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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79238 ***
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's Note
+
+    Italic font is indicated by _underscores_.
+    Bold text is indicated by +plus signs+.
+    Superscripted letters are indicated by a preceding ^ sign.
+
+
+
+
+                            WITH THE GERMAN
+                           ARMIES IN THE WEST
+
+
+
+
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+    |                                                              |
+    |                     _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_                     |
+    |                                                              |
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+    |                                                              |
+    |    THROUGH ASIA                                              |
+    |                                                              |
+    |    CENTRAL ASIA AND TIBET TOWARDS THE HOLY CITY OF LHASSA    |
+    |                                                              |
+    |    TRANS-HIMALAYA                                            |
+    |                                                              |
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MILITARY POLICEMAN MAKING NOTES]
+
+
+
+
+                   WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
+
+                            : BY SVEN HEDIN :
+
+                 AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE SWEDISH
+
+                        BY H. G. de WALTERSTORFF
+
+                    WITH 119 ILLUSTRATIONS AND 4 MAPS
+
+
+                   LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+
+                   NEW YORK:  JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXV
+
+
+
+
+                            _SECOND EDITION_
+
+
+       WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+  AUTHOR’S PREFACE
+  TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
+
+
+Long before my book dealing with my personal recollections from the war
+theatres of France and Belgium had been translated into English, it was
+made the subject of a criticism in the _Daily Telegraph_ of February
+15th.
+
+The author, Mr. William Archer, complained that I have not once
+introduced into my narrative any harsh and condemnatory utterances
+regarding Germany’s conduct of the war. The fact is that I have had
+no occasion for such utterances. My self-imposed task was, as I have
+repeatedly made clear, merely to describe what I saw with my own eyes
+and as much as possible to refrain from citing the experience of
+others. During the two months that I spent on the German western front,
+I did not see _a single instance_ of cruelty to prisoners or wounded,
+let alone ill-treatment of the civil population and its goods and
+chattels. The Germans maintained the same incorruptibly severe and just
+discipline that existed, according to the testimony of history, in the
+Swedish armies which Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. led to victory
+during the epic period of my own country.
+
+But even in peace time not a day passes but that crime is committed
+even in the most civilised countries. How, then, can one expect that it
+shall disappear in a war? I therefore by no means deny that there have
+been isolated instances of offences and cruelty in an army of several
+million men. But I have not _seen_ them and need not therefore embark
+upon the subject. I have a shrewd suspicion that criminal statistics
+generally will testify in favour of the Germanic peoples--as compared,
+for instance, with the Slavs and the Latins.
+
+Mr. William Archer has something to say about my “outspoken contempt
+for England.” Here he is mistaken. I have no feeling of hatred towards
+England and have never entertained any feelings of ill-will towards its
+great and admirable[1] people. It is only the part which England has
+played and plays in this world-wide crisis that I abhor and deplore.
+The earth is large enough to hold both England and Germany, and England
+would have gained more by keeping neutral in this war. The hatred of
+England which pervades Germany is new--it began on the 4th August,
+1914. Prior to that date it did not exist. Whether England’s policy
+has gained the sympathy and approval of the neutral countries is not
+for me to judge. One can respect and admire a nation for its splendid
+qualities and for its colossal contribution to the advancement of the
+world, and yet not admire its policy at a given juncture. This is the
+nature of the feelings I now entertain for England, and I deeply regret
+that her guiding statesmen were not able to avert a situation which
+must inevitably bring misfortune upon their country. Did the English
+_people itself_ desire this war? That question will be answered in the
+early future.
+
+[1] The more literal translation would be “excellent and admirable,”
+or “capital and admirable”; the term is difficult to render to a
+nicety.--Translator.
+
+Mr. William Archer is surprised that I do not speak about the Battle
+of the Marne. Here I will remind him once more of what I say in the
+introduction to the book, to wit, that it was not my intention to write
+the history of the war. I have simply described the happenings at which
+I myself was present.
+
+In conclusion Mr. William Archer says: “It would be curious to know
+whether Dr. Hedin now feels so confident of Germany’s triumph as he
+did in the golden prime....” As to that, after the events which have
+occurred _since_ “the golden prime,” especially on the eastern front,
+my faith in Germany’s victory is more unshakable than ever.
+
+It is very kind of Mr. William Archer to say that German culture is not
+in danger. I really think that he is right. The Germans have shown that
+they are men, capable of defending their culture against I might almost
+say the whole world, and I pity those who thought that by their united
+forces they would be able to reduce Germany to a second or third rate
+power.
+
+                                                              SVEN HEDIN
+
+Stockholm
+
+    _25th February, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+For the hospitality, the confidence and the comradeship which have been
+shown to me in the German armies at the Western Front, I tender my most
+heartfelt thanks.
+
+                                                              SVEN HEDIN
+
+Stockholm
+
+    _27th January, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+        I. On the Way to the Front                                 3
+
+       II. The Emperor William                                    44
+
+      III. On the Way to the Fifth Army                           55
+
+       IV. A Day at Eclisfontaine                                 80
+
+        V. A Day at Dun                                          104
+
+       VI. Back at Main Headquarters                             117
+
+      VII. To Sedan                                              125
+
+     VIII. In the Rear of the Fourth Army                        145
+
+       IX. With the Fourth Army                                  161
+
+        X. Quiet Days                                            182
+
+       XI. To Belgium                                            196
+
+      XII. Antwerp the Day After Its Fall                        217
+
+     XIII. More Days in Antwerp                                  233
+
+      XIV. Still in Antwerp                                      248
+
+       XV. _Via_ Ghent and Bruges to Ostend                      263
+
+      XVI. Ostend Bombarded                                      275
+
+     XVII. Two More Days on the Channel Coast                    284
+
+    XVIII. To Bapaume                                            296
+
+      XIX. An Excursion to the Front at Lille                    306
+
+       XX. Trench Life                                           316
+
+      XXI. Sunday the First of November                          332
+
+     XXII. English Prisoners from Ypres                          348
+
+    XXIII. Farewell to Bapaume                                   362
+
+     XXIV. A Final Day on the Western Front                      372
+
+      XXV. Home to Trelleborg                                    378
+
+           Index                                                 391
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ Military policeman making notes                          _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                             FACING PAGE
+ 21-cm. mortars firing at Septsarges                                  70
+
+ A service wagon at Stenay                                            71
+
+ Field-marshal General von Haeseler and General von Mudra at
+   Eclisfontaine                                                      96
+
+ Wrecked houses at Dun on the bank of the Meuse                       97
+
+ A food column composed of commandeered farmers’ carts               112
+
+ Bank clerk from Blois. Prisoner at Dun                              113
+
+ Road across bridge at Dun                                           114
+
+ Landwehr soldier, gaoler at Dun                                     115
+
+ The Crown Prince’s headquarters at Stenay                           116
+
+ Street in Longuyon                                                  117
+
+ Wooded height between Sedan and Donchery                            130
+
+ Houses wrecked by shells at Donchery                                131
+
+ Diagram showing organisation on lines of communication              142
+
+ German infantry                                                     143
+
+ Infantry reservists on the fringe of a wood at Rouvroy              146
+
+ A dressing wagon had halted behind a few dark pines                 147
+
+ A dressing wagon with hood                                          148
+
+ Four doctors breakfasting under cover of a shelter tent             149
+
+ Soldiers under cover of a haystack at Rouvroy                       150
+
+ Officers’ car at Grandpré                                         }
+ French prisoners carried wounded Germans to the railway station   } 151
+
+ A chef de musique of the 11th Infantry Regiment, 17th Army Corps,
+ taken prisoner on September 26th, south of Vouziers. Slightly
+ wounded in the head                                                 154
+
+ Chambon, thirty years old, French soldier from Perigueux in Dordogne
+ (17th Army Corps). Slightly wounded south of Vouziers               155
+
+ Feeding the wounded (the second from the left is Major von Plato)   156
+
+ A seriously wounded man carried from the train to the hospital at
+ Sedan                                                             }
+ The Uhlans proceed on their way                                   } 157
+
+ A squadron of Uhlans halt outside Captain von Behr’s house to await
+ their baggage train                                                 158
+
+ Protracted halt of an infantry ammunition column. Shelter tents have
+ been pitched                                                        159
+
+ Colonel Fischer at his tripod telescope                             161
+
+ A field kitchen or _Erbsenkanone_ (“pea-shooter”)                   162
+
+ “A hero’s death”                                                    163
+
+ Ammunition column halting beside a barn                             164
+
+ Camp scene on a farm at Séchault                                    165
+
+ An ammunition column at Cernay                                      166
+
+ A company ready to start out, receiving its marching instructions   167
+
+ Bivouacking food column with horses and covered wagons              170
+
+ A field hospital at Condé effectively screened from observation   }
+ Kitchen wagons “at work” near Condé                               } 171
+
+ Perot Julien, a 54-year-old peasant charged with plotting, but
+ released through insufficient evidence                              172
+
+ Saisac of Toulouse, 11th Infantry Regiment (33rd Inf. Div., 17th
+ Army Corps). Prisoner at Vouziers                                   173
+
+ Olive, thirty years old. Infanterie Coloniale, 24ème (2nd Colonial
+ Inf. Div.). Native of Perpignan, Eastern Pyrenees. Prisoner at
+ Vouziers                                                            174
+
+ Five Reservists from Bordeaux and Narbonne who fought in Alsace
+ and Champagne, and were captured the 26th and 27th September south
+ of Vouziers. They are busy peeling potatoes. At Vouziers the French
+ prisoners were allowed to cook their soup themselves in order to get
+ the proportion of meat and vegetables that they liked best          175
+
+ French prisoners at Vouziers waiting for their dinner               176
+
+ German airmen: Capt. Chamier, Lieutenants Count Rambaldi and
+ Bürger, and a fourth. The Iron Cross can be seen on the underside
+ of the left plane                                                   177
+
+ A battery of light field howitzers in position                      178
+
+ A salvo has just been fired. The guns are now being reloaded        179
+
+ Observer masked by twigs and branches                               180
+
+ Scene on the road in front of the observation post                  181
+
+ Pater Müller, Professor Zinsser and a Franciscan friar              188
+
+ French prisoners at Vouziers                                        189
+
+ French prisoners working at the railway station at Vouziers         196
+
+ Arms and knapsacks of dead and wounded--Vouziers                    197
+
+ A doctor, Prof. Capt. Lepsius and a few _Sœurs de la Providence_
+ in the Convent grounds                                              205
+
+ A group of fugitives                                                212
+
+ On the way to Ghent and the Channel                                 213
+
+ Malines Cathedral, south aspect                                     220
+
+ A house at Malines “laid open” by shell fire                        221
+
+ Marché aux Souliers a few days after Antwerp’s fall                 224
+
+ Belgian prisoners at Malines                                        225
+
+ Food column on the way to the ferry, with the Cathedral tower in the
+ background, flying the German flag over the cross                   228
+
+ Food column crossing the Grand’ Place                               229
+
+ Marines with a “field kitchen” and a couple of calves               230
+
+ Fugitives returning to Malines from the south                       231
+
+ In front of the Town Hall at Antwerp                                234
+
+ Infantry halting in front of Antwerp Town Hall                      235
+
+ Horses and vehicles being brought on board one of the pontoon
+ ferries. The vessels anchored in the fairway were used as pontoons
+ for the bridge which the Anglo-Belgian army threw across for its
+ retreat. When the last man had crossed, the bridge was blown up     236
+
+ The transport across the Scheldt                                  }
+ A Belgian gun in the harbour                                      } 237
+
+ Louvain Town Hall                                                   240
+
+ Some houses only have the walls left standing                       241
+
+ The interior of Malines Cathedral before the removal of the débris  244
+
+ Destruction wrought by “fat Bertha” in Fort St. Catherine           245
+
+ The Dutch frontier station at Putten on the way to Bergen-op-Zoom   252
+
+ Fugitives returning to Antwerp from Holland                         253
+
+ Outworks at Dryhoek, blown up by their commandant                   260
+
+ A German marine on the pontoon ferry at Antwerp                     261
+
+ A petty officer with a few marines at a street corner in Ostend     274
+
+ Military policemen inspecting the damage outside the Majestic Hotel 275
+
+ The western end of dining-room at the “Majestic” seen from the    }
+ street; one shell had crashed through the upper part of the window} 282
+ A Maubeuge gun doing duty at Middelkerke                          }
+
+ A “direct hit” on a house near the Hôtel Littoral                   283
+
+ Half of Capt.-Lieut. Bess and the whole of the author on the way to
+ Blankenberghe                                                       286
+
+ A self-igniting mine explodes                                       287
+
+ Dr. Schönfelder and the author on the dunes at Ostend               288
+
+ A traverse at Dorpfeld                                              289
+
+ Group beside one of the guns of Lieut. Haak’s battery.
+ (Furthest to the left are Capt.-Lieut. Bess and Lieut. Haak)        292
+
+ Gun crew getting ready to fire on a British destroyer               293
+
+ Hole made by a 42-cm. shell in Fort Talaert                         300
+
+ At the entrance to Fort Talaert                                     301
+
+ The interior of Fort Lierre                                         304
+
+ Privy Councillor von Lumm beside the hole made by a 42-cm. shell    305
+
+ Streets at the Porte Douai which have suffered through the
+ bombardment                                                         306
+
+ Hereditary Prince Friedrich of Hohenzollern and Duke Adolf Friedrich
+ of Mecklenburg                                                      307
+
+ A 15-cm. howitzer battery                                           310
+
+ Of some houses there is only the skeleton left                      311
+
+ Well-masked guns                                                    314
+
+ Gunners studying the news                                           315
+
+ Soldiers reading the latest number of the _Bapaumer Zeitung
+ am Mittag_                                                          318
+
+ Two young ladies are the only civilians to be seen                  319
+
+ Band playing beside Faidherbe’s statue                              340
+
+ German soldiers beside the French general’s memorial                341
+
+ Tommy Atkins at Roubaix                                             348
+
+ The French waitress and her English customers                       349
+
+ They were clothed in neat and practical field uniforms              352
+
+ Here and there was a slightly wounded soldier                       353
+
+ The last houses of Kruiseik                                       }
+ A shell crater in the road is being filled in by engineers        } 354
+
+ Hussar patrol riding through Kruiseik                               355
+
+ First came a German soldier with an English colonel on his left     358
+
+ Then came the convoy                                                359
+
+ The convoy halted just outside the village                          362
+
+ An English officer on a stretcher placed across a cart              363
+
+ Group of officers at Bapaume: The Duke, the Prince, the Chief of
+ Military Police, Cleving, Baron Fleming and others                  368
+
+ An enormous ammunition column had come to a stop at Barbas          369
+
+ Kitchen wagons                                                      374
+
+ On the fore-carriage of a gun sits a soldier fast asleep            375
+
+ A group of soldiers with the Divisional Pastor in the centre        378
+
+ The last picture from the Western Front                             379
+
+
+   MAPS
+
+ The country round Eclisfontaine and Varennes    _between_ pp. 86 and 87
+
+ The country between Somme Py and Rouvroy      _between_ pp. 152 and 153
+
+ The Belgian coast between Blankenberghe and Neuport      _face_ p. 266
+
+ The country round Lille and Ypres                                   312
+
+
+
+
+  PUBLISHER’S NOTE
+
+
+As I have been publicly criticized for undertaking the issue of the
+English edition of this book, for the most part by people who have not
+read it, I am taking the somewhat unusual course of giving a brief
+explanation of my point of view.
+
+In the first place, Dr. Sven Hedin’s book is essentially a record of
+facts as he saw them. He is a trained observer, and there can be no
+question of his veracity. Hitherto, for facts with regard to the German
+Armies and their organisation we have had to rely on such accounts
+as the German official communiqués chose to give us, which nobody
+believes; or, as an alternative, on the accounts published in our own
+press, which, owing to the strictness of the censorship, were mostly
+gathered from accounts furnished by prisoners or our own soldiers. The
+prisoners were naturally pessimistic and our men optimistic. Hence the
+general impression formed has been that the German organisation had
+gone to pieces, that their troops were short of food and clothes and
+that their ammunition was poor.
+
+How far this is from the truth these pages will show, and it is
+surely desirable to publish a book that for the first time gives us
+a comprehensive idea of the wonderful organisation against which we
+are fighting. To my mind it is one of the things chiefly needed to
+stimulate both our workers and our recruiting.
+
+Again, is it not well to let the English nation know, for instance,
+that those 600,000 troops which our gallant 120,000 successfully
+withstood at Ypres were not ill-clad, ill-fed levies, but
+magnificently equipped troops with a machine-like organisation behind
+them?
+
+There is also the question of Dr. Sven Hedin’s anti-English opinions,
+which are quite distinct from his record of facts. But why should
+these not appear in this country where those of Bernhardi, Nietzsche,
+Treitschke and Cramb have been universally read and their publication
+applauded? His reflections are of course intensely irritating to any
+British subject, but they cannot possibly affect the British cause. On
+the contrary, their publication will probably do good, for there is
+nothing like a little tail-twisting to rouse the British Lion!
+
+They afford only one more example of the truth that Lord Rosebery
+enunciated the other day that “foreigners have never understood
+Englishmen and Englishmen have never understood foreigners.”
+
+These opinions, however, though evidently accepted from official
+Germany without question or examination, do not lessen the value of Dr.
+Sven Hedin’s record of personal experiences. For he is so obviously
+honest. Indeed, again and again he naively records little facts which
+really tell against his case.
+
+Dr. Hedin’s personal position is not for me to discuss, but I give his
+book intact, omitting only, at his own request, a few passages dealing
+with Swedish politics of purely local interest, and the British public
+can form its own judgment both of the author and of his views.
+
+If that judgment is unfavourable I hope it will not prevent them from
+taking his facts to heart.
+
+                                                               JOHN LANE
+
+
+
+
+                             WITH THE GERMAN
+                           ARMIES IN THE WEST
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  ON THE WAY TO THE FRONT
+
+
+The tocsin bell has ceased to ring. Swedish men are no longer being
+called to arms. Quiet has once more descended upon Stockholm, and it
+is only occasionally that one encounters a detachment of Landsturm
+men marching through the streets to join their units or on their way
+home. People go about their business in the old familiar way. It would
+be hard to believe that the great world war was raging outside, did
+not the newspapers with their great black headlines and their fateful
+contents form a sinister reminder.
+
+But the individual who under these conditions started out from the
+Stockholm Central terminus with Berlin as his immediate objective, was
+only too well aware that it was not an ordinary trip on the Continent
+on which he was embarking. He travelled from the quiet of the North to
+the storm in the South--to the great capital where history was being
+made, the heart of the great empire which was at war with seven states,
+of which four were great powers. When Stockholm’s thousand lights faded
+into the distance, he felt that peace faded away with them, and that
+each passing day would bring him nearer to war. He was committed to a
+journey the spell of which would each day grow stronger, and he was a
+prey to a tension which was only to give way before the excitement and
+the thrill of action.
+
+The train clanged through the pitch-black night, and the rain wove its
+delicate tracery on the window-panes. On Trelleborg quay only a couple
+of baggage and mail wagons were brought on board the ferry, which
+bears King Gustaf’s name. No Swedish passenger coaches are allowed on
+the German system in war time, and similarly Germany does not permit
+hers to enter Sweden.
+
+The sun has broken through the clouds, but the mist has wiped
+Trelleborg and the Swedish coast from the horizon. A fresh breeze
+is blowing from the south-west, the Baltic is coated with swirling
+white-capped waves, and the ferry cuts through the foam on its way
+to the German coast. There is not a ship in sight, no cruisers, no
+destroyers or torpedo-boats, none of the greyhounds of the sea to track
+and hold up doubtful shipping. These are peaceful waters. None of the
+hot winds of war are yet blowing over this sea, only the cool autumnal
+breezes caress the wave crests. But no doubt grim times are in store
+even here, so it is as well to make the most of the fleeting hour.
+
+At Sassnitz we set foot on German soil which formerly belonged to us.
+Everything is as usual, the traveller’s excitement has been groundless.
+Nothing--unless it be a solitary Landsturm soldier with shouldered
+rifle--to remind one of war. On landing, our passports are viséd and
+our hand luggage is examined at the Custom House. Everything is done in
+a quiet and orderly manner. The German railway and customs officials
+are most polite, and look very well in their new ornamental uniforms.
+
+The train swings across Rügen to Altefähr and boards the ferry for the
+mainland. Here the time-worn churches rear their spires over our old
+possession Stralsund, where we stop a while at the station. Everything
+is as it used to be, no hurry or bustle; people go about their business
+as in times of piping peace. But just as the train is about to steam
+out, a squad of Landwehr soldiers with their kits under their arms rush
+on to the platform and take their seats in the last carriage. They
+are not bound for the front as yet, for they alight at Greifswald. A
+blurred mass of red-tiled roofs framed in the luxuriant foliage of late
+summer, and a number of churches pointing their spires aloft--that is
+all we see of the old university town. But there is nothing unusual to
+be seen, everything runs its normal course. “Papers!” “Beer!” cry the
+boys on the platform, and, anxious for news, one buys a paper from one
+and, to quench one’s thirst, a glass of good, dark beer of the other.
+A light meal is provided by a woman, who at 30 pfg. each sells small
+bags of waffles, plums and grapes.
+
+From some belated fields the corn is still being brought in, and black
+and brindled cattle, and here and there a flock of sheep, is seen
+grazing in the meadows. Summer and prosperity seem to reign everywhere
+in Germany, and there is meat and bread in abundance. Is it possible
+that it is six weeks since this country has been involved in the
+greatest war in history? Everything betokens peace on earth, even the
+sky is cloudless and the sun sheds its golden rays over Pomerania.
+Among the trees by the roadside some women are walking with little
+children in their arms. They are engaged in earnest conversation and
+walk with bowed heads. No doubt their menfolk are at the war, and
+perhaps one of them knows already that she is a widow. A conscientious
+observer might notice that there are fewer adult men than usual. But
+the difference is so slight that one would not think of it unless one
+knew that there was war. Old men, women and children seem a little more
+in evidence than in peace time: that is all.
+
+At Anklam station, not far from where the Peene flows into the Baltic,
+another body of soldiers board the train. Their uniforms are dark blue
+with very bright red collars. They are Landsturm men in the prime of
+life, and have probably been called up for service within Germany;
+for at the front hardly anything is seen but field-grey uniforms, a
+protective colouring which blends with the appearance of the soil and
+is very hard to distinguish.
+
+Prenzlau--so now we are in Brandenburg. Fresh bodies of Landsturm men
+clamber into the train, which is to carry them away from their homes
+to an unknown fate. They come running and singing across the platform,
+as if they long to get away. Their blue tunics with red collars and
+shoulder-straps, and the red cap-bands, form a bright contrast to
+the dress of the civilians. They are strong and powerful specimens
+of the Teutonic type, but too stout for perfect symmetry. One does
+not see amongst them any ideal specimens bearing the distinguishing
+characteristics of the Caucasian race, no broad-shouldered,
+deep-chested, strapping fellows such as one meets with in the mountains
+of Georgia; but they are a blonde, sound, calm and yet cheery set of
+men, all animated by one single thought--to conquer or to die. Their
+women, children and other relations have followed them to the train
+to say good-bye. All are cheerful, they chat and laugh. There is
+no weeping and complaining, it is the great day of joy, when every
+able-bodied man goes to do his duty for the welfare of his country.
+
+My carriage is filled with officers. They are engaged in very animated
+conversation; they do not care what is going on around them; they don’t
+look out of the window and don’t allow themselves to be disturbed by
+the bustle and crush in the corridor. They talk about the affairs of
+their units and regiments, about the equipment of the troops and the
+departure for foreign parts. They discuss Hindenburg’s victories and
+give vent to their admiration for him. The cares and solemnity of war
+do not rest heavily on these men; they are animated by a glad longing
+and sure feeling of victory, and without knowing them one realises that
+they have staked their lives and their existence on one single goal.
+About the result they have no doubt. They _must_ win, otherwise their
+country is lost.
+
+But the hours speed away, dusk settles down over Brandenburg, and soon
+the earth is wrapped in darkness. The carriages are not lighted--I
+don’t know why. As we approach Berlin it is dark within, but outside
+there are rows of electric lamps lighting up the interior of the
+carriage in a fantastic manner.
+
+The train stops at _Stettiner Bahnhof_. On the platform there is
+the same busy hum and bustle as in peace time. A whole crowd of
+_Gepäckträger_ hurry to the window to receive the passengers’
+luggage--one notices no lack of men. A policeman hands out numbered
+cab-discs, the heavy luggage is got out in a twinkling, and up one
+jumps into one of the numberless taxicabs ranged outside and drives off
+to one’s hotel.
+
+I am an old customer at the Kaiserhof, but this time I was told that
+I ought to stay in Unter den Linden in order to be able to study at
+my leisure from a balcony the endless processions of patriots, who,
+especially at night, file down the road with proud bearing, singing
+patriotic songs. I therefore chose the Hotel Bristol. Its name has
+been removed from the large illuminated sign facing the street.
+Bristol--this name reminded one too much of England’s faithlessness
+towards her Teutonic kinsmen! Only the first letter remained, to be
+interpreted as one might wish.
+
+The hotel was only half-full. Most of the visitors were Scandinavians
+and Americans. It was just as well that there were not too many, as
+the staff had also been reduced by half--the other half was at the
+front. The quiet which reigned in the big building was reflected by
+the atmosphere of the famous avenue outside. To-day there were no
+closely packed crowds, no singing processions. Only those people who
+had business to attend to or who wanted to glean the latest news were
+seen on the pavements--the others kept indoors. The traffic was, if
+anything, less lively than in peace time, and an amazing calm had
+descended upon the great city.
+
+I went out in the evening to see the people and listen to their
+conversation. The talk was almost entirely about the war. I walked
+through Friedrichstrasse, Leipzigerstrasse and the other familiar
+streets. Everything is just as usual. Berlin is wrapped in absolute
+peace. Innumerable shop windows still shed their light upon the
+pavements. In some of them large maps are shown, small flags indicating
+the positions of the armies. On one such map the flags were waving and
+fluttering, as if a storm were ravaging the plains of Europe. Outside,
+in the street, little groups formed to talk about the war and to
+express the hope that the German flags would soon be shifted further
+into the steppes in the east and towards the sea in the west.
+
+“Why are the streets so silent?” I ask somebody. “I understood that
+Berlin was in such high spirits.”
+
+“It is so long since we heard of any great victories,” is the answer.
+
+“Patience,” I retort, “you must not expect a Tannenberg every week.”
+
+Here comes a woman hurrying along with a bundle of newspapers. It is
+the latest edition with fresh telegrams from the front. She is hustling
+as much as possible in order to impress on the public that they must
+look sharp and get the news as fresh as possible. On the opposite
+pavement runs a boy with the same newspaper, calling out his ware in
+a loud voice. At a street corner stands an old man with his bundle of
+papers. He is too tired to run, and his cracked voice cannot even be
+heard above the subdued hubbub of street-life and the quick flow of
+talk of the people. It is all the same news, and it deals chiefly with
+the gigantic battle of Lemberg.
+
+The restaurants are well filled, in fact they are all overcrowded with
+customers. Through the big windows one can see the honest bourgeois
+seated at his little table, where sausage and _wienerschnitzel_,
+_dunkles_ or _helles_ may be had in abundance. I entered and sat down
+at a table, overhearing scraps of talk from all sides--all about the
+war, about brothers and sons who are fighting, one hardly knows where,
+as the field post has brought no news for a long time. But perhaps
+the next day will bring a greeting from the front. Maybe a son who
+has been reported in the papers as missing, has turned up again.
+But nevertheless the personal sorrow and anxiety is thrust into the
+background. Every sacrifice must be gladly made, and the loved ones
+may lie dead on the field of battle so long as Germany wins her fight
+against almost the whole of Europe.
+
+On the 13th September the lingering summer came to an end, and autumn
+suddenly asserted itself. It poured with rain, it was dark, windy, cold
+and raw. Shallow puddles covered the asphalt in Unter den Linden, which
+resembled an enormous river-bed still drenched with the flow, and from
+which the tide had just ebbed. The great avenue now looks desolate with
+a vengeance. From my balcony I can only see a few solitary individuals
+sheltered under more or less elegant umbrellas. Berlin’s inhabitants
+prefer to keep in their comfortable homes, and not even the longing for
+war news can tempt them out in such weather.
+
+The rain falls thick and heavy and patters down on the dripping limes
+outside my balcony. Berlin is dull and miserable in the autumn when the
+rain sweeps its long, monotonously straight streets with their heavy,
+dark houses. Not even the trooping of the colours and the march-past
+at midday raise the drooping spirits, and only a few pedestrians with
+open umbrellas join the band and march in step with the soldiers. The
+motor-cars buzz past over the asphalt, flinging up a spray of water
+as they rush along. They are plainly far less numerous than usual. No
+calls are made, no visits paid, for the whole of the aristocracy is in
+mourning for lost relatives and everybody’s thoughts are centred on the
+war. Nobody feels inclined for the futile pleasures of ordinary times
+when the newspapers speak of a father who has lost four sons at the
+front, or of a mother whose three sons have each died a hero’s death
+for Emperor and country. But no complaints are heard, no tears seen. In
+the streets one seldom sees signs of mourning. There is perhaps a tacit
+convention not to express in black and white the sorrow which is felt
+at the bottom of the heart, but to make the grief subservient to the
+proud consciousness that the beloved one has fallen for his country,
+never to return!
+
+Already in Berlin I was greatly impressed by the world-wide influence
+of German thought. Here is a nation which for long years back has
+known how to read the inexorable message of time, which has not rested
+on the laurels gained in its last war, which has needed no warnings,
+and whose watchmen never closed their eyes and never dallied with an
+inevitable fate. Here is a nation which during the decades of peace
+has armed itself to the teeth and which now, when the hour has struck,
+stands ready to meet four great powers in fierce combat and to contend
+with one of them for the mastery of the seas. It is true that the
+German people have been divided into parties, as the democratic spirit
+of our age demands, but the political factions have nevertheless
+realised the necessity of a strong defence of their common country.
+And now that the war is raging in all directions, the parties have
+disappeared completely. Germany at the present time is inhabited by a
+people which is at one with itself. Here we have but one party--that of
+the soldiers. Here everyone has but one goal, and there is no one who
+does not realise that this is a fight of life and death for Germany;
+all have the same thoughts, all hold the same hopes and offer up the
+same prayers, from the Emperor who stands first and foremost in war as
+in peace, to the street urchin who flattens his nose against the shop
+window and studies the positions of the tiny flags.
+
+But the rain keeps on falling and beats against the window-panes.
+I hurry downstairs, jump into a taxi and in a few minutes I am
+sitting in an elegant drawing-room at the dainty new residence of
+the Swedish Minister, at the corner of Friedrich Wilhelmstrasse and
+Tiergartenstrasse, chatting with old friends--needless to say, about
+the war. When I last met Count Taube in Berlin, I had just returned
+from a long journey in the Far East. Now I stood on the threshold of a
+new journey, which might be infinitely longer than the last! Later in
+the day I visited another nobleman, Prince von Wedel, whom I had met
+in Vienna when he was ambassador there, and in Strassburg when he was
+Governor. We had much to talk about, but what is there to discuss in
+these days but the great and bloody drama which occupies everyone’s
+thoughts--the War!
+
+My most important visit in Berlin was to the Foreign Office. But
+before narrating what took place there I must say a few words about the
+reasons which led up to my journey. It was desirable that no one in a
+responsible position in Sweden should have an inkling of my journey
+to the front. Our country belonged to the neutral states, and thus no
+authority must entertain the slightest shadow of a suspicion that I was
+travelling on any sort of secret mission. No,--the reason was a very
+simple one. Only a few days’ journey away the greatest war of all time
+was being waged. It was clear that the outcome of this struggle would
+decide the political development for the next fifty or hundred years,
+or perhaps longer. In any case its shadows must envelop the remainder
+of the lives of the present generation.
+
+The war of 1870-71 became the starting-point of a new era in Germany’s
+development. Now Germany is once again at war, and the new political
+problems which may be expected to come up for discussion in the
+immediate future will doubtless be rooted in the great Germanic war. If
+the two contending groups of powers were to come out of the struggle
+only with depleted forces, the war of 1914 would, in its dying embers,
+carry the seed of a new world conflagration, even more devastating
+perhaps than the last. But if Germany were to win at all points, the
+map of the world would undergo sweeping changes, and Germany would
+then, in the great triumph of her power, discountenance and forbid
+fresh wars. If Russia were to win, the fate of Sweden and Norway would
+be sealed. Whatever happens, great and memorable events will arise out
+of this struggle. How instructive would it be, then, to study the War
+on the very scene of the momentous conflict, and to visit the ravaged
+regions where the German soldiers carried the fate of Germany and of
+the whole Germanic world on the point of their bayonets! No one who has
+not seen with his own eyes how the Germans fight, can fully and clearly
+grasp what the struggle means to Germany. But his presence there will
+enable him to comprehend more plainly what the future holds in store
+for us, and the happenings which in due course will be unfolded before
+our vision.
+
+Thus I look upon my journey to the front first and foremost as a
+political study.
+
+But there were also other reasons and other thoughts that made me long
+to get out to the theatre of war. I wanted to see with my own eyes and
+become familiar with war as it really is, and I wanted to gain the
+personal experience which would enable me to describe to others the
+dark as well as the bright sides of war. Its dark sides are the hate,
+the desire for vengeance, the destruction, the gutted homesteads,
+the ruined crops, the wounded, the maimed, the graves, the grief and
+privation, but war is bright when it is fought by a united nation,
+determined to live and to retain its independence.
+
+The unity, self-sacrifice and confidence in victory of the German
+nation is one of the bright sides of this war, which otherwise reveals
+an abyss of human misery. I thought it would be instructive to see for
+myself how far civilisation, Christianity and pacificism had advanced
+nineteen hundred and fourteen years after the birth of Christ.
+
+During the first phase of the war the British press accused the Germans
+of barbaric cruelty to their prisoners and to wounded opponents. Not
+for one moment did I believe these reports, but for the sake of the
+Teutonic race I wanted to uproot this calumny and to bring to light
+the truth. If one cannot ask anything else of a people which stands
+on the pinnacle of culture, one may at least expect it not to accuse
+its opponents of crimes which were never committed. German protests
+against the accusations of foreign newspapers were of course of no
+avail. Perhaps I shall be believed if I protest before God that I will
+not write a single line which is not true and will describe nothing but
+what I have seen with my own eyes.
+
+Finally, it was my wish to study the psychology of war, I mean the
+_Geist_ and the fighting spirit with which armies went into battle, the
+mood in which they returned therefrom, the thoughts and feelings of
+the wounded, the spirit with which the soldiers entered the fray for
+the second time after having been slightly wounded, tended and healed.
+In the last phase of the Manchurian campaign there was a noticeable
+weakening of purpose which led to slackened efforts on both sides and
+caused the war to die, so to speak, of inanition. Was a like form of
+mental fatigue, an exhaustion of soul and body under the stupendous
+hardships in the field to leave its mark on the Germans too? Or would
+their conviction, that the war meant to them the life or death of
+Germany, endow them with a buoyancy and tenacity enabling them to
+fight through to victory? It might be of interest to us, Teutons of
+the north, to gain some insight into this problem. Such knowledge
+might be useful, should we at some future time be confronted with a
+situation comparable with that of Germany at the present moment. The
+outcome of a campaign does not merely depend upon preparations, war
+material and training. The fighting spirit and general mental attitude
+of the soldier also plays a most important part. The soldier must know
+_why_ he is fighting and _what_ he is fighting for. The psychological
+factor is therefore of the utmost importance. The officer leading his
+men to the front and into the firing line has neither the attitude of
+mind nor the time for such studies. His whole attention is and must be
+concentrated on the fighting itself; he only thinks of utilising the
+striking power of his men with the utmost effect at the right moment
+and in the right place. He is therefore--and quite rightly--blind
+to everything else. A layman on the other hand, whose attention
+is not distracted by considerations of conduct of war, has better
+opportunities of studying the psychology of the soldiers.
+
+Once this war is over, whole libraries of books will be written about
+it. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that on the western front
+alone upwards of a million and a half diaries are being kept at the
+present moment. In all directions, in all fighting units down to the
+company, the platoon and the battery, official war journals are being
+kept and accounts of the fighting are being prepared from the bedrock
+furnished on the one hand by the draft of outgoing reports and on the
+other by incoming papers, orders, reports and communications. The
+soldiers record their own personal experiences, the officers their
+military observations. Many a note-book has no doubt protected a heart
+or checked the death-dealing bullet. Thus the sections of the German
+General Staff, whose task it will be in due course to prepare the
+materials, will be occupied for many years to come with this monumental
+labour.
+
+When I went out to the front, it was clearly established in my mind
+that my narrative would be quite different from the military accounts.
+I was not going to devote any attention to matters of purely military
+science, which could only be dealt with by experts. Even Sweden has
+from the very beginning had its military attaché, Major Adlercreutz,
+of the Scanian Dragoons, and later on Lieut.-Col. Bouveng received
+permission to accompany the German forces. Strategical and tactical
+observations would thus be absent from my narrative. It would no
+doubt have been interesting and instructive to familiarise myself in
+some measure with these subjects. But it was evident to me from the
+beginning that I should always have to observe the utmost tact and
+discretion, and even avoid obtaining knowledge of military matters
+which ought to remain secret until the end of the campaign. This veto
+comprised the distribution of German forces, army corps, divisions,
+regiments and other units, as well as any regrouping of forces which
+might be effected during my presence at the front. I was destined often
+to hear of such details, but made up my mind to take no notes in that
+connection.
+
+Neither did I propose to embody in my narrative any account of the
+events that led up to the war or of the Notes despatched hither and
+thither across Europe during the days preceding its outbreak. All this
+had been fully dealt with before. My book was only to constitute a
+conscientious account of what I myself had seen and experienced whilst
+I was the guest of the German Army in the field. Towards this army and
+towards the German people I thus incurred a certain responsibility--my
+sketch, in order to possess any value, must therefore be a true and
+faithful one. Towards Germany’s enemies I also had a duty, not to be
+unfair to them. I further felt a certain responsibility towards Swedish
+officers as a body, for although it might have been my wish that my
+observations should be of use to them, it was more than doubtful
+whether I should succeed in my object. As regards the public, whatever
+I might witness, I had to guard against the temptation to satisfy its
+craving after sensation. Besides, it was evident to me that in a modern
+war there was very little to be left to the imagination, and that the
+reality would in most cases render it unnecessary to strive after
+effect. I wanted to describe life and death on the battlefield, that
+was all.
+
+Such were my thoughts and plans at the beginning of September. They had
+arisen and matured in my own mind without the shadow of any incentive
+from German or Swedish quarters. When I had made up my mind, all that
+remained for me to do was to obtain permission to go to the front and
+to spend some time with the German Army. With this object I applied to
+the German Minister in Stockholm, His Excellency von Reichenau, who
+with the greatest kindness undertook to transmit my request to the
+competent authority in Germany. After waiting a week I received a very
+courteous reply saying that I was very welcome to visit the front. The
+following day, September 11th, I set out on my fateful journey, and
+at the present moment--when I broke the thread of my narrative--I am
+standing on the doorstep and ringing the bell at the Foreign Office at
+76 Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin.
+
+The Under Secretary of State, Herr von Zimmermann, who is acting
+Foreign Minister in Berlin whilst His Excellency von Jagow is at the
+Main Headquarters, received me with open arms and said that all he knew
+was that I was to proceed straightway to the said Headquarters.
+
+“But where are the Main Headquarters?” I asked.
+
+“That is a secret,” Herr von Zimmermann answered, with a smile.
+
+“Good, but how am I to get there?”
+
+“Oh, the Chief of the Great General Staff, Colonel-General von Moltke,
+has given instructions that a car is to be kept at your disposal. You
+may decide yourself when you would like to start. An officer and an
+orderly will accompany you, and if you like you can travel to the Main
+Headquarters day and night without stopping, or you can choose your own
+road and time. In fact, you are at liberty to do as you like.”
+
+“And afterwards?”
+
+“After that your fate will rest in the hands of His Excellency von
+Moltke. No doubt he will map out a plan for your journey. The only
+thing you have to think about now is to get to him.”
+
+“And where shall I find the car?”
+
+“This paper will tell you.”
+
+Herr von Zimmermann handed me a permit from the Great General Staff
+which read as follows: “The bearer of this permit is entitled to use
+the relays of the Imperial Volunteer Automobile Corps to the Main
+Headquarters. Everything that can in any way expedite his journey is to
+be placed at his disposal.”
+
+In conclusion I was told that the offices of the Volunteer Automobile
+Corps were at 243 Friedrichstrasse, and that the Acting Chief was a Dr.
+Arnoldi.
+
+After heartily thanking Herr von Zimmermann and receiving his good
+wishes for the impending journey, I went off to look for Arnoldi and
+his office. I found him in a large room full of maps, piles of papers,
+telegrams, officers and orderlies, and my reception was as usual most
+cordial--in future I shall not have to repeat this pleasing fact, for
+everyone has been equally courteous and friendly. To begin with, I was
+shown a map of the great relay road, but for obvious reasons I must not
+tell anything about it.
+
+Then came the question:
+
+“Do you wish to travel independently of all regulations or by relays,
+that is to say, 700 kilometres in 16 hours--44 kilometres an hour on
+end?”
+
+I thought a moment, then chose to be independent, for if I had done the
+journey in sixteen hours, I should have been obliged to travel over
+the most interesting part of the road by night when there is nothing
+to be seen, and, after all, I had come to see as much as possible. The
+trip from Berlin to Headquarters ought to mean a continuous crescendo.
+I ought to know what it felt like to leave peace behind and gradually
+to approach the scorching firing lines. I thought in my innocence that
+the roads in Western Germany would be more or less encumbered with
+soldiers and vehicles. Not a bit of it! It was a long time before we
+had to drive slowly on account of the congestion, for within Germany
+all transports were effected by rail.
+
+“Who is going to be my chauffeur?”
+
+“An officer, accompanied by an orderly. Both are on duty with the
+Volunteer Automobile Corps.”
+
+“Who appoints the officer?”
+
+“I do; and I am just thinking that Rittmeister von Krum, of
+Württemberg, will be the right man.”
+
+Dr. Arnoldi touched a button. An orderly entered and was asked whether
+Captain von Krum was at hand.
+
+“Yes, the Rittmeister is here.” “Ask him to come in.” And an officer
+in field-grey uniform, of the most attractive appearance and charming
+manners, enters the room. Dr. Arnoldi tells him what his duties are,
+namely, to take me to the mysterious region in the west, and I wonder
+in my own mind whether it will bore him to jog along with me on the
+road through more than half of Germany. I even ask him how he feels
+about it, and he replies that it will be a great pleasure to him to
+take _me_, of all people, to the theatre of war. I assure Captain von
+Krum that it pleases me greatly to have _him_, of all people, as my
+travelling companion, chauffeur and guide.
+
+My Rittmeister had retired from active service, but on the outbreak of
+war he had rallied to the colours and placed his car at the disposal
+of the Crown in accordance with the mobilisation decree. He drives it
+himself in the service of the Army and the orderly who is to accompany
+us is, in peace time, his own chauffeur. I was told that the Volunteer
+Automobile Corps now mustered 350 cars. The owner of a car reports
+himself and is paid for his vehicle, and he may at the end of the war
+buy back his car from the Crown. It is reckoned that the serviceable
+life of a car is five years. If the owner paid ten thousand marks for
+his car and has used it for four years, he only gets paid at the last
+year’s valuation, i.e. two thousand marks, whilst if the car is quite
+new he receives the full amount.
+
+Three hundred and fifty cars--it doesn’t sound much, but these cars
+merely form the Volunteer Corps, and I suppose you will feel more
+at ease when I tell you that at the western front alone there are
+altogether fifty thousand cars in use, whilst forty thousand are left
+in Germany. That means fifty thousand chauffeurs. When one considers
+that each car usually has a crew of two, it will be seen that the
+equivalent of over two army corps are attached to the Automobile
+Service. There are plenty of men in Germany, plenty for every purpose.
+On the eastern front I was told that cars are useless outside the
+German boundaries, owing to the shocking state of Russian and Polish
+roads. There one has to ride or requisition ordinary vehicles. But in
+the west the cars play a part the importance of which had only remotely
+been guessed at, as may be gathered from the course of this narrative.
+
+Finally, von Krum was told to collect all maps (scale 1 : 100,000) that
+we should require from Berlin to Main Headquarters. I myself received
+the pleasing news that I need only give ten minutes’ notice before
+starting, as car, Rittmeister and orderly were always ready, likewise
+Dr. Arnoldi’s wolf-skin coat, which he advised me to take with me.
+
+I had thus every reason to be satisfied with my day’s work. The trip
+to Main Headquarters was evidently only the first step. What was to
+follow? Probably a trip along the line of German lines of communication
+to the fighting zone, and possibly to the firing line itself. Perhaps
+it would be my good fortune to catch at least a glimpse of a modern
+fight. After such a beginning the rest was sure to go well. My
+excitement on starting had now changed to longing, and I felt that I
+was about to be carried with lightning speed along magnificent roads
+towards a spectacle which I would never forget: the German Army in
+all its overpowering strength drawn up for the greatest contest in
+the world’s history. The German Army! These words convey nowadays far
+more than formerly, and the same may be said of the French Army. In
+these days it is not armies of mercenaries that meet one another in the
+field, it is entire nations that range up for battle. The difference
+is only that the German Army is one homogeneous whole and pure in
+race, whilst the French Army is reinforced with Englishmen and a whole
+colour-scheme of imported heathens.
+
+The next day I was out with my friend the Rittmeister and got fitted
+out from head to foot with motor cap, boots and puttees, a sporting
+suit of suitable warmth, leather coat and vest, rain-coat, a warm
+muffler and a pair of motor goggles, which I never used.
+
+I ended my day at a reception at the house of the Countess Wilamovitz,
+née Fock, whose husband, Captain of one of the Reserve Regiments of
+the Uhlans of the Guard, is fighting at the front. The sole topic of
+conversation among the guests was the War and the final victory.
+
+The 15th of September we started out. I turned up in good time at the
+offices of the Imperial Volunteer Automobile Corps, where the car was
+waiting. But as usual it takes a long time to get away; von Krum has
+several papers to sign and maps to arrange and Dr. Arnoldi conveys to
+me very hearty greetings from Lieut.-Colonel Gross, the great airship
+expert and inventor, who is commanding the Field Telegraph Battalion.
+Before I left he insisted on my going out to inspect his magnificent
+establishment. So we drove out to see him and were received at the
+gate by the Colonel himself, an energetic, virile, distinguished
+little man surrounded by several officers. The establishment is
+truly imposing, a whole row of barracks, workshops, depots, stores
+and stables surrounding an enormous yard, where masts for wireless
+telegraphy tower aloft. The station is thus in communication with
+the whole of Germany, and the aerial news operator was just engaged
+in reading out for the general edification some atrocity stories
+received that moment from English sources. The telegraph battalion with
+equipment, men and horses, is, of course, in the field with its Army
+Corps. But, nevertheless, depots, barracks and stables are replete
+with a completely new set of everything. In the stables every stall
+was occupied by recently requisitioned farm horses, fat and sleek and
+contented in their new unaccustomed surroundings. As regards the men,
+they were all volunteers, who had offered themselves in far greater
+numbers than were needed. Just as we were walking across the yard a
+detachment drove in at full speed with its loads of masts and wire.
+It had been out practising, and the precision and resolution which
+distinguished the work of the men was astonishing, seeing that they had
+only had four weeks’ training. One of them, by the scars on his cheeks,
+showed himself to be an old University student, and was now headmaster
+in a school. When addressed by the Colonel he came to attention and
+saluted with a smartness which made us suspect that he preferred the
+driver’s seat on a field telegraph lorry to the schoolmaster’s desk.
+We also visited the immense sheds containing the wagons with their
+substantial provision for batteries, telegraph and telephone apparatus,
+insulators, tools, wires and the innumerable objects required for field
+telegraph lines. The wagons, which are motor-driven, resemble enormous
+but well-built and graceful boxes. They are of immense weight and
+can only be used on paved or macadamised roads. On the Polish roads,
+soaked by the autumn rains, they would not get far. But on the western
+front it is sufficient if they keep to the main roads, where they are
+stationed at suitable points as depots from which supplies are conveyed
+in lighter vehicles to the spot where they are wanted. One store shed
+contained perfect mountains of gigantic wire coils. The wire seemed to
+me somewhat thin, but I was told that it fully answers its purpose. The
+Colonel showed me the lances by means of which experienced and expert
+riders throw up the telegraph and telephone wires among the branches of
+an avenue of trees. When I saw all these heavy lumbering vehicles and
+appliances and all these thousands of miles of wire, the idea crossed
+my mind that it was all very well when it was all ranged up before one
+as at an exhibition in Berlin, but how would it all work out in war?
+Was it possible that everything would turn out as calculated? Would
+the wagons arrive in time and would there not be endless bother with
+all these wires in trees and on the ground? I was soon to learn how
+wonderfully everything panned out and with what meticulous care every
+detail was superintended by trained soldiers.
+
+But time flies, we rush back to Berlin, cross Unter den Linden and pass
+out through the Brandenburger Tor. The war cars always create a good
+deal of interest. The Rittmeister sits at the wheel himself and steers
+his car with wonderful assurance. He threads his way with the most
+daring turns and twists in between and past other cars and carriages in
+the Tiergartenstrasse, and by pressing a little bulb on the wheel he
+produces a piercing, twittering noise which during the day caused an
+officer to shout after us: “That’s a nice little canary you’ve got hold
+of!”
+
+By the side of von Krum sits the chauffeur, the excellent Deffner, also
+from Württemberg, an enormous chap. His rifle is lashed to the front
+of the car. I myself occupy the back seat, where I have the map of the
+General Staff at hand, making hasty notes now and again. At the bottom
+of the car is my luggage, two bags no larger than can be carried by
+myself if necessary. In the field one should not carry more baggage
+than one can cope with personally. Our first halt is at Potsdam, 28.9
+kilometres. We fly along at a rattling pace on the magnificent road
+lined by avenues of trees, parks and long rows of large new houses.
+Here we have the Wannsee with its innumerable sailing boats at anchor,
+its leafy nooks, its villas and inns. There are very few people about
+and we seldom meet another vehicle. But when we sight one down the
+road, the shrill sound of the canary rends the atmosphere, and Deffner
+conjures forth a melodious note out of his hooter.
+
+We are not far from Beelitz when a report is heard under the car--it is
+not a shell, merely a burst tyre which compels us to stop and change
+it. A horseshoe nail has worked its way through the cover, but Deffner
+is a handy man and it is put right in no time. There is a fresh breeze
+blowing, and it murmurs through the pines by the roadside--it is the
+last breath of summer complaining that autumn is so near. One finds it
+rather windy travelling in an open car at sixty kilometres an hour with
+a head wind, but it is delightful and exhilarating to travel fast, to
+fly along the road regardless of everything and to approach the scene
+of events which are now daily filling the pages of the world’s history.
+All unpleasant thoughts are blown away, all fuss and pettiness which
+one otherwise has to endure are left behind, one simply runs away from
+it all and is filled with a feeling of buoyant joy and freedom as one
+rushes past the fields, the homely villages, the farms, the copses,
+the endless, straight avenues of ash, oak, maple and elm--everything
+flits past and disappears, whilst the hand of the indicator marks
+seventy kilometres an hour. There is nothing to indicate that Germany
+is in the throes of her greatest war. Huge cartloads of scented hay are
+being brought in from the meadows--not all Germany’s horses are busy
+pulling guns and ammunition. The sails of the windmills travel round
+busily with several reefs taken in, grinding the corn which is to be
+made into bread for millions of soldiers and their families at home. At
+Treuenbrietzen we encounter groups of merry school children who shout
+and wave, and in the fields outside women, young and old, are busy
+gathering potatoes and beet. They greet us with a flutter of aprons and
+handkerchiefs. Why on earth are they waving to us, I say to myself, but
+the answer is obvious--the uniforms and the streamer denote a war car,
+and they realise that we are on the way to the front; whether they know
+us or not does not matter, but perhaps they think we shall meet their
+own dear ones who are fighting out there for hearth and home!
+
+Now the country opens up more and stretches out in undulating vistas
+before us. Presently we reach the top of a rise and see the tower and
+roof of Wittenberg church in a hollow before us--the Elbe valley. Here
+is the Schlosskirche, and I see in my mind’s eye the wonder-struck
+crowds gathering before the portals where the monk Luther nailed up
+his ninety-five theses. But disturb not the peace which reigns within
+the church, where the great reformer rests before the pulpit! Outside
+in the street a body of volunteers are marching; they look cheerful,
+they march well with a rhythmical firm step and sing a lively and
+inspiriting war song. At the next street corner we meet another
+detachment on the way to or from its drill ground. They are strapping
+young fellows of martial bearing, and one can see how they are longing
+to get out to fight. They do not sing, they whistle a pleasing tune
+which sounds quaint among the venerable houses of Wittenberg. They are
+Teutons, they were not born to be conquered by Slavs and Latins. Their
+forefathers were described by Tacitus, and they fought and conquered in
+the Teutoburger Wald. Now it is the descendants of the old Teutons who
+are gathered under the German eagles to struggle for freedom between
+the Rhine and the Vistula, and far beyond the valleys of the great
+rivers. It is a dangerous game to trifle with the eagle, for he may
+leave his nest and spread his wings for flight. But Germany’s fateful
+hour has now struck, and the moment has come for the Teutons to assert
+themselves and to lay the foundation for an assured future. Listen to
+the echo of their ringing stride in the streets of Wittenberg--the
+same echo is heard in all German cities where the volunteers rally
+round the flag! It is a migration the like of which the world has never
+seen, and the country is filled with the spirit of resolution and
+enthusiasm which does not know what fear is or doubt, an understanding
+which asks no questions. They march off to unknown fates, glorious and
+horrible alike. Very soon they will say their evening prayers to the
+accompaniment of the thunder of guns and the shrieking of shells. It
+is not for German liberty alone that they are fighting, it is for the
+independent existence of the other Germanic nations as well that they
+fearlessly face death on the battlefield. So no wonder that my eye
+follows them until they disappear round the next street corner--the
+sound of their music still ringing in my soul.
+
+_Zum König von Preussen_, _Zum Goldenen Anker_--they show wonderful
+fertility of mind in hitting upon attractive names to lure the
+customers into their inns! Many a _Bierkneipe_ in these parts has
+venerable associations, and inns are still to be found where it is
+known that Luther sat and quaffed his good old beer.
+
+But Wittenberg also has Swedish memories. Many a Swedish soldier
+has marched over the Elbe bridge since the memorable 3rd September,
+1631, when Gustavus Adolphus came over for the first time to rescue
+Protestantism and the liberty of thought on earth--up to the October
+day, 1813, when our old regiments for the last time trod the road to
+Leipzig to take part in the struggle against Napoleon. How different
+was the conduct of war on these two occasions, but how alike were the
+will and spirit of the people!
+
+It was with a mixture of pride and melancholy that I sat thinking of
+those good old times, as we skimmed the surface with lightning speed.
+
+With the car as a pair of compasses we measure out the distances on
+the full-scale map of Germany itself. The Elbe valley has disappeared
+behind us, and we now pick up and leave one village after the other.
+Sometimes the village streets are paved with cobbles, and our speed
+slackens considerably. In other places rattling carts drawn by powerful
+dogs in complete harness come jogging along at a brisk pace. It is a
+pleasure to look at them. Truly they are examples of faithfulness and
+conscientiousness. With panting mouths and dripping tongues, and with
+all muscles and sinews of their bodies strained to the utmost, they
+tug so fiercely that their paws and chests might be expected to be a
+mass of sores. The man at the cart does not urge them and has no whip
+in his hand. He seems, on the contrary, to wish to hold them back when
+they struggle along too fast. If anyone seems to approach too close to
+their master’s barrow, they set up a ferocious bark. They long to be
+in harness as soon as the sun gets up, just like Jack London’s pals in
+Alaska. It is touching to see their sense of duty and honour. And yet
+they are but dogs. I felt I would like to follow them on the road and
+study them. But the car goes on inexorably, and in a twinkling they are
+far, far behind.
+
+Gräfenhainischen--what a delightful little monosyllable! One must never
+be in a hurry when one lives at Gräfenhainischen. As long, nay, longer
+than the name is the narrow street that leads through the village and
+finally loses itself in the flat country beyond.
+
+Mulde with its bridge and Bitterfeld, where the market is in full
+swing, are the next landmarks in our journey. The stalls with the busy
+market life around them look very picturesque. Full of colour, but at
+the same time so old-fashioned and tranquil--nobody could imagine here
+that Germany is at war. On the road outside the town we see plenty of
+women driving or walking back to their rustic farmsteads after their
+marketing.
+
+At the lignite mines outside Bitterfeld the little baskets on the
+cable-ways are busy carrying the coal to the factories, where it is
+made into briquettes.
+
+Next we roll into Halle and are now on the most classic ground of our
+national history, for it was at Halle that Gustavus Adolphus rested
+from the 10th to the 17th September, 1631, with the army which had
+conquered at Breitenfeld on the 7th of the same month. In passing over
+the bridges we cross a seemingly inextricable maze of railway lines.
+The bridge-heads here, as everywhere in the German Empire, are guarded
+by Landsturm sentries with loaded rifles. All railways and high roads,
+all arteries of communication on land and water, in fact everything
+that can pass by the name of road is of the utmost importance in war
+time, as they are the means of carrying the troops to the parts where
+the fighting is going on. But most important of all are the bridges,
+especially those spanning the great rivers. Any accident to one of
+these bridges means the severing of an artery for some time ahead.
+It may mean the loss of a battle. Everything must run as if it were
+greased, in war there must be no miscalculations, no sundering of the
+points which join the front with the interior. The cutting of his lines
+of communication is a distinct reverse to the enemy. The profession
+of the spy and plotter carries with it little honour and much danger.
+But had the allies been able to do so, they would certainly with the
+aid of enterprising emissaries have attempted to destroy the bridges,
+say across the Rhine, and thus stop or delay the German advance.
+Hence every important bridge throughout Germany has been guarded with
+sentries since the beginning of the war, and no bridge and viaduct is
+ever without one or two Landsturm men of middle-age, wearing dark-blue
+uniforms, and in the evenings and at night grey overcoats; they pace
+faithfully up and down at their posts on the bridges or under arches
+with arms crossed and the rifle held vertically inside the left arm,
+until they are relieved by their comrades. As the car dashes past with
+its fluttering war streamer, they come briskly to attention with the
+rifle to the order.
+
+Well, we are now at my dear old Halle on the Saale, where I once
+studied geography with the charming and humorous, one-eyed but yet
+keenly wide-awake Professor Kirchhoff. Halle is exactly as it used
+to be. In its main street there are plenty of people about, mainly
+children and young people, for this is the great highway to Merseburg
+and to the fighting West, and many military cars dashed past during the
+hour we halted in the town. Here also large war maps are exhibited in
+the booksellers’ windows, and outside them interested groups of Halle
+folk are gathered, mostly schoolboys, who talk importantly in loud
+voices of the silent, significant evidence of the little flags. At
+Halle another horseshoe nail or maybe a bit of glass caused tyre Number
+2 to burst, and as the accident happened exactly opposite Schultheiss’s
+door, von Krum and I saw in this a direct hint from fate that we
+wanted a glass of beer. There we sat and chatted at the table with its
+many-coloured cloth and round discs of felt under the beer mugs, and
+wondered how far we should get before nightfall. But as we sat and
+talked, dusk quietly descended upon Halle and when we got outside the
+street lamps were being lit. Further away in the west on the horizon
+the sky was a flaming red--a symbol of the bloody battlefield.
+
+After lighting our lamps, off we went from Halle southward past
+Merseburg on the way to Naumburg, still hugging the Saale valley.
+We are still on classic Swedish soil. November memories of
+1632--Pappenheim’s cuirassiers, Isolani’s Croatians, holding sway at
+Halle and Merseburg whilst Gustavus Adolphus is lying at Naumburg. Two
+hours before daybreak the King left this very town for Lützen. One
+can almost hear the Swedish cavalry bugle-calls. It was at this same
+Merseburg that the proud dragoons of the bodyguard under Field-Marshal
+Count Rehnsköld were installed in 1706-7.
+
+The bright light from our lamps shows up the road for some distance
+ahead. We have now slackened to 40 kilometres an hour. The leafy trees
+by the roadside are lit up from beneath, and we seem to travel through
+an endless fantastic tunnel of foliage. Far away on both sides of
+the road are strings of glistening lights--the windows of farms and
+villages where fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, maids and
+children are sitting round the lamp to read for the twentieth time
+the letters and cards received from their soldiers at the French and
+Belgian front. What do these letters say? I have read several. There
+are millions of them. The soldier tells his people how he likes his
+billet, what food tastes like after the heat and stress of the day,
+what it feels like when the shells burst close by and comrades fall at
+one’s side. They tell also that the enemy is done for, that he will be
+thrown back as soon as the commander deems fit to order them to charge.
+They speak with good-nature of the Frenchmen as courteous and honest
+soldiers, but of the English with glowing hatred. And, as often as
+not, the soldier finishes up by saying that there can be no question
+of any return to the village until he is wounded or useless--which God
+forbid--and until victory has been gained over Germany’s enemies. For
+the soldiers know, from the oldest veteran to the youngest drummer
+boy, that Germany was armed to the teeth to be ready for the war, but
+that Germany’s Emperor and statesmen did all in their power to avert a
+disaster which would surely affect the whole world and cause rivers
+of blood and tears to flow, bring nameless misery to ravaged homes and
+ruined countrysides, untold nights of anguish and expectation and long
+years of inconsolable grief and sorrow.
+
+But the evening is wearing on. We have left Naumburg behind us. The
+good people in the town have gone to bed, for the lights are mostly
+out and the windows dark. Tucked into their snug beds they listen to
+the whir of the motor-cars and the warning tooting of horns, and their
+thoughts no doubt run on to the fateful west whither the cars are
+speeding. But they will soon get left behind, the buzz dies away in the
+distance, and sleep carries them into the peaceful realm of dreams. I
+too begin to get a little sleepy. My eyelids begin to droop and my head
+feels heavy; it sinks down and recovers with a jerk as the car quickly
+takes a corner. The excellent Rittmeister seems to suspect something,
+for he slackens speed and says it is only a few minutes to Kösen; he
+asks what I think of this little watering-place as a spot for putting
+up for the night. Yes, I think Kösen is an ideal spot and quite agree
+that we ought to stop there. So we drive quietly into the little town,
+the two halves of which are separated from one another by the Saale,
+but reunited by a stone bridge. We stop at the hotel _Zum mutigen
+Ritter_ and are soon wide-awake again in its parlour, with a warming
+cup of steaming tea before us. The host keeps us company and tells us
+that all the visitors disappeared like magic when the war broke out,
+and that his own hotel business has dwindled to nothing at all. “But
+what does that matter as long as we win,” he adds.
+
+The 16th September was heralded by a cloudy sky and heavy, sleepy
+raindrops, which, however, soon stopped falling after obligingly
+laying the dust. From Kösen there was a steady rise across and along
+the heights which line the Saale and Ilm valleys in the north. Pretty
+vistas open up at the sides, where the valleys sink between the hills
+and where the forest, dark and heavy, silently mounts guard over its
+secrets. A little further on the country becomes more broken and the
+road winds along in big curves. On the left we leave the Apolda and its
+valley. On a commanding height we catch sight of a so-called Bismarck
+tower of granite, with the great chancellor’s name hewn into the stone
+at the top and his portrait medallion at the bottom. These towers are
+often to be met with in Germany, and on certain days of national
+rejoicing huge bonfires are lit on their summits.
+
+We cannot drive through Weimar without visiting the house where Goethe
+lived for forty years, and which stands in the square now bearing his
+great name. It is with a feeling of reverence that one sets foot on the
+steps and thresholds and in apartments where Germany’s, perhaps the
+world’s, greatest poet and thinker lived his life. As far as possible
+the furniture has been reinstated and restored to its former state.
+One admires Goethe’s discrimination as a collector and the quick
+intelligence he brought to bear on all departments of the natural
+sciences. These traits are evidenced by his large and magnificent
+geological and mineralogical collections, his zoological and botanical
+finds, and his physical laboratory. I stop, however, longest before
+the cabinets containing in large portfolios his pen-and-ink and
+water-colour sketches. I am touched as I look at them. Every stroke
+of the brush in these landscapes, portraits and groups has been made
+by his own hand. Their execution is masterly, and the perspective
+and general effect superb. Yet this was but a trifling detail in his
+wonderful endowment. Equally fascinating almost are the busts which
+render his glorious head and the oil paintings for which he sat. What
+wonderful eyes, full of life and energy and geniality! They reveal an
+intellect to which everything is as clear as crystal. With a feeling of
+awe and without daring to speak to the courteous Dr. Hans Kroeber, who
+showed us over one of the greatest national treasures of Germany, we
+entered Goethe’s study on the ground floor with its windows looking out
+on to the little garden. How simple and modest everything is; it occurs
+to one that one of the lighter rooms upstairs would have been a good
+deal pleasanter to work in. Behind the study we see his little bedroom,
+rigidly simple, where, with the words “More light,” he ended the saga
+of his wonderful life.
+
+When the mind has tarried for a little while in this world of great
+and precious memories, and is suddenly confronted on issuing into the
+square with a detachment of Landsturm soldiers marching off to their
+shooting range, when one leaves Goethe’s home behind and is once
+more surrounded by the modern world and thinks of Germany’s gigantic
+struggle against half the world--then, indeed, one has to rub one’s
+eyes and steady oneself mentally so as not to lose one’s balance. And
+this people, which has produced Goethe, and which now with honour
+and splendid courage fights on half a dozen fronts, has by the press
+of many countries and in fact entire nations been called a people of
+barbarians!
+
+But let us continue our trip along the great highway; it is now lined
+for a long distance with plum trees where women and girls on ladders
+are seen picking the great violet fruit and collecting it in baskets
+drawn on small barrows by dogs. On the whole we do not see many people,
+apart from the handful of peasants driving hay home in their carts
+drawn by cows, and a few women mowing the grass on banks and meadows.
+
+Next we come to Erfurt, a town which like so many others in these
+parts is memorable to us Swedes. At “The Tall Lily” Gustavus Adolphus
+spent one night of his great life. It was the night between the 28th
+and 29th October, 1632, after the assembling of the Swedish Army which
+a few days later was to fight and conquer at Lützen. At Erfurt one
+also thrills with pride at the memory of Field-Marshal Johan Banér.
+Here, as everywhere, the Landsturm soldiers sing as they march along.
+We lose ourselves in the labyrinth of old-world streets, and not even
+my experienced guide von Krum is able to find his way. “Which way to
+Gotha?” we cry at every street corner, and the answer comes quickly,
+_rechts_, _links_ or _gerade aus_. At last we work our way out of the
+tangle and fly along towards Gotha, the city of Justus Perthes and the
+Almanach de Gotha. Here it is easy to find the way, and before we know
+where we are we find ourselves once again dashing along through avenues
+of tall, graceful poplars towards Eisenach.
+
+On our left the ground rises towards the rain-shrouded, misty ridges of
+the Thüringer Wald, but the road itself runs through smiling villages
+with their picturesque houses of the timber framework type, where
+cackling geese and clucking turkeys sometimes do their best to get
+run over or at all events to hamper our progress. At every bridge we
+come to, we receive a smart military salute from the sentries. We spin
+along at a lightning pace to Eisenach, and are as quickly out of it.
+The road now turns sharp to the south-west and by a series of gentle
+curves ascends the heights of the Thüringer Wald. On both sides of
+the road is a fine wood of lofty pines. I could almost fancy that I
+had been transplanted to certain parts of my own land where the eye
+is accustomed to dwell on these dark green, solemn firs standing like
+sentinels by the roadside. It is a beautiful piece of country. The
+smell of damp earth and juicy pine-needles rises in the air and reminds
+one vividly of the country on the road from Rawalpindi to Kashmir.
+
+From the top of the hills a vast perspective opens up towards the
+south-west. Once again the road runs in serpentine curves down from
+the Thüringer Wald. The forest here consists largely of foliaged
+trees rather than conifers. Marksuhl is situated in a broken piece
+of country, where the higher-lying parts are occupied by clusters of
+trees whilst the rest of the land is cultivated. At Vacha we cross the
+important River Werra. From this point we progress again at lightning
+pace. Villages, fields, meadows, farms, gardens and leafy coppices,
+everything seems to fly past us.
+
+Here we have Hünfeld in Hesse. Let us stop a moment and drink a cup of
+tea. There is a cosy dining-room in the restaurant. At a table sits a
+nurse with the Red Cross badge on her arm talking to two gentlemen,
+evidently doctors, for they speak of the care of the wounded soldiers.
+A few sportsmen enter with their bags full of partridges and hares.
+They are dressed in brown and green, with sporting-looking felt hats
+with plumes, and carry their guns on the shoulder.
+
+We jump into the car once more and proceed to the old bishopric of
+Fulda, which does not long engage our attention, then across bridges
+and streams through a series of villages, one of which with its sinuous
+main street is called Schlüchtern. We continue to be delayed by
+poultry, geese and dogs, but the children seem to have learnt to leave
+the roadway clear. The boys give us a military salute and shoulder
+their little wooden guns, whilst the little children play on steps
+and benches, the mothers waving to us almost affectionately as if to
+say, “Give him my love and God bless him and you and the whole of our
+country!”
+
+_Via_ Gelnhausen we travel on to Hanau, in which neighbourhood we come
+across swarms of civilian cyclists. “Who on earth are these people,
+are they recruits on the way to join the army?” I ask. “Bless you, no;
+they are workmen from the factories and workshops at Hanau returning
+to their villages at the end of their day.” Big and majestic the Main
+sends its muddy waters towards the sea. It is raining a little, the
+roads are soaked but just as good. We can see that we are approaching
+a big town, the traffic on the road increases, people live closer
+together, and the telegraph wires combine into mighty clusters--those
+silent wires which yet talk and know far more than we. When I come to
+the Valley of the Main I seem once more to hear the good old Swedish
+music and to see Stålhandske’s cavalry before me, and into the moaning
+of the tree-tops I seem to read the words of Adler Salvius: “Our
+Finnish lads who are getting used to those wine-lands are not likely to
+come back to Savolaks in a hurry. In the Livland wars they often had
+to put up with water and coarse mouldy bread with their beer-broth;
+now the Finn quaffs his wine out of his helmet.” Such wealth and such
+abundance our poor old horsemen and their retainers had never even
+dreamt of.
+
+Before us through the mist and gloaming twinkled the thousand lights
+and electric lamps of Frankfurt. When Gustavus Adolphus first came
+to Frankfurt the good burghers did not want to let him in, but made
+excuses and put the blame on the Elector of Mayence. But the King
+answered that he knew of no Elector of Mayence but himself. “I do not
+want to be delayed. If you refuse to open the gates, I dare say I can
+find some keys as I have done before in places which have fallen into
+my hands.” The city surrendered at once. During the winter of 1631-32,
+when Sweden’s King held his court at Frankfurt, this city was the
+centre of Europe. It was from here that Gustavus Adolphus said to the
+French who asked him not to direct his armies against Alsace, which
+country they pretended to have claimed ever since the death of the
+remote Dagobert: “I have come not as a traitor to Germany, but as its
+protector. I will restore it, not rend it asunder.”
+
+We drive on and on. The clusters of houses in the outskirts and suburbs
+close up into the streets of a large town. The traffic grows, the tram
+bells ring, the motors hoot, vast crowds of people walk about busily
+under umbrellas, and after a short while we stop before the entrance of
+the Hotel which before the war was called _Englischer Hof_, but which
+has now been re-baptised the _Hessischer Hof_, owing to the feelings of
+the Germans towards their Germanic kinsmen of the island kingdom.
+
+It is wonderful how attached one gets to one’s car on a long journey!
+It is with a feeling of boredom that one stops at the hotel where the
+night is to be spent, and with a sensation of delight that one rises
+from the breakfast table the next morning to enter the car once more.
+This is how we felt on the 17th of September, a fine and pleasant
+day, though heavy clouds raced across the sky. But we could not start
+at once, we had first to go to a garage to get petrol and then to an
+_Immobiles Kraftwagen Depot_, where absolutely everything that may be
+wanted for repairing war cars is to be had. Here we took five spare
+tyres, which we lashed to the right side and to the back of our car.
+Of course, we do not pay a single _pfennig_--for we are travelling on
+Government service.
+
+At last we are off again and follow the long streets of Frankfurt,
+leaving the city by the western outskirts with their large
+working-class population. Perhaps it might be thought that these
+workmen are opposed to the war which Germany is now conducting for the
+sake of her future? It certainly does not look like it. The social
+democratic workmen have equipped their little sons with helmets and
+wooden swords to fight out real battles in the backyards, and you hear
+them call each other Kluck and Hindenburg.
+
+Once more we get out into the open country, and follow the great road
+which runs in a direct line to Wiesbaden. The avenue skirting it
+consists chiefly of apple and pear trees, weighed down with fruit.
+Farther on we meet with poplars, standing like sentries along the
+roadside. We do not stop at all in the graceful and elegant Wiesbaden,
+but fly past its parks and gardens, which are quieter and emptier than
+usual.
+
+Soon we begin to ascend the Taunus heights via the Eiserne Hand. The
+rise is gradual and the curves numerous. A trim and straight-stemmed
+pine wood skirts the road on both sides. One seldom meets a vehicle or
+a pedestrian. From an eminence a vast panorama is suddenly spread out
+before us, but the weather has got foggy again and one cannot see far.
+At Langen Schwalbach the elegant hotels form a striking contrast to the
+solemn Red Cross flags and the wounded soldiers, now convalescent, who
+are sitting on balconies and in gardens, taking the air. The road now
+winds upwards once more, and we breathe a crisper atmosphere, but the
+view across to smiling dells and wooded hills is limited through fog.
+Up we go and down again over the gentle undulations of the country,
+where the ploughed fields merge together in a colour scheme of green,
+yellow and brown.
+
+Next the road descends steeply to Nassau on the River Lahn. The
+country is gloriously pretty, its roads magnificent, its forests regal
+in their dark, silent splendour. On the brow of a hill stands an old
+ruined castle. The people in Nassau are friendly and greet and wave
+to us, and a stylish-looking young girl throws a red rose into our
+car--not for us, forsooth, but as a greeting to her lover, who no doubt
+is fighting in the war.
+
+A moment later we skim the pretty riverside road to Ems along the
+Lahn, line up the car in a side street and walk back to the pavement
+to greet with bared head and a salute a funeral procession which is
+going through. The dead man was a major who had succumbed to his
+wounds. First comes a band playing a slow and melancholy march, then
+two banners which precede the black-craped coffin on its carriage, and
+behind it the _Kampfgenossen_, members of the Ems _Kriegerverein_, all
+in tall hats, frock-coats and black ties; the procession is closed by
+a number of wounded convalescent soldiers housed in the Kursaal. The
+solemn cortège moves slowly up the street to the railway station, for
+the dead major’s body is to be sent to his own home. After a while the
+band returns accompanied by the convalescent soldiers. But now it plays
+a spirited and lively march. I was told that this was customary after
+military funerals--first the grief and the sorrow at the parting, the
+duty towards the honoured dead, then the joy of the survivors returning
+to the things of life.
+
+The Kurhaus, a fine and roomy building, now contains eighty patients,
+and more are expected. Most of the badly wounded are in bed, but those
+who can get up are sitting about on balconies and enjoying the fresh
+air, and from what they said to me they all long to be back at the
+front.
+
+I was told here that a young French lieutenant who had been badly
+wounded in the war had found an asylum in the Kurhaus, and recollecting
+the reports of the horrible cruelty with which the Germans, according
+to the English press, treat their French prisoners, I could not resist
+the temptation to enquire what the French lieutenant had to say about
+it. His room, which he occupied alone, was certainly not a matter for
+complaint; it was immediately above one of the six small rooms in which
+King William I. spent a short time each year from 1867 to 1887, and the
+view over Ems and the Lahn valley was the same as the King had enjoyed
+all those years. The wounded man was tended by a German doctor, who
+entertained good hopes of his recovery, and by two sisters of mercy,
+one of whom spoke French. But I hasten to add that Lieutenant Verrier,
+on my asking whether he was satisfied with the treatment he received
+in Germany, at once answered “yes” with warmth and conviction, and I
+suppose that wherever his fate will direct his steps he will always
+remember with gratitude the time he spent over William I.’s apartments
+in Ems, where the doctor did all in his power to save his leg and the
+sisters all they could to alleviate his suffering and dispel in a
+measure his loneliness and homesickness. I am sure that he will be the
+first to acknowledge that I am right.
+
+I went up to his room and was at once admitted. He lay in a large bed
+with clean white sheets. His face was little less pale than these, but
+he looked very handsome with his hair brushed from his forehead, his
+finely shaped nose and well-kept moustache over a firm mouth, and his
+black French eyes bespoke a _joie de vivre_ and a bright intelligence.
+He told me that he had come home from New Guinea in June and that he
+was just about to be married when the war came and took him away from
+his bride and parents. He received his wound in the scrap at Rossignol
+in Belgium. It was a terrible day, spent in the midst of bursting
+shells and fire from rifles and machine guns. His bullet had struck him
+obliquely through the knee and calf. He fell and remained lying all
+night on the field of battle. The following morning he was picked up
+and taken to a German Field Hospital and subsequently by easy stages
+to Ems. At the end of August Emperor William visited the town and when
+he heard that there was a wounded Frenchman there he went to see him.
+Lieutenant Verrier told me that the Emperor had enquired in excellent
+French about his adventures in the war and how he felt. I said that I
+should in all probability soon be meeting the Emperor, and would then
+tell his Majesty of the impression the gracious visit had made on the
+invalid. When later I carried out my self-imposed task, the Emperor
+remembered the French lieutenant very well and was gratified to hear of
+the hopes entertained for his recovery.
+
+In conclusion I asked Lieutenant Verrier whether there was anything I
+could do for him within the limits permitted by the German regulations.
+He seemed almost to have longed for this question, for he had the
+answer quite ready. Day and night he had been tormented by one single
+thought: “How are my parents and my fiancée to learn that I am still
+alive and doing well? I am now in enemy country and have no means
+of writing.” I asked him for his address, and he wrote in my diary,
+“Monsieur Verrier-Cachet, Horticulteur, 52, rue du Quinconce, Angers,
+Marne et Loire.” A minute later I was seated at a desk and wrote on
+postcards in German the adventures of the young Frenchman and sent
+them to my family in Stockholm, who, with the assistance of the French
+Minister, would forward the news to the above address. I know that it
+reached its destination and caused great joy, for later on I received
+very hearty greetings and thanks from Verrier’s home.
+
+I have often since wandered with a heavy and lingering step through
+the “field” and war hospitals, especially the wards containing wounded
+Frenchmen, British and Belgians who lay there counting the slowly
+passing hours. How easy would it not have been for me, who had both
+liberty and health, to send off a postcard here and there which would
+have reached distant homes with a message of release from the wearing
+anguish of anxiety! There is nothing so trying and so difficult to
+bear as the uncertainty of the fate of those we love. When the name of
+a son, a brother, or a husband appears in the list of missing after
+a battle, the sickening anguish is almost greater to those at home
+than if they knew that he had fallen. Their mental vision pictures him
+as wounded, bleeding to death, alone and abandoned to the horrors of
+darkness, cold and thirst. But I had really no grounds for such qualms
+of conscience, for in the first place I had no business to interfere
+with the regulations of the German military authorities regarding the
+communication between wounded prisoners and their homes, and in the
+second place there were far too many of them, and by the evening I
+realised that the task of acting as a good Samaritan was an altogether
+hopeless one.[2]
+
+[2] After the beginning of October all prisoners, even wounded
+Frenchmen in German hospitals, had permission to correspond with their
+homes. This was given after the French Government had granted the same
+privilege to German prisoners and wounded.
+
+Meanwhile I took a hearty farewell of Verrier and wished him a speedy
+recovery and a happy reunion with his people at home at Angers.
+
+Before leaving, we looked at the memorial stone commemorating the
+fateful and firm reply given “on the 13th of July, 1870, at 9.30 a.m.”
+by King William to the French Ambassador Benedetti, which gave the
+signal for the Franco-German war. And now, after a lapse of forty-four
+years, we were back again at the same point. Now it seemed that the
+thought of revenge for Alsace-Lorraine had ripened into action--unless
+it be indeed that other evil powers had exploited France’s longing
+for revenge, or revived it when, as some say, it was dead, to benefit
+themselves thereby and stop the advance of German prosperity. The near
+future will be the judge.
+
+After dinner we mounted our car once more and the canary began to sing
+so that the good people of Ems might get out of our way. We proceeded
+along the right bank of the Lahn, following its bends in noble curves.
+The country round here is exceedingly pretty. It is almost a pity that
+we have to travel so fast; one hardly has time to visualise the beauty
+of a perspective before the picture disappears and is replaced by
+another, if possible even finer. Suddenly, beyond a steep spur jutting
+from the mountain on our right, the majestic Rhine is revealed to our
+vision, whilst on the crest of a hill on our left towers a romantic
+old castle. We dash under another railway bridge faithfully guarded by
+the worthy Landsturm men. Suddenly we enter a street so narrow that
+its entire width is taken up by a Red Cross flag of more than ample
+dimensions. Following this street as far as it goes, we suddenly come
+to the bank of the enormous river whose German waters silently flow
+between its prosperous and well-populated banks to deliver their burden
+through neutral Holland into the mighty bosom of the sea.
+
+Once more the river is hidden by narrow streets, but soon it greets us
+again in all its wonderful splendour as we cross its dancing wavelets
+by a long pontoon bridge guarded more zealously than any we have yet
+passed. Next we are in Coblenz, where, at the point where the Moselle
+empties itself into the Rhine, stands a gigantic statue of old Emperor
+William on a charger. The plinth of this monument bears the following
+memorable inscription: _Nimmer wird das Reich zerstöret wenn Ihr einig
+seid und treu_.[3] The truth of these significant words is now indeed
+brought home to Germany and to the world.
+
+[3] “Never shall the Empire be destroyed if ye united are and faithful.”
+
+The road next takes us up along the right bank of the Moselle, where a
+stone bridge with beautiful arches takes us across and past a couple of
+Moselle steamers which are lying moored, carrying the Red Cross flag.
+The narrow, winding streets are filled with tramcars, cabs, vans, men
+and women, and last but not least soldiers in German army uniforms.
+We breathe more freely as we come out again on to the open road and
+speed along the bank of the great Rhine tributary. There is plenty for
+the eye to feast on. Now and again we catch sight of a little steamer
+or tug gliding on the river; on the steep left bank stone buttresses
+support the vineyards. The landscape itself is indescribably beautiful
+round these endless bends, as one village after another comes into
+view, the grey houses with their black slate roofs and the beautiful
+churches showing up strikingly against the luxuriant background of
+foliage. Still bowling along at lightning speed, we soon reach Treis,
+where a curious-looking ferry, reminding me of those of the Siberian
+rivers, is ready to take us and our car across to the left bank. We
+drive down on to the other end of its deck so that another car which
+has just arrived can be taken on board. The principle upon which the
+ferry is worked is as follows: A stout cable is stretched across the
+river and made fast on the left bank to the rock and on the right bank
+to a securely imbedded pile. From a ring on this cable runs a line, the
+other end of which is made fast to the bows of the punt-shaped ferry. A
+long steering-oar projects into the water astern. The rest is done by
+the current. By reversing the action and the steering-oar, the ferry
+runs back to the opposite bank.
+
+On the left bank we continue our swift, winding journey. Here and there
+we pass a military convoy or meet an ambulance train, the first two
+carriages of which contain wounded Frenchmen, the others Germans. The
+Frenchmen are no better or worse off than the Germans; all lie on straw
+and are covered with blankets. The sliding doors of these goods wagons,
+fitted up specially for the transport of wounded, stood open in order
+to admit fresh air to the wounded.
+
+At the village of Eller we stop for a moment at an inn, where the host,
+Herr Meinze, entertains us with what he knows about the war. His young
+daughter runs off to fetch a letter just received from the son of the
+family, twenty-two years old, an Uhlan of the Guard from Potsdam. The
+letter bears the somewhat vague postal address of La Ferté, and the
+writer complains that he has not had a word from home for a month.
+He mentions that he was present on an occasion when a French airman
+dropped a bomb over a gun team, killing three men and wounding twenty.
+Of his British opponents he speaks very disrespectfully. But he forgets
+that the English mercenaries, whatever their faults, show great
+personal courage and fight with bravery and contempt of death. He ends
+his letter with the hope that Germany will soon have made mincemeat
+of all her enemies. The chief trait which pervades all these field
+postcards is the bright and cheery spirit of the soldiers and their
+blind faith in the unconquerable might of the German Army and final
+victory. That _I_ may fall is of no account. That _I_ may not be one of
+the triumphant army which will march in through the Brandenburger Tor
+cannot be helped, but Germany must win, if not before, then after the
+spring flowers have begun to sprout and blossom round my grave.
+
+At Alf, where a white paddle-steamer flying the Red Cross flag lies
+at her moorings, we leave the Moselle and follow the laconic advice
+of a signpost pointing up towards the hills which mark the nearest
+way to Treves. It pours with rain. We put up the awning and the rain
+patters loudly on the taut canvas. Owing to the great speed we get one
+drenching after another. The water in the puddles spurts up around
+the wheels as before the bows of a swift steamer. The road is only
+half as wide as the great main road eastward. But on the other hand
+the traffic is insignificant. “Way to Wittlich?” von Krum asks in a
+village, when uncertain of the road. “To Paris!” comes the retort of
+a couple of joyous maidens who point in the direction we are to go.
+In due course we get to Wittlich and struggle through its horribly
+narrow streets, which, to make matters worse, are encumbered with
+all sorts of vehicles. The houses both of villages and towns in this
+part of the country are almost entirely of stone, and the streets are
+very narrow--sometimes one almost gets the impression that they were
+originally built with a view to protection against foreign invasion.
+
+Off we go again down to the banks of the Moselle and to its beautifully
+situated villages, and when at length we stop at the _Trierischer Hof_
+at Treves, it is pitch-dark and raining pitilessly. We were drenched
+to the skin, and had intended to proceed to Luxemburg after a moment’s
+rest to dry our clothes. But as the deluge grew worse instead of
+better, and as we were told that there were no rooms to be had at
+Luxemburg for love or money, we decided to stop where we were. Soon
+we were sitting in the restaurant at our belated dinner. The place
+teemed with officers, and in the streets the soldiers splashed about
+in the wet in their grey overcoats. We asked everybody where the
+Main Headquarters were, but nobody knew anything about it. Some said
+that the General Staff was at Luxemburg, others that it had moved to
+Belgium. “Well, we shall get there in time,” we said to ourselves.
+
+The _Trierischer Hof_ actually had a couple of modest rooms, where
+we made ourselves at home. My excellent friend von Krum told me
+that officers were entitled in war time to billet where they liked.
+Room with breakfast must always be placed at their disposal free of
+charge. Dinner and other meals they have to pay for. The officer
+has only to fill in a printed receipt which he hands to the host on
+leaving in place of currency. On producing this receipt before the
+competent military authority, the host receives his money, but not at
+the same rate as in peace time, for values are set at a lower figure
+than under normal conditions. The same applies to horses, carts,
+motor-cars and much else that is needed in war. Everything is valued by
+special committees and then paid for with a receipt. At Treves it was
+impossible to get a car or even a horse-cab, as there were no horses
+left. When therefore our host received a telegram saying that his son,
+who had probably been slightly wounded at the front, was expected at
+3 a.m., there was no means whatever of getting a conveyance to meet
+him and take him home in. He asked if he might borrow our car, but
+unfortunately we were not allowed to leave it in civilian hands. In the
+end he managed to borrow a doctor’s car and found his son in pretty
+good condition.
+
+Luckily the trams were running, and in the evening we took one to
+the Horn Barracks, usually occupied by Infantry Regiment No. 29 _von
+Horn_ (3rd Rhenish). But now the entire regiment is in the field and
+the barracks have been turned into a hospital. They hold in peace
+time three battalions, but at the present time only 500 wounded, as
+the latter need more room with special accommodation for doctors and
+nursing staff. Premises have, in addition, been requisitioned for
+operating theatres, bath-rooms, store-rooms, etc. Just now there
+is plenty of room, as only 220 beds are occupied, of which 150 by
+Frenchmen. Six doctors and one head surgeon, assisted by a great number
+of Red Cross sisters, were in charge of the wounded soldiers. In due
+course we arrived at the barracks, were passed by the sentry at the
+gate, entered a corridor and knocked at a door which was duly opened,
+and a moment later we had become the bosom friends of a couple of young
+doctors sitting at supper before a steaming bowl of soup which had just
+been brought in. I asked them, whatever they did, not to interrupt
+their meal, as we could sit and chat with them in the meantime. But no,
+that would not do at all, the soup could wait, and guided by a little
+oil lamp we marched out through the long corridor and began at once by
+inspecting a couple of the operating theatres, which had been rigged
+up hurriedly on the outbreak of war and equipped as far as possible on
+thoroughly modern lines. The operating tables were in the middle of
+the room. Water-pipes, vessels, appliances and a number of surgical
+instruments--everything was in superb condition. The walls and floor
+of these rooms had been painted over in oil and an average of fifteen
+operations took place in them daily. Several other barracks at Treves
+have been fitted up as hospitals in a like manner.
+
+Thereupon we went into a large ward filled with wounded German
+soldiers, and chatted with several of them. All were very satisfied and
+cheerful, they all felt thoroughly at home and could not conceive it
+possible to receive better and kindlier treatment than they got at the
+hospital. Nevertheless time hung heavily on their hands, and they could
+not help thinking of their comrades in the field. They longed to be
+back at the war and hoped soon to be about again--that is to say, those
+who knew that they would not be crippled for life.
+
+We left them with a “_Gute Nacht, gute Besserung_,” and proceeded
+to a ward higher up, where French soldiers were being tended. Here
+we also spoke with some of the patients. They were all polite and
+communicative, but lacked the cheery disposition of the Germans, which
+was really not to be wondered at, as they were in enemy country and
+cut off from all communication with their own people. One of them had
+been wounded at Rossignol like Lieutenant Verrier, but did not know
+him. He had been shot through the left hand and the left leg, which the
+surgeon had been obliged to amputate. When he got his bullet wounds,
+he had strength and presence of mind enough to creep into a ditch for
+protection against the weather and the firing. He had torn off strips
+of cloth from his greatcoat and wound them round his wounds. Next day
+the German ambulance men had found him, applied a proper “first field
+dressing” and carried him to the nearest field hospital, from which not
+long ago he had been conveyed by rail to Treves.
+
+Another soldier had been left lying on the field for two nights and
+had suffered maddening torture from thirst. The thirst had if possible
+caused him greater suffering than his wounds. Twice the Germans had in
+passing given him water and chocolate. Finally the ambulance people
+had found him and taken him to a field hospital. Like his comrade,
+he expressed his gratitude for the treatment he had met with here at
+Treves, and several assenting voices were heard from the neighbouring
+beds. The two German doctors who took us round told us that the French
+wounded usually did not want to leave the hospital, as they knew that
+as soon as they recovered they would be treated as ordinary prisoners.
+This view of the matter is quite natural and is most certainly shared
+by all wounded, no matter to what nation they belong. For it is
+pleasanter to lie in one’s comfortable bed and be coddled in every way,
+than to live in a barracks or a concentration camp with crowds of other
+prisoners, including Senegalese negroes, Moroccans and Indians.
+
+Finally our guide took us to the door of a room containing three French
+officers. One of them, who had been shot through the lung, slept well
+and did not permit himself to be disturbed by our talk. Another had a
+more dangerous lung wound and was continually troubled by a nasty cough
+which, whenever it attacked him, threw his head backwards and forwards
+with great violence. His condition was considered very critical, and
+even if one had known the address of his people it would have been no
+relief to them to learn his condition.
+
+The third, a big and somewhat stout Captain, had served for several
+years in southernmost Morocco and was accustomed to little scraps with
+the Tuaregs in the Sahara. But _this_ was something very different.
+It was terrible, _terrible_! He had been called home from his African
+station to take part in this horrible struggle. His right foot had
+been smashed in a fight in Belgium by a rifle bullet, whilst another
+had carried away a couple of his fingers. He said he had a sort of
+recollection of having the wound dressed on the battlefield by German
+Red Cross men or doctors who had done all they could to check the flow
+of blood. Afterwards he had been taken to a dressing station, where
+his wounds had received further treatment. As he was classed amongst
+the comparatively slightly wounded, he had been taken to Luxemburg and
+now at length to Treves. He was probably aware that when discharged
+as convalescent he would remain a prisoner with all the privileges to
+which his rank entitled him, receiving, besides, half the pay he had
+been getting at home. There he lay, the poor Captain, with his jovial
+face, aquiline nose and heavy beard. He was cheerful and good-tempered,
+and assured us that he had absolutely nothing to grumble about--apart
+from the fate which denied him the honour to continue fighting for his
+country. But it was evident that he was a bit of a philosopher and
+he bore his unkind fate like a man. He lay there with a smile on his
+lips and was grateful for anything that was done for him and for the
+interest taken in him by the unknown visitors. During the long lonely
+hours of the night he often heard his comrades struggling and wrestling
+with death, whilst his own thoughts wandered to the palm trees on the
+desert fringe, and he seemed to hear the dromedaries’ swishing steps
+over the sand and the desert winds calling “come home, come home!”
+
+The young doctors who accompanied us told us that the German soldiers
+always and without exception longed to be back at the front, unless
+their condition was such that they had not strength enough to desire
+anything. Among the French the feeling was different: “Whatever
+you like, anything but the fire at the front.” But this is, on
+psychological grounds, quite natural and cannot well be otherwise.
+There is nothing that depresses and demoralises the soldier as much as
+being a prisoner. He feels that he is playing the part of the weaker,
+that he is entirely at the mercy of others, that his strength is
+gone, his initiative taken from him and his fighting spirit rendered
+unavailing. In such a situation, to gain personal advantages and to
+make the best of a bad job, he will say much that he would never
+have dreamt of uttering on his own side of the fighting line. It is
+therefore unfair to judge the fighting value of an army by the remarks
+of prisoners detached from it.
+
+Herein we have perhaps the explanation of the fact observed at the
+Treves hospitals, or, at all events, at the Horn barracks, that the
+mortality amongst the Frenchmen was incomparably greater than amongst
+the Germans. It would be futile to try to explain it by the suggestion
+that the doctors and nurses involuntarily felt greater compassion for
+their own countrymen, for when it is considered that 35,000 wounded
+have been transported through Treves _Westbahnhof_--latterly 1500
+a day--it will be realised that the doctors available must be so
+overwhelmed with work as to have no time for sentiment. To them the
+case is everything, and it is a point of honour with them to save as
+many as possible. The whole care of the wounded becomes a professional,
+almost mechanical, matter, and one cannot wonder at it when one sees
+the stream of wounded passing through. I was told that the wounds
+of the Germans heal better and quicker than those of the Frenchmen,
+whatever the reason may be. But plainly the psychological factor has
+something to do with this also.
+
+To this must be added another point of view--the wounds of the
+Frenchmen are usually more malignant than those of the Germans.
+Whilst the former are all too frequently hit in the lungs, stomach or
+abdomen, the Germans in the great majority of cases are wounded in the
+shoulders, arms and legs. It becomes obvious that the Germans must keep
+closer to the ground and are more skilled in using cover. It would be
+interesting to know exactly in what measure this point is affected
+by the French army uniform, the dark-blue tunic and the bright red
+trousers, exactly the same as worn in 1870-71. This dress obviously
+presents a most excellent target, whilst the Germans with their grey
+field uniforms and grey headgear merge into their environment.
+
+We were talking in this strain as we were leaving the hospital, and
+the young doctors were inexhaustible in their stories of what they had
+experienced during their work at Treves. It was not only the barracks
+that had been converted into hospitals--churches and schools had
+also been requisitioned. “But how do the children get on with their
+schooling if the schools are turned into hospitals?” “Well, it is
+this way. Since the younger professors and masters were called to the
+war, older teachers, both men and women, have turned up from almost
+everywhere and carry on the work to the best of their ability. Thus
+they earn a little money which they badly need in these hard war times.”
+
+We also spoke, of course, about the unceasing stream of wounded who
+are being brought into Germany. The seriously wounded and those not
+expected to recover are kept near the front, as they cannot stand being
+moved. But the lightly wounded, or at all events those who can stand
+the journey, are sent home. Soldiers who have had a bullet through the
+hand or a flesh wound in the arm, may, if they wish it, go straight
+home to their people. In such cases, on leaving the army, they are
+provided with the receipt which entitles them to free medical care at
+home. They must then attend daily at a certain hour at the doctor’s for
+examination; when fully recovered they return to their own regiment.
+Soon I suppose there will not be a single village in Germany without
+its war hero and its Iron Cross. One can imagine the pride and joy with
+which a son is received on returning home after his deeds of valour,
+and the heartfelt good wishes which accompany him when for the second
+time he leaves for the front!
+
+I was told that a fresh train-load of wounded was expected at Treves at
+half-past twelve the same night. The doctors were holding themselves in
+readiness to receive another avalanche of exhausted and maimed heroes.
+Our doctors told us that when the train stopped they used to go through
+all the carriages to examine the patients. Those who were too bad to go
+any further were carried on hammock-stretchers to the hospitals. The
+others were allowed to go on after having their wounds redressed. This
+is another phase of the struggle between life and death--the doctor on
+the side of life struggling to snatch back those whom death has vainly
+sought to capture on the battlefield.
+
+To wind up our visit, we had a peep into a store-room, the floor of
+which was encumbered with entire bales of cotton, gauze dressings,
+oil cloth, sticking-plaster and bandages of all kinds. Entire railway
+trains full of dressings and bandages, surgical instruments and drugs,
+are constantly running east and west from the heart of Germany. Our
+hospital at Treves was also permeated with a strong scent of carbolic,
+ether and chloroform. When one sees the pale faces and red scars of
+the wounded and the mountains of dressings, and when one inhales this
+penetrating hospital odour, one almost seems to hear the ping of the
+rifle bullets and the fierce shrieking of the shells. At such moments
+the deep and horrible solemnity of war seems to draw closer, and one
+realises indeed its sinister reality. Late in the evening, as we
+wandered back in the wet to the _Trierischer Hof_, I felt that we were,
+indeed, not far away from those parts of Europe where entire nations
+are grappling in a life-and-death struggle.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THE EMPEROR WILLIAM
+
+
+Still as ignorant regarding the whereabouts of the Main Headquarters as
+when we left Berlin, we set out from Treves in the morning of the 18th
+September, recrossed the Moselle, and cast a glance up at the heights
+from which on August 4th Frenchmen in mufti were heliographing to the
+airships, who wanted to know how the German mobilisation was getting
+on. At the flying station we stopped a moment to have a look at the
+_Taubes_ in their canvas sheds.
+
+The gentle undulations of the country give it a picturesque aspect.
+At Igel stands the sandstone tower, 2000 years old and twenty-three
+metres in height, called the _Igeler Säule_, and considered to be the
+finest relic left by the Romans north of the Alps. To this very day
+an inscription can be seen, testifying that this monument was raised
+by Secundinius Aventinus and Secundinius Securus in memory of their
+parents and kinsmen. How different from the frail wooden crosses we
+were to see by the roadside, and which will disappear when the spring
+sun draws the frost out of the ground and the plough cuts fresh furrows
+in the soil!
+
+But we must now take leave of the Moselle. On the left we have already
+behind us the roads to Metz and Saarbrücken, and not far to the south
+is the boundary of Lorraine. Along a road passing through an orchard we
+reach Wasserbillig, cross the Sauer stream and enter the Grand Duchy
+of Luxemburg, the entire population of which does not nearly approach
+that of Stockholm. On the way to Grevenmacher we passed by numberless
+nurseries and gardens given up to the cultivation of roses. But there
+are also woods in Luxemburg, and our road takes us by frequent copses
+of larch and beech, and further on of pine and beech.
+
+At a railway crossing we are stopped by an empty train of enormous
+length, going to Germany to bring out fresh soldiers. The natives
+of Luxemburg regard us with indifference. The greetings and friendly
+wavings of handkerchiefs are a thing of the past, here no one greets
+and no one betrays his thoughts, which is as well perhaps, as they
+cannot be particularly friendly. The apple trees are succeeded by an
+avenue of chestnut, ash and plane trees. The bedrock consists of the
+same variety of limestone of which the houses in the villages are
+usually built.
+
+At length our road winds down into a pleasant valley, and at its bottom
+lies a part of the pretty and trim little town of Luxemburg, where
+the equally pretty and trim Grand Duchess has her residence. But the
+more fashionable part of the town lies on the height above the valley,
+reached by a very steep street presenting somewhat peculiar views, as,
+for instance, when one suddenly finds oneself on a level with a church
+spire.
+
+Now we begin to look about. Yes, it is obvious that the Main
+Headquarters are still at Luxemburg. Sentries at the entrances to all
+hotels, soldiers everywhere, officers rushing past in motor-cars. In a
+market-place large tents have been put up for horses, and round them
+walk the sentries smoking their pipes; in another open space there are
+rows of motor-cars laden with petrol and oil in cylinders.
+
+We must observe becoming military precision in our search and
+consequently make at once for the house where the great General Staff
+has taken up its quarters, and which in ordinary times is a Luxemburg
+school. Von Krum gets down and soon returns with the intimation that
+we must report ourselves to a Lieutenant-Colonel Hahnke. He sent us
+off to the Chief of the General Staff, His Excellency von Moltke, who
+with his charming Swedish Countess has just sat down to dinner at the
+_Kölnischer Hof_, where they reside. The Countess was on a short visit
+to Luxemburg in the service of the Red Cross. Here I felt almost as if
+I were at home, for I had many times been a guest in their hospitable
+home in Berlin. As calm as if he had been on manœuvres, the Chief lit
+his cigar and made detailed enquiries about my plans and wishes. I said
+I wanted to go to the front and see as much as I might be allowed to,
+mentioning that it was my intention subsequently to describe what I
+had seen of the war with my own eyes. If possible I wanted to get an
+impression of a modern battle, and hoped also to get an opportunity of
+visiting the occupied parts of Belgium.
+
+The Chief thought for a moment. Permission to visit the front had
+already been granted to me by the Emperor, and it only remained to
+decide which would be the best place for me to begin my observations.
+The army of the German Crown Prince was the nearest, only a couple of
+hours away. The Chief would arrange everything for my journey, and I
+was shortly to receive details of the programme. “Of course, there can
+be no question of safety in the fighting zone,” he said, “it is not far
+away. If you listen you can hear the thunder of guns from Verdun.”
+
+Later in the day I was the possessor of a so-called _Ausweis_ or permit
+signed by the Chief of the General Staff, and intimating that I had
+“permission to witness the course of events at the different sections
+of the army” and requesting “all authorities in command to meet my
+wishes as far as they possibly could,” and to assist me with word and
+deed. This document was to me an “open sesame.” It gave me almost
+unlimited liberty of movement. Once I had begun I could go practically
+where I liked. But it did not take me long to realise that I had been
+wrong in thinking that a couple of weeks would suffice for a layman to
+get an insight into the complicated apparatus of a field army; a couple
+of months would be nearer the mark. I hasten to add that the time I
+spent at the front was far from sufficient. For every step one takes,
+for every hour that passes, one is overwhelmed with fresh impressions
+which there is no time to assimilate, and when the first month is
+gone one retains but a very superficial conception of this enormously
+complicated piece of machinery, which nevertheless under the firm hand
+of the master runs as smoothly and noiselessly as clockwork.
+
+Then we spoke of other things. I learnt that a troop train passes
+through Luxemburg station every half-hour, and that the only pause is
+at midday to prevent congestion. It is the pulse which beats in the
+arteries of the German railway system. One wave of human energy after
+another thus sweeps out towards the battlefields and flings itself
+against the enemy’s fire; the spirit of gaiety resounds from the
+overfilled wagons, accompanied by the glorious songs of _Deutschland,
+Deutschland über Alles_ and _Die Wacht am Rhein_. There is no trace of
+fear, not a sign of despondency anywhere. All are willing and cheerful.
+What would life be worth as long as the dear fatherland was not free
+and great and powerful! One wonders if these soldiers have any
+conception of the dangers and struggles that await them. Of course they
+read about it daily in the newspapers, but the more difficult it looks
+the more eager they become. The Bavarians are the most warlike. They
+are in their element with bayonets lowered for the charge. Superhuman
+power is required to withstand them, once they have decided to “go
+ahead.” Here at Headquarters everyone also speaks with the greatest
+respect of the Frenchmen as opponents, and no one denies the bravery
+of the British soldiers. “They go straight into perdition without
+flinching and fall, but do not yield, before the fire of machine guns.”
+Of the prisoners, it was said that there was a great difference between
+the British and the French. The former would stand with their hands in
+their pockets and a pipe in their mouth when spoken to by an officer,
+and a salute was only elicited by a reprimand. The Frenchmen, on the
+other hand, always salute the German officers without being told, and
+this is probably due to their inherited military spirit and to the
+trait of inborn courtesy which pervades the whole nation.
+
+When speaking of the troop trains, the Countess Moltke suggested a
+visit to the railway station, and we accordingly proceeded there,
+accompanied by von Krum. We were just in time to see an ambulance
+train--that is to say, not a properly equipped hospital train--roll
+into the station. Immediately some doctors began their round of the
+carriages, where the wounded lay on a thick layer of straw and were
+covered with blankets. A goods wagon in a troop train holds forty
+men or eight horses, but only thirty-six wounded at the most. The
+seriously wounded are sorted out and carried out on stretchers to large
+ambulance motor-cars, which take them to the hospitals in the town.
+The remainder, who are to be taken into Germany, receive new dressings
+if necessary. All are fed whilst the train is standing in the station
+with soup, sausages, bread and coffee in ample quantities. The Red
+Cross sisters have installed a kitchen at the station, in which cooking
+is in full swing day and night. Temporary nurses and servants do the
+waiting and go from carriage to carriage with large buckets filled
+with steaming and fragrant soup or coffee. A kindly old gentleman
+accompanied by a porter slowly goes the round of the carriages and
+distributes newspapers and entire armfuls of cigars. Two carriages were
+occupied by Frenchmen only. They were treated otherwise in exactly the
+same way as the Germans, but the old gentleman devoted himself only to
+his countrymen. The latter, who were clearly on the road to recovery,
+were singing cheery soldiers’ ditties and delighted in recounting their
+experiences to anyone who would listen. One of them had had three
+horses shot under him on a critical occasion, but at last got hold of
+a mule which enabled him to carry on his duties. “You need not believe
+him if you don’t want to,” said one of his comrades laughingly, but he
+went on nevertheless with his tales and declared that he slept like a
+child whilst the shells were falling thick around him.
+
+From the railway we drove to a private hospital, of which there are
+several, supported by private contributions. This small house had over
+sixty beds, of which fifty-three were now occupied by soldiers. Forty
+Catholic sisters tended them. A sister of refined and distinguished
+appearance took us round from bed to bed, and Countess Moltke spoke
+in a friendly and interested manner with all the wounded. Here lay
+men with bullets through arms and legs, through a foot or a hand, or
+through the lung. One had lost his right hand. Another felt his lung
+wound only at the point where the bullet had passed out through the
+back. A couple of French officers were lodged in a separate room. All,
+and not least the Frenchmen, were very satisfied with the treatment
+they received. Most of them had been wounded at the battles of Vitry
+and Longwy.
+
+It would take too long to describe all the interesting acquaintances I
+made in Luxemburg and to introduce to the reader all the eminent men
+with whom I spoke during the two days I spent in this little town.
+Suffice it to mention the Imperial Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg, the
+Foreign Minister von Jagow, the War Minister Lieutenant-General von
+Falkenhayn, and the Chief of the Imperial Volunteer Automobile Corps
+the young Prince Waldemar, son of Prince Henry.
+
+The Main Headquarters are the head or rather the brain of the army
+in the field, where all plans are made and from which all orders are
+issued. It is an incredibly complicated apparatus with an organisation
+of which every detail has been prepared in advance. When an apparatus
+of this kind is installed in a small town like Luxemburg, all hotels,
+schools, barracks, Government offices, as well as a number of private
+houses, have to be requisitioned for billets. The invaded country
+has no alternative but to resign itself to its fate. But nothing is
+taken promiscuously, everything will be made good after the war. The
+War Ministry is housed in an hotel, the General Staff--as already
+mentioned--in a school, the offices of the Automobile Corps in a
+private house, and so on. The Commander-in-Chief, von Moltke, resided
+at the _Kölnischer Hof_, the Imperial Chancellor and the Foreign
+Minister in an exceptionally elegant private house, whilst the
+Emperor’s personal staff and suite were stopping at the _Hotel Staar_,
+where a room was also placed at my disposal.
+
+But although for several obvious reasons I could not remain long at the
+Main Headquarters, I must nevertheless say a few words about a man whom
+I met there and whom I regard as one of the most remarkable figures of
+the world’s history, the most powerful and most impressive ruler of our
+time, and, moreover, one of the most genial and most fascinating men
+one could wish to meet.
+
+When in June, 1913, William II. celebrated his twenty-five years’
+jubilee as German Emperor, I wrote about him in the _Magdeburgische
+Zeitung_ the following words, which in a large measure have already
+been borne out by events: “By his strong and powerful personality
+William II. stamps his impress on the era to which he belongs. Hitherto
+this has only been in the sphere of peace. What the future carries
+with it no one knows. But this much we know, that no foreign State
+will unchastised dare to challenge Germany’s honour and security. Even
+if an unkind fate should sometime draw letters of blood across his
+firmament, the Emperor, with the same energy and impulsive force which
+distinguished him in times of peace, will lead his legions into the
+fire, and the golden eagle on his helmet will point the way to fresh
+victories.”
+
+History will bear out as an indisputable fact that Emperor William
+throughout a quarter of a century has done all in his power to keep
+the thunders of war from the confines of the German Empire and from
+Europe. On more than one occasion peace hung by a hair. All who know
+the facts agree that it has been the Emperor’s personal intervention
+which averted a catastrophe. Once, not long ago, the war was nearer
+than people thought, and here again it was the Emperor’s love of peace
+that became the deciding factor. Many blamed him for this, and called
+his attitude irresolute and yielding. But here also the judgment of
+history will be in his favour. In the meantime Germany armed herself
+for the sanguinary conflict as to the coming of which no far-sighted
+man could doubt. In the end the struggle for the maintenance of peace
+became hopeless. This was realised by no one better than by the Emperor
+himself, and for this reason he has throughout his reign striven to
+strengthen the Empire’s fighting resources on land and water. At the
+present moment the fleet is riding on the seas like a gigantic monument
+to the wise and clear-eyed foresight of its creator. For it is the
+Emperor himself who, in co-operation with his peerless Grand Admiral
+von Tirpitz, created the floating fortresses without which Germany’s
+position would have been precarious when England came along with her
+declaration of war.
+
+When the spark of war was kindled, Emperor William was spending
+his usual summer vacation off the coast of Norway. He went home
+at once--with the same haste that brought President Poincaré from
+Stockholm, where he was spending a day after his doubtless very
+important visit to Petrograd. Since then events have succeeded
+one another rapidly. The little spark at Serajevo has become a
+conflagration which has spread over the entire earth like a devastating
+prairie fire. It was a fortunate thing for Germany and her Germanic
+neighbours that she was armed to the teeth and possessed a ruler who
+knew what he wanted, who wanted what was right and beneficial to his
+country, and who fully realised the grave responsibility which rested
+on his shoulders.
+
+But let us return to the Great Headquarters.
+
+Directly I arrived in Luxemburg, I was honoured with an invitation
+to dine with the Emperor William the following day at one o’clock.
+Most of the guests were stopping at the _Hotel Staar_, and the cars
+were to leave there in good time. I went with Adjutant-General,
+Lieutenant-General von Gontard, Acting General à la suite. The street
+close to the Imperial residence was railed off, the barriers being
+withdrawn by the soldiers to let our car pass. The Emperor lived in
+the house of the German Minister and had his private apartments on the
+first floor. On the ground floor was the chancellerie, where enormous
+maps of the theatres of war were mounted on easels, and next to it was
+the dining-room, quite a small apartment.
+
+The guests, all in field uniform, without any display, forgathered in
+the chancellerie. I myself was dressed in the most flagrant everyday
+clothes--in the field nothing is carried for show. Among the Emperor’s
+suite I recognised a couple of old acquaintances, the Headquarters
+Commandant, Adjutant-General, Colonel-General von Plessen, and the
+President of the Navy Council, Admiral von Müller, of Swedish descent,
+who spoke Swedish as fluently as German. The others were his Excellency
+von Treutler and Lieutenant-General Baron Marschall, Colonel von
+Mutius, acting aide-de-camp, the Princes Pless and Arnim and the
+Emperor’s body-physician, Dr. Ilberg. We were thus ten all told.
+
+At the stroke of one the door from the vestibule was opened and Emperor
+William entered with a firm, quiet step. All glances were fixed on
+the strongly built, well-knit figure. The room became as quiet as
+the grave. One realised that one was in the presence of a great
+personality. The little room, otherwise so humble, now had a deeper
+significance. Here was the axis, the pivot round which the world’s
+happenings turned. Here was the centre from which the war was directed.
+Germany is to be crushed, so say its enemies. “_Magst ruhig sein_,”[4]
+says the German army to its Fatherland. And here in our midst stands
+its supreme war-lord, a picture of manliness, resolution and honourable
+frankness. Around him flit the thoughts and passions of the whole
+world. He is the object of love, blind confidence and admiration, but
+also of fear, hate and calumny. Round him, who loves peace, rages the
+greatest war of all times, and his name is ringed with strife. A man
+who, in a nation sprung from the same race, can arouse such fierce
+hatred and call forth such outrageous indictments, must indeed possess
+a very remarkable personality. For otherwise his detractors would leave
+him in peace and empty the vials of their wrath on someone else, more
+formidable still. But all that calumny, meanness and craven fear can
+inspire has been poured on his head. His intentions are distorted, his
+words are misconstrued and his actions are turned into crimes. But
+in the whole of Germany, throughout the German army, his praises are
+sung. In the field services, in all the churches of Germany, everywhere
+fervent prayers for his safety are offered up. “_Magst ruhig sein_,”
+the soldiers may well say to their Emperor, and they on their part know
+that he will never fail in his duty and that he will never withdraw a
+single soldier from the fighting line until Germany’s future is assured.
+
+[4] From the line “_Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein_” (“Be undismayed,
+dear Fatherland”), in _Die Wacht am Rhein_.
+
+It is not a Charlemagne or an Imperator who enters the chancellerie. It
+is merely an officer in the simplest uniform imaginable, a greyish-blue
+tunic with a double row of buttons, dark-coloured breeches and brown
+top-boots. Not even the little black and white ribbon of the Iron
+Cross adorns his breast. But it is nevertheless a fascinating and
+compelling personality, an urbane and courteous man of the world, that
+we see entering the room. It is a man whose quick intuition and superb
+powers of description reveal the observer and the artist, whose wise
+speech betrays the statesman, whose kindly manner betokens humility
+and sympathy and whose military, commanding voice indicates the
+master, accustomed to be obeyed. Happy is the people which especially
+in troubled times possesses such a leader, a chieftain round whom all
+gather in confidence and whose ability no one doubts.
+
+But it is also his eyes that possess a singular magnetic power, and
+which fascinate all when the Emperor enters. It is as if the whole room
+suddenly became lighter, when one meets the glance of the Emperor’s
+calm, blue eyes. They are wonderfully expressive. They bespeak first
+and foremost an iron will and unconquerable energy. They betray a
+certain melancholy at the thought that all may not understand that
+he is actuated absolutely by the will to do what is pleasing unto
+God and beneficial to his people. They also betray a sparkling wit,
+an intellect to which nothing human is foreign and a spirit of
+humour which is irresistible. They betoken honour, love of truth and
+a steadfast sincerity, firm and indomitable, the spirit of which
+penetrates to one’s very marrow as one meets his glance.
+
+Any feeling of timidity one may have had whilst waiting for the most
+powerful and most remarkable man in the world vanished completely
+once the Emperor, after a more than hearty handshake and a cheery
+welcome, began to speak. His voice is manly and military, he speaks
+extraordinarily plainly without slurring over a single syllable, he
+is never at a loss for a word, but always strikes the nail on the
+head--often in exceedingly forceful terms. He punctuates his sentences
+with quick and expressive gestures. His speech flows smoothly, is
+always terse and interesting and is often suddenly interrupted by
+questions delivered with lightning precision, which one must endeavour
+to answer equally quickly and clearly. A good answer never fails to
+elicit the Emperor’s approval. He is exceedingly impulsive and his
+conversation is a mixture of earnest and jest. A ready repartee or an
+amusing tale causes him to laugh so heartily that his shoulders shake
+with it.
+
+At the Emperor’s bidding we passed into the dining-room. Admiral von
+Müller sat on the left, I on the right of our august host, and opposite
+him was Adjutant-General von Gontard. The table was simply laid. The
+only luxury that could be discovered was a bell of gold placed in front
+of the Emperor’s cover, and which he rang when a new course was to be
+brought in. The dinner was equally plain, consisting of soup, meat with
+vegetables, a sweet dish and fruit with claret. I have seldom been as
+hungry as when I rose from this table: not on account of the dishes,
+but because there had not been a moment’s silence up to the time
+when the bell rang for the last time and bade the uniformed servants
+withdraw our chairs as we rose. The Emperor talked to me all the time.
+He began by reminding me of my last lecture in Berlin, at which he was
+present, and he conjectured that Tibet, where I had passed through such
+stirring times, would probably soon be the only country in the world
+where peace reigned. Then we spoke of the political position and of
+the storms that are sweeping over Europe. It pleased me especially to
+hear with what respect and sympathy the Emperor referred to France.
+He regretted the necessity which, contrary to his wish, compelled him
+to lead his army against the French, and he hoped that the time would
+come when Germans and Frenchmen might live on amicable and neighbourly
+terms with one another. For this goal he had striven for twenty-five
+years and he hoped that quite a new order of things would arise out of
+the present war. An understanding between Germany and France would of
+necessity lay the solid foundation for future peace. But first there
+must be victory over the innumerable legions which four great powers
+had hurled against Germany’s frontiers and the German possessions
+in other continents, then an honourable and assured peace in all
+directions, and finally the great and abiding world-peace. First and
+foremost the Emperor placed his faith in God, but he also relied
+implicitly on the German people, on this great and noble army which had
+now for six weeks asserted itself so gloriously, and on his powerful
+fleet, longing to fight out its battle on the waves of the Atlantic.
+He relied on his soldiers’ superb bravery and contempt of death and on
+the officers who led them on land and water.
+
+If the French had any idea of the Emperor’s real feelings towards them,
+they would judge him very differently. Surely no one thinks that I
+would take the responsibility of attributing to the Emperor opinions
+other than those which had fallen from his lips and which I myself had
+heard! It would be an ill reward for the hospitality I met with in the
+German Army.
+
+The conversation turned besides on many other topics. The Emperor said
+many strong and manly things. He spoke like Gustavus Adolphus, when he
+first landed in Germany with his Swedish Army to bring succour to the
+Protestant princes and to fight for the liberty of thought and religion
+on this earth. When the German Emperor talks thus--then I have truly no
+time to eat beef and vegetables--then I prefer to listen and to order
+sandwiches afterwards, when back in my room at the hotel.
+
+On a table in the chancellerie were cigars and cigarettes round a
+lighted candle. Here the conversation was continued with zest and
+vigour, and jest and earnest, horrors of war and funny stories were
+all jumbled together; finally the Emperor took his leave, wishing me a
+successful and instructive trip, and went up to his apartments, where
+no doubt piles of papers and letters, reports and telegrams awaited him.
+
+The talk of the Emperor having aged during the war, and of the war with
+all its labours and anxieties having sapped his strength and health, is
+all nonsense. His hair is no more pronouncedly iron grey than before
+the war, his face has colour, and far from being worn and thin, he
+is plump and strong, bursting with energy and rude health. A man of
+Emperor William’s stamp is in his element when, through the force of
+circumstances, he is compelled to stake all he possesses and above all
+himself for the good and glory of his country. But his greatest quality
+is that he is a human being and that with all his fulminant force he is
+humble before God.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  ON THE WAY TO THE FIFTH ARMY
+
+
+I had hardly returned to the hotel when my excellent friend and
+travelling companion Captain von Krum came and knocked at my door to
+give me the bad news that he had received orders from the office of
+the Imperial Volunteer Automobile Corps to proceed to the twelfth
+Army Corps on a special mission. He comforted me with the assurance
+that I should get another car and another officer for the trip to the
+German Crown Prince’s Army, probably one whose duties took him in that
+direction. There was nothing to be done in the matter--we took a hearty
+farewell of one another and arranged to meet again, if not before, then
+after the end of the war.
+
+When I had lost von Krum, the cold, rainy, windy weather seemed worse
+than ever. It needed an hour in the friendly and delightful company
+of His Excellency and Countess von Moltke to dissipate the gloom. We
+talked about the German soldiers, their good-nature, their humane
+conduct and kindly camaraderie towards prisoners and wounded opponents.
+It is probably to lessen neutral countries’ sympathy towards Germany
+and to egg on their own troops that the newspapers of the Entente
+Powers have on repeated occasions accused the German soldiers of
+inhuman cruelty. Such tales are entirely without foundation and are in
+themselves highly improbable, for it is not and never has been part
+of the Teutonic character to show cruelty to vanquished, defenceless
+enemies. In this respect the Latins and the Slavs have much to learn
+from the Teutons. The wave of vandalism which passed over a part of
+Louvain was let loose by the inhabitants themselves. The anger felt
+by the German soldiers at the treachery of the civil population is
+justified. The treacherous firing of _franctireurs_ from behind bushes
+and windows, in the dusk and dark, is bound in the end to bring about
+reprisals, for the soldier reasons something like this: “The war must
+be conducted between _soldiers_, and when either party is defeated and
+the conqueror marches into the vanquished town, the civilians must not
+fire from windows on the troops entering. And if the nuisance cannot
+be checked in any other way, then the town must be punished.” Such was
+the case with Louvain, which is an unfortified town and where not a
+single window-pane would have been broken, had not the _franctireurs_
+themselves brought about the destruction. Things actually went to such
+lengths that German soldiers who tried to extinguish the fire in the
+burning houses next to the Townhall, in order to save this valuable
+building, were shot down during their work by _franctireurs_. The
+German conduct of the war is severe, but it is not cruel.
+
+During the first stage of the war, when the troops had entered a
+town and burnt or demolished those houses from which civilians had
+been shooting, solitary houses were often to be seen which remained
+untouched in the midst of the desolation. The doors of such remaining
+houses often bore, written in chalk and in a soldier’s hand, some such
+inscription as: “Here lives an aged couple,” or: “Here lives an invalid
+who must be spared,” or: “There has been no firing from this house”;
+or again: “The inhabitants of this house are friendly people.” Such
+houses are then spared by the troops who come after. In the course
+of my narrative I shall have frequent occasion to mention traits
+of kindliness on the part of the German soldiers towards the local
+population. On the other hand, I have never either seen or heard of a
+single act of cruelty.
+
+After one more visit to the railway station and taking a look at troops
+from Lunéville on the way to Belgium, likewise several infantry trains
+from Metz, I returned to the _Hotel Staar_ just in time to meet the
+young lieutenant who had been instructed by General Moltke to take
+me to the Headquarters of the Crown Prince’s Army. His name was Hans
+von Gwinner and he is the son of the great banker and Bagdad Railway
+magnate in Berlin. He was a wide-awake and capable young fellow and
+drove his car himself. I sat down beside him, whilst the orderly
+accompanying us took his seat inside.
+
+It poured with rain as we left the town. The road was slippery, but we
+had studded tyres and the lieutenant drove at terrific speed. We had
+started off rather late and we wanted to get in before dark. It is
+better thus, otherwise one is not entirely safe from the attentions of
+_franctireurs_. A whole lot of them had recently been caught by the
+Fifth Army and shot without hesitation.
+
+Our road took us westward. In the south we left behind an area of
+rich ore deposits, and at Rodingen we passed the frontier of French
+Lorraine. “Load carbine!” came quickly from the lieutenant to the
+orderly, and I looked round involuntarily, but without noticing
+anything out of the common. It was just a precaution apparently, but
+the order sounded strange when heard for the first time. Longlaville
+is the first place we come to in France. Here we find numerous traces
+of German shells, but the factories and their lofty chimneys have been
+spared. In the middle of the road and at its sides are numerous pits
+where shells have burst, and here and there a tree has been cut clean
+off by a “bull’s-eye.” Of some houses there is hardly anything left but
+the walls, whilst others have only had the roof carried away, evidently
+by projectiles striking them at a tangent. The tramway laid at the
+edge of the road has been roughly dealt with. Here and there its rails
+have been twisted as if made of wire. High up in the church towers one
+notices that the slates have been removed to make room for machine
+guns and to provide posts of observation for the officers watching the
+German artillery positions and the effect of the French fire.
+
+“_Où est la route pour Longwy?_” enquires von Gwinner, and the answer
+comes, “_Tout droit, monsieur._” The people always answer politely,
+whatever they may feel at heart. We leave one of Longwy’s two detached
+forts on the right and presently we enter the busy little manufacturing
+town, which is situated in a hollow, surrounded on all sides by hills.
+On one of them stands Longwy fortress, which was easily taken by the
+Germans right at the beginning of the war after an exceedingly violent
+bombardment. A couple of thousand prisoners then fell into the hands
+of the conquerors. In the previous war--January, 1871--Longwy also
+capitulated. We had no time to visit the fortress on this occasion,
+and drove straight through the town. It certainly looks anything
+but cheerful. But what can one expect of a town which has quite
+recently been ravaged by war and has been cut off from its country,
+its Government and administration? Nor did the rain and mud help to
+lessen the gloom. Nevertheless, the town looked by no means dead and
+deserted, for a large proportion of its inhabitants had returned after
+the heavy hand of war had moved further westward, and life had begun to
+settle down again in its old groove.
+
+Outside the town stand the naked walls of a house ravaged by fire. The
+German troops had been fired upon from its windows and in accordance
+with the custom of war it had been set fire to. We are travelling a
+little too fast to gather more than a hasty impression, but wherever I
+look I see the devastating effects of battle. I think to myself as we
+go along that the sooner I get accustomed to such sights the better. On
+both sides of the roads, in fields and ditches, French knapsacks and
+tattered fragments of uniforms are lying about. An upturned motor-car
+lies by the roadside, evidently flung aside so as not to be in the way
+of the traffic, and a little further on is a motor-lorry in the same
+position. Here we see broken bits of rifles and ammunition wagons,
+or the crescent-shaped shield of a field-gun. A grave with a wooden
+cross strikes the eye, then another and yet another, a whole row of
+graves--here is the resting-place of soldiers who have fallen in the
+fighting. In the middle of the road are a couple of shell holes filled
+with rain-water--these are dangerous, for one is apt in the hurry to
+take them for shallow puddles. But von Gwinner has travelled this way
+several times and knows the road.
+
+To the right and left of the road are deep, narrow trenches with
+shallow parapets; but the soldiers have gone away by now and the plain
+is silent--silent where not a month ago 300,000 soldiers were fighting
+for their lives. In many fields the harvest has been brought in by
+German troops to supply their own needs. By the side of ditches, in
+woods and copses, small, low huts are still standing, built of branches
+and boughs, in which the French soldiers had sought protection from
+rain and cold. The German infantry, on the other hand, is equipped with
+shelter-tents. Each man carries with his equipment a part of the brown
+tarpaulin, which, joined together, forms a temporary shelter for a
+certain number of soldiers.
+
+We now pass through a stretch of wooded country. The French are very
+clever in maintaining their positions on wooded ground. They often
+succeed in contriving concealed positions for machine guns in the
+leafy tops of trees. Ravines with streams at the bottom or woods are
+considered by the Germans to present greater obstacles to attack than
+the more open ground met with in central and southern France.
+
+Our road takes us through Longuyon and follows its main street. It
+has a desolate appearance. Over a long stretch there is not a single
+house standing. Everything is in ruins, the road is lined with piles
+of wreckage, swept aside so as not to impede the traffic, and naked
+walls with yawning window gaps meet the eye. The bridges are guarded
+by German sentries; otherwise no human beings are to be seen. How
+miserable the inhabitants must feel when they return and vainly look
+for their homes and belongings!
+
+We emerge into the open country where armies have been marching
+through. Small blackened holes in the earth are all that is left of the
+bivouac fires and cooking-pits. Here the transport columns have rested
+for the night. The village of Noërs is burned and its church steeple
+has been shot away, the music of a maxim gun having been traced to
+the spot from which at other times the church bells call to evensong.
+No dead bodies are seen, no fallen soldiers, no carcases of horses.
+All remains of men and horses have for sanitary reasons been interred
+by the Germans. They would otherwise poison the air and give rise to
+epidemics. Still there is quite enough left to recall the ravages
+of war. Here we have a row of straw shelters backed on to a hedge,
+there some upturned carts with which the French had endeavoured to
+bar the way. This is the most magnificent high road imaginable, lined
+everywhere with avenues of trees. Along the roadside runs a telegraph
+line, which had been destroyed by the defenders but repaired by the
+German Telegraph Corps, not by the field telegraph troops, whose sphere
+of activity is nearer the front.
+
+We have now reached Marville, and the road becomes livelier. At
+one side a supply column has turned off into a field and lined up
+its wagons, which with their canvas awnings give the impression
+of an open-air barrack-yard. The column is resting, and the men
+have commenced cooking. Round the encampment sentries are posted.
+Precautions must be taken. Yesterday in this very neighbourhood
+nineteen French civilians, who had fired on an ammunition column,
+were arrested. They were to be tried by court-martial and shot if the
+offence could be brought home to them. A little further on another
+supply column, consisting of more primitive wagons, had halted by the
+roadside, for it is the rule that a transport column must not pause
+for any length of time on the road itself, which for the sake of the
+traffic must always be kept as clear as possible. It is, moreover,
+considered easier to supervise, and, if necessary, protect a column of
+wagons drawn up several deep and thus shortened in length.
+
+We now drive past a motor-lorry with field post for the 5th Army. It
+makes a terrific noise as it rattles past on the hard road surface.
+Presently the road is encumbered by another supply column, but unlike
+the others, this one is on the move. We must drive more slowly in order
+that the horses of the mounted escort may not take fright and come
+into collision with the car. In passing I catch sight of the words,
+“_Reserve Park Kolonn 15_” on one of these wagons, each of which is
+marked with a number.
+
+We next drive through Montmédy, whose little fort surrendered without
+bombardment. But before the garrison withdrew, they blew up the railway
+tunnel through the mountain. Thereupon the Germans immediately began
+building a new railway round the rock on which the fort was built; as
+we drove past, French prisoners were still engaged on this work. It was
+a curious sight to see these toiling soldiers in blue and red uniforms
+supervised by grey-clad German privates with shouldered rifles.
+Chauvency is a little place on the River La Chiers, whose bridge had
+been destroyed by the French. One of the arches had been blown up.
+German engineers had forthwith built a wooden bridge below the old one.
+
+The weather cleared up towards evening, and the sun went down like a
+big red ball. Its last rays fell upon a convoy of French prisoners,
+who, under German escort, bent and footsore, made their way to
+Montmédy. The Frenchmen had nothing to carry, but the Germans had their
+rifles with fixed bayonets. In front of us lies the valley of the Meuse
+and the little town of Stenay. The faint outlines of heights and hills
+disappear in the dim blue distance. On the left bank of the river the
+French had at this point occupied a fortified position, which, however,
+was taken by storm at the beginning of the campaign. So this is the
+Meuse, or in German Maas, on which are situated so many towns rendered
+famous by this and previous wars, such as Sedan, Givet, Dinant, Namur,
+and Liège! To the left is the great main road which on the right river
+bank runs via Dun to Verdun.
+
+[Illustration: A SERVICE WAGON AT STENAY]
+
+We descend gradually until the Meuse is reached, meeting fresh
+ammunition and food columns on the way. In the latter I notice huge
+motor-lorries loaded with flour, bread and other foodstuffs. Now and
+again we come across horsemen, always in pairs. They are mounted police
+and are out to maintain order on the roads.
+
+We stop outside the house in which the General in Command of the 5th
+Army has taken up his quarters. I was able to speak there without
+difficulty to one of my friends from the Main Headquarters, Landrat
+Baron von Maltzahn, Member of the Reichstag and a personal friend of
+the Crown Prince. He was able to give me the welcome news that I was
+expected and that I must hurry in order to be in time for supper, which
+was served at eight o’clock. So we drove at once up to the little
+French château, where His I. & R. Highness had elected to stay. Here I
+said good-bye to my excellent friend Lieutenant von Gwinner and thanked
+him for his companionship. Thus he, too, disappears from my horizon,
+and I stand before a new association of acquaintances and friendships.
+
+Footmen in military uniforms at once took charge of my baggage and
+conducted me to my room on the first floor, next door to the Crown
+Prince’s private apartments. A few minutes before eight the acting
+Lord-in-Waiting, Court-Marshal von Behr, knocked at my door. He was
+a pleasant young man of distinguished and attractive appearance, and
+he had come to bring me in to supper. We went out through the upper
+vestibule and down the stairs, from the landing of which we were
+fortunate enough to witness a pleasing ceremony. In the lower hall
+stood a number of officers in line, and opposite them some twenty
+soldiers formed up in the same way. Then came the Crown Prince William,
+tall, slim and royally straight, dressed in a dazzling white tunic
+and wearing the Iron Cross of the first and second class; he walked
+with a firm step between the lines of soldiers. An adjutant followed
+him, carrying in a casket a number of Iron Crosses. The Crown Prince
+took one and handed it to the nearest officer, whom he thanked for the
+services which he had rendered to his Emperor and country, and then
+with a hearty handshake he congratulated the hero whom he had thus
+honoured.
+
+When all the officers had received their decorations, the reward for
+their bravery, the turn came of the soldiers, the ceremony being
+precisely the same as with the officers; but I found it hard to
+distinguish what the soldiers said in their loud, rough and nervous
+voices. At last I distinguished the words: _Danke untertänigst
+Kaiserliche Hoheit_ (I humbly thank your Imperial Highness).
+
+When the knights of the Iron Cross had taken their departure, we went
+down into the hall, where the Crown Prince stepped up to me and bade me
+heartily welcome to his Headquarters and to the seat of war. The meal,
+which might as well have been called dinner as supper, was attended by
+the following gentlemen: Lieutenant-General Schmidt von Knobelsdorff,
+Chief of Staff of the 5th Army, Court-Marshal von Behr, Chief of the
+Medical Corps, Body-Physician Professor Widenmann, Majors von der
+Planitz, von Müller, personal Adjutant to H.I. & R.H., and Heymann,
+Lieutenant von Zobeltitz and a few members of the Staff, who arrived
+later after the day’s work in the field and took their seats at the
+lower end of the table.
+
+Would you like to know what the German Crown Prince, the Crown Prince
+of Prussia, eats for supper? Here is the menu: cabbage soup, boiled
+beef with horse-radish and potatoes, wild duck with salad, fruit,
+wine, and coffee with cigars. And what would you say the conversation
+was about? It is hard to say exactly, but we travelled over almost
+the whole world with the ease bred by familiarity. The Crown Prince,
+like the Emperor, began with Tibet, and from there it was but a step
+across the Himalayas to the palms of the Hugli Delta, the pagodas
+of Benares, the silver moonlight over Taj Mahal, the tigers of the
+jungle and the music of the crystal waves of India beating against the
+rocks of Malabar point. We also spoke of old unforgettable memories
+and of common friends who now love us no longer--of the brave and
+famous Kitchener, the conqueror of Omdurman and South Africa, of the
+Mararajahs and their fairy-like splendour at Bikanir, Kutch Behar,
+Gwalior, Kashmir and Idar.
+
+We also talked about the war and its horrors, and the terrible
+sacrifices it demands. “But it cannot be helped,” said the Crown
+Prince, “our Fatherland asks us to give all we have, and _we will, we
+must_ win, even if the whole world takes up arms against us.”
+
+“Is not the calm here wonderful! We seem to be living to-night in the
+most absolute peace, and yet it is but a couple of hours’ drive to the
+firing line,” observes my Imperial host after listening to a short,
+concise and satisfactory report made in a ringing voice by an officer
+who has just entered. “Yes, your Imperial Highness, I had imagined
+the Staff Headquarters of an army to resemble a buzzing beehive, but
+now that I have the reality before me, I find no trace of anxiety or
+nervousness, nothing but calm and assurance everywhere. But what I
+should like to see most of all would be a battle, for I suspect that in
+common with most other civilians I have formed an erroneous opinion on
+this subject.”
+
+The Crown Prince smiles and answers: “Yes, battle painters like
+Neuville and Détaille would have little use for their art in these
+days. Of the fighting men one sees practically nothing, for they are
+concealed by the ground and in the trenches, and it is rather dangerous
+to get too close to a bayonet charge--unless one’s duty takes one
+there. Generally speaking, the distance between the fighting forces
+increases with the improvement in fire-arms. Those who have the best
+artillery have the best prospects of winning. To us the field-grey
+uniform is a great advantage, as we merge into the colouring of the
+ground, whilst the brilliant uniforms of the French are visible from
+afar. _To see_ a battle is practically impossible--not even the
+Commander directing it sees much of it, his direction is effected by
+telephone and is dependent on information and reports received, which
+in turn are carefully sifted and weighed. For a spectator to post
+himself on a height in the neighbourhood is not advisable, for then
+he may be sure of being taken for an observer directing the artillery
+fire, and becomes at once the target of the enemy’s shells. You shall,
+however, during your visit here be allowed to witness all that it is
+possible to see.”
+
+What life and spirit at the Crown Prince’s Headquarters! Everything was
+gay with the freshness of youth, and devoid of restraint. No trace of
+the stiffness of court ceremonial. Even General Schmidt, who usually
+maintained the strictest discipline, was infected by the prevailing
+spirit of camaraderie. But owing to the terrible burden of work which
+rested on the shoulders of the Chief of Staff, it was not unusual for
+him to come in for his meals after the others. The supper, or rather
+the talk after it, went on till about eleven--these were the only
+hours when one could meet in quiet, for during the day everyone was
+busy with his duties, and the Crown Prince then occupied his post as
+commanding officer at suitable points at the front.
+
+The château where we were staying belonged to an aristocratic French
+lady--if I remember rightly her name was du Vernier. When the war
+broke out she moved to Bordeaux. On her return after the contest she
+will find her château, her estates and the beautiful park in the same
+condition as when she went away. There was a certain aristocratic
+grandeur about the château, though signs of decay were already making
+themselves apparent. On the mantelpiece in my room stood a pendulum
+clock of gilt bronze of an antique mythological design, and on each
+side stood a couple of gorgeous candelabra. The walls were decorated
+with a few unassuming pictures, amongst them a portrait of an old
+French warrior.
+
+I open my window, it is pitch-dark outside, and the rain falls close
+and heavy upon the trees and lawns outside. Tired after a somewhat
+ambitious day’s work, I hurry to bed, the more so as I suspect the next
+day’s programme to be no less exacting.
+
+September 21st. I was called early to be ready for breakfast at seven,
+when all his entourage gathers round the Crown Prince. After breakfast
+H.I. & R.H. asked me to accompany him to the Staff quarters, where
+a “plan of campaign” for my day was to be drawn up. General Schmidt
+quickly made up his mind. He thought it might be of interest to me to
+begin by watching the artillery fire at Septsarges, and instructed
+three officers to take charge of me. Major Matthiasz was the leader of
+the party, and a soldier came as chauffeur. The two other officers were
+Liebrecht of a battalion of Chasseurs, and Schmidt of the Volunteer
+Automobile Corps.
+
+Whilst the car was got ready I was being coached on a large map in
+the grouping of the 5th Army and of the artillery positions which we
+were to visit. The General Staff of the Chief Command of the Army was
+housed in an _École de Garçons_, which still contained relics of its
+former state, such as natural history pictures and maps, and a couple
+of school benches with the master’s desk, above which could still be
+seen in black and white the golden rules: _Ne vous vantez pas_, and
+_Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_. How hollow and foolish did they not
+seem before the brutal reality now presiding over the world!
+
+The car is ready. We step in. I am dressed in furs and have a
+mackintosh. I also bring a pair of field-glasses and a sketch-book. It
+is no longer raining, but the sky is overcast and the weather chilly
+and autumnal after all the suffocating heat which the soldiers had to
+endure during the first phase of the campaign. We drive southward at
+break-neck speed. I cannot deny that I had to struggle against the
+feeling of growing excitement. It was not mere manœuvres; it was war
+itself, a part of the greatest struggle that had ever been fought on
+earth. It was, moreover, the struggle on the western front, the fight
+against the French, rightly considered to be the sturdiest and best
+soldiers among Germany’s opponents. When one approaches such a spot,
+and when for the first time in one’s life one enters the zone of fire,
+it is difficult not to feel, whether one admits it or not, a certain
+tension, even if one has been through some wild adventures in Asia.
+Every minute we get nearer the firing line, and as the car slows down
+at the corners we hear the cannonade more plainly. The booming of the
+guns sounds dull and heavy, the ground quivers.
+
+But events move all too fast. Observations and impressions follow so
+quickly upon one another that it is difficult to assimilate them all.
+I make my notes as usual, even when the car is racing along at its
+fastest, and my writing is far from copper-plate. We still have 32
+kilometres to Septsarges, a village 21 kilometres north-west of Verdun.
+How often did I not wish to stop--to impress more strongly on my mind
+some vivid and warlike picture, but as I am stopping for two days with
+the 5th Army, I shall, no doubt, have an opportunity of revisiting this
+section. The whole road is full of supply columns moving southward,
+and we meet innumerable empty transport lorries on the way north, to
+be reloaded at some railway station. Here we also see fresh young
+troops, all strapping fellows, who have come direct from Germany to go
+straight to victory or death. All are jolly and eager; truly, they look
+as if the whole affair were to them but an autumn manœuvre, and as if
+they felt no trace of excitement. They march along with easy bearing
+and sing merry soldiers’ ditties under the leaden skies now darkening
+this unhappy bleeding France. They light their pipes and their eternal
+cigarettes, laugh and chat--as if they were going to a picnic in the
+country. In reality they are going out to fill the gaps made by the
+French fire in the ranks of their comrades. They are _Ersatztruppen_,
+i.e. reinforcements, but I do not see a single face which betrays the
+slightest feeling that death is near. They hear the thunder of the guns
+better than we do, for the humming of the car drowns all other sounds.
+But they seem to delight in the dull music, and yet their place is far
+in advance of the artillery positions. _Ersatztruppen_! it means that
+their duty is to _replace_ the fallen, and that the same fate awaits
+themselves. Yet they are gay and happy. “_Dulce et decorum est pro
+patria mori._”
+
+The soldiers’ helmets are provided with covers of the same shade of
+grey as the uniforms. On their backs they carry knapsacks containing
+their most indispensable kit, their share of the tent, and a couple
+of bowls with spoon, knife and fork. At the side they carry the
+bayonet and the “portable tool,” spade or axe. To the waist-belt are
+fastened the filled cartridge pouches, the whole outfit weighing
+about 56 English lbs. It is a fairly substantial weight and, although
+figuratively speaking the soldiers march into battle with a light step,
+their steps are in reality pretty heavy, especially on country roads
+softened by rain. Anyhow, their marching capacity is nothing short of
+wonderful--I for my part should not get far with such a load. Practice
+makes perfect, as the whole German nation knows. That is why the
+Germans do not refuse to spend enormous sums on their defence. And that
+is why they conquer, even though attacked by four great powers whose
+soldiers have not received the same thorough scientific training in
+times of peace.
+
+We fly through Dun. One can hardly speak of more than one street in
+this prettily situated little village on the banks of the Meuse. Yet
+this street has indeed been hardly dealt with. It is a melancholy
+comfort to know that its comely houses have been destroyed by the
+French Army’s own artillery, so as to make the stay at Dun as
+disagreeable as possible for the Germans. It is now a “line of
+communication” base depot with Depot _Kommandantur_, a “line of
+communication” hospital and store depot, and also has large supplies
+of arms and ammunition. The railway, now under Prussian management, is
+being worked up to this point, where the transfer takes place from the
+supply trains to the great columns of the Army Service Corps.
+
+The population, which fled on the approach of the Germans, has already
+begun to return. The two bridges over the Meuse have been blown up,
+but one of them, the one of stone, over which the main road passes,
+has been repaired by the Engineers. The little village of Liny, on our
+right, has been more fortunate. Here the pretty little white houses
+with their red-tiled roofs are almost untouched.
+
+We now begin to notice that we are approaching the firing line. The
+whole road is encumbered with troops. Here comes a detachment of
+wounded on foot, with bandages round heads and hands, or with the arm
+in a sling. We meet an empty ammunition column, an endless string of
+rattling wagons. We always keep to the right of course. Woe to him who
+breaks this rule and causes a stoppage on the road.[5] If it is not
+broad enough, it becomes rather awkward at times to get along. And
+how often does it not happen that two transport columns meet on the
+same bit of road, one empty going northward and the other fully laden
+travelling south! Suddenly we find ourselves in the narrow passage
+between two such moving walls. If into the bargain another car with
+field post comes along--every corps has its own post--a temporary
+congestion is not infrequently the result, but thanks to the smartness
+of the drivers and chauffeurs the trouble is soon overcome.
+
+[5] In Sweden (as in England) one always keeps to the left.
+
+The artillery ammunition column which we are just now passing is an
+impressive sight. The noise of these vehicles, dull and heavy, is
+quite different from that of the empty wagons on our left, but then
+they are loaded to the top with heavy ammunition, shells for 21-cm.
+mortars at Septsarges and neighbouring villages. Every ammunition
+wagon--consisting of limber and wagon body--with its team of six horses
+requires the services of six men. Three of them--drivers--ride on the
+off-side[6] horses, two are seated on the limber, and one facing the
+rear on the wagon body. They are armed with Mauser pistols fastened on
+the left side of the belt, but the swords of the drivers are securely
+strapped on to the left side of the saddle.
+
+[6] i.e. the left-hand horse. As Germans drive to the right this is
+their “off” side.
+
+The horses are fat and sleek, and pull without exerting themselves
+unduly. They move at a walking pace--anything else would be impossible
+on this road. It is a far finer sight to see one of these columns
+trundling along at full speed with the horses moving at a sharp trot
+or gallop. Even at the pace at which they are now travelling these
+endless columns are an impressive and attractive sight. What does it
+matter if the helmets, in order not to glitter and attract attention,
+are concealed by a cover which even hides the spike surmounting them;
+what does it matter if the men’s uniforms are of the same dirty grey as
+the clay and mud of the soil? The whole team looks picturesque enough
+with its massive, solid wagon, its pole, its leather fittings and its
+harness.
+
+Tramp, tramp go the horses’ hoofs, and behind them comes the rattling
+of the heavy wagons. One rider sings, another whistles and a third is
+shouting at a refractory horse. Behind sit a couple of men rolling
+cigarettes, which by the way is more difficult than it sounds when a
+wagon is jolting up and down. This column also has a mounted escort.
+The train is wound up by a field kitchen with a couple of store wagons
+on which a few bundles of firewood are also lying. Without ceasing,
+this eternal tramp, tramp, keeps dinning into our ears as the columns
+slowly travel southward, a never-ending stream of warriors, horses,
+ammunition and provisions. “Germany must have inexhaustible supplies of
+everything,” I remark to Major Matthiasz.
+
+He smiles and replies: “Here on the western front we must have quite
+fifty roads such as this, all equally crowded with men, horses and
+materials.”
+
+“It must cost a tidy bit of money.”
+
+“Yes, it is best not to think of it, but then it means everything to
+us.”
+
+We have now reached the front of the great column. At its head ride a
+couple of officers, the commander and his adjutant. They salute us. We
+have hardly left them behind before we drive past the tail-end of an
+infantry ammunition column, the wagons of which are manned by three
+men and drawn by four horses with only one driver, mounted on the off
+leader.
+
+By the side of the road are numberless great pits where shells have
+struck. Here the fire has been heavy with a vengeance. This fact is
+brought home to us still more as we redescend to the Meuse at the point
+where the village of Vilosnes received such a pounding, and where a
+permanent bridge was blown up, only to be replaced in a twinkling
+by a temporary structure by the German Engineers. The ground round
+the village reminds one almost of a cake of Swedish rye-bread pitted
+all over with holes. The blankness of desolation is most curiously
+contrasted by the busy military life around. Almost every inch of
+ground is occupied by the transport columns with their endless streams
+of wagons, drafts of reinforcements who had elected to halt here--the
+men resting on the wet ground round their piled rifles--military police
+in their green uniforms and crescent-shaped metal badges, and countless
+horses to replace those which have fallen, for Vilosnes has now been
+made into a horse depot.
+
+The thunder of the guns has now become louder and we have not far
+to go to reach the German batteries. As yet there is no danger. The
+countless shell-pits have not been formed in the present fighting.
+Since these shells fell, the Germans have made an advance. But we are,
+nevertheless, immediately behind the firing line, and that is why all
+these supplies are required to feed men, horses, guns and rifles. A
+little way from the village an ammunition column has halted; its wheels
+look awful, coated with thick layers of mud and clay up to the axles.
+The men are like moving clay statues. In the midst of the mire, in
+fields and meadows, are ammunition parks and field hospitals, although
+it would be impossible to find a single dry patch on which to rest
+one’s tired body for the night. Presumably the men sleep in the wagons
+as far as space allows. They are hardy and brave, these men, always
+singing, never complaining.
+
+We come a step nearer the fire when we drive up to the village of
+Dannevoux, which is crowded with _Ersatztruppen_. Here we can study
+the reinforcement organisation more closely still. Here fresh soldiers
+stand ready to move up into the firing line to replace the killed
+and wounded, whilst the work of provisioning and bringing up fresh
+ammunition is in full swing, so that no fatal break need occur in the
+firing. Dannevoux church has been turned into a field hospital, where
+Germans and Frenchmen are tended without discrimination.
+
+In a modest little house in Dannevoux a Divisional Commander has
+taken up his quarters, and here we pay a short visit to General von
+Gossler, who is in the act of examining some fifty French prisoners
+drawn up in two files, who had just been captured. They reply calmly
+and politely to all questions and say that their regiment has been
+almost wiped out. They are from the south of France, most of them from
+Marseilles--that is to say they belong to the 15th Army Corps. Here we
+also meet Colonel von Rath, whose acquaintance I had made in Breslau.
+
+Dannevoux had been horribly knocked about by shells, and was still
+far from safe. The next day we heard that General von Gossler had
+miraculously escaped being hit by a shell which had dropped hardly
+twenty metres from the spot where he was standing.
+
+We mount the car once more to travel the six kilometres which separate
+us from the little village of Septsarges, in a south-westerly
+direction. On our left, hardly a kilometre distant, was a little
+coppice which had been bombarded that very morning. The day before
+yesterday the French had learnt from spies amongst the civil
+population or through one of their aviators that this was an important
+_Beobachtungsstand_, or observation station, and yesterday a thousand
+shells were rained upon it, but by that time the observers had already
+withdrawn and only left a picket behind, who found the necessary
+shelter in a bomb-proof cave.
+
+The road we take is within the range of the French batteries, and now
+and again a shell drops by the roadside. The ground is pitted with
+the marks of shell fire, but we manage to steer clear. We are as yet
+concealed by a slight rise in the ground south of the road. It was
+lucky that a little accident that happened to the car compelled us to
+stop just at this point. A little further on we should have been in
+sight of the French observation posts, and should no doubt have drawn
+their fire. The French artillery is exceedingly vigilant and considers
+it can afford to waste ammunition even on single individuals.
+
+I am worried by an inquisitive wasp buzzing round me and contrast it
+vaguely in my mind with the somewhat larger winged creatures issuing
+from the muzzles of the guns. Once more the car is ready to start.
+“Drive quickly over the high ground,” orders Major Matthiasz, but it is
+easier said than done; this by-road is narrow and has been converted
+into a perfect quagmire with enormous ruts by all the heavy traffic
+it has had to bear. We have to be content with such speed as we can
+manage, and trust that the French observers will not notice us or that
+their directions will not be obeyed until we are over the hill. On
+the left, towards the south, are two French captive balloons. It is a
+little unpleasant to know that they are in telephonic communication
+with the batteries beneath. Neither is it very encouraging to see a
+row of wooden crosses surmounting fresh graves by the roadside. In the
+ditch lies a dead horse which had not been able to struggle on any
+further. The shell craters are now so frequent that we do not pay them
+the slightest attention.
+
+Here by the roadside stands a transport convoy which has brought oats
+for the horses of a mortar section. We have not far to go to the first
+batteries, each consisting of four of these gigantic “growlers.” We
+drive up between two battery positions whilst they are firing. “Load!”
+calls the head of the battery, a Captain. “_Fertig zum Feuer!_”[7]--and
+directly after, “_Feuer!_”[8] and all four guns are discharged
+simultaneously. Immediately a spout of fire issues from the gun-muzzle,
+accompanied by a report which rends the air and causes the ground to
+shake for some distance around. Then is heard that peculiar, horrible
+whistle through the air, as the projectile sweeps the space which
+separates us from the French positions. Each mortar has a shield, and
+by the side of the guns the gunners have dug a trench for “_Deckung_”
+or protection in case the French fire should press the battery too hard.
+
+[7] Ready to fire!
+
+[8] Fire!
+
+Presently we reach Septsarges, where all alleys, yards and open
+spaces are filled with soldiers. The village is situated in a shallow
+hollow, and the men here are fairly safe from the French fire. But a
+flat-topped rise in the ground immediately south of the village is
+struck now and again by a shell.
+
+[Illustration: 21 CM. MORTARS FIRING AT SEPTSARGES]
+
+Septsarges also accommodates a few field kitchens, which stand ready
+with their smoking chimneys. The food is prepared during the day, and
+as dusk sets in the vehicles are driven up in proximity to the infantry
+positions, hugging the dips in the ground as much as possible and
+sheltering behind any cover there may be. The men in the trenches know
+where the canteen is set up, and betake themselves thither under the
+shelter of the darkness to get their tin bowls filled with boiling hot
+broth.
+
+We did not remain in the village longer than was necessary to get
+information from a couple of officers. Thereupon we continued on our
+way, leaving the car at a point beyond the range of artillery. Then we
+went up the hill towards the south, with the nearest mortar battery on
+the left and a field artillery position on the right. Even the field
+artillery gunners had dug trenches by the side of the guns, covered
+over with boughs, straw and leaves, thus carefully masking themselves
+from the French aviators.
+
+From the car, which we left in line with the artillery positions, we
+walked some 800 metres in the direction of the French fire. One has to
+imagine the infantry positions in two approximately parallel lines,
+only a few hundred metres distant from one another. Behind them come
+the artillery positions, also generally speaking in parallel lines.
+Thus we were now moving within the space situated between the German
+artillery positions and the German infantry lines, that is to say,
+the zone bombarded by the French artillery. The risk was, therefore,
+fairly great, and we took such precautions as the ground allowed. Our
+objective was an observation post located on the crest of the rise,
+where a couple of non-commissioned artillery officers stood immovable
+as if nailed to the ground, by the side of their telescope mounted on
+a tripod. They were observing the fire of the mortar batteries and
+telephoned where the shells had struck and the position of the hit in
+relation to the object aimed at. It is from the reports of aviators and
+of advanced observation posts and patrols of officers that the range is
+obtained and the fire is directed.
+
+On the lowest part of the slope we were fairly safe, as at this point
+we were not visible from the French side. “Look out for telephone
+wires,” warned Matthiasz, who was leading the way, as we passed the
+lines resting on the grass. When we had reached the middle of the
+slope, where we were exposed to view from several points on the French
+line, we descended into a long communication trench, which led to the
+vicinity of the post of observation. The trench was hardly more than
+a metre deep and we had to walk almost double in order not to be seen
+over its edge. The bottom was very unpleasant. Owing to the sloping
+ground nearly all the water had been drained off, but there was still
+enough to convert the trench into a greyish-blue bath of slime and
+mire, through which we laboriously made our way with our boots sticking
+in the mess, and now and again sinking down to the calves, and this was
+not made pleasanter by some delightful relics which the soldiers had
+left behind.
+
+Dressed in their greatcoats, the observation officers stand on the
+crest of the hill, with a very low, short parapet in front of them. As
+a rule one is anything but welcome when successful in sneaking up to
+one of these points, for one may easily attract the enemy’s attention
+and thus place the observers in great danger. No wonder, therefore,
+that they saluted us rather curtly and continued, immovable as statues,
+to observe the French fire. We walked the last bit of the way in single
+file, so as to make it appear to the opposite batteries as if there
+were only one man, and not, by open order, to create more movement
+than necessary on the hill crest. Sitting on our heels, we observed
+the country southward in the direction of Malancourt, and took our
+bearings as best we could. The Major was just explaining what heights,
+copses, villages and roads were occupied by the Germans and where the
+French positions began, when a shrapnel shell exploded close by us, a
+little to our left. “_Deckung!_” cried Matthiasz, and threw himself
+down at full length behind the parapet. We had hardly time to follow
+his example when three other of these infernal machines spat out their
+contents, a little further away, however, than the first. It was now
+obvious that we had been seen by the French observers, and that the
+fire from a battery had been concentrated on us. We, therefore, thought
+it wise to move on to a safer place--when one has been discovered there
+is nothing else to do if one wishes to get away with a whole skin. To
+begin with we moved down to the nearest mortar battery, where we passed
+a few moments. Whilst they were loading for the next salvo I drew the
+accompanying very rough sketch. But one can hardly be expected to show
+the requisite presence of mind and coolness to accomplish a detailed
+drawing, when at any moment one may be smothered in shell fragments. In
+the picture the mortar barrel is lowered for loading; on the right is a
+projectile on a _Trage_, or little iron barrow.
+
+By a more westerly road, and still passing endless transport columns,
+we next proceed northward, and ascend a height which seems to be
+outside the firing line, and from which with greater tranquillity we
+can observe the martial spectacle southward. There is really little to
+be seen. The only thing that we see and hear is the German batteries,
+and, if the weather is clear, the impact and bursting of the shells.
+The French batteries are, of course, equally well hidden behind mounds
+and masked by bushes and young trees, and one sees and hears nothing of
+their fire but the impact of their shells and the report. The French
+fire on this particular day consisted mainly of shrapnel, and it made
+itself known chiefly by a shrill whistling sound and by the little
+puffs of white smoke which denoted the bursting of the shells overhead.
+
+The streets of the village of Cunel are full of Württemberg Landwehr
+and their steaming field kitchens and long trains of supply columns.
+The roads are swarming with infantry and Uhlans. Here also are large
+bodies of _Ersatztruppen_ or reinforcements, ready to move up and fill
+the gaps. We have brought with us a whole bundle of fresh newspapers to
+distribute amongst the men. Nothing gives them greater pleasure than
+this kind of news from home. Out here the soldiers get, of course, no
+particulars of the war but what they can see with their own eyes. Of
+course, they can draw certain conclusions from the orders given out
+day by day. But about the general situation on the various fronts they
+know nothing. Their hunger and thirst are stilled at field kitchens,
+which are run so smartly and so thoroughly that the question of hunger
+or thirst really never arises. Cigars and cigarettes are also heartily
+welcome, and are sent to the front as _Liebesgaben_ (love gifts) in
+entire wagon-loads, perhaps mainly to the 5th Army, thanks to the
+Crown Prince’s spirited appeals to the generosity of the public. But
+on the whole the longing for news is the greatest, and I think that
+the soldiers would often gladly go hungry and thirsty for a while and
+forfeit their beloved smokes, if they could only learn how Germany’s
+great war was going on and how their people were at home. _Lieb
+Vaterland, magst ruhig sein_ they sing with tremendous gusto, when the
+news of fresh victories reaches them.
+
+In the village of Romagne we were on the territory of a new Army Corps.
+The house at which we stopped is owned by a French Major who has
+retired from the Army and lives there with his wife in the midst of
+the confusion. As a consequence his house and he are quite unmolested.
+He is on the billet register, and sees to it that his German guests
+are properly looked after. At Romagne there is also a field hospital,
+occupying several houses. Every Army Corps has twelve such hospitals,
+each of which has six wagons, all flying the Red Cross flag.
+
+The next village we pass is Bantheville, from which the population
+fired on the Germans from the windows when they entered. The guilty
+persons were seized and hanged, and a couple of houses which were fired
+from were burnt down. Now the village was full of troops and transport
+columns. Horrible-looking water-filled holes in the road and by the
+roadside betokened the effect of the German guns during the advance. In
+a field stands a whole row of wagons filled with sacks of oats. Near
+by is a flying station and a field-bakery detachment with its engines,
+which look like baking ovens, and its big yellow tents where the dough
+is kneaded and moulded in gigantic troughs.
+
+At length we drive back to Dun, where the traffic is if possible still
+livelier than in the morning. It took some time to make our way between
+the trains of vehicles on the bridges and in the narrow village street.
+_Proviant Kolonn 1 Wagen 23_ with its team of four and drivers seemed
+to wish to bar our way, but the officer in charge got a terrific
+scolding from the Major. The noise--the shouting, the creaking of
+wagons, the cracking of whips, the jolting and the neighing--in this
+village road is indescribable. The 5th Army seems to be in need of
+nothing, least of all of soldiers. As we pass through, fresh regiments
+come marching along, singing and smoking. When at last we get clear of
+the village we find no diminution of traffic, but we are at least no
+longer helplessly blocked in the narrow streets.
+
+A sharp shower patters down once more on the arched canvas roofs of
+the service wagons, and this poor land, so saturated with blood and
+water, receives another drenching. We ourselves come to no harm, but we
+cannot help thinking of the soldiers lying frozen in the firing line.
+The trenches are not a pleasant place to live in during these autumn
+rains. A German officer once told me that the water was a foot deep in
+many trenches, and that the men had no alternative but to stand up in
+it. Sometimes they were able to dig “dug-outs” above the water level so
+as at least to have somewhere to sit or lie, but any attempt at drying
+is futile. Even if it were possible to make up a fire, this is strictly
+forbidden, as the enemy’s gun-fire would be guided by the light.
+
+Here comes a string of vehicles with long, rough tree trunks for some
+bridge construction, there lies an upturned motor-car which has come
+to grief. If a little stretch of road is moderately clear or only
+encumbered by a single file of wagons, the chauffeur immediately puts
+on a terrific speed to gain ground.
+
+It was still daylight when we returned to our domicile, where the Crown
+Prince, just back from his day’s work, was resting in the doorway. A
+moment later I went out for a walk in the town. At the bridges over
+the Meuse I was stopped by the sentries, who in authoritative but
+invariably polite tones asked to see my _Ausweis_. That they found me
+suspicious-looking, ambling along as I did with a sketch-book under my
+arm, was not to be wondered at. Only one of them, an honest Landwehr
+man, declared categorically that my pass was not sufficient. “Oh,” I
+said. “The name of the Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army,
+General Moltke, does not impress you?” “No, the permit must be viséd by
+the 5th Army,” he replied. A couple of his comrades saved the situation
+after reading the permit, and declared that General Moltke was good
+enough for them.
+
+After a short visit to a field base hospital, accommodated in a French
+artillery barracks, I turned my steps homeward and stopped, in an
+inquisitive mood, at the entrance to a shop which was open and where
+soldier customers came and went. As I overheard a couple of privates
+doing their level best to make themselves understood by the women in
+the shop, I stepped up to offer my services as interpreter. It turned
+out to be a modest sort of place for women’s clothing, linen, stays,
+lace, handkerchiefs, stockings, scent and soap and other useful toilet
+articles. The proprietress, Madame Desserrey, had been a widow for
+three years and now lived there with her three daughters and a sister
+and subsisted on the profits of her little business. The soldiers who
+were engaged in discussion inside, wanted to buy shirts and pants,
+and Mme. Desserrey was trying to explain that if they would come back
+with the material, she would sew the garments they wanted. With this
+information they seemed satisfied, bought a couple of boxes of soap and
+went away.
+
+I asked Mme. Desserrey if she had not been ruined by the war, but she
+replied that she had not suffered any want so far. She hoped that she
+would get through the autumn and winter, and that the war would soon be
+at an end.
+
+“Well, and what do you think of the German soldiers?” I asked.
+
+“They haven’t done me or my family the slightest harm; they are always
+polite and take no liberties. They have bought everything in my shop
+that they can make use of and paid for it like men, and if I could only
+get fresh goods from Luxemburg I should do excellent business. I and
+three others are the only ones who keep our shops open. All the others
+closed and fled when the Germans came.”
+
+In the shop were two knitting machines at which the eighteen-year-old
+Blanche Desserrey and her sister of fourteen were sitting; they were
+knitting socks for the Germans, whilst their brother, eleven years old,
+was sitting on the steps outside watching the soldiers. Mademoiselle
+Blanche was a sweet and pretty girl, but she did not seem very strong;
+she had a look of melancholy in her dark eyes and wore an anchor of
+hope in her brooch. I asked if she had many relations at the war. She
+answered yes, and she longed for her friends who had fled from the
+town. “How horrible this war is,” she cried, “how awful for everybody.”
+Then she enquired whether they had been fighting hard at the front that
+day--she had heard the booming of the guns in the early morning. Yes,
+I said, they were fighting hard. It was the Germans and the French
+who were fighting against one another, and many a brave and promising
+youth had died for his country. Mademoiselle Blanche, I soon found,
+was not merely a seamstress for the soldiers, she was also a dreamer
+of beautiful dreams, sensitive and high-minded, and her heart was pure
+and without guile. She was cheerful, amiable, and could even raise a
+laugh in the midst of the billeting bothers and the knitting, but it
+was clear that she considered gaiety one of the transient things of
+this earth. The German officers and soldiers who entered eyed her with
+interest and treated her with respect. She assured me that she had
+never yet had occasion to complain of their conduct. She did not quite
+understand how she managed to disarm even the strongest by a look from
+her eyes. _Soyez comme l’oiseau, penché pour un instant sur les rameaux
+trop frêles. Il sent plier la branche mais il chante pourtant, sachant
+qu’il a des ailes._ Blanche Desserrey would have made an ideal heroine
+of a touching romance.
+
+But I for my part had no time for romances just then. When I came out
+into the street the clock in a church tower struck six in the solemn
+French way, and I hastened to my room to make a few notes. Then there
+was a knock at the door. “_Herein_” I called with the voice of a
+corporal. In steps the Crown Prince with a large volume under his arm.
+I ask my august guest to be seated on the sofa. There we sat and talked
+until it was time to prepare for the evening meal.
+
+The book which the Crown Prince had brought with him, and which he
+asked me to accept as a memento of him, was entitled _Deutschland in
+Waffen_ (Germany under Arms), and contained, apart from reading matter
+by various authors, a series of excellently executed coloured plates of
+different German armies in being, in manœuvres and sham fights, as well
+as of German warships at sea. The work, produced by the Crown Prince
+with the assistance of eminent experts, was dedicated to his father the
+Emperor. The copy, which I treasure in memory of the giver, contained a
+dedication curiously historical in tone. The motto chosen by the editor
+of the book was the following: “The world does not rest more securely
+on Atlas’ shoulders than does Germany upon her army and navy.” The
+introduction is written by the Crown Prince himself and ends with the
+following impressive and prophetic words:
+
+“Doubtless diplomatic skill can and will, for some time to come, defer
+conflicts and even dissolve them. Those called upon in the solemn
+hour of decision must and will surely be fully conscious of their
+terrible responsibility. They will feel it their duty to make it clear
+to themselves that once the match has been applied to the gigantic
+conflagration, it will be no easy and no speedy task to quench it.
+But, as the lightning equalises the tension between two air strata of
+different charge, so will the sword, until the world comes to an end,
+be and remain the deciding factor. And therefore everyone who loves his
+country and who believes in the great future of our people must gladly
+and readily do all in his power to guard the old soldierly spirit of
+our ancestors from decadence and from the sickly taint of thought. The
+sword itself is not enough, it needs the practised steel-clad arm to
+wield it. Every man amongst us must keep fit for service in our army
+and navy and must in heart and soul be ready for the great and solemn
+hour when our Emperor calls us to the colours, for the moment when we
+no longer belong to ourselves but to the country only with the whole of
+our bodily and spiritual strength--the time when all these qualities
+must be strained to the uttermost to attain the ‘will to conquer’
+which in all history has never been known to fail. If thus the entire
+German people is resolved gladly to adventure its life blood and all
+that it holds dear, it matters little if the world is ‘filled with the
+legions of darkness’ armed against us, for we shall know how to stand
+up against it, however great be the distress of the moment. Thus we
+shall indeed obey the exhortation contained in the comforting verses of
+Emanuel Geibel, the herald of the new German Empire:
+
+            “Und wenn uns nichts mehr übrig blieb
+            So blieb uns doch ein Schwert,
+            Das zorngemut mit scharfem Hieb
+            Dem Trutz des Fremdlings wehrt.
+
+            “So blieb die Schlacht als letzt Gericht
+            Auf Leben und auf Tod.
+            Und wenn die Not nicht Eisen bricht,
+            Das Eisen bricht die Not.”[9]
+
+The world conflagration which Crown Prince William foretold is now
+raging before our very eyes. Will he be justified in his steadfast
+faith in the people over which he is destined one day to reign? The
+writing on the wall from Ypres to the Wartha, from Tsingtau to the
+Cameroons, is telling its tale. Here is a nation which cannot go under
+and which never will be conquered.
+
+[9]         And if nought else to us be left,
+            There still remains the sword
+            Which boldly wielded with fierce cleft
+            Defies the foemen’s horde.
+            Thus combat unto death we make,
+            Last arbiter indeed,
+            For if need will not iron break
+            Then iron shall break the need.
+
+ The last line is a play on the German proverb, “Not bricht Eisen”:
+ Necessity will (teach us to) break down (obstacles strong as) iron; and
+ if it will not, our “iron” (sword) shall break the necessity itself.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  A DAY AT ECLISFONTAINE
+
+
+September 22nd. Last night the Crown Prince distributed more Iron
+Crosses among the heroes of the day. At the end of the meal he
+suggested that I should spend my morning with Major Matthiasz,
+whose duties with the Chief Command of the 5th Army called him to
+Eclisfontaine, from which point an attack was to be delivered against
+Varennes and neighbouring villages which the Germans had once occupied,
+but from which for strategical reasons they had been obliged to retire.
+
+At half-past three I was called, lit my candle, opened the window and
+looked out into the night. It was pitch-dark but for a star here and
+there which peered out through the crowns of the trees. It was very
+still, and nothing could be heard but the slow, measured tread of the
+sentry crunching the garden gravel.
+
+At four I was seated alone at breakfast. A soldier accompanied me with
+a lantern to Major Matthiasz’s residence, where a young lieutenant with
+an orderly stood waiting. We took our seats, wrapped in comfortable
+furs, and drove out of the town, our powerful headlights showing the
+way. At this early hour they were not of much use, however. A very
+dense fog lay over the ground and it was dangerous to drive fast. We
+accordingly made our way cautiously, the more so as the road was as
+usual crowded with soldiers on foot and supply columns. There is no
+rest on the lines of communication, even at night. It is wonderful
+to think that this ceaseless stream of life is never for one moment
+interrupted! Will there ever be an end to this incessant rattle and
+tramping of feet? Truly Germany seems inexhaustible in vital and
+material force.
+
+The trees loomed up through the fog like ghostly sentinels. Yet more
+eerie are the transport columns in this unaccustomed and picturesque
+half-light. The grey-clad riders, with their cloaks thrown over their
+shoulders, sit and dream on patient, snorting horses and seem to spring
+up from nowhere out of the fog as they come within the circle of our
+headlights. A horse takes fright at the light and the buzz, his rider
+starts and wakes up out of his reverie; he pulls himself together and
+settles down again in the saddle. The column goes on, but new riders
+loom up one after the other. We hear the tramping of innumerable hoofs
+against the road surface, and the wagon wheels make a smacking and
+gurgling sound as they move onward through the mire, which clings to
+them some little way and then drops back in shapeless clods.
+
+By the side of the road is a reddish light which, as we approach, gains
+in strength and colour; it is the camp fire of a bivouac, against which
+the figures of the soldiers are sharply silhouetted. They appear to be
+preparing something over the fire, coffee no doubt, or tea. Here and
+there one of them has already lit his early-morning pipe. As dark and
+as mist-enshrouded as the night which still enfolds the earth, is the
+fate that awaits them with the coming day. There seems to be something
+fateful in the air. A new fight no doubt is impending. To the soldiers
+there is nothing remarkable, nothing unusual or exciting in this. To
+them it is all in the day’s work--there is fighting at the front and
+their fate beckons to them under the French fire. Maybe it is their
+turn to-day to fall and add to the number of graves and wooden crosses
+by the roadside. Maybe this dismal night has been the last in their
+lives. But if so they have slept well for the last time, and the flames
+of the bivouac fire give out a friendly and agreeable warmth.
+
+The gleam of fresh fires shows through the mist; now clear, now
+pale and dim, at some distance from the road. Everywhere are groups
+of soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. Once we stop a moment, to allow a
+frightened horse to pass. The hushed voices of the night then seem
+louder, and the creaking of wagons, rattling of arms, tramping of the
+horses’ hoofs or the curt orders of the officers strike our ears. The
+troops are moving to the front. We are on one of the arteries of a
+fighting army.
+
+Once more we pass through Dun, whose naked walls and ruins present
+a desolate sight as they are lit up by our lamps. We drive through
+Romagne, which lies wrapped in fog. At the other end of the village a
+vast body of horsemen blocks the way; they are what we call in Sweden,
+Divisional Cavalry, in contrast to cavalry acting independently. The
+standard is furled. Sabres rattle against stirrups and harness. The
+horse of one of the troopers, as nervous and thoughtless as many others
+of the genus _equus caballus_, frightened by the lights, begins a wild
+dance in front of our vehicle. Instead of leaving the road free, the
+horse rears up on his hind legs in front of the car, which cannot stop
+abruptly. This ended in a tumble, which sent horse and rider spinning.
+The former now seemed to realise in his troubled mind that discretion
+is the better part of valour, took a jump across the ditch and cantered
+off across fields and meadows. Angry at his adventure, the unseated
+rider entered upon the pursuit and soon disappeared in the mist.
+
+It is evidently quite impossible to drive fast. We wriggle along
+kilometre after kilometre and constantly fresh swarms of soldiers seem
+to rise up out of the fog. It is clearly the reserves of an army who
+are on the march. Now the sky seems to grow lighter in the east, and
+the grey coats of the soldiers appear to assume a queer, ashen-grey,
+colourless tone. Here is another ammunition column and a string of
+motor-wagons belonging to some hospital establishment; they look like
+gigantic boxes with an enormous red cross on a white background on
+their sides. There is an infantry battalion which has bivouacked for
+the night and is now ready to break up and take up its prearranged
+position in the column of march. A little further on we are stopped by
+an artillery detachment, accompanied by its train. Even if the road
+is clear of vehicles for a hundred metres or so, we pass isolated
+companies of soldiers on foot, orderlies on cycles, despatch riders and
+police.
+
+It grows a little lighter and the fog lifts somewhat, but the columns
+grow ever denser. An ammunition column has halted owing to some
+congestion ahead. The riders have dismounted and the men on the wagons
+likewise. They stand in groups, talking and smoking, with their
+half-frozen hands in their breeches’ pockets. All the time the road is
+packed with soldiers and we cannot drive faster than they march.
+
+At last, at half-past six, we arrive at Eclisfontaine, a junction where
+several roads unite and where by-roads and paths debouch on to the
+main road. Cavalry, riding past at a sharp trot, with their horses’
+bellies caked with mire and the mud spurting up round their hoofs, is
+travelling in the same direction. We see at these cross-roads a few
+dismounted cavalry scouts. They stand there in order to show the way
+to oncoming detachments of the unit to which they belong or to which
+they have been attached. Orderlies, usually in couples, fly past at
+a gallop. They ask the way to Romagne and ride on directly they have
+received the required information. They belong to the artillery, and
+it seems to be their allotted duty to conduct ammunition columns to
+certain points where fresh ammunition has been ordered.
+
+Daylight makes further inroads. We hear the thud of the columns which
+we have just passed, they come nearer and move off in different
+directions. The artillery fire seems less brisk than yesterday. The
+fog prevents accurate fire, but now and again a salvo is heard. On a
+by-road in the village stands a row of motor-cars, evidently belonging
+to superior Staff officers. We drive up and range our car behind the
+others.
+
+Whilst my travelling companions go off to investigate the situation,
+I remain behind a moment to observe the busy life around me. I am now
+outside a house in which a Divisional Staff has evidently taken up its
+quarters; it is distinguished by a little black, white and red flag.
+Opposite, in a meadow, stands a group of orderlies and the escort of
+the Staff. The horses stand in a long row with the lances thrust into
+the ground; the men are standing round in little groups chatting,
+prepared to ride wherever they may be wanted with orders and reports.
+Now and again one hears the hum of a car rushing past on some errand.
+
+A party of eight stretcher bearers hurries past towards the fighting
+line. The stretchers, drenched in blood, bear witness to the recent
+removal of seriously wounded cases to a dressing station. The Red Cross
+is, or should be, avoided by the fire, and its staff, therefore, carry
+arms for self-defence only.
+
+A couple of French women come walking along with water in buckets. They
+have been to a well outside the village, where the water in these times
+cannot be any too good. It is wonderful how calm they look, considering
+that the fighting is raging round their very homes, but they are pale
+and have a serious look on their faces.
+
+The remnants of the fog hang about in wisps and patches, now lighter,
+now denser, and do their best to challenge the rising sun. It is an
+important day for the Germans. They are, as I have said, to attack the
+enemy at and around Varennes. It is nearly eight o’clock. The infantry
+is said to be engaged already. The artillery is waiting to move forward
+to fresh positions, but in the meantime is doing its best to support
+the advance of the infantry from the points which it is occupying.
+The sound of firing increases in all directions. Close to the village
+stands a heavy battery, howitzers and mortars of heavy calibre. The
+duller and more distant reports come from the French lines. Sometimes
+we hear four or six reports almost simultaneously, followed by a pause
+before the next salvo is discharged.
+
+[Illustration: The country round Eclisfontaine and Varennes.]
+
+Accompanied by an officer, I follow the main road through the village
+and peep into a little house, where all the wires of the field
+telephone seem to unite. Half a dozen officers are seated at a long
+table with receivers close to their ears and maps in front of them.
+All reports of the progress of the fighting at different points are
+brought in here, likewise any information about changes in the German
+and French positions and any fresh requirements and wishes entailed
+thereby. An officer of the General Staff seems to classify and
+summarise the purport of all these communications. He traces “the new
+position” on a map already filled with indications of the position of
+troops. No doubt this map is later to be submitted to the Chief of
+Staff. I can fancy the upshot of all this to be a telephonic order to
+some reserves--perhaps some of the infantry we passed at daybreak--to
+hurry forward to some point behind the firing line. I can almost see
+the impulsive thrill which passes through the ranks as the will of
+the High Command is made known to them. I can see in my mind’s eye
+the column leaving the road and making its way to its post in little
+separate detachments. Many a queer thought occurs to the untutored
+layman as he looks into the smithy where the military will is forged.
+No superfluous words are uttered, everything is concentrated and
+concise. It cannot well be otherwise. When I walk away I feel that I
+have a clearer conception of the vital part which the telephone plays
+in the direction of a fight.
+
+In the company of my friend Matthiasz I walk a little further
+south-westward, following the main road to the point from which the
+fighting proper is conducted. The ground rises gently towards this
+point, which has a commanding position and from which one gets an
+excellent view of the entire area in which the fight is raging. Here
+I see the General in Command, von Mudra. Here also is the almost
+octogenarian Field-marshal General Count von Haeseler, who, although he
+has no command, has not been able to resist his longing to be near his
+old corps, as it fights for Germany’s honour and rights. All day long
+the two generals stand in the middle of the road, surrounded by several
+officers. On the fringe of the road a powerful telescope has been
+mounted on its tripod. A Captain is posted behind it and is closely
+observing the position, and reporting when the telescope reveals any
+changes in the situation. Now and again the Commander of the Army Corps
+himself walks up to the telescope.
+
+[Illustration: FIELD-MARSHAL GENERAL VON HAESELER AND GENERAL VON MUDRA
+AT ECLISFONTAINE]
+
+After I had been duly introduced to the Generals and had chatted with
+them for a little while, I made the acquaintance of the other officers,
+and had the situation and the object of attack explained to me. The
+spot at which we were standing was not entirely without danger. A
+soldier standing on the road close to the telephone house was hit by
+a rifle bullet, but, curiously enough, without being wounded. He was
+knocked down by the impact or perhaps by the sudden surprise. The
+bullet, which had come from a great distance, had obviously spent
+itself. Another man was slightly wounded, likewise by a rifle bullet.
+Three shrapnel shells exploded fairly close to us, too high up to do
+any damage.
+
+The day is long, and I find time to make numerous interesting
+observations. The village of Eclisfontaine and the observation station
+of the Generals are the terminal points of a line of about a couple of
+hundred metres in length along which the officers and I are moving.
+Here I had an opportunity of talking, now to one, now to another,
+whilst at off moments I sat down in the grass to make notes and observe
+the line of fire. From a point near the village we had an excellent
+view towards south-south-west in the direction of Varennes. On a stool
+in the middle of the road sat the Chief of Division, Lieutenant-General
+Count von Pfeil, fat and jolly looking. When the last traces of the
+fog had disappeared, the dim, blue outlines of the Argonne became
+discernible. Three kilometres away in the direction of Varennes the
+ground rises to an extremely bare ridge, behind which, out of sight of
+the French, a couple of German field-gun batteries are posted. We can
+see them with the naked eye. Immediately to the left of this artillery
+position a body of German infantry is advancing to the attack. With
+the aid of the field-glasses we can see the soldiers go forward bent
+almost double in order as long as possible to retain the shelter of
+the height which screens the guns. It seems likely, however, that the
+French have noticed the move, as shrapnel is constantly seen bursting
+over these lines--one little tuft of smoke after the other, and out of
+their midst a streak of lightning. Once we could count as many as eight
+such cloudlets soaring simultaneously over the German infantry, and
+doing their best to pour a hail of bullets over it. It must thus be at
+least two batteries that are concentrating their fire on this point.
+Besides the shrapnel, common shells also keep falling in the vicinity
+of the attacking lines. These shells are easily distinguishable by the
+dark grey columns of earth, clay and smoke thrown up on impact with the
+ground.
+
+Immediately to the south of the hill in the south-west and concealed
+by it, a strong German infantry force lies entrenched. Here also the
+artillery is in position. On the near side of the batteries I notice
+two crescent-shaped, dark outlines on the ground, which turn out on
+scrutiny through my field-glasses to be bodies of infantry apparently
+at rest. This is the artillery cover. On their front the guns are
+well masked, embedded in the ground and protected by shallow parapets
+which resemble as closely as possible the appearance of the contiguous
+ground. It is only from where we are, that is to say from behind, that
+the guns are visible. So far no French infantry or cavalry has been
+observed this morning; on the enemy’s side the fight is only being
+conducted with artillery. The French artillery fire was said by the
+German officers to be directed very well indeed, but the projectiles
+often failed to burst and were therefore comparatively harmless, unless
+one had the bad luck to stand right in their path.
+
+The booming of cannon is now audible all round us, even from behind, a
+battery of four 21-cm. mortars having been brought up from the village
+and unlimbered only a hundred metres away from us. They make a terrible
+noise and the whole ground trembles when they are discharged. I had a
+peculiar feeling when standing in front of these winged messengers of
+death, a consciousness of security mingled with respect, for are they
+not fighting against the enemy’s positions, the duty of whose guns is
+to take our lives? The four reports come so close together that there
+is only a second or two in between. Then, for half a minute or
+longer, one hears a whining, singing, hissing whistle overhead, and one
+looks up involuntarily. The projectile is, however, only discernible
+if one stands right behind the mortar as nearly as possible in the
+extension of the line of fire. The four shells accompany one another
+through the air and sing the same whining song in the same high pitch.
+The sound arises through the air rushing to fill the vacuum behind the
+advancing body, and through the friction. Sometimes it seems to die
+away, but is heard again presently quite plainly, this being no doubt
+due to air currents.
+
+Time after time the four “growlers” emptied their heavy shells over
+the French positions opposite, and each one was meant to cause the
+death of heaven knows how many human beings. Their main task was to
+drive the defenders out of Varennes, which is situated six kilometres
+south-south-west of Eclisfontaine.
+
+After the artillery had been pounding away all day, I asked an officer
+what the cost had been. He made a rapid calculation for thirty-two
+batteries of different types and estimated the average cost of each
+round at fifty marks and the number of rounds at twelve thousand,
+which would make an expense of six hundred thousand marks for a single
+day, and yet this was only for a short portion of the long German
+western front. Others, however, considered the estimate too high both
+as regards average cost and number of shots fired. In any case the
+artillery swallows up incredible sums in a war such as this, in which
+it plays a greater and more powerful part than ever before.
+
+A little troop of soldiers without rifles come walking slowly across
+the fields and reach the main road between the observation station of
+the General in Command and the telephone house, and they must therefore
+march past us. It turns out to be a convoy of slightly wounded. This
+first lot is succeeded throughout the day by others. As a rule it is
+the left forearm and especially the hand that has been pierced by a
+bullet, the arm being carried in a sling. Here and there a man had an
+unimportant flesh wound in the shoulders, or his head had been grazed
+by a bullet. Two or three of the men looked pale, but they were all in
+good spirits. Their first field dressing had been applied on the field
+of battle. They were now on the way to a principal dressing station to
+be sorted out. Thence they were to proceed to a field hospital or to
+a collecting station for wounded, from which they would be sent to a
+clearing hospital and finally home.
+
+Badly wounded soldiers are carried past us on hammock-stretchers.
+Others are placed in ambulance wagons brought up to a halting-place in
+some sheltered position. Every infantry battalion has its surgeon and
+dressing wagon--containing medicines and dressing requisites--and staff
+of stretcher bearers. We saw several of these dressing wagons drive
+up on side-roads towards the batteries in the south-west in order to
+establish a _Truppenverbandsplatz_ or regimental dressing station.
+
+The “first field dressing,” which is applied in the firing line by the
+wounded man himself or by some ambulance man, is merely temporary and
+intended to prevent exhaustion from loss of blood until removal can
+in some way or other be effected to a safer place where doctors are
+available. Many of these emergency dressings are saturated with blood,
+and by the evening the road was stained with little red spots of blood
+which had dripped from them. No wonder, then, that now and again I saw
+a pale face among the wounded.
+
+We were busy scanning the heights opposite with our field-glasses, when
+the news came that the Commanding Officer of one of the battalions
+deployed in front of us, Lieutenant-Colonel Machenhauer, had been
+badly wounded and that a car was wanted at once to take him to a field
+hospital. Orders were immediately given that the nearest car, no matter
+to whom it belonged, should immediately proceed to the spot at full
+speed and fetch the wounded officer. It was not long before it returned
+with the Colonel propped up in the car between two ambulance men.
+
+Presently Captain Bernhard of the infantry came walking along without
+assistance. His whole head was bandaged, but the bandages were red and
+the blood was dripping down his tunic and on to the road. Just as he
+had turned to give an order to his men, who were advancing to charge,
+a bullet had pierced his cheek obliquely from behind and passed out
+through the mouth, taking several teeth with it. It was hoped that the
+lower jaw and tongue had not been seriously injured, but for the moment
+he was disinclined to talk more than necessary. He was a plucky fellow
+and in excellent spirits in spite of his misfortune. The only thing
+that annoyed him was that the flow of blood had soiled his beautiful
+tunic. But one soon gets accustomed to the wounded and their injuries
+and ends by paying little attention to them.
+
+It is no misfortune to bleed for one’s country and one’s liberty. As
+human beings must needs fire on one another, it is a blessing after
+all that so many of the wounded can be saved, even though they remain
+cripples for the rest of their days. But unhappiest are those who are
+deprived of their liberty and taken from the ranks of the defenders
+of their country to meet the dismal fate which awaits the prisoner of
+war. However kindly the treatment, a prisoner’s life is after all the
+hardest trial that can await a soldier.
+
+Here are some French infantrymen marching to Eclisfontaine, deprived of
+their arms and accoutrements but here and there carrying a knapsack.
+They are twenty-three in number and are escorted by two German soldiers
+with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets. Many, perhaps the majority, wear
+an indifferent expression which betrays but one thought: everything is
+now lost, everything is going wrong for us. Others look very distressed
+and one can see that they have been crying--France has been deprived of
+their strong right arm just as she needed them the most.
+
+I was just talking to the Brigade Commander, Major-General Bernhard,
+when the Frenchmen came marching along in their tattered blue tunics
+and baggy red trousers narrowing towards the tops of their “jack” or
+high-laced boots. The uniforms were torn and soiled, which is not to be
+wondered at after many days’ and nights’ exposure in the trenches. One
+cannot well expect them to be neat and trim after such an experience.
+
+General Bernhard stepped on to the road and ordered the convoy to
+halt. He then had the Frenchmen formed up before him in a semicircle
+and began to chat with some of them. One had been called out from
+Auxerre[10] and had on the eleventh day of mobilisation been moved
+via Bar-le-Duc to the neighbourhood of Varennes, where his regiment
+had since been stationed. Every man is carefully cross-examined. All
+statements are entered in the “Protocol.” Valuable information about
+the enemy is thus gained. The uniforms alone tell one what troops one
+has to deal with. Nor do the German commanders in this siege warfare
+seem to have any difficulty in forming a pretty good idea of the
+grouping of the forces on the French side. General Bernhard asked how
+the prisoners had been fed before they were captured. The answers
+varied considerably. Most of them were satisfied, but a couple of
+soldiers said that they had only had hot food twice during the last
+week, which was probably due to the fact that they were posted at a
+point where it was impossible to bring them soup. Such inaccessible
+posts are by no means rare. They are also considered the most dangerous.
+
+[10] Auxerre is the station of the 4th Infantry Regiment, 17th Infantry
+Brigade, 9th Infantry Division, 5th Army Corps.
+
+Finally the prisoners were asked if they had any diaries. Eight or
+nine men answered yes. The books were handed over to the General,
+who retained them. In this way one frequently gets much important
+information about the movement of troops on the other side, often
+from apparently very trivial notes, which can only be interpreted by
+an expert. General Bernhard afterwards read out to us an extract from
+one of these diaries. It was the last entry made by the prisoner on
+the previous day. It was as follows: “The Prussians are bombarding
+Varennes. They seem to aim pretty straight, for last night one of their
+shells hit General X----[11] just as he had gone to bed.” At this
+General Pfeil exclaimed: “Good gracious, is _he_ dead! I met him once.”
+General Bernhard told me that the French prisoners always were polite
+and attentive, and replied carefully and truthfully to all questions.
+In most cases they called him _Mon Général_, showing that they knew the
+German insignia of rank even on the plain field-service uniform. As
+regards the General himself, I noticed that he spoke to the prisoners
+without the slightest trace of military stiffness and without that air
+of superiority which rank and power might otherwise tend to instil.
+Whilst the examination was proceeding, a French N.C.O. with a fair
+beard turned to me and asked: “What are they going to do with us, sir?”
+To which I replied: “They are going to offer you soup and bread, and if
+you have any wounded they are going to hand them over to the doctors.”
+The man looked puzzled and surprised and wondered whether what I said
+was really true. He showed me one of his comrades whose neck had been
+grazed by a bullet, and whom a German lieutenant immediately placed in
+the hands of an ambulance man.
+
+[11] I never noted his name and have forgotten it.
+
+Thus I received close to the field of battle an immediate confirmation
+of what I had previously noticed at the hospitals, namely that the
+French prisoners in German hands are treated in a kindly and humane
+manner, and for the sake of truth I wish solemnly to protest before
+God that the allegations of certain foreign newspapers to the contrary
+are a mean lie and a shameless calumny. Once peace is restored and the
+French prisoners are allowed to return home, they will themselves be
+able to testify to the treatment they have received. Some of them will
+perhaps even remember Eclisfontaine.
+
+Presently we see fresh groups of Frenchmen, taken prisoners in a
+German bayonet charge. One man told us that he was called home from
+Constantinople on the 5th August, another that he was a reservist and
+that they began to be hard up for men. They were also examined by the
+Field-marshal and his excellent Adjutant Rechberg, who spoke most
+admirable French.
+
+One group of disarmed Frenchmen comprised a Captain. He had received
+a bullet through the thigh, limped badly and was supported by two
+soldiers. He had a frank and noble face and one could tell that he was
+a thorough gentleman. When his little band was to be examined, a chair
+was brought out for him, for he looked pale and weak.
+
+“Is your wound causing you much pain, Captain?” a German officer asked.
+
+“None at all, it is a mere trifle,” he replied.
+
+“Have you suffered heavy losses during the fighting?”
+
+“Not particularly; we fill up all gaps.”
+
+“You look tired and worn, I am sure you must have had a rough time of
+it lately?”
+
+“No, not by any means; I have been doing very well.”
+
+“Does it distress you to be amongst the prisoners?”
+
+“Yes,” he answered, in a low voice, without raising his head.
+
+He was not among those who are demoralised by capture, and he was
+certain to retain his pride in captivity. When the examination was over
+he rose, saluted, and vanished round the bend of the road together with
+his men in blue and red.
+
+The hours quickly pass. A kindly soul gives us some ration bread and
+claret. My portion was so ample that it was no charity on my part to
+give half of it to a French soldier, who at once proceeded to share it
+with three or four of his nearest neighbours.
+
+By degrees even one uninitiated was able to notice certain changes
+in the situation. We see the limbers being driven forward to the
+two batteries in the south-south-west with the Argonne forest as a
+background. The guns have been silent for a while; now they are getting
+ready to begin again. Gunners and drivers are hurrying to their posts
+and into the saddle, and the batteries roll away at a gallop in an
+elegant semicircle and soon disappear behind the hill. They are to
+accompany the infantry attack. West of the old artillery positions
+fresh lines are advancing in a south-south-westerly direction. We hear
+vividly the crackling, quivering sound of the machine guns advancing
+with the infantry. The attackers have gained ground and are now
+entrenching themselves in new positions taken from the enemy.
+
+I return to the observation station of the officer in command. The old
+Field-marshal, he who fought in 1870-1, and who ought to have been
+fairly tired, had actually been induced to sit down on the cane chair
+which had been brought for him. There the old soldier sits reviving
+his faded memories and cannot take his eyes off the battle-scene and
+the little puffs of smoke showing up where the shells have burst. His
+expression is solemn and severe, his face is furrowed by deep folds and
+wrinkles, his grey hairs hang round him like a mane. He seems to prefer
+to be left alone with his thoughts, but if anyone walks up to speak to
+him, he is full of life and vivacity.
+
+General von Mudra, a man of fine military bearing and distinguished
+aristocratic features, is standing at his tripod-stand telescope
+observing the fighting. The red collar of his light-blue coat has been
+turned up, in his hand he holds an ordnance map of the surrounding
+country, and at his left side he carries a wallet for maps, note-books,
+pencils, compasses, etc.
+
+A third battery of German field artillery has now advanced, and is
+seeking a fresh position, whilst a third wave of infantry follows the
+first two in the direction of Varennes. These reserves are also moving
+in open order so as not to offer a compact target for the enemy’s fire.
+The men are advancing at the double, rifle in hand. They soon disappear
+behind the nearest rise. The rifle fire keeps rattling away in the
+valley, accompanied by the crackling of the maxim guns. Presently the
+sound of tremendous cheering reaches our ears. It is evident that yet
+another position has been taken.
+
+This little action, which is but a link in the great chain, is
+causing considerable liveliness in Eclisfontaine. First the ambulance
+wagons of the field hospitals dash forward at full speed to the point
+where the fight has taken place. Then comes another body of infantry
+reinforcements, evidently to form a nucleus round which the units
+scattered by the fighting may be able to assemble. Small Uhlan patrols
+with vertical lances seem to be riding at a gallop along the roads
+and paths leading to Varennes. At last come the steaming and fragrant
+kitchen wagons with their pleased and grinning cooks perched high aloft
+on the top of their paraphernalia.
+
+But on the slopes south of us appear little groups of eight to ten men
+with stretchers, accompanied by collies whose duty it is to track the
+wounded lying lost and abandoned in ditches and ravines. When the dog
+discovers a wounded soldier, he stays with him and barks until the
+ambulance men come up with their stretchers.
+
+The French artillery fire has now slackened, owing to their having been
+compelled to move further to the rear in proportion as the Germans have
+advanced.
+
+Varennes, the little town where on June the 22nd, 1791, Louis XVI. was
+recognised, captured and taken back to Paris, is now in flames, and a
+brownish yellow column of smoke from its burning houses ascends into
+the sky. Near it Cheppy and further on Boureuilles are also burning.
+Cheppy church defiantly rears its spire aloft through the wreaths of
+smoke and sparks.
+
+To the west of us is the broad valley of the River Aire, a tributary
+of the Aisne. Varennes is situated on the Aire, the eastern bank of
+which is lined by the famous Argonne forest. In the south, through the
+valley, Württemberg troops are advancing on Varennes, and a portion of
+their right flank is busy on the fringe of the Argonne. Their advance
+is plainly discernible through the tripod telescope, which now and
+again I was allowed to look through. But I needed no glasses to see the
+little white murderous wreaths of smoke which arose when the shrapnel
+exploded right over the heads of the Württembergers. They were answered
+by German spurts of fire, visible a little further away and more to the
+left.
+
+An infantry ammunition column, which had found shelter behind the
+slight rise south of us, is now ordered to move forward. The nearest
+way would be to follow in a south-westerly direction the main road
+on which we had spent our day. But it would be too dangerous to take
+this route. The dusky outlines of the column would be visible from the
+new French positions and offer an excellent target, besides drawing
+the fire on to the German General Staff. The column had just begun
+to move down the road, when its commander was ordered to change its
+direction and drive behind the town where the great mortar guns were
+still posted. Only when dark has set in is it possible to advance right
+up to the troops--for the present it sufficed to go as far as the
+shelter afforded by the ground allowed. From the points thus reached
+the ammunition has to be carried up to the firing lines in daylight if
+a shortage becomes imminent. Such shortage of ammunition is however
+very rare, as an increased number of cartridges is always served out
+before a fight, in addition to which the cartridge belts of the dead
+and wounded are also carefully emptied by the men still on their legs.
+
+A battery of light howitzers now appears north of the main road.
+It follows the southward course taken by the infantry. In the
+west-south-west we notice the bursting of six shells a couple of
+kilometres away, evidently intended for the advancing Württembergers.
+But the centre of activity is now beginning to move away from my point
+of vantage, and I see but an occasional ambulance man who has been left
+behind.
+
+In the afternoon I made a hasty panoramic sketch of the battlefield. A
+young Captain provided with a map explained everything within our range
+of vision. In the east-south-east a battalion of reserves lay concealed
+in a hollow, in the south-east the French shrapnel kept on bursting,
+and immediately to the right of the puffs of smoke was the little wood
+called Bois de Cheppy. In the south-south-east the smoke from the
+burning village of Very rose into the sky--it had been taken in the
+course of the day. Immediately to the right, but further away, lay the
+prettily situated village of Vauquois, resembling a castle on a hill
+and still in the possession of the French. Immediately to the south was
+the burning village of Cheppy, and in the south-south-west Boureuilles
+and Varennes, both in flames. Yet a little further to the right, but
+at a greater distance, the little white cloudlets formed by the German
+shrapnel were sharply silhouetted against the sky. In the south-west
+the church tower and roofs of Montblainville, which had just been taken
+by the Württembergers, showed up above the outlines of the country
+with the Argonne forest as background. Above the village, numerous
+shells kept bursting, as evidenced by the little puffs of smoke--they
+were intended to make the conquerors’ stay in the village as unpleasant
+as possible. At 6 o’clock I counted eight burning villages, of which
+however one, west of the Argonne forest, lies within the fighting zone
+of the 4th Army. How many gutted homes, what appalling destruction
+of private property! It is pretty certain that the inhabitants have
+removed themselves and their portable valuables to a place of safety.
+But what will it look like in the thousands of homes when they return!
+Is it to be wondered at that one feels the deepest pity and compassion
+for the innocent people who are the greatest sufferers of the war?
+Surely it is not an unkindly thought towards France to strongly
+condemn the policy which has brought such nameless misfortune over
+the north-eastern portions of the republic. When one has seen with
+one’s own eyes all the misery and grief, all the destruction and the
+ruin following in the wake of war, surely one cannot with self-respect
+refrain from loudly condemning the policy which alone is the cause of
+it all!
+
+“But why does not the General Staff move forward, seeing that the
+troops have occupied positions six or seven kilometres in advance of
+the old ones?” I ask.
+
+“Well,” is the answer, “it is because it is impossible to extend
+immediately the telegraph and telephone lines and to reorganise the
+entire system of communications to meet the new situation.”
+
+The following day Varennes was taken, and the whole machinery was
+accordingly advanced a step further to the south-west.
+
+Daylight now began to fail and the sun was sinking towards the
+tree-tops of the Argonne forest. It had been an instructive day. I
+had been allowed to get a glimpse of the inner working of one of the
+German armies. I was deeply impressed with the sangfroid and the
+relentless certainty with which everything was carried out. The whole
+thing seemed like a game, which, subject to certain premises, it was
+impossible to lose. Not a single soul had the slightest doubt of the
+result. Whence this terrible assurance of ultimate triumph?--I need not
+refer to the perfected military measures which make it certain that
+it is beyond the power of Germany’s present enemies to defeat the
+Empire in the field. Neither need I touch upon all that has been done
+to prepare for Germany’s fateful hour and vital needs, or her readiness
+on land and sea to take up the gauntlet when it is thrown down. But
+there is one thing which above all needs emphasising, and that is the
+_inexorable will of the German nation_. It cannot be broken, it lives
+with increasing purpose. It grows stronger every day. It does not find
+expression in blind and unpremeditated action, _it is conscious and
+disciplined_. Its voice has penetrated deep down into the bosom of
+every son and daughter of the German Empire. To the onlooker it finds
+expression in the deep and silent fixity of purpose underlying every
+action, but also in the dauntless courage which once animated our own
+Charles XII. and his men. With unshakable confidence in its leaders,
+this disciplined people fights with God for Empire and country. It
+knows that all that can be done _is_ done, for all are animated with
+the immutable will to strain their resources to the uttermost, in order
+to attain the goal fixed by those who can discern the situation and
+have prepared the line of action. Trained strength has overcome the
+weakness of man. A reverse means nothing when met with such resolution.
+The skill and bravery of the opponent may sometimes thwart or delay
+the execution of a plan. Such things must occur. They are reckoned as
+part of the game. But the inherent superiority of German leadership,
+the superb strength of the German Army, the mutual confidence which
+inspires those who lead and those who execute----
+
+We rely on one another, we on him and he on us--we march inflexibly to
+victory.
+
+I witnessed that whole day in the history at Varennes, and was present
+at the successes won. I marvelled over the coolness with which
+everything was done, but on reflection I came to the conclusion that it
+would have been unnatural for these men, in whose midst I was, to break
+into expressions of triumph. What had occurred was to them merely what
+should and must occur. But there was another element. War is not play.
+Those who know it, speak of it with restraint. One does not boast when
+face to face with its realities. On the contrary, it inspires a feeling
+of humility.
+
+Everybody still remained at the observation station or wandered up
+and down along the main road. _Nachrichtenoffiziere_, or intelligence
+officers, were still riding backwards and forwards, and orderlies
+were keeping up constant communication between us and the fighting
+line. At times the road became almost congested. On such occasions,
+an officer gave out the order that as many as possible should stand
+under the shade of the trees so as not to draw the French fire and thus
+disturb the direction of the fight. A car arriving from the village
+had been instructed to move down the hill, horsemen had been told to
+dismount, and a detachment of cyclists were instructed to disperse, all
+in order not to give the enemy any inkling of the whereabouts of the
+General Staff by conspicuous massing of individuals.
+
+General von Mudra still kept to his post and old von Haeseler seemed
+determined to wait until the night sky was tinted red by the burning
+villages. At a quarter past six I took my leave. As Major Matthiasz
+seemed very busy, I arranged to have the company of Captain Suhlmann,
+who was going the same way.
+
+Thirty kilometres and a wide, straight high road--we ought to have done
+it in no time. We began well at a good speed, but had not proceeded far
+before the car was stopped. It was four wounded soldiers who had to go
+to Stenay and asked for a lift. One of them was badly injured and very
+exhausted. He was stowed away as comfortable as possible. Then we met a
+string of steaming kitchen wagons carrying the conqueror’s reward, his
+dinner, and later on several endless ammunition columns. We progressed
+by fits and starts. The drivers of the ammunition train, who shrewdly
+suspected that their dinners might be deferred, were cutting into their
+loaves, but turned round to gaze attentively at our wounded with their
+white or blood-drenched bandages. Further on the crowd becomes even
+denser. Fresh streams of men and wagons--a new cavalry force is moving
+forward. The same thing is going on throughout the immense front. Now
+we come to a dead stop: we must shift to the edge of the road and try
+to be patient. An aviator is passing overhead. We hear the buzz of
+an aeroplane at a considerable height. The undersides of its planes
+are illumined by the setting sun, but it is travelling at too high an
+altitude to see whether it bears the mark of the Iron Cross or of the
+Tricolor. If the airman is a Frenchman it is unpleasant to have him
+right overhead, for he is certain to drop bombs. But he is probably a
+German, and soon he has vanished altogether.
+
+A batch of French prisoners adds to the congestion. I speak to the one
+who is nearest. He says that out of his company only twenty-six men
+were in a position to use their arms when he was taken prisoner, that
+so many officers had been killed that there was hardly anybody left to
+command.
+
+As we are halting by the side of our ditch, we have an opportunity
+of witnessing the distribution of forage by a supply column. A large
+fatigue party come dragging huge trusses of hay. Here is another troop
+of slightly wounded who are proceeding in charge of a medical service
+N.C.O. from a _Leichtverwundeten-Sammelplatz_, or collecting station
+for slightly wounded, to the nearest base. We are asked if we have room
+for two more men. “Yes, if you can stand on the foot-board.” Yes, they
+were quite agreeable, and at last we get under way with our new burden.
+Here and there a horse has fallen during the day and lies cold and
+stiff by the roadside. A mortar ammunition column is proceeding in our
+direction. It is empty. The division stationed at Eclisfontaine has its
+supply for to-morrow’s fighting already on the spot.
+
+Now we are at Romagne and here we get badly stuck. There is a frightful
+crush in the village street. It is no use trying to force our way. We
+stop just in front of an emergency field hospital. The head surgeon is
+standing in the street and issuing his orders for the treatment and
+distribution of the newly arrived wounded. I am introduced to him and
+he declines to let me go until I have seen his organisation at work. To
+come to the front to study the war and not to see the field hospital at
+Romagne! “No, thank you, my dear Doctor, that will never do! You have
+spent the day watching the wounded come back from the fighting line
+after their first temporary field dressing. You have seen the principal
+dressing station at Eclisfontaine. Now you must absolutely stop for a
+look at the third hospital establishment, our field hospital, where all
+the wounded have to pass.”
+
+Thus speaking the _Herr Stabsarzt_ conducts me into the beautiful and
+ancient little Catholic church. I seem to step into the Middle Ages as
+I enter this temple, where a hundred years ago Napoleon’s victories
+had been proclaimed to rejoicing congregations. The sun is setting and
+twilight is descending over France. It is dusk inside, but still light
+enough to distinguish the precious stained-glass windows. At the altar
+a single lantern is burning, which seems to accentuate the darkness.
+The church has been turned into a hospital. It was now occupied by
+eighty wounded Germans. The short pews were arranged in pairs facing
+one another, forming with backs and seats roomy beds filled with straw.
+Each bed thus improvised contained a badly wounded soldier. The benches
+did not quite go round, and many of the wounded were lying along
+the walls on straw, laid out on the stone floor. Each one had been
+provided with a blanket, and the space between the beds was sufficient
+for doctors and nurses to move backwards and forwards without
+inconvenience. As soon as their condition permitted, the patients were
+sent on into Germany to make room for fresh convoys. Only the very
+seriously wounded, who could not stand the transport, were allowed to
+remain to die in peace or to recover as lifelong cripples.
+
+Up by the altar, by the light of a lantern, several young doctors
+were busy round a patient who had just arrived and who was to undergo
+an operation. More light was brought. The head surgeon conducted me
+from bed to bed and was indefatigable in his information about the
+various cases. Quiet reigned inside the church, as its doors were kept
+closed, but outside the rattle of wagons and tramping of horses’ hoofs
+continued. A wonderful, almost eerie silence reigned inside, one almost
+felt the struggle proceeding between life and death. One might have
+been in some subterranean crypt with its cold and musty atmosphere.
+We could hear the deep breathing of the patients, but there was no
+complaining. Now and again a soldier sighed, that was all. To complain
+would have been to show inferiority to the others and to disturb their
+rest. Most of them were asleep, dead-tired after the trials of the day.
+
+We pass from one to the other and speak in whispers so as not to wake
+those who are asleep or disturb the solemn spirit which had descended
+over these eighty heroes who had this day gladly given their blood for
+their country. Now they are dreaming their last dreams under their Iron
+Crosses. Soon many of them will go to their eternal rest under the
+little wooden crosses in the churchyard at Romagne. Their hearts, now
+beating at fever-rate, will soon rest ice-cold under the soil of France.
+
+Here lies a man who has received a bullet right through the most
+delicate region of the abdomen. He is as pale as his tanned and
+weather-beaten skin permits and his pulse is terribly weak. But his
+eyes are wide open and his glance roams in unknown regions far beyond
+this earth. It is certainly not the trench life, which he has just
+left, that is reflected in his vacant gaze. What a wonderful contrast!
+From the turmoil out there in the fighting line he is already on the
+way to eternal rest. It is difficult to give a name to the heartfelt
+sorrow which gripped the wanderer from the north before the quiet death
+struggle of the nameless soldier. In the midst of all his comrades
+he seemed so alone and abandoned. One could not help thinking of his
+people at home, still full of hope but who would soon weep bitter
+tears. “He won’t live till sunrise, I suppose?” I asked the doctor.
+
+“No, he is growing cold already”--but the memory of the brave does not
+grow cold, does not die.
+
+A school-house close to the church had also been requisitioned by the
+field hospital, and its rooms, usually filled with French children
+learning their _Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_, are now occupied by
+wounded Germans. Here, too, is an atmosphere of deathly torpor and
+fatigue. One of the school-rooms has been turned into an operating
+theatre. In the field one has to do what one can to make the best of
+the resources at hand. A couple of young surgeons, dressed in white
+from top to toe, were standing by the side of the leaf of a table
+rigged up on high trestles, on which a handsome and fresh-looking
+young soldier lay stretched out. He had had both feet shot through,
+but was in good spirits nevertheless. “Please don’t slash me about,”
+he ordered, with some conviction. A sister of mercy, the only one so
+near the front--for usually the organisation in the fighting zone is
+purely military--now undid the emergency dressings, which, clotted with
+the blood, had become a shapeless mass. It hurt a bit when the clotted
+blood was cleaned away and the wound laid bare, but the soldier bit his
+lips and made no sound. The left leg was crushed above the ankle and
+even the uninitiated could see that it was a very nasty wound. For the
+moment there was nothing to be done. His feet were put in splints and
+a fresh bandage applied, and he thanked the doctors very heartily for
+having been so kind. Soon after he was carried by two attendants to an
+empty bed and seemed determined to go to sleep and forget all about it.
+“Will he keep his feet?” I asked. “Yes, as regards the one there is no
+danger, but the other, the one that has just been bandaged--well, we
+shall see in two or three days; of course, I shall do my best, but ...”
+and he shook his head. A number of captured wounded Frenchmen had been
+accommodated temporarily on beds of straw in a store-room. Here they
+were to receive their first attention. At the moment they were busy
+eating bread and a nourishing hot soup of rice and vegetables. They had
+a fine appetite and seemed to be in good spirits; a couple of them went
+as far as joking and laughing at each other’s remarks. To my question
+how they were, one replied: “Monsieur, had we always been as well off
+as during the last fortnight, we should never have had much cause to
+grumble.”
+
+Outside in the street stood a whole row of wounded, both French and
+German, who were anxious to get in and receive a little attention.
+Fighting was still proceeding and fresh lots were expected during the
+hours of the night. There was no rest for the doctors. The Frenchmen
+stood in a batch by themselves. I went up to one of them. He had his
+entire head enveloped in a bandage so that I could hardly see anything
+but eyes and nose. In reply to my question where his bullet had hit
+him, he pointed with his left hand to the left side of his cranium
+and then to the underside of his lower jaw. I asked my friend the
+head surgeon if it was really possible for a man to stand and walk
+about and see and hear with a vertical shot right through his head. He
+answered that the man had not yet been examined, but that all sorts
+of remarkable wounds occurred. The bullets take the queerest paths
+through the wretched human body, which is often proof against the most
+appalling injuries.
+
+My experienced doctor friend said of the Frenchmen that they were
+wonderfully patient. They would stand for any length of time waiting
+for care and attention without betraying by word or gesture the
+slightest impatience. It may almost be said to be the rule that when
+a doctor goes up to one of the Frenchmen to take charge of him, the
+wounded man remarks: “There are other men amongst my comrades who are
+in greater need of help than I am. I can wait.” Or: “Sir, be good
+enough to attend first to that man over there--he is the father of a
+family and his wife is in poor circumstances.” I have heard the same
+from other German doctors. Here is another reason why the German
+Medical Corps treat the French wounded with so much sympathy. I do not
+know how many thousands of French soldiers are lying wounded at German
+hospitals, but those who survive the complications of their wounds and,
+when peace comes, return to their homes, will be as many witnesses in
+the service of truth.
+
+Thus charity, in the guise of medical science, follows in the track
+of cruel and relentless war. What are all these doctors, assistants,
+sick attendants, sisters of mercy, these endless medical trains, but
+guardian angels wrestling with the angel of death for the lives of the
+wounded? What are the ambulance wagons, the stretchers and the faithful
+and intrepid collies, but friends and allies of the poor wounded,
+bringing in their harvest on the bloody battlefields? Here is the
+atonement which follows war hand in hand, just as the emblem of the Red
+Cross combines the colour of blood with the symbol of Christian love.
+
+“Doesn’t the soldier get nervous and terrified at the sight of all
+these dead? I should have thought that he would realise that the danger
+which he runs is just as great as that of those who have already
+fallen?”
+
+“No, he hardly notices the dead bodies. ‘You are dead, you poor devils,
+but I am still alive and do not mean to die.’ That is how he reflects.
+It is as if the sight of the fallen had steeled him in the face of the
+danger. And yet he may sometimes come across the bodies of friends so
+swollen that the buttons burst from the uniforms, and with blackened,
+grinning features staring up into the sun and rain.”
+
+“But surely the bodies are not left above ground?”
+
+“No, as soon as the firing has died away on the battlefield, the
+civil population, or, if it has fled, our own soldiers, must inter
+the dead pell-mell in common pits, often without any attempt at a
+burial service. This can follow afterwards. The chief thing is that
+the dead disappear so as not to give rise to sickness and epidemics by
+putrefaction.”
+
+The time was now approaching when I ought to be back at Stenay. I said
+good-bye to the head surgeon of the Romagne field hospital and hurried
+with Captain Suhlmann into the car, where our seven invalids had been
+waiting. Our headlights had now been lit and once more we penetrated
+into the maze of the never-ending transport columns. Does night then
+bring no rest at all?
+
+At the edge of a ditch we saw two wounded soldiers sitting. They
+shouted and gesticulated to us to stop. We asked them what they
+wanted. It turned out as usual that they wanted a lift, they had not
+the strength to go any further. We pointed out, as they could see for
+themselves, that we had no room. Oh, that did not matter. They could
+sit on the knees of a couple of others. And they squeezed into the car.
+We now had a complement of twelve persons in a car made for six. One
+of the new arrivals was quite a character. He began by telling us that
+the Crown Prince had shaken hands with him that very day at Romagne
+and had asked him how he felt. Later on he told us that he had been in
+the storming party at St. André. He had even overheard his Colonel, as
+the day of St. André broke, say to the General in Command: “This will
+be a bloody day’s work.” And the Chief had answered: “Are you afraid?”
+But the Colonel was not afraid. When the time came he led the way and
+was immediately shot. The young soldier, on the other hand, had come
+through without a scratch. To-day he had been relieved of a couple
+of toes, a loss which did not seem to affect his good spirits in the
+least. He chatted away almost unconsciously, but he had quite forgotten
+how many of his foes had come into contact with his bayonet. The part
+he had not liked was when the French shot from trees. It was like
+shooting game.
+
+At last we arrived home and the sentries at Madame du Vernier’s iron
+gates looked surprised at the curious company I had brought with me.
+In the hall I asked a footman to let me see Herr von Behr--for I had
+arrived an hour late, but that could not be helped. The Crown Prince
+and his suite had finished supper, but remained at table to keep me
+company whilst between the mouthfuls I recounted my impressions of this
+eventful day.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  A DAY AT DUN
+
+
+September 23rd. I had intended leaving the 5th Army that day, but at
+our meeting on the previous evening Crown Prince William had been kind
+enough to ask if I could not stay one day longer. This hospitality
+was the more acceptable, as I wanted to inspect the pretty, but
+unfortunately badly damaged little town of Dun on the Meuse.
+
+[Illustration: WRECKED HOUSES AT DUN ON THE BANK OF THE MEUSE]
+
+When, therefore, the Crown Prince, called away by duty, motored that
+morning to Romagne, I accompanied Chamberlain von Behr in one of the
+Staff cars, and after an early and rapid run to Dun was ceremoniously
+handed over to the Commandant of the base there, Lieutenant-Colonel
+Betz. The latter was only just up when we entered his quarters at
+the Villa Saint Claude, belonging to a M. Thiébaut of Nancy. But he
+appeared, big, strong and pleasant, and assured me that I should be
+well looked after at Dun. To begin with I kept him company while he
+breakfasted, and he gave me an account of how Dun was taken by the
+Germans and how by far the greater part of the serious damage to the
+houses in the main street was done by French shells. But this belongs
+to the general history of the war, and I have pledged myself to speak
+of nothing but what I have seen with my own eyes.
+
+A civilian who wanders about a recently conquered town, in which the
+invader’s troops are quartered, looking at everything and sketching
+this, that and the other, is rightly regarded by sentries and patrols
+as a highly suspicious character. He is rigorously watched and tracked;
+he will notice that someone is following him like a shadow; finally he
+will be arrested and directed with cold military precision to accompany
+his captor to the proper examining authority. Little adventures of
+this kind might be quite amusing and exciting to me, knowing that they
+would always have a happy ending; but I had no time for them, and was
+grateful when Lieutenant-Colonel Betz told off a non-commissioned
+officer to escort me on my rambles through Dun.
+
+First we crossed to the east side of the Meuse, where the high road
+between Montmédy and Verdun runs through a fine avenue. This road joins
+on to the main street of Dun, in the northern half of which the backs
+of the houses, wrecked by shell fire, are reflected in the river as
+ruins and heaps of débris. In the southern part of the same street
+the hospital service has requisitioned those buildings that have been
+spared by the shells. Here, too, we find a little garden, enclosed by
+a fence, which is used as a mortuary, and to which soldiers who have
+died in hospital are brought. Four dead men were now lying on a grass
+plot in the shade of the trees. They were dressed in their uniforms
+and had their caps on. Wrapped in blankets and with a white cloth over
+the face, they lay there waiting until there were enough of them to
+be lowered in a batch into the big grave that was kept ready in the
+churchyard. I went up to them and raised the cloths. The features were
+cold and stiff, yet infinitely calm, and bore no trace of the hard fate
+and severe suffering the dead had undergone. I stopped in particular
+before a soldier who
+
+                “seemed to be resting from a game.
+          His aspect as undaunted as before,
+          But paler far.”
+
+He was a fine-looking fellow and his face seemed carved in
+marble. He lay as in a deep and heavy sleep, with eyes and lips closed,
+oblivious alike of the cannon’s roar and of ether fumes, of fatherland
+and songs of victory. The soil of France was receiving him in its
+embrace, and his relatives would never bring wreaths to his grave.
+
+Nevertheless, as we know, the fallen do not vanish without a trace,
+since every soldier wears round his neck a little disc, giving his
+regiment and his number. All that remains to be done is to turn up the
+roll of his unit to find the dead man’s name and home. In clearing the
+battlefield the discs are collected, and with their help the lists of
+killed are drawn up.
+
+A steep and narrow road leads up to the crest of the hills that form
+the eastern boundary of the Meuse valley. On the very edge of the
+slope stands the handsome and noble church of Notre Dame de Bonne
+Garde, which dates from the time of the Emperor Charles V. It is
+characteristic of this part of France that the churches, even of quite
+insignificant places, are veritable pearls from an architectural and
+artistic point of view.
+
+The porch is decorated with a little silvered statuette of Joan of
+Arc. On entering the nave we find on the left, behind an iron railing,
+a group of painted figures, three feet high, representing John the
+Baptist baptising Christ. Immediately opposite is a Pieta, on the altar
+of which helmets, knapsacks and bayonets form a sharp contrast with
+the ecclesiastical objects. But the floor between the railing and the
+altar is strewn with straw, and there soldiers have their simple beds.
+Notre Dame de Bonne Garde! Under her protection German sentries are now
+finding safe quarters.
+
+Inside the rail under the chancel arch which separates the choir from
+the nave, the high altar is surrounded by camp mattresses of straw.
+Some wooden chairs stand about a table and on the floor arms and
+equipment are heaped pell-mell. Where French priests formerly said
+mass, foreign soldiers now sit writing field postcards to their homes.
+On the arms of a silver candelabra stockings are hung to dry, and from
+niches and altarpieces saints and apostles look down with disconsolate
+eyes upon rifles and carbines, bayonets, belts and ammunition pouches,
+which lie scattered over the seats in the nave. Even the sacristy has
+been transformed into a bedroom. The priestly vestments of red velvet
+and gold brocade hang untouched in their cupboard, and on the arms of
+the chairs outside it hangs the soldier’s modest equipment of small and
+well-worn objects, together with a cloak or two, tattered and worn from
+the life of the trenches and sooty from the flames of camp-fires. The
+sacred vessels are touched by nobody. In the German Army it is strictly
+forbidden to commit depredations on the property of the Church, the
+State or private persons; and so it was here at Dun.
+
+The havoc of shells, on the other hand, is one of the privileges
+of war. Into the lower part of a buttress facing west a shell has
+penetrated the brickwork to about a third of its length. It is a
+_Blindgänger_, that is, one which has failed to burst on contact. It
+seems inadvisable to move a thing of this kind, and it will probably be
+allowed to stay where it is as a souvenir of the war. The shell is a
+French one, and its object, like that of the others that destroyed Dun,
+was to drive the Germans out of the place again or at least to make
+the first hours of their occupation as warm as possible. A projectile
+has badly damaged another buttress and several grave-crosses in its
+neighbourhood. Large blocks of masonry have crushed in their fall
+a flat gravestone lying close against the wall of the church. Many
+shrapnel holes may be seen round the clock-face on the tower, and a
+small house beside the church has been destroyed by two shells.
+
+We went out into the churchyard and turned our steps first to the
+railing at the edge of the slope. From here a magnificent view is
+displayed. Right under us lies Dun like a little map, and we can
+clearly see all the houses that have been ravaged by the French shells.
+We also have a bird’s-eye view of the valley of the Meuse, with the
+almost deserted road to Verdun on the south, and on the south-west the
+road to Romagne and Varennes, filled as usual with whole strings of
+transport columns, cavalry and hooting motor-cars.
+
+The graveyard itself offers an affecting sight. A shell has fallen in
+the midst of the tombstones, forming a fresh grave, which however did
+not expose any of the dead. But now peace reigns among these French
+crosses, which are often decorated with wreaths of coloured beads,
+expressing sorrow and loss in simple but eloquent words: _Nos Parents,
+Regrets, Souvenir_.
+
+To us all these names are unknown. They are modest townsmen of Dun and
+peasants from the neighbourhood who are taking their long rest in the
+churchyard. But the gravestones are always costly and handsome, and one
+can see that even the poor gladly part with their savings in order to
+honour the memory of their dear ones in the city of the dead.
+
+How simple, in contrast, are the memorials raised to soldiers who have
+died in the hospitals of Dun! Two strips of wood nailed together in
+the form of a cross, that is all. There one may read such epitaphs
+as the following: _Ein unbekannter Soldat._--_Ein Landwehrmann,
+Kanonier._--_1. Comp. I. R. 22._[12] _Ein deutscher Krieger_ ✠ _16/9
+1914._--_Zwei Französische Krieger 21/9._ Curiously enough, _deutsch_
+is spelt with a small d, but _Französisch_ with a big F; why, I
+don’t know--perhaps from some kind of unconscious politeness towards
+foreigners. The cross signifying “dead” is carved in the glorious shape
+of the Iron Cross. Here, too, is the big grave prepared for those
+who are slumbering in the garden down below. By one of the new graves
+a dog howls plaintively. Perhaps he is lamenting his master--it is a
+very common thing for the German soldiers to adopt for the sake of
+company French dogs without a master, who take to them and follow them
+faithfully.
+
+[12] No. 1 Company of the 22nd Regiment of Infantry.
+[Infanterie-Regiment Keith (1. Oberschlesisches) No. 22, quartered at
+Gleiwitz in peace time.]
+
+In a special little chapel at the side of the churchyard are buried the
+priests, natives of Dun, who have died there.
+
+We descend by another way, a steep lane between ruined houses. One of
+them has been exposed by the fall of the outer wall, and one can see
+the interior of a room, the bed standing in its place with blankets and
+pillows, while a mirror has fallen down and been smashed to pieces.
+Through the dark, gaping holes in the heap of débris surrounding the
+house one can see into the kitchen in the basement.
+
+One or two saw-mills and workshops driven by water-wheels had stood
+by the side of the river, but now nothing was to be seen but the most
+terrible devastation where formerly they had been. Machinery, belts and
+wheels lay twisted together into rubbish among charred beams. Close by
+were to be seen the remains of a bridge, which crossed the river in two
+spans, and which was blown up by the French when they had to evacuate
+the place. They also blew up the western span of the three-arched stone
+bridge over the Meuse, which carries the high road and the main street.
+With great skill and rapidity the German engineers have replaced the
+wrecked arch by a wooden bridge.
+
+The railway to Dun has been repaired by the Germans, and the station
+showed a scene of animation and traffic which the little town can
+scarcely have witnessed before. All the storehouses and baggage-rooms
+were literally packed with mountains of provisions, ready-baked loaves,
+tinned foods, meat, sacks of flour and oats, and even with wine. These
+warehouses had a smell like a grocer’s shop. The supply columns are
+loaded at new and old platforms and then go forward to the troops.
+I sketched here one of these columns, consisting of requisitioned
+farmers’ carts, drawn by horses also requisitioned at the seat of
+war, only two to each cart. The long lines of vehicles are brought up
+to their loading stations by special roads marked out by placards.
+Everything is done rapidly, but in silence and with unfailing accuracy.
+When a column is ready, you hear a shout to the horses, a crack of
+the whip, and the procession moves forward with creaking wheels on its
+way to Romagne. I noticed that--in addition to finger-posts--pickets
+have been posted to guide the traffic and prevent dangerous congestion
+at cross-roads. This is quite necessary, as column after column is
+constantly passing along the main road. Here was one, for instance, the
+wagons of which were marked “Fs. A..., III. Btl. (Mrs.) I. MK”--that
+is, Foot Artillery Regiment, 3rd (Mortar) Battalion, 1st ammunition
+column, and then the number of the wagon in the column. The stores at
+Dun supplied amongst others the army corps whose guest I had been the
+day before.
+
+In a field quite close to the station was a base slaughterhouse and
+cattle depot. Here all the cattle collected from the neighbourhood were
+assembled in a space enclosed with posts and barbed wire. A fenced-off
+portion was drenched with blood from the slaughter, and here lay
+immense piles of ox-hides. One felt certain that these would be turned
+to good account. An enclosure for pigs was equally well filled. There
+was thus beef and pork in plenty; the troops would not go hungry. The
+day’s requirements for 1000 men amount to 2 oxen or 6 pigs or 19 sheep,
+of an average weight respectively of 500, 90 and 40 kilogrammes. The
+depot is replenished by degrees. In most cases the troops do their own
+slaughtering; the animals being taken to the front by the provision
+columns.[13] At Dun there was also a field-bakery detachment with its
+attendant wagons, ovens and tents, and surrounded by a fragrant odour
+of new-baked bread. Each of these detachments is capable of supplying
+23,000 rations of bread in twenty-four hours, working uninterruptedly.
+
+[13] During more mobile operations the troops requisition their own
+cattle, so far as the local resources allow.
+
+We also visited the courtyard of a private house, where food was served
+out to a thousand French prisoners three times a day in separate
+batches. A kitchen on a grand scale with gigantic caldrons has been
+installed in a shed in the yard. When the hour strikes, the prisoners,
+drawn up in single file, have to step up and hold out their bowls to
+a cook, who fills each bowl with a single dip of his ladle. He is
+incredibly expert and rapid in his movements, and never spills a drop.
+Probably the condition of the French prisoners will one day disclose
+the fact that they have not been subjected to a starvation diet.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH PRISONERS AT VOUZIERS WAITING FOR THEIR DINNER]
+
+Here again I sketched a few types: a gilder, an official and a workman,
+all from Paris, as well as one of their German guards, a strapping
+Landwehr man. I remember I had half finished the portrait of a young
+French soldier--of the 113th Infantry Regiment,[14] of aristocratic,
+melancholy appearance, when the word of command was given that the
+batch that had been served was to be taken to its quarters and the next
+lot brought up. At my request, however, my model was allowed to stay
+behind. He was a bank clerk from Blois, of a highly _sympathique_ and
+amiable nature. Perhaps some day he will remember that sitting at Dun;
+I shall not forget him.
+
+[14] The 113th regiment of infantry of the line belongs to the 5th Army
+Corps, and is garrisoned at Blois. Parisians as a rule belong to the
+4th Army Corps.
+
+[Illustration: BANK CLERK FROM BLOIS. PRISONER AT DUN]
+
+While I was sketching the soldiers from Paris, I had a dense crowd of
+onlookers round me, and I threw out to them the following impertinent
+question:
+
+“What are you really fighting for?”
+
+“We have absolutely nothing to fight for,” replied one fellow with a
+defiant air, and he was seconded with much animation by another man
+opposite.
+
+“You have your country to fight for, I suppose?” I went on.
+
+“We _have_ no country,” answered the two malcontents.
+
+I asked a sensible fellow who was standing behind me what sort of
+persons they were, and was told: “They are notorious anarchists.”
+
+One may be tolerably certain that they would never have dared to answer
+like that on the other side of the firing lines. And if they had done
+so, they would have been torn to pieces by their comrades, who, even if
+they did not know how and why war had broken out just now, nevertheless
+understood that the future of France was at stake, nay, perhaps her
+existence as a first-class Power. On the other hand, they were all
+agreed in regretting the war, and expressions such as these constantly
+recurred: “_Cette malheureuse guerre_--_Cette guerre inutile_--_C’est
+terrible_--_C’est très, très malheureux pour tout le monde_.” But even
+to this criticism of the war a reservation must be added. For not a
+spark of the enthusiasm with which the French soldiers went into the
+fire is left after they have been taken prisoners. Their hope has then
+vanished and nothing is left but the regret that they can no longer be
+of use to their country.
+
+But it was now one o’clock, and I was engaged to dine with Colonel
+Betz at the officers’ mess, where a party of a dozen assembled at a
+big round table. The mess was installed in a private house, very plain
+but well preserved, although a few shots or splinters of shell had
+made their way through its walls. Even the piano had been pierced by a
+bullet, but its tone was still irreproachable. At this table, again,
+the German officers spoke with unmixed respect of the French soldiers
+and their commanders. They are equal and worthy opponents, they are
+real, fully trained soldiers, not mercenaries who fight for money. They
+fight for their lives with skill and with the courage of despair.
+
+After dinner I continued my ramble and visited amongst other places
+a hospital, where trained Red Cross sisters were at work. Finally I
+halted in the main street and sketched it and the bridge. A sheet was
+stretched right across the street, and on it was written, in enormous
+letters that nobody could help seeing, a notice that all empty vehicles
+returning from the front must be reported at the headquarters of the
+officer in command, where they would find out whether there were
+any wounded to be transported home. One constantly sees all kinds
+of directions, on calico, paper, planks and on whitewashed walls,
+to drive carefully, to keep to the right, as well as information of
+the distances in kilometres, the names of villages, where different
+roads lead, the position of the headquarters and other local offices,
+especially that of the hospital, and many things besides. Here, as
+in everything else, an exemplary orderliness prevails. Nobody needs
+to ask, he has only to follow the painted directions. As regards
+finger-posts and milestones, however, the French had done a good deal
+in advance; the notices which had to be added concerned the German
+lines of communication.
+
+The day was drawing to a close as I walked along the principal street
+of Dun with Colonels Betz and Fretzdorff. Fresh bands of French
+prisoners--“Red trousers,” as the German soldiers call them--had come
+in during the day and were now standing with their guards outside
+headquarters, waiting for orders as to their further destination. The
+prisoners were patient and calm as usual. Some sat on a bench chatting,
+others on the kerbstone; but the majority stood with their hands in
+their trouser-pockets, looking at the movement of the Prussians around
+them. They had never seen the German Army and its inner life at so
+close quarters. While fighting, the combatants see very little of each
+other; and now these Frenchmen had the strange sensation of standing
+quite close to their enemies without a shot being fired and without
+there being any question of slaughter. A couple of squadrons of Uhlans,
+armed with lances, sabres and carbines, were just riding past in close
+column. Their horses’ hoofs clattered on the stone pavement and the
+rattle of their arms and stirrups echoed in the narrow space between
+the houses. The prisoners watched the hostile cavalry attentively but
+calmly: “They are still in the game; we are out of it,” they appeared
+to be thinking, and one would have to have a heart of stone not to feel
+great pity for them.
+
+Colonel Betz told me how desperate things became sometimes, just
+at this spot, when columns of different kinds met in the street at
+night, troops marching through and motor-ambulances with severely
+wounded men anxious to get on. It would be all right if there were any
+possibility of keeping the street lighted, but the garrison was short
+of everything in the shape of illuminants, and a street could not very
+well be lighted with beacons. It was paraffin lamps that were wanted at
+suitable intervals, and presumably such lamps are now burning at night
+in the street of Dun, so that the supply columns no longer need get
+blocked and delay each other.
+
+[Illustration: A FOOD COLUMN COMPOSED OF COMMANDEERED FARMERS’ CARTS]
+
+It had been arranged that at about half-past six I should look out for
+the Crown Prince and his staff as they passed through Dun on their
+way back from Romagne. The time was approaching, and we were on the
+watch. The traffic had not decreased at all, rather the reverse. For a
+moment it looked like a block, and it would have been a nice thing if
+the Crown Prince had arrived just then. We crossed the bridge and were
+outside the town, when the aristocratic-looking cars, bearing the mark,
+_General Ober Kommando V. Armee_, came tearing along at full speed.
+Beside the chauffeur of the first one sat the Crown Prince himself
+in a cloak with a high collar. He made a sign to me to get in and I
+took my seat behind him. Then he talked for a while to the officers of
+the lines of communications, and after that we started. But now the
+pace was slow, as we happened to meet an infantry regiment. The men
+took hold of their helmets by the spike, raised them aloft and gave a
+rousing cheer, as if they were charging a French position. But this
+time the cheer was meant for the Commander of the 5th Army and the heir
+to the throne, and we drove through a roaring sea of loud hurrahs.
+Gradually the ranks thinned out and finally came the stragglers--for
+there are footsore men even in the best marching army of all--in small
+groups of two or three, but they cheered as wildly as the rest. Last of
+all a solitary man stood by the side of the road. He, too, joined in
+with all the strength of his lungs. When the Crown Prince had reassumed
+his motor goggles and turned up the collar of his cloak he was not
+easily recognised, especially by the men of the transport columns we
+met, who had their horses to look after. But his Imperial and Royal
+Highness turned half round to me and said unassumingly that nothing
+pleased him more than to find that he was supported and understood
+by the soldiers. He considered it the first duty of a prince to show
+himself worthy of the confidence of his whole people, and for his own
+part he could not imagine a greater happiness than to occupy such a
+position in the minds of the German people.
+
+We reached home in due course and sat down to table. The spirits of the
+company were as cheerful and unconstrained as usual, though one would
+have expected high-sounding speeches, toasts and cheering. For Varennes
+had been taken and news had come of Weddigen’s exploit at sea.[15]
+But no speeches were made and there was no cheering at all. The Crown
+Prince received the news with the same dignified calm as the others;
+he was glad, but not a muscle of his face moved, only his eyes shone
+with a moister brightness. The conversation then turned for a while
+on the question whether the effect of the submarines on the floating
+forts would be as great as that of the 42-cm. howitzers against the
+land fortresses. For that matter, subjects of conversation were never
+wanting at this table, where the spirit of comradeship was always held
+sacred. The imperturbable calmness of the Germans, especially of the
+higher ranks, in the face of success aroused my wonder and admiration,
+as it had done the day before and as it has often done since. And again
+the thought rose within me of the immense moral strength of the German
+military power and the conscious will of the German people in its fight
+for life.
+
+[15] This refers to the sinking of the _Cressy_, _Aboukir_ and _Hogue_
+by torpedoes.--Tr.
+
+Immediately outside Dun, on the north side of the road to Romagne, lies
+a solitary grave, covered with wreaths round its cross. In it reposes
+a captain, who held out with his little band in the thick of the fire
+when the French were shelling their own town, and who fell at last at
+his post. His memory lives among the German soldiers at Dun, fresh as
+the flowers which are constantly renewed on his grave. And he is only
+one among millions. Life is the least they can give to the fatherland.
+The virtue of bravery is not a rare one; history has often borne
+witness to its existence; but the inflexible fulfilment of duty, which
+distinguishes the Germans in their hour of destiny, has few parallels.
+Such a nation _cannot_ be conquered.
+
+Dinner had been going on for some time when Professor Widenmann, the
+body-physician, came in and took his place. He had been at a hospital,
+looking after our friend, Baron von Maltzahn, who had been the victim
+of a motor accident in the course of the day. The car, while going at a
+terrific pace, had skidded at a corner of the wet road and turned over.
+Von Maltzahn lay underneath and had the whole weight of the car on his
+chest. He had a couple of ribs broken, a broken leg, concussion of the
+brain and general shock. His condition was rather alarming, but the
+professor had good hopes of his recovery.
+
+That professor is a man one would never forget. We took to each other,
+more especially as he had travelled all over the world. He had seen a
+great deal of Africa, and had been very near the summit of Kilima Njaro
+when he was forced to turn back by wind and weather. We had mutual
+friends far and near, and long after the others had gone to their rooms
+we sat up chatting--on that evening, which was my last with the German
+Crown Prince, the Crown Prince of Prussia.
+
+On the following day, September 24, we made a very early breakfast,
+after which the cars of the Chief Command of the Army again drove up to
+the château. I thanked his Imperial and Royal Highness the Crown Prince
+with all my heart for the great hospitality which had been shown me and
+for all the memorable things I had had the opportunity of seeing while
+with his proud army. After a vigorous shake of the hand and a friendly
+_Auf Wiedersehen!_ the energetic young Imperial Prince got into his car
+and went off to his duty.
+
+[Illustration: ROAD ACROSS BRIDGE AT DUN]
+
+[Illustration: LANDWEHR SOLDIER, GAOLER AT DUN]
+
+As for myself, I was not to leave till twelve o’clock, as there was
+no convenient car going direct to Main Headquarters before then.
+Sitting by myself in Madame du Vernier’s château was far too slow, and
+I preferred a walk to the great base hospital, where the chief staff
+surgeon, Professor Sick of Leipzig, showed and explained everything to
+me in the most obliging way. We went from ward to ward and spoke to
+many of the patients, both German and French. The largest ward had room
+for forty beds. Over the head of each was a paper giving the wounded
+man’s number, name and regiment. On a folding table by the side of
+the bed stood a number of medicines and a glass of water, and in many
+cases a little Bible, some field postcards and portraits of relations
+at home. There was also a chart showing the wounded man’s temperature
+from day to day. Wards, beds and everything were excellent, which was
+not to be wondered at, since the building was a hospital in peace time.
+My visit concerned in particular my friend Baron von Maltzahn, who lay
+wrapped and bandaged in an officers’ ward. His condition was better
+to-day, and I was able to sit chatting with him for a good while. He
+agreed with me that it was a stupid thing to choose a motor accident,
+when there were so many other ways of getting killed in war. Not till
+several weeks later was von Maltzahn sufficiently recovered to be
+able to stand the journey to his home; but as late as the middle of
+November, when I saw him again in Berlin, he was still limping and had
+to use a stick.
+
+I then said good-bye to Madame Desserrey and her charming daughter, and
+made a hasty portrait of Mademoiselle Blanche, which, however, by no
+means did her justice. After the conclusion of peace I was to write and
+remind her of the hours we had spent together during the war.
+
+To conclude with a trifling anecdote: I was standing in the road in
+front of the château, making a hurried sketch of it. Then up came a
+sentry and addressed me in a rough tone:
+
+“It is forbidden to draw the Crown Prince’s quarters!”
+
+“O-oh?”
+
+“Give me your sketch-book.”
+
+“Here you are.”
+
+“If you have no permit I shall turn you away.”
+
+“You can’t turn away the Crown Prince’s guests.”
+
+“Anybody can say that. Where is your identification?”
+
+I then handed him my _Ausweis_, signed “von Moltke,” Chief of the
+General Staff. He took the paper, read it and gave it back, stood to
+attention, saluted and begged my pardon. Whereupon I assured him that
+he had only done his duty, which was always refreshing and pleasant to
+see.
+
+[Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCE’S HEADQUARTERS AT STENAY]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  BACK AT MAIN HEADQUARTERS
+
+
+It is twelve o’clock and in the yard stands a covered car with
+chauffeur and N.C.O., fat and jolly looking. It comes from Cologne and
+has been to take out _Liebesgaben_ to the soldiers at the front. In
+token hereof it carries on its dash-board the green and white flag of
+the Rhine Province and the red and white flag of the City of Cologne. I
+take leave of the château personnel and drive away from Stenay just as
+two German airmen ascend in humming spirals into the brilliant bright
+blue sky to reconnoitre the French positions. The little city gate with
+its arched tunnel disappears behind us and once more we are spinning
+along the road, which has now recovered from the rain to such an extent
+that we actually leave a trail of dust behind us.
+
+Now begin the old familiar scenes, these incredible masses of marching
+troops, supply columns--here made up chiefly of requisitioned vehicles
+on the way to the intermediate base or the fighting line--and
+motor-driven ambulance trains with the badly wounded, travelling in
+our direction soon to return to fetch fresh patients for the hospitals
+on the lines of communication. Presently we catch up to and pass a
+convoy of several hundred French prisoners marching three abreast with
+a German soldier for every twentieth or thirtieth man. The prisoners
+include a captain, who marches dejectedly with bent head after the
+heavy blow which fate has dealt him and his men.
+
+[Illustration: A SERVICE WAGON AT STENAY]
+
+Here is the village of Chauvency, and we pass under the arch of its
+railway bridge, where the sentry orders us to halt. A supply column of
+tremendous length is just on the point of crossing by the temporary
+bridge over La Chiers, resting on the almost dry river-bed close to
+the permanent bridge which had been blown up by the French. Between
+the trees on the other bank we catch sight now and again of fresh
+strings of wagons with their hooped canvas awnings, the white and
+yellow showing up vividly against the verdant background. Presently
+they come out on to the bridge, swing up under the archway and pursue
+their creaking progress westward. On one of the vehicles I catch sight
+of the lettering “_V. A. C. Etappe Fuhrp. Col. 4 Wagen 48_” (5th Army
+Corps, 4th Transport column, Wagon No. 48)--but this was by no means
+the last wagon of the column. It took them a long while to get across,
+the more so as the notice _Ganz langsam fahren_ (Proceed very slowly)
+was posted in large letters at each end of the bridge. At length the
+bridge was clear, but we had to look sharp so as to get well on to it
+before the next column, the creaking of which was already audible from
+among the trees, had time to arrive. Once we were out on the bridge we
+could safely obey the notice to drive very slowly, for whilst we were
+on it no one else had the right to use it.
+
+Soon after we pass a column which has decided to bivouac in a meadow,
+and presently we see a railway train loaded with Guards troops. At a
+curve in the line a body of railway engineers are at work. We pause a
+moment whilst my friend the N.C.O. distributes two boxes of cigars and
+fifty tins of preserves, the last that he had left of his “love gifts”
+from Cologne. As we moved away, blue rings were already rising in the
+air from the happy smokers. Nearly all the houses in the little town
+of Montmédy have been turned into hospitals, but on a naked piece of
+wall, all that is left of a wrecked house, some waggish soldier has
+chalked up the words “first-class waiting-room.” Another house had had
+the misfortune to stand in the way of the new railway built by the
+Germans, who had adopted the simple expedient of passing right through
+it. A train-load of Bavarian troops has just passed by and is followed
+by another full of Saxon Landwehr and engineers belonging to different
+regiments. It is not enough for the roads to convey gigantic columns to
+the front--the railways, too, are continually pouring fresh floods of
+human beings into the fighting zone.
+
+In the market-place of Montmédy we pause a while to fill our petrol
+tanks. Here we find long strings of cars, most of them Red Cross
+ambulance wagons, loaded to the roof with medical stores and dressing
+requisites. Some Catholic sisters are seen to cross the square,
+attired in dark brown with girdles round their waists, black and white
+head-dress and wearing crosses suspended by chains round their necks.
+I take them to belong to the Franciscan Order. The wind sighs sadly in
+the tops of the leafy chestnut trees. Now and again a police patrol
+comes riding by.
+
+Once more we drive through Marville, the pretty village with its
+curious amphitheatrical aspect and red-tiled houses, and its church
+which rears its tower above them. The fields round about are peopled
+with bivouacking troops and transport trains. The harvesting machines
+stand abandoned in the fields, where the German soldiers have brought
+in the autumn crops. Here and there, however, the corn has been left
+out to dry after the recent rains.
+
+Although Longuyon has suffered far more from the war, there seem to be
+more inhabitants left than at Stenay, where only a couple of houses
+have been damaged by fire. I stood for a moment in the main street to
+sketch the devastation, the naked walls with their crazy chimneys, the
+crumpled gutters and broken telephone wires, and the piles of wrecked
+masonry.
+
+[Illustration: STREET IN LONGUYON]
+
+By the roadside are a few soldiers’ graves with crosses of untrimmed
+branches cut from the nearest tree. Next we come to Tellancourt, a
+terribly battered village in which only a few inhabitants remain, most
+of them women and children--and cats. Yet a priest comes walking along
+in his round hat and long black cassock, and behind him some twenty
+boys--possibly a reorganised school.
+
+A little further on I make a hasty sketch of the remains of a piece
+of ordnance from St. Étienne, which has been shot to pieces. Several
+unused shells are still lying in the ammunition box by the side of
+the gun, and a cross shows that one of the gunners has fallen at his
+post. Wreckage of the war is everywhere to be seen. Broken rifles, torn
+knapsacks, scraps of uniforms and helmets--a whole open-air museum.
+Near by, some French peasants are ploughing their field with two
+ploughs and four horses.
+
+On the way out I had not had time to visit Longwy, the upper portion
+of which, within the Vauban fort, has suffered dreadfully through the
+war, whilst the manufacturing portion of the town down in the valley of
+the La Chiers has remained undamaged. This time we drove over the two
+moats up to the picturesquely ornamented gate with its Vauban memorial,
+over which the German flag was flying. I showed my pass to the sentry
+at the gate. The galleries are also guarded by sentries. The guard has
+settled down in a casemate in the counterscarp. Large placards still
+remained posted on the walls here and there, such as: _Armée de Terre
+et Armée de Mer_. Or again under two crossed tricolors: _Ordre de
+Mobilisation Générale_, with all particulars, and finally a notice that
+Sunday, the 2nd August, 1914, was the first day of mobilisation. It is
+really horrible to read this order, which was destined to cause rivers
+of France’s noblest blood to flow, to ruin all her northern provinces,
+and reduce the little town inside the fortifications to a mass of
+wreckage.
+
+From the gates the main street runs through the town of Longwy. In the
+part we first come to, a number of French workmen are busy emptying
+the powder out of French hand grenades to render them harmless. No
+earthquake could have destroyed this street throughout its length more
+completely than the shells have done. There is not a single house
+left standing. When the attacking artillery began to bombard Longwy,
+the inhabitants were ordered to leave the place, and most of them
+went away. Some, however, preferred to remain, and of them some sixty
+were buried under the ruins, among them several women. I stopped at
+the church and walked in. The scene there is one of indescribable
+devastation. The arches over the aisles had fallen in completely, and
+elsewhere the shells had made tremendous gaps, the hail of splinters
+having struck the pillars and cut great scars into them. The force of
+the explosions had broken practically all the stained-glass windows.
+All that remained here and there was the lead setting. The pulpit,
+from which the truths of Christianity had so often been expounded, had
+curiously enough been spared, and had the priest stood there and read
+the Mass during the bombardment--as did the Greek patriarch when the
+Turks stormed into the Hagia Sofia--not a hair of his head would have
+been touched, and a miracle would doubtless have been proclaimed. The
+sanctity of the altar, however, had not been proof against the shells,
+for the floor of the choir was strewn with fragments and débris,
+covered in turn with a thick layer of limestone dust. The centre
+aisle was impassable, for the organ with its flattened pipes and the
+galleries with their benches and rails had been shot down and formed
+an incredible confusion of débris and rubbish. Heaps of plaster and
+fragments of ornaments, _prie-dieux_ and other church furniture were
+piled on the floor, all mutilated beyond recognition.
+
+The lower part of the massive temple walls had more or less been
+spared, together with their oblong panels, in high-relief, illustrating
+the passion of our Lord. I stood in front of one which is quite
+undamaged, and under which I read the words: _Jésus tombe pour la
+deuxième fois_. The face of the Redeemer expresses infinite anguish as
+He totters under the weight of the cross and the sins of man.
+
+Oh, vanity of vanities! Everything seems vain and futile. On a stone
+tablet I read the following well-preserved inscription: _Hanc ecclesiam
+Ludovici XIV jussu et pecunia procurante_ Vauban _erectam primar.
+benedixit lapidem 22 martii 1683_ ... etc. Now the organ notes are
+silenced and no words of spiritual comfort fall from the pulpit. The
+wind sighs through the bared arches and seems plaintively to echo the
+frailty of human purpose.
+
+Outside the church the scene is one of equal desolation. There lies the
+skeleton of what was once a motor-car and the remnants of a bicycle
+amid the wreckage of accoutrements and uniforms, buckled soup-plates of
+tin, sword sheaths, rifle stocks and barrels, children’s toys, colour
+boxes and Noah’s Arks, water pipes, balcony rails and grilles, chairs
+and tables all entangled in an inextricable confusion of stone, brick
+and dust. Pompeii could not have been so utterly destroyed as this
+town, and my old Lou-lan in the heart of the desert, where the angel
+of destruction has reaped his harvest for so many centuries, looked
+less forlorn and desolate than the fortified town of Longwy after a few
+days’ bombardment.
+
+I walk along through the alleys and look round. The silence is
+ghostlike, except for occasional creaking in walls and joints and the
+sound of chips of stone falling to the ground. The wind is moaning
+among the roofless houses, and the gutter pipes, detached from their
+fastenings, hang nodding into space. Here and there the name of the
+street is still discernible at the corner, such as Rue des Écoles, or
+Rue Stanislas. Postcards, frayed and worn away by sun and rain, are
+lying about amongst the rubbish. I take one up and read the address:
+_Monsieur Crombez, Subsistant au 164 de Ligne,[16] Longwy-haut_. The
+text is as follows: “Le Mans, 22nd August. Dear Comrade, I have
+arrived safely at Mans, and have sent my certificate direct to the
+chief. I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of seeing you again.
+H....” Has this Crombez, I wonder, ever received the greeting of his
+comrade and been able to enjoy the pretty picture of the landscape
+where the tranquil waters of the Huisne and Sarthe flow together? Or
+has his name gone to make up the list of dead or of those who are
+missing, never to be found?
+
+[16] A battalion of the 164th regiment of infantry was garrisoned at
+Longwy in peace time.
+
+The little square in front of the church is planted with trees. Many
+of them have been cut down and lie piled into logs for fuel, and the
+leaves are yellow and shrivelled. In a line with the church and looking
+on to this open space, stands the riddled and shapeless frontage of
+a house over whose portals I fancy I can read the words _Hôtel de
+Ville_, and the year 1731. Its entrance hall, leading to the _Bureau de
+Police_, is one big rubbish heap of rags, broken furniture and paper.
+The archives of the police station lie scattered about. Here we find
+the whole edition of a little pamphlet: _Traité pour l’Éclairage au
+Gaz de la Ville de Longwy du 9 Janvier 1912 au 23 Décembre 1961_, that
+is to say, covering a period of fifty years. They little thought in
+printing it that the gas would go out in 1914. I hear a rustling sound
+among the scraps of paper as the wind passes through the bleak ruins.
+
+The lower part of the town, at the other end, reveals no other signs
+of war than the none too numerous German uniforms. The German soldiers
+wander calmly through the streets of the conquered town, in the central
+parts of which the civil population is quite well represented.
+
+A moment later we are driving over the frontier into Luxemburg, and as
+the sun sets gorgeously we reach the little Grand-Ducal capital, where
+once more I take up my quarters at the _Hotel Staar_. That very evening
+I had the good fortune to meet Prince Waldemar of Prussia, Admiral von
+Müller and Major Nicolai of the General Staff. The Chief of the General
+Staff, von Moltke, was absent from the town.
+
+As regards my immediate plans, I decided to proceed on the following
+morning, the 26th September, at 9 a.m. by a Landsturm train to Sedan,
+partly in order to see what sort of accommodation the troops had on the
+railways. The rest of the day was taken up by various tasks. My purse
+needed replenishing and accordingly I withdrew a thousand marks on the
+strength of my Swedish letter of credit. The payment was made less
+½ per cent, which after all was not to be wondered at in war time. I
+was glad enough to get any money at all. The great hall of the Banque
+Internationale looked empty and deserted.
+
+I had not brought a camera from Stockholm, as I had assumed that I
+should never be allowed to use it. But at the 5th Army I was told that
+it was not so very serious a matter--provided I kept within certain
+bounds and tolerated a certain amount of supervision. I was now
+fortunate enough to obtain at Luxemburg from a German photographer a
+perfectly new and excellent Eastman Kodak, thanks to which I have been
+able to adorn this book with pictures of my own selection.
+
+Through Chamberlain Baron von Reischach I was once more honoured with
+an invitation to dine at the Emperor’s table at one o’clock. Those
+present, apart from the Chamberlain, included Herren von Plessen,
+von Gontard and von Busch, the latter being the German Minister at
+Luxemburg, also the Emperor’s Field Chaplain and a couple of adjutants.
+In the forenoon news had been received of the illness of Prince Oskar.
+He had contracted some sort of heart complaint through over-exertion.
+I expected therefore to find the Emperor a bit depressed, but there
+was no sign of it. He walked in with youthful and military bearing,
+honoured me once more with a hearty handshake and bade me welcome
+back from the 5th Army. Thereupon he took a letter out of his pocket
+and asked me to read it through carefully. Whilst His Majesty was
+talking to his suite, I read the letter. It was addressed to the
+Emperor personally and was written by a sergeant who had been at Prince
+Joachim’s side when he was wounded. Now the sergeant wanted to tell
+his august master how gallantly the Prince had borne himself and what
+an example he had been to the soldiers. The letter was simply and
+ingenuously written and showed how deep and strong is the loyalty which
+binds the German Army to its supreme Chief and Emperor. The loyalty and
+unity between Emperor and people, between Commander and Army, form the
+firm and immovable rock on which the German Empire has been built up.
+When the Emperor turned to me again and asked what I thought of the
+letter, I merely answered: “It must be a pleasure to your Majesty to
+receive such messages from the rank and file.”
+
+“Yes,” he replied. “There is nothing that gives me so much pleasure as
+these proofs of the faithful loyalty of my people and the close bonds
+which bind me to my entire army. Such a letter as this I treasure
+amongst my most valued possessions.”
+
+Then we talked about Prince Oskar’s illness, and whilst on this topic
+the Emperor said: “So you see, now Hohenzollern blood, too, has flowed.
+I have six sons and a nephew with me in the war and among the many
+German Princes who are fighting at the front several have already given
+their lives for Germany’s sake.”
+
+The rest of the conversation was about my experiences with the 5th Army
+and the wonderful incidents of war.
+
+In the afternoon the great flag of the Red Cross tempted me to visit
+the Convent of St. Zita, where the sisters are Carmelite nuns of the
+second and third degrees. Amongst them are some of the very strictest
+order.
+
+The day was brought to an end with supper at the quarters of the
+Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann Hollweg, to which several charming
+and eminent gentlemen of his entourage had also been invited.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  TO SEDAN
+
+
+September 26th. I had been told that if I were at the railway station
+just before 9 a.m. I could go by the train which was to carry the
+Weimar Landsturm Battalion to Charleville. I arrived in time, but only
+to be informed that an alteration had been made in the train time-table
+and that this battalion would not leave until later, but that an
+ammunition train for Sedan, of about twenty-two “N” wagons, covered
+in with tarpaulins, was on the point of starting; if I liked to go by
+that, a first-class compartment would be placed at my disposal. A few
+passenger coaches were attached to the train, and I seated myself in
+one of these. My future travelling companions were the ten or twelve
+_Ersatz_ Reservists, belonging to an Ammunition Park Depot established
+in Mayence, who were in charge of the train. The latter had been on
+the road for eight days and the men had slept eight nights on the
+train. Our carriage had strayed here from the north-eastern regions of
+Germany, as appeared from its mark: “Prussian-Hessian State Railways,
+North-East.” On the wall of my compartment there was a little map of
+the railway line from Berlin to Memel.
+
+I had been advised by a friendly soul at the _Hotel Staar_ to take with
+me a supply of provisions, as it was more than doubtful whether any
+eatables could be found on the way. Four substantial cheese and ham
+sandwiches, three eggs and two bottles of mineral water had therefore
+been stowed away amongst my luggage in the compartment.
+
+And so we started. We glided smoothly out of Luxemburg Station, and
+passed a train shunted into a siding and crowded with soldiers who sat
+and talked and laughed and seemed to be in the best of spirits. The
+town disappears behind us. We are out in the open country. We pass
+by flourishing villages, farms and woods, meadows and pasture lands
+with grazing cattle, fields with ploughs at work, country roads and
+metalled high roads lined by two long rows of trees vanishing in the
+distance. In the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg one sees no houses wrecked by
+shells, no people rendered homeless. It is true that the billeting of
+German troops has caused some inconvenience, but the inhabitants have
+received full compensation for all that has been taken.
+
+On the roads one sees no marching troops, no toiling columns. And
+why--so near to the front? It is because, as far as the railways are
+worked in conjunction with the German railway system, they carry out
+almost the whole of the transport. It is only when railway traffic
+comes to a stop that recourse must be had to lines of communication
+by road. Hence the country on both sides of the railway looks quite
+flourishing, often idyllic. The only thing that reminds us of war are
+the sights which meet us at the railway stations, and the guards posted
+along the line. These guards are frequently stationed at such short
+intervals as to be actually in sight of each other. German railway
+corps troops are responsible for the traffic. The Landsturm attends to
+the guarding of the line. There you may see men of over forty, clothed
+in the dark-blue tunic with red collar and light-blue shoulder-straps,
+black trousers with a narrow red stripe, and peakless blue caps with
+red band. All are armed with rifles. It is especially at bridges and
+other important points of the line that one is sure to see these
+loyal trusty fellows, pacing to and fro,--just as they are doing in
+every other part of the German Empire. They are always there, always
+vigilant. _Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein...._
+
+Our route takes us _via_ Mamer and Kapellen. The country is rather
+flat; gently undulating, sunlit fields extend in every direction.
+Between two stations the train pulls up--we wonder why. At last we see
+a long train of empty carriages, nothing but goods-trucks, running up
+by our side on the up line. There does not seem to be a soul in it and
+one can hear how empty it is by its hollow ring as it rumbles by. It
+has carried a body of fresh troops as a reinforcement for one of the
+armies, and is now hurrying back through Luxemburg to fetch another.
+When the train has passed by, we run on to Kleinbettingen, where not
+a single civilian is to be seen, only some twenty of the usual trusty
+blue Landsturm men.
+
+Sterpenich! So we are now on Belgian soil. There is no change in the
+landscape. Here, too, German soldiers are on guard, and here and there,
+as in Luxemburg, a field is being ploughed. But one is not reminded by
+customs officers that one is entering another country as in peace time;
+war breaks down all barriers.
+
+We stop for a while in Arlon. We feel tempted to take a stroll through
+the town, but as I did not consider my ammunition train dependable, I
+contented myself with having a peep at the church with its grey tower
+and louvre-turret, and looking at the handsome station building. To the
+south-west, the dull but distinct thunder of guns was audible, but my
+fellow-travellers could not say whether it came from Verdun or from the
+Argonne. The distance would be some sixty kilometres or over.
+
+Meanwhile the train moves on at normal speed, but soon repents this
+effort and runs dead slow as if the murderous load which it is
+carrying, in the shape of heavy projectiles, will not bear shaking.
+We are now running on a high embankment and cross a country road by
+an arched stone bridge. At its foot a solitary sentry, alone with his
+rifle, looks up at us as we pass.
+
+Here is a village wrecked by shells and burnt. All that is left
+standing is some bare walls staring at us from between the trees.
+Part of an avenue has been cut down, as also the trees on the fringe
+of woods near the railway. At first I thought this had been done to
+facilitate watching the line and preventing attempts at wrecking it.
+But further on we found the felled trees stacked in piles, and a goods
+train on a siding, loaded with hewn timber, suggested that the wood was
+to be used for sleepers. Large notice-boards _Langsam fahren!_ (slacken
+speed) mark the spots where the straight line changes into sharp curves
+and where the German engine-drivers have not yet become familiar with
+the ground. Traffic is not particularly brisk, and one does not pass
+many trains on this line, though it is a double track.
+
+Lavaux, Cousteumont and Hamipré are small stations. The soldiers of
+the guard-pickets are sitting peacefully on the platforms smoking and
+reading the latest newspapers that have come through. Longlier and
+Neufchâteau are larger stations, where some wrecked houses are to be
+seen from the carriage window. This is a memento of the fights of a
+month ago, when the Army of Duke Albrecht of Württemberg beat back the
+opposing forces. We run into Libramont station alongside a huge troop
+train which, like ours, is bound for Sedan. All carriages are decorated
+with green branches, as if on the way to a midsummer fête. Sentences
+chalked on the sides of the carriages testify to the high spirits of
+the passengers:--“To dinner in Paris,--now waiting”; “Every shot a
+Russian,--every thrust a Frenchman,--the Serbs must die,”--and such
+like jokes. Amidst the jovial song and merry talk of the soldiers the
+train then rolls away to an unknown fate.
+
+After an hour’s halt it is our turn to follow in its track. We run
+through fields in which fragrant stacks of oats are standing in rows
+like soldiers. A road-bridge of stonework crossing the line has been
+blown up by the enemy before they retired, clearly in order to block
+the railway line passing beneath. The Engineers are now busy repairing
+it. Otherwise there are not many traces of warfare to be seen from the
+railway in Belgian Luxemburg.
+
+From Libramont our course lies to the south-west. At a small station
+we stop once more immediately abreast of a troop train, and glide
+slowly past it. It consists of third-class carriages, the interiors
+of which are exposed to our view, one by one, through the open doors.
+On every imaginable projection the soldiers have suspended their
+knapsacks, rifles, tunics and cartridge belts, all in picturesque and
+almost impressive disorder. Some are lying stretched full length on
+the seats, with their noses in the air, fast asleep; others sit with
+crossed legs, smoking, chatting or looking out on the scene outside.
+Officers and non-commissioned officers occupy the first and second
+class compartments. They are cavalry. The train also comprises “H.Gr.”
+carriages filled with horses. There are eight in each carriage, four
+on each side, with their heads turned towards each other and they
+are separated from the central doorway, with sliding doors, by bars
+suspended on short chains. The halters are fastened to the bars.
+Between the bars--that is in the middle of the carriage--is a table on
+trestles, and two benches. On these some men are seated at their midday
+meal--cold coffee and savoury sausage sandwiches.
+
+Bertrix! Another stop of one hour. Through the window one overhears
+involuntarily a few scraps of the soldiers’ conversation. “Have you
+heard that the Belgians are said to have a secret wireless station near
+Arlon, which it is impossible to lay hands on?”--“That was a neat
+piece of work of Weddigen’s.”[17]--“But the losses on land are far
+greater than at sea--a submarine means twenty men, but a bayonet charge
+on land ten or a hundred times as many.”--“Is it true that Rheims has
+been taken?”--“It is said that the right wing has fallen back a good
+way.”--What rumours one hears in the rear of the fighting line!
+
+[17] See footnote to p. 113.
+
+The station-master of Bertrix comes up to my compartment and engages
+me in conversation. He tells me that the stone bridge which we have
+just passed was destroyed by the Belgians on the 19th of August during
+the fierce engagements which were fought in this region. “But we
+railwaymen,” he confessed, “had to sit tight and listen to the guns
+in the distance. We cannot go into the firing line and fight with the
+rest.”--“Yes, but your work is just as important, after all! How would
+the fighting troops fare, as to supplies and reserves, if the railway
+traffic were not kept going?”--“That is true, but at any rate it is
+terribly trying to one’s patience.”
+
+He further told me that from Bertrix, for thirty-six kilometres
+onwards, the railway had been continued by German railway troops to
+establish connection with the French railway system. All blasting
+work, cuttings and embankments had been almost finished when the war
+broke out, but the line in question was not to open for traffic until
+1916, as probably a war before then, in these regions, had not been
+thought of. The new line is a single track and is of the type of a
+“field-railway.” Its section is narrow and will not bear too heavy a
+load. Its traffic capacity would therefore necessarily be very small.
+This was the reason for our long stop at Bertrix.
+
+At last the train which had been holding up the line arrives and we can
+go on. To the south-east a boundless view opens towards far-off regions
+wreathed in a dim blue haze, where, beyond the boundaries of Belgian
+Luxemburg, Montmédy and Longuyon are situated. One feels glad to see
+the oat stacks in the fields; many mouths will need feeding here during
+the coming winter. And for the same reason I was glad to observe the
+well-fed cattle, of which I caught a glimpse in copses and pastures.
+
+“Have you any recent newspapers?” This from the Landsturm sentries and
+railway workers as our train slowly rolls by. “I have already given
+away those I had,” I answer. But as I lift up a coat I discover yet
+another copy of the _Treves Gazette_, and next time I see a group
+of soldiers I throw it out and observe how eagerly they devour the
+news--one of them reading aloud and the others listening.
+
+Here stands a curious-looking train, belonging to some fatigue party
+or railway corps. Some of the carriages have been fitted up as repair
+workshops, with carpenter’s benches and grindstones, and saws, chisels,
+axes and hammers are lying about. Other carriages are crammed with
+bicycles, wheelbarrows, spades, crow-bars, hatchets, pickaxes and other
+tools--entrenching tools, such as used by the sappers.
+
+As we issue from a long tunnel, a beautiful landscape presents itself
+to our view--more hilly than before. Below us several high roads
+meet, in a vale clad with verdant trees. Towards the nearest road the
+embankment slopes down steeply. Near by is a guard-hut, with a small
+detachment of Landsturm men close by, resting from their labours and
+waiting for their comrades to come out on the line to relieve them. A
+number of grey-clothed workers with spades on their backs come up to
+the railway line. “Any newspapers left?” asks one. “All gone,” I reply.
+“That is very unfortunate,” he answers, without looking up. Had I only
+anticipated such avidity for news, I should have bought up the whole
+edition of the Luxemburg German newspaper. At a small halting-place we
+see some forty blue and grey soldiers near their piled rifles. Is there
+no end of all these men in arms? To think of the numbers which the
+railways alone absorb!
+
+The sun is setting; it is nearly six. After we have passed another
+tunnel, the panorama of the meandering water-course of the Semois
+unfolds itself in the valley beneath us. More groups of railway workers
+returning to their billets. “You have twenty kilometres to the French
+frontier,” one of them informs me, and another points to a wrecked
+village on the slope of a hill. We are told that whole piles of corpses
+lie buried there.
+
+The sun has now set, but there is still sufficient light to enable us
+to see, from a high bridge across the Semois, the main road, deep down
+below to the right of us, crossing the river on a handsome stone bridge
+with three spans. The banks are thickly covered with foliage, and we
+pass through a dusky belt of trees.
+
+The twilight deepens and the shades of night begin to fall. It is
+a pity to be robbed of the view over this beautiful country. The line
+winds in manifold curves, now rising, now descending.
+
+[Illustration: WOODED HEIGHT BETWEEN SEDAN AND DONCHERY]
+
+On we travel, desperately slow; the train groans and the timbers of the
+carriages creak under the burden of their load. Ahead of us appears
+another tunnel. At its entrance a little hut has been erected, where
+a patrol of Landsturm soldiers are just engaged in preparing their
+supper. We are travelling very slowly and are able to exchange a few
+words with the blue-clad men. Slowly and steadily we glide into the
+dark mouth of the tunnel. The engine pants and snorts, the tunnel
+is filled with smoke, and we quickly close the windows. We advance
+more slowly still, and the steam makes a horrible roar in front.
+Now the engine breaks down, and we come to a standstill! One of my
+fellow-travellers comes into the pitch-dark compartment, carrying a
+little lamp, which makes us feel more cheerful. The smoke becomes
+thicker and fills the compartment--if this goes on much longer we shall
+be asphyxiated. I open the window for a moment and peep out--nothing
+but darkness and smoke! But through the cloud one can see the sparks
+flying from the engine, which seems to be gathering strength. This
+train is loaded with powder and shot, and if it should explode just
+here in the tunnel--well, the railway corps will have their work cut
+out!
+
+The engine gives another snort, making the walls of the tunnel re-echo.
+We begin to move again. A light appears ahead--probably the mouth of
+the tunnel. But no, it is only a lantern dimmed by the smoke. A little
+later it is the reflection of the engine-fire that looks like the
+dawning of daylight. Will this eternal tunnel never end? We have been
+in it for more than half an hour, when at last it gets clearer and we
+can breathe fresh air again. But there is now little daylight left; the
+dusk obliterates the outlines of the landscape and the moon, yellow and
+mocking, floats over the troubled earth.
+
+By about eight the satellite has whitened, and is perched in the
+tree-tops. It is clear and cold. How easy it would be for snipers to
+send their bullets from some lurking-place in the woods through the
+faintly lighted windows of the train! But no shots echo through the
+night; all is hushed and silent outside. There is nothing to remind one
+of war--one travels as in times of profoundest peace.
+
+We have left behind to the west of us Bouillon, once the dukedom of
+Godfrey the Crusader, and are now at Messempré-Messincourt, the first
+station on the French side. One of my fellow-travellers has met an
+acquaintance from Darmstadt, and gives him messages for his home just
+as the train moves out into the darkness. A sheaf of flame issues from
+the funnel of the engine, tinging the steam red. Probably the fire and
+the powder on board are used to each other by now, after having kept
+company for a whole week. Over the flat French meadows floats a film
+like the whitest hoar-frost, but it is only a very thin stratum of
+mist, lit up by the moon....
+
+About midnight I fell asleep for the rest of the journey, and at 3
+o’clock on Sunday morning, the 27th of September, I was awakened by
+one of my fellow-passengers who told me that we were in Sedan. We had
+been travelling for eighteen hours. The Commandant of the station,
+Major von Plato, is already up at this early hour, cheerful and
+sprightly; he receives me with a hearty welcome and places a room in
+the station building at my disposal. But before I take possession of my
+new quarters I must have a cup of tea with the Major and a few other
+officers, as wide-awake and lively as he. Our early breakfast is served
+in a strange-looking dining-room belonging to the commissariat station
+established here, where sixteen lady volunteers provide for up to four
+thousand wounded daily. In their kitchen huge caldrons are always
+boiling, filled with nourishing soup. Immediately after the occupation
+of Sedan, a wooden shed was erected in two days in the station yard,
+where troops and wounded passing through are now fed at long tables.
+This morning, too, several seats were occupied, whilst outside a
+detachment of Landwehr were waiting for their morning coffee and roll.
+Each man was also to receive dry rations for the day--bread and ham--to
+take with him on his journey to the front. All were merry and cheerful,
+no one would guess that these men would shortly stand in the fighting
+line, to conquer or to die. It was said that, on an average, five
+thousand men a day had been passing through Sedan, on their way south,
+during the last five weeks. Meat and vegetables for the maintenance of
+these troops are supplied by the Sedan “Line of Communication Depot
+Commandant’s District,”--a French district the boundaries of which
+have been defined within the sphere of the Chief Command of one of the
+German Armies. The provisions are supplied, on requisition, by the
+French local civil authorities,--such is the custom in war time. The
+invader lives on the invaded. It will be readily seen how advantageous
+it is to be able to carry on warfare beyond one’s own frontiers. Woe to
+the vanquished! The invaded country must feed, not only its own army,
+but also that of the invader. As long as grain was to be had, it was
+simply requisitioned, but now, towards the end of September, flour had
+been procured from Germany to supply the requirements of the troops. In
+the coffee kitchen a dozen large caldrons were bubbling away, and an
+old Frenchwoman, garrulous but cheerful, was busying herself among them.
+
+The room which was now to be mine had been set apart for Major von
+Plato and his Adjutant. They were to use it in turn to rest in, but
+they had never had occasion to do so, as they were working day and
+night and only snatched a short rest, often without undressing, in the
+refreshment-room of the station, which did duty as Station Commandant’s
+Office. The detachment told off for guarding the railway station had
+its quarters in the third-class dining-room. The men were lying on the
+floor, and were just about to get ready for the morning roll-call.
+
+Our round also brought us to the waiting-rooms and store-room, where
+the Base Hospital wards had been established. In one of them none but
+badly wounded French soldiers were lying, nursed by the Red Cross
+staff. One ward contained Germans awaiting the day when they could bear
+being conveyed eastward. I was once more impressed with the importance
+of being able, even in an intermediate base, to clear the hospital
+wards immediately. A notice had just been received that a train with
+wounded was on its way to Sedan, and that five hundred ambulance
+carriages had been requisitioned by the Commander of the Army--which
+suggested fierce fighting and bloody engagements. When the train
+arrived, there was much bustle on the platforms. The sisters of mercy
+and volunteer civilian workers hurried from carriage to carriage with
+pails and cans of steaming coffee and large round baskets filled with
+bread. Bearers stood ready with their stretchers to carry those of
+the wounded whose condition was critical out to the motor-ambulances
+which were to take them to the hospital in the town. All goes like
+clockwork--everybody works with zeal and zest in this labour of
+charity. However many may come, there is always sufficient food for
+all, stretchers and bedding are never lacking, and the helping hands
+never tire. The wounded Frenchmen are treated with the same kindness as
+their own wounded, perhaps even better, as nearly all have a feeling
+of compassion for those who have fallen into an enemy’s hands and who,
+apart from their wounds, must suffer at the thought that their native
+country is bleeding under the hostile invasion. Sedan station is like
+a swarming beehive. Ambulance trains are not the only ones to be seen;
+frequent trains loaded with fresh troops also run into the station.
+There is also a considerable number of prisoners. Most frequent of
+all are the supply and ammunition trains from the north, and trains
+with captured or worn-out war material from the south. Now night is
+hovering, cold and starry, over Sedan, rich in memories of the past.
+But to those who are working here for the sake of tending the wounded
+and providing food, there is no difference between night and day. It is
+a puzzle to me how the officers, doctors, nurses and working staff can
+stand it. The force which impels them and prevents their breaking down
+with fatigue, is the love of their fatherland, which is now fighting
+its greatest and most fateful war.
+
+During our hurried round the Major narrates some episodes of the
+locality. The bridge across the Meuse was blown up by the French, and
+after the street-fighting some civilians fired from the windows. A fine
+of two hundred thousand francs was therefore levied on the town. A few
+days later, shots were fired again from houses in the town, and the
+war contribution was increased by half a million francs, to be paid
+within forty-eight hours. The Maire was given the somewhat unpleasant
+task of raising this sum. It was paid after fruitless representations
+as to the difficulties. If we try, in an entirely objective manner,
+to enter into the psychological currents which in such cases stir
+the minds of the French and of the Germans, we come to the following
+result: The Germans consider that, when a town has been conquered by
+them in honest and open fight, they are its masters, and the fight is
+therefore ended. The French citizens who are armed and have seen that
+their own troops are unable to defend the town, nevertheless nourish
+a mad hope that they can check the invasion and prevent the enemy
+from taking up his quarters there. They fire in frenzy and hatred,
+forgetting that a few fatal shots signify nothing in the serried ranks
+of disciplined soldiers. Nor do they realise that they are doing an
+evil service to their fellow-citizens, and that the war levy will
+become much heavier. An open honest fight is _one_ thing, but shots
+by civilians, after a decisive issue of the fight, are looked upon as
+murder, and must be punished, according to usage of war, by shooting or
+hanging, bombardment or imposition of a war contribution. No rules of
+civilised warfare recognise sparing the lives of sniping _franctireurs_
+or civilians firing from an ambush.
+
+The sufferings which war brings in its train for the populace visited
+by it are severe enough without being intensified by cowardice
+and stupidity. It is best, while there is yet time, to create for
+oneself an efficient army--_that_ will always command respect.
+Characteristically enough, such attempts as described here are defended
+and approved by individuals who, in times of peace, oppose the regular
+military training of their people. When the day of retribution comes
+they shout themselves hoarse at “right being trampled under foot.” But
+it is futile to disguise the betrayal of one’s own country. It is then
+too late. Jurisprudential sophistries are silenced when the guns talk
+in their voice of thunder.
+
+When Major von Plato came to Sedan, in the early part of September, the
+railway station looked more than wretched. Dead horses were lying about
+everywhere at and on the line. The fallen soldiers had been buried in
+very shallow graves, contributing to some extent to the unbearable
+stench which filled the air. The Maire was requested to call out French
+labourers, whose task was to scour the whole neighbourhood and bury
+the bodies properly. Now the ground around the station looked well and
+properly kept.
+
+In the afternoon I went with Major Heyn and a couple of other
+officers--one of whom was ordinarily a judge at Frankfurt-on-Main, and
+had now become _Kriegsgerichtsrat_ or “Court-Martial Councillor”--for
+a motor drive to the historically famous spots outside Sedan, the very
+name of which evokes, in the breast of every Frenchman, memories of
+grief and sorrow.
+
+We drive through the town. The citizens who have remained or returned
+are not few in number, but the well-to-do have gone away and taken
+up their abode elsewhere. Some shops are open, and those in which
+articles of food, preserves, or tobacco are sold, are emptied of stock,
+the owners having done a brisk business. But the tradesmen on whose
+shop-signs one reads _Teinturerie_ (dyer), _Imprimerie_ (printer),
+_Bijouterie_ (jeweller), and the like, might just as well have put up
+their shutters. A school has been converted into an intermediate base
+hospital, and the Place d’Alsace is the “motor-vehicle hospital,” or
+open-air workshop. This may not be photographed, as the sentry informs
+me when I approach with my camera. On one of the “patients” undergoing
+treatment here, the inscription “Mannheim Brewery No. 6” indicates its
+avocation in peace time. Even such motor-lorries, then, are mobilised
+for service in war time! All is arranged and regulated beforehand with
+the utmost forethought and exactitude. But, for this very reason,
+everything goes like clockwork when the hour has come. The honest
+brewer in Mannheim had no need to enquire what he had to do when the
+mobilisation order was issued. He knew it, and sent his motor-lorries
+to the prearranged spot.
+
+_Impavidus numero victus 1870_ is the inscription engraved on a
+memorial near a street still showing traces of the fighting, to which
+indeed the marks of bullets on its houses bear witness. Two bridges
+across the Meuse, one of stone, the other of iron, have been blown up
+by the French and replaced by the Germans.
+
+We are now out in the open country and pass over the scene of the
+hotly contested sanguinary fights of the 25th and 26th of August. The
+entrenchments have not been filled in, and the parapets and trenches
+are still in the same state, though they have crumbled here and
+there. I was told that many of them had been thrown up by the local
+population, whose assistance thus gave the defenders an advantage over
+the attack.
+
+Near the village of Frénois we run up to the little château of
+Bellevue, where after the great battle of the 1st of September, 1870,
+the capitulation of the French Army was signed on the morning of
+September 2nd, and where King William I. of Prussia had his historic
+meeting with the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III. The two monarchs
+met on the small glass veranda on the ground floor, which forms a porch
+or vestibule to the château.
+
+The furniture which was there at the time has all disappeared and there
+is no relic of those days remaining. Yet there is one! The aristocratic
+and venerable lady--who owns Bellevue, is still there, bowed with age
+and grief, and is now witnessing for the second time all the phases of
+a Franco-German war. Her hair was snow-white and she was bent with
+age, but it seemed nevertheless that she held her head high, and her
+carriage was proud and commanded respect. We asked whether we might see
+the interior of the château, but she asked us to excuse her--a wish
+which, of course, we respected.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the soldiers, whose way lies past
+Bellevue, like to look at the famous veranda. But the old lady asked
+that these visits should cease; she wished to be left in peace, alone
+with her sorrow. “_C’est bien malheureux; c’est très, très triste!_”
+she repeated again and again, and she, like her words, evoked the
+deepest sympathy. Bellevue with its round tower stands like a rock
+lashed by the tempestuous waves of the two greatest wars of modern
+history.
+
+Our next objective is Donchery, the little town which now inspires, in
+a twofold measure, such mournful impressions. It was here that General
+von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff, and General Wimpffen,
+the French Commander-in-Chief, discussed the terms of the capitulation
+late at night on the 1st of September, 1870. Count Bismarck, the
+Prussian Prime Minister, was also present, as well as several officers
+of both sides. The house where the negotiations took place has been
+destroyed in the present war. But Werner’s picture remains. This has a
+most stirring effect on the beholder. To the right, the Germanic iron
+strength and resolution, which will admit of no compromise; to the
+left the beaten Frenchmen in their dire misfortune. Moltke especially
+attracts our eyes, as he stands there with his hand thrust upon the
+table, categorically demanding the surrender of the whole French
+army, and we may well look with emotion on the picture of the “Iron
+Chancellor,” sitting with his hand on his sword-hilt;--these two men,
+the great strategist and the great statesman, are just about to lay
+the foundations of the mightiest empire of modern times;--but the
+central figure of the painting is Wimpffen, for he stands there as the
+impersonation of the deepest tragedy and the most terrible misfortune
+that could befall man. He has just been struck by the blow which the
+terms of capitulation involve for him and all France. He can bear no
+more--he has risen to go; but he totters, and has to support himself on
+the table and a chair. The light of the lamp falls upon his face, which
+betrays the deepest anguish and grief. His name will now be coupled
+for ever with this calamitous day! A picture of the Corsican hangs
+on the wall, and the great Emperor seems to cast a reproving look on
+the unfortunate general. The countenances of his companions express
+sorrow and dejection for which language has no words. No less grave
+is the expression of the Prussians standing on the other side. Their
+features betray admiration for the heroism of the French army and its
+dauntless courage, which should have deserved a better fate. The artist
+has created a scene which suggests to us that all those present were
+conscious of the fact that this day would live in memory as one of the
+greatest in Prussia’s history and one of the most tragic in that of
+France.
+
+Some parts of Donchery have been destroyed by the shells of the
+present war, but the Church of St. Onesimus still remains standing
+amid the desolation and has not suffered any damage to speak of. The
+chancel with the high altar dates from the twelfth century, the nave
+from the fifteenth. In front of the altarpiece stands a crucifix of
+ivory, and filtering in through the beautiful stained-glass windows, a
+multi-coloured light plays upon the pillars. The priest who accompanies
+us, assures us that not a single shot has been fired from the windows
+of Donchery and that the punishment which was inflicted on the town
+was therefore unmerited. But the German documents tell a different
+tale. A careful investigation in France and in Belgium will reveal,
+in due course, where the root and origin of the participation of the
+civilian population in the warfare is to be found. Until the result
+of this investigation lies before us, it will be wise to abstain from
+pronouncing judgment.
+
+[Illustration: HOUSES WRECKED BY SHELLS AT DONCHERY]
+
+On the return journey to Sedan we also stopped for a while at the
+little house by the roadside where Napoleon and Bismarck had an
+interview on the morning of the 2nd of September. Accompanied by his
+suite of a few horsemen, the Emperor drove over from Sedan in a landau.
+He had alighted and stood, broken and prematurely aged, leaning on his
+stick, when Bismarck came up alone on horseback. This incident, too,
+has been immortalised by Werner in one of his pictures. The victor and
+the vanquished then entered the house together, ascended the steep and
+narrow stairs and seated themselves in the inner of the two larger
+rooms. The host, the weaver Fournaise, withdrew; his wife, twenty-seven
+years of age, stayed in the outer room. And Madame Fournaise is still
+alive--a worthy and kindly woman, with a cheerful and philosophical
+view of life, in spite of the harrowing scenes which she has witnessed
+around her abode. The only thing that annoyed her was that two rifle
+bullets had gone through her windows and lodged in the ceiling. But
+she gave us a regular lecture on that momentous day, forty-four years
+ago, and recalled each detail. The Emperor had been friendly and
+condescending, Bismarck cheerful and jocular, when they had talked to
+her. And when the interview was over, and both of them went their way,
+the Emperor had given her four 20-franc pieces, which she still kept,
+set in a frame under glass, with the following inscription: _Donné par
+sa Majesté l’Empereur Napoléon III à Mme. Fournaise le 2 Septembre,
+1870_.
+
+As a memento of our visit we shall keep the stamp which she imprinted
+on our note-books: _Maison de la I^{re} entrevue, Donchery_. And the
+house itself is known as _Maison du Tisserand_, or “The weaver’s house.”
+
+At last we return by another road to Sedan, in order to cast a brief
+glance over the site of the forts which have been razed since 1870, and
+to enjoy the fine view over the unfortunate town from the surrounding
+heights. One cannot feel cheerful in Sedan; one feels as if one’s
+breast were oppressed by a leaden weight. Here is a people, generous
+and yet thrifty, which has suffered and is now suffering--which, in the
+leading strings of the republican democracy, has been led to an abyss
+of misfortunes--a people which has deserved a better fate than to bleed
+to death for the sake of its allies--a people whose children vainly
+repeat those high-sounding, but in reality empty and hollow words:
+_Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_. What brotherhood is it that never
+thinks of anything but revenge; what equality is it that for political
+aims sacrifices the fruits of the people’s thrift; what liberty is
+it that drives these same people into the arms of the world’s most
+despotically governed power?
+
+And yet one cannot but love the French, above all on account of their
+fascinating and attractive qualities, their unbounded patriotism, their
+brilliant bravery, their ever youthful enthusiasm, their bright wit
+and their high level of art. And one deplores the desolation which is
+spreading over their glorious country and which might so easily have
+been avoided.
+
+Late in the day we drive back into the town, past Place Turenne, where
+a statue, nearly one hundred years old, has been erected in memory
+of the great victorious marshal, himself a native of Sedan. In the
+market-place is the office of the Sedan Intermediate Base Commandant,
+located in a better-class café, in which busy clerks have taken the
+places formerly occupied by the habitués of the place. Here we happened
+to come across a most unusual sight,--a couple of civilians from
+Germany, who have come to see about the body of a killed relative. The
+dead man had been traced, and if they could identify his body they
+would have a zinc coffin made and take him home.
+
+From there I proceeded to the Hôtel Croix d’Or to call on General Baron
+von Seckendorff, who is Inspector of the Lines of Communication of the
+Fourth Army. The “Inspectorate” comprises, besides its Staff--the Chief
+of which is Colonel von Kemnitz--a variety of administrative branches,
+with subordinate organisations and establishments. One may truly say
+that whole armies and endless processions of transport columns of
+various kinds pass through General von Seckendorff’s hands. The task of
+the lines of communication organisation in general is, on the one hand,
+to arrange for bringing up to the army reserve troops and matériel of
+all kinds, and, on the other hand, to relieve the fighting troops of
+the wounded, prisoners, booty of war, and all worn-out material. As
+already hinted, each class of requirements has its own representative
+in the Line of Communication Inspectorate. There are supervisors for
+the provisioning and for the hospitals, for ammunition supply and store
+maintenance, for the railway traffic, for the telegraph, post-office,
+and road and hydraulic construction departments, for administration of
+justice and maintenance of law and order, and for civil administration.
+It is an immense burden of labour that rests on the shoulders of
+an inspector of the line of communication. There must be no hitch
+anywhere. The troop trains must not come too late; the ammunition and
+commissariat supply trains must arrive at stated times and places.
+Nothing must go wrong. The inspector must know how to find ways and
+means in all emergencies, must think of and foresee everything,--else
+incalculable calamities may arise.
+
+It might not be out of place here to give a short outline of the manner
+in which the lines of communication between the fighting troops and the
+home base are arranged.
+
+I reproduce a diagram showing the arrangement of the lines of
+communication of a German Army. The reader will see how the railway
+lines coming from the home bases of the respective army corps are made
+to converge towards the main line of transport which leads to the
+district of the lines of communication of an army--in a hostile country
+to a principal line of communication depot or “intermediate base,” and
+how, from this point, a new system of lines of communication of all
+kinds--railways, field railways, roads, waterways--diverges towards
+the operating units at the front. The whole reminds one vividly of a
+tree with its roots and branches. As far as possible, the functions
+in connection herewith must be planned in peace time. Of course,
+instructions and regulations are drawn up, not only for the transport
+system as a whole, but also for each and every detail thereof,
+as one can never elucidate with sufficient clearness the various
+administrative branches of war: the commissariat, the medical service,
+the veterinary department, the field post-office, the field telegraph
+department, the field-railway service, the war matériel and the army
+pay departments, etc.
+
+The supreme direction of the organisations of the lines of
+communication is exercised by an Inspector-General, who is subordinated
+to the Chief of the General Staff. The various armies each have their
+“Lines of Communication Inspectorate” subordinated to the Chief
+Command of the army, organised internally as indicated above. It
+controls the respective principal Lines of Communication Depot or
+“Intermediate Base,” and has under it the “Lines of Communication Depot
+Commandants” who in their turn are in charge of one or several Lines of
+Communication Depots with their surrounding districts.
+
+Now what principles are followed, in their work, by these different
+controlling authorities of the lines of communication? Well, they have,
+in continual _collaboration_ with the commanders of the troops, to
+supply to these the requisite information as regards depot, hospital,
+and other arrangements on the lines of communication,--such as store
+depots of different kinds of war matériel--and to give timely notice of
+the arrival of men, horses, matériel and requisites.
+
+Generally speaking, it is the duty of the Lines of Communication Depot
+Commandant to look after all the requirements of the system of the
+lines of communication itself, and to provide for the detachments
+of troops, and transport of remounts and animals intended for
+food, which may happen to be stationed in, or pass through their
+district of the lines of communication, while the “Inspectorate of
+the Lines of Communication,” through organisations and establishments
+directly subordinated to it, requisitions what is needed for the
+fighting troops from within the whole of its district of the lines of
+communication, or from the home bases. In order that the organisation
+of the lines of communication may work quickly in the event of urgent
+requirements--more especially in case of a battle--it establishes,
+as we have seen, store depots of matériel and requisites. Books are
+kept as to all that is stored within the respective district. The
+“Inspectorate” always enters into close relations with the civil
+administration, and in a hostile country may often--if the safety
+of the army requires this--take over this administration into its
+own hands. Both the “Inspectorate of the Lines of Communication” and
+the “Intermediate Depot Commandant’s Office” frequently requisition,
+for instance, from the Maire, labour for certain purposes. Some ten
+labourers or other civilians may for instance be required to bury dead
+horses or to clear a road. The soldiers of the invading army do not do
+this themselves.
+
+Frequently, the working of hospital departments attracts, more
+especially, the attention of the layman; at least such was the case
+with me. One marvels at the enormous sphere of duties that fall
+solely to the share of the intermediate base surgeons, subordinated
+to the “Inspectorate.” The Chief Surgeon-General at the “Inspectorate
+of the Lines of Communication zone of the 4th Army” had under him
+hospitals at twenty-eight different intermediate depots, apart from the
+transports of sick and wounded passing through this zone of the lines
+of communication.
+
+The reader will form some idea of the amount of work which devolves
+on the officers in charge on the lines of communication, when I
+mention that the Lines of Communication Depot Commandant’s Office in
+Vouziers alone, usually received every day six hundred requisitions and
+enquiries which all had to be attended to immediately. This needed men
+of ready and well-trained skill and energy, who could accomplish the
+task of ensuring that the fighting troops always had what they needed
+at the right time and in the right place. Dawdling routine work will
+never do in war!
+
+[Illustration: Example of Lines of Communications of an Army]
+
+If we had before us a large-scale map, faithfully representing the army
+and its connection with the home base, the lines of communication would
+appear to form a veritable cobweb, or network, the knots of which would
+be formed by the intermediate base depots. But the aspect shown by this
+network would only hold good for a certain period, perhaps only for
+one day. For, especially in the extreme ramifications of this network,
+changes are of course incessantly occurring, owing to the advance of
+the positions, or transfers of troops. The whole is like a system of
+blood-vessels in the body of the army or of the nation. The transport
+columns going west are the fresh blood of the arteries, maintaining
+combustion and life in the organism of the army; the trains returning
+east, empty, or loaded with wounded, represent the spent blood flowing
+back to the heart and lungs to be renovated. You cannot form any clear
+idea of this complicated apparatus until you have seen and felt, on the
+lines of communication, the throbbing of the pulses of the army.
+
+The army thus rests on the home country, and draws its food and
+sustenance from every nook and corner of the whole German empire--just
+as the roots of a tree, with their ramifications of fibres, suck up
+from the earth the nutritious juices. Every town and village, every
+farmstead in Germany feels that it contributes, in its measure, to
+the vitality of the army. The whole nation takes part in the war, and
+the soldier out at the front, in the trenches, cannot fight with any
+prospect of success, unless the peasant at home does his duty. But the
+German peasants and the whole German nation are doing their duty, not
+as if it were a hard necessity, but gladly and with pride and devotion.
+
+[Illustration: GERMAN INFANTRY]
+
+And now let us return to the “Inspectorate of the Lines of
+Communication zone of the Fourth Army!”
+
+General von Seckendorff has,--to use a common expression--plenty to do,
+and he works like a galley slave, I must say! He maintains faultless
+discipline on his lines and inspects them daily in person. During the
+campaign he has already covered twelve thousand kilometres in his
+elegant covered car. On the roads he rules with an iron hand and can,
+if necessary, roar like a lion at men and officers. But towards me he
+was kind, and gentle as a zephyr.
+
+He received me with open arms and invited me to stay to supper in the
+large restaurant of the hotel. Here, some forty of the three hundred
+officers now in Sedan were assembled--among them a Prince Hohenlohe
+who had something to do with the Red Cross. At the moment when we
+entered, the gentlemen were already standing by their seats around the
+long table and the small side-tables, and the General introduced me,
+once for all, with a few forceful yet kindly words. The food served was
+the same as for the rank and file--boiled rice, mutton with beans and
+potatoes, and pancakes with jam, the last being a luxury in honour of
+the Sunday.
+
+After a pleasant evening, in the course of which the General invited
+me to accompany him next day to Vouziers, I walked at midnight through
+the silent and empty streets of Sedan. The way from Place Turenne to
+the railway station, where I was staying, was rather long, and it was
+made no shorter by the six sentries who in turn stepped out from the
+gloom and challenged me--a suspicious-looking night-bird, perhaps out
+on some unlawful errand. Each of them read the “pass” issued to me
+by General von Moltke, and then left me to my fate--and to the next
+sentry. All were quiet and civil, and they were doing their duty. When
+I came to the last, quite close to the railway station, I stepped up
+to him and asked whether he had any objection to reading my _Ausweis_.
+He replied with a smile: “I suppose it has already been read often
+enough; and besides, I have seen you in the company of the Chief of the
+_Kommandantur_.”
+
+But this Chief had gone to sleep when I came “home.” He certainly
+needed rest after all the trains he had cleared through the course of
+the day. And as for myself, I will not deny that I was half-asleep
+before I lay down on my bed.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  IN THE REAR OF THE FOURTH ARMY
+
+
+Early on September 28th I proceeded to the Hôtel Croix d’Or and a
+moment later I was once more on the way towards the front with General
+von Seckendorff and his Adjutant. Our way lay in a south-south-westerly
+direction and followed roughly the Ardenne Canal, which we crossed
+two or three times. Our first goal was the town of Vouziers. Railway
+communication exists up to this point, but numerous transport columns,
+nevertheless, make use of the paved high road. A road on the lines of
+communication is always animated. The roads in the rear of the 4th
+Army resemble in all respects those I had seen before in the rear of
+the 5th. In fact, it was only the setting of the picture that seemed
+different. We passed a number of inviting-looking bivouacs, in some of
+which smoke was still curling from the cooking trench, by the fire of
+which the men of the transport columns were preparing their breakfast.
+In the avenue of chestnut and maple trees lining the road, which were
+already turning yellow, marching troops and transport columns of all
+kinds, supply and ammunition wagons, motor-ambulances and long rows of
+old-fashioned yellow mail-vans, filled with field-post mails intended
+for Germany, via Treves--where the first sorting takes place--succeed
+each other in motley procession. The indispensable “Field Gendarmes”
+(Military Police Patrols) in their green uniforms, with helmets and
+bright badges, ride backwards and forwards on their road sections to
+see that all is in order. There lies a horse which has broken down,
+worn out! A merciful bullet has just put an end to his suffering, and
+he is being dragged aside; a stream of blood is trickling from his
+nostrils, staining the road-dust red.
+
+It is a very pretty landscape that unrolls its undulating outlines on
+either side of the colonnade of ancient trees. Fields and meadows,
+pastures, groves and orchards--all slashed in different directions
+by the dark shaded lines of the roads. Now and then one sees cattle
+browsing peacefully--sheep among the goats. And the peasants who have
+returned to their land are busying themselves in their yards and
+fields. We pass through several villages, among others Tannay and
+Le Chesne on the Ardenne Canal. This country is full of memories.
+One can without much effort imagine oneself back in the last days of
+August, 1870, when Marshal MacMahon’s army marched in long columns
+along these very roads--towards Beaumont and Sedan. There, close by,
+in the wood to the south-west, and south of Le Chesne, the first
+German cavalry pickets were peering out, on August 29th, on the road
+to the north. These were horsemen, no doubt, who less than a fortnight
+previously had gained glory on the blood-drenched fields of Vionville
+and Mars-la-Tour.--Hark! The bugles are sounding at the head of
+von Bredow’s brigade!--The stranger from the land of Charles XII.
+feels a twinge in his heart, as his fancy calls up kindred memories
+of past ages. From remote regions far, far away, other sounds, yet
+strangely similar, seem to ring in his ears--an echo from the days
+of long ago, when his people were fighting for the Germanic cause
+in the east.--Around him is seething the vital energy of the German
+army, of the German people. He feels something he has felt before. He
+now comprehends the true significance of the words in which the poor
+Swedish petty officer Wessling replied to the Generals of Tsar Peter,
+who asked him how the Swedes could fight so valiantly, two against a
+hundred: “We were bound to do so for the sake of our most gracious king
+and the oath we have sworn.” This spirit shines from the eyes of every
+German soldier.--At length we arrive in Vouziers on the western bank of
+the Aisne.
+
+We do not stop long. The General only remains long enough to hear the
+reports of a couple of officers of the Intermediate Base Command there,
+as to what has occurred since yesterday. When he has gathered that
+all is in the best order he gives the word to drive on, and we soon
+continue southward on the high road to Séchault and Cernay--the road
+taken by the 11th Army Corps to Sedan in 1870. At Cernay we are twenty
+kilometres west of Varennes. But between these two localities lies the
+Argonne, where obstinate fighting is still proceeding. From Cernay
+issues, to the west, the great highway to Rheims. On the first
+sixteen kilometres of this road, or right up to the village of Somme
+Py, I was afforded the opportunity of visiting some highly interesting
+spots. At the end of September this was the most advanced road to the
+south then held by the Germans in this region.
+
+[Illustration: The country round Somme Py and Rouvroy.]
+
+The first village west of Cernay is Rouvroy. We did not intend to
+drive any further this day. We made a short stop to take our plain,
+soldier-like early meal--long narrow slices of army bread with butter
+and ham, and a glass of claret.
+
+[Illustration: INFANTRY RESERVISTS ON THE FRINGE OF A WOOD AT ROUVROY]
+
+[Illustration: A DRESSING WAGON HAD HALTED BEHIND A FEW DARK PINES]
+
+The General had with him an extra car, filled with bottles of wine,
+which he distributed among the soldiers. There was no need to be
+sparing with wine in these regions, where even the peasants have their
+cellars well stocked. But nothing is taken away off-hand. All will be
+made good to the owners after the war. The terms of peace will contain
+a provision to the effect that the defeated side shall pay the amount
+of every receipt or voucher (_bon_) representing the value of the
+things requisitioned during the military occupation. The individual
+is not to suffer direct, but only as a participant in the misfortune
+which falls on the country as a whole. It is the duty of the State to
+make good the people’s personal losses when the State is incapable of
+protecting the property of the individual against the enemy. And if the
+invading power is defeated in the war, its just punishment is that it
+must make good the losses of the sufferers.
+
+Perhaps someone may object that it is improper to let the soldiers
+drink wine--seeing that, in the east, the Russians have made the
+experiment of introducing total prohibition, and are satisfied with
+the result. No doubt this demonstration of moral strength, _per se_,
+deserves admiration, though it does not appear to have been fully
+carried through at home. Nevertheless I think that a draught of red
+or white wine, now and then, cannot but be beneficial to the soldier
+if it is distributed at the right time and in the right place, after
+strenuous exertions. To preach total abstinence is easy enough for
+those who are not called upon to lie freezing all night in cold, wet
+trenches where it is not permitted to light the smallest fire.
+
+At Rouvroy we left our cars and proceeded on foot up gently ascending
+ground, along fields and ditches, through hedges and brushwood. Here
+the ground was much pitted by shell fire and no one could tell when
+the rain of shells might recommence. Numerous projectiles were lying
+scattered about and I took with me a so-called _Ausbläser_, i.e. a
+shell “burnt out” without bursting.
+
+Higher up the slope we came across some reserves waiting to be called
+upon to relieve their comrades in the trenches. They lay concealed in
+a wood, with small bodies advanced to the very edge of the wood, which
+was protected by all sorts of entrenchments, with semi-subterranean
+“dug-outs” at the back--excavations covered with branches, twigs
+and green boughs, and serving not only as shelters for the men but
+also to screen them from aviators. As is natural, these bodies of
+reserves always locate themselves on the northern side of the points
+of vantage which they occupy. They must be concealed out of sight
+of the French lines. But in this war reconnoitring by aviators has
+also to be reckoned with. They are therefore compelled, even when on
+the far side of such cover, such as villages, woodlands and groves,
+to “dig themselves in” or at least hide as best they can from the
+buzzing war-hawks which every now and then come spying from the clouds
+for prey. Hence the most important thing of all is good screening or
+masking of the position. Exceedingly great care is bestowed on this
+point. Not the smallest detail is overlooked. The admissibility of
+lighting fires in these caves depends on the completeness of this
+masking.
+
+At a spot near the fringe of the wood, a field ambulance was stationed,
+well screened by some dark pines. It was accompanied by a spare horse,
+which might be useful in case the pair of horses forming the ordinary
+team should be shot down. Another vehicle belonging to the medical
+service corps was fitted with a greyish-yellow folding hood. Grey
+loin-cloths had been thrown over the horses to approximate their colour
+as nearly as possible to that of the ground--all as precaution against
+observation by aviators.
+
+[Illustration: A DRESSING WAGON WITH HOOD]
+
+In a small shelter-hut near by, four surgeons who were in charge of the
+two medical wagons had taken up their quarters. They had just finished
+their luncheon, which had been fetched from the nearest kitchen
+wagon; I also took the liberty of sampling the food, which seemed as
+nutritious as it was palatable.
+
+[Illustration: FOUR DOCTORS BREAKFASTING UNDER COVER OF A SHELTER TENT]
+
+Up on the hill, which afforded a view of the French positions, we found
+several officers. Close by, under cover of an enormous haystack, was
+a group of men of various units--presumably orderlies and despatch
+riders who had followed their respective superior officers so as to be
+at hand whenever wanted. All these men seemed to enjoy the opportunity
+of getting to know more than their comrades. They did not pay heed to
+the greater danger of their position. Reminders of death were not far
+to seek. Near by, two soldiers had been buried in the shade of a small
+copse. Fresh wreaths were hanging on the arms of the cross, suggesting
+that the brave men resting beneath had but recently fallen victims to
+the French fire. The solitary, insignificant little mounds were adorned
+with the helmets of the fallen men.
+
+[Illustration: SOLDIERS UNDER COVER OF A HAYSTACK AT ROUVROY]
+
+On our return trip, for which we chose a more easterly route, _via_
+the villages of Condé, Autry and Grandpré, we passed four companies
+of Landsturm, headed by a spirited band. It is an unusual thing to
+hear band music so near the front, where all has to be as silent as
+possible and where usually the only music is that of guns and rifles.
+The general drove past the whole detachment and stopped ahead of it by
+the side of the road. He then alighted, and we followed his example.
+The whole detachment now marched past. When the first company came up,
+he called out: “Good morning, first company,” greeting the others in
+the same way and receiving their salute. It was a fine and impressive
+sight to behold these sturdy men, among whom more than one was nearing
+the age of fifty.
+
+[Illustration: OFFICERS’ CAR AT GRANDPRÉ]
+
+And what a march-past! It moved me strangely. It vividly recalled to my
+recollection a troop of old Swedish territorials, whom I saw many, many
+years ago. They were of a similar stock, faithful in life, faithful in
+death--without reproach. Their dark-blue uniforms stood out in vivid
+contrast to the rusty foliage of the trees. There was nothing lacking
+in the equipment of this Landsturm battalion. It was a fine sight,
+too, to see the General, with his look of determination blended with
+kindness, his white moustache and his steel-grey hair. Erect and tall
+he stood, in his grey cloak, with his hands behind his back. There
+had been no need for him to alight and salute them, but it pleased
+his martial soul to look at these men, who had left hearth and home,
+wife and children, to bleed and die, but determined also to fight and
+conquer for their country. “We are comrades,” he thought, no doubt, as
+the last man filed past, and the sound of the music died away in the
+distance. And so we ran past the Landsturm battalion a second time,
+and listened once more to the inspiriting strains of the parade march.
+
+On our return to Vouziers the General handed me over to the care of
+Cavalry Captain von Behr, a brother of the Chamberlain. He was a
+merry and lively gentleman, and when the General asked him to show me
+every attention, he promised that I should want for nothing. And he
+kept his word, for during the period of fully a week which I spent
+with him and his comrades, I had occasion to see and learn much, and
+to make the acquaintance of many notable and estimable men. Von Behr
+had retired from the army long ago, but on the outbreak of the war
+he had re-entered the service in a cuirassier regiment and was now
+in command of a reserve squadron. His troop was now quartered in the
+barracks of the 3rd French Cuirassier Regiment. As the day was not
+yet spent he immediately proposed--like a true cavalryman--a visit
+to a riding-school which had been fitted up as stables and barracks.
+There we found the horses well-groomed and well-shod, in their stalls
+along the walls, while the men had arranged their beds on a litter of
+unthreshed wheat. The oat sacks were lying piled in large stacks. The
+bridles, saddles, arms and accoutrements were suspended on brackets
+and pillars. The interior of this stable, and of another immediately
+adjoining it, presented an aspect of military order, discipline and
+precision, which ensured that in case of need the squadron could be in
+the saddle, fully equipped, in a few minutes.
+
+A third building in the same grounds had been assigned to the French
+prisoners and their German guard. Thus the strangers were neither
+better nor worse provided for than the cuirassiers. They had arranged
+their beds in the best possible way along one of the walls. Armed with
+sketch-book and pen, I paid several visits to them during the following
+days.
+
+Lastly we also looked in at the barracks, now fitted up as a clearing
+hospital. We had the best imaginable cicerone, the head surgeon
+himself, Dr. Zinsser of Cologne. He was famous as a physician and
+surgeon. As a man he was charming and fascinating. It was always a
+great pleasure to me to meet him and hear him talk of the experience
+he had already gained during the war, and which had induced him
+to introduce many alterations and improvements in the hospital
+arrangements.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH PRISONERS CARRIED WOUNDED GERMANS TO THE RAILWAY
+STATION]
+
+We made a hurried round through some of the hospital wards, where
+nurses and Catholic friars were passing softly from bed to bed,
+silent as ghosts. Not all the beds were occupied, but five hundred
+wounded were expected at night, of whom, however, many would be moved
+on next day. Here we saw some French prisoners carrying wounded
+Germans on stretchers to the railway station for further transport--a
+strange sight! Among the German patients I noticed the same spirit
+that animates, with infectious ardour, the whole of this wonderful and
+firmly knit army--no homesickness, only an irresistible desire to get
+back to the front. If one ever came across a soldier who said that he
+wished himself back home, it was sure to be one of the badly wounded,
+prostrate on a sick-bed and at best doomed to be a cripple for life.
+We saw an instance of this in the operating theatre of the hospital. A
+man had his leg so badly shattered by a shell, that he had to undergo
+amputation. The bandages were skilfully and quickly put round the stump
+of the leg, and the man came to. But he had forgotten where he was, and
+it appeared from his confused talk that he was still imagining himself
+to be lying in the trenches.
+
+[Illustration: A CHEF DE MUSIQUE OF THE 11TH INFANTRY REGIMENT, 17TH
+ARMY CORPS, TAKEN PRISONER ON SEPT. 26TH, SOUTH OF VOUZIERS. SLIGHTLY
+WOUNDED IN THE HEAD]
+
+One ward contained patients who had recently undergone operations;
+another was occupied by men who had been wounded in the head. In the
+case of one, the bullet still remained lodged in the skull. It was
+horrible to see him lying there staring intently at one spot, and
+making restless but futile efforts to raise himself. One of those next
+to him had been rendered blind by a shot, and a third had lost his
+memory; he readily answered questions relating to the present, but was
+quite oblivious of all concerning the past.
+
+[Illustration: CHAMBON, 30 YEARS OLD, FRENCH SOLDIER FROM PERIGUEUX IN
+DORDOGNE (17TH ARMY CORPS). SLIGHTLY WOUNDED SOUTH OF VOUZIERS]
+
+The wounded officers had a ward to themselves, and seemed pleased to
+have an opportunity to chat awhile. “What news from the front--any
+fresh victories?” was the invariable question. The most singular case
+here was that of a Captain who had been shot right through the neck,
+the bullet having entered on the right and issued on the left side,
+without causing serious injury to the arteries, trachea, pharynx,
+or cervical vertebræ. The Captain sat up in his bed, his whole head
+swathed in bandages. He followed our conversation attentively, but did
+not, and could not, utter a word himself. Professor Zinsser said that
+it would certainly take him half an hour if he tried to pass a probe in
+the same way through a human neck without inflicting injury. But this
+bullet had found its way through in the minutest fraction of a second.
+
+Some distance apart from the rest lay the patients suffering from
+tetanus. It is only in rare cases that their lives can be saved.
+One-half of those who died in hospital had succumbed to tetanus. It is
+a terrible affliction. A surgeon who had been at the front in Alsace
+and whom I met on a subsequent occasion, thought he had noticed that
+this disease first appeared when they had crossed the French frontier.
+It is generated by the so-called tetanus bacillus, a bacillar microbe
+to be found in the soil, chiefly mould. If such infected earth comes
+into contact with a wound, say through a ricochet bullet, the latter
+may carry the bacilli with it and by their poisonous secretions induce
+this form of muscular catalepsy. We saw a few tetanus patients, and the
+professor talked to them. A young German had tetanus in the muscles
+of the mouth, and his face became distorted as he attempted almost
+inaudibly to speak. I was told that his life might possibly be saved.
+
+About the middle of September Professor Zinsser and his colleagues
+had had a trying time at the hospital. It was at the time when, for
+strategical reasons, the army retired from the Marne to the Aisne.
+The badly wounded men who could not bear hasty removal involving
+discomfort, had to be left in the care of surgeons, who thus
+voluntarily went into captivity--surely one of the greatest sacrifices
+that could be made in war.
+
+The rest, who could bear being removed, were conveyed in large numbers
+to these barracks, the floors of which had been covered with straw.
+Professor Zinsser arrived there late one night, in darkness and pouring
+rain, and at once proceeded to the improvised hospital. No lights were
+to be had. But wagon after wagon brought fresh wounded--would the
+stream never end? They were crammed in anywhere, anyhow, in terrible
+confusion. Some died during the night. Others grew worse. All were
+soaked with rain, their bandages were torn to shreds and undone.
+There they lay, fifteen hundred, light and grave cases, pell-mell.
+Here and there, among the living, lay a body growing cold in death. A
+terrible smell pervaded the atmosphere. Of course, none of the patients
+were able to go outside. Their strength was utterly gone. It was a
+pitch-dark night--the rain was pelting down! But the professor was
+powerless to relieve their distress; he had no alternative but to wait
+till the morning.
+
+In the morning five doctors and twenty men of the Army Medical Corps
+arrived. A dreadful sight met their eyes in these overcrowded rooms,
+foul with the stench of purulent wounds and excrements. But they set to
+work at once and soon received assistance from a field hospital. They
+were then thirty all told. They worked day and night. But new hosts
+of wounded kept on arriving. It seemed utterly hopeless! The wounded
+stretched out their hands to the surgeon as soon as they caught sight
+of him and cried: “Help us! Help us!” Extra motor-cars were procured
+to carry away those who could bear removal. Many of the wounded
+even crept down to the bottom of the steps to find a place in some
+ambulance wagon--to get away from this inferno. But in the end, the
+superhuman energy of the medical staff triumphed. A kitchen was fitted
+up, cattle were slaughtered and meat-broth was made. Soldiers who had
+been starving for days could at last stay their hunger. All dressings
+were changed--those of the graver cases first, the others afterwards.
+In a few days the medical staff were masters of the situation. But if
+such is the state of things on the lines of communication of an army
+which has only fallen back momentarily for some distance, what must
+happen after a crushing defeat? Of one thing I am certain, none but an
+army permeated with boundless confidence in its leaders and its chief
+command, can stand the strain of such phases of war without going to
+pieces.
+
+In the foregoing I have often stopped to speak of the wounded and shall
+do so again. It might therefore be opportune to give a brief outline of
+the system and the organisation which prevails in the hospital service
+in the field. All is arranged beforehand so as to be ready when war
+breaks out.
+
+Of course the hospital service assumes a different aspect according
+to the distance from the actual fighting line. At the front they have
+Medical Service Corps and establishments to meet the first needs of
+the wounded. There we find surgeons with military training. But all
+these dressing stations and field hospitals are cleared as speedily as
+possible to make room for fresh wounded. They pass their patients on,
+step by step, along the lines of communication, on which their further
+care, or transport to the home base, is provided for. Here most of the
+medical staff are not on the normal war establishment, but civilian
+medical men liable to military service or who have volunteered--though
+appointed already in peace time for certain duties.
+
+Each field force has its medical service staff whose task is to look
+after its well-being, to supervise its hygiene, to watch over the daily
+food supplies, to analyse the drinking water, etc. It is therefore the
+first duty of the Army Medical Staff to regulate the general hygienic
+care so as to prevent such epidemics as might otherwise easily spread.
+Men who have fallen sick among the troops are cared for in “local
+sick-rooms” until they can be handed over to the care of the Army
+Medical Service.
+
+[Illustration: FEEDING THE WOUNDED (THE SECOND FROM THE LEFT IS MAJOR
+VON PLATO)]
+
+At the fighting line the army surgeons establish regimental dressing
+stations. Some surgeons accompany the bearer patrols on to the
+battlefield, but without, save in exceptional cases, entering the
+actual fire zone.
+
+Each infantry division has at least one medical service company. The
+latter establishes, in a suitable spot at the rear of the troops, one
+or more principal dressing stations, sending its ambulance wagons to
+an advanced halting-place, so as to get the dangerously wounded as
+quickly as possible back to the rear. Each medical service company
+comprises nine surgeons and a large number of bearers, sick attendants,
+apothecaries, etc. The company, further, has eight two-horsed ambulance
+wagons, two medical-store wagons, equipped with medicaments, stretchers
+and dressing materials, two baggage wagons and one food-supply wagon.
+
+For each Army Corps there are twelve field hospitals. These are
+established in suitable towns, villages and mansions, behind the front.
+They have to be located in sheltered situations where they may remain
+even if the fighting line advances. The field hospitals receive the
+patients from the auxiliary and principal dressing stations, with the
+exception of such as are sent to a “collecting station for slightly
+wounded,” to proceed thence direct to the nearest line of communication
+depot.
+
+The field hospital has its own regulation medical wagons and carries
+with it a complete hospital equipment, such as mattresses, or empty
+covers to be filled with straw, pillows, blankets and sheets, shirts
+and other necessary clothing for the patients, china vessels for the
+convenience of the wounded, and many other things. The first surgical
+operations are carried out in the field hospital building unless, in
+quite exceptional cases, these have to be performed at once in the
+open, for instance, to staunch the flow of blood from gaping wounds.
+The field hospital staff is military throughout. No nursing sisters,
+nor, generally speaking, any volunteer nurses are to be found here.
+
+The head of the medical service organisation of the Army Corps is
+the “Chief Medical Officer” of the Army Corps. He is assisted by
+a consulting surgeon who in civil life is generally a University
+professor or lecturer and who also inspects the field hospitals.
+
+[Illustration: THE UHLANS PROCEED ON THEIR WAY]
+
+[Illustration: A SERIOUSLY WOUNDED MAN CARRIED FROM THE TRAIN TO THE
+HOSPITAL AT SEDAN]
+
+We will now proceed to the zone of the lines of communication. The
+field hospital is replaced after a time--as soon as possible when the
+field operations advance--by a clearing hospital section. This consists
+solely of a staff--medical men, military nursing attendants and
+volunteer assistants. Each Army Corps has one such section of nineteen
+surgeons and a corresponding number of subordinates.
+
+The field hospital is thus converted, on the advance of the troops,
+into a clearing hospital, or, in other words, when the field hospital
+with its matériel thus set free or replaced, follows the troops
+forward, its place is taken by the clearing hospital, which retains all
+that its predecessor has left behind. When, as at the time of my visit,
+the advance is slow, no change takes place and the clearing hospital
+staff has _comparatively_ little to do.
+
+Clearing hospitals are found wherever the fighting has given occasion
+for the establishment of a field hospital, and therefore also at
+considerable distances from the main lines of communication. In the
+event of hard fighting, clearing hospital sections with temporary
+equipment establish their hospitals side by side with the field
+hospital. The task of these hospitals is ultimately to remove by
+degrees their patients to the Line of Communication (stationary)
+hospitals, and to places, such as Sedan in the case of the 4th Army,
+from which a regular railway connection exists with the home country.
+The transport of the wounded is effected not only on foot and in empty
+transport wagons, but also by the motor-ambulance vehicles, of the
+Sick and Wounded Transport Department, among which one sees ordinary
+omnibuses from Berlin and other towns and motor-lorries bearing the
+names of well-known factories and business concerns. These may carry up
+to seven or ten beds. If slightly wounded are in question, one single
+large motor-vehicle can take up to fifty men, but then they will sit
+tightly packed and even on the roof. Thus the wounded are conveyed to
+the principal intermediate base on the lines of communication, from
+which they proceed by rail or by canal or river to the home base. I
+have previously discussed the organisation of the hospital service
+within the zone of the lines of communication. I will only remark
+here that just as the Principal Medical Officer of the Army Corps
+has a Consulting Surgeon, so the Principal Medical Officer at the
+Lines of Communication Hospital has a Consulting Sanitary Officer who
+is likewise, in peace time, a University professor. The latter has
+to examine all suspicious cases of infection and to prescribe all
+necessary measures of precaution to prevent any outbreak of infectious
+diseases. The Sanitary Officer is provided with a bacteriological
+laboratory and is expected to investigate carefully every individual
+case of typhoid fever, dysentery and similar diseases, to ascertain
+whence the patient has come, to isolate him and to try to eradicate the
+cause and source of infection. In certain cases he may find that by way
+of precaution, the establishment of an infectious diseases hospital in
+the zone of the lines of communication is advisable. Such a hospital
+has been established, for instance, in Attigny near Vouziers.
+
+Within the zone of the lines of communication to which the clearing
+hospitals--which are in charge of a “Director”--form the link of
+transition, there is first of all a Lines of Communication Hospital
+Supply Depot which replenishes the stores of the hospital units and
+organisations, both at the front and on the lines of communication,
+the Lines of Communication Hospital, with which we have already become
+acquainted, the sections for non-dangerous cases of disease, and for
+convalescents--from which the patients can frequently be sent back
+to the front after so short a time that their transport to the home
+country would be needless--the infectious diseases hospital, the
+ambulance trains--hospitals on wheels--and any incidental trains for
+the transport of wounded. I have already acquainted the reader with
+such hospital organisations at intermediate base stations, where we
+have seen doctors, nurses and medical service men go from carriage to
+carriage of the ambulance train to examine the patients and pick out
+those who cannot bear further transport.
+
+In the home country the arriving wounded are sent to home base
+hospitals--either ordinary hospitals or private houses which have
+been fitted up as hospitals during the war. Many, too, are sent direct
+to their homes. The main governing principle all the way from the front
+to the home country is: make room, make room, make room! Therefore
+every effort is made to get rid of the wounded as speedily as possible
+to make room for new arrivals.
+
+Every first-aid medical wagon is carefully divided into compartments
+and boxes so that each requisite has its proper place and can be
+found in an instant. The hospital trains are organised and equipped
+with equally exemplary care and forethought, everything being planned
+beforehand in peace time. The iron framework supporting the berth for
+the wounded is always kept ready, all that is required is to remove
+from third-class carriages the seats and racks, and screw fast in their
+place the framework for the berths. It is known beforehand how many
+mattresses, pillows and blankets are required for each carriage. In
+the medical and apothecaries’ store wagons all is arranged with such
+precision as to enable the doctor to find, blindfolded, the tincture
+of iodine or quinine he requires, or a piece of sticking-plaster, or a
+safety pin. Everything is arranged on a uniformly fixed system; if a
+new-comer cannot at once find his way he need only refer to the printed
+key which applies for all German ambulance trains. The punctilious
+thoroughness of the Germans has been ridiculed and called pedantry. But
+it now appears why this pedantry was useful. All goes like clockwork
+and no one has any need to search or enquire. And the same order,
+regulated by strict rules laid down in peace time, reigns everywhere;
+therefore the Germans do not behave like half-dazed dreamers startled
+out of their slumber, when they are faced with war in earnest. They are
+well prepared and trained in everything, whether the duties assigned to
+them are on the lines of communication or at the operating table.
+
+I have been told in German quarters that the French Army surgeons are
+better equipped than the German, that is to say that in the French
+Army there are on hand larger supplies of pharmaceutical and surgical
+stores. It is said that the French field hospitals are more numerous
+than the German and are not replaced subsequently by the clearing
+hospital. This last mentioned circumstance is, of course, quite natural
+and arises from the situation of the war itself. The Germans have
+been advancing on French soil; their lines of communication have
+lengthened. The field hospitals had to be shifted forward step by step.
+They had to be hurriedly replaced by the clearing hospitals. This is
+the result of the spirit favouring the offensive, which is peculiar to
+the German Army. Hitherto the French have not more than once had any
+need of corresponding arrangements. They were compelled from the first
+to keep on the defensive. Although it is a misfortune for them to have
+hostile armies on their soil, they have at least the advantage that the
+railways everywhere reach up to their front, whereby all transport of
+troops, wounded, supplies and ammunition is simplified and shortened.
+But this advantage is infinitesimal as compared with the misfortune of
+not being masters throughout their territory. And it also vanishes as
+soon as the operations assume such an overwhelming character as was the
+case in the latter part of August. In the present period of stagnation
+of the war the conditions are naturally different.
+
+The German soldiers have a perfect horror of falling into the hands of
+French doctors--they would rather die. When prisoners and wounded are
+exchanged some day after the close of the war, impartial critics in the
+medical world will be able to judge on what side the wounded prisoners
+have been treated most tenderly and humanely. In more than one respect
+this war has demonstrated the impotence and futility of all conferences
+and conventions of Geneva, The Hague, and other places, bearing names
+which now have an empty and illusory sound.
+
+But we cannot detain any longer the excellent Captain von Behr who has
+been waiting with angelic patience while we strayed into the subject
+of hospital organisation. He now takes me by the arm and we enter the
+little town.
+
+We enter the house in which von Behr, together with Count von
+Eichstedt, Baron von Tschammer, and a few other officers have taken up
+their quarters. Soon the supper bell rang, and we afterwards assembled
+for coffee in the drawing-room on the ground floor. The scene which met
+my eyes here and which I afterwards saw repeatedly, reminded me vividly
+of one of Anton von Werner’s war paintings, showing a brightly lighted
+room and an officer seated at the piano accompanying a singing comrade
+while the others listen.
+
+[Illustration: A SQUADRON OF UHLANS HALT OUTSIDE CAPT. VON BEHR’S HOUSE
+TO AWAIT THEIR BAGGAGE TRAIN]
+
+Forty-four years have since elapsed, but the picture represented by
+soldiers billeted in France is still the same. Von Behr sang Schumann,
+Wagner, and Richard Strauss to von Eichstedt’s accompaniment, and the
+rest of us sat silent like statues and listened. And while the soft
+sounds of the music were lulling my senses, my thoughts began to wander
+and I wondered what kind of man it was who, only a month ago, lived in
+this house and had so lovingly adorned the walls of his drawing-room
+with portraits of his wife and children. Then came a day when he had
+to leave his home in haste, to join the army himself and to carry his
+family into safety. And now his house has become the home of others.
+
+It is usually considered bad taste to examine too closely another man’s
+furniture. But the war sweeps away all conventions, and I cannot take
+my eyes off the objects surrounding me, not on their own account, but
+because one has a feeling as if the owner and his family were haunting
+the room and as if one heard their voices in the sharp tick of the
+clock on the mantelpiece. Their eyes have fallen daily on the expensive
+bureau between the windows, their feet have trod the carpet, and they
+have sat at that very writing-table and entrusted their fears and hopes
+to note-paper and envelope, whilst the chandelier had shed its light
+upon them until the last night before they departed in hurried flight.
+Why did this unfortunate war come to disturb their peaceful life? Was
+it necessary for the welfare of France?
+
+Above the writing-table hangs a war painting by Détaille, and from
+its shelf stares, gloomy and dark, a bronze bust of Bonaparte--not
+the Emperor, but the victorious General of the Italian war of 1796.
+A legendary glamour hovers around this image, whose look seems to
+be strangely penetrating into every corner of the room. However
+attentively I listened to the song and music and whatever else might
+attract my attention, my eyes always travelled back to the bronze
+figure on the writing-table. If it were alive and could talk! What
+would the Emperor say to the French? “The Prussians hated me; they had
+a right to do so as my hand had been heavy upon them. But England was
+my enemy as she was that of France. And Russia assisted her with forces
+the strength of which I did not realise until it was too late.”
+
+Who is host and who is guest in this house? I feel that I am the
+guest of my German friends as far as we are not all guests--I in a
+double measure--in the Frenchman’s house. For I presume it is, after
+all, the owner who is the host. Yet, no, war upsets all values. In
+war everything is settled by force of arms. By right of war, which
+is the highest instance of appeal, the Germans are at present owners
+of north-eastern France. And who will insist that Tsingtau is still
+German, only momentarily occupied by Japanese? No one knows how it will
+be after the war. But what we do know at present is that in those parts
+of France which are occupied by the Germans, they are also masters and
+hosts. Ask the civil population in our little town; they consist, it is
+true, solely of old people, women and children. They are treated with
+the greatest consideration and kindness, yet they know who is master
+here. To have invading troops quartered in one’s place is a terrible
+thing. And yet they are gentle here; inhabitants as well as property
+are spared as far as possible, and one sees everywhere, in streets and
+market-places, German soldiers in friendly intercourse with the natives.
+
+[Illustration: COLONEL FISCHER AT HIS TRIPOD TELESCOPE]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  WITH THE FOURTH ARMY
+
+
+On the 29th September I made a trip in the company of Count von
+Eichstedt to the little village of Séchault, chiefly with the object
+of quietly taking a few photographs of the daily life of the soldiers,
+such as I found it on a comparatively peaceful day immediately behind
+the front. We proceeded along a familiar road past marching columns of
+all kinds, and villages and woods. Our road took us past many fields
+where there was nobody to bring in the over-ripe corn, whilst in others
+the sugar-beet was simply rotting away. On reaching the above village
+we put up the car in a yard and went off to look for some tempting
+subjects.
+
+[Illustration: AMMUNITION COLUMN HALTING BESIDE A BARN]
+
+Of these there was no dearth and I will simply say a few words by way
+of explanation. In a field of white beet we came across the encampment
+of an infantry ammunition column, the men having already put up
+their shelter-tents. The foreground was littered with beet pulled up
+and thrown aside. By the side of the road an artillery ammunition
+column was resting, and its magnificent team of six horses was being
+regaled with hay, whilst to complete the picture a _Fussart.-Mun. Kol.
+Abteilung_ (_s. F.H._)[18] comes creaking past. From a side-road there
+suddenly issues a _Fuhrparkkolonne_, or food column made up of farmers’
+carts. A mounted military policeman presides over the crossing. He is
+making notes on the column which is marching past. A little further on
+another ammunition column has halted by the side of a barn which looks
+very picturesque with its decrepit patched-up walls eaten and worn away
+by wind and weather. We also catch a glimpse of one of those blessed
+institutions, a dressing wagon, which I have already spoken of. It is
+probably not the only one. It looks as if we had chanced upon a spot
+where what we call in Sweden the first _échelon_ of the great train
+belonging to the army corps in front was about to assemble.
+
+[18] Foot artillery ammunition column detachment for heavy field
+howitzers.
+
+[Illustration: PROTRACTED HALT OF AN INFANTRY AMMUNITION COLUMN.
+SHELTER-TENTS HAVE BEEN PITCHED]
+
+[Illustration: CAMP SCENE ON A FARM AT SÉCHAULT]
+
+In all yards and alleys in the village we see groups of these strong
+and cheerful German soldiers, always happy and contented, busy
+extricating their gear from the baggage wagons or cooking their dinners
+or patching their clothes. The infantrymen--of whom there are many in
+the village--are concentrating their attention on their kitchen wagons,
+which stand steaming and appetising as usual, ranged up at sheltered
+spots. The others, who had no such luxuries, did their cooking in
+cooking-trenches in the old familiar way. Around the large awnings
+stretched over and in front of the wagons, the crews of the transport
+columns often form really idyllic little picnic groups.
+
+Out in the field a bridging train has halted. Its vehicles, drawn by
+four horses, have been dispersed. Why? It is because yesterday a French
+airman flew over the column and dropped a bomb which mauled several
+horses horribly and seriously injured four men. One of the pontoons
+was pierced by several shell splinters, but was quickly and most
+effectively repaired. It is best to be careful--one does at least what
+one can to minimise the effects of these little visitations. Presently
+a few infantry soldiers come along, driving a flock of about a dozen
+sheep before them; we presume they have come across them wandering
+about in the open. Next day there will probably be Irish stew for at
+least a couple of companies.
+
+Before a barn stands a steam-engine, busy driving a threshing machine.
+Soldiers have brought in the wheat, and soldiers are driving the
+engine. So it seems at any rate that a part of the crop is being
+gathered. In the copse close by a company of Landwehr have halted by
+the side of their piled arms. What they are doing I cannot tell, but
+they seem ready for anything that may turn up.
+
+In the village we come across the 38th reserve field hospital.
+Accommodation is scanty, and the primitive farmhouses have had to be
+requisitioned. The wounded are lying on straw on the bare floor. I
+cannot resist the temptation of looking in, and step into a little
+hovel which has once been a kitchen. It is now occupied by six men.
+They are lying comfortably and softly on their backs and are all fast
+asleep. They must be terribly tired since they are sleeping so soundly,
+although it is eleven o’clock. I try to step as lightly as possible
+on the creaking floor boards so as not to wake them. “Up, ye warriors,
+arise and hie ye to the fight!” Had I exhorted them thus, they would
+have lain there just the same, sound asleep with peaceful placid faces
+and a smile playing about their lips. Why is their sleep so deep, I
+wonder? They are all shot through the head, and in most of them the
+bullet is still there.
+
+Here is a reservist. What a tremendous figure of a man. What can
+Latins, Slavs, Celts, Japs, Negroes, Hindoos, Ghurkas, Turcos, and
+whatever they are called, do against such strapping giants of the true
+Germanic type? His features are superbly noble, and he seems pleased
+with his day’s work. He does not regret that he has offered his life
+for Germany’s just cause. I cannot leave him, he holds me back, and I
+ask for a chair to make if but an imperfect sketch of the dying hero
+and his neighbours. But yesterday he had sung himself hoarse with the
+proud refrain: “_Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein!_” But yesterday he
+lay in the cold, narrow trench, and when he and his comrades dashed
+forward to charge, he was struck in the head by a bullet which lodged
+in the lower part of the temple. From the first collecting-place he was
+now on his way to the field hospital.
+
+The doctor comes in accompanied by two assistants. They support and
+lift him into a sitting posture, whilst the doctor carefully undoes the
+bandage and lays bare his skull. A large lump of cerebral matter has
+been squeezed out of the wound and still lies exposed. The doctor does
+not remove it, merely dries the edges after the hair round the wound
+has been cut away. The edges of the lump are painted with tincture
+of iodine, and a fresh, spotlessly white bandage is wound round his
+head. “But why don’t you remove the exposed cerebral substance?” I ask
+the doctor. “Because one wants to disturb his poor head as little as
+possible, and cerebral inflammation must be avoided.”
+
+“Can his life be saved?”
+
+“There is little or no hope for any of those lying in this room.”
+
+The wounded man half opens his eyes. The doctor taps him gently on the
+shoulder and asks: “What regiment do you belong to?” He mumbles a few
+unintelligible words which we take to mean “Reserve Regiment 87.” The
+brain-centre controlling his organs of speech has been injured. He
+lapses once more into unconsciousness, his thoughts no longer wander.
+Shortly they will cease altogether and the soldier will rest, as now
+beside his comrades, in the little churchyard in the village.
+
+The doctor passes on to the next man and rearranges his bandages. “What
+regiment?” he asks once more. “Ninety-nine,” is the reply. “Where are
+you from?” “Ninety-nine.” “Are you married?” “Ninety-nine.” He gave
+the same answer to all the questions put to him. “Anyhow, I suppose
+he really belongs to the ninety-ninth regiment of reserves?” “No, his
+regiment has quite a different number.”
+
+But why this persistent answer to everything? Had there been
+ninety-nine men in his trench or had he estimated his opponents at
+this number? Had his battalion or company at some time or other lost
+ninety-nine men? Or had he thought that he would reach the French
+trenches with his bayonet before counting to one hundred and had
+just got to ninety-nine when struck by a bullet in the forehead? Why
+had this figure, or its counterpart in the mechanism of his brain,
+imprinted itself on his mind like the image on the photographic plate?
+Who knows? The dying soldier was about to sink into his last sleep, in
+which there would be no counting to one hundred to disturb him. And
+when his immortal soul awakens beyond the churchyard, other sights than
+bayonets and trenches will meet his gaze.
+
+Right opposite the doorway lay some ten seriously wounded soldiers in a
+living-room. Near the door lay a man who had had one leg torn away from
+the hip joint by a shell. A few ragged muscle fibres were all that held
+it to his body. His face was whiter than the bolster, his big eyes were
+wide open; I noticed vaguely that he had a good nose and a dark beard.
+No doubt he had already been drained of blood. But as we stood opposite
+him, he turned his head and asked for a glass of water. It was brought
+at once, he drank eagerly and thanked us. We made a hasty round amongst
+the others and in five minutes we were back at the soldier by the door.
+He was now dead and his vacant eyes were gazing into the unknown.
+The doctor stooped down and firmly closed his eyelids. He patted him
+affectionately on the forehead and said in a tender voice, “Sleep
+well, my poor boy.” Later on, the hero, dressed in his uniform and
+greatcoat, was carried out to the little churchyard outside the village.
+
+[Illustration: “A HERO’S DEATH”]
+
+Of course it was a depressing and melancholy experience to stand
+beside so many death-beds. Every day numberless men in the hey-day of
+youth were thus being gathered to the eternal rest, in hospitals and
+trenches. But one gets accustomed to such sights, as do the soldiers
+themselves, for it does not seem to depress or frighten them in the
+least to see their comrades die.
+
+When a soldier sees his nearest neighbours fall, he does not think:
+Next time it is my turn. On the contrary his train of reflection seems
+to be like this: Yes, there they are, poor chaps, but I am still on my
+feet and the gaps will soon be filled. No need to lament over men who
+are dying for their country and for the liberty and honour of their
+people.
+
+Before we left the hospital, we had a look at some of the
+identification discs carried by the German soldiers round the neck, by
+the French round the wrist. One of the former read: “_Res. 1. R. 17. 6.
+K. No. 220_,” and one of the latter: “_Seine, 6, Bau (Bureau) 601_.” A
+third bore the somewhat incomplete inscription: “Leclerc, Alfred, 1902.”
+
+The party at dinner, which was served in the open air, included the
+Commander of the Army, Duke Albrecht of Württemberg, his three sons and
+his staff, and a young Lieutenant von Hindenburg, son of the famous
+Field-marshal.
+
+[Illustration: A COMPANY READY TO START OUT, RECEIVING ITS MARCHING
+INSTRUCTIONS]
+
+[Illustration: BIVOUACKING FOOD COLUMN WITH HORSES AND COVERED WAGONS]
+
+On the return _via_ Cernay, Condé and Challerange I had a further
+opportunity of adding to my collection of photographs. In the
+first-named village I took a couple of pictures of an ammunition
+column, a few soldiers cooking their dinner in a yard, and a company on
+the point of starting out and receiving their marching instructions.
+In the next village we came across a fine-looking body of Landsturm,
+likewise formed up to receive instructions regarding the work in hand,
+and a parked food column with covered wagons and horses. The most
+amusing sight was an ammunition column, the wagons of which had been
+pulled right under the overhanging trees on the fringe of the wood and
+were in addition covered over with leafy branches, all to conceal them
+from observation by French aviators. A field hospital had, if possible,
+masked its vehicles still more skilfully, and had likewise established
+itself under the trees by the roadside. The horses were not to be seen
+anywhere. They had disappeared amongst the hazel shrub. A little
+further on a dressing station had been rigged up in the middle of the
+wood. The white flags with the red cross could just be seen through the
+foliage. Similar precautions had been taken for the protection of a
+number of kitchen wagons.
+
+[Illustration: AN AMMUNITION COLUMN AT CERNAY]
+
+[Illustration: A FIELD HOSPITAL AT CONDÉ EFFECTIVELY SCREENED FROM
+OBSERVATION]
+
+[Illustration: KITCHEN WAGONS “AT WORK” NEAR CONDÉ]
+
+The French aviators were out daily between 5 and 6 p.m. They--like the
+corresponding German air scouts--have a double mission, consisting
+partly in damaging in a military sense, by means of bombs, the more
+delicate parts of the opposing mechanism, and partly in observing the
+transfer and grouping of troops, but especially of artillery positions,
+on the part of the enemy. The bridge across La Dormoise at Autry had
+been the victim of a bomb attack a couple of days previously, resulting
+in injuries to a couple of men, but leaving the bridge undamaged. At
+another point in our vicinity a soldier was struck by one of those
+horrible steel arrows which the airmen let fall from a height of 2500
+metres and which pass right through a horse or bury themselves in the
+ground after having struck a man on the head. They travel at the speed
+of a rifle bullet, but weigh more. At Grandpré, a captain was killed a
+few days ago by one of these arrows, and twenty-seven men were injured
+by a bomb from the same aeroplane. The previous week the Germans were
+just in the act of putting the last touches to a repaired railway line
+running through a little town in the neighbourhood, which was to become
+the railhead. The French were at once informed through their aviators
+of what was going on. Three bombs were thrown, which burst close to the
+station building, but no damage was done. The airman was immediately
+fired on from an anti-aircraft gun, also without effect. The incident
+showed however how well prepared one must be for everything. At some
+points in Germany there is a constant watch for enemy aviators. If
+one comes soaring along over a fortified town at night-time, several
+searchlights are concentrated on him, he is blinded by the light and
+loses his bearings altogether, whilst from the nearest church tower he
+is pelted by the fire from machine guns, which pour a rain of bullets
+on him.
+
+The aviator uses various methods of keeping in touch with his own
+side. This presumably is partly effected by direct signals, such as
+flags or electric torches, the light from which can be discerned from
+the ground through field-glasses. If an airman has seen, or thinks he
+has reason to suspect the presence of troops or transport trains
+on the fringe of a coppice or wood, he describes by the direction of
+his flight the outline of the area in question, and this is promptly
+followed by a rain of shells. One of the chief duties of the aviator is
+thus to guide the direction of the artillery fire. If one or several
+French batteries make it their business to bombard, and if possible to
+destroy, a German battery the approximate position of which is known by
+the airman, the latter ascends in the neighbourhood of the target and
+makes his observations, which are immediately conveyed to the artillery
+commander concerned. In case of “minus” hits--that is to say if the
+shells fall short of the object--the airman describes a circle of
+small diameter. In case of “plus” hits--if the shells burst beyond the
+object--the airman describes a circle of large diameter. If the shells
+fall to the left of the object, he makes an abrupt turn to the right,
+and if they fall subsequently to the right of the object he swings to
+the left. In this way the airman by his movements in the air brings the
+fire gradually closer to the target. It goes without saying that all
+these tricks are countered by the Germans with equal skill. If a German
+battery notices aerial observations on the part of the enemy, and that
+the enemy shells are coming nearer, it ceases fire and the battery is
+moved during the night. One advantage which the French possess, owing
+to the otherwise unfortunate circumstance that their own country is
+the theatre of war, is that they can gather much valuable information
+from the civil population. Amongst the latter it is of course easy
+here and there to conceal someone who by certain signs or by light
+signals at night is able to give information about the movements of
+the Germans. If the chief command of an army corps or other staff has
+taken up its quarters in a certain village, the French observers are
+informed thereof by prearranged signals, and it is soon revealed by the
+artillery fire whether they have been correctly interpreted. Signals
+can also be given in day-time, for instance, through a peasant driving
+his cattle to a certain spot when an airman is aloft and can see him.
+
+Constant shifting of ground is the most effective means of overcoming
+the effects of spying and of direct observation. These changes are
+made at night. In daylight care is taken to remain quiet and concealed
+under such cover as the ground affords. The Germans are past-masters
+in the art of moving troops. The great mobility of the German Army,
+the rapidity with which its various units can be thrown backwards and
+forwards, according to requirements, the scientifically developed
+marching powers of the infantry--there we have a few of the reasons
+which contribute to make this army the finest in the world.
+
+On our way eastward we just skim the zone which may at any moment be
+reached by the French fire. But we get past safely and all that we
+see is a column of yellow smoke ascending from the burning village of
+Sevron, set alight by German shells. Thenceforward we are on familiar
+ground and are soon home again after a thoroughly successful trip.
+
+At half-past seven I was invited to supper with the Commander of
+the 4th Army, Duke Albrecht of Württemberg. The guests included the
+Minister of War, Lieutenant-General von Falkenhayn, the Chief of
+Staff, General Ilse and the Duke’s three sons, all fine-looking and
+talented young men, the eldest twenty-one, the second eighteen and
+the third seventeen years old. They performed their duties with their
+units like any other officer and had already on numerous occasions
+shown commendable ability and courage. We Swedes remember what the
+Württemberg Princes are like from the time of Charles XII., when Prince
+Max, not yet fourteen, arrived in the King’s camp at Okuniev east of
+Warsaw and subsequently shared our hard and scanty bread as well as
+the plentiful fare of more prosperous days, until he died at twenty as
+Colonel and Chief of the Scanian regiment of Dragoons.
+
+At the end of the meal the son of seventeen rose to go. His duties
+took him to another part of the front and he had to return. He now
+walked round the table and said good-bye to all, and last of all to
+his father. The Duke took his head between both hands and kissed him,
+but said nothing. No scenes, no tears, no exhortations not to expose
+himself needlessly to the fire and other dangers. It was like an
+ordinary, “Good night, I shall see you to-morrow.” And yet, how many
+officers and soldiers are there not in this war for whom there is no
+such thing as “to-morrow”? How many families on parting from their dear
+ones do not see them for the last time? How many bonds have not been
+severed for ever? One of the Red Cross nurses had twenty-four relations
+in the war, and I was told about a father who had eight sons in the
+field and a ninth of sixteen who longed to follow their example. The
+whole German nation has during the past months displayed a fortitude
+and greatness the like of which has not been seen in our or any other
+time.
+
+On my return “home” my friends Behr, Eichstedt and Tschammer were still
+sitting up talking. I settled down beside them. We were just discussing
+the events and news of the day, when a cavalry captain entered and told
+us that the inhabitants of two villages about twelve kilometres away
+had fired on the soldiers, although the village had been in German
+hands for six weeks. The order had therefore been given that all the
+men of one village and all men, women and children of the other should
+be arrested and taken to Vouziers. The distinction made was probably
+due to the shots in the first village having been aimed at aviators
+and in the second at troops. Half a company of Landsturm infantry,
+accompanied by a squadron, likewise of Landsturm, were therefore at
+1 a.m. to proceed to the spot. The latter were to occupy all street
+exits and prevent any attempt at flight. Meanwhile every house was to
+be searched by the infantry and all inhabitants arrested. On arrival
+in the town they were to be court-martialled and the guilty ones shot.
+Such is the severe rule of war. There is no quarter, no salvation.
+Of course pity is felt for the wretched people, for what could they
+gain by firing a few paltry shots against a whole army? Is it possible
+that they believed in the mad rumours that the bridges of the German
+engineers had been built to assure the German retreat, and that the
+fortune of war had lately turned completely round? Whence could such
+news come? Obviously only from the civil population itself. Those
+who spread such rumours incur a heavy responsibility towards their
+countrymen for the lives they have risked, and gain nothing in return.
+
+I wondered what would happen to the wretched creatures. The very next
+day I had an opportunity of seeing them in the dock. They were all
+old people, peasants and their women folk. The latter wept and looked
+surprised, the men showed an indifferent demeanour. The war had already
+taken from them everything, life had no longer any charms. During the
+few days that the trial lasted they wanted for nothing--once I saw the
+prisoners sitting round large tables in a yard, eating their dinner. My
+heart urged me to intercede for them and to appeal to charity and pity,
+but my reason told me that one cannot and must not interfere in the
+decisions of military authorities, who are guided by law. I could but
+harden my heart and let it grow as cold as ice. It may be asked what
+happened to them in the end, whether they were tied to trees and shot.
+I lost trace of them for the moment. But a couple of days later I asked
+one of my friends about their fate.
+
+“They were all released through lack of evidence,” he said. “Those
+who had fired from the villages had clearly fled when our Landsturm
+arrived. The suspects have all returned to their homes.”
+
+[Illustration: PEROT JULIEN, A 54 YEAR OLD PEASANT CHARGED WITH
+PLOTTING BUT RELEASED THROUGH INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE]
+
+It must not be thought that the German court-martials treat such cases
+lightly or hastily, as if human life in a conquered country had no
+value. No, the court is utterly incorruptible and carries out its task
+with the most scrupulous thoroughness. Just as mitigating circumstances
+are when possible adduced in favour of a German soldier who--which
+is very rare--has assaulted a woman and therefore been condemned to
+death, it is sought in the same way to save the country’s own children
+when they are accused of crime. The court-martials of the German
+“barbarians” are in the highest degree conscientious and humane.
+
+The last day in September was set aside for rest, that is to say,
+for short walks and excursions. One of the latter was made to the
+churchyard, where eighteen German soldiers had been buried the previous
+day in a common grave, which was still open. Dressed in uniforms,
+greatcoats and caps, the dead are laid in rows alongside one another,
+with thin layers of earth in between. The reason why this grave has not
+been filled in is probably that there is still room for more dead. The
+German warriors who have been resting since 1871 amongst the French
+crosses have now indeed got company from their own land. On a new grave
+I read the inscription: “_Hier ruht in Gott Ltnt. Hans Greiner, Inf.
+Reg. 29. Schlaf wohl, tapfrer Kamerad_.” (Here rests in God Lieut.
+Hans Greiner, Inf. Reg. 29. Sleep in peace, brave comrade.) And on
+another: “_Hier ruht in Gott Hauptmann Parsohen, Res. Feld Art. 16. Er
+starb für König und Vaterland._” (Here rests in God Capt. Parsohen,
+Res. Field Art. 16. He died for King and Country.) A third grave bore
+underneath the name and regiment the words, “_Auf Wiedersehen!_” To one
+of the German graves a French rosary had found its way and hung on the
+cross over the dead soldier’s helmet and two bunches of flowers. An
+obelisk bore the inscription, “_A la mémoire des soldats morts pour la
+Patrie. Armée Française 1870-71_,” together with a string of names.
+
+Next von Behr and I drove to the flying station at ----, where six
+_Gotha Tauben_ with Mércèdes motors were housed in large yellow tents.
+One of the “doves” had a wing perforated with bullets. The holes had
+been covered over with little patches. These patches are regarded
+almost as medals for valour in the field. The more scars an airman has
+on his machine, the more exposed he has been and the greater has been
+his daring when above the enemy positions. I do not know which is the
+more unpleasant feeling, to know that one has an enemy aviator right
+above one’s head or to know that an anti-aircraft gun is planted right
+underneath and taking aim!
+
+Whilst we were at the station, two “doves” spread their wings for
+flight. It is beautiful to watch their graceful, easy movements. Before
+one can quite realise it, the slender wheels have left the ground and
+the machine is slowly rising from the field and describes a little
+circle over the tree-tops round about. It gradually rises in a circling
+motion higher and higher and the two enormous iron crosses under its
+wings gradually dwindle in size. It reminds one of the carrier pigeon
+which first rises to a certain height to get a view of the surrounding
+country and then darts off as straight as a die towards its goal. For
+when our first Gotha “dove” had reached a sufficient height, she went
+off at a tangent from her last spiral and flew straight south to the
+French positions and to the rear of them. Once there, it was the duty
+of the “observer,” who sits in front with map, note-book and glasses,
+to make his observations and then to come back and report them--that
+is assuming that he does not happen to be shot down on his journey.
+When over the enemy lines, it is necessary to ascend to a height of
+2000-2500 metres so as to be moderately safe from the shrapnel fire
+from below. But even at 1600 metres the airman and his companion begin
+to have a feeling of security. After a short while, the second _Taube_
+ascended and followed the invisible track of its predecessor through
+space.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH PRISONERS AT VOUZIERS]
+
+On my return I looked in to see the French prisoners. Five of them,
+from Bordeaux and Narbonne,[19] were seated round a tub peeling
+potatoes for their own dinner. Whilst I was sketching them, we had a
+chat on general topics. They were surprised at the kindly treatment
+they received in German captivity. They had expected something quite
+different. “One can’t expect more than a roof over one’s head, straw
+to lie on and sufficient food to eat, and all that we get here. We are
+on friendly terms with our German guards. They often offer us cigars
+or chocolate. We should quite well be able to live on good neighbourly
+terms with the Germans.” The Frenchmen further told me that they all
+had wives and children at home who of course were anxious about their
+fate. They wondered whether the war would last long, whether they
+would be taken to the interior of Germany, and whether they would be
+allowed to associate with their own countrymen in captivity so as not
+to feel too lonely. I was able to give them comforting answers to
+their questions. One of them said that he had seen quite fifty of his
+comrades being killed at the spot where he was taken prisoner. Another
+had lost an old school-fellow by his side, after they had long been
+together in the trenches. The five prisoners from southern France were
+calm, self-possessed and sensible men, whose views on the war had
+sobered down considerably since the day they first heard the reveille
+in Bordeaux and Narbonne. The glamour and the gloss had disappeared,
+and the triumphant chant of the victory which they had dreamt of,
+had died down to be succeeded by the naked, bleak reality. Now they
+saw the tricolor but dimly, as through a haze, and the music of the
+Marseillaise no longer sounded in their ears.
+
+[19] From the 18th and 16th Army Corps or their reserves.
+
+[Illustration: FIVE RESERVISTS FROM BORDEAUX AND NARBONNE WHO FOUGHT
+IN ALSACE AND CHAMPAGNE AND WERE CAPTURED THE 26TH AND 27TH SEPTEMBER
+SOUTH OF VOUZIERS. THEY ARE BUSY PEELING POTATOES. AT VOUZIERS THE
+FRENCH PRISONERS WERE ALLOWED TO COOK THEIR SOUP THEMSELVES IN ORDER TO
+GET THE PROPORTION OF MEAT AND VEGETABLES THAT THEY LIKED BEST]
+
+[Illustration: SAISAC OF TOULOUSE, 11TH INFANTRY REGIMENT (33RD INF.
+DIV. 17TH ARMY CORPS). PRISONER AT VOUZIERS]
+
+We spent the evening in the mess together with about thirty officers.
+The discussion was of course about the events of the day and the hopes
+of the morrow, and about the news brought by the latest newspapers from
+all parts of the front. One of those present told us that 270 military
+trains a day had passed through Kirn (between Kreuznach and Birkenfeld)
+during the first days of mobilisation, whilst another mentioned that
+when a regiment at Eiffel was told by its colonel that Britain had
+declared war, they broke into frenzied cheering. These war pictures
+were accompanied by the peaceful tones of a gramophone--which not long
+ago must have had very different listeners! The mess was housed at the
+residence of a French officer, and I had a look at the pleasing and
+attractive family portraits in an album, with groups of cavalry
+officers, amongst them a couple of Swedes, Counts Lewenhaupt and
+Cronstedt, lieutenants respectively of the Dragoons and Hussars of the
+Regiment of Life Guards.
+
+[Illustration: OLIVE, 30 YEARS OLD. INFANTERIE COLONIALE, 24ÈME (2ND
+COLONIAL INF. DIV.). NATIVE OF PERPIGNAN, EASTERN PYRENEES. PRISONER AT
+VOUZIERS]
+
+On the 1st of October we made an excursion to the troops, and had
+the company of the delightful and plucky chief of the flying corps,
+stationed just then at Vouziers, Captain H. von Chamier-Glisczinski. He
+called for us in his car and we drove at a wild pace through the avenue
+south-westward to Somme Py. Before however getting so far, we stopped
+a moment at the flying station, where the Captain had some business to
+attend to. Whilst we halted a _Taube_ came swooping down in a glorious
+vol-plane. It descended at what appeared a terrific speed, with its
+light graceful wings sharply silhouetted against the glorious blue sky.
+It came to the ground quite close to us and I thought I should have
+to step aside a bit not to be struck by one of the planes. When near
+the ground, the machine made a slight movement as if intending to rise
+again. But it was merely to lessen the shock on landing. Then it rolled
+along a little way on its wheels and came quietly to a standstill.
+
+[Illustration: GERMAN AIRMEN: CAPTAIN CHAMIER, LIEUTENANTS COUNT
+RAMBALDI AND BÜRGER, AND A FOURTH. THE IRON CROSS CAN BE SEEN ON THE
+UNDERSIDE OF THE LEFT PLANE]
+
+The airman and his companion accompanied us a little distance on our
+way. Once more the many phases of the active life in the rear of the
+fighting troops unfolded themselves before our eyes. It was not so
+difficult to advance as I expected, for nowadays it is the custom to
+keep still and under cover during daylight. Here and there little fires
+were burning in the shadow of trees. Cooking was going on, and the
+soldiers were contentedly drinking their coffee, smoking their pipes
+or taking sun-baths on overthrown wheat-sheaves. The food wagons with
+their white and yellow arched awnings were as usual covered with leafy
+branches in order not to attract more than necessary the attention of
+the French airmen.
+
+Somme Py was not much of a place to stop for, nearly the whole village
+is burnt and destroyed, leaving nothing but naked walls with sides
+blackened by the soot of flames. We proceeded on our way. Now and again
+we catch a glimpse of an ambulance section with doctors and stretcher
+bearers and vehicles, or of the fighting train of some infantry
+regiment. We recognise our old friends the foliage-shrouded kitchen
+wagons, the yellow ambulance wagons, surrounded by stretcher bearers
+with their white bands round the arm, and rows of grey ammunition
+wagons, all harnessed up with a team of two horses.
+
+At length we reach a point in the road where four light field howitzers
+are posted in a strong position by the wayside. Captain Chamier tells
+the chauffeur to stop and to hide the car well in the shadow of a
+tree. It is not considered advisable to proceed further, as the car
+may attract the attention of the French observers. We therefore alight
+and take a little turn round the battery, which happens to be at
+work. A salvo has just been fired, and the reloading is proceeding. I
+seize the opportunity of taking a couple of pictures. The guns, like
+the ammunition wagons, were well masked and were either dug in or
+surrounded by a rampart consisting of stone and sandbags covered over
+with earth. The target for the day was the village of Souain, 4050
+metres distant. I was told it was practically in ruins and that what
+remained was in flames. The firing of the battery was directed from the
+_Beobachtungsstand_ or observation post which we visited later on, and
+from which the effect of the shells could be discerned through good
+field-glasses.
+
+[Illustration: A BATTERY OF LIGHT FIELD HOWITZERS IN POSITION]
+
+When a shell strikes a house or other object, a dark column of
+smoke composed of gases, dust and earth, rises from the spot, and
+flames mingling with the smoke soon reveal the fact that combustible
+substances have been ignited. When unaccustomed to these weapons, one
+cannot but regard them with a certain amount of awe. This awe is no
+doubt still further increased with experience. The officers themselves
+appear perfectly unmoved, but I think this is mostly due to the
+exercise of self-control. A commander must not betray emotion before
+his men. He must be perfectly calm. But it _must_ nevertheless tell
+upon the strongest nerves to remain for long under fire. This battery
+had occupied the same spot for eighteen days without being discovered
+by the French aviators.
+
+[Illustration: A SALVO HAS JUST BEEN FIRED. THE GUNS ARE NOW BEING
+RELOADED]
+
+From the battery we proceeded on foot in open order through an avenue
+of trees, taking care to keep in the shade. Of course our security
+was not absolute, for here and there the trees had been cut in two
+by the French fire. We walked some five hundred metres southward to
+the observation post referred to, from which the fire was directed by
+telephone, and from which the foremost French positions could be kept
+under observation. The first thing that attracted our attention on
+approaching this very interesting point was something resembling a
+tree, rising above the young growth of the wood. On further inspection
+we found it to be a mast of the thickness and height of a telegraph
+pole, provided with a ladder, a little platform and a seat for an
+observer. A pair of glasses were left there permanently, and the
+observer was masked by leafy branches.
+
+On reaching the spot we were received by not less than three colonels,
+of whom, however, two were accidental guests, and by a couple of other
+officers. Colonel Fischer, Brigade Commander of the Field Artillery,
+a most genial and amusing man, was full of talk about Asia and more
+especially India, where he had travelled very extensively. We had thus
+many memories and friends in common, and I am afraid that on this
+occasion Asia took precedence over the Franco-German war.
+
+[Illustration: COLONEL FISCHER AT HIS TRIPOD TELESCOPE]
+
+However, I could not go away without seeing the underground abode of
+these officers, for they live there day and night, and as the spot is
+exposed to the French fire, they have to take certain precautions. A
+stairway, the steps of which had been cut out of the soil, leads to
+a cave dwelling of two rooms, small and dark, faintly lighted by a
+paraffin lamp and heated by a little tin stove, now burning brightly.
+A table, let into the wall, made of half a plank, is laden with
+toilet articles, glasses, maps, instruments and pistols in delightful
+confusion. In the sleeping apartment the beds are laid on the floor
+close together. I could not suppress a pious wish that the inmates
+would be preserved from death by asphyxiation in this subterranean
+cavern. One must not suffer from a horror of confined spaces if one
+is to sleep comfortably in these holes. But nevertheless it must be
+a great comfort to have this haven of refuge if and when the spot is
+bombarded. I was told that the cave was not quite proof against common
+shells, but that there was no danger from shrapnel. The officers’ meals
+are usually taken in the cave, so that they may at least eat in peace.
+
+A few steps further on we visited a telephone station installed in
+the masonried cellar of a wrecked house. This cellar was thus a
+subterranean chamber, to the walls of which a number of telephone
+appliances had been fastened. Below them several officers and privates
+were seated on benches let into the walls. Whilst I was there several
+telephones kept ringing simultaneously. Constant attention was
+therefore indispensable. Besides being in permanent communication
+with its own division, this station was in touch with the whole of
+the 4th Army through its Chief Command, and with Main Headquarters.
+There was, in fact, nothing to prevent its occupants from ringing up
+Germany, except of course that private conversations are forbidden.
+Two airmen, Lieutenants Count Rambaldi and Bürger, had just arrived at
+the observation post after a reconnaissance over the French positions.
+It was wonderful to hear how clearly and concisely they reported what
+they had seen. Rambaldi stood for a long while with the telephone
+receiver in one hand and in the other the map on which he had traced
+his observations. He was speaking to some member of the General Staff
+of his Army, with the same map before him and doubtless also with
+a pencil and note-book. The Lieutenant would, for instance, report
+something like this: 550 metres north-west of the village of X I
+observed artillery in position, but probably only 2 guns. On the road
+leading from the west to the village Y I saw a stationary column of
+eight vehicles. I could not make out whether it was an ammunition or
+food train. The battery which yesterday was posted in the hollow south
+of the village Z has to-day been removed, but it is impossible to tell
+at present where it has gone.
+
+Information thus gained--especially if it is of the kind indicated in
+the above example--assists in the first place the direction of the
+artillery fire. But that is not all. The air scouting--as I have made
+clear above--is primarily at the disposal of the Chief Command in
+order to discover in time the grouping and shifting of the opposing
+forces. Movements of troops, in order to avoid observation from above,
+therefore now take place during the night. This is why between four and
+five in the morning one always encounters troops of every description
+on the march, whilst in daylight they are seldom to be seen--at least
+not the infantry--barring an occasional body of Landwehr or Landsturm.
+
+From this observation post it was about two kilometres to the foremost
+German infantry positions, which in turn were from three hundred to
+five hundred metres from the French trenches. Sometimes, when the
+country is very open and affords no cover whatever, it may not be
+possible to get closer to the enemy than one thousand metres. In these
+advanced positions there is never any relaxation of tension. A
+moment of quiet can never be relied upon. Of course the occupants of
+a trench need not all be on the alert at the same time. If this were
+so, exhaustion would soon set in. But in every unit a certain number
+of men are always told off to watch the enemy whilst the others are
+“resting.” Glasses are always in use as long as daylight lasts. When
+it is dark, patrols are pushed forward to signal immediately in some
+way or other if there is any sign of approach on the part of the
+enemy. It is a dog’s life. If one pokes one’s nose over the edge, one
+becomes immediately the target of unwelcome attentions, and bullets
+start whizzing round one’s ears. The previous morning at ten o’clock
+it had been discovered that the French were proceeding to an attack on
+a part of the German position in front of us (north of Souain). One
+could see how, from a little wood at ----, they tried to creep forward
+under cover of the folds and creases of the ground. Two volleys of
+shrapnel were at once poured over them, 150 men fell and the others
+retired. But the French pay back in the same coin whenever they have
+an opportunity, and they fire with great skill from their excellent
+field artillery. Their ammunition, on the other hand, is said to be
+less good. Yesterday, for instance, only seven shells had burst out of
+thirty-six.
+
+The German soldiers retain their good humour in the face of great
+danger. Sometimes, for the fun of the thing, they place a helmet which
+has lost its owner on a stick and move it with a nodding motion along
+the edge of the trench. In a trice the French bullets begin to rain
+around it and the soldiers bet as to the number of hits.
+
+I am told there is no exaggerated cleanliness in these trenches,
+although one does what one can to remove anything that does not belong
+there. In these parts, I am told, the opposing troops have come to a
+mutual understanding, according to which, on certain solemn occasions,
+they are allowed to climb out of their trenches and walk one at a time
+and unarmed in the direction of the enemy. A soldier leaving some
+project of that kind need only raise his spade over the parapet and
+swing it three times backwards and forwards. After the signal he may
+confidently proceed on his errand and when completed return to his
+trench.
+
+On one occasion two grazing cows happened to find their way to the
+space between two infantry positions facing one another at a short
+distance. How it came about it is difficult to tell, but by the
+mysterious code of soldierly freemasonry it was agreed that a French
+soldier should milk one cow and a German soldier the other. When the
+job was done, they returned quite placidly to their trenches. All this
+shows that the French soldiers also are not wanting in humour and high
+spirits, even though day and night death is like the breath in their
+nostrils.
+
+The different infantry forces, large and small, are also in telephone
+communication with our observation post. One of my hosts asked if I
+would like to hear how the battalion in the most advanced position of
+all was getting on. Why of course I should, I said. I was handed one
+receiver and was at once ceremoniously introduced to the commanding
+officer of the battalion, who himself answered the call.
+
+“How are things going, Major?”
+
+“Thank you, very well.”
+
+“Have you anything special to report?”
+
+“Yes, there was some firing in the night, but no losses.”
+
+“In what sort of spirits are the men?”
+
+“Excellent, as usual.”
+
+“Have you received the eight machine guns that were to be sent you last
+night?”
+
+“Yes, they have arrived and are already in position, but one of them
+has no shield. However, we will manage with an earth parapet for the
+present.”
+
+“Have you any other wishes?”
+
+“No, thanks, everything else is all right.”
+
+The Major’s voice sounded calm and confident, but I could detect an
+undercurrent of solemnity in his answers.
+
+That part of the observation post which lay above ground had been
+transformed into a pleasant little arbour or enclosure among the young
+trees, visited now and again by cycle and other orderlies. A telescope,
+well protected and concealed, stood ready on its tripod. Another had
+been mounted in the road outside the arbour. With these glasses one
+can see almost everything, right away to the horizon. Thanks to the
+vertical position of the tubes, the observer’s head can be protected
+altogether by an armoured shield or a wall. From our commanding
+position we had an excellent view of the nearest infantry positions.
+Colonel Fischer explained everything to me. He focussed the horizontal
+cross line on a German trench. I saw it very clearly, it appeared
+like a somewhat uneven dark line. I could even see a man getting up
+out of the trench, probably after having waved his spade backwards and
+forwards the regulation number of times.
+
+Thereupon the telescope was focussed on one of the French infantry
+lines. This was not quite plainly discernible, but yet fairly clear.
+
+Still further to the south, about 3550 metres from the point where we
+were standing, we saw the burning village of Souain and a few clumps of
+trees, behind which we had reason to suspect the presence of cleverly
+masked artillery positions.
+
+In the east-south-east, between Souain and Perthes, we could clearly
+see a French battery of four field guns and a little nearer towards us
+a few abandoned gun ramparts.
+
+Suddenly the Colonel shouts, “_Deckung!_” A French aeroplane, a
+Blériot, is approaching. We hurry under the trees so as not to attract
+its attention. A few orderly mounts, tethered in a hollow, are likewise
+moved to a place offering better concealment. The airman comes nearer.
+We hear faintly but distinctly the drone of his motor. He is sailing
+along right over our heads. Is he going to drop bombs or smother us in
+a shower of arrows? It would be a useful day’s work for him to destroy
+an observation post from which the fire is directed and where the
+telephone wires of the neighbourhood run together. Some civilian spy
+may have conveyed a signal. But the alarm seems needless, the aviator
+flies past and there are no explosions. With a feeling of satisfaction
+we see the great bird disappear. He is seeking some other target for
+his bombs.
+
+Although it was combined with a certain risk, we walked a couple of
+hundred metres closer to the infantry positions. The ground sloped
+slightly downward in this direction. We follow the road in open order,
+keeping to the shadow of the trees, and where there are shrubs we keep
+close to them. If we are caught sight of from some French observation
+post, the enemy guns will immediately be trained upon us. However, we
+safely reach an infantry reserve unit. In this war, where one lies for
+weeks and months at practically the same spot, the former open fighting
+has gradually given place to a sort of siege war, with its attendant
+methods and customs. I here found that every infantry unit was divided
+into a number of shifts. The “changing of the guard” usually took place
+at about six every morning. A battalion which for twenty-four hours
+has occupied the area entrusted to the defence of its regiment, may
+then return to the rear after a fresh battalion has moved up into the
+position in question.
+
+But even at the point where the reserves are posted it is necessary to
+dig oneself in, and above all to be well screened from observation.
+These shelters usually take the form of niches or “dug-outs” in the
+soil. The openings are covered over with a slender roof of sticks,
+twigs and hay. We looked into one or two of these “caves” and saw the
+soldiers fast asleep and apparently not lacking anything. I noticed
+that all the men were wrapped up in their canvas tent sections. In this
+case we had happened to come across a detachment which had arrived
+from the firing line in the morning and was now to sleep till midday.
+Afterwards there was to be exercise--_drill_. As darkness comes on,
+the kitchen wagons are brought up with their comforting hot food. Such
+was the life in the German reserve positions on the north side of the
+wooded country north of Souain. Nobody cared to advise us to continue
+from this point, as in that case we should certainly have been visible
+from the French observation posts and should have been exposed to a
+murderous fire. Even a kitchen wagon, which does not travel far except
+under cover of darkness, was hit the other day by a shell and had four
+men killed. Some light or other had probably been seen by the enemy,
+and as he had the range to a nicety, he fired a volley. But now it
+was day-time and we had open ground before us. I was told on this
+occasion--in connection with the advice not to proceed further--a story
+of an attack made from the German side a few days previously in order
+to capture an advanced French position in the neighbourhood of Souain.
+The attack was launched at dusk, but failed. Several Germans remained
+on the ground. The lightly wounded were taken prisoners by the French,
+but three men had been so badly hurt that they were not considered
+worth taking, and were left on the ground. The nearest French soldiers
+took pity on them and went out each night in the dark to take them food
+and water, and even cigarettes. One fine day a plucky German doctor
+with a few stretcher bearers came forward from the German line. They
+had brought a Red Cross flag, carried high on its pole. At first a few
+shots were heard from the French lines, but as soon as the Frenchmen
+realised what was up, they ceased fire, as nobody wanted to interfere
+with the rescue work. Thus the doctor was able to carry his charges
+into safety.
+
+[Illustration: OBSERVER MASKED BY TWIGS AND BRANCHES]
+
+[Illustration: SCENE ON THE ROAD IN FRONT OF THE OBSERVATION POST]
+
+At another reserve position we chatted awhile with the grey-coats, who
+had recently lost a Lieutenant Johannes. The mound which covered his
+remains was surrounded by a perfect battery of shells, standing like a
+set of nine-pins with the cross for its centre. Young pines had also
+been planted as sentries round his grave.
+
+After a couple of hours with these friendly, merry, brave and manly
+fellows, we started out on the return journey to the flying station,
+where the guard delivered his report to Captain Chamier, adding: “It
+was lucky you did not arrive a quarter of an hour ago, for just then an
+aviator passed over the station and dropped a bomb which burst close by
+here but without doing any damage.” As a memento I was given a splinter
+of the bomb, which it was pleasanter to have in one’s pocket than in
+one’s body.
+
+From Somme Py we proceeded south-east to Tahure and passed on the way
+an ammunition column perched on the fringe of the wood by the side of
+its little cooking-pits. Inside the wood we caught sight of numberless
+items making up a transport train, such as infantry ammunition wagons,
+ambulance wagons, kitchen wagons and spare horses.
+
+In the yards and alleys of the little village there was an incessant
+bustle, and it took us some time to thread our way through. A little
+way beyond Tahure we left the car once more and proceeded on foot to
+another observation post, a little less important than the previous
+one, but otherwise on the same lines. We had hardly got there before
+shrapnel began to burst around and over us. An officer advised us to
+seek cover in a little trench, which, however, had no roof. For my part
+I was quite willing to follow his suggestion, and was glad to stop in
+the hole until the fire had died away. A few moments later another of
+those winged monsters of the air, known by the name of war aeroplanes,
+passed over us, without however showing signs of wanting to harm us.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  QUIET DAYS
+
+
+On October 2nd I made an excursion to Sedan to replenish a few items
+of my equipment. I was offered a seat in Lieutenant Kollmann’s covered
+car, which made this journey daily, and we tore along northward through
+the thin veil of mist which floated over fields and meadows.
+
+As we reached the bridge at Le Chesne, a Landsturm man stepped into
+the road, swinging a white flag. We stopped, and an officer stepped
+forward, saluted courteously and asked to see our pass. This is
+curious, I thought, this car ought to be pretty well known, and is
+manned besides by an officer and two chauffeurs, all in uniform.
+However, when our papers had been examined, he explained that the watch
+had been made stricter, as it had been found that there were so many
+spies about, who were even bold enough to dress up in German uniforms,
+so that one could not be too careful.
+
+The railway to Vouziers was clearly not yet equipped with sufficient
+rolling-stock to meet the demands made upon it, for the great road on
+the lines of communication to the 4th Army were still encumbered with
+endless transport trains.
+
+“What do the letters E.K.K. mean, that I see on all these cars?” I
+asked my travelling companion.
+
+“_Etappen Kraftwagen Kolonne_” (Mechanical transport trains for lines
+of communication), he replied. “They carry food and ammunition like all
+the others.”
+
+Thereupon we chatted awhile about this wonderful life which goes on
+behind the front, about all these threads by which an army hangs in an
+occupied country, and about the many types of armed wayfarers on foot,
+on horseback, and in wagons. We talked about the villages, crops, herds
+of cattle, and the wretched humans wandering about like strangers and
+prisoners in their own land. They are utterly cut off from the outside
+world, for there are no paths so secret and so subtle that news from
+France can reach them. How the war is progressing, they have no idea.
+They have not had a newspaper, not a letter, for close on two months.
+All they hear is an occasional rumour spread by some free-lance and
+intended to make them put difficulties in the way of the invading army.
+
+“But what on earth do they live on?” “Oh, there are plenty of potatoes
+and poultry, besides the corn still ungathered in the fields. And there
+are still plenty of cattle, for you can see them yourself grazing by
+the roadside. Sheep and pigs are equally plentiful, but the one thing
+there is not much left of is wine. For when the French Army passed
+through it did not stint itself, and then we came and took the rest.
+But we pay for everything and nobody will be the loser by what we take.
+Matches and paraffin disappeared long ago, and so there is nothing left
+for the inhabitants but to go to bed, like the chickens, with the sun.”
+
+Presently we arrived, drove across Place Turenne, attended to our
+business and met again at the Croix d’Or for lunch. Here every room
+was still taken up and the restaurant was well filled as usual. The
+proprietor was very contented and admitted that he was doing a roaring
+trade, provided that his “_bons_” were redeemed after the war. The
+town now wears a Prussian air, uniforms, soldiers and patrols wherever
+one looks. We were glad to sit for a while by the window and look out
+upon the square. Officers are busily walking hither and thither on
+the business of the lines of communication of the 4th Army, from the
+Base Commander’s Office to the _Palais de Justice_, where the Base
+Inspectorate is located, and from the _Palais de Justice_ to some other
+public building where some German authority has taken up its quarters.
+As they pass the grey-clad sentries with their gleaming bayonets, they
+are always greeted with a smart military salute.
+
+I cannot take my eyes from this window, the warlike, active scene
+outside fascinates me, and yet everything is done quietly and
+deliberately, and the greatest order reigns everywhere. Here is a row
+of cars ranged up in single file with carbines fastened to the screen
+in front of the driver’s seat, ready for use when wanted. Several of
+the cars are provided with a sort of superstructure of two iron hoops
+carrying a sharp narrow iron rod which starts from the front of the
+car and slopes upward over the heads of the occupants, coming to an
+end just in front of the hood. One might think it was the framework
+of a tent in case it became necessary to spend the night in the car.
+But this was not the case. The object of the contrivance is to cut or
+at least deflect telephone wires which might have been maliciously
+stretched across the road to injure travelling officers. When driving
+at high speed in the dark and coming up against one of these wires, one
+has every prospect of being decapitated.
+
+But the most interesting part of it all was to watch the civil
+population, the natives of Sedan. Here come two bareheaded girls
+accompanied by a boy in a cap and cloak. Walking backwards and forwards
+between the hospitals are nurses in white or black head-dress, but
+always with the Red Cross band round the arm. A couple of them are
+following a stretcher carried by ambulance men, on which lies a
+seriously wounded soldier taken from a train. On the other side of the
+square a couple of elderly women come plodding along with enormous
+bundles--doubtless washing for officers, who pay them well to look
+after their wants. I always feel the deepest compassion for these poor
+creatures. They have lost their country and their liberty, and the war
+has deprived them of their husbands and sons and ruined their homes. It
+is the poor who suffer most, the rich and well-to-do have fled in time
+and taken their valuables with them, leaving nothing but their empty
+and deserted houses. Yet here and there a wealthy citizen has elected
+to stop, or perhaps left his servants to guard his house and home. Such
+families will find their possessions absolutely untouched. In the house
+where officers have lived, not a pin will be out of place. But during
+the repeated advances of an army, after the officers have departed from
+their quarters and left them absolutely intact, it no doubt happens now
+and again that soldiers subsequently billeted there may not treat the
+effects with the same respect.
+
+Here come a couple of ladies of the higher bourgeoisie, perhaps mother
+and daughter, dressed in black and with long black veils. Are they in
+mourning for fallen relatives, or perhaps for the fate of France? As
+a matter of fact, the more well-to-do women always wear black. They
+_cannot_ but mourn. They understand better than the common people the
+position of unhappy France and how unfortunate the policy has been
+which brought them into this great, sanguinary war. If one lives for a
+few days at the same spot and passes the same houses several times,
+and maybe greets the old women standing alone or with their children in
+the doorways, one of them may occasionally nod pleasantly and answer
+“_Bon jour, monsieur_,” but the next one hardly takes any notice. The
+first may be well off and hope to see her menfolk once more, the other
+is probably brooding over her grief and sorrow, for she knows nothing,
+has nothing, and has lost all hope. Those who cook, bake, wash, mangle
+and “do” for the Germans are always contented, at least on the surface.
+The storm has already travelled past them. Whatever they do, they
+cannot change their fate and must make the best of what is left.
+
+One would have to be of stone, were one not to feel pity also for the
+old men. Here come a couple slowly walking across the square. Look at
+their wrinkled faces, their careworn features, their sharp profiles,
+black eyes and great grey moustaches. They are very plainly dressed and
+wear felt hats on their heads. They walk bent after their day’s work,
+if they have had any. Look at the corners of their eyes in profile,
+with all their lines showing, and watch the moist glance and forlorn
+expression of the eye. These eyes have ceased to cry and see no light
+ahead. But ask for once the old people if _they_ wanted the war and
+if they think it is for France’s good. No, they, the old men and the
+women of all ages, bear no blame for the nameless misery that is now
+spreading over France.
+
+I cannot tear myself away from the window. The bizarre life outside
+is running its even course. In the centre of the square, inside the
+lamp-posts and the iron railing stands the great Turenne on his stone
+plinth, scarred and green with age. He stands there like a ghost and
+an anachronism, and looks down with imperturbable calm on those dim
+distant ages whose blood-drenched waves are lapping round his feet.
+
+Everything that has been destroyed by the French in order to render
+the German advance more difficult, and everything that has been laid
+waste by the ravages of war itself has long since been mended by the
+German Army and its organisation. The railways are running, new bridges
+replace the wrecked ones, telegraph and telephone lines have been laid
+down, water-systems have been repaired and the electric light is now
+burning as brightly as ever in times of peace. Times of peace! It seems
+as if an eternity had flown since those days. The clocks in the houses
+have stopped, there are no French hands to set them going. The great
+clocks in the church towers alone denote the flight of time. It is
+German time that they show, and it is important that they should be
+working, not so that the priests may know their hours of duty, for they
+need no clocks, but in order that the transport trains, the soldiers,
+the sentries and the green-clad military police posted round Turenne’s
+statue and at other points may know when they shall relieve or be
+relieved--and last, but not least, in order that the civil population
+may know how long it is to nightfall. Anyone found loitering in the
+dark is shot if his papers are not in perfect order and if he cannot
+show that he is out on a lawful and proper errand.
+
+But the clock-tower strikes its five deliberate strokes and it is
+time for us to return to Vouziers, if we mean to arrive before it is
+quite dark. I cast a final glance at the houses opposite, where some
+windows are open and give me little snapshots into the interior--not
+of domestic French life, but of German billeting scenes; other windows
+are closed and further protected by green and white shutters. I have
+reached this stage in my reflections, when a tall gentleman comes
+up to me and introduces himself as Baron Bleichröder of Dresden. He
+is wearing a uniform which I cannot quite place within the somewhat
+narrow limits of my military knowledge, and I therefore hit upon the
+simple question, “What are you doing here, Baron?” “I have brought
+with me twenty-nine motor-lorries of _Liebesgaben_ for the troops,” he
+answers. “The lorries are filled to the roof with little parcels of
+cigars, cigarettes, pipe-tobacco, underclothing, socks, handkerchiefs,
+newspapers, chocolate and other things the soldiers like.”
+
+At last we took our leave and proceeded in a south-westerly direction,
+with the rapidly setting sun before us on our right. There was
+something remarkable about the sunsets at this time. To-night it was
+a glowing, burning red, and the sky around was tinted in the same
+gorgeous colouring. But it made me think of the long, bloody trail now
+stretching from Belfort to the sea in the north-west, a distance of
+about four hundred miles. Here the soldiers lie in an unbroken row of
+trenches, so closely together that a word of command or a piece of news
+can be repeated from ear to ear from Middelkerke to Altkirch; allowing
+only one man for every metre, this makes a total of six hundred
+thousand men. But the density is in reality far greater, and one is
+almost stunned at the thought that Germany, which in the east, too, has
+an enormous front to protect and stands in arms at many other points,
+is yet always able to fill the gaps with fresh, perfectly trained men.
+It is true that, numerically, the Allies are three times stronger than
+Germany and Austria-Hungary and that they--the self-conscious British,
+and the French, so rightly proud of their cultured refinement--have
+instituted a regular import of black and brown human material from
+distant continents. But in real soldiers the Germans are superior.
+Practically speaking their country is clear of enemies--with the
+exception of six hundred thousand prisoners--and they are fighting out
+their fight on enemy territory.
+
+Saturday, the 3rd of October, passed very quietly.
+
+It is pleasant to be able to rest now and again, when otherwise one
+is always on the move. I dined at one o’clock with Professor Zinsser
+and the doctors under him. The table was laid in the garden. Over our
+heads we heard the buzz of German biplanes and _Gotha Tauben_. A cheery
+and willing Franciscan friar waited at table and joined animatedly in
+the conversation. After dinner the distinguished old _pater_ Müller
+came to call. Now and again a batch of French prisoners marched
+past. A couple of them were carrying a sick German to the railway
+station, whilst others were carting coal to the hospitals in barrows.
+I photographed a band of eighteen men on their way to dinner. One can
+see even in the picture that they are in the best of spirits, well
+cared for and sheltered against cold and rain. Some scenes I witnessed
+between prisoners and their guards were inordinately comical. On one
+such occasion I saw a German gaoler pat his French prisoner on the
+shoulder and say in a fatherly, patronising voice, “_Hier hast du
+eine Cigarrette, mein Bursch_” (Here is a cigarette for you, my lad),
+whereupon the Frenchman gave a friendly nod, accepted the cigarette
+with a smile and a _merci_, and lit it from the German’s pipe. Among
+the soldiers one sees no signs of national hatred. But in the French
+press it glows like a consuming fire. Not to speak of the venom of the
+English newspapers!
+
+[Illustration: PATER MÜLLER, PROFESSOR ZINSSER AND A FRANCISCAN FRIAR]
+
+In the evening I spent a few moments with some Jesuits employed in
+the service of the Red Cross. They had some sanguinary tales to tell
+of places they had recently visited, particularly Rossignol. I might
+fill whole books with these horrible stories about streets drenched in
+blood, fallen soldiers and hand-to-hand fighting in towns and villages,
+where every house has to be stormed whilst death is being rained upon
+the attackers from the windows. But this is not part of my task, and I
+have made it my duty to speak in the main only of what I myself have
+seen and experienced.
+
+In the Argonne forest much blood has flowed, as I myself have seen
+in its northern part, both from the east and west, when with the 5th
+and the 4th Army respectively. Although the whole of the front has
+developed more or less into a siege war with trenches, communicating
+trenches, barbed-wire entanglements and _trous-de-loup_, this applies
+even in a larger measure to this forest region. Here the engineer
+troops have had much work to do, and it is the generals of the
+Engineers who lead the advance. To progress quickly is _impossible_.
+The forest, so badly kept that it would horrify a northern
+sylviculturist, is very difficult to advance in. In certain places one
+has to cut one’s way step by step through shrub and undergrowth. This
+sort of country is easy to defend, and the French understand their
+business well. At night or in a fog, the Germans push forward a thin
+line of infantry about fifteen paces distant from one another. After
+having advanced as far as the conditions allow, the men dig themselves
+in. This gives rise to a chain of pits which afterwards, by continued
+digging longitudinally, are united into a continuous trench. When the
+men have made themselves at home in this new position and extended
+it, a further area in front of the one occupied is cleared by fire,
+whereupon the fresh advance is made. In this way the forest is swept
+clean. It must be taken step by step, tree by tree, for--as I have
+already pointed out--the defenders have organised even the tree-tops
+for defence, and have mounted machine guns there. In the gloom of the
+undergrowth it is not always easy to distinguish friend from foe. On
+the occasion of my visit it was not advisable for anyone to come too
+close to the Argonne forest unless his duties called him there. In
+certain cases the risk seemed even greater for those behind the firing
+lines than for those in the advanced positions, for the French usually
+fired too high. Their shots mostly passed over the heads of their
+nearest opponents, who, by the way, were remarkably well concealed.
+This is not to be wondered at, for when the enemy is almost upon one,
+accurate shooting becomes difficult. The parts of the forest which have
+already been taken by the Germans look very strange. The ground is
+streaked with trenches and communicating trenches joining the former
+together, and the trees are often charred and stripped by the fire.
+
+The French are cleverer at artillery than infantry shooting. One of the
+doctors here told me that of the 2500 patients he had had to attend to,
+not quite ten per cent had been hit by rifle bullets; a few had been
+wounded by sword cuts or bayonet thrusts, but all the rest had been
+struck by shell splinters and shrapnel bullets. If the ammunition were
+better, the effect of the French artillery fire would be appalling.
+
+On Sunday morning, the 4th of October, at 5 o’clock, the kindly
+Franciscan friar came to call me. I dressed hurriedly, and accompanied
+by a Catholic soldier on orderly duty in von Behr’s house I wandered
+off to the “Home for the Aged,” in the chapel of which the birthday
+of St. Francis was to be celebrated with mass and song. No daylight,
+no moonlight; the heavy hand of night still grips the earth. A damp
+mist floats over Vouziers and the stone paving is wet. Here and
+there an electric lamp is engaged in an unequal struggle against the
+darkness. Now and then a few hurried steps are heard--monks on the way
+to mass. In front of a house used for some military purpose tramps a
+sentry--otherwise the street is still and silent.
+
+On reaching our goal we step into a tiny garden, and are presently
+in the chapel. It is already filled with worshippers. Here sit the
+Elizabeth sisters from Essen in their white veils, and the St. Vincent
+sisters from Hildesheim in black veils; the Franciscan friars have
+already taken their places. Several Catholic soldiers occupy the
+galleries, where presently I join them.
+
+At the altar the statues of saints are illumined by tall candles, just
+being lit, but the two candelabras are not yet brought into use. It
+is still so dark outside that the stained-glass windows shut out all
+light and are illumined only from the inside. The features and dress
+of the Virgin Mary and St. Helena in their leaden setting are scarcely
+discernible.
+
+A friar in a vestment embroidered in white and gold, surrounded by
+four other friars equally gorgeously attired, steps up to the altar.
+Suspended from long, fine chains they carry censers with glowing
+charcoal, on which one of them sprinkles an aromatic powder. Light
+blue clouds of smoke ascend to me in the gallery and instantly recall
+to my memory similar scenes from the Uspenskij Sobor in Moscow and
+Taschi-lunpo in desolate Tibet.
+
+Now begins the Latin altar service. One of the priests chants, and the
+congregation responds with the constantly recurring refrain: “_Per
+omnia secula seculorum. Amen._” “_Oremus_” comes from the altar, and
+again “_Per omnia secula seculorum. Amen_” from the congregation.
+
+Next comes the sermon. The preacher chooses for the subject of his
+discourse the life of St. Francis. Prayers coupled with his name are
+this day being offered up throughout the world. The congregation cannot
+better celebrate his memory than by fulfilling their duties on behalf
+of human love and charitableness, and by doing their part towards the
+relief of the sufferings of wounded soldiers.
+
+The stained-glass windows begin to brighten. Day is breaking outside.
+The congregation sings a German song in honour of St. Francis. A friar
+once more steps up to the altar and rings a little bell. I cannot take
+my eyes off these friars and sisters, who have come straight from the
+battlefields and hospitals, and whose thoughts are now so peacefully
+centred round the name of the great patriarch. How moved they seem,
+how eagerly they make the sign of the cross to betoken their piety!
+In a picture opposite the choir the crucified Christ looks down from
+the height of His agony on to the kneeling figures. “_Per omnia secula
+seculorum, Dominus vobiscum. Gratias agimus Domino Deo nostro. Unus
+est Deus, unus est Dominus._” The bell rings once more, the censers
+are swung on their chains, and it almost seems as if the Virgin Mary
+and Saint Helena had stepped out of the gloom around the altar and had
+approached us.
+
+The attendant friars greet one another by placing their hands on one
+another’s shoulders and head. Holy Communion is administered to the
+congregation, and once more the eternal refrain is chanted: “_Per omnia
+secula seculorum._” It makes one think of all the brave ones dying
+out in the trenches and of the flower of the male youth of two noble
+nations which is being sacrificed on the altar of shell fire. Maybe
+the thoughts of the nuns and monks, too, are more taken up with the
+strife now shaking the world to its foundations, than with the peace
+surrounding the name of the Holy Francis. Perhaps the thought of all
+the soldiers who have died before their eyes is clouding their mental
+vision. It cannot be easy to die when one is young and strong, and
+has all one’s life before one. But the honour of the country demands
+that its men be sacrificed. Their memory shall live “_per omnia secula
+seculorum_.” _Coronas decoris meruerunt._
+
+The candelabra on the communion table are now lighted. But they are no
+longer needed, daylight once more reigns outside and Saint Helena’s
+features now look down clearly on all beholders. Round her lips plays a
+smile full of gentleness and goodness. She, the friend of the helpless
+and suffering, seems to rejoice to see so many brethren and sisters
+devoting their best energies to the relief and care of wounded and
+dying soldiers.
+
+But now the devotions are over and my Franciscan friar leads me to
+the colonnade, where the sisters give us coffee with beautiful white
+wheaten bread and marmalade. Here we spend an agreeable hour together
+before parting.
+
+The Protestant field service was held at half-past nine. The worship
+took place at a quiet street corner under the open sky, a safer place
+than the fields outside the town, where a large gathering of people
+would make a welcome target for a French airman’s bombs. A few hundred
+soldiers and some fifty officers forgathered here. An octette from the
+regimental band began playing a psalm--we Swedes know it well--it has
+been sung before the blue and yellow standards of Gustavus Adolphus,
+before the Carolins at Narva, on the banks of Vabitj, on the plains
+of Ukraine, and has brought solace and comfort to the poor forgotten
+prisoners in Siberian thraldom: _Ein feste Burg ist Unser Gott_. The
+soldiers joined in with their strong clear voices. Perhaps one ought
+to have seen and heard this sort of thing to realise what Swedes and
+Germans have in common. At one time we gave each other the noblest
+and the best that we possessed. The Lutheran faith preserved by the
+sword of Gustavus Adolphus was the seed and life germ which has given
+birth to that Germanic culture which to-day is fighting for its
+existence. None of us can escape the responsibility for the inviolable
+preservation of the common heritage. Our German brethren are now
+shedding their hearts’ blood in a cause which in equal measure concerns
+ourselves, and for which Sweden’s greatest Kings gave their all and
+their lives.
+
+Pastor Marguth of Hessen conducted the service from some stone steps.
+He was attired in a black gown and, like all other chaplains of the
+Field Army, he wore round the arm a white and violet band. Taking the
+Epistle to the Romans as his subject, he spoke on the strength which
+the Gospel gives. From that he passed to the stirring world conflict
+which now filled everyone’s thoughts. He spoke of the irresistible
+power sometimes imparted to a people with the knowledge that it has a
+ruler who likewise is a real leader. The Emperor had done all within
+human power to avert the war, he said. The Emperor wanted peace, but
+when he was forced into the war he knew what his position was and
+understood what the people asked of him, and trusting in his people he
+did not hesitate to strike a blow for Germany’s existence and future.
+
+He spoke of the nation’s sense of duty, which is the first prerequisite
+of victory. The people _know_ what they must do when duty calls. “We
+must thank God for His infinite grace in thus making us united and
+strong in our time of trial, in our direst but also our greatest hour.”
+Then he touched upon the spirit of the soldiers and their firm resolve
+to fight to the last drop of blood and not to give way until the last
+man and the last horse has fallen. He spoke with simple eloquence, no
+flowers and no phrases. He spoke manfully with cheerful confidence
+and an unshakable faith in victory, and the German words roused a
+ringing echo from the old French houses opposite. “_Vater unser, der
+du bist im Himmel._... _Der Herr segne Euch und behüte Euch._” In
+conclusion another psalm was intoned. It was sung in swelling, rousing
+tones, as if they were on the eve of the triumphal entry through the
+Brandenburger Tor in Berlin. Here they stood, these broad-shouldered,
+sturdy Teutons, in the hey-day of youth and strength, with eyes
+flashing beneath their helmets--eyes whose vision would perhaps be
+dimmed for ever to-morrow in the trenches. I thrilled with emotion as
+I heard the ringing song, and thought: These men may know the art of
+dying, but their nation can never die. And this thought led to the
+reflection: I am sorry for the Powers who have combined to destroy it;
+what rivers of blood will flow before _they_ learn to understand that
+their aim, the destruction of Germany, is unattainable!
+
+          “Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär
+          Und woll’n uns gar verschlingen,
+          So fürchten wir uns nicht so sehr,
+          Es soll uns doch gelingen.
+          Der Fürst dieser Welt,
+          Wie saur er sich stellt,
+          Tut er uns doch nichts,
+          Das macht, er ist gericht,
+          Ein Wörtlein kann ihn fallen.”[20]
+
+[20]      And if the world with devils teemed,
+          All watching to devour us,
+          Yet are our hearts from fear redeemed,
+          Not they can overpower us!
+          And let the Prince of Ill
+          Look grim as e’er he will,
+          He harms us not one whit--
+          For why? His doom is writ;
+          A Word shall quickly slay him.
+
+                (_Congregational Hymn Book_ version, slightly modified.)
+
+Army chaplains almost form a race of their own. They are always
+cheerful, always wide-awake, self-sacrificing and dauntless. They are
+the soldiers’ priests, they preach for the living and comfort and
+console the dying. Creed no longer plays a part, the Protestant and
+Catholic chaplains are like brothers together. There is no rivalry
+between them, they have all _one_ God and _one_ aim, the welfare of
+their country. One often sees chaplains hurrying along on horseback,
+a cross round their neck, the black felt hat on their heads and the
+white and violet band round the left arm of the field tunic. They not
+infrequently wear the Iron Cross. This no doubt means that they have
+stood up in the midst of the shell fire and spoken of the Resurrection
+and the Life, or that with immovable calm they have remained at their
+post and addressed the congregation when enemy aviators were flying
+overhead. Or maybe that they have this very night in cold and rain
+crept between shrubs and bushes to reach the trenches and celebrate
+High Mass on Sunday for their occupants.
+
+Once more my thoughts fly away to our own immortal times of greatness.
+Pictures of solemn Carolin chaplains in boots and spurs seem to rise up
+before me, men who in strength and fortitude of soul were an example
+to the soldiers to be resolute and loyal unto death. I seemed to see
+as through a mist the regimental chalice placed upon the altar built
+up of silver tymbals, round which kneeling men and haughty officers
+throng to listen humbly to the Lutheran confession of faith, and to
+vow in ringing tones that in life and death alike they believe in the
+forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
+The battlefields are a sterile soil for atheism. Man is then too near
+his Maker and to the threshold of eternity.
+
+Our service ended quietly; no airmen came to disturb us, even the
+guns seemed to respect the day of rest. We took a walk round the
+town. The Town Hall, which looks on to an open space, has been turned
+into quarters for the Landsturm Guard, which is changed at midday.
+Officers also come in and out to receive their orders. Close by the
+Chief Command has been accommodated in the _Palais de Justice_, whilst
+another house has been chosen for the headquarters for the Commandant
+of the Lines of Communication. One sees no new or handsome houses. The
+streets look dull, with their monotonous, old-fashioned frontages,
+not old enough to bear the picturesque impress of antiquity. The only
+really attractive structure is the Church of Saint Morille; it looks
+old enough, in fact I was told by a native that it dates from the
+thirteenth century. Its façade is richly ornamented, but also bears the
+marks of bullets from 1792, so I was told. The interior of the church
+is gloomy and typically Catholic with its mighty pillars, its figures
+of the Virgin, its altar ornaments, memorial tablets and votive tablets
+to the Virgin.
+
+Facing the church is a statue of Taine on a pedestal, the front of
+which illustrates his genius reclining against a pile of bronze folios.
+Over the doorway of a house close by I read the words: “_Hippolyte
+Adolphe Taine de l’ Académie Française est né dans cette maison le 21
+avril 1828._”
+
+By the side of Taine’s statue stood three elderly citizens, busily
+chatting together. What they were talking of I do not know, but perhaps
+it was not hard to guess. I greeted them and they returned my greeting.
+I asked for some information about the church and about Taine, and
+from this we passed on to more practical subjects. It seemed that in
+common with many others they had decided to stop at Vouziers. Those who
+had left the town, about three thousand, had in their opinion acted
+unwisely, for they would find their houses and furniture ruined, whilst
+those who remained behind were able to safeguard their interests and
+property. Of the coming winter they hardly dared to think. It would
+be terrible, and would bring famine and destitution in its wake.
+“But the Prussians will have to provide us with our daily bread.”
+Their political views practically amounted to this: France cannot
+gain anything by this war, but can lose much; but France will fight
+nevertheless as long as there is a soldier left. To my question whether
+they ever received any news, they replied: “_Non, monsieur, nous sommes
+des zéros._” One feels the deepest compassion for these unhappy people
+whom God and the world seem to have deserted.
+
+On October 5th I had an opportunity of witnessing the sitting of a
+court-martial of the Chief Command of the Army. It had to deal with
+five cases of offences. This is not much for a whole army, when one
+knows that the slightest theft from a house is punished with the utmost
+severity. A more refreshing intermezzo is furnished by pay-day, which
+occurs three times a month. Both officers and men receive in war time
+nearly double their peace pay. Pay-day happened to come on one of the
+days I spent at Vouziers. The money is paid in notes, but also in coin.
+The day after, the field post had plenty to do, as from this single
+place alone the soldiers sent 250,000 marks by registered letter to
+their homes. A very large percentage of the enormous sums swallowed up
+by the army thus returns to Germany.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+  TO BELGIUM
+
+
+I had now camped long enough among the splendid officers of Duke
+Albrecht’s army, and began to long for fresh adventures. General von
+Seckendorff passed through Vouziers daily, and had courteously asked
+me just to tell him when I wanted to accompany him back to Sedan. But
+he always travelled northward at a late hour, and it so happened that
+one fine morning I suddenly felt inclined to start off. I went round
+and took a few groups at the railway station, such as French prisoners
+at work, a few doctors and nurses, an artillery transport train and
+a company of railway reserves. The station commander, Lieut.-Col.
+Böhlau, accompanied me. At first I thought I should like to take a
+military train to Sedan, but abandoned this plan on discovering that
+the next train would not start for several hours. The Colonel then
+made another suggestion. Since no officer’s car was leaving during
+the day I might accompany one of the large motor-wagons which carry
+the field post to the postal station at Sedan. An excellent idea! It
+was sure to be interesting to see how the field post was managed. The
+mail was not starting for a little while, and I even had time to lunch
+with my old set: von Behr, von Eichstedt and von Tschammer. I thanked
+these gentlemen, took leave with the customary _auf Wiedersehen_ and
+hurried away. Two young artillery lieutenants, Müller and Fuchs, had
+also been allowed to make use of the mail car. They had been so long
+under incessant fire that they needed a rest. One of them had been in
+many hard fights and wore his Iron Cross. They were both jolly and
+pleasant, and we were all three seated, with none too much room to
+spare, behind the mail-bags, which otherwise filled the entire vehicle
+up to the roof. We thus had a view to the rear over and on each side
+of an orderly standing on the platform. What was happening on the road
+ahead of us we could not see, but I had by now become familiar with its
+varied life. So off we went, rattling and jolting, towards Sedan.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH PRISONERS WORKING AT THE RAILWAY STATION AT
+VOUZIERS]
+
+[Illustration: ARMS AND KNAPSACKS OF DEAD AND WOUNDED--VOUZIERS]
+
+These wondrous bags, what tales did they not have to tell of the
+life at the front! One almost seemed to hear the old refrain: “_Lieb
+Vaterland, magst ruhig sein!_” How often had I not seen the soldiers
+sitting over their letters home--at the Cuirassier barracks in Vouziers
+at tables rigged up with planks and trestles, in streets and yards,
+using the mudguards of the cars or baggage-wagon cases as desks, or
+in subterranean caves behind the trenches, where they lay on their
+stomachs and wrote with their note-books as backing for the paper. If
+one were to take out a mail-bag haphazard and make it into a big, thick
+volume, and then read this volume from cover to cover, one could not
+fail to be impressed with the merry and cheerful outlook of the German
+soldiers, their faith in victory and their national vigour. One would
+look in vain for a single word, a single suggestion of complaint over
+long marches, excessive burdens, intolerable discipline, unnecessary
+drill at odd moments in between the fighting, insufficient or bad
+food. One would find that those who talk of marches, say that had they
+been double as long they would yet have managed them. As to weight of
+equipment, it is simply not mentioned. Discipline! If anybody mentioned
+it, he would say something like this: “Thank goodness we have officers
+who know what they want and take out of us what we can give, who punish
+if there is anything to be punished and who dare maintain that absolute
+discipline amongst the troops without which no army can win.” “These
+qualities,” they would add, “are possessed by our officers, and that is
+why we obey them, love them, trust them blindly, and gladly follow them
+into the fire.” Germans understand that silk gloves are out of place in
+a military education. They demand from their officers that inflexible,
+iron severity which is necessary for the proper moulding of an army
+into a whole, into an ever-ready instrument, and they do not permit
+anti-military agitation to foment that passive resistance against the
+leaders which is often discernible elsewhere. The German knows his
+power. He knows that it is the military discipline which pervades every
+fibre of the country’s body that has given them their strength. But
+they are not slaves, they are masters primarily of their own will and
+of their own actions.
+
+Does anyone think that this imaginary volume would contain a single
+word of fussy and squeamish complaints about food? No, one would
+read nothing but humorous and almost affectionate jests about the
+_Erbsenkanone_ (“pea-shooter”), the field kitchen, which is always
+there at the right moment when the soldier’s belly is empty. Doubtless
+there are many who have not touched food for forty-eight hours, if they
+have been lying under heavy fire in a trench. But to complain would
+never occur to them. They would only say what a wonderful sensation it
+was to get the hot pea-soup with its lumps of fat into their stomachs.
+Besides, they would probably have forgotten all about their misfortune
+by the time they wrote.
+
+[Illustration: A FIELD-KITCHEN OR “ERBSENKANONE” (“PEA-SHOOTER”)]
+
+This is the way they talk in their letters. And probably they write
+about the shell fire and the bayonet charges as if they were part of
+the routine of daily life. Every letter in the big book would contain
+affectionate but never sentimental greetings to father and mother,
+to wife and children, to sweethearts and sisters. So we were in
+excellent company, Müller, Fuchs and I, as we sat there and shook and
+jolted among the mail-bags on the twenty-eight mile journey to Sedan.
+That mail wagon carried a few days’ war history, disintegrated into
+atoms. I could not help time and again casting a glance at the bags
+and wondering what they had to say. I thought of the many farewell
+greetings they contained from soldiers for whom the fatal bullet had
+been cast and who would write no more field postcards, of the greetings
+from the wounded who would soon lose consciousness for ever, to be
+carried out to the great common grave in the local churchyard.
+
+My companions had much to tell about these things. But everything moved
+so swiftly and the wagon rattled so noisily that I forgot the greater
+part as fresh impressions came crowding into my mind. One of my new
+friends, after some fight was over, had gone up to a French soldier who
+lay on the ground with a nasty wound in the abdomen. He had stopped
+to see if he could help the wounded man before the ambulance arrived.
+The Frenchman wept bitterly and pulled out of his breast pocket the
+portrait of his sweetheart, which he showed the German officer. After
+he had looked at it eagerly for a couple of minutes, it slipped out
+of his benumbed hand and he sank back and died. Frenchmen also know
+how to die, and there are no words to express their bravery and heroic
+contempt of death.
+
+For three weeks Müller and Fuchs had shared the rough and the smooth
+together in their entrenched artillery position. At first they had
+suffered great hardships from rain and wet, but once they and their
+men had had time to dig themselves in properly, like moles under the
+earth, all had been well--especially when they had found some small
+stoves in neighbouring villages and installed them in their burrows.
+They soon became so accustomed to the shell fire that they slept like
+logs even when the air was filled with thunder and the impact caused
+the ground to tremble around them--that is, of course, if it was their
+turn to sleep! On Sunday, the 4th October, the day we heard Pastor
+Marguth preach, divine service had been held in the church at Cernay.
+Müller and Fuchs were there, and they told me that it was one of the
+most moving scenes they had ever witnessed. Too much light was not
+allowed, and on the altar alone a couple of candles were burning. But
+it was full moon and clear weather. The moonlight streamed in through
+the windows and illumined the aisle and pillars and the weather-beaten
+faces of the soldiers who had come in from their trenches or transport
+wagons. Meanwhile French shells were falling in the village, and
+there was a horrible rending and roaring from the explosions and the
+collapsing houses. But the chaplain did not permit himself to be
+disturbed. He seemed not to notice the pandemonium outside. He spoke
+without a quiver in his voice of the peace in God and the duty to one’s
+country. The soldiers listened immovable, and when the strains of the
+last hymn had died away and the lights had been put out they dispersed
+down the little streets and alleys, weirdly illumined by the moonlight
+and the fire from the burning houses.
+
+Thus the journey to Sedan was greatly shortened, and for my part I
+should have liked it to be double as long. But the mail van pulled
+up at the railway station, and there I had to say good-bye to my two
+interesting companions. On the platform stood Major von Plato at his
+post, jolly and cheerful as usual.
+
+“Tell me, my dear Major, is there any decent means of getting to Namur
+without having to encumber an officer’s car?”
+
+“There are no direct trains to Namur, but in twenty minutes there will
+be an ambulance train which can take you some distance into Belgium,
+and once you get so far, no doubt you can get along some other way. Of
+course, you must first have permission from the surgeon in charge of
+the train.”
+
+Whilst I was waiting for the doctor I went to have a look at a troop
+train--an infantry battalion, or something like it, crowded into
+third-class carriages. These travellers had come from Königsberg, and
+had swept East Prussia clear of the enemy, so they said, and now they
+were on the way to Verdun. Every compartment, with normally six seats,
+now also carried six men. But instead of sitting they were lying down,
+two on the floor, two on the seats, and two in the luggage racks. They
+were in the most exuberant spirits, and the din was fearful.
+
+Presently a messenger came to tell me that my surgeon had arrived and I
+went to see him. Judge of my surprise when I found it was Chief Staff
+Surgeon Dr. Fröhlich, whom I had met at Sedan and Vouziers!
+
+“May I come by your train?” I asked.
+
+“Why, of course, to Breslau, if you like.”
+
+“But, of course, you are going through Belgium?”
+
+“Yes, as far as Libramont, then we turn eastward and in four days we
+are at Breslau.”
+
+Dr. Fröhlich had now been travelling for some time between that city
+and Vouziers with wounded officers and men. Now he had upwards of three
+hundred patients on board, whom he was to drop here and there on the
+way until only a few remained to the journey’s end, where they would be
+taken charge of at some home hospital. That done, he would return as
+rapidly as possible with an empty hospital train to fetch a fresh batch
+of wounded. He is therefore constantly on the move with his staff of
+doctors and assistants, and he was very pleased to have company for a
+while.
+
+Time is up and the train starts with military punctuality, after we
+have taken a hearty farewell of the cheery Major von Plato. Presently
+we settled down in Dr. Fröhlich’s compartment, which almost resembled a
+little study. One wall was taken up by a sofa, the other by a couple of
+chairs, and a writing-table decorated with flowers in empty cartridge
+cases and still fresh, having been sent from the doctor’s home. Other
+tokens of his domestic ties were portraits of his wife and children and
+of a son and nephew fighting at Rheims. Here also lay an open diary,
+in which the doctor notes the incidents of his good work and enters
+such observations and discoveries as he may make in the course of
+his practice, together with various suggestions for improvements in
+hygienic arrangements in the field, which may be found of use in future
+wars--if any!
+
+We speed past a wrecked road bridge and a railway bridge which has
+been treated in the same way, and watch an airman ascending from earth
+in elegant circles, his wings tinted red by the evening sky. Here is
+another troop train--there is seemingly no end to all these soldiers.
+Wherever one goes and whatever time it is, everywhere one finds myriads
+of soldiers as in a gigantic ant-heap. By degrees twilight descends
+upon us, and the pretty scenery through which we pass evades my gaze.
+
+It is now dark. We sit still and chat whilst the train speeds on and
+the hours pass. The hours are short in Dr. Fröhlich’s company, but
+the train is interminably long--it consists of forty-two coaches. At
+Carignan, where the line swings round towards the Belgian frontier,
+and where the ground begins to rise, the train is divided into
+two sections, each drawn by two locomotives. We felt a tremendous
+pulling and tugging in our half. We are now on the “war road,” whose
+acquaintance I had made on the journey to Sedan. The wounded, dreaming
+about battlefields, bombs, and shells, must think that they have
+suddenly been overtaken by an earthquake, to put a finishing touch to
+their adventures. The cartridge cases with their flowers came hopping
+down from the table and we ourselves get a terrible shaking. But we are
+just as cheerful, and there are no pauses in our talk except when Dr.
+Fröhlich goes his round among the wounded.
+
+After a plain but excellent supper we retired to rest. At Bertrix the
+two halves of the train were put together once more, and the poor
+wounded soldiers are brought a stage nearer to the homeland.
+
+It was four o’clock when Dr. Fröhlich came in to call me, and a moment
+later we stopped at Libramont. Here our ways parted. But before saying
+good-bye we paid a visit to the kindly, cheerful sisters, who had
+steaming coffee ready at the station for the many travellers. Then we
+asked the station commander whether he could help me to get to Namur.
+
+“No, not the whole way, but as far as Jemelle. Once you get there, you
+will have no difficulty in finding somebody to take you the rest of the
+distance.”
+
+“Good; when does the train start?”
+
+“Now, immediately. But it isn’t exactly a train, only four coupled
+locomotives ordered from Jemelle.”
+
+I have indulged in many modes of locomotion, from the camels of
+Takla-makan to the rickshaws of Kioto, but it is a solemn fact that I
+had never yet travelled on a locomotive, and I therefore accepted the
+offer with the greatest alacrity. So I took farewell of the excellent
+Dr. Fröhlich, and was conducted with my baggage by a lantern-bearing
+Landsturm man across a few railway tracks to the four locomotives. The
+leading engine, which I climbed on to, had the tender in front. I thus
+had a clear view of the line and of the landscape which by degrees
+unfolded itself before me. But it was a cold and draughty journey.
+A thin coating of hoar-frost lay over the ground and its whiteness
+was emphasised by the moon, which cold and solemn floated above the
+tormented earth.
+
+The driver and fireman were sturdily built fellows, deliberate and
+imperturbable. Their sooty faces betrayed no emotion, no anxiety, but
+they kept their eyes glued on to the line ahead, ready to stop the
+engine on the slightest suspicion. They were not exactly overworked,
+for lately their duties had been reduced considerably; but a little
+while previously they assured me that they had had to work forty-eight
+hours without a break. The firing of _franctireurs_ along the line had
+ceased. They could now travel with a certain sense of security, but had
+nevertheless to be careful.
+
+The night is calm and still. We meet long military trains, looking
+weird and fantastic in the unaccustomed perspective, and the stations,
+at Hatrival, at Merwart, are encumbered with endless goods trains,
+now empty. Day gradually begins to dawn. Gardens and woods begin to
+take shape, and the leafy crowns of trees become more plainly outlined
+against the sky and the white ground. We pass over a wrecked bridge
+which has been repaired by German _pioniers_. Here comes Grupont with
+its arched bridge. It grows lighter and lighter. I begin to long for
+the sun and its warmth. The landscape is exceedingly pretty, with its
+wavy undulations and its little coppices and meadows dotted about. The
+driver offers me a little three-legged stool, and as the fireman opens
+the furnace door to throw in a few shovelfuls of coal, he smiles at me
+when I take the opportunity of warming my hands a moment.
+
+Forrières! Now the sun rises like a glittering golden ball, and gives
+colour to trees, fields and pastures, houses, gardens, and Landsturm
+men, now able once more to turn down their coat-collars.
+
+We arrive at Jemelle and step down. I thank my friends for their
+excellent company, but a tip is not accepted. On the platform comes
+a N.C.O. and asks what my business is. I show him my _Ausweis_, and
+he asks me to wait in the station commandant’s office until his
+arrival--it is now only 6.30 a.m. Inside a friendly stove is burning,
+in front of which I settle in an arm-chair and soon fall asleep.
+
+After a while Captain Haaf, the commandant, comes marching in and
+rouses me, mildly surprised at finding a total stranger in possession
+of his own office. But we are soon friends.
+
+“When is there a train to Namur?” I ask.
+
+“At 11.30 we have a supply train going through, and if you like to
+travel by that I shall be pleased to put on a passenger coach.”
+
+“Good, that will suit me excellently.” The Captain then took me to a
+Belgian restaurant close by, where a couple of breezy and talkative
+women soon served up a first-class breakfast. The Captain told me that
+they did not yet feel quite safe from the attentions of _franctireurs_.
+A few days previously a rifle bullet had been aimed at the
+station-house in Jemelle. The culprit was seized and court-martialled,
+but his fate had not yet been settled. In the neighbourhood of Houyet
+a band of Frenchmen had recently attacked some Germans, and a punitive
+expedition of 130 men had been sent out after them.
+
+Time is now up and the train steams away through the hilly country, its
+little villages and its cattle grazing in the pastures. As yet there is
+nothing to remind one of war but the Landsturm men on guard along the
+line, the railway troops at work here and there, and the troop trains
+halting at the stations. At Marloie one was standing in the station
+and we pulled up alongside of it. One of the carriages was taken up by
+Red Cross nurses, and as chance would have it, my window stopped right
+opposite one of theirs. A couple of the nurses were propped up against
+each other fast asleep, another couple were reading, the rest were
+knitting. One of them looked out through the open window. She looked
+very sweet in her light dress and the Red Cross on the arm.
+
+“Where have you come from and where are you off to?” I asked.
+
+“We come from Berlin and are going to Sedan,” she answered.
+
+“But surely there are hardly any wounded left in Sedan now; most of
+them have been taken into Germany.”
+
+“Yes, we have heard that is so, but no doubt plenty more will be coming
+down from the front. Where have you come from yourself?”
+
+“From the country south of Sedan.”
+
+“Are you a German?”
+
+“No, I am a Swede.” In the end I could not help introducing myself to
+the young lady and her companions. Conversation was soon in full swing
+and we had just got to know each other nicely when my train slowly
+glided out of the station. I just had time to wish them success in
+their charitable work, and in reply was greeted with friendly wavings
+from their window--and so that little idyll came to an end.
+
+On the way between Aye and Hogne some men belonging to a fatigue party
+made signs that they wanted to come on board. The train slowed down
+so that they could jump on to the step and get a free ride with their
+picks, spades, and rifles.
+
+To the left the country falls away in enormous flat wooded waves which
+die away on the horizon in a haze of dark green, light green, greenish
+blue, and bluish grey. Our train takes us through little woods and
+shrubs, coppices, clumps of fir and oak, and tunnels blasted through
+the solid rock. Now and then we come across a crowd of Belgian workmen
+at work on the embankment. The little signal-boxes along the line are
+guarded by Landsturm soldiers in pickets of ten to twelve men.
+
+The little town of Ciney boasts an unusually handsome station building,
+round which things seem livelier than elsewhere. Sometimes we meet
+colossal empty trains with straw in the goods-trucks and benches
+piled up topsy-turvy. One wonders whether they have been to carry
+reinforcements to the besieging army outside Antwerp. Often one sees
+attractive and well-kept kitchen gardens at the stations or between
+the fine-looking stone houses in the villages. At some distance from
+the railway we sight at length the fort of Naninnes, flying the German
+flag. Soon after we cross the Meuse by a _Kriegs-Eisenbahnbrücke_
+(war railway bridge), where we get a view of the remains of the old
+permanent bridges which were blown up during the first days of the war,
+and presently we enter the delightful and prettily situated little town
+of Namur.
+
+In order to get the information I needed, I applied to a Captain,
+a tall man with snow-white hair and beard, no less a person than
+professor emeritus Doctor B. Lepsius, who in spite of his age has gone
+out to the war. He is a great friend of Professor Svante Arrhenius, and
+looked after me like a father during my short stay in Namur.
+
+[Illustration: A DOCTOR, PROF. CAPT. LEPSIUS AND A FEW SŒURS DE LA
+PROVIDENCE IN THE CONVENT GROUNDS]
+
+After my baggage had been stowed away at an hotel by the railway
+station, we paid a short visit to the Governor, General von Hirschberg,
+who had no objection to letting me see one of the forts of the
+fortress. As companion I had, besides Professor Lepsius, Major Hans
+Friederich, of the General Staff.
+
+We drove to the northern fortifications and soon arrived at Fort
+Marchovelette, now called fort No. 1. Namur is, or rather was,
+surrounded by nine forts. In the Belgian days they were known by
+definite names, now they are merely numbered. The first impression
+that one gets of No. 1 is that the destruction has been less complete
+than in the Port Arthur fort where General Kondratenko was killed
+during the Japanese siege in 1904. I had an opportunity to visit that
+“eagle’s nest” exactly six years ago. It looked like a huge pile of
+broken stones and rubbish. But on closer examination of No. 1, one
+is astounded at the appalling effect of the fire from the German
+heavy artillery. The fort is triangular with one apex towards the
+north-east. Its glacis is covered with barbed wire-netting stretched
+out to a height of one metre between the iron posts driven vertically
+into the clay-bound soil. The netting is close, and covers a belt of
+thirty or forty metres. Inside is the moat, commanded by the fire from
+galleries in the counterscarp. At length we reach the heart of the
+fort with casemates for the garrison, armoured turrets for artillery,
+searchlights and fire control, and an infantry rampart like a belt
+round the grey cupolas on the summit.
+
+Ten to fifteen metres away, outside the barbed-wire zone, I noticed in
+the ground the crater of a 42-cm. shell, 30 metres in circumference
+and about 8 metres deep. On the almost vertical concrete walls of
+the scarp and counterscarp I saw the marks of shells of more normal
+dimensions--streaky scars radiating from the point of impact.
+Splinters of shells of various dimensions were still lying about. One
+queer-looking fragment of a 42-cm. shell was so heavy that I had to
+exert myself to as much as shift it. But then one of these “coal-boxes”
+weighs when whole hundreds of kilos. A little splinter which I
+took away with me showed that the metal had been expanded to about
+one-fourth of its original thickness.
+
+Everything regarding the giant mortars is kept secret. But this much I
+was told, that their range is enormous. The vertex of the trajectory
+is several kilometres above ground. The ranging is done with great
+precision, but of course one must be prepared for not hitting the
+target with the first shot or two. “Misses” are, however, very rare.
+The most exhaustive calculations and observations are made before the
+shots are fired. Observers are posted at suitable points as near the
+objective as possible; they are in communication with the gunners and
+report the point of impact. When a 42-cm. shell comes pounding down
+from a height of several kilometres, there is nothing built by human
+hands which can resist it.
+
+In fort No. 1 we saw a good instance of the effect of these gigantic
+projectiles. One shot had struck the annular armour round the cupola
+of the largest armoured turret, had passed through the half-metre of
+metal as if it had been butter and had then continued through a bed of
+concrete five metres thick. This shell was also provided with a _Zünder
+mit Verzögerung_.[21] If the fuse is set for retarded ignition the
+explosion only takes place a couple of seconds after the impact. If one
+cannot make sure that the projectile has first penetrated the material
+to be destroyed, its effect, at least on armoured concrete, would not
+be very disastrous.
+
+[21] Fuse timed for retarded ignition.
+
+The engineers from Krupp’s were now busy repairing the forts both at
+Namur and Liège, and a large number of men were engaged in this work.
+By repairing the occupied fortresses the Germans are strengthening
+their strategical position and can release considerable forces for the
+actual fighting line.
+
+The effect of the heavy artillery on the defending garrison will be
+realised when it is stated that at one fort seventy per cent of the
+complement were killed, whilst the remaining thirty per cent were
+severely injured. As we all know, the brave Commander of Liège, General
+Leman, was wounded in this way. In another fort were found forty
+bodies, which showed no trace of injury. It was evident that these men
+had succumbed to the gases of the projectiles or had been choked by the
+concrete dust which is said to whirl up in the most appalling manner
+and to penetrate everywhere. The air pressure had also flung many
+soldiers against the walls of the casemates, and they were subsequently
+found with broken skulls.
+
+One of the lessons which may be said to have been learnt in the present
+war is that even the most modern fortifications equipped with the
+most superb armoured turrets are useless when opposed by artillery of
+the calibre of the great German mortars. The circumstance that the
+projectile does not burst until it has penetrated into or even through
+the concrete bed gives rise to a havoc which challenges all attempt
+at description. Everything within the “bomb-proof arch” thus struck
+is rent asunder and destroyed without leaving a trace. The projectile
+first operates from above downward, and then from below upward through
+the explosion.
+
+The 42-cm. mortars are brought up to their emplacements on rails laid
+down especially for their conveyance.
+
+From fort No. 1 we returned to the town, which is at its prettiest at
+the point where the Sambre falls into the Meuse. South of the Sambre
+an exceedingly picturesque road winds its way up to the crest of the
+Citadelle height, on the slope of which the Stadion is also situated.
+Of the magnificent Grand Hotel Namur-Citadelle, which looked down from
+the top of the hill, there is nothing left but a skeleton of iron
+girders and brick walls. The proprietor was a German, and the Belgians
+suspected that on the approach of the Germans from the north-east he
+signalled to his countrymen. The building was therefore burnt down.
+But the view is left, and it is nothing short of superb, especially up
+the Meuse valley with its innumerable villas and châteaux lining the
+banks in the direction of Dinant, which are, or rather were, inhabited
+by wealthy Belgians, for most of them have gone away on account of the
+German occupation.
+
+The town of Namur itself has only suffered slightly from the ravages
+of war. The Hôtel de Ville has become a ruin, like many houses in its
+neighbourhood. But it is estimated that only about twenty houses in
+all have been wrecked by shell fire. The Germans have been blamed for
+the destruction they have wrought among human habitations, churches,
+public buildings and objects of artistic and historic value. Such
+losses are, of course, exceedingly regrettable. But neither attacker
+nor defender can pay any attention to such considerations when the
+fate of his country is at stake. If it is noticed by an armed force
+advancing to seize a place serving as a _point d’appui_ to the enemy,
+that the church tower is being used as an observation post, the church
+tower is shot down. When the Belgians suspected that Marche-les-Dames,
+the château of the Duchess of Ahrenberg, near Namur, famous for its
+priceless art treasures, was used for signalling purposes, they burnt
+it down. When it is a question of rendering the position of an invading
+army more difficult or of delaying its advance or cutting its lines
+of communication, the defender seems to shun no material sacrifices,
+even though he himself is the principal sufferer. Of the numberless
+bridges blown up by the Belgians in their own country, all in order
+to delay their enemy, there must be many which were of no importance
+whatever to the Germans. By so doing, the defenders brought upon
+themselves a treble loss, namely, the loss of the bridge itself, the
+cost of removal of débris, and the building of a new bridge after the
+end of the war--all this caused by a single blasting charge. But the
+defending army, which is always inferior, is nevertheless compelled,
+in a far greater measure than the attacking army, to effect wholesale
+destruction, more especially of buildings of architectural or historic
+value, whilst as often as not it lies in the interest of the attacker
+to preserve them. The blowing up of bridges is in itself a vandalism,
+but is fully justified if it is thought that strategic advantages
+can be obtained thereby. The destruction wrought by the Germans in
+their advance has partly been involuntary, and has partly had its
+cause in the conduct of the civilian population. But the Germans have
+never destroyed simply for the love of destruction. Assertions to the
+contrary are intended to create false notions, and it may be assumed
+with tolerable certainty that if the enemy armies had the opportunity
+of penetrating into Germany, they would, to say the least, bring about
+as much destruction as has been wrought in the countries now occupied
+by German armies.
+
+During the first period after the capture of Namur all windows facing
+the street had to be kept alight after dark, whilst the streets
+themselves were not lighted. The consequence was that people out
+of doors were not clearly discernible, but that if anyone were to
+fire from a window, he would be discovered immediately. At first all
+doors facing the street had to be left unlocked. But after a time the
+inhabitants, out of fear of the soldiers, asked to be allowed to close
+their doors, and this request was granted. At the time of my visit,
+that is to say on October 8th, Namur wore a very animated aspect. As
+late as half-past seven in the evening most shops were still open and
+the streets were well filled. Even the young ladies, who at first
+did not dare to go out, began to show themselves on the pavements.
+But the prohibition against being out of doors after 9 p.m. without
+special permit was still in force. On account of the many uniforms,
+military motor-cars and transport trains Namur looked more like a
+German garrison town than anything else. And yet this appearance was
+belied by the many white flags floating from the windows, especially in
+the principal streets, which indicated that the inhabitants of those
+particular houses had agreed to accept the new order of things. When
+one travels through Belgium one must harden one’s heart, for at every
+step one is reminded of the misfortune of having lost one’s liberty in
+one’s own country. And one thinks with horror of how it would feel to
+be placed in the same situation. A moral judgment is now being passed
+over Europe. Woe to the people which has not in time put its house in
+order, or which relies on paper treaties and declarations when force
+sits in the judgment seat and when none but the strong and wakeful
+inspire respect in _all_ directions.
+
+In the evening there was some sort of festivity at the officers’ mess
+of the 87th Landwehr Regiment. It was attended by the officers of the
+Higher Command who happened to be in the town. I also had the honour to
+be present, and spent a couple of very agreeable hours between Generals
+von Hirschberg and Rathgen.
+
+On the 9th October I made an excursion by motor-car to the magnificent
+and wealthy convent of Champion, founded in 1834 and now the home of
+180 _Sœurs de la Providence_. Its great hall was gorgeously decorated
+in white and gold, and had stained-glass windows. Many wounded warriors
+had been housed here, and we paused more especially before two Belgian
+soldiers from fort No. 1, who had been badly burnt on face and hands,
+but were now on the road to recovery. After some considerable
+hesitation I was at last allowed to photograph a few of the charming
+and hospitable nuns in the convent garden.
+
+We thereupon looked in for a while at the really magnificent _Hôpital
+Militaire_ with its one hundred and fifty wards and rooms, its seven
+hundred wounded, its twenty-three doctors and one hundred and forty
+male and female ‘sick’ attendants. Right from the beginning there
+have only been eighteen cases of tetanus, most of them attended with
+fatal results. All possible nationalities were represented amongst
+the patients. But from England there was only one patient, a handsome
+youth, badly wounded by several bullets. He seemed to be in a deep
+sleep and his face was pale and drawn with suffering. A couple of
+days before he had lost a chum, and one of the nurses told us that he
+had felt dreadfully lonely after his friend’s bed had stood empty.
+He seemed indeed terribly alone amongst all these strangers. I could
+not take my eyes off him, and it was touching to see how he lay there
+waiting--for what, I wonder? He seemed to lie there as the innocent
+incarnation of a policy which is doomed to die, and for which he
+himself had laid down his life.
+
+A band was beating an old Hessian tattoo in the square between the
+cathedral and the Government building when at half-past two, after
+dining with the Governor, I stepped into the car which he had kindly
+placed at my disposal. I was going to Brussels _via_ Waterloo, and was
+to arrive before dusk. Of Major Friederich I obtained an excellent
+map of Belgium, and after saying good-bye to the venerable but still
+youthful Professor Lepsius and my other new friends, I soon left
+the town behind me. I had with me a chauffeur and an orderly, both
+armed with carbines. The car was a little grey monster with flag and
+streamer. As regards speed, there seemed to be no limits to its powers.
+We drove, nay, we flew, at over fifty English miles an hour when
+travelling at our fastest. I wondered whether the object was to make
+the aim of _franctireurs_ more difficult by presenting them with a more
+swiftly moving target.
+
+Villages, gardens and fields tore past, and the pace was too great for
+careful observations and notes. But it is a delightful and exhilarating
+sensation; one becomes intoxicated with the sensation of speed, and
+any feeling of danger vanishes with the desire to drive on faster, and
+still faster!
+
+On the left we first pass fort No. 4, the repairs to which have now
+been practically completed. The high road is in excellent condition,
+and there is a little traffic in the shady avenues. Life seems slowly
+to be returning to its old grooves. In front of farms and houses by the
+roadside we notice German soldiers engaged in more or less laborious
+but always friendly and often jocular conversation with Belgian women,
+or playing with their children after the fashion of uncles. The
+country is flat, with hardly noticeable undulations. In the fields,
+which make a pleasing picture with the farm hands busily at work, the
+crop has been piled up in enormous cylindrical stacks crowned with
+shallow conical hoods intended to keep the water off the corn. At
+Gembloux--with its memories of 1815--a Red Cross flag almost fills the
+entire street, with the armed Landsturm men keeping watch below in
+their shining helmets.
+
+The stone houses in the villages look very substantial, but are far
+less picturesque and pretty than our own red cottages with the dark
+pine forest as background. At Wawre a house has been wrecked here and
+there. By the roadside is the lonely grave of a dead soldier. In front
+of it, on the road, an old woman is driving a barrow drawn by a dog.
+And so one impression succeeds the other.
+
+After Overyssche the road turns off sharp to the left and runs through
+La Hulpe and a number of other villages, until at last we reach the
+famous battlefield of Belle Alliance.[22] This spot is one of the
+sights for those who visit Brussels. In peace time there are on an
+average 450 visitors a day to the great hall erected outside Waterloo,
+in which a gigantic panorama, measuring 110 metres in circumference,
+gives an excellent idea of one of the most dramatic moments of the
+battle. Attention is especially directed to the group representing
+Marshal Ney’s furious onslaught with the French Guards against
+Wellington’s artillery and infantry positions south-west of Mont St.
+Jean. The foreground is strewn with soldiers and horses lying dead
+amongst the grass and lumber, and the whole has been carried out in
+natural size, with detached life-size figures gradually merging with
+bewilderingly telling effect into the painted canvas and its excellent
+perspective. Some way off one sees Napoleon on his white charger,
+attended by his Staff, and in the far distance the old Hussar General
+Blücher with his Prussians, who on that day saved England from
+perdition. One sees the burning villages around, the roads with their
+avenues of trees and the shady groves at Ohain and Château de Goumont.
+
+[22] The German name for the battle of Waterloo (Translator).
+
+But reality itself is after all more interesting. I walk up to the
+crest of the hill, some sixty metres high, on which stands a lion
+of colossal dimensions, unveiled ten years after the battle by the
+Netherlands Government. The lion is cast from captured French guns,
+and its base merely bears the inscription: XVIII June MDCCCXV. It is
+not the conquered Titan who is symbolised by this pompous lion, but
+the united powers who made an end of his career. The wounded bronze
+eagle on his piece of rock, recently put up by the French in memory of
+the battle, illustrates in a dignified manner the glorious but unhappy
+struggle of Napoleon and the French arms. But the lion remains at his
+post and looks out defiantly upon the historic landscape.
+
+Around us we now see the actual panorama with its shaded roads, its
+villages and church towers, its gardens and fields. Some of these are
+green--where clover or sugar-beet is grown; others blend in brown and
+grey--where the crops have been brought in and the plough has furrowed
+the soil afresh, and harvesters, ploughmen, grazing cattle, and other
+rural scenes form a picture which seems to speak only of peace and
+tranquillity.
+
+Dusk is descending over the tormented, blood-drenched earth and the
+wind sweeps dismally over fields and hills where the echo of the
+ancient guns and the rattle of harness and stirrups, crossed lances,
+and doughty sword-thrusts died away just on a hundred years ago. A
+feeling akin to reverence steals over the wanderer on this battlefield,
+still marked with the monuments put up by those who wished to honour
+their dead. Everything recalls his name, that great name still living
+as vivid and as fresh as ever, and undimmed by the dark nights which
+for wellnigh a hundred years have clothed in their shadows the country
+between Mont St. Jean and Planchenois.
+
+Now German soldiers are on guard at the battlefield of Waterloo and
+its historic monuments. Once more the Prussians have taken charge of
+the spot where the bravery and loyalty of their ancestors under the
+iron will of Blücher broke Napoleon’s strength and gave the British
+general a victory which he alone would never have been able to achieve.
+Wellington’s country followed the policy which had been its lodestar
+ever since the time of William of Orange. All that can jeopardise
+England’s supremacy on the high seas must be crushed--if possible
+by foreign arms. When the powers of the Continent have weakened one
+another with war, England has stepped in and reaped the harvest.
+Her position in the world has been gained more through felicitous
+combinations of circumstances than through any efforts and sacrifices
+of her own. It is only when Belgium has seemed near to falling into the
+hands of some strong continental power that England has felt obliged to
+put her hand to the plough, for her own skin has then been threatened.
+But the intervention has then been effected under the cloak of the plea
+of defending the minor states against the enemy’s violation of the
+rights of nations. At the beginning of the nineteenth century France
+was too great and powerful for England. Its Emperor must therefore be
+crushed for all time. Hence the vanquished monarch was placed in a cage
+on a crag in the ocean, and his gaoler obeyed but too promptly the
+orders he received from London. Now the centenary is to be celebrated
+with the crushing of Germany. But the success of a hundred years ago is
+not being repeated.
+
+Hush, is not that the thunder of the guns of Antwerp? We listen. No,
+all is still. My chauffeurs, still with the poor captive lion, cannot
+understand what has happened. Daily for the past two weeks they assure
+me they have heard the guns, and now all is suddenly still. We do not
+even see the glare of burning houses northward. Perhaps it is the wind
+and fog. My companions have been told that during the previous night
+1500 shells had been flung into the unhappy city, where the destruction
+must have been appalling. However, I say to myself, even the German
+artillery will need some time to take a place like Antwerp, which,
+according to English and French sources, is the world’s strongest
+fortress and absolutely impregnable.
+
+We jumped into the car once more and quickly covered the remaining
+eleven English miles to Brussels. The road is paved with stone, and
+seems one long street lined with continuous rows of houses. The
+electric tramways are running and entire trains pass us filled with
+Germans and Belgians. Villages and suburbs here follow one another
+in endless succession, and the traffic becomes livelier. Grey-clad
+sentries with fixed bayonets are everywhere to be seen, but all is
+quiet and peaceful. Yet we almost feel the covert hatred in the glances
+directed on our military car and its German flag. We meet proud women
+with heads held high and faces set, old ladies in mourning and frowning
+elderly men with fists clenched in their pockets.
+
+The shadows of night were falling when we reached the capital of the
+German Governor-General of Belgium. But the streets were well lighted,
+as were the windows of shops and restaurants. There were plenty of
+people about, but we saw no vehicles which were not occupied by German
+officers and men.
+
+We drive up to the corner of _rue de la Loi_, where we are stopped by
+a double sentry. I show my paper, they step aside, and we drive up to
+the Palace of Ministers. “Where does the Governor-General live?” I ask
+my chauffeur, and he answers that we shall be there in a minute. He
+stops outside the _Ministère des Sciences et des Arts_. In the gateway
+stands a strong guard. I am taken across a courtyard and into a long
+corridor with German name-plates on the doors. On one I see the name
+of Lieutenant Massebus, and it is him I want to see, for he is one of
+the adjutants. He told me that the Governor-General had spent the day
+outside the beleaguered city of Antwerp, but that he was certain to
+return by nine, if I would renew my visit then.
+
+I accordingly proceeded to the _Palace Hotel_, the 400 rooms of which
+were nearly all occupied by German officers. At the appointed time
+I was back in the vestibule leading to the reception rooms of the
+Governor-General. Several officers were waiting there. Amongst them I
+made the acquaintance of a man whose name I had already heard, namely,
+Captain Dreger, engineer at Krupp’s and joint designer of the 42-cm.
+mortars. This subject was, of course, taboo, but instead, Captain
+Dreger told me that he had arrived in Bombay in October, 1908, a week
+after I had left that city, and that he had literally pursued me via
+Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hongkong, and Shanghai--with hardly a
+week’s interval.
+
+“Who is in there just now?” I asked.
+
+“It is Frau Martha Koch, of Aleppo,” an adjutant tells me; “she and
+her husband and children have lived there for thirty years. The
+Governor-General is an old friend of the family from the time he lived
+in Turkey. Now she has come to offer her services for the Red Cross.”
+
+An officer who had spent the day with the Governor-General shook
+his head as he said: “It’s a wonder that we still have him with us.
+Every day he exposes himself to the most appalling risks. The other
+day a shell came sweeping along a few metres over his head, but he
+only smiled.” “Yes,” declared another officer, “he seems to delight in
+danger. He always picks out the most dangerous spots--one is almost
+tempted to think that he wants to be shot. It would be a nice ending
+to a brilliant career. But whilst the bullets avoid him, they are not
+so kind to those in his vicinity. He even goes as far as to walk up
+to the firing line, where he lies down and jokes with the soldiers.
+Of course, his presence is in the highest degree encouraging to them.
+One day, accompanied by a soldier, he walked up to one of the enemy’s
+trenches, and although it had been quiet for some time there was no
+knowing whether it was empty. Fortunately it proved to be so. When
+his Excellency returned, we reproached him for his daring. ‘But there
+was no one there,’ he answered innocently. ‘No, but it might quite
+well have been occupied by enemy soldiers.’ ‘True, but in that case
+I should probably not have gone.’” Just as we were standing there
+and talking about him, who should come out into the vestibule but
+his Excellency himself, who kindly asked me to walk in. I knew him
+from the _Deutsch-asiatische Gesellschaft_ in Berlin, where under his
+chairmanship I had lectured about my last journey. He, too, greeted me
+as an old friend, and wanted me to begin with to meet Frau Koch.
+
+The Governor-General of Belgium, Field-marshal General Baron Colmar von
+der Goltz, formerly in Turkish service, and now once more sent by the
+Emperor to the Sultan’s side, is a man of seventy-one years of age, but
+he retains his vigour and energy undiminished. He was now thoroughly in
+his element. He is a powerfully built man, thick-set, and rather below
+the medium height; he looks out from under his spectacles in a friendly
+and jovial way and seems to me more like a professor than a general. As
+a matter of fact he is a very learned man, who has published many books
+on military history which are ranked very high, especially about the
+Franco-German war of 1870-71, in which he took part.
+
+When we were alone, he told me the great news of the fall of Antwerp
+on the same day and of the entry of the German troops at three o’clock
+in the afternoon. So it was not to be wondered at that we had heard no
+sound of cannonading from Waterloo. I seized the opportunity of asking
+at once whether I should be permitted to visit Antwerp, the sooner the
+better, as it might be interesting as well as instructive to know what
+a large city which had just capitulated looked like. Why, of course I
+might! I should be allowed to see practically all I wanted, and if I
+liked I could return the next morning directly after seven o’clock and
+would then be told whether I could proceed at once without undue risk.
+
+After we had discussed the situation a few minutes longer I went home.
+It was then ten o’clock, German time, which, by the way, had been
+made the standard time after the occupation and was an hour ahead of
+Belgian time. At nine o’clock all shops and restaurants were closed
+and the streets were silent and still. Across the square outside the
+Palace Hotel and _Gare du Nord_ I was not allowed to go, in fact anyone
+attempting to do so was politely stopped by a Belgian policeman or even
+Belgian civilians. The reason was probably that the square must be kept
+free for military cars, of which there were always a great number lined
+up outside those buildings.
+
+The tramways cease running at ten o’clock. After that the city is empty
+and deserted, its population having gone to bed.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+  ANTWERP THE DAY AFTER ITS FALL
+
+
+For manifold and obvious reasons I will refrain from any attempt to
+describe the progress of the German army’s advance on Antwerp and of
+the operations which culminated in the conquest of the city on the 9th
+of October. Still less does it become me to pronounce judgment on the
+manner in which the Belgians and the English defended this city which
+the allies thought impregnable, especially since certain parts of the
+country south of Antwerp had been placed under water. All this will, in
+due course, be described in the minutest detail by the German General
+Staff, and also in a more popular form by Germans who took part. For
+me it is sufficient to say a few words by way of preface to what I saw
+myself.
+
+To a layman it would appear a hopeless proposition to capture an
+“impregnable” fortress whose environs have been inundated and whose
+forts and interior area are defended by considerably over one hundred
+thousand men, but when that layman learns that the Germans not only
+achieved the conquest but completed it in thirteen days with almost
+insignificant losses, he is constrained to admit that the German army
+evidently possesses qualities which make it greatly superior to the
+allied armies and which mark it as the most consummate instrument of
+war of our time. German generals of fortifications themselves admit
+that Antwerp, if not _the_ strongest of the world’s fortresses, may
+nevertheless be said to be one of the three strongest, the other two
+being Metz and Paris. But before the new heavy artillery even this
+bulwark of Belgium’s and Britain’s hope was doomed. Nevertheless, after
+the officers of the German General Staff, Artillery and Engineers had
+thoroughly examined the equipment and resources for defence, they were
+emphatic in asserting that had it been _their_ task to defend Antwerp,
+the city would not have capitulated in thirteen days.
+
+On its two lines of defence, the outer and the inner, Antwerp possessed
+forty-nine forts and redoubts, all equipped with the latest appliances
+and devices of modern technological science. The outer line had a
+circumference of ninety kilometres, and for complete investment
+would have compelled the attacking army to operate on a front of 120
+kilometres. But for a regular siege, carried out according to the
+accepted rules and canons of warfare, the Germans had no time--they had
+better use for their troops in other quarters. It is always endeavoured
+to shorten the attack as much as possible. From the artillery positions
+in a line with the village Heyst op den Berg the Germans proceeded to
+bombard the great southern forts--with what effect I will show later.
+Their resistance was entirely broken. But in order to reach the inner
+girdle of defence as well as the city itself, it was necessary to force
+the passage of the Nethe and silence the British artillery on the
+northern bank of the river. The new line was marked by the towns of
+Malines, Duffel and Lierre. The Nethe was crossed by soldiers swimming
+through the ice-cold water with ropes between their teeth in order
+subsequently to be able to haul the pontoons across. When once this was
+achieved, Antwerp’s fate was sealed. At eleven in the evening of the
+7th of October the bombardment of the city itself began. By an express
+order of the Emperor all buildings of great historic and art value,
+such as the cathedral, the other churches, the town hall, museums,
+etc., were to be spared. The zoological gardens were also on the list
+of items which were not to be bombarded.
+
+The bombardment continued the whole of the 8th of October and fire
+broke out at several points. In the evening and in the night these vast
+conflagrations were visible from a great distance and threw their ruddy
+light against the vapours rising from the sea and the whirling smoke
+clouds. During the night preceding the 9th October the bombardment
+increased in violence and continued until the forenoon. Then suddenly,
+at eleven o’clock, the firing ceased. At three the victorious German
+troops entered the city with bands playing and colours flying. There
+was no fighting in the streets and no shooting from windows by
+civilians. Antwerp suffered no damage beyond that sustained by the
+bombardment.
+
+This, as I have said, happened at three o’clock on the 9th of October.
+It was now seven in the morning of the 10th, and I was on the way
+to the _Palais_ of the Governor-General in the _Rue de la Loi_,
+opposite the Park. At the entrance I was met by three cheerful young
+officers, who greeted me as if we had been boys together. They had
+been instructed by the Field-marshal to accompany me to Antwerp. “If
+it pleases you, we will start at once, the car is ready.” “Excellent.”
+The chauffeur immediately started the engine and took his place at
+the wheel. At his side sat a soldier and inside the open car were the
+three officers and myself. All the Germans carried revolvers. We had
+also three carbines conveniently at hand. It was plain that the road
+was considered unsafe, and that the visit to the conquered city was not
+altogether without danger. As yet we had received no information to
+show the mood of the inhabitants of the captured city during the night
+and early morning. “To me it is quite the same whether I am shot now
+or later, one has to die in any case,” said Lieut. Classen, who was a
+great philosopher and full of comical fancies and stories. My other two
+travelling companions were Lieut. Dr. Hütten of Stettin and Lieut. Dr.
+Walter Kes of Steglitz. The latter was on the active list even in peace
+time, and yet a doctor of philosophy, a combination which I am told is
+very rare.
+
+The moment we were ready we started off. The pace from the first was
+terrific. The journey was exciting and remarkable in every way. It must
+not be wondered at that my notes were few and scanty--the blame must
+be put on the speed at which we were travelling. We sat in a state of
+tense excitement. To my travelling companions the northern portion,
+at all events, of this road was unknown, as was the city itself, and
+a road over which an army has just passed is obviously full of tracks
+and ruts. Merely to take in what one sees under such circumstances
+is no bad achievement, and demands, from a layman at least, a
+certain quickness of perception. Before one had heard the end of the
+explanation of one phenomenon, something fresh has to be noted, which
+in a trice cuts off the previous train of thought. The whole becomes a
+chaos of fragments which leave a confused and dazed general impression.
+But to follow certain threads from their inception to their logical
+conclusion is impossible. I will, therefore, give the fragments as they
+were impressed on my mind, leaving it to the description of subsequent
+visits to Antwerp to dwell more fully on the most interesting points.
+
+Before we knew where we were, the great city of Brussels, whose
+streets at this early hour were silent and empty, had been left behind
+and we were out in the open country; here and there a house or a
+village, a clump of trees or a haystack, would peep out of the fog
+still struggling against the morning sunlight. Through a glorious old
+gateway between two round turrets we tear at the same reckless pace
+into Malines, or, in German, Mecheln, the seat of the Archbishop and
+famous for its magnificent cathedral, which traces its history to the
+latter part of the thirteenth century and whose mighty towers, dating
+from 1452, had been intended originally to surpass in height all other
+cathedral towers of Christendom. Yet the height of ninety-seven metres,
+at which the builders stopped, suffices to impress the beholder. On
+misty days such as this the cathedral is not visible until one is upon
+it, but when the air is clear it becomes a landmark for miles around.
+The tower clock, with its face measuring thirteen and a half metres in
+diameter, has ceased to mark the fleeting hour. The Germans had found
+that this point of vantage had been used for observing their artillery
+positions and the effect of the defenders’ fire, hence the tower was
+bombarded, an adventure which did not suit the sober habits of the
+clock.
+
+[Illustration: MALINES CATHEDRAL, SOUTH ASPECT]
+
+Presently we come to the south portal beneath the giant windows,
+through the lower part of which a shell has made its way into the
+church. A couple of projectiles have struck between the window and the
+pillars of the south aisle. From the north the cathedral has also been
+fired upon, but this damage was done by the retreating Belgian troops,
+who were anxious to prevent the Germans from reaping the desired
+benefits of the capture of the city.
+
+From the outside the damage does not seem to be extensive, as my
+photograph shows. It can easily be repaired. But we have now no time to
+give to the interior of the cathedral, we merely cast a hasty glance
+at the destruction which the shells have wrought. Blocks and chips
+of fallen stone lie everywhere. A layer of limestone dust covers the
+archiepiscopal tombs. But the statues of the Apostles, which adorn the
+columns between the aisles, are untouched, and the precious pictures
+of van Dyck, Verhaghen and other masters had been saved before the
+bombardment began. Wondrous silvery tones descend to us from above,
+caressing the mighty arches. No doubt a bell-ringer or watchman is
+testing the carillon--a welcome music--perhaps a thank-offering that
+the cathedral has not been more severely visited by the havoc of war.
+
+The little town lies still and empty, and its streets are lifeless
+except for the troops and transport trains marching through, and the
+number of stray dogs, half wild, who are sniffing for their lost
+masters among the ruins. The main street leading to the cathedral
+recalls in a horrible manner the ravages of war, the relentless
+destroyer of peaceful homes. On the left we pass a house the interior
+of which has been laid completely bare by a shell, reminding one of
+the geological section of a piece of rock blasted for railway work.
+The ground floor is a pile of wreckage and lumber. From the first
+floor a tangle of draperies, curtains or mats is dangling down towards
+the street, like shreds of red flags, and the joists and girders
+between the first and second floors have collapsed, creating a perfect
+scrap-heap of wrecked furniture. On the second floor, however, a part
+of a room has been left intact, revealing a cupboard, a child’s cot,
+and, strange to say, a looking-glass which still hangs perfectly
+uninjured on its hook.
+
+[Illustration: A HOUSE OF MALINES “LAID OPEN” BY SHELL FIRE]
+
+Leaving on our right the _Grand’ Place_ with the town hall and other
+old-world buildings, and the pretty statue of Margaret of Austria,
+we cross another canal and debouch on the main road to Antwerp. Here
+we proceed between the important forts of Waelhem and St. Catherine,
+surrounded by their evil-looking belts of barbed-wire entanglements and
+_trous-de-loup_, and tack cautiously between the immense craters formed
+in the middle of the road by shell explosions. Some of these shells had
+dealt very roughly with the electric tramway lines running into Antwerp
+from this point. One projectile, which had struck close to the track,
+had merely succeeded in twisting the rails slightly upward, leaving
+them suspended over the pit by their sleepers. There was room for Dr.
+Hütten to stand upright under them, an experiment which we made later
+on when we could better afford the time.
+
+Onwards we fly through this country, levelled by the alluvial mud of
+rivers almost to the flatness of the sea outside. It is fertile soil
+and every inch almost is cultivated, and we were almost startled to see
+a puny little clump of pines standing lost and forlorn by the roadside.
+Otherwise there is nothing but parks and ploughed fields, kitchen
+gardens and nurseries. But many of the farms, châteaux and villas
+dotted about the country have been wrecked by German shells, whilst
+others have been levelled to the ground by the defenders themselves in
+order to clear the line of fire. On both sides of the road we observed
+some excellent field fortifications, which the Belgians had thrown up
+on retiring northward, and we noticed that bowl-shaped recesses have
+been excavated at the sides of the ditches for protection against the
+rain of shrapnel bullets. On the left, great tracts of country are
+still under water. Rafts made of barrels, used by the Germans to cross
+certain waterways, are still floating about.
+
+The population seems to have vanished into space. It is but rarely
+that one sees a forlorn-looking peasant or other mortal who had chosen
+to face the hurricane of battle. Yet the life on this great highway
+almost beggars description and the traffic increases the further
+north we get. It is the same familiar transport trains in the same
+endless columns, looking exactly as they did on the southern roads
+and travelling in the same exemplary order. Again we see the same old
+Landwehr troops, halting beside roads and trees, with rifles piled and
+coats, life-belts and cartridge pouches slung over the bayonet. And
+here we have entire regiments of Landsturm, with men well into the
+forties in the ranks, plodding on their way towards Ghent. There is no
+lack of cheery humour and everyone is in good spirits; the men march
+along with the light-hearted step of young soldiers and sing as if
+they were going to a harvest festival, with flowers tied to the rifle
+barrel and more flowers in wreaths round their necks. After five days’
+uninterrupted railway journey they are now marching the last forty-five
+kilometres to reach their post, where they are to guard the German
+lines of communication in western Belgium, an important and hazardous
+task, for even here the Fatherland may claim the sacrifice of their
+lives. That is why they sing so gaily. Yet wives and children have been
+left behind. It is for _their_ liberty and happiness that they fight
+and fall at their post. They _know_ what is at stake. The greater the
+progeny they have given their country, the more they have to defend and
+the more important it is for them that Germany’s liberty and future
+greatness shall be assured.
+
+[Illustration: BELGIAN PRISONERS AT MALINES]
+
+At some of the aristocratic villas and châteaux lining the road we
+take the liberty of paying a visit. A few of them are guarded by some
+faithful old retainer, others are empty and deserted. In none of them
+the owner seems to have remained behind, which perhaps is not to be
+wondered at. The houses which we visited were quite untouched and bore
+no trace of burglary or despoilment. We were among the very first to
+proceed along this road after the occupation, and may therefore be
+accepted as trustworthy witnesses. As I have already had occasion to
+mention, the soldiers are punished very severely for theft or wanton
+destruction. But as such crimes are exceedingly rare, there are but few
+occasions for such punishment. No doubt an army of a million men must
+comprise a few undesirable characters. However strict the discipline,
+a commander cannot be held answerable for all that his men may do when
+he is not personally present, especially so when both he and his troops
+are worn out from violent exertions. It must also be remembered that a
+seaport town like Antwerp, one of the centres of international trade,
+must contain a certain proportion of cosmopolitan riff-raff who at such
+times are let loose upon society and steal and pilfer where they can.
+It is therefore not to be wondered at if private property is found to
+have been pillaged at the end of the war. But up to now, as far as I
+could see, no such excesses had been committed. The wealthy homes which
+we visited were, as I have said, in the state in which their owners had
+left them. One house had, judging from a military cap which had been
+left behind, been occupied by a Belgian colonel. Outside the library
+on the first floor was a balcony looking on to a well-kept park, where
+the trees were now turning yellow. In another house we found a bedroom
+which had not long since been occupied by its master and mistress, but
+now they had abandoned their house and home and fled. Over the beds
+hung pictures of Christ, the Virgin Mary and Pope Pius X. I was touched
+on catching sight of the portrait of a beautiful boy in his coffin,
+with a wreath on his brow. Evidently many tears had been shed and much
+sorrow had dwelt in this still, deserted home.
+
+As we drive on we pass more ruins and naked, jagged walls. We cross the
+Nethe by a temporary wooden bridge guarded by an ordinary Landsturm
+patrol, the permanent bridge having been blown up by the Belgians. In
+a village, I don’t remember which, the church had been badly battered
+by the bombardment, and in the square fronting it stood a statue of St.
+Kilian--headless. Along the edge of a tomato field a venerable couple
+toiled along with their pitiful odds and ends on a wheelbarrow and
+two goats on a lead. They had clearly, to escape the fighting armies,
+retired to some quiet spot in the neighbourhood and were now returning
+to see whether there was anything left of their cottage. The population
+here is Flemish, as are most of the inhabitants of Antwerp.
+
+The trenches now become more numerous and have been constructed with
+admirable care. The underground passages have in many cases been
+enlarged into rooms, with walls of match-boarding. At one point in the
+town we found traces of barricades across the road. They had been built
+in the form of stone walls, but seemed harmless enough and easy both
+to destroy and to outflank. Here and there we come across dead horses
+lying on the road and in the ditches.
+
+Presently we pass a troop of Uhlans, fine men of superb bearing on big
+horses and looking splendid in their complete and yet handy and smart
+field kit, with their long slender lances surmounted by streamers.
+Near the inner girdle of forts with their belts of wire entanglements
+we meet a couple of heavy mortar batteries, now no longer needed here.
+They are evidently on their way to Ghent and to western Flanders. On
+the other hand a bridging detachment with upturned pontoons resting on
+long, narrow carriages is travelling in our direction, evidently for
+use on the Scheldt.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO GHENT AND THE CHANNEL]
+
+The town itself is encircled by a wall broken by several gates and by a
+moat crossed by bridges. German flags are now flying over the gateways.
+Through the _Porte de Malines_ we enter the Berchem quarter and then
+follow the _Chaussée de Malines_ north-westward. The whole street is
+crowded with transport trains and resting troops. They are evidently on
+the point of starting off for fresh adventures. Now and again we pass
+a house which has been struck by shells, and in some places the stone
+paving has been torn up by the same agency. The broad and aristocratic
+_Avenue des Arts_ here and there has had a tree trunk severed by
+fragments of shell. The _Place de Meir_, a large and handsome street
+in the very centre of the town, is likewise crowded with ammunition
+columns and troops, looking bright and cheerful in the sunlight, but
+with a bearing and an air as if it were the simplest thing in the world
+to contribute to the conquest of Antwerp.
+
+There are no women and children about, and the men out looking at
+the troops might be counted on the fingers of both hands. Most
+of the population has fled to Holland, the wealthy to England or
+the Riviera. All shops are closed. The banks are guarded by German
+soldiers. Yet the town, conquered but a few hours ago by the iron force
+of arms, is decorated as for a triumphal march. The whole of Antwerp
+is beflagged--and the flags are Belgian! How is it possible that they
+can have been allowed to remain? The reason is evident, the town fell
+yesterday and it was for the Belgian army and the British auxiliaries
+that the bunting had been hung out. But during the next few days the
+black, yellow and red emblems gradually disappeared.
+
+Over the houses at the western end of the _Place de Meir_ we notice
+brownish-black pillars of smoke whirling upward towards the sky. On
+arrival at the _Marché aux Souliers_ we find that a whole block is
+burning brightly, but now the fire spreads no weird glare around it,
+for the city is bathed in sunlight. The tongues of fire issue from
+the windows like as many yellow flags agitated by the breeze, and we
+can see from the street the furnace within. Several houses have been
+levelled to the ground. From the timber and the lumber of the ruins
+the smoke rises in dense, dark clouds. There are no curious crowds
+thronging to watch the terrible spectacle. One fire more or less means
+little in a time so filled with fearful happenings. German soldiers are
+on guard at the entrances to the street in the _Place Verte_ and _Place
+de Meir_, but there are few people to keep in order in a city all but
+emptied of its entire population. “Why is nothing done to quench the
+fire?” we ask. “The waterworks at Waelhem have been destroyed,” we are
+told, “and all that can be done is to watch the fire and to see that it
+does not spread. If necessary the adjoining houses must be pulled down,
+but it looks as if the fire had worn itself out.”
+
+[Illustration: MARCHÉ AUX SOULIERS A FEW DAYS AFTER ANTWERP’S FALL.]
+
+No part of the interior of Antwerp has been so gutted as the _Marché
+aux Souliers_--and yet only the houses on the north side of the street
+have been touched. Without a doubt the damage was originally done by
+only a shell or two. The shells usually ignite on bursting, and the
+flames had then no doubt spread to the adjoining houses. But the block
+in question is surrounded by open spaces and trees, and thus it has
+been possible to limit the spread of the fire. Yet the streets are very
+narrow. In the _Marché aux Souliers_ a protracted squabble had been
+going on between the private individuals who owned the houses, the
+commune which owned the pavement and the city which owned the street,
+and the fight had been about the widening of the latter, for it was too
+narrow for this busy neighbourhood. But nobody would give way. In the
+end no doubt the house-owners would have lost the fight. But then came
+the German heavy artillery and solved the difficulty, as King Solomon
+might have done, at one mighty stroke. Now the street is broad enough
+for anybody.
+
+We fly through the _Avenue du Sud_, yellowed by the falling leaves,
+but here we hardly see any trace of the bombardment, barring possibly
+a very occasional shell hole. At the south harbour we pass the
+interminable rows of sheds, warehouses and offices, whose brass plates
+bear the familiar inscriptions: Hamburg-Amerika-Linie, Norddeutscher
+Lloyd, Compagnie Maritime Belge du Congo, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Red Star
+Line, Peninsular and Oriental and others. But now the harbour, usually
+so teeming with life and filled with a roar and bustle unequalled by
+almost any other seaport town, lies still and silent. Huge sheds were
+filled with railway wagons, with or without valuable loads. A whole
+trainful of petrol in tanks was a find which particularly gratified
+the German officers. Another train had brought in colossal piles of
+compressed hay, covered over with tarpaulins. A warehouse had been
+found to contain considerable stocks of colonial produce, oats, flour,
+coffee and other supplies, which in due course would be examined
+and made use of. Some sheds were filled with about a thousand motor
+vehicles of all kinds, mostly lorries and taxicabs. We made a tour
+of inspection and soon found that they had all without exception
+been destroyed with axes, hammers and other implements, and were now
+perfectly useless. They must have represented a value of about £450,000.
+
+As yet there had been no time to post sentries. The entire harbour lay
+absolutely at the mercy of robbers, yet there were none to be seen.
+The silence among the deserted warehouses was almost uncanny. A couple
+of steamship offices and the offices at the South Railway Station had
+been left in excellent condition. Everything of value had been removed,
+nothing but receipts and accounts were left. The coats of clerks and
+officials were still hanging on their hooks as if the owners had just
+gone out to lunch.
+
+What attracted more than anything the attention of the visitor to the
+harbour was the colossal petroleum tanks, which now formed a perfect
+sea of fire and smoke. The Anglo-Belgian army had not forgotten to
+set fire to these supplies before retiring. If the enemy cannot be
+prevented from entering, then the next best thing to do is to deprive
+him as far as possible of the fruits of his conquest. That was why the
+motor vehicles had been destroyed and the petroleum supplies had been
+given over to the flames. They were a wonderful sight, these jet-black,
+weltering, rolling clouds with their rims of grey and brown, writhing
+and whirling up into the sky. We could hear the hissing and seething
+inside, and now and again the blood-red flames succeeded in forcing
+their way through the smoke. Occasionally there was an explosion. It
+was clearly not advisable to go too near this inferno. At one or two
+points, wreathed in smoke, we caught sight of the American flag still
+flying on its pole, soon to be reached and devoured by the flames. The
+only signs of life seemed to be ownerless cows and dogs roaming about
+in a dazed, bewildered way.
+
+On the river, opposite the _Fort de la Tête de Flandre_, a couple of
+large lighters were burning briskly. They were clearly anchored and had
+served as pontoons for an emergency bridge used by the allied armies
+when retiring across the Scheldt and continuing their retreat to Ghent.
+Certain defensive preparations at the harbour on the way to this bridge
+showed that the Anglo-Belgian army had intended to defend itself to
+the utmost. In some places barricades of thick iron-plate had been
+constructed beneath the gigantic sheds, and by the side of one of these
+stood three guns with shields, the fire from which was intended to
+cover the more open portion of the harbour. Here and there barbed wire
+had been put up. Judging from their arrangement, it seemed that it had
+been intended to electrify the wires, but this scheme had never matured.
+
+In the course of a walk round the town we came upon the _Rue Karel
+Ooms_. Within an iron railing lay a large villa, and in the grounds
+we found an old lady walking about, supported on the arm of a younger
+woman. As it was unusual to see any of the wealthier inhabitants who
+had decided to remain in the town during the past fateful weeks, we
+walked in and greeted the old lady, who told us in simple and dignified
+words that she could not bring herself to leave Antwerp in its hour of
+trial, and that at her age--she was now seventy--she had not cared to
+venture upon the vicissitudes of a journey. Her garden had been struck
+by five shells, but the house had been left untouched. Yet, as may be
+imagined, she had lived in mortal terror. Now she was out for the first
+time to take the air after the anxiety and strain of the last few days.
+Her nearest neighbours had been less fortunate, for of their houses
+nothing but the naked walls was left. No doubt they were away, but she
+believed that they had left servants behind, for she thought that she
+had heard cries of anguish from that direction when the shells were
+falling. Before parting, we learnt that the venerable lady was no less
+a person than the widow of the celebrated Belgian historical painter,
+Karel Ooms, and that she had lived in the villa since her husband’s
+death in 1900. The street had, in fact, been named after him.
+
+After a plain luncheon we paid a visit to the northern parts of the
+harbour, and had a hasty look at the steamers still lying in basins
+and docks. We went on board one of them. It was a German steamer, the
+_Celadon_, and the fore-part of the deck showed signs of an explosion
+having taken place. We learnt later that the boilers of all the vessels
+in the harbour had been destroyed, so as to make the ships useless to
+the Germans.
+
+In the afternoon we came across the long bridging train which we had
+passed on the way to the city; it was now marching past the cathedral
+on its way to the nearest part of the harbour quay used for crossing
+over to _Tête de Flandre_. No doubt a bridge was to be thrown across in
+place of the one which had been blown up.
+
+It was interesting to notice that the inhabitants were already showing
+signs of returning to their city. There were not many of them, but here
+and there we saw men and women with bundles on their backs opening the
+doors from the street. One man was pulling two old women along on a
+barrow which, besides, was crowded with packages and odds and ends. A
+couple of cafés and hotels were likewise on the point of opening, and a
+few shops, especially provision shops, soon followed their example.
+
+It was now time to break up and we turned back towards Brussels. We
+had not got very far before we met three reserve battalions with
+colours flying and headed by a band playing cheerful military music.
+In accordance with their pleasant custom, the soldiers had adorned
+their rifles with little sprays of flowers, and their faces shone as
+usual with cheerful determination and high spirits.
+
+Once more we looked in at a château by the roadside. I shall never
+forget the impressions which thronged into my mind as I wandered
+through its dim, desolate rooms. In the bedrooms and guest-rooms on
+the first floor the beds were still in the state in which the masters
+of the house and their guests had left them. Quilts and sheets had
+been pulled aside, towels carelessly slung across the backs of chairs
+and basins were still half-full of dirty water with the pieces of
+soap beside them, stuck to their dishes. On the ground floor was the
+large, lordly-looking dining-room. The table was laid. A large dish
+still contained the remnants of the course last served, an omelette.
+Some ten persons evidently had partaken of the meal. Some plates were
+empty, others still contained scraps of omelette. Knives and forks
+lay pell-mell among the bits of bread by the side of the covers.
+A couple of empty champagne bottles stood on the table, whilst a
+third still contained a few drops of the joyous wine, which had now
+lost its sparkling freshness. A few serviettes lay crumpled on the
+table, others on the chairs and a couple had dropped on to the floor.
+Everything testified to a hasty and panic-stricken departure. Perhaps
+the thunderous music of the guns had come unpleasantly near, or maybe
+a shell had dropped close by? Or perhaps a messenger had dashed in
+to report that the Germans had punctured the outer girdle of forts
+and were now rushing in through the opening? Who were the guests, I
+wondered, whose meal had been so unceremoniously disturbed? Was it the
+people of the house themselves, who had waited until the last moment,
+or was it officers spending the night there on their retreat?
+
+The château was dead and deserted. One heard no sounds but the hollow
+echo of one’s steps and now and then the creaking of the furniture.
+Yet in the hall, on the ground floor, we found a living being--a
+white dove--it sat alone and frozen on a table. The white dove is the
+symbol of innocence and purity, of divine sanctity, but here it seemed
+curiously out of place. Yet the open window did not tempt it to seek
+the liberty of the château grounds.
+
+At another villa the grounds had been occupied by a column of open
+ammunition carts containing Belgian shells with the fuse screwed off.
+The projectiles had not been used, and had been allowed to fall into
+German hands in this mutilated state. It now became impossible to drive
+quickly. The road was filled to overflowing with transport columns and
+Uhlans. They were on their way to Antwerp and were later bound for
+Ghent. In the west we heard the roar of cannon in the distance. The
+Germans were giving themselves no peace. Impregnable Antwerp had fallen
+in the course of a few days, yet the conquerors were swiftly hurrying
+westward, ever onward towards the sea. England had wanted war, and
+England was to have her fill and was to get more than she had bargained
+for since the days of Wellington. Entire companies of marines came
+marching on, magnificent specimens, all of the true Germanic type. Here
+and there they halted in villages, where they dragged out chairs and
+placed them along the house walls to get a good and convenient view of
+the ever-changing, never-ceasing life on the open road. At a corner in
+the badly ravaged village of Waelhem stood a clownish figure, beating a
+cracked drum. He wore a crazy-looking top-hat on his head and had drawn
+sooty lines on his face to represent moustache, imperial and eyebrows.
+He sang a Flemish song, twisted his body into extraordinary shapes
+and looked indescribably comical and jovial. The soldiers were beside
+themselves with laughter, and we could not help sharing their merriment
+as the performer broke off his song for a moment to greet us with a
+whimsical salute.
+
+As we again swung round the cathedral at Malines, where we stayed in
+the morning, Kes dropped the remark that it seemed to him as if several
+days had since elapsed. And he was right, for we had indeed seen and
+experienced much on this remarkable journey. We had come armed as if
+for battle, but everything had passed off peacefully, and a rumour
+that what was left of the Belgian army intended to attack the western
+bank of the Scheldt, had not yet been borne out by events. We had seen
+none but German soldiers amid the quaint old-fashioned and lavish
+architecture of the streets and market-places surrounding Antwerp’s
+venerable cathedral. The few people remaining out of Antwerp’s civil
+population were very peaceable citizens and seemed resolved to accept
+their fate. But in Brussels, whither we returned in the gloaming, we
+found nobody who would believe in Antwerp’s fall, for had not the
+allied leaders nourished the belief that this city could _never_
+be taken? So when the Germans posted up proclamations in French and
+Flemish announcing the fall of the city and how it had come to pass,
+people gathered in little knots in front of them and read them, but all
+were fully convinced that the whole story was an invention.[23]
+
+ [23] In his recent book, _War and Culture_--a work which I warmly
+ recommend to all and sundry who wish to sound the depths of the
+ socio-psychological labyrinths of the world war--Professor Gustaf
+ F. Steffen gives the following quotation from the Swedish newspaper
+ _Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning_ of the 9th October, the day on
+ which Antwerp fell:--
+
+ “In its first leading article in the number published the 1st inst.,
+ _The Times_ states that it seems as if the noise made by the German
+ batteries outside Antwerp were not commensurate with the importance of
+ the operations. _The Times_ goes on to say that they appear, in fact,
+ not to be doing very much damage and it is very unlikely that the
+ German Landwehr troops still in Belgium can achieve anything against
+ the outer fortifications, seeing that the Belgian field army is so
+ strong. Even if all the forts were destroyed, it was still doubtful
+ whether the Germans would be able to take Antwerp, for the important
+ factor in the defence of the city was not so much the forts as the
+ field entrenchments.
+
+ “The Belgians were said to hold one of the strongest fortresses in
+ Europe, they had at least 120,000 troops at their disposal and an open
+ harbour, whilst opposed to them were only second line troops; their
+ outer works were the newest and most formidable of all, and they knew
+ that the French and British armies in the north of France were on the
+ verge of victory and must come to their rescue.
+
+ “‘We do not therefore think that there is any need to worry about
+ Antwerp,’ writes the paper in question (_The Times_). ‘Doubtless the
+ graceful spires of the Antwerp churches will make the mouths of the
+ Huns water; the city presents incomparable opportunities for the
+ destructive side of German “Culture.” We can imagine the pretexts which
+ will be gleefully invented for pumping petrol into the “Plantain”
+ Museum. Every German regiment in Belgium seems to possess a special
+ machine for squirting petrol into buildings and to include a squad of
+ methodical incendiaries trained in the specific arts of the higher
+ civilisation, as taught at the University of Berlin. Apparently,
+ too, every German column has attached to it a number of mobilised
+ cinematograph actors, who upon suitable occasions impersonate civilians
+ firing on the soldiers.’”
+
+ This is a sample of _British_ culture and of the “specific arts of the
+ higher civilisation.” This is the sort of fare put before the neutral
+ countries, especially America, by the English newspapers.
+
+In the evening, at nine o’clock, some thirty officers were assembled
+round the Field-marshal’s table. Here I met once more Prince Waldemar
+and Captain Dreger, and made the acquaintance of the Governor-General’s
+Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Scheerenberg, and Surgeon-General
+Doctor Stecho, who spoke Swedish and who has many friends in Sweden.
+Afterwards we had a _Bierabend_[24] in the upper apartments, which was
+honoured with the presence of the Minister of War, Lieutenant-General
+von Falkenhayn. The talkative old Field-marshal von der Goltz saw
+to it that there was no lack of animation and favoured us with many
+interesting items about the fall of Antwerp and its past history,
+besides being inexhaustible in anecdotes and tales of the incidents of
+the last few days.
+
+[24] “Beer evening,” that is to say, a social evening enlivened by the
+consumption of beer (Trslr.).
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIII
+
+  MORE DAYS IN ANTWERP
+
+
+It might be thought that the war had dealt Antwerp and its commerce
+their death blow. But the city is merely asleep and there is no one who
+can tell how long its torpor will last. Just as the fall of the city
+was an event in the world’s history which brought German power within
+striking distance of Great Britain, so the city itself will in coming
+times of peace acquire a status of world-wide importance and become
+perhaps still greater than ever before. Both from a strategical and
+commercial point of view Antwerp is bound always to remain one of the
+nerve-centres of Europe. It was therefore interesting to have seen this
+great mercantile metropolis at the inception of its fateful crisis, and
+it is obvious that I could not have been content with my first short
+reconnaissance. Hence I obtained permission from the Governor-General’s
+office to return, and, if I wished to do so, to remain in the city for
+several days.
+
+I accordingly planned another trip with Lieut. Dr. Hütten, to take
+place on the 11th of October. Just as I was starting out from my hotel,
+I met an old friend, Professor Georg Wegener, one of my chums from the
+time I was cramming with Richthofen at the University of Berlin. We had
+not many minutes to spare, but exchanged nevertheless a few impressions
+of the war.
+
+Hütten drove the car himself and I sat at his side. It had been my
+intention to take a few photographs of the military life on the road
+and in the town, for the sights which were now to unfold themselves to
+our vision would soon vanish and make room for more tranquil scenes.
+The further we travelled northward, the slower we had to go, for the
+road was encumbered by an unceasing stream of marching troops and
+transport columns, Uhlans and Hussars, guns and ammunition wagons.
+Little contingents of marines were interspersed here and there amongst
+the other troops. They had their own amusing little train, consisting
+of a barrow drawn by a donkey and laden with an odd-looking contrivance
+of sheet-iron which might simply have been a stove with its pipes.
+“What are you going to do with that thing there?” we asked. “It’s going
+to be a field kitchen,” replied a stout, jovial fellow who was driving
+a couple of calves behind the donkey-barrow.
+
+[Illustration: MARINES WITH A “FIELD-KITCHEN” AND A COUPLE OF CALVES]
+
+Farther on we passed a bivouac with its shelter-tents still up and the
+breakfast boiling in its caldrons. Another war picture, or perhaps I
+should call it a picture from the boundary line of peace and war, was
+furnished by an entire caravan of carts piled high with trunks, bags,
+bundles, bedclothes and what not, accompanied by a group of men, women
+and children. They were fugitives returning to Malines. But if it was
+their misfortune to live just south of the cathedral, they were doomed
+never to see their homes again.
+
+[Illustration: A GROUP OF FUGITIVES]
+
+[Illustration: FUGITIVES RETURNING TO MALINES FROM THE SOUTH]
+
+Near Eppeghem we saw on an unpretentious wooden cross by the roadside
+the following inscription: “_Hier ruht ein tapferer Belgier von
+seinen deutschen Kameraden begraben._” (Here lies a brave Belgian
+buried by his German comrades.) The fallen hero has stuck to his post
+up to the last, and by his courage had evoked the admiration of his
+opponents.[25] Now we drive once more through the ruined street in
+Malines and stop outside the cathedral. Here are a couple of hundred
+Belgian prisoners guarded by a few marines. They wear little black caps
+with a red stripe and tassel, short tunics or greatcoats; some of them
+have water-bottles, bundles or bags carried on the shoulder by a strap.
+A herd of cattle is just being driven past by some German soldiers.
+“Quick march!” orders a German N.C.O., and the prisoners quickly
+disappear down one of the narrow alleys.
+
+[25] Dr. Fr. Klefberg, when in the same neighbourhood, had come across
+the following inscription: “A brave Belgian soldier buried by German
+comrades. 4th Company, 26th Regiment of Field Artillery.”
+
+We continue northward past the outer fortifications, with the German
+naval ensign floating on the crest, and meet fresh groups of returning
+fugitives, fresh marching columns, amongst them a field telegraph
+detachment, and fresh swarms of horsemen. And so at length we come once
+more to the long _Chaussée de Malines_, which in a car takes but a
+couple of minutes from end to end.
+
+[Illustration: IN FRONT OF THE TOWN HALL AT ANTWERP]
+
+[Illustration: INFANTRY HALTING IN FRONT OF ANTWERP TOWN HALL]
+
+But it was chiefly to take photographs that I had planned this day’s
+excursion to Antwerp, and what could after all be more attractive for
+the camera than the _Grand’ Place_, the noble little square by the
+Townhall with its quaint gable façades? In the middle of the square
+stands a piece of sculpture not long since erected, illustrating the
+legend about the boy who throws the giant’s hand: “_Hand werfen,
+Antwerpen_.” A house close by is the birthplace of one of the
+greatest painters of all time, as is shown by a plate over the door,
+“_Geboortehuis von Antoon van Dyck, Kunstschilder 1599-1641_.” Van
+Dyck’s models and their progeny have disappeared, and the setting
+of the _Grand’ Place_ now consists of German troops. It is marines
+we see marching in with their knapsacks on their backs, rifles on
+the shoulder, cartridge pouches on the bandolier and bayonet and
+water-bottle by the side. A dog faithfully plods along beside a private
+in the ranks--one constantly sees German soldiers who have adopted
+ownerless dogs. Next come a few batteries of 6-cm. naval guns, pulled
+by their respective crews. One wonders whether horse teams have not
+been procured for marine artillery used on shore. In front of the
+Townhall itself a company has piled arms and is resting. Some soldiers
+are content to take a nap on the stone paving and use their knapsacks
+for pillows. Here we see food columns with canvas awnings over the
+carts and wisps of hay in front of the horses. Marine cyclists are
+moving about everywhere on their silent wheels. By the side of a car
+stands the great engineer, Captain Dreger, looking at a map of the road
+to Ghent, which Lieut. Dr. Hütten has just shown him. But the scene is
+kaleidoscopic in its variety and there is a coming and going, a rushing
+to and fro of animal and motor traffic, a tramping of horses’ hoofs and
+a rattle of artillery wagons which baffles all description. We had some
+singing, too, for as the marine troops crossed the square they broke
+into the swelling tones of _Die Wacht am Rhein_.
+
+[Illustration: FOOD COLUMN CROSSING THE GRAND’ PLACE]
+
+We drive on and reach the land of ferries below the cathedral. Here the
+scene is still more changing, and there is a literal crush. The car is
+left in charge of our orderly and we thread our way between horses,
+carts and closely packed columns of troops. The street leading down to
+the harbour is thronged with double marching columns. They mark time,
+move on and mark time again. Belgian (Flemish-speaking) policemen in
+black coats with silver buttons and black helmets help to keep order
+in the thoroughfare. “Where are all these troops and vehicles off to?”
+I asked. “They are going to be ferried across the Scheldt to _Tête de
+Flandre_; that is, where the road to Ghent begins. They are off to the
+coast to throw a glance across to England.”
+
+[Illustration: A BELGIAN GUN IN THE HARBOUR]
+
+It is difficult to get along. Everything seems in such a jumble. I
+am just on the point of snapping some kitchen wagons when a Uhlan
+perched on a baggage wagon shouts to me: “Neighbour, it is forbidden to
+photograph the field kitchen!” “Good,” I answer. “I have no need to,
+I have pictures of them already.” The salutation “neighbour” was, I
+thought, an excellent touch.
+
+At the quay and bridges, built to allow for the considerable
+differences in level between high and low water, the ferries are in
+full swing. The bridging train we saw yesterday has not yet had time to
+throw a bridge across. Instead it has devoted its energies to building
+a species of ferry, consisting of a platform mounted on three pontoons.
+A tug took two of these contrivances in tow and three river steamers
+were busy conveying a double ferry of this kind across with troops,
+ammunition, ambulance and food wagons, field kitchens, field telegraph
+equipment and horses. Among the troops I noticed an Austrian artillery
+train belonging to the 30.5-cm. mortar batteries now stationed in
+Belgium.
+
+[Illustration: FOOD COLUMN ON THE WAY TO THE FERRY, WITH THE CATHEDRAL
+TOWER IN THE BACKGROUND, FLYING THE GERMAN FLAG OVER THE CROSS]
+
+“Drive up,” orders an officer. Immediately a column of vehicles moves
+forward and halts on the brink of the quay. The horses are taken out
+and the vehicles are pushed on to the ferry by the marines. Then the
+horses are led across the gangway. They stamp, snort and rear, for
+evidently they dislike the look of this queer-looking craft. But all
+to no purpose, on board they have to go. When two ferries are full,
+the steamer casts off and tows them in a twinkling across the Scheldt
+to _Tête de Flandre_. Here another gangway is thrown out, the vehicles
+are pulled on to the quay by hand, the horses are put to and the column
+proceeds on its way to Ghent.
+
+[Illustration: HORSES AND VEHICLES BEING BROUGHT ON BOARD ONE OF THE
+PONTOON FERRIES. THE VESSELS ANCHORED IN THE FAIRWAY WERE USED AS
+PONTOONS FOR THE BRIDGE WHICH THE ANGLO-BELGIAN ARMY THREW ACROSS FOR
+ITS RETREAT. WHEN THE LAST MAN HAD CROSSED THE BRIDGE WAS BLOWN UP]
+
+[Illustration: THE TRANSPORT ACROSS THE SCHELDT]
+
+As soon as the first load had left the east bank, another river steamer
+with its two ferries came alongside and took another contingent on
+board. So it went on all day and so it was to continue throughout the
+night by the light of electric lamps. The same programme would be
+repeated the next day, and so on as long as there were any troops,
+horses or vehicles left to ferry across the Scheldt; everything
+is done with the rapidity, efficiency, order and discipline which
+distinguish the doings of the German army down to the minutest detail.
+
+[Illustration: A GERMAN MARINE ON THE PONTOON FERRY AT ANTWERP]
+
+The ferries do not return empty from _Tête de Flandre_, for enormous
+groups of returning fugitives, men, women and children with their
+carts, bicycles and barrows, bundles and packages are now gathering on
+the opposite bank. They form a picturesque and motley crowd, such as
+one is accustomed to see by the side of emigrant ships on the way to
+America. Most of them are Flemings. A remarkable order seems to reign
+amongst them. They do not squabble, do not shout, and do not push to
+get past one another on to the ferries, but wait quietly and obediently
+until the soldiers show them the way. The military and civilians seem
+to be on the best of terms. We saw the former, to the accompaniment of
+jest and laughter, exert themselves to the utmost to make themselves
+understood, and the result was a bewildering medley of German, French
+and Flemish.
+
+When the Germans entered Antwerp, they found on the eastern quay
+in question enormous piles of Belgian uniforms, caps, helmets and
+knapsacks. None of these had yet been touched. Presumably all this kit
+had been intended for recruits recently called out.
+
+In the course of our wanderings we also visited the northern parts
+of the harbour. Here one almost loses oneself in a gigantic maze
+of docks, piers, quays, basins, warehouses and sheds, and enormous
+stacks of timber and stores of ironware and colonial produce. Here
+is a profusion of customs sheds, office buildings, loading gear,
+cranes, railway wagons, wheel-less motor-cars, packing cases and
+sacks containing I don’t know what. “_Verboten te rooken_” (Smoking
+prohibited) is posted up everywhere in gigantic letters. As I saw it
+I could not help thinking that “_Verboten te bombardeeren_” would
+have been, if anything, a more fitting injunction. Without a guide it
+would have been impossible to find one’s way, and we were glad to get
+hold of a queer-looking fish sniffing round amongst the merchandise,
+who subsequently took us in hand. To-day there were a few more people
+about, amongst them Germans who were making the round of the harbour
+precincts to note the names of all the vessels lying there. I asked
+them if they had seen any Swedish boats, but the answer was in the
+negative. Barges, lighters and fishing boats were lying closely packed
+together in certain parts of the harbour. Here also we came across
+barricades of iron girders and barbed-wire entanglements, and behind a
+parapet close by stood a Belgian gun with the breech-block missing.
+
+_Comte de Smets de Naeyer_ was the name of a fine-looking Belgian
+training-ship with light grey hull, white masts and spick-and-span
+rigging, but there was nothing on board to arouse our interest. We
+also paid a little visit to the great Australian liner, _Tasmania_. In
+the officers’ cabins all drawers had been pulled out and everything of
+value taken away. Nothing but books, papers and a quantity of accounts
+and other objects of no value remained. But on a writing-table in the
+captain’s own cabin stood a portrait of a woman and a photograph of
+a group of bonny children. In the dining saloon a table stood laid
+with a silver coffee-pot, half-full, cups and a box of cigars which
+had more or less been ransacked of its contents. All the passenger
+staterooms were empty and deserted. As we wandered through the endless
+corridors our steps gave off a hollow and eerie echo, and we actually
+stopped once or twice to discover whether it was really the echo of
+our own steps we heard, or whether someone was following us. One
+might believe almost anything in such times as these. Fugitives might
+for instance have hidden themselves on board. We shouted, but the
+sound of our voices died away in the abandoned ship and there was no
+answer. We looked into the forecastle, but nobody now slept in these
+bunks, so often rocked by the ocean swell. The same grave-like silence
+everywhere. It was quite uncanny to walk about this ghost-ship, this
+“flying Dutchman” with its crew of invisible spirits who seemed to eye
+us from every nook and cranny.
+
+At half-past six we returned to the capital and it was pitch-dark
+before we arrived ninety minutes later. At first the road was fairly
+clear, but later on we drove past incessant columns marching on their
+way to Ghent. As so many times before, a kaleidoscope of horses, riders
+and wagons were brought into successive relief by the light of our
+lamps. The men, otherwise singing and joking, were now still and sat as
+if moulded in the saddle. Once again we heard this eternal clatter of
+iron-shod hoofs against the stone paving, this endless tramp, tramp,
+tramp which is the music of the marching columns. The rattle of the
+wagons, the creaking of the iron-tyred wheels, the jingling of the
+chains, the chafing of the leather and the tramping of the horses’
+hoofs, these sounds seem still to haunt my ears as I write. Like a
+slow and irresistible tidal wave, like an implacable necessity, this
+train is rolling towards its goal. It is Germany’s train of victory.
+On hundreds of other roads similar streams are flowing to and from the
+greatest battle lines maintained by a single country ever since Noah
+left the ark to people the earth with human beings, for, as everyone
+knows, the continuous fighting line from Nieuport on the North Sea
+_via_ Rheims and round Verdun to the Vosges is an accomplished fact.
+
+We see eyes gleaming at us through the darkness. It is the light from
+cars we meet, but what can their business be on the road to Antwerp
+at this late hour? From under the shadow of the trees fresh packs of
+horsemen, square-set, sturdy men on well-fed powerful mounts constantly
+emerge into the circle of light from our lamps. Later on comes a gun
+team, no longer needed here, on its way to other places where the guns
+will resume their music for the benefit of the _entente_ legions, and
+here and there among the trees the figures of soldiers preparing their
+evening meal are silhouetted against the ruddy glow of the bivouac
+fires. Their pipes are glowing in the darkness and one can see the
+gleam of their teeth as they break into a peal of laughter at some
+comical remark.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the Banque de Paris and a couple of other banks they shook their
+heads over my Swedish letter of credit: “_Toutes les lettres de crédit
+sont annulées_.” I should certainly have had no difficulty in getting
+money by appealing to the Governor-General, but when I explained my
+unsound economic position at the Swedish Legation, Herr Pousette, who
+was _chargé d’affaires_, said that he would be very glad to lend me a
+thousand francs against the despatch of a telegram to _Skandinaviska
+Kreditaktiebolaget_. When this difficulty had been overcome, I took
+a trip to Löwen, which is German for Louvain. My friend, Lieut. Dr.
+Hütten, still acted as my guide. We had under our charge the energetic
+and charming Frau Koch, henceforth to be named Sister Martha, clad in
+cap and spotless white dress with a red cross on the left arm. The 12th
+of October turned out a brilliantly fine day. We passed out of the city
+under the triumphal arch between mirror-like ponds and yellowing trees.
+The _Chaussée de Louvain_ soon developed into a stone-paved road lined
+with a close beech wood, where hardly a ray of the sun penetrated to
+the ground and where cool shadows reigned over a bed of fallen leaves.
+We saw no German soldiers in this direction, nothing but the hand of
+autumn over this unhappy land which had lost its independence. There
+were no transport columns to be seen. The only vehicles on the road
+were civilian carts. The aristocratic carriages of the _grand monde_
+had disappeared without a trace, after their owners had removed to
+other climes.
+
+We have eighteen kilometres to go. Ruins do not meet the eye until we
+have travelled some distance into the precincts of Louvain. The whole
+city is not wrecked by shells as one had been led to believe. Hardly
+a fifth has been destroyed. But that fifth contained many precious
+and irreplaceable buildings, and the loss of the library with its
+collection of manuscripts, unless by some happy chance some remnants
+are still intact under the ruins, is regrettable in the extreme. But in
+the midst of the desolation, like a lonely crag in mid-ocean, stands
+the Townhall, that proud monument from the middle of the fifteenth
+century with its six slender fretwork turrets. I walked round the whole
+building, and with the best will in the world I was unable to detect a
+single scratch in its gorgeously decorated walls. There may, of course,
+be an occasional scar from a shell, but if so it escaped my attention.
+The German artillery had given a magnificent proof of its unerring
+accuracy of aim. It had hit everything round this building but without
+injuring as much as a cornice of any of the six turrets.
+
+[Illustration: LOUVAIN TOWN HALL]
+
+The reason of the German bombardment of Louvain is well known. On
+entering the town the German troops were fired on from windows by the
+civil population, and as there was no other means of checking this
+outrageous proceeding, a few houses were set fire to. When afterwards
+the German soldiers used every means in their power to extinguish the
+fire in the buildings nearest the Townhall, the _franctireurs_ lay once
+more in wait from their ambush. Then things grew serious. Any other
+army in the world would have acted in the same way, and the Germans
+themselves greatly regretted that they were compelled against their
+will to adopt such measures. From Louvain we proceeded to Malines, a
+lengthy trip along the canal joining the two cities, where we were
+startled to see the masts of fishing-smacks bob up amongst the trees
+of parks and alleys. We arrived just in time to witness the burial
+of a marine who had fallen at his post. The body of the dead man was
+carried to the grave on a Belgian hearse with a silver cross on the
+roof and drawn by one horse. Behind the hearse followed some hundred
+soldiers from the army and navy. After the funeral three rifle volleys
+were fired over the grave, which was then filled in. There were several
+German graves in the little churchyard, decorated with wreaths and
+helmets, and also two common graves containing the men who had fallen
+in some fight.
+
+[Illustration: SOME HOUSES ONLY HAVE THE WALL LEFT STANDING]
+
+On a country road near by a battery of Austrian 30.5-cm. mortars stood
+posted. A single one of these batteries of two guns requires a train
+of forty-two vehicles. The barrel requires a lorry to itself, likewise
+the gun carriage. Then there are wagons for the men, the ammunition,
+accessories, tools, provisions, kitchen gear, etc.
+
+In conclusion, we paid a visit to the great military hospital at
+Malines, where the surgeon-in-chief and another staff surgeon showed
+us round everywhere. The operating theatres more especially of this
+Belgian hospital seemed to meet all aseptic requirements. At the
+present moment there were only 140 wounded on the premises. Over every
+bed hung a metal frame to which an arm could be bandaged when it needed
+stretching, and other contrivances with weights and pulleys had been
+installed for stretching injured legs. Several interesting cases were
+explained to us. A soldier had received a bullet through the back of
+the neck, but the spinal medulla was uninjured and the patient could
+walk about although it was only six days since he was wounded. Another
+had been struck on the left side of the lower jaw, which had been
+crushed, the bullet having found its way out on the right side. By an
+ingenious arrangement of gilt brass wire fastened to the teeth, the
+doctors had succeeded in giving the necessary support to the lacerated
+jawbone. The patient could even move his lower jaw and speak. A third
+man had been struck by a bullet in the head and had lost the power of
+speech, but understood what was said to him and nodded yes and no.
+A Belgian soldier had received a nasty wound in the head. He seemed
+unbalanced, was delirious and spoke of his wife and children. If anyone
+asked whether he had heard from them or knew where they were, he merely
+answered: “Look there on the right,” and turned his head in that
+direction. In his delirium he described confusedly the fierce struggle
+at the Nethe, where he was wounded. Later we stood beside the bed of a
+little Belgian boy of twelve, who had happened to get too close to the
+firing lines and whose left arm had been cut off by a shell. Yet he
+was in good spirits and was looking at a book with coloured plates; he
+smiled pleasantly when the German doctor patted him on the head. They
+had succeeded in tracing his mother and she was to visit him daily for
+a little while.
+
+The corridors were lined with solid-looking iron-hooped wooden
+cases inscribed: _Nicht stürzen_ (Not to be upset). They contained
+photographic apparatus and plates. There were separate rooms for X-ray
+photography and some photos shown to us clearly revealed where the
+projectile had lodged and what damage it had done on its passage. As
+a rule wounds from rifle bullets are far less malignant than those
+occasioned by shrapnel or shell splinters.
+
+Soon we were on our way back again along the familiar road to Brussels
+and we were just in time to get ready for the Field-marshal’s
+supper-table. There were several interesting guests present. Grand
+Admiral von Tirpitz, regally tall and straight, was there. It is he
+who, after the Emperor, has worked hardest for the creation of the
+German Navy. Lofty forehead, frank and merry eyes, fair beard, resolute
+and manly bearing, in fact a real Teuton. It was like a draught of
+sparkling wine to speak to him. To such men nothing is impossible, and
+with them there is no trace of anxiety about the final issue of the war.
+
+I also met here Herr K. F. von Siemens, head of the firm of Siemens and
+Halske, also a very robust-looking man of the Teutonic type and of a
+temperament in which humour and gravity are agreeably blended. Talking
+about the German losses, he estimated them at 250,000, of which,
+however, the great majority were slightly wounded and had already
+returned or would soon return to the front, and would then possess the
+advantage over the new-comers that they had already been under fire and
+had personal experience behind them. We discovered that we possessed
+a common friend in the charming Sir Walter Lawrence, one-time private
+secretary to Lord Curzon when he was Viceroy of India. Probably he was
+now lost to us as a friend, as this war has proved capable of sundering
+the closest bonds of friendship.
+
+Another guest was Privy Councillor Kreidel, head of the commissariat
+department of the Governor-General of Belgium, and seventy-five years
+old. He had recently been subject to attacks of dizziness through
+overwork and was now on the point of returning to Germany to get
+strong again. The new Governor of Antwerp, Infantry-General Baron von
+Hoiningen, whom I had met in Karlsruhe, was also present. General of
+Fortifications Bailer, gentle and charming lecturer on æsthetics, was
+one of my special friends. He was in very good spirits to-day because
+he had seen his son of whom he had not heard for a long time and who
+served with one of the armies in France. Lieutenant Bailer had made the
+long journey through the air and was just on the point of returning in
+his aeroplane. We also talked about Ghent, which had fallen the same
+day after severe fighting in the open country. The General was now
+proceeding thither to study the Belgian field fortifications; the town
+itself is not fortified. From Ghent the German army was to continue to
+Bruges and Ostend. Finally we talked about the 300,000 volunteers who
+had just arrived at the front, where the youthful undergraduates with
+their merry pranks had greatly enlivened the older Landsturm men, who
+in turn had taught them their very best drill.
+
+The next two days I rested, wrote, visited the Swedish Legation and
+spent my evenings with the Governor-General. The weather was by no
+means suitable for excursions. The rain poured down and heavy clouds
+from the Atlantic floated over the town. As a lady whom I overheard in
+a shop rightly observed, life was quite dark and sad enough without
+the heavens adding their share. But to the soldiers there is no
+difference between fine and foul weather, and the troops and transport
+trains passing through the city seem no fewer than usual. But for
+the German uniforms and military cars, one would scarcely have known
+what was going on. Apart from these phenomena, a stranger arriving
+in Brussels would have noticed nothing, unless it be the absence of
+Belgian motor-cars and the rarity of horse-drawn vehicles; for both
+cars and horses had been requisitioned by the Belgian army. He might
+perhaps also have wondered where all the _beau monde_ and all the rich
+and well-to-do citizens had got to, for those who could afford it
+had preferred to betake themselves elsewhere, rather than to remain
+under the foreign yoke. It is only the poor and the less well-to-do
+bourgeoisie who have to remain.
+
+As regards the town itself, it is true that the stranger would notice
+that the theatres were closed and that a German sentry was posted
+outside the _Palais de Justice_ and other public buildings. But he
+would have seen no signs of destruction, no smoking ruins, no naked
+walls black with soot and smoke. The population of Brussels remained
+perfectly quiet when the Germans entered. There were no ambushes and
+there was no firing from windows. Therefore all the houses remain
+untouched and the town has been spared the fate which overtook Louvain
+and Dinant. And the population acted wisely. They would never have
+been able to inflict an appreciable check on the Germans, but would,
+on the contrary, have suffered enormous economic losses. The war
+requisition of fifty million francs imposed upon the town would in case
+of resistance have been multiplied over and over again.
+
+I could not refrain from making another inspection of Antwerp, more
+thorough than the preceding ones.
+
+Antwerp! The city of the dead! Lou-lan, the desert city, given over to
+destruction and oblivion when the sea of Lopnor wandered southward,
+was not harder hit than Antwerp. For have not the oceans retired and
+left high and dry this great hub of commerce which not many days ago
+was in close contact with all the earth’s continents and islands! These
+gigantic harbour installations now lay dead and idle, and there was
+not even an apprentice to be found in all the twenty-two ships which
+lay forgotten by the quayside when the blow fell. The whole city was
+paralysed. One of the things I wanted to see was whether in the course
+of the next few days there would be any signs of an awakening from
+this torpor. Of course, one realised that life in the harbour would
+remain dead as long as the sea outside was full of mines, and would not
+perhaps reawaken until the end of the war. But I thought it possible
+nevertheless that the city itself might rouse itself and that many of
+the unhappy fugitives who had fled across the Dutch frontier would
+return.
+
+So on the 15th October I started out for the third time for Antwerp.
+I had been invited to join in an excursion, and we drove out in five
+cars. I was with my friend General Bailer and a couple of other
+officers. The participants included no less a person than the Imperial
+Chancellor, Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, as well as His Excellency
+von Treutler. We quickly reached Malines and stopped as usual outside
+the cathedral. In view of the Chancellor’s visit the interior had been
+cleaned up. All blocks of stone, dust and lumber had been removed.
+St. Rombaut’s fane now looked quite neat and tidy, and it was evident
+that it would not cost much, either in time or money, to restore it to
+its former condition. A tombstone, crushed by blocks of stone which
+had fallen from an arch between the middle and the north side-aisle,
+will, however, be difficult to replace. The effect of the shell fire
+was demonstrated by artillery officers, and it was made clear that the
+Belgian fire directed from the north had only consisted of shrapnel
+intended to drive the German observers away from the tower.
+
+[Illustration: THE INTERIOR OF MALINES CATHEDRAL BEFORE THE REMOVAL OF
+THE DÉBRIS]
+
+From Malines we proceeded north-east to Fort St. Catherine, one of
+Antwerp’s strongest forts, constructed, like the others, by the great
+Engineer-General Brialmont and equipped with nine modern armoured
+turrets. Most of these had been horribly knocked about by the heaviest
+German artillery, _die dicke Bertha und die schwarze Marie_ (“fat
+Bertha” and “black Maria”) as the 42-cm. mortars have been playfully
+dubbed by the soldiers. One of the turrets had been struck plumb by
+a shell which had flung its 40-ton cupola some ten metres to one
+side, where the gigantic structure had alighted on its side and
+eaten itself into the earth. The cupola having been removed in this
+somewhat energetic manner, we were able to get an idea of the interior
+construction of the turret. Another turret had merely been struck at
+a tangent by a smaller projectile and yet the effect was such that
+the metal of the cupola had been rent as the soil is torn by the
+ploughshare. Another shell had penetrated through a bed of concrete
+several metres thick and upon detonation it wrought the most appalling
+havoc.
+
+[Illustration: DESTRUCTION WROUGHT BY “FAT BERTHA” IN FORT ST.
+CATHERINE]
+
+At Antwerp the Chancellor was received by Admiral von Schröder, whom I
+shall have occasion to mention later on. He was a powerfully built man,
+with white head and beard, a thorough sea-dog. He also was renowned for
+his astounding energy.
+
+In the afternoon I drove with General Bailer, Colonel Müller and Major
+Elert round the grass-clad slopes of the fortifications round the town,
+the innumerable gates of which were now guarded by German soldiers.
+It was really an initial tour of inspection that these officers were
+engaged upon. Among the discoveries made were several searchlights
+and old guns and a couple of excellently constructed barricades of
+cobble-stones and sheet-iron. The garrison seemed to have been prepared
+for street-fighting in the town itself, but things had never got thus
+far. Huts built of boards, tarpaulins and other materials had been put
+up for the defenders of the barricades.
+
+We had taken rooms at the Terminus Hotel, close by the Central Railway
+Station. The German officers paid with _bons_ which are redeemed after
+the war, I in ready cash. The dining-room was filled with officers,
+naval surgeons and civilian German engineers who had come to repair the
+waterworks, gas-works, telegraphs and telephones. The shortage of water
+had made itself felt very disagreeably, but at least one could now get
+tea and soup, which had been an unobtainable luxury during the first
+two days, when we had to remain satisfied with wine and beer. No doubt
+it was distilled Scheldt water, or perhaps well-water which now figured
+in our soup tureens and water-jugs.
+
+The streets with gas-lighting were pitch-dark at night, whilst
+the electrically lighted main streets were bathed in their usual
+brightness. Many shop windows were now also brilliantly lit, especially
+the tobacconist establishments, which attracted crowds of German
+customers. In the restaurants we saw the soldiers seated round the
+tables with their girl-friends, drinking beer or coffee. In the large
+avenues the traffic was almost animated. As long as daylight lasted
+we saw little knots of fugitives returning from the Dutch side. Their
+unkempt appearance, unwashed hands and faces and uncombed hair showed
+that they had been lying out of doors in the rain and cold and suffered
+great privations. Now they were returning with their bundles, their
+children, basket carriages, gramophones and other peculiar furniture,
+carried on the back or in little barrows drawn by dogs or donkeys. All
+looked calm and resigned. What else, indeed, could they do? In Holland
+they had been treated with great kindness and hospitality. In Antwerp
+they were to find that paralysis had seized upon all industries that
+gave them their livelihood. Doubtless they have a hard winter before
+them, but the Germans will, I subsequently heard, do all in their power
+to lessen the distress, and a special commission has, in fact, been
+nominated with this object. It may also surely be taken for granted
+that England, who says that she began the war to save neutral Belgium,
+and who can now afford to sacrifice £350,000,000 to encompass the
+destruction of Germany, will be able to offer a thousandth part of this
+sum to save the destitute in Belgium from that very fate.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIV
+
+  STILL IN ANTWERP
+
+
+The 16th of October--an anniversary! Nine years ago I left Stockholm
+for Tibet. How quiet and peaceful the world seemed then, how different
+from the thunders now re-echoing from pole to pole. The Russo-Japanese
+war had just ended. Now the Russians and Japanese are friends. Then
+Count Benckendorff had frowned on Lord Curzon’s Tibetan policy. But
+when the storm was preparing against Germany, and when it broke loose,
+Russia and England suddenly became friends--like Pilate and Herod in
+their day!
+
+The 16th of October broke with a leaden sky, and the German flag hung
+limp and motionless from the spire of the cathedral, 123 metres above
+the ground--where it had now been fluttering for a whole week. At the
+entrance facing the _Place Verte_ stood a middle-aged janitor, with an
+unspeakably sour mien. He scarcely deigned to glance at me when, in my
+most courteous accents, I asked him whether the cathedral was open.
+“The cathedral _is_ open,” he replied, “but only to German soldiers.”
+“All right, my boy,” I thought, and drew forth my _open sesame_,
+General von Moltke’s pass. The janitor read the paper and his face grew
+longer at every line. When he had finished he removed his cap and said:
+“Is that really true? If so I may tell you, Doctor, that I am a Swede,
+a native of Visby, resident in Antwerp for thirty years, and my name is
+Dahlgren.”
+
+Thereupon, the cathedral was open even to me, and honest Dahlgren took
+me round and explained everything. “Baedeker” does not know one-tenth
+of what he knew. But I will pass all this over, for this book deals
+only with the war. All that I will mention is that only one shell, or
+more likely perhaps a fragment of a shell, had struck the wall near the
+lower part of the great window above the entrance in _Place Verte_.
+The damage done is insignificant, and can be repaired in a day. If the
+shell had been maliciously inclined, and if Rubens’s famous pictures,
+“The Crucifixion” and the “Descent from the Cross,” had been in their
+usual places in the transept facing towards _Place Verte_, where the
+shell struck, they would have been in a perilous position. But they
+were removed before the bombardment and stored in a place of safety,
+like all other valuable pictures and art treasures in Antwerp. The
+only trace which the shell has left in the interior of the church is a
+scratch in one of the pillars.
+
+From the chancel one has a splendid view over the seven aisles and
+the majestic vaulted roof which was lost from view in the deep gloom
+above. It is a forest of mighty pillars presenting an ever-varying
+perspective--the nearest columns faintly illuminated from the windows,
+the more distant ones gradually merging into the sombre tint of the
+waning twilight. It is dark enough at the best of times in St. Joseph’s
+Chapel and St. Anthony’s Chapel, where windows four hundred years
+old represent the Father, Virgin, and Holy Child, side by side with
+St. George and the Dragon. “_In hoc signo vinces_” is inscribed on a
+reliquary, in which a splinter of the Holy Cross is kept.
+
+In the centre of the northern side-aisle, on a portable framework,
+stands an image of the Holy Virgin, richly arrayed in a long robe,
+with a golden crown on her head. Each year on the Sunday following the
+15th of August she is carried in procession round the town. But this
+year, when her aid was so badly needed, she was not carried through the
+streets of Antwerp. This year they contented themselves with lighting
+tall votive candles before the Queen of Heaven. Yet she seemingly
+remained deaf to all prayers! But a stained-glass picture in the third
+window from the left on the northern side shows a portrait of Emperor
+Charles V., who severed his Netherlands from their connection with the
+Germanic Holy Roman Empire, leaving the keys of Antwerp in the charge
+of this very image of the Virgin. The keys of Antwerp! It was “Black
+Maria”--and not her white namesake--who had the handling of them!
+
+The pulpit was carved by van der Voort in solid oak. It is exactly 200
+years old, but perhaps the oaks were 500 years old already when their
+wood was dedicated to the preaching of the Word of God. One likes to
+pause before this handsome work of art. The pulpit steps, with their
+carved crowns of trees and birds, leave us unmoved, but the four female
+figures which support the pulpit itself are noteworthy. They represent
+the four continents--Australia being then almost unknown. Three of the
+figures are light enough, but the one with the thick lips and the flat
+nose--Dark Africa, the negro continent--is wrapped in deep shadows.
+Four continents uphold the platform from which the gospel of God’s
+eternal love to mankind is preached throughout the earth--a pretty
+conception of van der Voort! “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.”
+The artist, no doubt, believed that the world would make progress
+during the centuries to come after his days. But now there are five
+continents--supporting the gospel of war and hatred. The two Western
+powers of the _entente_ bear the responsibility for having caused the
+Dance of Death to involve the whole globe, for they are bringing into
+the fight masses of men raked together from all parts of the world:
+Canadians come in their ships from America, Turcos and Senegalese
+negroes from Africa, and poor Hindus and Ghurkas, bronzed by the sun
+of India, lie freezing in the trenches--these are the representatives
+of Asia--and lastly, Australia and New Zealand are sending their
+contingents, over land and sea, from the Antipodes. And what is the
+purpose of which the attainment is thought worth such a world-wide levy
+of warriors? Why, Germanic culture is to be uprooted from the earth.
+And it is the bearers of this culture, the people of Luther, Goethe,
+Beethoven, Helmholtz and Röntgen, that are called barbarians and
+Huns--a danger to the future and civilisation of the white race! It is
+therefore fit that Ghurkas and Senegalese should come and save us from
+relapse into the dark ages. The artist who hereafter may be bold enough
+to immortalise the “levy of all races” of 1914, should not forget that
+he will find a promising idea for his leading motive in van der Voort’s
+woman--with the thick lips and the flat nose.
+
+On _Place Verte_ outside stands a bronze statue of Rubens, bareheaded,
+with a cloak over his shoulders. Its background is formed by the
+cathedral which he himself has adorned with some of his choicest
+masterpieces. There he stands, with extended hands, freely offering to
+the world the gifts his genius has created! The night before the town
+fell he stood there illumined by the glare of burning buildings--the
+_Hôtel d’Europe_ and _Taverne Royale_. The picturesque groups of
+warriors which were seen there five days ago, have disappeared for
+ever from the _Grand’ Place_. Now, only a long queue of civilians
+stands outside the Townhall, desiring to obtain, from the German
+military authorities, passports and permits for some purpose or other.
+
+As I sauntered through the old town, I looked at the people returning
+from their flight--in most cases merely a trip to the Dutch
+frontier--and who were now opening their doors and rearranging their
+shop windows. In a side street a group of marines had assembled round
+a half-starved cat whom they were treating to milk and meat; “the cat
+will be as fat as a porpoise in a week,” they assured me. Then my ears
+caught the sound of cheerful strains of music floating through the
+misty streets, and I followed the direction of the alluring sound. It
+turned out to be the band of one of the marine battalions playing in
+front of the Townhall--surrounded by a large crowd. At four o’clock
+every afternoon a band played here, at the Central Railway Station
+and outside _Hotel Weber_. Order was maintained by Belgian police
+constables. I addressed one of them and he told me various things of
+interest.
+
+[Illustration: FUGITIVES RETURNING TO ANTWERP FROM HOLLAND]
+
+He knew for certain, he said, that five British marines were taken
+prisoners yesterday in the town. Then he suddenly passed on to other
+topics. In the night of August 25th, a Zeppelin had flown over Antwerp,
+and dropped some bombs, one of which had hit three policemen; two were
+killed, one was still alive and likely to recover. The police force
+of Antwerp numbered 800 before the war. Of these, 260 had been called
+out for active service, 140 had fled when the bombardment commenced,
+the others had remained and were still doing duty. On account of their
+small number, even the higher police officers had to do street duty.
+He computed the strength of the Anglo-Belgian army which had been in
+Antwerp at 120,000 men, and he expressed himself in very drastic terms
+as to its mode of defending the town. He did not know where the army
+had gone to; at any rate it disappeared just when it was most needed.
+According to his computation, one-tenth, or at most one-eighth, of the
+population had remained during the bombardment. They had taken refuge
+in cellars, and stopped up the apertures with sandbags. Of course,
+men of his service were obliged to stay out of doors. Thus he had
+seen a cyclist struck by a shell and literally vanish on the spot. On
+returning home he found that his wife, like all others, had fled and
+taken their child with her. She had not yet returned, nor had he had
+any news of her. Further, he had seen the ferries in Antwerp cast loose
+and allowed to drift down-stream towards Flushing, to prevent their
+falling into the hands of the Germans. He believed that, in a month’s
+time, most of the inhabitants of the town would be back. The young men
+only hesitated to return for fear of being compelled by the Germans to
+serve in their army against Russia. And according to rumours which had
+been spread, the Russians were standing near Berlin with immense armies.
+
+Clearly, the defenders of Antwerp had feared that an attack would also
+be made from the west, from the region of Termonde, for one day General
+Bailer and his officers observed entrenchments, several kilometres
+in length, thrown up at the cost of at least a couple of weeks’ hard
+toil, and with much skill. The material was earth and timber, which
+had been dragged there by the civilian population from the surrounding
+districts. But even this labour was in vain, and they did not even make
+an attempt to defend these entrenchments.
+
+On October 17th we commenced with a visit to the Zoological Garden, one
+of the foremost of its kind in the world. Dr. Hütten, in his capacity
+as a German officer, was admitted free; I paid the usual admission. The
+Indian elephants, hippopotami, rhinoceroses and giraffes were just as
+unconcerned as the chimpanzees and the other simians, about the radical
+change which had recently taken place in their immediate surroundings.
+One of the elephants was gravely shaking his head, but otherwise the
+bombardment did not seem to have made the least impression on the
+animals; no doubt they mistook the roar of the guns for an approaching
+thunderstorm.
+
+But the most remarkable circumstance was that all beasts of prey had
+vanished. This is the only way in which the Zoological Garden has
+been affected by the war. The splendid large summer cages were empty,
+and so were the indoor winter quarters of the animals. An old keeper,
+who, grave and bent, was raking the paths in the park, explained the
+cause--shaking his head all the while just like the Indian elephant.
+
+“All beasts of prey were shot,” he said. “Four splendid lions, five
+fine tigers, all the leopards and panthers, all land bears and
+polar bears were killed. They were driven out into the summer cages
+and shot--the muzzles of the rifles were thrust through the bars.” He
+sighed, and no doubt he thought that this was the most grievous loss
+the war had caused, for both he and the other keepers of the wild
+beasts had become attached to their protégés.
+
+“But why, in the name of common-sense, were the poor beasts shot?
+Surely they were not suspected of espionage?” asked Lieut. Hütten.
+
+“Indeed not,” the keeper replied, “it was simply done by order of a
+general. They feared lest the cages might be struck by shells, when the
+beasts might have escaped and created a panic in the streets. That’s
+why they were shot. But now the bombardment is over, and the cages
+stand empty. Not even a splinter has fallen in the Zoological Garden.”
+
+It would be interesting to know what kind of shell it could be that
+would break a lion’s cage without killing the lion!
+
+Lastly I took a snapshot of the combined Asiatic and African landscape,
+in which my old friends, the Bactrian camels and the Tibetan yaks, were
+associated with dromedaries from Egypt. One might have imagined oneself
+far away from the turmoil of the war of nations when standing on the
+borders of their peaceful retreat!
+
+But before reverting to the war, I will interpolate here a few details
+gleaned in Antwerp as to what occurred in the town just before and
+during the bombardment. Most of these I obtained from a gentleman who
+on my return from the Zoological Garden was awaiting me at the entrance
+to the _Hôtel Terminus_, and introduced himself as Harald Petri,
+Swedish Consul in Antwerp. He was an uncommonly amiable, courteous and
+hospitable man, and as he had stayed in the town during those critical
+days, he could give me a great deal of perfectly reliable information.
+
+On Wednesday, the 7th of October, the Commanding General had published
+through the press a proclamation warning the inhabitants that the
+town might be bombarded at any moment. In consequence of this warning
+one-half of the population took flight. The warning had come none
+too soon, for the very same night at 11 p.m. the shells began to
+burst. During the night and on Thursday morning further crowds fled
+in a continuous stream. They went on foot, as no cars and no horses
+were to be had. They took with them their valuables and a good many
+domestic animals--I dare say also provisions. There were weeping
+women, screaming children and excited men. Many of them, perhaps, had
+seen shells falling near them. The number of these fugitives might be
+computed at over 150,000. They made for the Dutch frontier village of
+Putten, and thence for Bergen-op-Zoom, but many got as far as Esschem
+and Rosendaal by other roads.
+
+By 10 a.m. on Thursday the town was almost deserted, 10,000 having
+perhaps remained out of nearly 400,000 inhabitants. Nearly all of
+these sought refuge in the cellars under the houses which, with very
+few exceptions, stood empty. Among those remaining were nearly all the
+Swedes, Norwegians and Danes residing in Antwerp; in fact, many of the
+Scandinavians who had already taken out their passports, nevertheless
+remained behind.
+
+The bombardment continued all Thursday, and the town was set on fire by
+shells in several places. It was a terrific din, what with the roar of
+the guns and the crash of falling walls. The bombardment increased in
+intensity during Thursday night, and the fire spread. But at 11 a.m. on
+Friday, the 9th of October--the day before my visit--all became quiet.
+
+Consul Petri had disdained to seek shelter. In common with other
+officials, he had been invited to take refuge in the Townhall, but
+he preferred to stay at home. From time to time he went out into
+the streets to see the effect of the bombardment. As soon as it had
+ceased, he went to the Townhall, and then for a long stroll. The
+streets were deserted and silent; there was scarcely a soul to be seen.
+But suddenly, he saw a host of people. This was the German vanguard
+marching in from Berchem, to be followed later in the day by the main
+body of the besieging army. The public buildings were taken possession
+of, the artillery drove up to the quay, and the St. Anne’s quarter of
+the town was bombarded for two hours. Then all was quiet.
+
+Another informant in Antwerp told me that certain prominent persons
+would have left the town on October 3rd, if the Belgian Government had
+not ordered them to remain. This was done at the request of the British
+Government, who had promised to send troops to relieve the town. On
+the same day, at 2 p.m., Mr. W. Churchill arrived in a motor-car
+and had a consultation with the civic and military authorities of
+the city, in the course of which he promised to send 30,000 men to
+relieve the town, a force which, in conjunction with the Belgian
+army, should be sufficient for the defence of the city. As a matter
+of fact, only 15,000 men arrived, of whom 2500 were bluejackets. They
+had heavy artillery with them and are said to have fought bravely. On
+October 6th, late at night, Churchill left the town and drove off in a
+motor-car to the west, no doubt to Ostend.
+
+As the inhabitants during the nights heard, and in day-time saw,
+troops marching through the streets, they could not but believe that
+a vigorous resistance would be offered. They were therefore greatly
+surprised when the town surrendered without a fight and the defenders,
+at 6 a.m. on October 9th, withdrew over the pontoon bridge, built six
+weeks before, across the Scheldt, and then blew the bridge up. The
+British are said to have been the last to cross it.
+
+On October 17th, eight days after the fall of Antwerp, the number of
+inhabitants was estimated at fifty to sixty thousand. Probably even
+the young men fit for military service would soon return when they
+learnt that the Germans were paying well for work done and did not
+compel them to join their own ranks. Besides, the Governor had issued
+an order to the effect that all private property should be respected
+and that no private house should be entered by the soldiers. The three
+neutral Consuls--of Sweden, Holland and America--had also conferred
+with the Governor on the measures to be taken to restore normal life.
+In consequence, the Dutch Consul had advised his countrymen resident
+in Antwerp, numbering up to 20,000, to return. The German colony was
+estimated at 18,000, including many wealthy merchants. These also had
+commenced to return. The neutral Consuls most positively denied that
+any atrocities had been committed against Germans at the outbreak of
+the war.
+
+The material damage caused to the town itself by the bombardment is
+very small. Consul Petri calculates that there are 40,000 houses in
+Antwerp. Out of these, about 300 have been damaged by shells, and 100
+burnt down--hence no more than 1 per cent. He valued the buildings that
+had been burnt down at something like £500,000, and those damaged by
+shells at about £150,000.
+
+Consul Petri’s chauffeur had fled, and when we made a tour through the
+town the Consul drove the car himself. He was familiar with all the
+spots in the southern parts of Antwerp where shells had struck. The
+northern part had escaped damage altogether. We saw several yawning
+rents at the street level, where shells had laid open the cellars,
+leaving large gaping chasms. The Argentine Consul, who, like most other
+people, had taken refuge in a cellar, had been killed by one of these
+shells.
+
+In other places the shells had struck the roof, carrying away the whole
+garret floor, and leaving here and there nothing but the tattered
+shreds of girders rattling in the breeze. Frequently a shell had struck
+in the middle of a house-front without causing any damage visible from
+the street, beyond tearing a huge hole in the wall and shattering all
+the panes and window frames. Black streaks on the walls showed that
+fire had broken out. On closer examination we found, as a rule, that
+the principal havoc had been wrought on the side away from the street.
+
+We also saw how the shells had struck the roadway and burst, ripping
+up the stone pavement and throwing large mounds and fragments against
+adjacent houses, where cavities biting into the brickwork gaped red
+out of the white plastering. In one place we could see how a shell had
+carried away a roof and some ten yards of coping, and had then crashed
+into the opposite house on the other side of the street.
+
+All rubbish and brickwork which had tumbled into the streets and on
+the pavements had already been piled up in heaps, but had not yet been
+carted away for want of horses and vehicles. Among the heaps of ruins
+at the _Marché aux Souliers_ the gas was escaping from burst pipes and
+burning with blue wavering flames, presenting a weird spectacle at
+night.
+
+Our run also brought us to _St. Jacques_, a magnificent church, rich
+in works of art representing subjects from sacred history. The candles
+burning in front of some images of saints were inadequate to dispel
+the gloom. The features of the Saviour on a Crucifix revealed abysmal
+depths of pain and sorrow; it seemed as if darkness had descended for
+ever on the earth and overpowered him. The worshippers were easily
+counted. Among them I noticed a few young women confessing their sins
+in the confessional chairs, giving the listening priests an insight
+into some of the most secret recesses of human life.
+
+St. Paul’s can boast if anything a still greater ecclesiastical
+splendour. The interior was brightly illumined with electric light,
+but the church itself is jealously hidden in the midst of a dense
+cluster of houses.
+
+As it was still daylight, we decided to cross over to St. Anne’s on the
+western bank of the Scheldt. The ferries were still plodding steadily
+to and fro, but were now only bringing refugees back to Antwerp. One
+of the ferries was just lying to, and a broad gangway was thrown out
+to bridge the interval of one yard between the ferry and the quay. A
+restive grey horse shied at the gangway, reared, backed and fell into
+the river. “He is lost,” cried the marines, “he will find no place
+where he can get ashore.” The horse swam out into the Scheldt, but
+soon turned back. Meanwhile it was caught in the swirling current
+and disappeared. A boat went out to its aid, and towed it to a steep
+stairway. The horse was now spent and no longer attempted to swim.
+Ropes and lines were passed round its body and with united strength
+they pulled it up to the pavement. Here the horse lay as if dead. They
+rubbed it with straw. Presumably it revived, for when we returned from
+the other bank it was gone. It was only a horse! And yet it had caused
+men’s hearts to beat faster for a good half-hour!
+
+Yet, strangely enough, all the dead cavalry and transport horses whose
+swollen bodies lie on the road between Brussels and Antwerp, failed to
+move us deeply--not to speak of the graves with the small white crosses
+which we pass so heedlessly on our road.
+
+A last gleam of daylight was still lingering when we drove up to the
+imposing _Hôpital Militaire_, where I wished to call on Sister Martha
+for the last time. She was the only German among a number of Belgian
+Sisters. The medical staff consists partly of German naval surgeons,
+partly of Belgians. The surgeon-in-chief, whom I had met in Kobe, had
+been in Stockholm in July, just before the war broke out. The hospital
+had 700 beds, most of which were now occupied by Belgian soldiers, a
+few Germans and seventeen Englishmen. I talked to six of the latter
+in one of the pavilions. When I asked what they thought of the war
+they all replied: “Sir, we had got our orders, all we had to do was to
+obey and do our duty!” One of them admitted: “I suppose we could not
+well look on idly when the Germans were capturing the world’s trade.”
+Another thought it was absurd that men should go out and kill each
+other, and he declaimed about “this horrible, this terrible war.” All
+were longing for home, and asking whether we thought they would get
+there by Christmas. I was unable to reassure them on this point. “If at
+least our relatives knew that we are alive!” they said. They were all
+serene and dignified, and greatly appreciated the kind and solicitous
+care they received. What a pity that they should be lying there,
+counting the lingering hours! Nevertheless one feels greater pity
+still for the Belgians who have been left in the lurch by their great
+tempters and “protectors,” and who have lost their country and their
+independence. After all it is best to stand on one’s own legs and to
+follow the watchword of the boy scout: “Be prepared.”
+
+We had no time to visit Rubens’s house, standing in the street bearing
+his name. It has been on fire repeatedly since his time, and is
+entirely changed. But we entered Mrs. Osterith’s house. The Governor
+had taken up his quarters there. He is a refined and humane man, who
+is doing all he can to infuse new life into the dead town, and wishes
+to see its industry and prosperity flourishing afresh under the new
+forms which the inexorable necessities of war have brought forth. Mrs.
+Osterith herself was an old acquaintance of mine. In 1903 I had been
+to a great reception at this magnificent house, which might almost be
+called a palace. The noble lady is seventy-four, and full of humour.
+She had remained in Antwerp during the bombardment, and together with
+fifty-eight persons, members of the household and acquaintances,
+taken refuge in the vast cellars under the house. Her bed had stood
+between bins of old wine, and she slept there while shells crashed
+over the burning town. Once the Spanish Minister paid her a visit,
+and she received him in her “bombardment dress,” a peignoir. At last
+came the hour of release, and she returned with her household from her
+subterranean captivity to the realms of daylight.
+
+Finally, we made for the _Hôtel Terminus_, where we supped in the
+company of General Bailer, Colonel Müller, Major Elert, Captain
+Lamprecht, and a couple of other officers. Our company was also joined
+by Lieutenant-Colonel Schaubode, who had commanded the siege artillery
+and had been rewarded for his merits with the Iron Cross of the first
+class. He was so used to fire that he slept soundly while shells were
+whizzing around him. He told us various instances of the strange
+freaks of fate which occur in this connection. During an engagement,
+a General and a Major stood talking on the high road. A shell fell
+near them. The Major was sent away on some errand, and had scarcely
+moved away when there came another shell, which struck the General so
+effectually that he literally vanished from sight.
+
+On another occasion two officers were living in the same quarters in
+a town which was being shelled. When the house was struck by a shell,
+which, however, did no damage to speak of, one of the officers thought
+that they might consider themselves safe, as surely the same house
+was not likely to be hit more than once. The other, however, sought
+new quarters and induced his friend to follow him. As soon as they
+had left, the house was totally destroyed. It turned out that it was
+a public office, where the enemy took it for granted that the German
+commanders would take up their quarters.
+
+Thus, chance often seems to play a great part. To live in a bombarded
+town is like a game of chance, as no one can tell where the shells will
+strike. The wisest course is to discard all calculations and to trust
+one’s life to God’s hands. We have already seen how the Swedish Consul
+in Antwerp, who exposed himself to danger, came off scot-free, while
+his Argentine colleague, who took refuge in an apparently safe cellar,
+was killed.
+
+During my stay in Antwerp I had an opportunity--though only once--of
+meeting the Rev. Börjeson, Seamen’s Missionary, a son of the great
+sculptor. Börjeson told me various things about the refugees, and the
+hardships they suffered. They had camped out in woods and pasture
+lands, but in Holland they had been well received, and the Dutch had
+helped them all they could. In this connection I expressed a wish to
+see one of the high roads leading north, and Consul Petri, with his
+usual hospitality, placed his car at my disposal; accordingly, on the
+18th of October, we started on the road leading to Bergen-op-Zoom.
+
+On our drive through the town we observed, to our pleasant surprise,
+that some of the railways were already working--a new sign of
+reawakening life, even if of no great significance. At the bridge
+across the town moat our papers were carefully examined, whereupon we
+proceeded through the suburb of Merxem. West of this is the fort of the
+same name. This had been surrendered without a fight, though surrounded
+on all sides by barbed-wire entanglements; a number of trees had been
+felled to clear the range, and houses had been pulled down, all--so it
+seemed now--needlessly!
+
+The road was stone-paved and shaded by fine oaks and beeches; it passed
+through the villages of Donck, Eckeren, and Cappellen. Quite close to
+the frontier we passed between a couple of the extreme fortifications
+on the northern front. These, too, were surrounded by barbed-wire
+entanglements and an area of demolition, which had not been caused by
+the attackers but by the defenders. In one place a barricade had been
+erected right across the road--all to no purpose.
+
+Dryhoek is the name of one of the northernmost works, where we made
+a brief inspection, accompanied by a young German lieutenant and a
+Belgian merchant, a friend of Consul Petri. Dryhoek has been totally
+demolished, but the destruction was not wrought by German artillery.
+When the Commander recognised that the fortifications would fall into
+the hands of the Germans, he decided at least not to leave them to the
+enemy in undamaged condition, and ordered the garrison of about two
+hundred men to march off, whereupon he set fire to the powder magazine
+and blew himself up together with his fort. The great concrete blocks
+now lying scattered on the site form a monument over his grave. Even if
+nothing is won by such an act one cannot but recognise that it requires
+rare fortitude and resolution.
+
+[Illustration: OUTWORKS AT DRYHOEK, BLOWN UP BY THEIR COMMANDANT]
+
+The German lieutenant told me that several minor after-explosions had
+taken place on the site. Yesterday he had found among the ruins the arm
+of a man, evidently the Commander’s, unless one of the men had remained
+to die with his chief.
+
+The fort was crescent-shaped, with four turrets for 12- and 15-cm.
+guns, having a range of 8-10 kilometres, and one turret for 7.5-cm.
+guns, intended for short-range fighting. This turret faced north,
+and was the only one which remained intact besides the breastwork of
+sandbags for the defending infantry.
+
+All along the road we passed returning fugitives. At the village
+of Putten the frontier post is in the middle of the street, where
+the Dutch and the German flags float side by side, and where Dutch
+soldiers guard the frontier. All passports are scrutinised here. As
+for ourselves, we had no difficulty in being passed through, and we
+proceeded some distance to the north through a rather sparsely
+cultivated tract, where young pines were growing on both sides of the
+road. Scattered paper, rags, empty bottles and other vestiges marked
+the spots where the fugitives had camped. They had fared very ill in
+the chilly autumn nights. Some had got separated from their dear ones
+and were searching for them. They had sped on by night as well as by
+day on this _via dolorosa_, and it was not surprising that they lost
+each other in the darkness. The Dutch mounted police patrols could not
+help them, they could only maintain order. Many a woman gave birth to a
+child prematurely by the roadside. Indescribable scenes were enacted in
+this fleeing caravan, distracted with fear and anxiety. But even they,
+perhaps, could not forbear a smile when for instance they saw a big
+stout matron laboriously dragging an easy chair on which she sat down
+to rest at every fiftieth step! And grateful, indeed, they must have
+felt, when the Dutch regaled them with bread, soup, and other food!
+
+[Illustration: THE DUTCH FRONTIER STATION AT PUTTEN ON THE WAY TO
+BERGEN-OP-ZOOM]
+
+But now they were returning in endless procession, which however, was
+far more sparse than it had been a few days ago. They came on foot,
+on bicycles or guiding dog-drawn carts and pushing wheelbarrows. Many
+were riding in solid vehicles with or without springs. I had scarcely
+expected to see that so many Belgian horses had got over whole-skinned
+to Holland. Now they were returning to their old stables.
+
+As one tarries by the roadside awhile to watch this procession of
+poor half-starved and frozen people deprived of livelihood, home and
+country, one cannot but ask: “_Whose is the fault?_”
+
+I have on various occasions witnessed scenes of Belgian misery and
+distress, which nearly broke my heart. I felt glad that there are
+charitable souls in the world who are collecting means to alleviate
+this distress.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jesus said to his disciples: “Take heed that no man deceive you.... Ye
+shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled;
+for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For
+nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and
+there shall be famine and earthquakes in divers places. But all these
+are only the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be
+afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations
+for My name’s sake. And then shall many be offended and shall betray
+one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall
+rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the
+love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the
+same shall be saved.... When ye therefore shall see the abomination of
+desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place
+(whoso readeth, let him understand): then let them which be in Judæa
+flee into the mountains: let him which is on the housetop come not down
+to take anything out of his house: neither let him which is in the
+field return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with
+child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your
+flight be not in winter, neither on the sabbath day: for then shall be
+great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to
+this time, no, nor ever shall be....
+
+“Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
+But know this, that if the good man of the house had known in what
+watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have
+suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in
+such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.... Heaven and earth
+shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.”
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XV
+
+  _VIA_ GHENT AND BRUGES TO OSTEND
+
+
+During the time I stayed at Antwerp news kept reaching us almost daily
+of the rapidity with which the Germans were approaching the sea. “Ghent
+is taken,” “Bruges is taken,” and finally, “To-day our troops have
+entered Ostend.” On my return to Brussels it looked as if the Allies
+were going to do their utmost to drive the Germans out of Ostend, and a
+rumour was in circulation that the British had bombarded the town.
+
+Accompanied by the ever-charming and delightful Consul Petri and his
+Belgian friend, who took charge of the steering wheel, I proceeded
+on October 20th to Ostend, equipped with a special pass from the
+Governor-General. The weather was dull and rainy and dark curtains of
+heavy clouds hung over the bleak landscape. We drove through avenues of
+elms along a road paved with Swedish granite, so it might be said that
+we were travelling on Swedish, Belgian and German ground. Every inch of
+the country is cultivated or built upon, nothing but houses and farms,
+hop-fields, corn-fields and kitchen gardens. The draught dogs are very
+busy, since the war has taken all the horses. One sees remarkably few
+German uniforms, but a good many natives walking along under their
+umbrellas. As in Malines, the people wear wooden shoes, and we still
+come across great numbers of returning fugitives.
+
+At Alost we cross the Dendre by a bridge. Here we find numerous marks
+of shell fire. At Quaterecht many houses have been destroyed. From
+Melle the road is lined with an uninterrupted string of nurseries
+and flower gardens. Horticulture has here reached a high pitch of
+perfection and potted plants are exported to the United States to the
+tune of millions.
+
+In Ghent nothing has been destroyed. The town retains its customary
+appearance. The tramcars are running, all shops are open and there are
+crowds of people about in spite of the weather. Yet the many German
+uniforms tell their tale. We stopped to have a look at the magnificent
+cathedral. We found here an image of the Virgin Mary surrounded by
+burning candles and by it was a notice that anyone offering up prayers
+before the image would receive fifty days’ absolution. What the many
+people kneeling on the praying stools were praying for, we could
+readily guess.
+
+In the palace of the Counts of Flanders we wandered through
+subterranean crypts and along crenelated walls. From a commanding crest
+we had a remarkable view over the red-brick roofs and grey church
+towers of the town, all dripping with rain.
+
+I had been invited for supper by the charming and friendly war
+historian, Major-General Friederich, where I met several officers
+belonging to his staff. The General was now in mourning. His only son
+had fallen on the field of honour for his country. But the General had
+other sons, to wit: his Landwehr soldiers, sturdy, strong, willing
+and lusty fellows. The rank and file was composed of workmen, privy
+councillors, cobblers’ apprentices, barristers, brewers’ draymen,
+high court judges, blacksmiths and mayors. Differences in rank, party
+contentions and class distinctions all disappear in the field without
+leaving a trace behind them. War levels everything. There is but one
+rank: that of the warrior who fights for the honour of his country and
+the freedom of his people.
+
+At nine in the morning of the 21st October we continued our journey.
+The rain clouds still hung heavy over the narrow streets and the
+weather did not brighten until we had left the town behind us. At Eclo
+a company of German cyclists were resting. Bridges span the canals
+here and there and the latter in turn intersect the country in all
+directions to carry the many lighters to and fro. There is not much
+traffic now. Now and again we see large wagons which serve as homes for
+itinerant families moving from place to place to buy up the tresses of
+peasant girls, to sharpen knives, to do tinkering and so forth.
+
+Bruges is one of the most celebrated cities of Europe on account of
+its old-world air, its picturesque houses, its trees and bridges over
+the canals and its mighty city gates with rounded turrets. I felt I
+should like to remain to enjoy the repose which seemed to dwell over
+the many waterways. But now there is no time. We go on through a beech
+forest and over open fields and reach the village of Ghistelles; a
+few kilometres further on towards the south-west and we come to a
+crossing, where we are stopped by an infantry picket. As we halt we
+hear a violent cannonade within a short distance. Our papers are
+examined, and we are told that an artillery duel is going on at
+Middelkerke and that the German positions are on the near side of the
+long canal connecting Ostend with Nieuport and Dunkerque. A squadron
+of British warships is said to be lying off the coast and bombarding
+the German positions, which are also attacked from the land side by
+Belgian and French troops. But the road to Ostend, which runs first to
+the north-west and later to the north-north-east, was said to be free.
+The soldiers thought that we were practically, if not entirely, safe
+from shells on that road. The most dangerous point was the bend on the
+other side of the canal, where the road changes its direction. We met
+coming from Ostend several ammunition columns on the way to the troops
+at Middelkerke, where numbers of wounded soldiers were returning to the
+rear.
+
+[Illustration: The Belgian Coast between Blankenberghe and Nieuport.]
+
+We got safely past the dangerous corner and arrived safe and sound in
+the handsome and aristocratic town by the sea, to which Baedeker has
+given the following testimonial: “Ostend is perhaps at present Europe’s
+most elegant watering-place.” We drove on to the avenue along the front
+with its rows of big hotels facing the sea. Most of them are only
+open during the season, which ends on the 15th September, and during
+which some 45,000 visitors reside in the town. But Ostend is also
+the terminus of one of the passenger routes between England and the
+Continent and this traffic goes on all the year round. Travellers held
+up by gales or by fatigue can find hotels of a less pretentious kind,
+but they are situated in the interior of the town.
+
+[Illustration: A PETTY OFFICER WITH A FEW MARINES AT A STREET-CORNER IN
+OSTEND]
+
+It was two o’clock when we arrived. I had never been to Ostend and
+knew none of the German officers, but I had my pass and felt I ought
+to report myself to the commandant, who was said to be stopping at the
+_Hôtel Littoral_ facing the sea, so we proceeded there and lunched
+immediately in the restaurant, for Consul Petri’s time was nearly
+up and he had to be back in Antwerp before nightfall. I accompanied
+him and his Belgian friend to the door, thanked them for their
+companionship and saw them drive off with a little Swedish flag in
+front cracking in the breeze.
+
+It looked strange, this grey and dreary sea, as one cast one’s glance
+westward. One seemed to feel the hot breath of war blowing in over the
+land. The rain had ceased, the weather was clearing, but the sky was
+still overcast. In the west, at a distance of nine or ten kilometres,
+we saw plainly and clearly the outlines of thirteen British warships,
+of which a couple were cruisers and the others large destroyers of
+the older type. They were firing against the German positions on the
+Belgian coast and were themselves under fire. One could see them
+constantly on the move so as to render the German aim and fire more
+difficult. Yet on the whole they retained their positions and their
+black hulls were sharply silhouetted against the light horizon. Huge
+black clouds of smoke rose from their funnels and were blown across the
+horizon, giving the sky a peculiar streaky appearance.
+
+The swell rolled in, dull and sleepy, over the fine smooth sands of the
+_plage_. The road facing the sea was open to traffic, but the spacious
+promenade outside, separated from the sea and _plage_ by an iron rail,
+was reserved for the German troops. At high tide the sea ascends to the
+foot of the stone wall of the promenade, whilst at low water it recedes
+some distance, leaving a wide belt of sand high and dry. This was now
+occupied by German horsemen who rode out into the water to refresh and
+harden their tired mounts.
+
+I called upon the commandant at Ostend, _Kapitän zur See_ (naval
+captain) Tägert. He was staying on the first floor of the _Hôtel
+Littoral_, and from his balcony we once again observed the British
+warships. He told me that he and his brother naval officers had arrived
+at Ostend early the same day, the 21st October. They had gone first to
+the _Majestic Hotel_, which was supposed to be the best in the town.
+The proprietor declared that he had no rooms available, which was not
+true, as the season was long since over. Possibly the name of the
+hotel explained why there was no room--for German officers. Instead
+of availing themselves of their right to insist on accommodation, the
+Germans, anxious to avoid a fuss, went to the _Hôtel Littoral_, which
+was placed at their disposal from top to bottom. They subsequently
+found that they had no cause to repent the change. The army officers
+and doctors, on the other hand, were less amenable and settled down
+without further ado at the _Majestic Hotel_, where kitchen service and
+attendance were quickly working at full pressure.
+
+[Illustration: MILITARY POLICEMEN INSPECTING THE DAMAGE OUTSIDE THE
+“MAJESTIC” HOTEL]
+
+Captain Tägert, a refined and conscientious man, immediately ordered
+that a room (by the way, the last available at the _Littoral_)
+be placed at my disposal forthwith. I took possession at once.
+The corridor on the second floor led straight into the apartments
+overlooking the sea, the inner doors being already furnished with the
+name-plates of the German naval officers occupying them. The outer
+glass doors led to balconies with comfortable basket chairs. From these
+balconies we had an uninterrupted view of the sea and could watch the
+British squadron and its movements.
+
+From my splendid point of vantage I could enjoy at leisure the varying
+phases of a wonderful sunset. In the west the great ball was shining
+with a curious pink glow now and then running into yellow. The fleecy
+clouds near by were fringed with gold reflected in the glittering sea.
+The rest of the sky was overcast and a thin drizzle fell fitfully,
+whilst the windows on the front gleamed as if the houses were on fire.
+The British ships lay in the centre of the patch of sea turned golden
+by the rays of the setting sun. They had been bombarding the German
+positions all day and I could see the flashes from the guns, followed a
+long while after by the roar of the report. Now, at 5.20 p.m., German
+time, the thunder from the guns was so loud and insistent that the
+windows of the Kursaal shook and rattled. Half an hour later the firing
+ceased. We assumed that the squadron had gone north to replenish its
+ammunition. By this time the beam of light had shrunk and the golden
+tint had faded from the water. Twilight descended upon the sea and the
+blinking of a couple of gas-buoys began to assert itself. They are
+there to guide the shipping, but now the fairway was empty and deserted.
+
+During the day I had seen many civilians about, but towards evening
+they gradually disappeared. Nobody was allowed out after 9 p.m. or
+before 5 a.m. The streets themselves were not lighted, but several
+shops were kept with their lights burning until the former hour. On
+the promenade at the front there was not a single lamp alight--here
+one wandered in darkness among the German soldiers. Light issued,
+however, from many windows facing the sea. This was not thought risky,
+as the enemy vessels well knew their bearings in any case. It was not
+thought that the British ships would bombard Ostend, as the killing of
+a hundred or two of Germans and the evacuation of the place would not
+make up for the loss of the considerable British capital supposed to
+be invested in the town.
+
+I had been invited to regard myself as a member of the German naval
+officers’ mess for dinner and supper at the _Hôtel Littoral_. When
+therefore we assembled at eight o’clock in the restaurant for the first
+time, I made the acquaintance of them all. Among my special friends,
+apart from the chief, were Captain-Lieutenant Bess, Lieutenant Haak,
+Staff-Surgeon Schönfelder and Doctor Kübler. We kept together during
+the next few days and went through many experiences which we shall
+never forget.
+
+Whilst we were sitting at table a report was handed in that light
+signals had been made from a church tower, clearly addressed to the
+British warships. The instructions issued to deal with this matter
+ordered a very thorough investigation of the circumstances. The day’s
+bombardment from the British ships had done no damage beyond killing a
+few horses. Apart from this the shells had found an “empty billet.”
+
+We sat up late talking, and Captain Bess told us about the sinking of
+the old “tin box” _Ariadne_, a cruiser of 3000 tons, by the British on
+August 28th. Bess was navigating officer on board and he assured me
+that it takes some time before one’s nerves recover their equilibrium
+after the shock of such an experience. The _Ariadne_ had been doing
+patrol duty in Jade Bight when in the morning of August 28th she was
+ordered to scour the sea north-west of Heligoland. The weather was
+misty and it was impossible to see far ahead. Suddenly a huge grey hulk
+loomed up through the fog. It was a British “Dreadnought,” and her
+heavy guns at once began to play. The first “coal box” flew right over
+the _Ariadne_, so close that several of the crew were flung against the
+deck by the air pressure. After that the shells kept raining over the
+doomed little cruiser, which immediately headed for the Jade Bight, her
+guns returning the fire as best she could. One shot after the other
+struck the _Ariadne_. After a while her stern was on fire and there
+was no possibility of bringing the powder magazine under water so as
+to avert a catastrophe. The fore-part of the ship also caught fire,
+but not in the bows, where the wounded had been taken and where it was
+still possible to make one’s way. Next the steering apparatus was hit
+and the ship seemed to want to make for the British vessel, but somehow
+or other it was put right again. Words cannot describe the appalling
+noise which denoted each hit. A deafening crash resounded through the
+entire hull when the projectile struck its sides. The fire soon spread.
+Presently it became impossible to serve the guns. In the end the flames
+reached the parts of the ship where the ammunition was stored. Now
+began a terrible crackling and hissing as one projectile after the
+other exploded and shells and splinters poured out in every direction.
+Another “Dreadnought” dived through the fog, but did not take part in
+the fight, uneven enough already. The _Ariadne’s_ commander and Bess
+were on the bridge, the plating of which was perforated from beneath
+by the exploding ammunition. The heat was unbearable, everything was
+wreathed in smoke, the deafening detonations followed closer and closer
+and the final catastrophe was clearly approaching. When the crew saw
+that the end might come at any moment they broke into a rousing cheer
+for the Emperor and another for the _Ariadne’s_ commander. Then they
+sang the
+
+          “Stolz weht die Flagge schwarz-weiss-rot
+          An unsres Schiffes Mast
+          Dem Feinde weh, der sie bedroht,
+          Der diese Farben hasst!
+          Sie flattert an dem Heimatstrand
+          Im winde hin und her,
+          Und fern vom teuren Vaterland
+          Auf sturmbewegtem Meer.
+          Ihr wolln wir treu ergeben sein,
+          Getreu bis in den Tod,
+          Ihr wolln wir unser Leben weihn,
+          Der Flagge schwarz-weiss-rot. Hurra!”[26]
+
+[26]      Black, white and red our noble flag
+          Up at our masthead flies--
+          Woe to the foe who scorns that flag,
+          This ensign who defies!
+          It gaily flutters in the breeze
+          Upon our native strand
+          And out on many storm-tossed seas
+          Far from our fatherland.
+          Beneath it firm and true we’ll stand,
+          Our blood we’ll gladly shed,
+          And to our last breath will defend
+          The black and white and red!
+          Hurrah!
+
+But salvation was near at hand. The two cruisers _Danzig_ and
+_Stralsund_ showed up through the mist. The crew jumped overboard from
+the red-hot, burning ship. The British disappeared. The commander and
+Bess would have been roasted had they remained longer at their post,
+and they too dived into the sea. As regards the latter, he did not
+recover consciousness until he found himself in a comfortable berth on
+board one of the rescue ships. The _Ariadne_ had lost close on seventy
+men out of her full complement of three hundred.
+
+Thus ended the first day which I spent with the German naval officers
+at Ostend, that glorious watering-place, at other times the rendezvous
+of _la haute volée_ and “the upper ten,” that pleasure-ground of
+innumerable good-for-nothings, where dissipated diplomats bathe their
+jaded bodies in the pure salt sea, where namby-pamby dandies flirt
+with idle, fascinating women. Now German imperial power stood like
+an impenetrable iron wall on the brink of the sea, with its spear
+pointed at the heart of England. The first goal had been reached,
+England--fearful of her world supremacy on the sea and jealous of the
+rapid commercial and economic rise of Germany--had made up her mind to
+join in the fight and had declared war on Germany. Now, if ever, was
+the opportunity to get at a hated rival--without too great a sacrifice
+of her own resources. But already German forces had reached the ocean
+shore. Antwerp had fallen, the city which Mr. Winston Churchill, like
+the Duke of Wellington of old, had wished to convert into a British
+base for operations on the Continent, a point from which the Belgians
+could be put to rights should they perchance become less patient and
+show less interest in the sacred cause. Yes, Antwerp--the city which
+was to be saved for Great Britain even if the rest of Belgium went
+under--had fallen, in spite of Britain’s protest and in spite of
+the showers of abuse which the proud British had poured over their
+honourable enemy. The greatest drama of the world’s history was in
+full swing. Were the Teutons to go under and the culture of the German
+“barbarians” to be wiped out? No, never! Such a purpose would require
+other means for its fulfilment than those hitherto tried by the Allies.
+The military position of Germany is too strong, and all attempts to
+crush her people are and must be hopeless. But woe to those who bear
+the blame for the agony of the vanquished!
+
+It was with a queer feeling that I went to bed in a room where I could
+look upon a sea from which British warships had only a moment ago been
+bombarding the coast a few miles away. The fire might easily have been
+directed on Ostend itself. But this did not come to pass. At least I
+heard nothing, for I slept like a log. When I awoke war had resumed its
+thunders in the west.
+
+22nd October. The British bombardment of the coastal zone south of
+Ostend continued throughout the morning and was still more severe than
+on the previous day. The window-panes in the hotel restaurant shook in
+their frames. We wondered whether the deeper sounds emanated from newly
+arrived German heavy artillery or from British naval guns.
+
+Two German infantry detachments were occupying a line running from
+north-west to south-east of the north-eastern side of the Yser Canal.
+On the south-west side of the canal the Belgians and British had
+entrenched themselves firmly; they also held Nieuport. The immediate
+German object was to command the crossings of the canal, which in
+itself formed a very valuable defensive work in the hands of the
+Allies. The villages of Leffinghe and Slype and the road between
+them, running south-east of Middelkerke, had been bombarded by the
+enemy. Leffinghe was only six, Slype nine kilometres from Ostend. The
+positions of the Germans were enormously strong. They clearly did not
+intend to let go the advantage they had gained, although encircled
+by fire from the north, north-west, west, south-west and south, both
+from the sea and from the land side. The Allies on the other hand
+realised that every German advance west-south-westward, that is to say
+towards Nieuport, Dunkerque and Calais, was, to say the least, fatal
+to themselves. Hence the remnants of the Anglo-Belgian Army, which
+had thought fit to leave Antwerp before it was too late, had halted
+in its retreat after receiving considerable reinforcements both from
+France and England, and had offered a desperate resistance in fortified
+positions in the western sector of Belgian Flanders, intersected by
+canals and waterways. It will readily be understood what important
+British interests were at stake. As soon as England herself was in
+danger, the famous phlegm was transformed into unbridled hysteria.
+
+Captain Tägert now suggested an excursion to Middelkerke, situated
+on the coast, eight kilometres from Ostend. Captain-Lieutenant Bess
+and his adjutant were to accompany me. We drove in the covered car of
+the former, following the inner sea-road parallel with the shore, but
+separated from it by intermittent rows of houses. Towards Middelkerke
+the life and traffic increased. Long food and ammunition columns were
+being brought up to the rear of the troops. In a street in the little
+town the men were busy hiding the light canvas awnings of the provision
+wagons with twigs and branches, and the vehicles looked like so many
+leafy bowers. Yet I was unpleasantly impressed by the sight of this
+kind of leafy bower, for in my mind it was too closely associated with
+impending danger. As I have said before, this sort of disguise is
+necessitated by the enemy’s air scouting.
+
+We asked a picket where the General-in-Command von Werder had his
+quarters, and were directed to a modest little house. The General was
+busy at the moment receiving details of the situation in this part of
+the theatre of war. A report on the subject had to be sent to Main
+Headquarters. As soon as this matter was disposed of, we were shown in.
+The General received us with the greatest kindness. He was in brilliant
+spirits and possesses in a high degree that immovable equanimity
+required in difficult situations. Lieutenant-Colonel Wittisch was told
+to lend us an officer familiar with the field of battle, who would
+take us to a point of vantage from which we could obtain a view of the
+situation without too much exposing ourselves to the enemy’s fire. The
+Colonel asked whether he might not undertake this job himself, and so
+we promptly seated ourselves in his open car and continued on our way
+along the sea-front under cover of the only row of houses separating us
+from the sea. These houses are, however, intersected by several narrow
+streets like the openings in a gallery, through which we caught sight
+of the sea and two destroyers which had detached themselves from the
+British squadron and were now two kilometres away. They were clearly
+out to observe what was passing on shore, but did not fire, at least
+not at the moment.
+
+On reaching the last of the stone houses at the western end of
+Middelkerke we alighted from the car and proceeded on foot some
+distance south to the crest of the highest dune in the neighbourhood.
+At this point we were only a little over seven kilometres from
+Nieuport, which was in the hands of the Allies. We had with us a map
+of the neighbourhood and commanded a wide radius of the blood-drenched
+country. Below the crest of the dune, to the south-west, stood the
+nearest German batteries. They were just on the point of hurling
+their messengers of death into the allied positions. At every shot we
+heard that peculiar whining, whistling sound of the projectile, and
+presently a puff of smoke indicated the point of impact at the other
+end. All life in the vicinity of this target is destroyed. A hit can
+kill twenty men and wound as many or more. Yesterday British shells had
+been raining down from Nieuport and they had reached the spot where
+we now stood. It is difficult to avoid a feeling of excitement, and
+one’s attention is strained to the utmost when witnessing an artillery
+duel over a large area and hearing the incessant heavy dull booming of
+cannon.
+
+With the map in his hand and with really impressive calm Colonel
+Wittisch explained everything that was passing in front of us; now and
+again we stole a glance at the destroyers outside, wondering whether
+they would soon begin to shoot. In the south-west we noticed the little
+white puffs of smoke which denote the bursting of shrapnel shells.
+
+When everything had been fully explained to me, the Colonel thought
+that it was not advisable to remain any longer. There were four of us,
+and we were within range of all commanding points in the vicinity. If
+we were noticed from the south side, it would be assumed that we were
+directing the German artillery and the enemy’s guns would be trained
+on us. It is a peculiar sensation to know that one may at any moment
+become a target.
+
+So we walked down from the dunes and back to the car. From the mouth
+of one of the little streets running down to the sea we observed
+the two incredibly impudent destroyers, which we were told had been
+stealing along the coast for the last three days. They had gradually
+come nearer and nearer, since they noticed no evil intentions from the
+coast at Middelkerke. Through our glasses we could see the officers
+on the bridge and the crew moving about on deck. They on their part
+could see us with equal clearness, but I suppose they did not think
+us worth powder and shot from a revolving gun. After a while they
+seemed to make a large sweep, one to the south-west, west, north-west
+and north-north-west, and the other to the north-east, north and
+north-north-west, gradually approaching the remainder of the squadron,
+no doubt to report what they had seen. Of the squadron itself only five
+ships were discernible through the mist.
+
+Now we could proceed without any risk on our return journey along _La
+Digue_, the broad, hard road skirting the shore, with its excellent
+view of the sea. Here all civilian traffic was forbidden and no lights
+were allowed in the windows. In the evenings and at night the darkness
+was complete.
+
+After supper, at ten o’clock, I was sitting once more on my balcony,
+the two gas-buoys were burning and the swell was breaking drowsily
+upon the shore, drowning the steps of the sentries in the street. But
+I could see the soldiers by the light from the windows. They moved
+mostly in pairs, whilst other soldiers stood chatting in little groups,
+leaning against the iron railing of the promenade and watching the
+sheaves of fire from the British guns. In the course of ten minutes
+I counted 141 shots; probably there were more, as several might have
+coincided. In ten hours this meant 8500 shots, an expensive business.
+
+So I went to bed at Ostend for the second time. I left the balcony
+doors open--it was too tempting to lie awake awhile to watch the clear
+sky and listen to the harmonies of the ocean swell and the booming
+guns. Gradually I drifted into a deep and refreshing sleep.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVI
+
+  OSTEND BOMBARDED
+
+
+On Friday the 23rd October I was called by Dr. Kübler, who suggested a
+walk to the lighthouse and to the old fortifications. So we wandered
+off to the new outer harbour, where a sailor rowed us across the canal,
+whereupon we continued to the flying station, where we arrived just in
+time to watch the elegant ascent of a _Taube_, which circled up to a
+considerable height and then disappeared towards the south-west.
+
+The lighthouse rears its white minaret fifty-eight metres above the
+ground. Tempting as it was, we refrained from climbing up to the light
+to have a look at Nieuport, Furnes and Dunkerque, which can be seen
+from the top.
+
+Instead we traced our steps to the ancient fort and its moat, its
+earth-clad slopes and its five guns dating from 1862. We returned by
+the electric tramway. The car was filled with soldiers and civilians.
+The former included an old Landsturm man, who told us that he had three
+sons in the war, but where they were and whether they were still alive,
+he had not the faintest notion. “I don’t grudge their dying,” he said,
+“one must sacrifice all for the Fatherland.”
+
+On returning to the promenade, we settled down on a bench by the
+Kursaal and examined the British squadron through our glasses. The sky
+was exceptionally clear, the weather radiant; even the sun came out to
+have a peep at us.
+
+Just before half-past twelve Captain-Lieutenant Bess came to fetch me.
+He had just returned from Middelkerke, where he had been with Admiral
+von Schröder. He told me that the road in which yesterday we had seen
+the foliage-enshrouded wagons was now anything but safe, and that in
+fact a couple of shells had been dropped there. Even the soldiers
+were forbidden to show themselves on the front. Bess dissuaded me,
+therefore, from attempting a second visit to Middelkerke.
+
+He had another suggestion, combined with less risk, namely to visit
+a couple of his companies of marines and inspect their quarters.
+A company and a half had been billeted in the theatre, which was
+only a few steps away. Outside stood a couple of 6-cm. so-called
+_Bootskanonen_ (boat guns), neat-looking little guns of the same grey
+colour as the armoured ships. Their ammunition wagons were lined up
+along the pavement.
+
+We stepped into the large, handsome foyer. The men had rigged up their
+beds along the walls--mattresses and pillows had been requisitioned
+from the Mayor of Ostend. Their arms and clothes were hanging on chairs
+and coat-hangers and the tables were littered with their cups and
+crockery.
+
+The first-tier boxes had also been converted into sleeping berths or
+armouries. The whole of the corridor was filled with beds. We had a
+look into one or two boxes where the marines were sitting cleaning
+their rifles, patching their clothes or polishing their accoutrements.
+In front of us we had the handsomely decorated well of the theatre.
+Only three months ago this had been the scene of every conceivable
+extravagance from Paris, Brussels and London. From the box where we
+were standing we would have been gazing down on row upon row of elegant
+ladies intent on displaying their charms and jewellery. Not long ago
+coquettish, languishing glances had been exchanged across the stalls
+which now stood bare and empty. Then life was a whirl of dissipation
+and excitement. The days had been spent in bathing and in lounging
+in the high-backed basket chairs or basking on the sun-baked sands.
+Excursions, dinners and festivities had followed close upon one another
+and the evenings had been spent in the theatre in careless idleness.
+Then suddenly the curtain was rung down for the last time, and the war
+broke out.
+
+We could not resist the temptation to pay a visit to the theatre
+kitchen. Here stood the fat, jovial, naval cooks in their long white
+coats and caps and sleeves tucked up. The caldrons were on the boil
+and appetising fumes filled the atmosphere. Needless to say I was
+made to taste the dishes, and a gigantic portion of _goulash_ in a
+soup plate was put in front of me--stewed meat, potatoes, vegetables
+and broth. “Excellent! This is even better than the food we get at
+the hotel,” I thought to myself. I ate my dish with great gusto. No
+wonder that German soldiers are so strong, fresh and contented-looking
+when they are fed like this. If I were to be put on field diet for a
+long while and could choose between officers’ and men’s fare, I would
+unhesitatingly take the latter. It is wholesome, nourishing, and tasty
+food, and does not encumber the soldiers’ stomachs with unnecessary
+ballast. That the state of health in the German Army is as good as it
+is, is to a great extent due to the excellent and ample hot food.
+
+But it is now five minutes to one and we must not be late for dinner at
+the officers’ mess, for which I, for my part, had thoroughly spoilt my
+appetite. We walked up the _Rue du Cerf_. At the corner of this street
+and the _Digue de Mer_, the road fronting the sea, stands the _Hôtel
+Littoral_. The former street lies a few metres lower than the _Digue
+de Mer_, which is perched on the dune skirting the sea. The streets
+are paved with granite slabs. The last bit of the _Rue du Cerf_ forms
+a slight rise. Up at the corner of the _Hôtel Littoral_ a group of
+officers were standing in animated conversation, pointing to the west
+and busily using their glasses. We went up to them wondering what was
+up. The British squadron lay in its accustomed place to westward and
+west-south-westward, perhaps a little closer in than usual--about seven
+or eight kilometres away.
+
+A destroyer had just detached itself from the rest and was making at
+full speed for Ostend, parallel with the coast, as close as possible to
+the shore. Presently another destroyer appeared, following in the wake
+of the first. What could they want, these ruffians? Strong language was
+heard--it was a piece of consummate impudence to come steaming right
+under our noses like this. Evidently they were reconnoitring--but what
+insolence, they must have known that we had occupied Ostend! Aha! they
+suspect that there are submarines and destroyers in the inner harbour,
+and want to see whether they can detect anything from outside!
+
+Well, whatever their intentions are, we may as well go upstairs and
+get ready for dinner. I stepped on to my balcony, feeling convinced
+that by this time the destroyers would have turned back or gone out
+to sea again. But no! They kept on the same tack as before, and at a
+speed which made the foam break over their bows. My neighbours, Bess,
+Haak and Kübler, were also out on their balconies with their glasses.
+“Astounding insolence,” I heard them mutter. There will be something
+doing presently, I thought to myself, and went in to stow away my
+diaries, sketches and photographs in a handbag. Once more I cast a
+glance at the bold destroyers outside. Beneath my balcony I heard an
+officer shouting out orders in a stentorian voice to the effect that
+the street was to be cleared and that not a man must show himself on
+the front, except the sentry at the _Littoral_, but a moment later, he,
+too, was called in for _Deckung_.
+
+My friends had disappeared; I looked into their rooms, they were empty.
+Then I took my glasses and hurried downstairs. Bess had warned his
+colleagues against remaining on the balconies, and he thought that I
+had gone down already.
+
+In the elegant, carpeted vestibule of the hotel, where sofas, tables
+and chairs stood in little groups between the huge green plants,
+officers hurried to and fro, and it was plain that something unusual
+was pending. “Are they going to shoot?” I asked Bess. “Oh yes, they
+are going to shoot all right,” he answered with stoical calm. Through
+the glass doors of the vestibule I could see clearly what was going on
+at the end of the _Rue du Cerf_. Admiral von Schröder was in command
+and I caught sight of Captain Tägert and his men of the naval brigade,
+hurrying to bring up the two 6-cm. naval guns and their ammunition
+carts which we had seen a moment ago at the theatre--there was no
+other artillery available in the town for the moment. The street had
+been cleared of civilians, and there were no military visible save
+those required for serving and directing the little battery. I was
+not allowed outside, of course, but I had time nevertheless to admire
+the astounding swiftness and precision with which the two guns were
+unlimbered, loaded and the range found: “Load! Ready! Fire!”
+
+The first shot rang out. The report re-echoed down the street and the
+window-panes in the hotel rattled in their frames. I went into the
+restaurant, whence I had an uninterrupted view of the sea and the
+leading destroyer. A moment later came the second shot. The first shell
+struck the water right in front of the destroyer, but it was impossible
+to tell whether it did any damage. The second shell also struck quite
+close to the target.
+
+There were several officers in the restaurant. I was standing with Dr.
+Algermissen of Colmar, Lieutenant in the First Naval Reserve. The room
+was very large, with eight windows looking on to the sea and two others
+on to the _Rue du Cerf_. At the former little tables stood laid, and
+on the east side of the room stood the large table where we used to
+take our meals. Along the centre line the restaurant was supported
+by four solid pillars. Algermissen and I were standing at the second
+window from the west.
+
+Directly the German shots had been fired, the two destroyers swung
+round to port and at the same moment opened fire. Their guns seemed
+to flash out straight at us. _Deckung!_ shouted Algermissen, and we
+retired immediately behind our pillar, forgetting that it would have
+been blown away like paper if a shell had struck it. Some of those in
+the room followed our example, but others contemptuously disdained even
+this measure of precaution, which perhaps they considered insufficient.
+The leading destroyer was now about 1400 metres away. Its first shell
+fell short and dropped into the sea just in front of the _Littoral_.
+Tall columns of white spray showed where it had struck. Immediately
+we turned our glasses on to the enemy vessel. There is another flash.
+Once more we take cover, but only for the body, not for the head, for
+one simply _cannot_ take one’s eyes off such a spectacle, whatever the
+cost! But it would be vain to attempt to describe the excitement which
+we felt between the spurt of flame from the gun and the impact of the
+shell. We felt, indeed we were conscious that _we_ were the target of
+the sinister monster speeding towards us through the air. It was not
+fear, for if anyone had offered to take me to a perfectly safe spot in
+the centre of the town, I should not have stirred. It was a mixture
+of breathless excitement, intense interest and a fixed determination
+not to miss the smallest detail of what was passing. That was why we
+kept our glasses fixed, now on the boat, now on the point of impact.
+One projectile ricochetted from the surface of the water, sprang
+aloft and struck the roof coping, fifty-eight paces away from us, as
+I subsequently measured. Another described a most peculiar path--how
+it did it I cannot imagine--but in the end it landed on the stone
+promenade nearest the sea and buried itself beside the iron railing
+without bursting. There it lay for a couple of days, and the guard saw
+to it that nobody went up to interfere with the fearsome object. Twice
+we saw and heard the shells strike the water, dancing like flat stones
+over the surface, and finally crashing into the quay wall. First we
+saw the flash from the British gun, then the impact on striking the
+water--then came the report. A second or so later a horrible crash
+struck our ears, announcing that some house frontage had been hit,
+and followed by the clatter of bricks and stones smashing on to the
+pavement.
+
+The second destroyer, which I could not see from my point of vantage,
+was blazing away as cheerfully as the first. As we could not even see
+_when_ she fired, the protection of our pillar was still more illusory.
+The two German guns fired five or six shots each. Whether they did any
+damage, I do not know. As the street sloped upward towards the front,
+the recoil was very severe, and the guns had to be pulled up afresh
+for each round. The laying of them was combined with considerable
+difficulty. The whole affair was over in twelve minutes. The destroyers
+turned almost completely round and steamed with all speed back towards
+the west, firing continuously. According to the German officers they
+fired about thirty rounds. They also used machine guns. But the
+distance grew, and after a while the firing ceased altogether.
+
+One can hardly be in a more dangerous situation than the one we had
+been exposed to. We had been right in the middle of the shell fire,
+and yet got away unscathed. The shells had struck, some in front of
+us, some to the east of us, and the machine guns seemed to be trained
+on the lower floor of the house adjoining the _Littoral_ on the left.
+Several shots had made their way through its windows. We afterwards
+discussed this remarkable whim of fate.
+
+“How is it that not a single shot hit our hotel?” I asked. “The British
+ought to have seen that the German fire was directed from our street
+corner, and the men serving the guns were the only human beings in
+sight on the whole front.”
+
+“Well, it might seem so, but with the rapid movement of the ships it
+must be difficult to tell where the fire comes from. Possibly they may
+have had their attention fixed on the harbour, in the belief that we
+had torpedo-boats lying there. Several shots went in that direction.”
+
+“I hear,” said another, “that the _Majestic Hotel_ was struck several
+times, and that one or two officers there were killed. The _Majestic_
+is a large white monumental building, and the British no doubt thought
+that they were making a good haul.”
+
+“It is very significant,” added a third, “that they honoured us with
+their attention just at one o’clock when they knew that all the
+officers would be at dinner. Probably they thought that they would get
+past unimpeded after carrying out their reconnaissance before we were
+ready.”
+
+What can have been the intention of the British? It may perhaps have
+been--apart from the general reconnaissance to discover what the
+Germans had in the harbour--to tempt the German artillery out of its
+hiding-place. Their persistent fire, although the German reply was so
+slight, would hardly have any other explanation. They gained nothing
+by the affair, and did themselves and their Belgian Allies a certain
+amount of material damage.
+
+When all was quiet again we settled down to our meal, after which
+Bess, Kübler and I went over to the _Majestic Hotel_. On the way we
+passed the house where a shell had lodged in the coping. Some men and
+women were just issuing from its gates with a lusty-looking child in a
+perambulator. The elders looked frightened and perturbed. “Where are
+you off to?” we asked.
+
+“Surely you can’t expect us to remain in a house which has been shot
+at,” said one of the men, and added with a touch of sardonic humour,
+“these are strong pills for little children--we are going to move away.”
+
+In the 1910 edition of “Baedeker” the _Majestic Hotel_ appears under
+the name of _Grand Hotel des Bains_. Since then it has changed its
+name and probably its proprietor. Its handsome white frontage had been
+badly knocked about by the six shells which we had counted, and which
+had torn great gaping holes in the walls. On the pavement outside lay
+huge piles of stone, bricks and masonry, and we noticed the fragments
+of one of the ornamental plaster angels with wings lifted for flight,
+but which nevertheless, by the irony of fate, had ended its days in
+millions of fragments on the stone pavement.
+
+We went into the lobby, where cupboards, tables and chairs lay in
+picturesque disorder. An hour ago the restaurant had been one of the
+most elegant in Europe. Its floor was laid with rich red Brussels
+carpets, the walls were decorated in white and gold and mirrors, with
+magnificent chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Now the whole room
+was a picture of the most ghastly devastation. Two shells had entered
+just by the lower part of the long row of windows. Their splinters had
+torn gaping holes in walls and ceilings. The plaster ornaments had
+fallen down and now lay shivered into fragments, and the carpets had
+almost disappeared beneath the thick white dust. The windows had been
+smashed to atoms. Mirrors had cracked into all sorts of curious starry
+shapes which threatened to collapse altogether if touched. All the
+furniture lay about in little bits. The tablecloths had been torn to
+shreds. Yet in the corners of the room, more particularly the western
+corner, the tables were still standing, but glasses and crockery had,
+of course, been smashed. I noticed the bases of claret and champagne
+glasses still standing, whilst the bowls had been shivered to pieces,
+leaving an edge like an irregular saw blade.
+
+When the bombardment began some fifty officers had assembled together
+for dinner in this room, and some of them had already begun to eat.
+Most of them had been seated in the western end of the room, and had
+thus miraculously escaped death. But at a window in the eastern corner
+of the room a surgeon, Dr. Lippe, had sat down with an Adjutant of
+the Naval Brigade, and they had already begun their meal when the
+bombardment commenced. A shell had burst its way through the lower
+half of this very window. Probably the hotel had already been struck
+by a couple of shells, and as the two gentlemen had perhaps felt that
+they were rather too exposed where they were, it seems that Dr. Lippe
+had got up to go away, but he got no further than the other end of the
+table when he was literally torn to shreds by the shell, which struck
+him right in the back. What was left of his body lay flung forward on
+the floor, the head resting on the arms in a pool of blood. All that
+was left of the uniform was a few ragged tatters. A piece of one of
+his legs was found under a table at the other end of the room, and all
+the rest of him, in the form of blood-stains, organs and bowels and
+their contents, were spattered about the white walls and ceiling and
+the tablecloths. Dr. Schönfelder, who had hurried to the spot, could do
+nothing but order the remains of his colleague to be gathered together
+in a tablecloth and carried to a mortuary. The Adjutant, who was badly
+wounded in the head, was taken to the nearest hospital. A fine-looking
+Landsturm soldier, who was in the restaurant together with his son,
+told me that all the other diners had got out of it alive, but most
+of them had been hurled to the ground by the air pressure, and some
+had been cut and bruised by flying splinters. They were dazed for the
+moment, but soon recovered.
+
+[Illustration: THE WESTERN END OF DINING-ROOM AT THE “MAJESTIC” SEEN
+FROM THE STREET. ONE SHELL HAD CRASHED THROUGH THE UPPER PART OF THE
+WINDOW]
+
+Fate is indeed inscrutable. Why should he, who saw the danger and was
+on the point of seeking a safer place, be overtaken by death, whilst
+we, who stopped to observe the spectacle from another room, were
+spared? I was told afterwards that our post had been far from safe. In
+a confined space the risk is always far greater than out in the open.
+Strictly speaking the gunners at the street corners were far safer
+than we. So it came to pass that the visitors at the _Littoral_ had no
+reason to complain of the inhospitable treatment they received at the
+_Majestic_. If the German naval officers had been well received there,
+some of us might well have shared Dr. Lippe’s fate.
+
+[Illustration: A “DIRECT HIT” ON A HOUSE NEAR THE HOTEL LITTORAL]
+
+A great change suddenly came over Ostend with the altered situation.
+Counsels were divided as to what to do. Most people seemed to think
+that the town would be exposed to renewed firing, but others thought it
+unlikely that the night would bring a fresh bombardment. Orders were
+issued that nobody, not even the soldiers, was to be allowed on the
+front without special permission. All of the frontage looking on to the
+sea was to be cleared of people, excepting the guards at the street
+corners. In the evening and at night there must be no light whatever
+in the windows looking on to the sea. My friends at the _Littoral_
+therefore decided to move over to the _Hôtel de la Couronne_ opposite
+the railway station, where a room was also prepared for me. Our luggage
+was thereupon transferred to our new abode in two baggage carts.
+
+We ourselves remained, however, at the _Littoral_ until the evening,
+and some of us sat in the dark to keep Lieut. Haak company, as he had
+been ordered to take a battery to the zone beyond Middelkerke. He ate
+his supper, smoked his cigarette, bade us good-bye and started off
+with his sailors, horses and guns. The rest of us took our supper at
+the usual time in the dimly lit lobby, whereupon we said good-bye to
+the amiable proprietor and servants, and brought our memorable visit
+in the house to an end. From the corner of the _Rue du Cerf_ we cast a
+glance westward, where the sky was lit up by the fire from the British
+guns. Then we marched off to _La Couronne_ through the dim and silent
+streets in a darkness unbroken but for the light from an occasional
+lamp invisible from the sea.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVII
+
+  TWO MORE DAYS ON THE CHANNEL COAST
+
+
+The night was calm and still, and when in the morning of the 24th
+October I was called by Dr. Schönfelder’s _Bursche_ (servant), he
+assured me that no shells had fallen on Ostend whilst I had been
+asleep. But the roar of the artillery duel over at Nieuport was
+nevertheless the first sound that greeted my ears--an incessant
+hammering at the last remaining little corner of the Kingdom of
+Belgium. At midday it was reported that a couple of British ships had
+been hit, whereupon the entire squadron vanished in the fog.
+
+The day was spent in visiting the troops and transports bound for the
+Yser Canal front, the wounded in hospitals and the Belgian prisoners
+in the Kursaal. The latter were but a small contingent of some ten
+men. They, too, had been told that the Russians were only a hundred
+kilometres from Berlin. What they said _en passant_ about the British
+policy in Belgium and its result, I simply cannot repeat.
+
+The proprietor of the _Littoral_, where I looked in for a moment in
+passing, gave the following details of recent happenings. When the
+Germans were pushing forward against Antwerp, numberless bands of
+fugitives kept swarming into Ostend. The hotels were crammed and there
+was a life and bustle in the town such as had never been equalled even
+in the season. One ship after the other carried the fleeing inhabitants
+to England and France. The great majority went to Folkestone, the
+better-off to Eastbourne, Brighton and Bournemouth. But at Dunkerque no
+one was allowed to land. The vessels arriving there had to continue to
+Havre. Any sort of craft was good enough, even sailing boats, launches
+and row-boats. The first person who fled to England was a gentleman
+from Brussels who had already withdrawn to Ostend with his family. When
+a German _Taube_ on September 24th dropped a couple of bombs over that
+town, he interpreted this as a message and a warning that the Germans
+were on the way. And so he fled precipitately across to London with
+his family.
+
+From about that time the number of fugitives increased daily. They
+came in ever-increasing throngs from Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Termonde
+and elsewhere. On October 12th the last shipload of fugitives left the
+town, and after swarming with life like a beehive, it now became empty
+and deserted. A few members of the Belgian Cabinet remained, but on the
+13th they, too, left by a Government steamer, the _Aventi_. They had
+been staying at the _Majestic_ and _Littoral_--the latter had also been
+the residence of His Excellency Vandervelde.
+
+By the 14th and 15th of October there were no steamers left at Ostend
+for the fresh bands of fugitives who kept on arriving, and anything in
+the nature of fishing-smacks was eagerly snapped up. The reports of
+the advance of the German legions became louder and more insistent,
+and the civil population which remained was in a state of the tensest
+excitement, expecting to see them march in at any moment. Two hours
+before the first Germans appeared the last Belgian lancer, without
+helmet or sword, flung himself on his horse and galloped down the
+stone-paved road towards Middelkerke. The German “advance guard” was
+not formidable--it consisted of two cyclists and a horseman. It was
+then half-past ten in the morning, Belgian time. The last fishing-smack
+with sixty passengers had just cast off its moorings, but was compelled
+to return. The next few days saw the arrival of increasing bands
+of German troops, and then came the occurrences which I have just
+described.
+
+Now, on the 24th of October, the situation at Ostend was, to say the
+least, interesting. Everybody expected with imperturbable calm that
+something remarkable would happen. The possibility of an attempted
+landing was not overlooked. The Germans were prepared for it, at any
+rate. Anyone who had attempted such a step would have met with a
+warm reception, for large quantities of troops had been massed along
+the coast. At our hotel they realised, it seems, fairly plainly what
+was on foot. The stairs were thronged at all hours of the day with
+officers and men, and outside my door I heard late at night hurried
+conversations about dressings and bandages, ambulances and stretchers,
+and fresh batches of wounded who had been brought into the town and
+lodged in deserted empty houses.
+
+On Sunday the 25th of October the weather was brilliantly fine and as
+warm as a summer’s day, but a thin film of vapour lay over the sea like
+a delicate veil.
+
+Captain Bess suggested a motor trip to Haak’s battery among the dunes
+beyond Mariakerke. So we started off down the _Rue de Tourout_, dodged
+about awhile in the open country and finally found our friend Haak
+amongst his guns. His battery, consisting of four _French_ 7.5-cm.
+guns, looked a very motley lot. The guns themselves had been taken at
+Maubeuge, the horses were Belgian, and the harness and saddlery English.
+
+[Illustration: A MAUBEUGE GUN DOING DUTY AT MIDDELKERKE]
+
+In order, without being seen from the sea, to reach the position--well
+concealed behind the crest of the dune--it had been necessary to pass
+through a communicating trench which led up to it. We were thus fairly
+safe and did not have to expose ourselves to any objectionable missiles
+which might be thrown ashore from the English destroyers. The guns
+with their grey-coloured shields were also practically invisible from
+outside, as there was nothing but a small embrasure in the dune wall to
+indicate where they stood.
+
+[Illustration: GROUP BESIDE ONE OF THE GUNS OF LIEUT. HAAK’s BATTERY.
+(FURTHEST TO THE LEFT ARE CAPT.-LIEUT. BESS AND LIEUT. HAAK)]
+
+Officers and men had dug out caves for themselves, some covered with
+boards, some, for the lack of something better, with sticks and twigs.
+It looked quite homelike in their abodes. The sand of the dunes was
+soft to lie upon, albeit a little damp on account of the advanced
+autumn.
+
+In the ridge of the dune they had contrived a little niche with boarded
+floor, where an exceptionally powerful battery telescope had been
+adjusted on its stand in such a way that only the lenses showed above
+the crest. With the aid of this telescope we were able to scan the
+mist-enshrouded sea and the sandy, sunlit coast.
+
+We had just settled down on the edge of the communicating trench,
+where we sat as close together as in a crowded tramcar, when suddenly
+an officer up at the battery shouted, “_Deckung, Flieger!_” (“Cover,
+aviator!”) We looked up, and right above us soared an aeroplane at a
+very great height. “An English biplane,” somebody said. “No, I think
+I can see the Iron Cross under the wings,” answered another. But a
+third, lying on his back, with glasses focussed right on the thing,
+said quietly: “I can see the red English streamer.” We were then told
+to keep absolutely still. Everyone had to remain where he stood and
+no one was allowed to move. Otherwise the airman might have noticed
+the movement and bombs might be dropped over the guns. Now and
+again he disappeared among the little white clouds; the rascal was
+evidently following the coast to see what the Germans were up to in
+the neighbourhood of Ostend. When he was at his nearest, we could hear
+the droning of his engine. As usual, it was with a certain feeling of
+satisfaction that I saw him diminish in size and gradually vanish.
+
+Once more we took our seat on the edge of the trench and were just
+being threatened with coffee when Haak, sweeping the misty horizon with
+his telescope, reported that a destroyer was in sight. We went up to
+have a look. Quite right; the outline of the boat was quite distinct,
+though faint. The distance was gauged at three kilometres. Things
+suddenly became livelier. One could not tell exactly what might happen.
+The coast batteries had fired on British ships earlier in the day and
+it was thought that two of them had been hit, seeing that the squadron
+withdrew. Perhaps it was now returning at full strength. We had reason
+to think that the ships were receiving heliographic signals from the
+coast. Yesterday a couple of spies had been caught, who could not give
+a satisfactory account of themselves and who, if convicted, would land
+in the churchyard.
+
+So the order rang out to man the guns. The men scuttled off to their
+posts like as many rats. “Ready to fire!” The first shot rang out, and
+the other three followed at short intervals. We could see where the
+shells struck from the cascade of spray that formed on striking the
+water, but could not tell whether any hits had been scored. In any
+case, the destroyer remained where she was. She seemed to take it very
+quietly but could not tell where the fire came from, and her crew had
+long been inured to the rough music.
+
+[Illustration: GUN CREW GETTING READY TO FIRE ON A BRITISH DESTROYER]
+
+On the way back we stopped a moment at Mariakerke and peered out from
+behind the cover of a house. A battery further west had also begun
+to fire and the little waterspouts were clearly discernible. But the
+destroyer’s guns had not seemed anxious to join in the tune and the
+boat soon disappeared in the mist.
+
+This had, however, given me an opportunity of seeing how a coast
+battery is worked and what sort of a time the officers and men have of
+it. Constant watchfulness day and night! “Ever ready!” That is their
+motto. The discipline is of the very strictest and the officers expect
+the most absolute and immediate obedience to their orders. The result
+is that the understanding between officers and men is always the very
+best. Such things as sour faces, grudging steps or disinclination to
+obey an order are absolutely unknown. Anyone showing symptoms of this
+kind would be regarded with contempt by everybody, and his life would
+be made unbearable by his own comrades. The German language has a
+special word, _Drückeberger_, for individuals of that type, but the
+type itself is extraordinarily rare. It is no secret how disciplinary
+shortcomings are punished in war time. But it is not in order to avoid
+punishment that the German forces on land and sea do their duty. It is
+because they all have a common end in view, Germany’s salvation in this
+terrible crisis, Germany’s victory over her enemies in every part of
+the world, Germany’s future and honour.
+
+On the way home we met an ammunition column clattering along at full
+speed. The drivers were riding at full “manœuvre trot” and the horses
+of some wagons had even broken into a gallop. The wagons with their
+murderous load rattled heavily and noisily over the stone-paved road.
+It was easy to tell that the men well knew there was no time to lose
+and that some coast battery was in urgent need of fresh ammunition.
+These columns, when really and seriously on the move, are a joy and a
+feast to the eye.
+
+A little further on we passed a contingent of fifty French prisoners
+who were being taken into safe custody under a German guard. The
+fighting had shorn their red and blue uniforms of their lustre, and the
+men themselves looked pale and tired. What a contrast to the marines
+and gunners we had just seen! But then joyous faces are not to be
+expected from prisoners of war.
+
+In the afternoon, accompanied by Bess and Schönfelder, I made another
+excursion along the ideal automobile road which skirts the coast
+north-eastward, just inside the long line of dunes.
+
+[Illustration: HALF OF CAPT.-LIEUT. BESS AND THE WHOLE OF THE AUTHOR ON
+THE WAY TO BLANKENBERGHE]
+
+In the magnificent pavilion of the Royal (Knocke) Golf Club we
+inspected a platoon of marine infantry, who seemed to be having the
+time of their lives. _Via_ Venduyne we went on to Blankenberghe, where
+the sea promenade resembled that of Ostend, except that the population
+had remained and in addition had been reinforced by numberless refugees
+from Brussels and elsewhere. The hotels had been taken possession of by
+well-to-do people, and the beach was filled with a motley crowd of
+men, women and young girls; they all seemed more or less to be enjoying
+themselves. We met a couple of naval officers, among them a cheery and
+amusing corvette commander named Mönch. He told us that no British
+warships had been seen in this direction. The sea had probably been
+mined in this part. Not far north-east of Blankenberghe lies Zeebrugge,
+the port of Bruges. The two towns are connected by a canal, which might
+have been laid out with a ruler.
+
+[Illustration: DR. SCHÖNFELDER AND THE AUTHOR ON THE DUNES AT OSTEND]
+
+In the gloaming we drove past the great Belgian hospital on the eastern
+outskirts of Ostend. A funeral was taking place in its little cemetery.
+Several officers and a number of men were standing round the grave. The
+naval chaplain had just finished speaking and the band was playing a
+funeral march. The funeral was that of Chief-Surgeon Dr. Lippe, whose
+career had been ended yesterday by the shell from the British destroyer.
+
+In due course we got back once more to _La Couronne_ and assembled as
+usual for supper at eight o’clock. The restaurant is neither as large
+nor as fine as at the _Littoral_, and we missed above all the drowsy
+music of the swell breaking on the beach. Our former large company
+has now been split up into several little groups. Bess, Schönfelder,
+Kübler and I stick together as before. The clock strikes ten, we dawdle
+over our coffee and cigars discussing the war, reciting Kipling and
+exchanging anecdotes. We laugh till our sides ache over Schönfelder’s
+desperate efforts to repeat quickly the words: “_Didon dîna, dit-on,
+du dos d’un dodu dindon._” But he got his revenge by confronting me
+with the following awkward problem: What does the following sentence
+sound like when spelt backward: “_Ein Neger mit Gazelle zagt im Regen
+nie_”?[27]
+
+[27] Spells the same backwards.
+
+Such was the mood at our table, and such is the mood of the fighting
+men all along the front. Anxiety as to the result, nervousness,
+overwork, fear, are terms of which they do not know the meaning.
+Nothing made a deeper impression on me than this wonderful calm,
+this absolute certainty of victory everywhere, this incredible
+superabundance of physical energy and of matériel in men, horses and
+iron. It seemed to me that the German armies on the western front had
+not yet realised the irresistible strength which they had at their
+disposal. The apparent pause was a link in a strategic chain. When
+the moment for the great decision arrived, the army would still be
+in possession of its full collective strength. As yet everything was
+running smoothly and easily, as if it had been merely a matter of some
+well-prepared, gigantic autumn manœuvre.
+
+As we were sitting there chatting, a petty officer from the Naval
+Brigade entered and announced to Dr. Schönfelder that fresh transports
+of wounded had just arrived from the vicinity of the Yser Canal. They
+had been accommodated temporarily in restaurants and public-houses and
+any other vacant houses that were available. The two doctors at once
+rose and said good night. To my question whether I might join them
+they said “by all means.” So we threw our rain-coats over us, for it
+was pouring in torrents, and marched out into the pitch-black night
+accompanied by the petty officer.
+
+At first he took us to a moderately lighted low-class eating house. The
+doctors threw off their tunics and put on their white operating coats.
+A couple of assistants from the naval hospital section were there to
+help them and had brought dressings, instruments and drugs in bags and
+cases. A table was brought out into the middle of the floor under the
+lights with a cushion covered with a towel for a pillow. “Bring in the
+first man,” ordered Dr. Schönfelder. A little, fair-haired, sturdily
+built man was carried in and placed on the table. “Name?”--“Korte.”
+“Regiment?”--“Eighth company of 35th Infantry Reserve.” “Where is your
+wound?”--“In the left calf.” His breeches, fitting tight over his leg,
+were slit open. The first dressing, saturated with pus and clotted
+blood and stiffened into a solid lump, was removed with scissors and
+knife. The wound looked very unpleasant, the flesh hung in shreds, the
+skin had been torn away and a nasty smell issued from the open sore.
+“Please look away,” said the Doctor as the soldier tried to look at his
+wound, and I did my best to attract his attention. Powder of iodoform
+was sprinkled upon the wound, a few little plugs of gauze were pressed
+in with pincers in order to keep the wound open for the escape of the
+pus and to induce the growth of fresh skin. Shreds of dead tissue were
+removed and a fresh dressing was applied. The man had been wounded four
+days previously at a new bridge over the Yser Canal. It was a splinter
+from a shrapnel shell that had hit him.
+
+“Next man!” He came in limping, supported by two ambulance men. His
+bullet had caught him in the head, his skull was cracked, but the
+brain was evidently uninjured. He was a wonderfully plucky chap.
+According to himself it was nothing to speak of, and he deferentially
+asked the doctor to be so kind as to see that he was put right as soon
+as possible as he wanted to get out again. He seemed a little peculiar,
+however, and seemed to have had a terrible shock. The hair was cut and
+shaved away, the wound was washed with sublimate and benzine. Tincture
+of iodine was painted on with a brush and a piece of gauze with
+iodoform applied. Thereupon he was bandaged so thoroughly that only
+mouth, nose and eyes were free.
+
+“Next man!” He was a Fleming in Belgian uniform. He had been shot
+through the seat, and was treated with the same care as the German
+soldiers. An ashen paleness lay over his features and he looked tired
+and done-up, but seemed very grateful for the attention given him as he
+was carried away from the table.
+
+And so it went on. Every time that “next man” was called, another
+wounded soldier was brought in for treatment, I had thought of making a
+note of the cases, but they were too many and were dealt with in double
+shifts by the two doctors.
+
+When the whole lot had been seen to, we went out guided by a lantern.
+The rain had formed great puddles in the street. “_Wer da?_” cried a
+sentry, but let us pass when he saw we were doctors. We were now taken
+to a house of three stories where every room was occupied. The few beds
+there were, had been requisitioned, and when they were all gone the
+wounded men were laid on the floor. Most of them were in a deep and
+heavy sleep, dead-tired after all they had gone through. Some snored
+in different keys, it was rest, rest, rest that they wanted above
+everything. Now and then we heard a deep sigh, but no groaning, no
+complaining. The French and Belgians are as submissive and as patient
+as the Germans.
+
+They are too many to be taken down to the emergency operating theatre.
+The doctors go from bed to bed, and now and then a light is projected
+to display the wound, which is treated in most cases in the way I have
+described. The broken victims of war show no fear of the doctor or of
+his intentions. On the contrary, they are glad that he is willing to
+help them. Clenched teeth and grimaces alone show what they are going
+through. Never a sound of complaint, never a word about the pain,
+never an entreaty to be left in peace. In the eye of some of the badly
+wounded who will be cripples for life I sometimes seem to read the
+reflection: shall I ever see father and mother and brothers and sisters
+again, shall I ever settle down again in our quiet home as of yore,
+shall I ever go back to the workshop, to the mine, to the dock, to the
+tram, to the field, or whatever may have been his former occupation.
+The torn, dirty, soiled and sooty grey uniforms bore eloquent witness
+to the hardships they had gone through.
+
+We pass from house to house among the victims of war’s harvest. We were
+told it was the Belgians who had been attacking--a hopeless struggle
+for the last little strip which still remains to them of their country.
+
+Finally we came into a room containing among other wounded a soldier
+who had been shot through the left hand. “How do you feel?” asks the
+doctor. “Oh, pretty well, though it hurts a bit.”--“Come with me down
+into the bar; it is lighter there and we shall see what can be done.”
+A chair is brought for the soldier, the dressing is taken off, his
+hand is blue and swollen. “Will he keep his hand?” I whisper into the
+doctor’s ear. “I hope so, it is not a very serious wound.” The bullet
+has struck him as he was lying down in his trench and only had the left
+hand exposed. Whilst the wound is being examined, I ask the soldier:
+“Where are you from?”--“I am a Hamburg man, but live in Berlin.” “What
+is your occupation?”--“Actor,” he answers with pathetic humour. “It is
+a long way from the stage to the trench,” I remark, and he nods as he
+smiles his approval. By the light of the lamp I discerned a handsome,
+refined, clean-shaven face with Roman nose and solemn blue eyes. One
+could see that he was thinking of life’s great tragedy. Probably he had
+never played a better part than that which he had just performed out
+on the battlefield with the lurid glare of the shells for footlights.
+“_Gute Besserung!_” we said and patted him on the shoulder. “_Danke
+vielmals_,” he replied, and went up to his bed again.
+
+Now the round was over and we went out into the night. The rain was
+pelting down, but the sound of it was drowned by the thunder of the
+cannonade which after an hour’s cessation had now since 10 o’clock
+become more violent than ever. No human beings were to be seen, only
+here and there a sentry with the rain pouring off his greatcoat. As
+we passed St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s the clocks struck twelve slowly
+and deliberately. It was a terrible night for the soldiers in the open
+trenches, which must by now have been half-full of water. I could not
+take my thoughts off them as I entered the light and cosy warmth of
+_La Couronne_. But ask them if they would like to change with you, and
+the gruffness of the answer will surprise you: “No, thanks, warm beds
+there will be enough of at home when the fighting is over. Just now we
+are out on the country’s business, and in the trenches we stop even
+if we are up to the neck in water and if it rains brimstone from the
+heavens!” Such things as sentimentality and fuss are utterly unknown to
+the German soldiers. They _know_ what they are doing and they want to
+do nothing but their duty.
+
+October 26th was my last day in Ostend. As nothing startling seemed
+about to happen in the immediate future, I thought I might as well
+return to Brussels, but now Bess came with the suggestion that we
+should take a little trip to the stores and depots in the inner
+harbour, to which I readily assented--Brussels, after all, was only a
+couple of hours away and could wait. The stores contained all sorts of
+spare parts for ships and their engines, plates, propellers, screws,
+cables, compasses, a surfeit of useful things which might be wanted
+at any moment. We likewise inspected a training-ship now used for
+accommodating troops.
+
+Just as we were busy over our inspection, we heard four sharp reports
+from the sea. It was not the usual firing in the west, the sound came
+from the north and the source of it could not be far distant. Is it
+the English torpedo-boats? we wondered as we hurried into our car and
+drove down towards the beach past the lighthouse. On the way we met a
+naval officer who told us that the reports came from mines, which had
+detonated on their own account. Some ten such explosions had been heard
+during the night, and the waterspouts thrown up by the four we heard
+had been visible from the coast. If we cared and had patience enough
+to sit and wait among the dunes, the lieutenant had no doubt that we
+should see some more.
+
+So we went down to the belt of dunes north-west of the lighthouse,
+where some men of the naval brigade were busy digging in a battery of
+guns mounted on a temporary plank emplacement. They were also digging
+trenches in the dunes for themselves and their ammunition boxes. Bess
+showed the soldiers how to mask the guns in the best possible way with
+grass and plants.
+
+We had not been there very long before a dark column of water flung
+itself into the air on the horizon. We estimated its height at thirty
+metres and the distance, calculated from the interval between sight
+and sound, at 5.6 kilometres. The column was almost black, as if the
+water had been mixed with slime from the bottom and resembled a naphtha
+fountain in the Balakhani. We at once sent a man to fetch chart and
+compasses. I myself had my kodak ready, but was too late to snap this
+first explosion.
+
+However, it was not many minutes before the next water column spurted
+up from the surface of the sea in the same north-north-westerly
+direction as the other and accompanied by the same deafening report.
+This time I was just quick enough to get a picture. A moment later two
+other mines exploded, this time to the north-north-east and only about
+3.3 kilometres away. We waited for two more explosions at 3 and 4.3
+kilometres respectively, and had then had enough.
+
+[Illustration: A SELF-IGNITING MINE EXPLODES]
+
+The bearings of the six mines were pricked on the chart and in this
+way the officers obtained the necessary data for determining the
+position of the mine-field. Possibly it extended right across the
+Channel. The mines we had noticed exploded, curiously enough, in
+couples. They had clearly been laid in double or multiple lines and had
+been equipped with time fuses. What the time was, we could not tell,
+perhaps a week, perhaps longer. Mines of this type are employed for
+the temporary blockade of a harbour, which it is intended to attack on
+a more suitable occasion. But now, as it happened, the only creatures
+incommoded were the fishes in the sea. The Germans, on the other hand,
+were very glad to know where the mine-field lay and that the fairway
+was now clear.
+
+After dinner I learnt that a motor-car had arrived from Ghent with
+one of Krupp’s engineers, and was to return immediately to that city.
+Captain Jakobson, one of my friends, arranged for me to avail myself
+of this opportunity, so I made ready to depart. Good-bye to Tägert,
+Bess, Jakobson and Kübler and greetings to all the others--these
+splendid and capable fellows who had been my companions during these
+never-to-be-forgotten days and with whom I shared the memory of
+dangers happily survived. Then off I went at the usual break-neck speed.
+
+At Ghistelles I stopped for three-quarters of an hour to see
+Colonel-General von Beseler, one of my old friends from the
+_Gesellschaft für Erdkunde_ (Geographical Society) in Berlin. We had
+much to talk about, and he related many episodes from the last few
+days’ fighting on the Yser Canal. Of the result he had as little doubt
+as anyone else and reiterated time after time: “We _must_ win!” Von
+Beseler is one of the finest generals of the German army. It was he who
+took Antwerp and he was now commanding the extreme right flank nearest
+the sea. As a man he is congenial and fascinating.
+
+I continue my journey. A convoy of French prisoners is being taken
+into the interior--marine infantry, my chauffeur tells me. The road
+hereabouts abounds in inns and public-houses, I wonder how many. It
+would have given me something to do to count the inn signs by the
+roadside. At Bruges we did not stop; at Ghent we drove up to the Base
+Commandant’s office, in a narrow street, flying the German flag. A
+couple of obliging officers immediately offered to assist me, but for
+the moment all I wanted was to get to Brussels; if possible, I added,
+I should be very grateful for the loan of a car to the capital. Yes,
+there would be no difficulty about that, they assured me. General Jung
+would be sure to arrange it for me. So my name was taken in to the
+General and a minute later he came dashing out and greeted me with the
+utmost warmth, for he remembered me well from a fête in Posen where I
+had lectured in February, 1910.
+
+“But there cannot be any question of your starting off just yet,” said
+the General. “You must first sup with us at seven and a car will be
+ready for you at nine.”
+
+I did not need much pressing and spent a couple of delightful hours
+with these officers. At nine to the minute the car stood ready. It was
+a covered car, which was thought safer at night, and had a couple of
+exceptionally powerful head-lamps. And, best of all, I had a delightful
+Austrian lieutenant to keep me company--one of those in charge of
+the Austrian 30.5-cm. mortars in use on the western front. It was
+surpassingly interesting to listen to all that he had gone through. The
+ninety minutes which separated us from Brussels were all too quickly
+over.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  TO BAPAUME
+
+
+My notes do not contain much concerning the 27th of October. In the
+first place I had a good long sleep and the rest of the day was mostly
+taken up by “attending to private business,” completing my sketches and
+plans and writing letters. While I was sitting in the hotel over my
+late breakfast, a fine-looking officer came straight up to my table. He
+smiled humorously, wondering whether I would recognise him. Certainly I
+did! In fact I called out his name before he had time to utter a word:
+“Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg!”
+
+The Duke had been a friend of mine for several years. In the
+geographical world he bears a great and famous name, thanks to his
+travels in Africa, which had been conscientiously planned, most
+skilfully carried out and ably and entertainingly described. He was
+now Governor of Togoland, but happened to be in Germany on leave when
+the war broke out. Under these circumstances, in Germany’s great hour
+of destiny, he simply _could not_ return to Africa, and since, in his
+capacity as governor of a colony, he held no military command in the
+home country, he volunteered for service as intelligence officer, and
+was appointed to his old army corps.
+
+The Duke seemed glad to see me, and we sat and talked until it was
+time for him to return to his duties. The upshot was that I faithfully
+promised to accept his kind offer to come to Bapaume and spend a few
+days with him. He said I should not want for anything; he himself lived
+in a small house, but he would find accommodation for me near by. We
+were to take trips in various directions, as just now he had plenty of
+spare time; no large operations seemed to be in prospect. I might come
+whenever it suited me; I should always be welcome. And so we parted for
+the present.
+
+I had supper with Field-marshal General von der Goltz. The guests
+included on this occasion Duke Ernst Günther of Schleswig-Holstein,
+brother of the German Empress, and Duke Georg of Meiningen, who had
+lost his father and his brother in the war. The Field-marshal proposed
+that I should accompany him on the 29th of October to the front in the
+region of Dixmude. As, moreover, General Bailer asked me whether I was
+disposed to go with him and Councillor von Lumm on a trip to the outer
+forts of Antwerp on the 28th, my programme was well filled for the next
+few days.
+
+October 28th broke with a clouded sky, and a thick mist was lying
+over town and country in the morning. The two gentlemen and the young
+lieutenant, who sat at the wheel beside the chauffeur, came to fetch me
+in the morning, and we started out on the familiar road to Malines.
+
+As already mentioned, our purpose was to inspect as many as we could
+of Antwerp’s southern forts and redoubts. I shall not give any
+actual description of these fortifications. The few words I will say
+concerning them are merely added in order that the two or three photos
+which are reproduced here may not be beside the context.
+
+First of all we drove to Fort Waelhem, where a “42-cm.” had gone
+right through the bed of concrete, here, as elsewhere, five or six
+metres thick, and where an observation tower, resembling a gigantic
+church-bell, had been thrown over on to its side by the air pressure.
+One of the turrets is supposed to have been blown up by the Belgians
+themselves when they evacuated the fort. A few Belgian 12-cm. guns
+inside and outside the fort had been deprived of their breech-blocks.
+Lying near a barrack-wall were heaps of cartridge cases, tin boxes
+and baskets for carrying the shells. These latter were as finely and
+slenderly woven as if they had been intended for carrying grapes.
+
+[Illustration: PRIVY COUNCILLOR VON LUMM BESIDE THE HOLE MADE BY A 42
+CM. SHELL]
+
+We drove on to the east and north-east, and our next stopping-place
+was Fort Chemin de Fer, which had been rather severely peppered with
+smaller shells, while its shattered turret had been blown up from the
+inside by the defenders themselves. Fort St. Catherine I have already
+mentioned, and we will therefore pass on, _via_ the village of Wavre,
+with its wrecked church, to the Dorpfeld fortifications. An object
+of particular interest was the infantry breastwork surrounding this
+entrenchment. Sandbags, and sometimes gabions, had been plentifully
+applied here. There were numerous traverses, intended for protection
+against enfilading or slanting fire, and generally consisting of
+sandbags in timber-lined trenches. The gabions, I thought, looked like
+defensive works similar to those used in the seventeenth century. But
+they were as useful now as then.
+
+[Illustration: A TRAVERSE AT DORPFELD]
+
+We did not stop at the Boersbaek fortification, but went straight on
+to Fort Koningshoyckt, which had received some nasty hits and where a
+number of captured 12-cm. guns, all without their breech-blocks, had
+been ranged up in a row.
+
+Fort Talaert tempted me to take one or two photos, which need no
+comment. In one of them the reader will observe a huge gaping hole in
+the concrete. Another will give him an idea of what disarranged wire
+entanglements look like.
+
+[Illustration: HOLE MADE BY A 42 CM. SHELL IN FORT TALAERT]
+
+[Illustration: AT THE ENTRANCE TO FORT TALAERT]
+
+Fort Lierre, in Dutch Lier, is the largest of all the fortifications
+in the outer girdle of Antwerp. Here several 42-cm. shells had wrought
+terrible havoc. One had struck through the lower part of the concrete
+bed of a turret and penetrated into the interior regions, smashing all
+that was in its path. In the interior of the fort we found extensive
+quartering accommodation for the garrison. Belgian uniforms left behind
+were still lying about. Generally speaking the Germans found the
+barrack-rooms in the fort in great disorder. All scraps and lumber had
+now been removed and formed regular rubbish heaps outside.
+
+[Illustration: THE INTERIOR OF FORT LIERRE]
+
+The small town of Lierre has fared terribly ill, but the church stands
+almost untouched among the ruins. The village of Duffel has also
+suffered considerably. In its labyrinth of narrow lanes people were
+busy removing the rubbish.
+
+On our way back we found the market-place of Malines crowded with carts
+and carriages full of visitors who had come from Brussels to see the
+scenes of destruction. On the road to the capital, too, we passed quite
+a procession of sorrowful pilgrims.
+
+At night I saw the Field-marshal for a minute. He said he should be
+unable to travel the next day, as the King of Saxony was then expected
+in Antwerp. Remembering that a bird in the hand was worth two in the
+bush, I thereupon decided to go on to Bapaume. A car was to be placed
+at my disposal whenever I wanted it.
+
+I accordingly proceeded on the morning of October 29th to the office
+of the Governor-General, where I was informed that the Field-marshal
+had instructed von Siemens to take me to Bapaume. I said good-bye
+to my friends Majors Nethe and von Weller, stowed my luggage away in
+the car and was ready for starting. I cannot abstain from remarking
+that I never had a more distinguished chauffeur than on this occasion,
+as it was the head of the firm of Siemens and Halske himself who had
+donned the motor goggles and thick driving-gloves, and with strong
+skilled hands grasped the wheel. I sat down by his side and was thus
+conveniently at his elbow. A soldier was seated in the car, armed with
+rifle and revolver. The weather was fine, but the air was damp, as
+usual at this season.
+
+It was 10.45 when, with piercing shrieks of the hooter and the warning
+trills of the pipe-horn, we bowled along the Boulevard du Midi and Rue
+des Belges and came out on the Chaussée de Mons--a hybrid between a
+country road and a paved street and with a canal running by its left
+side. A whirl of fallen brown leaves rose in the wake of the car as it
+dashed on to Hal at the rate of seventy-four kilometres an hour. Narrow
+winding streets lead up to the market square of the little place,
+where the market was in full swing and where pigs and vegetables were
+being sold from peasants’ carts and stalls. Perfectly peaceful, rustic
+scenes, bustling life and motion--nothing to remind one of the war.
+
+In Tubize the bells of the village church were tolling, as if for a
+funeral. The country further on is somewhat hilly. Beyond Braine le
+Comte the splendid high road was without stone paving. The autumn wind
+moaned in the yellow crowns of the trees, and the leaves were falling
+around us like snow-flakes.
+
+We reached Soignies in a couple of minutes. Our speed was up to
+eighty-two or eighty-four kilometres per hour, falling off on slight
+curves to sixty. At all cross-roads, bridges and villages German
+Landsturm men in spick-and-span helmets and dark-blue uniforms stood
+posted, trusty and alert as ever. The road to Mons is straight and was
+in excellent condition, but the traffic was very inconsiderable. About
+noon a tyre burst, but was replaced in thirteen minutes--one could see
+that a great engineer was handling the nuts and tools.
+
+In the Mons region we passed through the great coal-mining district.
+All useless mineral taken out of the pits had to be cleared away
+so as not to take up any space which might be utilised to better
+advantage. By means of special tipping arrangements the refuse had
+thus been piled up into veritable pyramids, or rather huge cones, whose
+strange-looking summits towered high on either side of the road. To
+the right we saw a whole row of tall smoking chimneys--one is always
+glad to observe any signs of resumed activity and reawaking life. The
+smoke hung like a dark pall over the neighbourhood. It was no longer
+a country road, it was an unbroken street as far as Boussu--which
+therefore seemed to be an integral part of Mons. “_Sehr starke
+Industriegegend_” (“very ‘pronounced’ industrial region this”) shouted
+von Siemens in my ear; he had been here on business just before the war.
+
+Just on the other side of Quiévrain we crossed the French frontier.
+Poplars, stately and solemn like cypresses, rose up on both sides of
+the high road, now once more provided with stone paving. Here, too, we
+observed the absence of men in the prime of life. Only old men and boys
+are to be seen, and now and then a cripple. Women are greatly in the
+majority--widows and sorrowing sisters and brides who for three months
+have not heard a word from their menfolk.
+
+Valenciennes, an Intermediate Base Commandant’s post--numerous
+motor-cars and innumerable troops! The country opens up more and
+becomes flatter. We leave Demain and Bouchain to the right of our
+road, which runs _via_ Douchy. The mist lies over the landscape like
+a heavy veil, through which we dimly discern the outlines of thickets
+and orchards. Many of the crops were still standing in the fields,
+waiting for hands to bring them in. But these are not forthcoming!
+Only in one little field did we see some old people and children busy
+gathering beets into baskets. Of horses not a sign. The carts that were
+at work were drawn by oxen. Lonely women, ever and anon, looked after
+us with sad, wondering eyes. One could guess their thoughts, but their
+demeanour was always calm and demure; now and then one saw, not without
+pity, a white-bearded old man, with his staff in one hand leading a
+waif by the other.
+
+At Cambrai von Siemens drew up at the Base Commandant’s office to
+obtain some information. Numbers of cars were passing there, or waiting
+in the market-place. I noticed here once more the first indications of
+our proximity to the front. Cambrai is a railhead, and at the station
+troops were busy transferring the material from the railway wagons to
+the lines of communication transport column, or direct to the Army
+Service Corps detachments of the troops ahead. Fresh bodies of
+troops were also detraining to march west.
+
+We next proceed through a landscape characterised by extensive shallow
+undulations. The road is perfectly straight, stone-paved and lined with
+autumn-tinted or leaf-bared trees.
+
+We meet several cyclist orderlies and pass a supply column with its
+wagons covered with green branches.
+
+When finally we reached Bapaume we had been three and a half hours on
+the road, whereof three-quarters of an hour had been taken up by stops
+on the way. One could scarcely cover a distance of about one hundred
+English miles in a shorter time--allowing for the slowing down in
+passing through towns and villages.
+
+We drove direct to the quarters of Captain Trutz, who had charge of
+all matters concerning cars, petrol, quartering and the like, and
+began by taking lunch with him--consisting of bread and butter and
+ham, hard-boiled eggs and claret. Then my excellent friend von Siemens
+took leave and sped back to Brussels. Duke Adolf Friedrich was out,
+but was expected back about five. I was advised in the meantime to
+take up my quarters in some house near the Duke’s. A non-commissioned
+officer was ordered to conduct me to the Maire and I received from the
+latter a quartering ticket entitling me to occupy a room just opposite
+the Duke’s quarters. The French Maire was sitting in his office up to
+his eyes in work and surrounded by big piles of papers. But he was
+very polite and obliging, and no doubt consoled himself with the trite
+reflection that “necessity knows no law.”
+
+I also had to report myself at the Base Commandant’s office, where I
+was received, as always, with the greatest kindness. But then came
+the Chief himself, an old Bavarian Colonel who had retired from the
+service, but on the outbreak of the war had rejoined. And now he began
+to storm. “Who the thunder is this civilian?” he roared--“what business
+have you here?--where do you come from?--are you a pressman? I shall
+want to know what you are here for, and whether you have permission to
+stay here in Bapaume!” I tried to conciliate the irate Colonel by every
+imaginable means, but he went on raging like a model drill-sergeant. A
+few days later I met him again, and he then said: “Can you ever forgive
+me for being so rude the other day?” “Yes, dear Colonel, I assure you
+that it was a priceless pleasure to me to see a Bavarian warrior in
+the full flower of his vigour and forcefulness; I might have been a
+spy, and you had your orders to obey.” Of course we became friends for
+life, and it would give me pleasure to meet him again some day.
+
+I was then conducted by my non-commissioned officer to the house where
+I was to stay. A name-board bearing the inscription _Notaire_ was over
+the door. We rang the bell and an elderly servant came and opened
+it--followed, close at her heels, by an old gentleman of distinguished
+appearance, tall and with lofty forehead, kindly dark eyes below bushy
+brows, snow-white hair and white moustache and whiskers. This was the
+_Notaire_, Maître Emile Cossart, who had not been scared away from
+house and home by the war, but had quietly remained behind to face the
+turmoil. He asked me kindly to put up with the only visitors’ room
+he had to offer me, and which was duly shown me by one of his three
+nieces, Mademoiselle Lengagne, and the servant. The room was plain but
+neat and cheerful, and its two windows looked out on to a little garden.
+
+As regards terms, I told Monsieur Cossart that I would pay rent for the
+room for the days I should occupy it. But he would not hear of this.
+Without going into lengthy details I pleaded my capacity as citizen
+of a neutral country--a circumstance which forbade me taking quarters
+without paying for them. But it was all no use. To all my arguments
+he had but one reply: “_C’est impossible!_”--uttered in an inimitable
+manner. In the end I had no alternative but to thank him for his great
+hospitality.
+
+M. Cossart was a typical elderly _rentier_ in a French country
+town--and a most attractive and estimable specimen. Notwithstanding
+the storm which had burst over his country, his province and his home,
+he still retained an unquenchable good humour. In the war of 1870-71
+he had served in the army and had been taken prisoner in Peronne and
+interned in Jüterbog, where he remained two and a half months. He had
+been well treated while a prisoner in German hands, and had never had
+cause to complain, and I was able to assure him that at the present
+moment the French prisoners were treated most kindly. We talked
+together with the greatest frankness. M. Cossart did not believe that
+the Germans would win. In the former war it was different, but now
+they had England, too, and great and powerful Russia against them. The
+fact that Germany, by her astounding offensive power, had been able
+to swamp Belgium and part of north-eastern France, did not signify so
+very much after all. The fortune of war would soon turn, and change in
+favour of France. “We shall see! We shall see!” he said over and over
+again.
+
+I tried to explain to him the position in the eastern theatre of war
+and told him of Hindenburg’s victories, of the great calmness which
+reigned in Germany, and of the Russians’ “march to Berlin,” which
+General Rennenkampf had promised but of which nothing had been seen so
+far. It had not been beneficial for France, I said, to invest thousands
+upon thousands of millions of francs in a country whose aid failed just
+at the moment when it was most needed. If I did not admire France and
+love her intelligent, industrious, thrifty and patriotic people I might
+have rejoiced at a diplomacy which had brought about such calamities as
+the present; as it was, I was grieved at a policy from which no good
+could ever come.
+
+“_Nous verrons--nous verrons_,” M. Cossart replied, nodding his head
+and smiling. But then it occurred to him that perhaps he had said too
+much, and wondered whether the German officers would take offence and
+cause him trouble if they got to hear of it.
+
+Certainly not, I assured him, he need not be afraid of that. He might
+tell the German officers without fear that he blindly trusted in the
+victory of the French arms and the eventual retreat of the German
+hosts, without causing a single forehead to frown in anger. Any German
+officer would honour such speech and show his respect for a man who
+had fought for his country in his younger days, and who still, in the
+autumn of life, was cherishing great and glorious ideas concerning his
+nation. “For you may say what you like of the Germans, and look upon
+them, if you like, as your sworn enemies, yet it is a fact that the
+Germans admire in others the qualities which they cherish in their own
+people. Therefore the German soldiers feel nothing but esteem for their
+French opponents; as regards General Joffre, the whole German army is
+unanimous in thinking him a great and talented general.” Among the
+Germanic race, I told him, there is not a vestige of national hatred of
+the French, nothing but good-will and sympathy.
+
+And when I told him how sorry I was that the whole of his people
+should suffer in consequence of a mistake which had been made by a few
+responsible professional politicians, he could but shrug his shoulders
+and raise his eyebrows and reply: “But please always think and speak
+well of France!”
+
+We had many a discussion on this topic as I went in or out through his
+hall. And when I had time to spare before joining the German officers
+at dinner, I would knock at the door of the French drawing-room--for
+was I not a neutral?--and was always met with a cheery “_entrez_.”
+There sat M. Cossart in his rocking-chair, and his three amiable
+nieces were busy with their needlework round the table beneath the
+lamp, and then we could argue on politics to and fro without either
+party yielding one jot. Not because he was of the Latin and I of the
+Germanic race, but because our political views were as irreconcilable
+as fire and water. If Germany was crushed, I maintained, Russia would
+push forward to the Atlantic, and this could only be done over Swedish
+soil--across the Scandinavian peninsula, up there in the north.
+Therefore, for the sake of my country, I _could not_ but wish for
+Germany’s victory--a complete victory. But to M. Cossart Germany’s
+victory meant fearful calamities for his own native land. Hence it was,
+and _could not_ but be impossible for us to agree.
+
+Yet we always spoke with dignity and calm. The old lawyer never forgot
+himself, and I entertained the warmest and sincerest regard for him. I
+was always glad to have a chat with him, and regretted that, as a rule,
+time was so short.
+
+How different he was from those hot-heads I met elsewhere, who when
+confronted with an opinion at variance with their own, are so far
+from being able to master an opponent that they cannot even master
+themselves! Or how unlike a newspaper press which--Heaven knows by what
+means--may be induced to be silent on questions which concern the very
+life and existence of a nation, but loses all restraint and dignity in
+the face of a frankly and openly expressed opinion.
+
+M. Cossart was a man of quite another kind. There was no room in his
+soul for malice or cowardice. He was a gentleman to his finger-tips.
+His name, his avocation, his address are all stated above, and he is
+easily found. I have no fear lest my openness of speech might cause him
+any harm. He runs no risk as far as the Germans are concerned. I would,
+moreover, entreat my German friends in Bapaume--if this book should
+ever meet their eyes--to show him if but a fraction of the kindness
+they have shown to me. And as regards the French, they may--when peace
+once more reigns on earth--ask M. Cossart whether my statement is
+true. Nor should they forget to thank him that, in the face of the
+overwhelming might of the invasion, he always fearlessly stood up for
+France, with unruffled brow, unflinching eyes and manly speech--speech
+which made one bow in fancy before the laurel-wreathed tricolor over
+his head.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIX
+
+  AN EXCURSION TO THE FRONT AT LILLE
+
+
+There came a knock at my door. “_Entrez!_” I cried as neutrally as
+possible, and in stepped Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, young
+and gay and manly. He held out both hands to me and bade me heartily
+welcome to Bapaume. He hoped that I would be pleased with the few days
+I was to spend there. “But this room is too small!”--“Oh no, it is
+quite big enough.”--“Right. We will take all meals together, for I am
+now free for several days and shall be able to take you round and show
+you the sights.”
+
+Thereupon we sat and chatted until it was time to get ready for supper
+in the officers’ mess. When we entered, they were all assembled. The
+large table was presided over by Infantry-General von Plettenberg,
+Chief of the Garde-Corps, Adjutant-General to H.M. the Emperor and
+an old friend of our own Chief of Staff General Bildt. He was a tall
+man, thin and fair, a real soldier and a brave and plucky man who was
+never more at home than when the bullets were whizzing round him. Like
+Field-marshals von Haeseler and von der Goltz, he had the incurable
+habit of always turning up at odd moments where danger loomed largest.
+He had a way of walking out to the foremost trenches in the middle of
+the night and drawing the French rifle fire at a range of two hundred
+metres, and this merely to see how the soldiers were getting on and to
+make sure that everything was in the best order. A magnificent trait,
+in my opinion, for a plucky leader braces the soldiers’ courage. We
+Swedes have always demanded this quality from our leaders. General von
+Plettenberg was a man of quick and impulsive temperament, but he was
+serious nevertheless, partly perhaps because he had recently lost a son
+in the war. At table he would sit wrapped in thought for a long while,
+then suddenly his eyes would fill with humour and he would break into
+a jest, as when he said that it was bad for the health to go out to
+the war, for they shoot so thoughtlessly and lay the guns so carelessly
+that at times shells will actually drop at the very spot where one is
+standing.
+
+When the General had retired early to go about his night’s work, the
+Duke asked a dozen merry and entertaining officers to join him at his
+house. There we gathered in the drawing-room, cigars were lighted and
+the frothing nectar was poured out. They were all in brilliant spirits.
+No gloomy faces among these men, many of whom looked death in the face
+every day from trenches and aircraft and on daring scouting duty.
+
+They represented among them many of Germany’s most illustrious
+families. The talk was loud and frank and gay, but when an officer of
+the General Staff came in straight from the Chief Command and read out
+the latest news from the eastern battlefields or from far-away tropical
+seas, perfect stillness and silence suddenly came upon the room and
+everybody listened intently. After that a more serious mood came over
+the assembly and they began to discuss the solemn business of war.
+
+The guests included the young Hereditary Prince Friedrich of
+Hohenzollern, a beardless Apollo, related to three royal houses. He is
+a nephew of the King of Roumania. In some way or other, I forget how,
+he is a kinsman of the unhappy King of Belgium, and the brother-in-law
+of no less a person than--ex-King Manuel of Portugal. The Prince was an
+exceedingly pleasant young fellow, brimming over with good spirits and
+full of jests and pranks, but I never saw him laugh.
+
+[Illustration: HEREDITARY PRINCE FRIEDRICH OF HOHENZOLLERN AND DUKE
+ADOLPH FRIEDRICH OF MECKLENBURG]
+
+Another guest was the amiable Herr Schoelvinck, a director of Benz and
+Company. He was now serving in the army with the rank of Captain and
+was one of the four _parlementaires_ who were despatched to Rheims
+to discuss the terms of capitulation. They were taken prisoners and
+regarded as spies, and would probably have shared their usual fate
+had not the Emperor appealed to the American Ambassador in Paris, who
+managed to secure their release. I should say that in time to come they
+will have something to tell about the reception accorded them in France.
+
+Another of the four _parlementaires_ was also present at this evening’s
+sitting, in the person of volunteer Cleving of the Royal Theatre of
+Berlin, a perfectly fascinating man, full of humour, anecdote and
+song. An actor with the Iron Cross is probably something out of the
+ordinary, but what is there that is not striking on this endless German
+front of warriors! Perhaps Cleving’s greatest charm is his genius for
+accompanying himself on the guitar after the fashion of our own Sven
+Scholander. The two troubadours were to have started out on a singing
+tour together this autumn. But Cleving was destined to listen to a very
+different kind of music--that of the shrapnel shells, and it was a very
+different kind of theatre that he was about to perform in. He did not
+grumble at the change. Before he had scattered joy and merriment around
+him with his acting and his song, now he also bore the glory which
+surrounds a warrior who has fought with honour and bravery for his
+country.
+
+Yet the war had not quite been able to part him from his guitar. He had
+brought it with him and presently he settled down on a chair in our
+little circle and all became silent. French _chansons_, German soldier
+ditties of long ago, winter songs from 1530 and “_Die Goldene Kugel_”
+with music by himself, all succeeded one another but too rapidly. To
+me he seemed to keep the best to the end, when he surprised me with a
+selection from our own Swedish lyrical poet Bellman.
+
+But Cleving could sing of Mandalay, too, choosing a far prettier and
+more inspiriting tune than the English one, and with other words
+than Kipling’s. “But I must have a piano accompaniment for this,” he
+declared. The Duke pressed a button and an orderly entered. “Bring in
+a piano,” he said, “_Ja wohl, Hoheit_.” In a quarter of an hour the
+doors were thrown open and four gigantic soldiers strode in, carrying a
+piano. “Where have they found that, I wonder?” I asked. “Oh, I suppose
+they’ve conjured it forth from some house in the neighbourhood,” the
+Duke answered. And so we got the song about Mandalay, and indescribably
+wistful and dreamy it sounded with its alluring refrain of “_Bei den
+alten Tempeltoren_” (“By the old temple gate”).
+
+And so our evening passed away. Time crept by imperceptibly, the hour
+of midnight chimed from the clock-tower and it was nearly two when for
+the last time we intoned the thundering refrain “Trarallalalala” from
+one of Cleving’s Swedish adaptations.
+
+What did they think of it, I wonder, those wretched people tossing
+restlessly on their beds, though doubtless they had learnt by now the
+woes of billeting? Nobody could possibly think that the Germans were
+on the point of preparing for a retreat, a rumour which had spread
+mysteriously among the population. No drooping spirits or depression,
+the precursors of a pending catastrophe, could be discerned among the
+troops billeted in Bapaume. No, their mood was such as it always is and
+such as it must be in an army marching with an irresistible iron will
+to victory and thinking of nothing, speaking of nothing, believing in
+nothing but victory all along the line--victory even if the whole world
+were to be ransacked for fresh legions to bring against it on this
+front where the enemy is either shot down or taken prisoner and carried
+off to Döberitz or other internment camps in Germany.
+
+It is this _will_ to win which permeates the entire German army and
+makes such a deep impression on the stranger. Enviable, admirable,
+happy is the people which united marches on under its country’s
+standards when its hour of fate has struck. The dead would cry out
+from their lonely graves by the roadsides did not the living carry the
+fight to a glorious conclusion; but their sleep is untroubled, for they
+sank into it with the firm knowledge that those coming after would
+give their lives and all that they held dear with the same steadfast
+determination for the sake of home and country and future. No era has
+ever witnessed such national greatness as that attained by the German
+nation at the present day. It is an uplifting experience to have seen
+the Germans in their sublime struggle, and one which can never be
+forgotten by those who have been with them in this time.
+
+The mood and spirit of the German army finds expression in song. The
+officers sing in their messes, the soldiers on their marches, on their
+baggage wagons, in their bivouacs. In the trenches alone there must
+be silence. Perhaps the French soldiers, too, sing, but as to the
+Russians, their wistful airs have doubtless died away in the soldiers’
+throats during the long weary marches backwards and forwards across the
+Polish plains.
+
+After breakfast in the mess on October 30th we entered the Duke’s car
+to proceed to the field of battle between Lille and Armentières. We
+were four all told, the Duke’s chauffeur at the wheel, the Hereditary
+Prince of Hohenzollern by his side, looking after the hooter, the Duke
+and I. It had been raining and the by-roads were in a horrible state,
+whilst the great main roads were slippery and unreliable and a great
+wet blanket of fog darkened the whole of north-eastern France.
+
+At first we took the great main road to Arras, which we kept to as
+long as we possibly could without exposing ourselves to shell fire.
+At Boiry, almost levelled to the ground by fire and shell, we turned
+off to the right, but lost our way in the tangle of by-roads, until
+at Croisilles we once more got on to the right track. Here the Red
+Cross flag was hanging from many houses, and we saw the wounded being
+carried into the hospitals. A column of light field howitzers rolled
+away towards Arras. In a field some soldiers were placidly digging
+potatoes, and near by old men, women and children were gathering in the
+sugar-beet, which is an important item of cultivation in these parts.
+
+At last we come out on the great main road between Cambrai and Douai.
+The streets of the latter town are filled with civilians and military.
+After crossing the _Pont-à-Marcq_ we reach the outer girdle of forts
+at Lille, and in a few minutes we drive in through the _Porte Douai_.
+The part of the town nearest this gate is in ruins. The Germans, who
+at this point were advancing seven or eight battalions strong with
+artillery, wanted to spare the town and tried to induce its authorities
+to capitulate. The French resisted. Thereupon the Germans unlimbered
+a battery inside the gate and shelled the nearest houses and streets.
+The _Mairie_ and railway station were also brought under fire, the
+latter in order to stop all transport facilities. The town fell without
+having suffered any appreciable damage. The quarters exposed to the
+bombardment and which I had an opportunity of visiting, have, however,
+been reduced to ruins and the part round the _Porte Douai_ presents a
+sad picture of desolation. The worst damage had been done by shells
+which burst after they had penetrated into the lower part of a house.
+The effect of the detonation spreads to all the storeys and everything
+collapses utterly. In many cases nothing but skeletons and iron girders
+remain. Otherwise Lille is quite untouched. One can pass through one
+street after the other from beginning to end without noticing any trace
+of shell fire. In the central parts of the town the traffic is almost
+animated and there are plenty of people about. Young women of not even
+doubtful virtue and dressed in almost the latest fashion flit about
+like butterflies on the pavements. Many shops and hotels are open, and
+seem to be carrying on as if nothing has happened. The only reminder
+of war, apart from the wrecked quarters of the town, are the German
+infantry, cavalry, guns and transport trains.
+
+[Illustration: STREETS AT THE PORT DOUAI WHICH HAVE SUFFERED THROUGH
+THE BOMBARDMENT]
+
+[Illustration: OF SOME HOUSES THERE IS ONLY THE SKELETON LEFT]
+
+Meanwhile we drive through Lille and in passing I throw a glance at
+the statue of the noble Pasteur, who spent three years of his life
+in the scientific faculty of the town, and of the brave Joan of Arc,
+clad in armour and with her standard in her hand, sitting tall and
+straight and glorious on her gilded steed. Our road now runs along
+the canals, crammed with lighters, and after swinging off to the
+west through deserted suburbs we emerge into the smiling countryside
+slashed in all directions with meandering paths and by-ways. We have
+now left the village of Lomme behind us and proceed in the direction
+of Armentières. Little groves and coppices, parks and gardens, farms
+and villages dot the road on both sides. The road we are travelling by
+is narrow and badly cut up through the rain. We drive past a skilfully
+masked battery, working at full pressure. From the enemy’s side the
+booming of cannon comes nearer and nearer, but is still outvoiced by
+the eternal whirring hum of the car. It is only when we slacken down
+or stop that the thunder sounds alarmingly near. By a farm--or perhaps
+it is a modest château--we come to a clump of trees as yet unshorn of
+their leaves by the autumn winds. We drive at full speed past this
+spot, which can only be about one hundred metres north of the road.
+Fortunately we espy in time a young lieutenant with his two or three
+men in the shadow of the trees, making the most frantic signs to us and
+shouting “halt” as loudly as their lungs permit.
+
+We pull up as sharply as the tearing pace allows and drive over a
+marshy meadow up to the lieutenant, who is standing at a table littered
+with maps, compasses, pens, field-glasses and other paraphernalia. He
+explained that it was a matter of life and death to proceed a step
+further in that direction. I felt almost inclined to believe him, for
+it sounded to my ears as if we were surrounded by fire on all sides.
+The nearest German infantry positions were ahead of us along a line
+running from north-north-east to south-south-west, and we had German
+artillery in front of us, beside us and behind us. The battery which
+we had just driven past was firing salvo after salvo, and we heard the
+shells whining over the tree-tops. In front of us the French batteries
+were pounding away in the north, west and south-west. I felt as if
+I were enclosed in a ring of fiery throats all spitting out amiable
+pleasantries at one another.
+
+Near the coppice from which the young lieutenant was making his
+observations stood a 15-cm. howitzer battery. It was extremely
+interesting to note the skilful manner in which the guns had been
+concealed among the trees and bushes. They could not even be seen at
+a very short distance, and I had to come right up to them to realise
+where and how they were hidden among the boughs and branches. As an
+extra safeguard they were partly covered over with leaves so as not
+to be seen from above. The ammunition stores, huts for the gun crews
+and provisions were as effectively hidden. For protection against the
+enemy’s fire the gunners had dug the customary underground dwellings.
+At the present moment they were very busy attending to their guns. “Why
+don’t they shoot?” I asked. In answer the lieutenant pointed to the
+south-west. “Over there, above those trees, you notice a French airman,
+and it is probably his business to try to locate this battery. We have
+been shooting from here and have probably done some damage on the
+French side. Now they are on the prowl to find us, but so far without
+success. The enemy shells are bursting just now at only 500 metres to
+the south-west of us. Up to now they have not reached us, but they are
+getting nearer and may hit our battery at any moment. If we were to
+fire now whilst the aviator is in the air, their fire would be on us in
+no time.”
+
+[Illustration: A 15 CM. HOWITZER BATTERY]
+
+As he spoke the airman described circle after circle above the covert.
+As long as we remained at the observation post he kept circling over
+the same spot. It was clear that he was seeking the answer to some
+question. Perhaps he thought that the projection of his line of flight
+on the earth’s surface would give the confines of a spot which might
+profitably be shelled by the enemy. Our friends fancied they had seen
+him signal with flags and with white and red lights. The batteries
+which the Germans had opposed to them at this part of the front were
+all said to be British.
+
+The lieutenant and his men at the observation post and battery followed
+the aviator’s movements with the closest attention, and special pickets
+were posted under the trees to stop anyone from moving in the vicinity
+when the aviator had his machine turned in such a way that he had a
+free outlook in our direction. But when he swung slowly round and
+turned his back on us, we were able for the moment to move more freely.
+However, the circles he described were small, and it was all that we
+could do to hurry from the battery to the observation post and vice
+versa before he swung round again and we ran the risk of detection.
+
+The gun crew were therefore taking it easy. Beside one of the guns the
+men were eating their breakfast, beside another a man was reading aloud
+from a newspaper. I took a couple of pictures of them to their great
+delight.
+
+We then took the opportunity, when the airman’s back was turned, to
+hurry back across the meadow to our car under the shelter of the
+trees. It was still too early to go home, and we thought we might make
+another trip in the direction of the firing line to the north-westward;
+accordingly we turned back to the outskirts of Lille and took the road
+to St. André, Verlinghem and Quesnoy. At St. André, where a local
+command was quartered, we halted awhile, the Duke asking the General
+how far we might proceed in that direction. He thought Quesnoy and a
+little way beyond it might be quite safe. With a little luck, we might
+even see the Austrian 30.5-cm. mortars in action.
+
+We drove off in the direction indicated and passed several large supply
+columns proceeding to the front to provide the troops with fresh food
+and ammunition. Patrols showed us the way to one of the Austrian
+batteries. The road was very mediocre; its centre was stone-paved and
+at each side was a belt about three metres wide without any sign of
+paving and now converted into a sea of mud. The traffic was lively, and
+it was _impossible_ to drive fast. Presently we reached the ammunition
+column of the mortar battery. The fighting battery with its two pieces
+of ordnance was ahead of the column, which had halted, occupying the
+right half of the road, so we left the car and proceeded on foot.
+
+The road lay a good metre higher than the ground to the right. From the
+left, or south-west, the enemy shells kept dropping quite close to us.
+Constantly fresh little white tufts of cloud kept forming in the sky
+and out of them flashed a spurt of flame. This was a signal that the
+zone of fire was spreading towards us, and we bent down instinctively
+to take such cover as the road and battery-lorries afforded. We were
+right under fire and might be hit at any moment. The _Deckung_ we had
+was altogether insufficient, for the wagons stood at several metres
+from one another. The further we advanced the denser the little tufts
+of wool in the sky seemed to be. Then we met an officer who told us
+that the Austrian battery was not yet working and that it would be
+more than risky to continue in the direction we had taken. Probably
+the whereabouts of the ammunition column had been discovered through
+aviators. Although the enemy could not see it, they had trained the
+fire from several batteries on the sector where it was bound to be. The
+uncanny whistling sounds kept piercing the air; and so we thought it
+wisest to leave this dangerous spot.
+
+Just as we were getting near our car and had reached the road, we were
+honoured with a salvo from an English battery. The four shots followed
+at short intervals, and all of them seemed to be seeking our car.
+The first shrapnel shell burst some ten metres above ground just in
+front of us and the car, and I had a very distinct sensation of being
+within its zone of dispersion and wondered that I did not feel a sudden
+twinge in some part of my body. The other two shells burst a little
+to the side of the first. Then came the fourth--a devilishly impudent
+fellow! He came straight at us and the death-whistle rang in my ears.
+He arrived from the south-west. The air seemed to hiss and splutter and
+burn where he tore along. The whistling sound came nearer, passed just
+over our heads and died away behind us. We all three bent down so to
+bring our heads a metre nearer to the ground. This movement is entirely
+instinctive, and even officers who have been many times under fire
+resort to this device. But in time one gets rid of the habit, realising
+how little it avails. I have subsequently heard artillery officers
+say that when the whining sound seems closest and one thinks that the
+projectile is upon one, it has in reality passed by. We wondered at
+what height above us this shell had passed. The Duke estimated the
+distance at eight or ten metres, the Prince at fifteen at the most. To
+me it seemed so near that I almost expected to see my fur cap singed
+by the fire. But the most remarkable thing about this amiable greeting
+from the British was that whilst the three first shells burst, this
+fourth one never exploded at all. Had it done so we should in all
+probability have been flung to the ground. The projectile passed by us
+whole and entered the soft, wet earth some distance behind us.
+
+[Illustration: WELL-MASKED GUNS]
+
+[Illustration: GUNNERS STUDYING THE NEWS]
+
+As a rule there is a moment of quiet after a salvo. With a car, or
+at the worst with a horse handy, one has time to seek a safer spot,
+provided that the enemy artillery is aiming at the same point as
+before or one is so hardened after one’s previous baptisms of fire as
+to take no notice at all. We might now reasonably take it for granted
+that we should be allowed a respite, and thought it safer to take this
+chance of withdrawing some distance. The Duke, who struck me as an
+exceptionally calm and fearless man, remarked that he did not want to
+have my life and limbs on his conscience, especially as I happened to
+be his guest.
+
+So we jumped in and drove off to Lille again. To the right of us the
+shells kept singing in the tree-tops, and one of them gave a wonderful
+pyrotechnic display as it burst. Presently we met an ammunition column
+which forced us off the track into the mire. As long as we could drive
+straight on, things were all right, but when the column had passed and
+we tried to climb on to the stone paving again, the wheels skidded
+and the car got thoroughly stuck in the soup of mud. It almost looked
+as if we were to have more compliments paid us by the British. In the
+end there was no alternative but to get out of the car, which thus
+lightened was able to climb once more on to the firm surface. Thereupon
+we got to Lille without any further mishap.
+
+After dining we drove back to Bapaume in pelting rain, arriving soon
+after dark. The Duke had a party in the evening, and the incomparable
+Cleving was there with his guitar, accompanied by Herr Kummer, one of
+the four _parlementaires_ of Rheims.
+
+[Illustration: The country round Lille and Ypres.]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XX
+
+  TRENCH LIFE
+
+
+Saturday the 31st of October was spent quietly and peacefully. Duke
+Adolf Friedrich conducted me in the morning to the château of Vélu east
+of Bapaume. We followed the great main road to Cambrai a few kilometres
+and then struck off on to a by-road leading to this handsome château,
+built in 1719 and taken over in 1883 by a gentleman named Goër. It is
+still tenanted by a Madame Goër. The magnificent apartments were still
+haunted by an old French butler, and in the dining-room the table had
+just been laid for the officers who had been lucky enough to have found
+this comfortable billet. The house is surrounded by a large park, and
+we wandered up and down its neglected alleys on the softest of carpets
+of decaying leaves. Here we strolled and chatted about our travels in
+Africa and Asia, and about the new colouring that the world’s map would
+certainly be given at the end of this war--when we were disturbed by
+the rattling of heavy rifle fire in the neighbourhood. We at once made
+for an open space in the direction of the firing, and espied a French
+airman who was being hotly attacked by the German infantry, but seemed
+entirely unperturbed by the interest he was arousing.
+
+On our return to Bapaume we dined at the mess with General von
+Plettenberg and his usual set. Among the company was the famous
+surgeon, Professor Hildebrand of Göttingen, a sociable, learned and
+altogether charming gentleman, and an old friend of the family of the
+late Professor Gyldén of Stockholm. Professor Hildebrand told me among
+many other interesting things that the cardinal principle of modern
+surgery in the field is not to amputate except in cases of the utmost
+urgency. Formerly arms and legs were amputated in a far larger measure
+than at present; now the surgeons attempt to save all that there is a
+possible chance of saving. Hildebrand was one of the inner circle which
+often foregathered at the Duke’s house of an evening.
+
+The excellent light of the early afternoons just at this time tempted
+me to take several photographs, one or two of which I am reproducing
+here. All through the day heavy ammunition and supply columns of all
+kinds kept marching through the town, and the civilian element was
+almost drowned by the military. In the course of my walks through the
+town I witnessed many fascinating scenes of soldiers’ life.[28] Here
+are a few Landsturm soldiers sitting in a circle peeling potatoes which
+are afterwards to be cooked in a bucket over a coal fire. Others have
+rigged up a temporary awning over benches and tables, where they are
+writing their _Feldpostkarten_ home to parents and sweethearts. Another
+little coterie is sipping coffee beside a kitchen wagon. In a meadow
+stands a threshing machine which had just finished work for the day;
+the grain is being loaded into one cart and the straw into another.
+Close by an open-air barber has rigged up his shop by the side of a
+train wagon. An orderly comes leading a couple of officers’ horses, and
+in a field four Bavarian Landsturm men are lazily blowing clouds of
+smoke out of their enormous pipes.
+
+[28] One photograph shows a street in which the only civilians are two
+young ladies.
+
+[Illustration: TWO YOUNG LADIES ARE THE ONLY CIVILIANS TO BE SEEN]
+
+Presently we come to the little square adorned by Faidherbe’s statue,
+and further honoured by the presence of the Townhall with its handsome
+façade, supported by a Gothic arcade. Here a notice board has been
+posted up so that the latest war news may be studied, for a newspaper
+is now being published at Bapaume composed and printed at the Town
+_imprimerie_, and called _B(apaumer) Z(eitung) am Mittag_. Herr Cleving
+is its editor. Its circulation is six hundred copies. The paper is not
+large, only one page, in large type on thin yellow paper. I reproduce
+below a text of the number of October 27th, which I have selected
+because it also refers to the bombardment of Ostend, although with a
+wrong date:
+
+(1) “The fighting on the Yser-Ypres Canal front is exceedingly violent.
+In the north we have succeeded in crossing the canal with a strong
+force. East of Ypres and south-west of Lille our troops have advanced
+slowly after severe fighting. Ostend was yesterday bombarded by the
+English ships.
+
+(2) “In the Argonne our troops have likewise made progress. Several
+machine guns have been captured. We have taken a number of prisoners
+and two French aeroplanes have been brought down.
+
+(3) “East and north-east of Arras the enemy has received
+reinforcements. Nevertheless our troops have succeeded in making
+progress at several points. About five hundred British, including a
+Colonel and twenty-eight other officers have been taken prisoners.
+
+(4) “West of Augustovo the Russians have renewed their attacks which
+have all been repulsed.
+
+(5) “At Ivangorod 1800 Russians have been taken prisoners. South-east
+of Przemysl the Austrians have scored several successes,” and finally:
+“Copies for distribution among the various units may be obtained from
+the Commandant of the lines of communication.”
+
+That is all. There is nothing else to read in the number of October
+27th, 1914. Short and concise sentences, written with military
+precision, and above all--no lies. The _Bapaumer Zeitung am Mittag_
+follows the same honourable principles as the rest of the German Press.
+This Press knows its enormous responsibility towards the nation and
+towards the fighting armies. For the soldiers, whose duty it is to
+bear the sweat and labour of the day, and to spill their blood for
+the Fatherland, nothing but the truth, the pure honest truth, is good
+enough. In the Entente countries the Press has an extra and exceedingly
+important duty, which the German Press is spared, namely to fire the
+soldiers’ courage, and to keep burning the flame of hope among the
+population. As gladdening news is rare just now, its counterfeit is
+manufactured in the editorial sanctum of the newspapers. The German
+Press has no need to fire the nation’s courage, for it burns with a
+pure and clear flame. The German people insist that their Press shall
+tell them the _whole_ truth, whether gladdening or not. Good news is
+not exaggerated, bad news is not minimised. The whole nation insists on
+being fully enlightened on the progress of events on all fronts, for it
+will not build its hopes for the future on a tissue of falsehoods which
+in the end cannot but collapse. If anything goes wrong, it is best to
+know the full bearing of the disaster, so as to make good the loss and
+prevent it from occurring again. In Germany the people rely implicitly
+on the truthfulness of the Press and its sense of responsibility.
+There hundreds of thousands of volunteers hurry to the colours without
+artificial and false inducement. They come, driven by the Germanic
+spirit, by national pride, by sense of duty and ambition. There is not
+a single man able to carry arms who hesitates to go out and die, for it
+is clear to all that if it is God’s wish that Germany shall go under,
+the last German shall have fallen in the last trench before the waves
+close once for all over the wreck. For these reasons the Press of the
+Central Powers has in this war a far easier task to fulfil than the
+Press of the enemy countries, for it has but to register the trend of
+events and to announce the news from east and west and from far-away
+tropical seas, but it has no need to resort to the dishonourable
+makeshift of deceiving its readers and inventing tales of victory so as
+to drive fresh throngs to the recruiting offices.
+
+[Illustration: SOLDIERS READING THE LATEST NUMBER OF THE “BAPAUMER
+ZEITUNG AM MITTAG”]
+
+To return once more to the Townhall of Bapaume, every day, at the hour
+that the local newspaper was published, brought fresh groups of eager
+soldiers to the notice board. It was quite refreshing to stop awhile
+and observe them. There they stand with their cigarettes or pipes and
+hands in trouser-pockets reading through the news attentively and
+slowly. Up to the present they have had little news that is not good,
+but all news is taken with the same calm. At most one notices a passing
+smile or a momentary gleam in the eye. The same spirit is shown if a
+piece of bad news is posted, such as the loss of a warship.
+
+Sometimes the soldiers are not content with reading, they must copy the
+whole of the paper into their diary. And why? Probably because they
+are on the way to the foremost trenches, where they will impart the
+contents to their isolated comrades.
+
+Duke Adolf Friedrich and I were invited to supper with Lieut.-General
+von Winckler, the Grenadier _par excellence_, the Chief of all the
+Grenadiers of the Guard. At seven o’clock we started out on the great
+main road to Arras, but long before we reached half-way we turned off
+to the left along a by-road leading _via_ Hamelincourt to Boiry. The
+evening was still, the air was clear, and the moon was brilliantly
+radiant. We could hear no cannonading, and yet there could be no doubt
+that we were approaching the line traced in iron, blood and fire across
+the face of France. At every village we were stopped by pickets who
+stepped out on to the road and cried “Halt!” If you do not stop, you
+get a bullet through your back. “_Armeeoberkommando_” (“Chief Army
+Command”) calls the Duke, and we continue on our way. The strictest
+control has to be exercised, especially at night. Not even the German
+uniforms are a guarantee against spies. I feel that I am once more on
+the brink of glorious and wild adventure--on the way to the field of
+battle now lighted by the moon, and where every bush and tree trunk may
+hide a lurking spy. But the silence is unbroken except for the rhythmic
+thud of the engine.
+
+At length we stopped at the gate of a farm, where several officers
+of the General Staff came out to meet us and conducted us into an
+unpretentious little house. Here we were warmly greeted by General von
+Winckler himself, a soldierly figure with a fine head, distinguished,
+weather-beaten, kindly features, steel-grey hair and a dark
+well-groomed moustache.
+
+We sat down to table almost at once. It would have been wrong to call
+the mood of the company solemn or heavy. From the first moment lively
+and interesting conversation was afoot. More cheerful officers it would
+be hard to find--and yet these men had been at work since daybreak,
+and might well feel tired, but they showed no traces of fatigue. The
+company included the Surgeon-General of the Forces, Dr. Reichard, who
+had much to tell about his experience among the wounded, also a young
+lieutenant who that night was to have his first experience of trench
+duty, that strange phenomenon of modern warfare. One might perhaps
+have expected this youth to sit quiet and thoughtful, but he joked
+and laughed and chatted with the rest of them. He was delighted that
+his turn had come at last to be in the forefront of battle. He ate
+his supper, drank his wine and smoked his cigarettes without giving a
+thought to the cold and hardships which awaited him later in the night,
+for an advanced infantry position in close touch with the enemy is in
+very truth a living grave.
+
+At nightfall the occupants of some trenches immediately west of the
+village of Monchy-au-Bois, about seven kilometres from Boiry, were
+to be relieved. At this point it was done every forty-eight hours.
+Those who had been on duty for this length of time were then allowed
+to withdraw to the rear to rest, sleep and get some hot food. I had
+of course passed numberless empty trenches in Belgium, but thought
+it would be far more interesting to see them with the soldiers in
+possession. But when I happened to drop a hint to this effect, the
+General dissuaded me very strongly from visiting his fighting line. It
+would after all have been a great responsibility for him to let me go
+there. At Monchy the foremost German trenches were only eighty metres
+away from the French, with the distance widening to the north and
+south. The men can only be relieved after dark when the night is at its
+blackest. But to-night the moon shone brightly and hardly a sound was
+to be heard. It was eleven o’clock, and there was probably no intention
+to relieve the men in the trenches for another four or five hours.
+Even if the Germans had crept along the ground like leopards through
+the grass, the French would have seen their outlines and shadows. The
+slightest rustle would reach their ears if they held their breath and
+listened carefully; for the French do most emphatically _listen_ at
+night. They are exceedingly vigilant and wakeful. If one is discovered
+before having time to reach one’s trench and gain its welcome shelter,
+the bullets come whizzing round in extra quick time. The greatest
+danger lies, however, in the French fighting and scouting patrols, who
+are thoroughly familiar with the ground and begin to prowl about at
+nightfall.
+
+To-night, the last night of this fateful month of October, it was
+deemed impossible to relieve in the usual way. Only one or two men
+were allowed to creep forward at a time. When there is no moonlight or
+when the countryside is wrapped in fog they can advance close together
+without danger. But on a night such as this the risk was almost as
+great as in daylight and the very greatest caution had to be observed.
+It needs long and systematic training to move troops on moonlight
+nights.
+
+Even a man with uncommon grit and courage must feel a certain amount
+of excitement as he crawls through the grass on toes and elbows,
+particularly as he has his rifle to think about as well. Now and again
+he has to pause, either because this mode of locomotion is too tiring
+or because he has to take his bearings and listen. Then he proceeds a
+little further, holds his breath and listens and peers round like a
+tiger on the prowl. Everything is still, but at any moment he may hear
+the rattle of rifle fire and the ping of bullets. At last he sees the
+trench before him like a long dark line. Will he get there without
+being discovered by the French? That is the question. He hugs the earth
+still closer and moves still more slowly and cautiously. Now he only
+has twenty metres left, now ten. The parapet is clearly defined in the
+moonlight, it is but a step or two that separates him from his goal,
+and yet this step seems like a mile, for just here the danger is at
+its greatest, and it is on this point that the French sharpshooters
+and pickets have their attention riveted. He knows that the furrow in
+the ground beneath him is two metres deep and one metre wide and full
+of alert, wakeful men, but not a sound is heard, no sign of life is
+seen, not even the faintest flicker from a puny fire. Not even the
+scent of a cigarette strikes his nostrils, though perhaps there may be
+other odours that reveal the nearness of human beings. Now he has but
+a metre left, there is no sign of life from the French, and he slips
+noiselessly and softly like a cat over the edge and is safe. Thereupon
+one of his comrades down below rises from his shelter and creeps back
+with the same caution to the ramparts behind the trenches, where he
+gets hot soup and sinks into a deep and well-merited sleep.
+
+The new-comer has forty-eight solid hours before him. At night or in
+a fog he and his comrades must keep wide-awake, for then the danger
+of assault is greatest. Here and there a man may be allowed to doze
+off for a moment, but if a man sleeps when on duty his life is not
+worth much. In day-time most of the men are allowed to rest in their
+“dug-outs” under the parapet, but even then special look-outs are
+always posted along the trench. They all have their own little section
+of the battlefield to answer for. Within that section no life must
+stir but that they are aware of it. It is chiefly movement along the
+ground or the outline of some figure silhouetted against an indistinct
+background that reveals to the look-out the presence of the enemy.
+Clumsiness in real war is tantamount to a death warrant. The Germans
+disappear like field-mice in the inequalities of the ground. But the
+French, in return, are gifted with keen eyesight.
+
+In the trench wall nearest to the enemy bowl-shaped niches or dug-outs
+are excavated in the soil, providing effective protection against
+overhead bursts and not infrequently against direct hits. But it is not
+impossible for a shell to pitch in the wall, and in that case even the
+occupants of the dug-outs are doomed. To provide against this the men
+often dig out a cavern, and these caves are often so elaborate and
+luxurious that it is thought fit to put up curtains at the entrance.
+Along the walls of these caves straw is laid out for sleeping berths
+and the little tent section included in each soldier’s packing is
+often used as a blanket. When the distance between the opposing lines
+of trenches, as in the case I am describing, is only eighty metres,
+no light must be lit even in these subterranean caves, still less a
+fire, and the air in them is therefore cold, damp and raw. But if the
+nearest enemy is three or four hundred metres away, these rigid rules
+are sometimes dispensed with. But even then no fire must be lit and no
+naked light is allowed in the trench proper.
+
+The soldiers bring with them dry rations intended to last for the
+whole of their shift, but they are sometimes cut off through heavy and
+incessant fire from all communication and are then obliged to starve
+for a day or two. But even that misfortune is accepted good-humouredly.
+
+The dangers of trench life may be realised when I say that before
+Monchy-au-Bois alone the dead and wounded numbered sixty to eighty
+daily. Neither dead nor wounded can be removed. If you put up as much
+as a little finger above the edge of the trench the bullets come
+whizzing round immediately. The dead bodies must therefore be allowed
+to remain in the trench, that is to say the dead man is got rid of by
+digging a grave for him in the floor of the trench. A few days ago it
+happened in the trench which I am describing that a soldier was so
+badly hit by a shell that he was cut in two, one half remaining locked
+by a trench prop. He could not be removed without risk to the survivors
+and was therefore allowed to remain. But presently he began to give
+rise to a horrible stench and whatever they did the men could not get
+away from the mutilated, blackened features. Sometimes arms and legs
+torn away from the body are allowed to lie about at the bottom of the
+trench until somebody finds time to dig them down. One gets hardened
+in time. When it is for the sake of the country one does not mind
+occasional horrors.
+
+In rainy weather the trenches become almost unbearable. I saw for
+myself in Belgium what they looked like. The rain-water collects in
+them and they look exactly like the ditches by the side of a field,
+half-filled with grey and yellow water with a scum of mire and filth.
+General von Winckler told me that his men had stood in water up
+to the knees for twenty-four hours without complaining and without
+anyone collapsing from the effects. When the soldiers got back to
+the rear they told their comrades with much droll humour of their
+adventures. One would have thought that it would sour the temper to lie
+steeped in mud for twenty-four hours on end. I am speaking now of the
+Grenadiers of the Guard, of whom one expects that they will go through
+anything. But the same applies to all German troops. You never see any
+gloomy faces amongst the German soldiers, nothing but good spirits
+and laughter. To fight against the inundations, the General ordered
+drainage trenches to be dug, through which the rain-water escaped into
+cisterns, likewise hollowed out in the soil.
+
+In places communication between the trenches is made easier by real
+saps which lead in zigzag to the front line from some suitable
+declivity in the ground. In this way the work of relieving and
+replacing the returning units is greatly facilitated.
+
+The trenches do not run in straight lines, unless, as in the country
+south of Antwerp, the ground is absolutely flat. Usually their length
+and outline depend on the formation of the ground. As a rule they are
+situated so as to offer an uninterrupted view of the enemy positions
+opposite and so as to avoid dead angles. A free field of fire is the
+most important consideration. A trench thus often receives a very
+irregular shape, resembling a curve with numerous bends and salients.
+
+As I have already had occasion to mention, the trenches are often
+interrupted by traverses. If the trench runs in a wavy line it is not
+always possible to prevent parts of it from being flanked and enfiladed
+by the enemy’s artillery fire. The traverses not only prevent such
+enfilading from becoming effective beyond a certain distance but also
+limit the effectiveness of an explosive shell. As a rule the distance
+between the traverses is only ten paces, provided always that there
+has been time to improve and extend the position occupied. Behind
+the various sections one often finds--as I have mentioned more than
+once--deep caverns which afford more or less complete protection
+against direct hits. These spaces are used as refuges if the artillery
+fire becomes too unpleasant, but the trench must immediately be manned
+if the enemy’s infantry shows signs of advancing to the charge.
+
+When, as at Monchy-au-Bois, both sides have been stationary for
+some length of time--in this case since the 6th October--the art of
+field entrenchment usually reaches a very high pitch of perfection.
+It must not be thought that these advanced firing lines are always
+connected and continuous. The formations of the various units are
+adapted to the conformation of the ground according to its appearance
+and the possibilities which it affords. Yet there are no unprotected
+or unguarded places. The intervals between the trenches are always
+protected by wire entanglements or other obstacles effectively flanked
+by machine guns or rifle fire. In front of the German lines at Monchy
+there are numerous wide belts of wire entanglements, alternating with
+deep _trous-de-loup_ with stakes at the bottom. These obstacles,
+interrupted at certain points by open passages, can only be contrived
+under cover of darkness or fog, and even under favourable conditions
+the work is highly dangerous, not least on account of the enemy’s
+pickets who utilise the darkness of night to find out what the enemy is
+up to.
+
+These pickets are the eyes and feelers of their unit. The men to
+whom these scouting and guard duties are entrusted need the utmost
+vigilance, sense of duty and intelligence for the performance of their
+task; for the risks which they run are enormous and they could not
+possibly cope with the strain if they had not been trained in peace
+time to realise that boldness and alertness combined will overcome all
+obstacles. There are many kinds of patrols, but in a war such as this
+the outpost pickets have by far the most important task to perform.
+When the distance between the fighting units is small, they work at
+night only. The manner in which they discharge their duties is often
+the deciding factor in the execution of important plans. They are
+despatched to a certain limited area, with a definite task to perform.
+If possible, they are to avoid collision with the enemy. Other patrols
+are sent out to prevent similar scouting duty by the enemy. In the part
+of the front of which I am speaking, these tasks were often facilitated
+on moonlit nights by the number of corpses, chiefly French, remaining
+on the field from earlier outpost skirmishes between the two fighting
+lines. It is often difficult to tell a living from a dead man. In the
+dark it happens not infrequently that German and French patrols run
+against one another, which always gives rise to hand-to-hand fighting
+and losses. The boldest picket leaders, who in the midst of the most
+appalling danger think of nothing but the duty they are entrusted to
+perform, and who are _determined_ that this trust shall be carried out,
+take advantage even of misfortune. Whilst the others are engaged in a
+struggle of life and death they continue towards the enemy position,
+find out what they can, and return to their line--and to the Iron
+Cross. Their comrades are either dead or wounded. The latter crawl back
+as best they can. If the night is sufficiently dark they get help. The
+former remain to contribute to the foul stench of the atmosphere. At
+Monchy-au-Bois such incidents were of nightly occurrence.
+
+From Monchy I also heard told that on one occasion Frenchmen and
+Germans had installed themselves in one and the same trench. A French
+scouting unit had lost its way one dark night and had taken refuge in a
+part of a German trench for the moment unoccupied. When the Frenchmen
+realised the situation they threw up parapets in both directions in
+the trench itself, and from behind these walls the opposing soldiers
+fired at one another at a distance of a few paces. I do not know what
+happened in the end to the Frenchmen, but they were clearly doomed.
+Their position was absolutely untenable and their only way out of it
+was to surrender when their provisions failed them.
+
+Of course the conditions vary greatly according to the situation. When
+the enemy is relatively far away the communication with the rear is
+rendered easier and in such circumstances life becomes more bearable in
+the front line, if only because hygienic measures are in some measure
+possible. But at Monchy-au-Bois I was told that the state of things in
+these underground caverns literally baffled description. This cannot
+but increase the admiration one feels on witnessing the cheerful spirit
+amongst the men, their absolute readiness for any sacrifice. Any man
+complaining of the cold or of the food below ground would be chaffed
+to distraction or worse by his fellow-soldiers--but I never heard of a
+single case of this kind.
+
+In a village in the neighbourhood where we were now stopping, Prince
+Eitel Friedrich had his quarters. I heard it said of him that he lived
+in a farm-house more or less shot to pieces by shell fire, and that he
+slept on the bare ground. Everybody praised his courage and endurance
+and his great qualities as man and soldier.
+
+As I have already had occasion to remark, the fighting on the western
+front with its interminable lines of trenches is assuming more and more
+the character of a siege war. The opposing sides have dug themselves
+into the ground all along the front behind wire entanglements and
+_trous-de-loup_. These field entrenchments become more formidable as
+time goes on. They can really only be destroyed by heavy artillery.
+Hence this arm is of cardinal importance. The infantry can only sap
+ahead and stick to what it has gained. Every position must be treated
+by attackers as if it were a fortress in itself. Every metre of open
+country, every tree in the Argonne must be captured by what might
+almost be described as a separate engagement. The French are defending
+themselves with the most brilliant courage, and even General von
+Winckler characterised them as worthy opponents to the world’s finest
+soldiers.
+
+In some places ordinary wire entanglements on level ground are not
+deemed to be sufficient, and they are placed in holes or declivities,
+the bottom of which is covered by fire.
+
+In conclusion I should like to say a few words about the intelligence
+service in the field. The French are past-masters in the art of using
+civilian spies. The wounded in a field hospital are safe as long as
+they have a couple of Frenchmen amongst them, but as soon as they
+have been removed for transport eastward, even this sanctuary comes
+under the enemy’s fire. How is it that the enemy _knows_ that these
+particular wounded have been removed? In a village a soldier had made
+the acquaintance of a woman. One fine day she told him that she was
+going away. Why? he asked. Because to-morrow this village was going to
+be bombarded. The soldier did not pay much attention to the prophecy,
+but the woman was right. How did she know it? Of course because she
+had been warned by a spy. Once a peasant came strolling along from the
+French side into the German lines, where he was immediately seized. He
+declared with the most innocent face in the world that he had come to
+look after his cattle, which unfortunately had been left behind on the
+German side. Let the poor fellow look after his cows, they thought,
+and so he was allowed to pass. Of course there could be no question of
+letting him return to the French lines, for he might be a spy sent out
+to gather information. An hour later he was seen driving a little herd
+of cattle before him, but nobody took any notice. This was a daily
+occurrence. However it so happened that he drove his beasts right up
+to a German battery which had been so well masked that the French had
+been unable to detect it. There he left the cattle grazing and vanished
+completely. Presently a murderous fire descended upon the battery,
+which had to be moved in the night to another position. The peasant was
+in the employ of his countrymen, and his movements had been noted by an
+aviator, who had signalled to the French artillery positions.
+
+The German regulations governing the liberties of the civil population
+have naturally to be made much more stringent on account of such
+incidents, and that is why even officers are sometimes stopped at night
+when travelling within the fighting zone. But even the most vigilant
+are sometimes outwitted by the French spies. Complete telephone systems
+have in several instances been discovered below ground, clearly laid
+down in anticipation of the French retreat. The main cables no doubt
+existed already in peace time, but on the outbreak of war an additional
+system of temporary lines had been added, and during the retreat
+telephone stations were rigged up in all sorts of unsuspected places.
+It was often palpable that the French fire had been directed with the
+aid of telephone communication. But where is the underground cable and
+where is the operator? Usually it is chance that leads to the latter’s
+discovery. It had been noticed several times that within a certain area
+the French fire had searched and struck the most susceptible points
+on the German side with such rapidity and accuracy that the direction
+of the fire could only be explained by the existence of equally rapid
+and accurate information. It had also been noticed that no airmen had
+haunted this particular point and the conclusion was not far to seek
+that telephone communication alone could lie at the root of the skilful
+operations of the enemy artillery. All houses and cellars in the
+neighbourhood had been searched with the utmost thoroughness, perhaps
+with useful results, perhaps not. There might be subterranean vaults
+anywhere under meadows, gardens or fields; or strange as it may sound
+there may be telephone stations above ground, which are very difficult
+to detect.
+
+Anyone travelling through north-west France in the autumn cannot but
+be struck by the enormous straw stacks dotted here and there about the
+fields, often reaching a height of six to eight metres, cylindrical
+in form and capped by a flat cone. In the interior of such stacks the
+Germans have often discovered telephone operators. When I drove past
+one of these stacks for the first time I saw that it had been pulled
+to pieces, with the straw scattered in the greatest confusion. I asked
+my companion for the reason of this “eccentric treatment” and was told
+in reply: “It was thought that a man with a telephone apparatus might
+have concealed himself inside and they wanted to make quite sure.” I
+have since often seen similar stacks in the fields and wondered what it
+must feel like to sit shut up in one month after month. I had a shrewd
+suspicion that he must get his information from the civil inhabitants
+of the neighbourhood. Spies in the guise of vagrant peasants or
+shepherds no doubt steal up to the stack in the dead of night and creep
+in through some hidden passage to tell the operator what they have seen.
+
+The following episode was told me by a German officer. The Germans had
+billeted themselves on a French village and had requisitioned against
+_bons_ what they needed for their reasonable wants. Thereupon an
+elderly curé turned up at the commandant’s office and pleaded in the
+most beseeching tones to be allowed to keep the modest little stock of
+wine in his cellar which he said he needed for the sake of his failing
+health. His request was readily granted and orders were issued that the
+priest and his wine-cellar should be excluded from all requisitions.
+After a time the Germans noticed with amazement that the French fire
+in these parts was directed with almost uncanny precision. A thorough
+search was instituted, houses, cellars and straw stacks were ransacked,
+but without success. Nobody thought of the curé, who was old and broken
+in health, and who with the most innocent air in the world was seen
+daily tottering along laboriously to and from his little church. But
+at last things grew so suspicious that even the curé’s house had to be
+searched. There in the wine-cellar stood a large cask and inside it was
+a telephone apparatus, the wires from which passed through the cellar
+floor into the earth. It was the old curé himself who at night gave
+all the information which had proved so fatal to the Germans in the
+neighbourhood. On the following night the telephone was once more in
+operation. This time, however, it was a German officer, speaking French
+without the slightest trace of an accent, who took his seat in the wine
+cask. And what _he_ had to report may be left to the imagination. In
+any case there were no more direct hits after that night.
+
+When a village within the German sphere of operations continues to be
+inhabited by the French civil population it is not bombarded by the
+French, but if the population for any reason leaves the village, the
+fire is immediately directed against its farms and houses. Information
+in these respects can only be given through the underground telephone
+lines or through light signals at night. The latter method is, however,
+extremely dangerous, for when the Germans notice any suspicious lights
+their patrols bear down like hawks upon the point from which the light
+was seen.
+
+The village of Boiry where we now were has in peace time a population
+of nine hundred, but at present there are only a hundred and fifty
+left. After a while the population seemed to grow without any migration
+into the village being noticed. It was then found that the apparent
+new-comers had simply been hidden in the cellars, where they had
+tables, chairs, beds and all sorts of supplies. Thus they had lived for
+weeks, until they realised that the Germans were not such “barbarians”
+as they had been made out to be. But, nevertheless, the fact that Boiry
+was inhabited by French people made the German troops quartered there
+fairly safe from aviators’ bombs, whilst they were out of range of the
+artillery.
+
+On the other hand the French airmen evidently had their eye on a German
+flying station in the neighbourhood. That very day a _Taube_ had been
+damaged by a bomb, which had, moreover, wounded three men and killed
+twenty horses belonging to the flying section. But the Germans had
+revenged themselves amply, for the following day 155 Frenchmen had been
+captured in the same neighbourhood.
+
+I was told that it costs France tens of thousands of millions of francs
+to have the German armies in occupation of a part of their country, and
+this disadvantage is but slightly compensated for by certain benefits
+which I have briefly touched upon above and which include the greater
+facility of organising the intelligence service. But it must not be
+thought that the Germans are entirely deprived of the information they
+need. They have inexhaustible supplies of ordnance maps of the entire
+country, together with appertaining military and topographical data;
+they have, moreover, their incredibly skilful and bold flying corps and
+other scouts and, besides, the information vouchsafed by prisoners.
+Opposite Monchy-au-Bois they had the 69th Regiment of the 20th French
+Army Corps. In the same way it was known to a nicety how the various
+enemy units were located along this front of six hundred kilometres.
+Any movements of troops, and what such movements might portend, were
+also known immediately.
+
+But it is getting late. We take leave of the most charming General and
+his Staff and drive home through the moonlit silent night. And I for my
+part could not help thinking of the young lieutenant about to embark on
+his first experience of trench life.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXI
+
+  SUNDAY THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER
+
+
+For over a thousand years the Catholic Church has kept, on the 2nd or
+3rd of November, the solemn festival of “All Souls” in remembrance of
+the dead and as an admonition to the living to send up prayers to the
+throne of God for the souls suffering in purgatory. A Mass for the
+departed is held in the churches, and the graves in the cemeteries are
+adorned with wreaths and flowers.
+
+In the parish church of Bapaume a German “All Souls” celebration
+was held on Sunday the 1st of November in remembrance of the fallen
+soldiers. Duke Adolf Friedrich and I arrived in good time for the
+service but found the church filled to overcrowding with four thousand
+soldiers. We succeeded however in getting up to the chancel, where two
+chairs were placed for us among a group of officers.
+
+The old church makes a truly imposing and magnificent impression. The
+first thing I felt constrained to do, after taking my seat, was to
+cast my eye over the fane, with its lofty Gothic arches and handsome
+windows. On either side of the mighty nave are small side-aisles
+supported by massive pillars. The transept walls are adorned with large
+memorial tablets, which however are of doubtful artistic value. The
+sunlight filters in through the stained-glass windows and falls in all
+the hues of the rainbow upon the white pillars. One wonders why a town
+of little more than 3,000 inhabitants should need a church capable of
+holding 4,000 persons, but at the great festivals this place of worship
+attracts people from the whole surrounding country.
+
+All pews are overcrowded, soldiers are standing closely packed all
+down the aisles, with their helmets slung over their arms. There are
+Catholic Sisters in their black dresses, white coifs and Red Cross
+armlets. Both officers and men are unarmed. No rattling of sabres is
+heard. No one is commanded to Divine Service. The soldiers are at
+liberty to spend the hour of High Mass as they please. Yet the church
+is crowded from end to end. These hardened warriors feel the need of
+approaching God and hearing His word before they go forth to face death.
+
+A Divine Service in the field under the open sky is more impressive in
+its way. But I cannot imagine anything more beautiful than this High
+Mass in Bapaume Parish Church. Perhaps they preferred to celebrate
+All Souls’ Day under these lofty arches so as not to be disturbed by
+airmen. War is inexorable and does not hesitate to kill the children
+of man, even while performing their devotions. A Field Chaplain told
+me that on Sunday the 18th of October he was preaching on a hill-slope
+outside Douchy when a hostile aviator dropped a couple of bombs,
+intending to interrupt the service in this catastrophic manner. They
+exploded close to the listening troops. No one stirred, and the
+preacher calmly continued his sermon.
+
+It is a strangely fascinating sight that meets my eye as it travels
+over the nave from the raised floor of the chancel, and I feel that my
+heart beats in unison with those of the four thousand South Germans.
+Weather-beaten and sunburnt they stand--a picture of manhood, imbued
+with iron will and humble trust in God. Their field-grey uniforms have
+assumed a tint now truly at one with the colour of the fields through
+constant contact with the soil in trenches and “dug-outs.” But here and
+there I also observed the dark-blue tunics of Bavarian Landsturm men,
+sturdy and steadfast like the solid rock from which the pillars of the
+church were hewn.
+
+I hear that the credit of decorating the church so festively for
+All Souls’ Day was due to these Landsturm men. The chancel had been
+transformed into a solid bank of foliage, and all the pillars were hung
+with large green wreaths, in remembrance of the fallen. But the most
+remarkable thing of all was the reverence which the good Bavarians
+had shown to a small statue of Joan d’Arc standing on the left of the
+choir just within the triumphal arch. There was nothing in the least
+remarkable about this plaster image of the seventeen-year-old Maid of
+Orleans. She was just as one sees her in many other places. She stood,
+majestically erect, in her shining armour, holding in her hand the
+white standard adorned with _fleurs-de-lys_. And yet I could not keep
+my eyes off her. She seemed to scrutinise the German warriors in the
+nave, and an ironical smile seemed to hover about her lips.
+
+But how did she get here? It is true that just twenty years ago she
+was declared blessed by Pope Leo XIII.--perhaps she has meanwhile
+been actually received into the Canon of Saints.[29] At any rate she
+is the object of almost divine veneration in this part of France. One
+could see that her image was not a regular part of the decorations of
+the church, because it had been placed on an upturned packing-case
+scantily draped with some cloth. When the war was hanging over France
+like a dark thunder-cloud she had been carried into the church, and the
+believers had fallen on their knees before her, imploring her to bestow
+her spirit and her victorious aid on the French. To propitiate the
+noble virgin, the citizens of Bapaume had offered her numerous candles
+which were arranged on a stand in front of the image. And now comes the
+strangest part, the good Bavarians had glorified her with a background
+of tall plants and had lit all the candles, those candles whose flames
+were burning prayers for victory over--the Germans!
+
+[29] She was canonised by Pope Pius X. in May, 1909.--Translator.
+
+The blessed virgin had yet another and greater cause to smile at human
+folly. In her time, more than half of France was overrun by the English
+and their allies. It was against them that she had fought--them that
+she had vanquished--and when, overpowered at last, she fell into the
+hands of her country’s enemies she was delivered by them into the hands
+of the inquisition. She was derided, locked up with rough soldiers and
+finally burnt at the stake--all this by those very Englishmen whom she
+was now invoked, by burning prayers and candles, to assist against
+the Germans. One may pardon the young lady for making a wry face and
+feeling somewhat perplexed! The Bavarians might well light the candles
+without misgivings--she did not heed them, and her helmet prevented her
+from hearing the presumptuous prayers.
+
+The peals of the organ now rise loud and clear towards the roof, and
+lusty voices from four thousand young warriors’ throats sing Bernard de
+Clairvaux’s eight-hundred-year-old Latin hymn _Salve caput cruentatum_
+in its German version composed in 1659 by Paul Gerhard:
+
+          O sacred Head, surrounded
+            By crown of piercing thorn!
+          O bleeding Head, so wounded,
+            Reviled and put to scorn!
+          Death’s pallid hue comes o’er Thee,
+            The glow of life decays.
+          Yet angel hosts adore Thee
+            And tremble as they gaze!
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+          In mine own hour of passion,
+            Good Shepherd, think of me
+          With Thy most sweet compassion,
+            Unworthy though I be.
+
+          In Thy sweet arms abiding
+            For ever would I rest,
+          In Thy dear love confiding,
+            And with Thy presence blest!”[30]
+
+[30] “Ancient and Modern Hymns,” version slightly modified.--Translator.
+
+When the last note of Cleving’s sonorous voice--which, though I could
+not see the singer from where I sat, could easily be distinguished
+and rang with the fervour of devotion--had died away, Franz Xaver
+Münch, Divisional Chaplain of Düsseldorf, ascended the pulpit. He was
+a tall and powerfully built man. With authoritative dignity he stood
+and looked down upon his congregation of all grades and all arms,
+of horny-handed soldiers and Sisters of Mercy, of Protestants and
+Catholics. The service was a joint service for all creeds. The priest
+himself was a Catholic. But now, in the German nation’s greatest hour,
+all barriers of creed were broken; there was no longer any distinction
+between Protestants, Catholics or Jews--there were only _Germans_. “We
+have now all become as _one_ man, and we all have _one_ God.”
+
+But the priest stood in the pulpit and delivered the following sermon:
+
+“Dearly beloved friends and comrades!
+
+“‘O Sacred Head surrounded!’ This is how the German master Grünewald,
+the placid, great mystic, saw Him when he pictured that Divine ‘Man of
+Sorrow,’ His pain and His wounds, and His bruised and pierced body!
+This is how Bach beheld Him when in his ‘Passion according to St.
+Matthew’ he prayed and lamented over the dying Son of God: ‘Help, ye
+daughters ... help me lament!’
+
+“In this sacred hour, when we mourn our dead heroes, we realise more
+powerfully than ever before the passion of Our Lord. For are not we
+Germans ourselves undergoing our Passion, and is not our Empire itself
+transformed to a suffering Christ? We too have passed through our hour
+of trial on Mount Olivet when, with our Emperor, we prayed that ‘this
+cup of suffering might pass away’ from us, and obeying the unfathomable
+Divine Will, we began to drain it. We too felt the war weighing upon us
+like a cross, and we are bearing its burden, trusting in the same aid
+which comforted our Heavenly Master. We too have been forsaken by those
+to whom we had only shown what is good and right, and around us too has
+roared the cry, full of hatred and envy: ‘Crucify him!’ And like the
+Master, we too, in this our German Passion, are bearing wounds, among
+which the noblest and most bloody are our dear dead Germans!
+
+“Standing by the common graves in which we have buried our dead, we
+lament deeply and sorrowfully. For we Germans too can weep and lament!
+And with our lamentations mingle the sobs and wailings of the poor
+German widows and orphans, whose husbands and fathers rest in foreign
+soil.
+
+“And yet we do not sorrow like the heathen who have nothing to hope
+for. Even the dead live, and urge us on to the task incumbent on the
+living. I fancy I can hear, from those trench graves, the imploring,
+earnestly beseeching cry: ‘_See to it that our sufferings may not have
+been in vain!_’ The task which the dead lay upon us is, untiringly,
+and with the utmost exertion of all our powers of mind and body, to
+accomplish the work of liberation of our threatened empire. From
+the earliest times it has been a prominent characteristic of German
+effort in every domain to go about the task in hand thoroughly and
+perseveringly and to accomplish it accurately in every detail. This
+purely German talent we shall also employ, with all the energy
+mercifully bestowed on us, in this fateful hour. Just as in times of
+peace we were a nation who created new resources, beneficent even to
+others, so we will not now rest till we have forced upon our enemies a
+peace which shall not only bring a new spring of prosperity to our land
+but shall also be a guarantee for the tranquillity and security of all
+Europe.
+
+“Yet another cry I seem to hear from those trench graves: ‘_Do not
+forget our sufferings and our wounds!_’ My dear comrades! Those among
+our people who still retain their moral earnestness will never forget
+the wounds and the sufferings which this war has brought with it. The
+price of our liberation and of our victories is the most precious and
+most noble that a people can pay--the blood of our young manhood!
+Come and see how we are burying the young! We cannot even give them
+a plain coffin! We cannot, as the ancient Teutons did, raise them on
+our shields and carry them over hill and dale to their German home.
+But, dear brethren, I know of a sarcophagus which is more precious
+than a coffin--fashioned by the hand of a greater Master--I mean the
+sarcophagus of the German heart. Deeply enshrined there, let us lay
+our dear dead to rest and carry them home with us, some day, to the
+German native land. And if, some day--which God our Protector in our
+German fight forbid--a time should come when a generation of young men
+and young women does not know what the peace and the new prosperity of
+the empire has cost us, when people in laxity and luxury only live to
+enjoy the fruits, when people abandon themselves to the strange gods of
+demoralising and pernicious habits--then, my dear brethren, the time
+will have come for us, who have been standing to-day in sorrow around
+these tombs, to open the sarcophagus of our hearts and exhibit to a
+slothful generation our dead, their wounds and their dying moments!
+Then the spirits of the fallen shall fight another and a harder fight
+against those of our own people who no longer preserve the memory of
+the gaping wounds of war in the innermost recesses of their soul!
+
+“Thus this day on which we commemorate our dead is in reality a day
+of surging life, of new hopes and of urgent tasks. These graves are
+a gigantic reproach to our enemies, but to us they will be a sacred
+memorial in the time to come. Those who have sown the storms shall reap
+the whirlwind! And this whirlwind is now raging over their land! Led
+astray by petty motives and by small groups of selfish partisans, ‘they
+have sown in the flesh and they shall reap destruction.’ We venture to
+swear before God that we have sown in the spirit of righteousness and
+peace. To us the war is a momentously spiritual matter, which touches
+the innermost heart of a nation which has risen in unity, which has
+been hurt in its most sacred sentiments, and has been forced to defend
+itself. And through the Spirit of Righteousness and Peace our people
+shall reap eternal life. Amen.”
+
+“O God, who by Thy holy Apostles hast commanded us to love the Ruler
+Thou hast given us, pour the richest blessings on our Emperor and all
+his house! And above all we pray Thee, in these the great days of
+fateful warlike complications, to bestow Thy grace on our Imperial
+Lord! In holy trust and deep humility he has committed his people to
+Thy protection! For the sake of all of us, preserve his health and
+strength! Enlighten him in his counsels! Comfort him, while with a
+father’s heart he grieves over the wounds of his empire! Reward him
+with victory for his army, and with an honourable peace! This grant
+him, God, the Righteous, for the sake of the atoning death of our
+Divine Lord and Saviour! Amen.”
+
+“O Lord of Hosts! Uphold our brave German Army! Thou knowest what a
+righteous cause it is fighting for, and how it is pressed by enemies on
+every hand! Grant its leaders wisdom and skill,--grant its soldiers the
+spirit of constant self-sacrificing courage and ready obedience! Let
+them all find shelter under the wings of Thy mercy, Thy divinity and
+Thy grace! Grant us this through Thy son our Heavenly Lord and Saviour!
+Amen.”
+
+“O Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who Thyself didst live, with Thy
+holy parents, a holy family life, have mercy on our families at home!
+Protect our fair and fertile land, our villages and towns, our fields
+and vineyards, our trade and handicraft! Protect above all our German
+youth--Thou the divine friend of children! Let the young be deeply
+imbued with the import of the times and with love of their native land,
+in this fateful hour! But especially comfort each wife whose husband
+is resting in foreign soil, for Thy Father is the God of the widows
+and the fatherless! Thou Thyself hadst a mother whose heart bled with
+pain and grief! Console the mothers, give comfort to the children! Have
+mercy on brothers, sisters and betrothed who are mourning their beloved
+dead--Thou who livest and reignest from eternity to eternity! Amen.”
+
+
+The bands play a hymn whose magnificently solemn notes re-echo through
+the church. A quartette strikes up the _Ave verum corpus natum_ and
+finally the congregation sings the doxology:
+
+              “Mighty God, we worship Thee,
+          Lord, we praise Thy glorious name!
+              Heaven and earth bow down to Thee
+          And Thy wondrous works proclaim!
+              As from all eternity,
+          Thou for evermore shalt be!”
+
+The High Mass was over and the soldiers filed out, past the little maid
+who, thanks to Schiller’s magnificent romantic tragedy, was no stranger
+to them. The candles might well be lit in front of her--had she not
+vanquished the English? The French Maid, as she stands there, brings to
+our minds those proud words which the German bard put into her mouth
+when, a prisoner in the hands of the English, he makes her boldly
+exclaim to the ferocious and insolent Queen Isabeau:
+
+          “France never shall the Briton’s fetters bear,
+      No, never! For, ere that, it shall become
+          One vast engulphing tomb for all your hosts!
+      The flower of your army’s gone--betimes
+          Think of a safe retreat--already now,
+      Your glory’s faded and your might is broken!”
+
+Perhaps there were also some in Bapaume Church who thought of those
+grand words, in which Schiller makes her predict the ultimate triumph
+over truth:
+
+          “Without the Will of God no single hair
+      Falls from man’s head!--See yonder sun
+          Descending to the horizon--Yea, as surely
+      As in the morn he’ll rise anew in splendour,
+          As surely comes the day when truth prevails!”--
+
+Then the lights were quickly extinguished and the Maid of Orleans
+remained alone, pensive and still.
+
+Pastor Münch remarked to me how profoundly impressive it was to
+witness the soldiers’ and officers’ spiritual cravings during the war.
+At divine service the churches were always crowded, and hundreds of
+soldiers were attending the weekday Vespers. The sermons were printed
+in tens and hundreds of thousands of copies for distribution in the
+trenches. War was carried on, not only with rifles, bayonets and
+artillery, but also with the weapons of the fear of God and prayer!
+
+For his own part he thought that Catholics and Protestants, however
+strictly they each adhered to their own particular tenets, yet well
+understood each other. The German Catholics had most fervently taken to
+heart the situation of their common fatherland in the face of the war,
+and their sentiments were as genuine, sincere and true as those of the
+Protestants. Perhaps one of the results of the war would be that the
+two creeds would have learnt to esteem each other and to abstain in
+future from dwelling on those points in which they were most strongly
+at variance. Already it had been realised in German evangelical circles
+that, although the Roman Catholic Church comprises all nations, yet
+the German Catholics were fighting with unshakable consistency and
+conviction for German national interests.
+
+A sanguinary reminiscence of the Franco-German war is connected with
+Bapaume. On January 3rd, 1871, impelled by the precarious situation of
+Paris, General Faidherbe attacked, with the French Northern Army,--the
+22nd and 23rd Army Corps--General Goeben’s forces, collected in and
+about Bapaume, whose nucleus was the 15th Division of the 8th Army
+Corps. The Germans held their main position though outnumbered by more
+than two to one, but at the end of the day were totally exhausted, and
+moreover short of ammunition. General Faidherbe, on the other hand, saw
+his best troops badly spent and the _Gardes Mobiles_ demoralised by the
+fatigues undergone. He would not venture another blow, and fell back on
+Arras and Douai. The deficient military training and discipline of the
+French militia rendered it impossible for the General to take advantage
+of the otherwise favourable situation.
+
+Forty-four years have now passed since then, and Bapaume is once
+more in German hands. The French have erected, in the centre of the
+market-place, a statue of Faidherbe--a worthy memorial to a brilliant
+career. Time after time this brave man had been entrusted with the
+solution of important tasks at home, in Guadeloupe, in Algiers,
+Senegal and Kabylia, until in the end he was appointed by Gambetta, in
+November, 1870, to the command of the Northern Army. He was by no means
+lacking in courage, confidence, initiative, patriotism and fervent
+zeal, but with his militia troops he was like a general without an
+army, in the face of the thoroughly and carefully trained Germans.
+
+[Illustration: BAND PLAYING BESIDE FAIDHERBE’S STATUE]
+
+[Illustration: GERMAN SOLDIERS BESIDE THE FRENCH GENERAL’S MEMORIAL]
+
+Faidherbe survived his failure for a good many years. He died in Paris
+in 1889 after eighteen years’ grief at his generalship being wasted
+uselessly in consequence of the blindness and ignorance of those who
+represented the nation and who brought that nation to the deepest abyss
+of national misfortune ever witnessed in our times.
+
+There he stands, in bronze, on his white pedestal--one of the victims
+of his nation’s baneful mistake. And around him stand sons of the
+people who vanquished him, now following victoriously in the footsteps
+of their fathers. There he stands, defiant and resolute, with crossed
+arms, his right hand clasping the hilt of his sword. His whole bearing
+seems to evince an unflinching resolution not to recede one step but
+only to push forward! His greatcoat seems to flutter in the wind, and
+his cap is jauntily cocked to one side. He bears his head high and
+proudly, his eyes are turned towards the German troops--now as in the
+days of the past. For now, as then, he has closely serried ranks of
+German soldiers before him. Many of those who had attended the church
+service have now assembled in the market-place. The German military
+band forms a semicircle in front of Faidherbe’s statue. Baton in hand,
+the bandmaster steps forth, and now the “Watch on the Rhine” rings out.
+Grand, sonorous and stirring, its notes swirl round the hero up there
+on the pedestal. He seems more defiant than ever, with his bared sword,
+and an air of deep tragedy seems to hover about his features!
+
+But the German musicians and their comrades stand calm and undismayed;
+a sentiment of confident expectation of victory pervades all these
+warriors. Cleving begins to sing and others join in, until a mighty
+wave of song sweeps over the market-place:[31]
+
+        “The tocsin rings like thunder peal,
+        Like roar of waves and clash of steel:--
+        To th’ Rhine--the Rhine,--the German Rhine!
+        Who will keep guard upon the Rhine?
+
+                     _Chorus_:
+
+        Be undismayed, dear country mine:
+        Firm stands and true the watch,--the watch on th’ Rhine!
+
+                     (_Rep._)
+
+        Through hundred thousands thrills the call
+        And boldly flash the eyes of all:
+        The German, loyal, staunch and true,
+        Protects that sacred landmark blue!
+
+                    (_Chorus._)
+
+        He gazes upwards to the sky,
+        Where valiant fathers dwell on high,
+        And proudly vows: For evermore
+        Shall German stay the Rhine’s fair shore!
+
+                    (_Chorus._)
+
+        While yet a drop of blood we hoard,
+        Have yet an arm to wield the sword--
+        To pull the trigger yet one hand--
+        No foeman’s foot shall tread this land!
+
+                    (_Chorus._)
+
+        The vow rings o’er the wave-swept vale--
+        Proud banners flutter in the gale--
+        On th’ Rhine,--the Rhine, the German Rhine--
+        We’ll all keep guard upon the Rhine!”
+
+                    (_Chorus._)
+
+[31] “Die Wacht am Rhein.” Having failed, in this and in other
+instances in this book, to discover an “authorised” version, the
+translator has been compelled to make literal translations himself.
+
+Before we left the market square we looked in at the Base Commander’s
+office, to see the old Bavarian Colonel who had been so ungracious
+on my arrival in Bapaume. But now, as I have mentioned, we were firm
+friends.
+
+The brilliant assembly of guests round the Duke’s hospitable board
+included on this occasion the Chief of the Staff, Count von der
+Schulenburg, a lively and pleasant gentleman, who evoked great
+merriment by his happy wit.
+
+When the guests had departed, we mounted the Duke’s car and drove to
+Hamelincourt, whither we had been invited for tea by Rittmeister von
+Hollen. When we passed through the village before, night had fallen;
+now we inspected more closely the slightly damaged church and a few
+wrecked houses. Even this little place was swarming with troops and
+officers; we also met a stout and jovial Catholic priest who had been
+out that day to the foremost fighting line to preach. He had passed
+through the most remarkable adventures with his lively little grey cob,
+and he recounted some of them while we were seated at von Hollen’s
+hospitable table.
+
+On the notice board of the Townhall we had seen the announcement: “This
+afternoon at 5 p.m. a short service will be held in Bapaume Cemetery
+in commemoration of our fallen comrades.” When we left Hamelincourt,
+we therefore made straight for the cemetery. Crowds of officers and
+men were filtering along the paths between a forest of crosses and
+tombstones. There was here a common grave, in which Frenchmen and
+Germans have been resting side by side since 1871, also some fresh
+graves dating from the present war. A surgeon lay buried here, whose
+fox-terrier, for three days and nights, could not be induced to leave
+his master’s grave.
+
+A group of nursing sisters come bearing large wreaths wherewith to
+adorn the graves of the dead soldiers. The band strikes up a slow and
+solemn funeral march; a preacher delivers an address in remembrance
+of the dead, and a choir of Bavarian Landsturm men ascend a little
+mound and pay homage to their fallen comrades in beautiful song.
+They are good-natured fellows, these powerful and strong Bavarians,
+but in war they are awkward customers to tackle. Then they no longer
+think of “_Eine ganz frische Blume_”[32] and can even dispense with
+their beloved _Hofbräu_ beer. Their younger comrades in the trenches
+are notorious for their eagerness to fight and for their undaunted
+courage. They never give way. If the word is given to charge with the
+bayonet, nothing can hold them back. A Bavarian “Hurrah” is something
+terrifying. But when the enemy throws up his hands and yields himself
+up as prisoner, these warriors become their old gentle selves. If the
+situation permits it may happen, however, that they rummage in their
+opponents’ pockets and knapsacks for cigarettes. When, in the former
+war, the Germans reproached the French with having pressed half-savage
+and heathen races into their ranks, they are said to have replied: “_Eh
+bien, vous avez vos Bavarois!_”
+
+[32] Title of one of their songs.
+
+On the extreme fringe of the audience stood sixty Landsturm men, who
+had been ordered to the cemetery to open fire in case a hostile airman
+should show himself. Aviators are mostly out between five and six,
+and the air was calm and clear this evening. Just imagine what havoc
+might be wrought if a bomb or two were dropped among these closely
+packed crowds! While the priest is speaking, the warning whir is heard
+overhead. But not a muscle moves on the faces of his audience; the
+preacher’s voice never falters nor does he lose the thread of his
+discourse for an instant. One little sister alone raises her blue eyes
+to the sky, but seems quite unconcerned. “It is a German airman,” the
+Duke whispers into my ear, and he told me afterwards that one soon
+learnt to distinguish French from German aeroplanes--by their sound.
+The German machines have a duller note.
+
+On returning home I called in as usual to see M. Cossart and Mdlles.
+Lengagne, and sat and chatted with them for half an hour. They had been
+greatly upset on hearing that large numbers of the male population
+of Bapaume had been carried away into captivity in Germany, but on
+enquiring into the matter I was able to assure them that at most
+only a hundred were in question, who were considered of military age
+and had therefore been taken away to be interned; they would return
+after the war in unimpaired health and strength. Then I told them
+about the incidents of the day, the High Mass and the music in the
+market-place. They themselves had not been out of doors; they _would
+not_ go out--they _would not_ hear the Prussian music in Bapaume!
+What could I say to console them? How can one console people who see
+their countryside occupied by hostile armies? It could not cheer them
+to hear the latest news from the theatres of war--about Hindenburg’s
+fresh advances in Poland, and the doings of the Turkish fleet in the
+Black Sea! And if I did say anything of the kind they simply would not
+believe it. I felt very sorry for them--just as I did for Faidherbe,
+out there in the market-place!
+
+But it was now nearly seven o’clock, so I crossed the street to call
+for the Duke. We were to drive to Douai, where we were invited to
+take supper at 8 p.m. with the Chief of the 6th Army, Colonel-General
+Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria. The distance is nearly thirty-four
+kilometres and can easily be covered in three-quarters of an hour, but
+the numerous posts stationed on the road took up much of our time. It
+was five minutes to eight when we arrived. An adjutant conducted us
+to a drawing-room, and we had not waited half a minute when the Crown
+Prince entered.
+
+He is one of those rare men whom all love and admire--all except the
+English, for I think that even the French cannot help paying him a meed
+of respect. In the German army he is looked upon as a very eminent
+general--a born strategist and a thoroughly schooled soldier. As
+regards appearance, manner and speech, he is fascinating and congenial
+in the highest degree, neither regal nor humble, but without artifice
+and modest like an ordinary mortal. When one _knows_ that he has
+recently experienced the greatest private sorrow which could befall
+him, one fancies, perhaps, that one detects a trace thereof in his
+features--an air of sadness--but otherwise he does not betray, by a
+look or a sigh, how deeply he grieves over the death of the little
+prince of thirteen, the darling of all Bavaria. When the country and
+the empire are in danger, all private sorrows must be put aside!
+The Crown Prince has no time to grieve or to think of the void and
+bereavement which he will feel on his victorious return to Munich.
+He lives for and with his army, and is like a father to each and all
+of his soldiers. He devotes all his power of mind, all his physical
+strength, all his time, to the one great object which dominates all
+else in the minds of the whole German army.
+
+Crown Prince Rupprecht walks in with brisk and easy stride, stretches
+out his hands towards us and gives us a truly cordial welcome. And then
+he adds half-humorously: “I expect some other distinguished guests at
+my table to-night.”
+
+“Who can that be?” asks the Duke.
+
+“The Emperor!” replies the Crown Prince, and claps his hands together.
+
+“The Emperor?” we cry, for we had no idea that His Majesty was in this
+part of the country.
+
+“Yes, the Emperor has visited several units in this neighbourhood
+to-day, and has promised.... Hush, I hear his car!” and with that the
+Crown Prince hurried out.
+
+Meanwhile the Officers of the General Staff of the Army came to greet
+us, and presently the Emperor’s suite, among whom I knew several, also
+entered. Before I had time to wonder where the supreme War-Lord himself
+had gone, we were asked to step into the dining-room. The Emperor was
+already seated at the table. We all stepped up to our chairs, but no
+one seated himself. The Emperor sat with bowed head, looking very
+grave. But suddenly his blue eyes flashed up, and he nodded kindly in
+all directions. When he caught sight of me, he extended his hand across
+the table and cried gaily: “_Guten Tag, mein lieber Sven Hedin; es
+scheint Ihnen gut zu gefallen in meiner Armee_,”[33] a sentiment which
+I confirmed with the greatest alacrity.
+
+[33] “How do you do, my dear Sven Hedin; you seem rather to like being
+with my Army.”
+
+Perhaps it might amuse the reader to hear who were the ten people
+seated round Crown Prince Rupprecht’s table. Duke Adolf Friedrich of
+Mecklenburg sat at the Emperor’s right, and Prince Löwenstein at his
+left. Right opposite the Emperor sat the Crown Prince--the host--with
+Colonel-General von Plessen, Adjutant-General, at his right and myself
+at his left. Next to me on the other side was Lieut.-General von
+Marschall, with Colonel Tappen, of the Crown Prince’s staff, on his
+left. To the left of Prince Löwenstein sat General Falkenhayn, Minister
+of War, and between him and General von Plessen the chief of the Crown
+Prince’s staff, General Krafft von Dellmensingen. At another table of
+about the same size, covers had been laid for the other gentlemen of
+the Emperor’s and Crown Prince’s staff and suite.
+
+The Emperor was in brilliant spirits. I really do not know whether he
+_can_ be otherwise, for whenever I have had the honour to meet him, he
+has always been merry, amiable and witty. He can certainly express at
+times in words of thunder his displeasure at some contemptible act on
+the part of the enemy, but he is soon sunshine again and bursts into
+irresistible laughter at some whimsical idea. He has a wonderful gift
+of instilling life into a party and keeping the conversation at high
+pitch--as he did here for over two and a half hours. He told us a great
+deal of most interesting news, things which had happened in different
+parts of the field during the last few days and which, at least to me
+and to the Duke, were news indeed. If one asks the Emperor any question
+about the conditions in more or less remote countries, as to which
+sparse or contradictory information has come to one’s ears, he will,
+off-hand, and with a masterly marshalling of facts, deliver a veritable
+lecture on its internal and external policy, its public sentiments, its
+resources, and its military strength. I think I have never met a man
+who can rival Emperor William in this respect.
+
+He also possesses the faculty of grasping with lightning quickness
+and judging the opinions expressed by others. He listened with the
+liveliest interest to Crown Prince Rupprecht as the latter gave
+him various details about his army, and to me when I described the
+bombardment of Ostend.
+
+It was past half-past ten when the Emperor laid down his cigar and
+rose to say good-bye with that vigorous handshake which leaves its
+mark on one’s knuckles. The Crown Prince alone accompanied him out
+into the hall, which immediately adjoined the dining-room and from
+which a few steps led out into the road. A soldier stood ready holding
+the Emperor’s light greyish-blue cloak, with dark fur collar; another
+handed him the plain Prussian officer’s field-cap. After the host and
+his guest had exchanged a few more words they went out to the car,
+which drove off rapidly into the night, whereupon the Crown Prince
+rejoined us.
+
+We then arranged plans for the morrow--another trip northward. Captain
+Lübke was ordered to accompany us. He was to watch for us when we
+returned to Douai about ten o’clock.
+
+So we said good-bye to the Crown Prince of Bavaria, Chief of the 6th
+Army, and left his quarters where we had spent a memorable evening.
+Our return journey was most tediously delayed by the zeal of the
+guards posted along the road. Every moment we were stopped, and if we
+gave the slightest sign of disregarding the challenge, the sentries
+at once prepared to fire. Any attempt at running away might have cost
+us our lives. We therefore stopped discreetly. The commander of the
+picket came forward and turned his lantern upon us. The Duke asked why
+the guarding of the road was so much stricter now than it was three
+hours ago. “Well, we have received information that a couple of spies
+in German uniform accompanied by a woman, are out driving in a car
+somewhere in this neighbourhood. We have orders to let no one pass, no
+matter whom, without the closest scrutiny.”
+
+“Well, that is right; watch well, lads! Good night!” the Duke exclaims
+as we drive on--until the next lantern once more compels us to stop.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXII
+
+  ENGLISH PRISONERS FROM YPRES
+
+
+Up betimes for early Mass and away across Artois’ desolate plains to
+Douai! At the headquarters of the Chief Command we were met by Captain
+Lübke with his car, and he introduced us to two other participants in
+the day’s excursion, Councillor Göppert and the Austrian battle-scene
+painter, Professor Hans von Hayek. Thereupon we jumped in and tore away
+past Pasteur and Joan of Arc, before whom we had no further occasion to
+stop. We were through the town in a twinkling, and drove out under the
+_Porte de Roubaix_, following in a north-easterly direction the long
+unbroken street connecting Lille with Roubaix.
+
+At the latter place we came across 250 English soldiers who had
+recently been captured, together with a number of officers, all of whom
+were to be conveyed to Germany in the afternoon. The men were lodged in
+a large hall, probably a dismantled restaurant. There was no furniture,
+but large beds of straw had been spread out on the floor, especially
+along the walls. Here the men could fix themselves up for the night.
+They certainly had nothing to complain of. One “Tommy,” who had a
+slight wound in the head, was just being treated by an English doctor,
+who was also a prisoner. An adjoining room with a glass roof contained
+long rows of tables and chairs, where the prisoners took their meals.
+Here I photographed a couple of groups, and the reader will be able
+to see for himself that the English soldiers in German captivity look
+neither downcast nor ill. In one picture they even have a rather cheeky
+and lively Frenchwoman, inclined to stoutness, sitting between them,
+and I must admit to their honour as serious soldiers, that it was she
+who begged and prayed to be allowed to be photographed with her allies
+and customers--for the noble lady was no less a person than the chief
+waitress, and it was she who saw to it that the prisoners were amply
+and well fed.
+
+[Illustration: TOMMY ATKINS AT ROUBAIX]
+
+In the restaurant kitchen the prisoners’ fare was being cooked in large
+caldrons, and here, too, the kitchen staff was predominantly French.
+Anyone accusing the Germans of stinting the prisoners’ food allowance
+should take a peep at the restaurant in Roubaix. Everything was most
+ample and excellent. It is true that they got no oysters, truffles,
+lobster or plum pudding. But they got sound, solid food, and these
+mercenaries, who perhaps were natives of the east end of London, had
+probably not for a long time been so well looked after as at Roubaix.
+Moreover, the French waitress was not a little in love with “Tommy
+Atkins,” and watched over him as the mother eagle watches over her
+brood, to see that he always had plenty to eat.
+
+[Illustration: THE FRENCH WAITRESS AND HER ENGLISH CUSTOMERS]
+
+A few days previously the catering, both in food and other things,
+had threatened to assume more liberal proportions than the German
+authorities thought desirable. The fact was that the citizens of
+Roubaix had decided to make a collection of _Liebesgaben_ for the
+English prisoners. But then the Germans thought that things were going
+a little too far, and stepped in and prohibited the intended feast.
+
+In the great hall I found other members of the genus “Tommy Atkins”
+resting on the straw. They looked well and cheerful, and many had
+attractive, manly and kindly features. When I stopped in front of a
+group to talk to them, they made no sign of rising, but answered very
+politely and with the ineffable calm which distinguishes their race.
+They said straight out that they were satisfied with the treatment they
+received and with the food given them. One of them thought that one
+could not very well expect in war better treatment than they received
+here. The only thing that worried them was that they were not allowed
+to smoke in the hall. But the German officer standing by explained that
+the hall was built of inflammable material, not to speak of the dry
+straw, and that the Germans had no wish to see their English prisoners
+burnt. A large and pleasant room on the first floor accommodated three
+English officers, a captain and two lieutenants, and a French captain.
+Each of them had his own bed, clean and neat-looking, and the room also
+contained tables and chairs and other useful and necessary furniture.
+The Frenchman was in mufti, and explained, when I asked how this was,
+that he lived in Roubaix, and had received permission to fetch fresh
+clothes from his home. Like the others, he had nothing to complain
+of, but he was deeply distressed over the misfortunes which had come
+over France. He wept as he spoke of it, but comforted himself with
+the thought that the pendulum would soon swing the other way. Germany
+_could not_ in the long run keep her end up against the combined armies
+and navies of France, Britain, Russia and Japan, no, not even with the
+assistance she got from Austria-Hungary, but I could tell that his
+hopes were not very deeply rooted, for tears welled up in his eyes as
+he spoke. Poor French captain! Think how he must feel, first to be
+taken prisoner on the field of battle, and then to sit as a prisoner in
+his own native town, with his wife and family close by. But he admitted
+that the Germans had treated him kindly.
+
+It is really horrible and distressing to see two of the world’s leading
+cultured nations endeavouring with every conceivable bait to lure
+the Japanese into sending their armies to the European battlefields
+to destroy Germanic culture. What would the result have been had
+this plot against the white race been successful? The whole thing is
+unthinkable. One obvious effect would have been the weakening of the
+white races in favour of the yellow. What would the future have had
+to say to a diplomacy which thus administered its charge? Happily the
+Land of the Rising Sun has wiser and more far-sighted statesmen than
+the Western powers. The Japanese realise that if the Europeans continue
+to destroy one another, those areas in the Far East which mean so much
+to them, will drop like ripe fruit into their hands without a single
+Japanese soldier having to spill his blood in the land of the white
+races. And, besides, has not Japan herself immense problems to solve
+on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean and among its islands? Is it not in
+Japan’s interest that the war should leave Germany’s enemies as weak
+as possible? The more feeble they are after the war, the greater are
+Japan’s prospects of figuring as their heir and successor in the Far
+East. But even for the solution of these problems, which belong to the
+near future, Japan requires a considerable display of force. In her
+own obvious interests she must conserve her forces during this world
+struggle, and patiently bide her time. Then, far beyond the European
+battlefields, she has another political problem looming up on the
+horizon--America.
+
+Whilst I was talking politics with the French captain the Duke stood
+chatting with the English soldiers. I saw him point to me, and heard
+them exclaim: “No, really, _that_ fellow?” A moment later I had my
+revenge and told them who the German officer was that they had been
+talking to, and this surprised them even more. Perhaps they themselves
+will tell of our visit when the hour of peace has struck.
+
+One of the lieutenants was a well-bred and pleasant young fellow, the
+son of a prominent merchant in London. His father did business with
+Germany, and he himself had stayed there--I believe in Hamburg--to
+learn the language. He said that the war had turned all his plans
+completely upside down, “but we had no option but to come into the
+war,” he thought.
+
+We took a friendly farewell of the four officers, and drove back to
+Lille to pay a visit to the citadel, where a body of Indian prisoners
+were said to be interned. The French citadel is now a German barracks.
+German soldiers and military cars and a number of captured guns were
+ranged up in the yard, but there were no Indian prisoners, I am sorry
+to say. They had been moved east the same morning--for it is necessary
+to clear as quickly as possible all available space to make room for
+the fresh batches which pour in from the front in a continuous stream.
+However, I could do without the Indians. I had seen them before, in
+their own country, under India’s burning sun. There they are in their
+element. That is where they ought to be now. But I cannot deny that it
+would after all have been very interesting to meet them here again, and
+to find out what they thought of life in the foggy autumn of Artois
+and Flanders. I myself knew what it was like to try to acclimatise
+Indians in a colder climate. On my last journey in Tibet I had with me
+two Rajputs from Kashmir. When we got up amongst the mountains, they
+nearly froze to death, and my caravan leader, Mohammed Isa, declared
+that they were of no more use than the puppies we had with us. So they
+were discharged, and sent back to their tepid valleys. The same thing
+happened with my Hindoo cook from Madras. I realised that I had been
+guilty of a piece of stupidity in thinking that they could be used
+outside India. In Tibet one lives on meat, in India on vegetables. How
+could they possibly stand a sudden change both of climate and diet?
+
+And now I had read in the newspapers that the British had organised
+a complete importation of Indians into Europe. I had found it very
+difficult to believe these reports, but at the front I found that they
+were really true. “How do you treat these Indian soldiers?” I once
+asked some German officers.
+
+“We arrest them,” one answered, and another added:
+
+“It’s not necessary, they soon freeze to death in the trenches.”
+
+When I admit that I myself had been guilty of stupidity in thinking
+that the Indians could be employed in Tibet, I think I am entitled
+to say that Lord Curzon, who really is a man of character, made a
+mistake seven times greater when he expressed the hope “that he would
+see the Indian Lancers clear the Berlin streets, and the little brown
+Ghurkas make themselves at home in the park at _Sans Souci_.”[34] But
+as regards the actual performance of carrying this importation into
+effect, I consider it more than an act of stupidity--I consider it a
+crime.
+
+[34] Quotation taken from Professor Steffen’s book on “War and Culture.”
+
+Great Britain has for nearly 150 years superbly acquitted herself of
+the task of acting as India’s guardian, and I doubt whether any other
+nation would have succeeded in so gigantic an undertaking. Indian
+troops have fought with honour against many neighbouring peoples,
+and have helped to maintain order among the three hundred millions.
+But never before--until the present Liberal Government tried it--had
+it occurred to a British Government to employ coloured heathens
+against Christian Europeans. Such an act is a crime against culture,
+civilisation and Christendom, and if the English missionaries approve
+it, they are Pharisees and dishonest propagators of the Gospel--what
+the German missionaries in India think does not now matter, for
+they are under arrest. India’s British masters rightly despise all
+matrimonial bonds between the White Man and the Hindoo, and children
+of such marriages are indeed to be pitied. They are regarded as, and
+often called, mules; they are neither horse nor donkey, they are
+“half-castes.” In Calcutta they have their own quarters, and must not
+live in any other part of the town. But when the question arises of
+crushing the German barbarians, co-operation with the bronze-coloured
+peoples of India becomes good enough even for the Englishman.
+
+Is it perhaps thought a fitting act of culture and civilisation,
+worthy of the twentieth century, to convey the unsuspecting Indians
+thousands of miles over land and sea to throw them into the struggle
+against the German army on European battlefields? If this question is
+answered in the affirmative, I for one, with the memories I have of
+Asia and Europe, nevertheless retain the unshaken conviction that such
+conduct is the height of cruelty. I do not mean cruelty to the German
+soldiers, for I know what they think of their Indian opponents--a blend
+of contempt and compassion. Besides, I do not think that the sweeping
+clear of the Berlin streets will come to anything, nor do I think that
+the trees of _Sans Souci_ will ever spread their shadows over the
+warriors from the Himalayan slopes, for Ghurkas may be ever so useful
+in a campaign against Tibetans and other frontier tribes, but in Europe
+they are no good. Therefore I contend it is an act of cruelty to them
+to force them over to the white man’s country--to die all to no purpose.
+
+What opinion will these Indian troops harbour of their white masters?
+The future will show, and the survivors--if there are any--will
+return to India and tell what they have gone through. He who has seen
+something of the land of the Arabian nights--who has ridden across the
+crests of Himalaya--who has listened to the sighing of the wind through
+the deodars of Simla--who has dreamed under the moon of Tadj Mahal--who
+has seen the Holy Ganges slowly glide in ashen ringlets past Benares
+quays--who has been spellbound by the stately procession of elephants
+under the mango trees of Dekkan--he, in short, who loves his India and
+admires the order and security which British rule has brought into this
+vast country, needs no imagination to understand the thoughts with
+which the Indian soldiers will return, and the feelings with which
+their families and countrymen will listen to their recitals round the
+fireside of the humble little cottages in Himalayan valleys. I think of
+it all with a feeling akin to horror, for I cannot rid myself of the
+conviction that here, in the name of civilisation, a crime is being
+committed against humanity and Christendom.
+
+Kipling has described (in “Mandalay”) in glowing, unforgettable lines
+the longing--one might almost call it the homesickness--which the
+English soldier feels who has served his time in India or Burmah.
+
+If the English soldiers long so, with what feelings must not the
+Indians themselves dream of their homeland’s sunshine, its palms and
+tinkly temple bells! But their longing is vain. They have been taken
+to Flanders’ bloody battle-front and trenches to die instead to the
+music of German shell fire.
+
+One cannot help asking: “Are these Indian contingents really
+necessary?” Do not Great Britain’s, Canada’s and Australia’s white
+millions suffice, not to speak of Frenchmen, Belgians, Russians,
+Serbians, Montenegrins, Portuguese, Turcos and Senegalese negroes?
+No, it almost looks like it. In _The Times_ of September 5th I read
+in the biggest and fattest type the following heading: “_The need for
+more men_.” So already at that time more men were needed to eradicate
+the “culture” of the German “barbarians.” In the article following
+this heading I read the following words: “The educational campaign
+undertaken by the Prime Minister as to the origin and purpose of the
+war had a splendid opening in the Guildhall yesterday.”[35] So there
+was to be an educational campaign! So the British nation must by
+special means be educated up to understand the cause and the object of
+the war! Otherwise the Englishman will stop at home and play football
+and cricket. No doubt the education is to be coupled with a lesson
+in the course of which one learns what use the Hindoos are going to
+be--in an emergency. The situation should really be judged against the
+background of G. B. Shaw’s very sensible words to the following effect:
+“What we must bear in mind is that if our side wins, the consequences
+will be a shifting of the balance of power in favour of Russia, a
+situation which will be much more dangerous to all the other contending
+parties than would be the triumph of Germany, a result which we are
+now by war endeavouring to prevent.”[36] In other words, a Russian
+victory will be much more dangerous to the warring states than a German
+victory. For an all-powerful Russia would threaten the whole of Europe,
+including England and her mastery in India, but a victorious Germany
+would entail no menace to Europe. One must forgive the British if they
+need a specially organised education to understand such a complicated
+problem!
+
+[35] Steffen, page 115 _et seq._ are well worth reading.
+
+[36] Steffen, page 97.
+
+And what is this new popular education going to turn out like? The
+answer to this question is given in the English press every day. It
+consists in a systematic suppression of the truth. The fatal and
+momentous reality which is slowly bringing England to the brink of a
+catastrophe must be concealed under an exceedingly severe press and
+telegraph censorship. Of Hindenburg’s victories the English people
+have not the remotest idea. The realisation of the German operations
+in Poland is distorted into futile attempts to stop the victorious
+Russian march towards Berlin. The most shameful lies and malevolent
+calumnies are disseminated concerning the German Emperor. The Teutons
+are barbarians who must be crushed, and this laudable enterprise must
+be shared by the cultured peoples of Serbia, Senegambia, Montenegro
+and Portugal. The whole war is conducted on the English side on a
+foundation of distorted information and conscious untruths. The truth
+is as rare in the English press as lies are in the German. But do the
+people really believe all that is said in the English papers? They
+do, blindly and absolutely. Of this I have been convinced by letters
+received from England.
+
+When one asks English prisoners why they joined in the war they
+answer more or less logically: “We must obey orders, you know.” If
+one goes further and tries to find out the reasons for England’s
+participation, the answers become less certain: “We must keep abreast
+of German competition; we must defend Belgium, whose neutrality we have
+guaranteed; England was bound by treaties and must keep her word.” In
+the press one finds yet further reasons, such as the necessity for
+destroying German militarism! An appeal which was sent to me and which
+is signed by many learned men, including several Nobel prize winners,
+concludes with the words: “We deeply regret that under the unfortunate
+influence of a military system and its lawless dreams of conquest,
+the state which we have once honoured now stands unmasked as Europe’s
+common enemy and as the enemy of all peoples who respect the law of
+nations. We must carry to an end the war to which we have committed
+ourselves. To us, as to Belgium, it is a war of self-defence, fought
+out for liberty and peace.”
+
+At the same time as one feels grateful for the information that it was
+for the sake of liberty and peace that England declared war on Germany
+on the 4th of August, one cannot help feeling a little surprised that
+the learned gentlemen who have put their sonorous names to this paper
+could believe that the neutral Germanic nation of the North could ever
+be induced to see in the Germanic nation of the South its own and
+Europe’s most dangerous enemy.
+
+The talk of German militarism recalls the old parable about the mote
+and the beam. Is not Britain’s supremacy of the sea built up on a
+military system? Can one imagine a more widespread militarism than that
+which spreads its recruiting nets over five continents, which reaches
+gratefully after the straw held out by Republican Portugal, and which
+advertises in every newspaper and at every street corner “the need for
+more men”?
+
+The warning words of Kipling written after the Boer war now ring with a
+deeper and more earnest meaning than ever before.
+
+If English culture and English learning accuse German militarism of
+indulging in dreams of lawless conquest, I ask: How about the Boer
+war? Is it perhaps an expression of the same humane solicitude for
+the small States that now induces England to break a lance for the
+sake of Belgium’s independence? It would be a wasted effort to attempt
+to elucidate now, when it is too late, how the great war would have
+developed had England kept out of it. But one thing is certain, namely,
+that had she done so, Belgium would not have lost her independence
+for longer than the duration of the war. The war would not then have
+assumed the dimensions of a world war such as it is now--the greatest
+and most tragical catastrophe that has ever visited the human race. No
+nation has had a greater and more world-wide responsibility to bear
+than England.
+
+Before this spectacle and generally before the situation in which
+Great Britain now finds herself every sincere friend of England must
+shudder at the meaning of it all as he reads and re-reads Kipling’s
+“Recessional” written for the Sixty Years Jubilee in 1897. The whole
+British Empire was then in transports of exultation over the history of
+past years and over the fabulous power and glory of the immense Empire.
+Kipling alone stood like the guardian of the nation’s conscience and
+his voice was lifted up in words which will re-echo as long as there is
+a Briton left in the world.
+
+Now that I have unburdened my heart to the English, let us continue our
+trip after the pause in the Citadel.
+
+We drove out through the _Porte de Gand_, where there is quite a crush
+of fresh troops marching to the fighting line, wounded soldiers on the
+way to hospital, motor-lorries, ammunition columns and all that we are
+accustomed to see on the great war roads. On the left, we leave the
+_Fort de Bondues_--one of its towers is visible from the road. In the
+same direction, but far away, we see a captive balloon at a height of
+150 metres. In its car sits an officer with a telephone through which
+he speaks incessantly. He cannot be reached by the enemy fire, and yet
+his life is in danger all the time. A little while ago one of these
+balloons was hit by a bomb dropped from a great height by a French
+aviator.
+
+At Linselles we stopped a moment in the market-place whilst Captain
+Lübke entered a house to find out how far we could travel in the
+direction of Ypres. Whilst we were waiting, Crown Prince Rupprecht came
+walking along. It happened to be his dinner-hour. We chatted a couple
+of minutes, pausing a moment whilst an officer handed in an important
+report. The Crown Prince was visibly pleased with the news and hurried
+up to his dinner to return immediately to the fighting line. We met
+about twenty officers during this short pause. It was impossible to
+catch and note all the names in the course of the brief introduction.
+But one thing I do remember, and that is that they were all cheerful,
+friendly and full of youthful vivacity: “_Nun wie gefällt’s Ihnen, Herr
+Doktor?--Was denken Sie von unseren deutschen Soldaten, famose Kerls,
+nicht wahr?--Draussen in den Gefechtslinien ist’s etwas heiss, aber
+doch grossartig._”[37] And so on, always in the same light-hearted and
+jovial tone, as if it were a question of manœuvres; no difficulties, no
+unpleasantness, simply “quick-march and keep your eyes open!”--Forward,
+that is the main thing. Officers whose duty compels them to remain
+behind the firing line always long to be where the danger is, but
+as they always march at the head, the casualties amongst them are
+proportionately greater than among the men.
+
+[37] “Well, Doctor, and how do you like it? What do you think of our
+German soldiers? Fine fellows, eh?--A trifle hot out in the firing
+line, but otherwise first-rate.”
+
+We drove on northward to Wervicq and across the La Lys Canal, which
+forms the frontier between France and Belgium. A large part of the
+population has remained and makes a curious picture in these quaint old
+streets where German kitchen wagons stand steaming and smoking at quiet
+street corners. We advance but slowly. The whole road is encumbered
+with infantry, horsemen and vehicles. Here comes a party of 150 men
+armed with spades. “Where have you been?” we ask. “We have been to
+bury the dead,” they answer as if they were saying the most commonplace
+thing in the world. They looked more like conquering heroes than
+grave-diggers. They were not singing to-day, but they found it quite
+natural that when all Germany’s men are fighting for their country, not
+all can hope to return home, some must remain behind in the foreign
+soil, and the sacrifice is one which all are willing to make when it
+means Germany’s salvation.
+
+[Illustration: KITCHEN WAGONS]
+
+Here lies a wrecked windmill with broken sails and near it a motor-car
+which has come to grief. The transport trains which we pass are as
+usual wreathed in foliage to mislead aviators. The smell of burning
+strikes our nostrils--it is not to be wondered at, for just to the
+left of us a whole village is in flames. I became a victim of the same
+excitement that I had felt each time before as I had approached the
+danger zone.
+
+Presently we come to a village bearing eloquent testimony to the cruel
+realities of war. It boasts the peculiar name of America. At the last
+house in the main street we stop to make sure once more how far we may
+drive. Colonel von Oldershausen steps out. He is a magnificent type,
+a thorough soldier, straight as a poker, stiff and gracious at the
+same time. “Listen,” he said in answer to our question, “drive first
+to Kruiseik, two kilometres from here. From there you may continue one
+kilometre on foot until you come to the crossing between this road and
+the Ypres-Menin main road. If you wish to go further in the direction
+of Ypres I should advise you _not_ to take the main road as the whole
+avenue is covered by the English artillery fire. But if you keep a
+little way outside the ditches,” he went on, “it is not at all unlikely
+that you will come back with a certain amount of life left in your
+bodies.”
+
+Leaning against the car, the Colonel stood gesticulating with great
+animation and tried to describe the situation which would have greeted
+us, had we continued on the main road. He fully meant what he said and
+assured us that he had tried several times the prescription he now
+recommended to us--without once being killed! The day before yesterday
+he had made an attack at the head of his regiment in which a third of
+his men had fallen; of the others, 150 got the Iron Cross. The object
+was realised. The enemy’s position was taken and several prisoners
+fell into the hands of the regiment. An English officer with whom the
+Colonel had been conversing had made the following remark: “We don’t
+mind your shells, and don’t care a rap about your shrapnel. Your rifle
+fire doesn’t frighten us, and we can put up with your bayonet charges.
+But when your men commence their infernal noisy hurrahs, it is all up
+with us. There is nothing in the world so trying to the nerves. One
+feels entirely paralysed before these confounded jerky hurrahs.”
+
+So we took leave of the excellent Colonel and drove on in accordance
+with his directions. On our left, to the westward, we saw the familiar
+little puffs of smoke caused by the shrapnel bursting. A little further
+on a French airman was having a trying time with the German fire. Just
+as we drove into Kruiseik a shell came whizzing right over us. A large
+force of infantry reserves was quartered here, and the streets were
+crowded with officers and men. We pulled up by the side of a house
+and waited awhile. We were strongly dissuaded from continuing. On the
+previous day Kruiseik had been exposed to severe shell fire, and at
+the entrance to the village the road had been destroyed by some nasty
+holes, which were just being filled in by the engineers. Any moment we
+might expect a further pounding, as the enemy artillery had not changed
+its position since yesterday. I was much struck with the immovable
+calm with which officers and men stand here waiting for the fire and
+a very good chance of being killed. The same calm and light-hearted
+indifference also characterised the troops which we met further on
+towards Ypres. Take for instance that little hussar patrol riding
+towards the road swept by the English shells.
+
+[Illustration: HUSSAR PATROL RIDING THROUGH KRUISEIK]
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST HOUSES OF KRUISEIK]
+
+“_Deckung gegen Flieger!_” (“Take cover against aviator!”) roars an
+officer, and immediately everybody flattens himself against the house
+walls so as to present as small as possible a target from above. I
+suspect, however, that the aviator who was just that moment soaring
+over Kruiseik had something else to think about, for the anti-aircraft
+guns must have given him a lively time. Anyhow, he dropped no bombs on
+us. We had thought of returning to Bapaume, when someone came up to us
+with the news that if we liked to wait a minute we should see a batch
+of British who had just been captured at Ypres, which was only nine and
+a half kilometres from Kruiseik. They were 390 men all told and were
+expected to arrive any moment.
+
+[Illustration: A SHELL CRATER IN THE ROAD IS BEING FILLED IN BY
+ENGINEERS]
+
+True enough, it was not long before the street was black with human
+beings. There they came, Albion’s proud scions. If you examine closely
+the five photographs which I took of them whilst they were marching
+past the outskirts of Kruiseik, you will get a very good idea of what a
+brand-new convoy of prisoners from the front looks like.
+
+[Illustration: FIRST CAME A GERMAN SOLDIER WITH AN ENGLISH COLONEL ON
+HIS LEFT]
+
+First came a German soldier with an English officer on his left side, a
+tall man of distinguished appearance. He carried his hands behind him,
+under his greatcoat; he did not seem to notice us at all, and appeared
+quite unmoved by the harrowing events which he had doubtless witnessed
+that very day, and his glance was fixed with an expression of utter
+indifference on the horizon straight ahead of him.
+
+[Illustration: THEN CAME THE CONVOY]
+
+[Illustration: THE CONVOY HALTED JUST OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE]
+
+Then came the convoy, three abreast, the most diverse types one could
+imagine, dark and fair, handsome and ugly, well set up and slouching,
+cheerful and downcast. As I lifted my camera at them, a facetious
+Tommy cried out, “May I have a copy, sir?” The German guards did not
+love their charges. That, after all, is easy to understand, but I
+saw no expressions of hatred. Rank after rank drew past. They were
+dressed in practical and neat uniforms, a little browner in colour
+than the German. Most of them had nothing to carry, but some wore
+coats slung over the arm or over the shoulder. Some were smoking.
+Here and there was a slightly wounded man. When they came inside the
+village, they were all ordered to halt and here the prisoners were
+allowed to rest awhile, although they looked by no means tired. A young
+German lieutenant who was present when they were captured and who now
+headed the convoy, assured me that this particular English unit had
+surrendered five minutes after the attack began. But up to then they
+had obstinately defended their position. All the Germans I spoke to
+were of the same opinion respecting the individual bravery of the
+English--it was above all praise. The rear of the convoy was brought
+up by a row of carts and wagons containing seriously wounded English
+soldiers. One of them, I think he was a Colonel, lay comfortably on a
+stretcher which had been placed right across a cart, as shown in the
+accompanying picture. He was pale, but did not complain and lay with
+eyes closed without noticing the noise and bustle around him. Perhaps
+his light was going out, perhaps his heart had already stopped beating.
+Slowly the cart disappeared from view in the long procession of wounded
+Britons.
+
+[Illustration: THEY WERE CLOTHED IN NEAT AND PRACTICAL FIELD UNIFORMS]
+
+[Illustration: HERE AND THERE WAS A SLIGHTLY WOUNDED SOLDIER]
+
+[Illustration: AN ENGLISH OFFICER ON A STRETCHER PLACED ACROSS A CART]
+
+A moment later we, too, were travelling southward and once more drove
+past the melancholy cortège. “My poor old Tommy,” I thought to myself,
+“you have plenty of time before you to ponder over the problem why
+you, of all men, have been fighting against the German ‘barbarians’
+and whether your pay was worthy of your doughty deeds between Ypres
+and Kruiseik! If anyone confronts you with this poser you will always
+answer: ‘I don’t know I’m sure, I had to obey orders, I suppose.’ But
+it will never occur to you to reply: ‘I had to go over for a while and
+crush the German militarism, you know,’ for such an absurd idea would
+remind you too forcibly of the parallel argument of putting down the
+drink by consumption!”
+
+The life at and behind the front is rich in contrast. A few hours after
+we had seen Tommy’s tragic convoy disappear in the distance, we were
+listening once more to Cleving’s inimitable jest and song.
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXIII
+
+  FAREWELL TO BAPAUME
+
+
+The day of Hubertus falls on November 3rd, and is celebrated throughout
+Germany with the diligent pursuit of game, for Hubertus is the patron
+saint of all huntsmen. Nor even at Bapaume was the day allowed to pass
+by unnoticed. A field of fifty-five officers of all ranks forgathered
+early in the day at the village of Miraumont, situated nine kilometres
+west of Bapaume, immediately in the rear of the fighting line. With
+Captain Schlüter of the cavalry as guide, I drove out with Duke Adolf
+Friedrich to Miraumont to be present at the day’s sport. We took up our
+posts on a hill by the side of the road, and had an excellent view over
+the broken country with its natural and artificial obstacles.
+
+[Illustration: GROUP OF OFFICERS AT BAPAUME: THE DUKE, THE PRINCE, THE
+CHIEF OF MILITARY POLICE, CLEVING, BARON FLEMING AND OTHERS]
+
+We had not been there long before a couple of horsemen hove in sight,
+and immediately on their heels came the entire field in scattered
+groups. They took the fences and ditches in fine style and then
+disappeared up a steep hill like a whirlwind. There was nothing
+remarkable in this, nor perhaps in the fact that amongst them were
+many riders who would never see sixty again. But the remarkable thing
+about this ride was that all the horses were recently requisitioned
+farm animals, which had not even been trained. The Germans spare their
+horses no less than their men. When the horses of cavalry and train
+begin to tire and need rest and care, they are replaced from the farms
+of Germany and of the conquered countries.
+
+After the sport all the members assembled in a field, where in the
+shadow of the willows a table stood laid with sandwiches, _kaltes
+Aufgeschnittenes_[38] and hot punch. Here I made the acquaintance of
+many of the horsemen, among others Infantry-General von Soden and
+Lieut.-Gen. von Pawel, who had been in command in Kamerun. The
+crisp, clear autumn weather seemed to create the highest of spirits.
+Nobody could have imagined that we were almost in contact with troops
+engaged in severe fighting, had not the booming of cannon reminded us
+of it. Indeed it would have been difficult to gather an impression of
+anxiety, nervousness, hurry or want of officers as one listened to the
+animated conversation and contagious laughter of the grey-clad warriors
+of Miraumont. One would have thought, on the contrary, that war was
+the simplest thing in the world and that the Germans for the moment at
+least were not exerting themselves in the slightest. What they gained,
+they clearly gained without difficulty, albeit that for the time being
+they are content with merely holding their positions.
+
+[38] Cold collation.
+
+Suddenly we got something else to think of, and the familiar cry,
+“_Deckung!_” rang out across the field. An airman flying the tricolor
+was seen to be approaching. The main thing was to bring the horses as
+quickly as possible under the shadow of the willows, but the officers,
+too, together with their civilian guest, thought it wisest to withdraw
+to the nearest avenue of trees, for had the airman suspected for a
+moment that he could have killed fifty precious birds with one stone,
+he would certainly have sacrificed all the bombs in his armoury.
+Gradually he came nearer, glided past immediately above us, but could
+not have noticed anything, for not a single bomb burst in our vicinity,
+and soon the hostile aeroplane disappeared in an east-north-easterly
+direction. It could almost be taken for granted that his goal was a
+certain flying station, which had recently been favoured with several
+bombs.
+
+Presently we saw the characteristic little “tufts of wool” forming
+round the airman. They came from nowhere, grew, and were followed by
+a flash and a report. They have a peculiar knack of remaining for a
+long while at the spot where they are formed. Hence, as the Frenchman
+progressed on his journey and the guns kept firing at him, a little
+string of white cloudlets gradually formed in his wake, sharply
+defined against the blue background of the sky and pricking out his
+track through the air. One of the officers thought that the firing was
+almost as dangerous as the bombs, seeing that the shrapnel bullets must
+obviously come down sooner or later, and that when they do, they strike
+with the velocity and deadly effect of a rifle bullet.
+
+When this little excitement was over, the party of officers grouped
+themselves with the Duke and the two Generals in the centre, and I took
+a few groups which would have been the finest and most distinguished
+in my collection had not this particular roll of films turned out a
+complete failure on development.
+
+The next item on the programme was Frenchman number two, who came
+sailing serenely along over our heads and gave rise to the same
+precautions as before, but he likewise failed to realise the fine catch
+he might have made.
+
+A German airman told me one or two details from his own experience. He
+usually required three-quarters of an hour to rise to a height of two
+thousand metres, and did not proceed towards the French lines until he
+had reached this altitude. The view is glorious. He has the landscape
+in which the fighting is raging right underneath him. In fine, clear
+weather he can see plainly the marching troops, the ammunition columns
+and their transport trains, even when they are covered with foliage. He
+spots the artillery positions, unless they are too thoroughly concealed
+by hedges and bushes. He can even see isolated horsemen and pedestrians
+on the roads.
+
+But there are many other things that meet his eye in the course of
+his aerial adventures. He sees the fire and smoke from the German and
+French guns, and he sees the impacts and the explosions. Beneath him
+rages a constant turmoil of thunder and lightning. He admits willingly
+that he is a prey to intense excitement. He has never yet been wounded,
+but his machine has had its wings perforated by bullets more than once,
+and the holes are mended with little patches. He hears the rattle of
+the machine guns and the rifle fire, and knows that all this noise is
+for his benefit and that he is being observed through field-glasses
+from every conceivable hiding-place. When he hears this eternal din and
+knows that at any moment he may be hit and brought to earth, he must
+indeed summon all his self-control to retain his presence of mind, for
+a situation such as this may overstrain the strongest nerves.
+
+He is out to do his duty, he _must not_ fail. He cannot entirely
+eliminate the nervous tension, for he is but human, but he never
+turns back until he has carried out his orders and finds out what he
+_must_ know. His attention is strained to the highest pitch, he sees
+everything, hears everything, nothing escapes him. He sights far away
+a French aeroplane steering straight towards him, but he does not
+change his course. They come nearer and nearer to one another. Neither
+makes the slightest sign of giving way. The spectator from below
+cannot but think that they are sailing to an inevitable catastrophe,
+that they are lost already. But they seem to change their minds before
+it is too late, for a collision would bring them both to earth and
+kill them, and this is considered by both parties to be a useless
+and unpractical sacrifice. Hence one of them gives way before it is
+too late. The Frenchman is often armed with a machine gun for the
+benefit of his German colleague. In that case the German by a skilful
+manœuvre suddenly dips under his opponent or passes over him. If he
+passes under, the machine gun becomes useless, as it cannot fire
+downward. If he passes over, he benefits by the protection of the
+lightly armoured bottom of the aeroplane. The main thing to avoid is to
+remain on the same plane with the other machine. Again it may happen
+that the Frenchman likewise rises, and that a sort of skyward race
+begins between the two opponents, each trying to get above the other.
+In such cases the breathless spectator sees the machines circle round
+each other like a couple of playful may-flies, approach, separate,
+pursue, fire, but always avoiding collision. It is a tension which
+simply cannot be described, and whilst this goes on in the air the guns
+thunder angrily below and the soldiers lie in wait for one another in
+the trenches.
+
+When everything goes normally, the airman may be up for three hours.
+When he has completed his task he returns to the German lines, stops
+the motor and glides to earth in four minutes, although the time
+seems infinitely longer. He vol-planes down and may under certain
+circumstances alight without restarting the motor. He admits that it is
+not without some feeling of relief that he sets foot on the ground once
+more. Yet he is never entirely safe, for the flying stations are always
+singled out for special attention from the enemy bomb-throwers.
+
+French airmen often go up without an observation officer, but his
+weight is taken up instead by an extra bomb supply. When the machine
+is burdened by the weight of two men only three bombs can be taken,
+otherwise six or more are carried. The accuracy of aim depends on the
+amount of practice. Most bombs do no harm at all. Curiously enough,
+it seems to be the horses who suffer most. A few days ago an airman
+passed over a bivouac in the neighbourhood of Bapaume. Five men thought
+it advisable to seek protection underneath a heavily laden baggage
+wagon. But as luck would have it the wagon was hit, and nothing but the
+lacerated remains of the men remained when help arrived.
+
+I have already spoken of the immensely important rôle which aeroplanes
+are playing in this war, and how during the few months the war has
+lasted they have been manœuvred with continuously increasing skill. My
+informant thought he was justified in saying that the side possessing
+the best flying machines and the best pilots would come out the winners
+in a war of entrenched positions, a literal siege war, such as is now
+proceeding on the western front. For it depends in a very large measure
+on aerial observation whether the artillery fire can find its target
+and score with decisive effect.
+
+On our return to Bapaume we went to call on Divisional Pastor Münch, at
+whose house we were regaled with coffee, together with quite a crowd
+of doctors. All the war hospitals of the town together now contained
+barely five hundred wounded, and the city was therefore more than amply
+provided for with its 130 nurses.
+
+We looked in at the chief hospital, in the chapel of which some French
+wounded were being tended. One of them had received a bullet through
+the base of the nose which had lodged in the brain, where it still
+remained. He cried all day, “_de l’eau, de l’eau_,” and if one gave him
+water he drank, but went on calling, “_de l’eau, de l’eau_.” Another,
+who also had a bullet stuck in his head, wandered about with quick,
+jerky steps, and had to be watched so that he did not tumble on to
+the beds. Two others had had a leg amputated, and were now out of all
+danger. The Frenchmen spoke well of the German nurses and doctors,
+and said they could not have received kindlier treatment in their own
+country. One soldier complained because he was separated from his
+people, but added: “_Nous sommes très bien ici; nos blessures sont très
+bien soignées_.” We also made a hasty round of the German wards and
+spoke to the wounded warriors. They were all, as usual, in cheerful
+spirits, and hoped soon to be put right so that they could go back and
+fight again.
+
+On the way home Pastor Münch told us of a little episode which is
+rather illuminating. As I have mentioned before, it is strictly
+forbidden throughout the German army to take anything, whatever it may
+be, in a house or church in the occupied territory, and any breach
+of this rule is very severely punished. Now it so happened that a
+gentleman who served in the army had discovered amongst the vestments
+of a village church in the neighbourhood a piece of embroidery which
+he intended to take home as war booty. When his offence came to the
+knowledge of his superiors, he was discharged and sent home. Had not
+extenuating circumstances existed, he would have been still more
+severely punished. To carry away “war souvenirs” is considered in
+the German army to be equivalent to theft. To be dismissed for such
+an offence is a terrible disgrace at a time when no one can conceive
+a greater happiness than to be allowed to serve his country in the
+field.[39]
+
+[39] This relentless severity, as actually practised, should be
+compared with what the champions of truth in _The Times_ and _Standard_
+have to say about the German “Huns,” “incendiaries” and “burglars.”
+Steffen, pp. 132-33.
+
+After sitting chatting for the last time in the dim lamp-light with
+Monsieur Cossart and the demoiselles Lengagne, I proceeded with my most
+gracious friend, Duke Adolf Friedrich, to the officers’ mess, where
+the rest of the day and a good part of the night was passed in a most
+agreeable atmosphere of gravity blended with humour. Among the guests
+I met Colonel von Alers, late of the Second Artillery Regiment of the
+Prussian Guards; he is related to our Swedish Counts Wachtmeister. He
+had fought in the wars of 1866 and 1870-71, and was no chicken. But
+he meant to fight for his country once more, and so he turned out as
+volunteer. Nothing but real men wherever you go in Germany! Age is
+nothing, whether you are young or old it is all the same, and no one is
+too old to remember that he is still a man.
+
+In the morning of November 4th the Duke and I were seated at our usual
+breakfast _tête-à-tête_. We were quite ready to start off, my luggage
+had already been stowed away in the car, and I had taken a hearty
+farewell of my German friends who happened to be about and Monsieur
+Cossart. Now I was off to Metz, a distance of about two hundred English
+miles. Duke Adolf Friedrich himself took charge of the steering wheel,
+and I sat beside him, map in hand. A soldier was seated inside the car.
+
+At 9.20 a.m. we started. It was the fastest journey I have ever
+experienced, a record in speed. The Duke drove and managed the car
+with amazing coolness and presence of mind. Where the great main road
+was straight and clear he spurted up to between ninety and one hundred
+kilometres an hour. I felt sometimes as if I could hardly breathe,
+but it was a glorious sensation to fly over the country at this mad,
+tearing pace.
+
+At 9.52 a.m. we entered Cambrai where the Red Cross flag over the
+school-house was still wrapped in a thin veil of fog. To the right of
+the road was a large common grave, richly ornamented with flowers,
+and in the fields close by French peasants were gathering in the
+sugar-beet. A whole column of heavy carts loaded with beet drove up
+into a village we passed, but in this case the drivers were French
+peasants.
+
+At 10.25--Le Cateau. From this point we turned off on to some by-roads
+without stone paving in the direction of Bergues and Le Nouvion. The
+civil population here is fairly numerous, and whatever else there may
+be a shortage of, there is certainly no lack of poultry. Le Nouvion has
+been hardly dealt with. In the main street there are only a few houses
+left, all the others are in ruins. At the far end of the village a road
+runs through a wood where barricades have been thrown up. German troops
+are only met with in the large places, such as Hirson, where a fort
+meets the eye to the right of the road.
+
+After a long pause necessitated by a burst tyre we arrived at Mézières
+at 12.52 and crossed the Meuse. Half an hour later we drove into the
+market square at Sedan, where Turenne was still looking down on the
+disquietude of distant generations. Here we sacrificed an hour for
+dinner, and were soon off again in the direction of Carignan and
+Montmédy, where we found life was as busy as ever.
+
+The next place we come to is the grey and solid-looking Marville.
+Afterwards the country becomes more broken, until we reach the utterly
+ruined village of Noërs. At one point the road rises, curving slightly.
+We are tearing forward at a furious pace when just on the crest of the
+hill we meet another car as much in a hurry as ourselves. We had the
+narrowest possible escape from colliding at an aggregate speed of about
+120 English miles an hour. There could not have been room for a sheet
+of paper between the two cars and we had the Duke’s perfect coolness to
+thank for having escaped with our lives from that little adventure.
+
+Next we drive into our old friend Longuyon and follow a long straight
+street which has suffered less than other parts of the town. Outside
+the wall of a house stands a group of workmen who have finished
+their day’s toil, and on the other side some children are playing in
+the gutter. Opposite, on the left-hand side of the street, stands a
+curly-headed little chap of three or four in a blue smock, watching the
+other children. We come along at full tilt and are some twenty metres
+away from him when the little fellow takes it into his head to cross
+the street. I felt how I froze stiff and went quite white in the face.
+I leant forward to try to get hold of his head to throw him backward
+from the car. Surely this wretched people had suffered enough as it
+was! We were now into the bargain to run over its children, its one
+hope for the future after the war had wrecked and ruined its homes! It
+would have been my fault, for why had I decided to travel to Metz of
+all places, through this country where the population drops from year
+to year even in peace time and where every child is so precious! I can
+see him now in front of me. He was in the attitude so characteristic of
+running children, his body leaning slightly forward, head down, arms
+bent and raised, hands levelled with the ears, slightly curved and
+with the palm facing forward. He did not see the car, never noticed
+us and did not realise the danger, simply staring on the pavement and
+intent on reaching the others. The car came nearer. I seemed to feel
+the slight jolt as the wheels passed over him and crushed his ribs.
+It would have been quite impossible to stop. Instead the Duke put on
+a spurt and in a second we were past. How could we have comforted the
+wretched sorrowing parents, when there was no comfort to give? We
+should of course have had to stop in any case. I could see in my mind’s
+eye the pitiable little funeral procession to Longuyon cemetery, and
+seemed to hear the bells ringing among the ruins. At the same instant
+as we passed the little group of workmen and playing children, I almost
+flung myself upright in the car and turned round. There stood the
+little chap in the middle of the street with hands clasped and looking
+after us in mild surprise. Not a hair of his head had been touched.
+
+Presently we come to Xivry. The light begins to fail. By the roadside
+stands a row of pathetic little wooden crosses; some of the graves are
+adorned with helmets, but when the spring comes doubtless the helmets
+and crosses will disappear and the little mounds will be levelled by
+the plough. Darkness descends over the earth. We pass through Briey and
+cross the German frontier. Seized with a feeling of ease at being once
+more in Germany, we drive past the memorable St. Privat and through
+a bewildering chaos of main roads, by-roads, suburbs, tramway lines,
+bridges and vehicles all lit up in turn by our headlights and vanishing
+behind us. But by degrees the confusion disappears and we debouch
+slowly and majestically upon a brilliantly lighted street in Metz.
+There are enormous crowds of people afoot. They line the pavements
+in serried ranks. Officers and soldiers everywhere. The police keeps
+order. At a street corner we come to a halt and have to wait a minute.
+The Duke asks a policeman what is up. “It is the Emperor, he is due
+here in a moment; the Empress is here already.” We decided to preserve
+our incognito as much as possible. The whole town was filled with
+officers. The hotels had not an inch of room to spare, we enquired at
+six different hotels and at last, at a third-class place, we found a
+moderately decent room and “cupboard” on the third floor. The Duke
+would not allow me for a moment to sleep in the latter, his splendid
+gifts of hospitality would not desert him even here; but I declared
+that I would sooner lie in the street than in the big room, whilst he
+lay in the cupboard. Of course we were both equally obstinate--without
+that quality we should not have got through Africa and Asia. At last we
+agreed to draw lots and I drew the cupboard and slept excellently when
+once I got to bed and had finished thinking of the curly-headed little
+boy.
+
+But it is still far from late. It is only nine o’clock and the Duke’s
+hospitality will not be denied. So we went to the _Europäischer Hof_,
+where the Duke ordered a sumptuous champagne supper. There we stayed
+for several hours talking of the wonderful things we had seen together
+during the last few days, commonplace enough for him who is a soldier,
+but the more exciting and unforgettable to me.
+
+The witching hour of midnight had already struck when we quite suddenly
+caught sight of the Deputy-Governor of Metz, General von Pelkmann of
+the Artillery, a little man with a grey moustache, very eccentric,
+with very decided views on life, on the universe, and on the whole
+creation generally. In his company was Baron von Tauchnitz. That the
+latter was “_Kommandeur der Kraftfahrtruppen des Armeeoberkommando
+Falkenhausen_”[40] was not to be wondered at, for he was no less
+a person than the nephew of the head of the great publishing firm
+known throughout the Continent by its “Collection of British Authors,
+Tauchnitz Edition.” This chance acquaintance, in itself very agreeable,
+had the result that I could not resist the temptation to accompany
+Baron Tauchnitz on the following morning to Blamont, where a fight was
+to take place and where a French position was to be stormed.
+
+[40] Commander of the Mechanical Transport of the Falkenhausen Army
+Headquarters.
+
+It was nearly three o’clock in the morning when the Duke and I
+returned to our humble establishment. I had arranged to call at 6.30
+in the morning for Tauchnitz and the officers whom he was to drive to
+Blamont. The Duke, on the other hand, was due to return to Bapaume
+at about nine. Thus we were not to meet again for the present, so I
+said good-bye and thanked him as heartily as my restricted powers
+of eloquence allowed. For he had not only given me his time, his
+hospitality and friendship, he had given me opportunities of visiting
+some of the most remarkable points in the fighting line and of
+gathering deep and abiding impressions of this great world war. But the
+recollection I cherish most of all from that memorable week is that
+of his own personality, for he is a fine and noble man, a man whose
+outlook is not dimmed by his exalted birth and the glamour of fame, but
+who remains ever modest before men and humble before God. We felt quite
+sure that we should meet once more at some future time. Then we would
+empty the store of our memories and would recall the shrapnel shells at
+Quesnoy, which whizzed so close over our heads but forgot to burst and
+part us for ever from each other.
+
+And now, to conclude, one more hearty handshake and “_Auf Wiedersehen!_”
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXIV
+
+  A FINAL DAY ON THE WESTERN FRONT
+
+
+Needless to say the human alarums at the hotel forgot to call me in
+the morning, but happily I awoke without their aid and dressed quietly
+as a mouse so as not to disturb Duke Adolf Friedrich. Thereupon I
+wandered off in the pitch-dark night with no other weapons than my
+Zeiss glasses and my camera to the _Europäischer Hof_, where the others
+were already assembled. I was asked to join the party in the car driven
+by Tauchnitz, and already occupied by Captain Kriebel and Lieut. Baron
+von Peihmann, both attached to the General Command of the Falkenhausen
+army. Our road took us south-eastward _via_ Château-Salins in German
+Lorraine. We crossed into France further south at Rixingen.
+
+It was 7 o’clock when we started off. Day was just beginning to break,
+but the sky looked threatening, the weather was most unpleasant, and
+a thin layer of clayey mud lay over the hard surface, making the road
+as slippery as soap. My two companions inside were as agreeable and as
+light-hearted as all other German officers whom I had met. As we were
+skimming along, the pretty and interesting country we were passing
+through was being explained to me on the map. We were only a few
+kilometres from Rixingen when one of the pipes of the engine broke, and
+the car absolutely refused to move another inch. However, providence
+has presented us with legs, and so after walking a short distance we
+came upon a motor-driven hospital wagon, on the roof of which we made
+ourselves comfortable. We were soon to find that this motor conveyance
+was not without its dangers, for the wagon skidded about terribly on
+the slippery road and threatened any moment to dive into the ditch.
+However we held ourselves ready for any emergency so as at least to
+fall feet foremost when the catastrophe came. In the end we managed to
+get to Rixingen and reached the commandant’s office just as the wagon
+began skidding so hopelessly that the back wheels took command and
+the whole bag-of-tricks was on the point of overturning. Our somewhat
+eccentric entry into Rixingen aroused violent mirth from all who
+happened to be about. Here, however, we secured a third car and drove
+on gaily to Blamont.
+
+On leaving the village to the southward, the road turned up a hill to
+a slight eminence, the right-hand side of which was wooded. In a field
+immediately to the north of the little wood and evidently concealed by
+its trees, stood a battery, which was thundering away for all it was
+worth. It was really a very impressive sight to watch the guns firing
+their salvos. The officer in charge gave his orders in a loud voice
+according to the information received from the observing station.
+Then followed the usual brief, brisk words of command: “Load! Ready!!
+Fire!!!” The target for the moment was the village of Ancerviller,
+situated about 5600 metres south of Blamont. As the gun is discharged
+a sheaf of fire issues from the muzzle and a white smoke cloud forms
+several metres in front.
+
+In order not to attract the attention of the enemy, instructions have
+been given that the battery must only be approached on foot. On the
+crest of the hill stood the local commanding officer, Lieut.-Gen. von
+Tettenborn, acting Adjutant-General to the King of Saxony, surrounded
+by his staff, some twenty officers. He was a powerfully built little
+man with steel-grey hair and moustache. Hung over his shoulders he
+carried a light brownish-grey cape with red collar and on his head
+he wore a helmet with a grey cloth cover. Reports kept pouring in
+regarding the progress of the action. Now it was a horseman, now a
+motor-cyclist, now a car that came tearing along at full speed with
+information, whilst orders were sent out with equal rapidity to the
+various fighting units.
+
+General von Tettenborn received me with the greatest kindness and we
+stood chatting awhile on the hill as if there had been no war within
+a hundred miles. I was also introduced to all the other officers and
+in two minutes I felt thoroughly at home. The general atmosphere here
+was exactly the same as I have had occasion to record and admire all
+along the front, calm, reliant and cheerful in the consciousness of the
+monstrous strength of the German army.
+
+Two kilometres south of Blamont and about half that distance from the
+point where we were standing, lies the little village of Barbas in
+a picturesque hollow, its church tower dominating in a lordly manner
+the pretty little red-roofed stone houses beneath. One and a half
+kilometres south of Barbas, sharply outlined against the light rising
+background, were two little dark clumps of trees. On the north side
+of these coppices two German batteries were actively shelling the
+enemy positions. On the western border of the wooded belt to the right
+infantry fighting was in actual progress. At the moment the Germans
+were proceeding to the attack of the French positions. Both sides had
+concealed themselves gingerly behind trees and bushes, but the rattling
+fire from rifles and machine guns was deafening. One moment the shots
+would succeed one another in a continuous din, the next minute one
+heard but isolated reports. Of the actual fighting itself we saw
+nothing, but it became evident in the course of the day that the centre
+of activity was shifting south-westward, which meant that the German
+attack was progressing.
+
+Behind us the battery at which we had just stopped kept pounding away,
+and once more we heard the horrible, sinister whistle of shells pass
+overhead. The German artillery was very active, but the French did not
+reply to the fire. Towards the afternoon the German fire also ceased,
+the attempted goal having been reached. It was assumed that the French
+batteries, which had but lately occupied this point, had now been
+removed to some other place where they would come in more useful. I
+for my part was quite content to do without their fire, and it was a
+pleasant and restful experience not to have to be in constant dread of
+a shell coming on the top of me. The day before the French had sent
+a couple of shells into Blamont, but without doing any appreciable
+damage. Neither did we see any aviators on this occasion. I was told
+that they were less numerous in these parts.
+
+After a short visit to Blamont cemetery and a walk through the pretty
+village, where we dined, I returned with a couple of officers to
+the hill, but found it deserted. The General and his Staff had, it
+appeared, advanced a couple of kilometres to Barbas, where we found all
+the officers assembled in an open space, a cross between a street and a
+market-place. This had now become the point from which the operations
+on the whole front of the division were directed, and horsemen and
+cycle-orderlies kept dashing backwards and forwards as before on the
+hill.
+
+I remained at Barbas for another four hours and took the last
+photographs destined to appear in this book. Wherever I turned, I
+found picturesque and warlike subjects for my camera. In the open
+space referred to, officers with maps in hand stood gathered in
+little groups. Outside a house, several horses stood ready for the
+orderlies. In the next street, which was part of the great main road,
+an ammunition column had halted. It extended from one end of the
+village to the other and a bit beyond as well. The wagons were crowded
+with artillerymen, full of life and in good spirits as usual, and they
+usually asked for a photograph when I came along with my camera. On the
+fore-carriage of a gun sat a man fast asleep. In the outskirts of the
+village two companies of reserves had halted and were evidently waiting
+to take their place in the firing line.
+
+[Illustration: AN ENORMOUS AMMUNITION COLUMN HAD COME TO A STOP AT
+BARBAS]
+
+[Illustration: ON THE FORE-CARRIAGE OF A GUN SITS A SOLDIER FAST ASLEEP]
+
+“How are you, boys?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, first-rate, but it’s a nuisance to have to lie and wait like this.”
+
+“What are you waiting for?”
+
+“Why to go ahead and fight, of course.”
+
+Here I found a chaplain, a strikingly humorous and amusing man, who
+knew thoroughly how to get on with the soldiers; but then he had been
+in war before, in Pekin and German South-West Africa. As we stood
+chatting on the road, we were gradually surrounded by a narrowing
+circle of grey jackets, who listened intently to what we had to say.
+In the end they must have numbered fully 150, and there, in the
+centre, stood the pastor throwing out jests and calling them his grey
+field-mice, and they all laughed gaily at his whimsical ideas.
+
+“What do they do for a living in peace time, I wonder, all these
+soldiers?” I asked.
+
+“Oh,” said the pastor, “there are all sorts, loafers and county
+councillors, blacksmiths and professors, all jumbled together.
+
+“What is your occupation, my lad?” he asked of one who stood near, as
+he seized him by the collar.
+
+“Lecturer,” he answered.
+
+“What subject?”
+
+“Comparative philology of modern European languages.”
+
+“Excellent! There you see, doctor, what use the philology of modern
+European languages can be put to!”
+
+“And what are you?”
+
+“Metal worker at Siemens and Halske’s.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“Village schoolmaster.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“Navvy.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“Professor of zoology.”
+
+“There you see the levelling effects of war. No trace of class
+distinction. They all lie side by side in the trenches, eat the same
+food and are comrades through thick and thin, and the professor is no
+better treated than the navvy.”
+
+“How many of you are keeping diaries of your war experience?” I asked.
+
+“I don’t write a line,” said one, standing with his hands in his
+pockets in front of the circle.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“There are plenty of them who do as it is.”
+
+“Nonsense, you are a lazy beggar,” says the pastor.
+
+“All who keep diaries, put up their hands,” said I, and a perfect
+forest of hands rose into the air.
+
+“Perhaps it will be simpler if those who _don’t_ keep diaries put up
+their hands.”
+
+They did so, and there were ten out of fully 150. What a monument of
+memories and impressions, of wild adventures and heroic deeds told in
+simple and honest words must they not represent, these diaries, written
+from day to day between the fights, in the trenches and by the light of
+the bivouac fires!
+
+To conclude, I asked in a loud voice--although it was a stupid thing to
+do and I ought to have known better--_infandum jubes renovare dolorem_:
+“How many of you are social democrats?”
+
+At this there was a shout of laughter, almost of derision, and I
+suddenly felt exceedingly awkward and wished I were back at Metz again.
+Even the pastor laughed and shook his head. At last a burly-looking
+soldier answered for himself and the others:
+
+“There are no social democrats any more. _There are nothing but German
+soldiers._”
+
+I made a desperate attempt to cover my retreat by saying: “Of course,
+of course, I know; but are there any among you who have _been_ social
+democrats?”
+
+Some shouted no, others shrugged their shoulders and one replied: “Even
+if there _have been_ social democrats among us, all that rot has been
+washed away by now. It is real and serious business we are dealing with
+now, and none of that kids’ game!”
+
+Presently the men were ordered to form up and the circle melted away,
+leaving me alone with the divisional pastor and three young officers
+with whom I chatted for a few moments.
+
+[Illustration: A GROUP OF SOLDIERS WITH THE DIVISIONAL PASTOR IN THE
+CENTRE]
+
+Then I went back to my friends and travelling companions from Metz.
+The day’s work was over. The result of the achievements of the day had
+been reported to the General in Command, but they had to wait at Barbas
+until fresh orders arrived, which might not be until midnight. For my
+part I could return to Metz whenever I wanted to.
+
+The sun had long since set when Captain Kaufmann came up and offered
+me a seat in his car. He was a fine fellow and had moreover many
+memorable and interesting things to tell me from his experiences in
+the war. So I said good-bye to my charming host for the day, General
+von Tettenborn, and the other officers, jumped up beside Kaufmann and
+a lieutenant and in a second we were on the way, eating up the ninety
+kilometres separating us from our destination in the north-west. We had
+our head-lamps lighted. At least twenty times we were stopped by the
+patrols guarding the road, who swung their lanterns across the road
+and shouted “halt!” I consider we were very fortunate to get through
+with a whole skin, for if one overlooks a single sentry, it is all up
+and one gets a bullet through the back. There were numerous cavalry
+patrols about, evidently on their way home after their scouting in the
+gloaming. They, too, were stopped by the pickets, for otherwise French
+patrols in German uniforms might easily infest the roads and villages
+held by the Germans. We were also stopped on entering and leaving every
+village.
+
+However, at last we got safely back to Metz, and thus ended my last day
+at the front.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST PICTURE FROM THE WESTERN FRONT]
+
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXV
+
+  HOME TO TRELLEBORG
+
+
+In the morning of the memorable 6th of November I left Metz by the
+train for Saarbrücken, the town where the first shots were fired in the
+last Franco-German war. I had some time to spare, and settled down at
+a table in the restaurant of the _Terminus Hotel_ to read some really
+recent newspapers. Life seemed to go on here just as usual, and one
+noticed nothing of the war. The regular customers came in for their
+_Frühschoppen_ (early mug of beer) as they always do, and here and
+there an officer or a civilian was breakfasting.
+
+At Ludwigshafen a conductor came along and shouted into every
+compartment of the train that the windows were to be kept shut, and
+that nobody must lean out whilst passing over the Rhine bridge. It was
+pleasant to see the alacrity with which his order was obeyed--after
+all one had plenty of time to contemplate the great and mighty river
+between that town and Mannheim. Just as the train was starting, this
+same conductor jumped into my compartment. Aha, I thought, he thinks
+my shabby field clothes look suspicious in a first-class compartment,
+and he sees that I am busy with map, note-book and pencil. However,
+I met him half-way in my frankest manner, and asked whether the
+window-closing order was a precaution against bomb attacks on the
+bridge. He smiled and answered that the orders were that the windows
+were to be shut. Then I asked what the consequence would be if one
+disobeyed the order, opened the window and looked out. “In that case,”
+he said, “there are sentries outside who would note the compartment and
+the window, and the end would be that the guilty party would land in a
+place where he would find no windows at all.”
+
+At Mannheim nothing happened. But at Heidelberg I had hardly stepped
+on to the platform before two officers came up to me. One said in
+firm but very polite tones that I must accompany him to the District
+Commandant’s office. “Of course,” I said, “I shall be delighted, but
+I hope you will be kind enough to let me bring my hand luggage.” “Why
+certainly,” was the answer. On the way to the office, which happened
+to be close to the platform, the officer remarked: “Your passport must
+be examined by the military authorities.” “Why can’t you look at it at
+once?” I asked, and handed him my pass, now soiled and frayed at the
+edges. “Well, perhaps I might do so,” he answered, and we stopped. He
+read the paper with General von Moltke’s name, turned to his companion
+and whispered my name in his ear, whereupon both saluted and held out
+their hands, which I pressed almost as heartily as I laughed at the
+little adventure.
+
+“_Aber Herr Doktor, sie müssen uns doch entschuldigen, wir ..._”
+(“Really, doctor, you must excuse us, we ...”)
+
+“_Bitte, bitte, das ist ja reizend._” (“But please don’t mention it,
+I am delighted.”) Thereupon my German eagles also broke into hearty
+laughter over their prey.
+
+“Your train does not leave for an hour. In place of the examination at
+the office, won’t you come and drink a glass of beer with us at the
+buffet?”
+
+“Why, of course, I shall be most happy!” And so the time passed all
+too quickly, and we got a lot of fun out of the little adventure--an
+adventure which I might have repeated at every station, had I liked
+to do so. But it would not do, war is too serious a matter for
+jest. My new friends told me that the conductor had found me very
+suspicious-looking, especially on account of my maps and note-book,
+and had telephoned from Mannheim. At Heidelberg he had conducted the
+officers to my compartment. I assured them that I could find no words
+to express the admiration which I felt for the alertness and vigilance
+which pervaded the whole of Germany from frontier to frontier--it
+seemed like clockwork where every cog drops into its place with
+automatic precision, and where the hours strike their solemn strokes
+to the fraction of a second. When it was time to part they saw me into
+my carriage, and as the train moved out they gave me a final friendly
+salute and bade me God-speed.[41]
+
+ [41] This little episode, which seemed as harmless as it was amusing to
+ us three “conspirators” whilst we discussed it over our mugs of beer,
+ found its way into the German press, and was received with much mirth.
+ In the French press it appeared under a different guise. Thus, for
+ instance, the _Journal des Débats_, in a telegram from Bordeaux, dated
+ November 22nd, publishes the following:--
+
+ “_Un télégramme de Bâle dit qu’en quittant l’Allemagne, Sven Hedin
+ l’explorateur suédois bien connu, a été arrêté et retenu quelque temps
+ à Heidelberg comme suspect d’espionnage._”
+
+ The “Figaro” has quite a little article under the heading of “_Vieil
+ Heidelberg_.” Other headings are as follows:--
+
+ “_Le germanophile arrêté pour espionnage._--_Ils arrêtent leur meilleur
+ ami!_--_Arrestation de M. Sven Hedin._--_Arrêté comme espion._--_Les
+ allemands soupçonnent leurs meilleurs amis_,” and so on _ad infinitum_.
+ An English newspaper, the _Newcastle Chronicle_, of November 24th,
+ managed to improve on these versions: “The adventure at Heidelberg of
+ Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer now in the pay of the German Official
+ Press Bureau, appears to have been amusing. He delivered a lecture in
+ public at the ancient cradle of German culture, and knowing him to be
+ a foreigner, the Heidelberg police regarded his intense enthusiasm for
+ the greatness of Germany as suspicious. He was accordingly arrested,
+ and detained for several days until his employers of the Press Bureau
+ could be communicated with and establish that he was not a spy. Perhaps
+ this little experience may cool Sven Hedin’s ardour. In any case, why
+ was he lecturing in Heidelberg? His services in Holland or Italy, the
+ United States, or any other neutral country requiring enlightenment
+ would seem natural and appropriate, but surely Heidelberg needs no
+ lessons in pan-germanism.”
+
+ The surprising thing about the English description is not its wealth of
+ detail given with the same readiness as when it is a question of great
+ and serious matters, such as, for instance, Hindenburg’s continuous
+ defeats, the uninterrupted German retreat from Flanders, the funeral of
+ the German Crown Prince, which takes place on an average of about once
+ a month, etc. No, the really surprising thing in this article is that
+ the newspaper would find it natural and suitable if I were to plead
+ Germany’s cause in _neutral_ countries, such as Holland, Italy or the
+ United States. _A bon entendeur, salut!_
+
+At Karlsruhe, on the following day, I waited on the noble and
+high-minded mother of our Queen, the Dowager Grand Duchess Luise, as
+well as on the Grand Duke and his Consort. I was only due to leave
+for Berlin by the night train, and was therefore very glad to be
+able to accept the Grand Duchess Luise’s most gracious proposal that
+I should inspect the gigantic and ideally equipped hospital in the
+_Gewerbeschule_ under her Royal Highness’s own august guidance. I met
+there two distinguished head nurses, the wife of General von Oetinger
+and Frau Sautier, also Fru Linder from Stockholm who was here to study
+hospital arrangements in the field and who had met with the greatest
+hospitality in Karlsruhe.
+
+It was most touching to see the Grand Duchess, in spite of her
+seventy-six years, walk from bed to bed, from ward to ward, encouraging
+soldiers and speaking to them in a way that went straight to the heart.
+In her black dress and her black lace veil over her head, she looked
+like a pious abbess giving comfort and solace to the wounded warriors,
+and indeed she made a most welcome break in their long weary hours
+of suffering. Behind our Queen’s mother came several nurses carrying
+armfuls of flowers and little packets of portraits of the Grand-Ducal
+pair. Before leaving, this guardian angel of the wounded graciously
+handed a packet and a picture to each soldier as a souvenir of her
+visit.
+
+The most delightful part of my visit was the witnessing of the homage
+paid by the convalescent soldiers to the venerable and beloved lady, as
+they stood assembled in the great hall of the hospital. When the Grand
+Duchess came out, they spontaneously broke into the stirring and moving
+tones of the great German National Hymn here given in translation:--
+
+      (Tune: “Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him.”)
+
+          Germany, be thou exalted
+          Over every other land,
+          If but in the hour of peril,
+          True thy sons together stand
+          From the Meuse unto the Niemen,
+          From Adige to Baltic strand,
+          Germany, be thou exalted
+          Over every other land!
+
+          German women, German faith, and
+          German wine and German song
+          Shall their ancient fame and glory
+          Still retain through ages long,
+          And to noble deeds inspire us
+          All our path through life along--
+          German women, German faith, and
+          German wine and German song!
+
+          Unity and right and freedom
+          For our German fatherland--
+          This let us together strive for,
+          Brothers all, with heart and hand!--
+          Unity and right and freedom--
+          Pledges of a blessed land--
+          In the glory of such blessing
+          Flourish, German Fatherland!
+
+“Thank you, thank you, God bless you all,” said the Grand Duchess, and
+disappeared as unpretentiously as she had come.
+
+In Berlin I looked up several old friends and also had the honour
+and pleasure to be invited to supper with the pretty, charming and
+altogether delightful Crown Princess. In the evening we sat round
+an open, flaming hearth, and I recounted my recollections from the
+front and from the desert, whilst my illustrious hostess and her
+ladies-in-waiting were listening and knitting socks for the brave
+soldiers in the trenches. The Crown Princess had another guest whom it
+was a great pleasure to me to meet again--Baron von Maltzahn, who now,
+after his unlucky motor drive, had recovered sufficiently to hop about
+on crutches.
+
+The streets of Berlin looked the same as they had done two months
+previously. Men and women, motor-cars and ’buses moved about as busily
+as they had done before, and the streets were flooded with electric
+light all night just as in piping times of peace. At the appointed
+hour the Palace Guard came marching along _Unter den Linden_ as it has
+always done, with its alluring, rapturous military music calling to
+fresh deeds of valour. Had one not known it, one could not possibly
+have guessed, but for the shouting of the newsboys, that the country
+was involved in the most gigantic war of all time. Neither did I notice
+any thinning of the numbers of able-bodied men in the streets, and
+yet had I not seen through the carriage window from Metz armies of
+recruits, reservists and volunteers all drilling in barrack squares and
+fields along the line?
+
+It has been stated in certain newspapers that the Germans treated their
+prisoners of war in a cruel and inhuman manner. That this was untrue
+like everything else which forms part of the educational campaign, I
+readily understood, but all the same I thought it would be interesting
+to find out for myself the facts of the case. Accordingly I paid a
+visit to the acting General Staff. Not only did they give me the usual
+prompt permission to go out to the prisoners’ camp at Döberitz, but I
+was given as guide a most capable and learned major.
+
+At the entrance to the camp we were received by a colonel and several
+other officers, who took us round and explained everything. Here were
+four thousand Russians, four thousand British and a few hundred French,
+Belgians and Turcos--I am sorry to say there were no other specimens
+from the ethnological colour-box at Döberitz. The prisoners live in
+gigantic tents where they have their beds close together on the ground
+in four enormous rows. I went into one of the tents and found a group
+of Russians with caps on the back of their heads and coats or blankets
+over their shoulders, and asked if they were satisfied with the
+treatment they received. “Oh yes, nitchevo,” was the answer. But one
+of them shouted, “It is too cold to lie on the ground in late autumn.”
+“Yes,” I answered, “of course it was warmer in the firing lines in
+Poland. How would you like to go back and warm yourselves a bit?” “No,
+Heaven preserve us!” came as a chorus on every side.
+
+My old friend Tommy Atkins was strolling about inside the barbed-wire
+fence and looked and felt very bored. But he was not ill-treated,
+on the contrary, he was very well looked after. I saw him at dinner
+with his ally Ivan Ivanovitch. The 8500 prisoners were fed in
+three-quarters of an hour, and the whole thing was despatched with the
+utmost smoothness. In front of the kitchen building, in which gigantic
+caldrons were steaming, railings had been put up, permitting the men to
+advance in files of eight to the window opening, through which the mess
+cooks with the adroitness, touch and quickness of a virtuoso filled
+to the brim the bowls held out to them with wholesome, nourishing,
+steaming soup. When their bowls had been filled, the men went back
+another way so as to avoid congestion. The system is the same as at the
+booking offices at busy railway stations.
+
+The British soldier is, under _normal_ conditions, a sinewy and
+well-knit man, who has hardened and trained his body with football,
+tennis, cricket and other salutary exercises. But in Germany he merely
+vegetates and swells in bulk and by no means over-exerts himself over
+the work offered him in confinement, by which he can earn a couple of
+_pfennigs_ a day for tobacco. If therefore on his return home Tommy
+tries to make out that he has been living “below starvation mark” in
+Germany, his comfortably rounded form and his _eloquencia corporis_
+will give him the lie!
+
+It is surprising and peculiar to see Tommy Atkins and Ivan Ivanovitch
+arm-in-arm--figuratively speaking, of course! For in the concentration
+camps they hate one another heartily. Tommy regards Ivan as a lousy
+savage and Ivan looks on Tommy as an impudent upstart whom the modest
+patron of the _samovar_ ought not to associate with. And yet, for all
+practical purposes, they march arm-in-arm and use all the most hellish
+infernal machines of modern militarism to destroy the German militarism
+and free the earth from the Germanic barbarians. Great Britain and
+Russia! It really staggers the imagination when one thinks that these
+two countries have neither in Europe nor in Asia, in heaven nor on
+earth, _a single positive interest_ in common.
+
+We need only think of India, the most precious jewel in Great Britain’s
+crown. Of the possibility of a Russian invasion of India Lord Curzon,
+the greatest and most clear-sighted Viceroy India has ever had, has
+given utterance to the following: “It would involve the most terrible
+and lingering war that the world has ever seen; and it could only be
+effected by a loss, most unlikely to occur, and more serious in its
+effects upon the human race than that of India itself, namely, the
+loss of the fibre of the British people.” Elsewhere, when saying that
+India’s safety is Great Britain’s foremost duty, he speaks as follows
+of a Russian attack on that country: “It can only be prosecuted in the
+teeth of international morality, in defiance of civilised opinion and
+with the ultimate certainty of a war with this country that would ring
+from pole to pole.”
+
+The _Novoye Vremya_ writes at about the same time (1st December,
+1888): “Our attention has been focussed on the necessity of bringing
+Khorasan under Russia’s exclusive influence, the more so as through
+Khorasan runs a convenient road in the direction of Herat and in case
+of military operations against India, Khorasan would therefore serve as
+a base of supply for our further operations.” Then we have Skobeleff’s
+and Kuropatkin’s very detailed and minute plans for an invasion of
+India.[42]
+
+[42] Curzon: “Russia in Central Asia,” 1889, and “Persia and the
+Persian Question,” 1892, Vol. II.
+
+Many years have elapsed since Lord Curzon thoroughly and exhaustively,
+as usual, dealt with this question. But is there anyone who believes
+that the danger is less serious now that the Russians have been checked
+in the Far East by the Japanese and in the Far West by Germany and
+Austria-Hungary? It is true that there is one other outlet in the
+west--a truth which the _Swedes_ should bear in mind. But nevertheless
+the danger to India is far greater now than it was twenty-five years
+ago.
+
+It is therefore not a little peculiar to see Tommy Atkins helping Ivan
+Ivanovitch with blood and iron, on land and sea, to gain that power
+and strength which he needs for carrying out an invasion of India. For
+England this world war is a national calamity, however it may end. “We
+have forty million reasons for failure but not a single excuse.”
+
+We also visited the hospital at Döberitz, where the prisoners receive
+all the care that human charity can give to the sick. It is not charity
+alone that demands the greatest sacrifices in this respect, for a
+concentration camp where thousands of men live huddled together on one
+spot _may_ become a source of contagion, if ill-managed. Hence skilled
+doctors, sick attendants and nurses are engaged, and the slightest
+symptom is immediately followed by isolation to prevent the possibility
+of an epidemic.
+
+In one of the paths I came across a Tommy walking up and down. He
+looked very pale, but was convalescent.
+
+“How are you getting on?” said I, but received no reply.
+
+“I hope you will soon become a little bit of all right by and by,” I
+tried once more in my very best colloquial English. Tommy only smiled
+and looked at me.
+
+“Is he deaf or is he mad?” I asked the doctor who accompanied us.
+
+“No, he is Russian,” answered the doctor, laughing. But how this
+Russian had got into Tommy’s uniform remains an unsolved riddle.
+
+It is a rather significant fact that whilst the good-natured Russians
+need only four per cent of guards, the self-conscious English require
+ten per cent; in other words, four German soldiers look after a
+hundred Russians, whilst a hundred English need ten guardians. The
+reason may possibly be found in the inborn servility traceable to
+generations of serfdom, but the principal reason of the difficulty in
+handling the English prisoners is probably that they have no national
+service and have not accustomed themselves to discipline. The cases of
+insubordination in the prisoners’ camps are almost entirely confined to
+the British prisoners. The punishment for the first offence consisted
+in letting the culprit stand a couple of hours to guard the guns on a
+little flat eminence near the camp, where the wind usually blew cold
+and strong. After a graver offence the delinquent was usually tied to
+a tree for an hour or two, but this latter punishment had only been
+resorted to in isolated cases.
+
+My impression of the treatment of prisoners at Döberitz confirmed all
+that I had witnessed in this connection at the seat of war. But the
+world _will_ be deceived and is deceived. Hence the educators of the
+British nation spread broadcast the meanest calumnies concerning the
+“Huns’ barbarity” to their unhappy prisoners.
+
+The magnificent drawing-room inside the hall of the _Hotel Kaiserhof_
+usually formed the rendezvous of a little Swedish colony in the
+evening. Here I met Cavalry Captain Count Gilbert Hamilton, who had
+become a German subject and officer in order to strike a blow in the
+Germanic fight for existence. He was just on his way to his regiment
+and was looking forward to a very different reveille from that he
+was accustomed to at our own sleepy horse-guards barracks at home in
+Stockholm. Here also I met once more my old friend Colonel Gustaf
+Bouveng, who had spent two and a half months at the front and who,
+among innumerable other impressions, was also taking home with him the
+conviction that in a military sense Germany simply _cannot_ be defeated
+by her present opponents. Instead of tiring and becoming decimated, the
+German army grows in strength and numbers from month to month.
+
+On the 12th of November I took my departure from the _Stettiner
+Bahnhof_ and set out on my journey home to Sweden. As I reached
+Sassnitz, dusk was descending over the Baltic. The passports and
+effects of the passengers were subjected to a most careful scrutiny.
+The same calm, the same sure self-possession, the same discipline and
+order as I had noticed everywhere in Germany and in the firing lines,
+made themselves felt here, too, on the outermost planks of the harbour
+pier. At Sassnitz fourteen torpedo-boats lay ready for immediate
+action, and in the roads a gigantic hospital ship was riding at anchor,
+ready to receive wounded from the sea.
+
+The ferry cast off her moorings. Little by little in the gathering
+gloom we lose sight of land, that land whose seconds are as long as
+years, whose people is now writing its _epos_ in runes of blood on
+the pages of the world’s history--a united people, a virile people, a
+people which stood ready in its hour of trial, armed for the defence
+of its honour, its liberty and its future when the ravenous monster of
+strife rose up upon its frontiers, a people which has the _will_ to win
+and which therefore in the time to come will march at the head of the
+ruling race upon our earth.
+
+But the belt of sea between the ferry and the German coast grows wider.
+The song “_Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein_” has long since died away.
+The twilight, the transition between day and night, is over. And in the
+north bides the deep impenetrable darkness.
+
+
+
+
+  INDEX
+
+
+  _Aboukir_, loss of H.M.S., 113
+
+  Abstinence from wine, 147
+
+  Adlercreutz, Major, 12
+
+  Ahrenberg, Duchess of, 208
+
+  Aire, the, 93
+
+  Aisne, the, 93
+    retreat of the Germans to, 152
+
+  Alaska, 22
+
+  Albert, King of the Belgians, 307
+
+  Aleppo, 214
+
+  Alers, Colonel von, 367
+
+  Algermissen, Dr., at Ostend, 278, 279
+
+  Algiers, 340
+
+  Allies, the, their use of foreign troops, 17, 163, 187, 250, 352-355
+
+  All Souls’ Day at Bapaume, 332-347
+
+  Almanach de Gotha, the, 27
+
+  Alost, 263
+
+  Alsace, French claim on, 29, 32
+
+  Alt, 36
+
+  Altefähr, 4
+
+  Altkirch, 186
+
+  America, its relations with Japan, 350
+
+  American Ambassador in Paris, 307
+
+  America, village, 358
+
+  Ancerviller, 373
+
+  Angers, 33
+
+  Anklam, 5
+
+  Antwerp, author visits, 216-228, 235-262, 297
+    forts of, 297, 298
+    hospital in, 257
+    neutral consulates in, 255
+    port of, 224-228, 237
+    siege of, 204, 213-219, 231 note, 253-255, 270, 295
+    supposed British ambitions for, 270
+    Zoological Gardens, 252
+
+  Apolda, the, 25
+
+  Archer, William, reviews the author’s work, v-vii
+
+  Ardenne Canal, the, 145, 146
+
+  Argentine Consul in Antwerp, 256, 259
+
+  Argonne, the, fighting in, 85, 92, 93, 188, 318, 327
+
+  _Ariadne_, sinking of the, 268-270
+
+  Arlon, 127, 128
+
+  Armentières, author visits, 309, 311
+
+  Arnim, Prince, in Luxemburg, 51
+
+  Arnoldi, Dr., Acting Chief of the Automobile Corps, 14, 16, 17
+
+  Arras, fighting at, 310, 318
+
+  Arrhenius, Professor Svante, 205
+
+  Artois, 348, 351
+
+  Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., at the Guildhall, 354
+
+  Attigny, hospital at, 156
+
+  Augustovo, 318
+
+  Australian troops, the, 250, 354
+
+  Austria-Hungary checks Russia, 384
+    its army, 187
+
+  Austrian artillery in Belgium, 236, 295, 313
+
+  Automobile Corps, Imperial Volunteer, constitution of, 14-16, 48, 55
+
+  Autry, 149, 166
+
+  Auxerre, 89
+
+  _Aventi_, s.s., 285
+
+  Aye, 204
+
+
+  Bach’s _Passion_, 335
+
+  Baedeker on Belgium, 248, 265, 281
+
+  Bagdad Railway, the, 56
+
+  Bailer, General, in Brussels, 243, 244
+    in Antwerp, 245, 252, 258, 297
+
+  Balakhani, the, 294
+
+  Baltic Sea, the, 4
+
+  Banér, Field-Marshal Johan, 27
+
+  Bantheville, 75
+
+  Bapaume, author visits, 296-309, 315-319, 332-342, 361-367
+
+  _Bapaumer Zeitung am Mittag_, 317-319
+
+  Barbas, 374-377
+
+  Bar-le-Duc, 89
+
+  Bavaria, Rupprecht, Crown Prince of, 344
+
+  Bavarian Army, the, warlike spirit of, 47
+    Landsturm, the, 333, 343
+
+  Beaumont, 146
+
+  Beelitz, 19
+
+  Beethoven, 250
+
+  Behr, Captain von, author accompanies, 150, 158, 169, 171, 189, 196
+    Count-Marshal von, attends the Crown Prince, 61, 62, 103, 104
+
+  Belfort, 186
+
+  Belgian Army, the, 354
+    brings loss upon itself, 207, 208, 220, 260
+    defends Antwerp, 217, 222, 227, 231 note, 251, 254, 271
+    German tributes to, 234, 260
+    its wireless stations, 128
+    uniforms of, 237
+
+  Belgian Cabinet leaves Ostend, 285
+    coast bombarded by the British Navy, 265-283
+    dogs, 261, 263
+    hospitals at Malines, 241
+    hospitals at Ostend, 289
+    Luxemburg, 125-129
+    police in Antwerp, 235, 251
+    prisoners of war, 33, 234, 284
+    railwaymen, 204
+    refugees, 225
+    refugees from Antwerp, 237, 246, 251, 254, 257, 260, 285
+    refugees in Ostend, 284
+
+  Belgium, author’s compassion for, 209, 258, 261
+    England’s policy with regard to, 247, 270, 284, 355
+
+  Belle Alliance, La, 211
+
+  Bellevue, Sedan, 136, 137
+
+  Bellman, poet, 308
+
+  Benares, 62, 353
+
+  Benckendorff, Count, his Tibetan policy, 248
+
+  Benedetti, Ambassador of the French, 34
+
+  Benz and Co., 307
+
+  Berchem, 224, 254
+
+  Bergen-op-Zoom, 254, 259
+
+  Bergues, 368
+
+  Berlin, author’s visits to, 6-19, 45, 53, 381
+    Geological Society, 295
+    Russian advance on, 284, 303
+    triumphal entry into, 192
+    University, 233
+
+  Bernhard, Captain, 88
+
+  Bernhard, Major-General, questions prisoners, 89
+
+  Bernhardi, General, xvi
+
+  Bertrix, 128-130, 201
+
+  Beseler, General von, 295
+
+  Bess, Captain, at Ostend, 268, 271, 275, 277, 281, 286, 288, 293
+    on the _Ariadne_, 268-270
+
+  Betz, Lieut.-Col., at Dun, 104, 111
+
+  Bible, author’s quotations from the, 193, 261
+
+  _Bierabend_, author enjoys a, 231
+
+  Bikanir, 62
+
+  Bildt, General, 306
+
+  Billeting, German methods of, 37
+
+  Birkenfeld, 172
+
+  Bismarck, Count, at Donchery, 137-139
+    tower, Apolda, 25
+
+  Bitterfeld, 22
+
+  Black Sea, Turkish fleet in the, 344
+
+  Blamont, author visits, 370, 373
+
+  Blankenberghe, author visits, 288
+
+  Bleichröder, Baron, in Sedan, 186
+
+  Blériot aeroplanes in use, 179
+
+  Blois, 110
+
+  Blücher, General, English debt to, 211, 212
+
+  Boer War, the, 356
+
+  Böhlau, Lieut.-Col., 196
+
+  Boiry, 310, 319, 330
+
+  Bois de Cheppy, 94
+
+  Bombay, author in, 214
+
+  Bordeaux, 64, 171, 172, 380
+
+  Börjeson, Rev., in Antwerp, 259
+
+  Bouchain, 300
+
+  Bouillon, 131
+
+  Boureuilles, 93, 94
+
+  Bournemouth, 284
+
+  Boussu, 300
+
+  Bouveng, Colonel Gustaf, 12, 386
+
+  Boy Scouts, motto of, 258
+
+  Braine le Comte, 299
+
+  Brandenburg, 5
+
+  Breitenfeld, 22
+
+  Breslau, 70, 200
+
+  Brialmont, General, fortifications of, 245
+
+  Briey, 370
+
+  Brighton, 284
+
+  British Army aviators over Ostend, 287
+    bombards Ostend, 263
+    foreign troops in, 17, 163, 187, 250, 352-355
+    in Antwerp, 217, 225, 227, 231 note, 251, 271
+    its artillery, 314, 359
+    personal courage of, 36, 360
+
+  British Navy bombards the Belgian coast, 265-284, 286-288
+    sinks the _Ariadne_, 268-270
+
+  Bruges, 285
+    author in, 264
+    Germans in, 243, 263
+
+  Brussels, author in, 210-216, 230-233, 238, 242-244, 263, 295
+    refugees from, 284, 288
+    under the Germans, 243
+
+  Bürger, Lieutenant, 176
+
+  Busch, Herr von, Minister in Luxemburg, 123
+
+
+  Calais, German advance on, 271
+
+  Calcutta, 352
+
+  Cambrai, author visits, 300, 310, 368
+
+  Cameroons, the, 79
+
+  Canadian troops, 250, 354
+
+  Cappellen, 260
+
+  Carignan, 201, 368
+
+  Cernay, 146, 165, 199
+
+  Challerange, 165
+
+  Chamier-Glisczinski, Captain von, at Vouziers, 173, 181
+
+  Champion, Convent of, 209
+
+  Charlemagne, Emperor, 51
+
+  Charles V., Emperor, 10, 249
+
+  Charles XII. of Sweden, vi, 96, 146, 168
+
+  Charleville, 125
+
+  Château-Salins, 372
+
+  Chauvency, 60, 117
+
+  Cheppy, 93, 94
+
+  Churchill, Winston, in Antwerp, 254, 270
+
+  Ciney, 204
+
+  Clairvaux, Bernard de, 334
+
+  Classen, Lieutenant, 219
+
+  Cleving, Herr, at Bapaume, 307, 315, 317, 335, 341, 361
+
+  Coal-mines, Belgian, 299
+
+  Coblenz, 34
+
+  Colmar, 278
+
+  Cologne, 117, 150
+
+  Colombo, 214
+
+  Condé, 149, 165
+
+  Constantinople, 91
+    Turks capture, 120
+
+  Cossart, Maître Emile, 302-305, 344, 367
+
+  Cousteumont, 127
+
+  Cramb, Professor, xvi
+
+  _Cressy_, loss of H.M.S., 113
+
+  Croisilles, 310
+
+  Crombez, M., 121
+
+  Cronstedt, Count, 173
+
+  Crown Prince, the German, 380 note
+    as an author, 78
+    at Dun, 112
+    author’s visits to, 46, 55, 61-64, 76, 80, 103, 104, 113, 114
+    on war, 63
+    visits the author, 78
+
+  Crown Princess, German, entertains the author, 382
+
+  Cunel, 74
+
+  Curzon, Earl, as Viceroy, 242, 248
+    his hope, 352
+
+
+  Dagobert, King, 29
+
+  Dahlgren, janitor, 248
+
+  _Daily Telegraph_, v
+
+  Dannevoux, 69
+
+  _Danzig_, cruiser, 269
+
+  Darmstadt, 132
+
+  Deffner, chauffeur, 19
+
+  Dellmensingen, General Krafft von, at Douai, 346
+
+  Demain, 300
+
+  Dendre, the, 263
+
+  Desserrey, Madame, and family, 76, 77, 115
+
+  Détaille, artist, 63, 159
+
+  _Deutschland in Waffen_, 78
+
+  Diaries, soldiers’, 90, 376
+
+  Dinant, 60, 207
+    destruction of, 244
+
+  Dixmude, 297
+
+  Döberitz, 309
+    author visits, 382-386
+
+  Donchery, 137
+
+  Donck, 260
+
+  Dorpfeld, 297
+
+  Douai, author visits, 310, 344-348
+
+  Douchy, 300, 333
+
+  Dreger, Captain, in Brussels, 214, 231
+    in Antwerp, 235
+
+  Dresden, 186
+
+  Dryhoek, 260
+
+  Duffel, 218, 298
+
+  Dug-outs, German, 75, 175, 180, 199, 322
+
+  Dun, author’s day at, 104-116
+    Germans in, 61, 66, 75, 81
+
+  Dunkerque, 265, 271, 275, 284
+
+  Düsseldorf, 335
+
+
+  Eastbourne, 284
+
+  Eastern front, length of the, 186
+
+  East Prussia, German victories in, 200
+
+  Eckeren, 260
+
+  Eclisfontaine, the author visits, 80-103
+
+  Eclo, 264
+
+  Eichstedt, Count von, at Vouziers, 158, 161, 169, 196
+
+  Eiffel, 172
+
+  Eisenach, 27
+
+  Eiserne Hand, the, 30
+
+  Eitel Friedrich, Prince, at the front, 326
+
+  Elbe, the, 20
+
+  Elert, Major, 245, 258
+
+  Elizabeth Sisters, the, 189
+
+  Eller, 35
+
+  Ems, the author at, 31-34
+
+  Engineers, their work in the Argonne, 188
+
+  England, author’s sorrow for, vi, 192
+    German hatred of, vi, 24, 29, 159, 360
+    her army and navy. _See_ British
+    her care for the Belgian refugees, 225, 247, 284
+    her newspaper press, xv, 17, 31, 55, 354, 380 note, 386
+    her relations with Russia, 248, 383-385
+    her rule in India, 352, 384
+    her supposed hatred of Germany, vi, 187, 270, 344
+    her supposed hysteria, 271
+    policy of, vi, 210, 212, 213, 230, 270, 284, 355
+
+  English prisoners of war, 33, 47
+    at Antwerp, 257
+    at Döberitz, 382-386
+    at Kruiseik, 359-361
+    at Namur, 210
+    at Roubaix, 348-351, 358
+
+  Eppeghem, 234
+
+  Erfurt, 27
+
+  Esschem, 254
+
+  Essen, Elizabeth sisters of, 189
+
+
+  Faidherbe, statue of, 317, 340, 341
+
+  Falkenhausen army, the, 371, 372
+
+  Falkenhayn, Lieut.-Gen. von, 168
+    at Douai, 346
+    in Brussels, 232
+    in Luxemburg, 48
+
+  Fifth Army, the German, 57, 60, 61, 64, 74, 75, 113, 188
+
+  _Figaro, Le_, 380 note
+
+  Finnish armies, 29
+
+  Fischer, Colonel, at the front, 175, 178
+
+  Flanders, Anglo-Belgian Army in, 271
+    Counts of, 264
+
+  Flushing, 252
+
+  Fock. _See_ Wilamovitz
+
+  Folkestone, 284
+
+  Forrières, 203
+
+  Fournaise, Madame, 138
+
+  Fourth Army, German, author follows, 145-181
+    its lines of communication, 140-144
+
+  Franco-Prussian War, 1870, Germany’s development after, 10, 34
+    incidents of, 136-139, 215, 302, 340, 378
+
+  _Franctireurs_, at Louvain, 240
+    German treatment of, 56-59, 75, 135, 169, 202, 203, 208
+
+  Frankfurt-on-Main, 29, 135
+
+  French Army, artillery, 70-74, 86, 167, 177, 189
+    aviation service, 36, 70, 148, 162, 165-167, 173, 179, 181, 312,
+        316, 328, 330, 343, 359, 363-366
+    constitution of, 17
+    foreign troops in, 17, 163, 187, 250, 343
+    German tributes to, 24, 65, 111, 178, 198, 303, 327
+    its mobilisation, 120
+    its use of wooded country, 58, 188
+    its vigilance and spy system, 321, 325, 327-330
+    Medical Service, 157, 158
+    respects the Red Cross, 180
+    uniform of, 41
+
+  French people, the author’s affection for, and sympathy with, 139,
+        184, 192
+    their hatred of Germany, 187
+    the Kaiser’s sympathy and respect for, 53, 54
+    under the German occupation, 183-186
+
+  French prisoners of war, author visits, 70, 98, 109, 111, 150, 171,
+        187
+    author visits the wounded, 31-33, 35, 38-41, 89-91, 101, 133
+    construct a railway, 60
+    in Belgium, 295, 302, 366
+    in Germany, 47
+    their dejection, 89, 110, 112, 117, 288
+    their diaries, 90
+
+  Fretzdorff, Colonel, at Dun, 111
+
+  Friederich, Major Hans, 205, 210 Major-General, in Ghent, 264
+
+  Fröhlich, Dr., author travels with, 200-202
+
+  Fuchs, Lieutenant, 196, 198
+
+  Fulda, 28
+
+  Funerals, German military, 31
+
+  Furnes, 275
+
+
+  Gambetta, General, 340
+
+  Geibel, Emanuel, quoted, 79
+
+  Gelnhausen, 28
+
+  Gembloux, 211
+
+  Geneva conventions, 158
+
+  Gerhard, Paul, 335
+
+  German Army, aerial service, 44, 117, 166, 171, 173, 176, 344, 357,
+        364-366; _see also_ Taube
+    admiration of the French, 303
+    ammunition of, 67, 161, 288
+    artillery, 71-73, 85-87, 109, 167, 174, 205, 271, 280, 311, 373-375
+    base hospitals, 115
+    cavalry corps, 82, 150
+    chaplains, 192-194, 199, 333, 335, 343, 375
+    commissariat arrangements, 133, 147, 148, 183, 276
+    consideration for civilians, 160, 170, 184-186, 208, 246, 255, 329,
+        330; _see also Franctireurs_
+    despatch riders, 149
+    discipline, xv, 170, 195, 223, 367
+    equipment of, 66
+    Field Gendarmes, 145
+    field hospitals and Medical Service, 37-42, 74, 98, 133, 148, 150,
+        152-158, 162-165, 200, 210, 241, 257, 290-293, 366
+    Field postal service, 145, 195-198
+    Field Telegraph Battalion, 17, 59
+    Field Telephone Service, 72, 84, 174-176, 178
+    Headquarters at Luxemburg, 14, 45, 48-50, 115
+    lines of communication, 140-144, 155, 168, 182
+    loyalty of, 123
+    methods of observation, 85, 93, 178, 330, 377
+    mobilisation of, 44, 172
+    pay-day in, 195
+    reinforcements, 66, 69, 74, 148, 163, 180
+    Service Corps, 66
+    supposed superiority of, 168, 187, 217
+    systematic organisation of, 17, 21, 111, 136, 140, 157
+    transport columns, 67, 71, 75, 80, 108, 118, 162
+
+  German treatment of prisoners, 31, 348, 382-386
+    trenches, 75, 177
+    wounded of, 88, 133, 151-158, 290
+
+  German atrocities denied, 11, 17, 55, 56
+    culture, war on, vii, 191, 231 note, 250, 270, 350
+    hatred of England, vi, 24, 29
+    imperturbability, 113, 174, 318
+    letters from the front, 24, 197
+    militarism, 355, 360, 383
+
+  German Navy, its losses, 268-270
+    power of the, 50, 53, 78, 242, 386
+
+  German Press, honesty of the, 318
+    prisoners in France, 33 note, 158, 180
+    railway system, 22, 46, 118, 126, 129, 130, 172, 182, 202
+
+  German Red Cross, the, 28, 30, 35, 36
+    Countess von Moltke works for, 45
+    its work in Luxemburg, 47, 48, 124
+    its work on the battlefields, 40, 83, 93, 102, 153, 180
+    nurses, 203
+
+  German schools continue work, 41
+    social democrats, 30, 376
+    unity of feeling, 9, 11, 34, 36, 96, 123, 143, 169, 192, 288, 335,
+        376, 386
+    victory, confidence of, vi, 34, 36, 79, 95, 96, 114, 192, 239, 242,
+        270, 289, 309, 373, 386
+
+  German South-West Africa, 375
+
+  Germany, captures the world’s trade, 257
+    its preparations for war, 50, 95
+
+  Ghent, 285;
+    author in, 294, 295
+    fall of, 243, 263
+    Germans in, 222, 224, 227, 230, 235, 238, 263
+
+  Ghistelles, 264, 295
+
+  Ghurkas, the, 163, 250, 352
+
+  Givet, 60
+
+  Gleiwitz, 107
+
+  Godfrey the Crusader, 132
+
+  Goër, Madame, 316
+
+  Goethe, genius of, 26, 250
+
+  Goltz, Baron von der, in Brussels, 214-216, 232, 296, 298, 306
+
+  Gontard, Lieut.-Gen. von, in Luxemburg, 50, 53, 123
+
+  Göppert, Councillor, 348
+
+  Gossler, General von, at Dannevoux, 69
+
+  _Göteborgs Handels_, 231 note
+
+  Gotha, 27
+
+  Göttingen, 316
+
+  Goumont, Château de, 212
+
+  Gräfenhainischen, 22
+
+  Grandpré, 149, 166
+
+  Graves, soldiers’, 107, 149, 170, 181, 234, 241, 257, 323, 337, 358,
+        369
+
+  Greifswald, 4
+
+  Greiner, Hans, 170
+
+  Grevenmacher, 44
+
+  Gross, Lieut.-Colonel, commands the Field Telegraph Battalion, 17
+
+  Grünewald, 335
+
+  Grupont, 202
+
+  Guadeloupe, 340
+
+  Guildhall War Meeting, 354
+
+  Gustaf, King of Sweden, 4
+
+  Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany, 21, 22, 24, 27, 29, 54, 191
+
+  Gwalior, 62
+
+  Gwinner, Hans von, acts as chauffeur, 56-61
+
+  Gyldén, Professor, 316
+
+
+  Haaf, Captain, 203
+
+  Haak, Lieutenant, in Ostend, 268, 277, 283, 286, 287
+
+  Haeseler, Count von, at the front, 85, 92, 97, 306
+
+  Hague Conventions, the, 158
+
+  Hahnke, Lieutenant-Colonel, 45
+
+  Hal, 299
+
+  Halle, author at, 22-24
+
+  Halske and Siemens, Messrs., 242, 299, 376
+
+  Hamburg, 292, 351
+
+  Hamelincourt, 319, 342
+
+  Hamilton, Count Gilbert, 386
+
+  Hamipré, 127
+
+  Hanau, 28
+
+  Hatrival, 202
+
+  Havre, Le, 284
+
+  Hayek, Professor Hans von, 348
+
+  Heidelberg, author in, 378
+
+  Heligoland, 268
+
+  Helmholtz, 250
+
+  Henry of Prussia, Prince, 48
+
+  Herat, 384
+
+  Heymann, 62
+
+  Heyn, Major, in Sedan, 135
+
+  Heyst op den Berg, 218
+
+  Hildebrand, Professor, 316
+
+  Hildesheim, 189
+
+  Hindenburg, Field-Marshal von, victories of, 6, 303, 344, 355, 380
+        note
+    Lieut. von, 165
+
+  Hirschberg, General von, at Namur, 205, 209
+
+  Hirson, 368
+
+  Hogne, 204
+
+  _Hogue_, loss of H.M.S., 113
+
+  Hohenlohe, Prince, 144
+
+  Hohenzollern, Prince Friedrich of, at the front, 307, 309
+    race, the, shed their blood for Germany, 124
+
+  Hoiningen, Baron von, 243
+
+  Holland, Belgian refugees in, 225, 246, 254, 259-261
+
+  Hollen, Rittmeister von, 342
+
+  Hollweg, Herr von Bethmann, in Luxemburg, 48, 124
+    visits Antwerp, 245
+
+  Hongkong, 214
+
+  Houyet, 203
+
+  Huisne, the, 122
+
+  Hünfeld in Hesse, 28
+
+  Hussars, German, 233
+
+  Hütten, Lieut. Doctor, visits Antwerp, 219, 221, 233, 235, 252
+    visits Louvain, 239
+
+
+  Idar, 62
+
+  Identification discs, 105, 165
+
+  Igel, 44
+
+  Ilberg, Dr., in Luxemburg, 51
+
+  Ilm, the, 25
+
+  Ilse, General, 168
+
+  India, Crown Prince in, 62
+    English rule in, 352-354
+    Lord Curzon, Viceroy of, 242, 384
+
+  Indian prisoners of war, 351
+    troops, the, 39, 351-354
+
+  Iron Crosses, the, 42, 326, 358
+    awarded to Lt.-Col. Schaubode, 258
+    bestowed by the Crown Prince, 61, 62, 80
+    chaplains earn, 193
+    shape used as tombstone, 107
+
+  Isolani, in Germany, 24
+
+  Ivangorod, 318
+
+
+  Jade Bight, 268
+
+  Jagow, Herr von, Foreign Minister, at Headquarters, 14, 48
+
+  Jakobson, Captain, 294
+
+  Japan, its relations with Russia, 248, 350, 384
+
+  Japanese occupy Tsingtau, 160
+
+  Jemelle, 201, 203
+
+  Jesuits at Vouziers, 187
+
+  Joachim, Prince, is wounded, 123
+
+  Joan of Arc, statue of, 311, 333, 348
+    statuette of, 106
+
+  Joffre, General, German admiration of, 303
+
+  Johannes, Lieutenant, 181
+
+  _Journal des Débats_, 380 note
+
+  Jung, General, 295
+
+  Jüterbog, 302
+
+
+  Kabylia, 340
+
+  Kamerun, 363
+
+  Kapellen, 136
+
+  Karlsruhe, 243, 380
+
+  Kashmir, 28, 62, 351
+
+  Kaufmann, Captain, 377
+
+  Kemnitz, Colonel von, 140
+
+  Kes, Dr. Walter, 219, 230
+
+  Khorasan, 384
+
+  Kilima Njaro, Mount, 114
+
+  Kioto, 202
+
+  Kipling, Rudyard, author quotes, 289, 308, 353, 356
+
+  Kirchhoff, Professor, 23
+
+  Kirn, 172
+
+  Kitchener, Earl, Crown Prince on, 62
+
+  Klefberg, Dr., 234 note
+
+  Kleinbettingen, 126
+
+  Kobe, 257
+
+  Koch, Frau Martha, her Red Cross work, 214, 215, 239
+
+  Kodak, author’s Eastman, 123
+
+  Kollmann, Lieutenant, 182
+
+  Kondratenko, General, 205
+
+  Königsberg, troops from, 200
+
+  Korte, private, 290
+
+  Kösen, 25
+
+  Kreidel, Privy Councillor, at Brussels, 243
+
+  Kreuznach, 172
+
+  Kriebel, Captain, 372
+
+  Kroeber, Dr. Hans, 26
+
+  Kruiseik, author visits, 358-361
+
+  Krum, Rittmeister von, acts as the author’s chauffeur, 15-55
+
+  Krupp’s factory, engineers from, 294
+    workmen at Namur, 206
+    42-cm. mortars, 214
+
+  Kübler, Doctor, in Ostend, 268, 275, 277, 281, 289, 294
+
+  Kummer, Herr, 315
+
+  Kuropatkin, General, 384
+
+  Kutch Behar, 62
+
+
+  La Chiers, 60, 117, 119
+
+  La Dormoise, 166
+
+  La Ferté, letter from, 35
+
+  Lahn, the, 31, 34
+
+  La Hulpe, 211
+
+  La Lys Canal, 357
+
+  Lamprecht, Captain, 258
+
+  Landsturm, German, at Vouziers, 169
+    drill the volunteers, 243
+    characteristics, 5
+    guards the railways, 22, 126, 129, 203
+    in Bapaume, 317, 333, 343
+    march-past of, 149, 222
+
+  Landwehr, German, 162, 176, 222, 264
+
+  Langen Schwalbach, 30
+
+  Lavaux, 127
+
+  Lawrence, Sir Walter, 242
+
+  Le Cateau, author visits, 368
+
+  Le Chesne, 146, 182
+
+  Leclerc, Alfred, 165
+
+  Leffinghe, 271
+
+  Leipzig, 115
+    battle of, 21
+
+  Leman, General, at Liège, 206
+
+  Le Mans, 121
+
+  Lemberg, battle of, 7
+
+  Lengagne, Mesdemoiselles, 302, 344, 367
+
+  Le Nouvion, 368
+
+  Leo XIII., Pope, 334
+
+  Lepsius, Doctor, 205, 210
+
+  Lewenhaupt, Count, 173
+
+  Libramont, 128, 200-202
+
+  _Liebesgaben_ for German troops, 74, 186
+
+  Liebrecht, 64
+
+  Liège, Krupp’s men at, 206
+    siege of, 61, 206
+
+  Lierre, 218, 298
+
+  Lille, author visits, 309-311, 315
+    author visits, 348, 351
+
+  Linder, Fru, 380
+
+  Linselles, 357
+
+  Liny, 67
+
+  Lippe, Doctor, 282, 289
+
+  Livland wars, the, 29
+
+  Lomme, 311
+
+  London, refugees in, 285
+    Guildhall meeting, 354
+
+  London, Jack, his dogs, 22
+
+  Longlaville, 57
+
+  Longlier, 127
+
+  Longuyon, author visits, 59, 119, 129, 369
+
+  Longwy, bombardment of, 48, 57, 119-122
+
+  Looting, instances of, 170, 195, 223, 367
+
+  Lopnor, sea of, 244
+
+  Lorraine, the author in, 57
+
+  Louis XIV., King, 121
+
+  Louis XVI. at Varennes, 93
+
+  Lou-lan, 121, 244
+
+  Louvain, author visits, 239, 240
+    destruction of, 55, 240, 244
+
+  Löwenstein, Prince, at Douai, 346
+
+  Lübke, Captain, escorts the author, 347, 348, 357
+
+  Ludwigshafen, 378
+
+  Luise, Dowager Grand Duchess, in Karlsruhe, 380
+
+  Lumm, Councillor von, 297
+
+  Lunéville, 56
+
+  Luther, 250
+    at Wittenberg, 20, 21
+
+  Lützen, 24, 27
+
+  Luxemburg, author at, 36, 44-56
+    German Headquarters in, 48-50, 122-124
+    prisoners in, 40
+    treatment of wounded in, 47, 48
+    Grand Duchess of, 45
+
+  Lwow. _See_ Lemberg
+
+
+  Machenhauer, Lieut.-Col., 88
+
+  MacMahon, Marshal, at Sedan, 146
+
+  Madras, 351
+
+  _Magdeburgische Zeitung_, author on the Kaiser in, 49
+
+  Main, the, 28
+
+  Malancourt, 73
+
+  Malines, 218, 234, 263;
+    author visits, 220, 221, 230, 234, 240, 245, 297, 298
+
+  Maltzahn, Baron von, 61
+    injured in a motor accident, 114, 115, 382
+
+  Mamer, 126
+
+  Manchuria, war in, 11
+
+  Mannheim, 378
+    Brewery, 136
+
+  Manuel of Portugal, ex-King, 307
+
+  Marche-les-Dames, 208
+
+  Margaret of Austria, statue of, 221
+
+  Marguth, Pastor, 191, 199
+
+  Mariakerke, author at, 286, 287
+
+  Marines, German, at Antwerp, 233-235, 241, 251, 257
+    at Ostend, 276
+
+  Marksuhl, 28
+
+  Marloie, 203
+
+  Marne, the, 152
+    Battle of the, vi
+
+  Marschall, Lieut.-Gen. von, at Douai, 346
+    in Luxemburg, 51
+
+  Marseilles, 70
+
+  Mars-la-Tour, 146
+
+  Martha, Sister (Frau Koch), 239, 257
+
+  Marville, 59, 119, 368
+
+  Massebus, Lieutenant, in Brussels, 214
+
+  Matthiasz, Major, accompanies the author under fire, 64, 68, 70-73,
+        80, 84, 97
+
+  Maubeuge, 286
+
+  Max, Prince of Württemberg, 168
+
+  Mayence Ammunition Park Depot, 125
+    Elector of, 29
+
+  Mecklenburg, Duke Adolf Friedrich of, as a chauffeur, 367-370
+    at Brussels and Bapaume, 296, 301, 306-320, 332, 344, 362, 367,
+        371, 372
+    at Douai, 346
+    at Roubaix, 350
+
+  Meiningen, Duke Georg of, 297
+
+  Meinze, Herr, 35
+
+  Melle, 263
+
+  Memel, 125
+
+  Menin, 358
+
+  Merseburg, 23, 24
+
+  Merwart, 202
+
+  Merxem, 259
+
+  Messempré-Messincourt, 132
+
+  Metz, 44, 56
+    author visits, 367, 376, 378
+    fortifications of, 217
+
+  Meuse, the, 60, 67, 105, 207
+
+  Mézières, 368
+
+  Middelkerke, 186, 285
+    artillery at, 265, 271, 275, 283
+    author at, 271-273, 275
+
+  Militarism, German, 356, 357
+
+  Mine-field off the Belgian coast, 293
+
+  Miraumont, sports at, 362
+
+  Mohammed Isa, 351
+
+  Moltke, Colonel-General von, in Luxemburg, 45, 55, 122
+    Chief of the General Staff, smooths the author’s road, 14, 45, 56,
+        76, 116, 144, 248, 379
+    Countess von, in Luxemburg, 45, 47, 55
+    General von, at Donchery, 1870, 137
+
+  Mönch, Commander, 289
+
+  Monchy-au-Bois, trenches at, 320-331
+
+  Mons, author at, 299
+
+  Montblainville, 94
+
+  Montenegrin troops, the, 354, 355
+
+  Montmédy, 60, 105, 118, 129
+
+  Mont St. Jean, 211, 212
+
+  Moroccan troops, 39
+
+  Moscow, 190
+
+  Moselle, the, 34-36, 44
+
+  Mudra, General von, at the front, 85, 92, 97
+
+  Mulde, 22
+
+  Müller, Admiral von, in Luxemburg, 51, 53, 122
+    Colonel, in Antwerp, 245, 258
+    Lieutenant, 196, 198
+    Major von, 62, 187
+
+  Münch, Franz Xaver, chaplain, 335-340, 366
+
+  Munich, 345
+
+  Mutius, Colonel von, in Luxemburg, 51
+
+
+  Namur, 60
+    author visits, 199, 201-210
+
+  Nancy, 104
+
+  Naninnes, 204
+
+  Napoleon I., at Leipzig, 21
+    at Waterloo, 211, 212
+    picture of, 138
+    bust of, 159
+
+  Napoleon III., Emperor, capitulation of, 136-139
+
+  Narbonne, 171, 172
+
+  Narva, 191
+
+  Nassau, 30
+
+  Naumburg, 24
+
+  Nethe, Major, 299
+    the, 218, 223, 242
+
+  Neufchâteau, 127
+
+  Neuville, artist, 63
+
+  _Newcastle Chronicle_, the, 380 note
+
+  New Guinea, 32
+
+  New Zealand, troops from, 250
+
+  Ney, Marshal, 211
+
+  Nicolai, Major, in Luxemburg, 122
+
+  Nieuport, 239, 265, 271, 275
+    Allies in, 272, 273
+    bombardment of, 284
+
+  Nietzsche, xvi
+
+  Nobel prize winners, 355
+
+  Noërs, 59, 368
+
+  Norway, William II. in, 50
+
+  _Novoye Vremya_, 384
+
+
+  Oetinger, General von, 380
+
+  Ohain, 212
+
+  Okuniev, 168
+
+  Oldershausen, Colonel von, 358
+
+  Omdurman, 62
+
+  Ooms, Karel, widow of, 227
+
+  Oskar, Prince, illness of, 123, 124
+
+  Ostend, author visits, 263-294
+    bombardment of, 268-283, 317, 346
+
+  Ostend, Churchill in, 255
+    Germans in, 243, 263, 265, 285, 289
+
+  Osterith, Mrs., 258
+
+  Overyssche, 211
+
+
+  Pappenheim in Germany, 24
+
+  Paris, fortifications of, 217
+
+  Parsohen, Captain, 170
+
+  Pasteur, statue of, 311, 348
+
+  Pawel, Lieut.-Gen. von, 362
+
+  Peene, the, 5
+
+  Peihmann, Baron von, 372
+
+  Pekin, 375
+
+  Pelkmann, General von, 370
+
+  Penang, 214
+
+  Peronne, 302
+
+  _Persia and the Persian Question_, Curzon’s, 384 note
+
+  Perthes, 179
+    Justus, 27
+
+  Peter the Great, Tsar, 146
+
+  Petri, Harald, Swedish Consul in Antwerp, 253-255, 259, 260, 263, 265
+
+  Petrograd, Poincaré in, 50
+
+  Pfeil, Count von, at the front, 85, 90
+
+  Photography, author’s, 123, 165, 210, 235, 317
+
+  Pius IX., Pope, 334
+
+  Pius X., Pope, 223
+
+  Planchenois, 212
+
+  Planitz, Major von der, 62
+
+  Plato, Major von, at Sedan, 132-135, 199, 200
+
+  Pless, Prince, in Luxemburg, 51
+
+  Plessen, Col.-Gen. von, at Douai, 346
+    in Luxemburg, 51, 123
+
+  Plettenberg, General von, 306, 316
+
+  Poincaré, President, at Petrograd, 50
+
+  Poland, Germans in, 344, 355
+
+  Polish roads, 16, 18
+
+  Pomerania, 5
+
+  Pompeii, destruction of, 121
+
+  Port Arthur, siege of, 205
+
+  Portuguese troops, the, 354-356
+
+  Posen, author in, 295
+
+  Potsdam, 35
+    author at, 19
+
+  Pousette, Herr, 239
+
+  Prenzlau, 5
+
+  Press, honesty of the German, 318, 355
+    methods of the English, 354-356
+
+  Prisoners of war, dismal fate of, 89
+    German, treatment of, 31-33, 40, 89-91; _see also under_
+        British, French, etc.
+
+  Prussian-Hessian State Railways, 125
+
+  Przemysl, 318
+
+  Putten, 254, 260
+
+
+  Quaterecht, 263
+
+  Quesnoy, 313, 371
+
+  Quiévrain, 300
+
+
+  Rambaldi, Lieut. Count, 176
+
+  Rath, Colonel von, at Dannevoux, 70
+
+  Rathgen, General, at Namur, 209
+
+  Rawalpindi, 28
+
+  Rechberg, Adjutant, 91
+
+  Rehnsköld, Field-Marshal Count, 24
+
+  Reichard, Dr., 320
+
+  Reichenau, von, German Minister in Stockholm, 13
+
+  Reischach, Baron von, in Luxemburg, 123
+
+  Rennenkampf, General, 303
+
+  Requisitions, German, 133, 147, 183, 184
+
+  Rheims, 146
+    bombardment of, 129, 200, 239
+    Germans in, 307, 315
+
+  Rhine, the, 34
+
+  Richthofen, Professor, 233
+
+  Rixingen, 372
+
+  Rodingen, 57
+
+  Romagne, Germans in, 74, 81, 83, 98-103, 104, 109
+
+  Romans at Igel, the, 44
+
+  Röntgen, 250
+
+  Rosebery, Lord, quoted, xvi
+
+  Rosendaal, 254
+
+  Rossignol, battle at, 32, 38, 187
+
+  Roubaix, English prisoners in 348-351
+
+  Roumania, King of, 307
+
+  Rouvroy, 147
+
+  Rubens, P. P., his house, 258
+    pictures of, 249
+    statue of, 250
+
+  Rügen, 4
+
+  Rupprecht, Crown Prince, of Bavaria, at the front, 344-347, 357
+
+  Russia, effect of victory for, 304, 354
+    its relations with England, 159, 248, 384
+
+  Russian Army, its advance on Berlin, 284, 303
+    possible depression of, 309
+    prisoners of war, 382
+    roads, 16
+
+  Russo-Japanese War, the, 11, 248
+
+
+  Saale, the, 24, 25
+
+  Saarbrücken, 44, 378
+
+  Salvius, Adler, 29
+
+  Sambre, the, 207
+
+  _Sans Souci_, 352
+
+  Sarthe, the, 122
+
+  Sassnitz, 4, 386
+
+  Sauer, the, 44
+
+  Sautier, Frau, 380
+
+  Savolaks, 29
+
+  Saxony, King of, 298, 373
+
+  Schaubode, Lieut.-Col., in Antwerp, 258
+
+  Scheerenberg, Lieut.-Col., in Brussels, 231
+
+  Scheldt, the, 224, 227, 236, 255
+
+  Schiller, 339
+
+  Schleswig-Holstein, Duke Ernst Günther of, 297
+
+  Schlüchtern, 28
+
+  Schlüter, Captain, 362
+
+  Schmidt, soldier, 64
+
+  Schmidt von Knobelsdorff, Lieut.-Gen., 62-64
+
+  Schoelvinck, Herr, 307
+
+  Scholander, Sven, 308
+
+  Schönfelder, Dr., at Ostend, 268, 282, 284, 288-290
+
+  Schröder, Admiral von, at Antwerp, 245
+    at Middelkerke, 275
+    at Ostend, 278
+
+  Schulenburg, Count von der, 342
+
+  Schumann, 159
+
+  Séchault, 146, 161
+
+  Seckendorff, Baron von, controls the Fourth Army, 140-145, 196
+
+  Secundinius Aventinus, 44
+
+  Sedan, author visits, 122, 125-144, 182-186, 196, 200, 204, 368
+    memories of 1870 in, 60, 134-136, 146
+
+  Semois, the, 130
+
+  Senegal, 340
+
+  Senegalese troops, the, 39, 250
+
+  Senegambia, 355
+
+  Septsarges, 64-71
+
+  Serajevo, assassination of the Archduke at, 50
+
+  Serbian troops, the, 354, 355
+
+  Sevron, 168
+
+  Shanghai, 214
+
+  Shaw, G. B., quoted, 354
+
+  Sick, Professor, 115
+
+  Simla, 353
+
+  Singapore, 214
+
+  Siemens, Herr K. F. von, 242, 299-301, 376
+
+  Skobeleff, General, 384
+
+  Slype, 271
+
+  Social democrats, German, 376
+
+  Soden, General von, 362
+
+  Soignies, 299
+
+  Somme Py, 147, 173, 181
+
+  Souain, burning of, 174, 177, 179, 180
+
+  Spy, profession of the, 23, 167, 327-330
+
+  Stålhandske, 29
+
+  _Standard, The_, 367 note
+
+  St. André, 103, 313
+
+  Stecho, Doctor, in Brussels, 231
+
+  Steffen, Professor Gustaf F., on Antwerp, 231 note
+    quoted, 352, 354, 367 note
+
+  Steglitz, 219
+
+  Stenay, 60, 97, 102, 117, 119
+
+  Sterpenich, 126
+
+  St. Étienne, 119
+
+  Stettin, 219
+
+  St. Francis, Day of, 189-194
+
+  St. Hubertus, Day of, 362
+
+  St. Kilian, statue of, 223
+
+  Stockholm, 3, 33, 44, 123, 248, 380, 386
+    German Minister in, 13
+    Poincaré in, 50
+
+  St. Privat, 370
+
+  Stralsund, 4
+
+  _Stralsund_, cruiser, 269
+
+  Strassburg, von Wedel, governor of, 9
+
+  Strauss, Richard, 159
+
+  St. Vincent, Sisters of, 189
+
+  Suhlmann, Captain, 97, 102
+
+  Sweden, danger from Russia to, 304, 384
+    its military attachés in Germany, 12
+    Landsturm of, 3
+
+  Swedish Army in Germany, vi, 21, 22, 24, 27, 29, 54, 146
+    its lines of communication, 141, 162
+    Consul in Antwerp, 253-255, 259
+    granite in Belgium, 263
+    letter of credit, author’s, 122, 239
+
+
+  Tacitus on the Germans, 20
+
+  Tägert, Captain, at Ostend, 266, 271, 278, 294
+
+  Tahure, 181
+
+  Taine, statue of, 194
+
+  Takla-makan, 202
+
+  Tannay, 146
+
+  Tannenberg, 7
+
+  Tappen, Colonel, at Douai, 346
+
+  _Tasmania_, s.s., 238
+
+  _Taubes_, German, author inspects, 44, 171, 275
+    damaged by French, 330
+    over Ostend, 280
+
+  Taube, Count, Swedish Minister in Berlin, 9
+
+  Tauchnitz, Baron von, in Metz, 370, 372
+
+  Taunus, the, 30
+
+  Telephone Service, Army, 328-330
+
+  Tellancourt, 119
+
+  Termonde, 252, 285
+
+  Tetanus, cases of, 152, 210
+
+  _Tête de Flandre_, Germans at, 236, 237
+
+  Tettenborn, Lieut.-Gen. von, 373, 377
+
+  Theft, German punishment of, 170, 195, 223, 367
+
+  Thiébaut, M., of Nancy. 104
+
+  Thüringer, Wald, the, 27
+
+  Tibet, the author in, 53, 62, 190, 248, 351
+
+  _Times, The_, quoted, 231 note, 367
+
+  Tirpitz, Admiral von, 50
+    in Brussels, 242
+
+  Togoland, German Governor of, 296
+
+  Trade, Germany captures the world’s, 257, 270
+
+  Treis, 35
+
+  Treitschke, xvi
+
+  Trelleborg, 3
+
+  Trenches, life in the, 75, 177, 188, 320-327
+
+  Treutler, Herr von, in Antwerp, 245
+    in Luxemburg, 51
+
+  Trèves, 145
+    the author at, 36-44
+
+  _Trèves Gazette_, 130
+
+  Trutz, Captain, 301
+
+  Tschammer, Baron von, at Vouziers, 158, 169, 196
+
+  Tsingtau, fall of, 79, 160
+
+  Tuaregs, the, 39
+
+  Tubize, 299
+
+  Turcos, the, 354
+
+  Turenne, statue of, 139, 185, 368
+
+  Turkey, von der Goltz in, 215
+
+  Turkish fleet, the, 344
+
+
+  Uhlans of the Guard, the, 17, 35, 74, 93, 112
+    in Belgium, 224, 230, 233, 236
+
+  Ukraine, 191
+
+
+  Vabitj, 191
+
+  Vacha, 28
+
+  Valenciennes, 300
+
+  Vandervelde, M., at Ostend, 285
+
+  Van Dyck, birthplace of, 235
+    pictures by, 220
+
+  Varennes, 107, 146
+    engagement at, 84-103, 113
+
+  Vauban, memorials at Longwy, 119, 121
+
+  Vauquois, 94
+
+  Vélu, château of, 316
+
+  Venduyne, 288
+
+  Verdun, fortress of, 46, 61, 65, 105, 127, 200, 239
+
+  Verhaghen, pictures by, 220
+
+  Verlinghem, 313
+
+  Vernier, Madame du, 64, 103, 115
+
+  Verrier, Lieutenant, 31-33, 38
+
+  Very, 94
+
+  Vienna, the author in, 9
+
+  Vilosnes, 68
+
+  Vionville, 146
+
+  Visby, 248
+
+  Vitry, battle of, 48
+
+  Voort, van der, carving by, 249, 250
+
+  Vosges, the, 239
+
+  Vouziers, the author at, 142, 144-146, 150, 169, 173, 182, 186-196,
+        200
+
+
+  _Wacht am Rhein, Die_, 235, 341
+
+  Wachtmeister, Count, 367
+
+  Waelhem, 221, 225, 230
+
+  Wagner, Richard, 159
+
+  Waldemar, Prince, in Brussels, 231
+    in Luxemburg, 48, 122
+
+  _War and Culture_, Steffen’s, 231, 352, 354, 367 note
+
+  War, its psychology, 11
+    of 1870, Franco-Prussian, 10, 34, 57, 136-139, 146
+    of 1914-15, probable outcome of, 10
+    Russo-Japanese, 11
+
+  Warsaw, 168
+
+  Wartha, the, 79
+
+  Wasserbillig, 44
+
+  Waterloo, the author at, 210-214
+
+  Wavre, 297
+
+  Wedel, Prince von, 9
+
+  Weddigen, sinks the _Cressy_, _Aboukir_ and _Hogue_, 113, 129
+
+  Wegener, Professor Georg, 233
+
+  Weimar, 125
+    author in, 26
+
+  Weller, Major von, 299
+
+  Wellington, 1st Duke of, at Waterloo, 211, 212, 230
+    on Antwerp, 270
+
+  Werder, General von, 272
+    Anton von, his pictures of the capitulation of 1870, 137, 138, 158
+
+  Werra, the, 28
+
+  Wervicq, 357
+
+  Wessling, Swedish officer, 146
+
+  Western front, length of the, 186, 239, 289
+
+  Widenmann, Professor, 62, 114
+
+  Wiesbaden, 30
+
+  Wilamovitz, Countess, 17
+
+  William I., King of Prussia, at Ems, 31-34
+    at Sedan, 136
+    statue of, 34
+
+  William II., Kaiser, at Douai, 345-347
+    author’s interviews with, in Luxemburg, 49-54, 123
+    creates a Navy, 50, 53, 242
+    grants the author leave to visit the front, 46
+    his efforts to avert war, 24, 49, 53, 192, 336
+    his health, 54
+    his jubilee, 49
+    his piety, 53
+    in Metz, 370
+    visits French prisoners, 32
+
+  William III., of England, King, 213
+
+  Wimpffen, General, at Donchery, 1870, 137
+
+  Winckler, Lieut.-Gen. von, 319, 323, 327
+
+  Wine, Germans do not practise abstinence from, 147, 183
+
+  Wittenberg, 20
+
+  Wittisch, Lieut.-Col., 272, 273
+
+  Wittlich, 36
+
+  Woevre, 211
+
+  Wounded, uniform treatment of, 35, 38-42, 47, 48, 69, 98-102, 133,
+        151-158, 257, 291
+
+  Württemberg, 15, 19
+    Duke Albrecht of, victory of, 127;
+      author meets, 165, 168
+    Landwehr, 74
+    troops, 93, 127, 196
+
+
+  Xivry, 369
+
+
+  Ypres, xv, 79, 317, 357
+    English prisoners from, 359-361
+
+  Yser Canal, the, 271, 284
+    fighting on, 290, 295, 317
+
+
+  Zeppelins over Antwerp, 251
+
+  Zimmermann, Herr von, Under Secretary of State, 14
+
+  Zinsser, Dr., at Vouziers, 150-152, 186
+
+  Zobeltitz, Lieut. von, 62
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's Notes
+
+
+The following changes have been made to the text as printed.
+
+1. Illustrations and end-of-page footnotes (marked with an asterisk)
+have been located in appropriate paragraph breaks.
+
+2. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been silently
+corrected.
+
+3. Where a word is used repeatedly in the same way, spelling and
+hyphenation have been made consistent, preferring the form most often
+used in the printed work, or failing that the more usual form in
+general use at the time of publication. No typographical change has
+been made within direct quotes from other works.
+
+4. The spelling of the following names has been changed to agree with
+normal usage at the time of the original publication:
+
+  Page 135: "ordinarily a judge at Frankfort-on-Main" to "...
+  Frankfurt-on-Main".
+
+  Page 188: "In the Argonne forest much blood has flown" to "... has
+  flowed".
+
+  Page 261 (caption) and List of Illustrations: "Bergen-op-Zoon" to
+  "Bergen-op-Zoom".
+
+  Page 378 (chapter heading) and Table of Contents: "Trälleborg" to
+  "Trelleborg".
+
+5. Index: some entries have been amended in accordance with the
+corresponding body text.
+
+6. No change has been made to the following place names, but it is
+noted that:
+
+  Page 211: "Wawre" is a town in central Belgium, indexed as "Woevre",
+  now known as "Wavre".
+
+  Page 297: "Wavre" is a village near Antwerp, indexed as such, now
+  known as "Waver".
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79238 ***
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+
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79238 ***</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<figure class="figcenter illo w90" id="Cover">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover image">
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="sect x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="tnbox">
+<div class="section">
+<p class="fs125 center sp2" id="Transcribers_Note">Transcriber's Note</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>New original cover art included with the work is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="sect x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section">
+<p class="fs125 center sp2">
+WITH THE GERMAN
+ARMIES IN THE WEST
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="sect x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section">
+<div class="box1">
+<p class="center fs90 sp2">
+<i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i><br>
+</p>
+</div>
+<div class="box2">
+<p class="fs90 sp0 hang">
+<br>
+THROUGH ASIA<br>
+<br>
+CENTRAL ASIA AND TIBET TOWARDS THE HOLY CITY OF LHASSA<br>
+<br>
+TRANS-HIMALAYA<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="sect x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section">
+
+<a id="Frontispiece"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="Frontispiece_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/frontispiece_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>MILITARY POLICEMAN MAKING NOTES
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="sect x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section">
+<h1>WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST</h1>
+<p class="noindent center">
+<br>
+<span class="fs200">: BY SVEN HEDIN :</span><br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs80">AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE SWEDISH</span><br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs125 gesperrt1">BY H. G. <span class="allsmcap">DE</span> WALTERSTORFF</span><br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs100">WITH 119 ILLUSTRATIONS AND 4 MAPS</span><br>
+</p>
+<p class="sp4 center">
+<span style="color:red;">LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD</span><br>
+NEW YORK:  JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXV
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="sect x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section">
+<p class="center sp2"><i>SECOND EDITION</i></p>
+
+<p class="center sp4 fs80">WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[p. v]</span></p>
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="AUTHORS_PREFACE">
+    AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">LONG before my book dealing with my personal recollections
+from the war theatres of France and Belgium had
+been translated into English, it was made the subject
+of a criticism in the <cite>Daily Telegraph</cite> of February 15th.</p>
+
+<p>The author, Mr. William Archer, complained that I have
+not once introduced into my narrative any harsh and condemnatory
+utterances regarding Germany’s conduct of the
+war. The fact is that I have had no occasion for such utterances.
+My self-imposed task was, as I have repeatedly made
+clear, merely to describe what I saw with my own eyes and as
+much as possible to refrain from citing the experience of others.
+During the two months that I spent on the German western
+front, I did not see <em>a single instance</em> of cruelty to prisoners or
+wounded, let alone ill-treatment of the civil population and
+its goods and chattels. The Germans maintained the same
+incorruptibly severe and just discipline that existed, according
+to the testimony of history, in the Swedish armies which
+Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. led to victory during
+the epic period of my own country.</p>
+
+<p>But even in peace time not a day passes but that crime is
+committed even in the most civilised countries. How, then,
+can one expect that it shall disappear in a war? I therefore
+by no means deny that there have been isolated instances of
+offences and cruelty in an army of several million men. But
+I have not <em>seen</em> them and need not therefore embark upon
+the subject. I have a shrewd suspicion that criminal statistics
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[p. vi]</span>generally will testify in favour of the Germanic peoples&mdash;as
+compared, for instance, with the Slavs and the Latins.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. William Archer has something to say about my “outspoken
+contempt for England.” Here he is mistaken. I have
+no feeling of hatred towards England and have never entertained
+any feelings of ill-will towards its great and admirable&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
+people. It is only the part which England has played and
+plays in this world-wide crisis that I abhor and deplore.
+The earth is large enough to hold both England and Germany,
+and England would have gained more by keeping neutral in
+this war. The hatred of England which pervades Germany
+is new&mdash;it began on the 4th August, 1914. Prior to that date
+it did not exist. Whether England’s policy has gained the
+sympathy and approval of the neutral countries is not for me
+to judge. One can respect and admire a nation for its splendid
+qualities and for its colossal contribution to the advancement
+of the world, and yet not admire its policy at a given juncture.
+This is the nature of the feelings I now entertain for England,
+and I deeply regret that her guiding statesmen were not able
+to avert a situation which must inevitably bring misfortune
+upon their country. Did the English <em>people itself</em> desire this
+war? That question will be answered in the early future.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> The more literal translation would be “excellent and admirable,” or “capital
+and admirable”; the term is difficult to render to a nicety.&mdash;Translator.</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. William Archer is surprised that I do not speak about
+the Battle of the Marne. Here I will remind him once more
+of what I say in the introduction to the book, to wit, that it
+was not my intention to write the history of the war. I have
+simply described the happenings at which I myself was
+present.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion Mr. William Archer says: “It would be curious
+to know whether Dr. Hedin now feels so confident of Germany’s
+triumph as he did in the golden prime....” As to that,
+after the events which have occurred <em>since</em> “the golden
+prime,” especially on the eastern front, my faith in Germany’s
+victory is more unshakable than ever.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[p. vii]</span></p>
+
+<p>It is very kind of Mr. William Archer to say that German
+culture is not in danger. I really think that he is right. The
+Germans have shown that they are men, capable of defending
+their culture against I might almost say the whole world,
+and I pity those who thought that by their united forces
+they would be able to reduce Germany to a second or third
+rate power.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  SVEN HEDIN
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Stockholm</span></p>
+
+<p><i>25th February, 1915</i>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[p. viii]</span></p>
+<hr class="sect x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section">
+
+<p>For the hospitality, the confidence and the comradeship
+which have been shown to me in the German
+armies at the Western Front, I tender my most heartfelt
+thanks.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  SVEN HEDIN
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Stockholm</span></p>
+
+<p><i>27th January, 1915</i>
+</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[p. ix]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">
+    CONTENTS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<table class="contents">
+<tr class="fs80">
+ <th class="toccol1"> CHAPTER</th>
+ <th class="toccol2"></th>
+ <th class="toccol3"> PAGE</th>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1">  I.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"> <span class="smcap">On the Way to the Front</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3">  <a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1">  II.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"> <span class="smcap">The Emperor William</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_44">44</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1">  III.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"> <span class="smcap">On the Way to the Fifth Army</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_55">55</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1">  IV.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"> <span class="smcap">A Day at Eclisfontaine</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_80">80</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> V.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">A Day at Dun</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_104">104</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> VI.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Back at Main Headquarters</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_117">117</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> VII.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">To Sedan</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_125">125</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> VIII.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">In the Rear of the Fourth Army</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_145">145</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> IX.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">With the Fourth Army</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_161">161</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> X.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Quiet Days</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_182">182</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XI.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">To Belgium</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_196">196</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XII.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Antwerp the Day After Its Fall</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_217">217</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XIII.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">More Days in Antwerp</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_233">233</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XIV.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Still in Antwerp</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_248">248</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XV.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap"><i>Via</i> Ghent and Bruges to Ostend</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_263">263</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XVI.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Ostend Bombarded</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_275">275</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XVII.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Two More Days on the Channel Coast</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XVIII.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">To Bapaume</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_296">296</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XIX.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">An Excursion to the Front at Lille</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_306">306</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XX.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Trench Life</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_316">316</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XXI.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Sunday the First of November</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_332">332</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XXII.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">English Prisoners from Ypres</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_348">348</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XXIII.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Farewell to Bapaume</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_362">362</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XXIV.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">A Final Day on the Western Front</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_372">372</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"> XXV.</td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><a id="TN6"></a><span class="smcap">Home to Trelleborg</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_378">378</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="toccol1"></td>
+ <td class="toccol2"><span class="smcap">Index</span> </td>
+ <td class="toccol3"> <a href="#Page_391">391</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi"></a>[p. xi]</span></p>
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">
+    ILLUSTRATIONS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<table class="contents">
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#Frontispiece">Military policeman making notes</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3 right" colspan="2"> <i>Frontispiece</i></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <th class="tocloi2"></th>
+ <th class="tocloi3 right" colspan="2"> FACING PAGE</th>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill001">21-cm. mortars firing at Septsarges</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 70</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill010">A service wagon at Stenay</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 71</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill002">Field-marshal General von Haeseler and General von Mudra at Eclisfontaine</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 96</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill003">Wrecked houses at Dun on the bank of the Meuse</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 97</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill006">A food column composed of commandeered farmers’ carts</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 112</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill005">Bank clerk from Blois. Prisoner at Dun</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 113</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill008">Road across bridge at Dun</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 114</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill007">Landwehr soldier, gaoler at Dun</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 115</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill009">The Crown Prince’s headquarters at Stenay</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 116</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill011">Street in Longuyon</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 117</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill012">Wooded height between Sedan and Donchery</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 130</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill013">Houses wrecked by shells at Donchery</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 131</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill014">Diagram showing organisation on lines of communication</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 142</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill015">German infantry</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 143</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill017">Infantry reservists on the fringe of a wood at Rouvroy</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 146</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill016">A dressing wagon had halted behind a few dark pines</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 147</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill018">A dressing wagon with hood</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 148</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill019">Four doctors breakfasting under cover of a shelter tent</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 149</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill021">Soldiers under cover of a haystack at Rouvroy</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 150</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill020">Officers’ car at Grandpré</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle"> <span class="fs200">}</span></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle">151</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill022">French prisoners carried wounded Germans to the railway station</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill023">A chef de musique of the 11th Infantry Regiment, 17th Army Corps,
+  taken prisoner on September 26th, south of Vouziers. Slightly
+  wounded in the head</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 154</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill024">Chambon, thirty years old, French soldier from Perigueux in Dordogne
+  (17th Army Corps). Slightly wounded south of Vouziers</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 155</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill025">Feeding the wounded (the second from the left is Major von Plato)</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 156</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill026">A seriously wounded man carried from the train to the hospital at Sedan</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle"> <span class="fs200">}</span></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle">157</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill027">The Uhlans proceed on their way</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill028">A squadron of Uhlans halt outside Captain von Behr’s house to await their baggage train</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 158</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill032">Protracted halt of an infantry ammunition column. Shelter tents have been pitched</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 159</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[p. xii]</span><a href="#ill029">Colonel Fischer at his tripod telescope</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 161</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill052">A field kitchen or <i lang="de">Erbsenkanone</i> (“pea-shooter”)</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 162</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill034">“A hero’s death”</a> </td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 163</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill030"> Ammunition column halting beside a barn</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 164</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill031"> Camp scene on a farm at Séchault</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 165</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill037"> An ammunition column at Cernay</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3">166</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill033"> A company ready to start out, receiving its marching instructions</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 167</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill035"> Bivouacking food column with horses and covered wagons</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 170</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill036"> A field hospital at Condé effectively screened from observation</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle"> <span class="fs200">}</span></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle">171</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill038"> Kitchen wagons “at work” near Condé</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill039"> Perot Julien, a 54-year-old peasant charged with plotting, but released
+  through insufficient evidence </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 172</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill042"> Saisac of Toulouse, 11th Infantry Regiment (33rd Inf. Div., 17th Army
+  Corps). Prisoner at Vouziers </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 173</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill044"> Olive, thirty years old. Infanterie Coloniale, 24ème (2nd Colonial Inf.
+  Div.). Native of Perpignan, Eastern Pyrenees. Prisoner at Vouziers </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 174</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill041"> Five Reservists from Bordeaux and Narbonne who fought in Alsace
+  and Champagne, and were captured the 26th and 27th September south
+  of Vouziers. They are busy peeling potatoes. At Vouziers the French
+  prisoners were allowed to cook their soup themselves in order to get
+  the proportion of meat and vegetables that they liked best </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 175</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill004">French prisoners at Vouziers waiting for their dinner</a> </td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 176</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill043">German airmen: Capt. Chamier, Lieutenants Count Rambaldi and
+  Bürger, and a fourth. The Iron Cross can be seen on the underside of
+  the left plane </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 177</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill045">A battery of light field howitzers in position</a> </td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 178</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill046">A salvo has just been fired. The guns are now being reloaded </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 179</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill047"> Observer masked by twigs and branches</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 180</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill048">Scene on the road in front of the observation post</a> </td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 181</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill049"> Pater Müller, Professor Zinsser and a Franciscan friar</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3">188</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill040"> French prisoners at Vouziers</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 189</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill051">French prisoners working at the railway station at Vouziers</a> </td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 196</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill050">Arms and knapsacks of dead and wounded&mdash;Vouziers </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 197</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill053"> A doctor, Prof. Capt. Lepsius and a few <i lang="fr">Sœurs de la Providence</i> in the
+  Convent grounds</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 205</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill061"> A group of fugitives </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 212</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill057">On the way to Ghent and the Channel</a> </td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 213</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill054"> Malines Cathedral, south aspect</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 220</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill055"> A house at Malines “laid open” by shell fire</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3">221 </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill058">Marché aux Souliers a few days after Antwerp’s fall</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 224</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill056">Belgian prisoners at Malines</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 225</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill066">Food column on the way to the ferry, with the Cathedral tower in the
+  background, flying the German flag over the cross</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 228</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill064">Food column crossing the Grand’ Place</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 229</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill063">Marines with a “field kitchen” and a couple of calves</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 230</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill062">Fugitives returning to Malines from the south</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 231</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[p. xiii]</span> <a href="#ill060">In front of the Town Hall at Antwerp</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 234</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill059">Infantry halting in front of Antwerp Town Hall</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 235</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill067">Horses and vehicles being brought on board one of the pontoon ferries.
+  The vessels anchored in the fairway were used as pontoons for the
+  bridge which the Anglo-Belgian army threw across for its retreat.
+  When the last man had crossed, the bridge was blown up</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 236</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill068">The transport across the Scheldt</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle"> <span class="fs200">}</span></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle">237</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill065">A Belgian gun in the harbour</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill070">Louvain Town Hall</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 240</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill071">Some houses only have the walls left standing</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 241</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill073">The interior of Malines Cathedral before the removal of the débris</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 244</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill072">Destruction wrought by “fat Bertha” in Fort St. Catherine</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 245</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a id="TN4"></a><a href="#ill076">The Dutch frontier station at Putten on the way to Bergen-op-Zoom</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 252</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill074">Fugitives returning to Antwerp from Holland</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 253</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill075">Outworks at Dryhoek, blown up by their commandant</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 260</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill069">A German marine on the pontoon ferry at Antwerp</a> </td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 261</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill077">A petty officer with a few marines at a street corner in Ostend</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 274</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill078">Military policemen inspecting the damage outside the Majestic Hotel</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 275</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill079">The western end of dining-room at the “Majestic” seen from the
+  street; one shell had crashed through the upper part of the window</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle"> <span class="fs200">}</span></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle">282</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill081">A Maubeuge gun doing duty at Middelkerke</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill080">A “direct hit” on a house near the Hôtel Littoral</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 283</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill084">Half of Capt.-Lieut. Bess and the whole of the author on the way to Blankenberghe</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 286</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill086">A self-igniting mine explodes</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 287</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill085">Dr. Schönfelder and the author on the dunes at Ostend</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 288</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill088">A traverse at Dorpfeld</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 289</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill082">Group beside one of the guns of Lieut. Haak’s battery. (Furthest to the left are Capt.-Lieut. Bess and Lieut. Haak)</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 292</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill083">Gun crew getting ready to fire on a British destroyer</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 293</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill090">Hole made by a 42-cm. shell in Fort Talaert</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 300</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill089">At the entrance to Fort Talaert</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 301</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill091">The interior of Fort Lierre</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 304</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill087">Privy Councillor von Lumm beside the hole made by a 42-cm. shell</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 305</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill094">Streets at the Porte Douai which have suffered through the bombardment</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 306</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill092">Hereditary Prince Friedrich of Hohenzollern and Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 307</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill095">A 15-cm. howitzer battery</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 310</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill093">Of some houses there is only the skeleton left</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 311</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill097">Well-masked guns</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 314</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill096">Gunners studying the news</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 315</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill099">Soldiers reading the latest number of the <i lang="de">Bapaumer Zeitung am Mittag</i> </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 318</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill098">Two young ladies are the only civilians to be seen</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 319</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill100">Band playing beside Faidherbe’s statue</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 340</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill101">German soldiers beside the French general’s memorial</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 341</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[p. xiv]</span><a href="#ill102">Tommy Atkins at Roubaix</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 348</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill102_1">The French waitress and her English customers</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 349</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill104_2">They were clothed in neat and practical field uniforms</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 352</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill104_3">Here and there was a slightly wounded soldier</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 353</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill103_2">The last houses of Kruiseik</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle"> <span class="fs200">}</span></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3" rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle">354</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill103_3">A shell crater in the road is being filled in by engineers</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill103_1">Hussar patrol riding through Kruiseik</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 355</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill103_4">First came a German soldier with an English colonel on his left</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3">358</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill104">Then came the convoy</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 359</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill104_1">The convoy halted just outside the village </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 362</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill104_4">An English officer on a stretcher placed across a cart</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 363</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill105">Group of officers at Bapaume: The Duke, the Prince, the Chief of Military Police, Cleving, Baron Fleming and others </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 368</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill106">An enormous ammunition column had come to a stop at Barbas </a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 369</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill103">Kitchen wagons</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 374</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill107">On the fore-carriage of a gun sits a soldier fast asleep</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 375</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"> <a href="#ill108">A group of soldiers with the Divisional Pastor in the centre</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 378</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocloi2"><a href="#ill109">The last picture from the Western Front</a></td>
+ <td class="tocloix"></td>
+ <td class="tocloi3"> 379</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="MAPS">
+    MAPS
+  </h2>
+
+<table class="contents">
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocmap2"><a href="#map_1">The country round Eclisfontaine and Varennes</a></td>
+ <td class="tocmapx"></td>
+ <td class="tocmap3"> <i>between</i> pp. 86 and 87</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocmap2"><a href="#map_2">The country between Somme Py and Rouvroy</a></td>
+ <td class="tocmapx"></td>
+ <td class="tocmap3"><i>between</i> pp. 152 and 153</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocmap2"><a href="#map_3">The Belgian coast between Blankenberghe and Neuport</a></td>
+ <td class="tocmapx"></td>
+ <td class="tocmap3"><i>face</i> p. 266</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="tocmap2"><a href="#map_4">The country round Lille and Ypres</a></td>
+ <td class="tocmapx"></td>
+ <td class="tocmap3">312</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[p. xv]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="PUBLISHERS_NOTE">
+    PUBLISHER’S NOTE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">As I have been publicly criticized for undertaking the
+issue of the English edition of this book, for the most
+part by people who have not read it, I am taking
+the somewhat unusual course of giving a brief explanation of
+my point of view.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, Dr. Sven Hedin’s book is essentially a
+record of facts as he saw them. He is a trained observer, and
+there can be no question of his veracity. Hitherto, for facts
+with regard to the German Armies and their organisation we
+have had to rely on such accounts as the German official
+communiqués chose to give us, which nobody believes; or,
+as an alternative, on the accounts published in our own press,
+which, owing to the strictness of the censorship, were mostly
+gathered from accounts furnished by prisoners or our own
+soldiers. The prisoners were naturally pessimistic and our
+men optimistic. Hence the general impression formed has
+been that the German organisation had gone to pieces, that
+their troops were short of food and clothes and that their
+ammunition was poor.</p>
+
+<p>How far this is from the truth these pages will show, and it is
+surely desirable to publish a book that for the first time gives
+us a comprehensive idea of the wonderful organisation against
+which we are fighting. To my mind it is one of the things
+chiefly needed to stimulate both our workers and our
+recruiting.</p>
+
+<p>Again, is it not well to let the English nation know, for
+instance, that those 600,000 troops which our gallant 120,000
+successfully withstood at Ypres were not ill-clad, ill-fed levies,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvi">[p. xvi]</span>but magnificently equipped troops with a machine-like
+organisation behind them?</p>
+
+<p>There is also the question of Dr. Sven Hedin’s anti-English
+opinions, which are quite distinct from his record of facts.
+But why should these not appear in this country where those
+of Bernhardi, Nietzsche, Treitschke and Cramb have been
+universally read and their publication applauded? His reflections
+are of course intensely irritating to any British subject,
+but they cannot possibly affect the British cause. On the
+contrary, their publication will probably do good, for there
+is nothing like a little tail-twisting to rouse the British Lion!</p>
+
+<p>They afford only one more example of the truth that Lord
+Rosebery enunciated the other day that “foreigners have
+never understood Englishmen and Englishmen have never
+understood foreigners.”</p>
+
+<p>These opinions, however, though evidently accepted from
+official Germany without question or examination, do not
+lessen the value of Dr. Sven Hedin’s record of personal experiences.
+For he is so obviously honest. Indeed, again and
+again he naively records little facts which really tell against
+his case.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Hedin’s personal position is not for me to discuss, but
+I give his book intact, omitting only, at his own request, a few
+passages dealing with Swedish politics of purely local interest,
+and the British public can form its own judgment both of the
+author and of his views.</p>
+
+<p>If that judgment is unfavourable I hope it will not prevent
+them from taking his facts to heart.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  JOHN LANE
+</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[p. 3]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center fs200">
+WITH THE GERMAN
+ARMIES IN THE WEST
+</p>
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">
+    CHAPTER I
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">ON THE WAY TO THE FRONT</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">THE tocsin bell has ceased to ring. Swedish men are
+no longer being called to arms. Quiet has once
+more descended upon Stockholm, and it is only
+occasionally that one encounters a detachment of Landsturm
+men marching through the streets to join their units or on
+their way home. People go about their business in the old
+familiar way. It would be hard to believe that the great
+world war was raging outside, did not the newspapers with
+their great black headlines and their fateful contents form a
+sinister reminder.</p>
+
+<p>But the individual who under these conditions started out
+from the Stockholm Central terminus with Berlin as his
+immediate objective, was only too well aware that it was not
+an ordinary trip on the Continent on which he was embarking.
+He travelled from the quiet of the North to the storm in the
+South&mdash;to the great capital where history was being made,
+the heart of the great empire which was at war with seven
+states, of which four were great powers. When Stockholm’s
+thousand lights faded into the distance, he felt that peace
+faded away with them, and that each passing day would
+bring him nearer to war. He was committed to a journey
+the spell of which would each day grow stronger, and he was
+a prey to a tension which was only to give way before the
+excitement and the thrill of action.</p>
+
+<p>The train clanged through the pitch-black night, and the
+rain wove its delicate tracery on the window-panes. On
+Trelleborg quay only a couple of baggage and mail wagons
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[p. 4]</span>were brought on board the ferry, which bears King Gustaf’s
+name. No Swedish passenger coaches are allowed on the
+German system in war time, and similarly Germany does not
+permit hers to enter Sweden.</p>
+
+<p>The sun has broken through the clouds, but the mist has
+wiped Trelleborg and the Swedish coast from the horizon.
+A fresh breeze is blowing from the south-west, the Baltic is
+coated with swirling white-capped waves, and the ferry cuts
+through the foam on its way to the German coast. There is
+not a ship in sight, no cruisers, no destroyers or torpedo-boats,
+none of the greyhounds of the sea to track and hold
+up doubtful shipping. These are peaceful waters. None of
+the hot winds of war are yet blowing over this sea, only the
+cool autumnal breezes caress the wave crests. But no doubt
+grim times are in store even here, so it is as well to make the
+most of the fleeting hour.</p>
+
+<p>At Sassnitz we set foot on German soil which formerly
+belonged to us. Everything is as usual, the traveller’s excitement
+has been groundless. Nothing&mdash;unless it be a solitary
+Landsturm soldier with shouldered rifle&mdash;to remind one of
+war. On landing, our passports are viséd and our hand
+luggage is examined at the Custom House. Everything is
+done in a quiet and orderly manner. The German railway
+and customs officials are most polite, and look very well in
+their new ornamental uniforms.</p>
+
+<p>The train swings across Rügen to Altefähr and boards the
+ferry for the mainland. Here the time-worn churches rear
+their spires over our old possession Stralsund, where we stop
+a while at the station. Everything is as it used to be, no
+hurry or bustle; people go about their business as in times
+of piping peace. But just as the train is about to steam out,
+a squad of Landwehr soldiers with their kits under their arms
+rush on to the platform and take their seats in the last carriage.
+They are not bound for the front as yet, for they alight at
+Greifswald. A blurred mass of red-tiled roofs framed in the
+luxuriant foliage of late summer, and a number of churches
+pointing their spires aloft&mdash;that is all we see of the old
+university town. But there is nothing unusual to be seen,
+everything runs its normal course. “Papers!” “Beer!”
+cry the boys on the platform, and, anxious for news, one
+buys a paper from one and, to quench one’s thirst, a glass of
+good, dark beer of the other. A light meal is provided by a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[p. 5]</span>woman, who at 30 pfg. each sells small bags of waffles, plums
+and grapes.</p>
+
+<p>From some belated fields the corn is still being brought in,
+and black and brindled cattle, and here and there a flock of
+sheep, is seen grazing in the meadows. Summer and prosperity
+seem to reign everywhere in Germany, and there is meat and
+bread in abundance. Is it possible that it is six weeks since
+this country has been involved in the greatest war in history?
+Everything betokens peace on earth, even the sky is cloudless
+and the sun sheds its golden rays over Pomerania. Among the
+trees by the roadside some women are walking with little
+children in their arms. They are engaged in earnest conversation
+and walk with bowed heads. No doubt their menfolk
+are at the war, and perhaps one of them knows already that
+she is a widow. A conscientious observer might notice that
+there are fewer adult men than usual. But the difference is
+so slight that one would not think of it unless one knew that
+there was war. Old men, women and children seem a little
+more in evidence than in peace time: that is all.</p>
+
+<p>At Anklam station, not far from where the Peene flows into
+the Baltic, another body of soldiers board the train. Their
+uniforms are dark blue with very bright red collars. They
+are Landsturm men in the prime of life, and have probably
+been called up for service within Germany; for at the front
+hardly anything is seen but field-grey uniforms, a protective
+colouring which blends with the appearance of the soil and is
+very hard to distinguish.</p>
+
+<p>Prenzlau&mdash;so now we are in Brandenburg. Fresh bodies of
+Landsturm men clamber into the train, which is to carry them
+away from their homes to an unknown fate. They come
+running and singing across the platform, as if they long to get
+away. Their blue tunics with red collars and shoulder-straps,
+and the red cap-bands, form a bright contrast to the dress of
+the civilians. They are strong and powerful specimens of
+the Teutonic type, but too stout for perfect symmetry. One
+does not see amongst them any ideal specimens bearing the
+distinguishing characteristics of the Caucasian race, no broad-shouldered,
+deep-chested, strapping fellows such as one meets
+with in the mountains of Georgia; but they are a blonde,
+sound, calm and yet cheery set of men, all animated by one
+single thought&mdash;to conquer or to die. Their women, children
+and other relations have followed them to the train to say
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[p. 6]</span>good-bye. All are cheerful, they chat and laugh. There is
+no weeping and complaining, it is the great day of joy, when
+every able-bodied man goes to do his duty for the welfare of
+his country.</p>
+
+<p>My carriage is filled with officers. They are engaged in
+very animated conversation; they do not care what is going
+on around them; they don’t look out of the window and don’t
+allow themselves to be disturbed by the bustle and crush in
+the corridor. They talk about the affairs of their units and
+regiments, about the equipment of the troops and the departure
+for foreign parts. They discuss Hindenburg’s victories and
+give vent to their admiration for him. The cares and solemnity
+of war do not rest heavily on these men; they are animated by
+a glad longing and sure feeling of victory, and without knowing
+them one realises that they have staked their lives and their
+existence on one single goal. About the result they have no
+doubt. They <em>must</em> win, otherwise their country is lost.</p>
+
+<p>But the hours speed away, dusk settles down over Brandenburg,
+and soon the earth is wrapped in darkness. The carriages
+are not lighted&mdash;I don’t know why. As we approach Berlin
+it is dark within, but outside there are rows of electric lamps
+lighting up the interior of the carriage in a fantastic manner.</p>
+
+<p>The train stops at <i lang="de">Stettiner Bahnhof</i>. On the platform
+there is the same busy hum and bustle as in peace time.
+A whole crowd of <i lang="de">Gepäckträger</i> hurry to the window to
+receive the passengers’ luggage&mdash;one notices no lack of men.
+A policeman hands out numbered cab-discs, the heavy luggage
+is got out in a twinkling, and up one jumps into one of
+the numberless taxicabs ranged outside and drives off to
+one’s hotel.</p>
+
+<p>I am an old customer at the Kaiserhof, but this time I was
+told that I ought to stay in Unter den Linden in order to be
+able to study at my leisure from a balcony the endless processions
+of patriots, who, especially at night, file down the
+road with proud bearing, singing patriotic songs. I therefore
+chose the Hotel Bristol. Its name has been removed from
+the large illuminated sign facing the street. Bristol&mdash;this
+name reminded one too much of England’s faithlessness towards
+her Teutonic kinsmen! Only the first letter remained,
+to be interpreted as one might wish.</p>
+
+<p>The hotel was only half-full. Most of the visitors were
+Scandinavians and Americans. It was just as well that there
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[p. 7]</span>were not too many, as the staff had also been reduced by half&mdash;the
+other half was at the front. The quiet which reigned in
+the big building was reflected by the atmosphere of the famous
+avenue outside. To-day there were no closely packed crowds,
+no singing processions. Only those people who had business
+to attend to or who wanted to glean the latest news were seen
+on the pavements&mdash;the others kept indoors. The traffic was,
+if anything, less lively than in peace time, and an amazing
+calm had descended upon the great city.</p>
+
+<p>I went out in the evening to see the people and listen to
+their conversation. The talk was almost entirely about the
+war. I walked through Friedrichstrasse, Leipzigerstrasse and
+the other familiar streets. Everything is just as usual. Berlin
+is wrapped in absolute peace. Innumerable shop windows
+still shed their light upon the pavements. In some of them
+large maps are shown, small flags indicating the positions of
+the armies. On one such map the flags were waving and
+fluttering, as if a storm were ravaging the plains of Europe.
+Outside, in the street, little groups formed to talk about the
+war and to express the hope that the German flags would soon
+be shifted further into the steppes in the east and towards the
+sea in the west.</p>
+
+<p>“Why are the streets so silent?” I ask somebody. “I
+understood that Berlin was in such high spirits.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is so long since we heard of any great victories,” is the
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>“Patience,” I retort, “you must not expect a Tannenberg
+every week.”</p>
+
+<p>Here comes a woman hurrying along with a bundle of
+newspapers. It is the latest edition with fresh telegrams
+from the front. She is hustling as much as possible in order
+to impress on the public that they must look sharp and get
+the news as fresh as possible. On the opposite pavement runs
+a boy with the same newspaper, calling out his ware in a loud
+voice. At a street corner stands an old man with his bundle
+of papers. He is too tired to run, and his cracked voice cannot
+even be heard above the subdued hubbub of street-life and
+the quick flow of talk of the people. It is all the same news,
+and it deals chiefly with the gigantic battle of Lemberg.</p>
+
+<p>The restaurants are well filled, in fact they are all overcrowded
+with customers. Through the big windows one
+can see the honest bourgeois seated at his little table,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[p. 8]</span>where sausage and <i lang="de">wienerschnitzel</i>, <i lang="de">dunkles</i> or <i lang="de">helles</i> may
+be had in abundance. I entered and sat down at a table,
+overhearing scraps of talk from all sides&mdash;all about the war,
+about brothers and sons who are fighting, one hardly knows
+where, as the field post has brought no news for a long time.
+But perhaps the next day will bring a greeting from the front.
+Maybe a son who has been reported in the papers as missing,
+has turned up again. But nevertheless the personal sorrow
+and anxiety is thrust into the background. Every sacrifice
+must be gladly made, and the loved ones may lie dead on the
+field of battle so long as Germany wins her fight against almost
+the whole of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>On the 13th September the lingering summer came to an
+end, and autumn suddenly asserted itself. It poured with
+rain, it was dark, windy, cold and raw. Shallow puddles
+covered the asphalt in Unter den Linden, which resembled
+an enormous river-bed still drenched with the flow, and from
+which the tide had just ebbed. The great avenue now looks
+desolate with a vengeance. From my balcony I can only see
+a few solitary individuals sheltered under more or less elegant
+umbrellas. Berlin’s inhabitants prefer to keep in their comfortable
+homes, and not even the longing for war news can
+tempt them out in such weather.</p>
+
+<p>The rain falls thick and heavy and patters down on the
+dripping limes outside my balcony. Berlin is dull and miserable
+in the autumn when the rain sweeps its long, monotonously
+straight streets with their heavy, dark houses. Not even the
+trooping of the colours and the march-past at midday raise
+the drooping spirits, and only a few pedestrians with open
+umbrellas join the band and march in step with the soldiers.
+The motor-cars buzz past over the asphalt, flinging up a spray
+of water as they rush along. They are plainly far less numerous
+than usual. No calls are made, no visits paid, for the whole
+of the aristocracy is in mourning for lost relatives and everybody’s
+thoughts are centred on the war. Nobody feels inclined
+for the futile pleasures of ordinary times when the newspapers
+speak of a father who has lost four sons at the front, or of a
+mother whose three sons have each died a hero’s death for
+Emperor and country. But no complaints are heard, no tears
+seen. In the streets one seldom sees signs of mourning.
+There is perhaps a tacit convention not to express in black and
+white the sorrow which is felt at the bottom of the heart, but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[p. 9]</span>to make the grief subservient to the proud consciousness that
+the beloved one has fallen for his country, never to return!</p>
+
+<p>Already in Berlin I was greatly impressed by the world-wide
+influence of German thought. Here is a nation which for
+long years back has known how to read the inexorable message
+of time, which has not rested on the laurels gained in its last
+war, which has needed no warnings, and whose watchmen
+never closed their eyes and never dallied with an inevitable
+fate. Here is a nation which during the decades of peace has
+armed itself to the teeth and which now, when the hour has
+struck, stands ready to meet four great powers in fierce combat
+and to contend with one of them for the mastery of the seas.
+It is true that the German people have been divided into
+parties, as the democratic spirit of our age demands, but the
+political factions have nevertheless realised the necessity of
+a strong defence of their common country. And now that the
+war is raging in all directions, the parties have disappeared
+completely. Germany at the present time is inhabited by a
+people which is at one with itself. Here we have but one party&mdash;that
+of the soldiers. Here everyone has but one goal, and
+there is no one who does not realise that this is a fight of life
+and death for Germany; all have the same thoughts, all hold
+the same hopes and offer up the same prayers, from the
+Emperor who stands first and foremost in war as in peace, to
+the street urchin who flattens his nose against the shop window
+and studies the positions of the tiny flags.</p>
+
+<p>But the rain keeps on falling and beats against the window-panes.
+I hurry downstairs, jump into a taxi and in a few
+minutes I am sitting in an elegant drawing-room at the dainty
+new residence of the Swedish Minister, at the corner of Friedrich
+Wilhelmstrasse and Tiergartenstrasse, chatting with old
+friends&mdash;needless to say, about the war. When I last met
+Count Taube in Berlin, I had just returned from a long
+journey in the Far East. Now I stood on the threshold of a
+new journey, which might be infinitely longer than the last!
+Later in the day I visited another nobleman, Prince von Wedel,
+whom I had met in Vienna when he was ambassador there,
+and in Strassburg when he was Governor. We had much to
+talk about, but what is there to discuss in these days but the
+great and bloody drama which occupies everyone’s thoughts&mdash;the
+War!</p>
+
+<p>My most important visit in Berlin was to the Foreign Office.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[p. 10]</span>But before narrating what took place there I must say a few
+words about the reasons which led up to my journey. It was
+desirable that no one in a responsible position in Sweden
+should have an inkling of my journey to the front. Our
+country belonged to the neutral states, and thus no authority
+must entertain the slightest shadow of a suspicion that I was
+travelling on any sort of secret mission. No,&mdash;the reason was
+a very simple one. Only a few days’ journey away the greatest
+war of all time was being waged. It was clear that the outcome
+of this struggle would decide the political development
+for the next fifty or hundred years, or perhaps longer. In any
+case its shadows must envelop the remainder of the lives of
+the present generation.</p>
+
+<p>The war of 1870&ndash;71 became the starting-point of a new era
+in Germany’s development. Now Germany is once again at
+war, and the new political problems which may be expected
+to come up for discussion in the immediate future will doubtless
+be rooted in the great Germanic war. If the two contending
+groups of powers were to come out of the struggle
+only with depleted forces, the war of 1914 would, in its dying
+embers, carry the seed of a new world conflagration, even more
+devastating perhaps than the last. But if Germany were to
+win at all points, the map of the world would undergo sweeping
+changes, and Germany would then, in the great triumph of
+her power, discountenance and forbid fresh wars. If Russia
+were to win, the fate of Sweden and Norway would be sealed.
+Whatever happens, great and memorable events will arise
+out of this struggle. How instructive would it be, then, to
+study the War on the very scene of the momentous conflict, and
+to visit the ravaged regions where the German soldiers carried
+the fate of Germany and of the whole Germanic world on the
+point of their bayonets! No one who has not seen with his
+own eyes how the Germans fight, can fully and clearly grasp
+what the struggle means to Germany. But his presence there
+will enable him to comprehend more plainly what the future
+holds in store for us, and the happenings which in due course
+will be unfolded before our vision.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I look upon my journey to the front first and foremost
+as a political study.</p>
+
+<p>But there were also other reasons and other thoughts that
+made me long to get out to the theatre of war. I wanted to
+see with my own eyes and become familiar with war as it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[p. 11]</span>really is, and I wanted to gain the personal experience which
+would enable me to describe to others the dark as well as the
+bright sides of war. Its dark sides are the hate, the desire for
+vengeance, the destruction, the gutted homesteads, the ruined
+crops, the wounded, the maimed, the graves, the grief and
+privation, but war is bright when it is fought by a united
+nation, determined to live and to retain its independence.</p>
+
+<p>The unity, self-sacrifice and confidence in victory of the
+German nation is one of the bright sides of this war, which
+otherwise reveals an abyss of human misery. I thought it
+would be instructive to see for myself how far civilisation,
+Christianity and pacificism had advanced nineteen hundred
+and fourteen years after the birth of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>During the first phase of the war the British press accused
+the Germans of barbaric cruelty to their prisoners and to
+wounded opponents. Not for one moment did I believe these
+reports, but for the sake of the Teutonic race I wanted to
+uproot this calumny and to bring to light the truth. If one
+cannot ask anything else of a people which stands on the
+pinnacle of culture, one may at least expect it not to accuse its
+opponents of crimes which were never committed. German
+protests against the accusations of foreign newspapers were
+of course of no avail. Perhaps I shall be believed if I protest
+before God that I will not write a single line which is not true
+and will describe nothing but what I have seen with my own
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, it was my wish to study the psychology of war,
+I mean the <i lang="de">Geist</i> and the fighting spirit with which armies
+went into battle, the mood in which they returned therefrom,
+the thoughts and feelings of the wounded, the spirit with which
+the soldiers entered the fray for the second time after having
+been slightly wounded, tended and healed. In the last phase
+of the Manchurian campaign there was a noticeable weakening
+of purpose which led to slackened efforts on both sides and
+caused the war to die, so to speak, of inanition. Was a
+like form of mental fatigue, an exhaustion of soul and body
+under the stupendous hardships in the field to leave its mark
+on the Germans too? Or would their conviction, that the
+war meant to them the life or death of Germany, endow them
+with a buoyancy and tenacity enabling them to fight through
+to victory? It might be of interest to us, Teutons of the
+north, to gain some insight into this problem. Such knowledge
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[p. 12]</span>might be useful, should we at some future time be confronted
+with a situation comparable with that of Germany at the
+present moment. The outcome of a campaign does not
+merely depend upon preparations, war material and training.
+The fighting spirit and general mental attitude of the soldier
+also plays a most important part. The soldier must know
+<em>why</em> he is fighting and <em>what</em> he is fighting for. The psychological
+factor is therefore of the utmost importance. The officer
+leading his men to the front and into the firing line has neither
+the attitude of mind nor the time for such studies. His
+whole attention is and must be concentrated on the fighting
+itself; he only thinks of utilising the striking power of his
+men with the utmost effect at the right moment and in the
+right place. He is therefore&mdash;and quite rightly&mdash;blind to
+everything else. A layman on the other hand, whose attention
+is not distracted by considerations of conduct of war, has better
+opportunities of studying the psychology of the soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>Once this war is over, whole libraries of books will be written
+about it. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that on
+the western front alone upwards of a million and a half diaries
+are being kept at the present moment. In all directions, in
+all fighting units down to the company, the platoon and the
+battery, official war journals are being kept and accounts of
+the fighting are being prepared from the bedrock furnished
+on the one hand by the draft of outgoing reports and on the
+other by incoming papers, orders, reports and communications.
+The soldiers record their own personal experiences, the officers
+their military observations. Many a note-book has no doubt
+protected a heart or checked the death-dealing bullet. Thus
+the sections of the German General Staff, whose task it will
+be in due course to prepare the materials, will be occupied for
+many years to come with this monumental labour.</p>
+
+<p>When I went out to the front, it was clearly established in
+my mind that my narrative would be quite different from the
+military accounts. I was not going to devote any attention to
+matters of purely military science, which could only be dealt
+with by experts. Even Sweden has from the very beginning
+had its military attaché, Major Adlercreutz, of the Scanian
+Dragoons, and later on Lieut.-Col. Bouveng received permission
+to accompany the German forces. Strategical and tactical
+observations would thus be absent from my narrative. It
+would no doubt have been interesting and instructive to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[p. 13]</span>familiarise myself in some measure with these subjects.
+But it was evident to me from the beginning that I should
+always have to observe the utmost tact and discretion, and
+even avoid obtaining knowledge of military matters which
+ought to remain secret until the end of the campaign. This
+veto comprised the distribution of German forces, army corps,
+divisions, regiments and other units, as well as any regrouping
+of forces which might be effected during my presence at the
+front. I was destined often to hear of such details, but made
+up my mind to take no notes in that connection.</p>
+
+<p>Neither did I propose to embody in my narrative any
+account of the events that led up to the war or of the Notes
+despatched hither and thither across Europe during the days
+preceding its outbreak. All this had been fully dealt with
+before. My book was only to constitute a conscientious
+account of what I myself had seen and experienced whilst I
+was the guest of the German Army in the field. Towards
+this army and towards the German people I thus incurred a
+certain responsibility&mdash;my sketch, in order to possess any
+value, must therefore be a true and faithful one. Towards
+Germany’s enemies I also had a duty, not to be unfair to them.
+I further felt a certain responsibility towards Swedish officers
+as a body, for although it might have been my wish that my
+observations should be of use to them, it was more than
+doubtful whether I should succeed in my object. As regards
+the public, whatever I might witness, I had to guard against
+the temptation to satisfy its craving after sensation. Besides,
+it was evident to me that in a modern war there was very
+little to be left to the imagination, and that the reality would
+in most cases render it unnecessary to strive after effect. I
+wanted to describe life and death on the battlefield, that
+was all.</p>
+
+<p>Such were my thoughts and plans at the beginning of
+September. They had arisen and matured in my own mind
+without the shadow of any incentive from German or Swedish
+quarters. When I had made up my mind, all that remained
+for me to do was to obtain permission to go to the front and
+to spend some time with the German Army. With this object
+I applied to the German Minister in Stockholm, His Excellency
+von Reichenau, who with the greatest kindness undertook to
+transmit my request to the competent authority in Germany.
+After waiting a week I received a very courteous reply saying
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[p. 14]</span>that I was very welcome to visit the front. The following
+day, September 11th, I set out on my fateful journey, and at
+the present moment&mdash;when I broke the thread of my narrative&mdash;I
+am standing on the doorstep and ringing the bell at the
+Foreign Office at 76 Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>The Under Secretary of State, Herr von Zimmermann, who
+is acting Foreign Minister in Berlin whilst His Excellency von
+Jagow is at the Main Headquarters, received me with open
+arms and said that all he knew was that I was to proceed
+straightway to the said Headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>“But where are the Main Headquarters?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“That is a secret,” Herr von Zimmermann answered, with a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Good, but how am I to get there?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, the Chief of the Great General Staff, Colonel-General
+von Moltke, has given instructions that a car is to be kept
+at your disposal. You may decide yourself when you would
+like to start. An officer and an orderly will accompany you,
+and if you like you can travel to the Main Headquarters day
+and night without stopping, or you can choose your own road
+and time. In fact, you are at liberty to do as you like.”</p>
+
+<p>“And afterwards?”</p>
+
+<p>“After that your fate will rest in the hands of His Excellency
+von Moltke. No doubt he will map out a plan for your journey.
+The only thing you have to think about now is to get to him.”</p>
+
+<p>“And where shall I find the car?”</p>
+
+<p>“This paper will tell you.”</p>
+
+<p>Herr von Zimmermann handed me a permit from the Great
+General Staff which read as follows: “The bearer of this
+permit is entitled to use the relays of the Imperial Volunteer
+Automobile Corps to the Main Headquarters. Everything
+that can in any way expedite his journey is to be placed at his
+disposal.”</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion I was told that the offices of the Volunteer
+Automobile Corps were at 243 Friedrichstrasse, and that the
+Acting Chief was a Dr. Arnoldi.</p>
+
+<p>After heartily thanking Herr von Zimmermann and receiving
+his good wishes for the impending journey, I went off to look
+for Arnoldi and his office. I found him in a large room full of
+maps, piles of papers, telegrams, officers and orderlies, and
+my reception was as usual most cordial&mdash;in future I shall not
+have to repeat this pleasing fact, for everyone has been equally
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[p. 15]</span>courteous and friendly. To begin with, I was shown a map
+of the great relay road, but for obvious reasons I must not
+tell anything about it.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the question:</p>
+
+<p>“Do you wish to travel independently of all regulations
+or by relays, that is to say, 700 kilometres in 16 hours&mdash;44
+kilometres an hour on end?”</p>
+
+<p>I thought a moment, then chose to be independent, for if
+I had done the journey in sixteen hours, I should have been
+obliged to travel over the most interesting part of the road
+by night when there is nothing to be seen, and, after all,
+I had come to see as much as possible. The trip from Berlin
+to Headquarters ought to mean a continuous crescendo. I
+ought to know what it felt like to leave peace behind and
+gradually to approach the scorching firing lines. I thought
+in my innocence that the roads in Western Germany would
+be more or less encumbered with soldiers and vehicles. Not
+a bit of it! It was a long time before we had to drive slowly
+on account of the congestion, for within Germany all transports
+were effected by rail.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is going to be my chauffeur?”</p>
+
+<p>“An officer, accompanied by an orderly. Both are on duty
+with the Volunteer Automobile Corps.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who appoints the officer?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do; and I am just thinking that Rittmeister von Krum,
+of Württemberg, will be the right man.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Arnoldi touched a button. An orderly entered and was
+asked whether Captain von Krum was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, the Rittmeister is here.” “Ask him to come in.”
+And an officer in field-grey uniform, of the most attractive
+appearance and charming manners, enters the room. Dr.
+Arnoldi tells him what his duties are, namely, to take me to the
+mysterious region in the west, and I wonder in my own mind
+whether it will bore him to jog along with me on the road
+through more than half of Germany. I even ask him how
+he feels about it, and he replies that it will be a great pleasure
+to him to take <em>me</em>, of all people, to the theatre of war. I assure
+Captain von Krum that it pleases me greatly to have <em>him</em>,
+of all people, as my travelling companion, chauffeur and guide.</p>
+
+<p>My Rittmeister had retired from active service, but on the
+outbreak of war he had rallied to the colours and placed his
+car at the disposal of the Crown in accordance with the mobilisation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[p. 16]</span>decree. He drives it himself in the service of the
+Army and the orderly who is to accompany us is, in peace
+time, his own chauffeur. I was told that the Volunteer Automobile
+Corps now mustered 350 cars. The owner of a car
+reports himself and is paid for his vehicle, and he may at the
+end of the war buy back his car from the Crown. It is reckoned
+that the serviceable life of a car is five years. If the owner
+paid ten thousand marks for his car and has used it for four
+years, he only gets paid at the last year’s valuation, i.e. two
+thousand marks, whilst if the car is quite new he receives the
+full amount.</p>
+
+<p>Three hundred and fifty cars&mdash;it doesn’t sound much, but
+these cars merely form the Volunteer Corps, and I suppose
+you will feel more at ease when I tell you that at the western
+front alone there are altogether fifty thousand cars in use,
+whilst forty thousand are left in Germany. That means fifty
+thousand chauffeurs. When one considers that each car
+usually has a crew of two, it will be seen that the equivalent
+of over two army corps are attached to the Automobile
+Service. There are plenty of men in Germany, plenty for
+every purpose. On the eastern front I was told that cars
+are useless outside the German boundaries, owing to the
+shocking state of Russian and Polish roads. There one has
+to ride or requisition ordinary vehicles. But in the west the
+cars play a part the importance of which had only remotely
+been guessed at, as may be gathered from the course of this
+narrative.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, von Krum was told to collect all maps (scale
+1 : 100,000) that we should require from Berlin to Main Headquarters.
+I myself received the pleasing news that I need only
+give ten minutes’ notice before starting, as car, Rittmeister
+and orderly were always ready, likewise Dr. Arnoldi’s wolf-skin
+coat, which he advised me to take with me.</p>
+
+<p>I had thus every reason to be satisfied with my day’s work.
+The trip to Main Headquarters was evidently only the first
+step. What was to follow? Probably a trip along the line
+of German lines of communication to the fighting zone, and
+possibly to the firing line itself. Perhaps it would be my good
+fortune to catch at least a glimpse of a modern fight. After
+such a beginning the rest was sure to go well. My excitement
+on starting had now changed to longing, and I felt that I was
+about to be carried with lightning speed along magnificent roads
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[p. 17]</span>towards a spectacle which I would never forget: the German
+Army in all its overpowering strength drawn up for the greatest
+contest in the world’s history. The German Army! These
+words convey nowadays far more than formerly, and the
+same may be said of the French Army. In these days it is
+not armies of mercenaries that meet one another in the field,
+it is entire nations that range up for battle. The difference
+is only that the German Army is one homogeneous whole and
+pure in race, whilst the French Army is reinforced with
+Englishmen and a whole colour-scheme of imported heathens.</p>
+
+<p>The next day I was out with my friend the Rittmeister and
+got fitted out from head to foot with motor cap, boots and
+puttees, a sporting suit of suitable warmth, leather coat and
+vest, rain-coat, a warm muffler and a pair of motor goggles,
+which I never used.</p>
+
+<p>I ended my day at a reception at the house of the Countess
+Wilamovitz, née Fock, whose husband, Captain of one of the
+Reserve Regiments of the Uhlans of the Guard, is fighting at
+the front. The sole topic of conversation among the guests
+was the War and the final victory.</p>
+
+<p>The 15th of September we started out. I turned up in good
+time at the offices of the Imperial Volunteer Automobile
+Corps, where the car was waiting. But as usual it takes a
+long time to get away; von Krum has several papers to sign
+and maps to arrange and Dr. Arnoldi conveys to me very
+hearty greetings from Lieut.-Colonel Gross, the great
+airship expert and inventor, who is commanding the Field
+Telegraph Battalion. Before I left he insisted on my going
+out to inspect his magnificent establishment. So we drove
+out to see him and were received at the gate by the Colonel
+himself, an energetic, virile, distinguished little man surrounded
+by several officers. The establishment is truly
+imposing, a whole row of barracks, workshops, depots, stores
+and stables surrounding an enormous yard, where masts for
+wireless telegraphy tower aloft. The station is thus in
+communication with the whole of Germany, and the aerial
+news operator was just engaged in reading out for the general
+edification some atrocity stories received that moment from
+English sources. The telegraph battalion with equipment,
+men and horses, is, of course, in the field with its Army Corps.
+But, nevertheless, depots, barracks and stables are replete
+with a completely new set of everything. In the stables
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[p. 18]</span>every stall was occupied by recently requisitioned farm
+horses, fat and sleek and contented in their new unaccustomed
+surroundings. As regards the men, they were all volunteers,
+who had offered themselves in far greater numbers than were
+needed. Just as we were walking across the yard a detachment
+drove in at full speed with its loads of masts and wire.
+It had been out practising, and the precision and resolution
+which distinguished the work of the men was astonishing,
+seeing that they had only had four weeks’ training. One of
+them, by the scars on his cheeks, showed himself to be an
+old University student, and was now headmaster in a school.
+When addressed by the Colonel he came to attention and
+saluted with a smartness which made us suspect that he
+preferred the driver’s seat on a field telegraph lorry to the
+schoolmaster’s desk. We also visited the immense sheds
+containing the wagons with their substantial provision for
+batteries, telegraph and telephone apparatus, insulators,
+tools, wires and the innumerable objects required for field
+telegraph lines. The wagons, which are motor-driven,
+resemble enormous but well-built and graceful boxes. They
+are of immense weight and can only be used on paved or
+macadamised roads. On the Polish roads, soaked by the
+autumn rains, they would not get far. But on the western
+front it is sufficient if they keep to the main roads, where they
+are stationed at suitable points as depots from which supplies
+are conveyed in lighter vehicles to the spot where they are
+wanted. One store shed contained perfect mountains of
+gigantic wire coils. The wire seemed to me somewhat thin,
+but I was told that it fully answers its purpose. The Colonel
+showed me the lances by means of which experienced and
+expert riders throw up the telegraph and telephone wires
+among the branches of an avenue of trees. When I saw all
+these heavy lumbering vehicles and appliances and all these
+thousands of miles of wire, the idea crossed my mind that it
+was all very well when it was all ranged up before one as at
+an exhibition in Berlin, but how would it all work out in war?
+Was it possible that everything would turn out as calculated?
+Would the wagons arrive in time and would there not be
+endless bother with all these wires in trees and on the ground?
+I was soon to learn how wonderfully everything panned out
+and with what meticulous care every detail was superintended
+by trained soldiers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[p. 19]</span></p>
+
+<p>But time flies, we rush back to Berlin, cross Unter den
+Linden and pass out through the Brandenburger Tor. The
+war cars always create a good deal of interest. The Rittmeister
+sits at the wheel himself and steers his car with wonderful
+assurance. He threads his way with the most daring
+turns and twists in between and past other cars and carriages
+in the Tiergartenstrasse, and by pressing a little bulb on the
+wheel he produces a piercing, twittering noise which during
+the day caused an officer to shout after us: “That’s a nice
+little canary you’ve got hold of!”</p>
+
+<p>By the side of von Krum sits the chauffeur, the excellent
+Deffner, also from Württemberg, an enormous chap. His
+rifle is lashed to the front of the car. I myself occupy the back
+seat, where I have the map of the General Staff at hand,
+making hasty notes now and again. At the bottom of the
+car is my luggage, two bags no larger than can be carried by
+myself if necessary. In the field one should not carry more
+baggage than one can cope with personally. Our first halt
+is at Potsdam, 28.9 kilometres. We fly along at a rattling
+pace on the magnificent road lined by avenues of trees, parks
+and long rows of large new houses. Here we have the Wannsee
+with its innumerable sailing boats at anchor, its leafy nooks,
+its villas and inns. There are very few people about and we
+seldom meet another vehicle. But when we sight one down
+the road, the shrill sound of the canary rends the atmosphere,
+and Deffner conjures forth a melodious note out of his hooter.</p>
+
+<p>We are not far from Beelitz when a report is heard under
+the car&mdash;it is not a shell, merely a burst tyre which compels
+us to stop and change it. A horseshoe nail has worked its
+way through the cover, but Deffner is a handy man and it is
+put right in no time. There is a fresh breeze blowing, and it
+murmurs through the pines by the roadside&mdash;it is the last
+breath of summer complaining that autumn is so near. One
+finds it rather windy travelling in an open car at sixty kilometres
+an hour with a head wind, but it is delightful and
+exhilarating to travel fast, to fly along the road regardless
+of everything and to approach the scene of events which are
+now daily filling the pages of the world’s history. All unpleasant
+thoughts are blown away, all fuss and pettiness
+which one otherwise has to endure are left behind, one simply
+runs away from it all and is filled with a feeling of buoyant
+joy and freedom as one rushes past the fields, the homely
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[p. 20]</span>villages, the farms, the copses, the endless, straight avenues
+of ash, oak, maple and elm&mdash;everything flits past and disappears,
+whilst the hand of the indicator marks seventy
+kilometres an hour. There is nothing to indicate that Germany
+is in the throes of her greatest war. Huge cartloads of scented
+hay are being brought in from the meadows&mdash;not all Germany’s
+horses are busy pulling guns and ammunition. The sails
+of the windmills travel round busily with several reefs taken
+in, grinding the corn which is to be made into bread for
+millions of soldiers and their families at home. At Treuenbrietzen
+we encounter groups of merry school children who
+shout and wave, and in the fields outside women, young
+and old, are busy gathering potatoes and beet. They greet
+us with a flutter of aprons and handkerchiefs. Why on earth
+are they waving to us, I say to myself, but the answer is
+obvious&mdash;the uniforms and the streamer denote a war car,
+and they realise that we are on the way to the front; whether
+they know us or not does not matter, but perhaps they think
+we shall meet their own dear ones who are fighting out there
+for hearth and home!</p>
+
+<p>Now the country opens up more and stretches out in undulating
+vistas before us. Presently we reach the top of a
+rise and see the tower and roof of Wittenberg church in a
+hollow before us&mdash;the Elbe valley. Here is the Schlosskirche,
+and I see in my mind’s eye the wonder-struck crowds gathering
+before the portals where the monk Luther nailed up his
+ninety-five theses. But disturb not the peace which reigns
+within the church, where the great reformer rests before the
+pulpit! Outside in the street a body of volunteers are
+marching; they look cheerful, they march well with a rhythmical
+firm step and sing a lively and inspiriting war song. At
+the next street corner we meet another detachment on the
+way to or from its drill ground. They are strapping young
+fellows of martial bearing, and one can see how they are longing
+to get out to fight. They do not sing, they whistle a pleasing
+tune which sounds quaint among the venerable houses of
+Wittenberg. They are Teutons, they were not born to be
+conquered by Slavs and Latins. Their forefathers were
+described by Tacitus, and they fought and conquered in the
+Teutoburger Wald. Now it is the descendants of the old
+Teutons who are gathered under the German eagles to struggle
+for freedom between the Rhine and the Vistula, and far
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[p. 21]</span>beyond the valleys of the great rivers. It is a dangerous
+game to trifle with the eagle, for he may leave his nest and
+spread his wings for flight. But Germany’s fateful hour has
+now struck, and the moment has come for the Teutons to
+assert themselves and to lay the foundation for an assured
+future. Listen to the echo of their ringing stride in the streets
+of Wittenberg&mdash;the same echo is heard in all German cities
+where the volunteers rally round the flag! It is a migration
+the like of which the world has never seen, and the country
+is filled with the spirit of resolution and enthusiasm which
+does not know what fear is or doubt, an understanding which
+asks no questions. They march off to unknown fates, glorious
+and horrible alike. Very soon they will say their evening
+prayers to the accompaniment of the thunder of guns and the
+shrieking of shells. It is not for German liberty alone that
+they are fighting, it is for the independent existence of the
+other Germanic nations as well that they fearlessly face death
+on the battlefield. So no wonder that my eye follows them
+until they disappear round the next street corner&mdash;the sound
+of their music still ringing in my soul.</p>
+
+<p><i lang="de">Zum König von Preussen</i>, <i lang="de">Zum Goldenen Anker</i>&mdash;they
+show wonderful fertility of mind in hitting upon attractive
+names to lure the customers into their inns! Many a
+<i lang="de">Bierkneipe</i> in these parts has venerable associations, and inns
+are still to be found where it is known that Luther sat and
+quaffed his good old beer.</p>
+
+<p>But Wittenberg also has Swedish memories. Many a
+Swedish soldier has marched over the Elbe bridge since the
+memorable 3rd September, 1631, when Gustavus Adolphus
+came over for the first time to rescue Protestantism and the
+liberty of thought on earth&mdash;up to the October day, 1813,
+when our old regiments for the last time trod the road to
+Leipzig to take part in the struggle against Napoleon. How
+different was the conduct of war on these two occasions, but
+how alike were the will and spirit of the people!</p>
+
+<p>It was with a mixture of pride and melancholy that I sat
+thinking of those good old times, as we skimmed the surface
+with lightning speed.</p>
+
+<p>With the car as a pair of compasses we measure out the
+distances on the full-scale map of Germany itself. The Elbe
+valley has disappeared behind us, and we now pick up and
+leave one village after the other. Sometimes the village
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[p. 22]</span>streets are paved with cobbles, and our speed slackens considerably.
+In other places rattling carts drawn by powerful
+dogs in complete harness come jogging along at a brisk pace.
+It is a pleasure to look at them. Truly they are examples of
+faithfulness and conscientiousness. With panting mouths and
+dripping tongues, and with all muscles and sinews of their
+bodies strained to the utmost, they tug so fiercely that their
+paws and chests might be expected to be a mass of sores.
+The man at the cart does not urge them and has no whip in
+his hand. He seems, on the contrary, to wish to hold them
+back when they struggle along too fast. If anyone seems to
+approach too close to their master’s barrow, they set up a
+ferocious bark. They long to be in harness as soon as the sun
+gets up, just like Jack London’s pals in Alaska. It is touching
+to see their sense of duty and honour. And yet they are but
+dogs. I felt I would like to follow them on the road and study
+them. But the car goes on inexorably, and in a twinkling
+they are far, far behind.</p>
+
+<p>Gräfenhainischen&mdash;what a delightful little monosyllable!
+One must never be in a hurry when one lives at Gräfenhainischen.
+As long, nay, longer than the name is the narrow street
+that leads through the village and finally loses itself in the flat
+country beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Mulde with its bridge and Bitterfeld, where the market is
+in full swing, are the next landmarks in our journey. The
+stalls with the busy market life around them look very
+picturesque. Full of colour, but at the same time so old-fashioned
+and tranquil&mdash;nobody could imagine here that
+Germany is at war. On the road outside the town we see
+plenty of women driving or walking back to their rustic farmsteads
+after their marketing.</p>
+
+<p>At the lignite mines outside Bitterfeld the little baskets on
+the cable-ways are busy carrying the coal to the factories,
+where it is made into briquettes.</p>
+
+<p>Next we roll into Halle and are now on the most classic
+ground of our national history, for it was at Halle that Gustavus
+Adolphus rested from the 10th to the 17th September, 1631,
+with the army which had conquered at Breitenfeld on the
+7th of the same month. In passing over the bridges we cross
+a seemingly inextricable maze of railway lines. The bridge-heads
+here, as everywhere in the German Empire, are guarded
+by Landsturm sentries with loaded rifles. All railways and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[p. 23]</span>high roads, all arteries of communication on land and water,
+in fact everything that can pass by the name of road is of the
+utmost importance in war time, as they are the means of
+carrying the troops to the parts where the fighting is going on.
+But most important of all are the bridges, especially those
+spanning the great rivers. Any accident to one of these bridges
+means the severing of an artery for some time ahead. It may
+mean the loss of a battle. Everything must run as if it were
+greased, in war there must be no miscalculations, no sundering
+of the points which join the front with the interior. The
+cutting of his lines of communication is a distinct reverse to
+the enemy. The profession of the spy and plotter carries
+with it little honour and much danger. But had the allies
+been able to do so, they would certainly with the aid of enterprising
+emissaries have attempted to destroy the bridges, say
+across the Rhine, and thus stop or delay the German advance.
+Hence every important bridge throughout Germany has been
+guarded with sentries since the beginning of the war, and no
+bridge and viaduct is ever without one or two Landsturm men
+of middle-age, wearing dark-blue uniforms, and in the evenings
+and at night grey overcoats; they pace faithfully up and down
+at their posts on the bridges or under arches with arms crossed
+and the rifle held vertically inside the left arm, until they are
+relieved by their comrades. As the car dashes past with its
+fluttering war streamer, they come briskly to attention with
+the rifle to the order.</p>
+
+<p>Well, we are now at my dear old Halle on the Saale, where
+I once studied geography with the charming and humorous,
+one-eyed but yet keenly wide-awake Professor Kirchhoff.
+Halle is exactly as it used to be. In its main street there are
+plenty of people about, mainly children and young people,
+for this is the great highway to Merseburg and to the fighting
+West, and many military cars dashed past during the hour
+we halted in the town. Here also large war maps are exhibited
+in the booksellers’ windows, and outside them interested
+groups of Halle folk are gathered, mostly schoolboys, who
+talk importantly in loud voices of the silent, significant evidence
+of the little flags. At Halle another horseshoe nail or maybe a
+bit of glass caused tyre Number 2 to burst, and as the accident
+happened exactly opposite Schultheiss’s door, von Krum and
+I saw in this a direct hint from fate that we wanted a glass of
+beer. There we sat and chatted at the table with its many-coloured
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[p. 24]</span>cloth and round discs of felt under the beer mugs,
+and wondered how far we should get before nightfall. But
+as we sat and talked, dusk quietly descended upon Halle and
+when we got outside the street lamps were being lit. Further
+away in the west on the horizon the sky was a flaming red&mdash;a
+symbol of the bloody battlefield.</p>
+
+<p>After lighting our lamps, off we went from Halle southward
+past Merseburg on the way to Naumburg, still hugging the
+Saale valley. We are still on classic Swedish soil. November
+memories of 1632&mdash;Pappenheim’s cuirassiers, Isolani’s Croatians,
+holding sway at Halle and Merseburg whilst Gustavus
+Adolphus is lying at Naumburg. Two hours before daybreak
+the King left this very town for Lützen. One can almost hear
+the Swedish cavalry bugle-calls. It was at this same Merseburg
+that the proud dragoons of the bodyguard under Field-Marshal
+Count Rehnsköld were installed in 1706&ndash;7.</p>
+
+<p>The bright light from our lamps shows up the road for some
+distance ahead. We have now slackened to 40 kilometres
+an hour. The leafy trees by the roadside are lit up from
+beneath, and we seem to travel through an endless fantastic
+tunnel of foliage. Far away on both sides of the road are
+strings of glistening lights&mdash;the windows of farms and villages
+where fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, maids and
+children are sitting round the lamp to read for the twentieth
+time the letters and cards received from their soldiers at the
+French and Belgian front. What do these letters say? I
+have read several. There are millions of them. The soldier
+tells his people how he likes his billet, what food tastes like
+after the heat and stress of the day, what it feels like when the
+shells burst close by and comrades fall at one’s side. They
+tell also that the enemy is done for, that he will be thrown
+back as soon as the commander deems fit to order them to
+charge. They speak with good-nature of the Frenchmen as
+courteous and honest soldiers, but of the English with glowing
+hatred. And, as often as not, the soldier finishes up by saying
+that there can be no question of any return to the village until
+he is wounded or useless&mdash;which God forbid&mdash;and until
+victory has been gained over Germany’s enemies. For the
+soldiers know, from the oldest veteran to the youngest drummer
+boy, that Germany was armed to the teeth to be ready for the
+war, but that Germany’s Emperor and statesmen did all in
+their power to avert a disaster which would surely affect the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[p. 25]</span>whole world and cause rivers of blood and tears to flow, bring
+nameless misery to ravaged homes and ruined countrysides,
+untold nights of anguish and expectation and long years of
+inconsolable grief and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>But the evening is wearing on. We have left Naumburg
+behind us. The good people in the town have gone to bed,
+for the lights are mostly out and the windows dark. Tucked
+into their snug beds they listen to the whir of the motor-cars
+and the warning tooting of horns, and their thoughts no doubt
+run on to the fateful west whither the cars are speeding. But
+they will soon get left behind, the buzz dies away in the
+distance, and sleep carries them into the peaceful realm of
+dreams. I too begin to get a little sleepy. My eyelids begin
+to droop and my head feels heavy; it sinks down and recovers
+with a jerk as the car quickly takes a corner. The excellent
+Rittmeister seems to suspect something, for he slackens speed
+and says it is only a few minutes to Kösen; he asks what I
+think of this little watering-place as a spot for putting up for
+the night. Yes, I think Kösen is an ideal spot and quite
+agree that we ought to stop there. So we drive quietly into
+the little town, the two halves of which are separated from
+one another by the Saale, but reunited by a stone bridge. We
+stop at the hotel <i lang="de">Zum mutigen Ritter</i> and are soon wide-awake
+again in its parlour, with a warming cup of steaming
+tea before us. The host keeps us company and tells us that all
+the visitors disappeared like magic when the war broke out,
+and that his own hotel business has dwindled to nothing at
+all. “But what does that matter as long as we win,” he
+adds.</p>
+
+<p>The 16th September was heralded by a cloudy sky and
+heavy, sleepy raindrops, which, however, soon stopped falling
+after obligingly laying the dust. From Kösen there was a
+steady rise across and along the heights which line the Saale
+and Ilm valleys in the north. Pretty vistas open up at the
+sides, where the valleys sink between the hills and where the
+forest, dark and heavy, silently mounts guard over its secrets.
+A little further on the country becomes more broken and the
+road winds along in big curves. On the left we leave the
+Apolda and its valley. On a commanding height we catch
+sight of a so-called Bismarck tower of granite, with the great
+chancellor’s name hewn into the stone at the top and his
+portrait medallion at the bottom. These towers are often to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[p. 26]</span>be met with in Germany, and on certain days of national
+rejoicing huge bonfires are lit on their summits.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot drive through Weimar without visiting the house
+where Goethe lived for forty years, and which stands in the
+square now bearing his great name. It is with a feeling of
+reverence that one sets foot on the steps and thresholds
+and in apartments where Germany’s, perhaps the world’s,
+greatest poet and thinker lived his life. As far as possible the
+furniture has been reinstated and restored to its former state.
+One admires Goethe’s discrimination as a collector and the
+quick intelligence he brought to bear on all departments of
+the natural sciences. These traits are evidenced by his large
+and magnificent geological and mineralogical collections, his
+zoological and botanical finds, and his physical laboratory.
+I stop, however, longest before the cabinets containing in large
+portfolios his pen-and-ink and water-colour sketches. I am
+touched as I look at them. Every stroke of the brush in these
+landscapes, portraits and groups has been made by his own
+hand. Their execution is masterly, and the perspective and
+general effect superb. Yet this was but a trifling detail in his
+wonderful endowment. Equally fascinating almost are the
+busts which render his glorious head and the oil paintings
+for which he sat. What wonderful eyes, full of life and energy
+and geniality! They reveal an intellect to which everything
+is as clear as crystal. With a feeling of awe and without daring
+to speak to the courteous Dr. Hans Kroeber, who showed
+us over one of the greatest national treasures of Germany,
+we entered Goethe’s study on the ground floor with its windows
+looking out on to the little garden. How simple and modest
+everything is; it occurs to one that one of the lighter rooms
+upstairs would have been a good deal pleasanter to work in.
+Behind the study we see his little bedroom, rigidly simple,
+where, with the words “More light,” he ended the saga of his
+wonderful life.</p>
+
+<p>When the mind has tarried for a little while in this world
+of great and precious memories, and is suddenly confronted
+on issuing into the square with a detachment of Landsturm
+soldiers marching off to their shooting range, when one leaves
+Goethe’s home behind and is once more surrounded by the
+modern world and thinks of Germany’s gigantic struggle
+against half the world&mdash;then, indeed, one has to rub one’s
+eyes and steady oneself mentally so as not to lose one’s balance.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[p. 27]</span>And this people, which has produced Goethe, and which now
+with honour and splendid courage fights on half a dozen
+fronts, has by the press of many countries and in fact entire
+nations been called a people of barbarians!</p>
+
+<p>But let us continue our trip along the great highway;
+it is now lined for a long distance with plum trees where women
+and girls on ladders are seen picking the great violet fruit
+and collecting it in baskets drawn on small barrows by dogs.
+On the whole we do not see many people, apart from the
+handful of peasants driving hay home in their carts drawn by
+cows, and a few women mowing the grass on banks and
+meadows.</p>
+
+<p>Next we come to Erfurt, a town which like so many others in
+these parts is memorable to us Swedes. At “The Tall Lily”
+Gustavus Adolphus spent one night of his great life. It was
+the night between the 28th and 29th October, 1632, after the
+assembling of the Swedish Army which a few days later was
+to fight and conquer at Lützen. At Erfurt one also thrills
+with pride at the memory of Field-Marshal Johan Banér.
+Here, as everywhere, the Landsturm soldiers sing as they
+march along. We lose ourselves in the labyrinth of old-world
+streets, and not even my experienced guide von Krum
+is able to find his way. “Which way to Gotha?” we cry at
+every street corner, and the answer comes quickly, <i lang="de">rechts</i>,
+<i lang="de">links</i> or <i lang="de">gerade aus</i>. At last we work our way out of
+the tangle and fly along towards Gotha, the city of Justus
+Perthes and the Almanach de Gotha. Here it is easy to find
+the way, and before we know where we are we find ourselves
+once again dashing along through avenues of tall, graceful
+poplars towards Eisenach.</p>
+
+<p>On our left the ground rises towards the rain-shrouded,
+misty ridges of the Thüringer Wald, but the road itself runs
+through smiling villages with their picturesque houses of the
+timber framework type, where cackling geese and clucking
+turkeys sometimes do their best to get run over or at all events
+to hamper our progress. At every bridge we come to, we
+receive a smart military salute from the sentries. We spin
+along at a lightning pace to Eisenach, and are as quickly out of
+it. The road now turns sharp to the south-west and by a series
+of gentle curves ascends the heights of the Thüringer Wald. On
+both sides of the road is a fine wood of lofty pines. I could
+almost fancy that I had been transplanted to certain parts of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[p. 28]</span>my own land where the eye is accustomed to dwell on these
+dark green, solemn firs standing like sentinels by the roadside.
+It is a beautiful piece of country. The smell of damp
+earth and juicy pine-needles rises in the air and reminds one
+vividly of the country on the road from Rawalpindi to Kashmir.</p>
+
+<p>From the top of the hills a vast perspective opens up towards
+the south-west. Once again the road runs in serpentine
+curves down from the Thüringer Wald. The forest here consists
+largely of foliaged trees rather than conifers. Marksuhl is
+situated in a broken piece of country, where the higher-lying
+parts are occupied by clusters of trees whilst the rest of the land
+is cultivated. At Vacha we cross the important River Werra.
+From this point we progress again at lightning pace. Villages,
+fields, meadows, farms, gardens and leafy coppices, everything
+seems to fly past us.</p>
+
+<p>Here we have Hünfeld in Hesse. Let us stop a moment and
+drink a cup of tea. There is a cosy dining-room in the restaurant.
+At a table sits a nurse with the Red Cross badge on
+her arm talking to two gentlemen, evidently doctors, for they
+speak of the care of the wounded soldiers. A few sportsmen
+enter with their bags full of partridges and hares. They are
+dressed in brown and green, with sporting-looking felt hats
+with plumes, and carry their guns on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>We jump into the car once more and proceed to the old
+bishopric of Fulda, which does not long engage our attention,
+then across bridges and streams through a series of villages,
+one of which with its sinuous main street is called Schlüchtern.
+We continue to be delayed by poultry, geese and dogs, but
+the children seem to have learnt to leave the roadway clear.
+The boys give us a military salute and shoulder their little
+wooden guns, whilst the little children play on steps and
+benches, the mothers waving to us almost affectionately as if
+to say, “Give him my love and God bless him and you and
+the whole of our country!”</p>
+
+<p><i>Via</i> Gelnhausen we travel on to Hanau, in which neighbourhood
+we come across swarms of civilian cyclists. “Who
+on earth are these people, are they recruits on the way to join
+the army?” I ask. “Bless you, no; they are workmen from
+the factories and workshops at Hanau returning to their
+villages at the end of their day.” Big and majestic the Main
+sends its muddy waters towards the sea. It is raining a little,
+the roads are soaked but just as good. We can see that we
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[p. 29]</span>are approaching a big town, the traffic on the road increases,
+people live closer together, and the telegraph wires combine
+into mighty clusters&mdash;those silent wires which yet talk and
+know far more than we. When I come to the Valley of the
+Main I seem once more to hear the good old Swedish music
+and to see Stålhandske’s cavalry before me, and into the
+moaning of the tree-tops I seem to read the words of Adler
+Salvius: “Our Finnish lads who are getting used to those
+wine-lands are not likely to come back to Savolaks in a hurry.
+In the Livland wars they often had to put up with water and
+coarse mouldy bread with their beer-broth; now the Finn
+quaffs his wine out of his helmet.” Such wealth and such
+abundance our poor old horsemen and their retainers had never
+even dreamt of.</p>
+
+<p>Before us through the mist and gloaming twinkled the
+thousand lights and electric lamps of Frankfurt. When Gustavus
+Adolphus first came to Frankfurt the good burghers did
+not want to let him in, but made excuses and put the blame
+on the Elector of Mayence. But the King answered that he
+knew of no Elector of Mayence but himself. “I do not want
+to be delayed. If you refuse to open the gates, I dare say I
+can find some keys as I have done before in places which have
+fallen into my hands.” The city surrendered at once. During
+the winter of 1631&ndash;32, when Sweden’s King held his court at
+Frankfurt, this city was the centre of Europe. It was from
+here that Gustavus Adolphus said to the French who asked
+him not to direct his armies against Alsace, which country
+they pretended to have claimed ever since the death of the
+remote Dagobert: “I have come not as a traitor to Germany,
+but as its protector. I will restore it, not rend it asunder.”</p>
+
+<p>We drive on and on. The clusters of houses in the outskirts
+and suburbs close up into the streets of a large town. The
+traffic grows, the tram bells ring, the motors hoot, vast crowds
+of people walk about busily under umbrellas, and after a short
+while we stop before the entrance of the Hotel which before
+the war was called <i lang="de">Englischer Hof</i>, but which has now been
+re-baptised the <i lang="de">Hessischer Hof</i>, owing to the feelings of the
+Germans towards their Germanic kinsmen of the island
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>It is wonderful how attached one gets to one’s car on a long
+journey! It is with a feeling of boredom that one stops at
+the hotel where the night is to be spent, and with a sensation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[p. 30]</span>of delight that one rises from the breakfast table the next
+morning to enter the car once more. This is how we felt on
+the 17th of September, a fine and pleasant day, though heavy
+clouds raced across the sky. But we could not start at once,
+we had first to go to a garage to get petrol and then to an
+<i lang="de">Immobiles Kraftwagen Depot</i>, where absolutely everything
+that may be wanted for repairing war cars is to be had. Here
+we took five spare tyres, which we lashed to the right side
+and to the back of our car. Of course, we do not pay a
+single <i lang="de">pfennig</i>&mdash;for we are travelling on Government service.</p>
+
+<p>At last we are off again and follow the long streets of Frankfurt,
+leaving the city by the western outskirts with their large
+working-class population. Perhaps it might be thought that
+these workmen are opposed to the war which Germany is now
+conducting for the sake of her future? It certainly does not look
+like it. The social democratic workmen have equipped their little
+sons with helmets and wooden swords to fight out real battles
+in the backyards, and you hear them call each other Kluck
+and Hindenburg.</p>
+
+<p>Once more we get out into the open country, and follow the
+great road which runs in a direct line to Wiesbaden. The
+avenue skirting it consists chiefly of apple and pear trees,
+weighed down with fruit. Farther on we meet with poplars,
+standing like sentries along the roadside. We do not stop at
+all in the graceful and elegant Wiesbaden, but fly past its
+parks and gardens, which are quieter and emptier than usual.</p>
+
+<p>Soon we begin to ascend the Taunus heights via the Eiserne
+Hand. The rise is gradual and the curves numerous. A trim
+and straight-stemmed pine wood skirts the road on both sides.
+One seldom meets a vehicle or a pedestrian. From an eminence
+a vast panorama is suddenly spread out before us, but the
+weather has got foggy again and one cannot see far. At
+Langen Schwalbach the elegant hotels form a striking contrast
+to the solemn Red Cross flags and the wounded soldiers, now
+convalescent, who are sitting on balconies and in gardens,
+taking the air. The road now winds upwards once more, and
+we breathe a crisper atmosphere, but the view across to
+smiling dells and wooded hills is limited through fog. Up we
+go and down again over the gentle undulations of the country,
+where the ploughed fields merge together in a colour scheme
+of green, yellow and brown.</p>
+
+<p>Next the road descends steeply to Nassau on the River
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[p. 31]</span>Lahn. The country is gloriously pretty, its roads magnificent,
+its forests regal in their dark, silent splendour. On the brow
+of a hill stands an old ruined castle. The people in Nassau
+are friendly and greet and wave to us, and a stylish-looking
+young girl throws a red rose into our car&mdash;not for us, forsooth,
+but as a greeting to her lover, who no doubt is fighting in the
+war.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later we skim the pretty riverside road to Ems
+along the Lahn, line up the car in a side street and walk back
+to the pavement to greet with bared head and a salute a
+funeral procession which is going through. The dead man was a
+major who had succumbed to his wounds. First comes a band
+playing a slow and melancholy march, then two banners
+which precede the black-craped coffin on its carriage, and
+behind it the <i lang="de">Kampfgenossen</i>, members of the Ems <i lang="de">Kriegerverein</i>,
+all in tall hats, frock-coats and black ties; the procession
+is closed by a number of wounded convalescent soldiers
+housed in the Kursaal. The solemn cortège moves slowly up
+the street to the railway station, for the dead major’s body
+is to be sent to his own home. After a while the band returns
+accompanied by the convalescent soldiers. But now it plays
+a spirited and lively march. I was told that this was customary
+after military funerals&mdash;first the grief and the sorrow at the
+parting, the duty towards the honoured dead, then the joy
+of the survivors returning to the things of life.</p>
+
+<p>The Kurhaus, a fine and roomy building, now contains
+eighty patients, and more are expected. Most of the badly
+wounded are in bed, but those who can get up are sitting
+about on balconies and enjoying the fresh air, and from what
+they said to me they all long to be back at the front.</p>
+
+<p>I was told here that a young French lieutenant who had
+been badly wounded in the war had found an asylum in the
+Kurhaus, and recollecting the reports of the horrible cruelty
+with which the Germans, according to the English press,
+treat their French prisoners, I could not resist the temptation
+to enquire what the French lieutenant had to say about it.
+His room, which he occupied alone, was certainly not a matter
+for complaint; it was immediately above one of the six small
+rooms in which King William I. spent a short time each year
+from 1867 to 1887, and the view over Ems and the Lahn
+valley was the same as the King had enjoyed all those years.
+The wounded man was tended by a German doctor, who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[p. 32]</span>entertained good hopes of his recovery, and by two sisters of
+mercy, one of whom spoke French. But I hasten to add that
+Lieutenant Verrier, on my asking whether he was satisfied
+with the treatment he received in Germany, at once answered
+“yes” with warmth and conviction, and I suppose that
+wherever his fate will direct his steps he will always remember
+with gratitude the time he spent over William I.’s apartments
+in Ems, where the doctor did all in his power to save his leg
+and the sisters all they could to alleviate his suffering and dispel
+in a measure his loneliness and homesickness. I am sure that
+he will be the first to acknowledge that I am right.</p>
+
+<p>I went up to his room and was at once admitted. He lay
+in a large bed with clean white sheets. His face was little less
+pale than these, but he looked very handsome with his hair
+brushed from his forehead, his finely shaped nose and well-kept
+moustache over a firm mouth, and his black French eyes
+bespoke a <i lang="fr">joie de vivre</i> and a bright intelligence. He told me
+that he had come home from New Guinea in June and that he
+was just about to be married when the war came and took him
+away from his bride and parents. He received his wound in
+the scrap at Rossignol in Belgium. It was a terrible day,
+spent in the midst of bursting shells and fire from rifles and
+machine guns. His bullet had struck him obliquely through
+the knee and calf. He fell and remained lying all night on the
+field of battle. The following morning he was picked up and
+taken to a German Field Hospital and subsequently by easy
+stages to Ems. At the end of August Emperor William
+visited the town and when he heard that there was a wounded
+Frenchman there he went to see him. Lieutenant Verrier
+told me that the Emperor had enquired in excellent French
+about his adventures in the war and how he felt. I said that
+I should in all probability soon be meeting the Emperor,
+and would then tell his Majesty of the impression the gracious
+visit had made on the invalid. When later I carried out my
+self-imposed task, the Emperor remembered the French
+lieutenant very well and was gratified to hear of the hopes
+entertained for his recovery.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion I asked Lieutenant Verrier whether there was
+anything I could do for him within the limits permitted by
+the German regulations. He seemed almost to have longed
+for this question, for he had the answer quite ready. Day and
+night he had been tormented by one single thought: “How are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[p. 33]</span>my parents and my fiancée to learn that I am still alive and
+doing well? I am now in enemy country and have no means
+of writing.” I asked him for his address, and he wrote in my
+diary, “Monsieur Verrier-Cachet, Horticulteur, 52, rue du
+Quinconce, Angers, Marne et Loire.” A minute later I was
+seated at a desk and wrote on postcards in German the adventures
+of the young Frenchman and sent them to my family
+in Stockholm, who, with the assistance of the French Minister,
+would forward the news to the above address. I know that
+it reached its destination and caused great joy, for later on I
+received very hearty greetings and thanks from Verrier’s
+home.</p>
+
+<p>I have often since wandered with a heavy and lingering
+step through the “field” and war hospitals, especially the wards
+containing wounded Frenchmen, British and Belgians who
+lay there counting the slowly passing hours. How easy would
+it not have been for me, who had both liberty and health, to
+send off a postcard here and there which would have reached
+distant homes with a message of release from the wearing
+anguish of anxiety! There is nothing so trying and so difficult
+to bear as the uncertainty of the fate of those we love. When
+the name of a son, a brother, or a husband appears in the list
+of missing after a battle, the sickening anguish is almost
+greater to those at home than if they knew that he had fallen.
+Their mental vision pictures him as wounded, bleeding to
+death, alone and abandoned to the horrors of darkness, cold
+and thirst. But I had really no grounds for such qualms of
+conscience, for in the first place I had no business to interfere
+with the regulations of the German military authorities regarding
+the communication between wounded prisoners and their
+homes, and in the second place there were far too many of
+them, and by the evening I realised that the task of acting
+as a good Samaritan was an altogether hopeless one.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> After the beginning of October all prisoners, even wounded Frenchmen in
+German hospitals, had permission to correspond with their homes. This was given
+after the French Government had granted the same privilege to German prisoners
+and wounded.</p></div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile I took a hearty farewell of Verrier and wished
+him a speedy recovery and a happy reunion with his people at
+home at Angers.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving, we looked at the memorial stone commemorating
+the fateful and firm reply given “on the 13th of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[p. 34]</span>July, 1870, at 9.30 a.m.” by King William to the French
+Ambassador Benedetti, which gave the signal for the Franco-German
+war. And now, after a lapse of forty-four years, we
+were back again at the same point. Now it seemed that the
+thought of revenge for Alsace-Lorraine had ripened into action&mdash;unless
+it be indeed that other evil powers had exploited
+France’s longing for revenge, or revived it when, as some say, it
+was dead, to benefit themselves thereby and stop the advance
+of German prosperity. The near future will be the judge.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner we mounted our car once more and the canary
+began to sing so that the good people of Ems might get out of
+our way. We proceeded along the right bank of the Lahn,
+following its bends in noble curves. The country round here is
+exceedingly pretty. It is almost a pity that we have to travel
+so fast; one hardly has time to visualise the beauty of a
+perspective before the picture disappears and is replaced by
+another, if possible even finer. Suddenly, beyond a steep spur
+jutting from the mountain on our right, the majestic Rhine is
+revealed to our vision, whilst on the crest of a hill on our left
+towers a romantic old castle. We dash under another railway
+bridge faithfully guarded by the worthy Landsturm men.
+Suddenly we enter a street so narrow that its entire width is
+taken up by a Red Cross flag of more than ample dimensions.
+Following this street as far as it goes, we suddenly come to
+the bank of the enormous river whose German waters silently
+flow between its prosperous and well-populated banks to
+deliver their burden through neutral Holland into the mighty
+bosom of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the river is hidden by narrow streets, but soon
+it greets us again in all its wonderful splendour as we cross its
+dancing wavelets by a long pontoon bridge guarded more
+zealously than any we have yet passed. Next we are in
+Coblenz, where, at the point where the Moselle empties itself
+into the Rhine, stands a gigantic statue of old Emperor
+William on a charger. The plinth of this monument bears
+the following memorable inscription: <i lang="de">Nimmer wird das Reich
+zerstöret wenn Ihr einig seid und treu</i>.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The truth of these
+significant words is now indeed brought home to Germany
+and to the world.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> “Never shall the Empire be destroyed if ye united are and faithful.”</p></div>
+
+<p>The road next takes us up along the right bank of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[p. 35]</span>Moselle, where a stone bridge with beautiful arches takes us
+across and past a couple of Moselle steamers which are lying
+moored, carrying the Red Cross flag. The narrow, winding
+streets are filled with tramcars, cabs, vans, men and women,
+and last but not least soldiers in German army uniforms.
+We breathe more freely as we come out again on to the open
+road and speed along the bank of the great Rhine tributary.
+There is plenty for the eye to feast on. Now and again we
+catch sight of a little steamer or tug gliding on the river; on
+the steep left bank stone buttresses support the vineyards.
+The landscape itself is indescribably beautiful round these
+endless bends, as one village after another comes into view,
+the grey houses with their black slate roofs and the beautiful
+churches showing up strikingly against the luxuriant background
+of foliage. Still bowling along at lightning speed, we
+soon reach Treis, where a curious-looking ferry, reminding me
+of those of the Siberian rivers, is ready to take us and our car
+across to the left bank. We drive down on to the other end of
+its deck so that another car which has just arrived can be taken
+on board. The principle upon which the ferry is worked
+is as follows: A stout cable is stretched across the river and
+made fast on the left bank to the rock and on the right bank
+to a securely imbedded pile. From a ring on this cable
+runs a line, the other end of which is made fast to the bows
+of the punt-shaped ferry. A long steering-oar projects into
+the water astern. The rest is done by the current. By
+reversing the action and the steering-oar, the ferry runs back
+to the opposite bank.</p>
+
+<p>On the left bank we continue our swift, winding journey.
+Here and there we pass a military convoy or meet an ambulance
+train, the first two carriages of which contain wounded Frenchmen,
+the others Germans. The Frenchmen are no better or
+worse off than the Germans; all lie on straw and are covered
+with blankets. The sliding doors of these goods wagons,
+fitted up specially for the transport of wounded, stood open
+in order to admit fresh air to the wounded.</p>
+
+<p>At the village of Eller we stop for a moment at an inn, where
+the host, Herr Meinze, entertains us with what he knows about
+the war. His young daughter runs off to fetch a letter just
+received from the son of the family, twenty-two years old,
+an Uhlan of the Guard from Potsdam. The letter bears the
+somewhat vague postal address of La Ferté, and the writer
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[p. 36]</span>complains that he has not had a word from home for a month.
+He mentions that he was present on an occasion when a French
+airman dropped a bomb over a gun team, killing three men
+and wounding twenty. Of his British opponents he speaks
+very disrespectfully. But he forgets that the English mercenaries,
+whatever their faults, show great personal courage
+and fight with bravery and contempt of death. He ends his
+letter with the hope that Germany will soon have made mincemeat
+of all her enemies. The chief trait which pervades all
+these field postcards is the bright and cheery spirit of the
+soldiers and their blind faith in the unconquerable might of
+the German Army and final victory. That <em>I</em> may fall is of no
+account. That <em>I</em> may not be one of the triumphant army
+which will march in through the Brandenburger Tor cannot be
+helped, but Germany must win, if not before, then after the
+spring flowers have begun to sprout and blossom round my
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>At Alf, where a white paddle-steamer flying the Red Cross
+flag lies at her moorings, we leave the Moselle and follow the
+laconic advice of a signpost pointing up towards the hills
+which mark the nearest way to Treves. It pours with rain.
+We put up the awning and the rain patters loudly on the taut
+canvas. Owing to the great speed we get one drenching after
+another. The water in the puddles spurts up around the wheels
+as before the bows of a swift steamer. The road is only half
+as wide as the great main road eastward. But on the other
+hand the traffic is insignificant. “Way to Wittlich?”
+von Krum asks in a village, when uncertain of the road.
+“To Paris!” comes the retort of a couple of joyous maidens
+who point in the direction we are to go. In due course we get
+to Wittlich and struggle through its horribly narrow streets,
+which, to make matters worse, are encumbered with all sorts
+of vehicles. The houses both of villages and towns in this
+part of the country are almost entirely of stone, and the
+streets are very narrow&mdash;sometimes one almost gets the
+impression that they were originally built with a view to
+protection against foreign invasion.</p>
+
+<p>Off we go again down to the banks of the Moselle and to its
+beautifully situated villages, and when at length we stop at
+the <i lang="de">Trierischer Hof</i> at Treves, it is pitch-dark and raining pitilessly.
+We were drenched to the skin, and had intended to
+proceed to Luxemburg after a moment’s rest to dry our clothes.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[p. 37]</span>But as the deluge grew worse instead of better, and as we were
+told that there were no rooms to be had at Luxemburg for
+love or money, we decided to stop where we were. Soon we
+were sitting in the restaurant at our belated dinner. The
+place teemed with officers, and in the streets the soldiers
+splashed about in the wet in their grey overcoats. We asked
+everybody where the Main Headquarters were, but nobody
+knew anything about it. Some said that the General Staff
+was at Luxemburg, others that it had moved to Belgium.
+“Well, we shall get there in time,” we said to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The <i lang="de">Trierischer Hof</i> actually had a couple of modest rooms,
+where we made ourselves at home. My excellent friend
+von Krum told me that officers were entitled in war time to
+billet where they liked. Room with breakfast must always
+be placed at their disposal free of charge. Dinner and other
+meals they have to pay for. The officer has only to fill in a
+printed receipt which he hands to the host on leaving in place
+of currency. On producing this receipt before the competent
+military authority, the host receives his money, but not at
+the same rate as in peace time, for values are set at a lower
+figure than under normal conditions. The same applies to
+horses, carts, motor-cars and much else that is needed in war.
+Everything is valued by special committees and then paid
+for with a receipt. At Treves it was impossible to get a car or
+even a horse-cab, as there were no horses left. When therefore
+our host received a telegram saying that his son, who had
+probably been slightly wounded at the front, was expected
+at 3 a.m., there was no means whatever of getting a conveyance
+to meet him and take him home in. He asked if he might
+borrow our car, but unfortunately we were not allowed
+to leave it in civilian hands. In the end he managed to
+borrow a doctor’s car and found his son in pretty good
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily the trams were running, and in the evening we
+took one to the Horn Barracks, usually occupied by Infantry
+Regiment No. 29 <i lang="de">von Horn</i> (3rd Rhenish). But now the
+entire regiment is in the field and the barracks have been
+turned into a hospital. They hold in peace time three battalions,
+but at the present time only 500 wounded, as the latter
+need more room with special accommodation for doctors and
+nursing staff. Premises have, in addition, been requisitioned
+for operating theatres, bath-rooms, store-rooms, etc. Just now
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[p. 38]</span>there is plenty of room, as only 220 beds are occupied, of
+which 150 by Frenchmen. Six doctors and one head surgeon,
+assisted by a great number of Red Cross sisters, were in charge
+of the wounded soldiers. In due course we arrived at the
+barracks, were passed by the sentry at the gate, entered a
+corridor and knocked at a door which was duly opened, and
+a moment later we had become the bosom friends of a couple
+of young doctors sitting at supper before a steaming bowl of
+soup which had just been brought in. I asked them, whatever
+they did, not to interrupt their meal, as we could sit and chat
+with them in the meantime. But no, that would not do at all,
+the soup could wait, and guided by a little oil lamp we marched
+out through the long corridor and began at once by inspecting
+a couple of the operating theatres, which had been rigged up
+hurriedly on the outbreak of war and equipped as far as
+possible on thoroughly modern lines. The operating tables
+were in the middle of the room. Water-pipes, vessels, appliances
+and a number of surgical instruments&mdash;everything
+was in superb condition. The walls and floor of these rooms
+had been painted over in oil and an average of fifteen operations
+took place in them daily. Several other barracks at
+Treves have been fitted up as hospitals in a like manner.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon we went into a large ward filled with wounded
+German soldiers, and chatted with several of them. All were
+very satisfied and cheerful, they all felt thoroughly at home
+and could not conceive it possible to receive better and kindlier
+treatment than they got at the hospital. Nevertheless time
+hung heavily on their hands, and they could not help thinking
+of their comrades in the field. They longed to be back at the
+war and hoped soon to be about again&mdash;that is to say, those
+who knew that they would not be crippled for life.</p>
+
+<p>We left them with a “<i lang="de">Gute Nacht, gute Besserung</i>,” and
+proceeded to a ward higher up, where French soldiers were
+being tended. Here we also spoke with some of the patients.
+They were all polite and communicative, but lacked the cheery
+disposition of the Germans, which was really not to be wondered
+at, as they were in enemy country and cut off from all communication
+with their own people. One of them had been
+wounded at Rossignol like Lieutenant Verrier, but did not
+know him. He had been shot through the left hand and the
+left leg, which the surgeon had been obliged to amputate.
+When he got his bullet wounds, he had strength and presence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[p. 39]</span>of mind enough to creep into a ditch for protection against
+the weather and the firing. He had torn off strips of cloth
+from his greatcoat and wound them round his wounds. Next
+day the German ambulance men had found him, applied a
+proper “first field dressing” and carried him to the nearest
+field hospital, from which not long ago he had been conveyed
+by rail to Treves.</p>
+
+<p>Another soldier had been left lying on the field for two
+nights and had suffered maddening torture from thirst. The
+thirst had if possible caused him greater suffering than his
+wounds. Twice the Germans had in passing given him water
+and chocolate. Finally the ambulance people had found him
+and taken him to a field hospital. Like his comrade, he
+expressed his gratitude for the treatment he had met with
+here at Treves, and several assenting voices were heard from
+the neighbouring beds. The two German doctors who took
+us round told us that the French wounded usually did not
+want to leave the hospital, as they knew that as soon as they
+recovered they would be treated as ordinary prisoners. This
+view of the matter is quite natural and is most certainly
+shared by all wounded, no matter to what nation they belong.
+For it is pleasanter to lie in one’s comfortable bed and be
+coddled in every way, than to live in a barracks or a concentration
+camp with crowds of other prisoners, including
+Senegalese negroes, Moroccans and Indians.</p>
+
+<p>Finally our guide took us to the door of a room containing
+three French officers. One of them, who had been shot
+through the lung, slept well and did not permit himself to be
+disturbed by our talk. Another had a more dangerous lung
+wound and was continually troubled by a nasty cough which,
+whenever it attacked him, threw his head backwards and
+forwards with great violence. His condition was considered
+very critical, and even if one had known the address of his
+people it would have been no relief to them to learn his condition.</p>
+
+<p>The third, a big and somewhat stout Captain, had served
+for several years in southernmost Morocco and was accustomed
+to little scraps with the Tuaregs in the Sahara. But <em>this</em> was
+something very different. It was terrible, <em>terrible</em>! He had
+been called home from his African station to take part in
+this horrible struggle. His right foot had been smashed in a
+fight in Belgium by a rifle bullet, whilst another had carried
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[p. 40]</span>away a couple of his fingers. He said he had a sort of recollection
+of having the wound dressed on the battlefield by
+German Red Cross men or doctors who had done all they
+could to check the flow of blood. Afterwards he had been
+taken to a dressing station, where his wounds had received
+further treatment. As he was classed amongst the comparatively
+slightly wounded, he had been taken to Luxemburg
+and now at length to Treves. He was probably aware that
+when discharged as convalescent he would remain a prisoner
+with all the privileges to which his rank entitled him, receiving,
+besides, half the pay he had been getting at home. There he
+lay, the poor Captain, with his jovial face, aquiline nose and
+heavy beard. He was cheerful and good-tempered, and assured
+us that he had absolutely nothing to grumble about&mdash;apart
+from the fate which denied him the honour to continue fighting
+for his country. But it was evident that he was a bit of a
+philosopher and he bore his unkind fate like a man. He lay
+there with a smile on his lips and was grateful for anything
+that was done for him and for the interest taken in him by
+the unknown visitors. During the long lonely hours of the
+night he often heard his comrades struggling and wrestling
+with death, whilst his own thoughts wandered to the palm
+trees on the desert fringe, and he seemed to hear the dromedaries’
+swishing steps over the sand and the desert winds
+calling “come home, come home!”</p>
+
+<p>The young doctors who accompanied us told us that the
+German soldiers always and without exception longed to be
+back at the front, unless their condition was such that they
+had not strength enough to desire anything. Among the
+French the feeling was different: “Whatever you like, anything
+but the fire at the front.” But this is, on psychological
+grounds, quite natural and cannot well be otherwise. There
+is nothing that depresses and demoralises the soldier as much
+as being a prisoner. He feels that he is playing the part of
+the weaker, that he is entirely at the mercy of others, that
+his strength is gone, his initiative taken from him and his
+fighting spirit rendered unavailing. In such a situation, to
+gain personal advantages and to make the best of a bad job,
+he will say much that he would never have dreamt of uttering
+on his own side of the fighting line. It is therefore unfair to
+judge the fighting value of an army by the remarks of prisoners
+detached from it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[p. 41]</span></p>
+
+<p>Herein we have perhaps the explanation of the fact observed
+at the Treves hospitals, or, at all events, at the Horn barracks,
+that the mortality amongst the Frenchmen was incomparably
+greater than amongst the Germans. It would be futile to
+try to explain it by the suggestion that the doctors and nurses
+involuntarily felt greater compassion for their own countrymen,
+for when it is considered that 35,000 wounded have been
+transported through Treves <i lang="de">Westbahnhof</i>&mdash;latterly 1500 a day&mdash;it
+will be realised that the doctors available must be so overwhelmed
+with work as to have no time for sentiment. To
+them the case is everything, and it is a point of honour with
+them to save as many as possible. The whole care of the
+wounded becomes a professional, almost mechanical, matter,
+and one cannot wonder at it when one sees the stream of
+wounded passing through. I was told that the wounds
+of the Germans heal better and quicker than those of the
+Frenchmen, whatever the reason may be. But plainly
+the psychological factor has something to do with this
+also.</p>
+
+<p>To this must be added another point of view&mdash;the wounds
+of the Frenchmen are usually more malignant than those of
+the Germans. Whilst the former are all too frequently hit in
+the lungs, stomach or abdomen, the Germans in the great
+majority of cases are wounded in the shoulders, arms and legs.
+It becomes obvious that the Germans must keep closer to the
+ground and are more skilled in using cover. It would be interesting
+to know exactly in what measure this point is affected
+by the French army uniform, the dark-blue tunic and the
+bright red trousers, exactly the same as worn in 1870&ndash;71.
+This dress obviously presents a most excellent target, whilst
+the Germans with their grey field uniforms and grey headgear
+merge into their environment.</p>
+
+<p>We were talking in this strain as we were leaving the hospital,
+and the young doctors were inexhaustible in their stories
+of what they had experienced during their work at Treves. It
+was not only the barracks that had been converted into
+hospitals&mdash;churches and schools had also been requisitioned.
+“But how do the children get on with their schooling if the
+schools are turned into hospitals?” “Well, it is this way.
+Since the younger professors and masters were called to the
+war, older teachers, both men and women, have turned up from
+almost everywhere and carry on the work to the best of their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[p. 42]</span>ability. Thus they earn a little money which they badly
+need in these hard war times.”</p>
+
+<p>We also spoke, of course, about the unceasing stream of
+wounded who are being brought into Germany. The seriously
+wounded and those not expected to recover are kept near the
+front, as they cannot stand being moved. But the lightly
+wounded, or at all events those who can stand the journey, are
+sent home. Soldiers who have had a bullet through the hand
+or a flesh wound in the arm, may, if they wish it, go straight
+home to their people. In such cases, on leaving the army, they
+are provided with the receipt which entitles them to free medical
+care at home. They must then attend daily at a certain
+hour at the doctor’s for examination; when fully recovered
+they return to their own regiment. Soon I suppose there will
+not be a single village in Germany without its war hero and its
+Iron Cross. One can imagine the pride and joy with which
+a son is received on returning home after his deeds of valour,
+and the heartfelt good wishes which accompany him when
+for the second time he leaves for the front!</p>
+
+<p>I was told that a fresh train-load of wounded was expected
+at Treves at half-past twelve the same night. The doctors were
+holding themselves in readiness to receive another avalanche
+of exhausted and maimed heroes. Our doctors told us that
+when the train stopped they used to go through all the carriages
+to examine the patients. Those who were too bad to go any
+further were carried on hammock-stretchers to the hospitals.
+The others were allowed to go on after having their wounds redressed.
+This is another phase of the struggle between life and
+death&mdash;the doctor on the side of life struggling to snatch back
+those whom death has vainly sought to capture on the battlefield.</p>
+
+<p>To wind up our visit, we had a peep into a store-room, the
+floor of which was encumbered with entire bales of cotton,
+gauze dressings, oil cloth, sticking-plaster and bandages of
+all kinds. Entire railway trains full of dressings and bandages,
+surgical instruments and drugs, are constantly running east
+and west from the heart of Germany. Our hospital at Treves
+was also permeated with a strong scent of carbolic, ether and
+chloroform. When one sees the pale faces and red scars of the
+wounded and the mountains of dressings, and when one inhales
+this penetrating hospital odour, one almost seems to hear
+the ping of the rifle bullets and the fierce shrieking of the shells.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[p. 43]</span>At such moments the deep and horrible solemnity of war seems
+to draw closer, and one realises indeed its sinister reality.
+Late in the evening, as we wandered back in the wet to the
+<i lang="de">Trierischer Hof</i>, I felt that we were, indeed, not far away from
+those parts of Europe where entire nations are grappling in a
+life-and-death struggle.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[p. 44]</span></p>
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">
+    CHAPTER II
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE EMPEROR WILLIAM</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">STILL as ignorant regarding the whereabouts of the
+Main Headquarters as when we left Berlin, we set
+out from Treves in the morning of the 18th September,
+recrossed the Moselle, and cast a glance up at the heights from
+which on August 4th Frenchmen in mufti were heliographing
+to the airships, who wanted to know how the German mobilisation
+was getting on. At the flying station we stopped a
+moment to have a look at the <i lang="de">Taubes</i> in their canvas sheds.</p>
+
+<p>The gentle undulations of the country give it a picturesque
+aspect. At Igel stands the sandstone tower, 2000 years old
+and twenty-three metres in height, called the <i lang="de">Igeler Säule</i>, and
+considered to be the finest relic left by the Romans north of
+the Alps. To this very day an inscription can be seen, testifying
+that this monument was raised by Secundinius Aventinus
+and Secundinius Securus in memory of their parents and
+kinsmen. How different from the frail wooden crosses we
+were to see by the roadside, and which will disappear when
+the spring sun draws the frost out of the ground and the plough
+cuts fresh furrows in the soil!</p>
+
+<p>But we must now take leave of the Moselle. On the left
+we have already behind us the roads to Metz and Saarbrücken,
+and not far to the south is the boundary of Lorraine. Along
+a road passing through an orchard we reach Wasserbillig,
+cross the Sauer stream and enter the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg,
+the entire population of which does not nearly approach
+that of Stockholm. On the way to Grevenmacher we passed
+by numberless nurseries and gardens given up to the cultivation
+of roses. But there are also woods in Luxemburg, and
+our road takes us by frequent copses of larch and beech, and
+further on of pine and beech.</p>
+
+<p>At a railway crossing we are stopped by an empty train of
+enormous length, going to Germany to bring out fresh soldiers.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[p. 45]</span>The natives of Luxemburg regard us with indifference. The
+greetings and friendly wavings of handkerchiefs are a thing
+of the past, here no one greets and no one betrays his thoughts,
+which is as well perhaps, as they cannot be particularly
+friendly. The apple trees are succeeded by an avenue of
+chestnut, ash and plane trees. The bedrock consists of the
+same variety of limestone of which the houses in the villages
+are usually built.</p>
+
+<p>At length our road winds down into a pleasant valley, and
+at its bottom lies a part of the pretty and trim little town of
+Luxemburg, where the equally pretty and trim Grand Duchess
+has her residence. But the more fashionable part of the town
+lies on the height above the valley, reached by a very steep
+street presenting somewhat peculiar views, as, for instance,
+when one suddenly finds oneself on a level with a church spire.</p>
+
+<p>Now we begin to look about. Yes, it is obvious that the
+Main Headquarters are still at Luxemburg. Sentries at the
+entrances to all hotels, soldiers everywhere, officers rushing
+past in motor-cars. In a market-place large tents have been
+put up for horses, and round them walk the sentries smoking
+their pipes; in another open space there are rows of motor-cars
+laden with petrol and oil in cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>We must observe becoming military precision in our search
+and consequently make at once for the house where the great
+General Staff has taken up its quarters, and which in ordinary
+times is a Luxemburg school. Von Krum gets down and
+soon returns with the intimation that we must report ourselves
+to a Lieutenant-Colonel Hahnke. He sent us off to the
+Chief of the General Staff, His Excellency von Moltke, who
+with his charming Swedish Countess has just sat down to
+dinner at the <i lang="de">Kölnischer Hof</i>, where they reside. The Countess
+was on a short visit to Luxemburg in the service of the Red
+Cross. Here I felt almost as if I were at home, for I had many
+times been a guest in their hospitable home in Berlin. As
+calm as if he had been on manœuvres, the Chief lit his cigar
+and made detailed enquiries about my plans and wishes.
+I said I wanted to go to the front and see as much as I might
+be allowed to, mentioning that it was my intention subsequently
+to describe what I had seen of the war with my own
+eyes. If possible I wanted to get an impression of a modern
+battle, and hoped also to get an opportunity of visiting the
+occupied parts of Belgium.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[p. 46]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Chief thought for a moment. Permission to visit the
+front had already been granted to me by the Emperor, and
+it only remained to decide which would be the best place for
+me to begin my observations. The army of the German
+Crown Prince was the nearest, only a couple of hours away.
+The Chief would arrange everything for my journey, and I
+was shortly to receive details of the programme. “Of course,
+there can be no question of safety in the fighting zone,” he
+said, “it is not far away. If you listen you can hear the
+thunder of guns from Verdun.”</p>
+
+<p>Later in the day I was the possessor of a so-called <i lang="de">Ausweis</i>
+or permit signed by the Chief of the General Staff, and intimating
+that I had “permission to witness the course of events
+at the different sections of the army” and requesting “all
+authorities in command to meet my wishes as far as they
+possibly could,” and to assist me with word and deed. This
+document was to me an “open sesame.” It gave me almost
+unlimited liberty of movement. Once I had begun I could
+go practically where I liked. But it did not take me long to
+realise that I had been wrong in thinking that a couple of
+weeks would suffice for a layman to get an insight into the
+complicated apparatus of a field army; a couple of months
+would be nearer the mark. I hasten to add that the time I
+spent at the front was far from sufficient. For every step one
+takes, for every hour that passes, one is overwhelmed with
+fresh impressions which there is no time to assimilate, and
+when the first month is gone one retains but a very superficial
+conception of this enormously complicated piece of machinery,
+which nevertheless under the firm hand of the master runs as
+smoothly and noiselessly as clockwork.</p>
+
+<p>Then we spoke of other things. I learnt that a troop train
+passes through Luxemburg station every half-hour, and that
+the only pause is at midday to prevent congestion. It is the
+pulse which beats in the arteries of the German railway
+system. One wave of human energy after another thus sweeps
+out towards the battlefields and flings itself against the
+enemy’s fire; the spirit of gaiety resounds from the overfilled
+wagons, accompanied by the glorious songs of <i lang="de">Deutschland,
+Deutschland über Alles</i> and <i lang="de">Die Wacht am Rhein</i>.
+There is no trace of fear, not a sign of despondency anywhere.
+All are willing and cheerful. What would life be worth as long
+as the dear fatherland was not free and great and powerful!
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[p. 47]</span>One wonders if these soldiers have any conception of the
+dangers and struggles that await them. Of course they read
+about it daily in the newspapers, but the more difficult it
+looks the more eager they become. The Bavarians are the
+most warlike. They are in their element with bayonets
+lowered for the charge. Superhuman power is required to
+withstand them, once they have decided to “go ahead.”
+Here at Headquarters everyone also speaks with the greatest
+respect of the Frenchmen as opponents, and no one denies
+the bravery of the British soldiers. “They go straight into
+perdition without flinching and fall, but do not yield, before
+the fire of machine guns.” Of the prisoners, it was said that
+there was a great difference between the British and the French.
+The former would stand with their hands in their pockets and
+a pipe in their mouth when spoken to by an officer, and a
+salute was only elicited by a reprimand. The Frenchmen, on
+the other hand, always salute the German officers without
+being told, and this is probably due to their inherited military
+spirit and to the trait of inborn courtesy which pervades the
+whole nation.</p>
+
+<p>When speaking of the troop trains, the Countess Moltke
+suggested a visit to the railway station, and we accordingly
+proceeded there, accompanied by von Krum. We were just
+in time to see an ambulance train&mdash;that is to say, not a
+properly equipped hospital train&mdash;roll into the station.
+Immediately some doctors began their round of the carriages,
+where the wounded lay on a thick layer of straw and were
+covered with blankets. A goods wagon in a troop train holds
+forty men or eight horses, but only thirty-six wounded at the
+most. The seriously wounded are sorted out and carried out
+on stretchers to large ambulance motor-cars, which take them
+to the hospitals in the town. The remainder, who are to be
+taken into Germany, receive new dressings if necessary. All
+are fed whilst the train is standing in the station with soup,
+sausages, bread and coffee in ample quantities. The Red Cross
+sisters have installed a kitchen at the station, in which cooking
+is in full swing day and night. Temporary nurses and servants
+do the waiting and go from carriage to carriage with large
+buckets filled with steaming and fragrant soup or coffee. A
+kindly old gentleman accompanied by a porter slowly goes
+the round of the carriages and distributes newspapers and
+entire armfuls of cigars. Two carriages were occupied by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[p. 48]</span>Frenchmen only. They were treated otherwise in exactly
+the same way as the Germans, but the old gentleman devoted
+himself only to his countrymen. The latter, who were clearly
+on the road to recovery, were singing cheery soldiers’ ditties
+and delighted in recounting their experiences to anyone who
+would listen. One of them had had three horses shot under
+him on a critical occasion, but at last got hold of a mule which
+enabled him to carry on his duties. “You need not believe
+him if you don’t want to,” said one of his comrades laughingly,
+but he went on nevertheless with his tales and declared that
+he slept like a child whilst the shells were falling thick around
+him.</p>
+
+<p>From the railway we drove to a private hospital, of which there
+are several, supported by private contributions. This small
+house had over sixty beds, of which fifty-three were now occupied
+by soldiers. Forty Catholic sisters tended them. A sister of
+refined and distinguished appearance took us round from bed
+to bed, and Countess Moltke spoke in a friendly and interested
+manner with all the wounded. Here lay men with bullets
+through arms and legs, through a foot or a hand, or through
+the lung. One had lost his right hand. Another felt his lung
+wound only at the point where the bullet had passed out
+through the back. A couple of French officers were lodged in
+a separate room. All, and not least the Frenchmen, were very
+satisfied with the treatment they received. Most of them had
+been wounded at the battles of Vitry and Longwy.</p>
+
+<p>It would take too long to describe all the interesting
+acquaintances I made in Luxemburg and to introduce to the
+reader all the eminent men with whom I spoke during the two
+days I spent in this little town. Suffice it to mention the
+Imperial Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg, the Foreign
+Minister von Jagow, the War Minister Lieutenant-General
+von Falkenhayn, and the Chief of the Imperial Volunteer
+Automobile Corps the young Prince Waldemar, son of Prince
+Henry.</p>
+
+<p>The Main Headquarters are the head or rather the brain
+of the army in the field, where all plans are made and from
+which all orders are issued. It is an incredibly complicated
+apparatus with an organisation of which every detail has been
+prepared in advance. When an apparatus of this kind is
+installed in a small town like Luxemburg, all hotels, schools,
+barracks, Government offices, as well as a number of private
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[p. 49]</span>houses, have to be requisitioned for billets. The invaded
+country has no alternative but to resign itself to its fate.
+But nothing is taken promiscuously, everything will be made
+good after the war. The War Ministry is housed in an hotel,
+the General Staff&mdash;as already mentioned&mdash;in a school, the
+offices of the Automobile Corps in a private house, and so on.
+The Commander-in-Chief, von Moltke, resided at the <i lang="de">Kölnischer
+Hof</i>, the Imperial Chancellor and the Foreign Minister in an
+exceptionally elegant private house, whilst the Emperor’s
+personal staff and suite were stopping at the <i lang="de">Hotel Staar</i>,
+where a room was also placed at my disposal.</p>
+
+<p>But although for several obvious reasons I could not remain
+long at the Main Headquarters, I must nevertheless say a few
+words about a man whom I met there and whom I regard as
+one of the most remarkable figures of the world’s history, the
+most powerful and most impressive ruler of our time, and,
+moreover, one of the most genial and most fascinating men
+one could wish to meet.</p>
+
+<p>When in June, 1913, William II. celebrated his twenty-five
+years’ jubilee as German Emperor, I wrote about him in the
+<cite lang="de">Magdeburgische Zeitung</cite> the following words, which in a
+large measure have already been borne out by events: “By
+his strong and powerful personality William II. stamps his
+impress on the era to which he belongs. Hitherto this has only
+been in the sphere of peace. What the future carries with it
+no one knows. But this much we know, that no foreign State
+will unchastised dare to challenge Germany’s honour and
+security. Even if an unkind fate should sometime draw
+letters of blood across his firmament, the Emperor, with the
+same energy and impulsive force which distinguished him in
+times of peace, will lead his legions into the fire, and the golden
+eagle on his helmet will point the way to fresh victories.”</p>
+
+<p>History will bear out as an indisputable fact that Emperor
+William throughout a quarter of a century has done all in his
+power to keep the thunders of war from the confines of the
+German Empire and from Europe. On more than one occasion
+peace hung by a hair. All who know the facts agree that it
+has been the Emperor’s personal intervention which averted
+a catastrophe. Once, not long ago, the war was nearer than
+people thought, and here again it was the Emperor’s love of
+peace that became the deciding factor. Many blamed him for
+this, and called his attitude irresolute and yielding. But here
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[p. 50]</span>also the judgment of history will be in his favour. In the
+meantime Germany armed herself for the sanguinary conflict
+as to the coming of which no far-sighted man could doubt.
+In the end the struggle for the maintenance of peace became
+hopeless. This was realised by no one better than by the
+Emperor himself, and for this reason he has throughout his
+reign striven to strengthen the Empire’s fighting resources on
+land and water. At the present moment the fleet is riding
+on the seas like a gigantic monument to the wise and clear-eyed
+foresight of its creator. For it is the Emperor himself
+who, in co-operation with his peerless Grand Admiral von
+Tirpitz, created the floating fortresses without which
+Germany’s position would have been precarious when England
+came along with her declaration of war.</p>
+
+<p>When the spark of war was kindled, Emperor William was
+spending his usual summer vacation off the coast of Norway.
+He went home at once&mdash;with the same haste that brought
+President Poincaré from Stockholm, where he was spending a
+day after his doubtless very important visit to Petrograd.
+Since then events have succeeded one another rapidly. The
+little spark at Serajevo has become a conflagration which has
+spread over the entire earth like a devastating prairie fire.
+It was a fortunate thing for Germany and her Germanic
+neighbours that she was armed to the teeth and possessed a
+ruler who knew what he wanted, who wanted what was right
+and beneficial to his country, and who fully realised the grave
+responsibility which rested on his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>But let us return to the Great Headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>Directly I arrived in Luxemburg, I was honoured with an
+invitation to dine with the Emperor William the following day
+at one o’clock. Most of the guests were stopping at the <i lang="de">Hotel
+Staar</i>, and the cars were to leave there in good time. I went
+with Adjutant-General, Lieutenant-General von Gontard,
+Acting General à la suite. The street close to the Imperial
+residence was railed off, the barriers being withdrawn by the
+soldiers to let our car pass. The Emperor lived in the house of
+the German Minister and had his private apartments on the
+first floor. On the ground floor was the chancellerie, where
+enormous maps of the theatres of war were mounted on easels,
+and next to it was the dining-room, quite a small apartment.</p>
+
+<p>The guests, all in field uniform, without any display, forgathered
+in the chancellerie. I myself was dressed in the most
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[p. 51]</span>flagrant everyday clothes&mdash;in the field nothing is carried for
+show. Among the Emperor’s suite I recognised a couple of
+old acquaintances, the Headquarters Commandant, Adjutant-General,
+Colonel-General von Plessen, and the President of
+the Navy Council, Admiral von Müller, of Swedish descent,
+who spoke Swedish as fluently as German. The others were
+his Excellency von Treutler and Lieutenant-General Baron
+Marschall, Colonel von Mutius, acting aide-de-camp, the
+Princes Pless and Arnim and the Emperor’s body-physician,
+Dr. Ilberg. We were thus ten all told.</p>
+
+<p>At the stroke of one the door from the vestibule was opened
+and Emperor William entered with a firm, quiet step. All
+glances were fixed on the strongly built, well-knit figure.
+The room became as quiet as the grave. One realised that one
+was in the presence of a great personality. The little room,
+otherwise so humble, now had a deeper significance. Here
+was the axis, the pivot round which the world’s happenings
+turned. Here was the centre from which the war was directed.
+Germany is to be crushed, so say its enemies. “<i lang="de">Magst ruhig
+sein</i>,”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> says the German army to its Fatherland. And here
+in our midst stands its supreme war-lord, a picture of manliness,
+resolution and honourable frankness. Around him flit the
+thoughts and passions of the whole world. He is the object of
+love, blind confidence and admiration, but also of fear, hate
+and calumny. Round him, who loves peace, rages the greatest
+war of all times, and his name is ringed with strife. A man
+who, in a nation sprung from the same race, can arouse such
+fierce hatred and call forth such outrageous indictments, must
+indeed possess a very remarkable personality. For otherwise
+his detractors would leave him in peace and empty the vials
+of their wrath on someone else, more formidable still. But
+all that calumny, meanness and craven fear can inspire has
+been poured on his head. His intentions are distorted, his
+words are misconstrued and his actions are turned into crimes.
+But in the whole of Germany, throughout the German army,
+his praises are sung. In the field services, in all the churches
+of Germany, everywhere fervent prayers for his safety are
+offered up. “<i lang="de">Magst ruhig sein</i>,” the soldiers may well say
+to their Emperor, and they on their part know that he will
+never fail in his duty and that he will never withdraw a single
+soldier from the fighting line until Germany’s future is
+assured.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4" class="label">[4]</a> From the line “<i lang="de">Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein</i>” (“Be undismayed, dear
+Fatherland”), in <i lang="de">Die Wacht am Rhein</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[p. 52]</span></p>
+
+<p>It is not a Charlemagne or an Imperator who enters the
+chancellerie. It is merely an officer in the simplest uniform
+imaginable, a greyish-blue tunic with a double row of buttons,
+dark-coloured breeches and brown top-boots. Not even the
+little black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross adorns his
+breast. But it is nevertheless a fascinating and compelling
+personality, an urbane and courteous man of the world, that
+we see entering the room. It is a man whose quick intuition
+and superb powers of description reveal the observer and the
+artist, whose wise speech betrays the statesman, whose kindly
+manner betokens humility and sympathy and whose military,
+commanding voice indicates the master, accustomed to be
+obeyed. Happy is the people which especially in troubled
+times possesses such a leader, a chieftain round whom all
+gather in confidence and whose ability no one doubts.</p>
+
+<p>But it is also his eyes that possess a singular magnetic
+power, and which fascinate all when the Emperor enters.
+It is as if the whole room suddenly became lighter, when one
+meets the glance of the Emperor’s calm, blue eyes. They
+are wonderfully expressive. They bespeak first and foremost
+an iron will and unconquerable energy. They betray a certain
+melancholy at the thought that all may not understand that
+he is actuated absolutely by the will to do what is pleasing
+unto God and beneficial to his people. They also betray a
+sparkling wit, an intellect to which nothing human is foreign
+and a spirit of humour which is irresistible. They betoken
+honour, love of truth and a steadfast sincerity, firm and
+indomitable, the spirit of which penetrates to one’s very
+marrow as one meets his glance.</p>
+
+<p>Any feeling of timidity one may have had whilst waiting
+for the most powerful and most remarkable man in the world
+vanished completely once the Emperor, after a more than
+hearty handshake and a cheery welcome, began to speak.
+His voice is manly and military, he speaks extraordinarily
+plainly without slurring over a single syllable, he is never at a
+loss for a word, but always strikes the nail on the head&mdash;often
+in exceedingly forceful terms. He punctuates his sentences
+with quick and expressive gestures. His speech flows smoothly,
+is always terse and interesting and is often suddenly interrupted
+by questions delivered with lightning precision, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[p. 53]</span>one must endeavour to answer equally quickly and clearly.
+A good answer never fails to elicit the Emperor’s approval.
+He is exceedingly impulsive and his conversation is a mixture
+of earnest and jest. A ready repartee or an amusing tale causes
+him to laugh so heartily that his shoulders shake with it.</p>
+
+<p>At the Emperor’s bidding we passed into the dining-room.
+Admiral von Müller sat on the left, I on the right of our august
+host, and opposite him was Adjutant-General von Gontard.
+The table was simply laid. The only luxury that could be
+discovered was a bell of gold placed in front of the Emperor’s
+cover, and which he rang when a new course was to be brought
+in. The dinner was equally plain, consisting of soup, meat
+with vegetables, a sweet dish and fruit with claret. I have
+seldom been as hungry as when I rose from this table: not on
+account of the dishes, but because there had not been a
+moment’s silence up to the time when the bell rang for the
+last time and bade the uniformed servants withdraw our
+chairs as we rose. The Emperor talked to me all the time.
+He began by reminding me of my last lecture in Berlin, at
+which he was present, and he conjectured that Tibet, where
+I had passed through such stirring times, would probably
+soon be the only country in the world where peace reigned.
+Then we spoke of the political position and of the storms that
+are sweeping over Europe. It pleased me especially to hear
+with what respect and sympathy the Emperor referred to
+France. He regretted the necessity which, contrary to his
+wish, compelled him to lead his army against the French, and
+he hoped that the time would come when Germans and Frenchmen
+might live on amicable and neighbourly terms with one
+another. For this goal he had striven for twenty-five years
+and he hoped that quite a new order of things would arise out
+of the present war. An understanding between Germany and
+France would of necessity lay the solid foundation for future
+peace. But first there must be victory over the innumerable
+legions which four great powers had hurled against Germany’s
+frontiers and the German possessions in other continents, then
+an honourable and assured peace in all directions, and finally
+the great and abiding world-peace. First and foremost the
+Emperor placed his faith in God, but he also relied implicitly
+on the German people, on this great and noble army which
+had now for six weeks asserted itself so gloriously, and on his
+powerful fleet, longing to fight out its battle on the waves of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[p. 54]</span>the Atlantic. He relied on his soldiers’ superb bravery and
+contempt of death and on the officers who led them on land
+and water.</p>
+
+<p>If the French had any idea of the Emperor’s real feelings
+towards them, they would judge him very differently. Surely
+no one thinks that I would take the responsibility of attributing
+to the Emperor opinions other than those which had
+fallen from his lips and which I myself had heard! It would
+be an ill reward for the hospitality I met with in the German
+Army.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation turned besides on many other topics. The
+Emperor said many strong and manly things. He spoke like
+Gustavus Adolphus, when he first landed in Germany with his
+Swedish Army to bring succour to the Protestant princes and
+to fight for the liberty of thought and religion on this earth.
+When the German Emperor talks thus&mdash;then I have truly no
+time to eat beef and vegetables&mdash;then I prefer to listen and
+to order sandwiches afterwards, when back in my room at the
+hotel.</p>
+
+<p>On a table in the chancellerie were cigars and cigarettes
+round a lighted candle. Here the conversation was continued
+with zest and vigour, and jest and earnest, horrors of war and
+funny stories were all jumbled together; finally the Emperor
+took his leave, wishing me a successful and instructive trip,
+and went up to his apartments, where no doubt piles of papers
+and letters, reports and telegrams awaited him.</p>
+
+<p>The talk of the Emperor having aged during the war, and
+of the war with all its labours and anxieties having sapped his
+strength and health, is all nonsense. His hair is no more pronouncedly
+iron grey than before the war, his face has colour,
+and far from being worn and thin, he is plump and strong,
+bursting with energy and rude health. A man of Emperor
+William’s stamp is in his element when, through the force
+of circumstances, he is compelled to stake all he possesses and
+above all himself for the good and glory of his country. But
+his greatest quality is that he is a human being and that with
+all his fulminant force he is humble before God.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[p. 55]</span></p>
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">
+    CHAPTER III
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">ON THE WAY TO THE FIFTH ARMY</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capc">I HAD hardly returned to the hotel when my excellent
+friend and travelling companion Captain von Krum
+came and knocked at my door to give me the bad news
+that he had received orders from the office of the Imperial
+Volunteer Automobile Corps to proceed to the twelfth Army
+Corps on a special mission. He comforted me with the
+assurance that I should get another car and another officer
+for the trip to the German Crown Prince’s Army, probably
+one whose duties took him in that direction. There was
+nothing to be done in the matter&mdash;we took a hearty farewell
+of one another and arranged to meet again, if not before, then
+after the end of the war.</p>
+
+<p>When I had lost von Krum, the cold, rainy, windy
+weather seemed worse than ever. It needed an hour in the
+friendly and delightful company of His Excellency and
+Countess von Moltke to dissipate the gloom. We talked
+about the German soldiers, their good-nature, their humane
+conduct and kindly camaraderie towards prisoners and
+wounded opponents. It is probably to lessen neutral countries’
+sympathy towards Germany and to egg on their own troops
+that the newspapers of the Entente Powers have on repeated
+occasions accused the German soldiers of inhuman cruelty.
+Such tales are entirely without foundation and are in themselves
+highly improbable, for it is not and never has been
+part of the Teutonic character to show cruelty to vanquished,
+defenceless enemies. In this respect the Latins and the
+Slavs have much to learn from the Teutons. The wave of
+vandalism which passed over a part of Louvain was let loose
+by the inhabitants themselves. The anger felt by the German
+soldiers at the treachery of the civil population is justified.
+The treacherous firing of <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i> from behind bushes and
+windows, in the dusk and dark, is bound in the end to bring
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[p. 56]</span>about reprisals, for the soldier reasons something like this:
+“The war must be conducted between <em>soldiers</em>, and when
+either party is defeated and the conqueror marches into the
+vanquished town, the civilians must not fire from windows
+on the troops entering. And if the nuisance cannot be checked
+in any other way, then the town must be punished.” Such
+was the case with Louvain, which is an unfortified town and
+where not a single window-pane would have been broken,
+had not the <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i> themselves brought about the destruction.
+Things actually went to such lengths that German
+soldiers who tried to extinguish the fire in the burning houses
+next to the Townhall, in order to save this valuable building,
+were shot down during their work by <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i>. The
+German conduct of the war is severe, but it is not cruel.</p>
+
+<p>During the first stage of the war, when the troops had
+entered a town and burnt or demolished those houses from
+which civilians had been shooting, solitary houses were often
+to be seen which remained untouched in the midst of the
+desolation. The doors of such remaining houses often bore,
+written in chalk and in a soldier’s hand, some such inscription
+as: “Here lives an aged couple,” or: “Here lives an invalid
+who must be spared,” or: “There has been no firing from this
+house”; or again: “The inhabitants of this house are
+friendly people.” Such houses are then spared by the troops
+who come after. In the course of my narrative I shall have
+frequent occasion to mention traits of kindliness on the part
+of the German soldiers towards the local population. On
+the other hand, I have never either seen or heard of a single
+act of cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>After one more visit to the railway station and taking a
+look at troops from Lunéville on the way to Belgium, likewise
+several infantry trains from Metz, I returned to the <i lang="de">Hotel
+Staar</i> just in time to meet the young lieutenant who had been
+instructed by General Moltke to take me to the Headquarters
+of the Crown Prince’s Army. His name was Hans von Gwinner
+and he is the son of the great banker and Bagdad Railway
+magnate in Berlin. He was a wide-awake and capable young
+fellow and drove his car himself. I sat down beside him,
+whilst the orderly accompanying us took his seat inside.</p>
+
+<p>It poured with rain as we left the town. The road was
+slippery, but we had studded tyres and the lieutenant drove
+at terrific speed. We had started off rather late and we wanted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[p. 57]</span>to get in before dark. It is better thus, otherwise one is not
+entirely safe from the attentions of <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i>. A whole
+lot of them had recently been caught by the Fifth Army and
+shot without hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>Our road took us westward. In the south we left behind
+an area of rich ore deposits, and at Rodingen we passed the
+frontier of French Lorraine. “Load carbine!” came quickly
+from the lieutenant to the orderly, and I looked round involuntarily,
+but without noticing anything out of the common.
+It was just a precaution apparently, but the order sounded
+strange when heard for the first time. Longlaville is the first
+place we come to in France. Here we find numerous traces
+of German shells, but the factories and their lofty chimneys
+have been spared. In the middle of the road and at its sides
+are numerous pits where shells have burst, and here and there
+a tree has been cut clean off by a “bull’s-eye.” Of some
+houses there is hardly anything left but the walls, whilst
+others have only had the roof carried away, evidently by
+projectiles striking them at a tangent. The tramway laid
+at the edge of the road has been roughly dealt with. Here
+and there its rails have been twisted as if made of wire. High
+up in the church towers one notices that the slates have been
+removed to make room for machine guns and to provide posts
+of observation for the officers watching the German artillery
+positions and the effect of the French fire.</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="fr">Où est la route pour Longwy?</i>” enquires von Gwinner,
+and the answer comes, “<i lang="fr">Tout droit, monsieur.</i>” The people
+always answer politely, whatever they may feel at heart.
+We leave one of Longwy’s two detached forts on the right
+and presently we enter the busy little manufacturing town,
+which is situated in a hollow, surrounded on all sides by hills.
+On one of them stands Longwy fortress, which was easily
+taken by the Germans right at the beginning of the war after
+an exceedingly violent bombardment. A couple of thousand
+prisoners then fell into the hands of the conquerors. In the
+previous war&mdash;January, 1871&mdash;Longwy also capitulated.
+We had no time to visit the fortress on this occasion, and drove
+straight through the town. It certainly looks anything but
+cheerful. But what can one expect of a town which has quite
+recently been ravaged by war and has been cut off from
+its country, its Government and administration? Nor did
+the rain and mud help to lessen the gloom. Nevertheless, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[p. 58]</span>town looked by no means dead and deserted, for a large
+proportion of its inhabitants had returned after the heavy
+hand of war had moved further westward, and life had begun
+to settle down again in its old groove.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the town stand the naked walls of a house ravaged
+by fire. The German troops had been fired upon from its
+windows and in accordance with the custom of war it had been
+set fire to. We are travelling a little too fast to gather more
+than a hasty impression, but wherever I look I see the devastating
+effects of battle. I think to myself as we go along that the
+sooner I get accustomed to such sights the better. On both
+sides of the roads, in fields and ditches, French knapsacks
+and tattered fragments of uniforms are lying about. An
+upturned motor-car lies by the roadside, evidently flung
+aside so as not to be in the way of the traffic, and a little
+further on is a motor-lorry in the same position. Here we
+see broken bits of rifles and ammunition wagons, or the
+crescent-shaped shield of a field-gun. A grave with a wooden
+cross strikes the eye, then another and yet another, a whole
+row of graves&mdash;here is the resting-place of soldiers who have
+fallen in the fighting. In the middle of the road are a couple
+of shell holes filled with rain-water&mdash;these are dangerous, for
+one is apt in the hurry to take them for shallow puddles. But
+von Gwinner has travelled this way several times and knows
+the road.</p>
+
+<p>To the right and left of the road are deep, narrow trenches
+with shallow parapets; but the soldiers have gone away
+by now and the plain is silent&mdash;silent where not a month
+ago 300,000 soldiers were fighting for their lives. In many
+fields the harvest has been brought in by German troops to
+supply their own needs. By the side of ditches, in woods and
+copses, small, low huts are still standing, built of branches
+and boughs, in which the French soldiers had sought protection
+from rain and cold. The German infantry, on the
+other hand, is equipped with shelter-tents. Each man carries
+with his equipment a part of the brown tarpaulin, which,
+joined together, forms a temporary shelter for a certain
+number of soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>We now pass through a stretch of wooded country. The
+French are very clever in maintaining their positions on wooded
+ground. They often succeed in contriving concealed positions
+for machine guns in the leafy tops of trees. Ravines with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[p. 59]</span>streams at the bottom or woods are considered by the Germans
+to present greater obstacles to attack than the more
+open ground met with in central and southern France.</p>
+
+<p>Our road takes us through Longuyon and follows its main
+street. It has a desolate appearance. Over a long stretch
+there is not a single house standing. Everything is in ruins,
+the road is lined with piles of wreckage, swept aside so as not
+to impede the traffic, and naked walls with yawning window
+gaps meet the eye. The bridges are guarded by German
+sentries; otherwise no human beings are to be seen. How
+miserable the inhabitants must feel when they return and
+vainly look for their homes and belongings!</p>
+
+<p>We emerge into the open country where armies have been
+marching through. Small blackened holes in the earth are
+all that is left of the bivouac fires and cooking-pits. Here the
+transport columns have rested for the night. The village of
+Noërs is burned and its church steeple has been shot away,
+the music of a maxim gun having been traced to the spot
+from which at other times the church bells call to evensong.
+No dead bodies are seen, no fallen soldiers, no carcases of
+horses. All remains of men and horses have for sanitary
+reasons been interred by the Germans. They would otherwise
+poison the air and give rise to epidemics. Still there is
+quite enough left to recall the ravages of war. Here we have
+a row of straw shelters backed on to a hedge, there some upturned
+carts with which the French had endeavoured to bar
+the way. This is the most magnificent high road imaginable,
+lined everywhere with avenues of trees. Along the roadside
+runs a telegraph line, which had been destroyed by the
+defenders but repaired by the German Telegraph Corps, not
+by the field telegraph troops, whose sphere of activity is nearer
+the front.</p>
+
+<p>We have now reached Marville, and the road becomes
+livelier. At one side a supply column has turned off into a
+field and lined up its wagons, which with their canvas awnings
+give the impression of an open-air barrack-yard. The column
+is resting, and the men have commenced cooking. Round
+the encampment sentries are posted. Precautions must be
+taken. Yesterday in this very neighbourhood nineteen French
+civilians, who had fired on an ammunition column, were
+arrested. They were to be tried by court-martial and shot if
+the offence could be brought home to them. A little further
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[p. 60]</span>on another supply column, consisting of more primitive
+wagons, had halted by the roadside, for it is the rule that a
+transport column must not pause for any length of time on
+the road itself, which for the sake of the traffic must always
+be kept as clear as possible. It is, moreover, considered easier
+to supervise, and, if necessary, protect a column of wagons
+drawn up several deep and thus shortened in length.</p>
+
+<p>We now drive past a motor-lorry with field post for the 5th
+Army. It makes a terrific noise as it rattles past on the hard
+road surface. Presently the road is encumbered by another
+supply column, but unlike the others, this one is on the move.
+We must drive more slowly in order that the horses of the
+mounted escort may not take fright and come into collision with
+the car. In passing I catch sight of the words, “<i lang="de">Reserve Park
+Kolonn 15</i>” on one of these wagons, each of which is marked
+with a number.</p>
+
+<p>We next drive through Montmédy, whose little fort surrendered
+without bombardment. But before the garrison
+withdrew, they blew up the railway tunnel through the mountain.
+Thereupon the Germans immediately began building
+a new railway round the rock on which the fort was built;
+as we drove past, French prisoners were still engaged on this
+work. It was a curious sight to see these toiling soldiers in
+blue and red uniforms supervised by grey-clad German
+privates with shouldered rifles. Chauvency is a little place
+on the River La Chiers, whose bridge had been destroyed by
+the French. One of the arches had been blown up. German
+engineers had forthwith built a wooden bridge below the
+old one.</p>
+
+<p>The weather cleared up towards evening, and the sun went
+down like a big red ball. Its last rays fell upon a convoy
+of French prisoners, who, under German escort, bent and
+footsore, made their way to Montmédy. The Frenchmen
+had nothing to carry, but the Germans had their rifles with
+fixed bayonets. In front of us lies the valley of the Meuse and
+the little town of Stenay. The faint outlines of heights and hills
+disappear in the dim blue distance. On the left bank of the
+river the French had at this point occupied a fortified position,
+which, however, was taken by storm at the beginning of the
+campaign. So this is the Meuse, or in German Maas, on which
+are situated so many towns rendered famous by this and
+previous wars, such as Sedan, Givet, Dinant, Namur, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[p. 61]</span>Liège! To the left is the great main road which on the right
+river bank runs via Dun to Verdun.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill010"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_010_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/010.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A SERVICE WAGON AT STENAY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>We descend gradually until the Meuse is reached, meeting
+fresh ammunition and food columns on the way. In the
+latter I notice huge motor-lorries loaded with flour, bread
+and other foodstuffs. Now and again we come across horsemen,
+always in pairs. They are mounted police and are out
+to maintain order on the roads.</p>
+
+<p>We stop outside the house in which the General in Command
+of the 5th Army has taken up his quarters. I was able to
+speak there without difficulty to one of my friends from the
+Main Headquarters, Landrat Baron von Maltzahn, Member
+of the Reichstag and a personal friend of the Crown Prince.
+He was able to give me the welcome news that I was expected
+and that I must hurry in order to be in time for supper, which
+was served at eight o’clock. So we drove at once up
+to the little French château, where His I. &amp; R. Highness had
+elected to stay. Here I said good-bye to my excellent friend
+Lieutenant von Gwinner and thanked him for his companionship.
+Thus he, too, disappears from my horizon, and I stand
+before a new association of acquaintances and friendships.</p>
+
+<p>Footmen in military uniforms at once took charge of my
+baggage and conducted me to my room on the first floor,
+next door to the Crown Prince’s private apartments. A few
+minutes before eight the acting Lord-in-Waiting, Court-Marshal
+von Behr, knocked at my door. He was a pleasant
+young man of distinguished and attractive appearance, and
+he had come to bring me in to supper. We went out through
+the upper vestibule and down the stairs, from the landing of
+which we were fortunate enough to witness a pleasing ceremony.
+In the lower hall stood a number of officers in line,
+and opposite them some twenty soldiers formed up in the
+same way. Then came the Crown Prince William, tall, slim
+and royally straight, dressed in a dazzling white tunic and
+wearing the Iron Cross of the first and second class; he walked
+with a firm step between the lines of soldiers. An adjutant
+followed him, carrying in a casket a number of Iron Crosses.
+The Crown Prince took one and handed it to the nearest
+officer, whom he thanked for the services which he had rendered
+to his Emperor and country, and then with a hearty
+handshake he congratulated the hero whom he had thus
+honoured.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[p. 62]</span></p>
+
+<p>When all the officers had received their decorations, the
+reward for their bravery, the turn came of the soldiers, the
+ceremony being precisely the same as with the officers; but
+I found it hard to distinguish what the soldiers said in their
+loud, rough and nervous voices. At last I distinguished the
+words: <i lang="de">Danke untertänigst Kaiserliche Hoheit</i> (I humbly
+thank your Imperial Highness).</p>
+
+<p>When the knights of the Iron Cross had taken their departure,
+we went down into the hall, where the Crown Prince
+stepped up to me and bade me heartily welcome to his Headquarters
+and to the seat of war. The meal, which might as
+well have been called dinner as supper, was attended by
+the following gentlemen: Lieutenant-General Schmidt von
+Knobelsdorff, Chief of Staff of the 5th Army, Court-Marshal von
+Behr, Chief of the Medical Corps, Body-Physician Professor
+Widenmann, Majors von der Planitz, von Müller, personal
+Adjutant to H.I. &amp; R.H., and Heymann, Lieutenant von
+Zobeltitz and a few members of the Staff, who arrived later
+after the day’s work in the field and took their seats at the
+lower end of the table.</p>
+
+<p>Would you like to know what the German Crown Prince, the
+Crown Prince of Prussia, eats for supper? Here is the menu:
+cabbage soup, boiled beef with horse-radish and potatoes,
+wild duck with salad, fruit, wine, and coffee with cigars. And
+what would you say the conversation was about? It is hard
+to say exactly, but we travelled over almost the whole world
+with the ease bred by familiarity. The Crown Prince, like
+the Emperor, began with Tibet, and from there it was but
+a step across the Himalayas to the palms of the Hugli Delta,
+the pagodas of Benares, the silver moonlight over Taj Mahal,
+the tigers of the jungle and the music of the crystal waves of
+India beating against the rocks of Malabar point. We also
+spoke of old unforgettable memories and of common friends
+who now love us no longer&mdash;of the brave and famous Kitchener,
+the conqueror of Omdurman and South Africa, of the Mararajahs
+and their fairy-like splendour at Bikanir, Kutch Behar,
+Gwalior, Kashmir and Idar.</p>
+
+<p>We also talked about the war and its horrors, and the
+terrible sacrifices it demands. “But it cannot be helped,”
+said the Crown Prince, “our Fatherland asks us to give all
+we have, and <em>we will, we must</em> win, even if the whole world
+takes up arms against us.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[p. 63]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Is not the calm here wonderful! We seem to be living to-night
+in the most absolute peace, and yet it is but a couple of
+hours’ drive to the firing line,” observes my Imperial host
+after listening to a short, concise and satisfactory report
+made in a ringing voice by an officer who has just entered.
+“Yes, your Imperial Highness, I had imagined the Staff
+Headquarters of an army to resemble a buzzing beehive, but
+now that I have the reality before me, I find no trace of anxiety
+or nervousness, nothing but calm and assurance everywhere.
+But what I should like to see most of all would be a battle,
+for I suspect that in common with most other civilians I have
+formed an erroneous opinion on this subject.”</p>
+
+<p>The Crown Prince smiles and answers: “Yes, battle painters
+like Neuville and Détaille would have little use for their art
+in these days. Of the fighting men one sees practically nothing,
+for they are concealed by the ground and in the trenches, and it
+is rather dangerous to get too close to a bayonet charge&mdash;unless
+one’s duty takes one there. Generally speaking, the distance
+between the fighting forces increases with the improvement in
+fire-arms. Those who have the best artillery have the best
+prospects of winning. To us the field-grey uniform is a great
+advantage, as we merge into the colouring of the ground, whilst
+the brilliant uniforms of the French are visible from afar.
+<em>To see</em> a battle is practically impossible&mdash;not even the Commander
+directing it sees much of it, his direction is effected by
+telephone and is dependent on information and reports
+received, which in turn are carefully sifted and weighed. For
+a spectator to post himself on a height in the neighbourhood
+is not advisable, for then he may be sure of being taken for
+an observer directing the artillery fire, and becomes at once
+the target of the enemy’s shells. You shall, however, during
+your visit here be allowed to witness all that it is possible to see.”</p>
+
+<p>What life and spirit at the Crown Prince’s Headquarters!
+Everything was gay with the freshness of youth, and devoid of
+restraint. No trace of the stiffness of court ceremonial. Even
+General Schmidt, who usually maintained the strictest discipline,
+was infected by the prevailing spirit of camaraderie.
+But owing to the terrible burden of work which rested on the
+shoulders of the Chief of Staff, it was not unusual for him to
+come in for his meals after the others. The supper, or rather
+the talk after it, went on till about eleven&mdash;these were the
+only hours when one could meet in quiet, for during the day
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[p. 64]</span>everyone was busy with his duties, and the Crown Prince then
+occupied his post as commanding officer at suitable points at
+the front.</p>
+
+<p>The château where we were staying belonged to an aristocratic
+French lady&mdash;if I remember rightly her name was du
+Vernier. When the war broke out she moved to Bordeaux.
+On her return after the contest she will find her château, her
+estates and the beautiful park in the same condition as when
+she went away. There was a certain aristocratic grandeur
+about the château, though signs of decay were already making
+themselves apparent. On the mantelpiece in my room stood a
+pendulum clock of gilt bronze of an antique mythological
+design, and on each side stood a couple of gorgeous candelabra.
+The walls were decorated with a few unassuming pictures,
+amongst them a portrait of an old French warrior.</p>
+
+<p>I open my window, it is pitch-dark outside, and the rain
+falls close and heavy upon the trees and lawns outside. Tired
+after a somewhat ambitious day’s work, I hurry to bed, the
+more so as I suspect the next day’s programme to be no less
+exacting.</p>
+
+<p>September 21st. I was called early to be ready for breakfast
+at seven, when all his entourage gathers round the Crown Prince.
+After breakfast H.I. &amp; R.H. asked me to accompany him to
+the Staff quarters, where a “plan of campaign” for my day
+was to be drawn up. General Schmidt quickly made up his
+mind. He thought it might be of interest to me to begin by
+watching the artillery fire at Septsarges, and instructed three
+officers to take charge of me. Major Matthiasz was the leader
+of the party, and a soldier came as chauffeur. The two other
+officers were Liebrecht of a battalion of Chasseurs, and
+Schmidt of the Volunteer Automobile Corps.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst the car was got ready I was being coached on a large
+map in the grouping of the 5th Army and of the artillery
+positions which we were to visit. The General Staff of the
+Chief Command of the Army was housed in an <i lang="fr">École de
+Garçons</i>, which still contained relics of its former state, such
+as natural history pictures and maps, and a couple of school
+benches with the master’s desk, above which could still be
+seen in black and white the golden rules: <i lang="fr">Ne vous vantez
+pas</i>, and <i lang="fr">Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité</i>. How hollow and
+foolish did they not seem before the brutal reality now presiding
+over the world!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[p. 65]</span></p>
+
+<p>The car is ready. We step in. I am dressed in furs and
+have a mackintosh. I also bring a pair of field-glasses and a
+sketch-book. It is no longer raining, but the sky is overcast
+and the weather chilly and autumnal after all the suffocating
+heat which the soldiers had to endure during the first phase
+of the campaign. We drive southward at break-neck speed.
+I cannot deny that I had to struggle against the feeling of
+growing excitement. It was not mere manœuvres; it was war
+itself, a part of the greatest struggle that had ever been fought
+on earth. It was, moreover, the struggle on the western front,
+the fight against the French, rightly considered to be the
+sturdiest and best soldiers among Germany’s opponents.
+When one approaches such a spot, and when for the first time
+in one’s life one enters the zone of fire, it is difficult not to feel,
+whether one admits it or not, a certain tension, even if one has
+been through some wild adventures in Asia. Every minute
+we get nearer the firing line, and as the car slows down at the
+corners we hear the cannonade more plainly. The booming
+of the guns sounds dull and heavy, the ground quivers.</p>
+
+<p>But events move all too fast. Observations and impressions
+follow so quickly upon one another that it is difficult to
+assimilate them all. I make my notes as usual, even when
+the car is racing along at its fastest, and my writing is far
+from copper-plate. We still have 32 kilometres to Septsarges,
+a village 21 kilometres north-west of Verdun. How often did
+I not wish to stop&mdash;to impress more strongly on my mind
+some vivid and warlike picture, but as I am stopping for two
+days with the 5th Army, I shall, no doubt, have an opportunity
+of revisiting this section. The whole road is full of supply
+columns moving southward, and we meet innumerable empty
+transport lorries on the way north, to be reloaded at some
+railway station. Here we also see fresh young troops, all
+strapping fellows, who have come direct from Germany to go
+straight to victory or death. All are jolly and eager; truly,
+they look as if the whole affair were to them but an autumn
+manœuvre, and as if they felt no trace of excitement. They
+march along with easy bearing and sing merry soldiers’ ditties
+under the leaden skies now darkening this unhappy bleeding
+France. They light their pipes and their eternal cigarettes,
+laugh and chat&mdash;as if they were going to a picnic in the
+country. In reality they are going out to fill the gaps made
+by the French fire in the ranks of their comrades. They are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[p. 66]</span><i lang="de">Ersatztruppen</i>, i.e. reinforcements, but I do not see a single
+face which betrays the slightest feeling that death is near.
+They hear the thunder of the guns better than we do, for the
+humming of the car drowns all other sounds. But they seem
+to delight in the dull music, and yet their place is far in
+advance of the artillery positions. <i lang="de">Ersatztruppen</i>! it means
+that their duty is to <em>replace</em> the fallen, and that the same fate
+awaits themselves. Yet they are gay and happy. “<i lang="la">Dulce et
+decorum est pro patria mori.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers’ helmets are provided with covers of the same
+shade of grey as the uniforms. On their backs they carry
+knapsacks containing their most indispensable kit, their share
+of the tent, and a couple of bowls with spoon, knife and fork.
+At the side they carry the bayonet and the “portable tool,”
+spade or axe. To the waist-belt are fastened the filled cartridge
+pouches, the whole outfit weighing about 56 English lbs.
+It is a fairly substantial weight and, although figuratively
+speaking the soldiers march into battle with a light step, their
+steps are in reality pretty heavy, especially on country roads
+softened by rain. Anyhow, their marching capacity is nothing
+short of wonderful&mdash;I for my part should not get far with such
+a load. Practice makes perfect, as the whole German nation
+knows. That is why the Germans do not refuse to spend
+enormous sums on their defence. And that is why they
+conquer, even though attacked by four great powers whose
+soldiers have not received the same thorough scientific training
+in times of peace.</p>
+
+<p>We fly through Dun. One can hardly speak of more than
+one street in this prettily situated little village on the banks
+of the Meuse. Yet this street has indeed been hardly dealt
+with. It is a melancholy comfort to know that its comely
+houses have been destroyed by the French Army’s own
+artillery, so as to make the stay at Dun as disagreeable as
+possible for the Germans. It is now a “line of communication”
+base depot with Depot <i lang="de">Kommandantur</i>, a “line of
+communication” hospital and store depot, and also has large
+supplies of arms and ammunition. The railway, now under
+Prussian management, is being worked up to this point, where
+the transfer takes place from the supply trains to the great
+columns of the Army Service Corps.</p>
+
+<p>The population, which fled on the approach of the Germans,
+has already begun to return. The two bridges over the Meuse
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[p. 67]</span>have been blown up, but one of them, the one of stone, over
+which the main road passes, has been repaired by the Engineers.
+The little village of Liny, on our right, has been more fortunate.
+Here the pretty little white houses with their red-tiled roofs
+are almost untouched.</p>
+
+<p>We now begin to notice that we are approaching the firing
+line. The whole road is encumbered with troops. Here comes
+a detachment of wounded on foot, with bandages round heads
+and hands, or with the arm in a sling. We meet an empty
+ammunition column, an endless string of rattling wagons.
+We always keep to the right of course. Woe to him who
+breaks this rule and causes a stoppage on the road.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> If it is
+not broad enough, it becomes rather awkward at times to get
+along. And how often does it not happen that two transport
+columns meet on the same bit of road, one empty going northward
+and the other fully laden travelling south! Suddenly
+we find ourselves in the narrow passage between two such
+moving walls. If into the bargain another car with field post
+comes along&mdash;every corps has its own post&mdash;a temporary
+congestion is not infrequently the result, but thanks to the
+smartness of the drivers and chauffeurs the trouble is soon
+overcome.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">[5]</a> In Sweden (as in England) one always keeps to the left.</p></div>
+
+<p>The artillery ammunition column which we are just now
+passing is an impressive sight. The noise of these vehicles,
+dull and heavy, is quite different from that of the empty
+wagons on our left, but then they are loaded to the top with
+heavy ammunition, shells for 21-cm. mortars at Septsarges
+and neighbouring villages. Every ammunition wagon&mdash;consisting
+of limber and wagon body&mdash;with its team of six
+horses requires the services of six men. Three of them&mdash;drivers&mdash;ride
+on the off-side&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> horses, two are seated on the
+limber, and one facing the rear on the wagon body. They are
+armed with Mauser pistols fastened on the left side of the belt,
+but the swords of the drivers are securely strapped on to the
+left side of the saddle.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6" class="label">[6]</a> i.e. the left-hand horse. As Germans drive to the right this is their
+“off” side.</p></div>
+
+<p>The horses are fat and sleek, and pull without exerting
+themselves unduly. They move at a walking pace&mdash;anything
+else would be impossible on this road. It is a far finer sight to
+see one of these columns trundling along at full speed with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[p. 68]</span>the horses moving at a sharp trot or gallop. Even at the pace
+at which they are now travelling these endless columns are an
+impressive and attractive sight. What does it matter if the
+helmets, in order not to glitter and attract attention, are
+concealed by a cover which even hides the spike surmounting
+them; what does it matter if the men’s uniforms are of the
+same dirty grey as the clay and mud of the soil? The whole
+team looks picturesque enough with its massive, solid wagon,
+its pole, its leather fittings and its harness.</p>
+
+<p>Tramp, tramp go the horses’ hoofs, and behind them comes
+the rattling of the heavy wagons. One rider sings, another
+whistles and a third is shouting at a refractory horse. Behind
+sit a couple of men rolling cigarettes, which by the way is
+more difficult than it sounds when a wagon is jolting up and
+down. This column also has a mounted escort. The train is
+wound up by a field kitchen with a couple of store wagons on
+which a few bundles of firewood are also lying. Without
+ceasing, this eternal tramp, tramp, keeps dinning into our
+ears as the columns slowly travel southward, a never-ending
+stream of warriors, horses, ammunition and provisions.
+“Germany must have inexhaustible supplies of everything,”
+I remark to Major Matthiasz.</p>
+
+<p>He smiles and replies: “Here on the western front we must
+have quite fifty roads such as this, all equally crowded with
+men, horses and materials.”</p>
+
+<p>“It must cost a tidy bit of money.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, it is best not to think of it, but then it means everything
+to us.”</p>
+
+<p>We have now reached the front of the great column. At
+its head ride a couple of officers, the commander and his
+adjutant. They salute us. We have hardly left them behind
+before we drive past the tail-end of an infantry ammunition
+column, the wagons of which are manned by three men and
+drawn by four horses with only one driver, mounted on the
+off leader.</p>
+
+<p>By the side of the road are numberless great pits where
+shells have struck. Here the fire has been heavy with a
+vengeance. This fact is brought home to us still more as we
+redescend to the Meuse at the point where the village of
+Vilosnes received such a pounding, and where a permanent
+bridge was blown up, only to be replaced in a twinkling by a
+temporary structure by the German Engineers. The ground
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[p. 69]</span>round the village reminds one almost of a cake of Swedish rye-bread
+pitted all over with holes. The blankness of desolation
+is most curiously contrasted by the busy military life around.
+Almost every inch of ground is occupied by the transport
+columns with their endless streams of wagons, drafts of
+reinforcements who had elected to halt here&mdash;the men resting
+on the wet ground round their piled rifles&mdash;military police
+in their green uniforms and crescent-shaped metal badges,
+and countless horses to replace those which have fallen, for
+Vilosnes has now been made into a horse depot.</p>
+
+<p>The thunder of the guns has now become louder and we
+have not far to go to reach the German batteries. As yet
+there is no danger. The countless shell-pits have not been
+formed in the present fighting. Since these shells fell, the
+Germans have made an advance. But we are, nevertheless,
+immediately behind the firing line, and that is why all these
+supplies are required to feed men, horses, guns and rifles.
+A little way from the village an ammunition column has halted;
+its wheels look awful, coated with thick layers of mud and
+clay up to the axles. The men are like moving clay statues.
+In the midst of the mire, in fields and meadows, are ammunition
+parks and field hospitals, although it would be
+impossible to find a single dry patch on which to rest one’s
+tired body for the night. Presumably the men sleep in the
+wagons as far as space allows. They are hardy and brave,
+these men, always singing, never complaining.</p>
+
+<p>We come a step nearer the fire when we drive up to the
+village of Dannevoux, which is crowded with <i lang="de">Ersatztruppen</i>.
+Here we can study the reinforcement organisation more
+closely still. Here fresh soldiers stand ready to move up into
+the firing line to replace the killed and wounded, whilst the
+work of provisioning and bringing up fresh ammunition is in
+full swing, so that no fatal break need occur in the firing.
+Dannevoux church has been turned into a field hospital,
+where Germans and Frenchmen are tended without discrimination.</p>
+
+<p>In a modest little house in Dannevoux a Divisional Commander
+has taken up his quarters, and here we pay a short
+visit to General von Gossler, who is in the act of examining
+some fifty French prisoners drawn up in two files, who had
+just been captured. They reply calmly and politely to all
+questions and say that their regiment has been almost wiped
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[p. 70]</span>out. They are from the south of France, most of them from
+Marseilles&mdash;that is to say they belong to the 15th Army Corps.
+Here we also meet Colonel von Rath, whose acquaintance I
+had made in Breslau.</p>
+
+<p>Dannevoux had been horribly knocked about by shells,
+and was still far from safe. The next day we heard that
+General von Gossler had miraculously escaped being hit by
+a shell which had dropped hardly twenty metres from the
+spot where he was standing.</p>
+
+<p>We mount the car once more to travel the six kilometres
+which separate us from the little village of Septsarges, in a
+south-westerly direction. On our left, hardly a kilometre
+distant, was a little coppice which had been bombarded that
+very morning. The day before yesterday the French had
+learnt from spies amongst the civil population or through
+one of their aviators that this was an important <i lang="de">Beobachtungsstand</i>,
+or observation station, and yesterday a thousand
+shells were rained upon it, but by that time the observers
+had already withdrawn and only left a picket behind, who
+found the necessary shelter in a bomb-proof cave.</p>
+
+<p>The road we take is within the range of the French batteries,
+and now and again a shell drops by the roadside. The ground
+is pitted with the marks of shell fire, but we manage to steer
+clear. We are as yet concealed by a slight rise in the ground
+south of the road. It was lucky that a little accident that
+happened to the car compelled us to stop just at this point. A
+little further on we should have been in sight of the French
+observation posts, and should no doubt have drawn their
+fire. The French artillery is exceedingly vigilant and considers
+it can afford to waste ammunition even on single individuals.</p>
+
+<p>I am worried by an inquisitive wasp buzzing round me and
+contrast it vaguely in my mind with the somewhat larger
+winged creatures issuing from the muzzles of the guns. Once
+more the car is ready to start. “Drive quickly over the high
+ground,” orders Major Matthiasz, but it is easier said than
+done; this by-road is narrow and has been converted into a
+perfect quagmire with enormous ruts by all the heavy traffic
+it has had to bear. We have to be content with such speed
+as we can manage, and trust that the French observers will
+not notice us or that their directions will not be obeyed
+until we are over the hill. On the left, towards the south,
+are two French captive balloons. It is a little unpleasant to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[p. 71]</span>know that they are in telephonic communication with the
+batteries beneath. Neither is it very encouraging to see a
+row of wooden crosses surmounting fresh graves by the roadside.
+In the ditch lies a dead horse which had not been able
+to struggle on any further. The shell craters are now so frequent
+that we do not pay them the slightest attention.</p>
+
+<p>Here by the roadside stands a transport convoy which has
+brought oats for the horses of a mortar section. We have not
+far to go to the first batteries, each consisting of four of these
+gigantic “growlers.” We drive up between two battery
+positions whilst they are firing. “Load!” calls the head of
+the battery, a Captain. “<i lang="de">Fertig zum Feuer!</i>”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>&#x2060;&mdash;and directly
+after, “<i lang="de">Feuer!</i>”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> and all four guns are discharged simultaneously.
+Immediately a spout of fire issues from the
+gun-muzzle, accompanied by a report which rends the air and
+causes the ground to shake for some distance around. Then
+is heard that peculiar, horrible whistle through the air, as
+the projectile sweeps the space which separates us from the
+French positions. Each mortar has a shield, and by the side
+of the guns the gunners have dug a trench for “<i lang="de">Deckung</i>”
+or protection in case the French fire should press the battery
+too hard.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7" class="label">[7]</a> Ready to fire!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8" class="label">[8]</a> Fire!</p></div>
+
+<p>Presently we reach Septsarges, where all alleys, yards and
+open spaces are filled with soldiers. The village is situated
+in a shallow hollow, and the men here are fairly safe from the
+French fire. But a flat-topped rise in the ground immediately
+south of the village is struck now and again by a shell.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill001"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_001_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/001.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>21 CM. MORTARS FIRING AT SEPTSARGES
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Septsarges also accommodates a few field kitchens, which
+stand ready with their smoking chimneys. The food is prepared
+during the day, and as dusk sets in the vehicles are
+driven up in proximity to the infantry positions, hugging the
+dips in the ground as much as possible and sheltering behind
+any cover there may be. The men in the trenches know where
+the canteen is set up, and betake themselves thither under the
+shelter of the darkness to get their tin bowls filled with boiling
+hot broth.</p>
+
+<p>We did not remain in the village longer than was necessary
+to get information from a couple of officers. Thereupon we
+continued on our way, leaving the car at a point beyond the
+range of artillery. Then we went up the hill towards the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[p. 72]</span>south, with the nearest mortar battery on the left and a field
+artillery position on the right. Even the field artillery gunners
+had dug trenches by the side of the guns, covered over with
+boughs, straw and leaves, thus carefully masking themselves
+from the French aviators.</p>
+
+<p>From the car, which we left in line with the artillery positions,
+we walked some 800 metres in the direction of the
+French fire. One has to imagine the infantry positions in
+two approximately parallel lines, only a few hundred metres
+distant from one another. Behind them come the artillery
+positions, also generally speaking in parallel lines. Thus we
+were now moving within the space situated between the
+German artillery positions and the German infantry lines,
+that is to say, the zone bombarded by the French artillery.
+The risk was, therefore, fairly great, and we took such precautions
+as the ground allowed. Our objective was an observation
+post located on the crest of the rise, where a couple of
+non-commissioned artillery officers stood immovable as if
+nailed to the ground, by the side of their telescope mounted
+on a tripod. They were observing the fire of the mortar
+batteries and telephoned where the shells had struck and
+the position of the hit in relation to the object aimed at.
+It is from the reports of aviators and of advanced observation
+posts and patrols of officers that the range is obtained and
+the fire is directed.</p>
+
+<p>On the lowest part of the slope we were fairly safe, as at
+this point we were not visible from the French side. “Look
+out for telephone wires,” warned Matthiasz, who was leading
+the way, as we passed the lines resting on the grass. When
+we had reached the middle of the slope, where we were exposed
+to view from several points on the French line, we
+descended into a long communication trench, which led to
+the vicinity of the post of observation. The trench was hardly
+more than a metre deep and we had to walk almost double
+in order not to be seen over its edge. The bottom was very
+unpleasant. Owing to the sloping ground nearly all the water
+had been drained off, but there was still enough to convert
+the trench into a greyish-blue bath of slime and mire, through
+which we laboriously made our way with our boots sticking
+in the mess, and now and again sinking down to the calves,
+and this was not made pleasanter by some delightful relics
+which the soldiers had left behind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[p. 73]</span></p>
+
+<p>Dressed in their greatcoats, the observation officers stand
+on the crest of the hill, with a very low, short parapet in front
+of them. As a rule one is anything but welcome when successful
+in sneaking up to one of these points, for one may easily
+attract the enemy’s attention and thus place the observers
+in great danger. No wonder, therefore, that they saluted
+us rather curtly and continued, immovable as statues, to
+observe the French fire. We walked the last bit of the way
+in single file, so as to make it appear to the opposite batteries
+as if there were only one man, and not, by open order, to create
+more movement than necessary on the hill crest. Sitting on
+our heels, we observed the country southward in the direction
+of Malancourt, and took our bearings as best we could. The
+Major was just explaining what heights, copses, villages and
+roads were occupied by the Germans and where the French
+positions began, when a shrapnel shell exploded close by us,
+a little to our left. “<i lang="de">Deckung!</i>” cried Matthiasz, and threw
+himself down at full length behind the parapet. We had
+hardly time to follow his example when three other of these
+infernal machines spat out their contents, a little further
+away, however, than the first. It was now obvious that we
+had been seen by the French observers, and that the fire from
+a battery had been concentrated on us. We, therefore,
+thought it wise to move on to a safer place&mdash;when one has been
+discovered there is nothing else to do if one wishes to get away
+with a whole skin. To begin with we moved down to the
+nearest mortar battery, where we passed a few moments.
+Whilst they were loading for the next salvo I drew the accompanying
+very rough sketch. But one can hardly be expected
+to show the requisite presence of mind and coolness to accomplish
+a detailed drawing, when at any moment one may be
+smothered in shell fragments. In the picture the mortar
+barrel is lowered for loading; on the right is a projectile
+on a <i lang="de">Trage</i>, or little iron barrow.</p>
+
+<p>By a more westerly road, and still passing endless transport
+columns, we next proceed northward, and ascend a height
+which seems to be outside the firing line, and from which
+with greater tranquillity we can observe the martial spectacle
+southward. There is really little to be seen. The only thing
+that we see and hear is the German batteries, and, if the
+weather is clear, the impact and bursting of the shells. The
+French batteries are, of course, equally well hidden behind
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[p. 74]</span>mounds and masked by bushes and young trees, and one sees
+and hears nothing of their fire but the impact of their shells
+and the report. The French fire on this particular day consisted
+mainly of shrapnel, and it made itself known chiefly by
+a shrill whistling sound and by the little puffs of white smoke
+which denoted the bursting of the shells overhead.</p>
+
+<p>The streets of the village of Cunel are full of Württemberg
+Landwehr and their steaming field kitchens and long trains
+of supply columns. The roads are swarming with infantry
+and Uhlans. Here also are large bodies of <i lang="de">Ersatztruppen</i>
+or reinforcements, ready to move up and fill the gaps. We
+have brought with us a whole bundle of fresh newspapers to
+distribute amongst the men. Nothing gives them greater
+pleasure than this kind of news from home. Out here the
+soldiers get, of course, no particulars of the war but what
+they can see with their own eyes. Of course, they can draw
+certain conclusions from the orders given out day by day.
+But about the general situation on the various fronts they
+know nothing. Their hunger and thirst are stilled at field kitchens,
+which are run so smartly and so thoroughly that
+the question of hunger or thirst really never arises. Cigars
+and cigarettes are also heartily welcome, and are sent to the
+front as <i lang="de">Liebesgaben</i> (love gifts) in entire wagon-loads,
+perhaps mainly to the 5th Army, thanks to the Crown Prince’s
+spirited appeals to the generosity of the public. But on the
+whole the longing for news is the greatest, and I think that
+the soldiers would often gladly go hungry and thirsty for a
+while and forfeit their beloved smokes, if they could only learn
+how Germany’s great war was going on and how their people
+were at home. <i lang="de">Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein</i> they sing
+with tremendous gusto, when the news of fresh victories
+reaches them.</p>
+
+<p>In the village of Romagne we were on the territory of a new
+Army Corps. The house at which we stopped is owned by
+a French Major who has retired from the Army and lives
+there with his wife in the midst of the confusion. As a consequence
+his house and he are quite unmolested. He is on the
+billet register, and sees to it that his German guests are
+properly looked after. At Romagne there is also a field
+hospital, occupying several houses. Every Army Corps has
+twelve such hospitals, each of which has six wagons, all flying
+the Red Cross flag.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[p. 75]</span></p>
+
+<p>The next village we pass is Bantheville, from which the
+population fired on the Germans from the windows when they
+entered. The guilty persons were seized and hanged, and a
+couple of houses which were fired from were burnt down.
+Now the village was full of troops and transport columns.
+Horrible-looking water-filled holes in the road and by the roadside
+betokened the effect of the German guns during the
+advance. In a field stands a whole row of wagons filled with
+sacks of oats. Near by is a flying station and a field-bakery
+detachment with its engines, which look like baking ovens,
+and its big yellow tents where the dough is kneaded and
+moulded in gigantic troughs.</p>
+
+<p>At length we drive back to Dun, where the traffic is if
+possible still livelier than in the morning. It took some time
+to make our way between the trains of vehicles on the bridges
+and in the narrow village street. <i lang="de">Proviant Kolonn 1 Wagen
+23</i> with its team of four and drivers seemed to wish to bar
+our way, but the officer in charge got a terrific scolding from
+the Major. The noise&mdash;the shouting, the creaking of wagons,
+the cracking of whips, the jolting and the neighing&mdash;in this
+village road is indescribable. The 5th Army seems to be in
+need of nothing, least of all of soldiers. As we pass through,
+fresh regiments come marching along, singing and smoking.
+When at last we get clear of the village we find no diminution
+of traffic, but we are at least no longer helplessly blocked in
+the narrow streets.</p>
+
+<p>A sharp shower patters down once more on the arched
+canvas roofs of the service wagons, and this poor land, so
+saturated with blood and water, receives another drenching.
+We ourselves come to no harm, but we cannot help thinking
+of the soldiers lying frozen in the firing line. The trenches are
+not a pleasant place to live in during these autumn rains. A
+German officer once told me that the water was a foot deep in
+many trenches, and that the men had no alternative but to
+stand up in it. Sometimes they were able to dig “dug-outs”
+above the water level so as at least to have somewhere to sit
+or lie, but any attempt at drying is futile. Even if it were
+possible to make up a fire, this is strictly forbidden, as the
+enemy’s gun-fire would be guided by the light.</p>
+
+<p>Here comes a string of vehicles with long, rough tree trunks
+for some bridge construction, there lies an upturned motor-car
+which has come to grief. If a little stretch of road is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[p. 76]</span>moderately clear or only encumbered by a single file of wagons,
+the chauffeur immediately puts on a terrific speed to gain
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>It was still daylight when we returned to our domicile,
+where the Crown Prince, just back from his day’s work, was
+resting in the doorway. A moment later I went out for a
+walk in the town. At the bridges over the Meuse I was stopped
+by the sentries, who in authoritative but invariably polite
+tones asked to see my <i lang="de">Ausweis</i>. That they found me
+suspicious-looking, ambling along as I did with a sketch-book
+under my arm, was not to be wondered at. Only one of them,
+an honest Landwehr man, declared categorically that my pass
+was not sufficient. “Oh,” I said. “The name of the Chief
+of the General Staff of the Field Army, General Moltke, does
+not impress you?” “No, the permit must be viséd by the
+5th Army,” he replied. A couple of his comrades saved the
+situation after reading the permit, and declared that General
+Moltke was good enough for them.</p>
+
+<p>After a short visit to a field base hospital, accommodated
+in a French artillery barracks, I turned my steps homeward
+and stopped, in an inquisitive mood, at the entrance to a shop
+which was open and where soldier customers came and went.
+As I overheard a couple of privates doing their level best to
+make themselves understood by the women in the shop, I
+stepped up to offer my services as interpreter. It turned out
+to be a modest sort of place for women’s clothing, linen, stays,
+lace, handkerchiefs, stockings, scent and soap and other
+useful toilet articles. The proprietress, Madame Desserrey,
+had been a widow for three years and now lived there with
+her three daughters and a sister and subsisted on the profits
+of her little business. The soldiers who were engaged in discussion
+inside, wanted to buy shirts and pants, and Mme.
+Desserrey was trying to explain that if they would come back
+with the material, she would sew the garments they wanted.
+With this information they seemed satisfied, bought a couple
+of boxes of soap and went away.</p>
+
+<p>I asked Mme. Desserrey if she had not been ruined by the
+war, but she replied that she had not suffered any want so
+far. She hoped that she would get through the autumn and
+winter, and that the war would soon be at an end.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, and what do you think of the German soldiers?”
+I asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[p. 77]</span></p>
+
+<p>“They haven’t done me or my family the slightest harm;
+they are always polite and take no liberties. They have
+bought everything in my shop that they can make use of and
+paid for it like men, and if I could only get fresh goods from
+Luxemburg I should do excellent business. I and three others
+are the only ones who keep our shops open. All the others
+closed and fled when the Germans came.”</p>
+
+<p>In the shop were two knitting machines at which the
+eighteen-year-old Blanche Desserrey and her sister of fourteen
+were sitting; they were knitting socks for the Germans, whilst
+their brother, eleven years old, was sitting on the steps outside
+watching the soldiers. Mademoiselle Blanche was a sweet
+and pretty girl, but she did not seem very strong; she had a
+look of melancholy in her dark eyes and wore an anchor of
+hope in her brooch. I asked if she had many relations at the
+war. She answered yes, and she longed for her friends who
+had fled from the town. “How horrible this war is,” she cried,
+“how awful for everybody.” Then she enquired whether they
+had been fighting hard at the front that day&mdash;she had heard
+the booming of the guns in the early morning. Yes, I said,
+they were fighting hard. It was the Germans and the French
+who were fighting against one another, and many a brave
+and promising youth had died for his country. Mademoiselle
+Blanche, I soon found, was not merely a seamstress for the
+soldiers, she was also a dreamer of beautiful dreams, sensitive
+and high-minded, and her heart was pure and without guile.
+She was cheerful, amiable, and could even raise a laugh in
+the midst of the billeting bothers and the knitting, but it was
+clear that she considered gaiety one of the transient things
+of this earth. The German officers and soldiers who entered
+eyed her with interest and treated her with respect. She
+assured me that she had never yet had occasion to complain of
+their conduct. She did not quite understand how she managed
+to disarm even the strongest by a look from her eyes. <i lang="fr">Soyez
+comme l’oiseau, penché pour un instant sur les rameaux trop
+frêles. Il sent plier la branche mais il chante pourtant, sachant
+qu’il a des ailes.</i> Blanche Desserrey would have made an
+ideal heroine of a touching romance.</p>
+
+<p>But I for my part had no time for romances just then.
+When I came out into the street the clock in a church tower
+struck six in the solemn French way, and I hastened to my
+room to make a few notes. Then there was a knock at the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[p. 78]</span>door. “<i lang="de">Herein</i>” I called with the voice of a corporal. In steps
+the Crown Prince with a large volume under his arm. I ask
+my august guest to be seated on the sofa. There we sat and
+talked until it was time to prepare for the evening meal.</p>
+
+<p>The book which the Crown Prince had brought with him,
+and which he asked me to accept as a memento of him, was
+entitled <i lang="de">Deutschland in Waffen</i> (Germany under Arms), and
+contained, apart from reading matter by various authors,
+a series of excellently executed coloured plates of different
+German armies in being, in manœuvres and sham fights, as
+well as of German warships at sea. The work, produced by
+the Crown Prince with the assistance of eminent experts, was
+dedicated to his father the Emperor. The copy, which I
+treasure in memory of the giver, contained a dedication
+curiously historical in tone. The motto chosen by the editor
+of the book was the following: “The world does not rest
+more securely on Atlas’ shoulders than does Germany upon
+her army and navy.” The introduction is written by the
+Crown Prince himself and ends with the following impressive
+and prophetic words:</p>
+
+<p>“Doubtless diplomatic skill can and will, for some time to
+come, defer conflicts and even dissolve them. Those called
+upon in the solemn hour of decision must and will surely be
+fully conscious of their terrible responsibility. They will feel
+it their duty to make it clear to themselves that once the
+match has been applied to the gigantic conflagration, it will
+be no easy and no speedy task to quench it. But, as the
+lightning equalises the tension between two air strata of
+different charge, so will the sword, until the world comes to
+an end, be and remain the deciding factor. And therefore
+everyone who loves his country and who believes in the great
+future of our people must gladly and readily do all in his power
+to guard the old soldierly spirit of our ancestors from decadence
+and from the sickly taint of thought. The sword itself is not
+enough, it needs the practised steel-clad arm to wield it.
+Every man amongst us must keep fit for service in our army
+and navy and must in heart and soul be ready for the great
+and solemn hour when our Emperor calls us to the colours, for
+the moment when we no longer belong to ourselves but to the
+country only with the whole of our bodily and spiritual
+strength&mdash;the time when all these qualities must be strained
+to the uttermost to attain the ‘will to conquer’ which in all
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[p. 79]</span>history has never been known to fail. If thus the entire
+German people is resolved gladly to adventure its life blood
+and all that it holds dear, it matters little if the world is
+‘filled with the legions of darkness’ armed against us, for we
+shall know how to stand up against it, however great be the
+distress of the moment. Thus we shall indeed obey the
+exhortation contained in the comforting verses of Emanuel
+Geibel, the herald of the new German Empire:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“Und wenn uns nichts mehr übrig blieb</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">So blieb uns doch ein Schwert,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Das zorngemut mit scharfem Hieb</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Dem Trutz des Fremdlings wehrt.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“So blieb die Schlacht als letzt Gericht</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Auf Leben und auf Tod.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Und wenn die Not nicht Eisen bricht,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Das Eisen bricht die Not.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_9_9" href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>&#x2060;</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9" href="#FNanchor_9_9" class="label">[9]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">And if nought else to us be left,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">There still remains the sword</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Which boldly wielded with fierce cleft</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Defies the foemen’s horde.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Thus combat unto death we make,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Last arbiter indeed,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">For if need will not iron break</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Then iron shall break the need.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The last line is a play on the German proverb, “Not bricht Eisen”:
+Necessity will (teach us to) break down (obstacles strong as) iron; and if
+it will not, our “iron” (sword) shall break the necessity itself.</p></div>
+
+<p>The world conflagration which Crown Prince William foretold
+is now raging before our very eyes. Will he be justified
+in his steadfast faith in the people over which he is destined
+one day to reign? The writing on the wall from Ypres to the
+Wartha, from Tsingtau to the Cameroons, is telling its tale.
+Here is a nation which cannot go under and which never will
+be conquered.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[p. 80]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">
+    CHAPTER IV
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">A DAY AT ECLISFONTAINE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">SEPTEMBER 22nd. Last night the Crown Prince
+distributed more Iron Crosses among the heroes of
+the day. At the end of the meal he suggested that I
+should spend my morning with Major Matthiasz, whose duties
+with the Chief Command of the 5th Army called him to
+Eclisfontaine, from which point an attack was to be delivered
+against Varennes and neighbouring villages which the Germans
+had once occupied, but from which for strategical reasons
+they had been obliged to retire.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past three I was called, lit my candle, opened the
+window and looked out into the night. It was pitch-dark
+but for a star here and there which peered out through the
+crowns of the trees. It was very still, and nothing could be
+heard but the slow, measured tread of the sentry crunching
+the garden gravel.</p>
+
+<p>At four I was seated alone at breakfast. A soldier accompanied
+me with a lantern to Major Matthiasz’s residence,
+where a young lieutenant with an orderly stood waiting. We
+took our seats, wrapped in comfortable furs, and drove out of
+the town, our powerful headlights showing the way. At this
+early hour they were not of much use, however. A very
+dense fog lay over the ground and it was dangerous to drive
+fast. We accordingly made our way cautiously, the more so
+as the road was as usual crowded with soldiers on foot and
+supply columns. There is no rest on the lines of communication,
+even at night. It is wonderful to think that this
+ceaseless stream of life is never for one moment interrupted!
+Will there ever be an end to this incessant rattle and tramping
+of feet? Truly Germany seems inexhaustible in vital and
+material force.</p>
+
+<p>The trees loomed up through the fog like ghostly sentinels.
+Yet more eerie are the transport columns in this unaccustomed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[p. 81]</span>and picturesque half-light. The grey-clad riders, with their
+cloaks thrown over their shoulders, sit and dream on patient,
+snorting horses and seem to spring up from nowhere out of
+the fog as they come within the circle of our headlights. A
+horse takes fright at the light and the buzz, his rider starts
+and wakes up out of his reverie; he pulls himself together
+and settles down again in the saddle. The column goes on,
+but new riders loom up one after the other. We hear the
+tramping of innumerable hoofs against the road surface, and
+the wagon wheels make a smacking and gurgling sound as
+they move onward through the mire, which clings to them some
+little way and then drops back in shapeless clods.</p>
+
+<p>By the side of the road is a reddish light which, as we
+approach, gains in strength and colour; it is the camp fire
+of a bivouac, against which the figures of the soldiers are
+sharply silhouetted. They appear to be preparing something
+over the fire, coffee no doubt, or tea. Here and there one of
+them has already lit his early-morning pipe. As dark and as
+mist-enshrouded as the night which still enfolds the earth,
+is the fate that awaits them with the coming day. There
+seems to be something fateful in the air. A new fight no doubt
+is impending. To the soldiers there is nothing remarkable,
+nothing unusual or exciting in this. To them it is all in the
+day’s work&mdash;there is fighting at the front and their fate beckons
+to them under the French fire. Maybe it is their turn to-day
+to fall and add to the number of graves and wooden crosses
+by the roadside. Maybe this dismal night has been the last
+in their lives. But if so they have slept well for the last time,
+and the flames of the bivouac fire give out a friendly and
+agreeable warmth.</p>
+
+<p>The gleam of fresh fires shows through the mist; now clear,
+now pale and dim, at some distance from the road. Everywhere
+are groups of soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. Once we stop a
+moment, to allow a frightened horse to pass. The hushed voices
+of the night then seem louder, and the creaking of wagons,
+rattling of arms, tramping of the horses’ hoofs or the curt
+orders of the officers strike our ears. The troops are moving
+to the front. We are on one of the arteries of a fighting army.</p>
+
+<p>Once more we pass through Dun, whose naked walls and
+ruins present a desolate sight as they are lit up by our lamps.
+We drive through Romagne, which lies wrapped in fog. At
+the other end of the village a vast body of horsemen blocks
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[p. 82]</span>the way; they are what we call in Sweden, Divisional Cavalry,
+in contrast to cavalry acting independently. The standard
+is furled. Sabres rattle against stirrups and harness. The
+horse of one of the troopers, as nervous and thoughtless as
+many others of the genus <i lang="la">equus caballus</i>, frightened by the
+lights, begins a wild dance in front of our vehicle. Instead
+of leaving the road free, the horse rears up on his hind legs in
+front of the car, which cannot stop abruptly. This ended in
+a tumble, which sent horse and rider spinning. The former
+now seemed to realise in his troubled mind that discretion is
+the better part of valour, took a jump across the ditch and
+cantered off across fields and meadows. Angry at his adventure,
+the unseated rider entered upon the pursuit and soon
+disappeared in the mist.</p>
+
+<p>It is evidently quite impossible to drive fast. We wriggle
+along kilometre after kilometre and constantly fresh swarms
+of soldiers seem to rise up out of the fog. It is clearly the
+reserves of an army who are on the march. Now the sky
+seems to grow lighter in the east, and the grey coats of the
+soldiers appear to assume a queer, ashen-grey, colourless
+tone. Here is another ammunition column and a string of
+motor-wagons belonging to some hospital establishment; they
+look like gigantic boxes with an enormous red cross on a
+white background on their sides. There is an infantry battalion
+which has bivouacked for the night and is now ready to break
+up and take up its prearranged position in the column of
+march. A little further on we are stopped by an artillery
+detachment, accompanied by its train. Even if the road is
+clear of vehicles for a hundred metres or so, we pass isolated
+companies of soldiers on foot, orderlies on cycles, despatch
+riders and police.</p>
+
+<p>It grows a little lighter and the fog lifts somewhat, but the
+columns grow ever denser. An ammunition column has
+halted owing to some congestion ahead. The riders have
+dismounted and the men on the wagons likewise. They
+stand in groups, talking and smoking, with their half-frozen
+hands in their breeches’ pockets. All the time the road is
+packed with soldiers and we cannot drive faster than they
+march.</p>
+
+<p>At last, at half-past six, we arrive at Eclisfontaine, a junction
+where several roads unite and where by-roads and paths
+debouch on to the main road. Cavalry, riding past at a sharp
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[p. 83]</span>trot, with their horses’ bellies caked with mire and the mud
+spurting up round their hoofs, is travelling in the same direction.
+We see at these cross-roads a few dismounted cavalry scouts.
+They stand there in order to show the way to oncoming
+detachments of the unit to which they belong or to which
+they have been attached. Orderlies, usually in couples, fly
+past at a gallop. They ask the way to Romagne and ride on
+directly they have received the required information. They
+belong to the artillery, and it seems to be their allotted duty
+to conduct ammunition columns to certain points where
+fresh ammunition has been ordered.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight makes further inroads. We hear the thud of the
+columns which we have just passed, they come nearer and
+move off in different directions. The artillery fire seems less
+brisk than yesterday. The fog prevents accurate fire, but now
+and again a salvo is heard. On a by-road in the village stands
+a row of motor-cars, evidently belonging to superior Staff
+officers. We drive up and range our car behind the others.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst my travelling companions go off to investigate
+the situation, I remain behind a moment to observe the busy
+life around me. I am now outside a house in which a
+Divisional Staff has evidently taken up its quarters; it is
+distinguished by a little black, white and red flag. Opposite,
+in a meadow, stands a group of orderlies and the escort of
+the Staff. The horses stand in a long row with the lances
+thrust into the ground; the men are standing round in little
+groups chatting, prepared to ride wherever they may be wanted
+with orders and reports. Now and again one hears the hum
+of a car rushing past on some errand.</p>
+
+<p>A party of eight stretcher bearers hurries past towards the
+fighting line. The stretchers, drenched in blood, bear witness
+to the recent removal of seriously wounded cases to a dressing
+station. The Red Cross is, or should be, avoided by the fire,
+and its staff, therefore, carry arms for self-defence only.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of French women come walking along with water
+in buckets. They have been to a well outside the village,
+where the water in these times cannot be any too good. It
+is wonderful how calm they look, considering that the fighting
+is raging round their very homes, but they are pale and have
+a serious look on their faces.</p>
+
+<p>The remnants of the fog hang about in wisps and patches,
+now lighter, now denser, and do their best to challenge the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[p. 84]</span>rising sun. It is an important day for the Germans. They
+are, as I have said, to attack the enemy at and around
+Varennes. It is nearly eight o’clock. The infantry is said to
+be engaged already. The artillery is waiting to move forward
+to fresh positions, but in the meantime is doing its best to
+support the advance of the infantry from the points which
+it is occupying. The sound of firing increases in all directions.
+Close to the village stands a heavy battery, howitzers and
+mortars of heavy calibre. The duller and more distant reports
+come from the French lines. Sometimes we hear four
+or six reports almost simultaneously, followed by a pause
+before the next salvo is discharged.</p>
+
+
+<a id="map_1"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_map_1_result" style="max-width: 45em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/map_1_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>The country round Eclisfontaine and Varennes.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Accompanied by an officer, I follow the main road through
+the village and peep into a little house, where all the wires
+of the field telephone seem to unite. Half a dozen officers
+are seated at a long table with receivers close to their ears and
+maps in front of them. All reports of the progress of the
+fighting at different points are brought in here, likewise any
+information about changes in the German and French positions
+and any fresh requirements and wishes entailed thereby. An
+officer of the General Staff seems to classify and summarise
+the purport of all these communications. He traces “the new
+position” on a map already filled with indications of the
+position of troops. No doubt this map is later to be submitted
+to the Chief of Staff. I can fancy the upshot of all this to be
+a telephonic order to some reserves&mdash;perhaps some of the
+infantry we passed at daybreak&mdash;to hurry forward to some
+point behind the firing line. I can almost see the impulsive
+thrill which passes through the ranks as the will of the High
+Command is made known to them. I can see in my mind’s
+eye the column leaving the road and making its way to its
+post in little separate detachments. Many a queer thought
+occurs to the untutored layman as he looks into the smithy
+where the military will is forged. No superfluous words are
+uttered, everything is concentrated and concise. It cannot
+well be otherwise. When I walk away I feel that I have a
+clearer conception of the vital part which the telephone plays
+in the direction of a fight.</p>
+
+<p>In the company of my friend Matthiasz I walk a little
+further south-westward, following the main road to the
+point from which the fighting proper is conducted. The
+ground rises gently towards this point, which has a commanding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[p. 85]</span>position and from which one gets an excellent view of the
+entire area in which the fight is raging. Here I see the General
+in Command, von Mudra. Here also is the almost octogenarian
+Field-marshal General Count von Haeseler, who, although
+he has no command, has not been able to resist his longing to
+be near his old corps, as it fights for Germany’s honour and
+rights. All day long the two generals stand in the middle of
+the road, surrounded by several officers. On the fringe of
+the road a powerful telescope has been mounted on its
+tripod. A Captain is posted behind it and is closely observing
+the position, and reporting when the telescope reveals any
+changes in the situation. Now and again the Commander of
+the Army Corps himself walks up to the telescope.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill002"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_002_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/002.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FIELD-MARSHAL GENERAL VON HAESELER AND GENERAL VON MUDRA AT ECLISFONTAINE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>After I had been duly introduced to the Generals and had
+chatted with them for a little while, I made the acquaintance
+of the other officers, and had the situation and the object of
+attack explained to me. The spot at which we were standing
+was not entirely without danger. A soldier standing on the
+road close to the telephone house was hit by a rifle bullet, but,
+curiously enough, without being wounded. He was knocked
+down by the impact or perhaps by the sudden surprise. The
+bullet, which had come from a great distance, had obviously
+spent itself. Another man was slightly wounded, likewise
+by a rifle bullet. Three shrapnel shells exploded fairly close
+to us, too high up to do any damage.</p>
+
+<p>The day is long, and I find time to make numerous interesting
+observations. The village of Eclisfontaine and the observation
+station of the Generals are the terminal points of a line of about
+a couple of hundred metres in length along which the officers
+and I are moving. Here I had an opportunity of talking, now
+to one, now to another, whilst at off moments I sat down in
+the grass to make notes and observe the line of fire. From a
+point near the village we had an excellent view towards
+south-south-west in the direction of Varennes. On a stool
+in the middle of the road sat the Chief of Division, Lieutenant-General
+Count von Pfeil, fat and jolly looking. When the
+last traces of the fog had disappeared, the dim, blue outlines
+of the Argonne became discernible. Three kilometres away
+in the direction of Varennes the ground rises to an extremely
+bare ridge, behind which, out of sight of the French, a couple
+of German field-gun batteries are posted. We can see them
+with the naked eye. Immediately to the left of this artillery
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[p. 86]</span>position a body of German infantry is advancing to the
+attack. With the aid of the field-glasses we can see the soldiers
+go forward bent almost double in order as long as possible to
+retain the shelter of the height which screens the guns. It
+seems likely, however, that the French have noticed the
+move, as shrapnel is constantly seen bursting over these lines&mdash;one
+little tuft of smoke after the other, and out of their
+midst a streak of lightning. Once we could count as many as
+eight such cloudlets soaring simultaneously over the German
+infantry, and doing their best to pour a hail of bullets over it.
+It must thus be at least two batteries that are concentrating
+their fire on this point. Besides the shrapnel, common shells
+also keep falling in the vicinity of the attacking lines. These
+shells are easily distinguishable by the dark grey columns of
+earth, clay and smoke thrown up on impact with the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately to the south of the hill in the south-west and
+concealed by it, a strong German infantry force lies entrenched.
+Here also the artillery is in position. On the near side of the
+batteries I notice two crescent-shaped, dark outlines on the
+ground, which turn out on scrutiny through my field-glasses
+to be bodies of infantry apparently at rest. This is the artillery
+cover. On their front the guns are well masked, embedded in
+the ground and protected by shallow parapets which resemble
+as closely as possible the appearance of the contiguous ground.
+It is only from where we are, that is to say from behind, that
+the guns are visible. So far no French infantry or cavalry
+has been observed this morning; on the enemy’s side the
+fight is only being conducted with artillery. The French
+artillery fire was said by the German officers to be directed
+very well indeed, but the projectiles often failed to burst and
+were therefore comparatively harmless, unless one had the
+bad luck to stand right in their path.</p>
+
+<p>The booming of cannon is now audible all round us, even
+from behind, a battery of four 21-cm. mortars having been
+brought up from the village and unlimbered only a hundred
+metres away from us. They make a terrible noise and the
+whole ground trembles when they are discharged. I had a
+peculiar feeling when standing in front of these winged
+messengers of death, a consciousness of security mingled with
+respect, for are they not fighting against the enemy’s positions,
+the duty of whose guns is to take our lives? The four reports
+come so close together that there is only a second or two in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[p. 87]</span>between. Then, for half a minute or longer, one hears a
+whining, singing, hissing whistle overhead, and one looks up
+involuntarily. The projectile is, however, only discernible if
+one stands right behind the mortar as nearly as possible in the
+extension of the line of fire. The four shells accompany one
+another through the air and sing the same whining song in
+the same high pitch. The sound arises through the air rushing
+to fill the vacuum behind the advancing body, and through
+the friction. Sometimes it seems to die away, but is heard
+again presently quite plainly, this being no doubt due to air
+currents.</p>
+
+<p>Time after time the four “growlers” emptied their heavy
+shells over the French positions opposite, and each one was
+meant to cause the death of heaven knows how many human
+beings. Their main task was to drive the defenders out of
+Varennes, which is situated six kilometres south-south-west of
+Eclisfontaine.</p>
+
+<p>After the artillery had been pounding away all day, I asked
+an officer what the cost had been. He made a rapid calculation
+for thirty-two batteries of different types and estimated
+the average cost of each round at fifty marks and the number
+of rounds at twelve thousand, which would make an expense
+of six hundred thousand marks for a single day, and yet this
+was only for a short portion of the long German western front.
+Others, however, considered the estimate too high both as
+regards average cost and number of shots fired. In any case
+the artillery swallows up incredible sums in a war such as
+this, in which it plays a greater and more powerful part than
+ever before.</p>
+
+<p>A little troop of soldiers without rifles come walking slowly
+across the fields and reach the main road between the observation
+station of the General in Command and the telephone
+house, and they must therefore march past us. It turns out
+to be a convoy of slightly wounded. This first lot is succeeded
+throughout the day by others. As a rule it is the left forearm
+and especially the hand that has been pierced by a bullet, the
+arm being carried in a sling. Here and there a man had an
+unimportant flesh wound in the shoulders, or his head had
+been grazed by a bullet. Two or three of the men looked pale,
+but they were all in good spirits. Their first field dressing
+had been applied on the field of battle. They were now on the
+way to a principal dressing station to be sorted out. Thence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[p. 88]</span>they were to proceed to a field hospital or to a collecting
+station for wounded, from which they would be sent to a
+clearing hospital and finally home.</p>
+
+<p>Badly wounded soldiers are carried past us on hammock-stretchers.
+Others are placed in ambulance wagons brought
+up to a halting-place in some sheltered position. Every
+infantry battalion has its surgeon and dressing wagon&mdash;containing
+medicines and dressing requisites&mdash;and staff of
+stretcher bearers. We saw several of these dressing wagons
+drive up on side-roads towards the batteries in the south-west
+in order to establish a <i lang="de">Truppenverbandsplatz</i> or regimental
+dressing station.</p>
+
+<p>The “first field dressing,” which is applied in the firing line
+by the wounded man himself or by some ambulance man, is
+merely temporary and intended to prevent exhaustion from
+loss of blood until removal can in some way or other be
+effected to a safer place where doctors are available. Many
+of these emergency dressings are saturated with blood, and
+by the evening the road was stained with little red spots of
+blood which had dripped from them. No wonder, then, that
+now and again I saw a pale face among the wounded.</p>
+
+<p>We were busy scanning the heights opposite with our field-glasses,
+when the news came that the Commanding Officer of
+one of the battalions deployed in front of us, Lieutenant-Colonel
+Machenhauer, had been badly wounded and that a
+car was wanted at once to take him to a field hospital. Orders
+were immediately given that the nearest car, no matter to
+whom it belonged, should immediately proceed to the spot at
+full speed and fetch the wounded officer. It was not long
+before it returned with the Colonel propped up in the car
+between two ambulance men.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Captain Bernhard of the infantry came walking
+along without assistance. His whole head was bandaged, but
+the bandages were red and the blood was dripping down his
+tunic and on to the road. Just as he had turned to give an
+order to his men, who were advancing to charge, a bullet had
+pierced his cheek obliquely from behind and passed out
+through the mouth, taking several teeth with it. It was hoped
+that the lower jaw and tongue had not been seriously injured,
+but for the moment he was disinclined to talk more than
+necessary. He was a plucky fellow and in excellent spirits in
+spite of his misfortune. The only thing that annoyed him
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[p. 89]</span>was that the flow of blood had soiled his beautiful tunic. But
+one soon gets accustomed to the wounded and their injuries
+and ends by paying little attention to them.</p>
+
+<p>It is no misfortune to bleed for one’s country and one’s
+liberty. As human beings must needs fire on one another, it
+is a blessing after all that so many of the wounded can be
+saved, even though they remain cripples for the rest of their
+days. But unhappiest are those who are deprived of their
+liberty and taken from the ranks of the defenders of their
+country to meet the dismal fate which awaits the prisoner of
+war. However kindly the treatment, a prisoner’s life is after
+all the hardest trial that can await a soldier.</p>
+
+<p>Here are some French infantrymen marching to Eclisfontaine,
+deprived of their arms and accoutrements but here
+and there carrying a knapsack. They are twenty-three in
+number and are escorted by two German soldiers with loaded
+rifles and fixed bayonets. Many, perhaps the majority, wear
+an indifferent expression which betrays but one thought:
+everything is now lost, everything is going wrong for us.
+Others look very distressed and one can see that they have
+been crying&mdash;France has been deprived of their strong right
+arm just as she needed them the most.</p>
+
+<p>I was just talking to the Brigade Commander, Major-General
+Bernhard, when the Frenchmen came marching along in their
+tattered blue tunics and baggy red trousers narrowing towards
+the tops of their “jack” or high-laced boots. The uniforms
+were torn and soiled, which is not to be wondered at after
+many days’ and nights’ exposure in the trenches. One cannot
+well expect them to be neat and trim after such an experience.</p>
+
+<p>General Bernhard stepped on to the road and ordered the
+convoy to halt. He then had the Frenchmen formed up
+before him in a semicircle and began to chat with some of
+them. One had been called out from Auxerre&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_10_10" href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> and had on the
+eleventh day of mobilisation been moved via Bar-le-Duc to
+the neighbourhood of Varennes, where his regiment had since
+been stationed. Every man is carefully cross-examined. All
+statements are entered in the “Protocol.” Valuable information
+about the enemy is thus gained. The uniforms alone
+tell one what troops one has to deal with. Nor do the German
+commanders in this siege warfare seem to have any difficulty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[p. 90]</span>in forming a pretty good idea of the grouping of the forces
+on the French side. General Bernhard asked how the
+prisoners had been fed before they were captured. The
+answers varied considerably. Most of them were satisfied,
+but a couple of soldiers said that they had only had hot food
+twice during the last week, which was probably due to the
+fact that they were posted at a point where it was impossible
+to bring them soup. Such inaccessible posts are by no means
+rare. They are also considered the most dangerous.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10" href="#FNanchor_10_10" class="label">[10]</a> Auxerre is the station of the 4th Infantry Regiment, 17th Infantry
+Brigade, 9th Infantry Division, 5th Army Corps.</p></div>
+
+<p>Finally the prisoners were asked if they had any diaries.
+Eight or nine men answered yes. The books were handed
+over to the General, who retained them. In this way one
+frequently gets much important information about the
+movement of troops on the other side, often from apparently
+very trivial notes, which can only be interpreted by an expert.
+General Bernhard afterwards read out to us an extract from
+one of these diaries. It was the last entry made by the
+prisoner on the previous day. It was as follows: “The
+Prussians are bombarding Varennes. They seem to aim pretty
+straight, for last night one of their shells hit General X⸺&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_11_11" href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+just as he had gone to bed.” At this General Pfeil exclaimed:
+“Good gracious, is <em>he</em> dead! I met him once.” General
+Bernhard told me that the French prisoners always were
+polite and attentive, and replied carefully and truthfully to
+all questions. In most cases they called him <i lang="fr">Mon Général</i>,
+showing that they knew the German insignia of rank even
+on the plain field-service uniform. As regards the General
+himself, I noticed that he spoke to the prisoners without the
+slightest trace of military stiffness and without that air of
+superiority which rank and power might otherwise tend to
+instil. Whilst the examination was proceeding, a French
+N.C.O. with a fair beard turned to me and asked: “What
+are they going to do with us, sir?” To which I replied:
+“They are going to offer you soup and bread, and if you have
+any wounded they are going to hand them over to the doctors.”
+The man looked puzzled and surprised and wondered whether
+what I said was really true. He showed me one of his comrades
+whose neck had been grazed by a bullet, and whom a
+German lieutenant immediately placed in the hands of an
+ambulance man.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11" href="#FNanchor_11_11" class="label">[11]</a> I never noted his name and have forgotten it.</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus I received close to the field of battle an immediate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[p. 91]</span>confirmation of what I had previously noticed at the hospitals,
+namely that the French prisoners in German hands are treated
+in a kindly and humane manner, and for the sake of truth I
+wish solemnly to protest before God that the allegations of
+certain foreign newspapers to the contrary are a mean lie
+and a shameless calumny. Once peace is restored and the
+French prisoners are allowed to return home, they will themselves
+be able to testify to the treatment they have received.
+Some of them will perhaps even remember Eclisfontaine.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we see fresh groups of Frenchmen, taken prisoners
+in a German bayonet charge. One man told us that he was
+called home from Constantinople on the 5th August, another
+that he was a reservist and that they began to be hard up
+for men. They were also examined by the Field-marshal and
+his excellent Adjutant Rechberg, who spoke most admirable
+French.</p>
+
+<p>One group of disarmed Frenchmen comprised a Captain. He
+had received a bullet through the thigh, limped badly and was
+supported by two soldiers. He had a frank and noble face
+and one could tell that he was a thorough gentleman. When
+his little band was to be examined, a chair was brought out
+for him, for he looked pale and weak.</p>
+
+<p>“Is your wound causing you much pain, Captain?” a
+German officer asked.</p>
+
+<p>“None at all, it is a mere trifle,” he replied.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you suffered heavy losses during the fighting?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not particularly; we fill up all gaps.”</p>
+
+<p>“You look tired and worn, I am sure you must have had a
+rough time of it lately?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, not by any means; I have been doing very well.”</p>
+
+<p>“Does it distress you to be amongst the prisoners?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” he answered, in a low voice, without raising his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>He was not among those who are demoralised by capture,
+and he was certain to retain his pride in captivity. When the
+examination was over he rose, saluted, and vanished round
+the bend of the road together with his men in blue and red.</p>
+
+<p>The hours quickly pass. A kindly soul gives us some ration
+bread and claret. My portion was so ample that it was no
+charity on my part to give half of it to a French soldier, who
+at once proceeded to share it with three or four of his nearest
+neighbours.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[p. 92]</span></p>
+
+<p>By degrees even one uninitiated was able to notice certain
+changes in the situation. We see the limbers being driven
+forward to the two batteries in the south-south-west with
+the Argonne forest as a background. The guns have been
+silent for a while; now they are getting ready to begin again.
+Gunners and drivers are hurrying to their posts and into the
+saddle, and the batteries roll away at a gallop in an elegant
+semicircle and soon disappear behind the hill. They are to
+accompany the infantry attack. West of the old artillery
+positions fresh lines are advancing in a south-south-westerly
+direction. We hear vividly the crackling, quivering sound
+of the machine guns advancing with the infantry. The
+attackers have gained ground and are now entrenching themselves
+in new positions taken from the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>I return to the observation station of the officer in command.
+The old Field-marshal, he who fought in 1870&ndash;1, and who
+ought to have been fairly tired, had actually been induced
+to sit down on the cane chair which had been brought for him.
+There the old soldier sits reviving his faded memories and
+cannot take his eyes off the battle-scene and the little puffs
+of smoke showing up where the shells have burst. His expression
+is solemn and severe, his face is furrowed by deep folds
+and wrinkles, his grey hairs hang round him like a mane.
+He seems to prefer to be left alone with his thoughts, but if
+anyone walks up to speak to him, he is full of life and vivacity.</p>
+
+<p>General von Mudra, a man of fine military bearing and
+distinguished aristocratic features, is standing at his tripod-stand
+telescope observing the fighting. The red collar of his
+light-blue coat has been turned up, in his hand he holds an
+ordnance map of the surrounding country, and at his left
+side he carries a wallet for maps, note-books, pencils, compasses,
+etc.</p>
+
+<p>A third battery of German field artillery has now advanced,
+and is seeking a fresh position, whilst a third wave of infantry
+follows the first two in the direction of Varennes. These
+reserves are also moving in open order so as not to offer a
+compact target for the enemy’s fire. The men are advancing
+at the double, rifle in hand. They soon disappear behind the
+nearest rise. The rifle fire keeps rattling away in the valley,
+accompanied by the crackling of the maxim guns. Presently
+the sound of tremendous cheering reaches our ears. It is
+evident that yet another position has been taken.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[p. 93]</span></p>
+
+<p>This little action, which is but a link in the great chain, is
+causing considerable liveliness in Eclisfontaine. First the
+ambulance wagons of the field hospitals dash forward at full
+speed to the point where the fight has taken place. Then
+comes another body of infantry reinforcements, evidently
+to form a nucleus round which the units scattered by the
+fighting may be able to assemble. Small Uhlan patrols with
+vertical lances seem to be riding at a gallop along the roads
+and paths leading to Varennes. At last come the steaming
+and fragrant kitchen wagons with their pleased and grinning
+cooks perched high aloft on the top of their paraphernalia.</p>
+
+<p>But on the slopes south of us appear little groups of eight
+to ten men with stretchers, accompanied by collies whose
+duty it is to track the wounded lying lost and abandoned in
+ditches and ravines. When the dog discovers a wounded
+soldier, he stays with him and barks until the ambulance
+men come up with their stretchers.</p>
+
+<p>The French artillery fire has now slackened, owing to their
+having been compelled to move further to the rear in proportion
+as the Germans have advanced.</p>
+
+<p>Varennes, the little town where on June the 22nd, 1791,
+Louis XVI. was recognised, captured and taken back to Paris,
+is now in flames, and a brownish yellow column of smoke
+from its burning houses ascends into the sky. Near it Cheppy
+and further on Boureuilles are also burning. Cheppy church
+defiantly rears its spire aloft through the wreaths of smoke
+and sparks.</p>
+
+<p>To the west of us is the broad valley of the River Aire, a
+tributary of the Aisne. Varennes is situated on the Aire, the
+eastern bank of which is lined by the famous Argonne forest.
+In the south, through the valley, Württemberg troops are
+advancing on Varennes, and a portion of their right flank is
+busy on the fringe of the Argonne. Their advance is plainly
+discernible through the tripod telescope, which now and
+again I was allowed to look through. But I needed no
+glasses to see the little white murderous wreaths of smoke
+which arose when the shrapnel exploded right over the heads
+of the Württembergers. They were answered by German spurts
+of fire, visible a little further away and more to the left.</p>
+
+<p>An infantry ammunition column, which had found shelter
+behind the slight rise south of us, is now ordered to move
+forward. The nearest way would be to follow in a south-westerly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[p. 94]</span>direction the main road on which we had spent our
+day. But it would be too dangerous to take this route. The
+dusky outlines of the column would be visible from the new
+French positions and offer an excellent target, besides drawing
+the fire on to the German General Staff. The column had
+just begun to move down the road, when its commander
+was ordered to change its direction and drive behind the town
+where the great mortar guns were still posted. Only when
+dark has set in is it possible to advance right up to the troops&mdash;for
+the present it sufficed to go as far as the shelter afforded
+by the ground allowed. From the points thus reached the
+ammunition has to be carried up to the firing lines in daylight
+if a shortage becomes imminent. Such shortage of ammunition
+is however very rare, as an increased number of cartridges is
+always served out before a fight, in addition to which the
+cartridge belts of the dead and wounded are also carefully
+emptied by the men still on their legs.</p>
+
+<p>A battery of light howitzers now appears north of the main
+road. It follows the southward course taken by the infantry.
+In the west-south-west we notice the bursting of six shells a
+couple of kilometres away, evidently intended for the advancing
+Württembergers. But the centre of activity is now beginning
+to move away from my point of vantage, and I see but an
+occasional ambulance man who has been left behind.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon I made a hasty panoramic sketch of the
+battlefield. A young Captain provided with a map explained
+everything within our range of vision. In the east-south-east
+a battalion of reserves lay concealed in a hollow, in the south-east
+the French shrapnel kept on bursting, and immediately
+to the right of the puffs of smoke was the little wood called
+Bois de Cheppy. In the south-south-east the smoke from the
+burning village of Very rose into the sky&mdash;it had been taken
+in the course of the day. Immediately to the right, but further
+away, lay the prettily situated village of Vauquois, resembling
+a castle on a hill and still in the possession of the French.
+Immediately to the south was the burning village of Cheppy,
+and in the south-south-west Boureuilles and Varennes, both
+in flames. Yet a little further to the right, but at a greater
+distance, the little white cloudlets formed by the German
+shrapnel were sharply silhouetted against the sky. In the
+south-west the church tower and roofs of Montblainville,
+which had just been taken by the Württembergers, showed up
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[p. 95]</span>above the outlines of the country with the Argonne forest as
+background. Above the village, numerous shells kept bursting,
+as evidenced by the little puffs of smoke&mdash;they were intended
+to make the conquerors’ stay in the village as unpleasant as
+possible. At 6 o’clock I counted eight burning villages, of
+which however one, west of the Argonne forest, lies within
+the fighting zone of the 4th Army. How many gutted homes,
+what appalling destruction of private property! It is pretty
+certain that the inhabitants have removed themselves and
+their portable valuables to a place of safety. But what will
+it look like in the thousands of homes when they return! Is
+it to be wondered at that one feels the deepest pity and compassion
+for the innocent people who are the greatest sufferers
+of the war? Surely it is not an unkindly thought towards
+France to strongly condemn the policy which has brought
+such nameless misfortune over the north-eastern portions of
+the republic. When one has seen with one’s own eyes all the
+misery and grief, all the destruction and the ruin following
+in the wake of war, surely one cannot with self-respect refrain
+from loudly condemning the policy which alone is the cause
+of it all!</p>
+
+<p>“But why does not the General Staff move forward, seeing
+that the troops have occupied positions six or seven kilometres
+in advance of the old ones?” I ask.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” is the answer, “it is because it is impossible to
+extend immediately the telegraph and telephone lines and to
+reorganise the entire system of communications to meet the
+new situation.”</p>
+
+<p>The following day Varennes was taken, and the whole
+machinery was accordingly advanced a step further to the
+south-west.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight now began to fail and the sun was sinking towards
+the tree-tops of the Argonne forest. It had been an instructive
+day. I had been allowed to get a glimpse of the inner working
+of one of the German armies. I was deeply impressed with
+the sangfroid and the relentless certainty with which everything
+was carried out. The whole thing seemed like a game, which,
+subject to certain premises, it was impossible to lose. Not a
+single soul had the slightest doubt of the result. Whence this
+terrible assurance of ultimate triumph?&mdash;I need not refer
+to the perfected military measures which make it certain that
+it is beyond the power of Germany’s present enemies to defeat
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[p. 96]</span>the Empire in the field. Neither need I touch upon all that
+has been done to prepare for Germany’s fateful hour and
+vital needs, or her readiness on land and sea to take up the
+gauntlet when it is thrown down. But there is one thing
+which above all needs emphasising, and that is the <em>inexorable
+will of the German nation</em>. It cannot be broken, it lives with
+increasing purpose. It grows stronger every day. It does
+not find expression in blind and unpremeditated action, <em>it is
+conscious and disciplined</em>. Its voice has penetrated deep down
+into the bosom of every son and daughter of the German
+Empire. To the onlooker it finds expression in the deep and
+silent fixity of purpose underlying every action, but also in
+the dauntless courage which once animated our own Charles
+XII. and his men. With unshakable confidence in its leaders,
+this disciplined people fights with God for Empire and country.
+It knows that all that can be done <em>is</em> done, for all are animated
+with the immutable will to strain their resources to the uttermost,
+in order to attain the goal fixed by those who can discern
+the situation and have prepared the line of action. Trained
+strength has overcome the weakness of man. A reverse means
+nothing when met with such resolution. The skill and bravery
+of the opponent may sometimes thwart or delay the execution
+of a plan. Such things must occur. They are reckoned as
+part of the game. But the inherent superiority of German
+leadership, the superb strength of the German Army, the
+mutual confidence which inspires those who lead and those
+who <span class="nowrap">execute⸺</span></p>
+
+<p>We rely on one another, we on him and he on us&mdash;we march
+inflexibly to victory.</p>
+
+<p>I witnessed that whole day in the history at Varennes, and
+was present at the successes won. I marvelled over the coolness
+with which everything was done, but on reflection I came
+to the conclusion that it would have been unnatural for these
+men, in whose midst I was, to break into expressions of
+triumph. What had occurred was to them merely what
+should and must occur. But there was another element.
+War is not play. Those who know it, speak of it with restraint.
+One does not boast when face to face with its realities. On
+the contrary, it inspires a feeling of humility.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody still remained at the observation station or
+wandered up and down along the main road. <i lang="de">Nachrichtenoffiziere</i>,
+or intelligence officers, were still riding backwards
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[p. 97]</span>and forwards, and orderlies were keeping up constant
+communication between us and the fighting line. At times
+the road became almost congested. On such occasions, an
+officer gave out the order that as many as possible should
+stand under the shade of the trees so as not to draw the
+French fire and thus disturb the direction of the fight. A car
+arriving from the village had been instructed to move down
+the hill, horsemen had been told to dismount, and a detachment
+of cyclists were instructed to disperse, all in order not to
+give the enemy any inkling of the whereabouts of the General
+Staff by conspicuous massing of individuals.</p>
+
+<p>General von Mudra still kept to his post and old von
+Haeseler seemed determined to wait until the night sky was
+tinted red by the burning villages. At a quarter past six I
+took my leave. As Major Matthiasz seemed very busy, I
+arranged to have the company of Captain Suhlmann, who
+was going the same way.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty kilometres and a wide, straight high road&mdash;we ought
+to have done it in no time. We began well at a good speed,
+but had not proceeded far before the car was stopped. It was
+four wounded soldiers who had to go to Stenay and asked for
+a lift. One of them was badly injured and very exhausted.
+He was stowed away as comfortable as possible. Then we
+met a string of steaming kitchen wagons carrying the conqueror’s
+reward, his dinner, and later on several endless
+ammunition columns. We progressed by fits and starts. The
+drivers of the ammunition train, who shrewdly suspected
+that their dinners might be deferred, were cutting into their
+loaves, but turned round to gaze attentively at our wounded
+with their white or blood-drenched bandages. Further on
+the crowd becomes even denser. Fresh streams of men and
+wagons&mdash;a new cavalry force is moving forward. The same
+thing is going on throughout the immense front. Now we
+come to a dead stop: we must shift to the edge of the road
+and try to be patient. An aviator is passing overhead. We
+hear the buzz of an aeroplane at a considerable height. The
+undersides of its planes are illumined by the setting sun, but
+it is travelling at too high an altitude to see whether it bears
+the mark of the Iron Cross or of the Tricolor. If the airman is
+a Frenchman it is unpleasant to have him right overhead,
+for he is certain to drop bombs. But he is probably a German,
+and soon he has vanished altogether.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[p. 98]</span></p>
+
+<p>A batch of French prisoners adds to the congestion. I speak
+to the one who is nearest. He says that out of his company
+only twenty-six men were in a position to use their arms when
+he was taken prisoner, that so many officers had been killed
+that there was hardly anybody left to command.</p>
+
+<p>As we are halting by the side of our ditch, we have an
+opportunity of witnessing the distribution of forage by a
+supply column. A large fatigue party come dragging huge
+trusses of hay. Here is another troop of slightly wounded
+who are proceeding in charge of a medical service N.C.O.
+from a <i lang="de">Leichtverwundeten-Sammelplatz</i>, or collecting station
+for slightly wounded, to the nearest base. We are asked if we
+have room for two more men. “Yes, if you can stand
+on the foot-board.” Yes, they were quite agreeable, and at
+last we get under way with our new burden. Here and there
+a horse has fallen during the day and lies cold and stiff by the
+roadside. A mortar ammunition column is proceeding in our
+direction. It is empty. The division stationed at Eclisfontaine
+has its supply for to-morrow’s fighting already on
+the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Now we are at Romagne and here we get badly stuck.
+There is a frightful crush in the village street. It is no use
+trying to force our way. We stop just in front of an emergency
+field hospital. The head surgeon is standing in the street
+and issuing his orders for the treatment and distribution of
+the newly arrived wounded. I am introduced to him and he
+declines to let me go until I have seen his organisation at work.
+To come to the front to study the war and not to see the field
+hospital at Romagne! “No, thank you, my dear Doctor,
+that will never do! You have spent the day watching the
+wounded come back from the fighting line after their first
+temporary field dressing. You have seen the principal dressing
+station at Eclisfontaine. Now you must absolutely stop for
+a look at the third hospital establishment, our field hospital,
+where all the wounded have to pass.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus speaking the <i lang="de">Herr Stabsarzt</i> conducts me into the
+beautiful and ancient little Catholic church. I seem to step
+into the Middle Ages as I enter this temple, where a hundred
+years ago Napoleon’s victories had been proclaimed to rejoicing
+congregations. The sun is setting and twilight is
+descending over France. It is dusk inside, but still light
+enough to distinguish the precious stained-glass windows.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[p. 99]</span>At the altar a single lantern is burning, which seems to accentuate
+the darkness. The church has been turned into a hospital.
+It was now occupied by eighty wounded Germans. The short
+pews were arranged in pairs facing one another, forming
+with backs and seats roomy beds filled with straw. Each bed
+thus improvised contained a badly wounded soldier. The
+benches did not quite go round, and many of the wounded
+were lying along the walls on straw, laid out on the stone
+floor. Each one had been provided with a blanket, and the
+space between the beds was sufficient for doctors and nurses
+to move backwards and forwards without inconvenience. As
+soon as their condition permitted, the patients were sent on
+into Germany to make room for fresh convoys. Only the very
+seriously wounded, who could not stand the transport, were
+allowed to remain to die in peace or to recover as lifelong
+cripples.</p>
+
+<p>Up by the altar, by the light of a lantern, several young
+doctors were busy round a patient who had just arrived and
+who was to undergo an operation. More light was brought.
+The head surgeon conducted me from bed to bed and was
+indefatigable in his information about the various cases.
+Quiet reigned inside the church, as its doors were kept closed,
+but outside the rattle of wagons and tramping of horses’ hoofs
+continued. A wonderful, almost eerie silence reigned inside,
+one almost felt the struggle proceeding between life and death.
+One might have been in some subterranean crypt with its
+cold and musty atmosphere. We could hear the deep breathing
+of the patients, but there was no complaining. Now and
+again a soldier sighed, that was all. To complain would have
+been to show inferiority to the others and to disturb their
+rest. Most of them were asleep, dead-tired after the trials of
+the day.</p>
+
+<p>We pass from one to the other and speak in whispers so as
+not to wake those who are asleep or disturb the solemn spirit
+which had descended over these eighty heroes who had this
+day gladly given their blood for their country. Now they are
+dreaming their last dreams under their Iron Crosses. Soon
+many of them will go to their eternal rest under the little
+wooden crosses in the churchyard at Romagne. Their hearts,
+now beating at fever-rate, will soon rest ice-cold under the
+soil of France.</p>
+
+<p>Here lies a man who has received a bullet right through the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[p. 100]</span>most delicate region of the abdomen. He is as pale as his
+tanned and weather-beaten skin permits and his pulse is
+terribly weak. But his eyes are wide open and his glance
+roams in unknown regions far beyond this earth. It is certainly
+not the trench life, which he has just left, that is reflected in
+his vacant gaze. What a wonderful contrast! From the
+turmoil out there in the fighting line he is already on the way
+to eternal rest. It is difficult to give a name to the heartfelt
+sorrow which gripped the wanderer from the north before
+the quiet death struggle of the nameless soldier. In the midst
+of all his comrades he seemed so alone and abandoned. One
+could not help thinking of his people at home, still full of hope
+but who would soon weep bitter tears. “He won’t live till
+sunrise, I suppose?” I asked the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>“No, he is growing cold already”&mdash;but the memory of the
+brave does not grow cold, does not die.</p>
+
+<p>A school-house close to the church had also been
+requisitioned by the field hospital, and its rooms, usually
+filled with French children learning their <i lang="fr">Liberté, Égalité,
+Fraternité</i>, are now occupied by wounded Germans. Here,
+too, is an atmosphere of deathly torpor and fatigue. One of
+the school-rooms has been turned into an operating theatre.
+In the field one has to do what one can to make the best of
+the resources at hand. A couple of young surgeons, dressed
+in white from top to toe, were standing by the side of the leaf
+of a table rigged up on high trestles, on which a handsome and
+fresh-looking young soldier lay stretched out. He had had
+both feet shot through, but was in good spirits nevertheless.
+“Please don’t slash me about,” he ordered, with some conviction.
+A sister of mercy, the only one so near the front&mdash;for
+usually the organisation in the fighting zone is purely military&mdash;now
+undid the emergency dressings, which, clotted with
+the blood, had become a shapeless mass. It hurt a bit
+when the clotted blood was cleaned away and the wound
+laid bare, but the soldier bit his lips and made no sound. The
+left leg was crushed above the ankle and even the uninitiated
+could see that it was a very nasty wound. For the moment
+there was nothing to be done. His feet were put in splints
+and a fresh bandage applied, and he thanked the doctors
+very heartily for having been so kind. Soon after he was
+carried by two attendants to an empty bed and seemed
+determined to go to sleep and forget all about it. “Will he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[p. 101]</span>keep his feet?” I asked. “Yes, as regards the one there is
+no danger, but the other, the one that has just been bandaged&mdash;well,
+we shall see in two or three days; of course, I shall
+do my best, but ...” and he shook his head. A number of
+captured wounded Frenchmen had been accommodated
+temporarily on beds of straw in a store-room. Here they
+were to receive their first attention. At the moment they were
+busy eating bread and a nourishing hot soup of rice and
+vegetables. They had a fine appetite and seemed to be in
+good spirits; a couple of them went as far as joking and
+laughing at each other’s remarks. To my question how they
+were, one replied: “Monsieur, had we always been as well off
+as during the last fortnight, we should never have had much
+cause to grumble.”</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the street stood a whole row of wounded, both
+French and German, who were anxious to get in and receive a
+little attention. Fighting was still proceeding and fresh lots
+were expected during the hours of the night. There was no rest
+for the doctors. The Frenchmen stood in a batch by themselves.
+I went up to one of them. He had his entire head enveloped
+in a bandage so that I could hardly see anything but
+eyes and nose. In reply to my question where his bullet had
+hit him, he pointed with his left hand to the left side of his
+cranium and then to the underside of his lower jaw. I asked
+my friend the head surgeon if it was really possible for a
+man to stand and walk about and see and hear with a vertical
+shot right through his head. He answered that the man had
+not yet been examined, but that all sorts of remarkable wounds
+occurred. The bullets take the queerest paths through the
+wretched human body, which is often proof against the most
+appalling injuries.</p>
+
+<p>My experienced doctor friend said of the Frenchmen that
+they were wonderfully patient. They would stand for any
+length of time waiting for care and attention without betraying
+by word or gesture the slightest impatience. It may almost
+be said to be the rule that when a doctor goes up to one of the
+Frenchmen to take charge of him, the wounded man remarks:
+“There are other men amongst my comrades who are in
+greater need of help than I am. I can wait.” Or: “Sir, be
+good enough to attend first to that man over there&mdash;he is
+the father of a family and his wife is in poor circumstances.”
+I have heard the same from other German doctors. Here is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[p. 102]</span>another reason why the German Medical Corps treat the
+French wounded with so much sympathy. I do not know how
+many thousands of French soldiers are lying wounded at
+German hospitals, but those who survive the complications
+of their wounds and, when peace comes, return to their homes,
+will be as many witnesses in the service of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Thus charity, in the guise of medical science, follows in the
+track of cruel and relentless war. What are all these doctors,
+assistants, sick attendants, sisters of mercy, these endless
+medical trains, but guardian angels wrestling with the angel
+of death for the lives of the wounded? What are the ambulance
+wagons, the stretchers and the faithful and intrepid
+collies, but friends and allies of the poor wounded, bringing
+in their harvest on the bloody battlefields? Here is the atonement
+which follows war hand in hand, just as the emblem
+of the Red Cross combines the colour of blood with the symbol
+of Christian love.</p>
+
+<p>“Doesn’t the soldier get nervous and terrified at the sight
+of all these dead? I should have thought that he would realise
+that the danger which he runs is just as great as that of those
+who have already fallen?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, he hardly notices the dead bodies. ‘You are dead,
+you poor devils, but I am still alive and do not mean to die.’
+That is how he reflects. It is as if the sight of the fallen had
+steeled him in the face of the danger. And yet he may sometimes
+come across the bodies of friends so swollen that the
+buttons burst from the uniforms, and with blackened, grinning
+features staring up into the sun and rain.”</p>
+
+<p>“But surely the bodies are not left above ground?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, as soon as the firing has died away on the battlefield,
+the civil population, or, if it has fled, our own soldiers,
+must inter the dead pell-mell in common pits, often without
+any attempt at a burial service. This can follow afterwards.
+The chief thing is that the dead disappear so as not to give
+rise to sickness and epidemics by putrefaction.”</p>
+
+<p>The time was now approaching when I ought to be back at
+Stenay. I said good-bye to the head surgeon of the Romagne
+field hospital and hurried with Captain Suhlmann into the
+car, where our seven invalids had been waiting. Our headlights
+had now been lit and once more we penetrated into the
+maze of the never-ending transport columns. Does night then
+bring no rest at all?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[p. 103]</span></p>
+
+<p>At the edge of a ditch we saw two wounded soldiers sitting.
+They shouted and gesticulated to us to stop. We asked them
+what they wanted. It turned out as usual that they wanted
+a lift, they had not the strength to go any further. We pointed
+out, as they could see for themselves, that we had no room.
+Oh, that did not matter. They could sit on the knees of a
+couple of others. And they squeezed into the car. We now
+had a complement of twelve persons in a car made for six.
+One of the new arrivals was quite a character. He began by
+telling us that the Crown Prince had shaken hands with him
+that very day at Romagne and had asked him how he felt.
+Later on he told us that he had been in the storming party
+at St. André. He had even overheard his Colonel, as the day
+of St. André broke, say to the General in Command: “This
+will be a bloody day’s work.” And the Chief had answered:
+“Are you afraid?” But the Colonel was not afraid. When
+the time came he led the way and was immediately shot.
+The young soldier, on the other hand, had come through
+without a scratch. To-day he had been relieved of a couple
+of toes, a loss which did not seem to affect his good spirits
+in the least. He chatted away almost unconsciously, but he
+had quite forgotten how many of his foes had come into
+contact with his bayonet. The part he had not liked was
+when the French shot from trees. It was like shooting game.</p>
+
+<p>At last we arrived home and the sentries at Madame du
+Vernier’s iron gates looked surprised at the curious company
+I had brought with me. In the hall I asked a footman to let
+me see Herr von Behr&mdash;for I had arrived an hour late, but
+that could not be helped. The Crown Prince and his suite
+had finished supper, but remained at table to keep me company
+whilst between the mouthfuls I recounted my impressions
+of this eventful day.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[p. 104]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">
+    CHAPTER V
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">A DAY AT DUN</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">SEPTEMBER 23rd. I had intended leaving the 5th
+Army that day, but at our meeting on the previous
+evening Crown Prince William had been kind enough
+to ask if I could not stay one day longer. This hospitality
+was the more acceptable, as I wanted to inspect the pretty,
+but unfortunately badly damaged little town of Dun on the
+Meuse.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill003"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w70" id="i_003_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/003.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>WRECKED HOUSES AT DUN ON THE BANK OF THE MEUSE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>When, therefore, the Crown Prince, called away by duty,
+motored that morning to Romagne, I accompanied Chamberlain
+von Behr in one of the Staff cars, and after an early
+and rapid run to Dun was ceremoniously handed over to the
+Commandant of the base there, Lieutenant-Colonel Betz.
+The latter was only just up when we entered his quarters at
+the Villa Saint Claude, belonging to a M. Thiébaut of Nancy.
+But he appeared, big, strong and pleasant, and assured me
+that I should be well looked after at Dun. To begin with I
+kept him company while he breakfasted, and he gave me
+an account of how Dun was taken by the Germans and how
+by far the greater part of the serious damage to the houses
+in the main street was done by French shells. But this belongs
+to the general history of the war, and I have pledged myself
+to speak of nothing but what I have seen with my own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>A civilian who wanders about a recently conquered town,
+in which the invader’s troops are quartered, looking at everything
+and sketching this, that and the other, is rightly regarded
+by sentries and patrols as a highly suspicious character. He
+is rigorously watched and tracked; he will notice that someone
+is following him like a shadow; finally he will be arrested
+and directed with cold military precision to accompany his
+captor to the proper examining authority. Little adventures
+of this kind might be quite amusing and exciting to me,
+knowing that they would always have a happy ending; but
+I had no time for them, and was grateful when Lieutenant-Colonel
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[p. 105]</span>Betz told off a non-commissioned officer to escort me
+on my rambles through Dun.</p>
+
+<p>First we crossed to the east side of the Meuse, where the
+high road between Montmédy and Verdun runs through a
+fine avenue. This road joins on to the main street of Dun,
+in the northern half of which the backs of the houses, wrecked
+by shell fire, are reflected in the river as ruins and heaps of
+débris. In the southern part of the same street the hospital
+service has requisitioned those buildings that have been
+spared by the shells. Here, too, we find a little garden, enclosed
+by a fence, which is used as a mortuary, and to which
+soldiers who have died in hospital are brought. Four dead
+men were now lying on a grass plot in the shade of the trees.
+They were dressed in their uniforms and had their caps on.
+Wrapped in blankets and with a white cloth over the face,
+they lay there waiting until there were enough of them to
+be lowered in a batch into the big grave that was kept ready
+in the churchyard. I went up to them and raised the cloths.
+The features were cold and stiff, yet infinitely calm, and bore
+no trace of the hard fate and severe suffering the dead had
+undergone. I stopped in particular before a soldier who</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent6">“seemed to be resting from a game.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">His aspect as undaunted as before,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">But paler far.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">He was a fine-looking fellow and his face seemed carved in
+marble. He lay as in a deep and heavy sleep, with eyes and
+lips closed, oblivious alike of the cannon’s roar and of ether
+fumes, of fatherland and songs of victory. The soil of France
+was receiving him in its embrace, and his relatives would
+never bring wreaths to his grave.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, as we know, the fallen do not vanish without
+a trace, since every soldier wears round his neck a little disc,
+giving his regiment and his number. All that remains to be
+done is to turn up the roll of his unit to find the dead man’s
+name and home. In clearing the battlefield the discs are
+collected, and with their help the lists of killed are drawn up.</p>
+
+<p>A steep and narrow road leads up to the crest of the hills
+that form the eastern boundary of the Meuse valley. On the
+very edge of the slope stands the handsome and noble church
+of Notre Dame de Bonne Garde, which dates from the time
+of the Emperor Charles V. It is characteristic of this part
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[p. 106]</span>of France that the churches, even of quite insignificant places,
+are veritable pearls from an architectural and artistic point
+of view.</p>
+
+<p>The porch is decorated with a little silvered statuette of
+Joan of Arc. On entering the nave we find on the left, behind
+an iron railing, a group of painted figures, three feet high,
+representing John the Baptist baptising Christ. Immediately
+opposite is a Pieta, on the altar of which helmets, knapsacks
+and bayonets form a sharp contrast with the ecclesiastical
+objects. But the floor between the railing and the altar is
+strewn with straw, and there soldiers have their simple beds.
+Notre Dame de Bonne Garde! Under her protection German
+sentries are now finding safe quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the rail under the chancel arch which separates the
+choir from the nave, the high altar is surrounded by camp
+mattresses of straw. Some wooden chairs stand about a
+table and on the floor arms and equipment are heaped pell-mell.
+Where French priests formerly said mass, foreign
+soldiers now sit writing field postcards to their homes. On
+the arms of a silver candelabra stockings are hung to dry, and
+from niches and altarpieces saints and apostles look down
+with disconsolate eyes upon rifles and carbines, bayonets, belts
+and ammunition pouches, which lie scattered over the seats
+in the nave. Even the sacristy has been transformed into a
+bedroom. The priestly vestments of red velvet and gold
+brocade hang untouched in their cupboard, and on the arms
+of the chairs outside it hangs the soldier’s modest equipment
+of small and well-worn objects, together with a cloak or two,
+tattered and worn from the life of the trenches and sooty
+from the flames of camp-fires. The sacred vessels are touched
+by nobody. In the German Army it is strictly forbidden to
+commit depredations on the property of the Church, the
+State or private persons; and so it was here at Dun.</p>
+
+<p>The havoc of shells, on the other hand, is one of the privileges
+of war. Into the lower part of a buttress facing west a shell
+has penetrated the brickwork to about a third of its length.
+It is a <i lang="de">Blindgänger</i>, that is, one which has failed to burst on
+contact. It seems inadvisable to move a thing of this kind,
+and it will probably be allowed to stay where it is as a souvenir
+of the war. The shell is a French one, and its object, like that
+of the others that destroyed Dun, was to drive the Germans
+out of the place again or at least to make the first hours of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[p. 107]</span>their occupation as warm as possible. A projectile has badly
+damaged another buttress and several grave-crosses in its
+neighbourhood. Large blocks of masonry have crushed in
+their fall a flat gravestone lying close against the wall of the
+church. Many shrapnel holes may be seen round the clock-face
+on the tower, and a small house beside the church has
+been destroyed by two shells.</p>
+
+<p>We went out into the churchyard and turned our steps first
+to the railing at the edge of the slope. From here a magnificent
+view is displayed. Right under us lies Dun like a little map,
+and we can clearly see all the houses that have been ravaged
+by the French shells. We also have a bird’s-eye view of the
+valley of the Meuse, with the almost deserted road to Verdun
+on the south, and on the south-west the road to Romagne and
+Varennes, filled as usual with whole strings of transport
+columns, cavalry and hooting motor-cars.</p>
+
+<p>The graveyard itself offers an affecting sight. A shell has
+fallen in the midst of the tombstones, forming a fresh grave,
+which however did not expose any of the dead. But now
+peace reigns among these French crosses, which are often
+decorated with wreaths of coloured beads, expressing sorrow
+and loss in simple but eloquent words: <i lang="fr">Nos Parents, Regrets,
+Souvenir</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To us all these names are unknown. They are modest
+townsmen of Dun and peasants from the neighbourhood who
+are taking their long rest in the churchyard. But the gravestones
+are always costly and handsome, and one can see that
+even the poor gladly part with their savings in order to honour
+the memory of their dear ones in the city of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>How simple, in contrast, are the memorials raised to soldiers
+who have died in the hospitals of Dun! Two strips of wood
+nailed together in the form of a cross, that is all. There one
+may read such epitaphs as the following: <i lang="de">Ein unbekannter
+Soldat.</i>&mdash;<i lang="de">Ein Landwehrmann, Kanonier.</i>&mdash;<i lang="de">1. Comp. I. R. 22.</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_12_12" href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+<i lang="de">Ein deutscher Krieger</i> <span class="fs150">✠</span> <i lang="de">16/9 1914.</i>&mdash;<i lang="de">Zwei Französische
+Krieger 21/9.</i> Curiously enough, <i lang="de">deutsch</i> is spelt with a
+small d, but <i lang="de">Französisch</i> with a big F; why, I don’t know&mdash;perhaps
+from some kind of unconscious politeness towards
+foreigners. The cross signifying “dead” is carved in the
+glorious shape of the Iron Cross. Here, too, is the big grave
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[p. 108]</span>prepared for those who are slumbering in the garden down
+below. By one of the new graves a dog howls plaintively.
+Perhaps he is lamenting his master&mdash;it is a very common
+thing for the German soldiers to adopt for the sake of company
+French dogs without a master, who take to them and follow
+them faithfully.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12" href="#FNanchor_12_12" class="label">[12]</a> No. 1 Company of the 22nd Regiment of Infantry. [Infanterie-Regiment
+Keith (1. Oberschlesisches) No. 22, quartered at Gleiwitz in peace time.]</p></div>
+
+<p>In a special little chapel at the side of the churchyard are
+buried the priests, natives of Dun, who have died there.</p>
+
+<p>We descend by another way, a steep lane between ruined
+houses. One of them has been exposed by the fall of the
+outer wall, and one can see the interior of a room, the bed
+standing in its place with blankets and pillows, while a mirror
+has fallen down and been smashed to pieces. Through the
+dark, gaping holes in the heap of débris surrounding the house
+one can see into the kitchen in the basement.</p>
+
+<p>One or two saw-mills and workshops driven by water-wheels
+had stood by the side of the river, but now nothing
+was to be seen but the most terrible devastation where formerly
+they had been. Machinery, belts and wheels lay twisted
+together into rubbish among charred beams. Close by were
+to be seen the remains of a bridge, which crossed the river
+in two spans, and which was blown up by the French when
+they had to evacuate the place. They also blew up the western
+span of the three-arched stone bridge over the Meuse, which
+carries the high road and the main street. With great skill
+and rapidity the German engineers have replaced the wrecked
+arch by a wooden bridge.</p>
+
+<p>The railway to Dun has been repaired by the Germans, and
+the station showed a scene of animation and traffic which
+the little town can scarcely have witnessed before. All the
+storehouses and baggage-rooms were literally packed with
+mountains of provisions, ready-baked loaves, tinned foods,
+meat, sacks of flour and oats, and even with wine. These
+warehouses had a smell like a grocer’s shop. The supply
+columns are loaded at new and old platforms and then go
+forward to the troops. I sketched here one of these columns,
+consisting of requisitioned farmers’ carts, drawn by horses
+also requisitioned at the seat of war, only two to each cart.
+The long lines of vehicles are brought up to their loading
+stations by special roads marked out by placards. Everything
+is done rapidly, but in silence and with unfailing accuracy.
+When a column is ready, you hear a shout to the horses, a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[p. 109]</span>crack of the whip, and the procession moves forward with
+creaking wheels on its way to Romagne. I noticed that&mdash;in
+addition to finger-posts&mdash;pickets have been posted to guide
+the traffic and prevent dangerous congestion at cross-roads.
+This is quite necessary, as column after column is constantly
+passing along the main road. Here was one, for instance,
+the wagons of which were marked “Fs. A..., III. Btl. (Mrs.)
+I. MK”&mdash;that is, Foot Artillery Regiment, 3rd (Mortar)
+Battalion, 1st ammunition column, and then the number of
+the wagon in the column. The stores at Dun supplied amongst
+others the army corps whose guest I had been the day before.</p>
+
+<p>In a field quite close to the station was a base slaughterhouse
+and cattle depot. Here all the cattle collected from
+the neighbourhood were assembled in a space enclosed with
+posts and barbed wire. A fenced-off portion was drenched
+with blood from the slaughter, and here lay immense piles of
+ox-hides. One felt certain that these would be turned to
+good account. An enclosure for pigs was equally well filled.
+There was thus beef and pork in plenty; the troops would
+not go hungry. The day’s requirements for 1000 men amount
+to 2 oxen or 6 pigs or 19 sheep, of an average weight respectively
+of 500, 90 and 40 kilogrammes. The depot is replenished by
+degrees. In most cases the troops do their own slaughtering;
+the animals being taken to the front by the provision columns.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_13_13" href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>
+At Dun there was also a field-bakery detachment with its
+attendant wagons, ovens and tents, and surrounded by a
+fragrant odour of new-baked bread. Each of these detachments
+is capable of supplying 23,000 rations of bread in twenty-four
+hours, working uninterruptedly.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13_13" href="#FNanchor_13_13" class="label">[13]</a> During more mobile operations the troops requisition their own cattle, so far as
+the local resources allow.</p></div>
+
+<p>We also visited the courtyard of a private house, where
+food was served out to a thousand French prisoners three
+times a day in separate batches. A kitchen on a grand scale
+with gigantic caldrons has been installed in a shed in the
+yard. When the hour strikes, the prisoners, drawn up in
+single file, have to step up and hold out their bowls to a cook,
+who fills each bowl with a single dip of his ladle. He is incredibly
+expert and rapid in his movements, and never spills
+a drop. Probably the condition of the French prisoners will
+one day disclose the fact that they have not been subjected
+to a starvation diet.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill004"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_004_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/004.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FRENCH PRISONERS AT VOUZIERS WAITING FOR THEIR DINNER
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[p. 110]</span></p>
+
+<p>Here again I sketched a few types: a gilder, an official
+and a workman, all from Paris, as well as one of their German
+guards, a strapping Landwehr man. I remember I had
+half finished the portrait of a young French soldier&mdash;of the
+113th Infantry Regiment,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_14_14" href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> of aristocratic, melancholy appearance,
+when the word of command was given that the batch
+that had been served was to be taken to its quarters and the
+next lot brought up. At my request, however, my model was
+allowed to stay behind. He was a bank clerk from Blois,
+of a highly <i lang="fr">sympathique</i> and amiable nature. Perhaps some
+day he will remember that sitting at Dun; I shall not forget
+him.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14_14" href="#FNanchor_14_14" class="label">[14]</a> The 113th regiment of infantry of the line belongs to the 5th Army Corps,
+and is garrisoned at Blois. Parisians as a rule belong to the 4th Army Corps.</p></div>
+
+
+<a id="ill005"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_005_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/005.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>BANK CLERK FROM BLOIS. PRISONER AT DUN
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>While I was sketching the soldiers from Paris, I had a dense
+crowd of onlookers round me, and I threw out to them the
+following impertinent question:</p>
+
+<p>“What are you really fighting for?”</p>
+
+<p>“We have absolutely nothing to fight for,” replied one
+fellow with a defiant air, and he was seconded with much
+animation by another man opposite.</p>
+
+<p>“You have your country to fight for, I suppose?” I went on.</p>
+
+<p>“We <em>have</em> no country,” answered the two malcontents.</p>
+
+<p>I asked a sensible fellow who was standing behind me what
+sort of persons they were, and was told: “They are notorious
+anarchists.”</p>
+
+<p>One may be tolerably certain that they would never have
+dared to answer like that on the other side of the firing lines.
+And if they had done so, they would have been torn to pieces
+by their comrades, who, even if they did not know how and
+why war had broken out just now, nevertheless understood
+that the future of France was at stake, nay, perhaps her
+existence as a first-class Power. On the other hand, they
+were all agreed in regretting the war, and expressions such as
+these constantly recurred: “<i lang="fr">Cette malheureuse guerre</i>&mdash;<i lang="fr">Cette
+guerre inutile</i>&mdash;<i lang="fr">C’est terrible</i>&mdash;<i lang="fr">C’est très, très malheureux pour
+tout le monde</i>.” But even to this criticism of the war a reservation
+must be added. For not a spark of the enthusiasm with
+which the French soldiers went into the fire is left after they
+have been taken prisoners. Their hope has then vanished
+and nothing is left but the regret that they can no longer be
+of use to their country.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[p. 111]</span></p>
+
+<p>But it was now one o’clock, and I was engaged to dine with
+Colonel Betz at the officers’ mess, where a party of a dozen
+assembled at a big round table. The mess was installed in a
+private house, very plain but well preserved, although a few
+shots or splinters of shell had made their way through its
+walls. Even the piano had been pierced by a bullet, but its
+tone was still irreproachable. At this table, again, the German
+officers spoke with unmixed respect of the French soldiers
+and their commanders. They are equal and worthy opponents,
+they are real, fully trained soldiers, not mercenaries who fight
+for money. They fight for their lives with skill and with the
+courage of despair.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner I continued my ramble and visited amongst
+other places a hospital, where trained Red Cross sisters were
+at work. Finally I halted in the main street and sketched it
+and the bridge. A sheet was stretched right across the street,
+and on it was written, in enormous letters that nobody could
+help seeing, a notice that all empty vehicles returning from
+the front must be reported at the headquarters of the officer
+in command, where they would find out whether there were
+any wounded to be transported home. One constantly sees
+all kinds of directions, on calico, paper, planks and on whitewashed
+walls, to drive carefully, to keep to the right, as well
+as information of the distances in kilometres, the names of
+villages, where different roads lead, the position of the headquarters
+and other local offices, especially that of the hospital,
+and many things besides. Here, as in everything else, an
+exemplary orderliness prevails. Nobody needs to ask, he
+has only to follow the painted directions. As regards finger-posts
+and milestones, however, the French had done a good
+deal in advance; the notices which had to be added concerned
+the German lines of communication.</p>
+
+<p>The day was drawing to a close as I walked along the
+principal street of Dun with Colonels Betz and Fretzdorff.
+Fresh bands of French prisoners&mdash;“Red trousers,” as the
+German soldiers call them&mdash;had come in during the day and
+were now standing with their guards outside headquarters,
+waiting for orders as to their further destination. The
+prisoners were patient and calm as usual. Some sat on a
+bench chatting, others on the kerbstone; but the majority
+stood with their hands in their trouser-pockets, looking at
+the movement of the Prussians around them. They had never
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[p. 112]</span>seen the German Army and its inner life at so close quarters.
+While fighting, the combatants see very little of each other;
+and now these Frenchmen had the strange sensation of standing
+quite close to their enemies without a shot being fired and
+without there being any question of slaughter. A couple of
+squadrons of Uhlans, armed with lances, sabres and carbines,
+were just riding past in close column. Their horses’
+hoofs clattered on the stone pavement and the rattle of their
+arms and stirrups echoed in the narrow space between the
+houses. The prisoners watched the hostile cavalry attentively
+but calmly: “They are still in the game; we are out of it,”
+they appeared to be thinking, and one would have to have a
+heart of stone not to feel great pity for them.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Betz told me how desperate things became sometimes,
+just at this spot, when columns of different kinds met
+in the street at night, troops marching through and motor-ambulances
+with severely wounded men anxious to get on.
+It would be all right if there were any possibility of keeping
+the street lighted, but the garrison was short of everything
+in the shape of illuminants, and a street could not very well
+be lighted with beacons. It was paraffin lamps that were
+wanted at suitable intervals, and presumably such lamps are
+now burning at night in the street of Dun, so that the
+supply columns no longer need get blocked and delay each
+other.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill006"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_006_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/006.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A FOOD COLUMN COMPOSED OF COMMANDEERED FARMERS’ CARTS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>It had been arranged that at about half-past six I should
+look out for the Crown Prince and his staff as they passed
+through Dun on their way back from Romagne. The time
+was approaching, and we were on the watch. The traffic had
+not decreased at all, rather the reverse. For a moment it
+looked like a block, and it would have been a nice thing if
+the Crown Prince had arrived just then. We crossed the
+bridge and were outside the town, when the aristocratic-looking
+cars, bearing the mark, <i lang="de">General Ober Kommando
+V. Armee</i>, came tearing along at full speed. Beside the
+chauffeur of the first one sat the Crown Prince himself in a
+cloak with a high collar. He made a sign to me to get in and
+I took my seat behind him. Then he talked for a while to
+the officers of the lines of communications, and after that we
+started. But now the pace was slow, as we happened to meet
+an infantry regiment. The men took hold of their helmets
+by the spike, raised them aloft and gave a rousing cheer, as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[p. 113]</span>if they were charging a French position. But this time the
+cheer was meant for the Commander of the 5th Army and
+the heir to the throne, and we drove through a roaring sea of
+loud hurrahs. Gradually the ranks thinned out and finally
+came the stragglers&mdash;for there are footsore men even in the
+best marching army of all&mdash;in small groups of two or three,
+but they cheered as wildly as the rest. Last of all a solitary
+man stood by the side of the road. He, too, joined in with all
+the strength of his lungs. When the Crown Prince had reassumed
+his motor goggles and turned up the collar of his
+cloak he was not easily recognised, especially by the men of
+the transport columns we met, who had their horses to look
+after. But his Imperial and Royal Highness turned half
+round to me and said unassumingly that nothing pleased him
+more than to find that he was supported and understood by
+the soldiers. He considered it the first duty of a prince to
+show himself worthy of the confidence of his whole people,
+and for his own part he could not imagine a greater happiness
+than to occupy such a position in the minds of the German
+people.</p>
+
+<p>We reached home in due course and sat down to table. The
+spirits of the company were as cheerful and unconstrained as
+usual, though one would have expected high-sounding speeches,
+toasts and cheering. For Varennes had been taken and news
+had come of Weddigen’s exploit at sea.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_15_15" href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> But no speeches
+were made and there was no cheering at all. The Crown
+Prince received the news with the same dignified calm as the
+others; he was glad, but not a muscle of his face moved,
+only his eyes shone with a moister brightness. The conversation
+then turned for a while on the question whether the
+effect of the submarines on the floating forts would be as great
+as that of the 42-cm. howitzers against the land fortresses.
+For that matter, subjects of conversation were never wanting
+at this table, where the spirit of comradeship was always
+held sacred. The imperturbable calmness of the Germans,
+especially of the higher ranks, in the face of success aroused
+my wonder and admiration, as it had done the day before
+and as it has often done since. And again the thought rose
+within me of the immense moral strength of the German
+military power and the conscious will of the German people
+in its fight for life.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15_15" href="#FNanchor_15_15" class="label">[15]</a> This refers to the sinking of the <i>Cressy</i>, <i>Aboukir</i> and <i>Hogue</i>
+    by torpedoes.&mdash;Tr.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[p. 114]</span></p>
+
+<p>Immediately outside Dun, on the north side of the road
+to Romagne, lies a solitary grave, covered with wreaths round
+its cross. In it reposes a captain, who held out with his little
+band in the thick of the fire when the French were shelling
+their own town, and who fell at last at his post. His memory
+lives among the German soldiers at Dun, fresh as the flowers
+which are constantly renewed on his grave. And he is only
+one among millions. Life is the least they can give to the
+fatherland. The virtue of bravery is not a rare one; history
+has often borne witness to its existence; but the inflexible
+fulfilment of duty, which distinguishes the Germans in their
+hour of destiny, has few parallels. Such a nation <em>cannot</em> be
+conquered.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner had been going on for some time when Professor
+Widenmann, the body-physician, came in and took his place.
+He had been at a hospital, looking after our friend, Baron von
+Maltzahn, who had been the victim of a motor accident in
+the course of the day. The car, while going at a terrific pace,
+had skidded at a corner of the wet road and turned over.
+Von Maltzahn lay underneath and had the whole weight of
+the car on his chest. He had a couple of ribs broken, a broken
+leg, concussion of the brain and general shock. His condition
+was rather alarming, but the professor had good hopes of his
+recovery.</p>
+
+<p>That professor is a man one would never forget. We took
+to each other, more especially as he had travelled all over the
+world. He had seen a great deal of Africa, and had been very
+near the summit of Kilima Njaro when he was forced to turn
+back by wind and weather. We had mutual friends far and
+near, and long after the others had gone to their rooms we
+sat up chatting&mdash;on that evening, which was my last with
+the German Crown Prince, the Crown Prince of Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day, September 24, we made a very early
+breakfast, after which the cars of the Chief Command of the
+Army again drove up to the château. I thanked his Imperial
+and Royal Highness the Crown Prince with all my heart for
+the great hospitality which had been shown me and for all
+the memorable things I had had the opportunity of seeing
+while with his proud army. After a vigorous shake of the
+hand and a friendly <i lang="de">Auf Wiedersehen!</i> the energetic young
+Imperial Prince got into his car and went off to his duty.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill008"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_008_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/008.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>ROAD ACROSS BRIDGE AT DUN
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill007"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_007_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w50" src="images/007.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>LANDWEHR SOLDIER, GAOLER AT DUN
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[p. 115]</span></p>
+
+<p>As for myself, I was not to leave till twelve o’clock, as there
+was no convenient car going direct to Main Headquarters
+before then. Sitting by myself in Madame du Vernier’s
+château was far too slow, and I preferred a walk to the great
+base hospital, where the chief staff surgeon, Professor Sick
+of Leipzig, showed and explained everything to me in the
+most obliging way. We went from ward to ward and spoke to
+many of the patients, both German and French. The largest
+ward had room for forty beds. Over the head of each was
+a paper giving the wounded man’s number, name and regiment.
+On a folding table by the side of the bed stood a number
+of medicines and a glass of water, and in many cases a
+little Bible, some field postcards and portraits of relations at
+home. There was also a chart showing the wounded man’s
+temperature from day to day. Wards, beds and everything
+were excellent, which was not to be wondered at, since the
+building was a hospital in peace time. My visit concerned in
+particular my friend Baron von Maltzahn, who lay wrapped
+and bandaged in an officers’ ward. His condition was better
+to-day, and I was able to sit chatting with him for a good
+while. He agreed with me that it was a stupid thing to choose
+a motor accident, when there were so many other ways of
+getting killed in war. Not till several weeks later was von
+Maltzahn sufficiently recovered to be able to stand the journey
+to his home; but as late as the middle of November, when
+I saw him again in Berlin, he was still limping and had to
+use a stick.</p>
+
+<p>I then said good-bye to Madame Desserrey and her charming
+daughter, and made a hasty portrait of Mademoiselle Blanche,
+which, however, by no means did her justice. After the conclusion
+of peace I was to write and remind her of the hours we
+had spent together during the war.</p>
+
+<p>To conclude with a trifling anecdote: I was standing in
+the road in front of the château, making a hurried sketch of
+it. Then up came a sentry and addressed me in a rough
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>“It is forbidden to draw the Crown Prince’s quarters!”</p>
+
+<p>“O-oh?”</p>
+
+<p>“Give me your sketch-book.”</p>
+
+<p>“Here you are.”</p>
+
+<p>“If you have no permit I shall turn you away.”</p>
+
+<p>“You can’t turn away the Crown Prince’s guests.”</p>
+
+<p>“Anybody can say that. Where is your identification?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[p. 116]</span></p>
+
+<p>I then handed him my <i lang="de">Ausweis</i>, signed “von Moltke,”
+Chief of the General Staff. He took the paper, read it and gave
+it back, stood to attention, saluted and begged my pardon.
+Whereupon I assured him that he had only done his duty,
+which was always refreshing and pleasant to see.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill009"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_009_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/009.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE CROWN PRINCE’S HEADQUARTERS AT STENAY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[p. 117]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">
+    CHAPTER VI
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">BACK AT MAIN HEADQUARTERS</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">IT is twelve o’clock and in the yard stands a covered car
+with chauffeur and N.C.O., fat and jolly looking. It
+comes from Cologne and has been to take out <i lang="de">Liebesgaben</i>
+to the soldiers at the front. In token hereof it carries on its
+dash-board the green and white flag of the Rhine Province
+and the red and white flag of the City of Cologne. I take leave
+of the château personnel and drive away from Stenay just as
+two German airmen ascend in humming spirals into the
+brilliant bright blue sky to reconnoitre the French positions.
+The little city gate with its arched tunnel disappears behind
+us and once more we are spinning along the road, which has
+now recovered from the rain to such an extent that we actually
+leave a trail of dust behind us.</p>
+
+<p>Now begin the old familiar scenes, these incredible masses
+of marching troops, supply columns&mdash;here made up chiefly
+of requisitioned vehicles on the way to the intermediate base
+or the fighting line&mdash;and motor-driven ambulance trains with
+the badly wounded, travelling in our direction soon to return to
+fetch fresh patients for the hospitals on the lines of communication.
+Presently we catch up to and pass a convoy of several
+hundred French prisoners marching three abreast with a
+German soldier for every twentieth or thirtieth man. The
+prisoners include a captain, who marches dejectedly with
+bent head after the heavy blow which fate has dealt him and
+his men.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the village of Chauvency, and we pass under the
+arch of its railway bridge, where the sentry orders us to halt.
+A supply column of tremendous length is just on the point
+of crossing by the temporary bridge over La Chiers, resting
+on the almost dry river-bed close to the permanent bridge
+which had been blown up by the French. Between the trees
+on the other bank we catch sight now and again of fresh
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[p. 118]</span>strings of wagons with their hooped canvas awnings, the white
+and yellow showing up vividly against the verdant background.
+Presently they come out on to the bridge, swing up under the
+archway and pursue their creaking progress westward. On
+one of the vehicles I catch sight of the lettering “<i lang="de">V. A. C.
+Etappe Fuhrp. Col. 4 Wagen 48</i>” (5th Army Corps, 4th Transport
+column, Wagon No. 48)&mdash;but this was by no means the
+last wagon of the column. It took them a long while to get
+across, the more so as the notice <i lang="de">Ganz langsam fahren</i> (Proceed
+very slowly) was posted in large letters at each end of the
+bridge. At length the bridge was clear, but we had to look
+sharp so as to get well on to it before the next column, the
+creaking of which was already audible from among the trees,
+had time to arrive. Once we were out on the bridge we could
+safely obey the notice to drive very slowly, for whilst we were
+on it no one else had the right to use it.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after we pass a column which has decided to bivouac
+in a meadow, and presently we see a railway train loaded with
+Guards troops. At a curve in the line a body of railway
+engineers are at work. We pause a moment whilst my friend
+the N.C.O. distributes two boxes of cigars and fifty tins of
+preserves, the last that he had left of his “love gifts” from
+Cologne. As we moved away, blue rings were already rising
+in the air from the happy smokers. Nearly all the houses
+in the little town of Montmédy have been turned into hospitals,
+but on a naked piece of wall, all that is left of a wrecked house,
+some waggish soldier has chalked up the words “first-class
+waiting-room.” Another house had had the misfortune to stand
+in the way of the new railway built by the Germans, who had
+adopted the simple expedient of passing right through it.
+A train-load of Bavarian troops has just passed by and is
+followed by another full of Saxon Landwehr and engineers
+belonging to different regiments. It is not enough for the
+roads to convey gigantic columns to the front&mdash;the railways,
+too, are continually pouring fresh floods of human beings into
+the fighting zone.</p>
+
+<p>In the market-place of Montmédy we pause a while to fill
+our petrol tanks. Here we find long strings of cars, most
+of them Red Cross ambulance wagons, loaded to the roof with
+medical stores and dressing requisites. Some Catholic sisters
+are seen to cross the square, attired in dark brown with girdles
+round their waists, black and white head-dress and wearing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[p. 119]</span>crosses suspended by chains round their necks. I take them
+to belong to the Franciscan Order. The wind sighs sadly in
+the tops of the leafy chestnut trees. Now and again a police
+patrol comes riding by.</p>
+
+<p>Once more we drive through Marville, the pretty village
+with its curious amphitheatrical aspect and red-tiled houses,
+and its church which rears its tower above them. The fields
+round about are peopled with bivouacking troops and transport
+trains. The harvesting machines stand abandoned in the
+fields, where the German soldiers have brought in the autumn
+crops. Here and there, however, the corn has been left out
+to dry after the recent rains.</p>
+
+<p>Although Longuyon has suffered far more from the war,
+there seem to be more inhabitants left than at Stenay, where
+only a couple of houses have been damaged by fire. I stood
+for a moment in the main street to sketch the devastation,
+the naked walls with their crazy chimneys, the crumpled
+gutters and broken telephone wires, and the piles of wrecked
+masonry.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill011"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_011_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/011.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>STREET IN LONGUYON
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>By the roadside are a few soldiers’ graves with crosses of
+untrimmed branches cut from the nearest tree. Next we
+come to Tellancourt, a terribly battered village in which
+only a few inhabitants remain, most of them women and
+children&mdash;and cats. Yet a priest comes walking along in
+his round hat and long black cassock, and behind him some
+twenty boys&mdash;possibly a reorganised school.</p>
+
+<p>A little further on I make a hasty sketch of the remains
+of a piece of ordnance from St. Étienne, which has been shot
+to pieces. Several unused shells are still lying in the
+ammunition box by the side of the gun, and a cross shows
+that one of the gunners has fallen at his post. Wreckage of
+the war is everywhere to be seen. Broken rifles, torn knapsacks,
+scraps of uniforms and helmets&mdash;a whole open-air
+museum. Near by, some French peasants are ploughing
+their field with two ploughs and four horses.</p>
+
+<p>On the way out I had not had time to visit Longwy, the
+upper portion of which, within the Vauban fort, has suffered
+dreadfully through the war, whilst the manufacturing
+portion of the town down in the valley of the La Chiers has
+remained undamaged. This time we drove over the two
+moats up to the picturesquely ornamented gate with its
+Vauban memorial, over which the German flag was flying.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[p. 120]</span>I showed my pass to the sentry at the gate. The galleries
+are also guarded by sentries. The guard has settled down in
+a casemate in the counterscarp. Large placards still remained
+posted on the walls here and there, such as: <i lang="fr">Armée de Terre
+et Armée de Mer</i>. Or again under two crossed tricolors:
+<i lang="fr">Ordre de Mobilisation Générale</i>, with all particulars, and finally
+a notice that Sunday, the 2nd August, 1914, was the first
+day of mobilisation. It is really horrible to read this order,
+which was destined to cause rivers of France’s noblest blood
+to flow, to ruin all her northern provinces, and reduce the
+little town inside the fortifications to a mass of wreckage.</p>
+
+<p>From the gates the main street runs through the town of
+Longwy. In the part we first come to, a number of French
+workmen are busy emptying the powder out of French hand
+grenades to render them harmless. No earthquake could
+have destroyed this street throughout its length more completely
+than the shells have done. There is not a single house
+left standing. When the attacking artillery began to bombard
+Longwy, the inhabitants were ordered to leave the place,
+and most of them went away. Some, however, preferred to
+remain, and of them some sixty were buried under the ruins,
+among them several women. I stopped at the church and
+walked in. The scene there is one of indescribable devastation.
+The arches over the aisles had fallen in completely, and elsewhere
+the shells had made tremendous gaps, the hail of
+splinters having struck the pillars and cut great scars into
+them. The force of the explosions had broken practically
+all the stained-glass windows. All that remained here and
+there was the lead setting. The pulpit, from which the truths
+of Christianity had so often been expounded, had curiously
+enough been spared, and had the priest stood there and read
+the Mass during the bombardment&mdash;as did the Greek patriarch
+when the Turks stormed into the Hagia Sofia&mdash;not a hair of
+his head would have been touched, and a miracle would
+doubtless have been proclaimed. The sanctity of the altar,
+however, had not been proof against the shells, for the floor
+of the choir was strewn with fragments and débris, covered
+in turn with a thick layer of limestone dust. The centre
+aisle was impassable, for the organ with its flattened pipes
+and the galleries with their benches and rails had been shot
+down and formed an incredible confusion of débris and rubbish.
+Heaps of plaster and fragments of ornaments, <i lang="fr">prie-dieux</i> and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[p. 121]</span>other church furniture were piled on the floor, all mutilated
+beyond recognition.</p>
+
+<p>The lower part of the massive temple walls had more or
+less been spared, together with their oblong panels, in high-relief,
+illustrating the passion of our Lord. I stood in front of
+one which is quite undamaged, and under which I read the
+words: <i lang="fr">Jésus tombe pour la deuxième fois</i>. The face of the
+Redeemer expresses infinite anguish as He totters under the
+weight of the cross and the sins of man.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, vanity of vanities! Everything seems vain and futile.
+On a stone tablet I read the following well-preserved inscription:
+<i lang="la">Hanc ecclesiam Ludovici XIV jussu et pecunia
+procurante</i> Vauban <i lang="la">erectam primar. benedixit lapidem 22 martii
+1683</i> ... etc. Now the organ notes are silenced and no words
+of spiritual comfort fall from the pulpit. The wind sighs
+through the bared arches and seems plaintively to echo the
+frailty of human purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the church the scene is one of equal desolation.
+There lies the skeleton of what was once a motor-car and
+the remnants of a bicycle amid the wreckage of accoutrements
+and uniforms, buckled soup-plates of tin, sword sheaths,
+rifle stocks and barrels, children’s toys, colour boxes and Noah’s
+Arks, water pipes, balcony rails and grilles, chairs and tables
+all entangled in an inextricable confusion of stone, brick and
+dust. Pompeii could not have been so utterly destroyed
+as this town, and my old Lou-lan in the heart of the desert,
+where the angel of destruction has reaped his harvest for so
+many centuries, looked less forlorn and desolate than the
+fortified town of Longwy after a few days’ bombardment.</p>
+
+<p>I walk along through the alleys and look round. The silence
+is ghostlike, except for occasional creaking in walls and joints
+and the sound of chips of stone falling to the ground. The
+wind is moaning among the roofless houses, and the gutter
+pipes, detached from their fastenings, hang nodding into
+space. Here and there the name of the street is still
+discernible at the corner, such as Rue des Écoles, or Rue
+Stanislas. Postcards, frayed and worn away by sun and
+rain, are lying about amongst the rubbish. I take one up and
+read the address: <i lang="fr">Monsieur Crombez, Subsistant au 164 de
+Ligne,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_16_16" href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> Longwy-haut</i>. The text is as follows: “Le Mans,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[p. 122]</span>22nd August. Dear Comrade, I have arrived safely at Mans,
+and have sent my certificate direct to the chief. I hope I
+shall soon have the pleasure of seeing you again. H....”
+Has this Crombez, I wonder, ever received the greeting of
+his comrade and been able to enjoy the pretty picture of the
+landscape where the tranquil waters of the Huisne and Sarthe
+flow together? Or has his name gone to make up the list of
+dead or of those who are missing, never to be found?</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_16_16" href="#FNanchor_16_16" class="label">[16]</a> A battalion of the 164th regiment of infantry was garrisoned at Longwy in peace
+time.</p></div>
+
+<p>The little square in front of the church is planted with trees.
+Many of them have been cut down and lie piled into logs for
+fuel, and the leaves are yellow and shrivelled. In a line with
+the church and looking on to this open space, stands the
+riddled and shapeless frontage of a house over whose portals
+I fancy I can read the words <i lang="fr">Hôtel de Ville</i>, and the year 1731.
+Its entrance hall, leading to the <i lang="fr">Bureau de Police</i>, is one
+big rubbish heap of rags, broken furniture and paper.
+The archives of the police station lie scattered about. Here
+we find the whole edition of a little pamphlet: <i lang="fr">Traité pour
+l’Éclairage au Gaz de la Ville de Longwy du 9 Janvier 1912 au
+23 Décembre 1961</i>, that is to say, covering a period of fifty
+years. They little thought in printing it that the gas would
+go out in 1914. I hear a rustling sound among the scraps of
+paper as the wind passes through the bleak ruins.</p>
+
+<p>The lower part of the town, at the other end, reveals no
+other signs of war than the none too numerous German
+uniforms. The German soldiers wander calmly through the
+streets of the conquered town, in the central parts of which
+the civil population is quite well represented.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later we are driving over the frontier into Luxemburg,
+and as the sun sets gorgeously we reach the little Grand-Ducal
+capital, where once more I take up my quarters at the
+<i lang="de">Hotel Staar</i>. That very evening I had the good fortune to
+meet Prince Waldemar of Prussia, Admiral von Müller and
+Major Nicolai of the General Staff. The Chief of the General
+Staff, von Moltke, was absent from the town.</p>
+
+<p>As regards my immediate plans, I decided to proceed on
+the following morning, the 26th September, at 9 a.m. by a
+Landsturm train to Sedan, partly in order to see what sort
+of accommodation the troops had on the railways. The rest
+of the day was taken up by various tasks. My purse needed
+replenishing and accordingly I withdrew a thousand marks on
+the strength of my Swedish letter of credit. The payment was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[p. 123]</span>made less ½ per cent, which after all was not to be wondered
+at in war time. I was glad enough to get any money at all.
+The great hall of the Banque Internationale looked empty
+and deserted.</p>
+
+<p>I had not brought a camera from Stockholm, as I had
+assumed that I should never be allowed to use it. But at
+the 5th Army I was told that it was not so very serious a
+matter&mdash;provided I kept within certain bounds and tolerated
+a certain amount of supervision. I was now fortunate enough
+to obtain at Luxemburg from a German photographer a perfectly
+new and excellent Eastman Kodak, thanks to which I
+have been able to adorn this book with pictures of my own
+selection.</p>
+
+<p>Through Chamberlain Baron von Reischach I was once
+more honoured with an invitation to dine at the Emperor’s
+table at one o’clock. Those present, apart from the Chamberlain,
+included Herren von Plessen, von Gontard and von
+Busch, the latter being the German Minister at Luxemburg,
+also the Emperor’s Field Chaplain and a couple of adjutants.
+In the forenoon news had been received of the illness of Prince
+Oskar. He had contracted some sort of heart complaint
+through over-exertion. I expected therefore to find the
+Emperor a bit depressed, but there was no sign of it. He
+walked in with youthful and military bearing, honoured me
+once more with a hearty handshake and bade me welcome
+back from the 5th Army. Thereupon he took a letter out of
+his pocket and asked me to read it through carefully. Whilst
+His Majesty was talking to his suite, I read the letter. It
+was addressed to the Emperor personally and was written by
+a sergeant who had been at Prince Joachim’s side when he
+was wounded. Now the sergeant wanted to tell his august
+master how gallantly the Prince had borne himself and what
+an example he had been to the soldiers. The letter was simply
+and ingenuously written and showed how deep and strong is
+the loyalty which binds the German Army to its supreme
+Chief and Emperor. The loyalty and unity between Emperor
+and people, between Commander and Army, form the firm
+and immovable rock on which the German Empire has been
+built up. When the Emperor turned to me again and asked
+what I thought of the letter, I merely answered: “It must
+be a pleasure to your Majesty to receive such messages from
+the rank and file.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[p. 124]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” he replied. “There is nothing that gives me so
+much pleasure as these proofs of the faithful loyalty of my
+people and the close bonds which bind me to my entire army.
+Such a letter as this I treasure amongst my most valued
+possessions.”</p>
+
+<p>Then we talked about Prince Oskar’s illness, and whilst on
+this topic the Emperor said: “So you see, now Hohenzollern
+blood, too, has flowed. I have six sons and a nephew with me
+in the war and among the many German Princes who are
+fighting at the front several have already given their lives for
+Germany’s sake.”</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the conversation was about my experiences with
+the 5th Army and the wonderful incidents of war.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon the great flag of the Red Cross tempted
+me to visit the Convent of St. Zita, where the sisters are
+Carmelite nuns of the second and third degrees. Amongst
+them are some of the very strictest order.</p>
+
+<p>The day was brought to an end with supper at the quarters
+of the Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann Hollweg, to which
+several charming and eminent gentlemen of his entourage
+had also been invited.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[p. 125]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">
+    CHAPTER VII
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">TO SEDAN</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">SEPTEMBER 26th. I had been told that if I were at
+the railway station just before 9 a.m. I could go by
+the train which was to carry the Weimar Landsturm
+Battalion to Charleville. I arrived in time, but only to be
+informed that an alteration had been made in the train time-table
+and that this battalion would not leave until later, but
+that an ammunition train for Sedan, of about twenty-two
+“N” wagons, covered in with tarpaulins, was on the point of
+starting; if I liked to go by that, a first-class compartment
+would be placed at my disposal. A few passenger coaches
+were attached to the train, and I seated myself in one of these.
+My future travelling companions were the ten or twelve
+<i lang="de">Ersatz</i> Reservists, belonging to an Ammunition Park Depot
+established in Mayence, who were in charge of the train. The
+latter had been on the road for eight days and the men had
+slept eight nights on the train. Our carriage had strayed here
+from the north-eastern regions of Germany, as appeared from
+its mark: “Prussian-Hessian State Railways, North-East.”
+On the wall of my compartment there was a little map of the
+railway line from Berlin to Memel.</p>
+
+<p>I had been advised by a friendly soul at the <i lang="de">Hotel Staar</i>
+to take with me a supply of provisions, as it was more than
+doubtful whether any eatables could be found on the way.
+Four substantial cheese and ham sandwiches, three eggs and
+two bottles of mineral water had therefore been stowed away
+amongst my luggage in the compartment.</p>
+
+<p>And so we started. We glided smoothly out of Luxemburg
+Station, and passed a train shunted into a siding and crowded
+with soldiers who sat and talked and laughed and seemed to
+be in the best of spirits. The town disappears behind us.
+We are out in the open country. We pass by flourishing
+villages, farms and woods, meadows and pasture lands with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[p. 126]</span>grazing cattle, fields with ploughs at work, country roads and
+metalled high roads lined by two long rows of trees vanishing
+in the distance. In the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg one sees
+no houses wrecked by shells, no people rendered homeless. It
+is true that the billeting of German troops has caused some
+inconvenience, but the inhabitants have received full compensation
+for all that has been taken.</p>
+
+<p>On the roads one sees no marching troops, no toiling
+columns. And why&mdash;so near to the front? It is because, as
+far as the railways are worked in conjunction with the German
+railway system, they carry out almost the whole of the transport.
+It is only when railway traffic comes to a stop that
+recourse must be had to lines of communication by road.
+Hence the country on both sides of the railway looks quite
+flourishing, often idyllic. The only thing that reminds us of
+war are the sights which meet us at the railway stations, and
+the guards posted along the line. These guards are frequently
+stationed at such short intervals as to be actually in sight of
+each other. German railway corps troops are responsible for
+the traffic. The Landsturm attends to the guarding of the
+line. There you may see men of over forty, clothed in the
+dark-blue tunic with red collar and light-blue shoulder-straps,
+black trousers with a narrow red stripe, and peakless
+blue caps with red band. All are armed with rifles. It is
+especially at bridges and other important points of the line
+that one is sure to see these loyal trusty fellows, pacing to
+and fro,&mdash;just as they are doing in every other part of the
+German Empire. They are always there, always vigilant.
+<i lang="de">Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein....</i></p>
+
+<p>Our route takes us <i>via</i> Mamer and Kapellen. The country
+is rather flat; gently undulating, sunlit fields extend in every
+direction. Between two stations the train pulls up&mdash;we
+wonder why. At last we see a long train of empty carriages,
+nothing but goods-trucks, running up by our side on the up
+line. There does not seem to be a soul in it and one can hear
+how empty it is by its hollow ring as it rumbles by. It has
+carried a body of fresh troops as a reinforcement for one of
+the armies, and is now hurrying back through Luxemburg to
+fetch another. When the train has passed by, we run on to
+Kleinbettingen, where not a single civilian is to be seen, only
+some twenty of the usual trusty blue Landsturm men.</p>
+
+<p>Sterpenich! So we are now on Belgian soil. There is no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[p. 127]</span>change in the landscape. Here, too, German soldiers are on
+guard, and here and there, as in Luxemburg, a field is being
+ploughed. But one is not reminded by customs officers that
+one is entering another country as in peace time; war breaks
+down all barriers.</p>
+
+<p>We stop for a while in Arlon. We feel tempted to take a
+stroll through the town, but as I did not consider my ammunition
+train dependable, I contented myself with having a peep
+at the church with its grey tower and louvre-turret, and looking
+at the handsome station building. To the south-west, the dull
+but distinct thunder of guns was audible, but my fellow-travellers
+could not say whether it came from Verdun or from
+the Argonne. The distance would be some sixty kilometres
+or over.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the train moves on at normal speed, but soon
+repents this effort and runs dead slow as if the murderous load
+which it is carrying, in the shape of heavy projectiles, will not
+bear shaking. We are now running on a high embankment
+and cross a country road by an arched stone bridge. At its
+foot a solitary sentry, alone with his rifle, looks up at us as
+we pass.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a village wrecked by shells and burnt. All that is
+left standing is some bare walls staring at us from between the
+trees. Part of an avenue has been cut down, as also the trees
+on the fringe of woods near the railway. At first I thought
+this had been done to facilitate watching the line and preventing
+attempts at wrecking it. But further on we found
+the felled trees stacked in piles, and a goods train on a siding,
+loaded with hewn timber, suggested that the wood was to be
+used for sleepers. Large notice-boards <i lang="de">Langsam fahren!</i>
+(slacken speed) mark the spots where the straight line
+changes into sharp curves and where the German engine-drivers
+have not yet become familiar with the ground. Traffic
+is not particularly brisk, and one does not pass many trains
+on this line, though it is a double track.</p>
+
+<p>Lavaux, Cousteumont and Hamipré are small stations.
+The soldiers of the guard-pickets are sitting peacefully on the
+platforms smoking and reading the latest newspapers that
+have come through. Longlier and Neufchâteau are larger
+stations, where some wrecked houses are to be seen from the
+carriage window. This is a memento of the fights of a month
+ago, when the Army of Duke Albrecht of Württemberg beat
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[p. 128]</span>back the opposing forces. We run into Libramont station
+alongside a huge troop train which, like ours, is bound for
+Sedan. All carriages are decorated with green branches, as if
+on the way to a midsummer fête. Sentences chalked on the
+sides of the carriages testify to the high spirits of the passengers:&mdash;“To
+dinner in Paris,&mdash;now waiting”; “Every shot a
+Russian,&mdash;every thrust a Frenchman,&mdash;the Serbs must die,”&mdash;and
+such like jokes. Amidst the jovial song and merry talk
+of the soldiers the train then rolls away to an unknown fate.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour’s halt it is our turn to follow in its track. We
+run through fields in which fragrant stacks of oats are standing
+in rows like soldiers. A road-bridge of stonework crossing
+the line has been blown up by the enemy before they
+retired, clearly in order to block the railway line passing
+beneath. The Engineers are now busy repairing it. Otherwise
+there are not many traces of warfare to be seen from the
+railway in Belgian Luxemburg.</p>
+
+<p>From Libramont our course lies to the south-west. At a
+small station we stop once more immediately abreast of a
+troop train, and glide slowly past it. It consists of third-class
+carriages, the interiors of which are exposed to our view, one
+by one, through the open doors. On every imaginable projection
+the soldiers have suspended their knapsacks, rifles,
+tunics and cartridge belts, all in picturesque and almost impressive
+disorder. Some are lying stretched full length on the
+seats, with their noses in the air, fast asleep; others sit with
+crossed legs, smoking, chatting or looking out on the scene
+outside. Officers and non-commissioned officers occupy the
+first and second class compartments. They are cavalry.
+The train also comprises “H.Gr.” carriages filled with horses.
+There are eight in each carriage, four on each side, with their
+heads turned towards each other and they are separated from
+the central doorway, with sliding doors, by bars suspended
+on short chains. The halters are fastened to the bars. Between
+the bars&mdash;that is in the middle of the carriage&mdash;is a table on
+trestles, and two benches. On these some men are seated at
+their midday meal&mdash;cold coffee and savoury sausage sandwiches.</p>
+
+<p>Bertrix! Another stop of one hour. Through the window
+one overhears involuntarily a few scraps of the soldiers’
+conversation. “Have you heard that the Belgians are said to
+have a secret wireless station near Arlon, which it is impossible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[p. 129]</span>to lay hands on?”&mdash;“That was a neat piece of work of
+Weddigen’s.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_17_17" href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>&#x2060;&mdash;“But the losses on land are far greater than
+at sea&mdash;a submarine means twenty men, but a bayonet charge
+on land ten or a hundred times as many.”&mdash;“Is it true that
+Rheims has been taken?”&mdash;“It is said that the right wing
+has fallen back a good way.”&mdash;What rumours one hears in the
+rear of the fighting line!</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_17_17" href="#FNanchor_17_17" class="label">[17]</a> See <a href="#Footnote_15_15">footnote to p. 113</a>.</p></div>
+
+<p>The station-master of Bertrix comes up to my compartment
+and engages me in conversation. He tells me that the stone
+bridge which we have just passed was destroyed by the
+Belgians on the 19th of August during the fierce engagements
+which were fought in this region. “But we railwaymen,” he
+confessed, “had to sit tight and listen to the guns in the
+distance. We cannot go into the firing line and fight with the
+rest.”&mdash;“Yes, but your work is just as important, after all!
+How would the fighting troops fare, as to supplies and reserves,
+if the railway traffic were not kept going?”&mdash;“That is true,
+but at any rate it is terribly trying to one’s patience.”</p>
+
+<p>He further told me that from Bertrix, for thirty-six kilometres
+onwards, the railway had been continued by German
+railway troops to establish connection with the French railway
+system. All blasting work, cuttings and embankments had
+been almost finished when the war broke out, but the line in
+question was not to open for traffic until 1916, as probably a
+war before then, in these regions, had not been thought of.
+The new line is a single track and is of the type of a “field-railway.”
+Its section is narrow and will not bear too heavy a
+load. Its traffic capacity would therefore necessarily be very
+small. This was the reason for our long stop at Bertrix.</p>
+
+<p>At last the train which had been holding up the line arrives
+and we can go on. To the south-east a boundless view opens
+towards far-off regions wreathed in a dim blue haze, where,
+beyond the boundaries of Belgian Luxemburg, Montmédy and
+Longuyon are situated. One feels glad to see the oat stacks in
+the fields; many mouths will need feeding here during the
+coming winter. And for the same reason I was glad to observe
+the well-fed cattle, of which I caught a glimpse in copses and
+pastures.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you any recent newspapers?” This from the
+Landsturm sentries and railway workers as our train slowly
+rolls by. “I have already given away those I had,” I answer.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[p. 130]</span>But as I lift up a coat I discover yet another copy of the
+<cite>Treves Gazette</cite>, and next time I see a group of soldiers I
+throw it out and observe how eagerly they devour the news&mdash;one
+of them reading aloud and the others listening.</p>
+
+<p>Here stands a curious-looking train, belonging to some
+fatigue party or railway corps. Some of the carriages have
+been fitted up as repair workshops, with carpenter’s benches
+and grindstones, and saws, chisels, axes and hammers are
+lying about. Other carriages are crammed with bicycles,
+wheelbarrows, spades, crow-bars, hatchets, pickaxes and
+other tools&mdash;entrenching tools, such as used by the sappers.</p>
+
+<p>As we issue from a long tunnel, a beautiful landscape
+presents itself to our view&mdash;more hilly than before. Below
+us several high roads meet, in a vale clad with verdant trees.
+Towards the nearest road the embankment slopes down
+steeply. Near by is a guard-hut, with a small detachment of
+Landsturm men close by, resting from their labours and
+waiting for their comrades to come out on the line to relieve
+them. A number of grey-clothed workers with spades on
+their backs come up to the railway line. “Any newspapers
+left?” asks one. “All gone,” I reply. “That is very unfortunate,”
+he answers, without looking up. Had I only
+anticipated such avidity for news, I should have bought up the
+whole edition of the Luxemburg German newspaper. At a small
+halting-place we see some forty blue and grey soldiers near their
+piled rifles. Is there no end of all these men in arms? To
+think of the numbers which the railways alone absorb!</p>
+
+<p>The sun is setting; it is nearly six. After we have passed
+another tunnel, the panorama of the meandering water-course
+of the Semois unfolds itself in the valley beneath us. More
+groups of railway workers returning to their billets. “You
+have twenty kilometres to the French frontier,” one of them
+informs me, and another points to a wrecked village on the
+slope of a hill. We are told that whole piles of corpses lie
+buried there.</p>
+
+<p>The sun has now set, but there is still sufficient light to
+enable us to see, from a high bridge across the Semois, the
+main road, deep down below to the right of us, crossing the
+river on a handsome stone bridge with three spans. The
+banks are thickly covered with foliage, and we pass through
+a dusky belt of trees.</p>
+
+<p>The twilight deepens and the shades of night begin to fall.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[p. 131]</span>It is a pity to be robbed of the view over this beautiful country.
+The line winds in manifold curves, now rising, now descending.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill012"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_012_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/012_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>WOODED HEIGHT BETWEEN SEDAN AND DONCHERY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>On we travel, desperately slow; the train groans and the
+timbers of the carriages creak under the burden of their load.
+Ahead of us appears another tunnel. At its entrance a little
+hut has been erected, where a patrol of Landsturm soldiers
+are just engaged in preparing their supper. We are travelling
+very slowly and are able to exchange a few words with the blue-clad
+men. Slowly and steadily we glide into the dark mouth
+of the tunnel. The engine pants and snorts, the tunnel is
+filled with smoke, and we quickly close the windows. We
+advance more slowly still, and the steam makes a horrible
+roar in front. Now the engine breaks down, and we come to
+a standstill! One of my fellow-travellers comes into the pitch-dark
+compartment, carrying a little lamp, which makes us
+feel more cheerful. The smoke becomes thicker and fills the
+compartment&mdash;if this goes on much longer we shall be
+asphyxiated. I open the window for a moment and peep out&mdash;nothing
+but darkness and smoke! But through the cloud
+one can see the sparks flying from the engine, which seems to
+be gathering strength. This train is loaded with powder and
+shot, and if it should explode just here in the tunnel&mdash;well,
+the railway corps will have their work cut out!</p>
+
+<p>The engine gives another snort, making the walls of the
+tunnel re-echo. We begin to move again. A light appears
+ahead&mdash;probably the mouth of the tunnel. But no, it is only
+a lantern dimmed by the smoke. A little later it is the reflection
+of the engine-fire that looks like the dawning of daylight.
+Will this eternal tunnel never end? We have been
+in it for more than half an hour, when at last it gets clearer
+and we can breathe fresh air again. But there is now little
+daylight left; the dusk obliterates the outlines of the landscape
+and the moon, yellow and mocking, floats over the
+troubled earth.</p>
+
+<p>By about eight the satellite has whitened, and is perched
+in the tree-tops. It is clear and cold. How easy it would be
+for snipers to send their bullets from some lurking-place in the
+woods through the faintly lighted windows of the train!
+But no shots echo through the night; all is hushed and silent
+outside. There is nothing to remind one of war&mdash;one travels
+as in times of profoundest peace.</p>
+
+<p>We have left behind to the west of us Bouillon, once the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[p. 132]</span>dukedom of Godfrey the Crusader, and are now at Messempré-Messincourt,
+the first station on the French side. One of my
+fellow-travellers has met an acquaintance from Darmstadt,
+and gives him messages for his home just as the train moves
+out into the darkness. A sheaf of flame issues from the funnel
+of the engine, tinging the steam red. Probably the fire and
+the powder on board are used to each other by now, after
+having kept company for a whole week. Over the flat French
+meadows floats a film like the whitest hoar-frost, but it is
+only a very thin stratum of mist, lit up by the moon....</p>
+
+<p>About midnight I fell asleep for the rest of the journey,
+and at 3 o’clock on Sunday morning, the 27th of September,
+I was awakened by one of my fellow-passengers who told
+me that we were in Sedan. We had been travelling for eighteen
+hours. The Commandant of the station, Major von Plato, is
+already up at this early hour, cheerful and sprightly; he
+receives me with a hearty welcome and places a room in the
+station building at my disposal. But before I take possession
+of my new quarters I must have a cup of tea with the Major
+and a few other officers, as wide-awake and lively as he. Our
+early breakfast is served in a strange-looking dining-room
+belonging to the commissariat station established here, where
+sixteen lady volunteers provide for up to four thousand
+wounded daily. In their kitchen huge caldrons are always
+boiling, filled with nourishing soup. Immediately after the
+occupation of Sedan, a wooden shed was erected in two days
+in the station yard, where troops and wounded passing through
+are now fed at long tables. This morning, too, several seats
+were occupied, whilst outside a detachment of Landwehr
+were waiting for their morning coffee and roll. Each man
+was also to receive dry rations for the day&mdash;bread and ham&mdash;to
+take with him on his journey to the front. All were merry
+and cheerful, no one would guess that these men would shortly
+stand in the fighting line, to conquer or to die. It was said
+that, on an average, five thousand men a day had been passing
+through Sedan, on their way south, during the last five weeks.
+Meat and vegetables for the maintenance of these troops are
+supplied by the Sedan “Line of Communication Depot
+Commandant’s District,”&mdash;a French district the boundaries
+of which have been defined within the sphere of the Chief
+Command of one of the German Armies. The provisions are
+supplied, on requisition, by the French local civil authorities,&mdash;such
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[p. 133]</span>is the custom in war time. The invader lives on the
+invaded. It will be readily seen how advantageous it is to
+be able to carry on warfare beyond one’s own frontiers. Woe
+to the vanquished! The invaded country must feed, not
+only its own army, but also that of the invader. As long as
+grain was to be had, it was simply requisitioned, but now,
+towards the end of September, flour had been procured from
+Germany to supply the requirements of the troops. In the
+coffee kitchen a dozen large caldrons were bubbling away,
+and an old Frenchwoman, garrulous but cheerful, was busying
+herself among them.</p>
+
+<p>The room which was now to be mine had been set apart for
+Major von Plato and his Adjutant. They were to use it in
+turn to rest in, but they had never had occasion to do so, as
+they were working day and night and only snatched a short
+rest, often without undressing, in the refreshment-room of the
+station, which did duty as Station Commandant’s Office.
+The detachment told off for guarding the railway station had
+its quarters in the third-class dining-room. The men were
+lying on the floor, and were just about to get ready for the
+morning roll-call.</p>
+
+<p>Our round also brought us to the waiting-rooms and store-room,
+where the Base Hospital wards had been established.
+In one of them none but badly wounded French soldiers were
+lying, nursed by the Red Cross staff. One ward contained
+Germans awaiting the day when they could bear being conveyed
+eastward. I was once more impressed with the importance
+of being able, even in an intermediate base, to clear
+the hospital wards immediately. A notice had just been
+received that a train with wounded was on its way to Sedan,
+and that five hundred ambulance carriages had been requisitioned
+by the Commander of the Army&mdash;which suggested
+fierce fighting and bloody engagements. When the train
+arrived, there was much bustle on the platforms. The sisters
+of mercy and volunteer civilian workers hurried from carriage
+to carriage with pails and cans of steaming coffee and large
+round baskets filled with bread. Bearers stood ready with their
+stretchers to carry those of the wounded whose condition was
+critical out to the motor-ambulances which were to take them
+to the hospital in the town. All goes like clockwork&mdash;everybody
+works with zeal and zest in this labour of charity.
+However many may come, there is always sufficient food for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[p. 134]</span>all, stretchers and bedding are never lacking, and the helping
+hands never tire. The wounded Frenchmen are treated with
+the same kindness as their own wounded, perhaps even better,
+as nearly all have a feeling of compassion for those who have
+fallen into an enemy’s hands and who, apart from their wounds,
+must suffer at the thought that their native country is bleeding
+under the hostile invasion. Sedan station is like a swarming
+beehive. Ambulance trains are not the only ones to be seen;
+frequent trains loaded with fresh troops also run into the
+station. There is also a considerable number of prisoners.
+Most frequent of all are the supply and ammunition trains
+from the north, and trains with captured or worn-out war
+material from the south. Now night is hovering, cold and
+starry, over Sedan, rich in memories of the past. But to those
+who are working here for the sake of tending the wounded and
+providing food, there is no difference between night and day.
+It is a puzzle to me how the officers, doctors, nurses and
+working staff can stand it. The force which impels them and
+prevents their breaking down with fatigue, is the love of their
+fatherland, which is now fighting its greatest and most fateful
+war.</p>
+
+<p>During our hurried round the Major narrates some episodes
+of the locality. The bridge across the Meuse was blown up by
+the French, and after the street-fighting some civilians fired
+from the windows. A fine of two hundred thousand francs was
+therefore levied on the town. A few days later, shots were fired
+again from houses in the town, and the war contribution was
+increased by half a million francs, to be paid within forty-eight
+hours. The Maire was given the somewhat unpleasant task
+of raising this sum. It was paid after fruitless representations
+as to the difficulties. If we try, in an entirely objective manner,
+to enter into the psychological currents which in such cases
+stir the minds of the French and of the Germans, we come to
+the following result: The Germans consider that, when a town
+has been conquered by them in honest and open fight, they are
+its masters, and the fight is therefore ended. The French
+citizens who are armed and have seen that their own troops
+are unable to defend the town, nevertheless nourish a mad
+hope that they can check the invasion and prevent the enemy
+from taking up his quarters there. They fire in frenzy and
+hatred, forgetting that a few fatal shots signify nothing in the
+serried ranks of disciplined soldiers. Nor do they realise that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[p. 135]</span>they are doing an evil service to their fellow-citizens, and that
+the war levy will become much heavier. An open honest
+fight is <em>one</em> thing, but shots by civilians, after a decisive issue
+of the fight, are looked upon as murder, and must be punished,
+according to usage of war, by shooting or hanging, bombardment
+or imposition of a war contribution. No rules of civilised
+warfare recognise sparing the lives of sniping <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i> or
+civilians firing from an ambush.</p>
+
+<p>The sufferings which war brings in its train for the populace
+visited by it are severe enough without being intensified by
+cowardice and stupidity. It is best, while there is yet time,
+to create for oneself an efficient army&mdash;<em>that</em> will always command
+respect. Characteristically enough, such attempts as
+described here are defended and approved by individuals who,
+in times of peace, oppose the regular military training of their
+people. When the day of retribution comes they shout
+themselves hoarse at “right being trampled under foot.” But
+it is futile to disguise the betrayal of one’s own country. It is
+then too late. Jurisprudential sophistries are silenced when
+the guns talk in their voice of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>When Major von Plato came to Sedan, in the early part of
+September, the railway station looked more than wretched.
+Dead horses were lying about everywhere at and on the line.
+The fallen soldiers had been buried in very shallow graves,
+contributing to some extent to the unbearable stench which
+filled the air. The Maire was requested to call out French
+labourers, whose task was to scour the whole neighbourhood
+and bury the bodies properly. Now the ground around the
+station looked well and properly kept.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon I went with Major Heyn and a couple of
+other officers&mdash;one of whom was <a id="TN1"></a>ordinarily a judge at Frankfurt-on-Main,
+and had now become <i lang="de">Kriegsgerichtsrat</i> or “Court-Martial
+Councillor”&mdash;for a motor drive to the historically famous spots
+outside Sedan, the very name of which evokes, in the breast of
+every Frenchman, memories of grief and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>We drive through the town. The citizens who have remained
+or returned are not few in number, but the well-to-do
+have gone away and taken up their abode elsewhere. Some
+shops are open, and those in which articles of food, preserves,
+or tobacco are sold, are emptied of stock, the owners having
+done a brisk business. But the tradesmen on whose shop-signs
+one reads <i lang="fr">Teinturerie</i> (dyer), <i lang="fr">Imprimerie</i> (printer),
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[p. 136]</span><i lang="fr">Bijouterie</i> (jeweller), and the like, might just as well have put
+up their shutters. A school has been converted into an
+intermediate base hospital, and the Place d’Alsace is the
+“motor-vehicle hospital,” or open-air workshop. This may
+not be photographed, as the sentry informs me when I
+approach with my camera. On one of the “patients” undergoing
+treatment here, the inscription “Mannheim Brewery
+No. 6” indicates its avocation in peace time. Even such
+motor-lorries, then, are mobilised for service in war time!
+All is arranged and regulated beforehand with the utmost
+forethought and exactitude. But, for this very reason, everything
+goes like clockwork when the hour has come. The
+honest brewer in Mannheim had no need to enquire what he
+had to do when the mobilisation order was issued. He knew
+it, and sent his motor-lorries to the prearranged spot.</p>
+
+<p><i lang="la">Impavidus numero victus 1870</i> is the inscription engraved
+on a memorial near a street still showing traces of the fighting,
+to which indeed the marks of bullets on its houses bear witness.
+Two bridges across the Meuse, one of stone, the other of iron,
+have been blown up by the French and replaced by the
+Germans.</p>
+
+<p>We are now out in the open country and pass over the
+scene of the hotly contested sanguinary fights of the 25th
+and 26th of August. The entrenchments have not been filled
+in, and the parapets and trenches are still in the same state,
+though they have crumbled here and there. I was told that
+many of them had been thrown up by the local population,
+whose assistance thus gave the defenders an advantage over
+the attack.</p>
+
+<p>Near the village of Frénois we run up to the little château
+of Bellevue, where after the great battle of the 1st of September,
+1870, the capitulation of the French Army was signed
+on the morning of September 2nd, and where King William I.
+of Prussia had his historic meeting with the Emperor of the
+French, Napoleon III. The two monarchs met on the small
+glass veranda on the ground floor, which forms a porch or
+vestibule to the château.</p>
+
+<p>The furniture which was there at the time has all disappeared
+and there is no relic of those days remaining. Yet
+there is one! The aristocratic and venerable lady&mdash;who owns
+Bellevue, is still there, bowed with age and grief, and is now
+witnessing for the second time all the phases of a Franco-German
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[p. 137]</span>war. Her hair was snow-white and she was bent with
+age, but it seemed nevertheless that she held her head high, and
+her carriage was proud and commanded respect. We asked
+whether we might see the interior of the château, but she
+asked us to excuse her&mdash;a wish which, of course, we respected.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be wondered at that the soldiers, whose way
+lies past Bellevue, like to look at the famous veranda. But
+the old lady asked that these visits should cease; she wished
+to be left in peace, alone with her sorrow. “<i lang="fr">C’est bien
+malheureux; c’est très, très triste!</i>” she repeated again and
+again, and she, like her words, evoked the deepest sympathy.
+Bellevue with its round tower stands like a rock lashed by the
+tempestuous waves of the two greatest wars of modern
+history.</p>
+
+<p>Our next objective is Donchery, the little town which now
+inspires, in a twofold measure, such mournful impressions.
+It was here that General von Moltke, Chief of the German
+General Staff, and General Wimpffen, the French Commander-in-Chief,
+discussed the terms of the capitulation late at night
+on the 1st of September, 1870. Count Bismarck, the Prussian
+Prime Minister, was also present, as well as several officers of
+both sides. The house where the negotiations took place has
+been destroyed in the present war. But Werner’s picture
+remains. This has a most stirring effect on the beholder. To
+the right, the Germanic iron strength and resolution, which
+will admit of no compromise; to the left the beaten Frenchmen
+in their dire misfortune. Moltke especially attracts our
+eyes, as he stands there with his hand thrust upon the table,
+categorically demanding the surrender of the whole French
+army, and we may well look with emotion on the picture of
+the “Iron Chancellor,” sitting with his hand on his sword-hilt;&mdash;these
+two men, the great strategist and the great
+statesman, are just about to lay the foundations of the
+mightiest empire of modern times;&mdash;but the central figure
+of the painting is Wimpffen, for he stands there as the impersonation
+of the deepest tragedy and the most terrible
+misfortune that could befall man. He has just been struck
+by the blow which the terms of capitulation involve for him
+and all France. He can bear no more&mdash;he has risen to go;
+but he totters, and has to support himself on the table and a
+chair. The light of the lamp falls upon his face, which betrays
+the deepest anguish and grief. His name will now be coupled
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[p. 138]</span>for ever with this calamitous day! A picture of the Corsican
+hangs on the wall, and the great Emperor seems to cast a
+reproving look on the unfortunate general. The countenances
+of his companions express sorrow and dejection for which
+language has no words. No less grave is the expression of the
+Prussians standing on the other side. Their features betray
+admiration for the heroism of the French army and its dauntless
+courage, which should have deserved a better fate. The
+artist has created a scene which suggests to us that all those
+present were conscious of the fact that this day would live
+in memory as one of the greatest in Prussia’s history and one
+of the most tragic in that of France.</p>
+
+<p>Some parts of Donchery have been destroyed by the shells
+of the present war, but the Church of St. Onesimus still
+remains standing amid the desolation and has not suffered
+any damage to speak of. The chancel with the high altar dates
+from the twelfth century, the nave from the fifteenth. In
+front of the altarpiece stands a crucifix of ivory, and filtering
+in through the beautiful stained-glass windows, a multi-coloured
+light plays upon the pillars. The priest who accompanies
+us, assures us that not a single shot has been fired from
+the windows of Donchery and that the punishment which was
+inflicted on the town was therefore unmerited. But the
+German documents tell a different tale. A careful investigation
+in France and in Belgium will reveal, in due course, where
+the root and origin of the participation of the civilian population
+in the warfare is to be found. Until the result of this
+investigation lies before us, it will be wise to abstain from
+pronouncing judgment.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill013"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_013_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/013_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>HOUSES WRECKED BY SHELLS AT DONCHERY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>On the return journey to Sedan we also stopped for a while
+at the little house by the roadside where Napoleon and
+Bismarck had an interview on the morning of the 2nd of
+September. Accompanied by his suite of a few horsemen, the
+Emperor drove over from Sedan in a landau. He had alighted
+and stood, broken and prematurely aged, leaning on his stick,
+when Bismarck came up alone on horseback. This incident,
+too, has been immortalised by Werner in one of his pictures.
+The victor and the vanquished then entered the house together,
+ascended the steep and narrow stairs and seated themselves
+in the inner of the two larger rooms. The host, the weaver
+Fournaise, withdrew; his wife, twenty-seven years of age,
+stayed in the outer room. And Madame Fournaise is still
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[p. 139]</span>alive&mdash;a worthy and kindly woman, with a cheerful and
+philosophical view of life, in spite of the harrowing scenes
+which she has witnessed around her abode. The only thing
+that annoyed her was that two rifle bullets had gone through
+her windows and lodged in the ceiling. But she gave us a
+regular lecture on that momentous day, forty-four years ago,
+and recalled each detail. The Emperor had been friendly and
+condescending, Bismarck cheerful and jocular, when they had
+talked to her. And when the interview was over, and both of
+them went their way, the Emperor had given her four 20-franc
+pieces, which she still kept, set in a frame under glass,
+with the following inscription: <i lang="fr">Donné par sa Majesté l’Empereur
+Napoléon III à Mme. Fournaise le 2 Septembre, 1870</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As a memento of our visit we shall keep the stamp which
+she imprinted on our note-books: <i lang="fr">Maison de la I<sup>re</sup> entrevue,
+Donchery</i>. And the house itself is known as <i lang="fr">Maison du
+Tisserand</i>, or “The weaver’s house.”</p>
+
+<p>At last we return by another road to Sedan, in order to
+cast a brief glance over the site of the forts which have been
+razed since 1870, and to enjoy the fine view over the unfortunate
+town from the surrounding heights. One cannot
+feel cheerful in Sedan; one feels as if one’s breast were oppressed
+by a leaden weight. Here is a people, generous and
+yet thrifty, which has suffered and is now suffering&mdash;which,
+in the leading strings of the republican democracy, has been
+led to an abyss of misfortunes&mdash;a people which has deserved
+a better fate than to bleed to death for the sake of its allies&mdash;a
+people whose children vainly repeat those high-sounding,
+but in reality empty and hollow words: <i lang="fr">Liberté, Égalité,
+Fraternité</i>. What brotherhood is it that never thinks of anything
+but revenge; what equality is it that for political aims
+sacrifices the fruits of the people’s thrift; what liberty is it
+that drives these same people into the arms of the world’s
+most despotically governed power?</p>
+
+<p>And yet one cannot but love the French, above all on account
+of their fascinating and attractive qualities, their unbounded
+patriotism, their brilliant bravery, their ever youthful enthusiasm,
+their bright wit and their high level of art. And
+one deplores the desolation which is spreading over their
+glorious country and which might so easily have been avoided.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the day we drive back into the town, past Place
+Turenne, where a statue, nearly one hundred years old, has
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[p. 140]</span>been erected in memory of the great victorious marshal, himself
+a native of Sedan. In the market-place is the office
+of the Sedan Intermediate Base Commandant, located in a
+better-class café, in which busy clerks have taken the places
+formerly occupied by the habitués of the place. Here we
+happened to come across a most unusual sight,&mdash;a couple of
+civilians from Germany, who have come to see about the
+body of a killed relative. The dead man had been traced,
+and if they could identify his body they would have a zinc
+coffin made and take him home.</p>
+
+<p>From there I proceeded to the Hôtel Croix d’Or to call on
+General Baron von Seckendorff, who is Inspector of the Lines
+of Communication of the Fourth Army. The “Inspectorate”
+comprises, besides its Staff&mdash;the Chief of which is Colonel von
+Kemnitz&mdash;a variety of administrative branches, with subordinate
+organisations and establishments. One may truly
+say that whole armies and endless processions of transport
+columns of various kinds pass through General von Seckendorff’s
+hands. The task of the lines of communication organisation
+in general is, on the one hand, to arrange for bringing up
+to the army reserve troops and matériel of all kinds, and,
+on the other hand, to relieve the fighting troops of the wounded,
+prisoners, booty of war, and all worn-out material. As already
+hinted, each class of requirements has its own representative
+in the Line of Communication Inspectorate. There are
+supervisors for the provisioning and for the hospitals, for
+ammunition supply and store maintenance, for the railway
+traffic, for the telegraph, post-office, and road and hydraulic
+construction departments, for administration of justice and
+maintenance of law and order, and for civil administration.
+It is an immense burden of labour that rests on the shoulders
+of an inspector of the line of communication. There must
+be no hitch anywhere. The troop trains must not come too
+late; the ammunition and commissariat supply trains must
+arrive at stated times and places. Nothing must go wrong.
+The inspector must know how to find ways and means in all
+emergencies, must think of and foresee everything,&mdash;else
+incalculable calamities may arise.</p>
+
+<p>It might not be out of place here to give a short outline of
+the manner in which the lines of communication between the
+fighting troops and the home base are arranged.</p>
+
+<p>I reproduce a diagram showing the arrangement of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[p. 141]</span>lines of communication of a German Army. The reader will
+see how the railway lines coming from the home bases of
+the respective army corps are made to converge towards
+the main line of transport which leads to the district of the
+lines of communication of an army&mdash;in a hostile country
+to a principal line of communication depot or “intermediate
+base,” and how, from this point, a new system of lines of
+communication of all kinds&mdash;railways, field railways, roads,
+waterways&mdash;diverges towards the operating units at the
+front. The whole reminds one vividly of a tree with its roots
+and branches. As far as possible, the functions in connection
+herewith must be planned in peace time. Of course, instructions
+and regulations are drawn up, not only for the transport
+system as a whole, but also for each and every detail thereof,
+as one can never elucidate with sufficient clearness the various
+administrative branches of war: the commissariat, the medical
+service, the veterinary department, the field post-office, the
+field telegraph department, the field-railway service, the war
+matériel and the army pay departments, etc.</p>
+
+<p>The supreme direction of the organisations of the lines of
+communication is exercised by an Inspector-General, who is
+subordinated to the Chief of the General Staff. The various
+armies each have their “Lines of Communication Inspectorate”
+subordinated to the Chief Command of the army, organised
+internally as indicated above. It controls the respective
+principal Lines of Communication Depot or “Intermediate
+Base,” and has under it the “Lines of Communication Depot
+Commandants” who in their turn are in charge of one or
+several Lines of Communication Depots with their surrounding
+districts.</p>
+
+<p>Now what principles are followed, in their work, by these
+different controlling authorities of the lines of communication?
+Well, they have, in continual <em>collaboration</em> with the commanders
+of the troops, to supply to these the requisite information as
+regards depot, hospital, and other arrangements on the lines
+of communication,&mdash;such as store depots of different kinds of
+war matériel&mdash;and to give timely notice of the arrival of men,
+horses, matériel and requisites.</p>
+
+<p>Generally speaking, it is the duty of the Lines of Communication
+Depot Commandant to look after all the requirements of
+the system of the lines of communication itself, and to provide
+for the detachments of troops, and transport of remounts and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[p. 142]</span>animals intended for food, which may happen to be stationed
+in, or pass through their district of the lines of communication,
+while the “Inspectorate of the Lines of Communication,”
+through organisations and establishments directly subordinated
+to it, requisitions what is needed for the fighting troops from
+within the whole of its district of the lines of communication,
+or from the home bases. In order that the organisation of the
+lines of communication may work quickly in the event of
+urgent requirements&mdash;more especially in case of a battle&mdash;it
+establishes, as we have seen, store depots of matériel and
+requisites. Books are kept as to all that is stored within the
+respective district. The “Inspectorate” always enters into
+close relations with the civil administration, and in a hostile
+country may often&mdash;if the safety of the army requires this&mdash;take
+over this administration into its own hands. Both the
+“Inspectorate of the Lines of Communication” and the
+“Intermediate Depot Commandant’s Office” frequently requisition,
+for instance, from the Maire, labour for certain purposes.
+Some ten labourers or other civilians may for instance be
+required to bury dead horses or to clear a road. The soldiers
+of the invading army do not do this themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Frequently, the working of hospital departments attracts,
+more especially, the attention of the layman; at least such
+was the case with me. One marvels at the enormous sphere of
+duties that fall solely to the share of the intermediate base
+surgeons, subordinated to the “Inspectorate.” The Chief
+Surgeon-General at the “Inspectorate of the Lines of Communication
+zone of the 4th Army” had under him hospitals at
+twenty-eight different intermediate depots, apart from the
+transports of sick and wounded passing through this zone of
+the lines of communication.</p>
+
+<p>The reader will form some idea of the amount of work
+which devolves on the officers in charge on the lines of communication,
+when I mention that the Lines of Communication
+Depot Commandant’s Office in Vouziers alone, usually received
+every day six hundred requisitions and enquiries which all
+had to be attended to immediately. This needed men of
+ready and well-trained skill and energy, who could accomplish
+the task of ensuring that the fighting troops always had what
+they needed at the right time and in the right place. Dawdling
+routine work will never do in war!</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill014"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_014_result" style="max-width: 45em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/014.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>Example of Lines of Communications of an Army
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[p. 143]</span></p>
+
+<p>If we had before us a large-scale map, faithfully representing
+the army and its connection with the home base, the lines
+of communication would appear to form a veritable cobweb,
+or network, the knots of which would be formed by the intermediate
+base depots. But the aspect shown by this network
+would only hold good for a certain period, perhaps only for
+one day. For, especially in the extreme ramifications of this
+network, changes are of course incessantly occurring, owing
+to the advance of the positions, or transfers of troops. The
+whole is like a system of blood-vessels in the body of the army
+or of the nation. The transport columns going west are the
+fresh blood of the arteries, maintaining combustion and life
+in the organism of the army; the trains returning east, empty,
+or loaded with wounded, represent the spent blood flowing
+back to the heart and lungs to be renovated. You cannot
+form any clear idea of this complicated apparatus until you
+have seen and felt, on the lines of communication, the throbbing
+of the pulses of the army.</p>
+
+<p>The army thus rests on the home country, and draws its
+food and sustenance from every nook and corner of the whole
+German empire&mdash;just as the roots of a tree, with their ramifications
+of fibres, suck up from the earth the nutritious juices.
+Every town and village, every farmstead in Germany feels
+that it contributes, in its measure, to the vitality of the army.
+The whole nation takes part in the war, and the soldier out
+at the front, in the trenches, cannot fight with any prospect
+of success, unless the peasant at home does his duty. But the
+German peasants and the whole German nation are doing their
+duty, not as if it were a hard necessity, but gladly and with
+pride and devotion.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill015"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_015_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/015_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>GERMAN INFANTRY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>And now let us return to the “Inspectorate of the Lines of
+Communication zone of the Fourth Army!”</p>
+
+<p>General von Seckendorff has,&mdash;to use a common expression&mdash;plenty
+to do, and he works like a galley slave, I must say!
+He maintains faultless discipline on his lines and inspects them
+daily in person. During the campaign he has already covered
+twelve thousand kilometres in his elegant covered car. On
+the roads he rules with an iron hand and can, if necessary,
+roar like a lion at men and officers. But towards me he was
+kind, and gentle as a zephyr.</p>
+
+<p>He received me with open arms and invited me to stay to
+supper in the large restaurant of the hotel. Here, some forty
+of the three hundred officers now in Sedan were assembled&mdash;among
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[p. 144]</span>them a Prince Hohenlohe who had something to do
+with the Red Cross. At the moment when we entered, the
+gentlemen were already standing by their seats around the
+long table and the small side-tables, and the General introduced
+me, once for all, with a few forceful yet kindly words.
+The food served was the same as for the rank and file&mdash;boiled
+rice, mutton with beans and potatoes, and pancakes with jam,
+the last being a luxury in honour of the Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>After a pleasant evening, in the course of which the General
+invited me to accompany him next day to Vouziers, I walked at
+midnight through the silent and empty streets of Sedan.
+The way from Place Turenne to the railway station, where I
+was staying, was rather long, and it was made no shorter by
+the six sentries who in turn stepped out from the gloom and
+challenged me&mdash;a suspicious-looking night-bird, perhaps out
+on some unlawful errand. Each of them read the “pass”
+issued to me by General von Moltke, and then left me to my
+fate&mdash;and to the next sentry. All were quiet and civil, and
+they were doing their duty. When I came to the last, quite
+close to the railway station, I stepped up to him and asked
+whether he had any objection to reading my <i lang="de">Ausweis</i>. He
+replied with a smile: “I suppose it has already been read
+often enough; and besides, I have seen you in the company
+of the Chief of the <i lang="de">Kommandantur</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>But this Chief had gone to sleep when I came “home.”
+He certainly needed rest after all the trains he had cleared
+through the course of the day. And as for myself, I will not
+deny that I was half-asleep before I lay down on my bed.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[p. 145]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">
+    CHAPTER VIII
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">IN THE REAR OF THE FOURTH ARMY</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">EARLY on September 28th I proceeded to the Hôtel
+Croix d’Or and a moment later I was once more on
+the way towards the front with General von Seckendorff
+and his Adjutant. Our way lay in a south-south-westerly
+direction and followed roughly the Ardenne Canal, which we
+crossed two or three times. Our first goal was the town of
+Vouziers. Railway communication exists up to this point,
+but numerous transport columns, nevertheless, make use of
+the paved high road. A road on the lines of communication
+is always animated. The roads in the rear of the 4th
+Army resemble in all respects those I had seen before in the
+rear of the 5th. In fact, it was only the setting of the picture
+that seemed different. We passed a number of inviting-looking
+bivouacs, in some of which smoke was still curling from
+the cooking trench, by the fire of which the men of the transport
+columns were preparing their breakfast. In the avenue
+of chestnut and maple trees lining the road, which were
+already turning yellow, marching troops and transport
+columns of all kinds, supply and ammunition wagons, motor-ambulances
+and long rows of old-fashioned yellow mail-vans,
+filled with field-post mails intended for Germany, via Treves&mdash;where
+the first sorting takes place&mdash;succeed each other in
+motley procession. The indispensable “Field Gendarmes”
+(Military Police Patrols) in their green uniforms, with helmets
+and bright badges, ride backwards and forwards on their road
+sections to see that all is in order. There lies a horse which
+has broken down, worn out! A merciful bullet has just put an
+end to his suffering, and he is being dragged aside; a stream
+of blood is trickling from his nostrils, staining the road-dust
+red.</p>
+
+<p>It is a very pretty landscape that unrolls its undulating
+outlines on either side of the colonnade of ancient trees.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[p. 146]</span>Fields and meadows, pastures, groves and orchards&mdash;all
+slashed in different directions by the dark shaded lines of the
+roads. Now and then one sees cattle browsing peacefully&mdash;sheep
+among the goats. And the peasants who have
+returned to their land are busying themselves in their yards
+and fields. We pass through several villages, among others
+Tannay and Le Chesne on the Ardenne Canal. This country
+is full of memories. One can without much effort imagine
+oneself back in the last days of August, 1870, when Marshal
+MacMahon’s army marched in long columns along these very
+roads&mdash;towards Beaumont and Sedan. There, close by, in the
+wood to the south-west, and south of Le Chesne, the first
+German cavalry pickets were peering out, on August 29th,
+on the road to the north. These were horsemen, no doubt,
+who less than a fortnight previously had gained glory on the
+blood-drenched fields of Vionville and Mars-la-Tour.&mdash;Hark!
+The bugles are sounding at the head of von Bredow’s brigade!&mdash;The
+stranger from the land of Charles XII. feels a twinge in
+his heart, as his fancy calls up kindred memories of past ages.
+From remote regions far, far away, other sounds, yet strangely
+similar, seem to ring in his ears&mdash;an echo from the days of long
+ago, when his people were fighting for the Germanic cause in
+the east.&mdash;Around him is seething the vital energy of the
+German army, of the German people. He feels something he
+has felt before. He now comprehends the true significance of
+the words in which the poor Swedish petty officer Wessling
+replied to the Generals of Tsar Peter, who asked him how the
+Swedes could fight so valiantly, two against a hundred:
+“We were bound to do so for the sake of our most gracious
+king and the oath we have sworn.” This spirit shines from
+the eyes of every German soldier.&mdash;At length we arrive in
+Vouziers on the western bank of the Aisne.</p>
+
+<p>We do not stop long. The General only remains long enough
+to hear the reports of a couple of officers of the Intermediate
+Base Command there, as to what has occurred since yesterday.
+When he has gathered that all is in the best order he gives the
+word to drive on, and we soon continue southward on the
+high road to Séchault and Cernay&mdash;the road taken by the
+11th Army Corps to Sedan in 1870. At Cernay we are twenty
+kilometres west of Varennes. But between these two localities
+lies the Argonne, where obstinate fighting is still proceeding.
+From Cernay issues, to the west, the great highway to Rheims.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[p. 147]</span>On the first sixteen kilometres of this road, or right up to the
+village of Somme Py, I was afforded the opportunity of
+visiting some highly interesting spots. At the end of September
+this was the most advanced road to the south then held by
+the Germans in this region.</p>
+
+
+<a id="map_2"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="map_2_result" style="max-width: 45em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/map_2.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>The country round Somme Py and Rouvroy.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The first village west of Cernay is Rouvroy. We did not
+intend to drive any further this day. We made a short stop
+to take our plain, soldier-like early meal&mdash;long narrow slices
+of army bread with butter and ham, and a glass of claret.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill017"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_017_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/017_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>INFANTRY RESERVISTS ON THE FRINGE OF A WOOD AT ROUVROY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill016"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_016_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/016_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A DRESSING WAGON HAD HALTED BEHIND A FEW DARK PINES
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The General had with him an extra car, filled with bottles
+of wine, which he distributed among the soldiers. There was
+no need to be sparing with wine in these regions, where even
+the peasants have their cellars well stocked. But nothing
+is taken away off-hand. All will be made good to the owners
+after the war. The terms of peace will contain a provision to
+the effect that the defeated side shall pay the amount of
+every receipt or voucher (<i lang="fr">bon</i>) representing the value of the
+things requisitioned during the military occupation. The
+individual is not to suffer direct, but only as a participant in
+the misfortune which falls on the country as a whole. It is
+the duty of the State to make good the people’s personal
+losses when the State is incapable of protecting the property
+of the individual against the enemy. And if the invading
+power is defeated in the war, its just punishment is that it must
+make good the losses of the sufferers.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps someone may object that it is improper to let the
+soldiers drink wine&mdash;seeing that, in the east, the Russians
+have made the experiment of introducing total prohibition,
+and are satisfied with the result. No doubt this demonstration
+of moral strength, <i lang="la">per se</i>, deserves admiration, though it
+does not appear to have been fully carried through at home.
+Nevertheless I think that a draught of red or white wine, now
+and then, cannot but be beneficial to the soldier if it is distributed
+at the right time and in the right place, after strenuous
+exertions. To preach total abstinence is easy enough for
+those who are not called upon to lie freezing all night in
+cold, wet trenches where it is not permitted to light the smallest
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>At Rouvroy we left our cars and proceeded on foot up gently
+ascending ground, along fields and ditches, through hedges and
+brushwood. Here the ground was much pitted by shell fire and
+no one could tell when the rain of shells might recommence.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[p. 148]</span>Numerous projectiles were lying scattered about and I took
+with me a so-called <i lang="de">Ausbläser</i>, i.e. a shell “burnt out” without
+bursting.</p>
+
+<p>Higher up the slope we came across some reserves waiting
+to be called upon to relieve their comrades in the trenches.
+They lay concealed in a wood, with small bodies advanced
+to the very edge of the wood, which was protected by all sorts
+of entrenchments, with semi-subterranean “dug-outs” at the
+back&mdash;excavations covered with branches, twigs and green
+boughs, and serving not only as shelters for the men but also
+to screen them from aviators. As is natural, these bodies of
+reserves always locate themselves on the northern side of the
+points of vantage which they occupy. They must be concealed
+out of sight of the French lines. But in this war
+reconnoitring by aviators has also to be reckoned with. They
+are therefore compelled, even when on the far side of such
+cover, such as villages, woodlands and groves, to “dig themselves
+in” or at least hide as best they can from the buzzing
+war-hawks which every now and then come spying from the
+clouds for prey. Hence the most important thing of all is
+good screening or masking of the position. Exceedingly great
+care is bestowed on this point. Not the smallest detail is overlooked.
+The admissibility of lighting fires in these caves
+depends on the completeness of this masking.</p>
+
+<p>At a spot near the fringe of the wood, a field ambulance was
+stationed, well screened by some dark pines. It was accompanied
+by a spare horse, which might be useful in case the
+pair of horses forming the ordinary team should be shot down.
+Another vehicle belonging to the medical service corps was
+fitted with a greyish-yellow folding hood. Grey loin-cloths
+had been thrown over the horses to approximate their colour
+as nearly as possible to that of the ground&mdash;all as precaution
+against observation by aviators.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill018"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_018_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/018_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A DRESSING WAGON WITH HOOD
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>In a small shelter-hut near by, four surgeons who were in
+charge of the two medical wagons had taken up their quarters.
+They had just finished their luncheon, which had been fetched
+from the nearest kitchen wagon; I also took the liberty of
+sampling the food, which seemed as nutritious as it was
+palatable.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill019"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_019_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/019_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FOUR DOCTORS BREAKFASTING UNDER COVER OF A SHELTER TENT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Up on the hill, which afforded a view of the French positions,
+we found several officers. Close by, under cover of an enormous
+haystack, was a group of men of various units&mdash;presumably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[p. 149]</span>orderlies and despatch riders who had followed their respective
+superior officers so as to be at hand whenever wanted. All
+these men seemed to enjoy the opportunity of getting to know
+more than their comrades. They did not pay heed to the
+greater danger of their position. Reminders of death were
+not far to seek. Near by, two soldiers had been buried in the
+shade of a small copse. Fresh wreaths were hanging on the
+arms of the cross, suggesting that the brave men resting
+beneath had but recently fallen victims to the French fire.
+The solitary, insignificant little mounds were adorned with
+the helmets of the fallen men.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill021"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_021_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/021_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>SOLDIERS UNDER COVER OF A HAYSTACK AT ROUVROY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>On our return trip, for which we chose a more easterly route,
+<i>via</i> the villages of Condé, Autry and Grandpré, we passed
+four companies of Landsturm, headed by a spirited band.
+It is an unusual thing to hear band music so near the front,
+where all has to be as silent as possible and where usually the
+only music is that of guns and rifles. The general drove past
+the whole detachment and stopped ahead of it by the side of
+the road. He then alighted, and we followed his example.
+The whole detachment now marched past. When the first
+company came up, he called out: “Good morning, first
+company,” greeting the others in the same way and receiving
+their salute. It was a fine and impressive sight to behold these
+sturdy men, among whom more than one was nearing the age
+of fifty.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill020"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_020_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/020_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>OFFICERS’ CAR AT GRANDPRÉ
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>And what a march-past! It moved me strangely. It vividly
+recalled to my recollection a troop of old Swedish territorials,
+whom I saw many, many years ago. They were of a similar
+stock, faithful in life, faithful in death&mdash;without reproach.
+Their dark-blue uniforms stood out in vivid contrast to the
+rusty foliage of the trees. There was nothing lacking in the
+equipment of this Landsturm battalion. It was a fine sight,
+too, to see the General, with his look of determination blended
+with kindness, his white moustache and his steel-grey hair.
+Erect and tall he stood, in his grey cloak, with his hands
+behind his back. There had been no need for him to alight
+and salute them, but it pleased his martial soul to look at these
+men, who had left hearth and home, wife and children, to
+bleed and die, but determined also to fight and conquer for
+their country. “We are comrades,” he thought, no doubt, as
+the last man filed past, and the sound of the music died away
+in the distance. And so we ran past the Landsturm battalion
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[p. 150]</span>a second time, and listened once more to the inspiriting strains
+of the parade march.</p>
+
+<p>On our return to Vouziers the General handed me over to
+the care of Cavalry Captain von Behr, a brother of the
+Chamberlain. He was a merry and lively gentleman, and
+when the General asked him to show me every attention, he
+promised that I should want for nothing. And he kept his
+word, for during the period of fully a week which I spent with
+him and his comrades, I had occasion to see and learn much,
+and to make the acquaintance of many notable and estimable
+men. Von Behr had retired from the army long ago, but on
+the outbreak of the war he had re-entered the service in a
+cuirassier regiment and was now in command of a reserve
+squadron. His troop was now quartered in the barracks of
+the 3rd French Cuirassier Regiment. As the day was not yet
+spent he immediately proposed&mdash;like a true cavalryman&mdash;a
+visit to a riding-school which had been fitted up as stables
+and barracks. There we found the horses well-groomed and
+well-shod, in their stalls along the walls, while the men had
+arranged their beds on a litter of unthreshed wheat. The oat
+sacks were lying piled in large stacks. The bridles, saddles,
+arms and accoutrements were suspended on brackets and
+pillars. The interior of this stable, and of another immediately
+adjoining it, presented an aspect of military order, discipline
+and precision, which ensured that in case of need the squadron
+could be in the saddle, fully equipped, in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>A third building in the same grounds had been assigned to
+the French prisoners and their German guard. Thus the
+strangers were neither better nor worse provided for than the
+cuirassiers. They had arranged their beds in the best possible
+way along one of the walls. Armed with sketch-book and pen,
+I paid several visits to them during the following days.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly we also looked in at the barracks, now fitted up as
+a clearing hospital. We had the best imaginable cicerone, the
+head surgeon himself, Dr. Zinsser of Cologne. He was famous
+as a physician and surgeon. As a man he was charming and
+fascinating. It was always a great pleasure to me to meet
+him and hear him talk of the experience he had already gained
+during the war, and which had induced him to introduce many
+alterations and improvements in the hospital arrangements.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill022"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_022_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/022_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FRENCH PRISONERS CARRIED WOUNDED GERMANS TO THE RAILWAY STATION
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>We made a hurried round through some of the hospital
+wards, where nurses and Catholic friars were passing softly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[p. 151]</span>from bed to bed, silent as ghosts. Not all the beds were
+occupied, but five hundred wounded were expected at night,
+of whom, however, many would be moved on next day. Here
+we saw some French prisoners carrying wounded Germans on
+stretchers to the railway station for further transport&mdash;a
+strange sight! Among the German patients I noticed the
+same spirit that animates, with infectious ardour, the whole
+of this wonderful and firmly knit army&mdash;no homesickness,
+only an irresistible desire to get back to the front. If one ever
+came across a soldier who said that he wished himself back
+home, it was sure to be one of the badly wounded, prostrate
+on a sick-bed and at best doomed to be a cripple for life. We
+saw an instance of this in the operating theatre of the hospital.
+A man had his leg so badly shattered by a shell, that he had
+to undergo amputation. The bandages were skilfully and
+quickly put round the stump of the leg, and the man came to.
+But he had forgotten where he was, and it appeared from his
+confused talk that he was still imagining himself to be lying
+in the trenches.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill023"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_023_result" style="max-width: 15em;">
+  <img class="w80" src="images/023.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A CHEF DE MUSIQUE OF THE 11TH INFANTRY REGIMENT, 17TH ARMY CORPS, TAKEN PRISONER ON SEPT. 26TH, SOUTH OF VOUZIERS. SLIGHTLY WOUNDED IN THE HEAD
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>One ward contained patients who had recently undergone
+operations; another was occupied by men who had been
+wounded in the head. In the case of one, the bullet still
+remained lodged in the skull. It was horrible to see him lying
+there staring intently at one spot, and making restless but
+futile efforts to raise himself. One of those next to him had
+been rendered blind by a shot, and a third had lost his memory;
+he readily answered questions relating to the present, but was
+quite oblivious of all concerning the past.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill024"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_024_result" style="max-width: 15em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/024.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>CHAMBON, 30 YEARS OLD, FRENCH SOLDIER FROM PERIGUEUX IN DORDOGNE (17TH ARMY CORPS). SLIGHTLY WOUNDED SOUTH OF VOUZIERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The wounded officers had a ward to themselves, and seemed
+pleased to have an opportunity to chat awhile. “What news
+from the front&mdash;any fresh victories?” was the invariable
+question. The most singular case here was that of a Captain
+who had been shot right through the neck, the bullet having
+entered on the right and issued on the left side, without
+causing serious injury to the arteries, trachea, pharynx, or
+cervical vertebræ. The Captain sat up in his bed, his whole
+head swathed in bandages. He followed our conversation
+attentively, but did not, and could not, utter a word himself.
+Professor Zinsser said that it would certainly take him half
+an hour if he tried to pass a probe in the same way through a
+human neck without inflicting injury. But this bullet had
+found its way through in the minutest fraction of a second.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[p. 152]</span></p>
+
+<p>Some distance apart from the rest lay the patients suffering
+from tetanus. It is only in rare cases that their lives can be
+saved. One-half of those who died in hospital had succumbed
+to tetanus. It is a terrible affliction. A surgeon who had
+been at the front in Alsace and whom I met on a subsequent
+occasion, thought he had noticed that this disease first appeared
+when they had crossed the French frontier. It is generated
+by the so-called tetanus bacillus, a bacillar microbe to be
+found in the soil, chiefly mould. If such infected earth comes
+into contact with a wound, say through a ricochet bullet, the
+latter may carry the bacilli with it and by their poisonous
+secretions induce this form of muscular catalepsy. We saw
+a few tetanus patients, and the professor talked to them.
+A young German had tetanus in the muscles of the mouth,
+and his face became distorted as he attempted almost inaudibly
+to speak. I was told that his life might possibly be
+saved.</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of September Professor Zinsser and his
+colleagues had had a trying time at the hospital. It was at
+the time when, for strategical reasons, the army retired from
+the Marne to the Aisne. The badly wounded men who could
+not bear hasty removal involving discomfort, had to be left
+in the care of surgeons, who thus voluntarily went into
+captivity&mdash;surely one of the greatest sacrifices that could be
+made in war.</p>
+
+<p>The rest, who could bear being removed, were conveyed in
+large numbers to these barracks, the floors of which had been
+covered with straw. Professor Zinsser arrived there late one
+night, in darkness and pouring rain, and at once proceeded to
+the improvised hospital. No lights were to be had. But
+wagon after wagon brought fresh wounded&mdash;would the stream
+never end? They were crammed in anywhere, anyhow, in
+terrible confusion. Some died during the night. Others grew
+worse. All were soaked with rain, their bandages were torn
+to shreds and undone. There they lay, fifteen hundred, light
+and grave cases, pell-mell. Here and there, among the living,
+lay a body growing cold in death. A terrible smell pervaded
+the atmosphere. Of course, none of the patients were able
+to go outside. Their strength was utterly gone. It was a
+pitch-dark night&mdash;the rain was pelting down! But the
+professor was powerless to relieve their distress; he had no
+alternative but to wait till the morning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[p. 153]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the morning five doctors and twenty men of the Army
+Medical Corps arrived. A dreadful sight met their eyes in
+these overcrowded rooms, foul with the stench of purulent
+wounds and excrements. But they set to work at once and
+soon received assistance from a field hospital. They were
+then thirty all told. They worked day and night. But new
+hosts of wounded kept on arriving. It seemed utterly hopeless!
+The wounded stretched out their hands to the surgeon
+as soon as they caught sight of him and cried: “Help us!
+Help us!” Extra motor-cars were procured to carry away
+those who could bear removal. Many of the wounded even
+crept down to the bottom of the steps to find a place in some
+ambulance wagon&mdash;to get away from this inferno. But in the
+end, the superhuman energy of the medical staff triumphed.
+A kitchen was fitted up, cattle were slaughtered and meat-broth
+was made. Soldiers who had been starving for days
+could at last stay their hunger. All dressings were changed&mdash;those
+of the graver cases first, the others afterwards. In a few
+days the medical staff were masters of the situation. But if
+such is the state of things on the lines of communication of an
+army which has only fallen back momentarily for some
+distance, what must happen after a crushing defeat? Of
+one thing I am certain, none but an army permeated with
+boundless confidence in its leaders and its chief command,
+can stand the strain of such phases of war without going
+to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>In the foregoing I have often stopped to speak of the
+wounded and shall do so again. It might therefore be opportune
+to give a brief outline of the system and the organisation
+which prevails in the hospital service in the field. All is
+arranged beforehand so as to be ready when war breaks out.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the hospital service assumes a different aspect
+according to the distance from the actual fighting line. At
+the front they have Medical Service Corps and establishments
+to meet the first needs of the wounded. There we find surgeons
+with military training. But all these dressing stations and
+field hospitals are cleared as speedily as possible to make room
+for fresh wounded. They pass their patients on, step by step,
+along the lines of communication, on which their further care,
+or transport to the home base, is provided for. Here most of
+the medical staff are not on the normal war establishment, but
+civilian medical men liable to military service or who have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[p. 154]</span>volunteered&mdash;though appointed already in peace time for
+certain duties.</p>
+
+<p>Each field force has its medical service staff whose task is
+to look after its well-being, to supervise its hygiene, to watch
+over the daily food supplies, to analyse the drinking water,
+etc. It is therefore the first duty of the Army Medical Staff
+to regulate the general hygienic care so as to prevent such
+epidemics as might otherwise easily spread. Men who have
+fallen sick among the troops are cared for in “local sick-rooms”
+until they can be handed over to the care of the Army
+Medical Service.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill025"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_025_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/025_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FEEDING THE WOUNDED (THE SECOND FROM THE LEFT IS MAJOR VON PLATO)
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>At the fighting line the army surgeons establish regimental
+dressing stations. Some surgeons accompany the bearer
+patrols on to the battlefield, but without, save in exceptional
+cases, entering the actual fire zone.</p>
+
+<p>Each infantry division has at least one medical service
+company. The latter establishes, in a suitable spot at the
+rear of the troops, one or more principal dressing stations,
+sending its ambulance wagons to an advanced halting-place,
+so as to get the dangerously wounded as quickly as possible
+back to the rear. Each medical service company comprises
+nine surgeons and a large number of bearers, sick attendants,
+apothecaries, etc. The company, further, has eight two-horsed
+ambulance wagons, two medical-store wagons, equipped
+with medicaments, stretchers and dressing materials, two
+baggage wagons and one food-supply wagon.</p>
+
+<p>For each Army Corps there are twelve field hospitals.
+These are established in suitable towns, villages and mansions,
+behind the front. They have to be located in sheltered
+situations where they may remain even if the fighting line
+advances. The field hospitals receive the patients from the
+auxiliary and principal dressing stations, with the exception
+of such as are sent to a “collecting station for slightly
+wounded,” to proceed thence direct to the nearest line of
+communication depot.</p>
+
+<p>The field hospital has its own regulation medical wagons
+and carries with it a complete hospital equipment, such as
+mattresses, or empty covers to be filled with straw, pillows,
+blankets and sheets, shirts and other necessary clothing for
+the patients, china vessels for the convenience of the wounded,
+and many other things. The first surgical operations are
+carried out in the field hospital building unless, in quite
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[p. 155]</span>exceptional cases, these have to be performed at once in the
+open, for instance, to staunch the flow of blood from gaping
+wounds. The field hospital staff is military throughout. No
+nursing sisters, nor, generally speaking, any volunteer nurses
+are to be found here.</p>
+
+<p>The head of the medical service organisation of the Army
+Corps is the “Chief Medical Officer” of the Army Corps.
+He is assisted by a consulting surgeon who in civil life is
+generally a University professor or lecturer and who also
+inspects the field hospitals.</p>
+
+
+<div class="section">
+<a id="ill027"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_027_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/027_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE UHLANS PROCEED ON THEIR WAY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill026"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_026_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/026_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A SERIOUSLY WOUNDED MAN CARRIED FROM THE TRAIN TO THE HOSPITAL AT SEDAN
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>We will now proceed to the zone of the lines of communication.
+The field hospital is replaced after a time&mdash;as soon as
+possible when the field operations advance&mdash;by a clearing
+hospital section. This consists solely of a staff&mdash;medical men,
+military nursing attendants and volunteer assistants. Each
+Army Corps has one such section of nineteen surgeons and a
+corresponding number of subordinates.</p>
+
+<p>The field hospital is thus converted, on the advance of the
+troops, into a clearing hospital, or, in other words, when the
+field hospital with its matériel thus set free or replaced, follows
+the troops forward, its place is taken by the clearing hospital,
+which retains all that its predecessor has left behind. When,
+as at the time of my visit, the advance is slow, no change takes
+place and the clearing hospital staff has <em>comparatively</em> little to do.</p>
+
+<p>Clearing hospitals are found wherever the fighting has
+given occasion for the establishment of a field hospital, and
+therefore also at considerable distances from the main lines of
+communication. In the event of hard fighting, clearing
+hospital sections with temporary equipment establish their
+hospitals side by side with the field hospital. The task of these
+hospitals is ultimately to remove by degrees their patients to the
+Line of Communication (stationary) hospitals, and to places,
+such as Sedan in the case of the 4th Army, from which a
+regular railway connection exists with the home country.
+The transport of the wounded is effected not only on foot and
+in empty transport wagons, but also by the motor-ambulance
+vehicles, of the Sick and Wounded Transport Department,
+among which one sees ordinary omnibuses from Berlin and
+other towns and motor-lorries bearing the names of well-known
+factories and business concerns. These may carry up to
+seven or ten beds. If slightly wounded are in question, one
+single large motor-vehicle can take up to fifty men, but then
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[p. 156]</span>they will sit tightly packed and even on the roof. Thus the
+wounded are conveyed to the principal intermediate base on
+the lines of communication, from which they proceed by rail
+or by canal or river to the home base. I have previously
+discussed the organisation of the hospital service within the
+zone of the lines of communication. I will only remark here
+that just as the Principal Medical Officer of the Army Corps
+has a Consulting Surgeon, so the Principal Medical Officer at
+the Lines of Communication Hospital has a Consulting Sanitary
+Officer who is likewise, in peace time, a University professor.
+The latter has to examine all suspicious cases of infection and
+to prescribe all necessary measures of precaution to prevent
+any outbreak of infectious diseases. The Sanitary Officer is
+provided with a bacteriological laboratory and is expected to
+investigate carefully every individual case of typhoid fever,
+dysentery and similar diseases, to ascertain whence the patient
+has come, to isolate him and to try to eradicate the cause and
+source of infection. In certain cases he may find that by way
+of precaution, the establishment of an infectious diseases
+hospital in the zone of the lines of communication is advisable.
+Such a hospital has been established, for instance, in Attigny
+near Vouziers.</p>
+
+<p>Within the zone of the lines of communication to which
+the clearing hospitals&mdash;which are in charge of a “Director”&mdash;form
+the link of transition, there is first of all a Lines of
+Communication Hospital Supply Depot which replenishes the
+stores of the hospital units and organisations, both at the front
+and on the lines of communication, the Lines of Communication
+Hospital, with which we have already become acquainted, the
+sections for non-dangerous cases of disease, and for convalescents&mdash;from
+which the patients can frequently be sent
+back to the front after so short a time that their transport to
+the home country would be needless&mdash;the infectious diseases
+hospital, the ambulance trains&mdash;hospitals on wheels&mdash;and
+any incidental trains for the transport of wounded. I have
+already acquainted the reader with such hospital organisations
+at intermediate base stations, where we have seen
+doctors, nurses and medical service men go from carriage to
+carriage of the ambulance train to examine the patients and
+pick out those who cannot bear further transport.</p>
+
+<p>In the home country the arriving wounded are sent to
+home base hospitals&mdash;either ordinary hospitals or private
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[p. 157]</span>houses which have been fitted up as hospitals during the war.
+Many, too, are sent direct to their homes. The main governing
+principle all the way from the front to the home country is:
+make room, make room, make room! Therefore every
+effort is made to get rid of the wounded as speedily as possible
+to make room for new arrivals.</p>
+
+<p>Every first-aid medical wagon is carefully divided into
+compartments and boxes so that each requisite has its proper
+place and can be found in an instant. The hospital trains
+are organised and equipped with equally exemplary care and
+forethought, everything being planned beforehand in peace
+time. The iron framework supporting the berth for the
+wounded is always kept ready, all that is required is to remove
+from third-class carriages the seats and racks, and screw
+fast in their place the framework for the berths. It is known
+beforehand how many mattresses, pillows and blankets are
+required for each carriage. In the medical and apothecaries’
+store wagons all is arranged with such precision as to enable
+the doctor to find, blindfolded, the tincture of iodine or quinine
+he requires, or a piece of sticking-plaster, or a safety pin.
+Everything is arranged on a uniformly fixed system; if a new-comer
+cannot at once find his way he need only refer to the
+printed key which applies for all German ambulance trains.
+The punctilious thoroughness of the Germans has been
+ridiculed and called pedantry. But it now appears why this
+pedantry was useful. All goes like clockwork and no one has
+any need to search or enquire. And the same order, regulated
+by strict rules laid down in peace time, reigns everywhere;
+therefore the Germans do not behave like half-dazed dreamers
+startled out of their slumber, when they are faced with war
+in earnest. They are well prepared and trained in everything,
+whether the duties assigned to them are on the lines of communication
+or at the operating table.</p>
+
+<p>I have been told in German quarters that the French Army
+surgeons are better equipped than the German, that is to say
+that in the French Army there are on hand larger supplies
+of pharmaceutical and surgical stores. It is said that the
+French field hospitals are more numerous than the German
+and are not replaced subsequently by the clearing hospital.
+This last mentioned circumstance is, of course, quite natural
+and arises from the situation of the war itself. The Germans
+have been advancing on French soil; their lines of communication
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[p. 158]</span>have lengthened. The field hospitals had to be shifted
+forward step by step. They had to be hurriedly replaced by
+the clearing hospitals. This is the result of the spirit favouring
+the offensive, which is peculiar to the German Army. Hitherto
+the French have not more than once had any need of corresponding
+arrangements. They were compelled from the first
+to keep on the defensive. Although it is a misfortune for them
+to have hostile armies on their soil, they have at least the
+advantage that the railways everywhere reach up to their
+front, whereby all transport of troops, wounded, supplies
+and ammunition is simplified and shortened. But this advantage
+is infinitesimal as compared with the misfortune of
+not being masters throughout their territory. And it also
+vanishes as soon as the operations assume such an overwhelming
+character as was the case in the latter part of
+August. In the present period of stagnation of the war the
+conditions are naturally different.</p>
+
+<p>The German soldiers have a perfect horror of falling into
+the hands of French doctors&mdash;they would rather die. When
+prisoners and wounded are exchanged some day after the
+close of the war, impartial critics in the medical world will
+be able to judge on what side the wounded prisoners have been
+treated most tenderly and humanely. In more than one
+respect this war has demonstrated the impotence and futility
+of all conferences and conventions of Geneva, The Hague, and
+other places, bearing names which now have an empty and
+illusory sound.</p>
+
+<p>But we cannot detain any longer the excellent Captain von
+Behr who has been waiting with angelic patience while we
+strayed into the subject of hospital organisation. He now takes
+me by the arm and we enter the little town.</p>
+
+<p>We enter the house in which von Behr, together with
+Count von Eichstedt, Baron von Tschammer, and a few other
+officers have taken up their quarters. Soon the supper bell
+rang, and we afterwards assembled for coffee in the drawing-room
+on the ground floor. The scene which met my eyes here
+and which I afterwards saw repeatedly, reminded me vividly
+of one of Anton von Werner’s war paintings, showing a brightly
+lighted room and an officer seated at the piano accompanying
+a singing comrade while the others listen.</p>
+
+
+<div class="section">
+<a id="ill028"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_028_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/028_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A SQUADRON OF UHLANS HALT OUTSIDE CAPT. VON BEHR’S HOUSE TO AWAIT THEIR BAGGAGE TRAIN
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[p. 159]</span></p>
+
+<p>Forty-four years have since elapsed, but the picture represented
+by soldiers billeted in France is still the same.
+Von Behr sang Schumann, Wagner, and Richard Strauss to
+von Eichstedt’s accompaniment, and the rest of us sat silent
+like statues and listened. And while the soft sounds of the
+music were lulling my senses, my thoughts began to wander
+and I wondered what kind of man it was who, only a month
+ago, lived in this house and had so lovingly adorned the
+walls of his drawing-room with portraits of his wife and
+children. Then came a day when he had to leave his home
+in haste, to join the army himself and to carry his family
+into safety. And now his house has become the home of others.</p>
+
+<p>It is usually considered bad taste to examine too closely
+another man’s furniture. But the war sweeps away all
+conventions, and I cannot take my eyes off the objects surrounding
+me, not on their own account, but because one has a
+feeling as if the owner and his family were haunting the room
+and as if one heard their voices in the sharp tick of the clock
+on the mantelpiece. Their eyes have fallen daily on the
+expensive bureau between the windows, their feet have trod
+the carpet, and they have sat at that very writing-table and
+entrusted their fears and hopes to note-paper and envelope,
+whilst the chandelier had shed its light upon them until the
+last night before they departed in hurried flight. Why did this
+unfortunate war come to disturb their peaceful life? Was it
+necessary for the welfare of France?</p>
+
+<p>Above the writing-table hangs a war painting by Détaille,
+and from its shelf stares, gloomy and dark, a bronze bust of
+Bonaparte&mdash;not the Emperor, but the victorious General
+of the Italian war of 1796. A legendary glamour hovers around
+this image, whose look seems to be strangely penetrating
+into every corner of the room. However attentively I listened
+to the song and music and whatever else might attract my
+attention, my eyes always travelled back to the bronze figure
+on the writing-table. If it were alive and could talk! What
+would the Emperor say to the French? “The Prussians
+hated me; they had a right to do so as my hand had been
+heavy upon them. But England was my enemy as she was
+that of France. And Russia assisted her with forces the
+strength of which I did not realise until it was too late.”</p>
+
+<p>Who is host and who is guest in this house? I feel that
+I am the guest of my German friends as far as we are not all
+guests&mdash;I in a double measure&mdash;in the Frenchman’s house.
+For I presume it is, after all, the owner who is the host. Yet,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[p. 160]</span>no, war upsets all values. In war everything is settled by
+force of arms. By right of war, which is the highest instance
+of appeal, the Germans are at present owners of north-eastern
+France. And who will insist that Tsingtau is still German,
+only momentarily occupied by Japanese? No one knows how
+it will be after the war. But what we do know at present is
+that in those parts of France which are occupied by the
+Germans, they are also masters and hosts. Ask the civil
+population in our little town; they consist, it is true, solely
+of old people, women and children. They are treated with
+the greatest consideration and kindness, yet they know who is
+master here. To have invading troops quartered in one’s
+place is a terrible thing. And yet they are gentle here;
+inhabitants as well as property are spared as far as possible,
+and one sees everywhere, in streets and market-places, German
+soldiers in friendly intercourse with the natives.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[p. 161]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">
+    CHAPTER IX
+       <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">WITH THE FOURTH ARMY</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">ON the 29th September I made a trip in the company
+of Count von Eichstedt to the little village of Séchault,
+chiefly with the object of quietly taking a few photographs
+of the daily life of the soldiers, such as I found it on a
+comparatively peaceful day immediately behind the front.
+We proceeded along a familiar road past marching columns of
+all kinds, and villages and woods. Our road took us past many
+fields where there was nobody to bring in the over-ripe corn,
+whilst in others the sugar-beet was simply rotting away. On
+reaching the above village we put up the car in a yard and
+went off to look for some tempting subjects.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill030"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_030_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/030_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>AMMUNITION COLUMN HALTING BESIDE A BARN
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Of these there was no dearth and I will simply say a few words
+by way of explanation. In a field of white beet we came
+across the encampment of an infantry ammunition column, the
+men having already put up their shelter-tents. The foreground
+was littered with beet pulled up and thrown aside.
+By the side of the road an artillery ammunition column was
+resting, and its magnificent team of six horses was being
+regaled with hay, whilst to complete the picture a <i lang="de">Fussart.-Mun.
+Kol. Abteilung</i> (<i lang="de">s. F.H.</i>)&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_18_18" href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> comes creaking past. From
+a side-road there suddenly issues a <i lang="de">Fuhrparkkolonne</i>, or food
+column made up of farmers’ carts. A mounted military
+policeman presides over the crossing. He is making notes on
+the column which is marching past. A little further on
+another ammunition column has halted by the side of a barn
+which looks very picturesque with its decrepit patched-up
+walls eaten and worn away by wind and weather. We also
+catch a glimpse of one of those blessed institutions, a dressing
+wagon, which I have already spoken of. It is probably not
+the only one. It looks as if we had chanced upon a spot where
+what we call in Sweden the first <i lang="fr">échelon</i> of the great train
+belonging to the army corps in front was about to assemble.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a id="Footnote_18_18" href="#FNanchor_18_18" class="label">[18]</a> Foot artillery ammunition column detachment for heavy field howitzers.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[p. 162]</span></p>
+
+
+<a id="ill032"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_032_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/032_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>PROTRACTED HALT OF AN INFANTRY AMMUNITION COLUMN. SHELTER-TENTS HAVE BEEN PITCHED
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill031"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_031_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/031_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>CAMP SCENE ON A FARM AT SÉCHAULT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>In all yards and alleys in the village we see groups of these
+strong and cheerful German soldiers, always happy and contented,
+busy extricating their gear from the baggage wagons
+or cooking their dinners or patching their clothes. The infantrymen&mdash;of
+whom there are many in the village&mdash;are concentrating
+their attention on their kitchen wagons, which
+stand steaming and appetising as usual, ranged up at sheltered
+spots. The others, who had no such luxuries, did their cooking
+in cooking-trenches in the old familiar way. Around the large
+awnings stretched over and in front of the wagons, the crews
+of the transport columns often form really idyllic little picnic
+groups.</p>
+
+<p>Out in the field a bridging train has halted. Its vehicles,
+drawn by four horses, have been dispersed. Why? It is
+because yesterday a French airman flew over the column and
+dropped a bomb which mauled several horses horribly and
+seriously injured four men. One of the pontoons was pierced
+by several shell splinters, but was quickly and most effectively
+repaired. It is best to be careful&mdash;one does at least what
+one can to minimise the effects of these little visitations.
+Presently a few infantry soldiers come along, driving a flock
+of about a dozen sheep before them; we presume they have
+come across them wandering about in the open. Next day
+there will probably be Irish stew for at least a couple of companies.</p>
+
+<p>Before a barn stands a steam-engine, busy driving a threshing
+machine. Soldiers have brought in the wheat, and soldiers
+are driving the engine. So it seems at any rate that a part of
+the crop is being gathered. In the copse close by a company
+of Landwehr have halted by the side of their piled arms.
+What they are doing I cannot tell, but they seem ready for
+anything that may turn up.</p>
+
+<p>In the village we come across the 38th reserve field hospital.
+Accommodation is scanty, and the primitive farmhouses have
+had to be requisitioned. The wounded are lying on straw
+on the bare floor. I cannot resist the temptation of looking
+in, and step into a little hovel which has once been a kitchen.
+It is now occupied by six men. They are lying comfortably
+and softly on their backs and are all fast asleep. They must
+be terribly tired since they are sleeping so soundly, although
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[p. 163]</span>it is eleven o’clock. I try to step as lightly as possible on the
+creaking floor boards so as not to wake them. “Up, ye
+warriors, arise and hie ye to the fight!” Had I exhorted
+them thus, they would have lain there just the same, sound
+asleep with peaceful placid faces and a smile playing about
+their lips. Why is their sleep so deep, I wonder? They are
+all shot through the head, and in most of them the bullet is
+still there.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a reservist. What a tremendous figure of a man.
+What can Latins, Slavs, Celts, Japs, Negroes, Hindoos, Ghurkas,
+Turcos, and whatever they are called, do against such
+strapping giants of the true Germanic type? His features are
+superbly noble, and he seems pleased with his day’s work.
+He does not regret that he has offered his life for Germany’s
+just cause. I cannot leave him, he holds me back, and I ask
+for a chair to make if but an imperfect sketch of the dying
+hero and his neighbours. But yesterday he had sung himself
+hoarse with the proud refrain: “<i lang="de">Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig
+sein!</i>” But yesterday he lay in the cold, narrow trench, and
+when he and his comrades dashed forward to charge, he was
+struck in the head by a bullet which lodged in the lower part
+of the temple. From the first collecting-place he was now on
+his way to the field hospital.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor comes in accompanied by two assistants. They
+support and lift him into a sitting posture, whilst the doctor
+carefully undoes the bandage and lays bare his skull. A large
+lump of cerebral matter has been squeezed out of the wound
+and still lies exposed. The doctor does not remove it, merely
+dries the edges after the hair round the wound has been cut
+away. The edges of the lump are painted with tincture of
+iodine, and a fresh, spotlessly white bandage is wound round
+his head. “But why don’t you remove the exposed cerebral
+substance?” I ask the doctor. “Because one wants to disturb
+his poor head as little as possible, and cerebral inflammation
+must be avoided.”</p>
+
+<p>“Can his life be saved?”</p>
+
+<p>“There is little or no hope for any of those lying in this
+room.”</p>
+
+<p>The wounded man half opens his eyes. The doctor taps
+him gently on the shoulder and asks: “What regiment do
+you belong to?” He mumbles a few unintelligible words
+which we take to mean “Reserve Regiment 87.” The brain-centre
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[p. 164]</span>controlling his organs of speech has been injured.
+He lapses once more into unconsciousness, his thoughts no
+longer wander. Shortly they will cease altogether and the
+soldier will rest, as now beside his comrades, in the little
+churchyard in the village.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor passes on to the next man and rearranges his
+bandages. “What regiment?” he asks once more. “Ninety-nine,”
+is the reply. “Where are you from?” “Ninety-nine.”
+“Are you married?” “Ninety-nine.” He gave the
+same answer to all the questions put to him. “Anyhow, I
+suppose he really belongs to the ninety-ninth regiment of
+reserves?” “No, his regiment has quite a different
+number.”</p>
+
+<p>But why this persistent answer to everything? Had there
+been ninety-nine men in his trench or had he estimated his
+opponents at this number? Had his battalion or company
+at some time or other lost ninety-nine men? Or had he
+thought that he would reach the French trenches with his
+bayonet before counting to one hundred and had just got to
+ninety-nine when struck by a bullet in the forehead? Why
+had this figure, or its counterpart in the mechanism of his
+brain, imprinted itself on his mind like the image on the
+photographic plate? Who knows? The dying soldier was
+about to sink into his last sleep, in which there would be no
+counting to one hundred to disturb him. And when his
+immortal soul awakens beyond the churchyard, other sights
+than bayonets and trenches will meet his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>Right opposite the doorway lay some ten seriously wounded
+soldiers in a living-room. Near the door lay a man who had
+had one leg torn away from the hip joint by a shell. A few
+ragged muscle fibres were all that held it to his body. His
+face was whiter than the bolster, his big eyes were wide open;
+I noticed vaguely that he had a good nose and a dark beard.
+No doubt he had already been drained of blood. But as we
+stood opposite him, he turned his head and asked for a glass
+of water. It was brought at once, he drank eagerly and
+thanked us. We made a hasty round amongst the others
+and in five minutes we were back at the soldier by the door.
+He was now dead and his vacant eyes were gazing into the
+unknown. The doctor stooped down and firmly closed his
+eyelids. He patted him affectionately on the forehead and
+said in a tender voice, “Sleep well, my poor boy.” Later
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[p. 165]</span>on, the hero, dressed in his uniform and greatcoat, was carried
+out to the little churchyard outside the village.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill034"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_034_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/034.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>“A HERO’S DEATH”
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Of course it was a depressing and melancholy experience
+to stand beside so many death-beds. Every day numberless
+men in the hey-day of youth were thus being gathered to
+the eternal rest, in hospitals and trenches. But one gets
+accustomed to such sights, as do the soldiers themselves, for it
+does not seem to depress or frighten them in the least to see
+their comrades die.</p>
+
+<p>When a soldier sees his nearest neighbours fall, he does not
+think: Next time it is my turn. On the contrary his train of
+reflection seems to be like this: Yes, there they are, poor
+chaps, but I am still on my feet and the gaps will soon be
+filled. No need to lament over men who are dying for their
+country and for the liberty and honour of their people.</p>
+
+<p>Before we left the hospital, we had a look at some of the
+identification discs carried by the German soldiers round the
+neck, by the French round the wrist. One of the former
+read: “<i lang="de">Res. 1. R. 17. 6. K. No. 220</i>,” and one of the latter:
+“<i lang="fr">Seine, 6, Bau (Bureau) 601</i>.” A third bore the somewhat
+incomplete inscription: “Leclerc, Alfred, 1902.”</p>
+
+<p>The party at dinner, which was served in the open air,
+included the Commander of the Army, Duke Albrecht of
+Württemberg, his three sons and his staff, and a young Lieutenant
+von Hindenburg, son of the famous Field-marshal.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill033"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_033_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/033_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A COMPANY READY TO START OUT, RECEIVING ITS MARCHING INSTRUCTIONS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill035"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_035_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/035_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>BIVOUACKING FOOD COLUMN WITH HORSES AND COVERED WAGONS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>On the return <i>via</i> Cernay, Condé and Challerange I had a
+further opportunity of adding to my collection of photographs.
+In the first-named village I took a couple of pictures of an
+ammunition column, a few soldiers cooking their dinner in a
+yard, and a company on the point of starting out and receiving
+their marching instructions. In the next village we
+came across a fine-looking body of Landsturm, likewise formed
+up to receive instructions regarding the work in hand, and a
+parked food column with covered wagons and horses. The
+most amusing sight was an ammunition column, the wagons
+of which had been pulled right under the overhanging trees
+on the fringe of the wood and were in addition covered over
+with leafy branches, all to conceal them from observation
+by French aviators. A field hospital had, if possible, masked
+its vehicles still more skilfully, and had likewise established
+itself under the trees by the roadside. The horses were not
+to be seen anywhere. They had disappeared amongst the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[p. 166]</span>hazel shrub. A little further on a dressing station had been
+rigged up in the middle of the wood. The white flags with
+the red cross could just be seen through the foliage. Similar
+precautions had been taken for the protection of a number
+of kitchen wagons.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill037"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_037_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/037_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>AN AMMUNITION COLUMN AT CERNAY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill036"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_036_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/036_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A FIELD HOSPITAL AT CONDÉ EFFECTIVELY SCREENED FROM OBSERVATION
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill038"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_038_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/038_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>KITCHEN WAGONS “AT WORK” NEAR CONDÉ
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The French aviators were out daily between 5 and 6 p.m.
+They&mdash;like the corresponding German air scouts&mdash;have a
+double mission, consisting partly in damaging in a military
+sense, by means of bombs, the more delicate parts of the
+opposing mechanism, and partly in observing the transfer and
+grouping of troops, but especially of artillery positions, on
+the part of the enemy. The bridge across La Dormoise at
+Autry had been the victim of a bomb attack a couple of days
+previously, resulting in injuries to a couple of men, but leaving
+the bridge undamaged. At another point in our vicinity a
+soldier was struck by one of those horrible steel arrows which
+the airmen let fall from a height of 2500 metres and which
+pass right through a horse or bury themselves in the ground
+after having struck a man on the head. They travel at the
+speed of a rifle bullet, but weigh more. At Grandpré, a captain
+was killed a few days ago by one of these arrows, and twenty-seven
+men were injured by a bomb from the same aeroplane.
+The previous week the Germans were just in the act of putting
+the last touches to a repaired railway line running through
+a little town in the neighbourhood, which was to become the
+railhead. The French were at once informed through their
+aviators of what was going on. Three bombs were thrown,
+which burst close to the station building, but no damage
+was done. The airman was immediately fired on from an
+anti-aircraft gun, also without effect. The incident showed
+however how well prepared one must be for everything. At
+some points in Germany there is a constant watch for enemy
+aviators. If one comes soaring along over a fortified town at
+night-time, several searchlights are concentrated on him, he
+is blinded by the light and loses his bearings altogether, whilst
+from the nearest church tower he is pelted by the fire from
+machine guns, which pour a rain of bullets on him.</p>
+
+<p>The aviator uses various methods of keeping in touch
+with his own side. This presumably is partly effected by direct
+signals, such as flags or electric torches, the light from which
+can be discerned from the ground through field-glasses. If an
+airman has seen, or thinks he has reason to suspect the presence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[p. 167]</span>of troops or transport trains on the fringe of a coppice or wood,
+he describes by the direction of his flight the outline of the
+area in question, and this is promptly followed by a rain of
+shells. One of the chief duties of the aviator is thus to guide
+the direction of the artillery fire. If one or several French
+batteries make it their business to bombard, and if possible
+to destroy, a German battery the approximate position of
+which is known by the airman, the latter ascends in the
+neighbourhood of the target and makes his observations,
+which are immediately conveyed to the artillery commander
+concerned. In case of “minus” hits&mdash;that is to say if the
+shells fall short of the object&mdash;the airman describes a circle
+of small diameter. In case of “plus” hits&mdash;if the shells burst
+beyond the object&mdash;the airman describes a circle of large
+diameter. If the shells fall to the left of the object, he makes
+an abrupt turn to the right, and if they fall subsequently to
+the right of the object he swings to the left. In this way the
+airman by his movements in the air brings the fire gradually
+closer to the target. It goes without saying that all these
+tricks are countered by the Germans with equal skill. If a
+German battery notices aerial observations on the part of
+the enemy, and that the enemy shells are coming nearer, it
+ceases fire and the battery is moved during the night. One
+advantage which the French possess, owing to the otherwise
+unfortunate circumstance that their own country is the theatre
+of war, is that they can gather much valuable information
+from the civil population. Amongst the latter it is of course
+easy here and there to conceal someone who by certain signs
+or by light signals at night is able to give information about
+the movements of the Germans. If the chief command of an
+army corps or other staff has taken up its quarters in a certain
+village, the French observers are informed thereof by prearranged
+signals, and it is soon revealed by the artillery fire
+whether they have been correctly interpreted. Signals can
+also be given in day-time, for instance, through a peasant
+driving his cattle to a certain spot when an airman is aloft
+and can see him.</p>
+
+<p>Constant shifting of ground is the most effective means of
+overcoming the effects of spying and of direct observation.
+These changes are made at night. In daylight care is taken to
+remain quiet and concealed under such cover as the ground
+affords. The Germans are past-masters in the art of moving
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[p. 168]</span>troops. The great mobility of the German Army, the rapidity
+with which its various units can be thrown backwards and
+forwards, according to requirements, the scientifically developed
+marching powers of the infantry&mdash;there we have a
+few of the reasons which contribute to make this army the
+finest in the world.</p>
+
+<p>On our way eastward we just skim the zone which may at
+any moment be reached by the French fire. But we get past
+safely and all that we see is a column of yellow smoke ascending
+from the burning village of Sevron, set alight by German
+shells. Thenceforward we are on familiar ground and are
+soon home again after a thoroughly successful trip.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past seven I was invited to supper with the Commander
+of the 4th Army, Duke Albrecht of Württemberg.
+The guests included the Minister of War, Lieutenant-General
+von Falkenhayn, the Chief of Staff, General Ilse and the Duke’s
+three sons, all fine-looking and talented young men, the eldest
+twenty-one, the second eighteen and the third seventeen years
+old. They performed their duties with their units like any
+other officer and had already on numerous occasions shown
+commendable ability and courage. We Swedes remember
+what the Württemberg Princes are like from the time of
+Charles XII., when Prince Max, not yet fourteen, arrived in
+the King’s camp at Okuniev east of Warsaw and subsequently
+shared our hard and scanty bread as well as the plentiful
+fare of more prosperous days, until he died at twenty as Colonel
+and Chief of the Scanian regiment of Dragoons.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the meal the son of seventeen rose to go.
+His duties took him to another part of the front and he had
+to return. He now walked round the table and said good-bye
+to all, and last of all to his father. The Duke took his head
+between both hands and kissed him, but said nothing. No
+scenes, no tears, no exhortations not to expose himself needlessly
+to the fire and other dangers. It was like an ordinary,
+“Good night, I shall see you to-morrow.” And yet, how
+many officers and soldiers are there not in this war for whom
+there is no such thing as “to-morrow”? How many families
+on parting from their dear ones do not see them for the last
+time? How many bonds have not been severed for ever?
+One of the Red Cross nurses had twenty-four relations in the
+war, and I was told about a father who had eight sons in the
+field and a ninth of sixteen who longed to follow their example.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[p. 169]</span>The whole German nation has during the past months displayed
+a fortitude and greatness the like of which has not
+been seen in our or any other time.</p>
+
+<p>On my return “home” my friends Behr, Eichstedt and
+Tschammer were still sitting up talking. I settled down beside
+them. We were just discussing the events and news of the day,
+when a cavalry captain entered and told us that the inhabitants
+of two villages about twelve kilometres away had fired
+on the soldiers, although the village had been in German hands
+for six weeks. The order had therefore been given that all
+the men of one village and all men, women and children of
+the other should be arrested and taken to Vouziers. The
+distinction made was probably due to the shots in the first
+village having been aimed at aviators and in the second at
+troops. Half a company of Landsturm infantry, accompanied
+by a squadron, likewise of Landsturm, were therefore at
+1 a.m. to proceed to the spot. The latter were to occupy all
+street exits and prevent any attempt at flight. Meanwhile
+every house was to be searched by the infantry and all inhabitants
+arrested. On arrival in the town they were to be
+court-martialled and the guilty ones shot. Such is the severe
+rule of war. There is no quarter, no salvation. Of course
+pity is felt for the wretched people, for what could they gain
+by firing a few paltry shots against a whole army? Is it
+possible that they believed in the mad rumours that the
+bridges of the German engineers had been built to assure the
+German retreat, and that the fortune of war had lately turned
+completely round? Whence could such news come? Obviously
+only from the civil population itself. Those who
+spread such rumours incur a heavy responsibility towards
+their countrymen for the lives they have risked, and gain
+nothing in return.</p>
+
+<p>I wondered what would happen to the wretched creatures.
+The very next day I had an opportunity of seeing them in
+the dock. They were all old people, peasants and their women
+folk. The latter wept and looked surprised, the men showed
+an indifferent demeanour. The war had already taken from
+them everything, life had no longer any charms. During the
+few days that the trial lasted they wanted for nothing&mdash;once
+I saw the prisoners sitting round large tables in a yard, eating
+their dinner. My heart urged me to intercede for them and to
+appeal to charity and pity, but my reason told me that one
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[p. 170]</span>cannot and must not interfere in the decisions of military
+authorities, who are guided by law. I could but harden my
+heart and let it grow as cold as ice. It may be asked what
+happened to them in the end, whether they were tied to trees
+and shot. I lost trace of them for the moment. But a couple
+of days later I asked one of my friends about their fate.</p>
+
+<p>“They were all released through lack of evidence,” he said.
+“Those who had fired from the villages had clearly fled when
+our Landsturm arrived. The suspects have all returned to
+their homes.”</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill039"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_039_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/039_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>PEROT JULIEN, A 54 YEAR OLD PEASANT CHARGED WITH PLOTTING BUT RELEASED THROUGH INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>It must not be thought that the German court-martials
+treat such cases lightly or hastily, as if human life in a conquered
+country had no value. No, the court is utterly incorruptible
+and carries out its task with the most scrupulous
+thoroughness. Just as mitigating circumstances are when
+possible adduced in favour of a German soldier who&mdash;which
+is very rare&mdash;has assaulted a woman and therefore been condemned
+to death, it is sought in the same way to save the
+country’s own children when they are accused of crime. The
+court-martials of the German “barbarians” are in the highest
+degree conscientious and humane.</p>
+
+<p>The last day in September was set aside for rest, that is to
+say, for short walks and excursions. One of the latter was
+made to the churchyard, where eighteen German soldiers had
+been buried the previous day in a common grave, which was
+still open. Dressed in uniforms, greatcoats and caps, the dead
+are laid in rows alongside one another, with thin layers of
+earth in between. The reason why this grave has not been
+filled in is probably that there is still room for more dead.
+The German warriors who have been resting since 1871
+amongst the French crosses have now indeed got company
+from their own land. On a new grave I read the inscription:
+“<i lang="de">Hier ruht in Gott Ltnt. Hans Greiner, Inf. Reg. 29. Schlaf
+wohl, tapfrer Kamerad</i>.” (Here rests in God Lieut. Hans
+Greiner, Inf. Reg. 29. Sleep in peace, brave comrade.)
+And on another: “<i lang="de">Hier ruht in Gott Hauptmann Parsohen,
+Res. Feld Art. 16. Er starb für König und Vaterland.</i>” (Here
+rests in God Capt. Parsohen, Res. Field Art. 16. He died for
+King and Country.) A third grave bore underneath the name
+and regiment the words, “<i lang="de">Auf Wiedersehen!</i>” To one of the
+German graves a French rosary had found its way and hung
+on the cross over the dead soldier’s helmet and two bunches
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[p. 171]</span>of flowers. An obelisk bore the inscription, “<i lang="fr">A la mémoire des
+soldats morts pour la Patrie. Armée Française 1870&ndash;71</i>,” together
+with a string of names.</p>
+
+<p>Next von Behr and I drove to the flying station at ⸺,
+where six <i lang="de">Gotha Tauben</i> with Mércèdes motors were housed
+in large yellow tents. One of the “doves” had a wing perforated
+with bullets. The holes had been covered over with
+little patches. These patches are regarded almost as
+medals for valour in the field. The more scars an airman
+has on his machine, the more exposed he has been and the
+greater has been his daring when above the enemy positions.
+I do not know which is the more unpleasant feeling, to know
+that one has an enemy aviator right above one’s head or to
+know that an anti-aircraft gun is planted right underneath
+and taking aim!</p>
+
+<p>Whilst we were at the station, two “doves” spread their
+wings for flight. It is beautiful to watch their graceful, easy
+movements. Before one can quite realise it, the slender
+wheels have left the ground and the machine is slowly rising
+from the field and describes a little circle over the tree-tops
+round about. It gradually rises in a circling motion higher
+and higher and the two enormous iron crosses under its wings
+gradually dwindle in size. It reminds one of the carrier
+pigeon which first rises to a certain height to get a view of the
+surrounding country and then darts off as straight as a die
+towards its goal. For when our first Gotha “dove” had
+reached a sufficient height, she went off at a tangent from her
+last spiral and flew straight south to the French positions
+and to the rear of them. Once there, it was the duty of the
+“observer,” who sits in front with map, note-book and glasses,
+to make his observations and then to come back and report
+them&mdash;that is assuming that he does not happen to be shot
+down on his journey. When over the enemy lines, it is necessary
+to ascend to a height of 2000&ndash;2500 metres so as to be
+moderately safe from the shrapnel fire from below. But even
+at 1600 metres the airman and his companion begin to have a
+feeling of security. After a short while, the second <i lang="de">Taube</i>
+ascended and followed the invisible track of its predecessor
+through space.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill040"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_040_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/040_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FRENCH PRISONERS AT VOUZIERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>On my return I looked in to see the French prisoners. Five
+of them, from Bordeaux and Narbonne,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_19_19" href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> were seated round
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[p. 172]</span>a tub peeling potatoes for their own dinner. Whilst I was
+sketching them, we had a chat on general topics. They were
+surprised at the kindly treatment they received in German
+captivity. They had expected something quite different.
+“One can’t expect more than a roof over one’s head, straw
+to lie on and sufficient food to eat, and all that we get here.
+We are on friendly terms with our German guards. They often
+offer us cigars or chocolate. We should quite well be able to
+live on good neighbourly terms with the Germans.” The
+Frenchmen further told me that they all had wives and
+children at home who of course were anxious about their fate.
+They wondered whether the war would last long, whether
+they would be taken to the interior of Germany, and whether
+they would be allowed to associate with their own countrymen
+in captivity so as not to feel too lonely. I was able to
+give them comforting answers to their questions. One of them
+said that he had seen quite fifty of his comrades being killed
+at the spot where he was taken prisoner. Another had lost
+an old school-fellow by his side, after they had long been
+together in the trenches. The five prisoners from southern
+France were calm, self-possessed and sensible men, whose
+views on the war had sobered down considerably since the
+day they first heard the reveille in Bordeaux and Narbonne.
+The glamour and the gloss had disappeared, and the triumphant
+chant of the victory which they had dreamt of, had died
+down to be succeeded by the naked, bleak reality. Now
+they saw the tricolor but dimly, as through a haze, and the
+music of the Marseillaise no longer sounded in their ears.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_19_19" href="#FNanchor_19_19" class="label">[19]</a> From the 18th and 16th Army Corps or their reserves.</p></div>
+
+
+<a id="ill041"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_041_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/041.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FIVE RESERVISTS FROM BORDEAUX AND NARBONNE WHO FOUGHT IN ALSACE AND CHAMPAGNE AND WERE CAPTURED THE
+26TH AND 27TH SEPTEMBER SOUTH OF VOUZIERS. THEY ARE BUSY PEELING POTATOES. AT VOUZIERS THE FRENCH
+PRISONERS WERE ALLOWED TO COOK THEIR SOUP THEMSELVES IN ORDER TO GET THE PROPORTION OF MEAT AND VEGETABLES
+THAT THEY LIKED BEST
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill042"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_042_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/042_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>SAISAC OF TOULOUSE, 11TH INFANTRY REGIMENT (33RD INF.
+DIV. 17TH ARMY CORPS). PRISONER AT VOUZIERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>We spent the evening in the mess together with about
+thirty officers. The discussion was of course about the events
+of the day and the hopes of the morrow, and about the news
+brought by the latest newspapers from all parts of the front.
+One of those present told us that 270 military trains a day
+had passed through Kirn (between Kreuznach and Birkenfeld)
+during the first days of mobilisation, whilst another
+mentioned that when a regiment at Eiffel was told by its
+colonel that Britain had declared war, they broke into frenzied
+cheering. These war pictures were accompanied by the
+peaceful tones of a gramophone&mdash;which not long ago must
+have had very different listeners! The mess was housed at
+the residence of a French officer, and I had a look at the
+pleasing and attractive family portraits in an album, with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[p. 173]</span>groups of cavalry officers, amongst them a couple of Swedes,
+Counts Lewenhaupt and Cronstedt, lieutenants respectively
+of the Dragoons and Hussars of the Regiment of Life Guards.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill044"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_044_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/044.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption>OLIVE, 30 YEARS OLD. INFANTERIE COLONIALE, 24ÈME
+(2ND COLONIAL INF. DIV.). NATIVE OF PERPIGNAN,
+EASTERN PYRENEES. PRISONER AT VOUZIERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>On the 1st of October we made an excursion to the troops,
+and had the company of the delightful and plucky chief of
+the flying corps, stationed just then at Vouziers, Captain
+H. von Chamier-Glisczinski. He called for us in his car and
+we drove at a wild pace through the avenue south-westward
+to Somme Py. Before however getting so far, we stopped a
+moment at the flying station, where the Captain had some
+business to attend to. Whilst we halted a <i lang="de">Taube</i> came swooping
+down in a glorious vol-plane. It descended at what appeared
+a terrific speed, with its light graceful wings sharply
+silhouetted against the glorious blue sky. It came to the
+ground quite close to us and I thought I should have to step
+aside a bit not to be struck by one of the planes. When near
+the ground, the machine made a slight movement as if intending
+to rise again. But it was merely to lessen the shock on
+landing. Then it rolled along a little way on its wheels and
+came quietly to a standstill.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill043"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_043_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/043_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>GERMAN AIRMEN: CAPTAIN CHAMIER, LIEUTENANTS COUNT RAMBALDI AND BÜRGER, AND A FOURTH.
+THE IRON CROSS CAN BE SEEN ON THE UNDERSIDE OF THE LEFT PLANE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The airman and his companion accompanied us a little
+distance on our way. Once more the many phases of the
+active life in the rear of the fighting troops unfolded themselves
+before our eyes. It was not so difficult to advance as
+I expected, for nowadays it is the custom to keep still and
+under cover during daylight. Here and there little fires were
+burning in the shadow of trees. Cooking was going on, and
+the soldiers were contentedly drinking their coffee, smoking
+their pipes or taking sun-baths on overthrown wheat-sheaves.
+The food wagons with their white and yellow arched awnings
+were as usual covered with leafy branches in order not to
+attract more than necessary the attention of the French
+airmen.</p>
+
+<p>Somme Py was not much of a place to stop for, nearly the
+whole village is burnt and destroyed, leaving nothing but
+naked walls with sides blackened by the soot of flames. We
+proceeded on our way. Now and again we catch a glimpse
+of an ambulance section with doctors and stretcher bearers
+and vehicles, or of the fighting train of some infantry regiment.
+We recognise our old friends the foliage-shrouded
+kitchen wagons, the yellow ambulance wagons, surrounded
+by stretcher bearers with their white bands round the arm,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[p. 174]</span>and rows of grey ammunition wagons, all harnessed up with
+a team of two horses.</p>
+
+<p>At length we reach a point in the road where four light
+field howitzers are posted in a strong position by the wayside.
+Captain Chamier tells the chauffeur to stop and to hide the
+car well in the shadow of a tree. It is not considered advisable
+to proceed further, as the car may attract the attention of
+the French observers. We therefore alight and take a little
+turn round the battery, which happens to be at work. A
+salvo has just been fired, and the reloading is proceeding. I
+seize the opportunity of taking a couple of pictures. The
+guns, like the ammunition wagons, were well masked and were
+either dug in or surrounded by a rampart consisting of stone
+and sandbags covered over with earth. The target for the
+day was the village of Souain, 4050 metres distant. I was
+told it was practically in ruins and that what remained was
+in flames. The firing of the battery was directed from the
+<i lang="de">Beobachtungsstand</i> or observation post which we visited later
+on, and from which the effect of the shells could be discerned
+through good field-glasses.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill045"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_045_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/045_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A BATTERY OF LIGHT FIELD HOWITZERS IN POSITION
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>When a shell strikes a house or other object, a dark column
+of smoke composed of gases, dust and earth, rises from the
+spot, and flames mingling with the smoke soon reveal the fact
+that combustible substances have been ignited. When unaccustomed
+to these weapons, one cannot but regard them with
+a certain amount of awe. This awe is no doubt still further
+increased with experience. The officers themselves appear
+perfectly unmoved, but I think this is mostly due to the
+exercise of self-control. A commander must not betray
+emotion before his men. He must be perfectly calm. But it
+<em>must</em> nevertheless tell upon the strongest nerves to remain
+for long under fire. This battery had occupied the same spot
+for eighteen days without being discovered by the French
+aviators.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill046"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_046_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/046_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A SALVO HAS JUST BEEN FIRED. THE GUNS ARE NOW BEING RELOADED
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>From the battery we proceeded on foot in open order
+through an avenue of trees, taking care to keep in the shade.
+Of course our security was not absolute, for here and there
+the trees had been cut in two by the French fire. We walked
+some five hundred metres southward to the observation post
+referred to, from which the fire was directed by telephone,
+and from which the foremost French positions could be kept
+under observation. The first thing that attracted our attention
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[p. 175]</span>on approaching this very interesting point was something
+resembling a tree, rising above the young growth of the wood.
+On further inspection we found it to be a mast of the thickness
+and height of a telegraph pole, provided with a ladder,
+a little platform and a seat for an observer. A pair of glasses
+were left there permanently, and the observer was masked by
+leafy branches.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the spot we were received by not less than
+three colonels, of whom, however, two were accidental guests,
+and by a couple of other officers. Colonel Fischer, Brigade
+Commander of the Field Artillery, a most genial and amusing
+man, was full of talk about Asia and more especially India,
+where he had travelled very extensively. We had thus many
+memories and friends in common, and I am afraid that on
+this occasion Asia took precedence over the Franco-German
+war.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill029"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_029_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/029_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>COLONEL FISCHER AT HIS TRIPOD TELESCOPE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>However, I could not go away without seeing the underground
+abode of these officers, for they live there day and
+night, and as the spot is exposed to the French fire, they
+have to take certain precautions. A stairway, the steps of
+which had been cut out of the soil, leads to a cave dwelling
+of two rooms, small and dark, faintly lighted by a paraffin
+lamp and heated by a little tin stove, now burning brightly.
+A table, let into the wall, made of half a plank, is laden with
+toilet articles, glasses, maps, instruments and pistols in delightful
+confusion. In the sleeping apartment the beds are
+laid on the floor close together. I could not suppress a pious
+wish that the inmates would be preserved from death by
+asphyxiation in this subterranean cavern. One must not
+suffer from a horror of confined spaces if one is to sleep
+comfortably in these holes. But nevertheless it must be a
+great comfort to have this haven of refuge if and when the
+spot is bombarded. I was told that the cave was not quite
+proof against common shells, but that there was no danger
+from shrapnel. The officers’ meals are usually taken in the
+cave, so that they may at least eat in peace.</p>
+
+<p>A few steps further on we visited a telephone station installed
+in the masonried cellar of a wrecked house. This cellar
+was thus a subterranean chamber, to the walls of which a
+number of telephone appliances had been fastened. Below
+them several officers and privates were seated on benches let
+into the walls. Whilst I was there several telephones kept
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[p. 176]</span>ringing simultaneously. Constant attention was therefore
+indispensable. Besides being in permanent communication
+with its own division, this station was in touch with the
+whole of the 4th Army through its Chief Command, and with
+Main Headquarters. There was, in fact, nothing to prevent
+its occupants from ringing up Germany, except of course that
+private conversations are forbidden. Two airmen, Lieutenants
+Count Rambaldi and Bürger, had just arrived at the observation
+post after a reconnaissance over the French positions. It
+was wonderful to hear how clearly and concisely they reported
+what they had seen. Rambaldi stood for a long while with
+the telephone receiver in one hand and in the other the map
+on which he had traced his observations. He was speaking to
+some member of the General Staff of his Army, with the same
+map before him and doubtless also with a pencil and note-book.
+The Lieutenant would, for instance, report something like
+this: 550 metres north-west of the village of X I observed
+artillery in position, but probably only 2 guns. On the road
+leading from the west to the village Y I saw a stationary
+column of eight vehicles. I could not make out whether it
+was an ammunition or food train. The battery which yesterday
+was posted in the hollow south of the village Z has to-day
+been removed, but it is impossible to tell at present where it
+has gone.</p>
+
+<p>Information thus gained&mdash;especially if it is of the kind
+indicated in the above example&mdash;assists in the first place the
+direction of the artillery fire. But that is not all. The air
+scouting&mdash;as I have made clear above&mdash;is primarily at the
+disposal of the Chief Command in order to discover in time
+the grouping and shifting of the opposing forces. Movements
+of troops, in order to avoid observation from above, therefore
+now take place during the night. This is why between four
+and five in the morning one always encounters troops of every
+description on the march, whilst in daylight they are seldom
+to be seen&mdash;at least not the infantry&mdash;barring an occasional
+body of Landwehr or Landsturm.</p>
+
+<p>From this observation post it was about two kilometres to
+the foremost German infantry positions, which in turn were
+from three hundred to five hundred metres from the French
+trenches. Sometimes, when the country is very open and
+affords no cover whatever, it may not be possible to get closer
+to the enemy than one thousand metres. In these advanced
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[p. 177]</span>positions there is never any relaxation of tension. A moment
+of quiet can never be relied upon. Of course the occupants
+of a trench need not all be on the alert at the same time. If
+this were so, exhaustion would soon set in. But in every unit
+a certain number of men are always told off to watch the enemy
+whilst the others are “resting.” Glasses are always in use as
+long as daylight lasts. When it is dark, patrols are pushed
+forward to signal immediately in some way or other if there
+is any sign of approach on the part of the enemy. It is a dog’s
+life. If one pokes one’s nose over the edge, one becomes immediately
+the target of unwelcome attentions, and bullets
+start whizzing round one’s ears. The previous morning at
+ten o’clock it had been discovered that the French were proceeding
+to an attack on a part of the German position in front
+of us (north of Souain). One could see how, from a little wood
+at ⸺, they tried to creep forward under cover of the folds
+and creases of the ground. Two volleys of shrapnel were at
+once poured over them, 150 men fell and the others retired.
+But the French pay back in the same coin whenever they have
+an opportunity, and they fire with great skill from their
+excellent field artillery. Their ammunition, on the other hand,
+is said to be less good. Yesterday, for instance, only seven
+shells had burst out of thirty-six.</p>
+
+<p>The German soldiers retain their good humour in the face
+of great danger. Sometimes, for the fun of the thing, they
+place a helmet which has lost its owner on a stick and move
+it with a nodding motion along the edge of the trench. In a
+trice the French bullets begin to rain around it and the soldiers
+bet as to the number of hits.</p>
+
+<p>I am told there is no exaggerated cleanliness in these trenches,
+although one does what one can to remove anything that
+does not belong there. In these parts, I am told, the opposing
+troops have come to a mutual understanding, according to
+which, on certain solemn occasions, they are allowed to climb
+out of their trenches and walk one at a time and unarmed
+in the direction of the enemy. A soldier leaving some project
+of that kind need only raise his spade over the parapet and
+swing it three times backwards and forwards. After the signal
+he may confidently proceed on his errand and when completed
+return to his trench.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion two grazing cows happened to find their
+way to the space between two infantry positions facing one
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[p. 178]</span>another at a short distance. How it came about it is difficult
+to tell, but by the mysterious code of soldierly freemasonry it
+was agreed that a French soldier should milk one cow and a
+German soldier the other. When the job was done, they
+returned quite placidly to their trenches. All this shows that
+the French soldiers also are not wanting in humour and high
+spirits, even though day and night death is like the breath in
+their nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>The different infantry forces, large and small, are also in
+telephone communication with our observation post. One
+of my hosts asked if I would like to hear how the battalion in
+the most advanced position of all was getting on. Why of
+course I should, I said. I was handed one receiver and was at
+once ceremoniously introduced to the commanding officer
+of the battalion, who himself answered the call.</p>
+
+<p>“How are things going, Major?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, very well.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you anything special to report?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, there was some firing in the night, but no losses.”</p>
+
+<p>“In what sort of spirits are the men?”</p>
+
+<p>“Excellent, as usual.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you received the eight machine guns that were to
+be sent you last night?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, they have arrived and are already in position, but
+one of them has no shield. However, we will manage with an
+earth parapet for the present.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you any other wishes?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, thanks, everything else is all right.”</p>
+
+<p>The Major’s voice sounded calm and confident, but I could
+detect an undercurrent of solemnity in his answers.</p>
+
+<p>That part of the observation post which lay above ground
+had been transformed into a pleasant little arbour or enclosure
+among the young trees, visited now and again by cycle and
+other orderlies. A telescope, well protected and concealed,
+stood ready on its tripod. Another had been mounted in the
+road outside the arbour. With these glasses one can see almost
+everything, right away to the horizon. Thanks to the vertical
+position of the tubes, the observer’s head can be protected
+altogether by an armoured shield or a wall. From our commanding
+position we had an excellent view of the nearest
+infantry positions. Colonel Fischer explained everything to
+me. He focussed the horizontal cross line on a German trench.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[p. 179]</span>I saw it very clearly, it appeared like a somewhat uneven
+dark line. I could even see a man getting up out of the trench,
+probably after having waved his spade backwards and forwards
+the regulation number of times.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon the telescope was focussed on one of the French
+infantry lines. This was not quite plainly discernible, but yet
+fairly clear.</p>
+
+<p>Still further to the south, about 3550 metres from the point
+where we were standing, we saw the burning village of Souain
+and a few clumps of trees, behind which we had reason to
+suspect the presence of cleverly masked artillery positions.</p>
+
+<p>In the east-south-east, between Souain and Perthes, we
+could clearly see a French battery of four field guns and a
+little nearer towards us a few abandoned gun ramparts.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the Colonel shouts, “<i lang="de">Deckung!</i>” A French
+aeroplane, a Blériot, is approaching. We hurry under the
+trees so as not to attract its attention. A few orderly mounts,
+tethered in a hollow, are likewise moved to a place offering
+better concealment. The airman comes nearer. We hear
+faintly but distinctly the drone of his motor. He is sailing
+along right over our heads. Is he going to drop bombs or
+smother us in a shower of arrows? It would be a useful day’s
+work for him to destroy an observation post from which the
+fire is directed and where the telephone wires of the neighbourhood
+run together. Some civilian spy may have conveyed
+a signal. But the alarm seems needless, the aviator
+flies past and there are no explosions. With a feeling of
+satisfaction we see the great bird disappear. He is seeking
+some other target for his bombs.</p>
+
+<p>Although it was combined with a certain risk, we walked a
+couple of hundred metres closer to the infantry positions. The
+ground sloped slightly downward in this direction. We follow
+the road in open order, keeping to the shadow of the trees, and
+where there are shrubs we keep close to them. If we are caught
+sight of from some French observation post, the enemy guns
+will immediately be trained upon us. However, we safely
+reach an infantry reserve unit. In this war, where one lies
+for weeks and months at practically the same spot, the former
+open fighting has gradually given place to a sort of siege war,
+with its attendant methods and customs. I here found that
+every infantry unit was divided into a number of shifts. The
+“changing of the guard” usually took place at about six every
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[p. 180]</span>morning. A battalion which for twenty-four hours has
+occupied the area entrusted to the defence of its regiment,
+may then return to the rear after a fresh battalion has moved
+up into the position in question.</p>
+
+<p>But even at the point where the reserves are posted it is
+necessary to dig oneself in, and above all to be well screened
+from observation. These shelters usually take the form of
+niches or “dug-outs” in the soil. The openings are covered
+over with a slender roof of sticks, twigs and hay. We looked
+into one or two of these “caves” and saw the soldiers fast
+asleep and apparently not lacking anything. I noticed that
+all the men were wrapped up in their canvas tent sections.
+In this case we had happened to come across a detachment
+which had arrived from the firing line in the morning and was
+now to sleep till midday. Afterwards there was to be exercise&mdash;<em>drill</em>.
+As darkness comes on, the kitchen wagons are brought
+up with their comforting hot food. Such was the life in the
+German reserve positions on the north side of the wooded
+country north of Souain. Nobody cared to advise us to
+continue from this point, as in that case we should certainly
+have been visible from the French observation posts and should
+have been exposed to a murderous fire. Even a kitchen wagon,
+which does not travel far except under cover of darkness, was
+hit the other day by a shell and had four men killed. Some
+light or other had probably been seen by the enemy, and as he
+had the range to a nicety, he fired a volley. But now it was
+day-time and we had open ground before us. I was told on
+this occasion&mdash;in connection with the advice not to proceed
+further&mdash;a story of an attack made from the German side a
+few days previously in order to capture an advanced French
+position in the neighbourhood of Souain. The attack was
+launched at dusk, but failed. Several Germans remained on
+the ground. The lightly wounded were taken prisoners by
+the French, but three men had been so badly hurt that they
+were not considered worth taking, and were left on the ground.
+The nearest French soldiers took pity on them and went out
+each night in the dark to take them food and water, and even
+cigarettes. One fine day a plucky German doctor with a few
+stretcher bearers came forward from the German line. They
+had brought a Red Cross flag, carried high on its pole. At first
+a few shots were heard from the French lines, but as soon as
+the Frenchmen realised what was up, they ceased fire, as
+nobody wanted to interfere with the rescue work. Thus the
+doctor was able to carry his charges into safety.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill047"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_047_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w70" src="images/047_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>OBSERVER MASKED BY TWIGS AND BRANCHES
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill048"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_048_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/048_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>SCENE ON THE ROAD IN FRONT OF THE OBSERVATION POST
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[p. 181]</span></p>
+
+<p>At another reserve position we chatted awhile with the
+grey-coats, who had recently lost a Lieutenant Johannes.
+The mound which covered his remains was surrounded by a
+perfect battery of shells, standing like a set of nine-pins with
+the cross for its centre. Young pines had also been planted
+as sentries round his grave.</p>
+
+<p>After a couple of hours with these friendly, merry, brave
+and manly fellows, we started out on the return journey to
+the flying station, where the guard delivered his report to
+Captain Chamier, adding: “It was lucky you did not arrive
+a quarter of an hour ago, for just then an aviator passed over
+the station and dropped a bomb which burst close by here
+but without doing any damage.” As a memento I was given
+a splinter of the bomb, which it was pleasanter to have in one’s
+pocket than in one’s body.</p>
+
+<p>From Somme Py we proceeded south-east to Tahure and
+passed on the way an ammunition column perched on the
+fringe of the wood by the side of its little cooking-pits. Inside
+the wood we caught sight of numberless items making up a
+transport train, such as infantry ammunition wagons, ambulance
+wagons, kitchen wagons and spare horses.</p>
+
+<p>In the yards and alleys of the little village there was an
+incessant bustle, and it took us some time to thread our way
+through. A little way beyond Tahure we left the car once more
+and proceeded on foot to another observation post, a little
+less important than the previous one, but otherwise on the
+same lines. We had hardly got there before shrapnel began
+to burst around and over us. An officer advised us to seek
+cover in a little trench, which, however, had no roof. For my
+part I was quite willing to follow his suggestion, and was glad
+to stop in the hole until the fire had died away. A few moments
+later another of those winged monsters of the air, known by
+the name of war aeroplanes, passed over us, without however
+showing signs of wanting to harm us.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[p. 182]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">
+    CHAPTER X
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">QUIET DAYS</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">ON October 2nd I made an excursion to Sedan to
+replenish a few items of my equipment. I was
+offered a seat in Lieutenant Kollmann’s covered car,
+which made this journey daily, and we tore along northward
+through the thin veil of mist which floated over fields and
+meadows.</p>
+
+<p>As we reached the bridge at Le Chesne, a Landsturm man
+stepped into the road, swinging a white flag. We stopped,
+and an officer stepped forward, saluted courteously and asked
+to see our pass. This is curious, I thought, this car ought to
+be pretty well known, and is manned besides by an officer
+and two chauffeurs, all in uniform. However, when our
+papers had been examined, he explained that the watch had
+been made stricter, as it had been found that there were so
+many spies about, who were even bold enough to dress up in
+German uniforms, so that one could not be too careful.</p>
+
+<p>The railway to Vouziers was clearly not yet equipped with
+sufficient rolling-stock to meet the demands made upon it, for
+the great road on the lines of communication to the 4th
+Army were still encumbered with endless transport trains.</p>
+
+<p>“What do the letters E.K.K. mean, that I see on all these
+cars?” I asked my travelling companion.</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="de">Etappen Kraftwagen Kolonne</i>” (Mechanical transport
+trains for lines of communication), he replied. “They carry
+food and ammunition like all the others.”</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon we chatted awhile about this wonderful life
+which goes on behind the front, about all these threads by
+which an army hangs in an occupied country, and about
+the many types of armed wayfarers on foot, on horseback,
+and in wagons. We talked about the villages, crops, herds of
+cattle, and the wretched humans wandering about like strangers
+and prisoners in their own land. They are utterly cut off from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[p. 183]</span>the outside world, for there are no paths so secret and so subtle
+that news from France can reach them. How the war is progressing,
+they have no idea. They have not had a newspaper,
+not a letter, for close on two months. All they hear is an
+occasional rumour spread by some free-lance and intended to
+make them put difficulties in the way of the invading army.</p>
+
+<p>“But what on earth do they live on?” “Oh, there are
+plenty of potatoes and poultry, besides the corn still ungathered
+in the fields. And there are still plenty of cattle, for
+you can see them yourself grazing by the roadside. Sheep and
+pigs are equally plentiful, but the one thing there is not much
+left of is wine. For when the French Army passed through it
+did not stint itself, and then we came and took the rest. But
+we pay for everything and nobody will be the loser by what
+we take. Matches and paraffin disappeared long ago, and so
+there is nothing left for the inhabitants but to go to bed, like
+the chickens, with the sun.”</p>
+
+<p>Presently we arrived, drove across Place Turenne, attended
+to our business and met again at the Croix d’Or for lunch.
+Here every room was still taken up and the restaurant was
+well filled as usual. The proprietor was very contented and
+admitted that he was doing a roaring trade, provided that his
+“<i lang="fr">bons</i>” were redeemed after the war. The town now wears a
+Prussian air, uniforms, soldiers and patrols wherever one looks.
+We were glad to sit for a while by the window and look out
+upon the square. Officers are busily walking hither and thither
+on the business of the lines of communication of the 4th Army,
+from the Base Commander’s Office to the <i lang="fr">Palais de Justice</i>,
+where the Base Inspectorate is located, and from the <i lang="fr">Palais
+de Justice</i> to some other public building where some German
+authority has taken up its quarters. As they pass the grey-clad
+sentries with their gleaming bayonets, they are always
+greeted with a smart military salute.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot take my eyes from this window, the warlike,
+active scene outside fascinates me, and yet everything is done
+quietly and deliberately, and the greatest order reigns everywhere.
+Here is a row of cars ranged up in single file with
+carbines fastened to the screen in front of the driver’s seat,
+ready for use when wanted. Several of the cars are provided
+with a sort of superstructure of two iron hoops carrying a
+sharp narrow iron rod which starts from the front of the car
+and slopes upward over the heads of the occupants, coming to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[p. 184]</span>an end just in front of the hood. One might think it was the
+framework of a tent in case it became necessary to spend the
+night in the car. But this was not the case. The object of the
+contrivance is to cut or at least deflect telephone wires which
+might have been maliciously stretched across the road to injure
+travelling officers. When driving at high speed in the dark
+and coming up against one of these wires, one has every
+prospect of being decapitated.</p>
+
+<p>But the most interesting part of it all was to watch the
+civil population, the natives of Sedan. Here come two bareheaded
+girls accompanied by a boy in a cap and cloak. Walking
+backwards and forwards between the hospitals are nurses in
+white or black head-dress, but always with the Red Cross band
+round the arm. A couple of them are following a stretcher
+carried by ambulance men, on which lies a seriously wounded
+soldier taken from a train. On the other side of the square a
+couple of elderly women come plodding along with enormous
+bundles&mdash;doubtless washing for officers, who pay them well
+to look after their wants. I always feel the deepest compassion
+for these poor creatures. They have lost their country
+and their liberty, and the war has deprived them of their
+husbands and sons and ruined their homes. It is the poor
+who suffer most, the rich and well-to-do have fled in time and
+taken their valuables with them, leaving nothing but their
+empty and deserted houses. Yet here and there a wealthy
+citizen has elected to stop, or perhaps left his servants to
+guard his house and home. Such families will find their
+possessions absolutely untouched. In the house where officers
+have lived, not a pin will be out of place. But during the repeated
+advances of an army, after the officers have departed
+from their quarters and left them absolutely intact, it no
+doubt happens now and again that soldiers subsequently
+billeted there may not treat the effects with the same respect.</p>
+
+<p>Here come a couple of ladies of the higher bourgeoisie,
+perhaps mother and daughter, dressed in black and with long
+black veils. Are they in mourning for fallen relatives, or
+perhaps for the fate of France? As a matter of fact, the more
+well-to-do women always wear black. They <em>cannot</em> but mourn.
+They understand better than the common people the position
+of unhappy France and how unfortunate the policy has been
+which brought them into this great, sanguinary war. If one
+lives for a few days at the same spot and passes the same houses
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[p. 185]</span>several times, and maybe greets the old women standing alone
+or with their children in the doorways, one of them may
+occasionally nod pleasantly and answer “<i lang="fr">Bon jour, monsieur</i>,”
+but the next one hardly takes any notice. The first
+may be well off and hope to see her menfolk once more, the
+other is probably brooding over her grief and sorrow, for she
+knows nothing, has nothing, and has lost all hope. Those
+who cook, bake, wash, mangle and “do” for the Germans
+are always contented, at least on the surface. The storm has
+already travelled past them. Whatever they do, they cannot
+change their fate and must make the best of what is left.</p>
+
+<p>One would have to be of stone, were one not to feel pity also
+for the old men. Here come a couple slowly walking across the
+square. Look at their wrinkled faces, their careworn features,
+their sharp profiles, black eyes and great grey moustaches. They
+are very plainly dressed and wear felt hats on their heads.
+They walk bent after their day’s work, if they have had any.
+Look at the corners of their eyes in profile, with all their lines
+showing, and watch the moist glance and forlorn expression of
+the eye. These eyes have ceased to cry and see no light ahead.
+But ask for once the old people if <em>they</em> wanted the war and if
+they think it is for France’s good. No, they, the old men
+and the women of all ages, bear no blame for the nameless
+misery that is now spreading over France.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tear myself away from the window. The bizarre
+life outside is running its even course. In the centre of the
+square, inside the lamp-posts and the iron railing stands the
+great Turenne on his stone plinth, scarred and green with
+age. He stands there like a ghost and an anachronism, and
+looks down with imperturbable calm on those dim distant ages
+whose blood-drenched waves are lapping round his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Everything that has been destroyed by the French in order
+to render the German advance more difficult, and everything
+that has been laid waste by the ravages of war itself has long
+since been mended by the German Army and its organisation.
+The railways are running, new bridges replace the wrecked
+ones, telegraph and telephone lines have been laid down, water-systems
+have been repaired and the electric light is now burning
+as brightly as ever in times of peace. Times of peace!
+It seems as if an eternity had flown since those days. The
+clocks in the houses have stopped, there are no French hands
+to set them going. The great clocks in the church towers alone
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[p. 186]</span>denote the flight of time. It is German time that they show,
+and it is important that they should be working, not so that
+the priests may know their hours of duty, for they need no
+clocks, but in order that the transport trains, the soldiers, the
+sentries and the green-clad military police posted round
+Turenne’s statue and at other points may know when they
+shall relieve or be relieved&mdash;and last, but not least, in order
+that the civil population may know how long it is to nightfall.
+Anyone found loitering in the dark is shot if his papers are
+not in perfect order and if he cannot show that he is out on a
+lawful and proper errand.</p>
+
+<p>But the clock-tower strikes its five deliberate strokes and
+it is time for us to return to Vouziers, if we mean to arrive
+before it is quite dark. I cast a final glance at the houses
+opposite, where some windows are open and give me little
+snapshots into the interior&mdash;not of domestic French life, but
+of German billeting scenes; other windows are closed and
+further protected by green and white shutters. I have reached
+this stage in my reflections, when a tall gentleman comes up
+to me and introduces himself as Baron Bleichröder of Dresden.
+He is wearing a uniform which I cannot quite place within
+the somewhat narrow limits of my military knowledge, and I
+therefore hit upon the simple question, “What are you doing
+here, Baron?” “I have brought with me twenty-nine motor-lorries
+of <i lang="de">Liebesgaben</i> for the troops,” he answers. “The
+lorries are filled to the roof with little parcels of cigars, cigarettes,
+pipe-tobacco, underclothing, socks, handkerchiefs, newspapers,
+chocolate and other things the soldiers like.”</p>
+
+<p>At last we took our leave and proceeded in a south-westerly
+direction, with the rapidly setting sun before us on our right.
+There was something remarkable about the sunsets at this
+time. To-night it was a glowing, burning red, and the sky
+around was tinted in the same gorgeous colouring. But it
+made me think of the long, bloody trail now stretching from
+Belfort to the sea in the north-west, a distance of about four
+hundred miles. Here the soldiers lie in an unbroken row of
+trenches, so closely together that a word of command or a
+piece of news can be repeated from ear to ear from Middelkerke
+to Altkirch; allowing only one man for every metre, this makes
+a total of six hundred thousand men. But the density is in
+reality far greater, and one is almost stunned at the thought
+that Germany, which in the east, too, has an enormous front
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[p. 187]</span>to protect and stands in arms at many other points, is yet
+always able to fill the gaps with fresh, perfectly trained men.
+It is true that, numerically, the Allies are three times stronger
+than Germany and Austria-Hungary and that they&mdash;the self-conscious
+British, and the French, so rightly proud of their
+cultured refinement&mdash;have instituted a regular import of black
+and brown human material from distant continents. But in
+real soldiers the Germans are superior. Practically speaking
+their country is clear of enemies&mdash;with the exception of six
+hundred thousand prisoners&mdash;and they are fighting out their
+fight on enemy territory.</p>
+
+<p>Saturday, the 3rd of October, passed very quietly.</p>
+
+<p>It is pleasant to be able to rest now and again, when otherwise
+one is always on the move. I dined at one o’clock with
+Professor Zinsser and the doctors under him. The table
+was laid in the garden. Over our heads we heard the buzz of
+German biplanes and <i lang="de">Gotha Tauben</i>. A cheery and willing
+Franciscan friar waited at table and joined animatedly in the
+conversation. After dinner the distinguished old <i lang="la">pater</i> Müller
+came to call. Now and again a batch of French prisoners
+marched past. A couple of them were carrying a sick German
+to the railway station, whilst others were carting coal to the
+hospitals in barrows. I photographed a band of eighteen men
+on their way to dinner. One can see even in the picture that
+they are in the best of spirits, well cared for and sheltered
+against cold and rain. Some scenes I witnessed between
+prisoners and their guards were inordinately comical. On
+one such occasion I saw a German gaoler pat his French
+prisoner on the shoulder and say in a fatherly, patronising
+voice, “<i lang="de">Hier hast du eine Cigarrette, mein Bursch</i>” (Here is a
+cigarette for you, my lad), whereupon the Frenchman gave a
+friendly nod, accepted the cigarette with a smile and a <i lang="fr">merci</i>,
+and lit it from the German’s pipe. Among the soldiers one
+sees no signs of national hatred. But in the French press it
+glows like a consuming fire. Not to speak of the venom of
+the English newspapers!</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill049"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_049_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w70" src="images/049_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>PATER MÜLLER, PROFESSOR ZINSSER AND A FRANCISCAN FRIAR
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>In the evening I spent a few moments with some Jesuits
+employed in the service of the Red Cross. They had some
+sanguinary tales to tell of places they had recently visited,
+particularly Rossignol. I might fill whole books with these
+horrible stories about streets drenched in blood, fallen soldiers
+and hand-to-hand fighting in towns and villages, where every
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[p. 188]</span>house has to be stormed whilst death is being rained upon the
+attackers from the windows. But this is not part of my task,
+and I have made it my duty to speak in the main only of what
+I myself have seen and experienced.</p>
+
+<p><a id="TN2"></a>In the Argonne forest much blood has flowed, as I myself
+have seen in its northern part, both from the east and west,
+when with the 5th and the 4th Army respectively. Although the
+whole of the front has developed more or less into a siege war
+with trenches, communicating trenches, barbed-wire entanglements
+and <i lang="fr">trous-de-loup</i>, this applies even in a larger measure
+to this forest region. Here the engineer troops have had
+much work to do, and it is the generals of the Engineers who
+lead the advance. To progress quickly is <em>impossible</em>. The
+forest, so badly kept that it would horrify a northern sylviculturist,
+is very difficult to advance in. In certain places
+one has to cut one’s way step by step through shrub and
+undergrowth. This sort of country is easy to defend, and the
+French understand their business well. At night or in a fog,
+the Germans push forward a thin line of infantry about fifteen
+paces distant from one another. After having advanced as
+far as the conditions allow, the men dig themselves in. This
+gives rise to a chain of pits which afterwards, by continued
+digging longitudinally, are united into a continuous trench.
+When the men have made themselves at home in this new
+position and extended it, a further area in front of the one
+occupied is cleared by fire, whereupon the fresh advance is
+made. In this way the forest is swept clean. It must be
+taken step by step, tree by tree, for&mdash;as I have already pointed
+out&mdash;the defenders have organised even the tree-tops for
+defence, and have mounted machine guns there. In the gloom
+of the undergrowth it is not always easy to distinguish friend
+from foe. On the occasion of my visit it was not advisable
+for anyone to come too close to the Argonne forest unless his
+duties called him there. In certain cases the risk seemed even
+greater for those behind the firing lines than for those in the
+advanced positions, for the French usually fired too high.
+Their shots mostly passed over the heads of their nearest
+opponents, who, by the way, were remarkably well concealed.
+This is not to be wondered at, for when the enemy is almost
+upon one, accurate shooting becomes difficult. The parts of
+the forest which have already been taken by the Germans
+look very strange. The ground is streaked with trenches and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[p. 189]</span>communicating trenches joining the former together, and the
+trees are often charred and stripped by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The French are cleverer at artillery than infantry shooting.
+One of the doctors here told me that of the 2500 patients he
+had had to attend to, not quite ten per cent had been hit by
+rifle bullets; a few had been wounded by sword cuts or
+bayonet thrusts, but all the rest had been struck by shell
+splinters and shrapnel bullets. If the ammunition were
+better, the effect of the French artillery fire would be
+appalling.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday morning, the 4th of October, at 5 o’clock, the
+kindly Franciscan friar came to call me. I dressed hurriedly,
+and accompanied by a Catholic soldier on orderly duty in
+von Behr’s house I wandered off to the “Home for the Aged,”
+in the chapel of which the birthday of St. Francis was to be
+celebrated with mass and song. No daylight, no moonlight;
+the heavy hand of night still grips the earth. A damp mist
+floats over Vouziers and the stone paving is wet. Here and
+there an electric lamp is engaged in an unequal struggle
+against the darkness. Now and then a few hurried steps are
+heard&mdash;monks on the way to mass. In front of a house used
+for some military purpose tramps a sentry&mdash;otherwise the
+street is still and silent.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching our goal we step into a tiny garden, and are
+presently in the chapel. It is already filled with worshippers.
+Here sit the Elizabeth sisters from Essen in their white veils,
+and the St. Vincent sisters from Hildesheim in black veils;
+the Franciscan friars have already taken their places. Several
+Catholic soldiers occupy the galleries, where presently I join
+them.</p>
+
+<p>At the altar the statues of saints are illumined by tall
+candles, just being lit, but the two candelabras are not yet
+brought into use. It is still so dark outside that the stained-glass
+windows shut out all light and are illumined only from
+the inside. The features and dress of the Virgin Mary and
+St. Helena in their leaden setting are scarcely discernible.</p>
+
+<p>A friar in a vestment embroidered in white and gold, surrounded
+by four other friars equally gorgeously attired, steps
+up to the altar. Suspended from long, fine chains they carry
+censers with glowing charcoal, on which one of them sprinkles
+an aromatic powder. Light blue clouds of smoke ascend to me
+in the gallery and instantly recall to my memory similar
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[p. 190]</span>scenes from the Uspenskij Sobor in Moscow and Taschi-lunpo
+in desolate Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>Now begins the Latin altar service. One of the priests
+chants, and the congregation responds with the constantly
+recurring refrain: “<i lang="la">Per omnia secula seculorum. Amen.</i>”
+“<i lang="la">Oremus</i>” comes from the altar, and again “<i lang="la">Per omnia
+secula seculorum. Amen</i>” from the congregation.</p>
+
+<p>Next comes the sermon. The preacher chooses for the
+subject of his discourse the life of St. Francis. Prayers coupled
+with his name are this day being offered up throughout the
+world. The congregation cannot better celebrate his memory
+than by fulfilling their duties on behalf of human love and
+charitableness, and by doing their part towards the relief of
+the sufferings of wounded soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>The stained-glass windows begin to brighten. Day is
+breaking outside. The congregation sings a German song
+in honour of St. Francis. A friar once more steps up to the
+altar and rings a little bell. I cannot take my eyes off these
+friars and sisters, who have come straight from the battlefields
+and hospitals, and whose thoughts are now so peacefully
+centred round the name of the great patriarch. How moved
+they seem, how eagerly they make the sign of the cross to
+betoken their piety! In a picture opposite the choir the
+crucified Christ looks down from the height of His agony on to
+the kneeling figures. “<i lang="la">Per omnia secula seculorum, Dominus
+vobiscum. Gratias agimus Domino Deo nostro. Unus est Deus,
+unus est Dominus.</i>” The bell rings once more, the censers are
+swung on their chains, and it almost seems as if the Virgin
+Mary and Saint Helena had stepped out of the gloom around
+the altar and had approached us.</p>
+
+<p>The attendant friars greet one another by placing their
+hands on one another’s shoulders and head. Holy Communion
+is administered to the congregation, and once more the eternal
+refrain is chanted: “<i lang="la">Per omnia secula seculorum.</i>” It makes
+one think of all the brave ones dying out in the trenches and
+of the flower of the male youth of two noble nations which
+is being sacrificed on the altar of shell fire. Maybe the thoughts
+of the nuns and monks, too, are more taken up with the strife
+now shaking the world to its foundations, than with the peace
+surrounding the name of the Holy Francis. Perhaps the
+thought of all the soldiers who have died before their eyes is
+clouding their mental vision. It cannot be easy to die when
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[p. 191]</span>one is young and strong, and has all one’s life before one.
+But the honour of the country demands that its men be
+sacrificed. Their memory shall live “<i lang="la">per omnia secula seculorum</i>.”
+<i lang="la">Coronas decoris meruerunt.</i></p>
+
+<p>The candelabra on the communion table are now lighted.
+But they are no longer needed, daylight once more reigns
+outside and Saint Helena’s features now look down clearly
+on all beholders. Round her lips plays a smile full of gentleness
+and goodness. She, the friend of the helpless and suffering,
+seems to rejoice to see so many brethren and sisters devoting
+their best energies to the relief and care of wounded and dying
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>But now the devotions are over and my Franciscan friar
+leads me to the colonnade, where the sisters give us coffee
+with beautiful white wheaten bread and marmalade. Here
+we spend an agreeable hour together before parting.</p>
+
+<p>The Protestant field service was held at half-past nine.
+The worship took place at a quiet street corner under the
+open sky, a safer place than the fields outside the town, where
+a large gathering of people would make a welcome target for
+a French airman’s bombs. A few hundred soldiers and some
+fifty officers forgathered here. An octette from the regimental
+band began playing a psalm&mdash;we Swedes know it well&mdash;it
+has been sung before the blue and yellow standards of
+Gustavus Adolphus, before the Carolins at Narva, on the
+banks of Vabitj, on the plains of Ukraine, and has brought
+solace and comfort to the poor forgotten prisoners in Siberian
+thraldom: <i lang="de">Ein feste Burg ist Unser Gott</i>. The soldiers joined
+in with their strong clear voices. Perhaps one ought to have
+seen and heard this sort of thing to realise what Swedes and
+Germans have in common. At one time we gave each other
+the noblest and the best that we possessed. The Lutheran
+faith preserved by the sword of Gustavus Adolphus was the
+seed and life germ which has given birth to that Germanic
+culture which to-day is fighting for its existence. None of us
+can escape the responsibility for the inviolable preservation
+of the common heritage. Our German brethren are now
+shedding their hearts’ blood in a cause which in equal measure
+concerns ourselves, and for which Sweden’s greatest Kings
+gave their all and their lives.</p>
+
+<p>Pastor Marguth of Hessen conducted the service from some
+stone steps. He was attired in a black gown and, like all other
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[p. 192]</span>chaplains of the Field Army, he wore round the arm a white
+and violet band. Taking the Epistle to the Romans as his
+subject, he spoke on the strength which the Gospel gives.
+From that he passed to the stirring world conflict which now
+filled everyone’s thoughts. He spoke of the irresistible power
+sometimes imparted to a people with the knowledge that it
+has a ruler who likewise is a real leader. The Emperor had
+done all within human power to avert the war, he said. The
+Emperor wanted peace, but when he was forced into the war
+he knew what his position was and understood what the people
+asked of him, and trusting in his people he did not hesitate
+to strike a blow for Germany’s existence and future.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke of the nation’s sense of duty, which is the first
+prerequisite of victory. The people <em>know</em> what they must do
+when duty calls. “We must thank God for His infinite grace
+in thus making us united and strong in our time of trial, in
+our direst but also our greatest hour.” Then he touched upon
+the spirit of the soldiers and their firm resolve to fight to the
+last drop of blood and not to give way until the last man and
+the last horse has fallen. He spoke with simple eloquence,
+no flowers and no phrases. He spoke manfully with cheerful
+confidence and an unshakable faith in victory, and the
+German words roused a ringing echo from the old French
+houses opposite. “<i lang="de">Vater unser, der du bist im Himmel.</i>...
+<i lang="de">Der Herr segne Euch und behüte Euch.</i>” In conclusion another
+psalm was intoned. It was sung in swelling, rousing tones,
+as if they were on the eve of the triumphal entry through the
+Brandenburger Tor in Berlin. Here they stood, these broad-shouldered,
+sturdy Teutons, in the hey-day of youth and
+strength, with eyes flashing beneath their helmets&mdash;eyes
+whose vision would perhaps be dimmed for ever to-morrow
+in the trenches. I thrilled with emotion as I heard the ringing
+song, and thought: These men may know the art of dying,
+but their nation can never die. And this thought led to the
+reflection: I am sorry for the Powers who have combined to
+destroy it; what rivers of blood will flow before <em>they</em> learn
+to understand that their aim, the destruction of Germany, is
+unattainable!</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza" lang="de">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Und woll’n uns gar verschlingen,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">So fürchten wir uns nicht so sehr,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Es soll uns doch gelingen.</div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[p. 193]</span>      <div class="verse indent0">Der Fürst dieser Welt,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Wie saur er sich stellt,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Tut er uns doch nichts,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Das macht, er ist gericht,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Ein Wörtlein kann ihn fallen.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_20_20" href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>&#x2060;</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_20_20" href="#FNanchor_20_20" class="label">[20]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">And if the world with devils teemed,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">All watching to devour us,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Yet are our hearts from fear redeemed,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Not they can overpower us!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And let the Prince of Ill</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Look grim as e’er he will,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">He harms us not one whit&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">For why? His doom is writ;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">A Word shall quickly slay him.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="right">
+  (<cite>Congregational Hymn Book</cite> version, slightly modified.)
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Army chaplains almost form a race of their own. They
+are always cheerful, always wide-awake, self-sacrificing and
+dauntless. They are the soldiers’ priests, they preach for the
+living and comfort and console the dying. Creed no longer
+plays a part, the Protestant and Catholic chaplains are like
+brothers together. There is no rivalry between them, they
+have all <em>one</em> God and <em>one</em> aim, the welfare of their country.
+One often sees chaplains hurrying along on horseback, a cross
+round their neck, the black felt hat on their heads and the
+white and violet band round the left arm of the field tunic.
+They not infrequently wear the Iron Cross. This no doubt
+means that they have stood up in the midst of the shell fire
+and spoken of the Resurrection and the Life, or that with
+immovable calm they have remained at their post and addressed
+the congregation when enemy aviators were flying
+overhead. Or maybe that they have this very night in cold
+and rain crept between shrubs and bushes to reach the trenches
+and celebrate High Mass on Sunday for their occupants.</p>
+
+<p>Once more my thoughts fly away to our own immortal
+times of greatness. Pictures of solemn Carolin chaplains in
+boots and spurs seem to rise up before me, men who in strength
+and fortitude of soul were an example to the soldiers to be
+resolute and loyal unto death. I seemed to see as through a
+mist the regimental chalice placed upon the altar built up of
+silver tymbals, round which kneeling men and haughty
+officers throng to listen humbly to the Lutheran confession of
+faith, and to vow in ringing tones that in life and death alike
+they believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the
+body and life everlasting. The battlefields are a sterile soil
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[p. 194]</span>for atheism. Man is then too near his Maker and to the
+threshold of eternity.</p>
+
+<p>Our service ended quietly; no airmen came to disturb us,
+even the guns seemed to respect the day of rest. We took
+a walk round the town. The Town Hall, which looks on to
+an open space, has been turned into quarters for the Landsturm
+Guard, which is changed at midday. Officers also come
+in and out to receive their orders. Close by the Chief Command
+has been accommodated in the <i lang="fr">Palais de Justice</i>, whilst another
+house has been chosen for the headquarters for the Commandant
+of the Lines of Communication. One sees no new or
+handsome houses. The streets look dull, with their monotonous,
+old-fashioned frontages, not old enough to bear the
+picturesque impress of antiquity. The only really attractive
+structure is the Church of Saint Morille; it looks old enough,
+in fact I was told by a native that it dates from the thirteenth
+century. Its façade is richly ornamented, but also bears the
+marks of bullets from 1792, so I was told. The interior of the
+church is gloomy and typically Catholic with its mighty
+pillars, its figures of the Virgin, its altar ornaments, memorial
+tablets and votive tablets to the Virgin.</p>
+
+<p>Facing the church is a statue of Taine on a pedestal, the
+front of which illustrates his genius reclining against a pile of
+bronze folios. Over the doorway of a house close by I read
+the words: “<i lang="fr">Hippolyte Adolphe Taine de l’ Académie Française
+est né dans cette maison le 21 avril 1828.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>By the side of Taine’s statue stood three elderly citizens,
+busily chatting together. What they were talking of I do not
+know, but perhaps it was not hard to guess. I greeted them
+and they returned my greeting. I asked for some information
+about the church and about Taine, and from this we passed on
+to more practical subjects. It seemed that in common with
+many others they had decided to stop at Vouziers. Those
+who had left the town, about three thousand, had in their
+opinion acted unwisely, for they would find their houses and
+furniture ruined, whilst those who remained behind were able
+to safeguard their interests and property. Of the coming
+winter they hardly dared to think. It would be terrible, and
+would bring famine and destitution in its wake. “But the
+Prussians will have to provide us with our daily bread.”
+Their political views practically amounted to this: France
+cannot gain anything by this war, but can lose much; but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[p. 195]</span>France will fight nevertheless as long as there is a soldier left.
+To my question whether they ever received any news, they
+replied: “<i lang="fr">Non, monsieur, nous sommes des zéros.</i>” One feels
+the deepest compassion for these unhappy people whom God
+and the world seem to have deserted.</p>
+
+<p>On October 5th I had an opportunity of witnessing the
+sitting of a court-martial of the Chief Command of the Army.
+It had to deal with five cases of offences. This is not much for
+a whole army, when one knows that the slightest theft from
+a house is punished with the utmost severity. A more refreshing
+intermezzo is furnished by pay-day, which occurs
+three times a month. Both officers and men receive in war
+time nearly double their peace pay. Pay-day happened to
+come on one of the days I spent at Vouziers. The money is
+paid in notes, but also in coin. The day after, the field post
+had plenty to do, as from this single place alone the soldiers
+sent 250,000 marks by registered letter to their homes. A
+very large percentage of the enormous sums swallowed up by
+the army thus returns to Germany.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[p. 196]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">
+    CHAPTER XI
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">TO BELGIUM</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capc">I HAD now camped long enough among the splendid
+officers of Duke Albrecht’s army, and began to long
+for fresh adventures. General von Seckendorff passed
+through Vouziers daily, and had courteously asked me just
+to tell him when I wanted to accompany him back to Sedan.
+But he always travelled northward at a late hour, and it so
+happened that one fine morning I suddenly felt inclined to
+start off. I went round and took a few groups at the railway
+station, such as French prisoners at work, a few doctors and
+nurses, an artillery transport train and a company of railway
+reserves. The station commander, Lieut.-Col. Böhlau, accompanied
+me. At first I thought I should like to take a military
+train to Sedan, but abandoned this plan on discovering that
+the next train would not start for several hours. The Colonel
+then made another suggestion. Since no officer’s car was
+leaving during the day I might accompany one of the large
+motor-wagons which carry the field post to the postal station
+at Sedan. An excellent idea! It was sure to be interesting
+to see how the field post was managed. The mail was not
+starting for a little while, and I even had time to lunch with
+my old set: von Behr, von Eichstedt and von Tschammer.
+I thanked these gentlemen, took leave with the customary
+<i lang="de">auf Wiedersehen</i> and hurried away. Two young artillery
+lieutenants, Müller and Fuchs, had also been allowed to make
+use of the mail car. They had been so long under incessant
+fire that they needed a rest. One of them had been in many
+hard fights and wore his Iron Cross. They were both jolly and
+pleasant, and we were all three seated, with none too much
+room to spare, behind the mail-bags, which otherwise filled
+the entire vehicle up to the roof. We thus had a view to the
+rear over and on each side of an orderly standing on the platform.
+What was happening on the road ahead of us we could
+not see, but I had by now become familiar with its varied life.
+So off we went, rattling and jolting, towards Sedan.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill051"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_051_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/051_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FRENCH PRISONERS WORKING AT THE RAILWAY STATION AT VOUZIERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill050"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_050_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/050_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>ARMS AND KNAPSACKS OF DEAD AND WOUNDED&mdash;VOUZIERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[p. 197]</span></p>
+
+<p>These wondrous bags, what tales did they not have to tell
+of the life at the front! One almost seemed to hear the old
+refrain: “<i lang="de">Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein!</i>” How often
+had I not seen the soldiers sitting over their letters home&mdash;at
+the Cuirassier barracks in Vouziers at tables rigged up with
+planks and trestles, in streets and yards, using the mudguards
+of the cars or baggage-wagon cases as desks, or in
+subterranean caves behind the trenches, where they lay on
+their stomachs and wrote with their note-books as backing for
+the paper. If one were to take out a mail-bag haphazard and
+make it into a big, thick volume, and then read this volume
+from cover to cover, one could not fail to be impressed with
+the merry and cheerful outlook of the German soldiers, their
+faith in victory and their national vigour. One would look in
+vain for a single word, a single suggestion of complaint over
+long marches, excessive burdens, intolerable discipline, unnecessary
+drill at odd moments in between the fighting, insufficient
+or bad food. One would find that those who talk of
+marches, say that had they been double as long they would
+yet have managed them. As to weight of equipment, it is
+simply not mentioned. Discipline! If anybody mentioned
+it, he would say something like this: “Thank goodness we
+have officers who know what they want and take out of us
+what we can give, who punish if there is anything to be
+punished and who dare maintain that absolute discipline
+amongst the troops without which no army can win.” “These
+qualities,” they would add, “are possessed by our officers, and
+that is why we obey them, love them, trust them blindly, and
+gladly follow them into the fire.” Germans understand that
+silk gloves are out of place in a military education. They
+demand from their officers that inflexible, iron severity which
+is necessary for the proper moulding of an army into a whole,
+into an ever-ready instrument, and they do not permit anti-military
+agitation to foment that passive resistance against
+the leaders which is often discernible elsewhere. The German
+knows his power. He knows that it is the military discipline
+which pervades every fibre of the country’s body that has
+given them their strength. But they are not slaves, they are
+masters primarily of their own will and of their own actions.</p>
+
+<p>Does anyone think that this imaginary volume would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[p. 198]</span>contain a single word of fussy and squeamish complaints about
+food? No, one would read nothing but humorous and almost
+affectionate jests about the <i lang="de">Erbsenkanone</i> (“pea-shooter”), the
+field kitchen, which is always there at the right moment when
+the soldier’s belly is empty. Doubtless there are many who
+have not touched food for forty-eight hours, if they have
+been lying under heavy fire in a trench. But to complain
+would never occur to them. They would only say what a
+wonderful sensation it was to get the hot pea-soup with its
+lumps of fat into their stomachs. Besides, they would probably
+have forgotten all about their misfortune by the time they
+wrote.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill052"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_052_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/052_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A FIELD-KITCHEN OR “ERBSENKANONE” (“PEA-SHOOTER”)
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>This is the way they talk in their letters. And probably
+they write about the shell fire and the bayonet charges as if
+they were part of the routine of daily life. Every letter in the
+big book would contain affectionate but never sentimental
+greetings to father and mother, to wife and children, to sweethearts
+and sisters. So we were in excellent company, Müller,
+Fuchs and I, as we sat there and shook and jolted among the
+mail-bags on the twenty-eight mile journey to Sedan. That
+mail wagon carried a few days’ war history, disintegrated into
+atoms. I could not help time and again casting a glance at the
+bags and wondering what they had to say. I thought of the
+many farewell greetings they contained from soldiers for
+whom the fatal bullet had been cast and who would write no
+more field postcards, of the greetings from the wounded who
+would soon lose consciousness for ever, to be carried out to the
+great common grave in the local churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>My companions had much to tell about these things. But
+everything moved so swiftly and the wagon rattled so noisily
+that I forgot the greater part as fresh impressions came
+crowding into my mind. One of my new friends, after some
+fight was over, had gone up to a French soldier who lay on the
+ground with a nasty wound in the abdomen. He had stopped
+to see if he could help the wounded man before the ambulance
+arrived. The Frenchman wept bitterly and pulled out of his
+breast pocket the portrait of his sweetheart, which he showed
+the German officer. After he had looked at it eagerly for
+a couple of minutes, it slipped out of his benumbed hand and
+he sank back and died. Frenchmen also know how to die,
+and there are no words to express their bravery and heroic
+contempt of death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[p. 199]</span></p>
+
+<p>For three weeks Müller and Fuchs had shared the rough
+and the smooth together in their entrenched artillery position.
+At first they had suffered great hardships from rain and wet,
+but once they and their men had had time to dig themselves
+in properly, like moles under the earth, all had been well&mdash;especially
+when they had found some small stoves in neighbouring
+villages and installed them in their burrows. They
+soon became so accustomed to the shell fire that they slept
+like logs even when the air was filled with thunder and the
+impact caused the ground to tremble around them&mdash;that is,
+of course, if it was their turn to sleep! On Sunday, the 4th
+October, the day we heard Pastor Marguth preach, divine
+service had been held in the church at Cernay. Müller and
+Fuchs were there, and they told me that it was one of the most
+moving scenes they had ever witnessed. Too much light was
+not allowed, and on the altar alone a couple of candles were
+burning. But it was full moon and clear weather. The moonlight
+streamed in through the windows and illumined the aisle
+and pillars and the weather-beaten faces of the soldiers who
+had come in from their trenches or transport wagons. Meanwhile
+French shells were falling in the village, and there was
+a horrible rending and roaring from the explosions and the
+collapsing houses. But the chaplain did not permit himself
+to be disturbed. He seemed not to notice the pandemonium
+outside. He spoke without a quiver in his voice of the peace
+in God and the duty to one’s country. The soldiers listened
+immovable, and when the strains of the last hymn had died
+away and the lights had been put out they dispersed down the
+little streets and alleys, weirdly illumined by the moonlight
+and the fire from the burning houses.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the journey to Sedan was greatly shortened, and for
+my part I should have liked it to be double as long. But the
+mail van pulled up at the railway station, and there I had to
+say good-bye to my two interesting companions. On the
+platform stood Major von Plato at his post, jolly and cheerful
+as usual.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me, my dear Major, is there any decent means of
+getting to Namur without having to encumber an officer’s
+car?”</p>
+
+<p>“There are no direct trains to Namur, but in twenty minutes
+there will be an ambulance train which can take you some
+distance into Belgium, and once you get so far, no doubt
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[p. 200]</span>you can get along some other way. Of course, you must first
+have permission from the surgeon in charge of the train.”</p>
+
+<p>Whilst I was waiting for the doctor I went to have a look
+at a troop train&mdash;an infantry battalion, or something like it,
+crowded into third-class carriages. These travellers had come
+from Königsberg, and had swept East Prussia clear of the
+enemy, so they said, and now they were on the way to Verdun.
+Every compartment, with normally six seats, now also carried
+six men. But instead of sitting they were lying down, two on
+the floor, two on the seats, and two in the luggage racks.
+They were in the most exuberant spirits, and the din was
+fearful.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a messenger came to tell me that my surgeon
+had arrived and I went to see him. Judge of my surprise
+when I found it was Chief Staff Surgeon Dr. Fröhlich, whom
+I had met at Sedan and Vouziers!</p>
+
+<p>“May I come by your train?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, of course, to Breslau, if you like.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, of course, you are going through Belgium?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, as far as Libramont, then we turn eastward and in
+four days we are at Breslau.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Fröhlich had now been travelling for some time between
+that city and Vouziers with wounded officers and men. Now
+he had upwards of three hundred patients on board, whom
+he was to drop here and there on the way until only a few
+remained to the journey’s end, where they would be taken
+charge of at some home hospital. That done, he would return
+as rapidly as possible with an empty hospital train to fetch
+a fresh batch of wounded. He is therefore constantly on the
+move with his staff of doctors and assistants, and he was
+very pleased to have company for a while.</p>
+
+<p>Time is up and the train starts with military punctuality,
+after we have taken a hearty farewell of the cheery Major
+von Plato. Presently we settled down in Dr. Fröhlich’s compartment,
+which almost resembled a little study. One wall
+was taken up by a sofa, the other by a couple of chairs, and
+a writing-table decorated with flowers in empty cartridge
+cases and still fresh, having been sent from the doctor’s
+home. Other tokens of his domestic ties were portraits of his
+wife and children and of a son and nephew fighting at Rheims.
+Here also lay an open diary, in which the doctor notes the
+incidents of his good work and enters such observations and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[p. 201]</span>discoveries as he may make in the course of his practice, together
+with various suggestions for improvements in hygienic
+arrangements in the field, which may be found of use in
+future wars&mdash;if any!</p>
+
+<p>We speed past a wrecked road bridge and a railway bridge
+which has been treated in the same way, and watch an airman
+ascending from earth in elegant circles, his wings tinted
+red by the evening sky. Here is another troop train&mdash;there is
+seemingly no end to all these soldiers. Wherever one goes
+and whatever time it is, everywhere one finds myriads of
+soldiers as in a gigantic ant-heap. By degrees twilight descends
+upon us, and the pretty scenery through which we pass
+evades my gaze.</p>
+
+<p>It is now dark. We sit still and chat whilst the train speeds
+on and the hours pass. The hours are short in Dr. Fröhlich’s
+company, but the train is interminably long&mdash;it consists of
+forty-two coaches. At Carignan, where the line swings round
+towards the Belgian frontier, and where the ground begins to
+rise, the train is divided into two sections, each drawn by two
+locomotives. We felt a tremendous pulling and tugging in
+our half. We are now on the “war road,” whose acquaintance
+I had made on the journey to Sedan. The wounded, dreaming
+about battlefields, bombs, and shells, must think that they
+have suddenly been overtaken by an earthquake, to put a
+finishing touch to their adventures. The cartridge cases with
+their flowers came hopping down from the table and we ourselves
+get a terrible shaking. But we are just as cheerful,
+and there are no pauses in our talk except when Dr. Fröhlich
+goes his round among the wounded.</p>
+
+<p>After a plain but excellent supper we retired to rest. At
+Bertrix the two halves of the train were put together once
+more, and the poor wounded soldiers are brought a stage
+nearer to the homeland.</p>
+
+<p>It was four o’clock when Dr. Fröhlich came in to call me,
+and a moment later we stopped at Libramont. Here our
+ways parted. But before saying good-bye we paid a visit
+to the kindly, cheerful sisters, who had steaming coffee ready
+at the station for the many travellers. Then we asked the
+station commander whether he could help me to get to Namur.</p>
+
+<p>“No, not the whole way, but as far as Jemelle. Once you get
+there, you will have no difficulty in finding somebody to take
+you the rest of the distance.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[p. 202]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Good; when does the train start?”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, immediately. But it isn’t exactly a train, only
+four coupled locomotives ordered from Jemelle.”</p>
+
+<p>I have indulged in many modes of locomotion, from the
+camels of Takla-makan to the rickshaws of Kioto, but it is
+a solemn fact that I had never yet travelled on a locomotive,
+and I therefore accepted the offer with the greatest alacrity.
+So I took farewell of the excellent Dr. Fröhlich, and was
+conducted with my baggage by a lantern-bearing Landsturm
+man across a few railway tracks to the four locomotives.
+The leading engine, which I climbed on to, had the tender
+in front. I thus had a clear view of the line and of the landscape
+which by degrees unfolded itself before me. But it was a
+cold and draughty journey. A thin coating of hoar-frost lay
+over the ground and its whiteness was emphasised by the
+moon, which cold and solemn floated above the tormented
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>The driver and fireman were sturdily built fellows, deliberate
+and imperturbable. Their sooty faces betrayed no
+emotion, no anxiety, but they kept their eyes glued on to
+the line ahead, ready to stop the engine on the slightest suspicion.
+They were not exactly overworked, for lately their
+duties had been reduced considerably; but a little while
+previously they assured me that they had had to work forty-eight
+hours without a break. The firing of <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i> along
+the line had ceased. They could now travel with a certain
+sense of security, but had nevertheless to be careful.</p>
+
+<p>The night is calm and still. We meet long military trains,
+looking weird and fantastic in the unaccustomed perspective,
+and the stations, at Hatrival, at Merwart, are encumbered
+with endless goods trains, now empty. Day gradually begins
+to dawn. Gardens and woods begin to take shape, and the
+leafy crowns of trees become more plainly outlined against
+the sky and the white ground. We pass over a wrecked bridge
+which has been repaired by German <i lang="fr">pioniers</i>. Here comes
+Grupont with its arched bridge. It grows lighter and lighter.
+I begin to long for the sun and its warmth. The landscape is
+exceedingly pretty, with its wavy undulations and its little
+coppices and meadows dotted about. The driver offers me
+a little three-legged stool, and as the fireman opens the furnace
+door to throw in a few shovelfuls of coal, he smiles at me when
+I take the opportunity of warming my hands a moment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[p. 203]</span></p>
+
+<p>Forrières! Now the sun rises like a glittering golden ball, and
+gives colour to trees, fields and pastures, houses, gardens, and
+Landsturm men, now able once more to turn down their
+coat-collars.</p>
+
+<p>We arrive at Jemelle and step down. I thank my friends
+for their excellent company, but a tip is not accepted. On the
+platform comes a N.C.O. and asks what my business is. I
+show him my <i lang="de">Ausweis</i>, and he asks me to wait in the station
+commandant’s office until his arrival&mdash;it is now only 6.30 a.m.
+Inside a friendly stove is burning, in front of which I settle
+in an arm-chair and soon fall asleep.</p>
+
+<p>After a while Captain Haaf, the commandant, comes
+marching in and rouses me, mildly surprised at finding a total
+stranger in possession of his own office. But we are soon friends.</p>
+
+<p>“When is there a train to Namur?” I ask.</p>
+
+<p>“At 11.30 we have a supply train going through, and if
+you like to travel by that I shall be pleased to put on a passenger
+coach.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good, that will suit me excellently.” The Captain then
+took me to a Belgian restaurant close by, where a couple of
+breezy and talkative women soon served up a first-class
+breakfast. The Captain told me that they did not yet feel
+quite safe from the attentions of <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i>. A few days
+previously a rifle bullet had been aimed at the station-house
+in Jemelle. The culprit was seized and court-martialled, but
+his fate had not yet been settled. In the neighbourhood of
+Houyet a band of Frenchmen had recently attacked some
+Germans, and a punitive expedition of 130 men had been sent
+out after them.</p>
+
+<p>Time is now up and the train steams away through the hilly
+country, its little villages and its cattle grazing in the pastures.
+As yet there is nothing to remind one of war but the Landsturm
+men on guard along the line, the railway troops at work here
+and there, and the troop trains halting at the stations. At
+Marloie one was standing in the station and we pulled up
+alongside of it. One of the carriages was taken up by Red
+Cross nurses, and as chance would have it, my window stopped
+right opposite one of theirs. A couple of the nurses were
+propped up against each other fast asleep, another couple
+were reading, the rest were knitting. One of them looked out
+through the open window. She looked very sweet in her light
+dress and the Red Cross on the arm.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[p. 204]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Where have you come from and where are you off to?”
+I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“We come from Berlin and are going to Sedan,” she answered.</p>
+
+<p>“But surely there are hardly any wounded left in Sedan
+now; most of them have been taken into Germany.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, we have heard that is so, but no doubt plenty more
+will be coming down from the front. Where have you come
+from yourself?”</p>
+
+<p>“From the country south of Sedan.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you a German?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, I am a Swede.” In the end I could not help introducing
+myself to the young lady and her companions. Conversation
+was soon in full swing and we had just got to know
+each other nicely when my train slowly glided out of the
+station. I just had time to wish them success in their charitable
+work, and in reply was greeted with friendly wavings from
+their window&mdash;and so that little idyll came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>On the way between Aye and Hogne some men belonging
+to a fatigue party made signs that they wanted to come on
+board. The train slowed down so that they could jump on
+to the step and get a free ride with their picks, spades, and
+rifles.</p>
+
+<p>To the left the country falls away in enormous flat wooded
+waves which die away on the horizon in a haze of dark green,
+light green, greenish blue, and bluish grey. Our train takes
+us through little woods and shrubs, coppices, clumps of fir
+and oak, and tunnels blasted through the solid rock. Now
+and then we come across a crowd of Belgian workmen at work
+on the embankment. The little signal-boxes along the line
+are guarded by Landsturm soldiers in pickets of ten to twelve
+men.</p>
+
+<p>The little town of Ciney boasts an unusually handsome station
+building, round which things seem livelier than elsewhere.
+Sometimes we meet colossal empty trains with straw in the
+goods-trucks and benches piled up topsy-turvy. One wonders
+whether they have been to carry reinforcements to the besieging
+army outside Antwerp. Often one sees attractive and well-kept
+kitchen gardens at the stations or between the fine-looking
+stone houses in the villages. At some distance from
+the railway we sight at length the fort of Naninnes, flying the
+German flag. Soon after we cross the Meuse by a <i lang="de">Kriegs-Eisenbahnbrücke</i>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[p. 205]</span>(war railway bridge), where we get a view of
+the remains of the old permanent bridges which were blown
+up during the first days of the war, and presently we enter
+the delightful and prettily situated little town of Namur.</p>
+
+<p>In order to get the information I needed, I applied to a
+Captain, a tall man with snow-white hair and beard, no less
+a person than professor emeritus Doctor B. Lepsius, who in
+spite of his age has gone out to the war. He is a great friend
+of Professor Svante Arrhenius, and looked after me like a
+father during my short stay in Namur.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill053"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_053_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/053_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A DOCTOR, PROF. CAPT. LEPSIUS AND A FEW SŒURS DE LA PROVIDENCE IN THE CONVENT GROUNDS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>After my baggage had been stowed away at an hotel by the
+railway station, we paid a short visit to the Governor, General
+von Hirschberg, who had no objection to letting me see one
+of the forts of the fortress. As companion I had, besides
+Professor Lepsius, Major Hans Friederich, of the General Staff.</p>
+
+<p>We drove to the northern fortifications and soon arrived
+at Fort Marchovelette, now called fort No. 1. Namur is, or
+rather was, surrounded by nine forts. In the Belgian days
+they were known by definite names, now they are merely
+numbered. The first impression that one gets of No. 1 is that
+the destruction has been less complete than in the Port Arthur
+fort where General Kondratenko was killed during the
+Japanese siege in 1904. I had an opportunity to visit that
+“eagle’s nest” exactly six years ago. It looked like a huge
+pile of broken stones and rubbish. But on closer examination
+of No. 1, one is astounded at the appalling effect of the fire
+from the German heavy artillery. The fort is triangular with
+one apex towards the north-east. Its glacis is covered with
+barbed wire-netting stretched out to a height of one metre
+between the iron posts driven vertically into the clay-bound
+soil. The netting is close, and covers a belt of thirty or forty
+metres. Inside is the moat, commanded by the fire from
+galleries in the counterscarp. At length we reach the heart
+of the fort with casemates for the garrison, armoured turrets
+for artillery, searchlights and fire control, and an infantry
+rampart like a belt round the grey cupolas on the summit.</p>
+
+<p>Ten to fifteen metres away, outside the barbed-wire zone,
+I noticed in the ground the crater of a 42-cm. shell, 30 metres
+in circumference and about 8 metres deep. On the almost
+vertical concrete walls of the scarp and counterscarp I saw
+the marks of shells of more normal dimensions&mdash;streaky scars
+radiating from the point of impact. Splinters of shells of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[p. 206]</span>various dimensions were still lying about. One queer-looking
+fragment of a 42-cm. shell was so heavy that I had to exert
+myself to as much as shift it. But then one of these “coal-boxes”
+weighs when whole hundreds of kilos. A little splinter
+which I took away with me showed that the metal had been
+expanded to about one-fourth of its original thickness.</p>
+
+<p>Everything regarding the giant mortars is kept secret.
+But this much I was told, that their range is enormous. The
+vertex of the trajectory is several kilometres above ground.
+The ranging is done with great precision, but of course one
+must be prepared for not hitting the target with the first shot
+or two. “Misses” are, however, very rare. The most exhaustive
+calculations and observations are made before the
+shots are fired. Observers are posted at suitable points as
+near the objective as possible; they are in communication
+with the gunners and report the point of impact. When a
+42-cm. shell comes pounding down from a height of several
+kilometres, there is nothing built by human hands which can
+resist it.</p>
+
+<p>In fort No. 1 we saw a good instance of the effect of these
+gigantic projectiles. One shot had struck the annular armour
+round the cupola of the largest armoured turret, had passed
+through the half-metre of metal as if it had been butter and
+had then continued through a bed of concrete five metres
+thick. This shell was also provided with a <i lang="de">Zünder mit Verzögerung</i>.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_21_21" href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
+If the fuse is set for retarded ignition the explosion
+only takes place a couple of seconds after the impact. If one
+cannot make sure that the projectile has first penetrated the
+material to be destroyed, its effect, at least on armoured
+concrete, would not be very disastrous.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_21_21" href="#FNanchor_21_21" class="label">[21]</a> Fuse timed for retarded ignition.</p></div>
+
+<p>The engineers from Krupp’s were now busy repairing the
+forts both at Namur and Liège, and a large number of men
+were engaged in this work. By repairing the occupied fortresses
+the Germans are strengthening their strategical position
+and can release considerable forces for the actual fighting line.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of the heavy artillery on the defending garrison
+will be realised when it is stated that at one fort seventy per
+cent of the complement were killed, whilst the remaining
+thirty per cent were severely injured. As we all know, the
+brave Commander of Liège, General Leman, was wounded in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[p. 207]</span>this way. In another fort were found forty bodies, which
+showed no trace of injury. It was evident that these men had
+succumbed to the gases of the projectiles or had been choked
+by the concrete dust which is said to whirl up in the most
+appalling manner and to penetrate everywhere. The air
+pressure had also flung many soldiers against the walls of the
+casemates, and they were subsequently found with broken
+skulls.</p>
+
+<p>One of the lessons which may be said to have been learnt
+in the present war is that even the most modern fortifications
+equipped with the most superb armoured turrets are useless
+when opposed by artillery of the calibre of the great German
+mortars. The circumstance that the projectile does not burst
+until it has penetrated into or even through the concrete bed
+gives rise to a havoc which challenges all attempt at description.
+Everything within the “bomb-proof arch” thus struck is rent
+asunder and destroyed without leaving a trace. The projectile
+first operates from above downward, and then from
+below upward through the explosion.</p>
+
+<p>The 42-cm. mortars are brought up to their emplacements
+on rails laid down especially for their conveyance.</p>
+
+<p>From fort No. 1 we returned to the town, which is at its
+prettiest at the point where the Sambre falls into the Meuse.
+South of the Sambre an exceedingly picturesque road winds
+its way up to the crest of the Citadelle height, on the slope of
+which the Stadion is also situated. Of the magnificent Grand
+Hotel Namur-Citadelle, which looked down from the top of
+the hill, there is nothing left but a skeleton of iron girders and
+brick walls. The proprietor was a German, and the Belgians
+suspected that on the approach of the Germans from the north-east
+he signalled to his countrymen. The building was therefore
+burnt down. But the view is left, and it is nothing short
+of superb, especially up the Meuse valley with its innumerable
+villas and châteaux lining the banks in the direction of Dinant,
+which are, or rather were, inhabited by wealthy Belgians, for
+most of them have gone away on account of the German
+occupation.</p>
+
+<p>The town of Namur itself has only suffered slightly from
+the ravages of war. The Hôtel de Ville has become a ruin,
+like many houses in its neighbourhood. But it is estimated
+that only about twenty houses in all have been wrecked by
+shell fire. The Germans have been blamed for the destruction
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[p. 208]</span>they have wrought among human habitations, churches,
+public buildings and objects of artistic and historic value.
+Such losses are, of course, exceedingly regrettable. But
+neither attacker nor defender can pay any attention to such
+considerations when the fate of his country is at stake. If it
+is noticed by an armed force advancing to seize a place serving
+as a <i lang="fr">point d’appui</i> to the enemy, that the church tower is being
+used as an observation post, the church tower is shot down.
+When the Belgians suspected that Marche-les-Dames, the
+château of the Duchess of Ahrenberg, near Namur, famous
+for its priceless art treasures, was used for signalling purposes,
+they burnt it down. When it is a question of rendering the
+position of an invading army more difficult or of delaying its
+advance or cutting its lines of communication, the defender
+seems to shun no material sacrifices, even though he himself
+is the principal sufferer. Of the numberless bridges blown
+up by the Belgians in their own country, all in order to delay
+their enemy, there must be many which were of no importance
+whatever to the Germans. By so doing, the defenders brought
+upon themselves a treble loss, namely, the loss of the bridge
+itself, the cost of removal of débris, and the building of a new
+bridge after the end of the war&mdash;all this caused by a single
+blasting charge. But the defending army, which is always
+inferior, is nevertheless compelled, in a far greater measure
+than the attacking army, to effect wholesale destruction,
+more especially of buildings of architectural or historic value,
+whilst as often as not it lies in the interest of the attacker to
+preserve them. The blowing up of bridges is in itself a vandalism,
+but is fully justified if it is thought that strategic
+advantages can be obtained thereby. The destruction wrought
+by the Germans in their advance has partly been involuntary,
+and has partly had its cause in the conduct of the civilian
+population. But the Germans have never destroyed simply
+for the love of destruction. Assertions to the contrary are
+intended to create false notions, and it may be assumed with
+tolerable certainty that if the enemy armies had the opportunity
+of penetrating into Germany, they would, to say the
+least, bring about as much destruction as has been wrought in
+the countries now occupied by German armies.</p>
+
+<p>During the first period after the capture of Namur all
+windows facing the street had to be kept alight after dark,
+whilst the streets themselves were not lighted. The consequence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[p. 209]</span>was that people out of doors were not clearly discernible,
+but that if anyone were to fire from a window, he would be
+discovered immediately. At first all doors facing the street
+had to be left unlocked. But after a time the inhabitants,
+out of fear of the soldiers, asked to be allowed to close their
+doors, and this request was granted. At the time of my visit,
+that is to say on October 8th, Namur wore a very animated
+aspect. As late as half-past seven in the evening most shops
+were still open and the streets were well filled. Even the
+young ladies, who at first did not dare to go out, began to
+show themselves on the pavements. But the prohibition
+against being out of doors after 9 p.m. without special permit
+was still in force. On account of the many uniforms, military
+motor-cars and transport trains Namur looked more like a
+German garrison town than anything else. And yet this
+appearance was belied by the many white flags floating from
+the windows, especially in the principal streets, which indicated
+that the inhabitants of those particular houses had agreed to
+accept the new order of things. When one travels through
+Belgium one must harden one’s heart, for at every step one is
+reminded of the misfortune of having lost one’s liberty in
+one’s own country. And one thinks with horror of how it
+would feel to be placed in the same situation. A moral judgment
+is now being passed over Europe. Woe to the people
+which has not in time put its house in order, or which relies
+on paper treaties and declarations when force sits in the judgment
+seat and when none but the strong and wakeful inspire
+respect in <em>all</em> directions.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening there was some sort of festivity at the
+officers’ mess of the 87th Landwehr Regiment. It was attended
+by the officers of the Higher Command who happened to be
+in the town. I also had the honour to be present, and spent
+a couple of very agreeable hours between Generals von Hirschberg
+and Rathgen.</p>
+
+<p>On the 9th October I made an excursion by motor-car to
+the magnificent and wealthy convent of Champion, founded
+in 1834 and now the home of 180 <i lang="fr">Sœurs de la Providence</i>.
+Its great hall was gorgeously decorated in white and gold, and
+had stained-glass windows. Many wounded warriors had
+been housed here, and we paused more especially before two
+Belgian soldiers from fort No. 1, who had been badly burnt
+on face and hands, but were now on the road to recovery.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[p. 210]</span>After some considerable hesitation I was at last allowed to
+photograph a few of the charming and hospitable nuns in the
+convent garden.</p>
+
+<p>We thereupon looked in for a while at the really magnificent
+<i lang="fr">Hôpital Militaire</i> with its one hundred and fifty wards and
+rooms, its seven hundred wounded, its twenty-three doctors
+and one hundred and forty male and female ‘sick’ attendants.
+Right from the beginning there have only been eighteen cases
+of tetanus, most of them attended with fatal results. All
+possible nationalities were represented amongst the patients.
+But from England there was only one patient, a handsome
+youth, badly wounded by several bullets. He seemed to be
+in a deep sleep and his face was pale and drawn with suffering.
+A couple of days before he had lost a chum, and one of the
+nurses told us that he had felt dreadfully lonely after his
+friend’s bed had stood empty. He seemed indeed terribly
+alone amongst all these strangers. I could not take my eyes
+off him, and it was touching to see how he lay there waiting&mdash;for
+what, I wonder? He seemed to lie there as the innocent
+incarnation of a policy which is doomed to die, and for which
+he himself had laid down his life.</p>
+
+<p>A band was beating an old Hessian tattoo in the square
+between the cathedral and the Government building when at
+half-past two, after dining with the Governor, I stepped into
+the car which he had kindly placed at my disposal. I was
+going to Brussels <i>via</i> Waterloo, and was to arrive before dusk.
+Of Major Friederich I obtained an excellent map of Belgium,
+and after saying good-bye to the venerable but still youthful
+Professor Lepsius and my other new friends, I soon left the
+town behind me. I had with me a chauffeur and an orderly,
+both armed with carbines. The car was a little grey monster
+with flag and streamer. As regards speed, there seemed to
+be no limits to its powers. We drove, nay, we flew, at over
+fifty English miles an hour when travelling at our fastest.
+I wondered whether the object was to make the aim of <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i>
+more difficult by presenting them with a more swiftly
+moving target.</p>
+
+<p>Villages, gardens and fields tore past, and the pace was too
+great for careful observations and notes. But it is a delightful
+and exhilarating sensation; one becomes intoxicated with the
+sensation of speed, and any feeling of danger vanishes with
+the desire to drive on faster, and still faster!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[p. 211]</span></p>
+
+<p>On the left we first pass fort No. 4, the repairs to which have
+now been practically completed. The high road is in excellent
+condition, and there is a little traffic in the shady avenues.
+Life seems slowly to be returning to its old grooves. In front
+of farms and houses by the roadside we notice German soldiers
+engaged in more or less laborious but always friendly and often
+jocular conversation with Belgian women, or playing with
+their children after the fashion of uncles. The country is flat,
+with hardly noticeable undulations. In the fields, which make
+a pleasing picture with the farm hands busily at work, the
+crop has been piled up in enormous cylindrical stacks crowned
+with shallow conical hoods intended to keep the water off the
+corn. At Gembloux&mdash;with its memories of 1815&mdash;a Red Cross
+flag almost fills the entire street, with the armed Landsturm
+men keeping watch below in their shining helmets.</p>
+
+<p>The stone houses in the villages look very substantial, but
+are far less picturesque and pretty than our own red cottages
+with the dark pine forest as background. At <a id="TN7"></a>Wawre a house
+has been wrecked here and there. By the roadside is the lonely
+grave of a dead soldier. In front of it, on the road, an old
+woman is driving a barrow drawn by a dog. And so one
+impression succeeds the other.</p>
+
+<p>After Overyssche the road turns off sharp to the left and
+runs through La Hulpe and a number of other villages, until
+at last we reach the famous battlefield of Belle Alliance.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_22_22" href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>
+This spot is one of the sights for those who visit Brussels.
+In peace time there are on an average 450 visitors a day to
+the great hall erected outside Waterloo, in which a gigantic
+panorama, measuring 110 metres in circumference, gives an
+excellent idea of one of the most dramatic moments of the
+battle. Attention is especially directed to the group representing
+Marshal Ney’s furious onslaught with the French
+Guards against Wellington’s artillery and infantry positions
+south-west of Mont St. Jean. The foreground is strewn with
+soldiers and horses lying dead amongst the grass and lumber,
+and the whole has been carried out in natural size, with detached
+life-size figures gradually merging with bewilderingly
+telling effect into the painted canvas and its excellent perspective.
+Some way off one sees Napoleon on his white
+charger, attended by his Staff, and in the far distance the old
+Hussar General Blücher with his Prussians, who on that day
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[p. 212]</span>saved England from perdition. One sees the burning villages
+around, the roads with their avenues of trees and the shady
+groves at Ohain and Château de Goumont.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_22_22" href="#FNanchor_22_22" class="label">[22]</a> The German name for the battle of Waterloo (Translator).</p></div>
+
+<p>But reality itself is after all more interesting. I walk up
+to the crest of the hill, some sixty metres high, on which
+stands a lion of colossal dimensions, unveiled ten years after
+the battle by the Netherlands Government. The lion is cast
+from captured French guns, and its base merely bears the
+inscription: XVIII June MDCCCXV. It is not the conquered
+Titan who is symbolised by this pompous lion, but the
+united powers who made an end of his career. The wounded
+bronze eagle on his piece of rock, recently put up by the
+French in memory of the battle, illustrates in a dignified
+manner the glorious but unhappy struggle of Napoleon and
+the French arms. But the lion remains at his post and looks
+out defiantly upon the historic landscape.</p>
+
+<p>Around us we now see the actual panorama with its shaded
+roads, its villages and church towers, its gardens and fields.
+Some of these are green&mdash;where clover or sugar-beet is grown;
+others blend in brown and grey&mdash;where the crops have been
+brought in and the plough has furrowed the soil afresh, and
+harvesters, ploughmen, grazing cattle, and other rural scenes
+form a picture which seems to speak only of peace and tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>Dusk is descending over the tormented, blood-drenched
+earth and the wind sweeps dismally over fields and hills where
+the echo of the ancient guns and the rattle of harness and
+stirrups, crossed lances, and doughty sword-thrusts died away
+just on a hundred years ago. A feeling akin to reverence steals
+over the wanderer on this battlefield, still marked with the
+monuments put up by those who wished to honour their dead.
+Everything recalls his name, that great name still living as
+vivid and as fresh as ever, and undimmed by the dark nights
+which for wellnigh a hundred years have clothed in their
+shadows the country between Mont St. Jean and Planchenois.</p>
+
+<p>Now German soldiers are on guard at the battlefield of
+Waterloo and its historic monuments. Once more the Prussians
+have taken charge of the spot where the bravery and
+loyalty of their ancestors under the iron will of Blücher
+broke Napoleon’s strength and gave the British general a
+victory which he alone would never have been able to achieve.
+Wellington’s country followed the policy which had been its
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[p. 213]</span>lodestar ever since the time of William of Orange. All that
+can jeopardise England’s supremacy on the high seas must
+be crushed&mdash;if possible by foreign arms. When the powers
+of the Continent have weakened one another with war, England
+has stepped in and reaped the harvest. Her position in the
+world has been gained more through felicitous combinations
+of circumstances than through any efforts and sacrifices of
+her own. It is only when Belgium has seemed near to falling
+into the hands of some strong continental power that England
+has felt obliged to put her hand to the plough, for her own skin
+has then been threatened. But the intervention has then been
+effected under the cloak of the plea of defending the minor
+states against the enemy’s violation of the rights of nations.
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century France was too
+great and powerful for England. Its Emperor must therefore
+be crushed for all time. Hence the vanquished monarch was
+placed in a cage on a crag in the ocean, and his gaoler obeyed
+but too promptly the orders he received from London. Now
+the centenary is to be celebrated with the crushing of Germany.
+But the success of a hundred years ago is not being repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Hush, is not that the thunder of the guns of Antwerp?
+We listen. No, all is still. My chauffeurs, still with the poor
+captive lion, cannot understand what has happened. Daily
+for the past two weeks they assure me they have heard the
+guns, and now all is suddenly still. We do not even see the
+glare of burning houses northward. Perhaps it is the wind
+and fog. My companions have been told that during the
+previous night 1500 shells had been flung into the unhappy
+city, where the destruction must have been appalling. However,
+I say to myself, even the German artillery will need
+some time to take a place like Antwerp, which, according to
+English and French sources, is the world’s strongest fortress
+and absolutely impregnable.</p>
+
+<p>We jumped into the car once more and quickly covered
+the remaining eleven English miles to Brussels. The road
+is paved with stone, and seems one long street lined with
+continuous rows of houses. The electric tramways are running
+and entire trains pass us filled with Germans and Belgians.
+Villages and suburbs here follow one another in endless succession,
+and the traffic becomes livelier. Grey-clad sentries with
+fixed bayonets are everywhere to be seen, but all is quiet and
+peaceful. Yet we almost feel the covert hatred in the glances
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[p. 214]</span>directed on our military car and its German flag. We meet
+proud women with heads held high and faces set, old ladies
+in mourning and frowning elderly men with fists clenched in
+their pockets.</p>
+
+<p>The shadows of night were falling when we reached the
+capital of the German Governor-General of Belgium. But
+the streets were well lighted, as were the windows of shops and
+restaurants. There were plenty of people about, but we saw
+no vehicles which were not occupied by German officers and
+men.</p>
+
+<p>We drive up to the corner of <i lang="fr">rue de la Loi</i>, where we are
+stopped by a double sentry. I show my paper, they step
+aside, and we drive up to the Palace of Ministers. “Where
+does the Governor-General live?” I ask my chauffeur, and
+he answers that we shall be there in a minute. He stops outside
+the <i lang="fr">Ministère des Sciences et des Arts</i>. In the gateway
+stands a strong guard. I am taken across a courtyard and
+into a long corridor with German name-plates on the doors.
+On one I see the name of Lieutenant Massebus, and it is him
+I want to see, for he is one of the adjutants. He told me that
+the Governor-General had spent the day outside the beleaguered
+city of Antwerp, but that he was certain to return
+by nine, if I would renew my visit then.</p>
+
+<p>I accordingly proceeded to the <i>Palace Hotel</i>, the 400 rooms
+of which were nearly all occupied by German officers. At the
+appointed time I was back in the vestibule leading to the
+reception rooms of the Governor-General. Several officers
+were waiting there. Amongst them I made the acquaintance
+of a man whose name I had already heard, namely, Captain
+Dreger, engineer at Krupp’s and joint designer of the 42-cm.
+mortars. This subject was, of course, taboo, but instead,
+Captain Dreger told me that he had arrived in Bombay in
+October, 1908, a week after I had left that city, and that he
+had literally pursued me via Colombo, Penang, Singapore,
+Hongkong, and Shanghai&mdash;with hardly a week’s interval.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is in there just now?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“It is Frau Martha Koch, of Aleppo,” an adjutant
+tells me; “she and her husband and children have lived
+there for thirty years. The Governor-General is an old friend
+of the family from the time he lived in Turkey. Now she has
+come to offer her services for the Red Cross.”</p>
+
+<p>An officer who had spent the day with the Governor-General
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[p. 215]</span>shook his head as he said: “It’s a wonder that we
+still have him with us. Every day he exposes himself to the
+most appalling risks. The other day a shell came sweeping
+along a few metres over his head, but he only smiled.” “Yes,”
+declared another officer, “he seems to delight in danger.
+He always picks out the most dangerous spots&mdash;one is almost
+tempted to think that he wants to be shot. It would be a
+nice ending to a brilliant career. But whilst the bullets
+avoid him, they are not so kind to those in his vicinity. He
+even goes as far as to walk up to the firing line, where he lies
+down and jokes with the soldiers. Of course, his presence
+is in the highest degree encouraging to them. One day,
+accompanied by a soldier, he walked up to one of the enemy’s
+trenches, and although it had been quiet for some time there
+was no knowing whether it was empty. Fortunately it proved
+to be so. When his Excellency returned, we reproached him
+for his daring. ‘But there was no one there,’ he answered
+innocently. ‘No, but it might quite well have been occupied
+by enemy soldiers.’ ‘True, but in that case I should probably
+not have gone.’” Just as we were standing there and talking
+about him, who should come out into the vestibule but his
+Excellency himself, who kindly asked me to walk in. I knew
+him from the <i lang="de">Deutsch-asiatische Gesellschaft</i> in Berlin, where
+under his chairmanship I had lectured about my last journey.
+He, too, greeted me as an old friend, and wanted me to begin
+with to meet Frau Koch.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor-General of Belgium, Field-marshal General
+Baron Colmar von der Goltz, formerly in Turkish service,
+and now once more sent by the Emperor to the Sultan’s side,
+is a man of seventy-one years of age, but he retains his vigour
+and energy undiminished. He was now thoroughly in his
+element. He is a powerfully built man, thick-set, and rather
+below the medium height; he looks out from under his
+spectacles in a friendly and jovial way and seems to me more
+like a professor than a general. As a matter of fact he is a
+very learned man, who has published many books on military
+history which are ranked very high, especially about the
+Franco-German war of 1870&ndash;71, in which he took part.</p>
+
+<p>When we were alone, he told me the great news of the fall
+of Antwerp on the same day and of the entry of the German
+troops at three o’clock in the afternoon. So it was not to be
+wondered at that we had heard no sound of cannonading from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[p. 216]</span>Waterloo. I seized the opportunity of asking at once whether
+I should be permitted to visit Antwerp, the sooner the better,
+as it might be interesting as well as instructive to know what
+a large city which had just capitulated looked like. Why, of
+course I might! I should be allowed to see practically all I
+wanted, and if I liked I could return the next morning directly
+after seven o’clock and would then be told whether I could
+proceed at once without undue risk.</p>
+
+<p>After we had discussed the situation a few minutes longer
+I went home. It was then ten o’clock, German time, which,
+by the way, had been made the standard time after the occupation
+and was an hour ahead of Belgian time. At nine
+o’clock all shops and restaurants were closed and the streets
+were silent and still. Across the square outside the Palace
+Hotel and <i lang="fr">Gare du Nord</i> I was not allowed to go, in fact
+anyone attempting to do so was politely stopped by a Belgian
+policeman or even Belgian civilians. The reason was probably
+that the square must be kept free for military cars, of which
+there were always a great number lined up outside those
+buildings.</p>
+
+<p>The tramways cease running at ten o’clock. After that the
+city is empty and deserted, its population having gone to bed.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[p. 217]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">
+    CHAPTER XII
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">ANTWERP THE DAY AFTER ITS FALL</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">FOR manifold and obvious reasons I will refrain from
+any attempt to describe the progress of the German
+army’s advance on Antwerp and of the operations
+which culminated in the conquest of the city on the 9th of
+October. Still less does it become me to pronounce judgment
+on the manner in which the Belgians and the English defended
+this city which the allies thought impregnable, especially
+since certain parts of the country south of Antwerp had been
+placed under water. All this will, in due course, be described
+in the minutest detail by the German General Staff, and also
+in a more popular form by Germans who took part. For me
+it is sufficient to say a few words by way of preface to what I
+saw myself.</p>
+
+<p>To a layman it would appear a hopeless proposition to capture
+an “impregnable” fortress whose environs have been
+inundated and whose forts and interior area are defended by
+considerably over one hundred thousand men, but when that
+layman learns that the Germans not only achieved the conquest
+but completed it in thirteen days with almost insignificant
+losses, he is constrained to admit that the German army evidently
+possesses qualities which make it greatly superior to
+the allied armies and which mark it as the most consummate
+instrument of war of our time. German generals of fortifications
+themselves admit that Antwerp, if not <em>the</em> strongest of
+the world’s fortresses, may nevertheless be said to be one of
+the three strongest, the other two being Metz and Paris.
+But before the new heavy artillery even this bulwark of
+Belgium’s and Britain’s hope was doomed. Nevertheless,
+after the officers of the German General Staff, Artillery and
+Engineers had thoroughly examined the equipment and resources
+for defence, they were emphatic in asserting that had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[p. 218]</span>it been <em>their</em> task to defend Antwerp, the city would not have
+capitulated in thirteen days.</p>
+
+<p>On its two lines of defence, the outer and the inner, Antwerp
+possessed forty-nine forts and redoubts, all equipped with
+the latest appliances and devices of modern technological
+science. The outer line had a circumference of ninety kilometres,
+and for complete investment would have compelled
+the attacking army to operate on a front of 120 kilometres.
+But for a regular siege, carried out according to the accepted
+rules and canons of warfare, the Germans had no time&mdash;they
+had better use for their troops in other quarters. It is always
+endeavoured to shorten the attack as much as possible. From
+the artillery positions in a line with the village Heyst op den
+Berg the Germans proceeded to bombard the great southern
+forts&mdash;with what effect I will show later. Their resistance
+was entirely broken. But in order to reach the inner girdle
+of defence as well as the city itself, it was necessary to force
+the passage of the Nethe and silence the British artillery on
+the northern bank of the river. The new line was marked by
+the towns of Malines, Duffel and Lierre. The Nethe was
+crossed by soldiers swimming through the ice-cold water with
+ropes between their teeth in order subsequently to be able to
+haul the pontoons across. When once this was achieved,
+Antwerp’s fate was sealed. At eleven in the evening of the
+7th of October the bombardment of the city itself began. By
+an express order of the Emperor all buildings of great historic
+and art value, such as the cathedral, the other churches, the
+town hall, museums, etc., were to be spared. The zoological
+gardens were also on the list of items which were not to be
+bombarded.</p>
+
+<p>The bombardment continued the whole of the 8th of October
+and fire broke out at several points. In the evening and in the
+night these vast conflagrations were visible from a great
+distance and threw their ruddy light against the vapours
+rising from the sea and the whirling smoke clouds. During
+the night preceding the 9th October the bombardment increased
+in violence and continued until the forenoon. Then
+suddenly, at eleven o’clock, the firing ceased. At three the
+victorious German troops entered the city with bands playing
+and colours flying. There was no fighting in the streets and
+no shooting from windows by civilians. Antwerp suffered no
+damage beyond that sustained by the bombardment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[p. 219]</span></p>
+
+<p>This, as I have said, happened at three o’clock on the 9th
+of October. It was now seven in the morning of the 10th,
+and I was on the way to the <i lang="fr">Palais</i> of the Governor-General
+in the <i lang="fr">Rue de la Loi</i>, opposite the Park. At the entrance I
+was met by three cheerful young officers, who greeted me as
+if we had been boys together. They had been instructed by
+the Field-marshal to accompany me to Antwerp. “If it
+pleases you, we will start at once, the car is ready.” “Excellent.”
+The chauffeur immediately started the engine and
+took his place at the wheel. At his side sat a soldier and inside
+the open car were the three officers and myself. All the
+Germans carried revolvers. We had also three carbines conveniently
+at hand. It was plain that the road was considered unsafe,
+and that the visit to the conquered city was not altogether
+without danger. As yet we had received no information to
+show the mood of the inhabitants of the captured city during
+the night and early morning. “To me it is quite the same
+whether I am shot now or later, one has to die in any case,”
+said Lieut. Classen, who was a great philosopher and full of
+comical fancies and stories. My other two travelling companions
+were Lieut. Dr. Hütten of Stettin and Lieut. Dr. Walter
+Kes of Steglitz. The latter was on the active list even in
+peace time, and yet a doctor of philosophy, a combination
+which I am told is very rare.</p>
+
+<p>The moment we were ready we started off. The pace from
+the first was terrific. The journey was exciting and remarkable
+in every way. It must not be wondered at that my notes
+were few and scanty&mdash;the blame must be put on the speed at
+which we were travelling. We sat in a state of tense excitement.
+To my travelling companions the northern portion, at
+all events, of this road was unknown, as was the city itself,
+and a road over which an army has just passed is obviously
+full of tracks and ruts. Merely to take in what one sees under
+such circumstances is no bad achievement, and demands,
+from a layman at least, a certain quickness of perception.
+Before one had heard the end of the explanation of one phenomenon,
+something fresh has to be noted, which in a trice cuts
+off the previous train of thought. The whole becomes a chaos
+of fragments which leave a confused and dazed general impression.
+But to follow certain threads from their inception
+to their logical conclusion is impossible. I will, therefore, give
+the fragments as they were impressed on my mind, leaving
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[p. 220]</span>it to the description of subsequent visits to Antwerp to dwell
+more fully on the most interesting points.</p>
+
+<p>Before we knew where we were, the great city of Brussels,
+whose streets at this early hour were silent and empty, had
+been left behind and we were out in the open country; here
+and there a house or a village, a clump of trees or a haystack,
+would peep out of the fog still struggling against the morning
+sunlight. Through a glorious old gateway between two round
+turrets we tear at the same reckless pace into Malines, or, in
+German, Mecheln, the seat of the Archbishop and famous for
+its magnificent cathedral, which traces its history to the latter
+part of the thirteenth century and whose mighty towers,
+dating from 1452, had been intended originally to surpass in
+height all other cathedral towers of Christendom. Yet the
+height of ninety-seven metres, at which the builders stopped,
+suffices to impress the beholder. On misty days such as this
+the cathedral is not visible until one is upon it, but when the
+air is clear it becomes a landmark for miles around. The tower
+clock, with its face measuring thirteen and a half metres in
+diameter, has ceased to mark the fleeting hour. The Germans
+had found that this point of vantage had been used for observing
+their artillery positions and the effect of the defenders’
+fire, hence the tower was bombarded, an adventure which did
+not suit the sober habits of the clock.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill054"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_054_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/054_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>MALINES CATHEDRAL, SOUTH ASPECT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Presently we come to the south portal beneath the giant
+windows, through the lower part of which a shell has made its
+way into the church. A couple of projectiles have struck
+between the window and the pillars of the south aisle. From
+the north the cathedral has also been fired upon, but this
+damage was done by the retreating Belgian troops, who were
+anxious to prevent the Germans from reaping the desired
+benefits of the capture of the city.</p>
+
+<p>From the outside the damage does not seem to be extensive,
+as my photograph shows. It can easily be repaired. But we
+have now no time to give to the interior of the cathedral, we
+merely cast a hasty glance at the destruction which the shells
+have wrought. Blocks and chips of fallen stone lie everywhere.
+A layer of limestone dust covers the archiepiscopal tombs.
+But the statues of the Apostles, which adorn the columns
+between the aisles, are untouched, and the precious pictures of
+van Dyck, Verhaghen and other masters had been saved before
+the bombardment began. Wondrous silvery tones descend to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[p. 221]</span>us from above, caressing the mighty arches. No doubt a bell-ringer
+or watchman is testing the carillon&mdash;a welcome music&mdash;perhaps
+a thank-offering that the cathedral has not been more
+severely visited by the havoc of war.</p>
+
+<p>The little town lies still and empty, and its streets are lifeless
+except for the troops and transport trains marching
+through, and the number of stray dogs, half wild, who are
+sniffing for their lost masters among the ruins. The main
+street leading to the cathedral recalls in a horrible manner the
+ravages of war, the relentless destroyer of peaceful homes. On
+the left we pass a house the interior of which has been laid
+completely bare by a shell, reminding one of the geological
+section of a piece of rock blasted for railway work. The
+ground floor is a pile of wreckage and lumber. From the first
+floor a tangle of draperies, curtains or mats is dangling down
+towards the street, like shreds of red flags, and the joists and
+girders between the first and second floors have collapsed,
+creating a perfect scrap-heap of wrecked furniture. On the
+second floor, however, a part of a room has been left intact,
+revealing a cupboard, a child’s cot, and, strange to say, a
+looking-glass which still hangs perfectly uninjured on its hook.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill055"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_055_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/055_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A HOUSE OF MALINES “LAID OPEN” BY SHELL FIRE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Leaving on our right the <i lang="fr">Grand’ Place</i> with the town hall
+and other old-world buildings, and the pretty statue of
+Margaret of Austria, we cross another canal and debouch on
+the main road to Antwerp. Here we proceed between the
+important forts of Waelhem and St. Catherine, surrounded by
+their evil-looking belts of barbed-wire entanglements and
+<i lang="fr">trous-de-loup</i>, and tack cautiously between the immense
+craters formed in the middle of the road by shell explosions.
+Some of these shells had dealt very roughly with the electric
+tramway lines running into Antwerp from this point. One
+projectile, which had struck close to the track, had merely
+succeeded in twisting the rails slightly upward, leaving them
+suspended over the pit by their sleepers. There was room for
+Dr. Hütten to stand upright under them, an experiment which
+we made later on when we could better afford the time.</p>
+
+<p>Onwards we fly through this country, levelled by the
+alluvial mud of rivers almost to the flatness of the sea outside.
+It is fertile soil and every inch almost is cultivated, and we
+were almost startled to see a puny little clump of pines standing
+lost and forlorn by the roadside. Otherwise there is nothing
+but parks and ploughed fields, kitchen gardens and nurseries.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[p. 222]</span>But many of the farms, châteaux and villas dotted about the
+country have been wrecked by German shells, whilst others
+have been levelled to the ground by the defenders themselves
+in order to clear the line of fire. On both sides of the road we
+observed some excellent field fortifications, which the Belgians
+had thrown up on retiring northward, and we noticed that
+bowl-shaped recesses have been excavated at the sides of the
+ditches for protection against the rain of shrapnel bullets. On
+the left, great tracts of country are still under water. Rafts
+made of barrels, used by the Germans to cross certain waterways,
+are still floating about.</p>
+
+<p>The population seems to have vanished into space. It is
+but rarely that one sees a forlorn-looking peasant or other
+mortal who had chosen to face the hurricane of battle. Yet
+the life on this great highway almost beggars description and
+the traffic increases the further north we get. It is the same
+familiar transport trains in the same endless columns, looking
+exactly as they did on the southern roads and travelling in the
+same exemplary order. Again we see the same old Landwehr
+troops, halting beside roads and trees, with rifles piled and
+coats, life-belts and cartridge pouches slung over the bayonet.
+And here we have entire regiments of Landsturm, with men
+well into the forties in the ranks, plodding on their way
+towards Ghent. There is no lack of cheery humour and everyone
+is in good spirits; the men march along with the light-hearted
+step of young soldiers and sing as if they were going to
+a harvest festival, with flowers tied to the rifle barrel and more
+flowers in wreaths round their necks. After five days’ uninterrupted
+railway journey they are now marching the last
+forty-five kilometres to reach their post, where they are to
+guard the German lines of communication in western Belgium,
+an important and hazardous task, for even here the Fatherland
+may claim the sacrifice of their lives. That is why they
+sing so gaily. Yet wives and children have been left behind.
+It is for <em>their</em> liberty and happiness that they fight and fall at
+their post. They <em>know</em> what is at stake. The greater the
+progeny they have given their country, the more they have
+to defend and the more important it is for them that Germany’s
+liberty and future greatness shall be assured.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill056"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_056_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/056_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>BELGIAN PRISONERS AT MALINES
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>At some of the aristocratic villas and châteaux lining the
+road we take the liberty of paying a visit. A few of them are
+guarded by some faithful old retainer, others are empty and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[p. 223]</span>deserted. In none of them the owner seems to have remained
+behind, which perhaps is not to be wondered at. The houses
+which we visited were quite untouched and bore no trace of
+burglary or despoilment. We were among the very first to
+proceed along this road after the occupation, and may therefore
+be accepted as trustworthy witnesses. As I have already
+had occasion to mention, the soldiers are punished very
+severely for theft or wanton destruction. But as such crimes
+are exceedingly rare, there are but few occasions for such
+punishment. No doubt an army of a million men must comprise
+a few undesirable characters. However strict the discipline,
+a commander cannot be held answerable for all that
+his men may do when he is not personally present, especially
+so when both he and his troops are worn out from violent
+exertions. It must also be remembered that a seaport town
+like Antwerp, one of the centres of international trade, must
+contain a certain proportion of cosmopolitan riff-raff who at
+such times are let loose upon society and steal and pilfer where
+they can. It is therefore not to be wondered at if private
+property is found to have been pillaged at the end of the war.
+But up to now, as far as I could see, no such excesses had
+been committed. The wealthy homes which we visited were,
+as I have said, in the state in which their owners had left
+them. One house had, judging from a military cap which had
+been left behind, been occupied by a Belgian colonel. Outside
+the library on the first floor was a balcony looking on to a
+well-kept park, where the trees were now turning yellow. In
+another house we found a bedroom which had not long since
+been occupied by its master and mistress, but now they had
+abandoned their house and home and fled. Over the beds
+hung pictures of Christ, the Virgin Mary and Pope Pius X.
+I was touched on catching sight of the portrait of a beautiful
+boy in his coffin, with a wreath on his brow. Evidently many
+tears had been shed and much sorrow had dwelt in this still,
+deserted home.</p>
+
+<p>As we drive on we pass more ruins and naked, jagged walls.
+We cross the Nethe by a temporary wooden bridge guarded
+by an ordinary Landsturm patrol, the permanent bridge having
+been blown up by the Belgians. In a village, I don’t remember
+which, the church had been badly battered by the bombardment,
+and in the square fronting it stood a statue of St. Kilian&mdash;headless.
+Along the edge of a tomato field a venerable
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[p. 224]</span>couple toiled along with their pitiful odds and ends on a wheelbarrow
+and two goats on a lead. They had clearly, to escape
+the fighting armies, retired to some quiet spot in the neighbourhood
+and were now returning to see whether there was
+anything left of their cottage. The population here is Flemish,
+as are most of the inhabitants of Antwerp.</p>
+
+<p>The trenches now become more numerous and have been
+constructed with admirable care. The underground passages
+have in many cases been enlarged into rooms, with walls of
+match-boarding. At one point in the town we found traces of
+barricades across the road. They had been built in the form
+of stone walls, but seemed harmless enough and easy both to
+destroy and to outflank. Here and there we come across dead
+horses lying on the road and in the ditches.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we pass a troop of Uhlans, fine men of superb
+bearing on big horses and looking splendid in their complete
+and yet handy and smart field kit, with their long slender
+lances surmounted by streamers. Near the inner girdle of
+forts with their belts of wire entanglements we meet a couple
+of heavy mortar batteries, now no longer needed here. They
+are evidently on their way to Ghent and to western Flanders.
+On the other hand a bridging detachment with upturned pontoons
+resting on long, narrow carriages is travelling in our
+direction, evidently for use on the Scheldt.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill057"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_057_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/057_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>ON THE WAY TO GHENT AND THE CHANNEL
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The town itself is encircled by a wall broken by several
+gates and by a moat crossed by bridges. German flags are
+now flying over the gateways. Through the <i lang="fr">Porte de Malines</i>
+we enter the Berchem quarter and then follow the <i lang="fr">Chaussée
+de Malines</i> north-westward. The whole street is crowded with
+transport trains and resting troops. They are evidently on
+the point of starting off for fresh adventures. Now and again
+we pass a house which has been struck by shells, and in some
+places the stone paving has been torn up by the same agency.
+The broad and aristocratic <i lang="fr">Avenue des Arts</i> here and there has
+had a tree trunk severed by fragments of shell. The <i lang="fr">Place de
+Meir</i>, a large and handsome street in the very centre of the
+town, is likewise crowded with ammunition columns and
+troops, looking bright and cheerful in the sunlight, but with
+a bearing and an air as if it were the simplest thing in the
+world to contribute to the conquest of Antwerp.</p>
+
+<p>There are no women and children about, and the men out
+looking at the troops might be counted on the fingers of both
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[p. 225]</span>hands. Most of the population has fled to Holland, the wealthy
+to England or the Riviera. All shops are closed. The banks
+are guarded by German soldiers. Yet the town, conquered
+but a few hours ago by the iron force of arms, is decorated as
+for a triumphal march. The whole of Antwerp is beflagged&mdash;and
+the flags are Belgian! How is it possible that they can
+have been allowed to remain? The reason is evident, the town
+fell yesterday and it was for the Belgian army and the British
+auxiliaries that the bunting had been hung out. But during
+the next few days the black, yellow and red emblems gradually
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Over the houses at the western end of the <i lang="fr">Place de Meir</i> we
+notice brownish-black pillars of smoke whirling upward towards
+the sky. On arrival at the <i lang="fr">Marché aux Souliers</i> we find
+that a whole block is burning brightly, but now the fire spreads
+no weird glare around it, for the city is bathed in sunlight.
+The tongues of fire issue from the windows like as many
+yellow flags agitated by the breeze, and we can see from the
+street the furnace within. Several houses have been levelled
+to the ground. From the timber and the lumber of the ruins
+the smoke rises in dense, dark clouds. There are no curious
+crowds thronging to watch the terrible spectacle. One fire
+more or less means little in a time so filled with fearful happenings.
+German soldiers are on guard at the entrances to the
+street in the <i lang="fr">Place Verte</i> and <i lang="fr">Place de Meir</i>, but there are few
+people to keep in order in a city all but emptied of its entire
+population. “Why is nothing done to quench the fire?” we
+ask. “The waterworks at Waelhem have been destroyed,”
+we are told, “and all that can be done is to watch the fire
+and to see that it does not spread. If necessary the adjoining
+houses must be pulled down, but it looks as if the fire had
+worn itself out.”</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill058"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_058_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/058_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>MARCHÉ AUX SOULIERS A FEW DAYS AFTER ANTWERP’S FALL.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>No part of the interior of Antwerp has been so gutted as the
+<i lang="fr">Marché aux Souliers</i>&mdash;and yet only the houses on the north
+side of the street have been touched. Without a doubt the
+damage was originally done by only a shell or two. The shells
+usually ignite on bursting, and the flames had then no doubt
+spread to the adjoining houses. But the block in question is
+surrounded by open spaces and trees, and thus it has been
+possible to limit the spread of the fire. Yet the streets are very
+narrow. In the <i lang="fr">Marché aux Souliers</i> a protracted squabble
+had been going on between the private individuals who owned
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[p. 226]</span>the houses, the commune which owned the pavement and the
+city which owned the street, and the fight had been about
+the widening of the latter, for it was too narrow for this busy
+neighbourhood. But nobody would give way. In the end no
+doubt the house-owners would have lost the fight. But then
+came the German heavy artillery and solved the difficulty,
+as King Solomon might have done, at one mighty stroke.
+Now the street is broad enough for anybody.</p>
+
+<p>We fly through the <i lang="fr">Avenue du Sud</i>, yellowed by the falling
+leaves, but here we hardly see any trace of the bombardment,
+barring possibly a very occasional shell hole. At the south
+harbour we pass the interminable rows of sheds, warehouses
+and offices, whose brass plates bear the familiar inscriptions:
+Hamburg-Amerika-Linie, Norddeutscher Lloyd, Compagnie
+Maritime Belge du Congo, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Red Star
+Line, Peninsular and Oriental and others. But now the
+harbour, usually so teeming with life and filled with a roar
+and bustle unequalled by almost any other seaport town, lies
+still and silent. Huge sheds were filled with railway wagons,
+with or without valuable loads. A whole trainful of petrol
+in tanks was a find which particularly gratified the German
+officers. Another train had brought in colossal piles of compressed
+hay, covered over with tarpaulins. A warehouse
+had been found to contain considerable stocks of colonial
+produce, oats, flour, coffee and other supplies, which in due
+course would be examined and made use of. Some sheds were
+filled with about a thousand motor vehicles of all kinds,
+mostly lorries and taxicabs. We made a tour of inspection
+and soon found that they had all without exception been
+destroyed with axes, hammers and other implements, and
+were now perfectly useless. They must have represented a
+value of about £450,000.</p>
+
+<p>As yet there had been no time to post sentries. The entire
+harbour lay absolutely at the mercy of robbers, yet there
+were none to be seen. The silence among the deserted warehouses
+was almost uncanny. A couple of steamship offices
+and the offices at the South Railway Station had been left in
+excellent condition. Everything of value had been removed,
+nothing but receipts and accounts were left. The coats of
+clerks and officials were still hanging on their hooks as if the
+owners had just gone out to lunch.</p>
+
+<p>What attracted more than anything the attention of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[p. 227]</span>visitor to the harbour was the colossal petroleum tanks, which
+now formed a perfect sea of fire and smoke. The Anglo-Belgian
+army had not forgotten to set fire to these supplies
+before retiring. If the enemy cannot be prevented from
+entering, then the next best thing to do is to deprive him as
+far as possible of the fruits of his conquest. That was why the
+motor vehicles had been destroyed and the petroleum supplies
+had been given over to the flames. They were a wonderful
+sight, these jet-black, weltering, rolling clouds with their
+rims of grey and brown, writhing and whirling up into the
+sky. We could hear the hissing and seething inside, and
+now and again the blood-red flames succeeded in forcing their
+way through the smoke. Occasionally there was an explosion.
+It was clearly not advisable to go too near this
+inferno. At one or two points, wreathed in smoke, we caught
+sight of the American flag still flying on its pole, soon to be
+reached and devoured by the flames. The only signs of life
+seemed to be ownerless cows and dogs roaming about in a
+dazed, bewildered way.</p>
+
+<p>On the river, opposite the <i lang="fr">Fort de la Tête de Flandre</i>, a
+couple of large lighters were burning briskly. They were
+clearly anchored and had served as pontoons for an emergency
+bridge used by the allied armies when retiring across the
+Scheldt and continuing their retreat to Ghent. Certain
+defensive preparations at the harbour on the way to this
+bridge showed that the Anglo-Belgian army had intended to
+defend itself to the utmost. In some places barricades of
+thick iron-plate had been constructed beneath the gigantic
+sheds, and by the side of one of these stood three guns with
+shields, the fire from which was intended to cover the more
+open portion of the harbour. Here and there barbed wire had
+been put up. Judging from their arrangement, it seemed that
+it had been intended to electrify the wires, but this scheme had
+never matured.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of a walk round the town we came upon the
+<i lang="fr">Rue Karel Ooms</i>. Within an iron railing lay a large villa, and
+in the grounds we found an old lady walking about, supported
+on the arm of a younger woman. As it was unusual to see
+any of the wealthier inhabitants who had decided to remain
+in the town during the past fateful weeks, we walked in and
+greeted the old lady, who told us in simple and dignified words
+that she could not bring herself to leave Antwerp in its hour
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[p. 228]</span>of trial, and that at her age&mdash;she was now seventy&mdash;she had
+not cared to venture upon the vicissitudes of a journey. Her
+garden had been struck by five shells, but the house had been
+left untouched. Yet, as may be imagined, she had lived in
+mortal terror. Now she was out for the first time to take the
+air after the anxiety and strain of the last few days. Her
+nearest neighbours had been less fortunate, for of their houses
+nothing but the naked walls was left. No doubt they were
+away, but she believed that they had left servants behind, for
+she thought that she had heard cries of anguish from that
+direction when the shells were falling. Before parting, we
+learnt that the venerable lady was no less a person than the
+widow of the celebrated Belgian historical painter, Karel
+Ooms, and that she had lived in the villa since her husband’s
+death in 1900. The street had, in fact, been named after him.</p>
+
+<p>After a plain luncheon we paid a visit to the northern parts
+of the harbour, and had a hasty look at the steamers still
+lying in basins and docks. We went on board one of them.
+It was a German steamer, the <i>Celadon</i>, and the fore-part
+of the deck showed signs of an explosion having taken place.
+We learnt later that the boilers of all the vessels in the
+harbour had been destroyed, so as to make the ships useless
+to the Germans.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon we came across the long bridging train
+which we had passed on the way to the city; it was now
+marching past the cathedral on its way to the nearest part of
+the harbour quay used for crossing over to <i lang="fr">Tête de Flandre</i>.
+No doubt a bridge was to be thrown across in place of the one
+which had been blown up.</p>
+
+<p>It was interesting to notice that the inhabitants were
+already showing signs of returning to their city. There were
+not many of them, but here and there we saw men and women
+with bundles on their backs opening the doors from the street.
+One man was pulling two old women along on a barrow which,
+besides, was crowded with packages and odds and ends. A
+couple of cafés and hotels were likewise on the point of opening,
+and a few shops, especially provision shops, soon followed
+their example.</p>
+
+<p>It was now time to break up and we turned back towards
+Brussels. We had not got very far before we met three reserve
+battalions with colours flying and headed by a band
+playing cheerful military music. In accordance with their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[p. 229]</span>pleasant custom, the soldiers had adorned their rifles with
+little sprays of flowers, and their faces shone as usual with
+cheerful determination and high spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Once more we looked in at a château by the roadside. I
+shall never forget the impressions which thronged into my
+mind as I wandered through its dim, desolate rooms. In the
+bedrooms and guest-rooms on the first floor the beds were
+still in the state in which the masters of the house and their
+guests had left them. Quilts and sheets had been pulled
+aside, towels carelessly slung across the backs of chairs and
+basins were still half-full of dirty water with the pieces of soap
+beside them, stuck to their dishes. On the ground floor was
+the large, lordly-looking dining-room. The table was laid.
+A large dish still contained the remnants of the course last
+served, an omelette. Some ten persons evidently had partaken
+of the meal. Some plates were empty, others still contained
+scraps of omelette. Knives and forks lay pell-mell
+among the bits of bread by the side of the covers. A couple of
+empty champagne bottles stood on the table, whilst a third
+still contained a few drops of the joyous wine, which had now
+lost its sparkling freshness. A few serviettes lay crumpled on
+the table, others on the chairs and a couple had dropped on
+to the floor. Everything testified to a hasty and panic-stricken
+departure. Perhaps the thunderous music of the guns had
+come unpleasantly near, or maybe a shell had dropped close
+by? Or perhaps a messenger had dashed in to report that the
+Germans had punctured the outer girdle of forts and were
+now rushing in through the opening? Who were the guests,
+I wondered, whose meal had been so unceremoniously disturbed?
+Was it the people of the house themselves, who had
+waited until the last moment, or was it officers spending the
+night there on their retreat?</p>
+
+<p>The château was dead and deserted. One heard no sounds
+but the hollow echo of one’s steps and now and then the
+creaking of the furniture. Yet in the hall, on the ground
+floor, we found a living being&mdash;a white dove&mdash;it sat alone and
+frozen on a table. The white dove is the symbol of innocence
+and purity, of divine sanctity, but here it seemed curiously
+out of place. Yet the open window did not tempt it to seek
+the liberty of the château grounds.</p>
+
+<p>At another villa the grounds had been occupied by a column
+of open ammunition carts containing Belgian shells with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[p. 230]</span>fuse screwed off. The projectiles had not been used, and had
+been allowed to fall into German hands in this mutilated state.
+It now became impossible to drive quickly. The road was
+filled to overflowing with transport columns and Uhlans. They
+were on their way to Antwerp and were later bound for Ghent.
+In the west we heard the roar of cannon in the distance. The
+Germans were giving themselves no peace. Impregnable
+Antwerp had fallen in the course of a few days, yet the conquerors
+were swiftly hurrying westward, ever onward towards
+the sea. England had wanted war, and England was to have
+her fill and was to get more than she had bargained for since
+the days of Wellington. Entire companies of marines came
+marching on, magnificent specimens, all of the true Germanic
+type. Here and there they halted in villages, where they
+dragged out chairs and placed them along the house walls
+to get a good and convenient view of the ever-changing,
+never-ceasing life on the open road. At a corner in the badly
+ravaged village of Waelhem stood a clownish figure, beating
+a cracked drum. He wore a crazy-looking top-hat on his
+head and had drawn sooty lines on his face to represent
+moustache, imperial and eyebrows. He sang a Flemish song,
+twisted his body into extraordinary shapes and looked indescribably
+comical and jovial. The soldiers were beside
+themselves with laughter, and we could not help sharing their
+merriment as the performer broke off his song for a moment
+to greet us with a whimsical salute.</p>
+
+<p>As we again swung round the cathedral at Malines, where
+we stayed in the morning, Kes dropped the remark that it
+seemed to him as if several days had since elapsed. And he
+was right, for we had indeed seen and experienced much on
+this remarkable journey. We had come armed as if for battle,
+but everything had passed off peacefully, and a rumour that
+what was left of the Belgian army intended to attack the
+western bank of the Scheldt, had not yet been borne out by
+events. We had seen none but German soldiers amid the
+quaint old-fashioned and lavish architecture of the streets and
+market-places surrounding Antwerp’s venerable cathedral.
+The few people remaining out of Antwerp’s civil population
+were very peaceable citizens and seemed resolved to accept
+their fate. But in Brussels, whither we returned in the gloaming,
+we found nobody who would believe in Antwerp’s fall,
+for had not the allied leaders nourished the belief that this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[p. 231]</span>city could <em>never</em> be taken? So when the Germans posted
+up proclamations in French and Flemish announcing the fall
+of the city and how it had come to pass, people gathered in
+little knots in front of them and read them, but all were fully
+convinced that the whole story was an invention.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_23_23" href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_23_23" href="#FNanchor_23_23" class="label">[23]</a> In his recent book, <cite>War and Culture</cite>&mdash;a work which I warmly
+recommend to all and sundry who wish to sound the depths of the socio-psychological
+labyrinths of the world war&mdash;Professor Gustaf F. Steffen
+gives the following quotation from the Swedish newspaper <cite lang="sw">Göteborgs
+Handels- och Sjöfartstidning</cite> of the 9th October, the day on which Antwerp
+<span class="nowrap">fell:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>“In its first leading article in the number published the 1st inst., <cite>The
+Times</cite> states that it seems as if the noise made by the German batteries
+outside Antwerp were not commensurate with the importance of the operations.
+<cite>The Times</cite> goes on to say that they appear, in fact, not to be doing
+very much damage and it is very unlikely that the German Landwehr troops
+still in Belgium can achieve anything against the outer fortifications, seeing
+that the Belgian field army is so strong. Even if all the forts were destroyed,
+it was still doubtful whether the Germans would be able to take Antwerp,
+for the important factor in the defence of the city was not so much the forts
+as the field entrenchments.</p>
+
+<p>“The Belgians were said to hold one of the strongest fortresses in Europe,
+they had at least 120,000 troops at their disposal and an open harbour,
+whilst opposed to them were only second line troops; their outer works
+were the newest and most formidable of all, and they knew that the French
+and British armies in the north of France were on the verge of victory and
+must come to their rescue.</p>
+
+<p>“‘We do not therefore think that there is any need to worry about Antwerp,’
+writes the paper in question (<cite>The Times</cite>). ‘Doubtless the graceful
+spires of the Antwerp churches will make the mouths of the Huns water;
+the city presents incomparable opportunities for the destructive side of
+German “Culture.” We can imagine the pretexts which will be gleefully
+invented for pumping petrol into the “Plantain” Museum. Every German
+regiment in Belgium seems to possess a special machine for squirting petrol
+into buildings and to include a squad of methodical incendiaries trained in
+the specific arts of the higher civilisation, as taught at the University of
+Berlin. Apparently, too, every German column has attached to it a number
+of mobilised cinematograph actors, who upon suitable occasions impersonate
+civilians firing on the soldiers.’”</p>
+
+<p>This is a sample of <em>British</em> culture and of the “specific arts of the
+higher civilisation.” This is the sort of fare put before the neutral countries,
+especially America, by the English newspapers.</p></div>
+
+<p>In the evening, at nine o’clock, some thirty officers were
+assembled round the Field-marshal’s table. Here I met once
+more Prince Waldemar and Captain Dreger, and made the
+acquaintance of the Governor-General’s Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel
+Scheerenberg, and Surgeon-General Doctor
+Stecho, who spoke Swedish and who has many friends in
+Sweden. Afterwards we had a <i lang="de">Bierabend</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_24_24" href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> in the upper apartments,
+which was honoured with the presence of the Minister
+of War, Lieutenant-General von Falkenhayn. The talkative
+old Field-marshal von der Goltz saw to it that there was no
+lack of animation and favoured us with many interesting items
+about the fall of Antwerp and its past history, besides being
+inexhaustible in anecdotes and tales of the incidents of the
+last few days.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_24_24" href="#FNanchor_24_24" class="label">[24]</a> “Beer evening,” that is to say, a social evening enlivened by the consumption
+of beer (Trslr.).</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a><a id="Page_233"></a>[p. 233]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">
+    CHAPTER XIII
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">MORE DAYS IN ANTWERP</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">IT might be thought that the war had dealt Antwerp
+and its commerce their death blow. But the city is
+merely asleep and there is no one who can tell how long
+its torpor will last. Just as the fall of the city was an event in
+the world’s history which brought German power within
+striking distance of Great Britain, so the city itself will in
+coming times of peace acquire a status of world-wide importance
+and become perhaps still greater than ever before.
+Both from a strategical and commercial point of view Antwerp
+is bound always to remain one of the nerve-centres of Europe.
+It was therefore interesting to have seen this great mercantile
+metropolis at the inception of its fateful crisis, and it is obvious
+that I could not have been content with my first short reconnaissance.
+Hence I obtained permission from the Governor-General’s
+office to return, and, if I wished to do so, to remain
+in the city for several days.</p>
+
+<p>I accordingly planned another trip with Lieut. Dr.
+Hütten, to take place on the 11th of October. Just as I was
+starting out from my hotel, I met an old friend, Professor
+Georg Wegener, one of my chums from the time I was cramming
+with Richthofen at the University of Berlin. We had
+not many minutes to spare, but exchanged nevertheless a few
+impressions of the war.</p>
+
+<p>Hütten drove the car himself and I sat at his side. It had
+been my intention to take a few photographs of the military
+life on the road and in the town, for the sights which were
+now to unfold themselves to our vision would soon vanish
+and make room for more tranquil scenes. The further we
+travelled northward, the slower we had to go, for the road
+was encumbered by an unceasing stream of marching troops
+and transport columns, Uhlans and Hussars, guns and ammunition
+wagons. Little contingents of marines were interspersed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[p. 234]</span>here and there amongst the other troops. They had
+their own amusing little train, consisting of a barrow drawn
+by a donkey and laden with an odd-looking contrivance of
+sheet-iron which might simply have been a stove with its
+pipes. “What are you going to do with that thing there?”
+we asked. “It’s going to be a field kitchen,” replied a stout,
+jovial fellow who was driving a couple of calves behind the
+donkey-barrow.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill063"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_063_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/063_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>MARINES WITH A “FIELD-KITCHEN” AND A COUPLE OF CALVES
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Farther on we passed a bivouac with its shelter-tents still
+up and the breakfast boiling in its caldrons. Another war
+picture, or perhaps I should call it a picture from the boundary
+line of peace and war, was furnished by an entire caravan of
+carts piled high with trunks, bags, bundles, bedclothes and
+what not, accompanied by a group of men, women and children.
+They were fugitives returning to Malines. But if it
+was their misfortune to live just south of the cathedral, they
+were doomed never to see their homes again.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill061"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_061_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/061_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A GROUP OF FUGITIVES
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill062"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_062_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/062_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FUGITIVES RETURNING TO MALINES FROM THE SOUTH
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Near Eppeghem we saw on an unpretentious wooden cross
+by the roadside the following inscription: “<i lang="de">Hier ruht ein tapferer
+Belgier von seinen deutschen Kameraden begraben.</i>” (Here
+lies a brave Belgian buried by his German comrades.) The
+fallen hero has stuck to his post up to the last, and by his
+courage had evoked the admiration of his opponents.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_25_25" href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> Now
+we drive once more through the ruined street in Malines and
+stop outside the cathedral. Here are a couple of hundred
+Belgian prisoners guarded by a few marines. They wear
+little black caps with a red stripe and tassel, short tunics or
+greatcoats; some of them have water-bottles, bundles or
+bags carried on the shoulder by a strap. A herd of cattle
+is just being driven past by some German soldiers. “Quick
+march!” orders a German N.C.O., and the prisoners quickly
+disappear down one of the narrow alleys.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_25_25" href="#FNanchor_25_25" class="label">[25]</a> Dr. Fr. Klefberg, when in the same neighbourhood, had come across
+the following inscription: “A brave Belgian soldier buried by German
+comrades. 4th Company, 26th Regiment of Field Artillery.”</p></div>
+
+<p>We continue northward past the outer fortifications, with
+the German naval ensign floating on the crest, and meet
+fresh groups of returning fugitives, fresh marching columns,
+amongst them a field telegraph detachment, and fresh swarms
+of horsemen. And so at length we come once more to the long
+<i lang="fr">Chaussée de Malines</i>, which in a car takes but a couple of
+minutes from end to end.</p>
+
+<a id="ill060"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_060_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/060_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>IN FRONT OF THE TOWN HALL AT ANTWERP
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill059"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_059_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/059_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>INFANTRY HALTING IN FRONT OF ANTWERP TOWN HALL
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[p. 235]</span></p>
+
+<p>But it was chiefly to take photographs that I had planned
+this day’s excursion to Antwerp, and what could after all be
+more attractive for the camera than the <i lang="fr">Grand’ Place</i>, the
+noble little square by the Townhall with its quaint gable
+façades? In the middle of the square stands a piece of sculpture
+not long since erected, illustrating the legend about the
+boy who throws the giant’s hand: “<i lang="de">Hand werfen, Antwerpen</i>.”
+A house close by is the birthplace of one of the greatest painters
+of all time, as is shown by a plate over the door, “<i lang="nl">Geboortehuis
+von Antoon van Dyck, Kunstschilder 1599&ndash;1641</i>.” Van Dyck’s
+models and their progeny have disappeared, and the setting
+of the <i lang="fr">Grand’ Place</i> now consists of German troops. It is
+marines we see marching in with their knapsacks on their
+backs, rifles on the shoulder, cartridge pouches on the bandolier
+and bayonet and water-bottle by the side. A dog faithfully
+plods along beside a private in the ranks&mdash;one constantly sees
+German soldiers who have adopted ownerless dogs. Next
+come a few batteries of 6-cm. naval guns, pulled by their
+respective crews. One wonders whether horse teams have
+not been procured for marine artillery used on shore. In front
+of the Townhall itself a company has piled arms and is resting.
+Some soldiers are content to take a nap on the stone
+paving and use their knapsacks for pillows. Here we see food
+columns with canvas awnings over the carts and wisps of hay
+in front of the horses. Marine cyclists are moving about everywhere
+on their silent wheels. By the side of a car stands the
+great engineer, Captain Dreger, looking at a map of the road
+to Ghent, which Lieut. Dr. Hütten has just shown him.
+But the scene is kaleidoscopic in its variety and there is a
+coming and going, a rushing to and fro of animal and motor
+traffic, a tramping of horses’ hoofs and a rattle of artillery
+wagons which baffles all description. We had some singing,
+too, for as the marine troops crossed the square they broke
+into the swelling tones of <i lang="de">Die Wacht am Rhein</i>.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill064"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_064_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/064_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FOOD COLUMN CROSSING THE GRAND’ PLACE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>We drive on and reach the land of ferries below the
+cathedral. Here the scene is still more changing, and there
+is a literal crush. The car is left in charge of our orderly and
+we thread our way between horses, carts and closely packed
+columns of troops. The street leading down to the harbour
+is thronged with double marching columns. They mark time,
+move on and mark time again. Belgian (Flemish-speaking)
+policemen in black coats with silver buttons and black helmets
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[p. 236]</span>help to keep order in the thoroughfare. “Where are all these
+troops and vehicles off to?” I asked. “They are going to
+be ferried across the Scheldt to <i lang="fr">Tête de Flandre</i>; that is,
+where the road to Ghent begins. They are off to the coast to
+throw a glance across to England.”</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill065"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_065_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/065_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A BELGIAN GUN IN THE HARBOUR
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>It is difficult to get along. Everything seems in such a
+jumble. I am just on the point of snapping some kitchen
+wagons when a Uhlan perched on a baggage wagon shouts
+to me: “Neighbour, it is forbidden to photograph the field
+kitchen!” “Good,” I answer. “I have no need to, I have
+pictures of them already.” The salutation “neighbour” was,
+I thought, an excellent touch.</p>
+
+<p>At the quay and bridges, built to allow for the considerable
+differences in level between high and low water, the ferries are
+in full swing. The bridging train we saw yesterday has not
+yet had time to throw a bridge across. Instead it has devoted
+its energies to building a species of ferry, consisting of a platform
+mounted on three pontoons. A tug took two of these
+contrivances in tow and three river steamers were busy conveying
+a double ferry of this kind across with troops, ammunition,
+ambulance and food wagons, field kitchens, field telegraph
+equipment and horses. Among the troops I noticed
+an Austrian artillery train belonging to the 30.5-cm. mortar
+batteries now stationed in Belgium.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill066"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_066_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w70" src="images/066_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FOOD COLUMN ON THE WAY TO THE FERRY, WITH THE CATHEDRAL
+TOWER IN THE BACKGROUND, FLYING THE GERMAN FLAG OVER THE
+CROSS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>“Drive up,” orders an officer. Immediately a column of
+vehicles moves forward and halts on the brink of the quay.
+The horses are taken out and the vehicles are pushed on to the
+ferry by the marines. Then the horses are led across the gangway.
+They stamp, snort and rear, for evidently they dislike
+the look of this queer-looking craft. But all to no purpose,
+on board they have to go. When two ferries are full, the
+steamer casts off and tows them in a twinkling across the
+Scheldt to <i lang="fr">Tête de Flandre</i>. Here another gangway is thrown
+out, the vehicles are pulled on to the quay by hand, the
+horses are put to and the column proceeds on its way to
+Ghent.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill067"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_067_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/067_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>HORSES AND VEHICLES BEING BROUGHT ON BOARD ONE OF THE PONTOON FERRIES. THE VESSELS ANCHORED IN THE
+FAIRWAY WERE USED AS PONTOONS FOR THE BRIDGE WHICH THE ANGLO-BELGIAN ARMY THREW ACROSS FOR ITS RETREAT.
+WHEN THE LAST MAN HAD CROSSED THE BRIDGE WAS BLOWN UP
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill068"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_068_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/068_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE TRANSPORT ACROSS THE SCHELDT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>As soon as the first load had left the east bank, another river
+steamer with its two ferries came alongside and took another
+contingent on board. So it went on all day and so it was to
+continue throughout the night by the light of electric lamps.
+The same programme would be repeated the next day, and so
+on as long as there were any troops, horses or vehicles left to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[p. 237]</span>ferry across the Scheldt; everything is done with the rapidity,
+efficiency, order and discipline which distinguish the doings
+of the German army down to the minutest detail.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill069"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_069_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/069_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A GERMAN MARINE ON THE PONTOON FERRY AT ANTWERP
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The ferries do not return empty from <i lang="fr">Tête de Flandre</i>, for
+enormous groups of returning fugitives, men, women and
+children with their carts, bicycles and barrows, bundles and
+packages are now gathering on the opposite bank. They form
+a picturesque and motley crowd, such as one is accustomed
+to see by the side of emigrant ships on the way to America.
+Most of them are Flemings. A remarkable order seems to
+reign amongst them. They do not squabble, do not shout,
+and do not push to get past one another on to the ferries, but
+wait quietly and obediently until the soldiers show them the
+way. The military and civilians seem to be on the best of
+terms. We saw the former, to the accompaniment of jest and
+laughter, exert themselves to the utmost to make themselves
+understood, and the result was a bewildering medley of German,
+French and Flemish.</p>
+
+<p>When the Germans entered Antwerp, they found on the
+eastern quay in question enormous piles of Belgian uniforms,
+caps, helmets and knapsacks. None of these had yet been
+touched. Presumably all this kit had been intended for recruits
+recently called out.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of our wanderings we also visited the northern
+parts of the harbour. Here one almost loses oneself in a
+gigantic maze of docks, piers, quays, basins, warehouses and
+sheds, and enormous stacks of timber and stores of ironware
+and colonial produce. Here is a profusion of customs sheds,
+office buildings, loading gear, cranes, railway wagons, wheel-less
+motor-cars, packing cases and sacks containing I don’t
+know what. “<i lang="nl">Verboten te rooken</i>” (Smoking prohibited) is
+posted up everywhere in gigantic letters. As I saw it I could
+not help thinking that “<i lang="nl">Verboten te bombardeeren</i>” would have
+been, if anything, a more fitting injunction. Without a guide
+it would have been impossible to find one’s way, and we were
+glad to get hold of a queer-looking fish sniffing round amongst
+the merchandise, who subsequently took us in hand. To-day
+there were a few more people about, amongst them Germans
+who were making the round of the harbour precincts to note
+the names of all the vessels lying there. I asked them if they
+had seen any Swedish boats, but the answer was in the negative.
+Barges, lighters and fishing boats were lying closely
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[p. 238]</span>packed together in certain parts of the harbour. Here also
+we came across barricades of iron girders and barbed-wire
+entanglements, and behind a parapet close by stood a Belgian
+gun with the breech-block missing.</p>
+
+<p><i lang="fr">Comte de Smets de Naeyer</i> was the name of a fine-looking
+Belgian training-ship with light grey hull, white masts and
+spick-and-span rigging, but there was nothing on board to
+arouse our interest. We also paid a little visit to the great
+Australian liner, <i>Tasmania</i>. In the officers’ cabins all drawers
+had been pulled out and everything of value taken away.
+Nothing but books, papers and a quantity of accounts and
+other objects of no value remained. But on a writing-table in
+the captain’s own cabin stood a portrait of a woman and a
+photograph of a group of bonny children. In the dining
+saloon a table stood laid with a silver coffee-pot, half-full, cups
+and a box of cigars which had more or less been ransacked of
+its contents. All the passenger staterooms were empty and
+deserted. As we wandered through the endless corridors our
+steps gave off a hollow and eerie echo, and we actually stopped
+once or twice to discover whether it was really the echo of our
+own steps we heard, or whether someone was following us.
+One might believe almost anything in such times as these.
+Fugitives might for instance have hidden themselves on board.
+We shouted, but the sound of our voices died away in the
+abandoned ship and there was no answer. We looked into the
+forecastle, but nobody now slept in these bunks, so often
+rocked by the ocean swell. The same grave-like silence everywhere.
+It was quite uncanny to walk about this ghost-ship,
+this “flying Dutchman” with its crew of invisible spirits
+who seemed to eye us from every nook and cranny.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past six we returned to the capital and it was pitch-dark
+before we arrived ninety minutes later. At first the
+road was fairly clear, but later on we drove past incessant
+columns marching on their way to Ghent. As so many times
+before, a kaleidoscope of horses, riders and wagons were
+brought into successive relief by the light of our lamps. The
+men, otherwise singing and joking, were now still and sat as
+if moulded in the saddle. Once again we heard this eternal
+clatter of iron-shod hoofs against the stone paving, this endless
+tramp, tramp, tramp which is the music of the marching
+columns. The rattle of the wagons, the creaking of the iron-tyred
+wheels, the jingling of the chains, the chafing of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[p. 239]</span>leather and the tramping of the horses’ hoofs, these sounds
+seem still to haunt my ears as I write. Like a slow and irresistible
+tidal wave, like an implacable necessity, this train is
+rolling towards its goal. It is Germany’s train of victory. On
+hundreds of other roads similar streams are flowing to and from
+the greatest battle lines maintained by a single country ever
+since Noah left the ark to people the earth with human
+beings, for, as everyone knows, the continuous fighting line
+from Nieuport on the North Sea <i>via</i> Rheims and round Verdun
+to the Vosges is an accomplished fact.</p>
+
+<p>We see eyes gleaming at us through the darkness. It is
+the light from cars we meet, but what can their business be
+on the road to Antwerp at this late hour? From under the
+shadow of the trees fresh packs of horsemen, square-set,
+sturdy men on well-fed powerful mounts constantly emerge
+into the circle of light from our lamps. Later on comes a
+gun team, no longer needed here, on its way to other places
+where the guns will resume their music for the benefit of the
+<i lang="fr">entente</i> legions, and here and there among the trees the figures
+of soldiers preparing their evening meal are silhouetted against
+the ruddy glow of the bivouac fires. Their pipes are glowing
+in the darkness and one can see the gleam of their teeth as
+they break into a peal of laughter at some comical remark.</p>
+
+<hr class="sect">
+
+<p>At the Banque de Paris and a couple of other banks they
+shook their heads over my Swedish letter of credit: “<i lang="fr">Toutes
+les lettres de crédit sont annulées</i>.” I should certainly have had
+no difficulty in getting money by appealing to the Governor-General,
+but when I explained my unsound economic position
+at the Swedish Legation, Herr Pousette, who was <i lang="fr">chargé
+d’affaires</i>, said that he would be very glad to lend me a thousand
+francs against the despatch of a telegram to <i lang="sw">Skandinaviska
+Kreditaktiebolaget</i>. When this difficulty had been overcome,
+I took a trip to Löwen, which is German for Louvain. My
+friend, Lieut. Dr. Hütten, still acted as my guide. We had
+under our charge the energetic and charming Frau Koch,
+henceforth to be named Sister Martha, clad in cap and spotless
+white dress with a red cross on the left arm. The 12th of
+October turned out a brilliantly fine day. We passed out of
+the city under the triumphal arch between mirror-like ponds
+and yellowing trees. The <i lang="fr">Chaussée de Louvain</i> soon developed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[p. 240]</span>into a stone-paved road lined with a close beech wood, where
+hardly a ray of the sun penetrated to the ground and where
+cool shadows reigned over a bed of fallen leaves. We saw
+no German soldiers in this direction, nothing but the hand of
+autumn over this unhappy land which had lost its independence.
+There were no transport columns to be seen. The only
+vehicles on the road were civilian carts. The aristocratic
+carriages of the <i lang="fr">grand monde</i> had disappeared without a
+trace, after their owners had removed to other climes.</p>
+
+<p>We have eighteen kilometres to go. Ruins do not meet the
+eye until we have travelled some distance into the precincts
+of Louvain. The whole city is not wrecked by shells as one
+had been led to believe. Hardly a fifth has been destroyed.
+But that fifth contained many precious and irreplaceable
+buildings, and the loss of the library with its collection of
+manuscripts, unless by some happy chance some remnants are
+still intact under the ruins, is regrettable in the extreme.
+But in the midst of the desolation, like a lonely crag in mid-ocean,
+stands the Townhall, that proud monument from the
+middle of the fifteenth century with its six slender fretwork
+turrets. I walked round the whole building, and with the
+best will in the world I was unable to detect a single scratch
+in its gorgeously decorated walls. There may, of course, be
+an occasional scar from a shell, but if so it escaped my attention.
+The German artillery had given a magnificent proof of
+its unerring accuracy of aim. It had hit everything round this
+building but without injuring as much as a cornice of any of
+the six turrets.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill070"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_070_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w80" src="images/070_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>LOUVAIN TOWN HALL
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The reason of the German bombardment of Louvain is
+well known. On entering the town the German troops were
+fired on from windows by the civil population, and as there
+was no other means of checking this outrageous proceeding,
+a few houses were set fire to. When afterwards the German
+soldiers used every means in their power to extinguish the
+fire in the buildings nearest the Townhall, the <i lang="fr">franctireurs</i> lay
+once more in wait from their ambush. Then things grew
+serious. Any other army in the world would have acted in
+the same way, and the Germans themselves greatly regretted
+that they were compelled against their will to adopt such
+measures. From Louvain we proceeded to Malines, a lengthy
+trip along the canal joining the two cities, where we were
+startled to see the masts of fishing-smacks bob up amongst the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[p. 241]</span>trees of parks and alleys. We arrived just in time to witness
+the burial of a marine who had fallen at his post. The body
+of the dead man was carried to the grave on a Belgian hearse
+with a silver cross on the roof and drawn by one horse. Behind
+the hearse followed some hundred soldiers from the army and
+navy. After the funeral three rifle volleys were fired over the
+grave, which was then filled in. There were several German
+graves in the little churchyard, decorated with wreaths and
+helmets, and also two common graves containing the men who
+had fallen in some fight.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill071"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_071_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/071_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>SOME HOUSES ONLY HAVE THE WALL LEFT STANDING
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>On a country road near by a battery of Austrian 30.5-cm.
+mortars stood posted. A single one of these batteries of two
+guns requires a train of forty-two vehicles. The barrel requires
+a lorry to itself, likewise the gun carriage. Then there
+are wagons for the men, the ammunition, accessories, tools,
+provisions, kitchen gear, etc.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, we paid a visit to the great military hospital
+at Malines, where the surgeon-in-chief and another staff surgeon
+showed us round everywhere. The operating theatres
+more especially of this Belgian hospital seemed to meet all
+aseptic requirements. At the present moment there were
+only 140 wounded on the premises. Over every bed hung a
+metal frame to which an arm could be bandaged when it
+needed stretching, and other contrivances with weights and
+pulleys had been installed for stretching injured legs. Several
+interesting cases were explained to us. A soldier had received
+a bullet through the back of the neck, but the spinal
+medulla was uninjured and the patient could walk about
+although it was only six days since he was wounded. Another
+had been struck on the left side of the lower jaw, which had
+been crushed, the bullet having found its way out on the right
+side. By an ingenious arrangement of gilt brass wire fastened
+to the teeth, the doctors had succeeded in giving the necessary
+support to the lacerated jawbone. The patient could even
+move his lower jaw and speak. A third man had been struck
+by a bullet in the head and had lost the power of speech, but
+understood what was said to him and nodded yes and no. A
+Belgian soldier had received a nasty wound in the head. He
+seemed unbalanced, was delirious and spoke of his wife and
+children. If anyone asked whether he had heard from them
+or knew where they were, he merely answered: “Look there
+on the right,” and turned his head in that direction. In his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[p. 242]</span>delirium he described confusedly the fierce struggle at the
+Nethe, where he was wounded. Later we stood beside the
+bed of a little Belgian boy of twelve, who had happened to
+get too close to the firing lines and whose left arm had been cut
+off by a shell. Yet he was in good spirits and was looking at
+a book with coloured plates; he smiled pleasantly when the
+German doctor patted him on the head. They had succeeded
+in tracing his mother and she was to visit him daily for a little
+while.</p>
+
+<p>The corridors were lined with solid-looking iron-hooped
+wooden cases inscribed: <i lang="de">Nicht stürzen</i> (Not to be upset).
+They contained photographic apparatus and plates. There
+were separate rooms for X-ray photography and some photos
+shown to us clearly revealed where the projectile had lodged
+and what damage it had done on its passage. As a rule
+wounds from rifle bullets are far less malignant than those
+occasioned by shrapnel or shell splinters.</p>
+
+<p>Soon we were on our way back again along the familiar
+road to Brussels and we were just in time to get ready for the
+Field-marshal’s supper-table. There were several interesting
+guests present. Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, regally tall and
+straight, was there. It is he who, after the Emperor, has
+worked hardest for the creation of the German Navy. Lofty
+forehead, frank and merry eyes, fair beard, resolute and
+manly bearing, in fact a real Teuton. It was like a draught of
+sparkling wine to speak to him. To such men nothing is
+impossible, and with them there is no trace of anxiety about
+the final issue of the war.</p>
+
+<p>I also met here Herr K. F. von Siemens, head of the firm
+of Siemens and Halske, also a very robust-looking man of the
+Teutonic type and of a temperament in which humour and
+gravity are agreeably blended. Talking about the German
+losses, he estimated them at 250,000, of which, however, the
+great majority were slightly wounded and had already returned
+or would soon return to the front, and would then possess the
+advantage over the new-comers that they had already been
+under fire and had personal experience behind them. We discovered
+that we possessed a common friend in the charming
+Sir Walter Lawrence, one-time private secretary to Lord
+Curzon when he was Viceroy of India. Probably he was now
+lost to us as a friend, as this war has proved capable of sundering
+the closest bonds of friendship.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[p. 243]</span></p>
+
+<p>Another guest was Privy Councillor Kreidel, head of the
+commissariat department of the Governor-General of Belgium,
+and seventy-five years old. He had recently been subject
+to attacks of dizziness through overwork and was now
+on the point of returning to Germany to get strong again.
+The new Governor of Antwerp, Infantry-General Baron
+von Hoiningen, whom I had met in Karlsruhe, was also
+present. General of Fortifications Bailer, gentle and charming
+lecturer on æsthetics, was one of my special friends. He was
+in very good spirits to-day because he had seen his son of
+whom he had not heard for a long time and who served with
+one of the armies in France. Lieutenant Bailer had made the
+long journey through the air and was just on the point of
+returning in his aeroplane. We also talked about Ghent,
+which had fallen the same day after severe fighting in the
+open country. The General was now proceeding thither to
+study the Belgian field fortifications; the town itself is not
+fortified. From Ghent the German army was to continue to
+Bruges and Ostend. Finally we talked about the 300,000
+volunteers who had just arrived at the front, where the youthful
+undergraduates with their merry pranks had greatly enlivened
+the older Landsturm men, who in turn had taught
+them their very best drill.</p>
+
+<p>The next two days I rested, wrote, visited the Swedish
+Legation and spent my evenings with the Governor-General.
+The weather was by no means suitable for excursions. The
+rain poured down and heavy clouds from the Atlantic floated
+over the town. As a lady whom I overheard in a shop rightly
+observed, life was quite dark and sad enough without the
+heavens adding their share. But to the soldiers there is no
+difference between fine and foul weather, and the troops
+and transport trains passing through the city seem no fewer
+than usual. But for the German uniforms and military cars,
+one would scarcely have known what was going on. Apart
+from these phenomena, a stranger arriving in Brussels would
+have noticed nothing, unless it be the absence of Belgian
+motor-cars and the rarity of horse-drawn vehicles; for both
+cars and horses had been requisitioned by the Belgian army.
+He might perhaps also have wondered where all the <i lang="fr">beau
+monde</i> and all the rich and well-to-do citizens had got to, for
+those who could afford it had preferred to betake themselves
+elsewhere, rather than to remain under the foreign yoke. It
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[p. 244]</span>is only the poor and the less well-to-do bourgeoisie who have
+to remain.</p>
+
+<p>As regards the town itself, it is true that the stranger would
+notice that the theatres were closed and that a German
+sentry was posted outside the <i lang="fr">Palais de Justice</i> and other
+public buildings. But he would have seen no signs of destruction,
+no smoking ruins, no naked walls black with soot and
+smoke. The population of Brussels remained perfectly quiet
+when the Germans entered. There were no ambushes and there
+was no firing from windows. Therefore all the houses remain
+untouched and the town has been spared the fate which overtook
+Louvain and Dinant. And the population acted wisely.
+They would never have been able to inflict an appreciable
+check on the Germans, but would, on the contrary, have
+suffered enormous economic losses. The war requisition of
+fifty million francs imposed upon the town would in case of
+resistance have been multiplied over and over again.</p>
+
+<p>I could not refrain from making another inspection of
+Antwerp, more thorough than the preceding ones.</p>
+
+<p>Antwerp! The city of the dead! Lou-lan, the desert city,
+given over to destruction and oblivion when the sea of Lopnor
+wandered southward, was not harder hit than Antwerp.
+For have not the oceans retired and left high and dry this
+great hub of commerce which not many days ago was in close
+contact with all the earth’s continents and islands! These
+gigantic harbour installations now lay dead and idle, and there
+was not even an apprentice to be found in all the twenty-two
+ships which lay forgotten by the quayside when the blow fell.
+The whole city was paralysed. One of the things I wanted to
+see was whether in the course of the next few days there
+would be any signs of an awakening from this torpor. Of
+course, one realised that life in the harbour would remain
+dead as long as the sea outside was full of mines, and would
+not perhaps reawaken until the end of the war. But I thought
+it possible nevertheless that the city itself might rouse itself
+and that many of the unhappy fugitives who had fled across
+the Dutch frontier would return.</p>
+
+<p>So on the 15th October I started out for the third time for
+Antwerp. I had been invited to join in an excursion, and we
+drove out in five cars. I was with my friend General Bailer
+and a couple of other officers. The participants included no
+less a person than the Imperial Chancellor, Herr von Bethmann Hollweg,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[p. 245]</span>as well as His Excellency von Treutler. We
+quickly reached Malines and stopped as usual outside the
+cathedral. In view of the Chancellor’s visit the interior had
+been cleaned up. All blocks of stone, dust and lumber had
+been removed. St. Rombaut’s fane now looked quite neat and
+tidy, and it was evident that it would not cost much, either
+in time or money, to restore it to its former condition. A
+tombstone, crushed by blocks of stone which had fallen from
+an arch between the middle and the north side-aisle, will,
+however, be difficult to replace. The effect of the shell fire
+was demonstrated by artillery officers, and it was made clear
+that the Belgian fire directed from the north had only consisted
+of shrapnel intended to drive the German observers
+away from the tower.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill073"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_073_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/073_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE INTERIOR OF MALINES CATHEDRAL BEFORE THE REMOVAL OF THE DÉBRIS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>From Malines we proceeded north-east to Fort St. Catherine,
+one of Antwerp’s strongest forts, constructed, like the others,
+by the great Engineer-General Brialmont and equipped with
+nine modern armoured turrets. Most of these had been
+horribly knocked about by the heaviest German artillery,
+<i lang="de">die dicke Bertha und die schwarze Marie</i> (“fat Bertha” and
+“black Maria”) as the 42-cm. mortars have been playfully
+dubbed by the soldiers. One of the turrets had been struck
+plumb by a shell which had flung its 40-ton cupola some ten
+metres to one side, where the gigantic structure had alighted
+on its side and eaten itself into the earth. The cupola having
+been removed in this somewhat energetic manner, we were
+able to get an idea of the interior construction of the turret.
+Another turret had merely been struck at a tangent by a
+smaller projectile and yet the effect was such that the metal
+of the cupola had been rent as the soil is torn by the ploughshare.
+Another shell had penetrated through a bed of concrete
+several metres thick and upon detonation it wrought the
+most appalling havoc.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill072"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_072_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/072_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>DESTRUCTION WROUGHT BY “FAT BERTHA” IN FORT ST. CATHERINE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>At Antwerp the Chancellor was received by Admiral von
+Schröder, whom I shall have occasion to mention later on.
+He was a powerfully built man, with white head and beard,
+a thorough sea-dog. He also was renowned for his astounding
+energy.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon I drove with General Bailer, Colonel
+Müller and Major Elert round the grass-clad slopes of the
+fortifications round the town, the innumerable gates of which
+were now guarded by German soldiers. It was really an
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[p. 246]</span>initial tour of inspection that these officers were engaged upon.
+Among the discoveries made were several searchlights and old
+guns and a couple of excellently constructed barricades of
+cobble-stones and sheet-iron. The garrison seemed to have
+been prepared for street-fighting in the town itself, but things
+had never got thus far. Huts built of boards, tarpaulins and
+other materials had been put up for the defenders of the
+barricades.</p>
+
+<p>We had taken rooms at the Terminus Hotel, close by the
+Central Railway Station. The German officers paid with <i lang="fr">bons</i>
+which are redeemed after the war, I in ready cash. The
+dining-room was filled with officers, naval surgeons and
+civilian German engineers who had come to repair the waterworks,
+gas-works, telegraphs and telephones. The shortage
+of water had made itself felt very disagreeably, but at least
+one could now get tea and soup, which had been an unobtainable
+luxury during the first two days, when we had to remain
+satisfied with wine and beer. No doubt it was distilled Scheldt
+water, or perhaps well-water which now figured in our soup
+tureens and water-jugs.</p>
+
+<p>The streets with gas-lighting were pitch-dark at night,
+whilst the electrically lighted main streets were bathed in
+their usual brightness. Many shop windows were now also
+brilliantly lit, especially the tobacconist establishments, which
+attracted crowds of German customers. In the restaurants
+we saw the soldiers seated round the tables with their girl-friends,
+drinking beer or coffee. In the large avenues the
+traffic was almost animated. As long as daylight lasted we
+saw little knots of fugitives returning from the Dutch side.
+Their unkempt appearance, unwashed hands and faces and
+uncombed hair showed that they had been lying out of doors
+in the rain and cold and suffered great privations. Now they
+were returning with their bundles, their children, basket
+carriages, gramophones and other peculiar furniture, carried
+on the back or in little barrows drawn by dogs or donkeys.
+All looked calm and resigned. What else, indeed, could they
+do? In Holland they had been treated with great kindness
+and hospitality. In Antwerp they were to find that paralysis
+had seized upon all industries that gave them their livelihood.
+Doubtless they have a hard winter before them, but the
+Germans will, I subsequently heard, do all in their power to
+lessen the distress, and a special commission has, in fact, been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[p. 247]</span>nominated with this object. It may also surely be taken for
+granted that England, who says that she began the war to save
+neutral Belgium, and who can now afford to sacrifice
+£350,000,000 to encompass the destruction of Germany, will
+be able to offer a thousandth part of this sum to save the
+destitute in Belgium from that very fate.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[p. 248]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">
+    CHAPTER XIV
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">STILL IN ANTWERP</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">THE 16th of October&mdash;an anniversary! Nine years
+ago I left Stockholm for Tibet. How quiet and
+peaceful the world seemed then, how different from
+the thunders now re-echoing from pole to pole. The Russo-Japanese
+war had just ended. Now the Russians and Japanese
+are friends. Then Count Benckendorff had frowned on Lord
+Curzon’s Tibetan policy. But when the storm was preparing
+against Germany, and when it broke loose, Russia and England
+suddenly became friends&mdash;like Pilate and Herod in their
+day!</p>
+
+<p>The 16th of October broke with a leaden sky, and the
+German flag hung limp and motionless from the spire of the
+cathedral, 123 metres above the ground&mdash;where it had now
+been fluttering for a whole week. At the entrance facing the
+<i lang="fr">Place Verte</i> stood a middle-aged janitor, with an unspeakably
+sour mien. He scarcely deigned to glance at me when, in my
+most courteous accents, I asked him whether the cathedral
+was open. “The cathedral <em>is</em> open,” he replied, “but only
+to German soldiers.” “All right, my boy,” I thought, and
+drew forth my <i>open sesame</i>, General von Moltke’s pass.
+The janitor read the paper and his face grew longer at every
+line. When he had finished he removed his cap and said:
+“Is that really true? If so I may tell you, Doctor, that I am
+a Swede, a native of Visby, resident in Antwerp for thirty
+years, and my name is Dahlgren.”</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, the cathedral was open even to me, and honest
+Dahlgren took me round and explained everything. “Baedeker”
+does not know one-tenth of what he knew. But I will
+pass all this over, for this book deals only with the war. All
+that I will mention is that only one shell, or more likely perhaps
+a fragment of a shell, had struck the wall near the lower
+part of the great window above the entrance in <i lang="fr">Place Verte</i>.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[p. 249]</span>The damage done is insignificant, and can be repaired in a
+day. If the shell had been maliciously inclined, and if Rubens’s
+famous pictures, “The Crucifixion” and the “Descent from
+the Cross,” had been in their usual places in the transept
+facing towards <i lang="fr">Place Verte</i>, where the shell struck, they would
+have been in a perilous position. But they were removed
+before the bombardment and stored in a place of safety, like all
+other valuable pictures and art treasures in Antwerp. The
+only trace which the shell has left in the interior of the church
+is a scratch in one of the pillars.</p>
+
+<p>From the chancel one has a splendid view over the seven
+aisles and the majestic vaulted roof which was lost from view
+in the deep gloom above. It is a forest of mighty pillars presenting
+an ever-varying perspective&mdash;the nearest columns
+faintly illuminated from the windows, the more distant ones
+gradually merging into the sombre tint of the waning twilight.
+It is dark enough at the best of times in St. Joseph’s Chapel
+and St. Anthony’s Chapel, where windows four hundred years
+old represent the Father, Virgin, and Holy Child, side by side
+with St. George and the Dragon. “<i lang="la">In hoc signo vinces</i>” is
+inscribed on a reliquary, in which a splinter of the Holy
+Cross is kept.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the northern side-aisle, on a portable
+framework, stands an image of the Holy Virgin, richly arrayed
+in a long robe, with a golden crown on her head. Each year
+on the Sunday following the 15th of August she is carried in
+procession round the town. But this year, when her aid was
+so badly needed, she was not carried through the streets of
+Antwerp. This year they contented themselves with lighting
+tall votive candles before the Queen of Heaven. Yet she
+seemingly remained deaf to all prayers! But a stained-glass
+picture in the third window from the left on the northern
+side shows a portrait of Emperor Charles V., who severed his
+Netherlands from their connection with the Germanic Holy
+Roman Empire, leaving the keys of Antwerp in the charge of
+this very image of the Virgin. The keys of Antwerp! It was
+“Black Maria”&mdash;and not her white namesake&mdash;who had the
+handling of them!</p>
+
+<p>The pulpit was carved by van der Voort in solid oak. It is
+exactly 200 years old, but perhaps the oaks were 500 years old
+already when their wood was dedicated to the preaching of
+the Word of God. One likes to pause before this handsome
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[p. 250]</span>work of art. The pulpit steps, with their carved crowns of
+trees and birds, leave us unmoved, but the four female figures
+which support the pulpit itself are noteworthy. They represent
+the four continents&mdash;Australia being then almost unknown.
+Three of the figures are light enough, but the one with the thick
+lips and the flat nose&mdash;Dark Africa, the negro continent&mdash;is
+wrapped in deep shadows. Four continents uphold the platform
+from which the gospel of God’s eternal love to mankind is
+preached throughout the earth&mdash;a pretty conception of van
+der Voort! “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” The
+artist, no doubt, believed that the world would make progress
+during the centuries to come after his days. But now there
+are five continents&mdash;supporting the gospel of war and hatred.
+The two Western powers of the <i lang="fr">entente</i> bear the responsibility
+for having caused the Dance of Death to involve the whole
+globe, for they are bringing into the fight masses of men raked
+together from all parts of the world: Canadians come in their
+ships from America, Turcos and Senegalese negroes from
+Africa, and poor Hindus and Ghurkas, bronzed by the sun of
+India, lie freezing in the trenches&mdash;these are the representatives
+of Asia&mdash;and lastly, Australia and New Zealand are
+sending their contingents, over land and sea, from the Antipodes.
+And what is the purpose of which the attainment is
+thought worth such a world-wide levy of warriors? Why,
+Germanic culture is to be uprooted from the earth. And it is
+the bearers of this culture, the people of Luther, Goethe,
+Beethoven, Helmholtz and Röntgen, that are called barbarians
+and Huns&mdash;a danger to the future and civilisation of
+the white race! It is therefore fit that Ghurkas and Senegalese
+should come and save us from relapse into the dark
+ages. The artist who hereafter may be bold enough to immortalise
+the “levy of all races” of 1914, should not forget
+that he will find a promising idea for his leading motive in
+van der Voort’s woman&mdash;with the thick lips and the flat nose.</p>
+
+<p>On <i lang="fr">Place Verte</i> outside stands a bronze statue of Rubens,
+bareheaded, with a cloak over his shoulders. Its background
+is formed by the cathedral which he himself has adorned with
+some of his choicest masterpieces. There he stands, with extended
+hands, freely offering to the world the gifts his genius
+has created! The night before the town fell he stood there
+illumined by the glare of burning buildings&mdash;the <i lang="fr">Hôtel d’Europe</i>
+and <i lang="fr">Taverne Royale</i>. The picturesque groups of warriors which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[p. 251]</span>were seen there five days ago, have disappeared for ever from
+the <i lang="fr">Grand’ Place</i>. Now, only a long queue of civilians stands
+outside the Townhall, desiring to obtain, from the German
+military authorities, passports and permits for some purpose
+or other.</p>
+
+<p>As I sauntered through the old town, I looked at the people
+returning from their flight&mdash;in most cases merely a trip to the
+Dutch frontier&mdash;and who were now opening their doors and rearranging
+their shop windows. In a side street a group of
+marines had assembled round a half-starved cat whom they
+were treating to milk and meat; “the cat will be as fat as
+a porpoise in a week,” they assured me. Then my ears caught
+the sound of cheerful strains of music floating through the
+misty streets, and I followed the direction of the alluring
+sound. It turned out to be the band of one of the marine
+battalions playing in front of the Townhall&mdash;surrounded by
+a large crowd. At four o’clock every afternoon a band played
+here, at the Central Railway Station and outside <i lang="fr">Hotel Weber</i>.
+Order was maintained by Belgian police constables. I addressed
+one of them and he told me various things of interest.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill074"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_074_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/074_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FUGITIVES RETURNING TO ANTWERP FROM HOLLAND
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>He knew for certain, he said, that five British marines were
+taken prisoners yesterday in the town. Then he suddenly
+passed on to other topics. In the night of August 25th, a
+Zeppelin had flown over Antwerp, and dropped some bombs,
+one of which had hit three policemen; two were killed, one
+was still alive and likely to recover. The police force of Antwerp
+numbered 800 before the war. Of these, 260 had been
+called out for active service, 140 had fled when the bombardment
+commenced, the others had remained and were still
+doing duty. On account of their small number, even the
+higher police officers had to do street duty. He computed the
+strength of the Anglo-Belgian army which had been in Antwerp
+at 120,000 men, and he expressed himself in very drastic
+terms as to its mode of defending the town. He did not know
+where the army had gone to; at any rate it disappeared just
+when it was most needed. According to his computation,
+one-tenth, or at most one-eighth, of the population had
+remained during the bombardment. They had taken refuge in
+cellars, and stopped up the apertures with sandbags. Of course,
+men of his service were obliged to stay out of doors. Thus
+he had seen a cyclist struck by a shell and literally vanish on the
+spot. On returning home he found that his wife, like all others,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[p. 252]</span>had fled and taken their child with her. She had not yet returned,
+nor had he had any news of her. Further, he had seen
+the ferries in Antwerp cast loose and allowed to drift down-stream
+towards Flushing, to prevent their falling into the
+hands of the Germans. He believed that, in a month’s time,
+most of the inhabitants of the town would be back. The young
+men only hesitated to return for fear of being compelled by
+the Germans to serve in their army against Russia. And
+according to rumours which had been spread, the Russians
+were standing near Berlin with immense armies.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, the defenders of Antwerp had feared that an attack
+would also be made from the west, from the region of Termonde,
+for one day General Bailer and his officers observed
+entrenchments, several kilometres in length, thrown up at
+the cost of at least a couple of weeks’ hard toil, and with
+much skill. The material was earth and timber, which had
+been dragged there by the civilian population from the surrounding
+districts. But even this labour was in vain, and
+they did not even make an attempt to defend these entrenchments.</p>
+
+<p>On October 17th we commenced with a visit to the Zoological
+Garden, one of the foremost of its kind in the world. Dr.
+Hütten, in his capacity as a German officer, was admitted
+free; I paid the usual admission. The Indian elephants,
+hippopotami, rhinoceroses and giraffes were just as unconcerned
+as the chimpanzees and the other simians, about the
+radical change which had recently taken place in their immediate
+surroundings. One of the elephants was gravely
+shaking his head, but otherwise the bombardment did not
+seem to have made the least impression on the animals;
+no doubt they mistook the roar of the guns for an approaching
+thunderstorm.</p>
+
+<p>But the most remarkable circumstance was that all beasts
+of prey had vanished. This is the only way in which the
+Zoological Garden has been affected by the war. The splendid
+large summer cages were empty, and so were the indoor
+winter quarters of the animals. An old keeper, who, grave
+and bent, was raking the paths in the park, explained the
+cause&mdash;shaking his head all the while just like the Indian
+elephant.</p>
+
+<p>“All beasts of prey were shot,” he said. “Four splendid
+lions, five fine tigers, all the leopards and panthers, all land
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[p. 253]</span>bears and polar bears were killed. They were driven out into
+the summer cages and shot&mdash;the muzzles of the rifles were
+thrust through the bars.” He sighed, and no doubt he thought
+that this was the most grievous loss the war had caused, for
+both he and the other keepers of the wild beasts had become
+attached to their protégés.</p>
+
+<p>“But why, in the name of common-sense, were the poor
+beasts shot? Surely they were not suspected of espionage?”
+asked Lieut. Hütten.</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed not,” the keeper replied, “it was simply done by
+order of a general. They feared lest the cages might be struck
+by shells, when the beasts might have escaped and created
+a panic in the streets. That’s why they were shot. But now
+the bombardment is over, and the cages stand empty. Not
+even a splinter has fallen in the Zoological Garden.”</p>
+
+<p>It would be interesting to know what kind of shell it could
+be that would break a lion’s cage without killing the lion!</p>
+
+<p>Lastly I took a snapshot of the combined Asiatic and
+African landscape, in which my old friends, the Bactrian
+camels and the Tibetan yaks, were associated with dromedaries
+from Egypt. One might have imagined oneself far
+away from the turmoil of the war of nations when standing
+on the borders of their peaceful retreat!</p>
+
+<p>But before reverting to the war, I will interpolate here a few
+details gleaned in Antwerp as to what occurred in the town
+just before and during the bombardment. Most of these I
+obtained from a gentleman who on my return from the Zoological
+Garden was awaiting me at the entrance to the <i lang="fr">Hôtel
+Terminus</i>, and introduced himself as Harald Petri, Swedish
+Consul in Antwerp. He was an uncommonly amiable, courteous
+and hospitable man, and as he had stayed in the town
+during those critical days, he could give me a great deal of
+perfectly reliable information.</p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday, the 7th of October, the Commanding
+General had published through the press a proclamation
+warning the inhabitants that the town might be bombarded
+at any moment. In consequence of this warning one-half of
+the population took flight. The warning had come none too
+soon, for the very same night at 11 p.m. the shells began to
+burst. During the night and on Thursday morning further
+crowds fled in a continuous stream. They went on foot, as no
+cars and no horses were to be had. They took with them their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[p. 254]</span>valuables and a good many domestic animals&mdash;I dare say also
+provisions. There were weeping women, screaming children
+and excited men. Many of them, perhaps, had seen shells
+falling near them. The number of these fugitives might be
+computed at over 150,000. They made for the Dutch frontier
+village of Putten, and thence for Bergen-op-Zoom, but many
+got as far as Esschem and Rosendaal by other roads.</p>
+
+<p>By 10 a.m. on Thursday the town was almost deserted,
+10,000 having perhaps remained out of nearly 400,000 inhabitants.
+Nearly all of these sought refuge in the cellars
+under the houses which, with very few exceptions, stood
+empty. Among those remaining were nearly all the Swedes,
+Norwegians and Danes residing in Antwerp; in fact, many of
+the Scandinavians who had already taken out their passports,
+nevertheless remained behind.</p>
+
+<p>The bombardment continued all Thursday, and the town
+was set on fire by shells in several places. It was a terrific
+din, what with the roar of the guns and the crash of falling
+walls. The bombardment increased in intensity during
+Thursday night, and the fire spread. But at 11 a.m. on Friday,
+the 9th of October&mdash;the day before my visit&mdash;all became quiet.</p>
+
+<p>Consul Petri had disdained to seek shelter. In common
+with other officials, he had been invited to take refuge in the
+Townhall, but he preferred to stay at home. From time to
+time he went out into the streets to see the effect of the bombardment.
+As soon as it had ceased, he went to the Townhall,
+and then for a long stroll. The streets were deserted and
+silent; there was scarcely a soul to be seen. But suddenly,
+he saw a host of people. This was the German vanguard
+marching in from Berchem, to be followed later in the day by
+the main body of the besieging army. The public buildings
+were taken possession of, the artillery drove up to the quay,
+and the St. Anne’s quarter of the town was bombarded for
+two hours. Then all was quiet.</p>
+
+<p>Another informant in Antwerp told me that certain prominent
+persons would have left the town on October 3rd, if the
+Belgian Government had not ordered them to remain. This
+was done at the request of the British Government, who had
+promised to send troops to relieve the town. On the same
+day, at 2 p.m., Mr. W. Churchill arrived in a motor-car and
+had a consultation with the civic and military authorities of
+the city, in the course of which he promised to send 30,000
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[p. 255]</span>men to relieve the town, a force which, in conjunction with
+the Belgian army, should be sufficient for the defence of the
+city. As a matter of fact, only 15,000 men arrived, of whom
+2500 were bluejackets. They had heavy artillery with them
+and are said to have fought bravely. On October 6th, late at
+night, Churchill left the town and drove off in a motor-car
+to the west, no doubt to Ostend.</p>
+
+<p>As the inhabitants during the nights heard, and in day-time
+saw, troops marching through the streets, they could not
+but believe that a vigorous resistance would be offered. They
+were therefore greatly surprised when the town surrendered
+without a fight and the defenders, at 6 a.m. on October 9th,
+withdrew over the pontoon bridge, built six weeks before,
+across the Scheldt, and then blew the bridge up. The British
+are said to have been the last to cross it.</p>
+
+<p>On October 17th, eight days after the fall of Antwerp,
+the number of inhabitants was estimated at fifty to sixty
+thousand. Probably even the young men fit for military
+service would soon return when they learnt that the Germans
+were paying well for work done and did not compel them to
+join their own ranks. Besides, the Governor had issued an
+order to the effect that all private property should be respected
+and that no private house should be entered by the soldiers.
+The three neutral Consuls&mdash;of Sweden, Holland and America&mdash;had
+also conferred with the Governor on the measures to be
+taken to restore normal life. In consequence, the Dutch
+Consul had advised his countrymen resident in Antwerp,
+numbering up to 20,000, to return. The German colony was
+estimated at 18,000, including many wealthy merchants.
+These also had commenced to return. The neutral Consuls
+most positively denied that any atrocities had been committed
+against Germans at the outbreak of the war.</p>
+
+<p>The material damage caused to the town itself by the bombardment
+is very small. Consul Petri calculates that there are
+40,000 houses in Antwerp. Out of these, about 300 have been
+damaged by shells, and 100 burnt down&mdash;hence no more than
+1 per cent. He valued the buildings that had been burnt
+down at something like £500,000, and those damaged by shells
+at about £150,000.</p>
+
+<p>Consul Petri’s chauffeur had fled, and when we made a tour
+through the town the Consul drove the car himself. He was
+familiar with all the spots in the southern parts of Antwerp
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[p. 256]</span>where shells had struck. The northern part had escaped
+damage altogether. We saw several yawning rents at the street
+level, where shells had laid open the cellars, leaving large
+gaping chasms. The Argentine Consul, who, like most other
+people, had taken refuge in a cellar, had been killed by one of
+these shells.</p>
+
+<p>In other places the shells had struck the roof, carrying
+away the whole garret floor, and leaving here and there
+nothing but the tattered shreds of girders rattling in the
+breeze. Frequently a shell had struck in the middle of a house-front
+without causing any damage visible from the street,
+beyond tearing a huge hole in the wall and shattering all the
+panes and window frames. Black streaks on the walls showed
+that fire had broken out. On closer examination we found,
+as a rule, that the principal havoc had been wrought on the
+side away from the street.</p>
+
+<p>We also saw how the shells had struck the roadway and
+burst, ripping up the stone pavement and throwing large
+mounds and fragments against adjacent houses, where cavities
+biting into the brickwork gaped red out of the white plastering.
+In one place we could see how a shell had carried away a
+roof and some ten yards of coping, and had then crashed into
+the opposite house on the other side of the street.</p>
+
+<p>All rubbish and brickwork which had tumbled into the
+streets and on the pavements had already been piled up in
+heaps, but had not yet been carted away for want of horses
+and vehicles. Among the heaps of ruins at the <i lang="fr">Marché aux
+Souliers</i> the gas was escaping from burst pipes and burning
+with blue wavering flames, presenting a weird spectacle at
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Our run also brought us to <i lang="fr">St. Jacques</i>, a magnificent
+church, rich in works of art representing subjects from sacred
+history. The candles burning in front of some images of saints
+were inadequate to dispel the gloom. The features of the
+Saviour on a Crucifix revealed abysmal depths of pain and
+sorrow; it seemed as if darkness had descended for ever on
+the earth and overpowered him. The worshippers were easily
+counted. Among them I noticed a few young women confessing
+their sins in the confessional chairs, giving the listening
+priests an insight into some of the most secret recesses of
+human life.</p>
+
+<p>St. Paul’s can boast if anything a still greater ecclesiastical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[p. 257]</span>splendour. The interior was brightly illumined with electric
+light, but the church itself is jealously hidden in the midst
+of a dense cluster of houses.</p>
+
+<p>As it was still daylight, we decided to cross over to St. Anne’s
+on the western bank of the Scheldt. The ferries were still
+plodding steadily to and fro, but were now only bringing
+refugees back to Antwerp. One of the ferries was just lying to,
+and a broad gangway was thrown out to bridge the interval
+of one yard between the ferry and the quay. A restive grey
+horse shied at the gangway, reared, backed and fell into the
+river. “He is lost,” cried the marines, “he will find no
+place where he can get ashore.” The horse swam out into the
+Scheldt, but soon turned back. Meanwhile it was caught in the
+swirling current and disappeared. A boat went out to its aid,
+and towed it to a steep stairway. The horse was now spent
+and no longer attempted to swim. Ropes and lines were
+passed round its body and with united strength they pulled
+it up to the pavement. Here the horse lay as if dead. They
+rubbed it with straw. Presumably it revived, for when we
+returned from the other bank it was gone. It was only a
+horse! And yet it had caused men’s hearts to beat faster for
+a good half-hour!</p>
+
+<p>Yet, strangely enough, all the dead cavalry and transport
+horses whose swollen bodies lie on the road between Brussels
+and Antwerp, failed to move us deeply&mdash;not to speak of the
+graves with the small white crosses which we pass so heedlessly
+on our road.</p>
+
+<p>A last gleam of daylight was still lingering when we drove
+up to the imposing <i lang="fr">Hôpital Militaire</i>, where I wished to call
+on Sister Martha for the last time. She was the only German
+among a number of Belgian Sisters. The medical staff consists
+partly of German naval surgeons, partly of Belgians.
+The surgeon-in-chief, whom I had met in Kobe, had been
+in Stockholm in July, just before the war broke out. The hospital
+had 700 beds, most of which were now occupied by Belgian
+soldiers, a few Germans and seventeen Englishmen. I talked
+to six of the latter in one of the pavilions. When I asked what
+they thought of the war they all replied: “Sir, we had got
+our orders, all we had to do was to obey and do our duty!”
+One of them admitted: “I suppose we could not well look on
+idly when the Germans were capturing the world’s trade.”
+Another thought it was absurd that men should go out and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[p. 258]</span>kill each other, and he declaimed about “this horrible, this
+terrible war.” All were longing for home, and asking whether
+we thought they would get there by Christmas. I was unable
+to reassure them on this point. “If at least our relatives knew
+that we are alive!” they said. They were all serene and
+dignified, and greatly appreciated the kind and solicitous care
+they received. What a pity that they should be lying there,
+counting the lingering hours! Nevertheless one feels greater
+pity still for the Belgians who have been left in the lurch by
+their great tempters and “protectors,” and who have lost
+their country and their independence. After all it is best to
+stand on one’s own legs and to follow the watchword of the
+boy scout: “Be prepared.”</p>
+
+<p>We had no time to visit Rubens’s house, standing in the
+street bearing his name. It has been on fire repeatedly since
+his time, and is entirely changed. But we entered Mrs.
+Osterith’s house. The Governor had taken up his quarters
+there. He is a refined and humane man, who is doing all he
+can to infuse new life into the dead town, and wishes to see its
+industry and prosperity flourishing afresh under the new forms
+which the inexorable necessities of war have brought forth.
+Mrs. Osterith herself was an old acquaintance of mine. In
+1903 I had been to a great reception at this magnificent house,
+which might almost be called a palace. The noble lady is
+seventy-four, and full of humour. She had remained in Antwerp
+during the bombardment, and together with fifty-eight
+persons, members of the household and acquaintances, taken
+refuge in the vast cellars under the house. Her bed had stood
+between bins of old wine, and she slept there while shells
+crashed over the burning town. Once the Spanish Minister
+paid her a visit, and she received him in her “bombardment
+dress,” a peignoir. At last came the hour of release, and she
+returned with her household from her subterranean captivity
+to the realms of daylight.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, we made for the <i lang="fr">Hôtel Terminus</i>, where we supped in
+the company of General Bailer, Colonel Müller, Major Elert,
+Captain Lamprecht, and a couple of other officers. Our company
+was also joined by Lieutenant-Colonel Schaubode, who
+had commanded the siege artillery and had been rewarded
+for his merits with the Iron Cross of the first class. He was so
+used to fire that he slept soundly while shells were whizzing
+around him. He told us various instances of the strange
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[p. 259]</span>freaks of fate which occur in this connection. During an engagement,
+a General and a Major stood talking on the high road.
+A shell fell near them. The Major was sent away on some
+errand, and had scarcely moved away when there came
+another shell, which struck the General so effectually that he
+literally vanished from sight.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion two officers were living in the same
+quarters in a town which was being shelled. When the house
+was struck by a shell, which, however, did no damage to speak
+of, one of the officers thought that they might consider themselves
+safe, as surely the same house was not likely to be hit
+more than once. The other, however, sought new quarters
+and induced his friend to follow him. As soon as they had
+left, the house was totally destroyed. It turned out that it
+was a public office, where the enemy took it for granted that
+the German commanders would take up their quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, chance often seems to play a great part. To live in a
+bombarded town is like a game of chance, as no one can tell
+where the shells will strike. The wisest course is to discard
+all calculations and to trust one’s life to God’s hands. We
+have already seen how the Swedish Consul in Antwerp, who
+exposed himself to danger, came off scot-free, while his Argentine
+colleague, who took refuge in an apparently safe cellar,
+was killed.</p>
+
+<p>During my stay in Antwerp I had an opportunity&mdash;though
+only once&mdash;of meeting the Rev. Börjeson, Seamen’s Missionary,
+a son of the great sculptor. Börjeson told me various
+things about the refugees, and the hardships they suffered.
+They had camped out in woods and pasture lands, but in
+Holland they had been well received, and the Dutch had
+helped them all they could. In this connection I expressed
+a wish to see one of the high roads leading north, and Consul
+Petri, with his usual hospitality, placed his car at my disposal;
+accordingly, on the 18th of October, we started on the road
+leading to Bergen-op-Zoom.</p>
+
+<p>On our drive through the town we observed, to our pleasant
+surprise, that some of the railways were already working&mdash;a
+new sign of reawakening life, even if of no great significance.
+At the bridge across the town moat our papers were carefully
+examined, whereupon we proceeded through the suburb of
+Merxem. West of this is the fort of the same name. This
+had been surrendered without a fight, though surrounded on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[p. 260]</span>all sides by barbed-wire entanglements; a number of trees
+had been felled to clear the range, and houses had been pulled
+down, all&mdash;so it seemed now&mdash;needlessly!</p>
+
+<p>The road was stone-paved and shaded by fine oaks and
+beeches; it passed through the villages of Donck, Eckeren,
+and Cappellen. Quite close to the frontier we passed between
+a couple of the extreme fortifications on the northern front.
+These, too, were surrounded by barbed-wire entanglements
+and an area of demolition, which had not been caused by the
+attackers but by the defenders. In one place a barricade had
+been erected right across the road&mdash;all to no purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Dryhoek is the name of one of the northernmost works,
+where we made a brief inspection, accompanied by a young
+German lieutenant and a Belgian merchant, a friend of Consul
+Petri. Dryhoek has been totally demolished, but the destruction
+was not wrought by German artillery. When the Commander
+recognised that the fortifications would fall into the
+hands of the Germans, he decided at least not to leave them
+to the enemy in undamaged condition, and ordered the garrison
+of about two hundred men to march off, whereupon he set
+fire to the powder magazine and blew himself up together with
+his fort. The great concrete blocks now lying scattered on the
+site form a monument over his grave. Even if nothing is
+won by such an act one cannot but recognise that it requires
+rare fortitude and resolution.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill075"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_075_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/075_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>OUTWORKS AT DRYHOEK, BLOWN UP BY THEIR COMMANDANT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The German lieutenant told me that several minor after-explosions
+had taken place on the site. Yesterday he had
+found among the ruins the arm of a man, evidently the Commander’s,
+unless one of the men had remained to die with his
+chief.</p>
+
+<p>The fort was crescent-shaped, with four turrets for 12- and
+15-cm. guns, having a range of 8&ndash;10 kilometres, and one
+turret for 7.5-cm. guns, intended for short-range fighting.
+This turret faced north, and was the only one which remained
+intact besides the breastwork of sandbags for the defending
+infantry.</p>
+
+<p>All along the road we passed returning fugitives. At the
+village of Putten the frontier post is in the middle of the
+street, where the Dutch and the German flags float side by
+side, and where Dutch soldiers guard the frontier. All passports
+are scrutinised here. As for ourselves, we had no difficulty
+in being passed through, and we proceeded some distance
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[p. 261]</span>to the north through a rather sparsely cultivated tract, where
+young pines were growing on both sides of the road. Scattered
+paper, rags, empty bottles and other vestiges marked the
+spots where the fugitives had camped. They had fared very
+ill in the chilly autumn nights. Some had got separated
+from their dear ones and were searching for them. They had
+sped on by night as well as by day on this <i lang="la">via dolorosa</i>, and it
+was not surprising that they lost each other in the darkness.
+The Dutch mounted police patrols could not help them, they
+could only maintain order. Many a woman gave birth to a
+child prematurely by the roadside. Indescribable scenes were
+enacted in this fleeing caravan, distracted with fear and
+anxiety. But even they, perhaps, could not forbear a smile
+when for instance they saw a big stout matron laboriously
+dragging an easy chair on which she sat down to rest at every
+fiftieth step! And grateful, indeed, they must have felt, when
+the Dutch regaled them with bread, soup, and other food!</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill076"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_076_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/076_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption><a id="TN3"></a>THE DUTCH FRONTIER STATION AT PUTTEN ON THE WAY TO BERGEN-OP-ZOOM
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>But now they were returning in endless procession, which
+however, was far more sparse than it had been a few days ago.
+They came on foot, on bicycles or guiding dog-drawn carts and
+pushing wheelbarrows. Many were riding in solid vehicles
+with or without springs. I had scarcely expected to see that
+so many Belgian horses had got over whole-skinned to Holland.
+Now they were returning to their old stables.</p>
+
+<p>As one tarries by the roadside awhile to watch this procession
+of poor half-starved and frozen people deprived of livelihood,
+home and country, one cannot but ask: “<em>Whose is the
+fault?</em>”</p>
+
+<p>I have on various occasions witnessed scenes of Belgian
+misery and distress, which nearly broke my heart. I felt glad
+that there are charitable souls in the world who are collecting
+means to alleviate this distress.</p>
+
+<hr class="sect">
+
+<p>Jesus said to his disciples: “Take heed that no man deceive
+you.... Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see
+that ye be not troubled; for all these things must come to pass,
+but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation,
+and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famine
+and earthquakes in divers places. But all these are only the
+beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be
+afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[p. 262]</span>nations for My name’s sake. And then shall many be offended
+and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
+And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
+And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall
+wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same
+shall be saved.... When ye therefore shall see the abomination
+of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in
+the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand): then
+let them which be in Judæa flee into the mountains: let him
+which is on the housetop come not down to take anything out
+of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back
+to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child,
+and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that
+your flight be not in winter, neither on the sabbath day:
+for then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since
+the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall
+be....</p>
+
+<p>“Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord
+doth come. But know this, that if the good man of the house
+had known in what watch the thief would come, he would
+have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be
+broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour
+as ye think not the Son of man cometh.... Heaven and
+earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[p. 263]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">
+    CHAPTER XV
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80"><i>VIA</i> GHENT AND BRUGES TO OSTEND</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">DURING the time I stayed at Antwerp news kept
+reaching us almost daily of the rapidity with which
+the Germans were approaching the sea. “Ghent
+is taken,” “Bruges is taken,” and finally, “To-day our troops
+have entered Ostend.” On my return to Brussels it looked as
+if the Allies were going to do their utmost to drive the Germans
+out of Ostend, and a rumour was in circulation that the
+British had bombarded the town.</p>
+
+<p>Accompanied by the ever-charming and delightful Consul
+Petri and his Belgian friend, who took charge of the steering
+wheel, I proceeded on October 20th to Ostend, equipped with
+a special pass from the Governor-General. The weather was
+dull and rainy and dark curtains of heavy clouds hung over
+the bleak landscape. We drove through avenues of elms along
+a road paved with Swedish granite, so it might be said that we
+were travelling on Swedish, Belgian and German ground.
+Every inch of the country is cultivated or built upon, nothing
+but houses and farms, hop-fields, corn-fields and kitchen
+gardens. The draught dogs are very busy, since the war has
+taken all the horses. One sees remarkably few German uniforms,
+but a good many natives walking along under their
+umbrellas. As in Malines, the people wear wooden shoes,
+and we still come across great numbers of returning fugitives.</p>
+
+<p>At Alost we cross the Dendre by a bridge. Here we find
+numerous marks of shell fire. At Quaterecht many houses
+have been destroyed. From Melle the road is lined with an
+uninterrupted string of nurseries and flower gardens. Horticulture
+has here reached a high pitch of perfection and potted
+plants are exported to the United States to the tune of millions.</p>
+
+<p>In Ghent nothing has been destroyed. The town retains its
+customary appearance. The tramcars are running, all shops
+are open and there are crowds of people about in spite of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[p. 264]</span>weather. Yet the many German uniforms tell their tale. We
+stopped to have a look at the magnificent cathedral. We
+found here an image of the Virgin Mary surrounded by burning
+candles and by it was a notice that anyone offering up prayers
+before the image would receive fifty days’ absolution. What
+the many people kneeling on the praying stools were praying
+for, we could readily guess.</p>
+
+<p>In the palace of the Counts of Flanders we wandered
+through subterranean crypts and along crenelated walls.
+From a commanding crest we had a remarkable view over the
+red-brick roofs and grey church towers of the town, all dripping
+with rain.</p>
+
+<p>I had been invited for supper by the charming and friendly
+war historian, Major-General Friederich, where I met several
+officers belonging to his staff. The General was now in mourning.
+His only son had fallen on the field of honour for his
+country. But the General had other sons, to wit: his Landwehr
+soldiers, sturdy, strong, willing and lusty fellows. The
+rank and file was composed of workmen, privy councillors,
+cobblers’ apprentices, barristers, brewers’ draymen, high court
+judges, blacksmiths and mayors. Differences in rank, party
+contentions and class distinctions all disappear in the field
+without leaving a trace behind them. War levels everything.
+There is but one rank: that of the warrior who fights for the
+honour of his country and the freedom of his people.</p>
+
+<p>At nine in the morning of the 21st October we continued our
+journey. The rain clouds still hung heavy over the narrow
+streets and the weather did not brighten until we had left the
+town behind us. At Eclo a company of German cyclists were
+resting. Bridges span the canals here and there and the latter
+in turn intersect the country in all directions to carry the many
+lighters to and fro. There is not much traffic now. Now and
+again we see large wagons which serve as homes for itinerant
+families moving from place to place to buy up the tresses of
+peasant girls, to sharpen knives, to do tinkering and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>Bruges is one of the most celebrated cities of Europe on
+account of its old-world air, its picturesque houses, its trees
+and bridges over the canals and its mighty city gates with
+rounded turrets. I felt I should like to remain to enjoy the
+repose which seemed to dwell over the many waterways. But
+now there is no time. We go on through a beech forest and
+over open fields and reach the village of Ghistelles; a few
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[p. 265]</span>kilometres further on towards the south-west and we come
+to a crossing, where we are stopped by an infantry picket. As
+we halt we hear a violent cannonade within a short distance.
+Our papers are examined, and we are told that an artillery
+duel is going on at Middelkerke and that the German positions
+are on the near side of the long canal connecting Ostend with
+Nieuport and Dunkerque. A squadron of British warships
+is said to be lying off the coast and bombarding the German
+positions, which are also attacked from the land side by
+Belgian and French troops. But the road to Ostend, which
+runs first to the north-west and later to the north-north-east,
+was said to be free. The soldiers thought that we were practically,
+if not entirely, safe from shells on that road. The most
+dangerous point was the bend on the other side of the canal,
+where the road changes its direction. We met coming from
+Ostend several ammunition columns on the way to the troops
+at Middelkerke, where numbers of wounded soldiers were returning
+to the rear.</p>
+
+
+<a id="map_3"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_map_3_result" style="max-width: 45em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/map_3_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>The Belgian Coast between Blankenberghe and Nieuport.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>We got safely past the dangerous corner and arrived safe
+and sound in the handsome and aristocratic town by the sea,
+to which Baedeker has given the following testimonial:
+“Ostend is perhaps at present Europe’s most elegant watering-place.”
+We drove on to the avenue along the front with its
+rows of big hotels facing the sea. Most of them are only
+open during the season, which ends on the 15th September,
+and during which some 45,000 visitors reside in the town.
+But Ostend is also the terminus of one of the passenger routes
+between England and the Continent and this traffic goes on
+all the year round. Travellers held up by gales or by fatigue
+can find hotels of a less pretentious kind, but they are situated
+in the interior of the town.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill077"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_077_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/077_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A PETTY OFFICER WITH A FEW MARINES AT A STREET-CORNER IN OSTEND
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>It was two o’clock when we arrived. I had never been
+to Ostend and knew none of the German officers, but I had my
+pass and felt I ought to report myself to the commandant,
+who was said to be stopping at the <i lang="fr">Hôtel Littoral</i> facing the sea,
+so we proceeded there and lunched immediately in the restaurant,
+for Consul Petri’s time was nearly up and he had
+to be back in Antwerp before nightfall. I accompanied him
+and his Belgian friend to the door, thanked them for their
+companionship and saw them drive off with a little Swedish
+flag in front cracking in the breeze.</p>
+
+<p>It looked strange, this grey and dreary sea, as one cast one’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[p. 266]</span>glance westward. One seemed to feel the hot breath of war
+blowing in over the land. The rain had ceased, the weather
+was clearing, but the sky was still overcast. In the west, at
+a distance of nine or ten kilometres, we saw plainly and clearly
+the outlines of thirteen British warships, of which a couple were
+cruisers and the others large destroyers of the older type.
+They were firing against the German positions on the Belgian
+coast and were themselves under fire. One could see them
+constantly on the move so as to render the German aim and
+fire more difficult. Yet on the whole they retained their
+positions and their black hulls were sharply silhouetted against
+the light horizon. Huge black clouds of smoke rose from their
+funnels and were blown across the horizon, giving the sky
+a peculiar streaky appearance.</p>
+
+<p>The swell rolled in, dull and sleepy, over the fine smooth
+sands of the <i lang="fr">plage</i>. The road facing the sea was open to traffic,
+but the spacious promenade outside, separated from the sea
+and <i lang="fr">plage</i> by an iron rail, was reserved for the German troops.
+At high tide the sea ascends to the foot of the stone wall of the
+promenade, whilst at low water it recedes some distance,
+leaving a wide belt of sand high and dry. This was now
+occupied by German horsemen who rode out into the water to
+refresh and harden their tired mounts.</p>
+
+<p>I called upon the commandant at Ostend, <i lang="de">Kapitän zur See</i>
+(naval captain) Tägert. He was staying on the first floor of
+the <i lang="fr">Hôtel Littoral</i>, and from his balcony we once again observed
+the British warships. He told me that he and his
+brother naval officers had arrived at Ostend early the same
+day, the 21st October. They had gone first to the <i>Majestic
+Hotel</i>, which was supposed to be the best in the town. The
+proprietor declared that he had no rooms available, which
+was not true, as the season was long since over. Possibly
+the name of the hotel explained why there was no room&mdash;for
+German officers. Instead of availing themselves of their
+right to insist on accommodation, the Germans, anxious to
+avoid a fuss, went to the <i lang="fr">Hôtel Littoral</i>, which was placed
+at their disposal from top to bottom. They subsequently
+found that they had no cause to repent the change. The army
+officers and doctors, on the other hand, were less amenable
+and settled down without further ado at the <i>Majestic Hotel</i>,
+where kitchen service and attendance were quickly working
+at full pressure.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill078"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_078_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/078_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>MILITARY POLICEMEN INSPECTING THE DAMAGE OUTSIDE THE “MAJESTIC” HOTEL
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[p. 267]</span></p>
+
+<p>Captain Tägert, a refined and conscientious man, immediately
+ordered that a room (by the way, the last available
+at the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i>) be placed at my disposal forthwith. I took
+possession at once. The corridor on the second floor led
+straight into the apartments overlooking the sea, the inner
+doors being already furnished with the name-plates of the
+German naval officers occupying them. The outer glass doors
+led to balconies with comfortable basket chairs. From these
+balconies we had an uninterrupted view of the sea and could
+watch the British squadron and its movements.</p>
+
+<p>From my splendid point of vantage I could enjoy at leisure
+the varying phases of a wonderful sunset. In the west the
+great ball was shining with a curious pink glow now and then
+running into yellow. The fleecy clouds near by were fringed
+with gold reflected in the glittering sea. The rest of the sky
+was overcast and a thin drizzle fell fitfully, whilst the windows
+on the front gleamed as if the houses were on fire. The British
+ships lay in the centre of the patch of sea turned golden by
+the rays of the setting sun. They had been bombarding the
+German positions all day and I could see the flashes from the
+guns, followed a long while after by the roar of the report.
+Now, at 5.20 p.m., German time, the thunder from the guns
+was so loud and insistent that the windows of the Kursaal
+shook and rattled. Half an hour later the firing ceased. We
+assumed that the squadron had gone north to replenish its
+ammunition. By this time the beam of light had shrunk and
+the golden tint had faded from the water. Twilight descended
+upon the sea and the blinking of a couple of gas-buoys began
+to assert itself. They are there to guide the shipping, but now
+the fairway was empty and deserted.</p>
+
+<p>During the day I had seen many civilians about, but
+towards evening they gradually disappeared. Nobody was
+allowed out after 9 p.m. or before 5 a.m. The streets themselves
+were not lighted, but several shops were kept with their
+lights burning until the former hour. On the promenade at
+the front there was not a single lamp alight&mdash;here one wandered
+in darkness among the German soldiers. Light issued, however,
+from many windows facing the sea. This was not
+thought risky, as the enemy vessels well knew their bearings
+in any case. It was not thought that the British ships would
+bombard Ostend, as the killing of a hundred or two of Germans
+and the evacuation of the place would not make up for the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[p. 268]</span>loss of the considerable British capital supposed to be invested
+in the town.</p>
+
+<p>I had been invited to regard myself as a member of the
+German naval officers’ mess for dinner and supper at the <i lang="fr">Hôtel
+Littoral</i>. When therefore we assembled at eight o’clock in the
+restaurant for the first time, I made the acquaintance of them
+all. Among my special friends, apart from the chief, were
+Captain-Lieutenant Bess, Lieutenant Haak, Staff-Surgeon
+Schönfelder and Doctor Kübler. We kept together during the
+next few days and went through many experiences which we
+shall never forget.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst we were sitting at table a report was handed in that
+light signals had been made from a church tower, clearly
+addressed to the British warships. The instructions issued to
+deal with this matter ordered a very thorough investigation of
+the circumstances. The day’s bombardment from the British
+ships had done no damage beyond killing a few horses. Apart
+from this the shells had found an “empty billet.”</p>
+
+<p>We sat up late talking, and Captain Bess told us about
+the sinking of the old “tin box” <i>Ariadne</i>, a cruiser of 3000
+tons, by the British on August 28th. Bess was navigating
+officer on board and he assured me that it takes some time
+before one’s nerves recover their equilibrium after the shock
+of such an experience. The <i>Ariadne</i> had been doing patrol
+duty in Jade Bight when in the morning of August 28th she
+was ordered to scour the sea north-west of Heligoland. The
+weather was misty and it was impossible to see far ahead.
+Suddenly a huge grey hulk loomed up through the fog. It was
+a British “Dreadnought,” and her heavy guns at once began
+to play. The first “coal box” flew right over the <i>Ariadne</i>, so
+close that several of the crew were flung against the deck by
+the air pressure. After that the shells kept raining over the
+doomed little cruiser, which immediately headed for the Jade
+Bight, her guns returning the fire as best she could. One shot
+after the other struck the <i>Ariadne</i>. After a while her stern
+was on fire and there was no possibility of bringing the powder
+magazine under water so as to avert a catastrophe. The fore-part
+of the ship also caught fire, but not in the bows, where
+the wounded had been taken and where it was still possible to
+make one’s way. Next the steering apparatus was hit and the
+ship seemed to want to make for the British vessel, but somehow
+or other it was put right again. Words cannot describe
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[p. 269]</span>the appalling noise which denoted each hit. A deafening
+crash resounded through the entire hull when the projectile
+struck its sides. The fire soon spread. Presently it became
+impossible to serve the guns. In the end the flames reached
+the parts of the ship where the ammunition was stored. Now
+began a terrible crackling and hissing as one projectile after
+the other exploded and shells and splinters poured out in every
+direction. Another “Dreadnought” dived through the fog,
+but did not take part in the fight, uneven enough already.
+The <i>Ariadne’s</i> commander and Bess were on the bridge, the
+plating of which was perforated from beneath by the exploding
+ammunition. The heat was unbearable, everything was
+wreathed in smoke, the deafening detonations followed closer
+and closer and the final catastrophe was clearly approaching.
+When the crew saw that the end might come at any moment
+they broke into a rousing cheer for the Emperor and another
+for the <i>Ariadne’s</i> commander. Then they sang the</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza" lang="de">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“Stolz weht die Flagge schwarz-weiss-rot</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">An unsres Schiffes Mast</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Dem Feinde weh, der sie bedroht,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Der diese Farben hasst!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Sie flattert an dem Heimatstrand</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Im winde hin und her,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Und fern vom teuren Vaterland</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Auf sturmbewegtem Meer.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Ihr wolln wir treu ergeben sein,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Getreu bis in den Tod,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Ihr wolln wir unser Leben weihn,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Der Flagge schwarz-weiss-rot. Hurra!”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_26_26" href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>&#x2060;</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_26_26" href="#FNanchor_26_26" class="label">[26]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Black, white and red our noble flag</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Up at our masthead flies&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Woe to the foe who scorns that flag,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">This ensign who defies!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">It gaily flutters in the breeze</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Upon our native strand</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And out on many storm-tossed seas</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Far from our fatherland.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Beneath it firm and true we’ll stand,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Our blood we’ll gladly shed,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And to our last breath will defend</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The black and white and red!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Hurrah!</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>But salvation was near at hand. The two cruisers <i>Danzig</i>
+and <i>Stralsund</i> showed up through the mist. The crew
+jumped overboard from the red-hot, burning ship. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[p. 270]</span>British disappeared. The commander and Bess would have
+been roasted had they remained longer at their post, and they
+too dived into the sea. As regards the latter, he did not
+recover consciousness until he found himself in a comfortable
+berth on board one of the rescue ships. The <i>Ariadne</i> had
+lost close on seventy men out of her full complement of three
+hundred.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended the first day which I spent with the German
+naval officers at Ostend, that glorious watering-place, at other
+times the rendezvous of <i lang="fr">la haute volée</i> and “the upper ten,”
+that pleasure-ground of innumerable good-for-nothings, where
+dissipated diplomats bathe their jaded bodies in the pure salt
+sea, where namby-pamby dandies flirt with idle, fascinating
+women. Now German imperial power stood like an impenetrable
+iron wall on the brink of the sea, with its spear
+pointed at the heart of England. The first goal had been
+reached, England&mdash;fearful of her world supremacy on the sea
+and jealous of the rapid commercial and economic rise of
+Germany&mdash;had made up her mind to join in the fight and had
+declared war on Germany. Now, if ever, was the opportunity
+to get at a hated rival&mdash;without too great a sacrifice of her
+own resources. But already German forces had reached the
+ocean shore. Antwerp had fallen, the city which Mr. Winston
+Churchill, like the Duke of Wellington of old, had wished to
+convert into a British base for operations on the Continent, a
+point from which the Belgians could be put to rights should
+they perchance become less patient and show less interest in the
+sacred cause. Yes, Antwerp&mdash;the city which was to be saved
+for Great Britain even if the rest of Belgium went under&mdash;had
+fallen, in spite of Britain’s protest and in spite of the showers
+of abuse which the proud British had poured over their
+honourable enemy. The greatest drama of the world’s history
+was in full swing. Were the Teutons to go under and the
+culture of the German “barbarians” to be wiped out? No,
+never! Such a purpose would require other means for its
+fulfilment than those hitherto tried by the Allies. The military
+position of Germany is too strong, and all attempts to crush
+her people are and must be hopeless. But woe to those who
+bear the blame for the agony of the vanquished!</p>
+
+<p>It was with a queer feeling that I went to bed in a room
+where I could look upon a sea from which British warships
+had only a moment ago been bombarding the coast a few
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[p. 271]</span>miles away. The fire might easily have been directed on
+Ostend itself. But this did not come to pass. At least I heard
+nothing, for I slept like a log. When I awoke war had resumed
+its thunders in the west.</p>
+
+<p>22nd October. The British bombardment of the coastal zone
+south of Ostend continued throughout the morning and was
+still more severe than on the previous day. The window-panes
+in the hotel restaurant shook in their frames. We wondered
+whether the deeper sounds emanated from newly arrived
+German heavy artillery or from British naval guns.</p>
+
+<p>Two German infantry detachments were occupying a line
+running from north-west to south-east of the north-eastern
+side of the Yser Canal. On the south-west side of the canal
+the Belgians and British had entrenched themselves firmly;
+they also held Nieuport. The immediate German object was
+to command the crossings of the canal, which in itself formed
+a very valuable defensive work in the hands of the Allies. The
+villages of Leffinghe and Slype and the road between them,
+running south-east of Middelkerke, had been bombarded by
+the enemy. Leffinghe was only six, Slype nine kilometres from
+Ostend. The positions of the Germans were enormously
+strong. They clearly did not intend to let go the advantage
+they had gained, although encircled by fire from the north,
+north-west, west, south-west and south, both from the sea
+and from the land side. The Allies on the other hand realised
+that every German advance west-south-westward, that is to
+say towards Nieuport, Dunkerque and Calais, was, to say the
+least, fatal to themselves. Hence the remnants of the Anglo-Belgian
+Army, which had thought fit to leave Antwerp before
+it was too late, had halted in its retreat after receiving considerable
+reinforcements both from France and England, and
+had offered a desperate resistance in fortified positions in the
+western sector of Belgian Flanders, intersected by canals
+and waterways. It will readily be understood what important
+British interests were at stake. As soon as England herself
+was in danger, the famous phlegm was transformed into unbridled
+hysteria.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Tägert now suggested an excursion to Middelkerke,
+situated on the coast, eight kilometres from Ostend.
+Captain-Lieutenant Bess and his adjutant were to accompany
+me. We drove in the covered car of the former, following the
+inner sea-road parallel with the shore, but separated from it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[p. 272]</span>by intermittent rows of houses. Towards Middelkerke the
+life and traffic increased. Long food and ammunition columns
+were being brought up to the rear of the troops. In a street
+in the little town the men were busy hiding the light canvas
+awnings of the provision wagons with twigs and branches,
+and the vehicles looked like so many leafy bowers. Yet I was
+unpleasantly impressed by the sight of this kind of leafy bower,
+for in my mind it was too closely associated with impending
+danger. As I have said before, this sort of disguise is necessitated
+by the enemy’s air scouting.</p>
+
+<p>We asked a picket where the General-in-Command von
+Werder had his quarters, and were directed to a modest little
+house. The General was busy at the moment receiving details
+of the situation in this part of the theatre of war. A report
+on the subject had to be sent to Main Headquarters. As soon
+as this matter was disposed of, we were shown in. The General
+received us with the greatest kindness. He was in brilliant
+spirits and possesses in a high degree that immovable equanimity
+required in difficult situations. Lieutenant-Colonel
+Wittisch was told to lend us an officer familiar with the field
+of battle, who would take us to a point of vantage from which
+we could obtain a view of the situation without too much
+exposing ourselves to the enemy’s fire. The Colonel asked
+whether he might not undertake this job himself, and so we
+promptly seated ourselves in his open car and continued on
+our way along the sea-front under cover of the only row of
+houses separating us from the sea. These houses are, however,
+intersected by several narrow streets like the openings in a
+gallery, through which we caught sight of the sea and two
+destroyers which had detached themselves from the British
+squadron and were now two kilometres away. They were
+clearly out to observe what was passing on shore, but did not
+fire, at least not at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the last of the stone houses at the western
+end of Middelkerke we alighted from the car and proceeded
+on foot some distance south to the crest of the highest dune in
+the neighbourhood. At this point we were only a little over
+seven kilometres from Nieuport, which was in the hands of
+the Allies. We had with us a map of the neighbourhood and
+commanded a wide radius of the blood-drenched country.
+Below the crest of the dune, to the south-west, stood the
+nearest German batteries. They were just on the point of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[p. 273]</span>hurling their messengers of death into the allied positions.
+At every shot we heard that peculiar whining, whistling
+sound of the projectile, and presently a puff of smoke indicated
+the point of impact at the other end. All life in the vicinity
+of this target is destroyed. A hit can kill twenty men and
+wound as many or more. Yesterday British shells had been
+raining down from Nieuport and they had reached the
+spot where we now stood. It is difficult to avoid a feeling
+of excitement, and one’s attention is strained to the utmost
+when witnessing an artillery duel over a large area and hearing
+the incessant heavy dull booming of cannon.</p>
+
+<p>With the map in his hand and with really impressive calm
+Colonel Wittisch explained everything that was passing in
+front of us; now and again we stole a glance at the destroyers
+outside, wondering whether they would soon begin to shoot.
+In the south-west we noticed the little white puffs of smoke
+which denote the bursting of shrapnel shells.</p>
+
+<p>When everything had been fully explained to me, the Colonel
+thought that it was not advisable to remain any longer. There
+were four of us, and we were within range of all commanding
+points in the vicinity. If we were noticed from the south side,
+it would be assumed that we were directing the German
+artillery and the enemy’s guns would be trained on us. It
+is a peculiar sensation to know that one may at any moment
+become a target.</p>
+
+<p>So we walked down from the dunes and back to the car.
+From the mouth of one of the little streets running down to
+the sea we observed the two incredibly impudent destroyers,
+which we were told had been stealing along the coast for the
+last three days. They had gradually come nearer and nearer,
+since they noticed no evil intentions from the coast at Middelkerke.
+Through our glasses we could see the officers on the
+bridge and the crew moving about on deck. They on their
+part could see us with equal clearness, but I suppose they did
+not think us worth powder and shot from a revolving gun.
+After a while they seemed to make a large sweep, one to the
+south-west, west, north-west and north-north-west, and the
+other to the north-east, north and north-north-west, gradually
+approaching the remainder of the squadron, no doubt to report
+what they had seen. Of the squadron itself only five
+ships were discernible through the mist.</p>
+
+<p>Now we could proceed without any risk on our return
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[p. 274]</span>journey along <i lang="fr">La Digue</i>, the broad, hard road skirting the
+shore, with its excellent view of the sea. Here all civilian
+traffic was forbidden and no lights were allowed in the windows.
+In the evenings and at night the darkness was complete.</p>
+
+<p>After supper, at ten o’clock, I was sitting once more on my
+balcony, the two gas-buoys were burning and the swell was
+breaking drowsily upon the shore, drowning the steps of the
+sentries in the street. But I could see the soldiers by the
+light from the windows. They moved mostly in pairs, whilst
+other soldiers stood chatting in little groups, leaning against
+the iron railing of the promenade and watching the sheaves
+of fire from the British guns. In the course of ten minutes I
+counted 141 shots; probably there were more, as several
+might have coincided. In ten hours this meant 8500 shots, an
+expensive business.</p>
+
+<p>So I went to bed at Ostend for the second time. I left the
+balcony doors open&mdash;it was too tempting to lie awake awhile
+to watch the clear sky and listen to the harmonies of the
+ocean swell and the booming guns. Gradually I drifted into
+a deep and refreshing sleep.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[p. 275]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">
+    CHAPTER XVI
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">OSTEND BOMBARDED</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">ON Friday the 23rd October I was called by Dr. Kübler,
+who suggested a walk to the lighthouse and to the
+old fortifications. So we wandered off to the new
+outer harbour, where a sailor rowed us across the canal, whereupon
+we continued to the flying station, where we arrived just
+in time to watch the elegant ascent of a <i lang="de">Taube</i>, which circled
+up to a considerable height and then disappeared towards the
+south-west.</p>
+
+<p>The lighthouse rears its white minaret fifty-eight metres
+above the ground. Tempting as it was, we refrained from
+climbing up to the light to have a look at Nieuport, Furnes
+and Dunkerque, which can be seen from the top.</p>
+
+<p>Instead we traced our steps to the ancient fort and its moat,
+its earth-clad slopes and its five guns dating from 1862. We
+returned by the electric tramway. The car was filled with
+soldiers and civilians. The former included an old Landsturm
+man, who told us that he had three sons in the war, but where
+they were and whether they were still alive, he had not the
+faintest notion. “I don’t grudge their dying,” he said, “one
+must sacrifice all for the Fatherland.”</p>
+
+<p>On returning to the promenade, we settled down on a bench
+by the Kursaal and examined the British squadron through
+our glasses. The sky was exceptionally clear, the weather
+radiant; even the sun came out to have a peep at us.</p>
+
+<p>Just before half-past twelve Captain-Lieutenant Bess came
+to fetch me. He had just returned from Middelkerke, where
+he had been with Admiral von Schröder. He told me that the
+road in which yesterday we had seen the foliage-enshrouded
+wagons was now anything but safe, and that in fact a couple
+of shells had been dropped there. Even the soldiers were forbidden
+to show themselves on the front. Bess dissuaded me,
+therefore, from attempting a second visit to Middelkerke.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[p. 276]</span></p>
+
+<p>He had another suggestion, combined with less risk, namely
+to visit a couple of his companies of marines and inspect their
+quarters. A company and a half had been billeted in the
+theatre, which was only a few steps away. Outside stood a
+couple of 6-cm. so-called <i lang="de">Bootskanonen</i> (boat guns), neat-looking
+little guns of the same grey colour as the armoured
+ships. Their ammunition wagons were lined up along the
+pavement.</p>
+
+<p>We stepped into the large, handsome foyer. The men had
+rigged up their beds along the walls&mdash;mattresses and pillows
+had been requisitioned from the Mayor of Ostend. Their arms
+and clothes were hanging on chairs and coat-hangers and the
+tables were littered with their cups and crockery.</p>
+
+<p>The first-tier boxes had also been converted into sleeping
+berths or armouries. The whole of the corridor was filled
+with beds. We had a look into one or two boxes where the
+marines were sitting cleaning their rifles, patching their clothes
+or polishing their accoutrements. In front of us we had the
+handsomely decorated well of the theatre. Only three months
+ago this had been the scene of every conceivable extravagance
+from Paris, Brussels and London. From the box where we
+were standing we would have been gazing down on row upon
+row of elegant ladies intent on displaying their charms and
+jewellery. Not long ago coquettish, languishing glances had
+been exchanged across the stalls which now stood bare and
+empty. Then life was a whirl of dissipation and excitement.
+The days had been spent in bathing and in lounging in the
+high-backed basket chairs or basking on the sun-baked sands.
+Excursions, dinners and festivities had followed close upon one
+another and the evenings had been spent in the theatre in
+careless idleness. Then suddenly the curtain was rung down
+for the last time, and the war broke out.</p>
+
+<p>We could not resist the temptation to pay a visit to the
+theatre kitchen. Here stood the fat, jovial, naval cooks in
+their long white coats and caps and sleeves tucked up. The
+caldrons were on the boil and appetising fumes filled the
+atmosphere. Needless to say I was made to taste the dishes,
+and a gigantic portion of <i>goulash</i> in a soup plate was put in
+front of me&mdash;stewed meat, potatoes, vegetables and broth.
+“Excellent! This is even better than the food we get at the
+hotel,” I thought to myself. I ate my dish with great gusto.
+No wonder that German soldiers are so strong, fresh and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[p. 277]</span>contented-looking when they are fed like this. If I were to be
+put on field diet for a long while and could choose between
+officers’ and men’s fare, I would unhesitatingly take the latter.
+It is wholesome, nourishing, and tasty food, and does not
+encumber the soldiers’ stomachs with unnecessary ballast. That
+the state of health in the German Army is as good as it is, is to a
+great extent due to the excellent and ample hot food.</p>
+
+<p>But it is now five minutes to one and we must not be late
+for dinner at the officers’ mess, for which I, for my part, had
+thoroughly spoilt my appetite. We walked up the <i lang="fr">Rue du
+Cerf</i>. At the corner of this street and the <i lang="fr">Digue de Mer</i>, the
+road fronting the sea, stands the <i lang="fr">Hôtel Littoral</i>. The former
+street lies a few metres lower than the <i lang="fr">Digue de Mer</i>, which is
+perched on the dune skirting the sea. The streets are paved
+with granite slabs. The last bit of the <i lang="fr">Rue du Cerf</i> forms a
+slight rise. Up at the corner of the <i lang="fr">Hôtel Littoral</i> a group of
+officers were standing in animated conversation, pointing to
+the west and busily using their glasses. We went up to them
+wondering what was up. The British squadron lay in its
+accustomed place to westward and west-south-westward,
+perhaps a little closer in than usual&mdash;about seven or eight
+kilometres away.</p>
+
+<p>A destroyer had just detached itself from the rest and was
+making at full speed for Ostend, parallel with the coast, as
+close as possible to the shore. Presently another destroyer
+appeared, following in the wake of the first. What could they
+want, these ruffians? Strong language was heard&mdash;it was a
+piece of consummate impudence to come steaming right under
+our noses like this. Evidently they were reconnoitring&mdash;but
+what insolence, they must have known that we had occupied
+Ostend! Aha! they suspect that there are submarines and
+destroyers in the inner harbour, and want to see whether they
+can detect anything from outside!</p>
+
+<p>Well, whatever their intentions are, we may as well go
+upstairs and get ready for dinner. I stepped on to my balcony,
+feeling convinced that by this time the destroyers would have
+turned back or gone out to sea again. But no! They kept
+on the same tack as before, and at a speed which made the
+foam break over their bows. My neighbours, Bess, Haak and
+Kübler, were also out on their balconies with their glasses.
+“Astounding insolence,” I heard them mutter. There will be
+something doing presently, I thought to myself, and went in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[p. 278]</span>to stow away my diaries, sketches and photographs in a handbag.
+Once more I cast a glance at the bold destroyers outside.
+Beneath my balcony I heard an officer shouting out orders in
+a stentorian voice to the effect that the street was to be cleared
+and that not a man must show himself on the front, except the
+sentry at the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i>, but a moment later, he, too, was called in
+for <i lang="de">Deckung</i>.</p>
+
+<p>My friends had disappeared; I looked into their rooms, they
+were empty. Then I took my glasses and hurried downstairs.
+Bess had warned his colleagues against remaining on the
+balconies, and he thought that I had gone down already.</p>
+
+<p>In the elegant, carpeted vestibule of the hotel, where sofas,
+tables and chairs stood in little groups between the huge
+green plants, officers hurried to and fro, and it was plain that
+something unusual was pending. “Are they going to shoot?”
+I asked Bess. “Oh yes, they are going to shoot all right,” he
+answered with stoical calm. Through the glass doors of the
+vestibule I could see clearly what was going on at the end of
+the <i lang="fr">Rue du Cerf</i>. Admiral von Schröder was in command and
+I caught sight of Captain Tägert and his men of the naval
+brigade, hurrying to bring up the two 6-cm. naval guns and
+their ammunition carts which we had seen a moment ago at
+the theatre&mdash;there was no other artillery available in the town
+for the moment. The street had been cleared of civilians,
+and there were no military visible save those required for
+serving and directing the little battery. I was not allowed outside,
+of course, but I had time nevertheless to admire the
+astounding swiftness and precision with which the two guns
+were unlimbered, loaded and the range found: “Load!
+Ready! Fire!”</p>
+
+<p>The first shot rang out. The report re-echoed down the
+street and the window-panes in the hotel rattled in their
+frames. I went into the restaurant, whence I had an uninterrupted
+view of the sea and the leading destroyer. A
+moment later came the second shot. The first shell struck the
+water right in front of the destroyer, but it was impossible to
+tell whether it did any damage. The second shell also struck
+quite close to the target.</p>
+
+<p>There were several officers in the restaurant. I was standing
+with Dr. Algermissen of Colmar, Lieutenant in the First
+Naval Reserve. The room was very large, with eight windows
+looking on to the sea and two others on to the <i lang="fr">Rue du Cerf</i>.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[p. 279]</span>At the former little tables stood laid, and on the east side of
+the room stood the large table where we used to take our meals.
+Along the centre line the restaurant was supported by four
+solid pillars. Algermissen and I were standing at the second
+window from the west.</p>
+
+<p>Directly the German shots had been fired, the two destroyers
+swung round to port and at the same moment opened fire.
+Their guns seemed to flash out straight at us. <i lang="de">Deckung!</i>
+shouted Algermissen, and we retired immediately behind our
+pillar, forgetting that it would have been blown away like
+paper if a shell had struck it. Some of those in the room followed
+our example, but others contemptuously disdained even this
+measure of precaution, which perhaps they considered insufficient.
+The leading destroyer was now about 1400 metres
+away. Its first shell fell short and dropped into the sea just
+in front of the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i>. Tall columns of white spray showed
+where it had struck. Immediately we turned our glasses
+on to the enemy vessel. There is another flash. Once more
+we take cover, but only for the body, not for the head, for one
+simply <em>cannot</em> take one’s eyes off such a spectacle, whatever
+the cost! But it would be vain to attempt to describe the
+excitement which we felt between the spurt of flame from
+the gun and the impact of the shell. We felt, indeed we were
+conscious that <em>we</em> were the target of the sinister monster
+speeding towards us through the air. It was not fear, for if
+anyone had offered to take me to a perfectly safe spot in the
+centre of the town, I should not have stirred. It was a mixture
+of breathless excitement, intense interest and a fixed
+determination not to miss the smallest detail of what was
+passing. That was why we kept our glasses fixed, now on the
+boat, now on the point of impact. One projectile ricochetted
+from the surface of the water, sprang aloft and struck the
+roof coping, fifty-eight paces away from us, as I subsequently
+measured. Another described a most peculiar path&mdash;how it did
+it I cannot imagine&mdash;but in the end it landed on the stone
+promenade nearest the sea and buried itself beside the iron
+railing without bursting. There it lay for a couple of days,
+and the guard saw to it that nobody went up to interfere with
+the fearsome object. Twice we saw and heard the shells
+strike the water, dancing like flat stones over the surface,
+and finally crashing into the quay wall. First we saw the flash
+from the British gun, then the impact on striking the water&mdash;then
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[p. 280]</span>came the report. A second or so later a horrible crash
+struck our ears, announcing that some house frontage had
+been hit, and followed by the clatter of bricks and stones
+smashing on to the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>The second destroyer, which I could not see from my point
+of vantage, was blazing away as cheerfully as the first. As we
+could not even see <em>when</em> she fired, the protection of our pillar
+was still more illusory. The two German guns fired five
+or six shots each. Whether they did any damage, I do not
+know. As the street sloped upward towards the front, the
+recoil was very severe, and the guns had to be pulled up afresh
+for each round. The laying of them was combined with considerable
+difficulty. The whole affair was over in twelve
+minutes. The destroyers turned almost completely round and
+steamed with all speed back towards the west, firing continuously.
+According to the German officers they fired about
+thirty rounds. They also used machine guns. But the
+distance grew, and after a while the firing ceased altogether.</p>
+
+<p>One can hardly be in a more dangerous situation than the
+one we had been exposed to. We had been right in the middle
+of the shell fire, and yet got away unscathed. The shells had
+struck, some in front of us, some to the east of us, and the
+machine guns seemed to be trained on the lower floor of the
+house adjoining the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i> on the left. Several shots had
+made their way through its windows. We afterwards discussed
+this remarkable whim of fate.</p>
+
+<p>“How is it that not a single shot hit our hotel?” I asked.
+“The British ought to have seen that the German fire was
+directed from our street corner, and the men serving the guns
+were the only human beings in sight on the whole front.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it might seem so, but with the rapid movement of
+the ships it must be difficult to tell where the fire comes from.
+Possibly they may have had their attention fixed on the
+harbour, in the belief that we had torpedo-boats lying there.
+Several shots went in that direction.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hear,” said another, “that the <i>Majestic Hotel</i> was
+struck several times, and that one or two officers there were
+killed. The <i>Majestic</i> is a large white monumental building,
+and the British no doubt thought that they were making a
+good haul.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is very significant,” added a third, “that they honoured
+us with their attention just at one o’clock when they knew that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[p. 281]</span>all the officers would be at dinner. Probably they thought
+that they would get past unimpeded after carrying out their
+reconnaissance before we were ready.”</p>
+
+<p>What can have been the intention of the British? It may
+perhaps have been&mdash;apart from the general reconnaissance to
+discover what the Germans had in the harbour&mdash;to tempt the
+German artillery out of its hiding-place. Their persistent fire,
+although the German reply was so slight, would hardly have
+any other explanation. They gained nothing by the affair,
+and did themselves and their Belgian Allies a certain amount
+of material damage.</p>
+
+<p>When all was quiet again we settled down to our meal, after
+which Bess, Kübler and I went over to the <i>Majestic Hotel</i>.
+On the way we passed the house where a shell had lodged in
+the coping. Some men and women were just issuing from its
+gates with a lusty-looking child in a perambulator. The elders
+looked frightened and perturbed. “Where are you off to?”
+we asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Surely you can’t expect us to remain in a house which has
+been shot at,” said one of the men, and added with a touch
+of sardonic humour, “these are strong pills for little children&mdash;we
+are going to move away.”</p>
+
+<p>In the 1910 edition of “Baedeker” the <i>Majestic Hotel</i> appears
+under the name of <i lang="fr">Grand Hotel des Bains</i>. Since then it has
+changed its name and probably its proprietor. Its handsome
+white frontage had been badly knocked about by the six
+shells which we had counted, and which had torn great gaping
+holes in the walls. On the pavement outside lay huge piles
+of stone, bricks and masonry, and we noticed the fragments
+of one of the ornamental plaster angels with wings lifted for
+flight, but which nevertheless, by the irony of fate, had
+ended its days in millions of fragments on the stone pavement.</p>
+
+<p>We went into the lobby, where cupboards, tables and chairs
+lay in picturesque disorder. An hour ago the restaurant had
+been one of the most elegant in Europe. Its floor was laid
+with rich red Brussels carpets, the walls were decorated in
+white and gold and mirrors, with magnificent chandeliers
+hanging from the ceiling. Now the whole room was a picture
+of the most ghastly devastation. Two shells had entered just
+by the lower part of the long row of windows. Their splinters
+had torn gaping holes in walls and ceilings. The plaster
+ornaments had fallen down and now lay shivered into fragments,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[p. 282]</span>and the carpets had almost disappeared beneath the
+thick white dust. The windows had been smashed to atoms.
+Mirrors had cracked into all sorts of curious starry shapes
+which threatened to collapse altogether if touched. All the
+furniture lay about in little bits. The tablecloths had been
+torn to shreds. Yet in the corners of the room, more particularly
+the western corner, the tables were still standing, but
+glasses and crockery had, of course, been smashed. I noticed
+the bases of claret and champagne glasses still standing, whilst
+the bowls had been shivered to pieces, leaving an edge like an
+irregular saw blade.</p>
+
+<p>When the bombardment began some fifty officers had assembled
+together for dinner in this room, and some of them had
+already begun to eat. Most of them had been seated in the
+western end of the room, and had thus miraculously escaped
+death. But at a window in the eastern corner of the room a
+surgeon, Dr. Lippe, had sat down with an Adjutant of the
+Naval Brigade, and they had already begun their meal when
+the bombardment commenced. A shell had burst its way
+through the lower half of this very window. Probably the
+hotel had already been struck by a couple of shells, and as
+the two gentlemen had perhaps felt that they were rather too
+exposed where they were, it seems that Dr. Lippe had got up
+to go away, but he got no further than the other end of the
+table when he was literally torn to shreds by the shell, which
+struck him right in the back. What was left of his body
+lay flung forward on the floor, the head resting on the arms
+in a pool of blood. All that was left of the uniform was a
+few ragged tatters. A piece of one of his legs was found under
+a table at the other end of the room, and all the rest of him,
+in the form of blood-stains, organs and bowels and their contents,
+were spattered about the white walls and ceiling and
+the tablecloths. Dr. Schönfelder, who had hurried to the spot,
+could do nothing but order the remains of his colleague to be
+gathered together in a tablecloth and carried to a mortuary.
+The Adjutant, who was badly wounded in the head, was taken
+to the nearest hospital. A fine-looking Landsturm soldier,
+who was in the restaurant together with his son, told me that
+all the other diners had got out of it alive, but most of them
+had been hurled to the ground by the air pressure, and some
+had been cut and bruised by flying splinters. They were
+dazed for the moment, but soon recovered.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill079"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_079_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/079_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE WESTERN END OF DINING-ROOM AT THE “MAJESTIC” SEEN FROM
+THE STREET. ONE SHELL HAD CRASHED THROUGH THE UPPER PART
+OF THE WINDOW
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[p. 283]</span></p>
+
+<p>Fate is indeed inscrutable. Why should he, who saw the
+danger and was on the point of seeking a safer place, be overtaken
+by death, whilst we, who stopped to observe the spectacle
+from another room, were spared? I was told afterwards that
+our post had been far from safe. In a confined space the risk
+is always far greater than out in the open. Strictly speaking
+the gunners at the street corners were far safer than we. So it
+came to pass that the visitors at the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i> had no reason to
+complain of the inhospitable treatment they received at the
+<i>Majestic</i>. If the German naval officers had been well received
+there, some of us might well have shared Dr. Lippe’s fate.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill080"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_080_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/080_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A “DIRECT HIT” ON A HOUSE NEAR THE HOTEL LITTORAL
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>A great change suddenly came over Ostend with the altered
+situation. Counsels were divided as to what to do. Most
+people seemed to think that the town would be exposed to
+renewed firing, but others thought it unlikely that the night
+would bring a fresh bombardment. Orders were issued that
+nobody, not even the soldiers, was to be allowed on the front
+without special permission. All of the frontage looking on to
+the sea was to be cleared of people, excepting the guards at
+the street corners. In the evening and at night there must
+be no light whatever in the windows looking on to the sea.
+My friends at the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i> therefore decided to move over to
+the <i lang="fr">Hôtel de la Couronne</i> opposite the railway station, where
+a room was also prepared for me. Our luggage was thereupon
+transferred to our new abode in two baggage carts.</p>
+
+<p>We ourselves remained, however, at the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i> until the
+evening, and some of us sat in the dark to keep Lieut. Haak
+company, as he had been ordered to take a battery to the zone
+beyond Middelkerke. He ate his supper, smoked his cigarette,
+bade us good-bye and started off with his sailors, horses and
+guns. The rest of us took our supper at the usual time in the
+dimly lit lobby, whereupon we said good-bye to the amiable
+proprietor and servants, and brought our memorable visit in
+the house to an end. From the corner of the <i lang="fr">Rue du Cerf</i> we
+cast a glance westward, where the sky was lit up by the fire
+from the British guns. Then we marched off to <i lang="fr">La Couronne</i>
+through the dim and silent streets in a darkness unbroken
+but for the light from an occasional lamp invisible from the
+sea.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[p. 284]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">
+    CHAPTER XVII
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">TWO MORE DAYS ON THE CHANNEL COAST</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">THE night was calm and still, and when in the morning
+of the 24th October I was called by Dr. Schönfelder’s
+<i lang="de">Bursche</i> (servant), he assured me that no shells had
+fallen on Ostend whilst I had been asleep. But the roar of
+the artillery duel over at Nieuport was nevertheless the first
+sound that greeted my ears&mdash;an incessant hammering at the
+last remaining little corner of the Kingdom of Belgium. At
+midday it was reported that a couple of British ships had been
+hit, whereupon the entire squadron vanished in the fog.</p>
+
+<p>The day was spent in visiting the troops and transports
+bound for the Yser Canal front, the wounded in hospitals and
+the Belgian prisoners in the Kursaal. The latter were but a
+small contingent of some ten men. They, too, had been told
+that the Russians were only a hundred kilometres from Berlin.
+What they said <i lang="fr">en passant</i> about the British policy in Belgium
+and its result, I simply cannot repeat.</p>
+
+<p>The proprietor of the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i>, where I looked in for a moment
+in passing, gave the following details of recent happenings.
+When the Germans were pushing forward against
+Antwerp, numberless bands of fugitives kept swarming into
+Ostend. The hotels were crammed and there was a life and
+bustle in the town such as had never been equalled even in
+the season. One ship after the other carried the fleeing
+inhabitants to England and France. The great majority went
+to Folkestone, the better-off to Eastbourne, Brighton and
+Bournemouth. But at Dunkerque no one was allowed to
+land. The vessels arriving there had to continue to Havre.
+Any sort of craft was good enough, even sailing boats, launches
+and row-boats. The first person who fled to England was a
+gentleman from Brussels who had already withdrawn to
+Ostend with his family. When a German <i lang="de">Taube</i> on September
+24th dropped a couple of bombs over that town, he interpreted
+this as a message and a warning that the Germans were on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[p. 285]</span>the way. And so he fled precipitately across to London with
+his family.</p>
+
+<p>From about that time the number of fugitives increased
+daily. They came in ever-increasing throngs from Antwerp,
+Ghent, Bruges, Termonde and elsewhere. On October 12th
+the last shipload of fugitives left the town, and after swarming
+with life like a beehive, it now became empty and deserted.
+A few members of the Belgian Cabinet remained, but on the
+13th they, too, left by a Government steamer, the <i>Aventi</i>.
+They had been staying at the <i>Majestic</i> and <i lang="fr">Littoral</i>&mdash;the latter
+had also been the residence of His Excellency Vandervelde.</p>
+
+<p>By the 14th and 15th of October there were no steamers left
+at Ostend for the fresh bands of fugitives who kept on arriving,
+and anything in the nature of fishing-smacks was eagerly
+snapped up. The reports of the advance of the German legions
+became louder and more insistent, and the civil population
+which remained was in a state of the tensest excitement,
+expecting to see them march in at any moment. Two hours
+before the first Germans appeared the last Belgian lancer,
+without helmet or sword, flung himself on his horse and
+galloped down the stone-paved road towards Middelkerke.
+The German “advance guard” was not formidable&mdash;it consisted
+of two cyclists and a horseman. It was then half-past
+ten in the morning, Belgian time. The last fishing-smack with
+sixty passengers had just cast off its moorings, but was compelled
+to return. The next few days saw the arrival of increasing
+bands of German troops, and then came the occurrences
+which I have just described.</p>
+
+<p>Now, on the 24th of October, the situation at Ostend was,
+to say the least, interesting. Everybody expected with imperturbable
+calm that something remarkable would happen.
+The possibility of an attempted landing was not overlooked.
+The Germans were prepared for it, at any rate. Anyone who
+had attempted such a step would have met with a warm
+reception, for large quantities of troops had been massed
+along the coast. At our hotel they realised, it seems, fairly
+plainly what was on foot. The stairs were thronged at all
+hours of the day with officers and men, and outside my door
+I heard late at night hurried conversations about dressings
+and bandages, ambulances and stretchers, and fresh batches
+of wounded who had been brought into the town and lodged in
+deserted empty houses.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[p. 286]</span></p>
+
+<p>On Sunday the 25th of October the weather was brilliantly
+fine and as warm as a summer’s day, but a thin film of vapour
+lay over the sea like a delicate veil.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Bess suggested a motor trip to Haak’s battery
+among the dunes beyond Mariakerke. So we started off down
+the <i lang="fr">Rue de Tourout</i>, dodged about awhile in the open country
+and finally found our friend Haak amongst his guns. His
+battery, consisting of four <em>French</em> 7.5-cm. guns, looked a very
+motley lot. The guns themselves had been taken at Maubeuge,
+the horses were Belgian, and the harness and saddlery English.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill081"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_081_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w90" src="images/081_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A MAUBEUGE GUN DOING DUTY AT MIDDELKERKE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>In order, without being seen from the sea, to reach the
+position&mdash;well concealed behind the crest of the dune&mdash;it had
+been necessary to pass through a communicating trench which
+led up to it. We were thus fairly safe and did not have to
+expose ourselves to any objectionable missiles which might be
+thrown ashore from the English destroyers. The guns with
+their grey-coloured shields were also practically invisible from
+outside, as there was nothing but a small embrasure in the
+dune wall to indicate where they stood.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill082"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_082_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/082_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>GROUP BESIDE ONE OF THE GUNS OF LIEUT. HAAK’s BATTERY. (FURTHEST TO THE LEFT ARE CAPT.-LIEUT. BESS AND
+LIEUT. HAAK)
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Officers and men had dug out caves for themselves, some
+covered with boards, some, for the lack of something better,
+with sticks and twigs. It looked quite homelike in their
+abodes. The sand of the dunes was soft to lie upon, albeit a
+little damp on account of the advanced autumn.</p>
+
+<p>In the ridge of the dune they had contrived a little niche
+with boarded floor, where an exceptionally powerful battery
+telescope had been adjusted on its stand in such a way that
+only the lenses showed above the crest. With the aid of this
+telescope we were able to scan the mist-enshrouded sea and
+the sandy, sunlit coast.</p>
+
+<p>We had just settled down on the edge of the communicating
+trench, where we sat as close together as in a crowded tramcar,
+when suddenly an officer up at the battery shouted, “<i lang="de">Deckung,
+Flieger!</i>” (“Cover, aviator!”) We looked up, and right
+above us soared an aeroplane at a very great height. “An
+English biplane,” somebody said. “No, I think I can see the
+Iron Cross under the wings,” answered another. But a third,
+lying on his back, with glasses focussed right on the thing, said
+quietly: “I can see the red English streamer.” We were then
+told to keep absolutely still. Everyone had to remain where
+he stood and no one was allowed to move. Otherwise the airman
+might have noticed the movement and bombs might be dropped
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[p. 287]</span>over the guns. Now and again he disappeared among the little
+white clouds; the rascal was evidently following the coast to
+see what the Germans were up to in the neighbourhood of
+Ostend. When he was at his nearest, we could hear the droning
+of his engine. As usual, it was with a certain feeling of satisfaction
+that I saw him diminish in size and gradually vanish.</p>
+
+<p>Once more we took our seat on the edge of the trench and
+were just being threatened with coffee when Haak, sweeping
+the misty horizon with his telescope, reported that a destroyer
+was in sight. We went up to have a look. Quite right; the
+outline of the boat was quite distinct, though faint. The
+distance was gauged at three kilometres. Things suddenly
+became livelier. One could not tell exactly what might happen.
+The coast batteries had fired on British ships earlier in the day
+and it was thought that two of them had been hit, seeing that
+the squadron withdrew. Perhaps it was now returning at full
+strength. We had reason to think that the ships were receiving
+heliographic signals from the coast. Yesterday a couple of
+spies had been caught, who could not give a satisfactory
+account of themselves and who, if convicted, would land in
+the churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>So the order rang out to man the guns. The men scuttled
+off to their posts like as many rats. “Ready to fire!” The
+first shot rang out, and the other three followed at short
+intervals. We could see where the shells struck from the
+cascade of spray that formed on striking the water, but could
+not tell whether any hits had been scored. In any case, the
+destroyer remained where she was. She seemed to take it
+very quietly but could not tell where the fire came from, and
+her crew had long been inured to the rough music.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill083"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_083_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/083_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>GUN CREW GETTING READY TO FIRE ON A BRITISH DESTROYER
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>On the way back we stopped a moment at Mariakerke and
+peered out from behind the cover of a house. A battery
+further west had also begun to fire and the little waterspouts
+were clearly discernible. But the destroyer’s guns had not
+seemed anxious to join in the tune and the boat soon disappeared
+in the mist.</p>
+
+<p>This had, however, given me an opportunity of seeing how a
+coast battery is worked and what sort of a time the officers
+and men have of it. Constant watchfulness day and night!
+“Ever ready!” That is their motto. The discipline is of the
+very strictest and the officers expect the most absolute and immediate
+obedience to their orders. The result is that the understanding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[p. 288]</span>between officers and men is always the very best.
+Such things as sour faces, grudging steps or disinclination to
+obey an order are absolutely unknown. Anyone showing
+symptoms of this kind would be regarded with contempt by
+everybody, and his life would be made unbearable by his own
+comrades. The German language has a special word, <i lang="de">Drückeberger</i>,
+for individuals of that type, but the type itself is
+extraordinarily rare. It is no secret how disciplinary shortcomings
+are punished in war time. But it is not in order to
+avoid punishment that the German forces on land and sea do
+their duty. It is because they all have a common end in view,
+Germany’s salvation in this terrible crisis, Germany’s victory
+over her enemies in every part of the world, Germany’s future
+and honour.</p>
+
+<p>On the way home we met an ammunition column clattering
+along at full speed. The drivers were riding at full “manœuvre
+trot” and the horses of some wagons had even broken into
+a gallop. The wagons with their murderous load rattled
+heavily and noisily over the stone-paved road. It was easy to
+tell that the men well knew there was no time to lose and that
+some coast battery was in urgent need of fresh ammunition.
+These columns, when really and seriously on the move, are a
+joy and a feast to the eye.</p>
+
+<p>A little further on we passed a contingent of fifty French
+prisoners who were being taken into safe custody under a
+German guard. The fighting had shorn their red and blue
+uniforms of their lustre, and the men themselves looked pale
+and tired. What a contrast to the marines and gunners we
+had just seen! But then joyous faces are not to be expected
+from prisoners of war.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon, accompanied by Bess and Schönfelder, I
+made another excursion along the ideal automobile road
+which skirts the coast north-eastward, just inside the long line
+of dunes.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill084"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_084_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w70" src="images/084_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>HALF OF CAPT.-LIEUT. BESS AND THE WHOLE OF THE AUTHOR ON THE WAY TO BLANKENBERGHE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>In the magnificent pavilion of the Royal (Knocke) Golf Club
+we inspected a platoon of marine infantry, who seemed to be
+having the time of their lives. <i>Via</i> Venduyne we went on to
+Blankenberghe, where the sea promenade resembled that of
+Ostend, except that the population had remained and in
+addition had been reinforced by numberless refugees from
+Brussels and elsewhere. The hotels had been taken possession
+of by well-to-do people, and the beach was filled with a motley
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[p. 289]</span>crowd of men, women and young girls; they all seemed more
+or less to be enjoying themselves. We met a couple of naval
+officers, among them a cheery and amusing corvette commander
+named Mönch. He told us that no British warships
+had been seen in this direction. The sea had probably been
+mined in this part. Not far north-east of Blankenberghe lies
+Zeebrugge, the port of Bruges. The two towns are connected
+by a canal, which might have been laid out with a ruler.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill085"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_085_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/085_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>DR. SCHÖNFELDER AND THE AUTHOR ON THE DUNES AT OSTEND
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>In the gloaming we drove past the great Belgian hospital
+on the eastern outskirts of Ostend. A funeral was taking
+place in its little cemetery. Several officers and a number of
+men were standing round the grave. The naval chaplain had
+just finished speaking and the band was playing a funeral
+march. The funeral was that of Chief-Surgeon Dr. Lippe,
+whose career had been ended yesterday by the shell from the
+British destroyer.</p>
+
+<p>In due course we got back once more to <i lang="fr">La Couronne</i> and
+assembled as usual for supper at eight o’clock. The restaurant
+is neither as large nor as fine as at the <i lang="fr">Littoral</i>, and we missed
+above all the drowsy music of the swell breaking on the beach.
+Our former large company has now been split up into several
+little groups. Bess, Schönfelder, Kübler and I stick together
+as before. The clock strikes ten, we dawdle over our coffee
+and cigars discussing the war, reciting Kipling and exchanging
+anecdotes. We laugh till our sides ache over Schönfelder’s
+desperate efforts to repeat quickly the words: “<i lang="fr">Didon dîna,
+dit-on, du dos d’un dodu dindon.</i>” But he got his revenge by
+confronting me with the following awkward problem: What
+does the following sentence sound like when spelt backward:
+“<i lang="de">Ein Neger mit Gazelle zagt im Regen nie</i>”?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_27_27" href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_27_27" href="#FNanchor_27_27" class="label">[27]</a> Spells the same backwards.</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the mood at our table, and such is the mood of
+the fighting men all along the front. Anxiety as to the result,
+nervousness, overwork, fear, are terms of which they do not
+know the meaning. Nothing made a deeper impression on
+me than this wonderful calm, this absolute certainty of
+victory everywhere, this incredible superabundance of physical
+energy and of matériel in men, horses and iron. It seemed
+to me that the German armies on the western front had not
+yet realised the irresistible strength which they had at their
+disposal. The apparent pause was a link in a strategic chain.
+When the moment for the great decision arrived, the army
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[p. 290]</span>would still be in possession of its full collective strength. As
+yet everything was running smoothly and easily, as if it had
+been merely a matter of some well-prepared, gigantic autumn
+manœuvre.</p>
+
+<p>As we were sitting there chatting, a petty officer from the
+Naval Brigade entered and announced to Dr. Schönfelder
+that fresh transports of wounded had just arrived from the
+vicinity of the Yser Canal. They had been accommodated
+temporarily in restaurants and public-houses and any other
+vacant houses that were available. The two doctors at once
+rose and said good night. To my question whether I might
+join them they said “by all means.” So we threw our rain-coats
+over us, for it was pouring in torrents, and marched out
+into the pitch-black night accompanied by the petty officer.</p>
+
+<p>At first he took us to a moderately lighted low-class eating
+house. The doctors threw off their tunics and put on their
+white operating coats. A couple of assistants from the naval
+hospital section were there to help them and had brought
+dressings, instruments and drugs in bags and cases. A table
+was brought out into the middle of the floor under the lights
+with a cushion covered with a towel for a pillow. “Bring in
+the first man,” ordered Dr. Schönfelder. A little, fair-haired,
+sturdily built man was carried in and placed on the table.
+“Name?”&mdash;“Korte.” “Regiment?”&mdash;“Eighth company
+of 35th Infantry Reserve.” “Where is your wound?”&mdash;“In
+the left calf.” His breeches, fitting tight over his leg, were
+slit open. The first dressing, saturated with pus and clotted
+blood and stiffened into a solid lump, was removed with
+scissors and knife. The wound looked very unpleasant, the
+flesh hung in shreds, the skin had been torn away and a nasty
+smell issued from the open sore. “Please look away,” said
+the Doctor as the soldier tried to look at his wound, and I
+did my best to attract his attention. Powder of iodoform was
+sprinkled upon the wound, a few little plugs of gauze were
+pressed in with pincers in order to keep the wound open for
+the escape of the pus and to induce the growth of fresh skin.
+Shreds of dead tissue were removed and a fresh dressing was
+applied. The man had been wounded four days previously at
+a new bridge over the Yser Canal. It was a splinter from a
+shrapnel shell that had hit him.</p>
+
+<p>“Next man!” He came in limping, supported by two
+ambulance men. His bullet had caught him in the head, his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[p. 291]</span>skull was cracked, but the brain was evidently uninjured. He
+was a wonderfully plucky chap. According to himself it was
+nothing to speak of, and he deferentially asked the doctor
+to be so kind as to see that he was put right as soon as possible
+as he wanted to get out again. He seemed a little peculiar,
+however, and seemed to have had a terrible shock. The hair
+was cut and shaved away, the wound was washed with sublimate
+and benzine. Tincture of iodine was painted on with
+a brush and a piece of gauze with iodoform applied. Thereupon
+he was bandaged so thoroughly that only mouth, nose
+and eyes were free.</p>
+
+<p>“Next man!” He was a Fleming in Belgian uniform.
+He had been shot through the seat, and was treated with the
+same care as the German soldiers. An ashen paleness lay over
+his features and he looked tired and done-up, but seemed very
+grateful for the attention given him as he was carried away
+from the table.</p>
+
+<p>And so it went on. Every time that “next man” was
+called, another wounded soldier was brought in for treatment,
+I had thought of making a note of the cases, but they were
+too many and were dealt with in double shifts by the two
+doctors.</p>
+
+<p>When the whole lot had been seen to, we went out guided
+by a lantern. The rain had formed great puddles in the street.
+“<i lang="de">Wer da?</i>” cried a sentry, but let us pass when he saw we
+were doctors. We were now taken to a house of three stories
+where every room was occupied. The few beds there were,
+had been requisitioned, and when they were all gone the
+wounded men were laid on the floor. Most of them were in
+a deep and heavy sleep, dead-tired after all they had gone
+through. Some snored in different keys, it was rest, rest,
+rest that they wanted above everything. Now and then we
+heard a deep sigh, but no groaning, no complaining. The
+French and Belgians are as submissive and as patient as the
+Germans.</p>
+
+<p>They are too many to be taken down to the emergency
+operating theatre. The doctors go from bed to bed, and now
+and then a light is projected to display the wound, which is
+treated in most cases in the way I have described. The
+broken victims of war show no fear of the doctor or of his intentions.
+On the contrary, they are glad that he is willing to
+help them. Clenched teeth and grimaces alone show what
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[p. 292]</span>they are going through. Never a sound of complaint, never
+a word about the pain, never an entreaty to be left in peace.
+In the eye of some of the badly wounded who will be cripples
+for life I sometimes seem to read the reflection: shall I ever
+see father and mother and brothers and sisters again, shall
+I ever settle down again in our quiet home as of yore, shall
+I ever go back to the workshop, to the mine, to the dock, to
+the tram, to the field, or whatever may have been his former
+occupation. The torn, dirty, soiled and sooty grey uniforms
+bore eloquent witness to the hardships they had gone through.</p>
+
+<p>We pass from house to house among the victims of war’s
+harvest. We were told it was the Belgians who had been
+attacking&mdash;a hopeless struggle for the last little strip which
+still remains to them of their country.</p>
+
+<p>Finally we came into a room containing among other
+wounded a soldier who had been shot through the left hand.
+“How do you feel?” asks the doctor. “Oh, pretty well,
+though it hurts a bit.”&mdash;“Come with me down into the bar;
+it is lighter there and we shall see what can be done.” A chair
+is brought for the soldier, the dressing is taken off, his hand
+is blue and swollen. “Will he keep his hand?” I whisper
+into the doctor’s ear. “I hope so, it is not a very serious
+wound.” The bullet has struck him as he was lying down
+in his trench and only had the left hand exposed. Whilst the
+wound is being examined, I ask the soldier: “Where are you
+from?”&mdash;“I am a Hamburg man, but live in Berlin.” “What
+is your occupation?”&mdash;“Actor,” he answers with pathetic
+humour. “It is a long way from the stage to the trench,” I
+remark, and he nods as he smiles his approval. By the light
+of the lamp I discerned a handsome, refined, clean-shaven
+face with Roman nose and solemn blue eyes. One could see
+that he was thinking of life’s great tragedy. Probably he had
+never played a better part than that which he had just performed
+out on the battlefield with the lurid glare of the shells
+for footlights. “<i lang="de">Gute Besserung!</i>” we said and patted him
+on the shoulder. “<i lang="de">Danke vielmals</i>,” he replied, and went up
+to his bed again.</p>
+
+<p>Now the round was over and we went out into the night.
+The rain was pelting down, but the sound of it was drowned
+by the thunder of the cannonade which after an hour’s cessation
+had now since 10 o’clock become more violent than ever.
+No human beings were to be seen, only here and there a sentry
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[p. 293]</span>with the rain pouring off his greatcoat. As we passed St.
+Peter’s and St. Paul’s the clocks struck twelve slowly and deliberately.
+It was a terrible night for the soldiers in the open
+trenches, which must by now have been half-full of water.
+I could not take my thoughts off them as I entered the light
+and cosy warmth of <i lang="fr">La Couronne</i>. But ask them if they would
+like to change with you, and the gruffness of the answer will
+surprise you: “No, thanks, warm beds there will be enough
+of at home when the fighting is over. Just now we are out on
+the country’s business, and in the trenches we stop even if
+we are up to the neck in water and if it rains brimstone from
+the heavens!” Such things as sentimentality and fuss are
+utterly unknown to the German soldiers. They <em>know</em> what
+they are doing and they want to do nothing but their duty.</p>
+
+<p>October 26th was my last day in Ostend. As nothing
+startling seemed about to happen in the immediate future, I
+thought I might as well return to Brussels, but now Bess came
+with the suggestion that we should take a little trip to the
+stores and depots in the inner harbour, to which I readily
+assented&mdash;Brussels, after all, was only a couple of hours away
+and could wait. The stores contained all sorts of spare parts
+for ships and their engines, plates, propellers, screws, cables,
+compasses, a surfeit of useful things which might be wanted
+at any moment. We likewise inspected a training-ship now
+used for accommodating troops.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we were busy over our inspection, we heard four
+sharp reports from the sea. It was not the usual firing in the
+west, the sound came from the north and the source of it could
+not be far distant. Is it the English torpedo-boats? we wondered
+as we hurried into our car and drove down towards the
+beach past the lighthouse. On the way we met a naval officer
+who told us that the reports came from mines, which had
+detonated on their own account. Some ten such explosions
+had been heard during the night, and the waterspouts thrown
+up by the four we heard had been visible from the coast. If
+we cared and had patience enough to sit and wait among the
+dunes, the lieutenant had no doubt that we should see some
+more.</p>
+
+<p>So we went down to the belt of dunes north-west of the
+lighthouse, where some men of the naval brigade were busy
+digging in a battery of guns mounted on a temporary plank
+emplacement. They were also digging trenches in the dunes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[p. 294]</span>for themselves and their ammunition boxes. Bess showed
+the soldiers how to mask the guns in the best possible way
+with grass and plants.</p>
+
+<p>We had not been there very long before a dark column of
+water flung itself into the air on the horizon. We estimated
+its height at thirty metres and the distance, calculated from
+the interval between sight and sound, at 5.6 kilometres. The
+column was almost black, as if the water had been mixed with
+slime from the bottom and resembled a naphtha fountain in
+the Balakhani. We at once sent a man to fetch chart and
+compasses. I myself had my kodak ready, but was too late
+to snap this first explosion.</p>
+
+<p>However, it was not many minutes before the next water
+column spurted up from the surface of the sea in the same north-north-westerly
+direction as the other and accompanied by the
+same deafening report. This time I was just quick enough to
+get a picture. A moment later two other mines exploded,
+this time to the north-north-east and only about 3.3 kilometres
+away. We waited for two more explosions at 3 and
+4.3 kilometres respectively, and had then had enough.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill086"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_086_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/086_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A SELF-IGNITING MINE EXPLODES
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The bearings of the six mines were pricked on the chart and
+in this way the officers obtained the necessary data for determining
+the position of the mine-field. Possibly it extended
+right across the Channel. The mines we had noticed exploded,
+curiously enough, in couples. They had clearly been laid in
+double or multiple lines and had been equipped with time
+fuses. What the time was, we could not tell, perhaps a week,
+perhaps longer. Mines of this type are employed for the
+temporary blockade of a harbour, which it is intended to
+attack on a more suitable occasion. But now, as it happened,
+the only creatures incommoded were the fishes in the sea.
+The Germans, on the other hand, were very glad to know
+where the mine-field lay and that the fairway was now
+clear.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner I learnt that a motor-car had arrived from
+Ghent with one of Krupp’s engineers, and was to return immediately
+to that city. Captain Jakobson, one of my friends,
+arranged for me to avail myself of this opportunity, so I made
+ready to depart. Good-bye to Tägert, Bess, Jakobson and
+Kübler and greetings to all the others&mdash;these splendid and
+capable fellows who had been my companions during these
+never-to-be-forgotten days and with whom I shared the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[p. 295]</span>memory of dangers happily survived. Then off I went at the
+usual break-neck speed.</p>
+
+<p>At Ghistelles I stopped for three-quarters of an hour to
+see Colonel-General von Beseler, one of my old friends from
+the <i lang="de">Gesellschaft für Erdkunde</i> (Geographical Society) in Berlin.
+We had much to talk about, and he related many episodes
+from the last few days’ fighting on the Yser Canal. Of the
+result he had as little doubt as anyone else and reiterated
+time after time: “We <em>must</em> win!” Von Beseler is one of
+the finest generals of the German army. It was he who took
+Antwerp and he was now commanding the extreme right flank
+nearest the sea. As a man he is congenial and fascinating.</p>
+
+<p>I continue my journey. A convoy of French prisoners is
+being taken into the interior&mdash;marine infantry, my chauffeur
+tells me. The road hereabouts abounds in inns and public-houses,
+I wonder how many. It would have given me something
+to do to count the inn signs by the roadside. At Bruges
+we did not stop; at Ghent we drove up to the Base Commandant’s
+office, in a narrow street, flying the German flag.
+A couple of obliging officers immediately offered to assist me,
+but for the moment all I wanted was to get to Brussels; if
+possible, I added, I should be very grateful for the loan of a
+car to the capital. Yes, there would be no difficulty about that,
+they assured me. General Jung would be sure to arrange it
+for me. So my name was taken in to the General and a minute
+later he came dashing out and greeted me with the utmost
+warmth, for he remembered me well from a fête in Posen
+where I had lectured in February, 1910.</p>
+
+<p>“But there cannot be any question of your starting off just
+yet,” said the General. “You must first sup with us at seven
+and a car will be ready for you at nine.”</p>
+
+<p>I did not need much pressing and spent a couple of delightful
+hours with these officers. At nine to the minute the car
+stood ready. It was a covered car, which was thought safer
+at night, and had a couple of exceptionally powerful head-lamps.
+And, best of all, I had a delightful Austrian lieutenant
+to keep me company&mdash;one of those in charge of the Austrian
+30.5-cm. mortars in use on the western front. It was surpassingly
+interesting to listen to all that he had gone through.
+The ninety minutes which separated us from Brussels were all
+too quickly over.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[p. 296]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">TO BAPAUME</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">MY notes do not contain much concerning the 27th of
+October. In the first place I had a good long sleep
+and the rest of the day was mostly taken up by
+“attending to private business,” completing my sketches and
+plans and writing letters. While I was sitting in the hotel
+over my late breakfast, a fine-looking officer came straight up
+to my table. He smiled humorously, wondering whether I
+would recognise him. Certainly I did! In fact I called out
+his name before he had time to utter a word: “Duke Adolf
+Friedrich of Mecklenburg!”</p>
+
+<p>The Duke had been a friend of mine for several years. In
+the geographical world he bears a great and famous name,
+thanks to his travels in Africa, which had been conscientiously
+planned, most skilfully carried out and ably and entertainingly
+described. He was now Governor of Togoland, but happened
+to be in Germany on leave when the war broke out.
+Under these circumstances, in Germany’s great hour of
+destiny, he simply <em>could not</em> return to Africa, and since, in
+his capacity as governor of a colony, he held no military
+command in the home country, he volunteered for service as
+intelligence officer, and was appointed to his old army corps.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke seemed glad to see me, and we sat and talked
+until it was time for him to return to his duties. The upshot
+was that I faithfully promised to accept his kind offer to come
+to Bapaume and spend a few days with him. He said I should
+not want for anything; he himself lived in a small house,
+but he would find accommodation for me near by. We were
+to take trips in various directions, as just now he had plenty
+of spare time; no large operations seemed to be in prospect.
+I might come whenever it suited me; I should always be
+welcome. And so we parted for the present.</p>
+
+<p>I had supper with Field-marshal General von der Goltz.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[p. 297]</span>The guests included on this occasion Duke Ernst Günther of
+Schleswig-Holstein, brother of the German Empress, and
+Duke Georg of Meiningen, who had lost his father and his
+brother in the war. The Field-marshal proposed that I should
+accompany him on the 29th of October to the front in the
+region of Dixmude. As, moreover, General Bailer asked me
+whether I was disposed to go with him and Councillor von
+Lumm on a trip to the outer forts of Antwerp on the 28th, my
+programme was well filled for the next few days.</p>
+
+<p>October 28th broke with a clouded sky, and a thick mist
+was lying over town and country in the morning. The two
+gentlemen and the young lieutenant, who sat at the wheel
+beside the chauffeur, came to fetch me in the morning, and
+we started out on the familiar road to Malines.</p>
+
+<p>As already mentioned, our purpose was to inspect as many
+as we could of Antwerp’s southern forts and redoubts. I shall
+not give any actual description of these fortifications. The
+few words I will say concerning them are merely added in
+order that the two or three photos which are reproduced here
+may not be beside the context.</p>
+
+<p>First of all we drove to Fort Waelhem, where a “42-cm.”
+had gone right through the bed of concrete, here, as elsewhere,
+five or six metres thick, and where an observation tower,
+resembling a gigantic church-bell, had been thrown over on
+to its side by the air pressure. One of the turrets is supposed
+to have been blown up by the Belgians themselves when they
+evacuated the fort. A few Belgian 12-cm. guns inside and
+outside the fort had been deprived of their breech-blocks.
+Lying near a barrack-wall were heaps of cartridge cases, tin
+boxes and baskets for carrying the shells. These latter were
+as finely and slenderly woven as if they had been intended
+for carrying grapes.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill087"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_087_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w70" src="images/087_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>PRIVY COUNCILLOR VON LUMM BESIDE THE HOLE MADE BY A 42 CM. SHELL
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>We drove on to the east and north-east, and our next
+stopping-place was Fort Chemin de Fer, which had been
+rather severely peppered with smaller shells, while its shattered
+turret had been blown up from the inside by the defenders
+themselves. Fort St. Catherine I have already mentioned,
+and we will therefore pass on, <i>via</i> the village of <a id="TN9"></a>Wavre,
+with its wrecked church, to the Dorpfeld fortifications. An
+object of particular interest was the infantry breastwork
+surrounding this entrenchment. Sandbags, and sometimes
+gabions, had been plentifully applied here. There were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[p. 298]</span>numerous traverses, intended for protection against enfilading
+or slanting fire, and generally consisting of sandbags in
+timber-lined trenches. The gabions, I thought, looked like
+defensive works similar to those used in the seventeenth
+century. But they were as useful now as then.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill088"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_088_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/088_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A TRAVERSE AT DORPFELD
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>We did not stop at the Boersbaek fortification, but went
+straight on to Fort Koningshoyckt, which had received some
+nasty hits and where a number of captured 12-cm. guns, all
+without their breech-blocks, had been ranged up in a row.</p>
+
+<p>Fort Talaert tempted me to take one or two photos, which
+need no comment. In one of them the reader will observe a
+huge gaping hole in the concrete. Another will give him an
+idea of what disarranged wire entanglements look like.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill090"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_090_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/090_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>HOLE MADE BY A 42 CM. SHELL IN FORT TALAERT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill089"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_089_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/089_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>AT THE ENTRANCE TO FORT TALAERT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Fort Lierre, in Dutch Lier, is the largest of all the fortifications
+in the outer girdle of Antwerp. Here several 42-cm.
+shells had wrought terrible havoc. One had struck through
+the lower part of the concrete bed of a turret and penetrated
+into the interior regions, smashing all that was in its path.
+In the interior of the fort we found extensive quartering
+accommodation for the garrison. Belgian uniforms left
+behind were still lying about. Generally speaking the Germans
+found the barrack-rooms in the fort in great disorder. All
+scraps and lumber had now been removed and formed regular
+rubbish heaps outside.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill091"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_091_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/091_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE INTERIOR OF FORT LIERRE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The small town of Lierre has fared terribly ill, but the
+church stands almost untouched among the ruins. The
+village of Duffel has also suffered considerably. In its labyrinth
+of narrow lanes people were busy removing the rubbish.</p>
+
+<p>On our way back we found the market-place of Malines
+crowded with carts and carriages full of visitors who had come
+from Brussels to see the scenes of destruction. On the road
+to the capital, too, we passed quite a procession of sorrowful
+pilgrims.</p>
+
+<p>At night I saw the Field-marshal for a minute. He said he
+should be unable to travel the next day, as the King of Saxony
+was then expected in Antwerp. Remembering that a bird in
+the hand was worth two in the bush, I thereupon decided to
+go on to Bapaume. A car was to be placed at my disposal
+whenever I wanted it.</p>
+
+<p>I accordingly proceeded on the morning of October 29th
+to the office of the Governor-General, where I was informed
+that the Field-marshal had instructed von Siemens to take
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[p. 299]</span>me to Bapaume. I said good-bye to my friends Majors Nethe
+and von Weller, stowed my luggage away in the car and was
+ready for starting. I cannot abstain from remarking that I
+never had a more distinguished chauffeur than on this occasion,
+as it was the head of the firm of Siemens and Halske himself
+who had donned the motor goggles and thick driving-gloves,
+and with strong skilled hands grasped the wheel. I sat down
+by his side and was thus conveniently at his elbow. A soldier
+was seated in the car, armed with rifle and revolver. The
+weather was fine, but the air was damp, as usual at this
+season.</p>
+
+<p>It was 10.45 when, with piercing shrieks of the hooter and
+the warning trills of the pipe-horn, we bowled along the Boulevard
+du Midi and Rue des Belges and came out on the Chaussée
+de Mons&mdash;a hybrid between a country road and a paved street
+and with a canal running by its left side. A whirl of fallen
+brown leaves rose in the wake of the car as it dashed on to
+Hal at the rate of seventy-four kilometres an hour. Narrow
+winding streets lead up to the market square of the little
+place, where the market was in full swing and where pigs and
+vegetables were being sold from peasants’ carts and stalls.
+Perfectly peaceful, rustic scenes, bustling life and motion&mdash;nothing
+to remind one of the war.</p>
+
+<p>In Tubize the bells of the village church were tolling, as if
+for a funeral. The country further on is somewhat hilly.
+Beyond Braine le Comte the splendid high road was without
+stone paving. The autumn wind moaned in the yellow
+crowns of the trees, and the leaves were falling around us
+like snow-flakes.</p>
+
+<p>We reached Soignies in a couple of minutes. Our speed
+was up to eighty-two or eighty-four kilometres per hour,
+falling off on slight curves to sixty. At all cross-roads, bridges
+and villages German Landsturm men in spick-and-span helmets
+and dark-blue uniforms stood posted, trusty and alert as ever.
+The road to Mons is straight and was in excellent condition,
+but the traffic was very inconsiderable. About noon a tyre
+burst, but was replaced in thirteen minutes&mdash;one could see
+that a great engineer was handling the nuts and tools.</p>
+
+<p>In the Mons region we passed through the great coal-mining
+district. All useless mineral taken out of the pits had to be
+cleared away so as not to take up any space which might be
+utilised to better advantage. By means of special tipping
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[p. 300]</span>arrangements the refuse had thus been piled up into veritable
+pyramids, or rather huge cones, whose strange-looking summits
+towered high on either side of the road. To the right we saw
+a whole row of tall smoking chimneys&mdash;one is always glad to
+observe any signs of resumed activity and reawaking life.
+The smoke hung like a dark pall over the neighbourhood. It
+was no longer a country road, it was an unbroken street as
+far as Boussu&mdash;which therefore seemed to be an integral part
+of Mons. “<i lang="de">Sehr starke Industriegegend</i>” (“very ‘pronounced’
+industrial region this”) shouted von Siemens in my ear; he
+had been here on business just before the war.</p>
+
+<p>Just on the other side of Quiévrain we crossed the French
+frontier. Poplars, stately and solemn like cypresses, rose up
+on both sides of the high road, now once more provided with
+stone paving. Here, too, we observed the absence of men in
+the prime of life. Only old men and boys are to be seen, and
+now and then a cripple. Women are greatly in the majority&mdash;widows
+and sorrowing sisters and brides who for three months
+have not heard a word from their menfolk.</p>
+
+<p>Valenciennes, an Intermediate Base Commandant’s post&mdash;numerous
+motor-cars and innumerable troops! The country
+opens up more and becomes flatter. We leave Demain and
+Bouchain to the right of our road, which runs <i>via</i> Douchy.
+The mist lies over the landscape like a heavy veil, through
+which we dimly discern the outlines of thickets and orchards.
+Many of the crops were still standing in the fields, waiting for
+hands to bring them in. But these are not forthcoming! Only
+in one little field did we see some old people and children busy
+gathering beets into baskets. Of horses not a sign. The carts
+that were at work were drawn by oxen. Lonely women, ever
+and anon, looked after us with sad, wondering eyes. One
+could guess their thoughts, but their demeanour was always
+calm and demure; now and then one saw, not without pity,
+a white-bearded old man, with his staff in one hand leading
+a waif by the other.</p>
+
+<p>At Cambrai von Siemens drew up at the Base Commandant’s
+office to obtain some information. Numbers of cars were
+passing there, or waiting in the market-place. I noticed here
+once more the first indications of our proximity to the front.
+Cambrai is a railhead, and at the station troops were busy
+transferring the material from the railway wagons to the
+lines of communication transport column, or direct to the Army
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[p. 301]</span>Service Corps detachments of the troops ahead. Fresh bodies
+of troops were also detraining to march west.</p>
+
+<p>We next proceed through a landscape characterised by
+extensive shallow undulations. The road is perfectly straight,
+stone-paved and lined with autumn-tinted or leaf-bared trees.</p>
+
+<p>We meet several cyclist orderlies and pass a supply column
+with its wagons covered with green branches.</p>
+
+<p>When finally we reached Bapaume we had been three and a
+half hours on the road, whereof three-quarters of an hour had
+been taken up by stops on the way. One could scarcely cover
+a distance of about one hundred English miles in a shorter
+time&mdash;allowing for the slowing down in passing through towns
+and villages.</p>
+
+<p>We drove direct to the quarters of Captain Trutz, who had
+charge of all matters concerning cars, petrol, quartering and
+the like, and began by taking lunch with him&mdash;consisting of
+bread and butter and ham, hard-boiled eggs and claret.
+Then my excellent friend von Siemens took leave and sped
+back to Brussels. Duke Adolf Friedrich was out, but was
+expected back about five. I was advised in the meantime to
+take up my quarters in some house near the Duke’s. A non-commissioned
+officer was ordered to conduct me to the Maire
+and I received from the latter a quartering ticket entitling me
+to occupy a room just opposite the Duke’s quarters. The
+French Maire was sitting in his office up to his eyes in work
+and surrounded by big piles of papers. But he was very polite
+and obliging, and no doubt consoled himself with the trite
+reflection that “necessity knows no law.”</p>
+
+<p>I also had to report myself at the Base Commandant’s office,
+where I was received, as always, with the greatest kindness.
+But then came the Chief himself, an old Bavarian Colonel who
+had retired from the service, but on the outbreak of the war
+had rejoined. And now he began to storm. “Who the
+thunder is this civilian?” he roared&mdash;“what business have
+you here?&mdash;where do you come from?&mdash;are you a pressman?
+I shall want to know what you are here for, and whether you
+have permission to stay here in Bapaume!” I tried to conciliate
+the irate Colonel by every imaginable means, but he
+went on raging like a model drill-sergeant. A few days later
+I met him again, and he then said: “Can you ever forgive
+me for being so rude the other day?” “Yes, dear Colonel,
+I assure you that it was a priceless pleasure to me to see a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[p. 302]</span>Bavarian warrior in the full flower of his vigour and forcefulness;
+I might have been a spy, and you had your orders to
+obey.” Of course we became friends for life, and it would
+give me pleasure to meet him again some day.</p>
+
+<p>I was then conducted by my non-commissioned officer to
+the house where I was to stay. A name-board bearing the
+inscription <i lang="fr">Notaire</i> was over the door. We rang the bell and
+an elderly servant came and opened it&mdash;followed, close at
+her heels, by an old gentleman of distinguished appearance,
+tall and with lofty forehead, kindly dark eyes below bushy
+brows, snow-white hair and white moustache and whiskers.
+This was the <i lang="fr">Notaire</i>, Maître Emile Cossart, who had not been
+scared away from house and home by the war, but had quietly
+remained behind to face the turmoil. He asked me kindly
+to put up with the only visitors’ room he had to offer me, and
+which was duly shown me by one of his three nieces, Mademoiselle
+Lengagne, and the servant. The room was plain but
+neat and cheerful, and its two windows looked out on to a
+little garden.</p>
+
+<p>As regards terms, I told Monsieur Cossart that I would pay
+rent for the room for the days I should occupy it. But he
+would not hear of this. Without going into lengthy details
+I pleaded my capacity as citizen of a neutral country&mdash;a
+circumstance which forbade me taking quarters without
+paying for them. But it was all no use. To all my arguments
+he had but one reply: “<i lang="fr">C’est impossible!</i>”&mdash;uttered in an inimitable
+manner. In the end I had no alternative but to
+thank him for his great hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>M. Cossart was a typical elderly <i lang="fr">rentier</i> in a French country
+town&mdash;and a most attractive and estimable specimen. Notwithstanding
+the storm which had burst over his country, his
+province and his home, he still retained an unquenchable
+good humour. In the war of 1870&ndash;71 he had served in the
+army and had been taken prisoner in Peronne and interned
+in Jüterbog, where he remained two and a half months. He
+had been well treated while a prisoner in German hands, and
+had never had cause to complain, and I was able to assure him
+that at the present moment the French prisoners were treated
+most kindly. We talked together with the greatest frankness.
+M. Cossart did not believe that the Germans would win. In
+the former war it was different, but now they had England,
+too, and great and powerful Russia against them. The fact
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[p. 303]</span>that Germany, by her astounding offensive power, had been
+able to swamp Belgium and part of north-eastern France, did
+not signify so very much after all. The fortune of war would
+soon turn, and change in favour of France. “We shall see!
+We shall see!” he said over and over again.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to explain to him the position in the eastern theatre
+of war and told him of Hindenburg’s victories, of the great
+calmness which reigned in Germany, and of the Russians’
+“march to Berlin,” which General Rennenkampf had promised
+but of which nothing had been seen so far. It had not been
+beneficial for France, I said, to invest thousands upon thousands
+of millions of francs in a country whose aid failed just
+at the moment when it was most needed. If I did not admire
+France and love her intelligent, industrious, thrifty and
+patriotic people I might have rejoiced at a diplomacy which
+had brought about such calamities as the present; as it was,
+I was grieved at a policy from which no good could ever come.</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="fr">Nous verrons&mdash;nous verrons</i>,” M. Cossart replied, nodding
+his head and smiling. But then it occurred to him that perhaps
+he had said too much, and wondered whether the German
+officers would take offence and cause him trouble if they got
+to hear of it.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly not, I assured him, he need not be afraid of that.
+He might tell the German officers without fear that he blindly
+trusted in the victory of the French arms and the eventual
+retreat of the German hosts, without causing a single forehead
+to frown in anger. Any German officer would honour such
+speech and show his respect for a man who had fought for
+his country in his younger days, and who still, in the autumn
+of life, was cherishing great and glorious ideas concerning his
+nation. “For you may say what you like of the Germans,
+and look upon them, if you like, as your sworn enemies, yet
+it is a fact that the Germans admire in others the qualities
+which they cherish in their own people. Therefore the German
+soldiers feel nothing but esteem for their French opponents;
+as regards General Joffre, the whole German army is unanimous
+in thinking him a great and talented general.” Among the
+Germanic race, I told him, there is not a vestige of national
+hatred of the French, nothing but good-will and sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>And when I told him how sorry I was that the whole of his
+people should suffer in consequence of a mistake which had
+been made by a few responsible professional politicians, he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[p. 304]</span>could but shrug his shoulders and raise his eyebrows and
+reply: “But please always think and speak well of France!”</p>
+
+<p>We had many a discussion on this topic as I went in or out
+through his hall. And when I had time to spare before joining
+the German officers at dinner, I would knock at the door of
+the French drawing-room&mdash;for was I not a neutral?&mdash;and
+was always met with a cheery “<i lang="fr">entrez</i>.” There sat M. Cossart
+in his rocking-chair, and his three amiable nieces were busy
+with their needlework round the table beneath the lamp, and
+then we could argue on politics to and fro without either party
+yielding one jot. Not because he was of the Latin and I of
+the Germanic race, but because our political views were as
+irreconcilable as fire and water. If Germany was crushed, I
+maintained, Russia would push forward to the Atlantic, and
+this could only be done over Swedish soil&mdash;across the Scandinavian
+peninsula, up there in the north. Therefore, for the
+sake of my country, I <em>could not</em> but wish for Germany’s victory&mdash;a
+complete victory. But to M. Cossart Germany’s victory
+meant fearful calamities for his own native land. Hence it
+was, and <em>could not</em> but be impossible for us to agree.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we always spoke with dignity and calm. The old
+lawyer never forgot himself, and I entertained the warmest
+and sincerest regard for him. I was always glad to have a
+chat with him, and regretted that, as a rule, time was so short.</p>
+
+<p>How different he was from those hot-heads I met elsewhere,
+who when confronted with an opinion at variance with their
+own, are so far from being able to master an opponent that
+they cannot even master themselves! Or how unlike a newspaper
+press which&mdash;Heaven knows by what means&mdash;may be
+induced to be silent on questions which concern the very life
+and existence of a nation, but loses all restraint and dignity
+in the face of a frankly and openly expressed opinion.</p>
+
+<p>M. Cossart was a man of quite another kind. There was no
+room in his soul for malice or cowardice. He was a gentleman
+to his finger-tips. His name, his avocation, his address are
+all stated above, and he is easily found. I have no fear lest
+my openness of speech might cause him any harm. He runs
+no risk as far as the Germans are concerned. I would, moreover,
+entreat my German friends in Bapaume&mdash;if this book
+should ever meet their eyes&mdash;to show him if but a fraction of
+the kindness they have shown to me. And as regards the
+French, they may&mdash;when peace once more reigns on earth&mdash;ask
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[p. 305]</span>M. Cossart whether my statement is true. Nor should they
+forget to thank him that, in the face of the overwhelming
+might of the invasion, he always fearlessly stood up for France,
+with unruffled brow, unflinching eyes and manly speech&mdash;speech
+which made one bow in fancy before the laurel-wreathed
+tricolor over his head.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[p. 306]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">
+    CHAPTER XIX
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">AN EXCURSION TO THE FRONT AT LILLE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">THERE came a knock at my door. “<i lang="fr">Entrez!</i>” I cried as
+neutrally as possible, and in stepped Duke Adolf
+Friedrich of Mecklenburg, young and gay and manly.
+He held out both hands to me and bade me heartily welcome
+to Bapaume. He hoped that I would be pleased with the few
+days I was to spend there. “But this room is too small!”&mdash;“Oh
+no, it is quite big enough.”&mdash;“Right. We will take all
+meals together, for I am now free for several days and shall be
+able to take you round and show you the sights.”</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon we sat and chatted until it was time to get ready
+for supper in the officers’ mess. When we entered, they were
+all assembled. The large table was presided over by Infantry-General
+von Plettenberg, Chief of the Garde-Corps, Adjutant-General
+to H.M. the Emperor and an old friend of our own
+Chief of Staff General Bildt. He was a tall man, thin and fair,
+a real soldier and a brave and plucky man who was never more
+at home than when the bullets were whizzing round him.
+Like Field-marshals von Haeseler and von der Goltz, he had
+the incurable habit of always turning up at odd moments
+where danger loomed largest. He had a way of walking out
+to the foremost trenches in the middle of the night and drawing
+the French rifle fire at a range of two hundred metres, and this
+merely to see how the soldiers were getting on and to make
+sure that everything was in the best order. A magnificent
+trait, in my opinion, for a plucky leader braces the soldiers’
+courage. We Swedes have always demanded this quality
+from our leaders. General von Plettenberg was a man of
+quick and impulsive temperament, but he was serious nevertheless,
+partly perhaps because he had recently lost a son in
+the war. At table he would sit wrapped in thought for a
+long while, then suddenly his eyes would fill with humour and
+he would break into a jest, as when he said that it was bad for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[p. 307]</span>the health to go out to the war, for they shoot so thoughtlessly
+and lay the guns so carelessly that at times shells will actually
+drop at the very spot where one is standing.</p>
+
+<p>When the General had retired early to go about his night’s
+work, the Duke asked a dozen merry and entertaining officers
+to join him at his house. There we gathered in the drawing-room,
+cigars were lighted and the frothing nectar was poured
+out. They were all in brilliant spirits. No gloomy faces
+among these men, many of whom looked death in the face
+every day from trenches and aircraft and on daring scouting
+duty.</p>
+
+<p>They represented among them many of Germany’s most
+illustrious families. The talk was loud and frank and gay,
+but when an officer of the General Staff came in straight from
+the Chief Command and read out the latest news from the
+eastern battlefields or from far-away tropical seas, perfect
+stillness and silence suddenly came upon the room and everybody
+listened intently. After that a more serious mood came
+over the assembly and they began to discuss the solemn
+business of war.</p>
+
+<p>The guests included the young Hereditary Prince Friedrich
+of Hohenzollern, a beardless Apollo, related to three royal
+houses. He is a nephew of the King of Roumania. In some
+way or other, I forget how, he is a kinsman of the unhappy
+King of Belgium, and the brother-in-law of no less a person
+than&mdash;ex-King Manuel of Portugal. The Prince was an
+exceedingly pleasant young fellow, brimming over with good
+spirits and full of jests and pranks, but I never saw him
+laugh.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill092"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_092_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/092_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>HEREDITARY PRINCE FRIEDRICH OF HOHENZOLLERN AND DUKE ADOLPH
+FRIEDRICH OF MECKLENBURG
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Another guest was the amiable Herr Schoelvinck, a director
+of Benz and Company. He was now serving in the army with
+the rank of Captain and was one of the four <i lang="fr">parlementaires</i>
+who were despatched to Rheims to discuss the terms of capitulation.
+They were taken prisoners and regarded as spies, and
+would probably have shared their usual fate had not the
+Emperor appealed to the American Ambassador in Paris,
+who managed to secure their release. I should say that in
+time to come they will have something to tell about the
+reception accorded them in France.</p>
+
+<p>Another of the four <i lang="fr">parlementaires</i> was also present at
+this evening’s sitting, in the person of volunteer Cleving of
+the Royal Theatre of Berlin, a perfectly fascinating man,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[p. 308]</span>full of humour, anecdote and song. An actor with the Iron
+Cross is probably something out of the ordinary, but what
+is there that is not striking on this endless German front of
+warriors! Perhaps Cleving’s greatest charm is his genius for
+accompanying himself on the guitar after the fashion of our
+own Sven Scholander. The two troubadours were to have
+started out on a singing tour together this autumn. But
+Cleving was destined to listen to a very different kind of
+music&mdash;that of the shrapnel shells, and it was a very different
+kind of theatre that he was about to perform in. He did not
+grumble at the change. Before he had scattered joy and
+merriment around him with his acting and his song, now he
+also bore the glory which surrounds a warrior who has fought
+with honour and bravery for his country.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the war had not quite been able to part him from his
+guitar. He had brought it with him and presently he settled
+down on a chair in our little circle and all became silent.
+French <i lang="fr">chansons</i>, German soldier ditties of long ago, winter
+songs from 1530 and “<i lang="de">Die Goldene Kugel</i>” with music by
+himself, all succeeded one another but too rapidly. To me he
+seemed to keep the best to the end, when he surprised me with
+a selection from our own Swedish lyrical poet Bellman.</p>
+
+<p>But Cleving could sing of Mandalay, too, choosing a far
+prettier and more inspiriting tune than the English one, and
+with other words than Kipling’s. “But I must have a piano
+accompaniment for this,” he declared. The Duke pressed a
+button and an orderly entered. “Bring in a piano,” he said,
+“<i lang="de">Ja wohl, Hoheit</i>.” In a quarter of an hour the doors were
+thrown open and four gigantic soldiers strode in, carrying a
+piano. “Where have they found that, I wonder?” I asked.
+“Oh, I suppose they’ve conjured it forth from some house in
+the neighbourhood,” the Duke answered. And so we got the
+song about Mandalay, and indescribably wistful and dreamy
+it sounded with its alluring refrain of “<i lang="de">Bei den alten Tempeltoren</i>”
+(“By the old temple gate”).</p>
+
+<p>And so our evening passed away. Time crept by imperceptibly,
+the hour of midnight chimed from the clock-tower
+and it was nearly two when for the last time we intoned the
+thundering refrain “Trarallalalala” from one of Cleving’s
+Swedish adaptations.</p>
+
+<p>What did they think of it, I wonder, those wretched people
+tossing restlessly on their beds, though doubtless they had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[p. 309]</span>learnt by now the woes of billeting? Nobody could possibly
+think that the Germans were on the point of preparing for a
+retreat, a rumour which had spread mysteriously among the
+population. No drooping spirits or depression, the precursors
+of a pending catastrophe, could be discerned among the
+troops billeted in Bapaume. No, their mood was such as it
+always is and such as it must be in an army marching with
+an irresistible iron will to victory and thinking of nothing,
+speaking of nothing, believing in nothing but victory all along
+the line&mdash;victory even if the whole world were to be ransacked
+for fresh legions to bring against it on this front where the
+enemy is either shot down or taken prisoner and carried off
+to Döberitz or other internment camps in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>It is this <em>will</em> to win which permeates the entire German
+army and makes such a deep impression on the stranger.
+Enviable, admirable, happy is the people which united marches
+on under its country’s standards when its hour of fate has
+struck. The dead would cry out from their lonely graves by
+the roadsides did not the living carry the fight to a glorious
+conclusion; but their sleep is untroubled, for they sank into
+it with the firm knowledge that those coming after would give
+their lives and all that they held dear with the same steadfast
+determination for the sake of home and country and future.
+No era has ever witnessed such national greatness as that
+attained by the German nation at the present day. It is an
+uplifting experience to have seen the Germans in their sublime
+struggle, and one which can never be forgotten by those who
+have been with them in this time.</p>
+
+<p>The mood and spirit of the German army finds expression
+in song. The officers sing in their messes, the soldiers on their
+marches, on their baggage wagons, in their bivouacs. In the
+trenches alone there must be silence. Perhaps the French
+soldiers, too, sing, but as to the Russians, their wistful airs have
+doubtless died away in the soldiers’ throats during the long
+weary marches backwards and forwards across the Polish
+plains.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast in the mess on October 30th we entered the
+Duke’s car to proceed to the field of battle between Lille and
+Armentières. We were four all told, the Duke’s chauffeur at
+the wheel, the Hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern by his side,
+looking after the hooter, the Duke and I. It had been raining
+and the by-roads were in a horrible state, whilst the great main
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[p. 310]</span>roads were slippery and unreliable and a great wet blanket of
+fog darkened the whole of north-eastern France.</p>
+
+<p>At first we took the great main road to Arras, which we
+kept to as long as we possibly could without exposing ourselves
+to shell fire. At Boiry, almost levelled to the ground
+by fire and shell, we turned off to the right, but lost our way
+in the tangle of by-roads, until at Croisilles we once more got
+on to the right track. Here the Red Cross flag was hanging
+from many houses, and we saw the wounded being carried
+into the hospitals. A column of light field howitzers rolled
+away towards Arras. In a field some soldiers were placidly
+digging potatoes, and near by old men, women and children
+were gathering in the sugar-beet, which is an important item
+of cultivation in these parts.</p>
+
+<p>At last we come out on the great main road between Cambrai
+and Douai. The streets of the latter town are filled with
+civilians and military. After crossing the <i lang="fr">Pont-à-Marcq</i> we
+reach the outer girdle of forts at Lille, and in a few minutes
+we drive in through the <i lang="fr">Porte Douai</i>. The part of the town
+nearest this gate is in ruins. The Germans, who at this point
+were advancing seven or eight battalions strong with artillery,
+wanted to spare the town and tried to induce its authorities
+to capitulate. The French resisted. Thereupon the Germans
+unlimbered a battery inside the gate and shelled the nearest
+houses and streets. The <i lang="fr">Mairie</i> and railway station were
+also brought under fire, the latter in order to stop all transport
+facilities. The town fell without having suffered any appreciable
+damage. The quarters exposed to the bombardment
+and which I had an opportunity of visiting, have, however,
+been reduced to ruins and the part round the <i lang="fr">Porte Douai</i>
+presents a sad picture of desolation. The worst damage had
+been done by shells which burst after they had penetrated
+into the lower part of a house. The effect of the detonation
+spreads to all the storeys and everything collapses utterly.
+In many cases nothing but skeletons and iron girders remain.
+Otherwise Lille is quite untouched. One can pass through
+one street after the other from beginning to end without
+noticing any trace of shell fire. In the central parts of the town
+the traffic is almost animated and there are plenty of people
+about. Young women of not even doubtful virtue and dressed
+in almost the latest fashion flit about like butterflies on the
+pavements. Many shops and hotels are open, and seem to be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[p. 311]</span>carrying on as if nothing has happened. The only reminder
+of war, apart from the wrecked quarters of the town, are the
+German infantry, cavalry, guns and transport trains.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill094"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_094_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/094_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>STREETS AT THE PORT DOUAI WHICH HAVE SUFFERED THROUGH THE BOMBARDMENT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill093"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_093_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w60" src="images/093_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>OF SOME HOUSES THERE IS ONLY THE SKELETON LEFT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Meanwhile we drive through Lille and in passing I throw
+a glance at the statue of the noble Pasteur, who spent three
+years of his life in the scientific faculty of the town, and of
+the brave Joan of Arc, clad in armour and with her standard
+in her hand, sitting tall and straight and glorious on her gilded
+steed. Our road now runs along the canals, crammed with
+lighters, and after swinging off to the west through deserted
+suburbs we emerge into the smiling countryside slashed in
+all directions with meandering paths and by-ways. We have
+now left the village of Lomme behind us and proceed in the
+direction of Armentières. Little groves and coppices, parks
+and gardens, farms and villages dot the road on both sides.
+The road we are travelling by is narrow and badly cut up
+through the rain. We drive past a skilfully masked battery,
+working at full pressure. From the enemy’s side the booming
+of cannon comes nearer and nearer, but is still outvoiced by
+the eternal whirring hum of the car. It is only when we
+slacken down or stop that the thunder sounds alarmingly
+near. By a farm&mdash;or perhaps it is a modest château&mdash;we come
+to a clump of trees as yet unshorn of their leaves by the
+autumn winds. We drive at full speed past this spot, which
+can only be about one hundred metres north of the road.
+Fortunately we espy in time a young lieutenant with his
+two or three men in the shadow of the trees, making the most
+frantic signs to us and shouting “halt” as loudly as their
+lungs permit.</p>
+
+<p>We pull up as sharply as the tearing pace allows and drive
+over a marshy meadow up to the lieutenant, who is standing
+at a table littered with maps, compasses, pens, field-glasses
+and other paraphernalia. He explained that it was a matter
+of life and death to proceed a step further in that direction.
+I felt almost inclined to believe him, for it sounded to my
+ears as if we were surrounded by fire on all sides. The nearest
+German infantry positions were ahead of us along a line
+running from north-north-east to south-south-west, and we
+had German artillery in front of us, beside us and behind us.
+The battery which we had just driven past was firing salvo
+after salvo, and we heard the shells whining over the tree-tops.
+In front of us the French batteries were pounding away
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[p. 312]</span>in the north, west and south-west. I felt as if I were enclosed
+in a ring of fiery throats all spitting out amiable pleasantries
+at one another.</p>
+
+<p>Near the coppice from which the young lieutenant was
+making his observations stood a 15-cm. howitzer battery.
+It was extremely interesting to note the skilful manner in
+which the guns had been concealed among the trees and
+bushes. They could not even be seen at a very short distance,
+and I had to come right up to them to realise where and how
+they were hidden among the boughs and branches. As an
+extra safeguard they were partly covered over with leaves
+so as not to be seen from above. The ammunition stores,
+huts for the gun crews and provisions were as effectively
+hidden. For protection against the enemy’s fire the gunners
+had dug the customary underground dwellings. At the present
+moment they were very busy attending to their guns. “Why
+don’t they shoot?” I asked. In answer the lieutenant
+pointed to the south-west. “Over there, above those trees,
+you notice a French airman, and it is probably his business
+to try to locate this battery. We have been shooting from
+here and have probably done some damage on the French
+side. Now they are on the prowl to find us, but so far without
+success. The enemy shells are bursting just now at only
+500 metres to the south-west of us. Up to now they have not
+reached us, but they are getting nearer and may hit our
+battery at any moment. If we were to fire now whilst the
+aviator is in the air, their fire would be on us in no time.”</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill095"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_095_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/095_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A 15 CM. HOWITZER BATTERY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>As he spoke the airman described circle after circle above
+the covert. As long as we remained at the observation post
+he kept circling over the same spot. It was clear that he was
+seeking the answer to some question. Perhaps he thought
+that the projection of his line of flight on the earth’s surface
+would give the confines of a spot which might profitably be
+shelled by the enemy. Our friends fancied they had seen him
+signal with flags and with white and red lights. The batteries
+which the Germans had opposed to them at this part of the
+front were all said to be British.</p>
+
+<p>The lieutenant and his men at the observation post and
+battery followed the aviator’s movements with the closest
+attention, and special pickets were posted under the trees to
+stop anyone from moving in the vicinity when the aviator had
+his machine turned in such a way that he had a free outlook
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[p. 313]</span>in our direction. But when he swung slowly round and turned
+his back on us, we were able for the moment to move more
+freely. However, the circles he described were small, and it
+was all that we could do to hurry from the battery to the observation
+post and vice versa before he swung round again and
+we ran the risk of detection.</p>
+
+<p>The gun crew were therefore taking it easy. Beside one of
+the guns the men were eating their breakfast, beside another
+a man was reading aloud from a newspaper. I took a couple
+of pictures of them to their great delight.</p>
+
+<p>We then took the opportunity, when the airman’s back
+was turned, to hurry back across the meadow to our car under
+the shelter of the trees. It was still too early to go home, and
+we thought we might make another trip in the direction of
+the firing line to the north-westward; accordingly we turned
+back to the outskirts of Lille and took the road to St. André,
+Verlinghem and Quesnoy. At St. André, where a local command
+was quartered, we halted awhile, the Duke asking the
+General how far we might proceed in that direction. He
+thought Quesnoy and a little way beyond it might be quite
+safe. With a little luck, we might even see the Austrian
+30.5-cm. mortars in action.</p>
+
+<p>We drove off in the direction indicated and passed several
+large supply columns proceeding to the front to provide the
+troops with fresh food and ammunition. Patrols showed us
+the way to one of the Austrian batteries. The road was very
+mediocre; its centre was stone-paved and at each side was a
+belt about three metres wide without any sign of paving and
+now converted into a sea of mud. The traffic was lively, and
+it was <em>impossible</em> to drive fast. Presently we reached the ammunition
+column of the mortar battery. The fighting battery
+with its two pieces of ordnance was ahead of the column,
+which had halted, occupying the right half of the road, so
+we left the car and proceeded on foot.</p>
+
+<p>The road lay a good metre higher than the ground to the
+right. From the left, or south-west, the enemy shells kept
+dropping quite close to us. Constantly fresh little white tufts
+of cloud kept forming in the sky and out of them flashed a
+spurt of flame. This was a signal that the zone of fire was
+spreading towards us, and we bent down instinctively to take
+such cover as the road and battery-lorries afforded. We were
+right under fire and might be hit at any moment. The <i lang="de">Deckung</i>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[p. 314]</span>we had was altogether insufficient, for the wagons stood at
+several metres from one another. The further we advanced
+the denser the little tufts of wool in the sky seemed to be.
+Then we met an officer who told us that the Austrian battery
+was not yet working and that it would be more than risky to
+continue in the direction we had taken. Probably the whereabouts
+of the ammunition column had been discovered through
+aviators. Although the enemy could not see it, they had
+trained the fire from several batteries on the sector where it
+was bound to be. The uncanny whistling sounds kept piercing
+the air; and so we thought it wisest to leave this dangerous spot.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we were getting near our car and had reached the
+road, we were honoured with a salvo from an English battery.
+The four shots followed at short intervals, and all of them
+seemed to be seeking our car. The first shrapnel shell burst
+some ten metres above ground just in front of us and the car,
+and I had a very distinct sensation of being within its zone
+of dispersion and wondered that I did not feel a sudden twinge
+in some part of my body. The other two shells burst a little
+to the side of the first. Then came the fourth&mdash;a devilishly
+impudent fellow! He came straight at us and the death-whistle
+rang in my ears. He arrived from the south-west. The
+air seemed to hiss and splutter and burn where he tore along.
+The whistling sound came nearer, passed just over our heads
+and died away behind us. We all three bent down so to bring
+our heads a metre nearer to the ground. This movement is
+entirely instinctive, and even officers who have been many
+times under fire resort to this device. But in time one gets
+rid of the habit, realising how little it avails. I have subsequently
+heard artillery officers say that when the whining
+sound seems closest and one thinks that the projectile is upon
+one, it has in reality passed by. We wondered at what height
+above us this shell had passed. The Duke estimated the
+distance at eight or ten metres, the Prince at fifteen at the
+most. To me it seemed so near that I almost expected to see
+my fur cap singed by the fire. But the most remarkable
+thing about this amiable greeting from the British was that
+whilst the three first shells burst, this fourth one never exploded
+at all. Had it done so we should in all probability
+have been flung to the ground. The projectile passed by
+us whole and entered the soft, wet earth some distance
+behind us.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill097"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_097_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/097_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>WELL-MASKED GUNS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill096"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_096_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/096_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>GUNNERS STUDYING THE NEWS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[p. 315]</span></p>
+
+<p>As a rule there is a moment of quiet after a salvo. With a
+car, or at the worst with a horse handy, one has time to
+seek a safer spot, provided that the enemy artillery is aiming
+at the same point as before or one is so hardened after one’s
+previous baptisms of fire as to take no notice at all. We might
+now reasonably take it for granted that we should be allowed
+a respite, and thought it safer to take this chance of withdrawing
+some distance. The Duke, who struck me as an
+exceptionally calm and fearless man, remarked that he did
+not want to have my life and limbs on his conscience, especially
+as I happened to be his guest.</p>
+
+<p>So we jumped in and drove off to Lille again. To the right
+of us the shells kept singing in the tree-tops, and one of them
+gave a wonderful pyrotechnic display as it burst. Presently
+we met an ammunition column which forced us off the track
+into the mire. As long as we could drive straight on, things
+were all right, but when the column had passed and we tried
+to climb on to the stone paving again, the wheels skidded
+and the car got thoroughly stuck in the soup of mud. It
+almost looked as if we were to have more compliments paid
+us by the British. In the end there was no alternative but
+to get out of the car, which thus lightened was able to climb
+once more on to the firm surface. Thereupon we got to Lille
+without any further mishap.</p>
+
+<p>After dining we drove back to Bapaume in pelting rain,
+arriving soon after dark. The Duke had a party in the evening,
+and the incomparable Cleving was there with his guitar,
+accompanied by Herr Kummer, one of the four <i lang="fr">parlementaires</i>
+of Rheims.</p>
+
+<a id="map_4"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_map_4_result" style="max-width: 45em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/map_4_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>The country round Lille and Ypres.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[p. 316]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">
+    CHAPTER XX
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">TRENCH LIFE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">SATURDAY the 31st of October was spent quietly and
+peacefully. Duke Adolf Friedrich conducted me in
+the morning to the château of Vélu east of Bapaume.
+We followed the great main road to Cambrai a few kilometres
+and then struck off on to a by-road leading to this handsome
+château, built in 1719 and taken over in 1883 by a gentleman
+named Goër. It is still tenanted by a Madame Goër. The
+magnificent apartments were still haunted by an old French
+butler, and in the dining-room the table had just been laid for
+the officers who had been lucky enough to have found this
+comfortable billet. The house is surrounded by a large park,
+and we wandered up and down its neglected alleys on the
+softest of carpets of decaying leaves. Here we strolled and
+chatted about our travels in Africa and Asia, and about
+the new colouring that the world’s map would certainly be
+given at the end of this war&mdash;when we were disturbed by
+the rattling of heavy rifle fire in the neighbourhood. We at
+once made for an open space in the direction of the firing, and
+espied a French airman who was being hotly attacked by the
+German infantry, but seemed entirely unperturbed by the
+interest he was arousing.</p>
+
+<p>On our return to Bapaume we dined at the mess with
+General von Plettenberg and his usual set. Among the company
+was the famous surgeon, Professor Hildebrand of
+Göttingen, a sociable, learned and altogether charming gentleman,
+and an old friend of the family of the late Professor
+Gyldén of Stockholm. Professor Hildebrand told me among
+many other interesting things that the cardinal principle of
+modern surgery in the field is not to amputate except in cases
+of the utmost urgency. Formerly arms and legs were amputated
+in a far larger measure than at present; now the surgeons
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[p. 317]</span>attempt to save all that there is a possible chance of saving.
+Hildebrand was one of the inner circle which often foregathered
+at the Duke’s house of an evening.</p>
+
+<p>The excellent light of the early afternoons just at this time
+tempted me to take several photographs, one or two of which
+I am reproducing here. All through the day heavy ammunition
+and supply columns of all kinds kept marching through
+the town, and the civilian element was almost drowned by
+the military. In the course of my walks through the town I
+witnessed many fascinating scenes of soldiers’ life.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_28_28" href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Here
+are a few Landsturm soldiers sitting in a circle peeling potatoes
+which are afterwards to be cooked in a bucket over a coal
+fire. Others have rigged up a temporary awning over benches
+and tables, where they are writing their <i lang="de">Feldpostkarten</i> home
+to parents and sweethearts. Another little coterie is sipping
+coffee beside a kitchen wagon. In a meadow stands a threshing
+machine which had just finished work for the day; the grain
+is being loaded into one cart and the straw into another.
+Close by an open-air barber has rigged up his shop by the side
+of a train wagon. An orderly comes leading a couple of
+officers’ horses, and in a field four Bavarian Landsturm men
+are lazily blowing clouds of smoke out of their enormous
+pipes.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_28_28" href="#FNanchor_28_28" class="label">[28]</a> One photograph shows a street in which the only civilians are two
+young ladies.</p></div>
+
+
+<a id="ill098"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_098_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/098_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>TWO YOUNG LADIES ARE THE ONLY CIVILIANS TO BE SEEN
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Presently we come to the little square adorned by Faidherbe’s
+statue, and further honoured by the presence of the
+Townhall with its handsome façade, supported by a Gothic
+arcade. Here a notice board has been posted up so that the
+latest war news may be studied, for a newspaper is now
+being published at Bapaume composed and printed at the
+Town <i lang="fr">imprimerie</i>, and called <cite lang="de">B(apaumer) Z(eitung) am Mittag</cite>.
+Herr Cleving is its editor. Its circulation is six hundred
+copies. The paper is not large, only one page, in large type
+on thin yellow paper. I reproduce below a text of the number
+of October 27th, which I have selected because it also refers
+to the bombardment of Ostend, although with a wrong date:</p>
+
+<p>(1) “The fighting on the Yser&ndash;Ypres Canal front is exceedingly
+violent. In the north we have succeeded in crossing
+the canal with a strong force. East of Ypres and south-west
+of Lille our troops have advanced slowly after severe fighting.
+Ostend was yesterday bombarded by the English ships.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[p. 318]</span></p>
+
+<p>(2) “In the Argonne our troops have likewise made progress.
+Several machine guns have been captured. We have
+taken a number of prisoners and two French aeroplanes have
+been brought down.</p>
+
+<p>(3) “East and north-east of Arras the enemy has received
+reinforcements. Nevertheless our troops have succeeded in
+making progress at several points. About five hundred
+British, including a Colonel and twenty-eight other officers
+have been taken prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>(4) “West of Augustovo the Russians have renewed their
+attacks which have all been repulsed.</p>
+
+<p>(5) “At Ivangorod 1800 Russians have been taken
+prisoners. South-east of Przemysl the Austrians have scored
+several successes,” and finally: “Copies for distribution
+among the various units may be obtained from the Commandant
+of the lines of communication.”</p>
+
+<p>That is all. There is nothing else to read in the number of
+October 27th, 1914. Short and concise sentences, written
+with military precision, and above all&mdash;no lies. The
+<cite lang="de">Bapaumer Zeitung am Mittag</cite> follows the same honourable
+principles as the rest of the German Press. This Press knows
+its enormous responsibility towards the nation and towards
+the fighting armies. For the soldiers, whose duty it is to bear
+the sweat and labour of the day, and to spill their blood for
+the Fatherland, nothing but the truth, the pure honest truth,
+is good enough. In the Entente countries the Press has an
+extra and exceedingly important duty, which the German
+Press is spared, namely to fire the soldiers’ courage, and to
+keep burning the flame of hope among the population. As
+gladdening news is rare just now, its counterfeit is manufactured
+in the editorial sanctum of the newspapers. The
+German Press has no need to fire the nation’s courage, for it
+burns with a pure and clear flame. The German people insist
+that their Press shall tell them the <em>whole</em> truth, whether
+gladdening or not. Good news is not exaggerated, bad news
+is not minimised. The whole nation insists on being fully
+enlightened on the progress of events on all fronts, for it will
+not build its hopes for the future on a tissue of falsehoods
+which in the end cannot but collapse. If anything goes
+wrong, it is best to know the full bearing of the disaster, so
+as to make good the loss and prevent it from occurring again.
+In Germany the people rely implicitly on the truthfulness of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[p. 319]</span>the Press and its sense of responsibility. There hundreds of
+thousands of volunteers hurry to the colours without artificial
+and false inducement. They come, driven by the Germanic
+spirit, by national pride, by sense of duty and ambition.
+There is not a single man able to carry arms who hesitates
+to go out and die, for it is clear to all that if it is God’s wish
+that Germany shall go under, the last German shall have fallen
+in the last trench before the waves close once for all over the
+wreck. For these reasons the Press of the Central Powers
+has in this war a far easier task to fulfil than the Press of the
+enemy countries, for it has but to register the trend of events
+and to announce the news from east and west and from far-away
+tropical seas, but it has no need to resort to the dishonourable
+makeshift of deceiving its readers and inventing
+tales of victory so as to drive fresh throngs to the recruiting
+offices.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill099"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_099_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/099_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>SOLDIERS READING THE LATEST NUMBER OF THE “BAPAUMER ZEITUNG AM MITTAG”
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>To return once more to the Townhall of Bapaume, every
+day, at the hour that the local newspaper was published,
+brought fresh groups of eager soldiers to the notice board. It
+was quite refreshing to stop awhile and observe them. There
+they stand with their cigarettes or pipes and hands in trouser-pockets
+reading through the news attentively and slowly.
+Up to the present they have had little news that is not good,
+but all news is taken with the same calm. At most one notices
+a passing smile or a momentary gleam in the eye. The same
+spirit is shown if a piece of bad news is posted, such as the
+loss of a warship.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the soldiers are not content with reading, they
+must copy the whole of the paper into their diary. And
+why? Probably because they are on the way to the foremost
+trenches, where they will impart the contents to their isolated
+comrades.</p>
+
+<p>Duke Adolf Friedrich and I were invited to supper with
+Lieut.-General von Winckler, the Grenadier <i lang="fr">par excellence</i>, the
+Chief of all the Grenadiers of the Guard. At seven o’clock we
+started out on the great main road to Arras, but long before
+we reached half-way we turned off to the left along a by-road
+leading <i>via</i> Hamelincourt to Boiry. The evening was still,
+the air was clear, and the moon was brilliantly radiant. We
+could hear no cannonading, and yet there could be no doubt
+that we were approaching the line traced in iron, blood and
+fire across the face of France. At every village we were stopped
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[p. 320]</span>by pickets who stepped out on to the road and cried “Halt!”
+If you do not stop, you get a bullet through your back. “<i lang="de">Armeeoberkommando</i>”
+(“Chief Army Command”) calls the Duke, and
+we continue on our way. The strictest control has to be
+exercised, especially at night. Not even the German uniforms
+are a guarantee against spies. I feel that I am once more on
+the brink of glorious and wild adventure&mdash;on the way to the
+field of battle now lighted by the moon, and where every bush
+and tree trunk may hide a lurking spy. But the silence is
+unbroken except for the rhythmic thud of the engine.</p>
+
+<p>At length we stopped at the gate of a farm, where several
+officers of the General Staff came out to meet us and conducted
+us into an unpretentious little house. Here we were
+warmly greeted by General von Winckler himself, a soldierly
+figure with a fine head, distinguished, weather-beaten, kindly
+features, steel-grey hair and a dark well-groomed moustache.</p>
+
+<p>We sat down to table almost at once. It would have been
+wrong to call the mood of the company solemn or heavy.
+From the first moment lively and interesting conversation
+was afoot. More cheerful officers it would be hard to find&mdash;and
+yet these men had been at work since daybreak, and might
+well feel tired, but they showed no traces of fatigue. The
+company included the Surgeon-General of the Forces, Dr.
+Reichard, who had much to tell about his experience among
+the wounded, also a young lieutenant who that night was to
+have his first experience of trench duty, that strange phenomenon
+of modern warfare. One might perhaps have expected
+this youth to sit quiet and thoughtful, but he joked and
+laughed and chatted with the rest of them. He was delighted
+that his turn had come at last to be in the forefront of battle.
+He ate his supper, drank his wine and smoked his cigarettes
+without giving a thought to the cold and hardships which
+awaited him later in the night, for an advanced infantry
+position in close touch with the enemy is in very truth a living
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall the occupants of some trenches immediately
+west of the village of Monchy-au-Bois, about seven kilometres
+from Boiry, were to be relieved. At this point it was done
+every forty-eight hours. Those who had been on duty for
+this length of time were then allowed to withdraw to the rear
+to rest, sleep and get some hot food. I had of course passed
+numberless empty trenches in Belgium, but thought it would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[p. 321]</span>be far more interesting to see them with the soldiers in possession.
+But when I happened to drop a hint to this effect,
+the General dissuaded me very strongly from visiting his
+fighting line. It would after all have been a great responsibility
+for him to let me go there. At Monchy the foremost
+German trenches were only eighty metres away from the
+French, with the distance widening to the north and south.
+The men can only be relieved after dark when the night is at
+its blackest. But to-night the moon shone brightly and
+hardly a sound was to be heard. It was eleven o’clock, and
+there was probably no intention to relieve the men in the
+trenches for another four or five hours. Even if the Germans
+had crept along the ground like leopards through the grass,
+the French would have seen their outlines and shadows.
+The slightest rustle would reach their ears if they held their
+breath and listened carefully; for the French do most emphatically
+<em>listen</em> at night. They are exceedingly vigilant and
+wakeful. If one is discovered before having time to reach
+one’s trench and gain its welcome shelter, the bullets come
+whizzing round in extra quick time. The greatest danger lies,
+however, in the French fighting and scouting patrols, who are
+thoroughly familiar with the ground and begin to prowl about
+at nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>To-night, the last night of this fateful month of October,
+it was deemed impossible to relieve in the usual way. Only
+one or two men were allowed to creep forward at a time.
+When there is no moonlight or when the countryside is wrapped
+in fog they can advance close together without danger. But
+on a night such as this the risk was almost as great as in daylight
+and the very greatest caution had to be observed. It
+needs long and systematic training to move troops on moonlight
+nights.</p>
+
+<p>Even a man with uncommon grit and courage must feel a
+certain amount of excitement as he crawls through the grass
+on toes and elbows, particularly as he has his rifle to think
+about as well. Now and again he has to pause, either because
+this mode of locomotion is too tiring or because he has to
+take his bearings and listen. Then he proceeds a little further,
+holds his breath and listens and peers round like a tiger on
+the prowl. Everything is still, but at any moment he may
+hear the rattle of rifle fire and the ping of bullets. At last he
+sees the trench before him like a long dark line. Will he get
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[p. 322]</span>there without being discovered by the French? That is the
+question. He hugs the earth still closer and moves still more
+slowly and cautiously. Now he only has twenty metres left,
+now ten. The parapet is clearly defined in the moonlight, it
+is but a step or two that separates him from his goal, and yet
+this step seems like a mile, for just here the danger is at its
+greatest, and it is on this point that the French sharpshooters
+and pickets have their attention riveted. He knows that
+the furrow in the ground beneath him is two metres deep and
+one metre wide and full of alert, wakeful men, but not a
+sound is heard, no sign of life is seen, not even the faintest
+flicker from a puny fire. Not even the scent of a cigarette
+strikes his nostrils, though perhaps there may be other odours
+that reveal the nearness of human beings. Now he has but
+a metre left, there is no sign of life from the French, and he
+slips noiselessly and softly like a cat over the edge and is
+safe. Thereupon one of his comrades down below rises from
+his shelter and creeps back with the same caution to the
+ramparts behind the trenches, where he gets hot soup and
+sinks into a deep and well-merited sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The new-comer has forty-eight solid hours before him. At
+night or in a fog he and his comrades must keep wide-awake,
+for then the danger of assault is greatest. Here and there a
+man may be allowed to doze off for a moment, but if a man
+sleeps when on duty his life is not worth much. In day-time
+most of the men are allowed to rest in their “dug-outs” under
+the parapet, but even then special look-outs are always posted
+along the trench. They all have their own little section of
+the battlefield to answer for. Within that section no life must
+stir but that they are aware of it. It is chiefly movement
+along the ground or the outline of some figure silhouetted
+against an indistinct background that reveals to the look-out
+the presence of the enemy. Clumsiness in real war is tantamount
+to a death warrant. The Germans disappear like field-mice
+in the inequalities of the ground. But the French, in
+return, are gifted with keen eyesight.</p>
+
+<p>In the trench wall nearest to the enemy bowl-shaped niches
+or dug-outs are excavated in the soil, providing effective protection
+against overhead bursts and not infrequently against
+direct hits. But it is not impossible for a shell to pitch in the
+wall, and in that case even the occupants of the dug-outs are
+doomed. To provide against this the men often dig out a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[p. 323]</span>cavern, and these caves are often so elaborate and luxurious
+that it is thought fit to put up curtains at the entrance. Along
+the walls of these caves straw is laid out for sleeping berths
+and the little tent section included in each soldier’s packing
+is often used as a blanket. When the distance between the
+opposing lines of trenches, as in the case I am describing, is
+only eighty metres, no light must be lit even in these subterranean
+caves, still less a fire, and the air in them is therefore
+cold, damp and raw. But if the nearest enemy is three or
+four hundred metres away, these rigid rules are sometimes
+dispensed with. But even then no fire must be lit and no
+naked light is allowed in the trench proper.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers bring with them dry rations intended to last
+for the whole of their shift, but they are sometimes cut off
+through heavy and incessant fire from all communication and
+are then obliged to starve for a day or two. But even that
+misfortune is accepted good-humouredly.</p>
+
+<p>The dangers of trench life may be realised when I say that
+before Monchy-au-Bois alone the dead and wounded numbered
+sixty to eighty daily. Neither dead nor wounded can
+be removed. If you put up as much as a little finger above
+the edge of the trench the bullets come whizzing round immediately.
+The dead bodies must therefore be allowed to
+remain in the trench, that is to say the dead man is got rid
+of by digging a grave for him in the floor of the trench. A
+few days ago it happened in the trench which I am describing
+that a soldier was so badly hit by a shell that he was cut in
+two, one half remaining locked by a trench prop. He could
+not be removed without risk to the survivors and was therefore
+allowed to remain. But presently he began to give rise
+to a horrible stench and whatever they did the men could not
+get away from the mutilated, blackened features. Sometimes
+arms and legs torn away from the body are allowed to lie
+about at the bottom of the trench until somebody finds time
+to dig them down. One gets hardened in time. When it is
+for the sake of the country one does not mind occasional
+horrors.</p>
+
+<p>In rainy weather the trenches become almost unbearable.
+I saw for myself in Belgium what they looked like. The rain-water
+collects in them and they look exactly like the ditches
+by the side of a field, half-filled with grey and yellow water
+with a scum of mire and filth. General von Winckler told me
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[p. 324]</span>that his men had stood in water up to the knees for twenty-four
+hours without complaining and without anyone collapsing
+from the effects. When the soldiers got back to the rear they
+told their comrades with much droll humour of their adventures.
+One would have thought that it would sour the temper
+to lie steeped in mud for twenty-four hours on end. I am
+speaking now of the Grenadiers of the Guard, of whom one
+expects that they will go through anything. But the same
+applies to all German troops. You never see any gloomy faces
+amongst the German soldiers, nothing but good spirits and
+laughter. To fight against the inundations, the General
+ordered drainage trenches to be dug, through which the rain-water
+escaped into cisterns, likewise hollowed out in the soil.</p>
+
+<p>In places communication between the trenches is made
+easier by real saps which lead in zigzag to the front line from
+some suitable declivity in the ground. In this way the work
+of relieving and replacing the returning units is greatly
+facilitated.</p>
+
+<p>The trenches do not run in straight lines, unless, as in the
+country south of Antwerp, the ground is absolutely flat.
+Usually their length and outline depend on the formation of
+the ground. As a rule they are situated so as to offer an uninterrupted
+view of the enemy positions opposite and so as
+to avoid dead angles. A free field of fire is the most important
+consideration. A trench thus often receives a very irregular
+shape, resembling a curve with numerous bends and salients.</p>
+
+<p>As I have already had occasion to mention, the trenches
+are often interrupted by traverses. If the trench runs in a
+wavy line it is not always possible to prevent parts of it from
+being flanked and enfiladed by the enemy’s artillery fire.
+The traverses not only prevent such enfilading from becoming
+effective beyond a certain distance but also limit the effectiveness
+of an explosive shell. As a rule the distance between the
+traverses is only ten paces, provided always that there has
+been time to improve and extend the position occupied.
+Behind the various sections one often finds&mdash;as I have mentioned
+more than once&mdash;deep caverns which afford more or
+less complete protection against direct hits. These spaces
+are used as refuges if the artillery fire becomes too unpleasant,
+but the trench must immediately be manned if the enemy’s
+infantry shows signs of advancing to the charge.</p>
+
+<p>When, as at Monchy-au-Bois, both sides have been stationary
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[p. 325]</span>for some length of time&mdash;in this case since the 6th October&mdash;the
+art of field entrenchment usually reaches a very high
+pitch of perfection. It must not be thought that these advanced
+firing lines are always connected and continuous. The
+formations of the various units are adapted to the conformation
+of the ground according to its appearance and the possibilities
+which it affords. Yet there are no unprotected or
+unguarded places. The intervals between the trenches are
+always protected by wire entanglements or other obstacles
+effectively flanked by machine guns or rifle fire. In front of
+the German lines at Monchy there are numerous wide belts of
+wire entanglements, alternating with deep <i lang="fr">trous-de-loup</i> with
+stakes at the bottom. These obstacles, interrupted at certain
+points by open passages, can only be contrived under cover of
+darkness or fog, and even under favourable conditions the
+work is highly dangerous, not least on account of the enemy’s
+pickets who utilise the darkness of night to find out what the
+enemy is up to.</p>
+
+<p>These pickets are the eyes and feelers of their unit. The
+men to whom these scouting and guard duties are entrusted
+need the utmost vigilance, sense of duty and intelligence for
+the performance of their task; for the risks which they run
+are enormous and they could not possibly cope with the strain
+if they had not been trained in peace time to realise that boldness
+and alertness combined will overcome all obstacles.
+There are many kinds of patrols, but in a war such as this the
+outpost pickets have by far the most important task to perform.
+When the distance between the fighting units is small,
+they work at night only. The manner in which they discharge
+their duties is often the deciding factor in the execution of
+important plans. They are despatched to a certain limited
+area, with a definite task to perform. If possible, they are to
+avoid collision with the enemy. Other patrols are sent out to
+prevent similar scouting duty by the enemy. In the part of
+the front of which I am speaking, these tasks were often
+facilitated on moonlit nights by the number of corpses, chiefly
+French, remaining on the field from earlier outpost skirmishes
+between the two fighting lines. It is often difficult to tell a
+living from a dead man. In the dark it happens not infrequently
+that German and French patrols run against one
+another, which always gives rise to hand-to-hand fighting and
+losses. The boldest picket leaders, who in the midst of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[p. 326]</span>most appalling danger think of nothing but the duty they are
+entrusted to perform, and who are <em>determined</em> that this trust
+shall be carried out, take advantage even of misfortune.
+Whilst the others are engaged in a struggle of life and death
+they continue towards the enemy position, find out what they
+can, and return to their line&mdash;and to the Iron Cross. Their
+comrades are either dead or wounded. The latter crawl back
+as best they can. If the night is sufficiently dark they get help.
+The former remain to contribute to the foul stench of the
+atmosphere. At Monchy-au-Bois such incidents were of
+nightly occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>From Monchy I also heard told that on one occasion Frenchmen
+and Germans had installed themselves in one and the
+same trench. A French scouting unit had lost its way one
+dark night and had taken refuge in a part of a German trench
+for the moment unoccupied. When the Frenchmen realised
+the situation they threw up parapets in both directions in the
+trench itself, and from behind these walls the opposing soldiers
+fired at one another at a distance of a few paces. I do not
+know what happened in the end to the Frenchmen, but they
+were clearly doomed. Their position was absolutely untenable
+and their only way out of it was to surrender when their
+provisions failed them.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the conditions vary greatly according to the situation.
+When the enemy is relatively far away the communication
+with the rear is rendered easier and in such circumstances
+life becomes more bearable in the front line, if only because
+hygienic measures are in some measure possible. But at
+Monchy-au-Bois I was told that the state of things in these
+underground caverns literally baffled description. This cannot
+but increase the admiration one feels on witnessing the cheerful
+spirit amongst the men, their absolute readiness for any
+sacrifice. Any man complaining of the cold or of the food
+below ground would be chaffed to distraction or worse by his
+fellow-soldiers&mdash;but I never heard of a single case of this
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>In a village in the neighbourhood where we were now
+stopping, Prince Eitel Friedrich had his quarters. I heard it
+said of him that he lived in a farm-house more or less shot to
+pieces by shell fire, and that he slept on the bare ground.
+Everybody praised his courage and endurance and his great
+qualities as man and soldier.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[p. 327]</span></p>
+
+<p>As I have already had occasion to remark, the fighting on
+the western front with its interminable lines of trenches is
+assuming more and more the character of a siege war. The
+opposing sides have dug themselves into the ground all along
+the front behind wire entanglements and <i lang="fr">trous-de-loup</i>. These
+field entrenchments become more formidable as time goes on.
+They can really only be destroyed by heavy artillery. Hence
+this arm is of cardinal importance. The infantry can only sap
+ahead and stick to what it has gained. Every position must
+be treated by attackers as if it were a fortress in itself. Every
+metre of open country, every tree in the Argonne must be
+captured by what might almost be described as a separate
+engagement. The French are defending themselves with the
+most brilliant courage, and even General von Winckler
+characterised them as worthy opponents to the world’s finest
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>In some places ordinary wire entanglements on level ground
+are not deemed to be sufficient, and they are placed in holes
+or declivities, the bottom of which is covered by fire.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion I should like to say a few words about the
+intelligence service in the field. The French are past-masters
+in the art of using civilian spies. The wounded in a field hospital
+are safe as long as they have a couple of Frenchmen
+amongst them, but as soon as they have been removed for
+transport eastward, even this sanctuary comes under the
+enemy’s fire. How is it that the enemy <em>knows</em> that these particular
+wounded have been removed? In a village a soldier
+had made the acquaintance of a woman. One fine day she
+told him that she was going away. Why? he asked. Because
+to-morrow this village was going to be bombarded. The
+soldier did not pay much attention to the prophecy, but the
+woman was right. How did she know it? Of course because
+she had been warned by a spy. Once a peasant came strolling
+along from the French side into the German lines, where he
+was immediately seized. He declared with the most innocent
+face in the world that he had come to look after his cattle,
+which unfortunately had been left behind on the German
+side. Let the poor fellow look after his cows, they thought,
+and so he was allowed to pass. Of course there could be no
+question of letting him return to the French lines, for he might
+be a spy sent out to gather information. An hour later he was
+seen driving a little herd of cattle before him, but nobody took
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[p. 328]</span>any notice. This was a daily occurrence. However it so
+happened that he drove his beasts right up to a German
+battery which had been so well masked that the French had
+been unable to detect it. There he left the cattle grazing and
+vanished completely. Presently a murderous fire descended
+upon the battery, which had to be moved in the night to another
+position. The peasant was in the employ of his countrymen,
+and his movements had been noted by an aviator, who had
+signalled to the French artillery positions.</p>
+
+<p>The German regulations governing the liberties of the civil
+population have naturally to be made much more stringent
+on account of such incidents, and that is why even officers are
+sometimes stopped at night when travelling within the fighting
+zone. But even the most vigilant are sometimes outwitted
+by the French spies. Complete telephone systems have in
+several instances been discovered below ground, clearly laid
+down in anticipation of the French retreat. The main cables
+no doubt existed already in peace time, but on the outbreak
+of war an additional system of temporary lines had been added,
+and during the retreat telephone stations were rigged up in
+all sorts of unsuspected places. It was often palpable that the
+French fire had been directed with the aid of telephone communication.
+But where is the underground cable and where
+is the operator? Usually it is chance that leads to the latter’s
+discovery. It had been noticed several times that within a
+certain area the French fire had searched and struck the most
+susceptible points on the German side with such rapidity and
+accuracy that the direction of the fire could only be explained
+by the existence of equally rapid and accurate information.
+It had also been noticed that no airmen had haunted this particular
+point and the conclusion was not far to seek that
+telephone communication alone could lie at the root of the
+skilful operations of the enemy artillery. All houses and
+cellars in the neighbourhood had been searched with the
+utmost thoroughness, perhaps with useful results, perhaps
+not. There might be subterranean vaults anywhere under
+meadows, gardens or fields; or strange as it may sound there
+may be telephone stations above ground, which are very
+difficult to detect.</p>
+
+<p>Anyone travelling through north-west France in the autumn
+cannot but be struck by the enormous straw stacks dotted
+here and there about the fields, often reaching a height of six
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[p. 329]</span>to eight metres, cylindrical in form and capped by a flat cone.
+In the interior of such stacks the Germans have often discovered
+telephone operators. When I drove past one of these
+stacks for the first time I saw that it had been pulled to pieces,
+with the straw scattered in the greatest confusion. I asked
+my companion for the reason of this “eccentric treatment”
+and was told in reply: “It was thought that a man with a
+telephone apparatus might have concealed himself inside and
+they wanted to make quite sure.” I have since often seen
+similar stacks in the fields and wondered what it must feel
+like to sit shut up in one month after month. I had a shrewd
+suspicion that he must get his information from the civil inhabitants
+of the neighbourhood. Spies in the guise of vagrant
+peasants or shepherds no doubt steal up to the stack in the
+dead of night and creep in through some hidden passage to
+tell the operator what they have seen.</p>
+
+<p>The following episode was told me by a German officer.
+The Germans had billeted themselves on a French village and
+had requisitioned against <i lang="fr">bons</i> what they needed for their
+reasonable wants. Thereupon an elderly curé turned up at
+the commandant’s office and pleaded in the most beseeching
+tones to be allowed to keep the modest little stock of wine
+in his cellar which he said he needed for the sake of his failing
+health. His request was readily granted and orders were
+issued that the priest and his wine-cellar should be excluded
+from all requisitions. After a time the Germans noticed with
+amazement that the French fire in these parts was directed
+with almost uncanny precision. A thorough search was instituted,
+houses, cellars and straw stacks were ransacked, but
+without success. Nobody thought of the curé, who was old
+and broken in health, and who with the most innocent air in
+the world was seen daily tottering along laboriously to and
+from his little church. But at last things grew so suspicious
+that even the curé’s house had to be searched. There in the
+wine-cellar stood a large cask and inside it was a telephone
+apparatus, the wires from which passed through the cellar
+floor into the earth. It was the old curé himself who at night
+gave all the information which had proved so fatal to the
+Germans in the neighbourhood. On the following night the
+telephone was once more in operation. This time, however,
+it was a German officer, speaking French without the slightest
+trace of an accent, who took his seat in the wine cask. And
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[p. 330]</span>what <em>he</em> had to report may be left to the imagination. In any
+case there were no more direct hits after that night.</p>
+
+<p>When a village within the German sphere of operations
+continues to be inhabited by the French civil population it is
+not bombarded by the French, but if the population for any
+reason leaves the village, the fire is immediately directed against
+its farms and houses. Information in these respects can only
+be given through the underground telephone lines or through
+light signals at night. The latter method is, however, extremely
+dangerous, for when the Germans notice any suspicious lights
+their patrols bear down like hawks upon the point from which
+the light was seen.</p>
+
+<p>The village of Boiry where we now were has in peace time
+a population of nine hundred, but at present there are only
+a hundred and fifty left. After a while the population seemed
+to grow without any migration into the village being noticed.
+It was then found that the apparent new-comers had simply
+been hidden in the cellars, where they had tables, chairs, beds
+and all sorts of supplies. Thus they had lived for weeks, until
+they realised that the Germans were not such “barbarians”
+as they had been made out to be. But, nevertheless, the fact
+that Boiry was inhabited by French people made the German
+troops quartered there fairly safe from aviators’ bombs, whilst
+they were out of range of the artillery.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand the French airmen evidently had their
+eye on a German flying station in the neighbourhood. That
+very day a <i lang="de">Taube</i> had been damaged by a bomb, which had,
+moreover, wounded three men and killed twenty horses belonging
+to the flying section. But the Germans had revenged
+themselves amply, for the following day 155 Frenchmen had
+been captured in the same neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>I was told that it costs France tens of thousands of millions
+of francs to have the German armies in occupation of a part
+of their country, and this disadvantage is but slightly compensated
+for by certain benefits which I have briefly touched
+upon above and which include the greater facility of organising
+the intelligence service. But it must not be thought that the
+Germans are entirely deprived of the information they need.
+They have inexhaustible supplies of ordnance maps of the
+entire country, together with appertaining military and
+topographical data; they have, moreover, their incredibly
+skilful and bold flying corps and other scouts and, besides, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[p. 331]</span>information vouchsafed by prisoners. Opposite Monchy-au-Bois
+they had the 69th Regiment of the 20th French Army
+Corps. In the same way it was known to a nicety how the
+various enemy units were located along this front of six hundred
+kilometres. Any movements of troops, and what such
+movements might portend, were also known immediately.</p>
+
+<p>But it is getting late. We take leave of the most charming
+General and his Staff and drive home through the moonlit
+silent night. And I for my part could not help thinking of
+the young lieutenant about to embark on his first experience
+of trench life.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[p. 332]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXI">
+    CHAPTER XXI
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">SUNDAY THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">FOR over a thousand years the Catholic Church has
+kept, on the 2nd or 3rd of November, the solemn
+festival of “All Souls” in remembrance of the dead
+and as an admonition to the living to send up prayers
+to the throne of God for the souls suffering in purgatory.
+A Mass for the departed is held in the churches, and the
+graves in the cemeteries are adorned with wreaths and
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>In the parish church of Bapaume a German “All Souls”
+celebration was held on Sunday the 1st of November in
+remembrance of the fallen soldiers. Duke Adolf Friedrich
+and I arrived in good time for the service but found the
+church filled to overcrowding with four thousand soldiers.
+We succeeded however in getting up to the chancel, where
+two chairs were placed for us among a group of officers.</p>
+
+<p>The old church makes a truly imposing and magnificent
+impression. The first thing I felt constrained to do, after
+taking my seat, was to cast my eye over the fane, with its
+lofty Gothic arches and handsome windows. On either side
+of the mighty nave are small side-aisles supported by massive
+pillars. The transept walls are adorned with large memorial
+tablets, which however are of doubtful artistic value. The
+sunlight filters in through the stained-glass windows and falls
+in all the hues of the rainbow upon the white pillars. One
+wonders why a town of little more than 3,000 inhabitants
+should need a church capable of holding 4,000 persons, but
+at the great festivals this place of worship attracts people
+from the whole surrounding country.</p>
+
+<p>All pews are overcrowded, soldiers are standing closely
+packed all down the aisles, with their helmets slung over their
+arms. There are Catholic Sisters in their black dresses, white
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[p. 333]</span>coifs and Red Cross armlets. Both officers and men are unarmed.
+No rattling of sabres is heard. No one is commanded
+to Divine Service. The soldiers are at liberty to spend the
+hour of High Mass as they please. Yet the church is crowded
+from end to end. These hardened warriors feel the need of
+approaching God and hearing His word before they go forth
+to face death.</p>
+
+<p>A Divine Service in the field under the open sky is more
+impressive in its way. But I cannot imagine anything more
+beautiful than this High Mass in Bapaume Parish Church.
+Perhaps they preferred to celebrate All Souls’ Day under these
+lofty arches so as not to be disturbed by airmen. War is
+inexorable and does not hesitate to kill the children of man,
+even while performing their devotions. A Field Chaplain
+told me that on Sunday the 18th of October he was preaching
+on a hill-slope outside Douchy when a hostile aviator dropped
+a couple of bombs, intending to interrupt the service in this
+catastrophic manner. They exploded close to the listening
+troops. No one stirred, and the preacher calmly continued
+his sermon.</p>
+
+<p>It is a strangely fascinating sight that meets my eye as it
+travels over the nave from the raised floor of the chancel,
+and I feel that my heart beats in unison with those of the
+four thousand South Germans. Weather-beaten and sunburnt
+they stand&mdash;a picture of manhood, imbued with iron will and
+humble trust in God. Their field-grey uniforms have assumed
+a tint now truly at one with the colour of the fields through
+constant contact with the soil in trenches and “dug-outs.”
+But here and there I also observed the dark-blue
+tunics of Bavarian Landsturm men, sturdy and steadfast
+like the solid rock from which the pillars of the church were
+hewn.</p>
+
+<p>I hear that the credit of decorating the church so festively
+for All Souls’ Day was due to these Landsturm men. The
+chancel had been transformed into a solid bank of foliage,
+and all the pillars were hung with large green wreaths, in
+remembrance of the fallen. But the most remarkable thing
+of all was the reverence which the good Bavarians had shown
+to a small statue of Joan d’Arc standing on the left of the
+choir just within the triumphal arch. There was nothing in
+the least remarkable about this plaster image of the seventeen-year-old
+Maid of Orleans. She was just as one sees her in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[p. 334]</span>many other places. She stood, majestically erect, in her
+shining armour, holding in her hand the white standard
+adorned with <i lang="fr">fleurs-de-lys</i>. And yet I could not keep my eyes
+off her. She seemed to scrutinise the German warriors in
+the nave, and an ironical smile seemed to hover about her
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>But how did she get here? It is true that just twenty
+years ago she was declared blessed by Pope Leo XIII.&mdash;perhaps
+she has meanwhile been actually received into the Canon of
+Saints.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_29_29" href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> At any rate she is the object of almost divine veneration
+in this part of France. One could see that her image
+was not a regular part of the decorations of the church,
+because it had been placed on an upturned packing-case
+scantily draped with some cloth. When the war was hanging
+over France like a dark thunder-cloud she had been carried
+into the church, and the believers had fallen on their knees
+before her, imploring her to bestow her spirit and her victorious
+aid on the French. To propitiate the noble virgin,
+the citizens of Bapaume had offered her numerous candles
+which were arranged on a stand in front of the image. And
+now comes the strangest part, the good Bavarians had glorified
+her with a background of tall plants and had lit all the candles,
+those candles whose flames were burning prayers for victory
+over&mdash;the Germans!</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_29_29" href="#FNanchor_29_29" class="label">[29]</a> She was canonised by Pope Pius X. in May, 1909.&mdash;Translator.</p></div>
+
+<p>The blessed virgin had yet another and greater cause to
+smile at human folly. In her time, more than half of France
+was overrun by the English and their allies. It was against
+them that she had fought&mdash;them that she had vanquished&mdash;and
+when, overpowered at last, she fell into the hands of her
+country’s enemies she was delivered by them into the hands
+of the inquisition. She was derided, locked up with rough
+soldiers and finally burnt at the stake&mdash;all this by those very
+Englishmen whom she was now invoked, by burning prayers
+and candles, to assist against the Germans. One may pardon
+the young lady for making a wry face and feeling somewhat
+perplexed! The Bavarians might well light the candles
+without misgivings&mdash;she did not heed them, and her helmet
+prevented her from hearing the presumptuous prayers.</p>
+
+<p>The peals of the organ now rise loud and clear towards the
+roof, and lusty voices from four thousand young warriors’
+throats sing Bernard de Clairvaux’s eight-hundred-year-old
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[p. 335]</span>Latin hymn <i lang="la">Salve caput cruentatum</i> in its German version
+composed in 1659 by Paul Gerhard:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">O sacred Head, surrounded</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">By crown of piercing thorn!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">O bleeding Head, so wounded,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Reviled and put to scorn!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Death’s pallid hue comes o’er Thee,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">The glow of life decays.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Yet angel hosts adore Thee</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">And tremble as they gaze!</div>
+    </div>
+          <hr class="sect">
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">In mine own hour of passion,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Good Shepherd, think of me</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">With Thy most sweet compassion,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Unworthy though I be.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">In Thy sweet arms abiding</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">For ever would I rest,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">In Thy dear love confiding,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">And with Thy presence blest!”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_30_30" href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>&#x2060;</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_30_30" href="#FNanchor_30_30" class="label">[30]</a> “Ancient and Modern Hymns,” version slightly modified.&mdash;Translator.</p></div>
+
+<p>When the last note of Cleving’s sonorous voice&mdash;which,
+though I could not see the singer from where I sat, could easily
+be distinguished and rang with the fervour of devotion&mdash;had
+died away, Franz Xaver Münch, Divisional Chaplain of Düsseldorf,
+ascended the pulpit. He was a tall and powerfully built
+man. With authoritative dignity he stood and looked down
+upon his congregation of all grades and all arms, of horny-handed
+soldiers and Sisters of Mercy, of Protestants and
+Catholics. The service was a joint service for all creeds. The
+priest himself was a Catholic. But now, in the German
+nation’s greatest hour, all barriers of creed were broken; there
+was no longer any distinction between Protestants, Catholics
+or Jews&mdash;there were only <em>Germans</em>. “We have now all become
+as <em>one</em> man, and we all have <em>one</em> God.”</p>
+
+<p>But the priest stood in the pulpit and delivered the following
+sermon:</p>
+
+<p>“Dearly beloved friends and comrades!</p>
+
+<p>“‘O Sacred Head surrounded!’ This is how the German
+master Grünewald, the placid, great mystic, saw Him when
+he pictured that Divine ‘Man of Sorrow,’ His pain and His
+wounds, and His bruised and pierced body! This is how
+Bach beheld Him when in his ‘Passion according to St.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[p. 336]</span>Matthew’ he prayed and lamented over the dying Son of
+God: ‘Help, ye daughters ... help me lament!’</p>
+
+<p>“In this sacred hour, when we mourn our dead heroes, we
+realise more powerfully than ever before the passion of Our
+Lord. For are not we Germans ourselves undergoing our
+Passion, and is not our Empire itself transformed to a suffering
+Christ? We too have passed through our hour of trial on
+Mount Olivet when, with our Emperor, we prayed that ‘this
+cup of suffering might pass away’ from us, and obeying the
+unfathomable Divine Will, we began to drain it. We too felt
+the war weighing upon us like a cross, and we are bearing its
+burden, trusting in the same aid which comforted our Heavenly
+Master. We too have been forsaken by those to whom we
+had only shown what is good and right, and around us too
+has roared the cry, full of hatred and envy: ‘Crucify him!’
+And like the Master, we too, in this our German Passion, are
+bearing wounds, among which the noblest and most bloody
+are our dear dead Germans!</p>
+
+<p>“Standing by the common graves in which we have buried
+our dead, we lament deeply and sorrowfully. For we Germans
+too can weep and lament! And with our lamentations mingle
+the sobs and wailings of the poor German widows and orphans,
+whose husbands and fathers rest in foreign soil.</p>
+
+<p>“And yet we do not sorrow like the heathen who have
+nothing to hope for. Even the dead live, and urge us on to
+the task incumbent on the living. I fancy I can hear, from
+those trench graves, the imploring, earnestly beseeching cry:
+‘<em>See to it that our sufferings may not have been in vain!</em>’ The
+task which the dead lay upon us is, untiringly, and with the
+utmost exertion of all our powers of mind and body, to accomplish
+the work of liberation of our threatened empire. From
+the earliest times it has been a prominent characteristic of
+German effort in every domain to go about the task in hand
+thoroughly and perseveringly and to accomplish it accurately
+in every detail. This purely German talent we shall also employ,
+with all the energy mercifully bestowed on us, in this
+fateful hour. Just as in times of peace we were a nation who
+created new resources, beneficent even to others, so we will
+not now rest till we have forced upon our enemies a peace
+which shall not only bring a new spring of prosperity to our
+land but shall also be a guarantee for the tranquillity and
+security of all Europe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[p. 337]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Yet another cry I seem to hear from those trench graves:
+‘<em>Do not forget our sufferings and our wounds!</em>’ My dear
+comrades! Those among our people who still retain their
+moral earnestness will never forget the wounds and the sufferings
+which this war has brought with it. The price of our
+liberation and of our victories is the most precious and most
+noble that a people can pay&mdash;the blood of our young manhood!
+Come and see how we are burying the young! We
+cannot even give them a plain coffin! We cannot, as the
+ancient Teutons did, raise them on our shields and carry them
+over hill and dale to their German home. But, dear brethren,
+I know of a sarcophagus which is more precious than a coffin&mdash;fashioned
+by the hand of a greater Master&mdash;I mean the sarcophagus
+of the German heart. Deeply enshrined there, let us
+lay our dear dead to rest and carry them home with us, some
+day, to the German native land. And if, some day&mdash;which
+God our Protector in our German fight forbid&mdash;a time should
+come when a generation of young men and young women does
+not know what the peace and the new prosperity of the empire
+has cost us, when people in laxity and luxury only live to
+enjoy the fruits, when people abandon themselves to the strange
+gods of demoralising and pernicious habits&mdash;then, my dear
+brethren, the time will have come for us, who have been standing
+to-day in sorrow around these tombs, to open the sarcophagus
+of our hearts and exhibit to a slothful generation our
+dead, their wounds and their dying moments! Then the
+spirits of the fallen shall fight another and a harder fight
+against those of our own people who no longer preserve the
+memory of the gaping wounds of war in the innermost recesses
+of their soul!</p>
+
+<p>“Thus this day on which we commemorate our dead is in
+reality a day of surging life, of new hopes and of urgent tasks.
+These graves are a gigantic reproach to our enemies, but to
+us they will be a sacred memorial in the time to come. Those
+who have sown the storms shall reap the whirlwind! And
+this whirlwind is now raging over their land! Led astray by
+petty motives and by small groups of selfish partisans, ‘they
+have sown in the flesh and they shall reap destruction.’ We
+venture to swear before God that we have sown in the spirit
+of righteousness and peace. To us the war is a momentously
+spiritual matter, which touches the innermost heart of a
+nation which has risen in unity, which has been hurt in its
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[p. 338]</span>most sacred sentiments, and has been forced to defend itself.
+And through the Spirit of Righteousness and Peace our
+people shall reap eternal life. Amen.”</p>
+
+<p>“O God, who by Thy holy Apostles hast commanded us
+to love the Ruler Thou hast given us, pour the richest blessings
+on our Emperor and all his house! And above all we pray
+Thee, in these the great days of fateful warlike complications,
+to bestow Thy grace on our Imperial Lord! In holy trust
+and deep humility he has committed his people to Thy protection!
+For the sake of all of us, preserve his health and
+strength! Enlighten him in his counsels! Comfort him,
+while with a father’s heart he grieves over the wounds of his
+empire! Reward him with victory for his army, and with an
+honourable peace! This grant him, God, the Righteous, for
+the sake of the atoning death of our Divine Lord and Saviour!
+Amen.”</p>
+
+<p>“O Lord of Hosts! Uphold our brave German Army!
+Thou knowest what a righteous cause it is fighting for, and
+how it is pressed by enemies on every hand! Grant its leaders
+wisdom and skill,&mdash;grant its soldiers the spirit of constant
+self-sacrificing courage and ready obedience! Let them all
+find shelter under the wings of Thy mercy, Thy divinity and
+Thy grace! Grant us this through Thy son our Heavenly
+Lord and Saviour! Amen.”</p>
+
+<p>“O Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who Thyself didst live,
+with Thy holy parents, a holy family life, have mercy on our
+families at home! Protect our fair and fertile land, our villages
+and towns, our fields and vineyards, our trade and handicraft!
+Protect above all our German youth&mdash;Thou the divine friend
+of children! Let the young be deeply imbued with the import
+of the times and with love of their native land, in this
+fateful hour! But especially comfort each wife whose husband
+is resting in foreign soil, for Thy Father is the God of the
+widows and the fatherless! Thou Thyself hadst a mother
+whose heart bled with pain and grief! Console the mothers,
+give comfort to the children! Have mercy on brothers,
+sisters and betrothed who are mourning their beloved dead&mdash;Thou
+who livest and reignest from eternity to eternity!
+Amen.”</p>
+
+
+<p>The bands play a hymn whose magnificently solemn notes
+re-echo through the church. A quartette strikes up the <i lang="la">Ave
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[p. 339]</span>verum corpus natum</i> and finally the congregation sings the
+doxology:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent4">“Mighty God, we worship Thee,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Lord, we praise Thy glorious name!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">Heaven and earth bow down to Thee</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And Thy wondrous works proclaim!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">As from all eternity,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Thou for evermore shalt be!”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The High Mass was over and the soldiers filed out, past the
+little maid who, thanks to Schiller’s magnificent romantic
+tragedy, was no stranger to them. The candles might well be
+lit in front of her&mdash;had she not vanquished the English?
+The French Maid, as she stands there, brings to our minds
+those proud words which the German bard put into her mouth
+when, a prisoner in the hands of the English, he makes her
+boldly exclaim to the ferocious and insolent Queen Isabeau:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent4">“France never shall the Briton’s fetters bear,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">No, never! For, ere that, it shall become</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">One vast engulphing tomb for all your hosts!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The flower of your army’s gone&mdash;betimes</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">Think of a safe retreat&mdash;already now,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Your glory’s faded and your might is broken!”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Perhaps there were also some in Bapaume Church who
+thought of those grand words, in which Schiller makes her
+predict the ultimate triumph over truth:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent4">“Without the Will of God no single hair</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Falls from man’s head!&mdash;See yonder sun</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">Descending to the horizon&mdash;Yea, as surely</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">As in the morn he’ll rise anew in splendour,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">As surely comes the day when truth prevails!”&mdash;</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then the lights were quickly extinguished and the Maid of
+Orleans remained alone, pensive and still.</p>
+
+<p>Pastor Münch remarked to me how profoundly impressive
+it was to witness the soldiers’ and officers’ spiritual cravings
+during the war. At divine service the churches were always
+crowded, and hundreds of soldiers were attending the weekday
+Vespers. The sermons were printed in tens and hundreds
+of thousands of copies for distribution in the trenches. War
+was carried on, not only with rifles, bayonets and artillery,
+but also with the weapons of the fear of God and prayer!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[p. 340]</span></p>
+
+<p>For his own part he thought that Catholics and Protestants,
+however strictly they each adhered to their own particular
+tenets, yet well understood each other. The German Catholics
+had most fervently taken to heart the situation of their common
+fatherland in the face of the war, and their sentiments were as
+genuine, sincere and true as those of the Protestants. Perhaps
+one of the results of the war would be that the two creeds
+would have learnt to esteem each other and to abstain in
+future from dwelling on those points in which they were most
+strongly at variance. Already it had been realised in German
+evangelical circles that, although the Roman Catholic Church
+comprises all nations, yet the German Catholics were fighting
+with unshakable consistency and conviction for German
+national interests.</p>
+
+<p>A sanguinary reminiscence of the Franco-German war is
+connected with Bapaume. On January 3rd, 1871, impelled
+by the precarious situation of Paris, General Faidherbe
+attacked, with the French Northern Army,&mdash;the 22nd and
+23rd Army Corps&mdash;General Goeben’s forces, collected in and
+about Bapaume, whose nucleus was the 15th Division of the
+8th Army Corps. The Germans held their main position
+though outnumbered by more than two to one, but at the
+end of the day were totally exhausted, and moreover short
+of ammunition. General Faidherbe, on the other hand, saw
+his best troops badly spent and the <i lang="fr">Gardes Mobiles</i> demoralised
+by the fatigues undergone. He would not venture another
+blow, and fell back on Arras and Douai. The deficient military
+training and discipline of the French militia rendered it impossible
+for the General to take advantage of the otherwise
+favourable situation.</p>
+
+<p>Forty-four years have now passed since then, and Bapaume
+is once more in German hands. The French have erected, in
+the centre of the market-place, a statue of Faidherbe&mdash;a
+worthy memorial to a brilliant career. Time after time this
+brave man had been entrusted with the solution of important
+tasks at home, in Guadeloupe, in Algiers, Senegal and Kabylia,
+until in the end he was appointed by Gambetta, in November,
+1870, to the command of the Northern Army. He was by no
+means lacking in courage, confidence, initiative, patriotism
+and fervent zeal, but with his militia troops he was like a
+general without an army, in the face of the thoroughly and
+carefully trained Germans.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill100"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_100_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/100_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>BAND PLAYING BESIDE FAIDHERBE’S STATUE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill101"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_101_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/101_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>GERMAN SOLDIERS BESIDE THE FRENCH GENERAL’S MEMORIAL
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[p. 341]</span></p>
+
+<p>Faidherbe survived his failure for a good many years. He
+died in Paris in 1889 after eighteen years’ grief at his generalship
+being wasted uselessly in consequence of the blindness
+and ignorance of those who represented the nation and who
+brought that nation to the deepest abyss of national misfortune
+ever witnessed in our times.</p>
+
+<p>There he stands, in bronze, on his white pedestal&mdash;one of the
+victims of his nation’s baneful mistake. And around him
+stand sons of the people who vanquished him, now following
+victoriously in the footsteps of their fathers. There he stands,
+defiant and resolute, with crossed arms, his right hand clasping
+the hilt of his sword. His whole bearing seems to evince an
+unflinching resolution not to recede one step but only to push
+forward! His greatcoat seems to flutter in the wind, and his
+cap is jauntily cocked to one side. He bears his head high and
+proudly, his eyes are turned towards the German troops&mdash;now
+as in the days of the past. For now, as then, he has
+closely serried ranks of German soldiers before him. Many
+of those who had attended the church service have now
+assembled in the market-place. The German military band
+forms a semicircle in front of Faidherbe’s statue. Baton in
+hand, the bandmaster steps forth, and now the “Watch on
+the Rhine” rings out. Grand, sonorous and stirring, its notes
+swirl round the hero up there on the pedestal. He seems more
+defiant than ever, with his bared sword, and an air of deep
+tragedy seems to hover about his features!</p>
+
+<p>But the German musicians and their comrades stand calm
+and undismayed; a sentiment of confident expectation of
+victory pervades all these warriors. Cleving begins to sing
+and others join in, until a mighty wave of song sweeps over
+the market-place:&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_31_31" href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“The tocsin rings like thunder peal,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Like roar of waves and clash of steel:&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">To th’ Rhine&mdash;the Rhine,&mdash;the German Rhine!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Who will keep guard upon the Rhine?</div>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>Chorus:</i></div>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Be undismayed, dear country mine:</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Firm stands and true the watch,&mdash;the watch on th’ Rhine!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent10">(<i>Rep.</i>)</div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[p. 342]</span>    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Through hundred thousands thrills the call</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And boldly flash the eyes of all:</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The German, loyal, staunch and true,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Protects that sacred landmark blue!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent10">(<i>Chorus.</i>)</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">He gazes upwards to the sky,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Where valiant fathers dwell on high,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And proudly vows: For evermore</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Shall German stay the Rhine’s fair shore!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent10">(<i>Chorus.</i>)</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">While yet a drop of blood we hoard,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Have yet an arm to wield the sword&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">To pull the trigger yet one hand&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">No foeman’s foot shall tread this land!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent10">(<i>Chorus.</i>)</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">The vow rings o’er the wave-swept vale&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Proud banners flutter in the gale&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">On th’ Rhine,&mdash;the Rhine, the German Rhine&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">We’ll all keep guard upon the Rhine!”</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent10">(<i>Chorus.</i>)</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_31_31" href="#FNanchor_31_31" class="label">[31]</a> “Die Wacht am Rhein.” Having failed, in this and in other instances
+in this book, to discover an “authorised” version, the translator has been
+compelled to make literal translations himself.</p></div>
+
+<p>Before we left the market square we looked in at the Base
+Commander’s office, to see the old Bavarian Colonel who had
+been so ungracious on my arrival in Bapaume. But now, as I
+have mentioned, we were firm friends.</p>
+
+<p>The brilliant assembly of guests round the Duke’s hospitable
+board included on this occasion the Chief of the Staff, Count
+von der Schulenburg, a lively and pleasant gentleman, who
+evoked great merriment by his happy wit.</p>
+
+<p>When the guests had departed, we mounted the Duke’s car
+and drove to Hamelincourt, whither we had been invited for
+tea by Rittmeister von Hollen. When we passed through the
+village before, night had fallen; now we inspected more
+closely the slightly damaged church and a few wrecked houses.
+Even this little place was swarming with troops and officers;
+we also met a stout and jovial Catholic priest who had been
+out that day to the foremost fighting line to preach. He had
+passed through the most remarkable adventures with his
+lively little grey cob, and he recounted some of them while we
+were seated at von Hollen’s hospitable table.</p>
+
+<p>On the notice board of the Townhall we had seen the
+announcement: “This afternoon at 5 p.m. a short service
+will be held in Bapaume Cemetery in commemoration of our
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[p. 343]</span>fallen comrades.” When we left Hamelincourt, we therefore
+made straight for the cemetery. Crowds of officers and men
+were filtering along the paths between a forest of crosses and
+tombstones. There was here a common grave, in which
+Frenchmen and Germans have been resting side by side since
+1871, also some fresh graves dating from the present war.
+A surgeon lay buried here, whose fox-terrier, for three days and
+nights, could not be induced to leave his master’s grave.</p>
+
+<p>A group of nursing sisters come bearing large wreaths
+wherewith to adorn the graves of the dead soldiers. The band
+strikes up a slow and solemn funeral march; a preacher
+delivers an address in remembrance of the dead, and a choir
+of Bavarian Landsturm men ascend a little mound and pay
+homage to their fallen comrades in beautiful song. They are
+good-natured fellows, these powerful and strong Bavarians,
+but in war they are awkward customers to tackle. Then they
+no longer think of “<i lang="de">Eine ganz frische Blume</i>”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_32_32" href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> and can even
+dispense with their beloved <i lang="de">Hofbräu</i> beer. Their younger
+comrades in the trenches are notorious for their eagerness to
+fight and for their undaunted courage. They never give way.
+If the word is given to charge with the bayonet, nothing can
+hold them back. A Bavarian “Hurrah” is something terrifying.
+But when the enemy throws up his hands and yields
+himself up as prisoner, these warriors become their old gentle
+selves. If the situation permits it may happen, however, that
+they rummage in their opponents’ pockets and knapsacks for
+cigarettes. When, in the former war, the Germans reproached
+the French with having pressed half-savage and heathen
+races into their ranks, they are said to have replied: “<i lang="fr">Eh
+bien, vous avez vos Bavarois!</i>”</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_32_32" href="#FNanchor_32_32" class="label">[32]</a> Title of one of their songs.</p></div>
+
+<p>On the extreme fringe of the audience stood sixty Landsturm
+men, who had been ordered to the cemetery to open
+fire in case a hostile airman should show himself. Aviators
+are mostly out between five and six, and the air was calm and
+clear this evening. Just imagine what havoc might be wrought
+if a bomb or two were dropped among these closely packed
+crowds! While the priest is speaking, the warning whir is
+heard overhead. But not a muscle moves on the faces of his
+audience; the preacher’s voice never falters nor does he lose
+the thread of his discourse for an instant. One little sister
+alone raises her blue eyes to the sky, but seems quite unconcerned.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[p. 344]</span>“It is a German airman,” the Duke whispers into
+my ear, and he told me afterwards that one soon learnt to
+distinguish French from German aeroplanes&mdash;by their sound.
+The German machines have a duller note.</p>
+
+<p>On returning home I called in as usual to see M. Cossart
+and Mdlles. Lengagne, and sat and chatted with them for
+half an hour. They had been greatly upset on hearing that
+large numbers of the male population of Bapaume had been
+carried away into captivity in Germany, but on enquiring into
+the matter I was able to assure them that at most only a
+hundred were in question, who were considered of military
+age and had therefore been taken away to be interned; they
+would return after the war in unimpaired health and strength.
+Then I told them about the incidents of the day, the High
+Mass and the music in the market-place. They themselves
+had not been out of doors; they <em>would not</em> go out&mdash;they
+<em>would not</em> hear the Prussian music in Bapaume! What could
+I say to console them? How can one console people who see
+their countryside occupied by hostile armies? It could not
+cheer them to hear the latest news from the theatres of war&mdash;about
+Hindenburg’s fresh advances in Poland, and the doings
+of the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea! And if I did say anything
+of the kind they simply would not believe it. I felt very
+sorry for them&mdash;just as I did for Faidherbe, out there in the
+market-place!</p>
+
+<p>But it was now nearly seven o’clock, so I crossed the street
+to call for the Duke. We were to drive to Douai, where we
+were invited to take supper at 8 p.m. with the Chief of the
+6th Army, Colonel-General Rupprecht, Crown Prince of
+Bavaria. The distance is nearly thirty-four kilometres and
+can easily be covered in three-quarters of an hour, but the
+numerous posts stationed on the road took up much of our
+time. It was five minutes to eight when we arrived. An
+adjutant conducted us to a drawing-room, and we had not
+waited half a minute when the Crown Prince entered.</p>
+
+<p>He is one of those rare men whom all love and admire&mdash;all
+except the English, for I think that even the French cannot
+help paying him a meed of respect. In the German army he
+is looked upon as a very eminent general&mdash;a born strategist
+and a thoroughly schooled soldier. As regards appearance,
+manner and speech, he is fascinating and congenial in the
+highest degree, neither regal nor humble, but without artifice
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[p. 345]</span>and modest like an ordinary mortal. When one <em>knows</em> that
+he has recently experienced the greatest private sorrow which
+could befall him, one fancies, perhaps, that one detects a trace
+thereof in his features&mdash;an air of sadness&mdash;but otherwise he
+does not betray, by a look or a sigh, how deeply he grieves
+over the death of the little prince of thirteen, the darling of
+all Bavaria. When the country and the empire are in danger,
+all private sorrows must be put aside! The Crown Prince has
+no time to grieve or to think of the void and bereavement
+which he will feel on his victorious return to Munich. He lives
+for and with his army, and is like a father to each and all of
+his soldiers. He devotes all his power of mind, all his physical
+strength, all his time, to the one great object which dominates
+all else in the minds of the whole German army.</p>
+
+<p>Crown Prince Rupprecht walks in with brisk and easy stride,
+stretches out his hands towards us and gives us a truly cordial
+welcome. And then he adds half-humorously: “I expect
+some other distinguished guests at my table to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who can that be?” asks the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>“The Emperor!” replies the Crown Prince, and claps his
+hands together.</p>
+
+<p>“The Emperor?” we cry, for we had no idea that His
+Majesty was in this part of the country.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, the Emperor has visited several units in this neighbourhood
+to-day, and has promised.... Hush, I hear his
+car!” and with that the Crown Prince hurried out.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Officers of the General Staff of the Army
+came to greet us, and presently the Emperor’s suite, among
+whom I knew several, also entered. Before I had time to
+wonder where the supreme War-Lord himself had gone, we
+were asked to step into the dining-room. The Emperor was
+already seated at the table. We all stepped up to our chairs,
+but no one seated himself. The Emperor sat with bowed
+head, looking very grave. But suddenly his blue eyes flashed
+up, and he nodded kindly in all directions. When he caught
+sight of me, he extended his hand across the table and cried
+gaily: “<i lang="de">Guten Tag, mein lieber Sven Hedin; es scheint Ihnen
+gut zu gefallen in meiner Armee</i>,”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_33_33" href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> a sentiment which I confirmed
+with the greatest alacrity.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_33_33" href="#FNanchor_33_33" class="label">[33]</a> “How do you do, my dear Sven Hedin; you seem rather to like being
+with my Army.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps it might amuse the reader to hear who were the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[p. 346]</span>ten people seated round Crown Prince Rupprecht’s table.
+Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg sat at the Emperor’s
+right, and Prince Löwenstein at his left. Right opposite the
+Emperor sat the Crown Prince&mdash;the host&mdash;with Colonel-General
+von Plessen, Adjutant-General, at his right and myself
+at his left. Next to me on the other side was Lieut.-General
+von Marschall, with Colonel Tappen, of the Crown
+Prince’s staff, on his left. To the left of Prince Löwenstein
+sat General Falkenhayn, Minister of War, and between him
+and General von Plessen the chief of the Crown Prince’s staff,
+General Krafft von Dellmensingen. At another table of about
+the same size, covers had been laid for the other gentlemen of
+the Emperor’s and Crown Prince’s staff and suite.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor was in brilliant spirits. I really do not know
+whether he <em>can</em> be otherwise, for whenever I have had the
+honour to meet him, he has always been merry, amiable and
+witty. He can certainly express at times in words of thunder
+his displeasure at some contemptible act on the part of the
+enemy, but he is soon sunshine again and bursts into irresistible
+laughter at some whimsical idea. He has a wonderful gift of
+instilling life into a party and keeping the conversation at
+high pitch&mdash;as he did here for over two and a half hours.
+He told us a great deal of most interesting news, things which
+had happened in different parts of the field during the last
+few days and which, at least to me and to the Duke, were
+news indeed. If one asks the Emperor any question about the
+conditions in more or less remote countries, as to which sparse
+or contradictory information has come to one’s ears, he will,
+off-hand, and with a masterly marshalling of facts, deliver a
+veritable lecture on its internal and external policy, its public
+sentiments, its resources, and its military strength. I think
+I have never met a man who can rival Emperor William in
+this respect.</p>
+
+<p>He also possesses the faculty of grasping with lightning
+quickness and judging the opinions expressed by others. He
+listened with the liveliest interest to Crown Prince Rupprecht
+as the latter gave him various details about his army, and to
+me when I described the bombardment of Ostend.</p>
+
+<p>It was past half-past ten when the Emperor laid down his
+cigar and rose to say good-bye with that vigorous handshake
+which leaves its mark on one’s knuckles. The Crown Prince
+alone accompanied him out into the hall, which immediately
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[p. 347]</span>adjoined the dining-room and from which a few steps led out
+into the road. A soldier stood ready holding the Emperor’s
+light greyish-blue cloak, with dark fur collar; another handed
+him the plain Prussian officer’s field-cap. After the host and
+his guest had exchanged a few more words they went out to
+the car, which drove off rapidly into the night, whereupon the
+Crown Prince rejoined us.</p>
+
+<p>We then arranged plans for the morrow&mdash;another trip
+northward. Captain Lübke was ordered to accompany us.
+He was to watch for us when we returned to Douai about
+ten o’clock.</p>
+
+<p>So we said good-bye to the Crown Prince of Bavaria, Chief
+of the 6th Army, and left his quarters where we had spent a
+memorable evening. Our return journey was most tediously
+delayed by the zeal of the guards posted along the road.
+Every moment we were stopped, and if we gave the slightest
+sign of disregarding the challenge, the sentries at once prepared
+to fire. Any attempt at running away might have cost
+us our lives. We therefore stopped discreetly. The commander
+of the picket came forward and turned his lantern upon us.
+The Duke asked why the guarding of the road was so much
+stricter now than it was three hours ago. “Well, we have
+received information that a couple of spies in German uniform
+accompanied by a woman, are out driving in a car somewhere
+in this neighbourhood. We have orders to let no one pass,
+no matter whom, without the closest scrutiny.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that is right; watch well, lads! Good night!” the
+Duke exclaims as we drive on&mdash;until the next lantern once
+more compels us to stop.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[p. 348]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">
+    CHAPTER XXII
+    <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">ENGLISH PRISONERS FROM YPRES</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">UP betimes for early Mass and away across Artois’
+desolate plains to Douai! At the headquarters of the
+Chief Command we were met by Captain Lübke with
+his car, and he introduced us to two other participants in the
+day’s excursion, Councillor Göppert and the Austrian battle-scene
+painter, Professor Hans von Hayek. Thereupon we
+jumped in and tore away past Pasteur and Joan of Arc, before
+whom we had no further occasion to stop. We were through
+the town in a twinkling, and drove out under the <i lang="fr">Porte de
+Roubaix</i>, following in a north-easterly direction the long
+unbroken street connecting Lille with Roubaix.</p>
+
+<p>At the latter place we came across 250 English soldiers who
+had recently been captured, together with a number of officers,
+all of whom were to be conveyed to Germany in the afternoon.
+The men were lodged in a large hall, probably a dismantled
+restaurant. There was no furniture, but large beds of straw
+had been spread out on the floor, especially along the walls.
+Here the men could fix themselves up for the night. They
+certainly had nothing to complain of. One “Tommy,” who
+had a slight wound in the head, was just being treated by an
+English doctor, who was also a prisoner. An adjoining room
+with a glass roof contained long rows of tables and chairs,
+where the prisoners took their meals. Here I photographed
+a couple of groups, and the reader will be able to see for himself
+that the English soldiers in German captivity look neither
+downcast nor ill. In one picture they even have a rather
+cheeky and lively Frenchwoman, inclined to stoutness, sitting
+between them, and I must admit to their honour as serious
+soldiers, that it was she who begged and prayed to be allowed
+to be photographed with her allies and customers&mdash;for the
+noble lady was no less a person than the chief waitress, and it
+was she who saw to it that the prisoners were amply and well
+fed.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill102"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_102_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w70" src="images/102_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>TOMMY ATKINS AT ROUBAIX
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[p. 349]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the restaurant kitchen the prisoners’ fare was being cooked
+in large caldrons, and here, too, the kitchen staff was predominantly
+French. Anyone accusing the Germans of stinting
+the prisoners’ food allowance should take a peep at the restaurant
+in Roubaix. Everything was most ample and excellent.
+It is true that they got no oysters, truffles, lobster or plum
+pudding. But they got sound, solid food, and these mercenaries,
+who perhaps were natives of the east end of London,
+had probably not for a long time been so well looked after as
+at Roubaix. Moreover, the French waitress was not a little
+in love with “Tommy Atkins,” and watched over him as the
+mother eagle watches over her brood, to see that he always
+had plenty to eat.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill102_1"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_102_1_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w90" src="images/102_1_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE FRENCH WAITRESS AND HER ENGLISH CUSTOMERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>A few days previously the catering, both in food and other
+things, had threatened to assume more liberal proportions
+than the German authorities thought desirable. The fact was
+that the citizens of Roubaix had decided to make a collection
+of <i lang="de">Liebesgaben</i> for the English prisoners. But then the Germans
+thought that things were going a little too far, and stepped in
+and prohibited the intended feast.</p>
+
+<p>In the great hall I found other members of the genus “Tommy
+Atkins” resting on the straw. They looked well and cheerful,
+and many had attractive, manly and kindly features. When
+I stopped in front of a group to talk to them, they made no
+sign of rising, but answered very politely and with the ineffable
+calm which distinguishes their race. They said straight out
+that they were satisfied with the treatment they received and
+with the food given them. One of them thought that one
+could not very well expect in war better treatment than they
+received here. The only thing that worried them was that
+they were not allowed to smoke in the hall. But the German
+officer standing by explained that the hall was built of inflammable
+material, not to speak of the dry straw, and that
+the Germans had no wish to see their English prisoners burnt.
+A large and pleasant room on the first floor accommodated
+three English officers, a captain and two lieutenants, and a
+French captain. Each of them had his own bed, clean and
+neat-looking, and the room also contained tables and chairs
+and other useful and necessary furniture. The Frenchman
+was in mufti, and explained, when I asked how this was, that
+he lived in Roubaix, and had received permission to fetch
+fresh clothes from his home. Like the others, he had nothing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[p. 350]</span>to complain of, but he was deeply distressed over the misfortunes
+which had come over France. He wept as he spoke
+of it, but comforted himself with the thought that the pendulum
+would soon swing the other way. Germany <em>could not</em> in the
+long run keep her end up against the combined armies and
+navies of France, Britain, Russia and Japan, no, not even
+with the assistance she got from Austria-Hungary, but I could
+tell that his hopes were not very deeply rooted, for tears welled
+up in his eyes as he spoke. Poor French captain! Think how
+he must feel, first to be taken prisoner on the field of battle,
+and then to sit as a prisoner in his own native town, with
+his wife and family close by. But he admitted that the
+Germans had treated him kindly.</p>
+
+<p>It is really horrible and distressing to see two of the world’s
+leading cultured nations endeavouring with every conceivable
+bait to lure the Japanese into sending their armies to the
+European battlefields to destroy Germanic culture. What
+would the result have been had this plot against the white
+race been successful? The whole thing is unthinkable. One
+obvious effect would have been the weakening of the white
+races in favour of the yellow. What would the future have
+had to say to a diplomacy which thus administered its charge?
+Happily the Land of the Rising Sun has wiser and more far-sighted
+statesmen than the Western powers. The Japanese
+realise that if the Europeans continue to destroy one another,
+those areas in the Far East which mean so much to them, will
+drop like ripe fruit into their hands without a single Japanese
+soldier having to spill his blood in the land of the white races.
+And, besides, has not Japan herself immense problems to solve
+on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean and among its islands?
+Is it not in Japan’s interest that the war should leave Germany’s
+enemies as weak as possible? The more feeble they
+are after the war, the greater are Japan’s prospects of figuring
+as their heir and successor in the Far East. But even for the
+solution of these problems, which belong to the near future,
+Japan requires a considerable display of force. In her own
+obvious interests she must conserve her forces during this
+world struggle, and patiently bide her time. Then, far beyond
+the European battlefields, she has another political problem
+looming up on the horizon&mdash;America.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst I was talking politics with the French captain the
+Duke stood chatting with the English soldiers. I saw him
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[p. 351]</span>point to me, and heard them exclaim: “No, really, <em>that</em>
+fellow?” A moment later I had my revenge and told them
+who the German officer was that they had been talking to,
+and this surprised them even more. Perhaps they themselves
+will tell of our visit when the hour of peace has struck.</p>
+
+<p>One of the lieutenants was a well-bred and pleasant young
+fellow, the son of a prominent merchant in London. His
+father did business with Germany, and he himself had stayed
+there&mdash;I believe in Hamburg&mdash;to learn the language. He said
+that the war had turned all his plans completely upside down,
+“but we had no option but to come into the war,” he thought.</p>
+
+<p>We took a friendly farewell of the four officers, and drove
+back to Lille to pay a visit to the citadel, where a body of
+Indian prisoners were said to be interned. The French citadel
+is now a German barracks. German soldiers and military cars
+and a number of captured guns were ranged up in the yard,
+but there were no Indian prisoners, I am sorry to say. They
+had been moved east the same morning&mdash;for it is necessary
+to clear as quickly as possible all available space to make room
+for the fresh batches which pour in from the front in a continuous
+stream. However, I could do without the Indians. I had
+seen them before, in their own country, under India’s burning
+sun. There they are in their element. That is where they
+ought to be now. But I cannot deny that it would after all
+have been very interesting to meet them here again, and to
+find out what they thought of life in the foggy autumn of
+Artois and Flanders. I myself knew what it was like to try
+to acclimatise Indians in a colder climate. On my last journey
+in Tibet I had with me two Rajputs from Kashmir. When we
+got up amongst the mountains, they nearly froze to death,
+and my caravan leader, Mohammed Isa, declared that they
+were of no more use than the puppies we had with us. So they
+were discharged, and sent back to their tepid valleys. The
+same thing happened with my Hindoo cook from Madras.
+I realised that I had been guilty of a piece of stupidity in thinking
+that they could be used outside India. In Tibet one lives
+on meat, in India on vegetables. How could they possibly
+stand a sudden change both of climate and diet?</p>
+
+<p>And now I had read in the newspapers that the British had
+organised a complete importation of Indians into Europe.
+I had found it very difficult to believe these reports, but at
+the front I found that they were really true. “How do you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[p. 352]</span>treat these Indian soldiers?” I once asked some German
+officers.</p>
+
+<p>“We arrest them,” one answered, and another added:</p>
+
+<p>“It’s not necessary, they soon freeze to death in the
+trenches.”</p>
+
+<p>When I admit that I myself had been guilty of stupidity in
+thinking that the Indians could be employed in Tibet, I think
+I am entitled to say that Lord Curzon, who really is a man
+of character, made a mistake seven times greater when he
+expressed the hope “that he would see the Indian Lancers
+clear the Berlin streets, and the little brown Ghurkas make
+themselves at home in the park at <i lang="fr">Sans Souci</i>.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_34_34" href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> But as
+regards the actual performance of carrying this importation
+into effect, I consider it more than an act of stupidity&mdash;I
+consider it a crime.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_34_34" href="#FNanchor_34_34" class="label">[34]</a> Quotation taken from Professor Steffen’s book on “War and Culture.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Great Britain has for nearly 150 years superbly acquitted
+herself of the task of acting as India’s guardian, and I doubt
+whether any other nation would have succeeded in so gigantic
+an undertaking. Indian troops have fought with honour
+against many neighbouring peoples, and have helped to
+maintain order among the three hundred millions. But never
+before&mdash;until the present Liberal Government tried it&mdash;had
+it occurred to a British Government to employ coloured
+heathens against Christian Europeans. Such an act is a crime
+against culture, civilisation and Christendom, and if the English
+missionaries approve it, they are Pharisees and dishonest
+propagators of the Gospel&mdash;what the German missionaries in
+India think does not now matter, for they are under arrest.
+India’s British masters rightly despise all matrimonial bonds
+between the White Man and the Hindoo, and children of such
+marriages are indeed to be pitied. They are regarded as, and
+often called, mules; they are neither horse nor donkey, they
+are “half-castes.” In Calcutta they have their own quarters,
+and must not live in any other part of the town. But when
+the question arises of crushing the German barbarians, co-operation
+with the bronze-coloured peoples of India becomes
+good enough even for the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>Is it perhaps thought a fitting act of culture and civilisation,
+worthy of the twentieth century, to convey the unsuspecting
+Indians thousands of miles over land and sea to throw them
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[p. 353]</span>into the struggle against the German army on European battlefields?
+If this question is answered in the affirmative, I for
+one, with the memories I have of Asia and Europe, nevertheless
+retain the unshaken conviction that such conduct is the height
+of cruelty. I do not mean cruelty to the German soldiers, for
+I know what they think of their Indian opponents&mdash;a blend
+of contempt and compassion. Besides, I do not think that
+the sweeping clear of the Berlin streets will come to anything,
+nor do I think that the trees of <i lang="fr">Sans Souci</i> will ever spread
+their shadows over the warriors from the Himalayan slopes, for
+Ghurkas may be ever so useful in a campaign against Tibetans
+and other frontier tribes, but in Europe they are no good.
+Therefore I contend it is an act of cruelty to them to force
+them over to the white man’s country&mdash;to die all to no
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>What opinion will these Indian troops harbour of their
+white masters? The future will show, and the survivors&mdash;if
+there are any&mdash;will return to India and tell what they have
+gone through. He who has seen something of the land of the
+Arabian nights&mdash;who has ridden across the crests of Himalaya&mdash;who
+has listened to the sighing of the wind through
+the deodars of Simla&mdash;who has dreamed under the moon of
+Tadj Mahal&mdash;who has seen the Holy Ganges slowly glide in
+ashen ringlets past Benares quays&mdash;who has been spellbound
+by the stately procession of elephants under the mango trees
+of Dekkan&mdash;he, in short, who loves his India and admires the
+order and security which British rule has brought into this
+vast country, needs no imagination to understand the thoughts
+with which the Indian soldiers will return, and the feelings
+with which their families and countrymen will listen to their
+recitals round the fireside of the humble little cottages in
+Himalayan valleys. I think of it all with a feeling akin to
+horror, for I cannot rid myself of the conviction that here, in
+the name of civilisation, a crime is being committed against
+humanity and Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>Kipling has described (in “Mandalay”) in glowing, unforgettable
+lines the longing&mdash;one might almost call it the
+homesickness&mdash;which the English soldier feels who has served
+his time in India or Burmah.</p>
+
+<p>If the English soldiers long so, with what feelings must not
+the Indians themselves dream of their homeland’s sunshine, its
+palms and tinkly temple bells! But their longing is vain.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[p. 354]</span>They have been taken to Flanders’ bloody battle-front and
+trenches to die instead to the music of German shell fire.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot help asking: “Are these Indian contingents
+really necessary?” Do not Great Britain’s, Canada’s and
+Australia’s white millions suffice, not to speak of Frenchmen,
+Belgians, Russians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Portuguese,
+Turcos and Senegalese negroes? No, it almost looks like it.
+In <cite>The Times</cite> of September 5th I read in the biggest and
+fattest type the following heading: “<em>The need for more men</em>.”
+So already at that time more men were needed to eradicate
+the “culture” of the German “barbarians.” In the article
+following this heading I read the following words: “The
+educational campaign undertaken by the Prime Minister as
+to the origin and purpose of the war had a splendid opening
+in the Guildhall yesterday.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_35_35" href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> So there was to be an educational
+campaign! So the British nation must by special means be
+educated up to understand the cause and the object of the
+war! Otherwise the Englishman will stop at home and play
+football and cricket. No doubt the education is to be coupled
+with a lesson in the course of which one learns what use the
+Hindoos are going to be&mdash;in an emergency. The situation
+should really be judged against the background of G. B. Shaw’s
+very sensible words to the following effect: “What we must
+bear in mind is that if our side wins, the consequences will be
+a shifting of the balance of power in favour of Russia, a
+situation which will be much more dangerous to all the other
+contending parties than would be the triumph of Germany,
+a result which we are now by war endeavouring to prevent.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_36_36" href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a>
+In other words, a Russian victory will be much more dangerous
+to the warring states than a German victory. For an all-powerful
+Russia would threaten the whole of Europe, including
+England and her mastery in India, but a victorious Germany
+would entail no menace to Europe. One must forgive the
+British if they need a specially organised education to understand
+such a complicated problem!</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_35_35" href="#FNanchor_35_35" class="label">[35]</a> Steffen, page 115 <i>et seq.</i> are well worth reading.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_36_36" href="#FNanchor_36_36" class="label">[36]</a> Steffen, page 97.</p></div>
+
+<p>And what is this new popular education going to turn out
+like? The answer to this question is given in the English
+press every day. It consists in a systematic suppression of
+the truth. The fatal and momentous reality which is slowly
+bringing England to the brink of a catastrophe must be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[p. 355]</span>concealed under an exceedingly severe press and telegraph
+censorship. Of Hindenburg’s victories the English people
+have not the remotest idea. The realisation of the German
+operations in Poland is distorted into futile attempts to stop
+the victorious Russian march towards Berlin. The most
+shameful lies and malevolent calumnies are disseminated
+concerning the German Emperor. The Teutons are barbarians
+who must be crushed, and this laudable enterprise must be
+shared by the cultured peoples of Serbia, Senegambia, Montenegro
+and Portugal. The whole war is conducted on the English
+side on a foundation of distorted information and conscious
+untruths. The truth is as rare in the English press as lies are
+in the German. But do the people really believe all that is said
+in the English papers? They do, blindly and absolutely. Of
+this I have been convinced by letters received from England.</p>
+
+<p>When one asks English prisoners why they joined in the
+war they answer more or less logically: “We must obey
+orders, you know.” If one goes further and tries to find out
+the reasons for England’s participation, the answers become
+less certain: “We must keep abreast of German competition;
+we must defend Belgium, whose neutrality we have guaranteed;
+England was bound by treaties and must keep her word.”
+In the press one finds yet further reasons, such as the necessity
+for destroying German militarism! An appeal which was
+sent to me and which is signed by many learned men, including
+several Nobel prize winners, concludes with the words:
+“We deeply regret that under the unfortunate influence of a
+military system and its lawless dreams of conquest, the state
+which we have once honoured now stands unmasked as
+Europe’s common enemy and as the enemy of all peoples
+who respect the law of nations. We must carry to an end the
+war to which we have committed ourselves. To us, as to
+Belgium, it is a war of self-defence, fought out for liberty and
+peace.”</p>
+
+<p>At the same time as one feels grateful for the information
+that it was for the sake of liberty and peace that England
+declared war on Germany on the 4th of August, one cannot
+help feeling a little surprised that the learned gentlemen who
+have put their sonorous names to this paper could believe that
+the neutral Germanic nation of the North could ever be
+induced to see in the Germanic nation of the South its own and
+Europe’s most dangerous enemy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[p. 356]</span></p>
+
+<p>The talk of German militarism recalls the old parable about
+the mote and the beam. Is not Britain’s supremacy of the
+sea built up on a military system? Can one imagine a more
+widespread militarism than that which spreads its recruiting
+nets over five continents, which reaches gratefully after the
+straw held out by Republican Portugal, and which advertises
+in every newspaper and at every street corner “the need for
+more men”?</p>
+
+<p>The warning words of Kipling written after the Boer war
+now ring with a deeper and more earnest meaning than ever
+before.</p>
+
+<p>If English culture and English learning accuse German
+militarism of indulging in dreams of lawless conquest, I ask:
+How about the Boer war? Is it perhaps an expression of the
+same humane solicitude for the small States that now induces
+England to break a lance for the sake of Belgium’s independence?
+It would be a wasted effort to attempt to elucidate
+now, when it is too late, how the great war would have developed
+had England kept out of it. But one thing is certain,
+namely, that had she done so, Belgium would not have lost
+her independence for longer than the duration of the war.
+The war would not then have assumed the dimensions of a
+world war such as it is now&mdash;the greatest and most tragical
+catastrophe that has ever visited the human race. No nation
+has had a greater and more world-wide responsibility to bear
+than England.</p>
+
+<p>Before this spectacle and generally before the situation in
+which Great Britain now finds herself every sincere friend of
+England must shudder at the meaning of it all as he reads and
+re-reads Kipling’s “Recessional” written for the Sixty Years
+Jubilee in 1897. The whole British Empire was then in transports
+of exultation over the history of past years and over the
+fabulous power and glory of the immense Empire. Kipling
+alone stood like the guardian of the nation’s conscience and
+his voice was lifted up in words which will re-echo as long as
+there is a Briton left in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now that I have unburdened my heart to the English, let
+us continue our trip after the pause in the Citadel.</p>
+
+<p>We drove out through the <i lang="fr">Porte de Gand</i>, where there is
+quite a crush of fresh troops marching to the fighting line,
+wounded soldiers on the way to hospital, motor-lorries, ammunition
+columns and all that we are accustomed to see on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[p. 357]</span>the great war roads. On the left, we leave the <i lang="fr">Fort de Bondues</i>&mdash;one
+of its towers is visible from the road. In the same direction,
+but far away, we see a captive balloon at a height of
+150 metres. In its car sits an officer with a telephone through
+which he speaks incessantly. He cannot be reached by the
+enemy fire, and yet his life is in danger all the time. A little
+while ago one of these balloons was hit by a bomb dropped
+from a great height by a French aviator.</p>
+
+<p>At Linselles we stopped a moment in the market-place
+whilst Captain Lübke entered a house to find out how far we
+could travel in the direction of Ypres. Whilst we were waiting,
+Crown Prince Rupprecht came walking along. It happened
+to be his dinner-hour. We chatted a couple of minutes,
+pausing a moment whilst an officer handed in an important
+report. The Crown Prince was visibly pleased with the news
+and hurried up to his dinner to return immediately to the fighting
+line. We met about twenty officers during this short
+pause. It was impossible to catch and note all the names in
+the course of the brief introduction. But one thing I do remember,
+and that is that they were all cheerful, friendly and full
+of youthful vivacity: “<i lang="de">Nun wie gefällt’s Ihnen, Herr Doktor?&mdash;Was
+denken Sie von unseren deutschen Soldaten, famose
+Kerls, nicht wahr?&mdash;Draussen in den Gefechtslinien ist’s etwas
+heiss, aber doch grossartig.</i>”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_37_37" href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> And so on, always in the same
+light-hearted and jovial tone, as if it were a question of
+manœuvres; no difficulties, no unpleasantness, simply “quick-march
+and keep your eyes open!”&mdash;Forward, that is the main
+thing. Officers whose duty compels them to remain behind
+the firing line always long to be where the danger is, but as
+they always march at the head, the casualties amongst them
+are proportionately greater than among the men.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_37_37" href="#FNanchor_37_37" class="label">[37]</a> “Well, Doctor, and how do you like it? What do you think of our
+German soldiers? Fine fellows, eh?&mdash;A trifle hot out in the firing line, but
+otherwise first-rate.”</p></div>
+
+<p>We drove on northward to Wervicq and across the La Lys
+Canal, which forms the frontier between France and Belgium.
+A large part of the population has remained and makes a
+curious picture in these quaint old streets where German
+kitchen wagons stand steaming and smoking at quiet street
+corners. We advance but slowly. The whole road is encumbered
+with infantry, horsemen and vehicles. Here comes a
+party of 150 men armed with spades. “Where have you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[p. 358]</span>been?” we ask. “We have been to bury the dead,” they
+answer as if they were saying the most commonplace thing in
+the world. They looked more like conquering heroes than
+grave-diggers. They were not singing to-day, but they found
+it quite natural that when all Germany’s men are fighting for
+their country, not all can hope to return home, some must
+remain behind in the foreign soil, and the sacrifice is one which
+all are willing to make when it means Germany’s salvation.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill103"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_103_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/103_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>KITCHEN WAGONS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Here lies a wrecked windmill with broken sails and near it
+a motor-car which has come to grief. The transport trains
+which we pass are as usual wreathed in foliage to mislead
+aviators. The smell of burning strikes our nostrils&mdash;it is not
+to be wondered at, for just to the left of us a whole village is
+in flames. I became a victim of the same excitement that I
+had felt each time before as I had approached the danger zone.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we come to a village bearing eloquent testimony
+to the cruel realities of war. It boasts the peculiar name of
+America. At the last house in the main street we stop to
+make sure once more how far we may drive. Colonel von
+Oldershausen steps out. He is a magnificent type, a thorough
+soldier, straight as a poker, stiff and gracious at the same time.
+“Listen,” he said in answer to our question, “drive first to
+Kruiseik, two kilometres from here. From there you may
+continue one kilometre on foot until you come to the crossing
+between this road and the Ypres&ndash;Menin main road. If you
+wish to go further in the direction of Ypres I should advise
+you <em>not</em> to take the main road as the whole avenue is covered
+by the English artillery fire. But if you keep a little way
+outside the ditches,” he went on, “it is not at all unlikely
+that you will come back with a certain amount of life left in
+your bodies.”</p>
+
+<p>Leaning against the car, the Colonel stood gesticulating
+with great animation and tried to describe the situation which
+would have greeted us, had we continued on the main road.
+He fully meant what he said and assured us that he had tried
+several times the prescription he now recommended to us&mdash;without
+once being killed! The day before yesterday he had
+made an attack at the head of his regiment in which a third
+of his men had fallen; of the others, 150 got the Iron Cross.
+The object was realised. The enemy’s position was taken and
+several prisoners fell into the hands of the regiment. An
+English officer with whom the Colonel had been conversing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[p. 359]</span>had made the following remark: “We don’t mind your shells,
+and don’t care a rap about your shrapnel. Your rifle fire
+doesn’t frighten us, and we can put up with your bayonet
+charges. But when your men commence their infernal noisy
+hurrahs, it is all up with us. There is nothing in the world so
+trying to the nerves. One feels entirely paralysed before these
+confounded jerky hurrahs.”</p>
+
+<p>So we took leave of the excellent Colonel and drove on in
+accordance with his directions. On our left, to the westward,
+we saw the familiar little puffs of smoke caused by the shrapnel
+bursting. A little further on a French airman was having a
+trying time with the German fire. Just as we drove into
+Kruiseik a shell came whizzing right over us. A large force of
+infantry reserves was quartered here, and the streets were
+crowded with officers and men. We pulled up by the side of
+a house and waited awhile. We were strongly dissuaded from
+continuing. On the previous day Kruiseik had been exposed
+to severe shell fire, and at the entrance to the village the road
+had been destroyed by some nasty holes, which were just being
+filled in by the engineers. Any moment we might expect a
+further pounding, as the enemy artillery had not changed its
+position since yesterday. I was much struck with the immovable
+calm with which officers and men stand here waiting
+for the fire and a very good chance of being killed. The same
+calm and light-hearted indifference also characterised the troops
+which we met further on towards Ypres. Take for instance
+that little hussar patrol riding towards the road swept by the
+English shells.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill103_1"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_103_1_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/103_1_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>HUSSAR PATROL RIDING THROUGH KRUISEIK
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill103_2"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_103_2_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/103_2_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE LAST HOUSES OF KRUISEIK
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>“<i lang="de">Deckung gegen Flieger!</i>” (“Take cover against aviator!”)
+roars an officer, and immediately everybody flattens himself
+against the house walls so as to present as small as possible a
+target from above. I suspect, however, that the aviator who
+was just that moment soaring over Kruiseik had something
+else to think about, for the anti-aircraft guns must have given
+him a lively time. Anyhow, he dropped no bombs on us.
+We had thought of returning to Bapaume, when someone
+came up to us with the news that if we liked to wait a minute
+we should see a batch of British who had just been captured
+at Ypres, which was only nine and a half kilometres from
+Kruiseik. They were 390 men all told and were expected to
+arrive any moment.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill103_3"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_103_3_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/103_3_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A SHELL CRATER IN THE ROAD IS BEING FILLED IN BY ENGINEERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>True enough, it was not long before the street was black
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[p. 360]</span>with human beings. There they came, Albion’s proud scions.
+If you examine closely the five photographs which I took of
+them whilst they were marching past the outskirts of Kruiseik,
+you will get a very good idea of what a brand-new convoy of
+prisoners from the front looks like.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill103_4"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_103_4_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/103_4_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>FIRST CAME A GERMAN SOLDIER WITH AN ENGLISH COLONEL ON HIS LEFT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>First came a German soldier with an English officer on his
+left side, a tall man of distinguished appearance. He carried
+his hands behind him, under his greatcoat; he did not seem
+to notice us at all, and appeared quite unmoved by the harrowing
+events which he had doubtless witnessed that very day,
+and his glance was fixed with an expression of utter indifference
+on the horizon straight ahead of him.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill104"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_104_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/104_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THEN CAME THE CONVOY
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill104_1"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_104_1_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/104_1_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE CONVOY HALTED JUST OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Then came the convoy, three abreast, the most diverse
+types one could imagine, dark and fair, handsome and ugly,
+well set up and slouching, cheerful and downcast. As I lifted
+my camera at them, a facetious Tommy cried out, “May I
+have a copy, sir?” The German guards did not love their
+charges. That, after all, is easy to understand, but I saw no
+expressions of hatred. Rank after rank drew past. They
+were dressed in practical and neat uniforms, a little browner
+in colour than the German. Most of them had nothing to
+carry, but some wore coats slung over the arm or over the
+shoulder. Some were smoking. Here and there was a slightly
+wounded man. When they came inside the village, they were
+all ordered to halt and here the prisoners were allowed to rest
+awhile, although they looked by no means tired. A young
+German lieutenant who was present when they were captured
+and who now headed the convoy, assured me that this particular
+English unit had surrendered five minutes after the
+attack began. But up to then they had obstinately defended
+their position. All the Germans I spoke to were of the same
+opinion respecting the individual bravery of the English&mdash;it
+was above all praise. The rear of the convoy was brought
+up by a row of carts and wagons containing seriously wounded
+English soldiers. One of them, I think he was a Colonel, lay
+comfortably on a stretcher which had been placed right across
+a cart, as shown in the accompanying picture. He was pale,
+but did not complain and lay with eyes closed without noticing
+the noise and bustle around him. Perhaps his light was going
+out, perhaps his heart had already stopped beating. Slowly
+the cart disappeared from view in the long procession of
+wounded Britons.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill104_2"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_104_2_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/104_2_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THEY WERE CLOTHED IN NEAT AND PRACTICAL FIELD UNIFORMS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill104_3"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_104_3_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/104_3_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>HERE AND THERE WAS A SLIGHTLY WOUNDED SOLDIER
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill104_4"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_104_4_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/104_4_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>AN ENGLISH OFFICER ON A STRETCHER PLACED ACROSS A CART
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[p. 361]</span></p>
+
+<p>A moment later we, too, were travelling southward and
+once more drove past the melancholy cortège. “My poor old
+Tommy,” I thought to myself, “you have plenty of time
+before you to ponder over the problem why you, of all men,
+have been fighting against the German ‘barbarians’ and
+whether your pay was worthy of your doughty deeds between
+Ypres and Kruiseik! If anyone confronts you with this poser
+you will always answer: ‘I don’t know I’m sure, I had to
+obey orders, I suppose.’ But it will never occur to you to reply:
+‘I had to go over for a while and crush the German militarism,
+you know,’ for such an absurd idea would remind you too
+forcibly of the parallel argument of putting down the drink
+by consumption!”</p>
+
+<p>The life at and behind the front is rich in contrast. A few
+hours after we had seen Tommy’s tragic convoy disappear in
+the distance, we were listening once more to Cleving’s inimitable
+jest and song.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[p. 362]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">
+    CHAPTER XXIII
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">FAREWELL TO BAPAUME</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">THE day of Hubertus falls on November 3rd, and is
+celebrated throughout Germany with the diligent
+pursuit of game, for Hubertus is the patron saint
+of all huntsmen. Nor even at Bapaume was the day allowed
+to pass by unnoticed. A field of fifty-five officers of all ranks
+forgathered early in the day at the village of Miraumont,
+situated nine kilometres west of Bapaume, immediately in the
+rear of the fighting line. With Captain Schlüter of the cavalry
+as guide, I drove out with Duke Adolf Friedrich to Miraumont
+to be present at the day’s sport. We took up our posts
+on a hill by the side of the road, and had an excellent view
+over the broken country with its natural and artificial obstacles.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill105"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_105_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/105_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>GROUP OF OFFICERS AT BAPAUME: THE DUKE, THE PRINCE, THE CHIEF OF MILITARY POLICE, CLEVING, BARON FLEMING
+AND OTHERS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>We had not been there long before a couple of horsemen
+hove in sight, and immediately on their heels came the entire
+field in scattered groups. They took the fences and ditches
+in fine style and then disappeared up a steep hill like a whirlwind.
+There was nothing remarkable in this, nor perhaps in
+the fact that amongst them were many riders who would
+never see sixty again. But the remarkable thing about this
+ride was that all the horses were recently requisitioned farm
+animals, which had not even been trained. The Germans
+spare their horses no less than their men. When the horses
+of cavalry and train begin to tire and need rest and care, they
+are replaced from the farms of Germany and of the conquered
+countries.</p>
+
+<p>After the sport all the members assembled in a field, where
+in the shadow of the willows a table stood laid with sandwiches,
+<i lang="de">kaltes Aufgeschnittenes</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_38_38" href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> and hot punch. Here I made
+the acquaintance of many of the horsemen, among others
+Infantry-General von Soden and Lieut.-Gen. von Pawel,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[p. 363]</span>who had been in command in Kamerun. The crisp, clear
+autumn weather seemed to create the highest of spirits.
+Nobody could have imagined that we were almost in contact
+with troops engaged in severe fighting, had not the booming
+of cannon reminded us of it. Indeed it would have been
+difficult to gather an impression of anxiety, nervousness,
+hurry or want of officers as one listened to the animated
+conversation and contagious laughter of the grey-clad warriors
+of Miraumont. One would have thought, on the contrary,
+that war was the simplest thing in the world and that the
+Germans for the moment at least were not exerting themselves
+in the slightest. What they gained, they clearly gained
+without difficulty, albeit that for the time being they are
+content with merely holding their positions.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_38_38" href="#FNanchor_38_38" class="label">[38]</a> Cold collation.</p></div>
+
+<p>Suddenly we got something else to think of, and the familiar
+cry, “<i lang="de">Deckung!</i>” rang out across the field. An airman flying
+the tricolor was seen to be approaching. The main thing
+was to bring the horses as quickly as possible under the shadow
+of the willows, but the officers, too, together with their civilian
+guest, thought it wisest to withdraw to the nearest avenue of
+trees, for had the airman suspected for a moment that he
+could have killed fifty precious birds with one stone, he would
+certainly have sacrificed all the bombs in his armoury.
+Gradually he came nearer, glided past immediately above us,
+but could not have noticed anything, for not a single bomb
+burst in our vicinity, and soon the hostile aeroplane disappeared
+in an east-north-easterly direction. It could almost
+be taken for granted that his goal was a certain flying station,
+which had recently been favoured with several bombs.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we saw the characteristic little “tufts of wool”
+forming round the airman. They came from nowhere, grew,
+and were followed by a flash and a report. They have a
+peculiar knack of remaining for a long while at the spot where
+they are formed. Hence, as the Frenchman progressed on
+his journey and the guns kept firing at him, a little string of
+white cloudlets gradually formed in his wake, sharply defined
+against the blue background of the sky and pricking out his
+track through the air. One of the officers thought that the
+firing was almost as dangerous as the bombs, seeing that the
+shrapnel bullets must obviously come down sooner or later,
+and that when they do, they strike with the velocity and deadly
+effect of a rifle bullet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[p. 364]</span></p>
+
+<p>When this little excitement was over, the party of officers
+grouped themselves with the Duke and the two Generals in
+the centre, and I took a few groups which would have been
+the finest and most distinguished in my collection had not
+this particular roll of films turned out a complete failure
+on development.</p>
+
+<p>The next item on the programme was Frenchman number
+two, who came sailing serenely along over our heads and gave
+rise to the same precautions as before, but he likewise failed
+to realise the fine catch he might have made.</p>
+
+<p>A German airman told me one or two details from his own
+experience. He usually required three-quarters of an hour
+to rise to a height of two thousand metres, and did not proceed
+towards the French lines until he had reached this altitude.
+The view is glorious. He has the landscape in which the
+fighting is raging right underneath him. In fine, clear weather
+he can see plainly the marching troops, the ammunition
+columns and their transport trains, even when they are
+covered with foliage. He spots the artillery positions, unless
+they are too thoroughly concealed by hedges and bushes.
+He can even see isolated horsemen and pedestrians on the
+roads.</p>
+
+<p>But there are many other things that meet his eye in the
+course of his aerial adventures. He sees the fire and smoke
+from the German and French guns, and he sees the impacts
+and the explosions. Beneath him rages a constant turmoil of
+thunder and lightning. He admits willingly that he is a prey
+to intense excitement. He has never yet been wounded, but
+his machine has had its wings perforated by bullets more than
+once, and the holes are mended with little patches. He hears
+the rattle of the machine guns and the rifle fire, and knows
+that all this noise is for his benefit and that he is being observed
+through field-glasses from every conceivable hiding-place.
+When he hears this eternal din and knows that at any moment
+he may be hit and brought to earth, he must indeed summon
+all his self-control to retain his presence of mind, for a situation
+such as this may overstrain the strongest nerves.</p>
+
+<p>He is out to do his duty, he <em>must not</em> fail. He cannot entirely
+eliminate the nervous tension, for he is but human, but he
+never turns back until he has carried out his orders and finds
+out what he <em>must</em> know. His attention is strained to the
+highest pitch, he sees everything, hears everything, nothing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[p. 365]</span>escapes him. He sights far away a French aeroplane steering
+straight towards him, but he does not change his course.
+They come nearer and nearer to one another. Neither makes
+the slightest sign of giving way. The spectator from below
+cannot but think that they are sailing to an inevitable catastrophe,
+that they are lost already. But they seem to change
+their minds before it is too late, for a collision would bring
+them both to earth and kill them, and this is considered by
+both parties to be a useless and unpractical sacrifice. Hence
+one of them gives way before it is too late. The Frenchman
+is often armed with a machine gun for the benefit of his
+German colleague. In that case the German by a skilful
+manœuvre suddenly dips under his opponent or passes over
+him. If he passes under, the machine gun becomes useless,
+as it cannot fire downward. If he passes over, he benefits
+by the protection of the lightly armoured bottom of the
+aeroplane. The main thing to avoid is to remain on the same
+plane with the other machine. Again it may happen that
+the Frenchman likewise rises, and that a sort of skyward
+race begins between the two opponents, each trying to get
+above the other. In such cases the breathless spectator sees
+the machines circle round each other like a couple of playful
+may-flies, approach, separate, pursue, fire, but always
+avoiding collision. It is a tension which simply cannot be
+described, and whilst this goes on in the air the guns thunder
+angrily below and the soldiers lie in wait for one another in the
+trenches.</p>
+
+<p>When everything goes normally, the airman may be up for
+three hours. When he has completed his task he returns to
+the German lines, stops the motor and glides to earth in four
+minutes, although the time seems infinitely longer. He vol-planes
+down and may under certain circumstances alight
+without restarting the motor. He admits that it is not without
+some feeling of relief that he sets foot on the ground once
+more. Yet he is never entirely safe, for the flying stations are
+always singled out for special attention from the enemy bomb-throwers.</p>
+
+<p>French airmen often go up without an observation officer,
+but his weight is taken up instead by an extra bomb supply.
+When the machine is burdened by the weight of two men only
+three bombs can be taken, otherwise six or more are carried.
+The accuracy of aim depends on the amount of practice.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[p. 366]</span>Most bombs do no harm at all. Curiously enough, it seems to
+be the horses who suffer most. A few days ago an airman
+passed over a bivouac in the neighbourhood of Bapaume.
+Five men thought it advisable to seek protection underneath
+a heavily laden baggage wagon. But as luck would have it
+the wagon was hit, and nothing but the lacerated remains of
+the men remained when help arrived.</p>
+
+<p>I have already spoken of the immensely important rôle
+which aeroplanes are playing in this war, and how during
+the few months the war has lasted they have been manœuvred
+with continuously increasing skill. My informant thought he
+was justified in saying that the side possessing the best flying
+machines and the best pilots would come out the winners in a
+war of entrenched positions, a literal siege war, such as is now
+proceeding on the western front. For it depends in a very large
+measure on aerial observation whether the artillery fire can
+find its target and score with decisive effect.</p>
+
+<p>On our return to Bapaume we went to call on Divisional
+Pastor Münch, at whose house we were regaled with coffee,
+together with quite a crowd of doctors. All the war hospitals
+of the town together now contained barely five hundred
+wounded, and the city was therefore more than amply provided
+for with its 130 nurses.</p>
+
+<p>We looked in at the chief hospital, in the chapel of which
+some French wounded were being tended. One of them had
+received a bullet through the base of the nose which had
+lodged in the brain, where it still remained. He cried all day,
+“<i lang="fr">de l’eau, de l’eau</i>,” and if one gave him water he drank, but
+went on calling, “<i lang="fr">de l’eau, de l’eau</i>.” Another, who also had
+a bullet stuck in his head, wandered about with quick, jerky
+steps, and had to be watched so that he did not tumble on
+to the beds. Two others had had a leg amputated, and were
+now out of all danger. The Frenchmen spoke well of the
+German nurses and doctors, and said they could not have
+received kindlier treatment in their own country. One soldier
+complained because he was separated from his people, but
+added: “<i lang="fr">Nous sommes très bien ici; nos blessures sont très
+bien soignées</i>.” We also made a hasty round of the German
+wards and spoke to the wounded warriors. They were all,
+as usual, in cheerful spirits, and hoped soon to be put right
+so that they could go back and fight again.</p>
+
+<p>On the way home Pastor Münch told us of a little episode
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[p. 367]</span>which is rather illuminating. As I have mentioned before,
+it is strictly forbidden throughout the German army to take
+anything, whatever it may be, in a house or church in the
+occupied territory, and any breach of this rule is very severely
+punished. Now it so happened that a gentleman who served
+in the army had discovered amongst the vestments of a village
+church in the neighbourhood a piece of embroidery which he
+intended to take home as war booty. When his offence came
+to the knowledge of his superiors, he was discharged and sent
+home. Had not extenuating circumstances existed, he would
+have been still more severely punished. To carry away “war
+souvenirs” is considered in the German army to be equivalent
+to theft. To be dismissed for such an offence is a terrible
+disgrace at a time when no one can conceive a greater happiness
+than to be allowed to serve his country in the field.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_39_39" href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_39_39" href="#FNanchor_39_39" class="label">[39]</a> This relentless severity, as actually practised, should be compared with
+what the champions of truth in <cite>The Times</cite> and <cite>Standard</cite> have to say about
+the German “Huns,” “incendiaries” and “burglars.” Steffen, pp. 132&ndash;33.</p></div>
+
+<p>After sitting chatting for the last time in the dim lamp-light
+with Monsieur Cossart and the demoiselles Lengagne, I proceeded
+with my most gracious friend, Duke Adolf Friedrich,
+to the officers’ mess, where the rest of the day and a good part
+of the night was passed in a most agreeable atmosphere of
+gravity blended with humour. Among the guests I met
+Colonel von Alers, late of the Second Artillery Regiment of
+the Prussian Guards; he is related to our Swedish Counts
+Wachtmeister. He had fought in the wars of 1866 and 1870&ndash;71,
+and was no chicken. But he meant to fight for his country
+once more, and so he turned out as volunteer. Nothing but
+real men wherever you go in Germany! Age is nothing,
+whether you are young or old it is all the same, and no one is
+too old to remember that he is still a man.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning of November 4th the Duke and I were seated
+at our usual breakfast <i lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i>. We were quite ready to
+start off, my luggage had already been stowed away in the
+car, and I had taken a hearty farewell of my German friends
+who happened to be about and Monsieur Cossart. Now I was
+off to Metz, a distance of about two hundred English miles.
+Duke Adolf Friedrich himself took charge of the steering wheel,
+and I sat beside him, map in hand. A soldier was seated inside
+the car.</p>
+
+<p>At 9.20 a.m. we started. It was the fastest journey I have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[p. 368]</span>ever experienced, a record in speed. The Duke drove and
+managed the car with amazing coolness and presence of mind.
+Where the great main road was straight and clear he spurted
+up to between ninety and one hundred kilometres an hour. I
+felt sometimes as if I could hardly breathe, but it was a glorious
+sensation to fly over the country at this mad, tearing pace.</p>
+
+<p>At 9.52 a.m. we entered Cambrai where the Red Cross flag
+over the school-house was still wrapped in a thin veil of fog.
+To the right of the road was a large common grave, richly
+ornamented with flowers, and in the fields close by French
+peasants were gathering in the sugar-beet. A whole column
+of heavy carts loaded with beet drove up into a village we
+passed, but in this case the drivers were French peasants.</p>
+
+<p>At 10.25&mdash;Le Cateau. From this point we turned off on to
+some by-roads without stone paving in the direction of
+Bergues and Le Nouvion. The civil population here is fairly
+numerous, and whatever else there may be a shortage of,
+there is certainly no lack of poultry. Le Nouvion has been
+hardly dealt with. In the main street there are only a few
+houses left, all the others are in ruins. At the far end of the
+village a road runs through a wood where barricades have been
+thrown up. German troops are only met with in the large
+places, such as Hirson, where a fort meets the eye to the
+right of the road.</p>
+
+<p>After a long pause necessitated by a burst tyre we arrived
+at Mézières at 12.52 and crossed the Meuse. Half an hour
+later we drove into the market square at Sedan, where Turenne
+was still looking down on the disquietude of distant generations.
+Here we sacrificed an hour for dinner, and were soon off again
+in the direction of Carignan and Montmédy, where we found
+life was as busy as ever.</p>
+
+<p>The next place we come to is the grey and solid-looking
+Marville. Afterwards the country becomes more broken, until
+we reach the utterly ruined village of Noërs. At one point
+the road rises, curving slightly. We are tearing forward at a
+furious pace when just on the crest of the hill we meet another
+car as much in a hurry as ourselves. We had the narrowest
+possible escape from colliding at an aggregate speed of about
+120 English miles an hour. There could not have been room
+for a sheet of paper between the two cars and we had the
+Duke’s perfect coolness to thank for having escaped with our
+lives from that little adventure.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[p. 369]</span></p>
+
+<p>Next we drive into our old friend Longuyon and follow a
+long straight street which has suffered less than other parts
+of the town. Outside the wall of a house stands a group of
+workmen who have finished their day’s toil, and on the other
+side some children are playing in the gutter. Opposite, on the
+left-hand side of the street, stands a curly-headed little chap
+of three or four in a blue smock, watching the other children.
+We come along at full tilt and are some twenty metres away
+from him when the little fellow takes it into his head to cross
+the street. I felt how I froze stiff and went quite white in the
+face. I leant forward to try to get hold of his head to throw him
+backward from the car. Surely this wretched people had
+suffered enough as it was! We were now into the bargain to
+run over its children, its one hope for the future after the war
+had wrecked and ruined its homes! It would have been my
+fault, for why had I decided to travel to Metz of all places,
+through this country where the population drops from year
+to year even in peace time and where every child is so precious!
+I can see him now in front of me. He was in the attitude so
+characteristic of running children, his body leaning slightly
+forward, head down, arms bent and raised, hands levelled
+with the ears, slightly curved and with the palm facing forward.
+He did not see the car, never noticed us and did not
+realise the danger, simply staring on the pavement and intent
+on reaching the others. The car came nearer. I seemed to
+feel the slight jolt as the wheels passed over him and crushed
+his ribs. It would have been quite impossible to stop. Instead
+the Duke put on a spurt and in a second we were past. How
+could we have comforted the wretched sorrowing parents,
+when there was no comfort to give? We should of course
+have had to stop in any case. I could see in my mind’s eye
+the pitiable little funeral procession to Longuyon cemetery,
+and seemed to hear the bells ringing among the ruins. At the
+same instant as we passed the little group of workmen and
+playing children, I almost flung myself upright in the car and
+turned round. There stood the little chap in the middle of
+the street with hands clasped and looking after us in mild
+surprise. Not a hair of his head had been touched.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we come to Xivry. The light begins to fail. By
+the roadside stands a row of pathetic little wooden crosses;
+some of the graves are adorned with helmets, but when the
+spring comes doubtless the helmets and crosses will disappear
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[p. 370]</span>and the little mounds will be levelled by the plough. Darkness
+descends over the earth. We pass through Briey and
+cross the German frontier. Seized with a feeling of ease at
+being once more in Germany, we drive past the memorable
+St. Privat and through a bewildering chaos of main roads,
+by-roads, suburbs, tramway lines, bridges and vehicles all lit
+up in turn by our headlights and vanishing behind us. But
+by degrees the confusion disappears and we debouch slowly
+and majestically upon a brilliantly lighted street in Metz.
+There are enormous crowds of people afoot. They line the
+pavements in serried ranks. Officers and soldiers everywhere.
+The police keeps order. At a street corner we come to a halt
+and have to wait a minute. The Duke asks a policeman what
+is up. “It is the Emperor, he is due here in a moment; the
+Empress is here already.” We decided to preserve our incognito
+as much as possible. The whole town was filled with
+officers. The hotels had not an inch of room to spare, we enquired
+at six different hotels and at last, at a third-class place,
+we found a moderately decent room and “cupboard” on the
+third floor. The Duke would not allow me for a moment to
+sleep in the latter, his splendid gifts of hospitality would not
+desert him even here; but I declared that I would sooner lie
+in the street than in the big room, whilst he lay in the cupboard.
+Of course we were both equally obstinate&mdash;without that quality
+we should not have got through Africa and Asia. At last we
+agreed to draw lots and I drew the cupboard and slept excellently
+when once I got to bed and had finished thinking of the
+curly-headed little boy.</p>
+
+<p>But it is still far from late. It is only nine o’clock and the
+Duke’s hospitality will not be denied. So we went to the
+<i lang="de">Europäischer Hof</i>, where the Duke ordered a sumptuous champagne
+supper. There we stayed for several hours talking of
+the wonderful things we had seen together during the last few
+days, commonplace enough for him who is a soldier, but the
+more exciting and unforgettable to me.</p>
+
+<p>The witching hour of midnight had already struck when
+we quite suddenly caught sight of the Deputy-Governor of
+Metz, General von Pelkmann of the Artillery, a little man with
+a grey moustache, very eccentric, with very decided views on
+life, on the universe, and on the whole creation generally. In
+his company was Baron von Tauchnitz. That the latter was
+“<i lang="de">Kommandeur der Kraftfahrtruppen des Armeeoberkommando
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[p. 371]</span>Falkenhausen</i>”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_40_40" href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> was not to be wondered at, for he was no
+less a person than the nephew of the head of the great publishing
+firm known throughout the Continent by its “Collection
+of British Authors, Tauchnitz Edition.” This chance acquaintance,
+in itself very agreeable, had the result that I could not
+resist the temptation to accompany Baron Tauchnitz on the
+following morning to Blamont, where a fight was to take place
+and where a French position was to be stormed.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_40_40" href="#FNanchor_40_40" class="label">[40]</a> Commander of the Mechanical Transport of the Falkenhausen Army
+Headquarters.</p></div>
+
+<p>It was nearly three o’clock in the morning when the Duke
+and I returned to our humble establishment. I had arranged
+to call at 6.30 in the morning for Tauchnitz and the officers
+whom he was to drive to Blamont. The Duke, on the other
+hand, was due to return to Bapaume at about nine. Thus we
+were not to meet again for the present, so I said good-bye and
+thanked him as heartily as my restricted powers of eloquence
+allowed. For he had not only given me his time, his hospitality
+and friendship, he had given me opportunities of visiting
+some of the most remarkable points in the fighting line and
+of gathering deep and abiding impressions of this great world
+war. But the recollection I cherish most of all from that
+memorable week is that of his own personality, for he is a
+fine and noble man, a man whose outlook is not dimmed by
+his exalted birth and the glamour of fame, but who remains
+ever modest before men and humble before God. We felt
+quite sure that we should meet once more at some future time.
+Then we would empty the store of our memories and would
+recall the shrapnel shells at Quesnoy, which whizzed so close
+over our heads but forgot to burst and part us for ever from
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>And now, to conclude, one more hearty handshake and
+“<i lang="de">Auf Wiedersehen!</i>”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[p. 372]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">
+    CHAPTER XXIV
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80">A FINAL DAY ON THE WESTERN FRONT</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">NEEDLESS to say the human alarums at the hotel forgot
+to call me in the morning, but happily I awoke
+without their aid and dressed quietly as a mouse so as
+not to disturb Duke Adolf Friedrich. Thereupon I wandered
+off in the pitch-dark night with no other weapons than my
+Zeiss glasses and my camera to the <i lang="de">Europäischer Hof</i>, where
+the others were already assembled. I was asked to join the
+party in the car driven by Tauchnitz, and already occupied
+by Captain Kriebel and Lieut. Baron von Peihmann, both
+attached to the General Command of the Falkenhausen army.
+Our road took us south-eastward <i>via</i> Château-Salins in German
+Lorraine. We crossed into France further south at
+Rixingen.</p>
+
+<p>It was 7 o’clock when we started off. Day was just beginning
+to break, but the sky looked threatening, the weather was
+most unpleasant, and a thin layer of clayey mud lay over the
+hard surface, making the road as slippery as soap. My two
+companions inside were as agreeable and as light-hearted as
+all other German officers whom I had met. As we were skimming
+along, the pretty and interesting country we were passing
+through was being explained to me on the map. We were only
+a few kilometres from Rixingen when one of the pipes of the
+engine broke, and the car absolutely refused to move another
+inch. However, providence has presented us with legs, and
+so after walking a short distance we came upon a motor-driven
+hospital wagon, on the roof of which we made ourselves comfortable.
+We were soon to find that this motor conveyance
+was not without its dangers, for the wagon skidded about
+terribly on the slippery road and threatened any moment to
+dive into the ditch. However we held ourselves ready for any
+emergency so as at least to fall feet foremost when the catastrophe
+came. In the end we managed to get to Rixingen and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[p. 373]</span>reached the commandant’s office just as the wagon began
+skidding so hopelessly that the back wheels took command
+and the whole bag-of-tricks was on the point of overturning.
+Our somewhat eccentric entry into Rixingen aroused violent
+mirth from all who happened to be about. Here, however,
+we secured a third car and drove on gaily to Blamont.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the village to the southward, the road turned up
+a hill to a slight eminence, the right-hand side of which was
+wooded. In a field immediately to the north of the little
+wood and evidently concealed by its trees, stood a battery,
+which was thundering away for all it was worth. It was really
+a very impressive sight to watch the guns firing their salvos.
+The officer in charge gave his orders in a loud voice according
+to the information received from the observing station. Then
+followed the usual brief, brisk words of command: “Load!
+Ready!! Fire!!!” The target for the moment was the village
+of Ancerviller, situated about 5600 metres south of Blamont.
+As the gun is discharged a sheaf of fire issues from the muzzle
+and a white smoke cloud forms several metres in front.</p>
+
+<p>In order not to attract the attention of the enemy, instructions
+have been given that the battery must only be approached
+on foot. On the crest of the hill stood the local commanding
+officer, Lieut.-Gen. von Tettenborn, acting Adjutant-General
+to the King of Saxony, surrounded by his staff, some
+twenty officers. He was a powerfully built little man with
+steel-grey hair and moustache. Hung over his shoulders he
+carried a light brownish-grey cape with red collar and on his
+head he wore a helmet with a grey cloth cover. Reports kept
+pouring in regarding the progress of the action. Now it was
+a horseman, now a motor-cyclist, now a car that came tearing
+along at full speed with information, whilst orders were sent
+out with equal rapidity to the various fighting units.</p>
+
+<p>General von Tettenborn received me with the greatest
+kindness and we stood chatting awhile on the hill as if there
+had been no war within a hundred miles. I was also introduced
+to all the other officers and in two minutes I felt
+thoroughly at home. The general atmosphere here was exactly
+the same as I have had occasion to record and admire all
+along the front, calm, reliant and cheerful in the consciousness
+of the monstrous strength of the German army.</p>
+
+<p>Two kilometres south of Blamont and about half that distance
+from the point where we were standing, lies the little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[p. 374]</span>village of Barbas in a picturesque hollow, its church tower
+dominating in a lordly manner the pretty little red-roofed
+stone houses beneath. One and a half kilometres south of
+Barbas, sharply outlined against the light rising background,
+were two little dark clumps of trees. On the north side of
+these coppices two German batteries were actively shelling
+the enemy positions. On the western border of the wooded
+belt to the right infantry fighting was in actual progress. At
+the moment the Germans were proceeding to the attack of the
+French positions. Both sides had concealed themselves
+gingerly behind trees and bushes, but the rattling fire from
+rifles and machine guns was deafening. One moment the
+shots would succeed one another in a continuous din, the
+next minute one heard but isolated reports. Of the actual
+fighting itself we saw nothing, but it became evident in the
+course of the day that the centre of activity was shifting south-westward,
+which meant that the German attack was progressing.</p>
+
+<p>Behind us the battery at which we had just stopped kept
+pounding away, and once more we heard the horrible, sinister
+whistle of shells pass overhead. The German artillery was
+very active, but the French did not reply to the fire. Towards
+the afternoon the German fire also ceased, the attempted goal
+having been reached. It was assumed that the French batteries,
+which had but lately occupied this point, had now been
+removed to some other place where they would come in more
+useful. I for my part was quite content to do without their
+fire, and it was a pleasant and restful experience not to have
+to be in constant dread of a shell coming on the top of me.
+The day before the French had sent a couple of shells into
+Blamont, but without doing any appreciable damage. Neither
+did we see any aviators on this occasion. I was told that they
+were less numerous in these parts.</p>
+
+<p>After a short visit to Blamont cemetery and a walk through
+the pretty village, where we dined, I returned with a couple
+of officers to the hill, but found it deserted. The General and
+his Staff had, it appeared, advanced a couple of kilometres
+to Barbas, where we found all the officers assembled in an
+open space, a cross between a street and a market-place. This
+had now become the point from which the operations on the
+whole front of the division were directed, and horsemen and
+cycle-orderlies kept dashing backwards and forwards as before
+on the hill.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[p. 375]</span></p>
+
+<p>I remained at Barbas for another four hours and took the
+last photographs destined to appear in this book. Wherever
+I turned, I found picturesque and warlike subjects for my
+camera. In the open space referred to, officers with maps in
+hand stood gathered in little groups. Outside a house, several
+horses stood ready for the orderlies. In the next street, which
+was part of the great main road, an ammunition column had
+halted. It extended from one end of the village to the other
+and a bit beyond as well. The wagons were crowded with
+artillerymen, full of life and in good spirits as usual, and they
+usually asked for a photograph when I came along with my
+camera. On the fore-carriage of a gun sat a man fast asleep.
+In the outskirts of the village two companies of reserves had
+halted and were evidently waiting to take their place in the
+firing line.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill106"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_106_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/106_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>AN ENORMOUS AMMUNITION COLUMN HAD COME TO A STOP AT BARBAS
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<a id="ill107"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_107_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/107_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>ON THE FORE-CARRIAGE OF A GUN SITS A SOLDIER FAST ASLEEP
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>“How are you, boys?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, first-rate, but it’s a nuisance to have to lie and wait
+like this.”</p>
+
+<p>“What are you waiting for?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why to go ahead and fight, of course.”</p>
+
+<p>Here I found a chaplain, a strikingly humorous and amusing
+man, who knew thoroughly how to get on with the soldiers;
+but then he had been in war before, in Pekin and German
+South-West Africa. As we stood chatting on the road, we
+were gradually surrounded by a narrowing circle of grey
+jackets, who listened intently to what we had to say. In the
+end they must have numbered fully 150, and there, in the
+centre, stood the pastor throwing out jests and calling them
+his grey field-mice, and they all laughed gaily at his whimsical
+ideas.</p>
+
+<p>“What do they do for a living in peace time, I wonder, all
+these soldiers?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh,” said the pastor, “there are all sorts, loafers and
+county councillors, blacksmiths and professors, all jumbled
+together.</p>
+
+<p>“What is your occupation, my lad?” he asked of one who
+stood near, as he seized him by the collar.</p>
+
+<p>“Lecturer,” he answered.</p>
+
+<p>“What subject?”</p>
+
+<p>“Comparative philology of modern European languages.”</p>
+
+<p>“Excellent! There you see, doctor, what use the philology
+of modern European languages can be put to!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[p. 376]</span></p>
+
+<p>“And what are you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Metal worker at Siemens and Halske’s.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Village schoolmaster.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Navvy.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Professor of zoology.”</p>
+
+<p>“There you see the levelling effects of war. No trace of
+class distinction. They all lie side by side in the trenches,
+eat the same food and are comrades through thick and thin,
+and the professor is no better treated than the navvy.”</p>
+
+<p>“How many of you are keeping diaries of your war experience?”
+I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t write a line,” said one, standing with his hands in
+his pockets in front of the circle.</p>
+
+<p>“Why not?”</p>
+
+<p>“There are plenty of them who do as it is.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense, you are a lazy beggar,” says the pastor.</p>
+
+<p>“All who keep diaries, put up their hands,” said I, and a
+perfect forest of hands rose into the air.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps it will be simpler if those who <em>don’t</em> keep diaries
+put up their hands.”</p>
+
+<p>They did so, and there were ten out of fully 150. What a
+monument of memories and impressions, of wild adventures
+and heroic deeds told in simple and honest words must they
+not represent, these diaries, written from day to day between
+the fights, in the trenches and by the light of the bivouac fires!</p>
+
+<p>To conclude, I asked in a loud voice&mdash;although it was a
+stupid thing to do and I ought to have known better&mdash;<i lang="la">infandum
+jubes renovare dolorem</i>: “How many of you are social
+democrats?”</p>
+
+<p>At this there was a shout of laughter, almost of derision,
+and I suddenly felt exceedingly awkward and wished I were
+back at Metz again. Even the pastor laughed and shook his
+head. At last a burly-looking soldier answered for himself and
+the others:</p>
+
+<p>“There are no social democrats any more. <em>There are
+nothing but German soldiers.</em>”</p>
+
+<p>I made a desperate attempt to cover my retreat by saying:
+“Of course, of course, I know; but are there any among you
+who have <em>been</em> social democrats?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[p. 377]</span></p>
+
+<p>Some shouted no, others shrugged their shoulders and one
+replied: “Even if there <em>have been</em> social democrats among us,
+all that rot has been washed away by now. It is real and serious
+business we are dealing with now, and none of that kids’
+game!”</p>
+
+<p>Presently the men were ordered to form up and the circle
+melted away, leaving me alone with the divisional pastor and
+three young officers with whom I chatted for a few moments.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill108"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_108_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/108_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>A GROUP OF SOLDIERS WITH THE DIVISIONAL PASTOR IN THE CENTRE
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>Then I went back to my friends and travelling companions
+from Metz. The day’s work was over. The result of the
+achievements of the day had been reported to the General in
+Command, but they had to wait at Barbas until fresh orders
+arrived, which might not be until midnight. For my part I
+could return to Metz whenever I wanted to.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had long since set when Captain Kaufmann came
+up and offered me a seat in his car. He was a fine fellow and
+had moreover many memorable and interesting things to tell
+me from his experiences in the war. So I said good-bye to
+my charming host for the day, General von Tettenborn, and
+the other officers, jumped up beside Kaufmann and a lieutenant
+and in a second we were on the way, eating up the
+ninety kilometres separating us from our destination in the
+north-west. We had our head-lamps lighted. At least twenty
+times we were stopped by the patrols guarding the road, who
+swung their lanterns across the road and shouted “halt!”
+I consider we were very fortunate to get through with a whole
+skin, for if one overlooks a single sentry, it is all up and one
+gets a bullet through the back. There were numerous cavalry
+patrols about, evidently on their way home after their scouting
+in the gloaming. They, too, were stopped by the pickets, for
+otherwise French patrols in German uniforms might easily
+infest the roads and villages held by the Germans. We were
+also stopped on entering and leaving every village.</p>
+
+<p>However, at last we got safely back to Metz, and thus ended
+my last day at the front.</p>
+
+
+<a id="ill109"></a>
+<figure class="figcenter w90" id="i_109_result" style="max-width: 30em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/109_result.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>THE LAST PICTURE FROM THE WESTERN FRONT
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[p. 378]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXV">
+    CHAPTER XXV
+   <br><br>
+    <span class="fs80"><a id="TN5"></a>HOME TO TRELLEBORG</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="firstpara drop-capb">IN the morning of the memorable 6th of November I left
+Metz by the train for Saarbrücken, the town where the
+first shots were fired in the last Franco-German war.
+I had some time to spare, and settled down at a table in the
+restaurant of the <i>Terminus Hotel</i> to read some really recent
+newspapers. Life seemed to go on here just as usual, and one
+noticed nothing of the war. The regular customers came in
+for their <i lang="de">Frühschoppen</i> (early mug of beer) as they always do,
+and here and there an officer or a civilian was breakfasting.</p>
+
+<p>At Ludwigshafen a conductor came along and shouted into
+every compartment of the train that the windows were to be
+kept shut, and that nobody must lean out whilst passing over
+the Rhine bridge. It was pleasant to see the alacrity with
+which his order was obeyed&mdash;after all one had plenty of time
+to contemplate the great and mighty river between that town
+and Mannheim. Just as the train was starting, this same
+conductor jumped into my compartment. Aha, I thought,
+he thinks my shabby field clothes look suspicious in a first-class
+compartment, and he sees that I am busy with map,
+note-book and pencil. However, I met him half-way in my
+frankest manner, and asked whether the window-closing order
+was a precaution against bomb attacks on the bridge. He
+smiled and answered that the orders were that the windows
+were to be shut. Then I asked what the consequence would
+be if one disobeyed the order, opened the window and looked
+out. “In that case,” he said, “there are sentries outside who
+would note the compartment and the window, and the end
+would be that the guilty party would land in a place where
+he would find no windows at all.”</p>
+
+<p>At Mannheim nothing happened. But at Heidelberg I had
+hardly stepped on to the platform before two officers came
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[p. 379]</span>up to me. One said in firm but very polite tones that I must
+accompany him to the District Commandant’s office. “Of
+course,” I said, “I shall be delighted, but I hope you will be
+kind enough to let me bring my hand luggage.” “Why
+certainly,” was the answer. On the way to the office, which
+happened to be close to the platform, the officer remarked:
+“Your passport must be examined by the military authorities.”
+“Why can’t you look at it at once?” I asked, and handed
+him my pass, now soiled and frayed at the edges. “Well,
+perhaps I might do so,” he answered, and we stopped. He
+read the paper with General von Moltke’s name, turned to his
+companion and whispered my name in his ear, whereupon
+both saluted and held out their hands, which I pressed almost
+as heartily as I laughed at the little adventure.</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="de">Aber Herr Doktor, sie müssen uns doch entschuldigen,
+wir ...</i>” (“Really, doctor, you must excuse us, we ...”)</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="de">Bitte, bitte, das ist ja reizend.</i>” (“But please don’t mention
+it, I am delighted.”) Thereupon my German eagles also broke
+into hearty laughter over their prey.</p>
+
+<p>“Your train does not leave for an hour. In place of the
+examination at the office, won’t you come and drink a glass
+of beer with us at the buffet?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, of course, I shall be most happy!” And so the
+time passed all too quickly, and we got a lot of fun out of the
+little adventure&mdash;an adventure which I might have repeated
+at every station, had I liked to do so. But it would not do,
+war is too serious a matter for jest. My new friends told me
+that the conductor had found me very suspicious-looking,
+especially on account of my maps and note-book, and had
+telephoned from Mannheim. At Heidelberg he had conducted
+the officers to my compartment. I assured them that I could
+find no words to express the admiration which I felt for the
+alertness and vigilance which pervaded the whole of Germany
+from frontier to frontier&mdash;it seemed like clockwork where every
+cog drops into its place with automatic precision, and where
+the hours strike their solemn strokes to the fraction of a second.
+When it was time to part they saw me into my carriage, and
+as the train moved out they gave me a final friendly salute
+and bade me God-speed.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_41_41" href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_41_41" href="#FNanchor_41_41" class="label">[41]</a> This little episode, which seemed as harmless as it was amusing to us
+three “conspirators” whilst we discussed it over our mugs of beer, found
+its way into the German press, and was received with much mirth. In the
+French press it appeared under a different guise. Thus, for instance, the
+<cite lang="fr">Journal des Débats</cite>, in a telegram from Bordeaux, dated November 22nd,
+publishes the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="fr">Un télégramme de Bâle dit qu’en quittant l’Allemagne, Sven Hedin l’explorateur
+suédois bien connu, a été arrêté et retenu quelque temps à Heidelberg
+comme suspect d’espionnage.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>The “Figaro” has quite a little article under the heading of “<i lang="fr">Vieil
+Heidelberg</i>.” Other headings are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="fr">Le germanophile arrêté pour espionnage.</i>&mdash;<i lang="fr">Ils arrêtent leur meilleur ami!</i>&mdash;<i lang="fr">Arrestation
+de M. Sven Hedin.</i>&mdash;<i lang="fr">Arrêté comme espion.</i>&mdash;<i lang="fr">Les allemands soupçonnent
+leurs meilleurs amis</i>,” and so on <i lang="la">ad infinitum</i>. An English newspaper,
+the <cite>Newcastle Chronicle</cite>, of November 24th, managed to improve on
+these versions: “The adventure at Heidelberg of Sven Hedin, the Swedish
+explorer now in the pay of the German Official Press Bureau, appears to
+have been amusing. He delivered a lecture in public at the ancient cradle
+of German culture, and knowing him to be a foreigner, the Heidelberg police
+regarded his intense enthusiasm for the greatness of Germany as suspicious.
+He was accordingly arrested, and detained for several days until his employers
+of the Press Bureau could be communicated with and establish that he was
+not a spy. Perhaps this little experience may cool Sven Hedin’s ardour.
+In any case, why was he lecturing in Heidelberg? His services in Holland
+or Italy, the United States, or any other neutral country requiring enlightenment
+would seem natural and appropriate, but surely Heidelberg needs no
+lessons in pan-germanism.”</p>
+
+<p>The surprising thing about the English description is not its wealth of
+detail given with the same readiness as when it is a question of great and
+serious matters, such as, for instance, Hindenburg’s continuous defeats,
+the uninterrupted German retreat from Flanders, the funeral of the German
+Crown Prince, which takes place on an average of about once a month, etc.
+No, the really surprising thing in this article is that the newspaper would find
+it natural and suitable if I were to plead Germany’s cause in <em>neutral</em> countries,
+such as Holland, Italy or the United States. <i lang="fr">A bon entendeur, salut!</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[p. 380]</span></p>
+
+<p>At Karlsruhe, on the following day, I waited on the noble
+and high-minded mother of our Queen, the Dowager Grand
+Duchess Luise, as well as on the Grand Duke and his Consort.
+I was only due to leave for Berlin by the night train, and was
+therefore very glad to be able to accept the Grand Duchess
+Luise’s most gracious proposal that I should inspect the gigantic
+and ideally equipped hospital in the <i lang="de">Gewerbeschule</i> under
+her Royal Highness’s own august guidance. I met there two
+distinguished head nurses, the wife of General von Oetinger
+and Frau Sautier, also Fru Linder from Stockholm who was
+here to study hospital arrangements in the field and who had
+met with the greatest hospitality in Karlsruhe.</p>
+
+<p>It was most touching to see the Grand Duchess, in spite of
+her seventy-six years, walk from bed to bed, from ward to
+ward, encouraging soldiers and speaking to them in a way
+that went straight to the heart. In her black dress and her
+black lace veil over her head, she looked like a pious abbess
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[p. 381]</span>giving comfort and solace to the wounded warriors, and indeed
+she made a most welcome break in their long weary hours of
+suffering. Behind our Queen’s mother came several nurses
+carrying armfuls of flowers and little packets of portraits of
+the Grand-Ducal pair. Before leaving, this guardian angel of
+the wounded graciously handed a packet and a picture to each
+soldier as a souvenir of her visit.</p>
+
+<p>The most delightful part of my visit was the witnessing of
+the homage paid by the convalescent soldiers to the venerable
+and beloved lady, as they stood assembled in the great hall
+of the hospital. When the Grand Duchess came out, they
+spontaneously broke into the stirring and moving tones of
+the great German National Hymn here given in translation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>(Tune: “Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him.”)</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Germany, be thou exalted</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Over every other land,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">If but in the hour of peril,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">True thy sons together stand</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">From the Meuse unto the Niemen,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">From Adige to Baltic strand,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Germany, be thou exalted</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Over every other land!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">German women, German faith, and</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">German wine and German song</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Shall their ancient fame and glory</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Still retain through ages long,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And to noble deeds inspire us</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">All our path through life along&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">German women, German faith, and</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">German wine and German song!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Unity and right and freedom</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">For our German fatherland&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">This let us together strive for,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Brothers all, with heart and hand!&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Unity and right and freedom&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Pledges of a blessed land&mdash;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">In the glory of such blessing</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Flourish, German Fatherland!</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Thank you, thank you, God bless you all,” said the Grand
+Duchess, and disappeared as unpretentiously as she had come.</p>
+
+<p>In Berlin I looked up several old friends and also had the
+honour and pleasure to be invited to supper with the pretty,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[p. 382]</span>charming and altogether delightful Crown Princess. In the
+evening we sat round an open, flaming hearth, and I recounted
+my recollections from the front and from the desert, whilst
+my illustrious hostess and her ladies-in-waiting were listening
+and knitting socks for the brave soldiers in the trenches.
+The Crown Princess had another guest whom it was a great
+pleasure to me to meet again&mdash;Baron von Maltzahn, who now,
+after his unlucky motor drive, had recovered sufficiently to
+hop about on crutches.</p>
+
+<p>The streets of Berlin looked the same as they had done two
+months previously. Men and women, motor-cars and ’buses
+moved about as busily as they had done before, and the streets
+were flooded with electric light all night just as in piping times
+of peace. At the appointed hour the Palace Guard came
+marching along <i lang="de">Unter den Linden</i> as it has always done, with
+its alluring, rapturous military music calling to fresh deeds of
+valour. Had one not known it, one could not possibly have
+guessed, but for the shouting of the newsboys, that the country
+was involved in the most gigantic war of all time. Neither did
+I notice any thinning of the numbers of able-bodied men in
+the streets, and yet had I not seen through the carriage window
+from Metz armies of recruits, reservists and volunteers all drilling
+in barrack squares and fields along the line?</p>
+
+<p>It has been stated in certain newspapers that the Germans
+treated their prisoners of war in a cruel and inhuman manner.
+That this was untrue like everything else which forms part of
+the educational campaign, I readily understood, but all the
+same I thought it would be interesting to find out for myself
+the facts of the case. Accordingly I paid a visit to the acting
+General Staff. Not only did they give me the usual prompt
+permission to go out to the prisoners’ camp at Döberitz, but I
+was given as guide a most capable and learned major.</p>
+
+<p>At the entrance to the camp we were received by a colonel
+and several other officers, who took us round and explained
+everything. Here were four thousand Russians, four thousand
+British and a few hundred French, Belgians and Turcos&mdash;I am
+sorry to say there were no other specimens from the ethnological
+colour-box at Döberitz. The prisoners live in gigantic
+tents where they have their beds close together on the ground
+in four enormous rows. I went into one of the tents and found
+a group of Russians with caps on the back of their heads and
+coats or blankets over their shoulders, and asked if they were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[p. 383]</span>satisfied with the treatment they received. “Oh yes, nitchevo,”
+was the answer. But one of them shouted, “It is too
+cold to lie on the ground in late autumn.” “Yes,” I
+answered, “of course it was warmer in the firing lines in
+Poland. How would you like to go back and warm yourselves
+a bit?” “No, Heaven preserve us!” came as a
+chorus on every side.</p>
+
+<p>My old friend Tommy Atkins was strolling about inside the
+barbed-wire fence and looked and felt very bored. But he was
+not ill-treated, on the contrary, he was very well looked after.
+I saw him at dinner with his ally Ivan Ivanovitch. The
+8500 prisoners were fed in three-quarters of an hour, and the
+whole thing was despatched with the utmost smoothness. In
+front of the kitchen building, in which gigantic caldrons were
+steaming, railings had been put up, permitting the men to
+advance in files of eight to the window opening, through which
+the mess cooks with the adroitness, touch and quickness of a
+virtuoso filled to the brim the bowls held out to them with
+wholesome, nourishing, steaming soup. When their bowls
+had been filled, the men went back another way so as to avoid
+congestion. The system is the same as at the booking offices
+at busy railway stations.</p>
+
+<p>The British soldier is, under <em>normal</em> conditions, a sinewy and
+well-knit man, who has hardened and trained his body with
+football, tennis, cricket and other salutary exercises. But in
+Germany he merely vegetates and swells in bulk and by no
+means over-exerts himself over the work offered him in confinement,
+by which he can earn a couple of <i>pfennigs</i> a day for
+tobacco. If therefore on his return home Tommy tries to
+make out that he has been living “below starvation mark”
+in Germany, his comfortably rounded form and his <i lang="la">eloquencia
+corporis</i> will give him the lie!</p>
+
+<p>It is surprising and peculiar to see Tommy Atkins and Ivan
+Ivanovitch arm-in-arm&mdash;figuratively speaking, of course!
+For in the concentration camps they hate one another heartily.
+Tommy regards Ivan as a lousy savage and Ivan looks on
+Tommy as an impudent upstart whom the modest patron of
+the <i lang="ru">samovar</i> ought not to associate with. And yet, for all
+practical purposes, they march arm-in-arm and use all the
+most hellish infernal machines of modern militarism to destroy
+the German militarism and free the earth from the Germanic
+barbarians. Great Britain and Russia! It really staggers the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[p. 384]</span>imagination when one thinks that these two countries have
+neither in Europe nor in Asia, in heaven nor on earth, <em>a single
+positive interest</em> in common.</p>
+
+<p>We need only think of India, the most precious jewel in
+Great Britain’s crown. Of the possibility of a Russian invasion
+of India Lord Curzon, the greatest and most clear-sighted
+Viceroy India has ever had, has given utterance to
+the following: “It would involve the most terrible and lingering
+war that the world has ever seen; and it could only be
+effected by a loss, most unlikely to occur, and more serious in
+its effects upon the human race than that of India itself,
+namely, the loss of the fibre of the British people.” Elsewhere,
+when saying that India’s safety is Great Britain’s foremost
+duty, he speaks as follows of a Russian attack on that country:
+“It can only be prosecuted in the teeth of international
+morality, in defiance of civilised opinion and with the ultimate
+certainty of a war with this country that would ring from
+pole to pole.”</p>
+
+<p>The <cite lang="ru">Novoye Vremya</cite> writes at about the same time (1st
+December, 1888): “Our attention has been focussed on the
+necessity of bringing Khorasan under Russia’s exclusive
+influence, the more so as through Khorasan runs a convenient
+road in the direction of Herat and in case of military operations
+against India, Khorasan would therefore serve as a base of
+supply for our further operations.” Then we have Skobeleff’s
+and Kuropatkin’s very detailed and minute plans for an invasion
+of India.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_42_42" href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_42_42" href="#FNanchor_42_42" class="label">[42]</a> Curzon: “Russia in Central Asia,” 1889, and “Persia and the Persian
+Question,” 1892, Vol. II.</p></div>
+
+<p>Many years have elapsed since Lord Curzon thoroughly
+and exhaustively, as usual, dealt with this question. But is
+there anyone who believes that the danger is less serious now
+that the Russians have been checked in the Far East by the
+Japanese and in the Far West by Germany and Austria-Hungary?
+It is true that there is one other outlet in the west&mdash;a
+truth which the <em>Swedes</em> should bear in mind. But nevertheless
+the danger to India is far greater now than it was twenty-five
+years ago.</p>
+
+<p>It is therefore not a little peculiar to see Tommy Atkins
+helping Ivan Ivanovitch with blood and iron, on land and
+sea, to gain that power and strength which he needs for carrying
+out an invasion of India. For England this world war is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[p. 385]</span>a national calamity, however it may end. “We have forty
+million reasons for failure but not a single excuse.”</p>
+
+<p>We also visited the hospital at Döberitz, where the prisoners
+receive all the care that human charity can give to the sick.
+It is not charity alone that demands the greatest sacrifices in
+this respect, for a concentration camp where thousands of
+men live huddled together on one spot <em>may</em> become a source
+of contagion, if ill-managed. Hence skilled doctors, sick attendants
+and nurses are engaged, and the slightest symptom is
+immediately followed by isolation to prevent the possibility
+of an epidemic.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the paths I came across a Tommy walking up and
+down. He looked very pale, but was convalescent.</p>
+
+<p>“How are you getting on?” said I, but received no
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>“I hope you will soon become a little bit of all right by and
+by,” I tried once more in my very best colloquial English.
+Tommy only smiled and looked at me.</p>
+
+<p>“Is he deaf or is he mad?” I asked the doctor who accompanied us.</p>
+
+<p>“No, he is Russian,” answered the doctor, laughing. But
+how this Russian had got into Tommy’s uniform remains an
+unsolved riddle.</p>
+
+<p>It is a rather significant fact that whilst the good-natured
+Russians need only four per cent of guards, the self-conscious
+English require ten per cent; in other words, four German
+soldiers look after a hundred Russians, whilst a hundred English
+need ten guardians. The reason may possibly be found in the
+inborn servility traceable to generations of serfdom, but the
+principal reason of the difficulty in handling the English
+prisoners is probably that they have no national service and
+have not accustomed themselves to discipline. The cases of
+insubordination in the prisoners’ camps are almost entirely
+confined to the British prisoners. The punishment for the
+first offence consisted in letting the culprit stand a couple of
+hours to guard the guns on a little flat eminence near the camp,
+where the wind usually blew cold and strong. After a graver
+offence the delinquent was usually tied to a tree for an hour
+or two, but this latter punishment had only been resorted to
+in isolated cases.</p>
+
+<p>My impression of the treatment of prisoners at Döberitz
+confirmed all that I had witnessed in this connection at the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[p. 386]</span>seat of war. But the world <em>will</em> be deceived and is deceived.
+Hence the educators of the British nation spread broadcast
+the meanest calumnies concerning the “Huns’ barbarity” to
+their unhappy prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>The magnificent drawing-room inside the hall of the <i lang="de">Hotel
+Kaiserhof</i> usually formed the rendezvous of a little Swedish
+colony in the evening. Here I met Cavalry Captain Count
+Gilbert Hamilton, who had become a German subject and
+officer in order to strike a blow in the Germanic fight for
+existence. He was just on his way to his regiment and was
+looking forward to a very different reveille from that he was
+accustomed to at our own sleepy horse-guards barracks at
+home in Stockholm. Here also I met once more my old friend
+Colonel Gustaf Bouveng, who had spent two and a half months
+at the front and who, among innumerable other impressions,
+was also taking home with him the conviction that in a military
+sense Germany simply <em>cannot</em> be defeated by her present
+opponents. Instead of tiring and becoming decimated, the
+German army grows in strength and numbers from month
+to month.</p>
+
+<p>On the 12th of November I took my departure from the
+<i lang="de">Stettiner Bahnhof</i> and set out on my journey home to Sweden.
+As I reached Sassnitz, dusk was descending over the Baltic.
+The passports and effects of the passengers were subjected to
+a most careful scrutiny. The same calm, the same sure self-possession,
+the same discipline and order as I had noticed
+everywhere in Germany and in the firing lines, made themselves
+felt here, too, on the outermost planks of the harbour
+pier. At Sassnitz fourteen torpedo-boats lay ready for
+immediate action, and in the roads a gigantic hospital
+ship was riding at anchor, ready to receive wounded from
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The ferry cast off her moorings. Little by little in the gathering
+gloom we lose sight of land, that land whose seconds are
+as long as years, whose people is now writing its <i lang="la">epos</i> in runes
+of blood on the pages of the world’s history&mdash;a united people,
+a virile people, a people which stood ready in its hour of trial,
+armed for the defence of its honour, its liberty and its future
+when the ravenous monster of strife rose up upon its frontiers,
+a people which has the <em>will</em> to win and which therefore in the
+time to come will march at the head of the ruling race upon
+our earth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[p. 387]</span></p>
+
+<p>But the belt of sea between the ferry and the German
+coast grows wider. The song “<i lang="de">Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig
+sein</i>” has long since died away. The twilight, the transition
+between day and night, is over. And in the north bides
+the deep impenetrable darkness.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_391"></a>[p. 391]</span></p>
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX_1">
+    INDEX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<ul class="index">
+  <li class="ifrst"><i>Aboukir</i>, loss of H.M.S., <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Abstinence from wine, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Adlercreutz, Major, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ahrenberg, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Aire, the, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Aisne, the, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">retreat of the Germans to, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Alaska, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Albert, King of the Belgians, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Aleppo, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Alers, Colonel von, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Algermissen, Dr., at Ostend, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Algiers, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Allies, the, their use of foreign troops, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_352">352&ndash;355</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">All Souls’ Day at Bapaume, <a href="#Page_332">332&ndash;347</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Almanach de Gotha, the, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Alost, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Alsace, French claim on, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Alt, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Altefähr, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Altkirch, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">America, its relations with Japan, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">American Ambassador in Paris, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">America, village, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ancerviller, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Angers, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Anklam, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Antwerp, author visits, <a href="#Page_216">216&ndash;228</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235&ndash;262</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">forts of, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hospital in, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">neutral consulates in, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">port of, <a href="#Page_224">224&ndash;228</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">siege of, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213&ndash;219</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note, <a href="#Page_253">253&ndash;255</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">supposed British ambitions for, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Apolda, the, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Archer, William, reviews the author’s work, v-vii</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ardenne Canal, the, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Argentine Consul in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Argonne, the, fighting in, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Ariadne</i>, sinking of the, <a href="#Page_268">268&ndash;270</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Arlon, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Armentières, author visits, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Arnim, Prince, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Arnoldi, Dr., Acting Chief of the Automobile Corps, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Arras, fighting at, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Arrhenius, Professor Svante, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Artois, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., at the Guildhall, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Attigny, hospital at, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Augustovo, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Australian troops, the, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Austria-Hungary checks Russia, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its army, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Austrian artillery in Belgium, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Automobile Corps, Imperial Volunteer, constitution of, <a href="#Page_14">14&ndash;16</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Autry, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Auxerre, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Aventi</i>, s.s., <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Aye, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Bach’s <i>Passion</i>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Baedeker on Belgium, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bagdad Railway, the, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bailer, General, in Brussels, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Balakhani, the, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Baltic Sea, the, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Banér, Field-Marshal Johan, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bantheville, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bapaume, author visits, <a href="#Page_296">296&ndash;309</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315&ndash;319</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332&ndash;342</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361&ndash;367</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i lang="de">Bapaumer Zeitung am Mittag</i>, <a href="#Page_317">317&ndash;319</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Barbas, <a href="#Page_374">374&ndash;377</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bar-le-Duc, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bavaria, Rupprecht, Crown Prince of, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bavarian Army, the, warlike spirit of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Landsturm, the, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[p. 392]</span>Beaumont, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Beelitz, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Beethoven, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Behr, Captain von, author accompanies, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Count-Marshal von, attends the Crown Prince, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Belfort, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Belgian Army, the, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">brings loss upon itself, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">defends Antwerp, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">German tributes to, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its wireless stations, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">uniforms of, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Belgian Cabinet leaves Ostend, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">coast bombarded by the British Navy, <a href="#Page_265">265&ndash;283</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">dogs, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hospitals at Malines, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hospitals at Ostend, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_125">125&ndash;129</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">police in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><a id="Belgpris"></a>prisoners of war, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">railwaymen, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">refugees, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">refugees from Antwerp, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">refugees in Ostend, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Belgium, author’s compassion for, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">England’s policy with regard to, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Belle Alliance, La, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bellevue, Sedan, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bellman, poet, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Benares, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Benckendorff, Count, his Tibetan policy, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Benedetti, Ambassador of the French, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Benz and Co., <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Berchem, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bergen-op-Zoom, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bergues, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Berlin, author’s visits to, <a href="#Page_6">6&ndash;19</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Geological Society, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Russian advance on, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">triumphal entry into, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">University, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bernhard, Captain, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bernhard, Major-General, questions prisoners, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bernhardi, General, xvi</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bertrix, <a href="#Page_128">128&ndash;130</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Beseler, General von, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bess, Captain, at Ostend, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">on the <i>Ariadne</i>, <a href="#Page_268">268&ndash;270</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Betz, Lieut.-Col., at Dun, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bible, author’s quotations from the, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i lang="de">Bierabend</i>, author enjoys a, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bikanir, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bildt, General, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Billeting, German methods of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Birkenfeld, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bismarck, Count, at Donchery, <a href="#Page_137">137&ndash;139</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">tower, Apolda, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bitterfeld, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Black Sea, Turkish fleet in the, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blamont, author visits, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blankenberghe, author visits, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bleichröder, Baron, in Sedan, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blériot aeroplanes in use, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blois, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blücher, General, English debt to, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Boer War, the, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Böhlau, Lieut.-Col., <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Boiry, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bois de Cheppy, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bombay, author in, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bordeaux, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Börjeson, Rev., in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bouchain, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bouillon, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Boureuilles, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bournemouth, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Boussu, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bouveng, Colonel Gustaf, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Boy Scouts, motto of, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Braine le Comte, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Brandenburg, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Breitenfeld, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Breslau, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Brialmont, General, fortifications of, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Briey, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Brighton, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">British Army aviators over Ostend, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">bombards Ostend, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">foreign troops in, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352&ndash;355</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its artillery, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">personal courage of, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[p. 393]</span>British Navy bombards the Belgian coast, <a href="#Page_265">265&ndash;284</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286&ndash;288</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">sinks the <i>Ariadne</i>, <a href="#Page_268">268&ndash;270</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bruges, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author in, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Germans in, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Brussels, author in, <a href="#Page_210">210&ndash;216</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230&ndash;233</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242&ndash;244</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">refugees from, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">under the Germans, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bürger, Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Busch, Herr von, Minister in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Calais, German advance on, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Calcutta, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cambrai, author visits, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cameroons, the, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Canadian troops, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cappellen, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Carignan, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cernay, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Challerange, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Chamier-Glisczinski, Captain von, at Vouziers, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Champion, Convent of, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Charlemagne, Emperor, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Charles V., Emperor, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Charles XII. of Sweden, vi, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Charleville, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Château-Salins, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Chauvency, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cheppy, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Churchill, Winston, in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ciney, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Clairvaux, Bernard de, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Classen, Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cleving, Herr, at Bapaume, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Coal-mines, Belgian, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Coblenz, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Colmar, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cologne, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Colombo, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Condé, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Constantinople, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Turks capture, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cossart, Maître Emile, <a href="#Page_302">302&ndash;305</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cousteumont, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cramb, Professor, xvi</li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Cressy</i>, loss of H.M.S., <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Croisilles, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Crombez, M., <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cronstedt, Count, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Crown Prince, the German, <a href="#Page_380">380</a> note</li>
+  <li class="isub1">as an author, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Dun, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author’s visits to, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61&ndash;64</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">on war, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">visits the author, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Crown Princess, German, entertains the author, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cunel, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Curzon, Earl, as Viceroy, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his hope, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Dagobert, King, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dahlgren, janitor, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite>Daily Telegraph</cite>, v</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dannevoux, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Danzig</i>, cruiser, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Darmstadt, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Deffner, chauffeur, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dellmensingen, General Krafft von, at Douai, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Demain, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dendre, the, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Desserrey, Madame, and family, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Détaille, artist, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i lang="de">Deutschland in Waffen</i>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Diaries, soldiers’, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dinant, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">destruction of, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dixmude, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Döberitz, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author visits, <a href="#Page_382">382&ndash;386</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Donchery, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Donck, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dorpfeld, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Douai, author visits, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344&ndash;348</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Douchy, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dreger, Captain, in Brussels, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dresden, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dryhoek, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Duffel, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dug-outs, German, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dun, author’s day at, <a href="#Page_104">104&ndash;116</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Germans in, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dunkerque, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Düsseldorf, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Eastbourne, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eastern front, length of the, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">East Prussia, German victories in, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eckeren, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eclisfontaine, the author visits, <a href="#Page_80">80&ndash;103</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_394">[p. 394]</span>Eclo, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eichstedt, Count von, at Vouziers, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eiffel, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eisenach, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eiserne Hand, the, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eitel Friedrich, Prince, at the front, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Elbe, the, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Elert, Major, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Elizabeth Sisters, the, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eller, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ems, the author at, <a href="#Page_31">31&ndash;34</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Engineers, their work in the Argonne, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">England, author’s sorrow for, vi, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">German hatred of, vi, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">her army and navy. <i>See</i> British</li>
+  <li class="isub1">her care for the Belgian refugees, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">her newspaper press, xv, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>
+    note, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">her relations with Russia, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383&ndash;385</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">her rule in India, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">her supposed hatred of Germany, vi, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">her supposed hysteria, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">policy of, vi, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><a id="Britpris"></a>English prisoners of war, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Antwerp, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Döberitz, <a href="#Page_382">382&ndash;386</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Kruiseik, <a href="#Page_359">359&ndash;361</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Namur, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Roubaix, <a href="#Page_348">348&ndash;351</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eppeghem, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Erfurt, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Esschem, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Essen, Elizabeth sisters of, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Faidherbe, statue of, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Falkenhausen army, the, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Falkenhayn, Lieut.-Gen. von, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Douai, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Brussels, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fifth Army, the German, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite>Figaro, Le</cite>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Finnish armies, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fischer, Colonel, at the front, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Flanders, Anglo-Belgian Army in, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Counts of, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Flushing, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fock. <i>See</i> Wilamovitz</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Folkestone, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Forrières, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fournaise, Madame, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fourth Army, German, author follows, <a href="#Page_145">145&ndash;181</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its lines of communication, <a href="#Page_140">140&ndash;144</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Franco-Prussian War, 1870, Germany’s development after, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">incidents of, <a href="#Page_136">136&ndash;139</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><a id="Franctireurs"></a><i lang="fr">Franctireurs</i>, at Louvain, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">German treatment of, <a href="#Page_56">56&ndash;59</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Frankfurt-on-Main, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">French Army, artillery, <a href="#Page_70">70&ndash;74</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">aviation service, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165&ndash;167</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363&ndash;366</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">constitution of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">foreign troops in, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">German tributes to, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its mobilisation, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its use of wooded country, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its vigilance and spy system, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327&ndash;330</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Medical Service, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">respects the Red Cross, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">uniform of, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">French people, the author’s affection for, and sympathy with, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">their hatred of Germany, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">the Kaiser’s sympathy and respect for, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">under the German occupation, <a href="#Page_183">183&ndash;186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><a id="Frenchpris"></a>French prisoners of war, author visits, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author visits the wounded, <a href="#Page_31">31&ndash;33</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38&ndash;41</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89&ndash;91</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">construct a railway, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Belgium, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Germany, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">their dejection, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">their diaries, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fretzdorff, Colonel, at Dun, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Friederich, Major Hans, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a> Major-General, in Ghent, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fröhlich, Dr., author travels with, <a href="#Page_200">200&ndash;202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_395">[p. 395]</span>Fuchs, Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fulda, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Funerals, German military, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Furnes, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Gambetta, General, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Geibel, Emanuel, quoted, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gelnhausen, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gembloux, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Geneva conventions, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gerhard, Paul, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German Army, aerial service, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364&ndash;366</a>; <i>see also</i> <a href="#Taube">Taube</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">admiration of the French, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">ammunition of, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">artillery, <a href="#Page_71">71&ndash;73</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85&ndash;87</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373&ndash;375</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">base hospitals, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">cavalry corps, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">chaplains, <a href="#Page_192">192&ndash;194</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">commissariat arrangements, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">consideration for civilians, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184&ndash;186</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>; <i>see also <a href="#Franctireurs">Franctireurs</a></i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">despatch riders, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">discipline, xv, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">equipment of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Field Gendarmes, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">field hospitals and Medical Service, <a href="#Page_37">37&ndash;42</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152&ndash;158</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162&ndash;165</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290&ndash;293</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Field postal service, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195&ndash;198</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Field Telegraph Battalion, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Field Telephone Service, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174&ndash;176</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Headquarters at Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48&ndash;50</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">lines of communication, <a href="#Page_140">140&ndash;144</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">loyalty of, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">methods of observation, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">mobilisation of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">pay-day in, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">reinforcements, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Service Corps, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">supposed superiority of, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">systematic organisation of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">transport columns, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German treatment of prisoners, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382&ndash;386</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">trenches, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">wounded of, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151&ndash;158</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German atrocities denied, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">culture, war on, vii, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hatred of England, vi, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">imperturbability, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">letters from the front, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">militarism, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German Navy, its losses, <a href="#Page_268">268&ndash;270</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">power of the, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German Press, honesty of the, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">prisoners in France, <a href="#Page_33">33</a> note, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">railway system, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German Red Cross, the, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Countess von Moltke works for, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its work in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its work on the battlefields, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">nurses, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German schools continue work, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">social democrats, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">unity of feeling, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">victory, confidence of, vi, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German South-West Africa, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Germany, captures the world’s trade, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its preparations for war, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ghent, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</li>
+  <li class="isub1">author in, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">fall of, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Germans in, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ghistelles, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ghurkas, the, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Givet, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gleiwitz, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Godfrey the Crusader, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Goër, Madame, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Goethe, genius of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Goltz, Baron von der, in Brussels, <a href="#Page_214">214&ndash;216</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gontard, Lieut.-Gen. von, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Göppert, Councillor, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gossler, General von, at Dannevoux, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite lang="sw">Göteborgs Handels</cite>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gotha, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_396">[p. 396]</span>Göttingen, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Goumont, Château de, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gräfenhainischen, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Grandpré, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Graves, soldiers’, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Greifswald, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Greiner, Hans, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Grevenmacher, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gross, Lieut.-Colonel, commands the Field Telegraph Battalion, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Grünewald, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Grupont, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Guadeloupe, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Guildhall War Meeting, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gustaf, King of Sweden, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gwalior, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gwinner, Hans von, acts as chauffeur, <a href="#Page_56">56&ndash;61</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gyldén, Professor, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Haaf, Captain, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Haak, Lieutenant, in Ostend, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Haeseler, Count von, at the front, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hague Conventions, the, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hahnke, Lieutenant-Colonel, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hal, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Halle, author at, <a href="#Page_22">22&ndash;24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Halske and Siemens, Messrs., <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hamburg, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hamelincourt, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hamilton, Count Gilbert, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hamipré, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hanau, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hatrival, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Havre, Le, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hayek, Professor Hans von, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Heidelberg, author in, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Heligoland, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Helmholtz, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Henry of Prussia, Prince, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Herat, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Heymann, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Heyn, Major, in Sedan, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Heyst op den Berg, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hildebrand, Professor, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hildesheim, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hindenburg, Field-Marshal von, victories of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>
+    note</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Lieut. von, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hirschberg, General von, at Namur, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hirson, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hogne, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Hogue</i>, loss of H.M.S., <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hohenlohe, Prince, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hohenzollern, Prince Friedrich of, at the front, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">race, the, shed their blood for Germany, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hoiningen, Baron von, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Holland, Belgian refugees in, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259&ndash;261</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hollen, Rittmeister von, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hollweg, Herr von Bethmann, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">visits Antwerp, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hongkong, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Houyet, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Huisne, the, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hünfeld in Hesse, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hussars, German, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hütten, Lieut. Doctor, visits Antwerp, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">visits Louvain, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Idar, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Identification discs, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Igel, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ilberg, Dr., in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ilm, the, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ilse, General, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">India, Crown Prince in, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">English rule in, <a href="#Page_352">352&ndash;354</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Lord Curzon, Viceroy of, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Indian prisoners of war, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">troops, the, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351&ndash;354</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Iron Crosses, the, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">awarded to Lt.-Col. Schaubode, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">bestowed by the Crown Prince, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">chaplains earn, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">shape used as tombstone, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Isolani, in Germany, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ivangorod, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Jade Bight, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jagow, Herr von, Foreign Minister, at Headquarters, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jakobson, Captain, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Japan, its relations with Russia, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Japanese occupy Tsingtau, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jemelle, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jesuits at Vouziers, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Joachim, Prince, is wounded, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_397">[p. 397]</span>Joan of Arc, statue of, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">statuette of, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Joffre, General, German admiration of, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Johannes, Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite lang="fr">Journal des Débats</cite>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jung, General, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jüterbog, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Kabylia, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kamerun, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kapellen, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Karlsruhe, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kashmir, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kaufmann, Captain, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kemnitz, Colonel von, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kes, Dr. Walter, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Khorasan, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kilima Njaro, Mount, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kioto, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kipling, Rudyard, author quotes, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kirchhoff, Professor, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kirn, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kitchener, Earl, Crown Prince on, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Klefberg, Dr., <a href="#Page_234">234</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kleinbettingen, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kobe, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Koch, Frau Martha, her Red Cross work, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kodak, author’s Eastman, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kollmann, Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kondratenko, General, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Königsberg, troops from, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Korte, private, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kösen, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kreidel, Privy Councillor, at Brussels, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kreuznach, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kriebel, Captain, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kroeber, Dr. Hans, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kruiseik, author visits, <a href="#Page_358">358&ndash;361</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Krum, Rittmeister von, acts as the author’s chauffeur, <a href="#Page_15">15&ndash;55</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Krupp’s factory, engineers from, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">workmen at Namur, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">42-cm. mortars, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kübler, Doctor, in Ostend, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kummer, Herr, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kuropatkin, General, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kutch Behar, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">La Chiers, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">La Dormoise, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">La Ferté, letter from, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lahn, the, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">La Hulpe, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">La Lys Canal, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lamprecht, Captain, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Landsturm, German, at Vouziers, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">drill the volunteers, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">characteristics, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">guards the railways, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Bapaume, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">march-past of, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Landwehr, German, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Langen Schwalbach, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lavaux, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lawrence, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Le Cateau, author visits, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Le Chesne, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Leclerc, Alfred, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Leffinghe, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Leipzig, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">battle of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Leman, General, at Liège, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Le Mans, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lemberg, battle of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lengagne, Mesdemoiselles, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Le Nouvion, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Leo XIII., Pope, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lepsius, Doctor, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lewenhaupt, Count, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Libramont, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200&ndash;202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i lang="de">Liebesgaben</i> for German troops, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Liebrecht, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Liège, Krupp’s men at, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">siege of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lierre, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lille, author visits, <a href="#Page_309">309&ndash;311</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author visits, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Linder, Fru, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Linselles, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Liny, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lippe, Doctor, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Livland wars, the, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lomme, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">London, refugees in, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Guildhall meeting, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">London, Jack, his dogs, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Longlaville, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Longlier, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Longuyon, author visits, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Longwy, bombardment of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119&ndash;122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Looting, instances of, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lopnor, sea of, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_398">[p. 398]</span>Lorraine, the author in, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Louis XIV., King, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Louis XVI. at Varennes, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lou-lan, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Louvain, author visits, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">destruction of, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Löwenstein, Prince, at Douai, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lübke, Captain, escorts the author, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ludwigshafen, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Luise, Dowager Grand Duchess, in Karlsruhe, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lumm, Councillor von, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lunéville, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Luther, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Wittenberg, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lützen, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Luxemburg, author at, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44&ndash;56</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">German Headquarters in, <a href="#Page_48">48&ndash;50</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122&ndash;124</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">prisoners in, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">treatment of wounded in, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Grand Duchess of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lwow. <i>See</i> Lemberg</li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Machenhauer, Lieut.-Col., <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">MacMahon, Marshal, at Sedan, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Madras, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite lang="de">Magdeburgische Zeitung</cite>, author on the Kaiser in, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Main, the, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Malancourt, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Malines, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</li>
+  <li class="isub1">author visits, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Maltzahn, Baron von, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">injured in a motor accident, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mamer, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Manchuria, war in, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mannheim, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Brewery, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Manuel of Portugal, ex-King, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marche-les-Dames, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Margaret of Austria, statue of, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marguth, Pastor, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mariakerke, author at, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marines, German, at Antwerp, <a href="#Page_233">233&ndash;235</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Ostend, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marksuhl, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marloie, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marne, the, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Battle of the, vi</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marschall, Lieut.-Gen. von, at Douai, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marseilles, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mars-la-Tour, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Martha, Sister (Frau Koch), <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marville, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Massebus, Lieutenant, in Brussels, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Matthiasz, Major, accompanies the author under fire, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70&ndash;73</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Maubeuge, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Max, Prince of Württemberg, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mayence Ammunition Park Depot, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Elector of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mecklenburg, Duke Adolf Friedrich of, as a chauffeur, <a href="#Page_367">367&ndash;370</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Brussels and Bapaume, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306&ndash;320</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Douai, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Roubaix, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Meiningen, Duke Georg of, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Meinze, Herr, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Melle, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Memel, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Menin, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Merseburg, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Merwart, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Merxem, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Messempré-Messincourt, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Metz, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author visits, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">fortifications of, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Meuse, the, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mézières, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Middelkerke, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">artillery at, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author at, <a href="#Page_271">271&ndash;273</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Militarism, German, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mine-field off the Belgian coast, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Miraumont, sports at, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mohammed Isa, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Moltke, Colonel-General von, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Chief of the General Staff, smooths the author’s road, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Countess von, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">General von, at Donchery, 1870, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mönch, Commander, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Monchy-au-Bois, trenches at, <a href="#Page_320">320&ndash;331</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mons, author at, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Montblainville, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Montenegrin troops, the, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Montmédy, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mont St. Jean, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_399">[p. 399]</span>Moroccan troops, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Moscow, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Moselle, the, <a href="#Page_34">34&ndash;36</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mudra, General von, at the front, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mulde, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Müller, Admiral von, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Colonel, in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Major von, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Münch, Franz Xaver, chaplain, <a href="#Page_335">335&ndash;340</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Munich, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mutius, Colonel von, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Namur, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author visits, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201&ndash;210</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nancy, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Naninnes, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Napoleon I., at Leipzig, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Waterloo, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">picture of, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">bust of, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Napoleon III., Emperor, capitulation of, <a href="#Page_136">136&ndash;139</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Narbonne, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Narva, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nassau, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Naumburg, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nethe, Major, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">the, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Neufchâteau, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Neuville, artist, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite>Newcastle Chronicle</cite>, the, <a href="#Page_380">380</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">New Guinea, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">New Zealand, troops from, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ney, Marshal, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nicolai, Major, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nieuport, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Allies in, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">bombardment of, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nietzsche, xvi</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nobel prize winners, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Noërs, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Norway, William II. in, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite lang="ru">Novoye Vremya</cite>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Oetinger, General von, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ohain, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Okuniev, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Oldershausen, Colonel von, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Omdurman, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ooms, Karel, widow of, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Oskar, Prince, illness of, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ostend, author visits, <a href="#Page_263">263&ndash;294</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">bombardment of, <a href="#Page_268">268&ndash;283</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ostend, Churchill in, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Germans in, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Osterith, Mrs., <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Overyssche, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Pappenheim in Germany, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Paris, fortifications of, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Parsohen, Captain, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pasteur, statue of, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pawel, Lieut.-Gen. von, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Peene, the, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Peihmann, Baron von, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pekin, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pelkmann, General von, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Penang, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Peronne, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite>Persia and the Persian Question</cite>, Curzon’s, <a href="#Page_384">384</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Perthes, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Justus, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Peter the Great, Tsar, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Petri, Harald, Swedish Consul in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_253">253&ndash;255</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Petrograd, Poincaré in, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pfeil, Count von, at the front, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Photography, author’s, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pius IX., Pope, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pius X., Pope, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Planchenois, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Planitz, Major von der, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Plato, Major von, at Sedan, <a href="#Page_132">132&ndash;135</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pless, Prince, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Plessen, Col.-Gen. von, at Douai, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Plettenberg, General von, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Poincaré, President, at Petrograd, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Poland, Germans in, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Polish roads, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pomerania, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pompeii, destruction of, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Port Arthur, siege of, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Portuguese troops, the, <a href="#Page_354">354&ndash;356</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Posen, author in, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Potsdam, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author at, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pousette, Herr, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Prenzlau, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Press, honesty of the German, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">methods of the English, <a href="#Page_354">354&ndash;356</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Prisoners of war, dismal fate of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">German, treatment of, <a href="#Page_31">31&ndash;33</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89&ndash;91</a>; <i>see also under</i>
+    <a href="#Britpris">British</a>, <a href="#Frenchpris">French</a>, <a href="#Belgpris">etc.</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_400">[p. 400]</span>Prussian-Hessian State Railways, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Przemysl, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Putten, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Quaterecht, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Quesnoy, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Quiévrain, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Rambaldi, Lieut. Count, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rath, Colonel von, at Dannevoux, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rathgen, General, at Namur, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rawalpindi, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rechberg, Adjutant, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rehnsköld, Field-Marshal Count, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Reichard, Dr., <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Reichenau, von, German Minister in Stockholm, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Reischach, Baron von, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rennenkampf, General, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Requisitions, German, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rheims, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">bombardment of, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Germans in, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rhine, the, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Richthofen, Professor, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rixingen, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rodingen, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Romagne, Germans in, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98&ndash;103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Romans at Igel, the, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Röntgen, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rosebery, Lord, quoted, xvi</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rosendaal, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rossignol, battle at, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Roubaix, English prisoners in 348&ndash;351</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Roumania, King of, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rouvroy, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rubens, P. P., his house, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">pictures of, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">statue of, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rügen, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rupprecht, Crown Prince, of Bavaria, at the front, <a href="#Page_344">344&ndash;347</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Russia, effect of victory for, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its relations with England, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Russian Army, its advance on Berlin, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">possible depression of, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">prisoners of war, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">roads, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Russo-Japanese War, the, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Saale, the, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Saarbrücken, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Salvius, Adler, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sambre, the, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i lang="fr">Sans Souci</i>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sarthe, the, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sassnitz, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sauer, the, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sautier, Frau, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Savolaks, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Saxony, King of, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schaubode, Lieut.-Col., in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Scheerenberg, Lieut.-Col., in Brussels, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Scheldt, the, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schiller, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schleswig-Holstein, Duke Ernst Günther of, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schlüchtern, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schlüter, Captain, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schmidt, soldier, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schmidt von Knobelsdorff, Lieut.-Gen., <a href="#Page_62">62&ndash;64</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schoelvinck, Herr, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Scholander, Sven, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schönfelder, Dr., at Ostend, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288&ndash;290</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schröder, Admiral von, at Antwerp, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Middelkerke, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Ostend, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schulenburg, Count von der, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Schumann, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Séchault, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Seckendorff, Baron von, controls the Fourth Army, <a href="#Page_140">140&ndash;145</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Secundinius Aventinus, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sedan, author visits, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125&ndash;144</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182&ndash;186</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">memories of 1870 in, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134&ndash;136</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Semois, the, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Senegal, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Senegalese troops, the, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Senegambia, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Septsarges, <a href="#Page_64">64&ndash;71</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Serajevo, assassination of the Archduke at, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Serbian troops, the, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sevron, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Shanghai, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Shaw, G. B., quoted, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sick, Professor, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Simla, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Singapore, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Siemens, Herr K. F. von, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299&ndash;301</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_401">[p. 401]</span>Skobeleff, General, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Slype, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Social democrats, German, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Soden, General von, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Soignies, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Somme Py, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Souain, burning of, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spy, profession of the, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327&ndash;330</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stålhandske, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite>Standard, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. André, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stecho, Doctor, in Brussels, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Steffen, Professor Gustaf F., on Antwerp, <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note</li>
+  <li class="isub1">quoted, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Steglitz, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stenay, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sterpenich, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Étienne, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stettin, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Francis, Day of, <a href="#Page_189">189&ndash;194</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Hubertus, Day of, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Kilian, statue of, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stockholm, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">German Minister in, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Poincaré in, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Privat, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stralsund, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Stralsund</i>, cruiser, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Strassburg, von Wedel, governor of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Strauss, Richard, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Vincent, Sisters of, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Suhlmann, Captain, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sweden, danger from Russia to, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its military attachés in Germany, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Landsturm of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Swedish Army in Germany, vi, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its lines of communication, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Consul in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_253">253&ndash;255</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">granite in Belgium, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">letter of credit, author’s, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Tacitus on the Germans, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tägert, Captain, at Ostend, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tahure, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Taine, statue of, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Takla-makan, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tannay, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tannenberg, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tappen, Colonel, at Douai, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Tasmania</i>, s.s., <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><a id="Taube"></a><i lang="de">Taubes</i>, German, author inspects, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">damaged by French, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">over Ostend, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Taube, Count, Swedish Minister in Berlin, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tauchnitz, Baron von, in Metz, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Taunus, the, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Telephone Service, Army, <a href="#Page_328">328&ndash;330</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tellancourt, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Termonde, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tetanus, cases of, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i lang="fr">Tête de Flandre</i>, Germans at, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tettenborn, Lieut.-Gen. von, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Theft, German punishment of, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Thiébaut, M., of Nancy. 104</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Thüringer, Wald, the, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tibet, the author in, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite>Times, The</cite>, quoted, <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tirpitz, Admiral von, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Brussels, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Togoland, German Governor of, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Trade, Germany captures the world’s, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Treis, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Treitschke, xvi</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Trelleborg, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Trenches, life in the, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320&ndash;327</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Treutler, Herr von, in Antwerp, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Trèves, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">the author at, <a href="#Page_36">36&ndash;44</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite lang="fr">Trèves Gazette</cite>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Trutz, Captain, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tschammer, Baron von, at Vouziers, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tsingtau, fall of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tuaregs, the, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tubize, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Turcos, the, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Turenne, statue of, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Turkey, von der Goltz in, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Turkish fleet, the, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Uhlans of the Guard, the, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Belgium, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ukraine, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Vabitj, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vacha, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Valenciennes, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vandervelde, M., at Ostend, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_402">[p. 402]</span>Van Dyck, birthplace of, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">pictures by, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Varennes, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">engagement at, <a href="#Page_84">84&ndash;103</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vauban, memorials at Longwy, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vauquois, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vélu, château of, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Venduyne, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Verdun, fortress of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Verhaghen, pictures by, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Verlinghem, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vernier, Madame du, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Verrier, Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_31">31&ndash;33</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Very, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vienna, the author in, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vilosnes, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vionville, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Visby, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vitry, battle of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Voort, van der, carving by, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vosges, the, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vouziers, the author at, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144&ndash;146</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186&ndash;196</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><cite lang="de">Wacht am Rhein, Die</cite>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wachtmeister, Count, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Waelhem, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wagner, Richard, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Waldemar, Prince, in Brussels, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><cite>War and Culture</cite>, Steffen’s, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a> note</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">War, its psychology, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">of 1870, Franco-Prussian, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136&ndash;139</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">of 1914&ndash;15, probable outcome of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Russo-Japanese, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Warsaw, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wartha, the, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wasserbillig, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Waterloo, the author at, <a href="#Page_210">210&ndash;214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><a id="TN10"></a>Wavre, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wedel, Prince von, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Weddigen, sinks the <i>Cressy</i>, <i>Aboukir</i> and <i>Hogue</i>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wegener, Professor Georg, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Weimar, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author in, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Weller, Major von, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wellington, 1st Duke of, at Waterloo, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">on Antwerp, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Werder, General von, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Anton von, his pictures of the capitulation of 1870, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Werra, the, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wervicq, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wessling, Swedish officer, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Western front, length of the, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Widenmann, Professor, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wiesbaden, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wilamovitz, Countess, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">William I., King of Prussia, at Ems, <a href="#Page_31">31&ndash;34</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at Sedan, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">statue of, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">William II., Kaiser, at Douai, <a href="#Page_345">345&ndash;347</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author’s interviews with, in Luxemburg, <a href="#Page_49">49&ndash;54</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">creates a Navy, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">grants the author leave to visit the front, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his efforts to avert war, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his health, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his jubilee, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his piety, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in Metz, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">visits French prisoners, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">William III., of England, King, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wimpffen, General, at Donchery, 1870, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Winckler, Lieut.-Gen. von, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wine, Germans do not practise abstinence from, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wittenberg, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wittisch, Lieut.-Col., <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wittlich, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><a id="TN8"></a>Woevre, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wounded, uniform treatment of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38&ndash;42</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_98">98&ndash;102</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151&ndash;158</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Württemberg, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Duke Albrecht of, victory of, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;</li>
+  <li class="isub2">author meets, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Landwehr, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">troops, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Xivry, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Ypres, xv, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">English prisoners from, <a href="#Page_359">359&ndash;361</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Yser Canal, the, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">fighting on, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Zeppelins over Antwerp, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Zimmermann, Herr von, Under Secretary of State, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Zinsser, Dr., at Vouziers, <a href="#Page_150">150&ndash;152</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Zobeltitz, Lieut. von, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="tnbox">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_note">
+    Transcriber's Notes
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The following changes have been made to the text as printed.</p>
+
+<p>1. Illustrations and end-of-page footnotes (marked with an asterisk)
+have been located in appropriate paragraph breaks.</p>
+
+<p>2. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been silently corrected.</p>
+
+<p>3. Where a word is used repeatedly in the same way, spelling and
+hyphenation have been made consistent, preferring the form most
+often used in the printed work, or failing that the more usual form
+in general use at the time of publication. No typographical change
+has been made within direct quotes from other works.</p>
+
+<p>4. The spelling of the following names has been changed to agree
+with normal usage at the time of the original publication:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#TN1">Page 135</a>: "ordinarily a judge at Frankfort-on-Main" to "... Frankfurt-on-Main"</li>
+<li><a href="#TN2">Page 188</a>: "In the Argonne forest much blood has flown" to "... has flowed"</li>
+<li><a href="#TN3">Page 261 (caption)</a> and <a href="#TN4">List of Illustrations</a>: "Bergen-op-Zoon" to "Bergen-op-Zoom"</li>
+<li><a href="#TN5">Page 378 (chapter heading)</a> and <a href="#TN6">Table of Contents</a>: "Trälleborg" to "Trelleborg"</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>5. Index: some entries have been amended in accordance with the
+corresponding body text.</p>
+
+<p>6. No change has been made to the following place names, but it is noted that:</p>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#TN7">Page 211</a>: "Wawre" is a town in central Belgium, <a href="#TN8">indexed as "Woevre"</a>, now known as "Wavre"</li>
+<li><a href="#TN9">Page 297</a>: "Wavre" is a village near Antwerp, <a href="#TN10">indexed as such</a>, now known as "Waver"</li>
+</ul>
+
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79238 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
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+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+[Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook [#79238](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79238)