TRUE STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR

TRUE STORIES
OF THE
GREAT WAR

TALES OF ADVENTURE—HEROIC DEEDS—EXPLOITS
TOLD BY THE SOLDIERS, OFFICERS, NURSES,
DIPLOMATS, EYE WITNESSES
Collected in Six Volumes
From Official and Authoritative Sources
(See Introductory to Volume I)
VOLUME II
Editor-in-Chief
FRANCIS TREVELYAN MILLER (Litt. D., LL.D.)
Editor of The Search-Light Library
1917
REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
NEW YORK

Copyright, 1917, by
REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY

CONTENTS

This collection of stories for VOLUME II has been selected by the Board of Editors, according to the plan outlined in "Introductory" to Volume I for preserving the "Best Stories of the War" from the most authentic sources in Europe and America. These pages record 144 personal adventures and episodes told by twenty-four Diplomatists, Attachées, Aviators, Naval Officers, French Mothers, German Spies, Soldiers and Eye-Witnesses. Full credit is given in every instance to the original source.

VOLUME II—TWENTY-FOUR STORY-TELLERS—144 EPISODES

British Official Photo, by International Film Service.
BASEBALL PLAYERS AND CRICKETERS MAKE
GOOD GRENADE THROWERS
Position No. 1 in Bombing

THE HELL OF "LIQUID FIRE" WHICH HAS BECOME A REGULAR PART OF WAR

AN AMERICAN "BEHIND THE SCENES IN WARRING GERMANY"

Told by Edward Lyell Fox, Special Correspondent with the Kaiser's Armies and in Berlin

This vivid and authentic narrative covering five months of thrilling experience with the Kaiser's Armies in France, Belgium, Austria, Russia and Germany, is the first hand impressions of an American writer whose special credentials from the German Government enabled him to go everywhere and see everything through official courtesies not extended to other observers in the field. Mr. Fox has interviewed the Kings of Bavaria and Saxony, the Crown Prince, General von Hindenberg, the Governor General of Belgium, and the President of the Reichstag. He has witnessed the campaigning at close range in the trenches at Arras and Ypres, has lived with the German officers at headquarters, has surveyed the battlefield from an aeroplane and a Zeppelin and has enjoyed the unique sensations of scouting under the sea in a submarine, and as a final unprecedented experience has covered with an official escort the whole length of General von Hindenberg's battle line in Russia. One chapter of his experiences is here recorded from his book: "Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany," by courtesy of his publishers, Robert M. McBride and Company, New York: Copyright 1915.

[1] I—STORY OF A NIGHT ON THE BALTIC SEA

In the lingering twilight, the Baltic's choppy swells turned dark and over the bow I saw a vague gray strip of land—Germany! I was at the gateway of war.

For two hours the railway ferry had plowed between the mines that strew the way to Denmark with potential death, and as slowly the houses of Warnemunde appeared in shadow against the darkening day, some one touched my arm.

"Safe now."

He was the courier. He had traveled with me from New York to Copenhagen, a bland, reserved young man, with a caution beyond his years. I had come to know he was making the trip as a German courier, and he was an American with no Teutonic blood in his veins! Knowing the ropes, he had suggested that he see me through to Berlin.

"It's good we came over the Baltic," he remarked, "instead of making that long trip through Jutland. We save eight hours."

"Yes," I agreed, "nothing like slipping in the back door."

And being new to it then, and being very conscious of certain letters I carried, and of the power implied in the documents which I knew he carried, I wondered what the frontier guard would do. During the two hours we ferried from the Danish shore the passengers talked in a troubled way of military search given every one at Warnemunde and I smiled to myself in a reassuring way. Yes, they would be searched, poor devils!... But the courier and I? I wondered if the German Lieutenant at Warnemunde would ask us to take coffee with him. I even took out my watch. No, it could hardly be done, for by the time the soldiers had finished searching all these passengers the train would be leaving. Too bad! Coffee and a chat with some other lieutenant, then.

"Yes," the courier was saying as the ferry docked and we caught, under the glint of the sentries' rifles, a glimpse of the Landwehr red and blue, "it will be so easy here—just a formality, whereas if we had taken the other route it no doubt would have been harder. You see," he explained, "when a train crosses the Kiel canal a soldier is posted in every compartment, the window shades are pulled down and the passengers are warned not to look out on penalty of instant death. Of course that is necessary for military reasons. Naturally the whole inspection at that frontier is more severe because of the Kiel canal."

By this time the big boat had been made fast to a long railroad pier and as we crossed the gang plank we made out in the bluish haze of an arc lamp, a line of soldiers who seemed to be herding the passengers into what appeared to be a long wooden shed newly built. Crowds are the same the world over, so no one held back, all pushing, luggage and passports in hand, into the frame structure built, I realized, for purposes of military inspection.

II—STORY OF THE GUARDS AT GATES TO GERMANY

Sluggishly the mass moved forward. Presently I saw it divide half-way down the room, to pause before two openings at which six soldiers waited, like ticket takers in a circus. I was near enough now to observe the lantern light dimly shining upon two crude desk tops, slanting down from the wall which gave entrance through a doorway to a larger room beyond; and everywhere gleamed the glint of gun barrels, the red and blue or gray of military hats, while an increasing flow of German, punctuated with "Donnerwetter!" and "Das ist genug," was heard above the shuffle of feet and the thumping of trunks and bags on the counters in the room beyond. I wondered what two men in civilian clothes were doing among the soldiers; I saw them dart about, notebooks in hand. Later I learned more of these men who seemed to have it in their power to make the passengers they challenged either comfortable or uncomfortable.

And then it was my turn. Having seen the passenger in front throw both hands over his head, unconsciously inviting the kind of search given a criminal, I decided such submissiveness a blunder. As I expected, the soldier was a perfectly sane human being who did not begin punching a revolver against me—which certain printed words I had read in New York implied was the usual prelude to a German searching party—rather this soldier most courteously asked to see my wallet. I gave it to him. I would have given him anything. Our coöperation was perfect. There was no need for me to bring my exhaustive knowledge of the German language into play. Talking fluently with my hands, now and then uttering "danke," I tried to assist his search, meanwhile hopelessly looking about for the courier. I was depending not only upon his fluent German but also upon his superior knowledge of the situation to help me to pass serenely through this ordeal. Alas, the crowd hid him.

Suddenly my soldier grunted something. Until now we had been getting along splendidly and I could not conceal my surprise when he took from my wallet a handful of letters and stared at them in bewilderment. The more he stared the more his regard for me seemed to vanish. Although he could not understand English he could recognize a proper name, for the letters bore the addresses of decidedly influential men in Germany. They challenged his suspicion. Thoroughly puzzled he opened the letters and tried to read them. When he compared my passport with a letter I saw his face light up. I realized that he had recognized my name in the contents. Whereupon, greatly relieved, assured now that everything was all right, I held out my hand for both letters and wallet. Not yet. A rumble of words and the soldier called one of those busy civilians with the notebooks.

This person spoke a little English. The letters interested him. Where had I found them?... My spine began to feel cold. I replied that they had been given me in New York and remembering that I had the courier to rely on, I suggested that they have a word with him. It was then that I heard an excited deluge of words and, glancing over my shoulder, I observed that the courier was thoroughly flanked and surrounded by five Landwehr who apparently were much in earnest about something. Concluding that some cog had slipped I racked my wits to make the best of what was rapidly becoming a difficult situation.

The soldier having turned me over to the civilian I noticed several suspicious glances in my direction, and blessed the luck that had impelled me to go to the American Legation and the German Consulate in Copenhagen for visés. That the civilian who was taking such an interest in me belonged to the secret service, I was certain. I appealed to his sense of discretion.

"Your passport seems all right," he thoughtfully observed, and opened a little book. "Where are you going?"

I told him to Hamburg but could not tell him where I would stay, for the excellent reason that not the name of a single Hamburg hotel was known to me.

"Only for a few days, though," I said, adding hopefully; "after that I go to Berlin to Hotel Adlon."

As fast as his pencil could move he wrote the address in his book.

"These letters," he said reluctantly, tapping them on his hand, "I must take now. If everything is all right, they will be sent to you in Berlin."

"But it is important that I have them," I protested, "they are my introductions. You cannot tell me how long I may have to wait for them? You can see from them that I am a responsible person known to your people."

"I know," he replied, "but they are written in English, and to bring letters written in English into Germany is forbidden. I am sorry."

He was thus politely relieving me of all my credentials when I happened to think that in my inner waistcoat pocket lay a letter I had yet to show them—a communication so important to me that I had kept it separate from the others. Moreover I remembered it was sealed and that properly used it might save the day. It was worth a trial.

Realizing that the thing had to be staged I impressively drew the police spy aside and employing the familiar "stage business" of side glances and exaggerated caution I slowly took the note—it was a mere letter of introduction to the Foreign Office—from my waistcoat. If the soldier's eyes had opened wide at the other addresses, the police agent's now fairly bulged. Handing him the envelope I pointed to what was typed in the upper left-hand corner—Kaiserliche Deutsche Botschaft, Washington, D. C.—and simply said "Verstehen sie?"

He verstehened. Being an underling he understood so well that after a few moments he returned all the letters he had appropriated and instantly changing his manner, he facilitated the rest of the inspection. After my baggage was examined by more soldiers (and those soldiers did their duty, even going through the pockets of clothes in my trunks) I was told I might go.

"Gute reise," the police agent called—"Good journey."

Although treated with all courtesy I was afraid somebody might change his mind, so hurrying out of the last room of the long wooden shed I proceeded down the platform to the train at a pace that must have shown signs of breaking into a run. There in my compartment the thoughts that came to me were in this order:

There must be reason for such a rigid inspection; no doubt spies must have been caught recently trying to enter Germany at Warnemunde.

If I hadn't lost the courier in the crowd there would have been plain sailing.

III—STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS PAPERS

The minutes passed. It was nearly time for the train to start. Where was the courier? Presently, rather pale, nervous in speech, but as reserved and cool as ever he limply entered the compartment and threw himself on the cushions.

"They took everything," he announced. "All they left me was a pair of pajamas."

"What! You mean they have your papers?"

"All of them," he smiled. "Likewise a trunk full of letters and a valise. Oh, well, they'll send them on. They took my address. Gad, they stripped me through!"

I began laughing. The courier could see no mirth in the situation.

"You," I gasped, "you, who by all rights should have paraded through, from you they take everything while they let me pass."

"Do you mean to say," he exclaimed, "that they didn't take your letters?"

"Not one," I grinned.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he said.

Locked in the compartment we nervously watched the door, half expecting that the police spy would come back for us. We could not have been delayed more than a few minutes, but it seemed hours, before, with German regard for comfort, the train glided out of the shed. It must have been trying on my companion's good humor, but the absurdity of stripping a courier of everything he carried, was irresistible. Perhaps it was our continued laughter that brought the knock on the door.

Pushing aside the curtains we saw outside—for it was one of the new German wagons with a passageway running the entire length of one side of the car—a tall, broad-shouldered, lean man with features and expression both typical and unmistakable.

"An Englishman!"

We saw him smile and shake his head. I hesitatingly let fall the curtain and looked at the courier.

"Let him in," he said. "He's got the brand of an English university boy all over him. We'll have a chat with him. You don't mind, do you?"

"Mind!" In my eagerness I banged back the compartment doors with a crash that brought down the conductor. I saw my companion hastily corrupt that official whose murmured "Bitte schon" implied an un-Teutonic disregard for the fact that he had done something verboten by admitting a second-class passenger into a first-class coupé; and the stranger entered.

We were gazing upon a strikingly handsome, fair-haired man not yet thirty. His eyes twinkled when he said that he supposed we were Americans. His manner and intonation made me stare at him.

"And you?" we finally asked.

"I'm going first to Berlin, then to Petrograd," he said, perhaps avoiding our question. "Business trip."

We chatted on, the obvious thought obsessing me. Of course the man was an English spy. But how absurd! If his face did not give him away to any one who knew—and my word for it, those police spies do know!—he would be betrayed by his mannerisms. His accent would instantly cry out the English in him. Of what could Downing Street be thinking? It was sending this man to certain death. One began to feel sorry for him.

Feeling the intimacy brought by the common experience at Warnemunde, I presently said:

"You certainly have your nerve with you, traveling in Germany with your accent."

"Why?" he laughed. "A neutral is safe."

Expecting he would follow this up by saying that he was an American I looked inquiring and when he sought to turn the subject I asked:

"Neutral? What country?"

"Denmark," he smiled.

"But your accent?" I persisted.

"I do talk a bit English, do I not? I had quite a go at it, though; lived in London a few years, you know."

Nerve? I marveled at it. Stark foolhardy courage, or did a secret commission from Downing Street make this the merest commonplace of duty? Charming company, he hurried along the time with well-told anecdotes of the Russian capital and Paris, in both of which places he said he had been since the war began. As we drew near Lübeck, where a thirty-five minute stop was allowed for dinner in the station, and the stranger showed no signs of going back to his own compartment, I could see that the courier was becoming annoyed. Relapsing into silence he only broke it to reply to the "Dane" in monosyllables; finally, to my surprise, the courier became downright rude. As the stranger, from the start, had been extremely courteous, this rudeness surprised me, more so, as it seemed deliberate. Bludgeoned by obvious hints the stranger excused himself, and as soon as he was gone my companion leaned towards me.

"You were surprised at my rudeness," he said, and then in an undertone; "it was deliberate."

"I saw that. But why?"

"Because," he explained, "seeing we are Americans that fellow wanted to travel with us all the way through. He must have known that American company is the best to be seen in over here these days. He might have made trouble for us."

"Then you think he's English?"

"Think! Why, they must have let him through at Warnemunde for a reason. He has a Danish passport right enough. I saw it in the inspection room. But I'll bet you anything there's a police spy in this train, undoubtedly in the same compartment with him."

One felt uncomfortable. One thought that those police spies must dislike one even more now.

"That means we may be suspected as being confederates," I gloomily suggested.

Whether he was getting back for my having guyed him about losing his papers I do not know, but the courier said we probably were suspected. Whereupon the book I tried to read became a senseless jumble of words and our compartment door became vastly more interesting. When would it open to admit the police spy?... Confound the luck! Everything breaking wrong.

IV—STORY OF A RIDE FROM LÜBECK TO HAMBURG

But at Lübeck nothing happened—nothing to us. A train load of wounded had just come in and our hearts jumped at the sight of the men in the gray-green coats of the firing line, slowly climbing the long iron steps from the train platforms. Hurrying, we saw them go clumping down a long, airy waiting room and as they approached the street their hobbling steps suddenly quickened to the sharper staccato of the canes upon which they leaned. Hurrying too, we saw there a vague mass of pallid faces in a dense crowd; some one waved a flag;—it stuck up conspicuously above that throng;—some one darted forth;—"Vater!"—"Liebes Mütterchen!"

Past the burly Landsturm, who was trying his utmost to frown his jolly face into threatening lines that would keep back the crowd, a woman was scurrying. One of the big gray-green wounded men caught her in his arm—the other arm hung in a black sling—and she clung to him as though some one might take him away, and because she was a woman, she wept in her moment of happiness. Her Mann had come home....

Forgetting the dinner we were to have eaten in the Lübeck station, we finally heeded a trainman's warning and turned back to our car. There remained etched in my mind the line of pallid, apprehensive faces, the tiny waving flags, the little woman and the big man. It was my first sight of war.

From Lübeck to Hamburg the ride was uneventful. The hour was not late and beyond remarking that the towns through which we passed were not as brilliantly lighted as usual, the courier could from the car window observe no difference between the Germany of peace and of war. Here and there we noticed bridges and trestles patroled by Landwehr and outside our compartment we read the handbill requesting every passenger to aid the government in preventing spies throwing explosives from the car windows. From the conductor we learned that there had been such attempts to delay the passage of troop trains. Whereupon we congratulated ourselves upon buying the conductor, as we had the compartment to ourselves. One thought of what would have happened had there been an excitable German in with us and while the train was crossing a bridge, we had innocently opened a window for air!

It was almost ten when the close, clustered lights of Hamburg closed in against the trackside and we caught our first glimpse of the swarming Bahnhof. Soldiers everywhere. The blue of the Reservists, the gray-green of the Regulars—a shifting tide of color swept the length of the long platforms, rising against the black slopes of countless staircases, overrunning the vast halls above, increasing, as car after car emptied its load. And then, as at Lübeck, we saw white bandages coming down under cloth-covered helmets and caps, or arms slung in black slings; the slightly wounded were coming in from the western front.

All this time we had forgotten the Englishman, and it was with a start that we recalled him.

"If he spots us," advised my companion, "we've got to hand him the cold shoulder. Mark my words, he'll try to trail along to the same hotel and stick like a leech."

Again he was right. At the baggage room the Englishman overtook us, suggesting that we make a party of it—he knew a gay café—first going to the hotel. He suggested the Atlantic. Bluntly he was informed we were visiting friends, but nothing would do then but we must agree to meet him in, say, an hour. Not until he found it an impossibility did he give us up and finally, with marvelous good nature, he said good night. The last I saw of him was his broad back disappearing through a door into a street.

The courier nudged me.

"Quick," he whispered, "look,—the man going out the next door."

Before I could turn I knew whom he meant. I saw only the man's profile before he, too, disappeared into the street; but it was a face difficult to forget, for it had been close to me at Warnemunde; it was the face of the police spy.

"I told you they purposely let him get through," continued my friend. "That police fellow must have come down on the train from Warnemunde. I tell you it's best not to pick up with any one these days. Suppose we had fallen for that Englishman and gone to a café with him to-night—a nice mess!"

It was in a restaurant a few hours later that I saw my first Iron Cross, black against a gray-green coat and dangling from a button. In Bieber's, a typical better class café of the new German type, luxurious with its marble walls and floors, and with little soft rugs underfoot and colored wicker tables and chairs, one felt the new spirit of this miracle of nations. On the broad landing of a wide marble staircase an orchestra played soldier songs and above the musicians, looking down on his people, loomed a bust of Wilhelm II, Von Gottes Gnaden, Kaiser von Deutschland. About him, between the flags of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, blazed the black, white, and red, and there where all might read, hung the proclamation of August to the German people. We had read it through to the last line: "Forward with God who will be with us as he was with our Fathers!"—when we heard an excited inflection in the murmurings from the many tables—"Das Eiserne Kreuz!" And we saw the officer from whose coat dangled the black maltese cross, outlined in silver. His cheeks flushed, proud of a limping, shot-riddled leg, proud of his Emperor's decoration, but prouder still that he was a German; he must have forgotten all of battle and suffering during that brief walk between the tables. Cheers rang out, then a song, and when finally the place quieted everybody stared at that little cross of black as though held by some hypnotic power.

So! We were Americans, he said when we finally were presented. That was good. We—that is—I had come to write of the war as seen from the German side. Good, sehr gut! He had heard the Allies, especially the English,—Verfluchte Englanderschwein!—were telling many lies in the American newspapers. How could any intelligent man believe them?

In his zeal for the German cause his Iron Cross, his one shattered leg, the consciousness that he was a hero, all were forgotten. Of course I wanted to hear his story—the story of that little piece of metal hanging from the black and white ribbon on his coat—but tenaciously he refused. That surprised me until I knew Prussian officers.

So we left the man with the Iron Cross, marveling not at his modesty but that it embodied the spirit of the German army; whereas I thought I knew that spirit. But not until the next night, when I left Hamburg behind, where every one was pretending to be busy and the nursemaids and visitors were still tossing tiny fish to the wintering gulls in the upper lake; not until the train was bringing me to Berlin did I understand what it meant. At the stations I went out and walked with the passengers and watched the crowds; I talked with a big business man of Hamburg—bound for Berlin because he had nothing to do in Hamburg; then it was I faintly began to grasp the tremendous emotional upheaval rumbling in every Germanic soul.

V—STORY OF THE SOLDIERS IN BERLIN

My first impression of Berlin was the long cement platform gliding by, a dazzling brilliance of great arc lamps and a rumbling chorus of song. Pulling down the compartment window I caught the words "Wir kämpfen Mann für Mann, für Kaiser and Reich!" And leaning out I could see down at the other end of the Friederichstrasse Station a regiment going to the front.

Flowers bloomed from the long black tubes from which lead was soon to pour; wreaths and garlands hung from cloth-covered helmets; cartridge belts and knapsacks were festooned with ferns. The soldiers were all smoking; cigars and cigarettes had been showered upon them with prodigal hand. Most of them held their guns in one hand and packages of delicacies in the other; and they were climbing into the compartments or hanging out of the windows singing, always singing, in the terrific German way. Later I was to learn that they went into battle with the "Wacht am Rhein" on their lips and a wonderful trust in God in their hearts.

I felt that trust now. I saw it in the confident face of the young private who hung far out of the compartment in order to hold his wife's hand. It was not the way a conscript looks. This soldier's blue eyes sparkled as with a holy cause, and as I watched this man and wife I marveled at their sunny cheer. I saw that each was wonderfully proud of the other and that this farewell was but an incident in the sudden complexity of their lives. The Fatherland had been attacked: her man must be a hero. It was all so easy, so brimming with confidence. Of course he would come back to her.... You believed in the Infinite ordering of things that he would.

Walking on down the platform I saw another young man. They were all young, strapping fellows in their new uniforms of field gray. He was standing beside the train; he seemed to want to put off entering the car until the last minute. He was holding a bundle of something white in his arms, something that he hugged to his face and kissed, while the woman in the cheap furs wept, and I wondered if it was because of the baby she cried, while that other childless young wife had smiled.

Back in the crowd I saw a little woman with white hair; she was too feeble to push her way near the train. She was dabbing her eyes and waving to a big, mustached man who filled a compartment door and who shouted jokes to her. And almost before they all could realize it, the train was slipping down the tracks; the car windows filled with singing men, the long gray platform suddenly shuffling to the patter of men's feet, as though they would all run after the train as far as they could go. But the last car slipped away and the last waving hand fell weakly against a woman's side. They seemed suddenly old, even the young wife, as they slowly walked away. Theirs was not the easiest part to play in the days of awful waiting while the young blood of the nation poured out to turn a hostile country red.

I thought I had caught the German spirit at Lübeck and at the café in Hamburg when the hero of the Iron Cross had declined to tell me his tale; but this sensation that had come with my setting foot on the Berlin station—this was something different. Fifteen hundred men going off to what?—God only knows!—fifteen hundred virile types of this nation of virility; and they had laughed and they had sung, and they had kissed their wives and brothers and babies as though these helpless ones should only be proud that their little household was helping their Fatherland and their Emperor. Self? It was utterly submerged. On that station platform I realized that there is but one self in all Germany to-day and that is the soul of the nation. Nothing else matters; a sacrifice is commonplace. Wonderful? Yes. But then we Americans fought that way at Lexington; any nation can fight that way when it is a thing of the heart; and this war is all of the heart in Germany. As we walked through the station gates I understood why three million Socialists who had fought their Emperor in and out of the Reichstag, suddenly rallied to his side, agreeing "I know no parties, only Germans." I felt as I thought of the young faces of the soldiers, cheerfully starting down into the unknown hell of war, that undoubtedly among their number were Socialists. In this national crisis partisan allegiance counted for nothing, they had ceased dealing with the Fatherland in terms of the mind and gave to it only the heart.

Even in Berlin I realized that war stalks down strange by-paths. It forever makes one feel the incongruous. It disorders life in a monstrous way. I have seen it in an instant make pictures that the greatest artist would have given his life to have done. It likes to deal in contrasts; it is jolting....

With General von Loebell I walked across the Doeberitz camp, which is near Berlin. At Doeberitz new troops were being drilled for the front. We walked towards a dense grove of pines above which loomed the sky, threateningly gray. Between the trees I saw the flash of yellow flags; a signal squad was drilling. Skirting the edge of the woods we came to a huge, cleared indentation where twenty dejected English prisoners were leveling the field for a parade ground. On the left I saw an opening in the trees; a wagon trail wound away between the pines. And then above the rattling of the prisoners' rakes I heard the distant strains of a marching song that brought a lump to my throat. Back there in the woods somewhere, some one had started a song; and countless voices took up the chorus; and through the trees I saw a moving line of gray-green and down the road tramped a company of soldiers. They were all singing and their boyish voices blended with forceful beauty. "In the Heimat! In the Heimat!" It was the favorite medley of the German army.

The prisoners stopped work; unconsciously some of those dispirited figures in British khaki stiffened. And issuing from the woods in squads of fours, all singing, tramped the young German reserves, swinging along not fifteen feet from the prison gang in olive drab—"In the Heimat!" And out across the Doeberitz plains they swung, big and snappy.

"They're ready," remarked General von Loebell. "They've just received their field uniforms."

And then there tramped out of the woods another company, and another, two whole regiments, the last thundering "Die Wacht am Rhein," and we went near enough to see the pride in their faces, the excitement in their eyes; near enough to see the Englishmen, young lads, too, who gazed after the swinging column with a soldier's understanding, but being prisoners and not allowed to talk, they gave no expression to their emotions and began to scrape their rakes over the hard ground....

VI—STORY OF "THE HALL OF AWFUL DOUBT"

I stood on the Dorotheenstrasse looking up at the old red brick building which before the second of August in this year of the world war was the War Academy. I had heard that when tourists come to Berlin they like to watch the gay uniformed officers ascending and descending the long flights of gray steps; for there the cleverest of German military youths are schooled for the General Staff. Like the tourists, I stood across the street to-day and watched the old building and the people ascending or descending the long flights of gray steps. Only I saw civilians, men alone and in groups, women with shawls wrapped around their heads, women with yellow topped boots, whose motors waited beside the curb, and children, clinging to the hands of women, all entering or leaving by the gray gate; some of the faces were happy and others were wet with tears, and still others stumbled along with heavy steps. For this old building on Dorotheenstrasse is no longer the War Academy; it is a place where day after day hundreds assemble to learn the fate of husband, kin or lover. For inside the gray gate sits the Information Bureau of the War Ministry, ready to tell the truth about every soldier in the German army! I, too, went to learn the truth.

I climbed a creaking staircase and went down a creaking hall. I met the Count von Schwerin, who is in charge. I found myself in a big, high-ceilinged room the walls of which were hung with heroic portraits of military dignitaries. My first impression was of a wide arc of desks that circling from wall to wall seemed to be a barrier between a number of gentle-spoken, elderly gentlemen and a vague mass of people that pressed forward. The anxious faces of all these people reminded me of another crowd that I had seen—the crowd outside the White Star offices in New York when the Titanic went down. And I became conscious that the decorations of this room which, the Count was explaining, was the Assembly Hall of the War Academy, were singularly appropriate—the pillars and walls of gray marble, oppressively conveying a sense of coldness, insistent cold, like a tomb, and all around you the subtle presence of death, the death of hopes. It was the Hall of Awful Doubt.

And as I walked behind the circle of desks I learned that these men of tact and sympathy, too old for active service, were doing their part in the war by helping to soften with kindly offices the blow of fate. I stood behind them for some few moments and watched, although I felt like one trespassing upon the privacy of grief. I saw in a segment of the line a fat, plain-looking woman, with a greasy child clinging to her dress, a white-haired man with a black muffler wrapped around his neck, a veiled woman, who from time to time begged one of the elderly clerks to hurry the news of her husband, and then a wisp of a girl in a cheap, rose-colored coat, on whose cheeks two dabs of rouge burned like coals.

Soldiers from the Berlin garrison were used there as runners. At the bidding of the gentle old men they hastened off with the inquiry to one of the many filing rooms and returned with the news. This day there was a new soldier on duty; he was new to the Hall of Awful Doubt.

"I cannot imagine what is keeping him so long," I heard an elderly clerk tell the woman with the veil. "He'll come any minute.... There he is now. Excuse me, please."

And the elderly clerk hurried to meet the soldier, wanting to intercept the news, if it were bad, and break it gently. But as he caught sight of the clerk I saw the soldier click his heels and, as if he were delivering a message to an officer, his voice boomed out: "Tot!" ... Dead!

And the woman with the veil gave a little gasp, a long, low moan, and they carried her to another room; and as I left the gray room, with the drawn, anxious faces pushing forward for their turns at the black-covered desks, I realized the heart-rending sacrifice of the women of France, Belgium, Russia, England, Servia, and Austria, who, like these German mothers, wives, sweethearts, had been stricken down in the moment of hope.

VII—STORY OF A NIGHT IN BERLIN

That night I went to the Jägerstrasse, to Maxim's. The place is everything the name suggests; one of those Berlin cafés that open when the theaters are coming out and close when the last girl has smiled and gone off with the last man. I sat in a white and gold room with a cynical German surgeon, listening to his comments.

"It is the best in town now," he explained. "All the Palais de Danse girls come here. Don't be in a hurry. I know what you want for your articles. You'll see it soon."

Maxim's, like most places of the sort, was methodically banal. But one by one officers strolled in and soon a piano struck up the notes of a patriotic song. When the music began the girls left the little tables where they had been waiting for some man to smile, and swarmed around the piano, singing one martial song upon another, while officers applauded, drank their healths, and asked them to sing again.

Time passed and the girls sang on, flushed and savage as the music crashed to the cadenzas of war. What were the real emotions of these subjects of Germany; had the war genuine thrills for them? I had talked with decent women of all classes about the war; what of the women whose hectic lives had destroyed real values?

"Get one of those girls over here," I told the surgeon, "and ask her what she thinks of the war."

"Do you really mean it?" he said with a cynical smile.

"Surely. This singing interests me. I wonder what's back of it?"

He called one of them. "Why not sing?" Hilda said with a shrug. "What else? There are few men here now and there are fewer every night. What do I think of this war? My officer's gone to the front without leaving me enough to keep up the apartment. Krieg? Krieg ist schrecklich! War is terrible!"

My German friend was laughing.

"War?" he smiled. "And you thought it was going to change that kind."

But I was thinking of the woman with the veil whom I had seen in the Hall of Awful Doubt; and outside the night air felt cool and clean....

But my symbol of Berlin is not these things—not bustling streets filled with motors, swarming with able-bodied men whom apparently the army did not yet need. Its summation is best expressed by the varied sights and emotions of an afternoon in mid-December.

Lodz has fallen; again Hindenburg has swept back the Russian hordes. Black-shawled women call the extras. Berlin rises out of its calmness and goes mad. Magically the cafés fill.... I am walking down a side street. I see people swarming toward a faded yellow brick church. They seem fired with a zealot's praise. I go in after them and see them fall on their knees.... They are thanking Him for the Russian rout.... Wondering I go out. I come to another church. Its aisles are black with bowed backs; the murmur of prayer drones like bees; a robed minister is intoning:

"Oh, Almighty Father, we thank Thee that Thou art with us in our fight for the right; we thank Thee that——"

It is very quiet in there. War seems a thing incredibly far away. The sincerity of these people grips your heart. I feel as I never felt in church before. Something mysteriously big and reverent stirs all around.... Then outside in the street drums rattle, feet thump. A regiment is going to the front! I hurry to see it go by, but back in the church the bowed forms pray on.

(This American observer now leaves Berlin to go to the battle-front with the German armies. He continues to narrate his experiences in some of the world's greatest battles. He tells the first complete account of the great battle of Augustowo Wald in which the Russian army of 240,000 men was annihilated, and how he was a guest of honor at the "Feast of Victory.")

FOOTNOTE:

[1] All numerals throughout this volume relate to the stories herein related—not to chapters in the original book.

THE "EMDEN"—AN EPIC OF THE GREAT WAR

Experiences Aboard a Gallant Little Fighting Ship
By Kapitanleutnant Hellmuth Von Mücke, of His Emperor's Ship, The "Emden"—Translated by Helene S. White

The tale of the Emden is one of the greatest sea stories in all history. Fighting its way through the China Seas, into the Bay of Bengal, and across the Indian Ocean, knowing that sooner or later it must face death, the crew of this gallant ship defeated and captured twenty-four enemy ships, destroying cargoes and property valued at $10,000,000—in two months roving the high seas. The romantic voyage began on September 10th and ended on November 9th, 1914. It was a crew of "jolly good fellows" that sailed under Commander von Müller; their adventures won the admiration not only of their enemies but of the whole world. An authentic story of this epic of the seas is told by Lieutenant Captain von Mücke, of the Emden in a volume relating its exploits. He has also written a book bearing on the adventures of the landing squad in "The Ayesha." There is nothing more sensationally adventuresome in fiction than these voyages. The most improbable romance is outdone by the exploits of the gallant German seamen. Commander von Müller of the Emden is a prisoner of war in England at the time that these accounts are written. Selections are here given from the volume on the Emden, with permission of the publishers, Ritter and Company, Copyright 1917.

[2] I—STORY OF ADVENTURES ON THE YELLOW SEA

"All hands aft," shrilled the whistles of the boatswain's mate through all the ship's decks. Quickly all the officers and crew assembled on the after deck. Everyone knew what it was for.

It was at two o'clock on the afternoon of the second day of August, 1914, while our ship lay far out in the Yellow Sea, that Captain von Mueller appeared on the poop, holding in his hand a slip of paper such as is used for messages by wireless. In eager expectancy three hundred pairs of eyes were fixed upon the lips of our Commander as he began to speak.

"The following wireless message has just been received from Tsingtao: 'On August first, his Majesty, the Emperor, ordered the mobilization of the entire land and naval forces of the Empire. Russian troops have crossed the border into Germany. As a consequence, the Empire is at war with Russia and with France...."

Three cheers for his Majesty, the Emperor, rang out over the broad surface of the Yellow Sea. Then came the order that sent every man to his post,—"Clear ship for action."

And so it had come to pass—the war was upon us!...

"Guns ready!" "Torpedo service ready!" "Engines and auxiliary engines ready!" "Leak service ready!" "Steering service ready!" "Signal and wireless service ready!"

Rapidly, one after the other, the reports from all over the ship were now coming in, and demanded my attention to the exclusion of all further thought and reflection. A quick tour of inspection through the ship assured me that all was in readiness, and I could report to our Commander, "The ship is clear for action."

At a speed of fifteen nautical miles we were proceeding toward the Strait of Tchusima. When darkness came on, the war watch was begun on the Emden, which is done in the following manner: Half of the men of the crew remain awake and on duty at their posts,—at the guns, at the searchlights and lookouts, in the torpedo room, in the engine and fire rooms, etc., while the others are allowed to go to sleep with their clothes on, and ready, at a moment's notice, to get to their posts. The commander of the ship takes charge of one of these watches, and the other one is in command of the first officer.

After passing through the Strait of Tchusima, the Emden steered northward. There was no moon, and the night was pitch black. It was too dark to see anything even in our immediate vicinity. We were, of course, traveling with all lights screened. Not a ray of light was allowed to escape from the ship, nor the least bit of smoke from her funnels. There was a moderate sea running, and the water was unusually bright with phosphorescence. The water churned up by our screws stretched away behind the ship in a shimmering wake of light green. The waves dashing high up against the bow, and the water tumbling and breaking against the sides, splashed the whole ship with a phosphorescent glitter, and made her appear as though she had been dipped into molten gold of a greenish hue. Occasionally, there appeared in the water large shining spots of great length, so that a number of times the lookouts reported undersea boats in sight.

At four o'clock in the morning the port war watch, which I commanded, was relieved. The Commander now took charge. The day was just dawning. I had just gone to my cabin, and had lain down to rest, when I was wakened by the shrill call of the alarm bells and the loud noise of many hurrying feet. "Clear ship for action," the order went echoing from room to room. In an instant everyone was at his post. Were we really to be so fortunate as to fall in, on our very first day, with one of the Russian or French ships that had been reported to us as being in the vicinity of Vladivostok?

By the trembling of the ship we could tell that the engine had been put on high speed. In the gray of the early morning we sighted, ahead of us and a little to the right, a vessel somewhat larger than our own, which was also traveling with screened lights, and looked like a man-of-war. Our commander ordered a course toward her at high speed. Hardly had she seen us when she turned hard about, took the contrary course, and ran away from us, the dense column of smoke rising from her funnels indicating that her engines were working at maximum power. The pursued ship took a course directly toward the Japanese Islands, lying about ten miles distant. A black cloud of smoke streamed behind her, rested on the water, and, for a while, hid her from sight entirely. We could see nothing of her but the mast tops, and so found it impossible to discover the nature of the vessel with which we were dealing. That she was not a neutral was evident enough from her behavior. Therefore, after her with full speed!

II—STORY OF CAPTURE OF THE RUSSIAN "RJESAN"

Meanwhile, daylight had come. The signal: "Stop at once!" was flying at our foremast. When this demand was not complied with after a reasonable time, we fired a blind shell, and when this also failed to have the desired effect, we sent a quick reminder in the form of a couple of sharp shots after her. The fleeing ship could no longer hope to reach the neutral waters of Japan. When our shots fell into the water close beside her, she stopped, turned, and set the Russian colors in all her topmasts. So, on the very first night after the war had begun, we had taken our first prize. It was the Russian volunteer steamer Rjesan. In time of peace she had plied as a passenger steamer between Shanghai and Vladivostok. She was now to be armed with guns and to serve as an auxiliary cruiser. She was a speedy and very new ship, built in the German ship yards of Schichau.

In the sea that was running, the Emden and her prize rolled badly. It was therefore no easy matter to get the cutter, that was to carry the prize crew from the Emden to the Rjesan, into the water. There was danger that it would be pounded to pieces against the sides of the ships. However, everything passed off satisfactorily. In a short time we saw the officer of the prize crew, followed by a number of men, all armed with pistols, climbing up the gangway ladder. The Russian flag was hauled down, and in its place the German colors were run up.

As the steamer was one that could serve our own purposes excellently well—she could be transformed into a very good German auxiliary cruiser—our commander decided not to destroy her, but instead to take her to Tsingtao. At a speed of fifteen miles we made our way southward. Behind us, in our wake, followed the Rjesan. A commanding officer with a prize crew of twelve men remained aboard of her, to make certain that the service of the ship and the engines, etc., would be according to our wishes.

From the newspapers, we had learned that the main body of the French fleet, consisting of the armored cruisers Montcalm and Dupleix, besides a number of torpedo boat destroyers, was lying somewhere off Vladivostok. With these ships the Emden must not be allowed to come in contact by daylight. As we were rounding the southern extremity of Corea, the look-out in the top suddenly sang out, "Seven smoke clouds in sight astern!" To make quite sure of it, the Commander sent me aloft. I, too, could distinctly see seven separate columns of smoke, together with the upper structure of a small vessel, the one nearest to us, just above the horizon. Upon hearing my report, the commander gave orders to change our course. We swept a wide circle, and so avoided the enemy. Without meeting with hindrance of any kind, we arrived at Tsingtao.

On the way we caught up an interesting wireless message. The Reuter Agency, so celebrated for its rigid adherence to facts, was sending a telegram abroad, informing the credulous world that the Emden had been sunk. How many sympathetic people must have shuddered as they read,—and so did we, of course!

During the following night, our prize occasioned us some further trouble. Naturally, her lights, as well as our own, had to be screened. It was a much easier matter to give orders to that effect, however, than to see to it that they were carried out. On the steamer were several women passengers, who, from the outset, were filled with mortal terror as to what the barbarous Germans would do with them. Most of them were fat Russian Jewesses. Every few minutes they would turn on the electric lights in their cabins, so that finally there was nothing left for the officer of the prize crew to do but to have the electric light cable in the engine capped....

III—IN THE HARBOR AT TSINGTAO

At Tsingtao our commander found orders awaiting him from the Admiral of our squadron, Count von Spee, who, with the armored cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the small cruiser, Nürnberg, was in the South Pacific, steering northward. The Emden's orders were to join this squadron at a stated point of meeting in the South Pacific.

At sunrise on the following day the Emden left Tsingtao in the company of a large number of German ships, all bound for the south, where they were to join the Admiral's squadron.

With fair weather and a smooth sea the Emden slipped out of the harbor moles. Our band played "The Watch on the Rhine." The entire crew was on deck, singing as the band played. Cheers rang from ship to shore, and back again. Everyone was confident and in high spirits.

Cautiously the Emden made her way between the mines which barred the entrance to the harbor. The sun had just risen. Behind us lay Tsingtao, the gem of the far East, brightened by the golden-red beams of the young day—a picture of peace....

As we gazed, there was not one of us who was not conscious of a strange tugging at his heart. But duty called with an imperative voice. Therefore, farewell to the fair scene we were leaving behind us! For us, it was, "Onward, to the South!"

We were accompanied by the Markomannia, the other ships taking different courses. The Markomannia remained our faithful companion for a number of months.

On our way to the South Pacific we learned, by wireless, of the rupture in the relations between Germany and England, and of the latter's declaration of war.

A few days later we learned of Japan's remarkable ultimatum, without its causing us any special anxiety. It might as well all be done up at one and the same time, was the general feeling among us.

On the twelfth of August, in the evening, we had reached the vicinity of the island where we were to join our cruiser squadron, and soon we fell in with some of the ships that were serving as outposts. As we approached the group of assembled warships, we saw the stanch cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau lying in the midst of them, each with a coal tender alongside, and engaged in coaling. To the left lay the slender Nürnberg, also busy with taking on coal. Distributed about the bay, many larger and smaller auxiliary ships and tenders of the squadron could be seen. The Emden was ordered to an anchorage close beside the flagship, in the right-hand half of the bay. Rousing cheers were sent from deck to deck, as we passed by the other ships, and soon our anchor rattled seaward, and to the bottom,—it was to be the last time for many a long day.

Our commander went aboard the flagship to report to the Admiral of the squadron, and to submit to him the proposal that the Emden be detached from the squadron, and be sent to the Indian Ocean, to raid the enemy's commerce.

On the following day the squadron steered an easterly course, the ships keeping a long line, one behind the other, with all the coal tenders bringing up the rear. The Admiral had, for the present, reserved his decision with regard to our Commander's proposition, and we were all impatient to learn what it would be. At last, toward noon, signal flags were seen running up on the flagship. They read, "Emden detached. Wish you good luck!" Sweeping a wide curve, the Emden withdrew from the long line of warships, a signal conveying her Commander's thanks for the good wishes of the Admiral fluttering at her mast head. There was still another signal from the commanding officer of the squadron, ordering the Markomannia to attend the Emden. Ere long we had lost sight of the other ships of the squadron, which now were steering a course contrary to our own, and we all knew full well that we should never meet again.

These days were strenuous ones for our men, as the war watch was continued without intermission, in order that the ship might be ready at a moment's notice for any emergency. There was no opportunity to give the crew even a short season of rest. For us, there was not one harbor of refuge where we might lie free from danger....

To reach the open sea, our course now led us through a number of narrow water ways. These straits swarmed with fishing boats and other small sea craft. The nights were bright with moonlight, which made it possible to recognize the Emden at a considerable distance. To meet so many boats was a source of anxiety to our Commander, who expressed himself as apprehensive that our presence in these waters, and our probable course also, would be noised about by some of these vessels. All English ships have either two or four funnels, whereas the Emden had three.

The happy thought came to me that much might be gained if the Emden were provided with a fourth funnel....

Out of wooden laths and sail-cloth we soon had constructed a funnel of most elegant appearance, and, when it had been placed in position, the Emden was the exact counterpart of the British cruiser Yarmouth....

IV—STORY OF EXPLOITS ON THE BAY OF BENGAL

In this way, by the end of the first week in September, we had got as far as the Bay of Bengal. For a period of about five days an English man-of-war, most likely the Minotaur, kept a course close beside our own, which we learned from the frequent wireless messages that we caught up. Gradually, her messages became less distinct, and then ceased altogether. At no time had she come within sight of us.

It was not until the night of September tenth that our work began in real earnest. A steamer came in sight, and we approached her very cautiously, so as to give her a closer inspection. Quietly, and with lights screened, we crept up behind our intended victim. Our Commander ordered an approach to within one hundred meters of the steamer, which was peacefully and unsuspectingly proceeding on her course, and, after the manner of merchantmen, was paying little heed to anything except what was ahead of her and showing lights. Suddenly, through the stillness of the perfectly calm night, rang out our challenge through the speaking trumpet:

"Stop at once! Do not use your wireless! We are sending a boat!"

The steamer did not seem to realize what was meant by this order. Perhaps she did not expect, here in the heart of Indian waters, to run across an enemy's man-of-war. Or she may have thought it the voice of a sea god, and therefore no concern of hers. At any rate, she continued on her way undeterred. So, to explain the situation, we sent a blank shot whizzing past her. This made an impression, and, pell mell, her engines were reversed—we truly regretted the start we had given her dozing engineers—and with her siren she howled out her willingness to obey our order.

One of our cutters, with a prize crew in it, glided swiftly to water, and thence to the steamer, of which we thus took possession. An unpleasant surprise was now in store for us, for soon there came flashing back to us a signal given by one of the men of our prize crew: "This is the Greek steamer, Pontoporros." ...

The Pontoporros was loaded with coal from India, the very dirtiest coal in the world....

I had, in jest, entreated our Commander to capture, as our first prize, a ship loaded with soap, instead of which we now got this cargo of dirty Indian coal. My disappointment was so great that I could not refrain from reproachfully calling our Commander's attention to it, and, with a laugh, he promised to do his best toward providing us with the much-needed soap. And he kept his word.

On the morning of the eleventh of September, only a few hours after we had made the first addition to our squadron, there appeared, forward, a large steamer, which, in the supposition that we were an English man-of-war, manifested her delight at meeting us by promptly running up a large English flag while still a long way off. We could not help wondering what sort of expression her captain's face wore when we ran up the German colors, and politely requested him to remain with us for a while.

The steamer hailed from Calcutta, had been requisitioned to serve as an English transport for carrying troops from Colombo to France, and was fitted out with an abundance of excellent supplies....

We also found aboard the ship a very handsome race horse. By a shot through the head, this noble creature was spared the agony of death by drowning. But our sympathy was hardly sufficient to extend to all the many mounts for artillery, which occupied as many neatly numbered stalls that had been built into the ship. They had to be left to become the prey of sharks a half hour later. The ship's crew was sent aboard our "junkman."...

During the next few days our business flourished. It was carried on in this way: As soon as a steamer came in sight, she was stopped, and one of our officers, accompanied by ten men, was sent aboard her. It was their duty to get the steamer ready to be sunk, and to arrange for the safe transfer of the passengers and crew. As a rule, while we were still occupied with this, the mast head of the next ship would appear above the horizon. There was no need of giving chase. When the next steamer had come near enough to us, the Emden steamed off to meet her, and sent her a friendly signal by which she was induced to join our other previously captured ships. Again an officer and men were sent off, boarded her, got her ready to be sunk, and attended to the transfer of all hands aboard her, etc., and, by the time this was accomplished, the mast head of the third ship had usually come in sight. Again the Emden went to meet her, and so the game went on....

V—SEA TALES FROM CEYLON TO CALCUTTA

In this way we cleaned up the whole region from Ceylon to Calcutta. In addition to our old companion, the Markomannia, we were now accompanied by the Greek collier Pontoporros, which, in the meanwhile, had relinquished the rôle of "junkman" to the Cabigna. The latter was an English steamer carrying an American cargo, the destruction of which would have resulted in nothing but unnecessary charges.

The Cabigna continued with us for several days, although she, the Markomannia, and the Pontoporros were not the only companions of the Emden during that night. We had captured more prizes, whose destruction, however, was deferred to the following day in consideration of the passengers, because of the darkness, and the high seas running. All told, we had six attendants that night. Three of these disappeared in the sea on the coming morning, and the Cabigna was discharged to land her passengers.

Aboard the Cabigna were the wife and little child of the captain. The position at sea, where the other steamers had been sent to the bottom, was so far distant from the nearest shore that it would have been quite impossible for any boats to have reached land. Before the captain of the Cabigna had been told that he would be allowed to proceed, and in the assumption that his ship also was to be sunk, he begged that he might be allowed to take a revolver with him for the protection of his wife and child....

When the captain was informed that it was not our purpose to destroy his ship, he was overcome with joy. I, myself, was aboard his ship for several hours, and he could not find words sufficient to express his gratitude, begging me to convey his thanks to our Commander, and finally handing me a letter to deliver to him.

I had a long conversation with the captain's wife, also, and she expressed sentiments much like those contained in her husband's letter to our Commander. When she discovered, from something I said, that my oil-skins were going to pieces, she pressed me to accept her husband's. Besides this, upon learning that our supply of smoking tobacco was getting low, she urged us to take as many cigarettes and as much smoking tobacco with us as we could carry. These, she declared, were but trifling gifts in comparison with the gratitude she felt. It is hardly necessary to say that we took with us neither the tobacco nor the oil-skins.

At the time that the Cabigna was discharged, her deck was full of passengers, all people from the steamers we had captured. At our order, "You may proceed!" three cheers—"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!"—rang back to us, one for the Commander, one for the officers, and one for the crew of H. M. S. Emden, in which every person on the crowded deck joined.... There were, at the time, about four hundred persons aboard the ship.

In the further progress of our activities we never failed to get three cheers from our discharged "junkmen," as they departed with their collection of passengers from captured steamers....

This seems a fitting place to speak about the attitude taken by the Englishmen when we captured their ships. Most of them behaved very sensibly. After they had recovered from the first shock of surprise, they usually passed into the stage of unrestrained indignation at their government, at which they swore roundly. With but one exception, they never offered any resistance to the sinking of their ships. We always allowed them time enough to collect and take with them their personal possessions. They usually devoted most of this time to making certain that their precious supply of whiskey was not wasted on the fishes. I can say with truth that seldom did we send off a wholly sober lot of passengers on any one of our "junkmen."

VI—TWO SHELLS AT MADRAS—AND AN EXPLOSION

One captain was especially amusing. His was the unenviable duty of taking a bucket-dredger from England to Australia. No seafaring man can help sympathizing with the unfortunate who has to conduct one of these rolling tubs, with a speed of not more than four nautical miles at best, all the way from Europe down to Australia. And so, from a purely humane standpoint, we could fully appreciate this English captain's joy at being captured. Rarely have I seen anyone jump so high for joy. He must have been a past master in the art of jumping to be able to keep his feet in spite of the terrible rolling of his ship. Tears of gratitude coursed down his weathered cheeks as he exclaimed, "Thank God, that the old tub is gone! The five hundred pounds I was to have for taking her to Australia were paid me in advance."

On the eighteenth of September, in the evening, the Emden entered the harbor. It so happened that this was the day after the one on which the joyful tidings of the Emden's destruction had been officially announced. To celebrate the happy occasion, a large company had assembled for dinner at the Club. As we were not aware of this, it was hardly our fault that the Emden's shells fell into the soup. Had we known of the dinner party, we would, of course, gladly have deferred our attack until another day, as it is the part of wisdom never to exasperate the enemy unnecessarily. A due regard should always be shown for sacred institutions, and dinner is an institution with regard to which the English are always keenly sensitive.

We approached to within 3,000 meters of Madras. The harbor light was shining peacefully. It rendered us good service as we steered toward shore, for which we again take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the British Indian government. A searchlight revealed to us the object of our quest,—the oil tanks, painted white and ornamented with a stripe of red. A couple of shells sent in that direction, a quick upleaping of tongues of bluish-yellow flame, streams of liquid fire pouring out through the holes made by our shots, an enormous black cloud of dense smoke,—and, following the advice of the old adage, "A change is good for everybody," we had sent several millions' worth of the enemy's property up into the air, instead of down into the sea, as heretofore.

Meanwhile the coaling question had come to be a source of annoyance to us. Our faithful Markomannia had no more coal to give us. To be sure, our prize, the Pontoporros, with her cargo of coal from India, was still with us. But this Indian coal is far from being desirable fuel, as it not only clogs the fire kettles with dirt, but, while it gives out a minimum of heat, it sends forth a maximum of smoke, and so our prize was not an unmixed joy to us. However, this vexed coal question was happily solved for us by the English Admiralty in a most satisfactory manner. Before many days had passed, a fine large steamer of 7,000 tonnage, loaded with the best of Welsh coal, en route for Hong Kong, and destined for their own use, was relinquished to us by the English in a most unselfish manner.

So, for the present, we were most generously supplied with the best of fuel, and all further anxiety on this account was dismissed to the uncertain future. The captain of our new coal-laden prize seemed to have no scruples with regard to transferring himself, together with his ship, into German service. Willingly and faithfully he coöperated with the officer of the prize crew that was, of course, placed in command of his ship, all the while cheerfully whistling "Rule, Britannia."

In the meantime, even the English government itself had become convinced that the destruction of the Emden had, after all, not been accomplished.

VII—STORY OF LIFE ABOARD THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

We knew quite well that sixteen hostile ships were in pursuit of us,—British, French, and Japanese. We never had any information with regard to the position of these ships, nor of their character, which, after all, could matter very little to us, since the Emden was the smallest and least formidable of all the war ships in the Indian Ocean. There was not a hostile cruiser, that she was likely to meet, that was not her superior in strength. That the Emden's career must soon be cut short was therefore a prospect of which everyone aboard her felt certain. Many hounds are certain death to the hare.

Our Commander had set this aspect of affairs before us, sharply and clearly, at the very outset of the Emden's career, pointing out that the only future ahead of the Emden was to inflict as much damage as possible upon the enemy before she herself should be destroyed, which, in any event, could be but a question of time.

The devotion of the Emden's crew to their Commander was touching in the extreme. The men appreciated the high qualities of their leader, were proud of their ship, and gloried in its successful career. If, at any time when they were singing, or were otherwise noisy, the word was passed along, "The Commander is tired," they would become instantly quiet. At a word of encouragement from him the men would accomplish some truly wonderful feats in connection with difficult undertakings, such as coaling at sea under most adverse conditions, and in spite of extreme fatigue.

Of "Emden yarns" ... there was an untold number. On board ship we kept a scrap-book in which they were all preserved, but this, unfortunately, was lost, together with much that was of higher value.

Amusement of a different nature was afforded the officers' mess by our "war cats," as we called them. On the day before we left Tsingtao a cat had come on board, and so had come along with us. In course of time, this cat experienced the joys of motherhood. Lying in my hammock one morning, I opened my eyes upon a charming scene of family life. Just beneath me, a little to one side, on a mattress on the floor of the deck, lay Lieutenant Schall, sleeping the sleep of the just. Close beside him, on the same mattress, lay the cat, with a family of five newly born kittens. After I had quickly wakened the other officers who were sleeping near, so that they might enjoy the sight of this peaceful domesticity, we poked Lieutenant Schall until he, too, opened his eyes upon the scene. At first he did not seem to share our pleasure in it, however, but, with a muttered oath, hurried off to the washroom.

Our kittens were not the only animals that the war had brought aboard our ship. If some one had dropped from the sky, and landed on the Emden on one of these days, he would have opened his eyes in wonderment at sight of this "man-of-war." Forward, in the vicinity of the drain pipe, he would have discovered one or two pigs, grunting with satisfaction. Near by, he would have seen a couple of lambs and a sheep or two, bleating peacefully. By a walk aft he would, in all probability, have scared up a whole flock of pigeons that had been sitting on the rails which served for the transportation of ammunition, and that, at his approach, would take refuge in the pigeon house that had been fastened against one of the funnels. In his further progress he would most likely have frightened up a few dozen hens that would then have run cackling about his heels, the noise they made being only outdone by the still louder cackling of a flock of geese engaged in unsuccessful attempts at swimming in a large half-tub aft, and at the same time trying to drink salt water. We always had a great deal of live stock on board, all of which we had taken from the captured steamers.... We had a less practical, but more ornamental addition to our menagerie in a dwarf antelope, which I came upon one day in the forward battery. How the dainty creature got there has always remained a mystery to me.

VIII—LAST DAYS OF THE GALLANT "EMDEN"

Every afternoon the ship's band gave us quite a long concert. At such times the men all sat cozily about on the forecastle, listening to the music, some joining in with their voices, while others smoked or danced. In the evening, after darkness had set in, the singers aboard usually got together, and then every possible and impossible song was sung by a chorus that was excellent both in volume and quality. The "possible" songs were, to a great extent, our beautiful German national melodies, and these were always well rendered. The "impossible" ones were frequently improvised for the occasion. In these, clearness of enunciation was always a greater feature than either rhyme or rhythm. The singing invariably closed with the "Watch on the Rhine," in which all hands on deck joined.

Distributing the booty we had taken from a captured ship was always an occasion about which centered a great deal of interest. Anything of a useful nature, especially everything in the line of food, was, as a matter of course, taken aboard the Emden. As a result, veritable mountains of canned goods were stored away in a place set apart for them on the forward deck. Casks full of delectable things were there. Hams and sausages dangled down from the engine skylight. There were stacks of chocolate and confectionery, and bottles labelled "Claret" and "Cognac," with three stars....

So as to be able to do justice to all that fortune bestowed upon us, an extra meal or two had to be tucked in between the usual ones. So, with our afternoon coffee we now had chocolate or bonbons. For the smokers there were more than 250,000 cigarettes stored away, and when, in the evening, they had been passed around, the deck looked as though several hundred fireflies were flitting about it.

So we spent the passing days, while certain death lurked round about us. In sixteen ships our enemies were burning their coal, and racking their brains in vain attempt to catch us.

(Here the Lieutenant-Captain of The Flying Dutchman narrates the adventures of those wonderful days; how they kept the enemy seas fraught with danger; how they were hunted through the oceans; how they lived their gay life of "gentlemen buccaneers," knowing that each day brought them nearer to death and the bottom of the seas. He describes vividly "Our Baptism by Fire;" he tells how they torpedoed the Russian destroyer Schemtschuk; how they fought the French gunboat D'Iberville; how they sunk the French destroyer Mousquet; how they wrapped the French dead in the French flag and buried them with naval honors in the sea; until the last fight of the Emden when she met her champion, the Anglo-Australian cruiser Sydney and went down gloriously in the Indian Ocean. The Lieutenant-Captain's description of this last fight is one of the classics of the Great War.)

FOOTNOTE:

[2] All numerals relate to the stories herein told—not to the chapters in the book.

"THE WAY OF THE CROSS"—A TRAGEDY OF THE RUSSIANS

The Millions Who Have Become Beggars
Told by V. Doroshevitch, Famous Russian Journalist

This is probably the first piece of Russian War literature translated into English. It presents the terrible picture of the Russian and Polish fugitives flying from the German invasion in the autumn of 1915. The narrator is a famous Russian journalist, who first contributed his experiences to the Russkol Slovl. He went from Moscow to meet the incoming flood of refugees and then passed through to the rear of the Russian Army. At first he met the survivors who were forced ahead in the procession; afterwards they came thicker and thicker until they were a moving wall. He tells how they camped in the forests, how they died by the way, how they put up their crosses by the side of the road, how they sold their horses and abandoned their carts, how they starved, how they suffered. His articles have been collected by Stephen Graham and published in book form by G. P. Putnam's Sons: Copyright 1916. These breathless, desperate stories breathe a tender love. The style is typically Slavic and has been preserved in the excellent translations. A single typical story is here told of "The Desolation of Roslavl" by permission of the publishers.

In 1812 Moscow made a funeral pyre for herself, and burned—for Russia's sake. A hundred years have passed. And the red glare of Moscow's fire has paled. The Moscow of those days! A wooden city. The burning of it was appalling. The ground burned under the feet of the Napoleonic soldiers: even the roadways of Moscow were made of wood at that time.

But now! More than ten provinces have been laid waste by the enemy. Millions of people have become beggars. And have fled. From the places of their birth to the far centre of Russia stretches the way of the Cross for these people.

And on this way, as on that other way—of Golgotha, are places, where the people faint under the burden of the Cross: Bobruisk! Dovsk! Roslavl! These are names full of affliction. Especially: The memory of Roslavl is terrible.

[3] I—STORY OF DESOLATION OF ROSLAVL

Roslavl, on the River Oster, is a quiet little town in the province of Smolensk. Ordinarily, when you drive along the high-road coming from the West, in Rogachef, in Cherikof, in Propoisk, in Krichef, they will tell you that Roslavl is the first Russian town. From here to the eastward, Great Russia begins.

When you arrive at Roslavl you will be awakened in the morning by the soft yet powerful baritone of its marvellous bell, sounding from the height of the Transfiguration monastery on the hill.

And you will hear this, like music—for the first time on the whole of your journey from the West up till then.

Now Roslavl is choked and drowned. There is neither sugar nor salt in the town. In the streets fugitives stop you and ask,

"Friend, where can I buy any salt here? I've been trying to get some all day."

"Little father, where can we get any sugar? Even if it's only half a pound or a quarter of a pound."

You go into a baker's shop and ask:

"Have you any white bread?"

The shopman looks at you in wonder.

"We bake no white. Only black, and even that's all taken for the fugitives."

"The fugitives will eat us up," says Roslavl in terror.

But the wave of fugitives comes on and on, and a stench is given forth from it. Here the great river stops, and its waters turn round and round, like a whirlpool. Roslavl is overwhelmed; the tide rises above its head.

The reason?—the railway. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people will remember with horror the desolation of Roslavl. Here is enacted a dreadful scene: "The completion of the process"—the fugitives giving up their horses. First they were as "gipsies," but now they have turned into a Khitrof market.[4] Numbers of the fugitives, the great majority of them, having exhausted their last strength and reached the railway.

Have the last thing to do as peasants. They sell their horses. And thence go onward—in the train. Waiting in an open-air camp in Roslavl for a week or so, until they are given places. And with what desperation do they cling to the possession of their horses.

II—STORY OF THE PEASANT—AND THREE MOTHERLESS CHILDREN

Here I made the acquaintance of a fugitive—a bitter man. His wife died two weeks before the final ruin and he has three children, two very young, and a baby. He had owned some land and was a farmer. He had paid 12,000 rubles for it. The payment had been spread over seven years and all had been paid. He had only just begun to make a living. And now "this had happened." He had managed to bring away all his cattle. And four horses. He had gone a long way.

But in Minsk province, where a continuous marsh extends for tens and tens of versts, an order had come to clear the high-road, and the cattle had been driven on to the marsh.

"My little son," said he, "who had gone on in front with the cattle, ran back to meet me at a turn of the road, crying, 'Daddy, Daddy, the cattle are all drowned in the marsh.' I ran to him. The herd of cattle were twisting and writhing in the bog. Bellowing. And among them I saw mine."

He spoke sadly but calmly about the death of his wife, about his land that had "cost so much money."

"But I'd rather have been blinded than see such a sight. A second ruin. All my property perishing in the quagmire, and I stand on the road and become a beggar. Three horses died on the way. One remained. A little shaggy horse, ten years old, but active."

In Roslavl he found a kind man who permitted him to live in his banya, bath-house. A black banya. But that was a palace!

"Day and night I never cease to pray to God for the kind man who saved my children," says he.

He has found a footing at Roslavl and will remain there—drives a cab.

"Two rubles a day shall I earn, think I. One and a half will feed the horse, and the fifty kopecks which remain must suffice for us four."

"Not a large budget. And what if you were to sell the horse and go farther?"

He looked at me straight in the eyes with terror.

"Master!" said he, "I have a horse, and so all the same I remain a man! A human being! But without a horse, what sort of a being should I be? What should I be?"

III—STORY OF THE PROCESSION—AND THE COFFINS

On all sides you hear: