The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon Part 9

"By G.o.d's help, England shall not starve."

3. German-Americans Who Vilify England

The biography of Grant holds many exciting incidents. One of them concerns a spy who nearly wrecked Grant's plans. It seems that a rumour came saying that Sheridan had been defeated at Winchester. A telegram came a few minutes later saying that Sheridan was recovering from the disaster. Meanwhile, Grant noticed one of his young a.s.sistants was endeavouring in vain to conceal his pleasure over the news of Sheridan's defeat. That feeling seemed inexplicable to Grant. The Commander-in-Chief had three armies--Sherman's in the South, Sheridan's in the Valley of the Shenandoah, and his own army of the Potomac. How could a young aide rejoice over Sheridan's defeat without down in his heart wanting Grant defeated, the Union destroyed, and secession made a success? Grant became more and more alarmed. He told one of his a.s.sociates to follow this youth, whom he feared was a spy. Shortly afterwards the man was discovered sending signals, was tried, the proofs of his treason uncovered, and finally he was executed.

To-day certain German-Americans never tire of announcing their Americanism. Their favourite expression is: "Germany was the Fatherland, but the United States is the wife." Not daring, therefore, to attack our Government, afraid to confess that they want Germany to succeed, and when that time comes expect to hold certain offices under Germany, they spend all their time vilifying Great Britain. There is one absolute and invariable test of the German-American's treason to this country, and that is bitterness towards England, because England is doing all she can to prevent Germany's victory. One thing has saved this country during four years, giving us a chance to prepare--Great Britain's fleet, holding Germany's battle-ships behind the Kiel Ca.n.a.l. To-day our Republic is defended by three armies--General Pershing's, Marshal Foch's and Marshal Haig's. But whenever a German-American vilifies Haig and attacks England you may know that down in his heart he wants Pershing defeated, the United States conquered, and Germany made victorious. The German-American who vilifies Great Britain is angry because Great Britain has prevented Germany from loading a million German veterans upon her six or eight thousand pa.s.senger ships, freight ships, sailing vessels and war fleet, and sailing to New York and a.s.sessing fifty billion dollars indemnity upon us.

In a certain Western State a German professor of electricity resigned from his inst.i.tution. He was receiving about $3,000 a year. Many months pa.s.sed by. One day this man was heard defaming England. "England has destroyed the freedom of the seas. England controls Gibraltar and the Suez Ca.n.a.l. England is the great land pirate. England is the world butcher." A Secret Service man followed the German professor, and found that he was working as fireman at the wireless station of that great city. This German professor of electricity had resigned a $3,000 a year position to work for $75 a month as fireman. As soon as he found that the United States Government was upon his track he fled to Mexico. This spy's camouflage was love for the United States, but his treason was revealed through his hatred of England. That man should have been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot at daybreak.

There is a newspaper reporter in this country. This German-American was caught by a trick. Another reporter faked a story, writing out on his typewriter an account of several German submarines getting into the harbour of Liverpool and blowing up half a dozen English steamers and killing several thousand Englishmen, and this German-American reporter lifted his hands into the air in glee, and in the presence of half a dozen fellow reporters shouted: "I knew it! I knew it! I knew the Germans would smash Hades out of them!" In that moment he revealed his real att.i.tude towards the United States. Any man that wants Admiral Beatty defeated wants the American transports sunk and American soldiers murdered. That reporter should also have been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot at daybreak.

In another city there is a young Irish writer. He fulfills all the proverbs about the crazy Irishman. In connection with the Sinn Fein conspiracy this young writer proposed a toast to the memory of Sir Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt, the success of the revolution, and poured forth such bitterness upon England as cannot be described by those who hate ingrat.i.tude towards a country that has given us a chance to prepare.

Wherever that man goes he carries hate with him towards Great Britain.

His atmosphere is malign; his presence breathes treason towards England.

That is another man who should have been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot at daybreak. No man can serve G.o.d and Mammon. No man can be faithful to the United States who hates England and loves Germany. He must love the one and hate the other; he must hold to the one and despise the crimes of the other. No man can serve G.o.d and the Allies, Germany and the devil, at one and the same time.

4. British vs. American Girls in Munition Factories

To-morrow morning at eight o'clock one million British girls will enter the munition and related factories. To-morrow afternoon at four o'clock another million girls will enter the same factories, to be followed at midnight by the third shift of women.

These factories average forty feet wide, and end to end would be 100 feet in length. The roar of the machinery is never silent by day or night.

In one factory I saw a young woman who was closely related, through her grandfather, to a man in the House of Lords. Her arms were black with machine oil, her hair was under a rubber cover, she wore bloomers. Her task was pouring two tons of molten steel into the sh.e.l.l moulds. The great sh.e.l.ls pa.s.sed from the hands of one girl to another until the fiftieth girl, 1,500 feet away, finished the threads into which the cap's screw was fastened.

Every twenty-four hours these women turn out more small calibre cartridges than all England did the first year of this war. Every forty-eight hours they turn out more large cartridges than all England did the first year of this war. Every six days, with the help of men not fit for the battle front, they turn out more heavy cannon than all England did the first year of this war.

They have sent 17,000,900 tons of ammunition to the front. Their sh.e.l.ls are roaring on five battle fronts in three continents. When the British boys thrust their huge sh.e.l.ls into the cannon these boys literally receive the sh.e.l.ls at the hands of the millions of English girls who are pa.s.sing them forward.

Wonderful the heroism of the British soldiers! The reason why the men fight well at the front is because there are women at home worth fighting for. In all ages battles have been won, partly by the strong arm of the soldier, but chiefly by the heart that nerves the arm. That is why John Ruskin once said that "the woman in the rear generally wins the victory at the front."

It stirs one's sense of wonder to find that all cla.s.ses and all social conditions are represented in these factories. Thousands of young school-teachers have left the schoolroom behind, closed the book and desk and gone to the factory. Tens of thousands of young wives and mothers have left their little children with the grandmother. Many rectors and clergymen and priests, unfit for service at the front by reason of age, work all day long in the munition factory. Many a professional man crowds his work in the office that he may reach the factory for at least a few hours' work upon shot and sh.e.l.l.

One day in France, as I was entering the factory, I saw perhaps twenty young women come out, hurry across the street to a building where two old crippled soldiers were taking care of the little children. These young mothers nursed their babes, looked after the other children and then hurried back to the factory. Every minute was precious; every day was big with destiny. Their young husbands and brothers and lovers, when the German push came, must have their cartridges and sh.e.l.ls ready and in abundance.

Watching these women with their strained, anxious faces--women who cut each thread in the sh.e.l.l with the accuracy of the expert--you could see the lips of the woman murmuring, and needed no confession from her that she was silently praying for the man who would use this weapon to defend her beloved France, her aged mother and her little child.

When the beast is slain and the Potsdam gang tried and executed for their crimes, and the boys come home with trumpets and banners, the ovations will be for the soldiers; but after the soldiers have had their parade and their honour and their ovation on the first day of the triumph, there should be a second great parade, in which, while the soldiers stand on the streets and observe, and the merchants and working men and the professional cla.s.ses stand as spectators, down the street shall march the munition girls, who fashioned the weapons with which the soldiers slew the common enemy.

For while the boys at the front have defended liberty the girls at home have armed the soldiers. Neither one without the other could have made the world safe for democracy.

Through the imagination these women have a right, while they toil, to watch the sh.e.l.l complete their work. The smith who forges the chain for the ship's anchor has a right to exult when he looks out through his imagination upon the great boat held firm by his chain in the hour when the storm threatened to hurl the craft upon the rocks. The inventor has a right to say: "That granary full of wheat is mine; I invented the reaper." The physician has a right to rejoice over the battle and victory over the youth whose life was saved by the surgeon's skill. Not otherwise, the munition girl has a right when the long day of battle is over to say: "I safeguarded that cottage; I lifted a shield above that little child; I built a wall against the cathedral and the gallery and the homes of yonder city."

For American girls of vision there is nothing that they so much desire as the immediate condemnation by our Government of 10,000 luxury-producing plants in this country, which should immediately be taken over by our Government for munition purposes, and before the daybreak of the first morning there would be ten million American girls standing before the doors, trying to break their way in to obtain a chance to fashion the sh.e.l.ls that would protect American boys in danger at the front.

5. The Wolves' Den on Vimy Ridge

The bloodiest battle of 1917 was fought on the slopes of Vimy Ridge.

That ridge is seven and a half miles long and is shaped like a dog's hind leg. Lifted up to an elevation of several hundred feet, the hill not only commands an outlook upon the German lines eastward, but protects the great plains that slope westward towards the English Channel.

To hold that ridge the Germans constructed a vast system of trenches, barbed wire barriers, Portland cement pill-boxes and underneath the ridge, at a depth of sixty feet, they made their prisoners dig a gallery seven and a half miles long, with rooms for the officers opening out on either side of the long pa.s.sageways.

One morning the Canadian troops started up the long sloping hillside, under skies that rained cartridges, sh.e.l.ls and gas bombs. So terrific was the machine-gun fire that some cartridges cut trees in two as if they had been cut with a saw, while others did not so much strike the Canadian boys as cut their bodies into two parts.

Lying upon their faces they crawled up the hillside, cutting the wires as they crept forward. Not until the second afternoon did the shattered remnants reach the German trench that crowned the hillcrest. Then they plunged down into the trench, while the Germans rushed down the long stairs into the underground chamber and fled through the lower openings of their long gallery northward towards safety.

Not until the Canadian officers led us into one of those German chambers did we understand the black tragedy. The room was sh.e.l.l-proof. The soft yellow clay was sh.o.r.ed up by rough boards. All around the walls were bunks. In that chamber the German officers had kept the captive French and Belgian girls. There were two cupboards standing against the wall.

One was made of rough boards; the other was a large, exquisitely carved walnut bureau for girls' garments. When the German officers fled from the trench above they had just time to escape to the lower sh.e.l.l-proof rooms, grab some of the treasure and flee. Unwilling to give these captive girls their freedom, since they could not have the girls they determined that their French and Belgian fathers and sweethearts should not recover them.

There was just time during the excitement of the flight to unlock the door, rush in and send a bullet through each young woman. A few minutes later the Canadian boys swarmed through the long connecting chambers and side rooms.

In one of those rooms they found these young women now dead or dying.

Gas bombs had already been flung down and the rooms were foul with poisoned air. Protected by their masks the Canadian boys had time to pick up these girls and carry them up the steps into the open air, where they laid them down on the gra.s.s in the open sunshine. But help came too late. Beginning with an attempt to murder the souls of the girls the German officers had ended by slaying their bodies.

An officer saw to it that the official photographer kept the record of the faces of these dead girls. Once they must have been divinely beautiful, for all were lovely beyond the average. One could understand the pride and joy of a father or lover when he looked upon the young girl's face. The slender body made one think of the tall lily stem, crowned with that flower named the face and glorious head. Strangely enough they seemed to sleep as if peace had come, after long pain.

Plainly death had been longed for.

Weeks pa.s.sed by. The photographs of the dead girls were shown in the hope that if possible word might reach their parents, but no friend had been found to recognize them. One day a Canadian officer, making slow recovery in a hospital near the coast, was asked by his nurse for the photograph.

It seemed there was a Belgian woman working in the hospital. Her village had been entirely destroyed. Her home was gone and all whom she loved had disappeared. By some accident the Red Cross nurse remembered this photograph and decided to show it to the Belgian woman who had pa.s.sed so swiftly from abundance and happiness to the utmost of poverty and heart-break. Almost unwillingly at first the woman looked at the print.

A moment later she held the picture out at arm's length, rose to her feet, then drew it to her lips and hugged it to her breast.

With streaming eyes she almost shouted, "Thank G.o.d! Julia is dead!

Thank G.o.d! Julia is dead! Now I know there is a G.o.d in Israel, for Julia is dead, is dead--is dead! Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d!"

Though for a long time the doves had been in the clutches of the German hawks; though for a long time the lambs had been in the jaws of the German wolves; when all else failed death came and released the lovely girls from the clutch of German a.s.sa.s.sins.

6. "Why Did You Leave Us in h.e.l.l for Two Years?"

For British soldiers it had been a long trying day on Messines Ridge.

For many nights the boys had been coming up towards the front trenches.

The next morning at 3:50 they were to go "over the top"; a feat which they accomplished, driving in a mile and a half deep, on a long, long line, only to be stopped by four days and nights of rain that drowned the trenches and drove them back out of the flooded valley to the hillside. Because the Germans knew what must come the next day, the German cannon were trying to bomb out the British guns.

That night--tired out--we drove back eighteen miles behind the line for one good night's sleep. After dinner an English lieutenant told me this tragic tale:

"It was an April night last spring. All day the wind and fog and rain had been coming in from the North Sea. The chill and damp went into the very marrow of the bones. When night fell a few of us officers crept down the long stair into a sh.e.l.l-proof room. There we had our pipes and gossiped about the events of the day and talked with the French captain, our guest, who was spending a week studying our sector. Finally the time came when we must go back into the trench to take our turn in the rain.

"We were putting on our raincoats, when in my happiness I said, 'Well, men, you should congratulate me. One week from to-night I shall not be here in this rain and mud. I shall be home in England and have my little wife and my baby girl. Just one week! It seems like seven eternities instead of seven days and nights!'

"I little dreamed the little tragedy that I had precipitated. My colonel was very kind. He told me that he would have his permission in three more months. The rest of the boys also said nice things. Suddenly we realized that the French captain was acting very strangely and saying excited things with his back towards us. We did not know how we had insulted him, nor could we understand what had happened. Finally my colonel said to him:

"'Captain, I hope you will have your vacation soon and have a chance to go home and see your family.'

"He turned on us like a crazy man. He put his fists in the air, he half shouted and half sobbed at us.

"'How do you men dare talk to me about going home? Your land has never been invaded, nor your families ruined. Home! How can I go home? The Germans have had my town for a year. In their retreat they carried away my little girl and my young wife, and now the priest has gotten word to me that in six weeks my little girl and my young wife will both have babes by the German beast who carried them off.'