World's War Events Volume II Part 35

When we left the Emba.s.sy, Captain McCulley, the American Naval Attache, said he knew a way to get out of the revolutionary quarter without pa.s.sing a line of fire. So he edged us off toward the distant Nevsky along several blood-blotched streets in which there were occasional groups of soldiers who did not know which way to turn. Then, as the Bycenie, beyond, suddenly filled with revolutionists coming from some other quarter, we turned to cross the Litenie. Twenty minutes earlier Captain McCulley had pa.s.sed there and the Government troops controlled for another quarter mile. Now we pa.s.sed a machine-gun company commanding the street, which dared not fire because there was a line of soldiers between it and a vast crowd pouring through the street toward us. The crowd had already overwhelmed and made revolutionists out of hundreds of soldiers, and the situation for a moment was dramatically tense.

Down the bisecting Litenie another crowd was advancing, filling the wide street. Before it there was also a company of soldiers, and it did not know whether to face the Bycenie or the river. Three immense mobs were overwhelming it, though it knew of but two. Suddenly, just at the moment when we expected a shower of bullets, and flattened ourselves against a doorway, the company grounded arms and in three seconds was in the arms of the revolution.

[Sidenote: Company after company joins.]

As we retreated to the Nevsky ahead of the victorious crowd we could see company after company turn, as if suddenly deciding not to shoot, and join.

[Sidenote: Thunder of motor trucks.]

I walked rapidly back to the Morskaya and down to the cable office, which I found closed, not encountering on the whole two miles a single soldier or policeman until I reached St. Isaac's Cathedral, where a regiment of marines turned up the Morskaya toward the Nevsky, swinging along behind a band. Five minutes later I followed them up the Morskaya, but before I reached the Gorokawaya, half the distance, I could hear the thunder of the revolutionary motor trucks and the glad howls of the revolutionists. They had run the length of the Nevsky, and the city, except this little corner, was theirs. The shooting began at once, and for the next three hours on both the Morskaya and the Moika there was steady firing. This was still going on when, at nine in the evening, I pa.s.sed around the edge of the fight, crossed Winter Palace Square, deserted except for a company of Cossacks dimly outlined against the Winter Palace across the square. By pa.s.sing under the arch into the head of Morskaya again I was once more with the revolutionists.

I have since asked Mr. Milukoff, now Minister of Foreign Affairs, at that moment a member of the Duma's Committee of Safety, how much of an organization there was behind the events of that day.

[Sidenote: The organization a spontaneous growth.]

"There was some incipient organization certainly," he replied, "though even now I could not be more definite. But for the most part it was spontaneous growth. The Duma was not revolutionary, and we held off until it became necessary for us to take hold. We were the only government left."

[Sidenote: Duma is forced to adopt democratic programme.]

The rapid work was done by the Socialists, who quickly formed the Council of Workmen and Soldiers' Deputies and formulated the programme which has come to be the Russian Declaration of Independence. They consented to support the Duma if it adopted their democratic programme.

There was nothing else for the Duma to do, and the main issues of the new Government were worked out before Tuesday morning, within twenty-four hours of the beginning of the revolution. Since then I have been repeatedly impressed with the organizing ability of the men in control, and their ability to take matters rapidly in hand.

[Sidenote: The crowd feels its power.]

[Sidenote: Not much terrorism.]

Monday night the city was in the hands of the mob. Anybody could have a gun. Public safety lay in the released spirits of the Russian workmen who saw the vision of liberty before them. Tuesday was the most dangerous day, as the crowd was beginning to feel its power, and the amount of shooting going on everywhere must have been out of all proportion to the sniping on the part of cornered police. But the searching of apartments for arms was carried on with some semblance of order, and usually there was a student in command. The individual stories of officers who refused to surrender and fought to the end in their apartments are endless, but these individual fights were lost in the victorious sweep of the day. Tuesday evening the real business of burning police stations and prisons and destroying records went on throughout the city, but the actual burnings, while picturesque, lacked the terrorism one might expect. Still I felt that the large number of irresponsible civilians carrying arms might do what they pleased.

The same idea evidently occurred to the Committee of Safety, as it began at once disarming the irresponsible, and its work was so quick and effective that there were very few civilians not registered as responsible police who still had fire-arms on Wednesday morning.

[Sidenote: Regiments sent to Petrograd join revolutionists.]

As late as Wednesday there was a possibility of troops being sent against Petrograd, but all the regiments for miles around joined the revolution before they entered the city. There was obviously no one who wanted to uphold the old monarchy, and it fell without even dramatic incident to mark its end. To us in Petrograd the abdication of the Emperor had just one significance. It brought the army over at a stroke.

The country, long saturated with democratic principles, accepted the new Government as naturally as if it had been chosen by a national vote.

The credit of the first shot fired on the American side in the Great War fell to the crew of the American ship, _Mongolia_. A narrative of this dramatic event is given in the chapter following.

AMERICA'S FIRST SHOT

J. R. KEEN

Copyright, New York Times, April 27, 1919.

[Sidenote: Gunners of the _Mongolia_ hit a submarine.]

April 19 has long been celebrated in Ma.s.sachusetts because of the battle of Lexington, but henceforth the Bay State can keep with added pride a day which has acquired national interest in this war, for on that date the S. S. _Mongolia_, bound from New York to London, under command of Captain Emery Rice, while proceeding up the English Channel, fired on an attacking submarine at 5.24 in the morning, smashing its periscope and causing the U-boat to disappear.

[Sidenote: Officers from Ma.s.sachusetts.]

The gun crew who made this clean hit at 1,000 yards were under command of Lieutenant Bruce R. Ware, United States Navy, and the fact of special interest in Ma.s.sachusetts is that both Rice and Ware were born in that State, the Captain receiving his training for the sea in the Ma.s.sachusetts Nautical School and the Lieutenant being a graduate of Annapolis.

[Sidenote: Dangerous voyages and cargoes.]

The _Mongolia_, a merchantman of 13,638 tons, had been carrying munitions to Great Britain since January, 1916, when she reached New York Harbor from San Francisco, coming by way of Cape Horn, and she had already made nine voyages to England. In those voyages her officers and men had faced many of the greatest perils of the war. Her cargoes had consisted of TNT, of ammunition, of powder, of fuses, and of sh.e.l.ls. At one time while carrying this dangerous freight Captain Rice saw, as he stood on the bridge during a storm, a lightning bolt strike the ship forward just where a great quant.i.ty of powder was stored, and held his breath as he waited to see "whether he was going up or going down."

[Sidenote: Warnings of U-boats.]

Captain Rice has since died, and among his papers now in my possession are many of the warnings of the presence of U-boats sent to his ship by the British Admiralty during 1916, when every vessel approaching the British coast was in danger from those a.s.sa.s.sins of the sea.

[Sidenote: _Mongolia_ sails in spite of German edict.]

After February 1, 1917, when the Huns made their "war zone" declaration, the question with us at home whether the _Mongolia_ would continue to sail in defiance of that edict of ruthless warfare became a matter of acute anxiety. The ship completed her eighth voyage on February 7, when she reached New York and found the whole country discussing the burning question, "Would the United States allow the Imperial German Government to dictate how and where our ships should go?" There was never but one answer in the mind of Captain Rice. At home he simply said, "I shall sail on schedule, armed or unarmed. Does any one suppose I would let those d.a.m.ned Prussians drive me off the ocean?"

In the office of the International Mercantile Marine he expressed himself more politely, but with equal determination, to the President of the company, P. A. S. Franklin, to whom he said, "I am prepared, so are my officers, to sail with or without arms, but of course I would rather have arms."

[Sidenote: Arms slow to get.]

But the arms were slow to get, and the _Mongolia_, loaded with her super-dangerous cargo, cleared from New York on February 20, the first one of our boats to reach England after the "war zone" declaration, I believe. Captain Rice arrived in London about the time when Captain Tucker of the S. S. _Orleans_ reached Bordeaux, the latter being the first American to reach France in safety after the same declaration.

[Sidenote: Spies try to learn sailing dates.]

Early in February of 1917 we became aware that German spies were making a persistent attempt to get into our home to find out when the _Mongolia_ was sailing, and if the ship was to be armed. The first spy came up the back stairs in the guise of an employe engaged in delivering household supplies. He accomplished nothing, and the incident was dismissed from our minds, but the second spy came up the front stairs and effected an entrance, and this event roused us to the dangers around Captain Rice even in his own country and showed the intense determination of the Germans to prevent, if they could, any more big cargoes of munitions reaching England on the _Mongolia_. Our second visitor was a man who had been an officer in the German Army years before. After leaving Germany he came to the United States and became a citizen.

[Sidenote: A German-American turns German spy.]

In August, 1914, when the Huns invaded Belgium, he became all German again and returned to Europe to serve with the German Army on the French front, from which region he was ordered by the German Government back to the United States, where his command of English and knowledge of the country made him valuable to the propaganda and spy groups here. All this and much more I found out shortly after his visit, but the afternoon he called I (I was alone at the time) received him without suspicion, since he said he came to pay his respects to Captain Rice, whom he had known in China.

[Sidenote: Deceiving the spy.]

It was not until his apparently casual questions about the time of the _Mongolia's_ sailing and whether she was to be armed became annoying that "I woke up," and looking attentively at this over-curious visitor, I encountered a look of such cold hostility that with a shock I realized I was dealing with a spy, one who was probably armed, and who appeared determined to get the information he sought. In a few seconds of swift thinking I decided the best thing to do was to make him believe that Captain Rice himself did not know whether his ship was going out again, and that no one could tell what course of action the ship owners would take. After forty minutes of probing for information he departed, convinced there was no information to be had from me.

[Sidenote: How signals could be sent by German agents.]

It was ascertained that his New York home was in an apartment house on the highest point of land in Manhattan. In this same house there lived another German, who received many young men, all Teutons, as visitors, some of whom spent much time with him on the roof. The possibility of their signaling out to sea from this elevation is too obvious to be dwelt on, and it is beyond doubt that some of the submarines' most effective work at this time and later was due to the activities of these German agents allowed at large by our too-trustful laws of citizenship.

So exact and timely was much of the information these spies secured that the _Mongolia_ on one of her voyages to England picked up a wireless message sent in the _Mongolia's_ own secret code, saying that the _Montana_ was sinking, giving her position, and asking the _Mongolia_ to come to her rescue, but it had happened that when the _Mongolia_ left New York Harbor at the beginning of this very voyage one of her officers had noticed the _Montana_ lying in the harbor.

[Sidenote: _Mongolia_ is armed with three 6-inch guns.]

When the _Mongolia_ returned on March 30, 1917, from this unarmed voyage she was given three six-inch guns, two forward and one aft, and a gun crew from the U. S. S. _Texas_, under Lieutenant Bruce R. Ware, who had already made his mark in gunnery.

The _Mongolia_ left New York on her tenth voyage April 7 with the following officers:

[Sidenote: The officers on the voyage.]