The Land of Deepening Shadow Part 5

Then he anathematised the Russians and all things Russian, while his orderly stood stiffly and admiringly at attention and the other officers stopped in their tracks.

"First you should visit the ruins of the once beautiful old castle at l.a.b.i.au destroyed by the beasts," he thundered. "And they also wantonly destroyed the magnificent old church near by."

He followed with an account of the history of the castle, and it was clear that he was deeply affected by the loss of these landscape embellishments which he had learned to love so much that they became part of his life, and that their destruction deeply enraged him against the enemy. Though I saw his point of view and sympathised with him, I questioned him in the hope of learning of some real atrocities. It was useless. Although he made general charges against the Russians, he always reverted, when pinned down to facts, with a fresh burst of anger, to the castle and church of l.a.b.i.au as his pet atrocity.

The orderly had just been commanded to take me on a search for quarters for the night, when an automobile horn tooted beneath the window. Heavy steps on the stairs; a Staff Officer entered the room, looked surprised to see me, and asked who I was. The Commandant justified his permission to let me remain by eulogising the n.o.ble work upon which I was engaged, but though the Staff Officer's objections were hushed, he did not enthuse over my coming.

With intent to convince him that I was already hard at work I told him of the terrible destruction of the castle and church at l.a.b.i.au, which I would visit on the following day.

"I have a sergeant below who was there, and I will have him come in," he said.

The sergeant entered, clicked his heels at attention; a doughty old warrior, small and wiry, not a civilian thrust into field-grey, but a soldier, every inch of him, a Prussian soldier, turned to stone in the presence of his superior officers, his sharp clear eyes strained on some point in s.p.a.ce directly ahead. He might have stepped out of the pages of the Seven Years' War.

n.o.body spoke. The pale yellow light of the oil lamp on the Commandants desk fell on the military faces, figures and trappings of the men in the room. The shuffling tramp of soldiers in the dark street below died away in the direction of the river. I felt the military tenseness of the scene. I realised that I was inside the German lines on a bluff that was succeeding but might collapse at any moment.

Feeling that a good investigating committee should display initiative I broke the silence by questioning the little sergeant, and I began on a line which I felt would please the Commandant, "You were at l.a.b.i.au during the fighting?" I asked.

"I was, sir!"

He did not move a muscle except those necessary for speech. His eyes were still rigid on that invisible something directly ahead.

He clearly was conscious of the importance of his position, as informant to a stranger before his superior officers.

"I have heard that the beautiful old castle and the magnificent old church were destroyed," I continued.

"You know of this, of course?"

"Ja, ja, that is true! Our wonderful artillery knocked them to pieces when we drove the Russians out in panic!"

The sergeant was not the only one looking into s.p.a.ce now. The Staff Officer relieved the situation by dismissing him from the room, whereupon the Commandant sharply bade the orderly conduct me to my night lodgings.

"No Iron Cross for the little sergeant," I reflected, as we stumbled through the cooked old streets in the dark. Is it any wonder that the German Government insists that neutral correspondents be chaperoned by someone who can skilfully show them what is proper for them to see, and let them hear that which is proper for them to hear?

Everywhere in rooms lighted by oil lamps soldiers sat talking, drinking and playing cards. They were under every roof, and were also bivouacked on the flats along the river. In all three inns there was not even floor s.p.a.ce available. The little brick town hall, too, was crowded with soldiers.

At the pontoon bridge we were sharply challenged by a sentry. The orderly answered and we pa.s.sed on to a crowded beer hall above which I was fortunate to secure a room. By the flickering light of a candle I was conducted to a dusty attic furnished with ferruginous junk in one corner and a dilapidated bed in another.

No such luxuries as bed clothing, of course; only a red mattress which had not been benefited in the least by Russian bayonet thrusts and sabre slashes in the quest of concealed treasure. I could not wash unless I would go down to the river, for with the blowing up of the bridges the water mains had also been destroyed.

The excellent organisation of the Germans was in evidence, however, for during my stay I witnessed their prompt and efficient measures to restore sanitation, in order to avert disease.

I went downstairs and entered the large beer room, hazy with tobacco smoke, and filled for the most part with non-commissioned officers. They, like everybody else in the room, seemed to have heard of my arrival. I joined a group at a long table, a jovial crowd of men who chaffed good naturedly one of their number who said he wished to be home with his wife and little ones. They looked at me and laughed, then pointing at him said, "He is no warrior!"

But it was their talk about the Russians which, interested me most.

There was no hate in their speech, only indifference and contempt for their Eastern enemy. Hindenburg was their hero, and they drank toast after toast to his health. The Russian menace was over, they felt; Britain and France would be easily smashed. They loved their Army, their Emperor, and Hindenburg, and believed implicitly in all three.

They sang a song of East Prussia and raised their foaming gla.s.ses at the last two lines:

"Es trinkt der Mensch, es sauft das Pferd, In Ostpreussen 1st das umgekehrt."

While they were singing a man in civilian clothes entered, approached me with an air of authority, and announced in a loud tone of voice that he had heard that I had said that I had come to East Prussia in search of Russian atrocities.

"My name is Curtin," I began, introducing myself, although I felt somewhat uneasy.

"Thomas!" was all he said.

"Good Heavens!" I thought. "Is this man looking for me? Am I in for serious trouble now?"

Instead, however, of _Thomas_ being an interrogation as to my first name, it was his simple introduction of himself--a strange coincidence.

Although he was addressing his remarks to me, he exclaimed in a tone which could be heard all over the room that he was Chief of Police during the Russian occupation of Wehlau for three weeks, and took great pride in a.s.serting that he was the man who could tell me all that I wished to know. He was highly elated because the Russians had employed him, given him a whistle and invested him with authority to summon aid if he detected any wrong-doing. They had furthermore paid him for his services. Although he now roundly tongue-lashed them in general terms, there was no definite personal accusation that he could make against them.

He told me of a sergeant who went into a house, ordered a meal and then demanded money, threatening the woman who had served him. A lieutenant entered at this moment, learned the particulars of the altercation, and struck the sergeant, whom he reproved for disobeying commands for good conduct which had come from Headquarters. "Just think of such lack of respect among officers,"

Thomas concluded. "One officer striking another for something done against a person in an enemy country. That is bad for discipline.

Such a thing would never happen in the German Army."

The moral of the story as I saw it was quite different from what he had intended it to be.

A few days later I was again in the crowded beer hall when Herr Thomas entered. He liked to be in the limelight, and had a most extraordinary manner of apparently addressing his conversation to some selected individual, but carried it on in a tone which could be heard throughout the entire room. The Russian whistle which he still wore, and of which he was very proud, threatened to become a millstone about his neck, for returning refugees were accusing him of inefficiency during his reign, since they a.s.serted that the Russians had stolen their goods from under his very nose.

After he had hurled the usual invectives against the invaders for my benefit, two splendid looking officers, captain and lieutenant, both perfect gentlemen, said that they hoped that I would not become so saturated with this talk that I would write unfairly about the Russians. They added that they had been impressed by the Russian officers in that region and the control which they had exercised over their men.

Early next morning I met the big man with the black beard who was either on my trail or had encountered me again by chance. When I said that I was going to Allenburg, of the destruction of which I had heard so much, he practically insisted that I go with him in his carriage. A mysterious stranger in brown was with him, who also a.s.sisted in the sight-seeing.

We road through a gently undulating farming and grazing country to the Alle River, where we boarded a little Government tug which threaded its way through dead cows, horses, pigs, dogs, and now and then a man floating down the stream. Battered trenches, ruined farmhouses, splintered woods, the hoof marks of Russian horses that had forded the stream under German fire, showed that the struggle had been intense along the river. The plan of battle formed in my mind. It was clear that the Germans had made the western bank a main line of defence, which, however, had been broken through.

"Just wait until we reach Allenburg," said the man in brown, "and you will see what beasts the murdering Russians are. Wait until you see how they have destroyed that innocent town!"

According to the course of the battle and the story of the Russian destruction of Allenburg, I expected to find it on the western bank, but to my great surprise it is on the eastern, with a considerable stretch of road, separating it from the river. We left the boat and walked along this road, on each side of which lay willows in perfect rows where they had been skilfully felled by the Russians. This sight evoked new a.s.saults from my guides upon "the beasts" whom they accused of wanton and wilful violation of the arboreal beauty which the Allenburgers had loved.

I put myself in the place of the citizens of Allenburg, returning to their little town devastated by war; I understood their feelings and I sympathised with them. I was seeing the other side of Germany's page of conquest. The war map of Europe shows that she has done most of the invading, and during all the days I spent in the Fatherland I never heard a single word of pity for the people of the regions overrun by her armies--except, of course, the Pecksniffian variety used by her diplomats. It was now any rare privilege to return with German refugees to _their_ ruined country, and they vied with one another when they talked to me in the presence of my guides in accusing the Russians of every crime under the sun. The war had been brought home to them, but in the meantime other Germans had brought the war home even more forcibly to the citizens of Belgium and northern France, but the thing could not balance in the minds of those affected.

I was conducted to a combination home and chemist's shop, the upper part of which had been wrecked by a sh.e.l.l. The Russians had looted the place of chemicals and had searched through all the letters in the owner's desk. These they had thrown upon the floor instead of putting them back neatly in the drawers.

My guides laid great stress on such crimes, but I took mental note of certain other things which were not pointed out to me. The beasts--as they always called them--had been quartered here for three weeks, but not a mirror had been cracked, not a scratch marred the highly polished black piano, and the well-stocked, exquisitely carved bookcase was precisely as it had been before the first Cossack patrol entered the city.

The owner viewed his loss philosophically. "When we have placed a war indemnity upon Russia I shall be paid in full," he declared in a voice of supreme confidence.

My guides never gave me an opportunity to talk alone with the few civilians in the place, and at the sausage and beer lunch the conversation was based on the "wanton destruction by the beasts of an innocent town."

After they had drunk so much beer that they both fell asleep I slipped quietly away and went about amid the ruins. I came upon human bodies burned to a crisp. Heaps of empty cartridge sh.e.l.ls littered the ground, which I examined with astonishment for they were Russian, not German, sh.e.l.ls, and must have been used by men defending the town.

I met a pretty girl of seventeen drawing water at a well, who had remained during the three weeks that the Russians were there to care for her invalid father, and had not suffered the slightest insult. Yet all my informants had told me that the Russians had spared none of the weaker s.e.x who had remained in their path.

Further investigations had revealed that the Russians had not fired a shot upon the town, but that the Germans had destroyed it driving them out.

I entered a little Roman Catholic church in the undamaged section of the town and noted with interest that nothing had apparently been disturbed--this the more significant since the Russians hold a different faith.

I walked back towards the river and strolled through the neat, well-shaded, churchyard to the ruins of the large church, the dominating feature of the town. It was clear from what was left that the lines of the body and the spire had been of rare beauty for such an insignificant place as Allenburg.

"Too bad!" I remarked to a white-haired old man who was sitting on a bench mournfully contemplating the ruins.