, I have not seen one so thoroughly equipped. I am not speaking of the fighting qualities of any army, only of theequipment and organization. The German army moved into Brusselsas smoothly and as compactly as an Empire State express. Therewere no halts, no open places, no stragglers. For the grayautomobiles and the gray motorcycles bearing messengers one sideof the street always was kept clear; and so compact was the column, so rigid the vigilance of the file-closers, that at the rate of forty milesan hour a car could race the length of the column and need not for asingle horse or man once swerve from its course. 

All through the night, like the tumult of a river when it races betweenthe cliffs of a canyon, in my sleep I could hear the steady roar of thepassing army. And when early in the morning I went to the windowthe chain of steel was still unbroken. It was like the torrent that sweptdown the Connemaugh Valley and destroyed Johnstown. As acorrespondent I have seen all the great armies and the militaryprocessions at the coronations in Russia, England, and Spain, andour own inaugural parades down Pennsylvania Avenue, but thosearmies and processions were made up of men. This was a machine, endless, tireless, with the delicate organization of a watch and thebrute power of a steam roller. And for three days and three nightsthrough Brussels it roared and rumbled, a cataract of molten lead. The infantry marched singing, with their iron-shod boots beating outthe time. They sang "Fatherland, My Fatherland. " Between each lineof song they took three steps. At times two thousand men weresinging together in absolute rhythm and beat. It was like the blowsfrom giant pile-drivers. When the melody gave way the silence wasbroken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the songrose. When the singing ceased the bands played marches. Theywere followed by the rumble of the howitzers, the creaking of wheelsand of chains clanking against the cobblestones, and the sharp, bell-like voices of the bugles. 

More Uhlans followed, the hoofs of their magnificent horses ringinglike thousands of steel hammers breaking stones in a road; and afterthem the giant siege-guns rumbling, growling, the mitrailleuse withdrag-chains ringing, the field-pieces with creaking axles, complainingbrakes, the grinding of the steel-rimmed wheels against the stonesechoing and re-echoing from the house front. When at night for aninstant the machine halted, the silence awoke you, as at sea youwake when the screw stops. 

For three days and three nights the column of gray, with hundreds ofthousands of bayonets and hundreds of thousands of lances, withgray transport wagons, gray ammunition carts, gray ambulances, gray cannon, like a river of steel, cut Brussels in two. 

For three weeks the men had been on the march, and there was nota single straggler, not a strap out of place, not a pennant missing. Along the route, without for a minute halting the machine, the post-office carts fell out of the column, and as the men marched mountedpostmen collected post-cards and delivered letters. Also, as theymarched, the cooks prepared soup, coffee, and tea, walking besidetheir stoves on wheels, tending the fires, distributing the smokingfood. Seated in the motor-trucks cobblers mended boots and brokenharness; farriers on tiny anvils beat out horseshoes. No officerfollowed a wrong turning, no officer asked his way. He followed themap strapped to his side and on which for his guidance in red ink hisroute was marked. At night he read this map by the light of an electrictorch buckled to his chest. 

To perfect this monstrous engine, with its pontoon bridges, itswireless, its hospitals, its aeroplanes that in rigid alignment sailedbefore it, its field telephones that, as it advanced, strung wires overwhich for miles the vanguard talked to the rear, all modern inventionshad been prostituted. To feed it millions of men had been called fromhomes, offices, and workshops; to guide it, for years the minds of thehigh-born, with whom it is a religion and a disease, had been solelyconcerned. 

It is, perhaps, the most efficient organization of modern times; and itspurpose only is death. Those who cast it loose upon Europe aremilitary-mad. And they are only a very small part of the Germanpeople. But to preserve their class they have in their own imagecreated this terrible engine of destruction. For the present it is theirservant. But, "though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grindexceeding small. " And, like Frankenstein's monster, this monster, towhich they gave life, may turn and rend them. 

Chapter II"To Be Treated As A Spy"

This story is a personal experience, but is told in spite of that fact andbecause it illustrates a side of war that is unfamiliar. It is unfamiliarfor the reason that it is seamy and uninviting. With bayonet charges, bugle-calls, and aviators it has nothing in common. 

Espionage is that kind of warfare of which, even when it succeeds, nocountry boasts. It is military service an officer may not refuse, butwhich few seek. Its reward is prompt promotion, and its punishment, in war time, is swift and without honor. This story is intended to showhow an army in the field must be on its guard against even asupposed spy and how it treats him. 

The war offices of France and Russia would not permit an Americancorrespondent to accompany their armies; the English granted thatprivilege to but one correspondent, and that gentleman already hadbeen chosen. So I was without credentials. To oblige Mr. BrandWhitlock, our minister to Belgium, the government there was willing togive me credentials, but on the day I was to receive them thegovernment moved to Antwerp. Then the Germans entered Brussels, and, as no one could foresee that Belgium would heroically continuefighting, on the chance the Germans would besiege Paris, I plannedto go to that city. To be bombarded you do not need credentials. 

For three days a steel-gray column of Germans had been sweepingthrough Brussels, and to meet them, from the direction of Vincennesand Lille, the English and French had crossed the border. It wasfalsely reported that already the English had reached Hal, a town onlyeleven miles from Brussels, that the night before there had been afight at Hal, and that close behind the English were the French. 

With Gerald Morgan, of the London Daily Telegraph, with whom I hadbeen in other wars, I planned to drive to Hal and from there on footcontinue, if possible, into the arms of the French or English. We bothwere without credentials, but, once with the Allies, we believed wewould not need them. It was the Germans we doubted. To satisfythem we had only a passport and a laissez-passer issued by Generalvon Jarotsky, the new German military governor of Brussels, and hischief of staff, Lieutenant Geyer. Mine stated that I represented theWheeler Syndicate of American newspapers, the London DailyChronicle, and Scribner's Magazine, and that I could pass Germanmilitary lines in Brussels and her environs. Morgan had a pass of thesame sort. The question to be determined was: What were "environs"and how far do they extend? How far in safety would the word carryus forward?

On August 23 we set forth from Brussels in a taxicab to find out. AtHal, where we intended to abandon the cab and continue on foot, wefound out. We were arrested by a smart and most intelligent-lookingofficer, who rode up to the side of the taxi and pointed an automatic atus. We were innocently seated in a public cab, in a street crowdedwith civilians and the passing column of soldiers, and why any oneshould think he needed a gun only the German mind can explain. Later, I found that all German officers introduced themselves andmade requests gun in hand. Whether it was because from every onethey believed themselves in danger or because they simply did notknow any better, I still am unable to decide. With no other army haveI seen an officer threaten with a pistol an unarmed civilian. Were anAmerican or English officer to act in such a fashion he might escapelooking like a fool, he certainly would feel like one. The four soldiersthe officer told off to guard us climbed with alacrity into our cab anddrove with us until the street grew too narrow both for their regimentand our taxi, when they chose the regiment and disappeared. Wepaid off the cabman and followed them. To reach the front there wasno other way, and the very openness with which we trailed alongbeside their army, very much like small boys following a circusprocession, seemed to us to show how innocent was our intent. Thecolumn stretched for fifty miles. Where it was going we did not know, but, we argued, if it kept on going and we kept on with it, eventuallywe must stumble upon a battle. The story that at Hal there had beena fight was evidently untrue; and the manner in which the column wasadvancing showed it was not expecting one. At noon it halted atBrierges, and Morgan decided Brierges was out of bounds and thatthe limits of our "environs" had been reached. 

"If we go any farther, " he argued, "the next officer who reads ourpapers will order us back to Brussels under arrest, and we will loseour laissez-passer. Along this road there is no chance of seeinganything. I prefer to keep my pass and use it in 'environs' where thereis fighting. " So he returned to Brussels. I thought he was most wise, and I wanted to return with him. But I did not want to go back onlybecause I knew it was the right thing to do, but to be ordered back sothat I could explain to my newspapers that I returned becauseColonel This or General That sent me back. It was a form of vanity forwhich I was properly punished. That Morgan was right wasdemonstrated as soon as he left me. I was seated against a tree bythe side of the road eating a sandwich, an occupation which seemsalmost idyllic in its innocence but which could not deceive theGermans. In me they saw the hated Spion, and from behind me, across a ploughed field, four of them, each with an automatic, mademe prisoner. One of them, who was an enthusiast, pushed his gundeep into my stomach. With the sandwich still in my hand, I held upmy arms high and asked who spoke English. It turned out that theenthusiast spoke that language, and I suggested he did not need somany guns and that he could find my papers in my inside pocket. With four automatics rubbing against my ribs, I would not havelowered my arms for all the papers in the Bank of England. They tookme to a café, where their colonel had just finished lunch and was in amost genial humor. First he gave the enthusiast a drink as a rewardfor arresting me, and then, impartially, gave me one for beingarrested. He wrote on my passport that I could go to Enghien, whichwas two miles distant. That pass enabled me to proceed unmolestedfor nearly two hundred yards. I was then again arrested and takenbefore another group of officers. This time they searched myknapsack and wanted to requisition my maps, but one of thempointed out they were only automobile maps and, as compared totheir own, of no value. They permitted me to proceed to Enghien. Iwent to Enghien, intending to spend the night and on the morningcontinue. I could not see why I might not be able to go on indefinitely. 

As yet no one who had held me up had suggested I should turn back, and as long as I was willing to be arrested it seemed as though Imight accompany the German army even to the gates of Paris. Butmy reception in Enghien should have warned me to get back toBrussels. The Germans, thinking I was an English spy, scowled atme; and the Belgians, thinking the same thing, winked at me; and thelandlord of the only hotel said I was "suspect" and would not give mea bed. But I sought out the burgomaster, a most charming mannamed Delano, and he wrote out a pass permitting me to sleep onenight in Enghien. 

"You really do not need this, " he said; "as an American you are freeto stay here as long as you wish. " Then he, too, winked. 

"But I am an American, " I protested. 

"But certainly, " he said gravely, and again he winked. It was then Ishould have started back to Brussels. Instead, I sat on a moss-covered, arched stone bridge that binds the town together, and untilnight fell watched the gray tidal waves rush up and across it, stamping, tripping, stumbling, beating the broad, clean stones withthousands of iron heels, steel hoofs, steel chains, and steel-rimmedwheels. You hated it, and yet could not keep away. The Belgians ofEnghien hated it, and they could not keep away. Like a great river inflood, bearing with it destruction and death, you feared and loathed it, and yet it fascinated you and pulled you to the brink. All through thenight, as already for three nights and three days at Brussels, I hadheard it; it rumbled and growled, rushing forward without pause orbreath, with inhuman, pitiless persistence. At daybreak I sat on theedge of the bed and wondered whether to go on or turn back. I stillwanted some one in authority, higher than myself, to order me back. So, at six, riding for a fall, to find that one, I went, as I thought, along the road to Soignes. The gray tidal wave was still roaring past. It was pressing forward with greater speed, but in nothing else didit differ from the tidal wave that had swept through Brussels. 

There was a group of officers seated by the road, and as I passed Iwished them good morning and they said good morning in return. Ihad gone a hundred feet when one of them galloped after me andasked to look at my papers. With relief I gave them to him. I was surenow I would be told to return to Brussels. I calculated if at Hal I hadluck in finding a taxicab, by lunch time I should be in the Palace Hotel. 

"I think, " said the officer, "you had better see our general. He is aheadof us. "

I thought he meant a few hundred yards ahead, and to be orderedback by a general seemed more convincing than to be returned by amere captain. So I started to walk on beside the mounted officers. This, as it seemed to presume equality with them, scandalized themgreatly, and I was ordered into the ranks. But the one who hadarrested me thought I was entitled to a higher rating and placed mewith the color-guard, who objected to my presence so violently that along discussion followed, which ended with my being ranked below asecond lieutenant and above a sergeant. Between one of each ofthese I was definitely placed, and for five hours I remained definitelyplaced. We advanced with a rush that showed me I had surprised asurprise movement. The fact was of interest not because I haddiscovered one of their secrets, but because to keep up with thecolumn I was forced for five hours to move at what was a steady trot. It was not so fast as the running step of the Italian bersagliere, but asfast as our "double-quick. " The men did not bend the knees, but, keeping the legs straight, shot them forward with a quick, slidingmovement, like men skating or skiing. The toe of one boot seemedalways tripping on the heel of the other. As the road was paved withroughly hewn blocks of Belgian granite this kind of going was verystrenuous, and had I not been in good shape I could not have keptup. As it was, at the end of the five hours I had lost fifteen pounds, which did not help me, as during the same time the knapsack hadtaken on a hundred. For two days the men in the ranks had beenrushed forward at this unnatural gait and were moving likeautomatons. Many of them fell by the wayside, but they were notpermitted to lie there. Instead of summoning the ambulance, theywere lifted to their feet and flung back into the ranks. Many of themwere moving in their sleep, in that partly comatose state in which youhave seen men during the last hours of a six days' walking match. Their rules, so the sergeant said, were to halt every hour and then forten minutes rest. But that rule is probably only for route marching. 

On account of the speed with which the surprise movement wasmade our halts were more frequent, and so exhausted were the menthat when these "thank you, ma'ams" arrived, instead of standing atease and adjusting their accoutrements, as though they had beenstruck with a club they dropped to the stones. Some in an instantwere asleep. I do not mean that some sat down; I mean that thewhole column lay flat in the road. The officers also, those that werenot mounted, would tumble on the grass or into the wheat-field and lieon their backs, their arms flung out like dead men. To the fact thatthey were lying on their field-glasses, holsters, swords, and water-bottles they appeared indifferent. At the rate the column moved itwould have covered thirty miles each day. It was these forcedmarches that later brought Von Kluck's army to the right wing of theAllies before the army of the crown prince was prepared to attack, and which at Sezanne led to his repulse and to the failure of hisadvance upon Paris. 

While we were pushing forward we passed a wrecked British air-ship, around which were gathered a group of staff-officers. My papers weregiven to one of them, but our column did not halt and I was notallowed to speak. A few minutes later they passed in theirautomobiles on their way to the front; and my papers went with them. Already I was miles beyond the environs, and with each step awayfrom Brussels my pass was becoming less of a safeguard than amenace. For it showed what restrictions General Jarotsky had placedon my movements, and my presence so far out of bounds proved Ihad disregarded them. But still I did not suppose that in returning toBrussels there would be any difficulty. I was chiefly concerned withthe thought that the length of the return march was rapidly increasingand with the fact that one of my shoes, a faithful friend in othercampaigns, had turned traitor and was cutting my foot in half. I hadstarted with the column at seven o'clock, and at noon an automobile, with flags flying and the black eagle of the staff enamelled on thedoor, came speeding back from the front. In it was a very blond anddistinguished-looking officer of high rank and many decorations. Heused a single eye-glass, and his politeness and his English werefaultless. He invited me to accompany him to the general staff. 

That was the first intimation I had that I was in danger. I saw theywere giving me far too much attention. I began instantly to work to setmyself free, and there was not a minute for the next twenty-four hoursthat I was not working. Before I stepped into the car I had decidedupon my line of defence. I would pretend to be entirely unconsciousthat I had in any way laid myself open to suspicion; that I had erredthrough pure stupidity and that I was where I was solely because Iwas a damn fool. I began to act like a damn fool. Effusively Iexpressed my regret at putting the General Staff to inconvenience. 

"It was really too stupid of me, " I said. "I cannot forgive myself. Ishould not have come so far without asking Jarotsky for properpapers. I am extremely sorry I have given you this trouble. I would liketo see the general and assure him I will return at once to Brussels. " Iignored the fact that I was being taken to the general at the rate ofsixty miles an hour. The blond officer smiled uneasily and with hissingle glass studied the sky. When we reached the staff he escapedfrom me with the alacrity of one released from a disagreeable andhumiliating duty. The staff were at luncheon, seated in their luxuriousmotor-cars or on the grass by the side of the road. On the other sideof the road the column of dust-covered gray ghosts were beingrushed past us. The staff, in dress uniforms, flowing cloaks, andgloves, belonged to a different race. They knew that. Amongthemselves they were like priests breathing incense. Whenever oneof them spoke to another they saluted, their heels clicked, theirbodies bent at the belt line. 

One of them came to where, in the middle of the road, I was strandedand trying not to feel as lonely as I looked. He was much youngerthan myself and dark and handsome. His face was smooth-shaven, his figure tall, lithe, and alert. He wore a uniform of light blue andsilver that clung to him and high boots of patent leather. His waist waslike a girl's, and, as though to show how supple he was, he keptcontinually bowing and shrugging his shoulders and in elegant protestgesticulating with his gloved hands. He should have been a moving-picture actor. He reminded me of Anthony Hope's fascinating butwicked Rupert of Hentzau. He certainly was wicked, and I got to hatehim as I never imagined it possible to hate anybody. He had beentold off to dispose of my case, and he delighted in it. He enjoyed it asa cat enjoys playing with a mouse. As actors say, he saw himself inthe part. He "ate" it. 

"You are an English officer out of uniform, " he began. "You havebeen taken inside our lines. " He pointed his forefinger at my stomachand wiggled his thumb. "And you know what that means!"

I saw playing the damn fool with him would be waste of time. 

"I followed your army, " I told him, "because it's my business to followarmies and because yours is the best-looking army I ever saw. " Hemade me one of his mocking bows. 

"We thank you, " he said, grinning. "But you have seen too much. "

"I haven't seen anything, " I said, "that everybody in Brussels hasn'tseen for three days. "

He shook his head reproachfully and with a gesture signified thegroup of officers. 

"You have seen enough in this road, " he said, "to justify us inshooting you now. "

The sense of drama told him it was a good exit line, and he returnedto the group of officers. I now saw what had happened. At Enghien Ihad taken the wrong road. I remembered that, to confuse theGermans, the names on the sign-post at the edge of the town hadbeen painted out, and that instead of taking the road to Soignes I wason the road to Ath. What I had seen, therefore, was an army corpsmaking a turning movement intended to catch the English on theirright and double them up upon their centre. The success of thismanœuvre depended upon the speed with which it was executed andupon its being a complete surprise. As later in the day I learned, theGermans thought I was an English officer who had followed themfrom Brussels and who was trying to slip past them and warn hiscountrymen. What Rupert of Hentzau meant by what I had seen onthe road was that, having seen the Count de Schwerin, whocommanded the Seventh Division, on the road to Ath, I mustnecessarily know that the army corps to which he was attached hadseparated from the main army of Von Kluck, and that, in going so farsouth at such speed, it was bent upon an attack on the English flank. All of which at the time I did not know and did not want to know. All Iwanted was to prove I was not an English officer, but an Americancorrespondent who by accident had stumbled upon their secret. Toconvince them of that, strangely enough, was difficult. 

When Rupert of Hentzau returned the other officers were with him, and, fortunately for me, they spoke or understood English. For therest of the day what followed was like a legal argument. It was ascold-blooded as a game of bridge. Rupert of Hentzau wanted anEnglish spy shot for his supper; just as he might have desired agrilled bone. He showed no personal animus, and, I must say for him, that he conducted the case for the prosecution without heat or anger. He mocked me, grilled and taunted me, but he was alwayscharmingly polite. 

As Whitman said, "I want Becker, " so Rupert said, "Fe, fo, fi, fum, Iwant the blood of an Englishman. " He was determined to get it. I waseven more interested that he should not. The points he made againstme were that my German pass was signed neither by GeneralJarotsky nor by Lieutenant Geyer, but only stamped, and that anyrubber stamp could be forged; that my American passport had notbeen issued at Washington, but in London, where an Englishmanmight have imposed upon our embassy; and that in the photographpasted on the passport I was wearing the uniform of a British officer. Iexplained that the photograph was taken eight years ago, and thatthe uniform was one I had seen on the west coast of Africa, worn bythe West African Field Force. Because it was unlike any knownmilitary uniform, and as cool and comfortable as a golf jacket, I hadhad it copied. But since that time it had been adopted by the EnglishBrigade of Guards and the Territorials. I knew it sounded like fiction;but it was quite true. 

Rupert of Hentzau smiled delightedly. 

"Do you expect us to believe that?" he protested. 

"Listen, " I said. "If you could invent an explanation for that uniform asquickly as I told you that one, standing in a road with eight officerstrying to shoot you, you would be the greatest general in Germany. "

That made the others laugh; and Rupert retorted: "Very well, then, wewill concede that the entire British army has changed its uniform tosuit your photograph. But if you are not an officer, why, in thephotograph, are you wearing war ribbons?"

I said the war ribbons were in my favor, and I pointed out that noofficer of any one country could have been in the different campaignsfor which the ribbons were issued. 

"They prove, " I argued, "that I am a correspondent, for only acorrespondent could have been in wars in which his own country wasnot engaged. "

I thought I had scored; but Rupert instantly turned my own witnessagainst me. 

"Or a military attaché, " he said. At that they all smiled and noddedknowingly. 

He followed this up by saying, accusingly, that the hat and clothes Iwas then wearing were English. The clothes were English, but I knewhe did not know that, and was only guessing; and there were nomarks on them. About my hat I was not certain. It was a felt Alpinehat, and whether I had bought it in London or New York I could notremember. Whether it was evidence for or against I could not besure. So I took it off and began to fan myself with it, hoping to get alook at the name of the maker. But with the eyes of the youngprosecuting attorney fixed upon me, I did not dare take a chance. Then, to aid me, a German aeroplane passed overhead, andthose who were giving me the third degree looked up. I stoppedfanning myself and cast a swift glance inside the hat. To my intensesatisfaction I read, stamped on the leather lining: "Knox, New York. "

I put the hat back on my head and a few minutes later pulled it off andsaid: "Now, for instance, my hat. If I were an Englishman would Icross the ocean to New York to buy a hat?"

It was all like that. They would move away and whisper together, andI would try to guess what questions they were preparing. I had toarrange my defence without knowing in what way they would try to tripme, and I had to think faster than I ever have thought before. I had nomore time to be scared, or to regret my past sins, than has a man ina quicksand. So far as I could make out, they were divided in opinionconcerning me. Rupert of Hentzau, who was the adjutant or the chiefof staff, had only one simple thought, which was to shoot me. Othersconsidered me a damn fool; I could hear them laughing and saying:"Er ist ein dummer Mensch. " And others thought that whether I was afool or not, or an American or an Englishman, was not the question; Ihad seen too much and should be put away. I felt if, instead of havingRupert act as my interpreter, I could personally speak to the general Imight talk my way out of it, but Rupert assured me that to set me freethe Count de Schwerin lacked authority, and that my papers, whichwere all against me, must be submitted to the general of the armycorps, and we would not reach him until midnight. 

"And then!--" he would exclaim, and he would repeat his pantomimeof pointing his forefinger at my stomach and wiggling his thumb. Hewas very popular with me. 

Meanwhile they were taking me farther away from Brussels and the"environs. "

"When you picked me up, " I said, "I was inside the environs, but bythe time I reach 'the' general he will see only that I am fifty milesbeyond where I am permitted to be. And who is going to tell him itwas you brought me there? You won't!"

Rupert of Hentzau only smiled like the cat that has just swallowed thecanary. 

He put me in another automobile and they whisked me off, alwaysgoing farther from Brussels, to Ath and then to Ligne, a little town fivemiles south. Here they stopped at a house the staff occupied, and, leading me to the second floor, put me in an empty room thatseemed built for their purpose. It had a stone floor and whitewashedwalls and a window so high that even when standing you could seeonly the roof of another house and a weather-vane. They threw twobundles of wheat on the floor and put a sentry at the door with ordersto keep it open. He was a wild man, and thought I was, and everytime I moved his automatic moved with me. It was as though he werefollowing me with a spotlight. My foot was badly cut across the instepand I was altogether forlorn and disreputable. So, in order to look lesslike a tramp when I met the general, I bound up the foot, and, alwayswith one eye on the sentry, and moving very slowly, shaved and puton dry things. From the interest the sentry showed it seemed evidenthe never had taken a bath himself, nor had seen any one else takeone, and he was not quite easy in his mind that he ought to allow it. He seemed to consider it a kind of suicide. I kept on thinking outplans, and when an officer appeared I had one to submit. I offered togive the money I had with me to any one who would motor back toBrussels and take a note to the American minister, Brand Whitlock. My proposition was that if in five hours, or by seven o'clock, he did notarrive in his automobile and assure them that what I said aboutmyself was true, they need not wait until midnight, but could shoot methen. 

"If I am willing to take such a chance, " I pointed out, "I must be afriend of Mr. Whitlock. If he repudiates me, it will be evident I havedeceived you, and you will be perfectly justified in carrying out yourplan. " I had a note to Whitlock already written. It was composedentirely with the idea that they would read it, and it was much moreintimate than my very brief acquaintance with that gentleman justified. But from what I have seen and heard of the ex-mayor of Toledo I felthe would stand for it. 

The note read:

"Dear Brand:

"I am detained in a house with a garden where the railroad passesthrough the village of Ligne. Please come quick, or send some one inthe legation automobile. 

"Richard. "

The officer to whom I gave this was Major Alfred Wurth, a reservistfrom Bernburg, on the Saale River. I liked him from the first becauseafter we had exchanged a few words he exclaimed incredulously:"What nonsense! Any one could tell by your accent that you are anAmerican. " He explained that, when at the university, in the samepension with him were three Americans. 

"The staff are making a mistake, " he said earnestly. "They will regretit. "

I told him that I not only did not want them to regret it, but I did notwant them to make it, and I begged him to assure the staff that I wasan American. I suggested also that he tell them, if anything happenedto me there were other Americans who would at once declare war onGermany. The number of these other Americans I overestimated byabout ninety millions, but it was no time to consider details. 

He asked if the staff might read the letter to the American minister, and, though I hated to deceive him, I pretended to consider this. 

"I don't remember just what I wrote, " I said, and, to make sure theywould read it, I tore open the envelope and pretended to reread theletter. 

"I will see what I can do, " said Major Wurth; "meanwhile, do not bediscouraged. Maybe it will come out all right for you. "

After he left me the Belgian gentleman who owned the house and hiscook brought me some food. She was the only member of hishousehold who had not deserted him, and together they were servingthe staff-officers, he acting as butler, waiter, and valet. The cock wasan old peasant woman with a ruffled white cap, and when she left, inspite of the sentry, she patted me encouragingly on the shoulder. Theowner of the house was more discreet, and contented himself withwinking at me and whispering: "Ça va mal pour vous en bas!" As theyboth knew what was being said of me downstairs, their visit did notespecially enliven me. Major Wurth returned and said the staff couldnot spare any one to go to Brussels, but that my note had beenforwarded to "the" general. That was as much as I had hoped for. Itwas intended only as a "stay of proceedings. " But the manner of themajor was not reassuring. He kept telling me that he thought theywould set me free, but even as he spoke tears would come to hiseyes and roll slowly down his cheeks. It was most disconcerting. Aftera while it grew dark and he brought me a candle and left me, takingwith him, much to my relief, the sentry and his automatic. This gaveme since my arrest my first moment alone, and, to find anything thatmight further incriminate or help me, I used it in going rapidly throughmy knapsack and pockets. My note-book was entirely favorable. In itthere was no word that any German could censor. My only otherpaper was a letter, of which all day I had been conscious. It was oneof introduction from Colonel Theodore Roosevelt to PresidentPoincaré, and whether the Germans would consider it a clean bill ofhealth or a death-warrant I could not make up my mind. Half a dozentimes I had been on the point of saying: "Here is a letter from the manyour Kaiser delighted to honor, the only civilian who ever reviewedthe German army, a former President of the United States. "

But I could hear Rupert of Hentzau replying: "Yes, and it isrecommending you to our enemy, the President of France!"

I knew that Colonel Roosevelt would have written a letter to theGerman Emperor as impartially as to M. Poincaré, but I knew alsothat Rupert of Hentzau would not believe that. So I decided to keepthe letter back until the last moment. If it was going to help me, it stillwould be effective; if it went against me, I would be just as dead. Ibegan to think out other plans. Plans of escape were foolish. I couldhave crawled out of the window to the rain gutter, but before I hadreached the rooftree I would have been shot. And bribing the sentry, even were he willing to be insulted, would not have taken me fartherthan the stairs, where there were other sentries. I was more safeinside the house than out. They still had my passport and laissez-passer, and without a pass one could not walk a hundred yards. Asthe staff had but one plan, and no time in which to think of a betterone, the obligation to invent a substitute plan lay upon me. The plan Ithought out and which later I outlined to Major Wurth was this: Insteadof putting me away at midnight, they would give me a pass back toBrussels. The pass would state that I was a suspected spy and that ifbefore midnight of the 26th of August I were found off the direct roadto Brussels, or if by that hour I had not reported to the militarygovernor of Brussels, any one could shoot me on sight. As I havestated, without showing a pass no one could move a hundred yards, and every time I showed my pass to a German it would tell him I wasa suspected spy, and if I were not making my way in the rightdirection he had his orders. With such a pass I was as much aprisoner as in the room at Ligne, and if I tried to evade its conditions Iwas as good as dead. The advantages of my plan, as I urged themupon Major Wurth, were that it prevented the General Staff fromshooting an innocent man, which would have greatly distressed them, and were he not innocent would still enable them, after a reprieve oftwo days, to shoot him. The distance to Brussels was about fiftymiles, which, as it was impossible for a civilian to hire a bicycle, motor-car, or cart, I must cover on foot, making twenty-five miles aday. Major Wurth heartily approved of my substitute plan, and addedthat he thought if any motor-trucks or ambulances were returningempty to Brussels, I should be permitted to ride in one of them. Heleft me, and I never saw him again. It was then about eight o'clock, and as the time passed and he did not return and midnight grewnearer, I began to feel very lonely. Except for the Roosevelt letter, Ihad played my last card. 

As it grew later I persuaded myself they did not mean to act untilmorning, and I stretched out on the straw and tried to sleep. Atmidnight I was startled by the light of an electric torch. It was strappedto the chest of an officer, who ordered me to get up and come withhim. He spoke only German, and he seemed very angry. The ownerof the house and the old cook had shown him to my room, but theystood in the shadow without speaking. Nor, fearing I mightcompromise them--for I could not see why, except for one purpose, they were taking me out into the night--did I speak to them. We gotinto another motor-car and in silence drove north from Ligne down acountry road to a great château that stood in a magnificent park. Something had gone wrong with the lights of the château, and its hallwas lit only by candles that showed soldiers sleeping like dead menon bundles of wheat and others leaping up and down the marblestairs. They put me in a huge armchair of silk and gilt, with two of thegray ghosts to guard me, and from the hall, when the doors of thedrawing-room opened, I could see a long table on which werecandles in silver candlesticks or set on plates, and many maps andhalf-empty bottles of champagne. Around the table, standing orseated, and leaning across the maps, were staff-officers in brilliantuniforms. They were much older men and of higher rank than any Ihad yet seen. They were eating, drinking, gesticulating. In spite of thetumult, some, in utter weariness, were asleep. It was like a picture of1870 by Détaille or De Neuville. Apparently, at last I had reached theheadquarters of the mysterious general. I had arrived at what, for asuspected spy, was an inopportune moment. The Germans themselveshad been surprised, or somewhere south of us had met with areverse, and the air was vibrating with excitement and somethingvery like panic. Outside, at great speed and with sirens shrieking, automobiles were arriving, and I could hear the officers shouting:"Die Englischen kommen!"

To make their reports they flung themselves up the steps, the electrictorches, like bull's-eye lanterns, burning holes in the night. Seeing acivilian under guard, they would stare and ask questions. Even whenthey came close, owing to the light in my eyes, I could not see them. Sometimes, in a half circle, there would be six or eight of the electrictorches blinding me, and from behind them voices barking at me withstrange, guttural noises. Much they said I could not understand, much I did not want to understand, but they made it quite clear it wasno fit place for an Englishman. 

When the door from the drawing-room opened and Rupert ofHentzau appeared, I was almost glad to see him. 

Whenever he spoke to me he always began or ended his sentencewith "Mr. Davis. " He gave it an emphasis and meaning which wasintended to show that he knew it was not my name. I would not havethought it possible to put so much insolence into two innocent words. It was as though he said: "Mr. Davis, alias Jimmy Valentine. " Hecertainly would have made a great actor. 

"Mr. Davis, " he said, "you are free. "

He did not look as disappointed as I knew he would feel if I were free, so I waited for what was to follow. 

"You are free, " he said, "under certain conditions. " The conditionsseemed to cheer him. He recited the conditions. They were those Ihad outlined to Major Wurth. But I am sure Rupert of Hentzau did notguess that. Apparently, he believed Major Wurth had thought ofthem, and I did not undeceive him. For the substitute plan I was notinclined to rob that officer of any credit. I felt then, and I feel now, that but for him and his interceding for me I would have been leftin the road. Rupert of Hentzau gave me the pass. It said I mustreturn to Brussels by way of Ath, Enghien, Hal, and that I must reportto the military governor on the 26th or "be treated as a spy"--"so wirder als Spion behandelt. " The pass, literally translated, reads:

"The American reporter Davis must at once return to Brussels viaAth, Enghien, Hal, and report to the government at the latest onAugust 26th. If he is met on any other road, or after the 26th ofAugust, he will be handled as a spy. Automobiles returning toBrussels, if they can unite it with their duty, can carry him. "

"CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF. ""VON GREGOR, Lieutenant-Colonel. "

Fearing my military education was not sufficient to enable me toappreciate this, for the last time Rupert stuck his forefinger in mystomach and repeated cheerfully: "And you know what that means. And you will start, " he added, with a most charming smile, "in threehours. "

He was determined to have his grilled bone. 

"At three in the morning!" I cried. "You might as well take me out andshoot me now!"

"You will start in three hours, " he repeated. 

"A man wandering around at that hour, " I protested, "wouldn't live fiveminutes. It can't be done. You couldn't do it. " He continued to grin. Iknew perfectly well the general had given no such order, and that itwas a cat-and-mouse act of Rupert's own invention, and he knew Iknew it. But he repeated: "You will start in three hours, Mr. Davis. "

I said: "I am going to write about this, and I would like you to readwhat I write. What is your name?"

He said: "I am the Baron von"--it sounded like "Hossfer"--and, in anycase, to that name, care of General de Schwerin of the SeventhDivision, I shall mail this book. I hope the Allies do not kill Rupert ofHentzau before he reads it! After that! He would have made a greatactor. 

They put me in the automobile and drove me back to Ligne and theimpromptu cell. But now it did not seem like a cell. Since I had lastoccupied it my chances had so improved that returning to the candleon the floor and the bundles of wheat was like coming home. ThoughI did not believe Rupert had any authority to order me into the night atthe darkest hour of the twenty-four, I was taking no chances. Mynerve was not in a sufficiently robust state for me to disobey anyGerman. So, lest I should oversleep, until three o'clock I paced thecell, and then, with all the terrors of a burglar, tiptoed down the stairs. There was no light, and the house was wrapped in silence. 

Earlier there had been everywhere sentries, and, not daring tobreathe, I waited for one of them to challenge, but, except for thecreaking of the stairs and of my ankle-bones, which seemed toexplode like firecrackers, there was not a sound. I was afraid, andwished myself safely back in my cell, but I was more afraid of Rupert, and I kept on feeling my way until I had reached the garden. Theresome one spoke to me in French, and I found my host. 

"The animals have gone, " he said; "all of them. I will give you a bednow, and when it is light you shall have breakfast. " I told him myorders were to leave his house at three. 

"But it is murder!" he said. With these cheering words in my ears, Ithanked him, and he bid me bonne chance. 

In my left hand I placed the pass, folded so that the red seal of theGeneral Staff would show, and a match-box. In the other hand I heldready a couple of matches. Each time a sentry challenged I struckthe matches on the box and held them in front of the red seal. Theinstant the matches flashed it was a hundred to one that the manwould shoot, but I could not speak German, and there was no otherway to make him understand. They were either too surprised or toosleepy to fire, for each of them let me pass. But after I had made amark of myself three times I lost my nerve and sought cover behind ahaystack. I lay there until there was light enough to distinguish treesand telegraph-poles, and then walked on to Ath. After that, when theystopped me, if they could not read, the red seal satisfied them; if theywere officers and could read, they cursed me with strange, uncleanoaths, and ordered me, in the German equivalent, to beat it. It was adelightful walk. I had had no sleep the night before and had eatennothing, and, though I had cut away most of my shoe, I could hardlytouch my foot to the road. Whenever in the villages I tried to bribe anyone to carry my knapsack or to give me food, the peasants ran fromme. They thought I was a German and talked Flemish, not French. Iwas more afraid of them and their shotguns than of the Germans, and I never entered a village unless German soldiers were enteringor leaving it. And the Germans gave me no reason to feel free fromcare. Every time they read my pass they were inclined to try me allover again, and twice searched my knapsack. 

After that happened the second time I guessed my letter to thePresident of France might prove a menace, and, tearing it into littlepieces, dropped it over a bridge, and with regret watched thathistorical document from the ex-President of one republic to thePresident of another float down the Sambre toward the sea. By noonI decided I would not be able to make the distance. For twenty-fourhours I had been without sleep or food, and I had been put throughan unceasing third degree, and I was nearly out. Added to that, thechance of my losing the road was excellent; and if I lost the road thefirst German who read my pass was ordered by it to shoot me. So Idecided to give myself up to the occupants of the next German cargoing toward Brussels and ask them to carry me there under arrest. Iwaited until an automobile approached, and then stood in front of itand held up my pass and pointed to the red seal. The car stopped, and the soldiers in front and the officer in the rear seat gazed at me inindignant amazement. The officer was a general, old and kindlylooking, and, by the grace of Heaven, as slow-witted as he was kind. He spoke no English, and his French was as bad as mine, and inconsequence he had no idea of what I was saying except that I hadorders from the General Staff to proceed at once to Brussels. I madea mystery of the pass, saying it was very confidential, but the red sealsatisfied him. He bade me courteously to take the seat at his side, and with intense satisfaction I heard him command his orderly to getdown and fetch my knapsack. The general was going, he said, onlyso far as Hal, but that far he would carry me. Hal was the last townnamed in my pass, and from Brussels only eleven miles distant. According to the schedule I had laid out for myself, I had not hoped toreach it by walking until the next day, but at the rate the car hadapproached I saw I would be there within two hours. My feelingswhen I sank back upon the cushions of that car and stretched out myweary legs and the wind whistled around us are too sacred for coldprint. It was a situation I would not have used in fiction. I was acondemned spy, with the hand of every German properly against me, and yet under the protection of a German general, and in luxuriousease, I was escaping from them at forty miles an hour. I had but oneregret. I wanted Rupert of Hentzau to see me. At Hal my luck stillheld. The steps of the Hôtel de Ville were crowded with generals. Ithought never in the world could there be so many generals, so manyflowing cloaks and spiked helmets. I was afraid of them. I was afraidthat when my general abandoned me the others might not prove soslow-witted or so kind. My general also seemed to regard them withdisfavor. He exclaimed impatiently. Apparently, to force his waythrough them, to cool his heels in an anteroom, did not appeal. It waslong past his luncheon hour and the restaurant of the Palace Hotelcalled him. He gave a sharp order to the chauffeur. 

"I go on to Brussels, " he said. "Desire you to accompany me?" I didnot know how to ask him in French not to make me laugh. I saw thegreat Palace of Justice that towers above the city with the sameemotions that one beholds the Statue of Liberty, but not until we hadreached the inner boulevards did I feel safe. There I bade my friend agrateful but hasty adieu, and in a taxicab, unwashed and unbrushed, Idrove straight to the American legation. To Mr. Whitlock I told thisstory, and with one hand that gentleman reached for his hat and withthe other for his stick. In the automobile of the legation we raced tothe Hôtel de Ville. There Mr. Whitlock, as the moving-picture peoplesay, "registered" indignation. Mr. Davis was present, he made itunderstood, not as a ticket-of-leave man, and because he had beenordered to report, but in spite of that fact. He was there as the friendof the American minister, and the word "Spion" must be removedfrom his papers. 

And so, on the pass that Rupert gave me, below where he hadwritten that I was to be treated as a spy, they wrote I was "not at all, ""gar nicht, " to be treated as a spy, and that I was well known to theAmerican minister, and to that they affixed the official seal. 

That ended it, leaving me with one valuable possession. It is this:should any one suggest that I am a spy, or that I am not a friend ofBrand Whitlock, I have the testimony of the Imperial GermanGovernment to the contrary. 

Chapter IIIThe Burning Of Louvain

After the Germans occupied Brussels they closed the road to Aix-la-Chapelle. A week later, to carry their wounded and prisoners, theyreopened it. But for eight days Brussels was isolated. The mail-trainsand the telegraph office were in the hands of the invaders. Theyaccepted our cables, censored them, and three days later told us, ifwe still wished, we could forward them. But only from Holland. By thisthey accomplished three things: they learned what we were writingabout them, for three days prevented any news from leaving the city, and offered us an inducement to visit Holland, so getting rid of us. 

The despatches of those diplomats who still remained in Brusselswere treated in the same manner. With the most cheerfulcomplacency the military authorities blue-pencilled their despatchesto their governments. When the diplomats learned of this, with theircode cables they sent open cables stating that their confidentialdespatches were being censored and delayed. They still weredelayed. To get any message out of Brussels it was necessary to usean automobile, and nearly every automobile had taken itself off toAntwerp. If a motor-car appeared it was at once commandeered. Thiswas true also of horses and bicycles. All over Brussels you sawdelivery wagons, private carriages, market carts with the shafts emptyand the horse and harness gone. After three days a German soldierwho did not own a bicycle was poor indeed. 

Requisitions were given for these machines, stating they would bereturned after the war, by which time they will be ready for the scrap-heap. Any one on a bicycle outside the city was arrested, so the onlyway to get messages through was by going on foot to Ostend orHolland, or by an automobile for which the German authoritieshad given a special pass. As no one knew when one of theseautomobiles might start, we carried always with us our cables andletters, and intrusted them to any stranger who was trying to run thelines. 

No one wished to carry our despatches, as he feared they mightcontain something unfavorable to the Germans, which, if he werearrested and the cables read, might bring him into greater trouble. Money for himself was no inducement. But I found if I gave money forthe Red Cross no one would refuse it, or to carry the messages. 

Three out of four times the stranger would be arrested and orderedback to Brussels, and our despatches, with their news valuedeparted, would be returned. 

An account of the Germans entering Brussels I sent by an Englishboy named Dalton, who, after being turned back three times, gotthrough by night, and when he arrived in England his adventureswere published in all the London papers. They were so thrilling thatthey made my story, for which he had taken the trip, extremely tamereading. 

Hugh Gibson, secretary of the American legation, was the first personin an official position to visit Antwerp after the Belgian Governmentmoved to that city, and, even with his passes and flag flying from hisautomobile, he reached Antwerp and returned to Brussels only aftermany delays and adventures. Not knowing the Belgians wereadvancing from the north, Gibson and his American flag were severaltimes under fire, and on the days he chose for his excursion his routeled him past burning towns and dead and wounded and between thelines of both forces actively engaged. 

He was carrying despatches from Brand Whitlock to Secretary Bryan. During the night he rested at Antwerp the first Zeppelin air-ship to visitthat city passed over it, dropping one bomb at the end of the block inwhich Gibson was sleeping. He was awakened by the explosion andheard all of those that followed. 

The next morning he was requested to accompany a committeeappointed by the Belgian Government to report upon the outrage, and he visited a house that had been wrecked, and saw what was leftof the bodies of those killed. People who were in the streets when theair-ship passed said it moved without any sound, as though the motorhad been shut off and it was being propelled by momentum. 

One bomb fell so near the palace where the Belgian Queen wassleeping as to destroy the glass in the windows and scar the walls. The bombs were large, containing smaller bombs of the size ofshrapnel. Like shrapnel, on impact they scattered bullets over aradius of forty yards. One man, who from a window in the eighth storyof a hotel watched the air-ship pass, stated that before each bomb fellhe saw electric torches signal from the roofs, as though givingdirections as to where the bombs should strike. 

After my arrest by the Germans, I found my usefulness in Brussels asa correspondent was gone, and I returned to London, and from thererejoined the Allies in Paris. 

I left Brussels on August 27th with Gerald Morgan and Will Irwin, ofCollier's, on a train carrying English prisoners and German wounded. In times of peace the trip to the German border lasts three hours, butin making it we were twenty-six hours, and by order of the authoritieswe were forbidden to leave the train. 

Carriages with cushions naturally were reserved for the wounded, sowe slept on wooden benches and on the floor. It was not possible toobtain food, and water was as scarce. At Graesbeek, ten miles fromBrussels, we first saw houses on fire. They continued with us toLiege. 

Village after village had been completely wrecked. In his march to thesea Sherman lived on the country. He did not destroy it, and asagainst the burning of Columbia must be placed to the discredit of theGermans the wiping out of an entire countryside. 

For many miles we saw procession after procession of peasantsfleeing from one burning village, which had been their home, to othervillages, to find only blackened walls and smouldering ashes. In nopart of northern Europe is there a countryside fairer than thatbetween Aix-la-Chapelle and Brussels, but the Germans had made ofit a graveyard. It looked as though a cyclone had uprooted its houses, gardens, and orchards and a prairie fire had followed. 

At seven o'clock in the evening we arrived at what for six hundredyears had been the city of Louvain. The Germans were burning it, and to hide their work kept us locked in the railroad carriages. But thestory was written against the sky, was told to us by German soldiersincoherent with excesses; and we could read it in the faces of womenand children being led to concentration camps and of citizens on theirway to be shot. 

The day before the Germans had sentenced Louvain to become awilderness, and with German system and love of thoroughness theyleft Louvain an empty, blackened shell. The reason for this appeal tothe torch and the execution of non-combatants, as given to Mr. Whitlock and myself on the morning I left Brussels by General vonLutwitz, the military governor, was this: The day before, while theGerman military commander of the troops in Louvain was at the Hôtelde Ville talking to the burgomaster, a son of the burgomaster, with anautomatic pistol, shot the chief of staff and German staff surgeons. 

Lutwitz claimed this was the signal for the civil guard, in civilianclothes on the roofs, to fire upon the German soldiers in the opensquare below. He said also the Belgians had quick-firing guns, brought from Antwerp. As for a week the Germans had occupiedLouvain and closely guarded all approaches, the story that there wasany gun-running is absurd. 

"Fifty Germans were killed and wounded, " said Lutwitz, "and for thatLouvain must be wiped out--so!" In pantomime with his fist he sweptthe papers across his table. 

"The Hôtel de Ville, " he added, "was a beautiful building; it is a pity itmust be destroyed. "

Were he telling us his soldiers had destroyed a kitchen-garden, histone could not have expressed less regret. 

Ten days before I had been in Louvain, when it was occupied byBelgian troops and King Albert and his staff. The city dates from theeleventh century, and the population was forty-two thousand. Thecitizens were brewers, lace-makers, and manufacturers of ornamentsfor churches. The university once was the most celebrated inEuropean cities and was the headquarters of the Jesuits. 

In the Louvain College many priests now in America have beeneducated, and ten days before, over the great yellow walls of thecollege, I had seen hanging two American flags. I had found the cityclean, sleepy, and pretty, with narrow, twisting streets and smartshops and cafés. Set in flower gardens were the houses, with redroofs, green shutters, and white walls. 

Over those that faced south had been trained pear-trees, theirbranches, heavy with fruit, spread out against the walls like branchesof candelabra. The town hall was an example of Gothic architecture, in detail and design more celebrated even than the town hall ofBruges or Brussels. It was five hundred years old, and lately hadbeen repaired with taste and at great cost. 

Opposite was the Church of St. Pierre, dating from the fifteenthcentury, a very noble building, with many chapels filled with carvingsof the time of the Renaissance in wood, stone, and iron. In theuniversity were one hundred and fifty thousand volumes. 

Near it was the bronze statue of Father Damien, priest of the lepercolony in the South Pacific, of whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote. 

On the night of the 27th these buildings were empty, explodedcartridges. Statues, pictures, carvings, parchments, archives--allthese were gone. 

No one defends the sniper. But because ignorant Mexicans, whentheir city was invaded, fired upon our sailors, we did not destroy VeraCruz. Even had we bombarded Vera Cruz, money could haverestored that city. Money can never restore Louvain. Great architectsand artists, dead these six hundred years, made it beautiful, and theirhandiwork belonged to the world. With torch and dynamite theGermans turned those masterpieces into ashes, and all the Kaiser'shorses and all his men cannot bring them back again. 

When our troop train reached Louvain, the entire heart of the city wasdestroyed, and the fire had reached the Boulevard Tirlemont, whichfaces the railroad station. The night was windless, and the sparksrose in steady, leisurely pillars, falling back into the furnace fromwhich they sprang. In their work the soldiers were moving from theheart of the city to the outskirts, street by street, from house to house. 

In each building they began at the first floor and, when that wasburning steadily, passed to the one next. There were no exceptions--whether it was a store, chapel, or private residence, it was destroyed. The occupants had been warned to go, and in each deserted shop orhouse the furniture was piled, the torch was stuck under it, and intothe air went the savings of years, souvenirs of children, of parents, heirlooms that had passed from generation to generation. 

The people had time only to fill a pillowcase and fly. Some were notso fortunate, and by thousands, like flocks of sheep, they wererounded up and marched through the night to concentration camps. We were not allowed to speak to any citizen of Louvain, but theGermans crowded the windows of the train, boastful, gloating, eagerto interpret. 

In the two hours during which the train circled the burning city warwas before us in its most hateful aspect. 

In other wars I have watched men on one hilltop, without haste, without heat, fire at men on another hill, and in consequence on bothsides good men were wasted. But in those fights there were nowomen or children, and the shells struck only vacant stretches ofveldt or uninhabited mountain sides. 

At Louvain it was war upon the defenceless, war upon churches, colleges, shops of milliners and lace-makers; war brought to thebedside and the fireside; against women harvesting in the fields, against children in wooden shoes at play in the streets. 

At Louvain that night the Germans were like men after an orgy. 

There were fifty English prisoners, erect and soldierly. In the ocean ofgray the little patch of khaki looked pitifully lonely, but they regardedthe men who had outnumbered but not defeated them with calm, uncurious eyes. In one way I was glad to see them there. Later theywill bear witness. They will tell how the enemy makes a wildernessand calls it war. It was a most weird picture. On the high ground rosethe broken spires of the Church of St. Pierre and the Hôtel de Ville, and descending like steps were row beneath row of houses, roofless, with windows like blind eyes. The fire had reached the last row ofhouses, those on the Boulevard de Jodigne. Some of these werealready cold, but others sent up steady, straight columns of flame. Inothers at the third and fourth stories the window curtains still hung, flowers still filled the window-boxes, while on the first floor the torchhad just passed and the flames were leaping. Fire had destroyed theelectric plant, but at times the flames made the station so light thatyou could see the second-hand of your watch, and again all wasdarkness, lit only by candles. 

You could tell when an officer passed by the electric torch he carriedstrapped to his chest. In the darkness the gray uniforms filled thestation with an army of ghosts. You distinguished men only whenpipes hanging from their teeth glowed red or their bayonets flashed. 

Outside the station in the public square the people of Louvain passedin an unending procession, women bareheaded, weeping, mencarrying the children asleep on their shoulders, all hemmed in by theshadowy army of gray wolves. Once they were halted, and amongthem were marched a line of men. These were on their way to beshot. And, better to point the moral, an officer halted both processionsand, climbing to a cart, explained why the men were to die. Hewarned others not to bring down upon themselves a like vengeance. 

As those being led to spend the night in the fields looked across tothose marked for death they saw old friends, neighbors of longstanding, men of their own household. The officer bellowing at themfrom the cart was illuminated by the headlights of an automobile. Helooked like an actor held in a spotlight on a darkened stage. 

It was all like a scene upon the stage, unreal, inhuman. You felt itcould not be true. You felt that the curtain of fire, purring and cracklingand sending up hot sparks to meet the kind, calm stars, was only apainted backdrop; that the reports of rifles from the dark ruins camefrom blank cartridges, and that these trembling shopkeepers andpeasants ringed in bayonets would not in a few minutes really die, butthat they themselves and their homes would be restored to theirwives and children. 

You felt it was only a nightmare, cruel and uncivilized. And then youremembered that the German Emperor has told us what it is. It is hisHoly War. 

Chapter IVParis In War Time

Those who, when the Germans approached, fled from Paris, described it as a city doomed, as a waste place, desolate as agraveyard. Those who run away always are alarmists. They are onthe defensive. They must explain why they ran away. 

Early in September Paris was like a summer hotel out of season. Theowners had temporarily closed it; the windows were barred, thefurniture and paintings draped in linen, a caretaker and a night-watchman were in possession. 

It is an old saying that all good Americans go to Paris when they die. Most of them take no chances and prefer to visit it while they are alive. Before this war, if the visitor was disappointed, it was the fault ofthe visitor, not of Paris. She was all things to all men. To some sheoffered triumphal arches, statues, paintings; to others by day racing, and by night Maxims and the Rat Mort. Some loved her for the book-stalls along the Seine and ateliers of the Latin Quarter; some for herparks, forests, gardens, and boulevards; some because of theLuxembourg; some only as a place where everybody was smiling, happy, and polite, where they were never bored, where they werealways young, where the lights never went out and there was no earlycall. Should they to-day revisit her they would find her grown graveand decorous, and going to bed at sundown, but still smiling bravely, still polite. 

You cannot wipe out Paris by removing two million people and closingCartier's and the Café de Paris. There still remains some hundredmiles of boulevards, the Seine and her bridges, the Arc de Triomphe, with the sun setting behind it, and the Gardens of the Tuilleries. Youcannot send them to the store-house or wrap them in linen. And thespirit of the people of Paris you cannot crush nor stampede. 

Between Paris in peace and Paris to-day the most striking differenceis lack of population. Idle rich, the employees of the government, andtourists of all countries are missing. They leave a great emptiness. When you walk the streets you feel either that you are up very early, before any one is awake, or that you are in a boom town from whichthe boom has departed. 

On almost every one of the noted shops "Fermé" is written, or it hasbeen turned over to the use of the Red Cross. Of the smaller shopsthose that remain open are chiefly bakeshops and chemists, but noman need go naked or hungry; in every block he will find at least oneplace where he can be clothed and fed. But the theatres are allclosed. No one is in a mood to laugh, and certainly no one wishes toconsider anything more serious than the present crisis. So there areno revues, operas, or comedies. 

The thing you missed perhaps most were the children in the Avenuedes Champs Elysées. For generations over that part of the publicgarden the children have held sway. They knew it belonged to them, and into the gravel walks drove their tin spades with the same senseof ownership as at Deauville they dig up the shore. Their straw hatsand bare legs, their Normandy nurses, with enormous head-dresses, blue for a boy and pink for a girl, were, of the sights of Paris, one ofthe most familiar. And when the children vanished they left a drearywilderness. You could look for a mile, from the Place de la Concordeto the Arc de Triomphe, and not see a child. The stalls, where theybought hoops and skipping-ropes, the flying wooden horses, Punch-and-Judy shows, booths where with milk they refreshed themselvesand with bonbons made themselves ill, all were deserted andboarded up. 

The closing down of the majority of the shops and hotels was not dueto a desire on the part of those employed in them to avoid theGermans, but to get at the Germans. 

On shop after shop are signs reading: "The proprietor and staff arewith the colors, " or "The personnel of this establishment is mobilized, "or "Monsieur------informs his clients that he is with his regiment. "

In the absence of men at the front, Frenchwomen, at all timescapable and excellent managers, have surpassed themselves. In myhotel there were employed seven women and one man. In anotherhotel I visited the entire staff was composed of women. 

An American banker offered his twenty-two polo ponies to thegovernment. They were refused as not heavy enough. He did notknow that, and supposed he had lost them. Later he learned from thewife of his trainer, a Frenchwoman, that those employed in his stablesat Versailles who had not gone to the front at the approach of theGermans had fled, and that for three weeks his string of twenty-twohorses had been fed, groomed, and exercised by the trainer's wifeand her two little girls. 

To an American it was very gratifying to hear the praise of the Frenchand English for the American ambulance at Neuilly. It is the outgrowthof the American hospital, and at the start of this war was organized byMrs. Herrick, wife of our ambassador, and other ladies of theAmerican colony in Paris, and the American doctors. They took overthe Lycée Pasteur, an enormous school at Neuilly, that had just beenfinished and never occupied, and converted it into what is a mostsplendidly equipped hospital. In walking over the building you find ithard to believe that it was intended for any other than its present use. The operating rooms, kitchens, wards, rooms for operating byRoentgen rays, and even a chapel have been installed. 

The organization and system are of the highest order. Every one in itis American. The doctors are the best in Paris. The nurses andorderlies are both especially trained for the work and volunteers. Thespirit of helpfulness and unselfishness is everywhere apparent. Certain members of the American colony, who never in their livesthought of any one save themselves, and of how to escape boredom, are toiling like chambermaids and hall porters, performing mostdisagreeable tasks, not for a few hours a week, but unceasingly, dayafter day. No task is too heavy for them or too squalid. They help allalike--Germans, English, major-generals, and black Turcos. 

There are three hundred patients. The staff of the hospital numbersone hundred and fifty. It is composed of the best-known Americandoctors in Paris and a few from New York. Among the volunteernurses and attendants are wives of bankers in Paris, American girlswho have married French titles, and girls who since the war camehave lost employment as teachers of languages, stenographers, andgovernesses. The men are members of the Jockey Club, artstudents, medical students, clerks, and boulevardiers. They are allworking together in most admirable harmony and under anorganization that in its efficiency far surpasses that of any otherhospital in Paris. Later it is going to split the American colony in twain. If you did not work in the American ambulance you won't belong. 

Attached to the hospital is a squadron of automobile ambulances, tenof which were presented by the Ford Company and ten purchased. Their chassis have been covered with khaki hoods and fitted tocarry two wounded men and attendants. On their runs they areaccompanied by automobiles with medical supplies, tires, andgasolene. The ambulances scout at the rear of the battle line andcarry back those which the field-hospitals cannot handle. 

One day I watched the orderlies who accompany these ambulanceshandling about forty English wounded, transferring them from theautomobiles to the reception hall, and the smartness and intelligencewith which the members of each crew worked together was like thatof a champion polo team. The editor of a London paper, who was inParis investigating English hospital conditions, witnessed the sameperformance, and told me that in handling the wounded it surpassedin efficiency anything he had seen. 

Chapter VThe Battle Of Soissons

The struggle for the possession of Soissons lasted two days. Thesecond day's battle, which I witnessed, ended with the city in thepossession of the French. It was part of the seven days' ofcontinuous fighting that began on September 6th at Meaux. Then theGerman left wing, consisting of the army of General von Kluck, was atClaye, within fifteen miles of Paris. But the French and English, instead of meeting the advance with a defence, themselves attacked. Steadily, at the rate of ten miles a day, they drove the Germans backacross the Aisne and the Marne, and so saved the city. 

When this retrograde movement of the Germans began, those whocould not see the nature of the fighting believed that the German lineof communication, the one from Aix-la-Chapelle through Belgium, hadproved too long, and that the left wing was voluntarily withdrawing tomeet the new line of communication through Luxembourg. But thefields of battle beyond Meaux, through which it was necessary topass to reach the fight at Sois-sons, showed no evidence of leisurelywithdrawal. On both sides there were evidences of the mostdesperate fighting and of artillery fire that was wide-spread anddesolating. That of the Germans, intended to destroy the road fromMeaux and to cover their retreat, showed marksmanship so accurateand execution so terrible as, while it lasted, to render pursuitimpossible. 

The battle-field stretched from the hills three miles north of Meaux forfour miles along the road and a mile to either side. The road is linedwith poplars three feet across and as high as a five-story building. Forthe four miles the road was piled with branches of these trees. Thetrees themselves were split as by lightning, or torn in half, as with yourhands you could tear apart a loaf of bread. Through some, solid shellhad passed, leaving clean holes. Others looked as though drunkenwoodsmen with axes from roots to topmost branches had slashedthem in crazy fury. Some shells had broken the trunks in half as ahurricane snaps a mast. 

That no human being could survive such a bombardment were manygrewsome proofs. In one place for a mile the road was lined withthose wicker baskets in which the Germans carry their ammunition. These were filled with shells, unexploded, and behind the trencheswere hundreds more of these baskets, some for the shells of thesiege-guns, as large as lobster-pots or umbrella-stands, and others, each with three compartments, for shrapnel. In gutters along the roadand in the wheat-fields these brass shells flashed in the sunshine liketiny mirrors. 

The four miles of countryside over which for four days both armieshad ploughed the earth with these shells was the picture of completedesolation. The rout of the German army was marked by knapsacks, uniforms, and accoutrements scattered over the fields on either handas far as you could see. Red Cross flags hanging from bushesshowed where there had been dressing stations. Under them wereblood-stains, bandages and clothing, and boots piled in heaps ashigh as a man's chest, and the bodies of those German soldiers thatthe first aid had failed to save. 

After death the body is mercifully robbed of its human aspect. You arespared the thought that what is lying in the trenches among theshattered trees and in the wheat-fields staring up at the sky was oncea man. It appears to be only a bundle of clothes, a scarecrow thathas tumbled among the grain it once protected. But it gives a terriblemeaning to the word "missing. " When you read in the reports fromthe War Office that five thousand are "missing, " you like to think ofthem safely cared for in a hospital or dragging out the period of thewar as prisoners. But the real missing are the unidentified dead. Intime some peasant will bury them, but he will not understand thepurpose of the medal each wears around his neck. And so, with thedead man will be buried his name and the number of his regiment. Noone will know where he fell or where he lies. Some one will alwayshope that he will return. For, among the dead his name did notappear. He was reported "missing. "

The utter wastefulness of war was seldom more clearly shown. Carcasses of horses lined the road. Some few of these had beenkilled by shell-fire. Others, worn out and emaciated, and bearing thebrand of the German army, had been mercifully destroyed; but thegreater number of them were the farm horses of peasants, stillwearing their head-stalls or the harness of the plough. That theymight not aid the enemy as remounts, the Germans in their retreathad shot them. I saw four and five together in the yards of stables, the bullet-hole of an automatic in the head of each. Others lay besidethe market cart, others by the canal, where they had sought water. 

Less pitiful, but still evidencing the wastefulness of war, were themotor-trucks, and automobiles that in the flight had been abandoned. For twenty miles these automobiles were scattered along the road. There were so many one stopped counting them. Added to their losswere two shattered German airships. One I saw twenty-six kilometresoutside of Meaux and one at Bouneville. As they fell they had buriedtheir motors deep in the soft earth and their wings were twistedwrecks of silk and steel. 

All the fields through which the army passed had become waste land. Shells had re-ploughed them. Horses and men had camped in them. The haystacks, gathered by the sweat of the brow and patiently set intrim rows were trampled in the mud and scattered to the winds. All thesmaller villages through which I passed were empty of people, andsince the day before, when the Germans occupied them, none of theinhabitants had returned. These villages were just as the Germanshad left them. The streets were piled with grain on which the soldiershad slept, and on the sidewalks in front of the better class of housestables around which the officers had eaten still remained, the bottleshalf empty, the food half eaten. 

In a château beyond Neufchelles the doors and windows were openand lace curtains were blowing in the breeze. From the garden youcould see paintings on the walls, books on the tables. Outside, on thelawn, surrounded by old and charming gardens, apparently thegeneral and his staff had prepared to dine. The table was set for adozen, and on it were candles in silver sticks, many bottles of red andwhite wine, champagne, liqueurs, and coffee-cups of the finest china. From their banquet some alarm had summoned the officers. Theplace was as they had left it, the coffee untasted, the candles burnedto the candlesticks, and red stains on the cloth where the burgundyhad spilled. In the bright sunlight, and surrounded by flowers, thedeserted table and the silent, stately château seemed like thesleeping palace of the fairy-tale. 

Though the humor of troops retreating is an ugly one, I saw nooutrages such as I saw in Belgium. Except in the villages of Neuf-chelles and Varreddes, there was no sign of looting or wantondestruction. But in those two villages the interior of every home andshop was completely wrecked. In the other villages the destructionwas such as is permitted by the usages of war, such as the blowingup of bridges, the burning of the railroad station, and the cutting oftelegraph-wires. 

Not until Bouneville, thirty kilometres beyond Meaux, did I catch upwith the Allies. There I met some English Tommies who were trying tofind their column. They had no knowledge of the French language, orwhere they were, or where their regiment was, but were quiteconfident of finding it, and were as cheerful as at manœuvres. Outside of Chaudun the road was blocked with tirailleurs, Algerians inlight-blue Zouave uniforms, and native Turcos from Morocco in khaki, with khaki turbans. They shivered in the autumn sunshine, and werewrapped in burnooses of black and white. They were making aturning movement to attack the German right, and were being hurriedforward. They had just driven the German rear-guard out of Chaudun, and said that the fighting was still going on at Soissons. But the onlysign I saw of it were two Turcos who had followed the Germans toofar. They lay sprawling in the road, and had so lately fallen that theirrifles still lay under them. Three miles farther I came upon theadvance line of the French army, and for the remainder of the daywatched a most remarkable artillery duel, which ended with Soissonsin the hands of the Allies. 

Soissons is a pretty town of four thousand inhabitants. It is chieflyknown for its haricot beans, and since the Romans held it underCaesar it has been besieged many times. Until to-day the Germanshad held it for two weeks. In 1870 they bombarded it for four days, and there is, or was, in Soissons, in the Place de la République, amonument to those citizens of Soissons whom after that siege theGermans shot. The town lies in the valley of the River Aisne, which isformed by two long ridges running south and north. 

The Germans occupied the hills to the south, but when attackedoffered only slight resistance and withdrew to the hills opposite. InSoissons they left a rear-guard to protect their supplies, who weredestroying all bridges leading into the town. At the time I arrived aforce of Turcos had been ordered forward to clean Soissons of theGermans, and the French artillery was endeavoring to disclose theirpositions on the hills. The loss of the bridges did not embarrass theblack men. In rowboats they crossed to Soissons and were warmlygreeted. Soissons was drawing no color-line. The Turcos werefollowed by engineers, who endeavored to repair one bridge and inconsequence were heavily shelled with shrapnel, while, with the intentto destroy the road and retard the French advance, the hills wherethe French had halted were being pounded by German siege-guns. 

This was at a point four kilometres from Chaudun, between thevillages of Breuil and Courtelles. From this height you could seealmost to Compiègne, and thirty miles in front in the direction of Saint-Quentin. It was a panorama of wooded hills, gray villages in fields ofyellow grain, miles of poplars marking the roads, and below us theflashing waters of the Aisne and the canal, with at our feet thesteeples of the cathedral of Soissons and the gate to the old abbey ofThomas à Becket. Across these steeples the shells sang, and onboth sides of the Aisne Valley the artillery was engaged. The windwas blowing forty knots, which prevented the use of the Frenchaeroplanes, but it cleared the air, and, helped by brilliant sunshine, itwas possible to follow the smoke of the battle for fifteen miles. Thewind was blowing toward our right, where we were told were theEnglish, and though as their shrapnel burst we could see the flash ofguns and rings of smoke, the report of the guns did not reach us. Itgave the curious impression of a bombardment conducted in uttersilence. 

From our left the wind carried the sounds clearly. The jar and roar ofthe cannon were insistent, and on both sides of the valley the hilltopswere wrapped with white clouds. Back of us in the wheat-fields shellswere setting fire to the giant haystacks and piles of grain, which in theclear sunshine burned a blatant red. At times shells would strike inthe villages of Breuil and Vauxbain, and houses would burst intoflames, the gale fanning the fire to great height and hiding the villagein smoke. Some three hundred yards ahead of us the shells ofGerman siege-guns were trying to destroy the road, which thepoplars clearly betrayed. But their practice was at fault, and the shellsfell only on either side. When they struck they burst with a roar, casting up black fumes and digging a grave twenty yards incircumference. 

But the French soldiers disregarded them entirely. In the trencheswhich the Germans had made and abandoned they hid from the windand slept peacefully. Others slept in the lee of the haystacks, their redbreeches and blue coats making wonderful splashes of color againstthe yellow grain. For seven days these same men had been fightingwithout pause, and battles bore them. 

Late in the afternoon, all along the fifteen miles of battle, firingceased, for the Germans were falling back, and once more Soissons, freed of them as fifteen hundred years ago she had freed herself ofthe Romans, held out her arms to the Allies. 

Chapter VIThe Bombardment of Rheims

In several ways the city of Rheims is celebrated. Some know her onlythrough her cathedral, where were crowned all but six of the kings ofFrance, and where the stained-glass windows, with those in thecathedrals of Chartres and Burgos, Spain, are the most beautiful in allthe world. Children know Rheims through the wicked magpie whichthe archbishop excommunicated, and to their elders, if they are rich, Rheims is the place from which comes all their champagne. 

On September 4th the Germans entered Rheims, and occupied ituntil the 12th, when they retreated across the Vesle to the hills northof the city. 

On the 18th the French forces, having entered Rheims, the Germansbombarded the city with field-guns and howitzers. 

Rheims is fifty-six miles from Paris, but, though I started at an earlyhour, so many bridges had been destroyed that I did not reach thecity until three o'clock in the afternoon. At that hour the Frenchartillery, to the east at Nogent and immediately outside the northernedge of the town, were firing on the German positions, and theGermans were replying, their shells falling in the heart of the city. 

The proportion of those that struck the cathedral or houses within ahundred yards of it to those falling on other buildings was about six toone. So what damage the cathedral suffered was from blowsdelivered not by accident but with intent. As the priests put it, firing onthe church was "exprès. "

The cathedral dominates not only the city but the countryside. It risesfrom the plain as Gibraltar rises from the sea, as the pyramids risefrom the desert. And at a distance of six miles, as you approach fromParis along the valley of the Marne, it has more the appearance of afortress than a church. But when you stand in the square beneathand look up, it is entirely ecclesiastic, of noble and magnificentproportions, in design inspired, much too sublime for the kings it hascrowned, and almost worthy of the king in whose honor, sevenhundred years ago, it was reared. It has been called "perhaps themost beautiful structure produced in the Middle Ages. " On the westfaçade, rising tier upon tier, are five hundred and sixty statues andcarvings. The statues are of angels, martyrs, patriarchs, apostles, thevices and virtues, the Virgin and Child. In the centre of these is thefamous rose window; on either side giant towers. 

At my feet down the steps leading to the three portals were pools ofblood. There was a priest in the square, a young man with white hairand with a face as strong as one of those of the saints carved instone, and as gentle. He was curé doyen of the Church of St. Jacques, M. Chanoine Frezet, and he explained the pools of blood. After the Germans retreated, the priests had carried the Germanwounded up the steps into the nave of the cathedral and for themhad spread straw upon the stone flagging. 

The curé guided me to the side door, unlocked it, and led the way intothe cathedral. It is built in the form of a crucifix, and so vast is theedifice that many chapels are lost in it, and the lower half is in ashadow. But from high above the stained windows of the thirteenthcentury, or what was left of them, was cast a glow so gorgeous, sowonderful, so pure that it seemed to come direct from the other world. 

From north and south the windows shed a radiance of deep blue, likethe blue of the sky by moonlight on the coldest night of winter, andfrom the west the great rose window glowed with the warmth andbeauty of a thousand rubies. Beneath it, bathed in crimson light, where for generations French men and women have knelt in prayer, where Joan of Arc helped place the crown on Charles VII, was piledthree feet of dirty straw, and on the straw were gray-coated Germans, covered with the mud of the fields, caked with blood, white andhaggard from the loss of it, from the lack of sleep, rest, and food. Theentire west end of the cathedral looked like a stable, and in the blueand purple rays from the gorgeous windows the wounded were asunreal as ghosts. Already two of them had passed into the world ofghosts. They had not died from their wounds, but from a shell sent bytheir own people. 

It had come screaming into this backwater of war, and, tearing outleaded window-panes as you would destroy cobwebs, had burstamong those who already had paid the penalty. And so two of them, done with pack-drill, goose-step, half rations and forced marches, layunder the straw the priests had heaped upon them. The toes of theirboots were pointed grotesquely upward. Their gray hands wereclasped rigidly as though in prayer. 

Half hidden in the straw, the others were as silent and almost as still. Since they had been dropped upon the stone floor they had notmoved, but lay in twisted, unnatural attitudes. Only their eyes showedthat they lived. These were turned beseechingly upon the FrenchRed Cross doctors, kneeling waist-high in the straw and unreelinglong white bandages. The wounded watched them drawing slowlynearer, until they came, fighting off death, clinging to life asshipwrecked sailors cling to a raft and watch the boats pulling towardthem. 

A young German officer, his smart cavalry cloak torn and slashed, and filthy with dried mud and blood and with his eyes in bandages, groped toward a pail of water, feeling his way with his foot, his armsoutstretched, clutching the air. To guide him a priest took his arm, andthe officer turned and stumbled against him. Thinking the priest wasone of his own men, he swore at him, and then, to learn if he woreshoulder-straps, ran his fingers over the priest's shoulders, and, finding a silk cassock, said quickly in French: "Pardon me, my father;I am blind. "

As the young curé guided me through the wrecked cathedral hisindignation and his fear of being unjust waged a fine battle. "Everysummer, " he said, "thousands of your fellow countrymen visit thecathedral. They come again and again. They love these beautifulwindows. They will not permit them to be destroyed. Will you tell themwhat you saw?"

It is no pleasure to tell what I saw. Shells had torn out some of thewindows, the entire sash, glass, and stone frame--all was gone; onlya jagged hole was left. On the floor lay broken carvings, pieces ofstone from flying buttresses outside that had been hurled through theembrasures, tangled masses of leaden window-sashes, like twistedcoils of barbed wire, and great brass candelabra. The steel ropes thatsupported them had been shot away, and they had plunged to theflagging below, carrying with them their scarlet silk tassels heavy withthe dust of centuries. And everywhere was broken glass. Not one ofthe famous blue windows was intact. None had been totallydestroyed, but each had been shattered, and through the aperturesthe sun blazed blatantly. 

We walked upon glass more precious than precious stones. It wasbeyond price. No one can replace it. Seven hundred years ago thesecret of the glass died. Diamonds can be bought anywhere, pearlscan be matched, but not the stained glass of Rheims. And under ourfeet, with straw and caked blood, it lay crushed into tiny fragments. When you held a piece of it between your eye and the sun it glowedwith a light that never was on land or sea. 

War is only waste. The German Emperor thinks it is thousands ofmen in flashing breastplates at manoeuvres, galloping past him, shouting "Hoch der Kaiser!" Until this year that is all of war he hasever seen. 

I have seen a lot of it, and real war is his high-born officer with hiseyes shot out, his peasant soldiers with their toes sticking stifflythrough the straw, and the windows of Rheims, that for centuries withtheir beauty glorified the Lord, swept into a dust heap. 

Outside the cathedral I found the bombardment of the city was stillgoing forward and that the French batteries to the north and eastwere answering gun for gun. How people will act under unusualconditions no one can guess. Many of the citizens of Rheims wereabandoning their homes and running through the streets leadingwest, trembling, weeping, incoherent with terror, carrying nothing withthem. Others were continuing the routine of life with anxious faces butmaking no other sign. The great majority had moved to the west ofthe city to the Paris gate, and for miles lined the road, but had takenlittle or nothing with them, apparently intending to return at nightfall. They were all of the poorer class. The houses of the rich were closed, as were all the shops, except a few cafés and those that offered forsale bread, meat, and medicine. 

During the morning the bombardment destroyed many houses. Oneto each block was the average, except around the cathedral, wheretwo hotels that face it and the Palace of Justice had been poundedbut not destroyed. Other shops and residences facing the cathedralhad been ripped open from roof to cellar. In one a fire was burningbriskly, and firemen were playing on it with hose. I was their onlyaudience. A sight that at other times would have collected half ofRheims and blocked traffic, in the excitement of the bombardmentfailed to attract. The Germans were using howitzers. Where shells hitin the street they tore up the Belgian blocks for a radius of five yards, and made a hole as though a water-main had burst. When they hit ahouse, that house had to be rebuilt. Before they struck it was possibleto follow the direction of the shells by the sound. It was like thejangling of many telegraph-wires. 

A hundred yards north of the cathedral I saw a house hit at the thirdstory. The roof was of gray slate, high and sloping, with tall chimneys. When the shell exploded the roof and chimneys disappeared. You didnot see them sink and tumble; they merely vanished. They had beena part of the sky-line of Rheims; then a shell removed them andanother roof fifteen feet lower down became the sky-line. 

I walked to the edge of the city, to the northeast, but at the outskirtsall the streets were barricaded with carts and paving-stones, andwhen I wanted to pass forward to the French batteries the officers incharge of the barricades refused permission. At this end of the town, held in reserve in case of a German advance, the streets werepacked with infantry. The men were going from shop to shop trying tofind one the Germans had not emptied. Tobacco was what theysought. 

They told me they had been all the way to Belgium and back, but Inever have seen men more fit. Where Germans are haggard andshow need of food and sleep, the French were hard and movedquickly and were smiling. 

One reason for this is that even if the commissariat is slow they arefed by their own people, and when in Belgium by the Allies. But whenthe Germans pass the people hide everything eatable and bolt thedoors. And so, when the German supply wagons fail to come up themen starve. 

I went in search of the American consul, William Bardel. Everybodyseemed to know him, and all men spoke well of him. They liked himbecause he stuck to his post, but the mayor had sent for him, and Icould find neither him nor the mayor. 

When I left the cathedral I had told my chauffeur to wait near by it, notbelieving the Germans would continue to make it their point of attack. He waited until two houses within a hundred yards of him wereknocked down, and then went away from there, leaving word with thesentry that I could find him outside the gate to Paris. When I foundhim he was well outside and refused to return, saying he would sleepin his car. 

On the way back I met a steady stream of women and old menfleeing before the shells. Their state was very pitiful. Some of themseemed quite dazed with fear and ran, dodging, from one sidewalk tothe other, and as shells burst above them prayed aloud and crossedthemselves. Others were busy behind the counters of their shopsserving customers, and others stood in doorways holding in theirhands their knitting. Frenchwomen of a certain class always knit. Ifthey were waiting to be electrocuted they would continue knitting. 

The bombardment had grown sharper and the rumble of guns wasuninterrupted, growling like thunder after a summer storm or as theshells passed shrieking and then bursting with jarring detonations. Underfoot the pavements were inch-deep with fallen glass, and asyou walked it tinkled musically. With inborn sense of order, some ofthe housewives abandoned their knitting and calmly swept up theglass into neat piles. Habit is often so much stronger than fear. So iscuriosity. All the boys and many young men and maidens were in themiddle of the street watching to see where the shells struck and onthe lookout for aeroplanes. When about five o'clock one sailed overthe city, no one knew whether it was German or French, but everyone followed it, apparently intending if it launched a bomb to be in atthe death. 

I found all the hotels closed and on their doors I pounded in vain, andwas planning to go back to my car when I stumbled upon the Hôteldu Nord. It was open and the proprietress, who was knitting, told methe table-d'hôte dinner was ready. Not wishing to miss dinner, I haltedan aged citizen who was fleeing from the city and asked him to carrya note to the American consul inviting him to dine. But the aged mansaid the consulate was close to where the shells were falling and thatto approach it was as much as his life was worth. I asked him howmuch his life was worth in money, and he said two francs. 

He did not find the consul, and I shared the table d'hôte with threetearful old French ladies, each of whom had husband or son at thefront. That would seem to have been enough without being shelled athome. It is a commonplace, but it is nevertheless true that in war it isthe women who suffer. The proprietress walked around the table, stillknitting, and told us tales of German officers who until the day beforehad occupied her hotel, and her anecdotes were not intended tomake German officers popular. 

The bombardment ceased at eight o'clock, but at four the nextmorning it woke me, and as I departed for Paris salvoes of Frenchartillery were returning the German fire. 

Before leaving I revisited the cathedral to see if during the night it hadbeen further mutilated. Around it shells were still falling, and thesquare in front was deserted. In the rain the roofless houses, shattered windows, and broken carvings that littered the streetpresented a picture of melancholy and useless desolation. Aroundthree sides of the square not a building was intact. But facing thewreckage the bronze statue of Joan of Arc sat on her bronze charger, uninjured and untouched. In her right hand, lifted high above her asthough defying the German shells, some one overnight had lashedthe flag of France. 

The next morning the newspapers announced that the cathedral wasin flames, and I returned to Rheims. The papers also gave the twoofficial excuses offered by the Germans for the destruction of thechurch. One was that the French batteries were so placed that inreplying to them it was impossible to avoid shelling the city. 

I know where the French batteries were, and if the German gunsaimed at them by error missed them and hit the cathedral, theGerman marksmanship is deteriorating. To find the range the artillerysends what in the American army are called brace shots--one aimedat a point beyond the mark and one short of it. From the explosions ofthese two shells the gunner is able to determine how far he is off thetarget and accordingly regulates his sights. Not more, at the most, than three of these experimental brace shots should be necessary, and, as one of each brace is purposely aimed to fall short of thetarget, only three German shells, or, as there were two Frenchpositions, six German shells should have fallen beyond the batteriesand into the city. And yet for four days the city was bombarded!

To make sure, I asked French, English, and American army officerswhat margin of error they thought excusable after the range wasdetermined. They all agreed that after his range was found an artilleryofficer who missed it by from fifty to one hundred yards ought to becourt-martialled. The Germans "missed" by one mile. 

The other excuse given by the Germans for the destruction of thecathedral was that the towers had been used by the French formilitary purposes. On arriving at Rheims the question I first askedwas whether this was true. The abbé Chinot, curé of the chapel of thecathedral, assured me most solemnly and earnestly it was not. TheFrench and the German staffs, he said, had mutually agreed that onthe towers of the cathedral no quick-firing guns should be placed, andby both sides this agreement was observed. After entering Rheimsthe French, to protect the innocent citizens against bombs droppedby German air-ships, for two nights placed a search-light on thetowers, but, fearing this might be considered a breach of agreementas to the mitrailleuses, the abbé Chinot ordered the search-lightwithdrawn. Five days later, during which time the towers were notoccupied and the cathedral had been converted into a hospital for theGerman wounded and Red Cross flags were hanging from bothtowers, the Germans opened fire upon it. Had it been the search-lightto which the Germans objected, they would have fired upon it when itwas in evidence, not five days after it had disappeared. 

When, with the abbé Chinot, I spent the day in what is left of thecathedral, the Germans still were shelling it. Two shells fell withintwenty-five yards of us. It was at that time that the photographs thatillustrate this chapter were taken. 

The fire started in this way. For some months the northeast tower ofthe cathedral had been under repair and surrounded by scaffolding. On September 19th a shell set fire to the outer roof of the cathedral, which is of lead and oak. The fire spread to the scaffolding and fromthe scaffolding to the wooden beams of the portals, hundred of yearsold. The abbé Chinot, young/alert, and daring, ran out upon thescaffolding and tried to cut the cords that bound it. 

In other parts of the city the fire department was engaged with fire litby the bombardment, and unaided, the flames gained upon him. Seeing this, he called for volunteers, and, under the direction of theArchbishop of Rheims, they carried on stretchers from the burningbuilding the wounded Germans. The rescuing parties were not aminute too soon. Already from the roofs molten lead, as deadly asbullets, was falling among the wounded. The blazing doors hadturned the straw on which they lay into a prairie fire. 

Splashed by the molten lead and threatened by falling timbers, thepriests, at the risk of their lives and limbs, carried out the woundedGermans, sixty in all. 

But, after bearing them to safety, their charges were confronted with anew danger. Inflamed by the sight of their own dead, four hundredcitizens having been killed by the bombardment, and by the loss oftheir cathedral, the people of Rheims who were gathered about theburning building called for the lives of the German prisoners. "Theyare barbarians, " they cried. "Kill them!" Archbishop Landreaux andAbbé Chinot placed themselves in front of the wounded. 

"Before you kill them, " they cried, "you must first kill us. "

This is not highly colored fiction, but fact. It is more than fact. It ishistory, for the picture of the venerable archbishop, with his cathedralblazing behind him, facing a mob of his own people in defence of theirenemies, will always live in the annals of this war and in the annals ofthe church. 

There were other features of this fire and bombardment which theCatholic Church will not allow to be forgotten. The leaden roofs weredestroyed, the oak timbers that for several hundred years hadsupported them were destroyed, stone statues and flying buttressesweighing many tons were smashed into atoms, but not a singlecrucifix was touched, not one waxen or wooden image of the Virgindisturbed, not one painting of the Holy Family marred. 

I saw the Gobelin tapestries, more precious than spun gold, intact, while sparks fell about them, and lying beneath them were iron boltstwisted by fire, broken rooftrees and beams still smouldering. 

But the special Providence that saved the altars was not omnipotent. The windows that were the glory of the cathedral were wrecked. Through some the shells had passed, others the explosions hadblown into tiny fragments. Where, on my first visit, I saw in the stainedglass gaping holes, now the whole window had been torn from thewalls. Statues of saints and crusader and cherubim lay in mangledfragments. The great bells, each of which is as large as the LibertyBell in Philadelphia, that for hundreds of years for Rheims havesounded the angelus, were torn from their oak girders and melted intoblack masses of silver and copper, without shape and without sound. Never have I looked upon a picture of such pathos, of such wantonand wicked destruction. 

The towers still stand, the walls still stand, for beneath the roofs oflead the roof of stone remained, but what is intact is a pitiful, distortedmass where once were exquisite and noble features. It is like the faceof a beautiful saint scarred with vitriol. 

Two days before, when I walked through the cathedral, the scenewas the same as when kings were crowned. You stood where Joanof Arc received the homage of France. When I returned I walkedupon charred ashes, broken stone, and shattered glass. Where oncethe light was dim and holy, now through great breaches in the wallsrain splashed. The spirit of the place was gone. 

Outside the cathedral, in the direction from which the shells came, forthree city blocks every house was destroyed. The palace of thearchbishop was gutted, the chapel and the robing-room of the kingswere cellars filled with rubbish. Of them only crumbling walls remain. And on the south and west the façades of the cathedral and flyingbuttresses and statues of kings, angels, and saints were mangledand shapeless. 

I walked over the district that had been destroyed by these accidentalshots, and it stretched from the northeastern outskirts of Rheims in astraight line to the cathedral. Shells that fell short of the cathedral fora quarter of a mile destroyed entirely three city blocks. The heart ofthis district is the Place Godinot. In every direction at a distance ofa mile from the Place Godinot I passed houses wrecked by shells--south at the Paris gate, north at the railroad station. 

There is no part of Rheims that these shells the Germans claim wereaimed at French batteries did not hit. If Rheims accepts the Germanexcuse she might suggest to them that the next time they bombard, ifthey aim at the city they may hit the batteries. 

The Germans claim also that the damage done was from fires, notshells. But that is not the case; destruction by fire was slight. Houseswrecked by shells where there was no fire outnumbered those thatwere burned ten to one. In no house was there probably any otherfire than that in the kitchen stove, and that had been smothered byfalling masonry and tiles. 

Outside the wrecked area were many shops belonging to Americanfirms, but each of them had escaped injury. They were filled withAmerican typewriters, sewing-machines, and cameras. A number ofcafés bearing the sign "American Bar" testified to the nationality andtastes of many tourists. 

I found our consul, William Bardel, at the consulate. He is a fine typeof the German-American citizen, and, since the war began, with hiswife and son has held the fort and tactfully looked after the interestsof both Americans and Germans. On both sides of him shells haddamaged the houses immediately adjoining. The one across thestreet had been destroyed and two neighbors killed. 

The street in front of the consulate is a mass of fallen stone, and themorning I called on Mr. Bardel a shell had hit his neighbor's chestnut-tree, filled his garden with chestnut burrs, and blown out the glass ofhis windows. He was patching the holes with brown wrapping-paper, but was chiefly concerned because in his own garden the dahliaswere broken. During the first part of the bombardment, when firingbecame too hot for him, he had retreated with his family to the cornerof the street, where are the cellars of the Roderers, the champagnepeople. There are worse places in which to hide in than a champagnecellar. 

Mr. Bardel has lived six years in Rheims and estimated the damagedone to property by shells at thirty millions of dollars, and said thatunless the seat of military operations was removed the champagnecrop for this year would be entirely wasted. It promised to be anespecially good year. The seasons were propitious, being dry whensun was needed and wet when rain was needed, but unless thegrapes were gathered by the end of September the crops would belost. 

Of interest to Broadway is the fact that in Rheims, or rather in hercellars, are stored nearly fifty million bottles of champagne belongingto six of the best-known houses. Should shells reach these bottles, the high price of living in the lobster palaces will be proportionatelyincreased. 

Except for Red Cross volunteers seeking among the ruins forwounded, I found that part of the city that had suffered completelydeserted. Shells still were falling and houses as yet intact, and thosepartly destroyed were empty. You saw pitiful attempts to save thepieces. In places, as though evictions were going forward, chairs, pictures, cooking-pans, bedding were piled in heaps. There was noneto guard them; certainly there was no one so unfeeling as to disturbthem. 

I saw neither looting nor any effort to guard against it. In theircommon danger and horror the citizens of Rheims of all classesseemed drawn closely together. The manner of all was subdued andgentle, like those who stand at an open grave. 

The shells played the most inconceivable pranks. In some streets thehouses and shops along one side were entirely wiped out and on theother untouched. In the Rue du Cardinal du Lorraine every housewas gone. Where they once stood were cellars filled with powderedstone. Tall chimneys that one would have thought a strong windmight dislodge were holding themselves erect, while the surroundingwalls, three feet thick, had been crumpled into rubbish. 

In some houses a shell had removed one room only, and as neatlyas though it were the work of masons and carpenters. It was asthough the shell had a grievance against the lodger in that particularroom. The waste was appalling. 

Among the ruins I saw good paintings in rags and in gardens statuescovered with the moss of centuries smashed. In many places, still onthe pedestal, you would see a headless Venus, or a flying Mercurychopped off at the waist. 

Long streamers of ivy that during a century had crept higher andhigher up the wall of some noble mansion, until they were part of it, still clung to it, although it was divided into a thousand fragments. Ofone house all that was left standing was a slice of the front wall justwide enough to bear a sign reading: "This house is for sale; elegantlyfurnished. " Nothing else of that house remained. 

In some streets of the destroyed area I met not one living person. The noise made by my feet kicking the broken glass was the onlysound. The silence, the gaping holes in the sidewalk, the ghastlytributes to the power of the shells, and the complete desolation, mademore desolate by the bright sunshine, gave you a curious feeling thatthe end of the world had come and you were the only survivor. 

This-impression was aided by the sight of many rare and valuablearticles with no one guarding them. They were things of price that onemay not carry into the next world but which in this are kept under lockand key. 

In the Rue de l'Université, at my leisure, I could have ransacked shopafter shop or from the shattered drawing-rooms filled my pockets. Shopkeepers had gone without waiting to lock their doors, and inhouses the fronts of which were down you could see that, in order tosave their lives, the inmates had fled at a moment's warning. 

In one street a high wall extended an entire block, but in the centre ahowitzer shell had made a breach as large as a barn door. Throughthis I had a view of an old and beautiful garden, on which oasisnothing had been disturbed. Hanging from the walls, on diamond-shaped lattices, roses were still in bloom, and along the gravel walksflowers of every color raised their petals to the sunshine. On theterrace was spread a tea-service of silver and on the grass werechildren's toys--hoops, tennis-balls, and flat on its back, staring upwide-eyed at the shells, a large, fashionably dressed doll. 

In another house everything was destroyed except the mantel overthe fireplace in the drawing-room. On this stood a terra-cotta statuetteof Harlequin. It is one you have often seen. The legs are wide apart, the arms folded, the head thrown back in an ecstasy of laughter. Itlooked exactly as though it were laughing at the wreckage with whichit was surrounded. No one could have placed it where it was after thehouse fell, for the approach to it was still on fire. Of all the fantastictricks played by the bursting shells it was the most curious. 

Chapter VIIThe Spirit Of The English

When I left England for home I had just returned from France andhad motored many miles in both countries. Everywhere in thisgreatest crisis of the century I found the people of England showingthe most undaunted and splendid spirit. To their common enemy theyare presenting an unbroken front. The civilian is playing his part justas loyally as the soldier, the women as bravely as the men. 

They appreciate that not only their own existence is threatened, butthe future peace and welfare of the world require that the militaryparty of Germany must be wiped out. That is their burden, and withthe heroic Belgians to inspire them, without a whimper or a whine ofself-pity, they are bearing their burden. 

Every one in England is making sacrifices great and small. As longago as the middle of September it was so cold along the Aisne that Ihave seen the French, sooner than move away from the open firesthey had made, risk the falling shells. Since then it has grown muchcolder, and Kitchener issued an invitation to the English people tosend in what blankets they could spare for the army in the field and inreserve. The idea was to dye the blankets khaki and then turn themover to the supply department. In one week, so eagerly did thepeople respond to this appeal, Kitchener had to publish a card statingthat no more blankets were needed. He had received over half amillion. 

The reply to Kitchener's appeal for recruits was as prompt andgenerous. The men came so rapidly that the standard for enlistmentwas raised. That is, I believe, in the history of warfare withoutprecedent. Nations often have lowered their requirements forenlistment, but after war was once well under way to make recruitingmore difficult is new. The sacrifices are made by every class. 

There is no business enterprise of any sort that has not shown itselfunselfish. This is true of the greengrocery, the bank, the departmentstore, the Cotton Exchange. Each of these has sent employees to thefront, and while they are away is paying their wages and, on thechance of their return, holding their places open. Men who are notaccepted as recruits are enrolled as special constables. They arethose who could not, without facing ruin, neglect their business. Theyhave signed on as policemen, and each night for four hours patrol theposts of the regular bobbies who have gone to the front. 

The ingenuity shown in finding ways in which to help the army isequalled only by the enthusiasm with which these suggestions aremet. Just before his death at the front, Lord Roberts called upon allracing-men, yachtsmen, and big-game shots to send him, for the useof the officers in the field, their field-glasses. The response wasamazingly generous. 

Other people gave their pens. The men whose names are bestknown to you in British literature are at the service of the governmentand at this moment are writing exclusively for the Foreign Office. Theyare engaged in answering the special pleading of the Germans and inwriting monographs, appeals for recruits, explanations of whyEngland is at war. They do not sign what they write. They are, ofcourse, not paid for what they write. They have their reward inknowing that to direct public opinion fairly will be as effective inbringing this war to a close as is sticking bayonets into Uhlans. 

The stage, as well as literature, has found many ways in which it canserve the army. One theatre is giving all the money taken in at thedoor to the Red Cross; all of them admit men in uniform free, or athalf price, and a long list of actors have gone to the front. Amongthem are several who are well known in America. Robert Lorraine hasreceived an officer's commission in the Royal Flying Corps, and GuyStanding in the navy. The former is reported among the wounded. Gerald du Maurier has organized a reserve battalion of actors, artists, and musicians. 

There is not a day passes that the most prominent members of thetheatrical world are not giving their services free to benefitperformances in aid of Belgian refugees, Red Cross societies, or tosome one of the funds under royal patronage. Whether their talent isto act or dance, they are using it to help along the army. SeymourHicks and Edward Knoblauch in one week wrote a play called"England Expects, " which was an appeal in dramatic form for recruits, and each night the play was produced recruits crowded over thefootlights. 

The old sergeants are needed to drill the new material and cannot bespared for recruiting. And so members of Parliament and members ofthe cabinet travel all over the United Kingdom--and certainly thesedays it is united--on that service. Even the prime minister and the firstlord of the admiralty, Winston Churchill, work overtime in addressingpublic meetings and making stirring appeals to the young men. Andwherever you go you see the young men by the thousands marching, drilling, going through setting-up exercises. The public parks, golf-links, even private parks like Bedford Square, are filled with them, andin Green Park, facing the long beds of geraniums, are lines of cavalryhorses and the khaki tents of the troopers. 

Every one is helping. Each day the King and Queen and PrincessMary review troops or visit the wounded in some hospital; and the daybefore sailing, while passing Buckingham Palace, I watched theyoung Prince of Wales change the guard. In a businesslike mannerhe was listening to the sentries repeat their orders; and in turn ayoung sergeant, also in a most businesslike manner, was in whisperscoaching the boy officer in the proper manner to guard the home ofhis royal parents. Since then the young prince has gone to the frontand is fighting for his country. And the King is in France with hissoldiers. 

As the song says, all the heroes do not go to war, and the warriors atthe front are not the only ones this war has turned out-of-doors. Thenumber of Englishwomen who have left their homes that the RedCross may have the use of them for the wounded would fill a long rollof honor. Some give an entire house, like Mrs. Waldorf Astor, whohas loaned to the wounded Cliveden, one of the best-known andmost beautiful places on the Thames. Others can give only a room. But all over England the convalescents have been billeted in privatehouses and made nobly welcome. 

Even the children of England are helping. The Boy Scouts, one of themost remarkable developments of this decade, has in this war scoreda triumph of organization. This is equally true of the Boy Scouts inBelgium and France. In England military duties of the most seriousnature have been intrusted to them. On the east coast they havetaken the place of the coast guards, and all over England they arepatrolling railroad junctions, guarding bridges, and carryingdespatches. Even if the young men who are now drilling in the parksand the Boy Scouts never reach Berlin nor cross the Channel, thetraining and sense of responsibility that they are now enjoying are allfor their future good. 

They are coming out of this war better men, not because they havebeen taught the manual of arms, but in spite of that fact. What theyhave learned is much more than that. Each of them has, for an ideal, whether you call it a flag, or a king, or a geographical position on themap, offered his life, and for that ideal has trained his body andsacrificed his pleasures, and each of them is the better for it. Andwhen peace comes his country will be the richer and the morepowerful. 

Chapter VIIIOur Diplomats In The War Zone

When the war broke loose those persons in Europe it concerned theleast were the most upset about it. They were our fellow countrymen. Even to-day, above the roar of shells, the crash of falling walls, forts, forests, cathedrals, above the scream of shrapnel, the sobs ofwidows and orphans, the cries of the wounded and dying, all overEurope, you still can hear the shrieks of the Americans calling for theirlost suit-cases. 

For some of the American women caught by the war on the wrongside of the Atlantic the situation was serious and distressing. Therewere thousands of them travelling alone, chaperoned only by a manfrom Cook's or a letter of credit. For years they had been saving tomake this trip, and had allowed themselves only sufficient moneyafter the trip was completed to pay the ship's stewards. Suddenlythey found themselves facing the difficulties of existence in a foreignland without money, friends, or credit. During the first days ofmobilization they could not realize on their checks or letters. Americanbank-notes and Bank of England notes were refused. Save gold, nothing was of value, and every one who possessed a gold piece, especially if he happened to be a banker, was clinging to it with thedesperation of a dope fiend clutching his last pill of cocaine. We canimagine what it was like in Europe when we recall the conditions athome. 

In New York, when I started for the seat of war, three banks in whichfor years I had kept a modest balance refused me a hundred dollarsin gold, or a check, or a letter of credit. They simply put up theshutters and crawled under the bed. So in Europe, where thereactually was war, the women tourists, with nothing but a worthlessletter of credit between them and sleeping in a park, had everyreason to be panic-stricken. But to explain the hysteria of the hundredthousand other Americans is difficult--so difficult that while they livethey will still be explaining. The worst that could have happened tothem was temporary discomfort offset by adventures. Of those theyexperienced they have not yet ceased boasting. 

On August 5th, one day after England declared war, the AmericanGovernment announced that it would send the Tennessee with acargo of gold. In Rome and in Paris Thomas Nelson Page and MyronT. Herrick were assisting every American who applied to them, andcommittees of Americans to care for their fellow countrymen hadbeen organized. All that was asked of the stranded Americans was tokeep cool and, like true sports, suffer inconvenience. Around themwere the French and English, facing the greatest tragedy of centuries, and meeting it calmly and with noble self-sacrifice. The men weremarching to meet death, and in the streets, shops, and fields thewomen were taking up the burden the men had dropped. And in theRue Scribe and in Cockspur Street thousands of Americans werestruggling in panic-stricken groups, bewailing the loss of a hat-box, and protesting at having to return home second-class. Their sufferingwas something terrible. In London, in the Ritz and Carltonrestaurants, American refugees, loaded down with fat pearls andseated at tables loaded with fat food, besought your pity. The imperialsuite, which on the fast German liner was always reserved for them, "except when Prince Henry was using it, " was no longer available, and they were subjected to the indignity of returning home on a nine-day boat and in the captain's cabin. It made their blue blood boil; andthe thought that their emigrant ancestors had come over in thesteerage did not help a bit. 

The experiences of Judge Richard William Irwin, of the SuperiorCourt of Massachusetts, and his party, as related in the Paris Herald, were heartrending. On leaving Switzerland for France they wereforced to carry their own luggage, all the porters apparently havingselfishly marched off to die for their country, and the train was notlighted, nor did any one collect their tickets. "We have them yet!" saysJudge Irwin. He makes no complaint, he does not write to the Public-Service Commission about it, but he states the fact. No one came tocollect his ticket, and he has it yet. Something should be done. Merelybecause France is at war Judge Irwin should not be condemned togo through life clinging to a first-class ticket. 

In another interview Judge George A. Carpenter, of the United StatesCourt of Chicago, takes a more cheerful view. "I can't see anythingfor Americans to get hysterical about, " he says. "They seem to thinktheir little delays and difficulties are more important than all thetroubles of Europe. For my part, I should think these people would beglad to settle down in Paris. " A wise judge!

For the hysterical Americans it was fortunate that in the embassiesand consulates of the United States there were fellow country-menwho would not allow a war to rattle them. When the representatives ofother countries fled our people not only stayed on the job but helddown the jobs of those who were forced to move away. At no time inmany years have our diplomats and consuls appeared to suchadvantage. They deserve so much credit that the administration willundoubtedly try to borrow it. Mr. Bryan will point with pride and say:"These men who bore themselves so well were my appointments. "Some of them were. But back of them, and coaching them, were firstand second secretaries and consuls-general and consuls who hadbeen long in the service and who knew the language, the short cuts, and what ropes to pull. And they had also the assistance of every lostand strayed, past and present American diplomat who, when the warbroke, was caught off his base. These were commandeered and putto work, and volunteers of the American colonies were madehonorary attachés, and without pay toiled like fifteen-dollar-a-weekbookkeepers. 

In our embassy in Paris one of these latter had just finished strugglingwith two American women. One would not go home by way ofEngland because she would not leave her Pomeranian in quarantine, and the other because she could not carry with her twenty-two trunks. They demanded to be sent back from Havre on a battle-ship. Thevolunteer diplomat bowed. "Then I must refer you to our navalattaché, on the first floor, " he said. "Any tickets for battle-ships mustcome through him. "

I suggested he was having a hard time. 

"If we remained in Paris, " he said, "we all had to help. It was a choicebetween volunteering to aid Mr. Herrick at the embassy or Mrs. Herrick at the American Ambulance Hospital and tending woundedTurcos. But between soothing terrified Americans and washingniggers, I'm sorry now I didn't choose the hospital. "

In Paris there were two embassies running overtime; that means fromearly morning until after midnight, and each with a staff enlarged tosix times the usual number. At the residence of Mr. Herrick, in theRue François Ier, there was an impromptu staff composed chiefly ofyoung American bankers, lawyers, and business men. They weremen who inherited, or who earned, incomes of from twenty thousandto fifty thousand a year, and all day, and every day, without pay, andcertainly without thanks, they assisted their bewildered, penniless, and homesick fellow countrymen. Below them in the cellar was storedpart of the two million five hundred thousand dollars voted byCongress to assist the stranded Americans. It was guarded by quick-firing guns, loaned by the French War Office, and by six petty officersfrom the Tennessee. With one of them I had been a shipmate whenthe Utah sailed from Vera Cruz. I congratulated him on being in Paris. 

"They say Paris is some city, " he assented, "but all I've seen of it isthis courtyard. Don't tell anybody, but, on the level, I'd rather be backin Vera Cruz!"

The work of distributing the money was carried on in the chancelleriesof the embassy in the Rue de Chaillot. It was entirely in the hands ofAmerican army and navy officers, twenty of whom came over on thewarship with Assistant Secretary of War Breckinridge. Major SpencerCosby, the military attaché of the embassy, was treasurer of the fund, and every application for aid that had not already been investigatedby the civilian committee appointed by the ambassador was decidedupon by the officers. Mr. Herrick found them invaluable. He wasearnest in their praise. They all wanted to see the fighting; but in otherways they served their country. 

As a kind of "king's messenger" they were sent to our otherembassies, to the French Government at Bordeaux, and in commandof expeditions to round up and convoy back to Paris strandedAmericans in Germany and Switzerland. Their training, their habit ofcommand and of thinking for others, their military titles helped them tosuccess. By the French they were given a free road, and they werenot only of great assistance to others, but what they saw of the warand of the French army will be of lasting benefit to themselves. Among them were officers of every branch of the army and navy andof the marine and aviation corps. Their reports to the WarDepartment, if ever they are made public, will be mighty interestingreading. 

The regular staff of the embassy was occupied not only withAmericans but with English, Germans, and Austrians. These latterstood in a long line outside the embassy, herded by gendarmes. Thatline never seemed to grow less. Myron T. Herrick, our ambassador, was at the embassy from early in the morning until midnight. He wasalways smiling, helpful, tactful, optimistic. Before the war came hewas already popular, and the manner in which he met the dark days, when the Germans were within fifteen miles of Paris, made himthousands of friends. He never asked any of his staff to work harderthan he worked himself, and he never knocked off and called it aday's job before they did. Nothing seemed to worry or daunt him;neither the departure of the other diplomats, when the governmentmoved to Bordeaux and he was left alone, nor the advancingGermans and threatened siege of Paris, nor even falling bombs. 

Herrick was as democratic as he was efficient. For his exclusive usethere was a magnificent audience-chamber, full of tapestry, ormolubrass, Sèvres china, and sunshine. But of its grandeur theambassador would grow weary, and every quarter-hour he wouldcome out into the hall crowded with waiting English and Americans. There, assisted by M. Charles, who is as invaluable to ourambassadors to France as are Frank and Edward Hodson to ourambassadors to London, he would hold an impromptu reception. Itwas interesting to watch the ex-governor of Ohio clear that hall andsend everybody away smiling. Having talked to his ambassadorinstead of to a secretary, each went off content. In the hall onemorning I found a noble lord of high degree chuckling with pleasure. 

"This is the difference between your ambassadors and ours, " he said. "An English ambassador won't let you in to see him; your Americanambassador comes out to see you. " However true that may be, it wasextremely fortunate that when war came we should have had a manat the storm-centre so admirably efficient. 

Our embassy was not embarrassed nor was it greatly helped by thepresence in Paris of two other American ambassadors: Mr. Sharp, the ambassador-elect, and Mr. Robert Bacon, the ambassador thatwas. That at such a crisis these gentlemen should have chosen tocome to Paris and remain there showed that for an ambassador tactis not absolutely necessary. 

Mr. Herrick was exceedingly fortunate in his secretaries, RobertWoods Bliss and Arthur H. Frazier. Their training in the diplomaticservice made them most valuable. With him, also, as a volunteercounsellor, was H. Perceval Dodge, who, after serving in diplomaticposts in six countries, was thrown out of the service by Mr. Bryan tomake room for a lawyer from Danville, Ky. Dodge was sent over toassist in distributing the money voted by Congress, and Herrick, knowing his record, signed him on to help him in the difficult task ofrunning the affairs of the embassies of four countries, three of whichwere at war. Dodge, Bliss, and Frazier were able to care for theseembassies because, though young in years, in the diplomatic servicethey have had training and experience. In this crisis they proved theneed of it. For the duties they were, and still are, called upon toperform it is not enough that a man should have edited a democraticnewspaper or stumped the State for Bryan. A knowledge oflanguages, of foreign countries, and of foreigners, their likes and theirprejudices, good manners, tact, and training may not, in the eyes ofthe administration, seem necessary, but, in helping the ninety millionpeople in whose interest the diplomat is sent abroad, thesequalifications are not insignificant. 

One might say that Brand Whitlock, who is so splendidly holding thefort at Brussels, in the very centre of the conflict, is not a traineddiplomat. But he started with an excellent knowledge of the Frenchlanguage, and during the eight years in which he was mayor ofToledo he must have learned something of diplomacy, responsibility, and of the way to handle men--even German military governors. Heis, in fact, the right man in the right place. In Belgium all men, Belgians, Americans, Germans, speak well of him. In one night heshipped out of Brussels, in safety and comfort, five thousandGermans; and when the German army advanced upon that city it waslargely due to him and to the Spanish minister, the Marquis Villalobar, that Brussels did not meet the fate of Antwerp. He has a direct way ofgoing at things. One day, while the Belgian Government still was inBrussels and Whitlock in charge of the German legation, the chiefjustice called upon him. It was suspected, he said, that on the roof ofthe German legation, concealed in the chimney, was a wireless outfit. He came to suggest that the American minister, representing theGerman interests, and the chief justice should appoint a jointcommission to investigate the truth of the rumor, to take thetestimony of witnesses, and make a report. 

"Wouldn't it be quicker, " said Whitlock, "if you and I went up on theroof and looked down the chimney?"

The chief justice was surprised but delighted. Together theyclambered over the roof of the German legation. They found that thewireless outfit was a rusty weather-vane that creaked. 

When the government moved to Antwerp Whitlock asked permissionto remain at the capital. He believed that in Brussels he could be ofgreater service to both Americans and Belgians. And while diplomaticcorps moved from Antwerp to Ostend, and from Ostend to Havre, heand Villalobar stuck to their posts. What followed showed Whitlockwas right. To-day from Brussels he is directing the efforts of the restof the world to save the people of that city and of Belgium from deathby starvation. In this he has the help of his wife, who was Miss EllaBrainerd, of Springfield, 111, M. Gaston de Levai, a Belgiangentleman, and Miss Caroline S. Larner, who was formerly asecretary in the State Department, and who, when the war started, was on a vacation in Belgium. She applied to Whitlock to aid her toreturn home; instead, much to her delight, he made her one of thelegation staff. His right-hand man is Hugh C. Gibson, his firstsecretary, a diplomat of experience. It is a pity that to the legation inBrussels no military attaché was accredited. He need not have goneout to see the war; the war would have come to him. As it was, Gibson saw more of actual warfare than did any or all of our twenty-eight military men in Paris. It was his duty to pass frequently throughthe firing-lines on his way to Antwerp and London. He was constantlyunder fire. Three times his automobile was hit by bullets. These tripswere so hazardous that Whitlock urged that he should take them. It issaid he and his secretary used to toss for it. Gibson told me he wasdisturbed by the signs the Germans placed between Brussels andAntwerp, stating that "automobiles looking as though they were onreconnoissance" would be fired upon. He asked how an automobilelooked when it was on reconnoissance. 

Gibson is one of the few men who, after years in the diplomaticservice, refuses to take himself seriously. He is always smiling, cheerful, always amusing, but when the dignity of his official positionis threatened he can be serious enough. When he was chargéd'affaires in Havana a young Cuban journalist assaulted him. Thatjournalist is still in jail. In Brussels a German officer tried toblue-pencil a cable Gibson was sending to the State Department. Those who witnessed the incident say it was like a buzz-sawcutting soft pine. 

When the present administration turned out the diplomats it sparedthe consuls-general and consuls. It was fortunate for the StateDepartment that it showed this self-control, and fortunate forthousands of Americans who, when the war-cloud burst, werescattered all over Europe. Our consuls rose to the crisis and roundedthem up, supplied them with funds, special trains, and letters ofidentification, and when they were arrested rescued them from jail. Under fire from shells and during days of bombardment the Americanconsuls in France and Belgium remained at their posts and protectedthe people of many nationalities confided to their care. Only oneshowed the white feather. He first removed himself from his post, andthen was removed still farther from it by the State Department. All theother American consuls of whom I heard in Belgium, France, andEngland were covering themselves with glory and bringing credit totheir country. Nothing disturbed their calm, and at no hour could youcatch them idle or reluctant to help a fellow countryman. Their officehours were from twelve to twelve, and each consulate had taken outan all-night license and thrown away the key. With four otherAmericans I was forced to rout one consul out of bed at two in themorning. He was Colonel Albert W. Swalm, of Iowa, but of late yearsour representative at Southampton. That port was in the military zone, and before an American could leave it for Havre it was necessary thathis passport should be viséed in London by the French and Belgianconsuls-general and in Southampton by Colonel Swalm. We arrivedin Southampton at two in the morning to learn that the boat left atfour, and that unless, in the interval, we obtained the autograph andseal of Colonel Swalm she would sail without us. 

In the darkness we set forth to seek our consul, and we found that, difficult as it was to leave the docks by sea, it was just as difficult byland. In war time two o'clock in the morning is no hour for honest mento prowl around wharfs. So we were given to understand by verywide-awake sentries with bayonets, policemen, and enthusiasticspecial constables. But at last we reached the consulate and laidsiege. One man pressed the electric button, kicked the door, andpounded with the knocker, others hurled pebbles at the upperwindows, and the fifth stood in the road and sang: "Oh, say, can yousee, by the dawn's early light?"

A policeman arrested us for throwing stones at the consular sign. Weexplained that we had hit the sign by accident while aiming at thewindows, and that in any case it was the inalienable right ofAmericans, if they felt like it, to stone their consul's sign. He said healways had understood we were a free people, but, "without meaningany disrespect to you, sir, throwing stones at your consul's coat ofarms is almost, as you might say, sir, making too free. " He then toldus Colonel Swalm lived in the suburbs, and in a taxicab started ustoward him. 

Scantily but decorously clad, Colonel Swalm received us, andgreeted us as courteously as though we had come to present himwith a loving-cup. He acted as though our pulling him out of bed attwo in the morning was intended as a compliment. For affixing theseal to our passports he refused any fee. We protested that theconsuls-general of other nations were demanding fees. "I know, " hesaid, "but I have never thought it right to fine a man for being anAmerican. "

Of our ambassadors and representatives in countries in Europe otherthan France and Belgium I have not written, because during this war Ihave not visited those countries. But of them, also, all men speakwell. At the last election one of them was a candidate for the UnitedStates Senate. He was not elected. The reason is obvious. 

Our people at home are so well pleased with their ambassadors inEurope that, while the war continues, they would keep them wherethey are. 

Chapter IX"Under Fire"

One cold day on the Aisne, when the Germans had just withdrawn tothe east bank and the Allies held the west, the French soldiers builthuge bonfires and huddled around them. When the "Jack Johnsons, "as they call the six-inch howitzer shells that strike with a burst of blacksmoke, began to fall, sooner than leave the warm fires the soldiersaccepted the chance of being hit by the shells. Their officers had toorder them back. I saw this and wrote of it. A friend refused to creditit. He said it was against his experience. He did not believe that, forthe sake of keeping warm, men would chance being killed. 

But the incident was quite characteristic. In times of war youconstantly see men, and women, too, who, sooner than sufferdiscomfort or even inconvenience, risk death. The psychology of thething is, I think, that a man knows very little about being dead but hasa very acute knowledge of what it is to be uncomfortable. His brain isnot able to grasp death but it is quite capable of informing him that hisfingers are cold. Often men receive credit for showing coolness andcourage in times of danger when, in reality, they are not properlyaware of the danger and through habit are acting automatically. Thegirl in Chicago who went back into the Iroquois Theatre fire to rescueher rubber overshoes was not a heroine. She merely lackedimagination. Her mind was capable of appreciating how serious forher would be the loss of her overshoes but not being burned alive. Atthe battle of Velestinos, in the Greek-Turkish War, John F. Bass, ofThe Chicago Daily News, and myself got into a trench at the foot of ahill on which later the Greeks placed a battery. All day the Turksbombarded this battery with a cross-fire of shrapnel and rifle-bulletswhich did not touch our trench but cut off our return to Velestinos. Sooner than pass through this crossfire, all day we crouched in thetrench until about sunset, when it came on to rain. We exclaimed withdismay. We had neglected to bring our ponchos. "If we don't get backto the village at once, " we assured each other, "we will get wet!" Sowe raced through half a mile of falling shells and bullets and, beforethe rain fell, got under cover. Then Bass said: "For twelve hours westuck to that trench because we were afraid if we left it we would bekilled. And the only reason we ever did leave it was because we weremore afraid of catching cold!"

In the same war I was in a trench with some infantrymen, one ofwhom never raised his head. Whenever he was ordered to fire hewould shove his rifle-barrel over the edge of the trench, shut his eyes, and pull the trigger. He took no chances. His comrades laughed athim and swore at him, but he would only grin sheepishly and burrowdeeper. After several hours a friend in another trench held up a bagof tobacco and some cigarette-papers and in pantomime "dared" himto come for them. To the intense surprise of every one he scrambledout of our trench and, exposed against the sky-line, walked to theother trench and, while he rolled a handful of cigarettes, drew the fireof the enemy. It was not that he was brave; he had shown that hewas not. He was merely stupid. Between death and cigarettes, hismind could not rise above cigarettes. 

Why the same kind of people are so differently affected by danger isvery hard to understand. It is almost impossible to get a line on it. Iwas in the city of Rheims for three days and two nights while it wasbeing bombarded. During that time fifty thousand people remained inthe city and, so far as the shells permitted, continued about theirbusiness. The other fifty thousand fled from the city and camped outalong the road to Paris. For five miles outside Rheims they lined bothedges of that road like people waiting for a circus parade. With themthey brought rugs, blankets, and loaves of bread, and from daybreakuntil night fell and the shells ceased to fall they sat in the hay-fieldsand along the grass gutters of the road. Some of them were mostintelligent-looking and had the manner and clothes of the rich. Therewas one family of five that on four different occasions on our way toand from Paris we saw seated on the ground at a place certainly fivemiles away from any spot where a shell had fallen. They were all indeep mourning, but as they sat in the hay-field around a wicker teabasket and wrapped in steamer-rugs they were comic. Their liveswere no more valuable than those of thousands of their fellowtownsfolk who in Rheims were carrying on the daily routine. Thesekept the shops open or in the streets were assisting the Red Cross. 

One elderly gentleman told me how he had been seized by theGermans as a hostage and threatened with death by hanging. Withforty other first citizens, from the 4th to the 12th of September he hadbeen in jail. After such an experience one would have thought thatbetween himself and the Germans he would have placed as manymiles as possible, but instead he was strolling around the Place duParvis Notre-Dame, in front of the cathedral. For the French officerswho, on sightseeing bent, were motoring into Rheims from the battleline he was acting as a sort of guide. Pointing with his umbrella, hewould say: "On the left is the new Palace of Justice, the façadeentirely destroyed; on the right you see the palace of the archbishop, completely wrecked. The shells that just passed over us haveapparently fallen in the garden of the Hôtel Lion d'Or. " He was as coolas the conductor on a "Seeing Rheims" observation-car. 

He was matched in coolness by our consul, William Bardel. TheAmerican consulate is at No. 14 Rue Kellermann. That morning ashell had hit the chestnut-tree in the garden of his neighbor, at No. 12, and had knocked all the chestnuts into the garden of theconsulate. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good, " said Mr. Bardel. 

In the bombarded city there was no rule as to how any one would act. One house would be closed and barred, and the inmates would beeither in their own cellar or in the caves of the nearest champagnecompany. To those latter they would bring books or playing-cardsand, among millions of dust-covered bottles, by candle-light, wouldwait for the guns to cease. Their neighbors sat in their shops or stoodat the doors of their houses or paraded the streets. Past them theirfriends were hastening, trembling with terror. Many women sat on thefront steps, knitting, and with interested eyes watched theiracquaintances fleeing toward the Paris gate. When overhead a shellpassed they would stroll, still knitting, out into the middle of the streetto see where the shell struck. 

By the noise it was quite easy to follow the flight of the shells. Youwere tricked by the sound into almost believing you could see them. The six-inch shells passed with a whistling roar that was quiteterrifying. It was as though just above you invisible telegraph-wireshad jangled, and their rush through the air was like the roar that risesto the car window when two express-trains going in oppositedirections pass at sixty miles an hour. When these sounds assailedthem the people flying from the city would scream. Some of them, asthough they had been hit, would fall on their knees. Others weresobbing and praying aloud. The tears rolled down their cheeks. Intheir terror there was nothing ludicrous; they were in as great physicalpain as were some of the hundreds in Rheims who had been hit. Andyet others of their fellow townsmen living in the same street, and withthe same allotment of brains and nerves, were treating thebombardment with the indifference they would show to a summershower. 

We had not expected to spend the night in Rheims, so, withAshmead Bartlett, the military expert of the London Daily Telegraph, Iwent into a chemist's shop to buy some soap. The chemist, seeing Iwas an American, became very much excited. He was overstockedwith an American shaving-soap, and he begged me to take it off hishands. He would let me have it at what it cost him. He did not knowwhere he had placed it, and he was in great alarm lest we wouldleave his shop before he could unload it on us. From both sides ofthe town French artillery were firing in salvoes, the shocks shakingthe air; over the shop of the chemist shrapnel was whining, and in thestreet the howitzer shells were opening up subways. But his mindwas intent only on finding that American shaving-soap. I was anxiousto get on to a more peaceful neighborhood. To French soap, to soap"made in Germany, " to neutral American soap I was indifferent. Had itnot been for the presence of Ashmead Bartlett I would have fled. Todie, even though clasping a cake of American soap, seemed lessattractive than to live unwashed. But the chemist had no time toconsider shells. He was intent only on getting rid of surplus stock. 

The majority of people who are afraid are those who refuse toconsider the doctrine of chances. The chances of their being hit maybe one in ten thousand, but they disregard the odds in their favor andfix their minds on that one chance against them. In their imagination itgrows larger and larger. It looms red and bloodshot, it hovers overthem; wherever they go it follows, menacing, threatening, filling themwith terror. In Rheims there were one hundred thousand people, andby shells one thousand were killed or wounded. The chances againstwere a hundred to one. Those who left the city undoubtedly thoughtthe odds were not good enough. 

Those who on account of the bombs that fell from the Germanaeroplanes into Paris left that city had no such excuse. The chance ofany one person being hit by a bomb was one in several millions. Buteven with such generous odds in their favor, during the days thebomb-dropping lasted many thousands fled. They were obsessed bythat one chance against them. In my hotel in Paris my landlady hadher mind fixed on that one chance, and regularly every afternoonwhen the aeroplanes were expected she would go to bed. Just asregularly her husband would take a pair of opera-glasses and in theRue de la Paix hopefully scan the sky. 

One afternoon while we waited in front of Cook's an aeroplane sailedoverhead, but so far above us that no one knew whether it was aFrench air-ship scouting or a German one preparing to launch abomb. A man from Cook's, one of the interpreters, with a horribleknowledge of English, said: "Taube or not Taube; that is thequestion. " He was told he was inviting a worse death than from abomb. To illustrate the attitude of mind of the Parisian, there is thestory of the street gamin who for some time, from the Garden of theTuileries, had been watching a German aeroplane threatening thecity. Finally, he exclaimed impatiently:

"Oh, throw your bomb! You are keeping me from my dinner. "

A soldier under fire furnishes few of the surprises of conduct to whichthe civilian treats you. The soldier has no choice. He is tied by the leg, and whether the chances are even or ridiculously in his favor he mustaccept them. The civilian can always say, "This is no place for me, "and get up and walk away. But the soldier cannot say that. He andhis officers, the Red Cross nurses, doctors, ambulance-bearers, andeven the correspondents have taken some kind of oath or signedsome kind of contract that makes it easier for them than for thecivilian to stay on the job. For them to go away would require morecourage than to remain. 

Indeed, although courage is so highly regarded, it seems to be of allvirtues the most common. In six wars, among men of nearly everyrace, color, religion, and training, I have seen but four men who failedto show courage. I have seen men who were scared, sometimeswhole regiments, but they still fought on; and that is the highestcourage, for they were fighting both a real enemy and an imaginaryone. 

There is a story of a certain politician general of our army who, undera brisk fire, turned on one of his staff and cried:

"Why, major, you are scared, sir; you are scared!"

"I am, " said the major, with his teeth chattering, "and if you were asscared as I am you'd be twenty miles in the rear. "

In this war the onslaughts have been so terrific and so unceasing, theartillery fire especially has been so entirely beyond humanexperience, that the men fight in a kind of daze. Instead of arousingfear the tumult acts as an anaesthetic. With forests uprooted, housessmashing about them, and unseen express-trains hurtling throughspace, they are too stunned to be afraid. And in time they becomefed up on battles and to the noise and danger grow callous. On theAisne I saw an artillery battle that stretched for fifteen miles. Bothbanks of the river were wrapped in smoke; from the shells villagesmiles away were in flames, and two hundred yards in front of us thehowitzer shells were bursting in black fumes. To this the Frenchsoldiers were completely indifferent. The hills they occupied had beenheld that morning by the Germans, and the trenches and fields werestrewn with their accoutrement. So all the French soldiers who werenot serving the guns wandered about seeking souvenirs. They hadnever a glance for the villages burning crimson in the bright sunight orfor the falling "Jack Johnsons. "

They were intent only on finding a spiked helmet, and when theycame upon one they would give a shout of triumph and hold it up fortheir comrades to see. And their comrades would laugh delightedlyand race toward them, stumbling over the furrows. They were ashappy and eager as children picking wild flowers. 

It is not good for troops to sup entirely on horrors and also tobreakfast and lunch on them. So after in the trenches one regimenthas been pounded it is withdrawn for a day or two and kept inreserve. The English Tommies spend this period of recuperating inplaying football and cards. When the English learned this theyforwarded so many thousands of packs of cards to the distributingdepot that the War Office had to request them not to send any more. When the English officers are granted leave of absence they do notwaste their energy on football, but motor into Paris for a bath andlunch. At eight they leave the trenches along the Aisne and by noonarrive at Maxim's, Voisin's, or La Rue's. Seldom does warfare presenta sharper contrast. From a breakfast of "bully" beef, eaten from a tinplate, with in their nostrils the smell of camp-fires, dead horses, andunwashed bodies, they find themselves seated on red velvetcushions, surrounded by mirrors and walls of white and gold, andspread before them the most immaculate silver, linen, and glass. Andthe odors that assail them are those of truffles, white wine, and"artechant sauce mousseline. "

It is a delight to hear them talk. The point of view of the English is sosane and fair. In risking their legs or arms, or life itself, they seenothing heroic, dramatic, or extraordinary. They talk of the war asthey would of a cricket-match or a day in the hunting-field. If thingsare going wrong they do not whine or blame, nor when fortune smilesare they unduly jubilant. And they are so appallingly honest and frank. A piece of shrapnel had broken the arm of one of them, and we werehelping him to cut up his food and pour out his Scotch and soda. Instead of making a hero or a martyr of himself, he said confidingly:"You know, I had no right to be hit. If I had been minding my ownbusiness I wouldn't have been hit. But Jimmie was having a hell of atime on top of a hill, and I just ran up to have a look in. And thebeggars got me. Served me jolly well right. What?"

I met one subaltern at La Rue's who had been given so manycommissions by his brother officers to bring back tobacco, soap, andunderclothes that all his money save five francs was gone. He stillhad two days' leave of absence, and, as he truly pointed out, in Pariseven in war time five francs will not carry you far. I offered to be hisbanker, but he said he would first try elsewhere. The next day I methim on the boulevards and asked what kind of a riotous existence hefound possible on five francs. 

"I've had the most extraordinary luck, " he said. "After I left you I metmy brother. He was just in from the front, and I got all his money. "

"Won't your brother need it?" I asked. 

"Not at all, " said the subaltern cheerfully. "He's shot in the legs, andthey've put him to bed. Rotten luck for him, you might say, but howlucky for me!"

Had he been the brother who was shot in both legs he would havetreated the matter just as light-heartedly. 

One English major, before he reached his own firing-line, was hit by abursting shell in three places. While he was lying in the Americanambulance hospital at Neuilly the doctor said to him:

"This cot next to yours is the only one vacant. Would you object if weput a German in it?"

"By no means, " said the major; "I haven't seen one yet. "

The stories the English officers told us at La Rue's and Maxim's bycontrast with the surroundings were all the more grewsome. Seeingthem there it did not seem possible that in a few hours these same fit, sun-tanned youths in khaki would be back in the trenches, orscouting in advance of them, or that only the day before they hadbeen dodging death and destroying their fellow men. 

Maxim's, which now reminds one only of the last act of "The MerryWidow, " was the meeting-place for the French and English officersfrom the front; the American military attachés from our embassy, among whom were soldiers, sailors, aviators, marines; the doctorsand volunteer nurses from the American ambulance, and thecorrespondents who by night dined in Paris and by day dodged arrestand other things on the firing-line, or as near it as they could motorwithout going to jail. For these Maxim's was the clearing-house fornews of friends and battles. Where once were the supper-girls andthe ladies of the gold-mesh vanity-bags now were only men in redand blue uniforms, men in khaki, men in bandages. Among themwere English lords and French princes with titles that dated fromAgincourt to Waterloo, where their ancestors had met as enemies. Now those who had succeeded them, as allies, were, over a soleMarguery, discussing air-ships, armored automobiles, andmitrailleuses. 

At one table Arthur H. Frazier, of the American embassy, would betelling an English officer that a captain of his regiment who wassupposed to have been killed at Courtrai had, like a homing pigeon, found his way to the hospital at Neuilly and wanted to be reported"safe" at Lloyds. At another table a French lieutenant would describea raid made by the son of an American banker in Paris who is incommand of an armed automobile. "He swept his gun only once--so, "the Frenchman explained, waving his arm across the champagneand the broiled lobster, "and he caught a general and two staff-officers. He cut them in half. " Or at another table you would listen to agroup of English officers talking in wonder of the Germans' wastefuladvance in solid formation. 

"They were piled so high, " one of them relates, "that I stopped firing. They looked like gray worms squirming about in a bait-box. I canshoot men coming at me on their feet, but not a mess of arms andlegs. "

"I know, " assents another; "when we charged the other day we had toadvance over the Germans that fell the night before, and my menwere slipping and stumbling all over the place. The bodies didn't givethem any foothold. "

"My sergeant yesterday, " another relates, "turned to me and said: 'Itisn't cricket. There's no game in shooting into a target as big as that. It's just murder. ' I had to order him to continue firing. "

They tell of it without pose or emotion. It is all in the day's work. Mostof them are young men of wealth, of ancient family, cleanly bredgentlemen of England, and as they nod and leave the restaurant weknow that in three hours, wrapped in a greatcoat, each will besleeping in the earth trenches, and that the next morning the shellswill wake him. 

Chapter XThe Waste of War

In this war, more than in other campaigns, the wastefulness isapparent. In other wars, what to the man at home was mostdistressing was the destruction of life. He measured the importanceof the conflict by the daily lists of killed and wounded. But in thosewars, except human life, there was little else to destroy. The war inSouth Africa was fought among hills of stone, across vacant stretchesof prairie. Not even trees were destroyed, because there were notrees. In the district over which the armies passed there were notenough trees to supply the men with fire-wood. In Manchuria, with theJapanese, we marched for miles without seeing even a mud village, and the approaches to Port Arthur were as desolate as our BlackHills. The Italian-Turkish War was fought in the sands of a desert, andin the Balkan War few had heard of the cities bombarded until theyread they were in flames. But this war is being waged in that part ofthe world best known to the rest of the world. 

Every summer hundreds of thousands of Americans, on business oron pleasure bent, travelled to the places that now daily are beingtaken or retaken or are in ruins. At school they had read of theseplaces in their history books and later had visited them. Inconsequence, in this war they have a personal and an intelligentinterest. It is as though of what is being destroyed they were partowners. 

Toward Europe they are as absentee landlords. It was their pleasure-ground and their market. And now that it is being laid low the utterwastefulness of war is brought closer to this generation than everbefore. Loss of life in war has not been considered entirely wasted, because the self-sacrifice involved ennobled it. And the men whowent out to war knew what they might lose. Neither when, in thepursuits of peace, human life is sacrificed is it counted as wasted. The pioneers who were killed by the Indians or who starved to deathin what then were deserts helped to carry civilization from the Atlanticto the Pacific. Only ten years ago men were killed in learning tocontrol the "horseless wagons, " and now sixty-horsepower cars aredriven by women and young girls. Later the air-ship took its toll ofhuman life. Nor, in view of the possibilities of the air-ships in thefuture, can it be said those lives were wasted. But, except life, therewas no other waste. To perfect the automobile and the air-ship nowomen were driven from home and the homes destroyed. Nochurches were bombarded. Men in this country who after many yearshad built up a trade in Europe were not forced to close their mills andturn into the streets hundreds of working men and women. 

It is in the by-products of the war that the waste, cruelty, and stupidityof war are most apparent. It is the most innocent who suffer andthose who have the least offended who are the most severelypunished. The German Emperor wanted a place in the sun, and, having decided that the right moment to seize it had arrived, declaredwar. As a direct result, Mary Kelly, a telephone girl at the WistariaHotel, in New York, is looking for work. It sounds like an O. Henrystory, but, except for the name of the girl and the hotel, it is notfiction. She told me about it one day on my return to New York, on Broadway. 

"I'm looking for work, " she said, "and I thought if you remembered meyou might give me a reference. I used to work at Sherry's and at theWistaria Hotel. But I lost my job through the war. " How the war inEurope could strike at a telephone girl in New York was puzzling; butMary Kelly made it clear. "The Wistaria is very popular withSoutherners, " she explained, "They make their money in cotton andblow it in New York. But now they can't sell their cotton, and so theyhave no money, and so they can't come to New York. And the hotelis run at a loss, and the proprietor discharged me and the other girl, and the bellboys are tending the switchboard. I've been a monthtrying to get work. But everybody gives me the same answer. They'recutting down the staff on account of the war. I've walked thirty miles aday looking for a job, and I'm nearly all in. How long do you think thiswar will last?" This telephone girl looking for work is a tiny by-productof war. She is only one instance of efficiency gone to waste. 

The reader can think of a hundred other instances. In his own life hecan show where in his pleasures, his business, in his plans for thefuture the war has struck at him and has caused him inconvenience, loss, or suffering. He can then appreciate how much greater are theloss and suffering to those who live within the zone of fire. In Belgiumand France the vacant spaces are very few, and the shells fall amongcities and villages lying so close together that they seem to touchhands. For hundreds of years the land has been cultivated, the fields, gardens, orchards tilled and lovingly cared for. The roads date backto the days of Caesar. The stone farmhouses, as well as the stonechurches, were built to endure. And for centuries, until this war came, they had endured. After the battle of Waterloo some of these stonefarmhouses found themselves famous. In them Napoleon orWellington had spread his maps or set up his cot, and until this warthe farmhouses of Mont-Saint-Jean, of Caillou, of Haie-Sainte, of theBelle-Alliance remained as they were on the day of the great battle ahundred years ago. They have received no special care, theelements have not spared them nor caretakers guarded them. Theystill were used as dwellings, and it was only when you recognizedthem by having seen them on the post-cards that you distinguishedthem from thousands of other houses, just as old and just as wellpreserved, that stretched from Brussels to Liege. 

But a hundred years after this war those other houses will not beshown on picture post-cards. King Albert and his staff may havespent the night in them, but the next day Von Kluck and his armypassed, and those houses that had stood for three hundred yearswere destroyed. In the papers you have seen many pictures of theshattered roofs and the streets piled high with fallen walls and linedwith gaping cellars over which once houses stood. The walls can berebuilt, but what was wasted and which cannot be rebuilt are thelabor, the saving, the sacrifices that made those houses not merewalls but homes. A house may be built in a year or rented overnight; ittakes longer than that to make it a home. The farmers and peasantsin Belgium had spent many hours of many days in keeping theirhomes beautiful, in making their farms self-supporting. After the workof the day was finished they had planted gardens, had reared fruit-trees, built arbors; under them at mealtime they sat surrounded bythose of their own household. To buy the horse and the cow they hadpinched and saved; to make the gardens beautiful and the fieldsfertile they had sweated and slaved, the women as well as the men;even the watch-dog by day was a beast of burden. 

When, in August, I reached Belgium between Brussels and Liege, thewhole countryside showed the labor of these peasants. Unlike theAmerican farmer, they were too poor to buy machines to work forthem, and with scythes and sickles in hand they cut the grain; withheavy flails they beat it. All that you saw on either side of the road thatwas fertile and beautiful was the result of their hard, unceasingpersonal effort. Then the war came, like a cyclone, and in threeweeks the labor of many years was wasted. The fields were torn withshells, the grain was in flames, torches destroyed the villages, by theroadside were the carcasses of the cows that had been killed to feedthe invader, and the horses were carried off harnessed to gray gun-carriages. These were the things you saw on every side, fromBrussels to the German border. The peasants themselves werehuddled beneath bridges. They were like vast camps of gypsies, except that, less fortunate than the gypsy, they had lost what heneither possesses nor desires, a home. As the enemy advanced theinhabitants of one village would fly for shelter to the next, only by theshells to be whipped farther forward; and so, each hour growing innumber, the refugees fled toward Brussels and the coast. They werean army of tramps, of women and children tramps, sleeping in theopen fields, beneath the hayricks seeking shelter from the rain, livingon the raw turnips and carrots they had plucked from the desertedvegetable gardens. The peasants were not the only ones whosuffered. The rich and the noble-born were as unhappy and ashomeless. They had credit, and in the banks they had money, butthey could not get at the money; and when a château and afarmhouse are in flames, between them there is little choice. 

Three hours after midnight on the day the Germans began their threedays' march through Brussels I had crossed the Square Rogier tosend a despatch by one of the many last trains for Ostend. When Ireturned to the Palace Hotel, seated on the iron chairs on thesidewalk were a woman, her three children, and two maid servants. The woman was in mourning, which was quite new, for, though thewar was only a month old, many had been killed, among them herhusband. The day before, at Tirlemont, shells had destroyed herchâteau, and she was on her way to England. She had around herneck two long strings of pearls, the maids each held a small hand-bag, her boy clasped in his arms a forlorn and sleepy fox-terrier, andeach of the little girls was embracing a bird-cage. In one was acanary, in the other a parrot. That was all they had saved. In their waythey were just as pathetic as the peasants sleeping under thehedges. They were just as homeless, friendless, just as much inneed of food and sleep, and in their eyes was the same look of fearand horror. Bernhardi tells his countrymen that war is glorious, heroic, and for a nation an economic necessity. Instead, it is stupid, unintelligent. It creates nothing; it only wastes. 

If it confined itself to destroying forts and cradles of barbed wire thenit would be sufficiently hideous. But it strikes blindly, brutally; ittramples on the innocent and the beautiful. It is the bull in the chinashop and the mad dog who snaps at children who are trying onlyto avoid him. People were incensed at the destruction in Louvainof the library, the Catholic college, the Church of St. Pierre that datedfrom the thirteenth century. These buildings belonged to the world, and over their loss the world was rightfully indignant, but in Louvainthere were also shops and manufactories, hotels and private houses. Each belonged, not to the world, but to one family. These individualfamilies made up a city of forty-five thousand people. In two daysthere was not a roof left to cover one of them. The trade those peoplehad built up had been destroyed, the "good-will and fixings, " thestock on the shelves and in the storerooms, the goods in theshop-windows, the portraits in the drawing-room, the souvenirs andfamily heirlooms, the love-letters, the bride's veil, the baby's firstworsted shoes, and the will by which some one bequeathed to hisbeloved wife all his worldly goods. 

War came and sent all these possessions, including the will and theworldly goods, up into the air in flames. Most of the people of Louvainmade their living by manufacturing church ornaments and brewingbeer. War was impartial, and destroyed both the beer and the churchornaments. It destroyed also the men who made them, and it drovethe women and children into concentration camps. When first I visitedLouvain it was a brisk, clean, prosperous city. The streets werespotless, the shop-windows and cafés were modern, rich-looking, inviting, and her great churches and Hôtel de Ville gave to the citygrace and dignity. Ten days later, when I again saw it, Louvain was indarkness, lit only by burning buildings. Rows and rows of streets werelined with black, empty walls. Louvain was a city of the past, anotherPompeii, and her citizens were being led out to be shot. The fate ofLouvain was the fate of Vise, of Malines, of Tirlemont, of Liege, ofhundreds of villages and towns, and by the time this is printed it willbe the fate of hundreds of other towns over all of Europe. In this warthe waste of horses is appalling. Those that first entered Brussels withthe German army had been bred and trained for the purposes of war, and they were magnificent specimens. Every one who saw themexclaimed ungrudgingly in admiration. But by the time the armyreached the approaches of Paris the forced marches had so depletedthe stock of horses that for remounts the Germans were seizing allthey met. Those that could not keep up were shot. For miles alongthe road from Meaux to Soissons and Rheims their bodies tainted theair. 

They had served their purposes, and after six weeks of campaigningthe same animals that in times of peace would have proved faithfulservants for many years were destroyed that they might not fall intothe hands of the French. Just as an artillery-man spikes his gun, theGermans on their retreat to the Aisne River left in their wake no horsethat might assist in their pursuit. As they withdrew they searched eachstable yard and killed the horses. In village after village I saw horseslying in the stalls or in the fields still wearing the harness of theplough, or in groups of three or four in the yard of a barn, each with abullet-hole in its temple. They were killed for fear they might be useful. 

Waste can go no further. Another example of waste were the motor-trucks and automobiles. When the war began the motor-trucks of thebig department stores and manufacturers and motor-buses ofLondon, Paris, and Berlin were taken over by the different armies. They had cost them from two thousand to three thousand dollarseach, and in times of peace, had they been used for the purposes forwhich they were built, would several times over have paid forthemselves. But war gave them no time to pay even for their tires. You saw them by the roadside, cast aside like empty cigarette-boxes. A few hours' tinkering would have set them right. They were still goodfor years of service. But an army in retreat or in pursuit has no time towaste in repairing motors. To waste the motor is cheaper. 

Between Villers-Cotterets and Soissons the road was strewn withhigh-power automobiles and motor-trucks that the Germans hadbeen forced to destroy. Something had gone wrong, something thatat other times could easily have been mended. But with the French inpursuit there was no time to pause, nor could cars of such value beleft to the enemy. So they had been set on fire or blown up, orallowed to drive head-on into a stone wall or over an embankment. From the road above we could see them in the field below, lying likegiant turtles on their backs. In one place in the forest of Villers was aline of fifteen trucks, each capable of carrying five tons. The gasoleneto feed them had become exhausted, and the whole fifteen had beenset on fire. In war this is necessary, but it was none the less waste. When an army takes the field it must consider first its own safety; andto embarrass the enemy everything else must be sacrificed. It cannotconsider the feelings or pockets of railroad or telegraph companies. Itcannot hesitate to destroy a bridge because that bridge cost fivehundred thousand dollars. And it does not hesitate. 

Motoring from Paris to the front these days is a question of avoidingroads rendered useless because a broken bridge has cut them inhalf. All over France are these bridges of iron, of splendid masonry, some decorated with statues, some dating back hundreds of years, but now with a span blown out or entirely destroyed and sprawling inthe river. All of these material things--motor-cars, stone bridges, railroad-tracks, telegraph-lines--can be replaced. Money can restorethem. But money cannot restore the noble trees of France andBelgium, eighty years old or more, that shaded the roads, that madebeautiful the parks and forests. For military purposes they have beencut down or by artillery fire shattered into splinters. They will againgrow, but eighty years is a long time to wait. 

Nor can money replace the greatest waste of all--the waste in "killed, wounded, and missing. " The waste of human life in this war is soenormous, so far beyond our daily experience, that disasters lessappalling are much easier to understand. The loss of three people inan automobile accident comes nearer home than the fact that at thebattle of Sezanne thirty thousand men were killed. Few of us aretrained to think of men in such numbers--certainly not of dead men insuch numbers. We have seen thirty thousand men together onlyduring the world's series or at the championship football matches. Toget an idea of the waste of this war we must imagine all of thespectators at a football match between Yale and Harvard suddenlystricken dead. We must think of all the wives, children, friendsaffected by the loss of those thirty thousand, and we must multiplythose thirty thousand by hundreds, and imagine these hundreds ofthousands lying dead in Belgium, in Alsace-Lorraine, and within tenmiles of Paris. After the Germans were repulsed at Meaux and atSezanne the dead of both armies were so many that they layintermingled in layers three and four deep. They were buried in longpits and piled on top of each other like cigars in a box. Lines of freshearth so long that you mistook them for trenches intended to concealregiments were in reality graves. Some bodies lay for days uncovereduntil they had lost all human semblance. They were so many youceased to regard them even as corpses. They had become just apart of the waste, a part of the shattered walls, uprooted trees, andfields ploughed by shells. What once had been your fellow men wereonly bundles of clothes, swollen and shapeless, like scarecrowsstuffed with rags, polluting the air. 

The wounded were hardly less pitiful. They were so many and sothickly did they fall that the ambulance service at first was notsufficient to handle them. They lay in the fields or forests sometimesfor a day before they were picked up, suffering unthinkable agony. And after they were placed in cars and started back toward Paris thetortures continued. Some of the trains of wounded that arrivedoutside the city had not been opened in two days. The wounded hadbeen without food or water. They had not been able to move from thepositions in which in torment they had thrown themselves. The foul airhad produced gangrene. And when the cars were opened the stenchwas so fearful that the Red Cross people fell back as though from ablow. For the wounded Paris is full of hospitals--French, English, andAmerican. And the hospitals are full of splendid men. Each one oncehad been physically fit or he would not have been passed to the front;and those among them who are officers are finely bred, finelyeducated, or they would not be officers. But each matched his goodhealth, his good breeding, and knowledge against a broken piece ofshell or steel bullet, and the shell or bullet won. They always will win. Stephen Crane called a wound "the red badge of courage. " It is all ofthat. And the man who wears that badge has all my admiration. But Icannot help feeling also the waste of it. I would have a standing armyfor the same excellent reason that I insure my house; but, except inself-defence, no war. For war--and I have seen a lot of it--is waste. And waste is unintelligent. 

Chapter XIWar Correspondents

The attitude of the newspaper reader toward the war correspondentwho tries to supply him with war news has always puzzled me. 

One might be pardoned for suggesting that their interests are thesame. If the correspondent is successful, the better service herenders the reader. The more he is permitted to see at the front, themore news he is allowed to cable home, the better satisfied should bethe man who follows the war through the "extras. "

But what happens is the reverse of that. Never is the "constantreader" so delighted as when the war correspondent gets the worst ofit. It is the one sure laugh. The longer he is kept at the base, the morehe is bottled up, "deleted, " censored, and made prisoner, the greateris the delight of the man at home. He thinks the joke is on the warcorrespondent. I think it is on the "constant reader. " If, at breakfast, the correspondent fails to supply the morning paper with news, thereader claims the joke is on the news-gatherer. But if the milkmanfails to leave the milk, and the baker the rolls, is the joke on themilkman and the baker or is it on the "constant reader"? Which goeshungry?

The explanation of the attitude of the "constant reader" to thereporters seems to be that he regards the correspondent as a pryingbusybody, as a sort of spy, and when he is snubbed and suppressedhe feels he is properly punished. Perhaps the reader also resents thefact that while the correspondent goes abroad, he stops at home andreceives the news at second hand. Possibly he envies the man whohas a front seat and who tells him about it. And if you envy a man, when that man comes to grief it is only human nature to laugh. 

You have seen unhappy small boys outside a baseball park, and onehappy boy inside on the highest seat of the grand stand, who callsdown to them why the people are yelling and who has struck out. Dothe boys on the ground love the boy in the grand stand and are theygrateful to him? No. 

Does the fact that they do not love him and are not grateful to him fortelling them the news distress the boy in the grand stand? No. For nomatter how closely he is bottled up, how strictly censored, "deleted, "arrested, searched, and persecuted, as between the man at homeand the correspondent, the correspondent will always be the morefortunate. He is watching the march of great events, he is studyinghistory in the making, and all he sees is of interest. Were it not ofinterest he would not have been sent to report it. He watches menacting under the stress of all the great emotions. He sees theminspired by noble courage, pity, the spirit of self-sacrifice, of loyalty, and pride of race and country. 

In Cuba I saw Captain Robb Church of our army win the Medal ofHonor, in South Africa I saw Captain Towse of the Scot Greys win hisVictoria Cross. Those of us who watched him knew he had won it justas surely as you know when a runner crosses the home plate andscores. Can the man at home from the crook play or the home runobtain a thrill that can compare with the sight of a man offering up hislife that other men may live?

When I returned to New York every second man I knew greeted mesympathetically with: "So, you had to come home, hey? They wouldn'tlet you see a thing. " And if I had time I told him all I saw was theGerman, French, Belgian, and English armies in the field, Belgium inruins and flames, the Germans sacking Louvain, in the Dover Straitsdreadnoughts, cruisers, torpedo destroyers, submarines, hydroplanes; in Paris bombs falling from air-ships and a city put tobed at 9 o'clock; battle-fields covered with dead men; fifteen miles ofartillery firing across the Aisne at fifteen miles of artillery; thebombardment of Rheims, with shells lifting the roofs as easily as youwould lift the cover of a chafing-dish and digging holes in the streets, and the cathedral on fire; I saw hundreds of thousands of soldiersfrom India, Senegal, Morocco, Ireland, Australia, Algiers, Bavaria, Prussia, Scotland, saw them at the front in action, saw themmarching over the whole northern half of Europe, saw them woundedand helpless, saw thousands of women and children sleeping underhedges and haystacks with on every side of them their homes blazingin flames or crashing in ruins. That was a part of what I saw. Whatduring the same two months did the man at home see? If he werelucky he saw the Braves win the world's series, or the Vernon Castlesdance the fox trot. 

The war correspondents who were sent to this war knew it was tosound their death-knell. They knew that because the newspapers thathad no correspondents at the front told them so; because theGeneral Staff of each army told them so; because every man theymet who stayed at home told them so. Instead of taking their death-blow lying down they went out to meet it. In other wars as rivals theyhad fought to get the news; in this war they were fighting for theirprofessional existence, for their ancient right to stand on the firing-line, to report the facts, to try to describe the indescribable. If theirdeath-knell sounded they certainly did not hear it. If they were lickedthey did not know it. In the twenty-five years in which I have followedwars, in no other war have I seen the war correspondents so wellprove their right to march with armies. The happy days when theywere guests of the army, when news was served to them by the menwho made the news, when Archibald Forbes and Frank Millet sharedthe same mess with the future Czar of Russia, when MacGahan sleptin the tent with Skobeleff and Kipling rode with Roberts, have passed. Now, with every army the correspondent is as popular as a floatingmine, as welcome as the man dropping bombs from an air-ship. Thehand of every one is against him. "Keep out! This means you!" is theway they greet him. Added to the dangers and difficulties they mustovercome in any campaign, which are only what give the game itsflavor, they are now hunted, harassed, and imprisoned. But the newconditions do not halt them. They, too, are fighting for their place inthe sun. I know one man whose name in this war has been signed todespatches as brilliant and as numerous as those of anycorrespondent, but which for obvious reasons is not given here. Hewas arrested by one army, kept four days in a cell, and then warned ifhe was again found within the lines of that army he would go to jail forsix months; one month later he was once more arrested, and told ifhe again came near the front he would go to prison for two years. Two weeks later he was back at the front. Such a story causes theteeth of all the members of the General Staff to gnash with fury. Youcan hear them exclaiming: "If we caught that man we would treat himas a spy. " And so unintelligent are they on the question ofcorrespondents that they probably would. 

When Orville Wright hid himself in South Carolina to perfect his flying-machine he objected to what he called the "spying" of thecorrespondents. One of them rebuked him. "You have discoveredsomething, " he said, "in which the whole civilized world is interested. If it is true you have made it possible for man to fly, that discovery ismore important than your personal wishes. Your secret is toovaluable for you to keep to yourself. We are not spies. We arecivilization demanding to know if you have something that moreconcerns the whole world than it can possibly concern you. "

As applied to war, that point of view is equally just. The army calls foryour father, husband, son--calls for your money. It enters upon a warthat destroys your peace of mind, wrecks your business, kills the menof your family, the man you were going to marry, the son you broughtinto the world. And to you the army says: "This is our war. We willfight it in our own way, and of it you can learn only what we choose totell you. We will not let you know whether your country is winning thefight or is in danger, whether we have blundered and the soldiers arestarving, whether they gave their lives gloriously or through our lackof preparation or inefficiency are dying of neglected wounds. " And ifyou answer that you will send with the army men to write letters homeand tell you, not the plans for the future and the secrets of the army, but what are already accomplished facts, the army makes reply: "No, those men cannot be trusted. They are spies. "

Not for one moment does the army honestly think those men arespies. But it is the excuse nearest at hand. It is the easiest way out ofa situation every army, save our own, has failed to treat withintelligence. Every army knows that there are men to-day acting, oranxious to act, as war correspondents who can be trusted absolutely, whose loyalty and discretion are above question, who no more wouldrob their army of a military secret than they would rob a till. If the armydoes not know that, it is unintelligent. That is the only crime I imputeto any general staff--lack of intelligence. 

When Captain Granville Fortescue, of the Hearst syndicate, told theFrench general that his word as a war correspondent was as good asthat of any general in any army he was indiscreet, but he was merelystating a fact. The answer of the French general was to put him inprison. That was not an intelligent answer. 

The last time I was arrested was at Romigny, by General Asebert. Ihad on me a three-thousand-word story, written that morning inRheims, telling of the wanton destruction of the cathedral. I asked theGeneral Staff, for their own good, to let the story go through. It statedonly facts which I believed were they known to civilized people wouldcause them to protest against a repetition of such outrages. To getthe story on the wire I made to Lieutenant Lucien Frechet and MajorKlotz, of the General Staff, a sporting offer. For every word of mydespatch they censored I offered to give them for the Red Cross ofFrance five francs. That was an easy way for them to subscribe to theFrench wounded three thousand dollars. To release his story GeraldMorgan, of the London Daily Telegraph, made them the same offer. Itwas a perfectly safe offer for Gerald to make, because a great part ofhis story was an essay on Gothic architecture. Their answer was toput both of us in the Cherche-Midi prison. The next day the censorread my story and said to Lieutenant Frechet and Major Klotz: "But Iinsist this goes at once. It should have been sent twenty-four hoursago. "

Than the courtesy of the French officers nothing could have beenmore correct, but I submit that when you earnestly wish to help a manto have him constantly put you in prison is confusing. It was all verywell to dissemble your love. But why did you kick me down-stairs?

There was the case of Luigi Barzini. In Italy Barzini is the D'Annunzioof newspaper writers. Of all Italian journalists he is the best known. On September 18, at Romigny, General Asebert arrested Barzini, andfor four days kept him in a cow stable. Except what he begged fromthe gendarmes, he had no food, and he slept on straw. When I sawhim at the headquarters of the General Staff under arrest I told themwho he was, and that were I in their place I would let him see all therewas to see, and let him, as he wished, write to his people of theexcellence of the French army and of the inevitable success of theAllies. With Italy balancing on the fence and needing very little urgingto cause her to join her fortunes with France, to choose that momentto put Italian journalists in a cow yard struck me as dull. 

In this war the foreign offices of the different governments have beenwilling to allow correspondents to accompany the army. They knowthat there are other ways of killing a man than by hitting him with apiece of shrapnel. One way is to tell the truth about him. In this entirewar nothing hit Germany so hard a blow as the publicity given to acertain remark about a scrap of paper. But from the government thearmy would not tolerate any interference. It said: "Do you want us torun this war or do you want to run it?" Each army of the Allies treatedits own government much as Walter Camp would treat the Yalefaculty if it tried to tell him who should play right tackle. 

As a result of the ban put upon the correspondents by the armies, theEnglish and a few American newspapers, instead of sending into thefield one accredited representative, gave their credentials to a dozen. These men had no other credentials. The letter each received statingthat he represented a newspaper worked both ways. When arrestedit helped to save him from being shot as a spy, and it was almost sureto lead him to jail. The only way we could hope to win out was throughthe good nature of an officer or his ignorance of the rules. Manyofficers did not know that at the front correspondents were prohibited. 

As in the old days of former wars we would occasionally come uponan officer who was glad to see some one from the base who could tellhim the news and carry back from the front messages to his friendsand family. He knew we could not carry away from him anyinformation of value to the enemy, because he had none to give. In abattle front extending one hundred miles he knew only his own tinyunit. On the Aisne a general told me the shrapnel smoke we saw twomiles away on his right came from the English artillery, and that on hisleft five miles distant were the Canadians. At that exact moment theEnglish were at Havre and the Canadians were in Montreal. 

In order to keep at the front, or near it, we were forced to make use ofevery kind of trick and expedient. An English officer who was actingas a correspondent, and with whom for several weeks I shared thesame automobile, had no credentials except an order permitting himto pass the policemen at the British War Office. With this he made hisway over half of France. In the corner of the pass was the seal orcoat of arms of the War Office. When a sentry halted him he would, with great care and with an air of confidence, unfold this permit, andwith a proud smile point at the red seal. The sentry, who could notread English, would invariably salute the coat of arms of his ally, andwave us forward. 

That we were with allied armies instead of with one was a great help. We would play one against the other. When a French officer haltedus we would not show him a French pass but a Belgian one, or one inEnglish, and out of courtesy to his ally he would permit us to proceed. But our greatest asset always was a newspaper. After a man hasbeen in a dirt trench for two weeks, absolutely cut off from the entireworld, and when that entire world is at war, for a newspaper he willgive his shoes and his blanket. 

The Paris papers were printed on a single sheet and would pack asclose as bank-notes. We never left Paris without several hundred ofthem, but lest we might be mobbed we showed only one. It was theduty of one of us to hold this paper in readiness. The man who was toshow the pass sat by the window. Of all our worthless passes our rulewas always to show first the one of least value. If that failed webrought out a higher card, and continued until we had reached theace. If that proved to be a two-spot, we all went to jail. Whenever wewere halted, invariably there was the knowing individual whorecognized us as newspaper men, and in order to save his countryfrom destruction clamored to have us hung. It was for this pest thatthe one with the newspaper lay in wait. And the instant the pestopened his lips our man in reserve would shove the Figaro at him. "Have you seen this morning's paper?" he would ask sweetly. Itnever failed us. The suspicious one would grab at the paper as a dogsnatches at a bone, and our chauffeur, trained to our team-work, would shoot forward. 

When after hundreds of delays we did reach the firing-line, we alwaysannounced we were on our way back to Paris and would conveythere postal cards and letters. If you were anxious to stop in any oneplace this was an excellent excuse. For at once every officer andsoldier began writing to the loved ones at home, and while they wroteyou knew you would not be molested and were safe to look at thefighting. 

It was most wearing, irritating, nerve-racking work. You knew youwere on the level. In spite of the General Staff you believed you had aright to be where you were. You knew you had no wish to pry intomilitary secrets; you knew that toward the allied armies you felt onlyadmiration--that you wanted only to help. But no one else knew that;or cared. Every hundred yards you were halted, cross-examined, searched, put through a third degree. It was senseless, silly, andhumiliating. Only a professional crook with his thumb-prints andphotograph in every station-house can appreciate how from minute tominute we lived. Under such conditions work is difficult. It does notmake for efficiency to know that any man you meet is privileged totouch you on the shoulder and send you to prison. 

This is a world war, and my contention is that the world has a right toknow, not what is going to happen next, but at least what hashappened. If men have died nobly, if women and children havecruelly and needlessly suffered, if for no military necessity and withoutreason cities have been wrecked, the world should know that. 

Those who are carrying on this war behind a curtain, who haveenforced this conspiracy of silence, tell you that in their good time thetruth will be known. It will not. If you doubt this, read the accounts ofthis war sent out from the Yser by the official "eye-witness" or"observer" of the English General Staff. Compare his amiable gossipin early Victorian phrases with the story of the same battle by PercivalPhillips; with the descriptions of the fall of Antwerp by Arthur Ruhl, andthe retreat to the Marne by Robert Dunn. Some men are trained tofight, and others are trained to write. The latter can tell you of whatthey have seen so that you, safe at home at the breakfast table, alsocan see it. Any newspaper correspondent would rather send hispaper news than a descriptive story. But news lasts only until youhave told it to the next man, and if in this war the correspondent is notto be permitted to send the news I submit he should at least bepermitted to tell what has happened in the past. This war is a worldenterprise, and in it every man, woman, and child is an interestedstockholder. They have a right to know what is going forward. Thedirectors' meetings should not be held in secret.