New York Times Current History The European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January Part 38

VILNA, Russia, Sept. 28.--For a fact as great as Russia one needs a symbol by which to apprehend it For me, till now, the symbol has been a memory of Moscow in the Winter of 1905, the Winter of revolution, when the barricades were up in the streets and the dragoons worked among the crowds like slaughtermen in a shambles. Toward that arched gateway leading from the Red Square into the Kremlin came soldiers on foot, bringing with them prisoners dredged out of the turmoil, two armed men to each battered and terrified captive, whose white and bloodstained face stared startling and ghastly between the gray uniform greatcoats.

The first of them came to the deep arch, in whose recess is a lamplit shrine; I stood aside to see them go past. The soldiers were wrenching the man along by the arms, each holding him on one side; I recall yet the prisoner's lean, miserable face, with the suggestion it had of dissolute and desperate youth; and as they came abreast of the faintly gleaming ikon in the gate they let him go for a moment. His dazed eyes wandered up to the shrine; he was already bareheaded, and with a shaking, uncertain hand he crossed himself in the intricate Russian fashion. The soldiers who guarded him, too--they shuffled their rifles to a convenient hold to have a right hand free; they crossed themselves and their lips moved. Then they were through the arch and out upon the snow within the walls, and once again they had hold of their man and were thrusting him along to the prison which for him was the antechamber of death.

That was Russia then. Prisoner and captors, soldiers and revolutionaries, blinded and bewildered by the rush and dazzle of affairs, straining asunder yet linked, knitted into a unity of the spirit which they neither understood nor questioned.

But a week ago, on those still, dreary lands which border the Prussian frontier, there was evidence of a Russia that has been born or made since those hectic days in Moscow. The Germans who had forced Gen.

Rennenkampf to withdraw to the border were making an attempt to envelop his left wing. Their columns, issuing from the maze of lakes and hills in Masurenland, came across the border on both banks of the little River Amulew, and fell upon him. There is a road in those parts that drifts south along the frontier, an unmade, unholy Russian road, ribbed with outcrops of stone, a purgatory to travel upon till the snow clothes it and one can go by sledge. Away to the southwest, beyond the patches of firwood and the gray, steeply [Transcriber: original 'steply'] rolling land, there toned the far diapason of artillery; strings of army transport, Red Cross vehicles, and miscellaneous men straggled upon the road.

From beyond the nearest shoulder of land sounded suddenly some gigantic and hoa.r.s.e whistle, an ear-shattering roar of warning and urgency. There was shouting and a stir of movement; the wagons and Red Cross vans began to pull out to one side; and over the brow of the hill, hurtling into sight, huge, unbelievably swift, roaring upon its whistle, tore a great, gray-painted motor lorry, packed with khaki-clad infantrymen. It was going at a hideous speed, leaping its tons of weight insanely from rock ridge to traffic-churned slough in the road; there was only time to note its immensity and uproar and the ranked faces of the men swaying in their places, and it was by, and another was bounding into sight behind it. A hundred and odd of them, each with thirty men on board--three battalions to reinforce the threatened left wing--a mighty instrument of war, mightily wielded. It was Russia as she is today, under way and gathering speed.

At Rennenkampf's headquarters at Wirballen, where formerly one changed trains going from Berlin to Petersburg, one sees the fashion in which Russia shapes for war. Here, beneath a little bridge with a black and white striped sentry box upon it, its muddy banks part.i.tioned with rotten planks into goose-pens, runs that feeble stream which separates Russia from Germany. Upon its further side, what is left of Eydtkuhnen, the Prussian frontier village, looms drearily through its screen of willows--walls smoke-blackened and roofless, crumbling in piles of fallen brick across its single street, which was dreary enough at its best. To the north and south, and behind to the eastward, are the camps, a city full, a country full of men armed and equipped; the mean and ugly village thrills to the movement and purpose. On the roof of the schoolhouse there lifts itself against the pale Autumn sky the cobweb mast and stays of the wireless apparatus, and in the courtyard below and in the shabby street in front there is a surge of automobiles, motor cycles, mounted orderlies--all the message-carrying machinery of a staff office. The military telephone wires loop across the street, and spray out in a dozen directions over the flat and trodden fields; for within the dynamic kernel to all this elaborate sh.e.l.l is Rennenkampf, the Prussian-Russian who governs the gate of Germany.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEN. PAUL PAU Commanding one of the French Armies (_Photo from Underwood & Underwood._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEN. D'AMADE Commanding One of the French Armies (_Photo from Bain News Service._)]

Here is the brain of the army. Its limbs go swinging by at all hours, in battalions and brigades, or at the trot, with a jingle of bits and scabbards, or at the walk, with b.u.mp and clank, as the gun wheels clear the ruts. It is the infantry--that fills the eye--fine, big stuff, man for man the biggest infantry in the world.

Their uniform of peaked cap, trousers tucked into knee-boots, and khaki blouse is workmanlike, and the serious middle-aged officers trudging beside them are hardly distinguishable from the men. They have not yet learned the use of the short, broad-bladed bayonets; theirs are of the old three-cornered section type with which the Bulgarians drove the Turks to Chataldja; but there is something else that they have learned.

Since the first days of the mobilization that brought them from their homes there is not a man among them that has tasted strong drink. In 1904 the men came drunk from their homes to the centres; one saw them about the streets and on the railways and in the gutters. But these men have been sober from the start, and will perforce be sober to the end.

Of all that elaborate and copious machinery of war which Russia has built up since her failure in Manchuria there is nothing so impressive as this. Her thousand and odd aeroplanes, her murderously expert artillery, her neat and successful field wireless telegraph, even her strategy, count as secondary to it. The chief of her weaknesses in the past has been the slowness of her mobilization; Germany, with her plans laid and tested for a mobilization in four days, could count on time enough to strike before Russia could move. She used her advantage to effect when Austria planted the seed of this present war by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; she was able to present Russia in all her unpreparedness with the alternatives of war in twenty-four hours or accepting the situation. But this time it has been different.

At Petrograd one sees how different. Hither from the northern and eastern Governments come the men who are to swell Rennenkampf's force.

Their cadres, the skeletons of the battalions of which they are the flesh, are waiting for them--officers, organization, equipment, all is ready. The endless trains decant them; they swing in leisurely columns through the streets to their depots, motley as a circus--foresters, moujiks in fetid sheepskins, cattlemen, and rivermen, Siberians, tow-haired Finns, the wide gamut of the races of Russia, all big or biggish, with those impa.s.sive, blunt-featured faces that mask the Russian soul, and all sober. No need now to make men of them before making soldiers; no inferno at the way side-stations and troop trains turning up days late. It is as if, at the cost of those annual 780,000,000 rubles, Russia had bought the clue to victory.

West beyond Eydtkuhnen, under the pearl-gray northern sky, lies East Prussia. Hereabout it is flat and fertile, with lavish, eye-fatiguing levels of cornland stretching away to Insterburg and beyond to Konigsberg's formidable girdle of forts. Here are many villages, and scattered between them innumerable hamlets of only two or three houses, and a small town or two. Most of them are empty now; the German army that leans its back on the Vistula's fortresses has cleared this country like a dancing floor for its work. It has rearranged it as one rearranges the furniture in a room; whole populations have been transported, roads broken, bridges blown up, strategically unnecessary; villages burned. Nothing remains on the ground that has not its purpose a.s.signed--not even the people, and their purpose has been clear for some time past. The Russians have been over this ground already, and fell back from it after their defeat between Osterode and Allenstein.

Their advance was through villages lifeless and deserted and over empty roads; the retreat was through a country that swarmed with hostile life.

Roads were blocked with farm carts, houses along their route took fire mysteriously, signaling their movement and direction, and answered from afar by other conflagrations; bridges that had been sound enough before blew up at the last moment. What the Belgians were charged with, and their country laid waste for, all East Prussia is organized to do daily as an established and carefully schooled auxiliary to the army.

A few days since there arrived a prisoner, driven in on foot by a mounted Cossack, sent back by the officer commanding the reconnoissance party which had captured him. He came up the street, shuffling at a quick walk to keep ahead of the horse and the thin, sinister Cossack--an elderly farmer, in work-stained clothes, with the lean neck and pursed jaws of a hard bargainer. In all his bearing and person there was evident the man of toilsome life who had prospered a little; in that soldier-thronged street, in his posture of a prisoner with the Cossack's revolver at his back, he was conspicuous and grotesque. His eyes, under the gray pent of his brows, were uneasy, and through all his commonplace quality and his show of fort.i.tude there was a gleam of the fear of death that made him tragic. He had been found on his farm doing nothing in particular; it was out of simply general suspicion that the Russian officer had ordered him to be searched. The result was the discovery of a typewritten paper, giving precise instructions as to how a German civilian in East Prussia must act toward the enemy--how to signal movements of infantry, of cavalry, of artillery; how to estimate the numbers of a body of men, and what to say if questioned, and the like--a doc.u.ment conceived and executed with true Prussian exact.i.tude and clearness, a masterpiece in the literature of espionage.

For him there was no hope; even The Hague Convention, which permits mine-laying, does not protect spies, however earnestly and dangerously they serve their country. He pa.s.sed, always at the same forced shuffle of reluctant feet, toward his judges and his doom.

*Belgian Cities Germanized*

*By Cyril Brown,*

Staff Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.

BRUSSELS, Nov. 4.--Of all the war capitals of Europe, Brussels under the German occupation is probably the gayest and the most deceptive. It certainly outrivals Berlin in life and brilliancy, as Berlin outshines London. The Germans are free spenders afield; their influx here by thousands has put large sums of money into circulation, resulting in a spell of artificial, perhaps superficial, prosperity.

The crowds surging all day up and down the princ.i.p.al shopping street, the Rue Neuve, overflow the sidewalks and fill the street. Well-dressed crowds promenade along the circular boulevard all afternoon and into the night. Places of amus.e.m.e.nt and the cafes are crowded. The hundreds of automobiles loaded with officers speeding about the streets, with musical military horns blowing, add to the gay illusion.

Nowhere save at the Great Headquarters in France, where the Kaiser stays when not haranguing his troops at the front, will you see such a brilliant galaxy of high officers--and every day seems a holiday in Brussels.

You catch the sinister undercurrent in the more obscure little cafes.

Here you will find some Belgian patriot who is glad of the chance to unbosom himself to a safe American. Perhaps he will speak with unprintable bitterness of the shame of the Brussels women who, he says, wave handkerchiefs and smile friendly greetings at the singing troop trains pa.s.sing through the suburbs on their way to the front, or give flowers and cigars to the returning streams of wounded. They ought to be shot as traitresses, he says. For the honor of the Belgian women, he adds, these form only a small percentage.

You are not surprised when well-informed neutral residents tell you that these people "have murder in their hearts, and that if the Germans ever retreat in a rout through Belgium, Heaven help the straggler and the rear guard." Nor that copies of English papers, whose reading is forbidden, are nevertheless smuggled in, and that copies of The London Times fetch as high as 200 francs, reading circles being often formed at 20 francs per head.

But there are no hopeful signs here of a German retreat. Brussels has not been "practically evacuated." On the contrary, one gets overwhelmingly the impression that the Germans expect to stay forever.

No cannon are posted on commanding avenues or squares. There are no serious measures for the defense of the capital. The military and civil Governments occupy the princ.i.p.al public buildings, and seem to be working with typical German thoroughness. The Government offices begin to a.s.sume an air of permanence.

As conquerors go, the invaders seem to be bearing themselves well. There is apparently no desire to "rub it in," the military Government seemingly pursuing the wise policy of trying to spare the feelings of the natives as much as possible, perhaps in the impossible hope of ultimately conciliating them. German flags are flown sparingly. Only small squads of Landsturm are now occasionally seen marching through the streets. Even from the bitterest Belgians one hears no stories of "insult, shame, or wrong."

At the same time, swift and harsh punishment is meted out to any one whose actions are thought to tend to impair German military authority or dignity. Thus placards posted on many street corners day before yesterday informed the people that a Belgian city policeman had been sentenced to five years' imprisonment for "interfering with a German official in the discharge of his duty, a.s.saulting a soldier, and attempting to free a prisoner." For this, also, a fine of 5,000,000 france ($1,000,000) was imposed on the City of Brussels. Another policeman was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for alleged similar offenses.

An interesting history of the German occupation can be reconstructed from these same placards pasted on buildings. Here is one, dating from the early days, forbidding bicycle riding in the country and announcing that civilian cyclists will be shot at sight. If you look long enough you can also find a mutilated specimen of ex-Burgomaster Max's famous "dementi," in which he virtually calls the German Military Governor of Liege and, by implication, the German Government, "liar." The Bruxellois must be fickle and quick to forget, for I did not hear the picturesque Max's name mentioned once.

The realities of the military occupation are brought home to the people perhaps most at the Gare du Nord and the Place de la Gare, where the Civic Guards, in their curious comic opera caps, are reinforced by German gendarmes with rifles slung over their shoulders. Civilians are not allowed to cross this square in front of the railway station. "Keep to the sidewalk" is the brusque order to those who stray. Also the park in front of the Royal Palace is closed to the public. Three bright red gasoline tank wagons among the trees give it an incongruous touch, while the walks and drives are used as an exercising ground for officers'

mounts. All the windows of the Royal Palace are decorated with the sign of the Red Cross.

Brussels just now is humorously a victim of the double standard--not moral, but financial. All kinds of money go here on the basis of 1 mark equaling 1 franc 25 centimes, but shopkeepers still fix prices and waiters bring bills in francs, and when payment is tendered in marks you generally get change in both--a proceeding that involves elaborate mathematical computations. At the next table to you in the restaurant of the Palace Hotel, once a favorite stopping place for Anglo-American travelers, but now virtually an exclusive German officers' club, with the distinction of a double guard posted at the front door, sits a short, fiercely mustached General of some sort--evidently a person of great importance from the commotion his entry caused among all the other officers in the room. In his b.u.t.tonhole he wears the Iron Cross of the second cla.s.s, the Iron Cross of the first cla.s.s pinned to his breast, and underneath the rare "Pour le Merite Order, with Swords." His bill amounts to about 7 francs, for he consumed the regular 4-franc table d'hote, plus a full bottle of red Burgundy. He tenders a blue 100-mark bill in payment and gets in return a baffling heap of change, including 1 and 2 franc Belgium paper notes, 5 and 10 mark German bills, Belgian and German silver, and Belgian nickel coins with holes punched in the centres. The General takes out his pencil and begins elaborate calculations on the menu--then sends for the head waiter. It takes some time and much talk to convince him that he is not being "short changed."

The double standard furnishes many of these humorous interludes.

Equally exasperating is the double time standard. The Germans set their official clocks and watches by Berlin time, but have made no attempt to force it on the natives, who continue loyal to Belgian time, which is one hour behind Berlin.

Brand Whitlock, the American Minister to Belgium, who runs a strong risk of having a statue erected to him some day by the grateful Belgian people, is quite the happiest, most relieved-looking person in Brussels since he heard the good news that all America was hard at work collecting food for the Belgians and that England would not prevent its delivery. Soon after the German occupation of Brussels a committee was organized to give food to the poor here, of which Mr. Whitlock and the Spanish Minister were patrons. Three weeks ago the Ministerial allies discovered that the situation was exceedingly grave, not only here but all over Belgium. Committees came to see Mr. Whitlock from Louvain, Liege, Namur, Charleroi, Mons, Dinant, &c., and the people, I was told, were within four weeks of absolute starvation. Mr. Whitlock got the German Military Governor of Belgium, Field Marshal von der Goltz, to give the Spanish Minister and himself a guarantee in writing that any food sent in for the poor Belgians would not be requisitioned for the German Army.

The next thing was to get the permission of England; so two weeks ago Secretary Gibson was sent to London with Baron Lambert, a banker, and M.

Franqui to get England's permission as well as a first shipment of food.

Two weeks ago Mr. Whitlock sent a long letter to the State Department and to President Wilson, asking them to do something. At least one phrase of Mr. Whitlock's coinage has been going the rounds here. In the various preliminary discussions as to whose responsibility it was to take care of the Belgian people there was considerable talk about Hague conventions. "Starving people can't eat Hague conventions" was his answer.

Minister Whitlock also feels vastly relieved that he has got practically all non-official Americans out of Belgium, the twoscore still here being mostly resident business men, with a sprinkling of the boldest tourists, who are staying "to see the fun," in spite of Ministerial warnings.

Mr. Whitlock believes he has broken the world's record by being eight Ministers at once. At one time he was representing Germany, Austria, Great Britain, j.a.pan, Servia, Denmark, and Lichtenstein. When he told a German officer that he represented Lichtenstein--which is said to be a small sovereign State somewhere, dependent on Austria--the officer laughed and said: "Theoretically, Germany is still at war with Lichtenstein and has been since 1866, it having been overlooked in the peace shuffle." The reason for representing Denmark, which isn't at war with anybody, is that the Danish Minister is equally accredited to Belgium and The Hague, and had no Secretary to leave behind when he departed Hagueward. Of course, the American flag does not fly over the Danish Legation here. In addition, the French and Russian interests were also offered to Mr. Whitlock, but he was so full of responsibility that he had to ask to be excused.

LOUVAIN, Nov. 5.--Louvain now presents the ghastly spectacle of a dead city, buried under ruins, slowly coming to life again, and continues to give full scope to the morbid streak in human nature; for sightseers continue to flock here in increasing numbers from Antwerp, Brussels, and, in fact, all over Belgium, excepting from over the deadline of the operating zone. With the Bruxellois especially the trip is a favorite outing on a pleasant Sunday. The Germans have succeeded in restoring the train service to the extent of two pa.s.senger trains daily between here and Brussels and one between here and Antwerp, and the military authorities pursue a surprisingly liberal policy in giving traveling pa.s.ses to the Belgian population. In addition to those who come by train, a steady procession of automobiles pa.s.ses through all day; and next week, when a Berlin-Brussels express service is to be started, the local touring season will have a further boom.

About 5 per cent of the original population have come crawling back, and the three companies of Landsturm garrisoned here, together with the sightseers, form their source of revenue. The more courageous shopkeepers who have come back and reopened their stores are coining money as never in peace times--especially the little confectionery and pastry shops, where the soldiers off duty come for afternoon coffee, and the one tailor's shop which is open. Workmen are putting the finishing touches to the new pine-board roof on the cathedral and are making efforts to "restore" the stone exterior. The famous Gothic Hotel de Ville is now protected by a high board fence, and two bearded Landsturm men mount guard there day and night. A gang of laborers is making headway in cleaning up the interior of the hopelessly ruined University Library, and the streets are all cleared of debris. The academic halls of the main university building, which suffered little damage, are not silent, for one of the Landsturm companies is quartered there. I found half a hundred of them and two cows in the university quadrangle or campus. The men were all unshaven, but of a good-natured sort, and many were the rough German jokes as they watched a comrade milking the cows preparatory to their slaughter on the spot by the company butcher, who stood in waiting, while at the same time the gray-haired university castellan was getting ready to take a time exposure of the cows.

"And yet they say we Germans are barbarians," laughed an under officer.

"I bet you won't find that the French soldiers, or the highly civilized English gentlemen, either, have a photographer come to take a picture of the cows they are about to eat."

The venerable university guardian continued to do a brisk business making group pictures and solo portraits of Landsturm under officers and men at two francs per dozen postcards, till a Lieutenant appeared on the scene and the bugle sounded in the court for "boot inspection." All promptly lined up in double file against the brick university wall and presented feet for the critical eye of the inspector--all except the company cooks, who were busy among their pots and pans and open-air cook stoves set up in the academic stone portico.

The last of the former students of the University of Louvain was probably the well-dressed, meek-looking young Chinese, eating luncheon at the near-by restaurant--the only one open in town. The German soldiers, fortunately, did not mistake him for a j.a.panese, and he has not been molested.

There are touches of grim humor among the ruins. Here on the main street, for example, is a pink placard stuck on a stick on top of the heap of brick and mortar that was once a store. It reads: "Elegant corsets: Removed to Rue Malines 21." And again, on a number of houses that escaped the torch are pasted neatly printed little signs bearing the legend: "This house is to be protected. Soldiers are not allowed to enter houses or to set fire to them without orders from the Kommandantur."

The inhabitants who have no stores to keep seem continually to wander aimlessly in the streets; and here, too, is the sight, common now all over Belgium, of many women with children begging. Especially they linger around the entrances to the barracks, for hunger has given them a keen nose for bread, and they have soon learned that the soldier will give them what they have left over from their ample rations. The German Government is trying to stimulate the return of the population, and is apparently doing its best to help them to earn a living by providing work.