The Log of a Noncombatant Part 5

I was traveling with nothing but a knapsack (my suitcase had to be abandoned) and therefore moving faster than the crowd. At one point, for the sake of company, I joined a group and took a turn at shoving the family wheel-barrow. They poured out thanks in the guttural Flemish tongue, then loaded me with bread and bits of mouldy pie. When that was not accepted they feared for their hospitality. They talked and I talked, with a result that was hardly worth the effort. Finally, after a conference, one of the group disappeared into the crowd and returned leading an eight-year-old boy.

"Me talk American," said the boy. "We two speak together?"

And so we talked, for the road was long and weary.

Their advance was so gradual that, although I did not leave Antwerp until the bombardment was over, I caught up with the army of refugees before Roosendaal, just across the Dutch border.

Here Holland opened out her arms. The kindness of the Dutch--as yet personal, unorganized endeavor--was beyond conception.

Churches, houses, public halls, stations were thrown open to the mult.i.tude. You saw hundreds of Dutch soldiers join in the procession, lift babies and bundles, and walk with them for miles. At Dordrecht, when the trains came through, peasants pa.s.sed scores of babies'

milk-bottles into the cars. When a jolly-looking Dutch girl, with a great big gleaming smile that reminded me of some one, gave me milk and chocolate, the tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I suppose it was the reaction, or because I was tired, or, perhaps, because the crowd was cheering and waving at us. For the others there were piles of bread, Dutch cake, and, best of all, some good, long drinks of water. For ten days Antwerp's water supply had been cut off. Von Beseler, German siege commander, had seen to that.

At Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal people used the walls of the houses for post-offices. They wrote their names in chalk letters, giving directions to relatives lost in the scramble.

After ox carts, rowboats, and river barges had done their share, a Dutch-Belgian "Stoom Tram" joggled us along for a few miles. Some more walking and a little running before I at last crawled aboard a twenty-car freight and pa.s.senger train moving slowly toward the east.

At the first telegraph office across the Dutch border, I filed a cable story to the "Boston Journal"; and later started an account for the "New York Evening Post." I had an idea that I would score a "beat" or "scoop" so that the people of the Back Bay could read of Antwerp's fall over their coffee-cups the next morning. My cable account had too much inside information. There were in it too many facts concerning Winston Churchill's visit, also information about the number of Royal Marines engaged, none of which it was thought proper to give out at that time. So the English censor refused to let it through. That, however, did not prevent the Dutch Cable Company from pocketing my two hundred guilders.

By the time I reached Rotterdam the word "refugee" had a.s.sumed a new and altogether nearer meaning. I had been in a besieged and captured city; I had mixed with homeless and starving people; I had seen houses crumble and burn; and ghastly human figures with their insides oozing away and the eyes staring vacantly.

As I lay in bed that night I could hear, and I still can hear, the scruff, scruff, and shuffle of feet as the compact body of this army--the army without guns or leaders--dragged slowly past my window at the Queen's, the tinkle of ox-cart bells, the talk and babble of guttural tongues; the curses of the team drivers, the frantic cries of mothers who had lost their children in the scramble, the cries of young children who didn't know what was wrong, but realized in their vague, childish way that something terrible was happening.

I could see, and I still can see, those big Belgian hounds sniffing along the outskirts of the crowd and plainly advertising for an owner; I can see other hounds with their heads thrown back wailing at the door of their deserted and abandoned homes. And I can see the Dutch border where Holland opened out her arms, and the Dutch peasants gave us rye bread and sandwiches and good long drinks of welcome milk.

Sometimes I can sit with my legs dangling over the stern of that old towboat barge on which I finally made my escape, and can visualize the blue-gray spire of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, standing, it seemed to me, a quiet sentinel over the ruins of the tortured city; and, then, as the old barge sweeps around the river's bend, I can look back upon the last of Antwerp's story written in flaming letters of red against the early morning sky.

Chapter VII

Spying On Spies

Less than forty-eight hours after the fall of Antwerp the wave of helpless humanity whose crest broke on the Belgian border had rolled over the entire length and breadth of Holland. Thousands of Belgian refugees wandered as far north as The Hague, where various Dutch relief committees and the American Legation at The Hague did their best to house the homeless and relieve the suffering.

Dr. van d.y.k.e rolled up his sleeves still farther and strained to solve the problem of the unemployed, sometimes, when a case interested him, turning his own pocket inside out.

Eight days after the Antwerp bombardment, I left The Hague for my second trip into Germany.

Just before my start Captain Sunderland, U.S.A., at the head of the American Relief Committee at The Hague, asked me to help him in taking charge of two carloads of grain, which were to go across the German border and be distributed among the starving Belgians at Liege. England had agreed not to interfere with food supplies, provided the United States saw that they did not fall into German hands in Belgium. The present job required sleeping in the freight cars and saying, in one form or another, "Hands off!" to every spiked helmet that tried to interfere. Captain Sunderland could speak no German, and as I had already been over the same territory and had had some experience with the military authorities, he wished me to accompany him.

I decided, however, to go into the interior of Germany. I had already seen three armies in the field, and had watched, more or less closely, the people of two warring nations. I was now particularly anxious to study the German point of view, and if possible get to the front with the Crown Prince's army.

For such a purpose I considered that I carried good enough credentials. In addition to a packet of mail for Amba.s.sador Gerard, my letter from ex-President Roosevelt, and my United States pa.s.sport, which had been vised by Herr von Mueller, German Amba.s.sador at The Hague, I now carried a special laissez-pa.s.ser which Mr. Marshall Langhorne had been kind enough to secure for me from the same legation. I had a letter from Count von Bernstorff, whom I had seen the night he arrived in America, and a letter from Herr von Biel, Secretary of the German Emba.s.sy at The Hague, recommending me to the Foreign Office in Berlin. Professor Hugo Munsterberg had taken the trouble to send me a note to Dr. R. W.

Drechsler, head of the American Inst.i.tute in Berlin, and I had also a letter to the head of the University of Berlin.

It was a five-hours' run from The Hague to Bentheim, a small country village on the German frontier. The train stopped a quarter of a mile north of the border. Dutch officials came aboard to examine pa.s.sports and baggage of every pa.s.senger. They were good-natured and talkative, and did not go minutely into details, as those leaving the country were less carefully watched than "immigrants." Me, however, they mistook for an Englishman (as was usually the case in Germany) and told me I could not cross the frontier. A Dutch manufacturer, with whom I had struck up an acquaintance, explained my ident.i.ty, and the official, who looked astonished, waved me ahead with a doubtful expression, as much as to say, "On your own head be it, young man."

That first night pa.s.sed without trouble. At the border station we lined up, immigrant fas.h.i.+on, and went through an inspection by a number of the businesslike German militariat attached to the Zollamt, or customs service. For ten minutes I stood in suspense while a fiery-looking officer, with a snapping blue eye, looked through my credentials in silence. He wrote my name in a notebook, looked through my eye as if he would read my very soul, and then, without a remark, pa.s.sed me on. I filed through a narrow gate--and so into the Realms of the Kaiser.

It was now eleven o'clock at night and the Berlin express came through Bentheim at 7.45 the next morning. We stayed at a little inn, somewhat resembling the Wayside Inn, at Sudbury, Ma.s.sachusetts.

Here I fell in with a German manufacturer whom I had seen several weeks before as we were bringing the good news from Ghent to Aix. I was surprised at this man's change of opinion regarding the conflict.

On the first occasion he laughed outright at the idea of an extended fight. Now, all through his arguments, he repeated such phrases as, "Well, if Germany doesn't win," or, "Suppose the war does last two years," etc., etc.

In the morning I had a peculiarly disagreeable experience at Lohne, some distance from the German frontier, where we had again to change trains en route to the capital. Experience had by this time taught me, when thrown with people on the road, to show them my papers and make my ident.i.ty known as soon as possible.

I therefore clung pretty closely to my argumentative German acquaintance of Bentheim and Aix. During the melee of changing cars I was, however, separated from him, and became engaged in conversation (spoken in English) with a Dutch chocolate merchant.

The argument must have been interesting, for I did not at first notice a crowd of twenty or thirty travelers and villagers gathering around us: I did, however, notice when they began to push and jostle in a manner obviously intended for insult. When I tried to retreat the exits were locked. The crowd, convinced that I was an English spy, closed more compactly and manhandled me off toward an officer on the street behind the platform. My hat was knocked off, and for a brief moment I recalled the lynching anger which I had seen in the eyes of Belgian mobs, as German spies in Antwerp were being led to the police station.

At the last moment my rescuer came in the shape of the German friend of Bentheim, who broke through the mob and whispered in my ear, "Speak German. Always speak in German, you fool!"

I admitted the soft impeachment.

"Ich bin ein Amerikaner--ein correspondent," I explained to the row of angry faces; and while my German friend soothed and rea.s.sured his testy compatriots, I moved away, glad enough to escape another visit to jail. Those personally conducted jail tours were not so bad, I had found, with a handsome gendarme at your side; but a howling crowd was altogether another matter.

I reached the capital that night. One of my letters says, a few days later:--

"The atmosphere is oppressive to the Anglo-Saxon visitor. His looks, his manner, his accent betray him as one of the English-speaking pest, and the crowd, with its mind so full of English hatred, does not readily distinguish the American. So drop into a word of English in a cafe: your neighbor glowers and draws away. You face it out with a nonchalant air, but gradually the tension grows, especially when, as happened to-day at the prisoners' camp at Zossen, twenty miles south of Berlin, a great burly Prussian puts a menacing eye on you and says, without introduction: 'It is very dangerous for an Englishman here!'

"Day by day here the hatred grows of England and things English: judging from the press and the temper of the people, one would think that England is the only foe. As a nation and as individuals they bear no particular malice toward France. They even feel sorry for 'misguided' Belgium--betrayed by the British, they say. But England they look upon as the root of all their trouble, the despicable, retreating enemy they cannot touch, the enemy, they maintain, whose clever, but selfish, diplomacy has forced the brunt of the fighting on the others, while she sits back to wait for the spoils."

On my arrival in Berlin I delivered the mail packet to Amba.s.sador Gerard. Two days later I presented my credentials at the Auswartige Amt, or Foreign Office, hoping to get permission to go to the western front with the Crown Prince's army. I was told to see Baron von Mumm Schwartzenstein, who was officially designated by Von Jagow to handle neutral correspondents, and who, unofficially, I have reason to believe, is connected with the Secret Service. He is a pudgy sort of man, with a watery skin, and decidedly not of military build or bearing.

When, after much red tape, I was finally admitted to an outer office, he stepped out to see me, merely taking my name and the names of the papers I represented. I was told to come back in the evening.

When I did so and was admitted to His Holy of Holies, he said to me at once:--

"I was expecting you to come yesterday. Why did you not?"

This was rather startling, but his next remark altogether took away my breath.

"Were you satisfied with your treatment by the War Office in Brussels, Herr Green? And why, if you have already been wiss ze army in scenes of war, do you now come to me for permission?"

Mind you, I had at this time spoken scarcely a word, and had certainly told nothing of my age or previous condition of servitude in Brussels.

But the Government that never forgets knew all about my movements. He smiled at my discomfiture, and, within the next few minutes, proved to be such a genial German (for war-time) that I soon told him all about my adventures, including the fact that I had gone back into Antwerp and entered Belgian lines, after escaping from German surveillance at Aix. I happened to speak of the marvelous efficiency and preparedness of the German army in Belgium.

"Yes, that iss quite so," remarked His Excellency, with a smile. "You see, we were prepared for everysing--except," he added after a pause,--"except ze invasion of ze American newspaperman. When he iss out of our sight, zen we do not feel secure."

Several weeks later, after I had come out of the Kaiser's realm, a representative of the "Boston Journal," who had been looking for me all over the Continent, ran me down just as I was leaving The Hague for England.

"The Foreign Office in Berlin told me where to find you," he said.

"They told me that in Berlin you had stayed first at the Esplanade, and then you had moved to the Kaiserhof. They said you had left the city [this was when I went out toward Poland], that you had returned to Berlin, and that on such and such a date at 8.45 you had departed for The Hague."!!

The military and civil authorities looked upon the correspondent as an embryo spy. And if the correspondent's sympathies were foreign, he was a thousand times worse than the ordinary spy, because he could make use of the cable and press to spread his information.

While waiting in Berlin for a chance to go to the front, I became, therefore, more and more conscious of surveillance. Whether it was the fact of being so much alone, or due perhaps to an unfortunately English-like appearance, I do not know. At all events, the long arm of the Secret Service continuously cast a shadow over my shoulder: I even became suspicious of myself.

For one who has not been through the experience it is difficult to appreciate the strain of such constant, unending suspicion. On July 17,1912, I stood beside the body of Herman Rosenthal, the gambler, as it lay in the coffin in the parlor of his house in the Tenderloin. My newspaper had sent me to "cover" the funeral, and I managed, because of some previous knowledge of the household, and by giving the impression of a mourner, to gain access. The murderers had not yet been caught. Because the public knew nothing of "Lefty"

Louie, or "Gyp the Blood," or even of the late Lieutenant Becker, it was common gossip that the criminals lurked in the neighborhood, and that, in order to avoid suspicion, they would appear among the chief mourners. Therefore, each eye was turned against its neighbor, and each man, as he pa.s.sed you, asked the silent question,--"Did you shoot Herman Rosenthal?" During all the months on the Continent, and particularly in Germany, I felt myself at Rosenthal's funeral.