New York Times Current History The European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January Part 25

There is no pomp or ceremony even when royalty is running around at large. Thus when the King of Saxony arrived in town, a few hours after I did, no fuss was made whatever. The Saxon King and his staff, three touring car loads, all in field gray, drove straight to the villa a.s.signed them, and, after reciprocal informal visits between King and Kaiser, the former left to visit some of the battlefields on which Saxon troops had fought, and later paid a visit to his troops at the front.

For this exploit, the Kaiser promptly bestowed on him the Iron Cross, first and second cla.s.s, on his return to town.

Even the Kaiser's heart is not covered with medals, nor does he wear the gorgeous white plume parade helmet nowadays, when going out for a horse-back ride or a drive. I saw him come from a motor run late in the afternoon--four touring cars full of staff officers and personal entourage--and was struck by the complete absence of pomp and ceremony.

In the second car sat the Kaiser, wearing the dirty green-gray uniform of his soldiers in the field. At a distance of fifteen feet, the Over War Lord looked physically fit, but quite sober--an intense earnestness of expression that seemed to mirror the sternness of the times.

The Kaiser goes for a daily drive or ride about the countryside usually in the afternoon, but occasionally he is allowed to have a real outing by his solicitous entourage--a day and more rarely a [Transcriber: text missing in original]

"His Majesty is never so happy as when he is among his troops at the front," another transplanted Berlin detective told me. "If his Majesty had his way he would be among them all the time, preferably sleeping under canvas and roughing it like the rest--eating the 'simple' food prepared by his private field kitchen. But his life is too valuable to be risked in that way, and his personal Adjutant, von Plessen, who watches over his Majesty like a mother or a governess, won't let him go to the front often. His Majesty loves his soldiers and would be among them right up at the firing line if he were not constantly watched and kept in check by his devoted von Plessen." However, the Kaiser sleeps within earshot of the not very distant thunder of the German heavy artillery pounding away at Rheims, plainly heard here at night when the wind blows from the right direction.

Of barbarism or brutality the writer saw no signs, either here or at other French villages occupied by the Germans. The behavior of the common soldiers toward the natives is exemplary and in most cases kindly. There are many touches of human interest. I saw about a hundred of the most dest.i.tute hungry townsfolk, mostly women with little children, hanging around one of the barracks at the outskirts of the town until after supper the German soldiers came out and distributed the remnants of their black bread rations to them. It is not an uncommon sight to see staff officers as well as soldiers stopping on the streets to hand out small alms to the begging women and children. Many of the shops in town were closed and boarded up at the approach of the Prussians, but small hotel keepers, cafe proprietors, and tradesmen who had the nerve to remain and keep open are very well satisfied with the German invasion in one way, for they never made so much money before in their lives. Most of the German soldiers garrisoned here have picked up a few useful words of French; all of them can, and do, call for wine, white or red, in the vernacular. Moreover, they pay for all they [Transcriber: original 'them'] consume. I was astonished to see even the detectives paying real money for what they drank. Several tradesmen told me they had suffered chiefly at the hands of the French soldiers themselves, who had helped themselves freely to their stock before retreating, without paying, saying it was no use to leave good wine, for the Prussian swine.

I had not prowled around the Great Headquarters for many hours when the Secret Field Police, patrolling all the streets, showed signs of curiosity, and to forestall the orthodox arrest and march to headquarters (already experienced [Transcriber: original 'experience']

once, in Cologne) waited upon Lieut. Col. von Hahnke, Military Commandant of the city, and secured immunity in the form of the Commandant's signature on a sc.r.a.p of paper stamped in purple ink with the Prussian eagle. Commandant Hahnke, after expressing the opinion that it was good that American newspaper men were coming to Germany to see for themselves, and hoping that "the truth" was beginning to become known on the other side, courteously sent his Adjutant along to get me past the guard at the Great General Staff and introduce me to Major Nikolai, Chief of Division III. B., in charge of newspaper correspondents and Military Attaches. Here, however, the freedom of the American press came into hopeless, but humorous, collision with the Prussian militarism.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get here?" snapped the Prussian Major. A kind letter of introduction from Amba.s.sador Gerard, requesting "all possible courtesy and a.s.sistance from the authorities of the countries through which he may pa.s.s," and emblazoned with the red seal of the United States of America, which had worked like magic on all previous occasions, had no effect on Major Nikolai. Neither had a letter from the American Consul at Cologne, nor a letter of introduction to Gen. von Buelow, nor any one of a dozen other impressive doc.u.ments produced in succession for his benefit.

"No foreign correspondents are permitted to be at the Great Headquarters. None has been allowed to come here. If we allow one to remain, fifty others will want to come, and we should be unable to keep an eye on all of them," he explained. "You must go back to Berlin at once."

Reluctant permission was finally obtained to remain one night on the possibly unwarranted intimation that the great American people would consider it a "national affront" if an American newspaperman was not allowed to stay and see the American Military Attache, Major Langhorne, who was away on a sightseeing tour near Verdun, but would be back in the morning. However, a long cross-examination had to be undergone at the hands of the venerable Herr Chief of the Secret Field Police Bauer, who was taking no chances at harboring an English spy in the Houptquartier disguised as a correspondent.

I found Major Langhorne standing the strain of the campaign [Transcriber: original 'compaign'] well, and I gathered the impression that he intended to see the thing through, and that there was much which America could learn from the t.i.tanic operations of the Germans. Major Langhorne and the Argentinian, Brazilian, Chilean, Spanish, Rumanian, and Swedish military attaches are luxuriously quartered a mile and a half out of town in the handsome villa of M. Noll, the landscape painter, present whereabouts unknown. The attaches all have a sense of humor, "otherwise," said one of them, "we could never stand being cooped up here together." The gardener's daughter, a pretty young Frenchwoman, the only servant who remained behind when the household fled at the approach of the Germans, is both cook and housekeeper, and when I arrived I found the seven military attaches resolved into a board of strategy trying to work out the important problem of securing a pure milk supply for her four-month-old baby.

Work consists of occasional motor runs to various points along the long front. I was told that recently Major Langhorne ran into some heavy shrapnel and sh.e.l.l fire, and was lucky to get away with a whole skin.

When asked to tell about it, Major Langhorne pa.s.sed it off laughingly as "all in the day's work."

In spite of the fact that they are engaged in keeping their end up in a life-and-death fight for national existence, the Great General Staff has found time to give the American Military Attache every possible opportunity to see actual fighting.

The foreign military attaches have made many of their expeditions in company with the small band of German war correspondents, who live in another villa close by, under the constant chaperonage of Major von Rohrscheldt. They are allowed to see much, but send little. The relative position of the press in Germany is indicated by the fact that these German war correspondents are nicknamed "hunger candidates." A military expert who was well posted on American journalism explained to me, however, that the very tight censorship lid was not for the purpose of withholding news from the German people, but to keep valuable information from being handed to the enemy. He pointed out that the laconic German official dispatches dealt only with things actually accomplished, and were very bare of detail, while, on the other hand, the French and English press had been worth more than several army corps to the Germans, concluding, "It may be poor journalism, but it's the right way to make war."

KAISERIN'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.

Oct. 22.--It was hard to realize today that a great war was going on.

Every building in town occupied by the Germans was decorated with the German flag in honor of the Kaiserin's birthday, and at night the princ.i.p.al ones, including that occupied by the "War Cabinet," were specially illuminated. All morning long, quant.i.ties of Generals came rolling up in touring cars to the Kaiser's door to pay their homage and offer congratulations. About noon the Crown Prince and staff arrived by motor from the direction of the headquarters of his army. The Crown Prince, who characteristically sat on the front seat next to the chauffeur, looked as boyish and immature as his former pictures--his military cap c.o.c.ked slightly on one side. The responsibility of leading an army had apparently not had a sobering effect on the Crown Prince as yet, but I was told that the guiding brain and genius in the Crown Prince's army headquarters was not that of the Crown Prince, but of his chief adviser, Gen. von Haeseler, the brilliant cavalry leader of the war of 1870 and now the "grand old man" of the German Army, sharing with von Zeppelin the distinction of being the oldest living German Generals.

It seemed still harder to realize that men were fighting and dying not fifty miles away when, after luncheon, Kaiser, Crown Prince, and staffs went for a two hours' automobile ride, the Crown Prince leaving late in the afternoon to rejoin his command.

The only warlike notes in the day's picture were a German military aeroplane--one of the famous Taubes--that flew at a high alt.i.tude over the Great Headquarters toward the enemies' lines; a battalion of Saxon Landsturm that rested for an hour at the railroad station, then started on the final hike for the front, refreshed by a glimpse of their motoring Kaiser, and toward evening four automobile loads of wounded German officers, who arrived from the direction of Rheims, where it was rumored the French had made four desperate attempts to break through.

Here one gets more and more the impression that the Germans in their war-making have learned a lesson from the hustling Americans--that they have managed to graft American speed to their native thoroughness, making a combination hard to beat. For instance, there is a regular relay service of high-power racing motor cars between the Great Headquarters and Berlin, the schedule calling for a total running time of something under a day and a half, beating the best time at present possible by train by four hours. One of the picked drivers, who has the last lap--through France--said his running schedule required him to average sixty miles an hour, and this running at night. A network of fast relay automobile services is also run from the Great Headquarters, through Belgium, linking up Brussels and Antwerp, and to the princ.i.p.al points on the long line of battle.

How great a role the motor car plays among the Germans may be gathered from an estimate made to the writer that 40,000 cars were in use for military purposes. Many thousands of these are private automobiles operated by their wealthy owners as members of the Volunteer War Automobile Corps, of which Prince Waldemar, son of the sailor Prince Henry, is chief. Their ranks include many big business men, captains of industry, and men of social prominence and professional eminence.

They wear a distinctive uniform, that of an infantry officer, with a collar of very dark red, and a short, purely ornamental sword or dagger.

BACK TO LUXEMBURG.

LUXEMBURG, Oct. 24.--I have just returned from the German Great Headquarters in France, the visit terminating abruptly on the fourth day, when one of the Kaiser's secret field police woke me up at 7 o'clock in the morning and regretfully said that his instructions were to see that I "did not oversleep" the first train out. The return journey along one of the German main lines of communication--through Eastern France, across a corner of Belgium and through Luxemburg--was full of interest, and confirmed the impression gathered at the centre of things, the Great Headquarters, that this twentieth century warfare is in the last a.n.a.lysis a gigantic business proposition which the Board of Directors (the Great General Staff) and the thirty-six department heads are conducting with the efficiency of a great American business corporation.

The west-bound track is a continuous procession of freight trains--fresh consignments of raw material--men and ammunition--being rushed to the firing line to be ground out into victories. The first shipment we pa.s.s is an infantry battalion--first ten flatcars loaded with baggage, ammunition, provision wagons, and field kitchens, the latter already with fire lighted and soup cooking as the long train steams slowly along, for the trenches are only fifty miles away, and the Germans make a point of sending their troops into battle with full stomachs.

After the flatcars come thirty box cars, all decorated with green branches and scrawled over with chalked witticism at the expense of the French and Russians. The men cheer as our train pa.s.ses. A few kilometers further backed on to a siding, is a train of some twenty flatcars, each loaded with a touring car. Then we pa.s.s a battery of artillery on flatcars, the guns still garlanded with flowers; then a short freight train--six cars loaded with nothing but spare automobile tires--then a long train of heavy motor trucks, then more infantry trains, then an empty hospital train going back for another load, then a train of gasoline tank cars, more cheering infantry, more artillery, another empty hospital train, a pioneer train, a score of flatcars loaded with long, heavy piles, beams, steel girders, bridge spans, and lumber, then a pa.s.senger train load of German railway officials and servants going to operate the railways toward the coast, more infantry, food trains, ammunition trains, train loads of railway tracks already bolted to metal ties and merely needing to be laid down and pieced together, and so on in endless succession all through France and through Belgium. The two-track road, shaky in spots, especially when crossing rivers, is being worked to capacity, and how well the huge traffic is handled is surprising even to an American commuter.

Our fast train stops at the mouth of a tunnel, then crawls ahead charily, for the French, before retreating, dynamited the tunnel. One track has been cleared, but the going is still bad. To keep it from being blocked again by falling debris the Germans have dug clean through the top of the hill, opening up a deep well of light into the tunnel.

Looking up, you see a pioneer company in once cream-colored, now dirty-colored, fatigue uniform still digging away and terracing the sides of the big hole to prevent slides. Half an hour later we go slow again in crossing a new wooden bridge over the Meuse--only one track as yet. It took the German pioneers nearly a week to build the subst.i.tute for the old steel railway bridge dynamited by the French, whose four spans lie buckled up in the river. The pioneers are at work driving piles to carry a second track. The process is interesting. A forty-man-power pile driver is rigged upon the bow end of a French river barge with forty soldiers tugging at forty strands of the main rope.

The "gang" foreman, a Captain in field gray, stands on the river bank and bellows the word of command. Up goes the heavy iron weight; another command, and down it drops on the pile. It looks like a painfully slow process, but the bridges are rebuilt just the same.

Further on, a variety of interest is furnished to a squad of French prisoners being marched along the road. Then a spot of ant-hill-like activity where a German railway company is at work building a new branch line, hundreds of them having pickaxes and making the dirt fly. You half expect to see a swearing Irish foreman. It looks like home--all except the inevitable officer (distinguished by revolver and field gla.s.s) shouting commands.

The intense activity of the Germans in rebuilding the torn-up railroads and pushing ahead new strategic lines, is one of the most interesting features of a tour now in France. I was told that they had pushed the railroad work so far that they were able to ship men and ammunition almost up to the fortified trenches. The Germanization of the railroads here has been completed by the importation of station Superintendents, station hands, track walkers, &c., from the Fatherland. The stretch over which we are traveling, for example, is in charge of Bavarians. The Bavarian and German flags hang out at every French station we pa.s.s.

German signs everywhere, even German time. It looks as if they thought to stay forever.

Now we creep past a long hospital train, full this time, which has turned out on a siding to give us the right of way--perhaps thirty all-steel cars--each fitted with two tiers of berths, eight to a side, sixteen to a car. Every berth is taken. One car is fitted up as an operating room, but fortunately no one is on the operating table as we crawl past. Another car is the private office of the surgeon in charge of the train. He is sitting at a big desk receiving reports form the orderlies. During the day we pa.s.s six of these splendidly appointed new all-steel hospital trains, all full of wounded. Some of them are able to sit up in their bunks and take a mild interest in us. Once, by a queer coincidence, we simultaneously pa.s.s the wounded going one way and cheering fresh troops going the other.

*How the Belgians Fight*

[By a Correspondent of The London Daily News.]

LONDON, Oct. 28.--Writing from an unnamed place in Belgium a correspondent of The Daily News says:

"The regiment I am concerned with was fifteen days and nights in the Antwerp trenches in countless engagements. It withdrew at dawn, hoping then to rest. It marched forty-five kilometers with shouldered rifles.

In the next five days it marched nearly 200 kilometers until it reached the Nieuport and Dixmude line. By an error of judgment it got two days of drill and inspection in place of resting, then took its place in the front line on the Yser to face the most desperate of the German efforts."

The correspondent quotes a young volunteer in this regiment as follows:

"---- was evacuated by the Germans, and we were sent in at nightfall. As soon as they saw our lights they began sh.e.l.ling us. We lost terribly. A number of the men ran up the streets, but we got them together. I had about twenty and retired in order. We were 600 who went in, and must have left a third there.

"In the morning we moved down to reinforce a network of trenches on our bank of the Yser. There was a farm on our right, and some of our men were firing at it, but the door opened and three officers in Belgian uniform came out shouting to us to cease fire, so we sent a detachment to the farm, and they were swept away by machine gun fire from the windows. No, I don't know what happened afterward about the farm. I lost sight of it.

"We got into the trenches. They lay longways behind a raised artificial bank on our side of the river. At the northern end of them were mazes of cross trenches protecting them in case the Germans got across the bridge there and started to enfilade us. They were full of water. I was firing for six hours myself thigh deep in muddy water.

"The Germans got across the bridge. We could not show head or hand over our bank. German machine guns shot us from crevices in their raised bank across the river only a few yards away. I was hours and hours dragging our wounded out of the cross trenches at the northern end of the bank southward and behind a mound till there was no more room for them there, and bringing up new men singly and two or three at a time from further down the trenches to take their places. We lost our officers, but I got the men to listen to me.

"Some Germans sh.e.l.led us with a cross fire. They got into the cross trenches. They fired down our lines from the side. We had to run back. I was too tired and sleepy to drag my feet. I think I must have fallen asleep.

"We had an order to advance again. The French were behind us on either wing in support. I was too tired to get up. Some one kicked me. I looked up. They were three of my friends, volunteers like myself. We had all joined together. They apologized and ran forward. They are all wounded now, but we are all still alive, and I never have been hit once in thirty-four fights.

"I got up. So did a man lying on the field in front of me. He was shot through the head and fell back on me. I got up again. A sh.e.l.l burst beside me and I saw three men, who were running past, just disappear. I was lying on my face again, and could not lift my head, either through fear or sleep, I don't know which.

"I found myself running forward again. I called to men lying and running near and held my revolver at them. We were all charging with bayonets back at the Germans shooting us from our own trenches under the raised bank. They did not wait for us. They looked like frightened gray beetles as they scrambled up away over our bank and down into the river. It was dusk, but we shot at them over the bank. The water seemed full of them.