The Note-Book of an Attache Part 17

_Wednesday, January 20th._ A party of neutral diplomats who last week went by train into the country for a picnic were arrested on their return to the railroad station at Vienna, beaten up, and insulted by police and soldiers in spite of their identification papers. The affair went to such lengths that several of the diplomats came out of the fracas with bruised faces and torn clothes. The whole party were detained for nearly an hour before they were finally set at liberty.

Among the distinguished members of the party were: M. Chafford, the Swiss Minister, M. Bekfris, the Swedish Minister, M. Lelerche, the Norwegian Charge d'Affaires, M. Carpion, the Roumanian Charge d'Affaires, MM. Guignous and Segesser, Swiss Secretaries.

Several ladies were with the party, which numbered a dozen in all. The affair was started and led by a colonel in the army who resented the fact that the diplomats were conversing in French, a language they were forced to employ since they were of many different nationalities.

The crowd at the railroad station where the "incident" took place was not hostile and did nothing except stand by in idle curiosity. Up to the present time the only action taken by the Austrian Government has been to send regrets, not apologies, to the various diplomats. The colonel who was responsible for the a.s.sault offered his resignation, which was promptly refused. I know of no such disgraceful incident ever having taken place in France or Great Britain.

Captain Briggs returned from the front this morning.

_Berlin, Thursday, January 21st._ I arrived in Berlin last night after an uneventful journey. I went to the theatre this evening with Charles Russell. We walked around through the lobby during the intermission and among other things saw a young man, perhaps nineteen, very blond, with the nicest, simplest, most straightforward face, the face of a quiet, retiring boy, who would grow up into a thinking man. He was with his mother. He was in civilian clothes, but in his lapel he wore the broad ribbon--black with two white bars--of the Iron Cross.

Somewhere, sometime in these recent months, this quiet lad had performed coolly some feat of great personal valor. The look of unsuppressible pride upon his mother's face, as she walked on his arm, was wonderful to behold.

_Sunday, January 24th._ I am to leave early Wednesday morning for London or The Hague, I do not yet know which. From either one it is probable that I shall be sent to Brussels.

_Tuesday, January 26th._ I visited the prison camp at Doberitz today.

In a military automobile I was conducted there with much ceremony by Captain Freiherr von G----, Iron Cross and Red Eagle, of the Imperial Guard. He is on leave convalescing from a wound in the knee which he received at Ypres. I was expressly told that I might describe what I saw and repeat what I heard as many times and as much in detail as I chose, so that I have no hesitation in giving my impressions without reserve, even though it was by courtesy of the German Government that I made the trip.

The camp was distant one hour's fast run from Berlin and was situated on a flat plain which had very little natural or artificial drainage.

The cold mud was everywhere from three to four inches deep. On this plain and closely surrounded by heavy barbed-wire entanglements were some seventy or eighty rude wooden sheds arranged in four rows with a broad avenue down the center. Here were kept some nine thousand prisoners of war, of whom four thousand were British and four thousand Russian. By careful and repeated pacing I estimated that the sheds were about one hundred by thirty feet. Each one had six unopenable windows on a side. In each such house were quartered one hundred and twenty-five men. When certain part.i.tioned areas have been subtracted this means a s.p.a.ce of about six by three feet per man. Each house was heated by one stove and was very hot and stuffy, being, except for the door, hermetically sealed.

None of the prisoners had overcoats, personal belongings, or blankets.

They slept on straw ticks measuring approximately seven feet by thirty inches. That they all suffered from lice and other vermin was perfectly evident. The whole camp was closely surrounded by barbed wire, and the main avenue was commanded by three field-guns placed outside at one end in a little barbed-wire fort. The whole was apparently under the charge of a Captain of Landsturm and the guards were men of the Landsturm. The prisoners looked thin, peaked, unhappy and sickly, and many had boils. They have absolutely nothing to do--they exist. They are fed three times a day--6 A.M., 12 noon, and 4 P.M. For "lunch" and "dinner" and also Sunday breakfast, they receive about one pint of a thick soup. I tasted some of this and thought it was concocted chiefly of barley and potatoes. I was told that there was meat in it but could find no evidence of any. For breakfast the prisoners receive black bread with a slice of either cheese or sausage and either tea or coffee. The diet is evidently insufficient. I should say that it was calculated with German accuracy to just keep body and soul together. I was taken through many of the houses and although no actual prohibition to talk was given it was virtually impossible to speak with the prisoners, as I was always hurriedly rushed along from one place to another. In order to make a pretence of conversation, one of the two captains who escorted me would sometimes say to a prisoner, "What nationality are you?" "Scotch, sir." "What regiment?"

"Argyle-Highlanders, sir." "Ah, so!" and we would then hurry along again. We were in the camp an hour and a half, and during that time I succeeded in asking three short well-chosen questions of intelligent-looking British non-commissioned officers.

First question: "Do you get enough to eat?"

Answer: "My Gawd, no!"

Second question: "How do present conditions compare with the past?"

Answer: "Wonderfully improved, sir, in comparison."

Third question: "How often do you write home?"

Answer: "One letter every two months, but they _say_ they are going to improve that."

I saw the four o'clock feeding. It reminded me of nothing except seeing animals fed at the Zoo. In the kitchen I saw the British soldiers receive their afternoon meal. A line of five great cauldrons of hot soup extended down the room, each one being about four feet high and four feet in diameter. The prisoners entered through a vestibule at one end of the building, where they pa.s.sed between two German sentinels to whom each delivered up a metal check before being allowed to pa.s.s inside. There is a roll-call in the sheds before every meal and each man is then handed a check which later ent.i.tles him to receive his ration. Each prisoner possesses and keeps constantly with him one iron bowl and one large spoon. When they are permitted to enter the kitchen the prisoners rush to whatever cauldron is least busy. There a cook, armed with a long-handled measure holding about a pint, ladles out one measureful of soup into each man's bowl and this const.i.tutes the entire repast. The Captain of Landsturm in explaining to me about the metal checks said indignantly, "Why, if we did not have this system of checks, they would all come back three and four times!" by which remark he showed the typical German lack of anything approaching tact or diplomacy.

There were some British sailors and numerous marines among the prisoners. These, according to the Germans, came from Antwerp. They had reached that city just as the Germans entered and had been captured without ever having left their train. They were sent on in the same train to German prisons and their total war experience consisted in one continued non-change journey from Ostend to the Doberitz prison-camp. The Germans said that there was at times ill feeling between English and Russians.

The method of punishment in the camp was called "tying up" for one or two hours. I was unable to get details but gathered that this consisted in suspension by some part of the hands. This, however, may have been a wrong conclusion. I was told that the men received letters from home, about fifty a day arriving at the camp, and are also allowed to receive money. Yesterday was a record day, a big mail arriving with some 7000 marks. They may spend the money at the camp store, which I examined; tobacco, sausages, and insecticide seemed to be the chief articles in stock.

A bath-house has recently been provided in which it is possible to take cold showers. The English shave with potato knives borrowed from the kitchen. The men wash in the open, apparently in the same bowls from which they eat. Water is very sparingly served out to them.

The two German officers who acted as my guides tried to impress upon me that the camp was a model one and that everything was done for the prisoners which they had a right to expect. It seemed to me very much less desirable than the prison for French soldiers which I had previously inspected at Zossen. Some specific things which the French possessed and the British lacked were overcoats, bunks, ample food, work, recreation, blankets, and the opportunity for exercise, and it should be remembered in extenuation of German prison camps in general--if extenuation is deemed necessary--that besides interned civilians, Germany has now nearly seven hundred thousand prisoners of war to house and feed.

_February 14th._ After brief visits to Holland, France, and England I last night boarded the steams.h.i.+p Lusitania at Liverpool and sailed for that land of skysc.r.a.pers, electric signs, and telephones--the land which has been called "opulent, aggressive, and unprepared."

CONCLUSION

It would be a sin of omission for me to neglect to sound again that oft-repeated warning against the dangers of military unpreparedness, which has been so vainly sounded since the birth of our nation by every American, great or small, who has known or seen anything of actual war conditions.

Is it idle to hope that the warnings to be deduced from the current histories of other nations will be heeded by a nation which has ever disregarded the lessons of its own history?

APPENDIX

MISCELLANEOUS MILITARY OBSERVATIONS MADE BY THE AUTHOR DURING THE SEVEN MONTHS RECORDED IN THIS BOOK

The best maps with which to follow and study the war in France, Flanders, and Belgium are those of the French Automobile Club, called "Cartes Routieres pour Automobiles," published by A. Taride, 18 Boulevard Saint-Denis, Paris. The war has been largely fought and directed by the use of these maps, which are on the scale prescribed by the French General Staff--about three and one-half miles to the inch. They show every road and lane, every town and village in France.

The war areas are contained in numbers 1, ibis, 2, 3, 6, and 7. Those most referred to in this book are 3 and 7.

CASUALTIES

The total losses of the various belligerents in killed, wounded, and captured for the first six months of the war, from August 1st to February 1st, are as follows:

British 140,000 French 1,450,000 Russians 2,050,000 Austro-Hungarians 950,000 Germans 1,500,000

The approximate ratio of deaths to total casualties is as follows:

German, 2 deaths to 9 casualties.

French, 2 deaths to 7 casualties.

(The large proportion of French deaths was due:

First, to the fact that in the early part of the war most actions were German victories, and the Germans could not care for French wounded as well as they did for their own;

Secondly to lack of sanitary skill on the part of the French in taking care of their wounded.)

Austrian, 2 deaths to 7 casualties.