America's War for Humanity Part 73

The return within fifteen days, of all inhabitants removed from invaded countries, including hostages and persons under trial or convicted.

Release of American and allied prisoners of war held by Germany--the American and allied powers to retain all Germans held by them as prisoners of war.

Surrender of half of the German fleet to America and the allies, together with all submarines, other miscellaneous German ships, and all American and allied merchant ships held by Germany. The other half of the German fleet to be disarmed and dismantled.

Notification to neutral countries by Germany that they are free to trade on the seas with America and the allied countries.

Access by way of Dantzig or the Vistula river, to all territory in the East evacuated by Germany.

Evacuation by all German forces in East Africa within a time to be fixed by the allies.

Rest.i.tution for all damage done by German forces.

Return of the funds taken by the Germans from the National Bank of Belgium, and the gold taken from Russia and Roumania.

These terms, which not only const.i.tute Germany's unconditional surrender, but reduce Germany to a condition that absolutely prevents her resumption of war, form the base of the final treaty of peace.

CLOSING DAYS OF HOHENZOLLERN REIGN

Into the four months preceding November 11, 1918, were crammed events that drove the Germans back, deprived them of their allies, brought the utter collapse of Imperial government, drove the emperor into exile, saw a socialist republic set up with Berlin as its capital, brought the whole of what had been the empire to a state of seething unrest and change touched with the poison of bolshevism. November 4, a memorable date, found Germany alone and unsupported against a world triumphant in arms. All the laboriously built up structure of her military state was brought to a futile struggle for life, the whole vast fabric of her underground diplomacy, her intricate, world-penetrating spy system, her marvelously elaborate and totally unscrupulous propaganda, crumbled away; nothing remained of the earlier vigor but a memory--that shall be a stench forever.

November 11, 1918, will go down in history as the memorable day in which the last surviving medieval tyranny in Europe disappeared in blood and smoke; for its final act was filled with characteristic hate and brutality.

In the very last hours before armistice took effect, German batteries poured a deluge of high explosives and poison gas on Mezieres, where there were no allied soldiers at all, but only civilians, men, women and children, twenty thousand of them, penned like rats in a trap, without possibility of escape. Says one correspondent, describing that horror: "Words cannot depict the plight of the unhappy victims of this crowning German atrocity. Incendiary sh.e.l.ls fired the hospital, and by the glare of a hundred fires the wounded were carried to a shelter of cellars where the whole population was crouching.

"That was not enough to appease the bitter blood l.u.s.t of the Germans in defeat. Cellars may give protection from fire or melinite; but they are worse than death traps against the heavy fumes of poisonous gas. So the murderous order was given, and faithfully the boche gunners carried it out. There were no gas masks for the civilians and no chemicals that might permit them to save lives. Many succ.u.mbed."

FINAL ACT OF THE HUN AT SEA

The final act at sea was almost concurrent with this tragedy. The 16,000-ton battleship Britannia was torpedoed off the entrance to the straits of Gibraltar, November 9, and sank in three and one-half hours.

FOLLOWING THE DAYS OF RECKONING

And so, spewing murder in its last writhing, the monster died. It had begun by furiously ravaging Belgium in August, 1914; it ended with the awful, wanton murder of noncombatants at Mezieres in November, 1918.

Throughout four years, three months and ten days, it had ramped and raged over the land, under the sea and in the air, slaughtering, poisoning, ravaging, without cessation, killing wherever it could, robbing with colossal greed, defiling what it could neither kill nor carry away, leaving across the pages of history a trail of blood and filth and slime that all the tears of all the angels cannot ever wash away.

But it left a world of nations free to work out their several destinies, self-determining, not subject any more to the threat of causeless war at the hands of a government steeled to barbarity. A world cemented by the blood the monster itself had caused to be shed; by the memory of brave sons fallen that others might live; by the tears of countless women and children made widows and orphans; by a new understanding between all the nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth, because of mutual sacrifices in a common cause; by a knowledge that the long night of medieval tyranny had faded out and a new day had come, in which power shall arise from and be wielded by the peoples, never again by kings or emperors. And so our planet shall be ruled as long as man inhabits it.

Out of bitter darkness, in the splendor of this new day the spirit of liberty has risen, with healing on its wings.

We who have lived through the struggle may say with grat.i.tude, each of us, "I saw the light! I saw the morning break!"

AMONG THE LAST SHOTS FIRED

While Berlin was trying to get into touch with Marshal Foch, and the end was coming into sight, the Americans along the Meuse put forth all the energy that was in them, in their eager desire to hand the enemy a final series of wallops. It was here one of the most brilliant exploits of the war occurred.

On the night of November 4, American troops, though under very heavy artillery and machine gun fire, succeeded in building four pontoon bridges across the Meuse, a little more than a mile east of Brieulles.

Early in the morning one of these was destroyed, but a strong force crossed over the other three, and swept forward with such rapidity, though in the face of superior numbers, that by noon the enemy was in disorderly retreat northward. By nightfall the Americans on that side of the river had captured Liny-Devant-Dun and Mille-Devant-Dun, on the east bank of the river, while a large American and French force pushed back the Germans on the west bank, capturing Beaumont, Pouilly and several less important places, and taking positions on three sides of Stenay, the pivot on which the whole German retirement had turned. American troops the 5th and 6th of November had advanced to within five miles of the main communication line of the Germans between Metz, Mezieres, Hirson and the north.

After destroying the bridge connecting Stenay with Laneuville, the Germans had opened the locks of the Ardennes ca.n.a.l and flooded the river to a width of about two-thirds of a mile.

It was here the Americans undertook and accomplished the impossible.

They picked out the best of their swimmers, who crossed the stream carrying light lines attached to heavy cables, which were drawn after them, and by a hasty pontoon construction got the whole force across.

Then, in the face of heavy firing, they pounded their way over a mud flat nearly a mile wide, and hit the ca.n.a.l, which by then, had been drained, forming a deep ditch that would have stopped any other soldiers. But the Americans rustled up some grappling irons and hooks, which they tied to the ends of ropes, and throwing them to the coping, then swarmed up and chased the disconcerted Germans out of their last position in that sector.

On November 7th American troops entered Sedan and cut the German line of communication between Metz and the north.

The same day, troops from Ohio, under command of General Farnsworth, took the Ecke salient sixteen miles southwest of Ghent in Belgium, and were advancing on the city when the Germans suddenly evacuated it, departing in haste toward the German frontier.

Stenay was the last town to fall into American hands. It was occupied without resistance, an hour before the armistice went into effect. While preparations for attack were in course, paroles came in reporting that the Germans had cleared out. The American troops at once poured in, and established occupation at 10:45 in the forenoon, just a quarter of an hour before word came that the armistice had taken effect.

In a few minutes flags of the allies were flying from housetops, and the church bells were ringing out the war. It was over.

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR

The last morning on the fighting lines was busy wherever American troops were placed, from the Moselle to Sedan. All the batteries kept their guns going, and the Germans replied in kind. The American heavy guns fired their parting salvo at 11:00 o'clock, less two or three seconds.

To this final crack the Germans tossed a few over, just after 11:00.

There was a strong American infantry advance, northeast of Verdun, in the direction of Ornes, beginning at nine o'clock, after lively artillery preparation. The German artillery responded feebly, but the machine gun resistance was stubborn. Nevertheless, the Americans made progress. The Americans had received orders to hold the positions reached by 11:00 o'clock, and at those points they began to dig in, marking the advance positions of the American line when hostilities ceased.

Then the individual groups unfurled the Stars and Stripes, shook hands and cheered. Soon afterwards they were preparing for luncheon. All the boys were hungry, as they had breakfasted early in antic.i.p.ation of what they considered the greatest day in American history.

THE ALL PULL TOGETHER SHOT

There was a regular celebration at Pepper hill, north of Verdun, where a battery of Rhode Island artillery rigged a twenty-foot rope to the lanyard of a .155 cannon, and every man in the company, from the captain to the cook, laid hold of it and waited. At the tick of eleven o'clock they gave that rope one mighty yank, all together, and the gun roared out the last shot of the war.

--_The Last Yank of the Yanks_.

AT THE END OF THE WORLD WAR

The great drama is ended. For the first time in four years the sound of giant cannon cannot be heard anywhere along the long line from the channel to the Adriatic; the deadly rattle of machine guns is stilled.

No gas fumes poison the winter air. No clouds of burning cities darken the sun. Better than all, no life blood flows; the fighting men rest in their lines, the bayonet is sheathed, the bullet sleeps harmless in its clip.

This at last is peace. In the great cities, the towns and hamlets of Europe and America, a vast wave of emotion inundates the hearts of men; in the allied lands there is exultation; in Germany there is at least relief, and perhaps the dawning of a new hope.

We have had our day of glorification. It is now time for our best thought, and the first of this thought will be for the men who have given their lives for our cause and for the men more fortunate, but not less willing to give all, who in France and Flanders have covered our flag once more with undying glory, the soldiers of the Marne, of Cantigny, of the great German repulse east of Reims, of Chateau Thierry, of St. Mihiel, the Argonne, and Sedan. The graves of our men have consecrated these immortal battlefields and our sacred dead will live on in the memory of the republic forever. As for those who return, crowned with victory, they shall now be first and foremost under the roof tree of the great motherland, who sent them forth with aching yet uplifted heart, confident that they would honor her even as they have done.

In this hour we salute our army and our navy, which have not failed us at any point, in any test, however arduous or fiery. Under commanders devoted, efficient, indefatigable, our regiments have met the most famous troops of the enemy and crushed their resistance, have set new records of sanguinary valor under punishment, and driven always and irresistibly on to victory. They have written a page in the annals of the republic and in the history of war which will shine down the ages with unsurpa.s.sed magnificence.

It has been terrible, yet glorious, to live through such a time, even for us who have not pa.s.sed through the great experience of battle, who have not watched and taken part in the heroic charge of our infantry across death-swept meadows, or heard with our ears the thunder of the great guns or felt the earth shake under the tread of marching legions.

We at home have had our own experiences, our deep anxieties, our doubts, our griefs, and always we have been conscious of the might of forces in grapple and the high issues that hung upon the fate of the armies. In the background of all our thoughts at all times has been the solemn consciousness that the destiny of mankind was at work in mighty throes toward an end hidden to our knowledge if not to our faith and hope. We have none of us pa.s.sed through this experience without receiving its mark. Life can never be altogether what it was before for any of us. New generations will spring forth innocent of the memories which are ours and the unexpressible lessons of our day. But for us it has been, with all its tragedy and vast destruction, a day of illumination and inspiration.

Standing on the threshold of a peace restored, we must pray that out of the epic experience of the great conflict something more than the stern negative of our victory shall be preserved for the time to come, something positive of good, something of that divine light of men's heroic sacrifice which shone out in the darkest hour, something of new strength and understanding of life and of human potentialities.

We have before us now a tremendous task of restoration. America is in a more fortunate situation than the nations of Europe; yet to return our resources to the channels of peace, to free our inst.i.tutions from the hasty improvisations of war emergency, and to protect them from the effects of forced and abnormal application, is a task which will test the wisdom and character of our leaders and our people.

If our war experience has proved anything of America, it has been the soundness and beneficence of American inst.i.tutions and the life they make possible. Let us realize that truth, and resolve that these inst.i.tutions shall be strengthened in peace and not weakened, and that the life which has grown up and flowered under their influence shall be jealously preserved for our children and our children's children, and for the sake of our heroic dead."

THE CROWNING HUMILIATION

The Crowning Humiliation, or Before and After Seeing Foch, might be the appropriate t.i.tle for the latest story now added to the pages of world history.