Chapter M: L'Aryesse was in alarm; it would never do to take a picture. What if (4)

You caught the undernote of pride in the doctor's voice, a sensing of which you had felt at the hospital's very door. Pride seemed to be in the air; you read it in the faces of the nurses; the younger doctors, Stem and Spearmin, showed it, pride because they had turned the one notorious resort of Gleiwitz into an American hospital. And, it is significant--and it was a German officer who told me this--into a hospital of such efficiency that the German Sanitary Authorities always ordered that the worst cases be sent to Dr. Sanders and his assistants; this with thirteen other military hospitals in Gleiwitz.

But I was wondering if the other patients, the men in the orchestra, had come to know what the little room upstairs meant, and if they had heard the cry from that Austrian's bed, and if so, what their thoughts were, if they had all thanked the Almighty for their lesser plights. You felt they had.

"Come on, now," suggested the doctor, "we'll go and talk to some of the patients. Sister Anna can speak German."

Sister Anna you discovered to be a resourceful-looking woman of middle age, dressed in Red Cross gray. She was sitting at a table reading "Alice in Wonderland," and she said that she had spent the last ten years in New York at the Lying-in-hospital. Her capable manner impressed you, and when Dr. Sanders whispered: "She was the best supervisor on the Red Cross boat that brought us all over, and I was mighty lucky to get her," you agreed with him. She was walking on ahead between the rows of blue gingham-covered cots and presently she stopped before one at the end of the line. It is a part of the German hospital system to have a metal sign-board on a post behind each hospital bed, and upon this we saw printed the soldier's name, a private, Kaiser, of the 148th Infantry. His wife was sitting beside his bed, a rosy-cheeked woman who recalled one of our middle Western farm girls. Quiet and calm, satisfied that her husband was in the best of hands, she smiled thankfully at Sister Anna and the doctor. Her husband was wounded in both the arm and leg and oddly enough by the same bullet, which, with a little smile, he picked up from a bed table to show us.

"It entered his arm above the elbow," explained the doctor, "went clean through, hit an electric torch in his pocket, glanced off that and went into his thigh. It was an interesting case. On the other side of his thigh, I found the wound of exit. Imagine my surprise when in a few days I discovered that the bullet was still in his leg, and that the exit wound had been made by a piece of bone breaking through."

It seemed that Private Kaiser could understand a little English, and he nodded eagerly. We asked him some questions, and it developed he had been a school teacher in Hamburg.

"I was wounded near Brounsberg in East Prussia," he told us. "It was towards evening, almost dark, and not thinking the Russians could see us, we got up to dig a trench. I was alone, way off at the end of the line when I was shot. It did not hurt me much when the bullet hit me. It took me off my feet, though I spun around twice before I fell. No one saw me and I lay on the ground for ten minutes. Then I was able to get up, and I walked away to the hospital. How I did it I can't tell you, but all at once my strength seemed to come back."

"Probably nervous shock made him helpless," explained the doctor in an undertone, "and when that passed he was able to help himself a bit."

We were going down the line of beds, talking to another patient, when the doctor said it was time for lunch, and that we might visit the patients again in the afternoon. Two of the nurses--there are fourteen American girls at Gleiwitz--walked back with us. I asked one of them, a young Boston girl, why she had come to the war.

"I don't know," she said. "I had made my application for a Red Cross nurse, and I was ready to go to Mexico. Then I got word that they wanted nurses in Europe, so I packed up and came along on twenty-four hours' notice.

"What I've seen of the war here, though," she said, "is not half so terrible as it was in the English Channel. We were on the coast of France one morning when I happened to see a big round thing in the water. I thought it was a mine, and I guess I screamed. Then I thought it was a dummy, but it wasn't that, it was a body, and there were six other bodies, all sailors from those English ships that the submarine blew up. Isn't there some way I could go back home without going through the English Channel? I can't bear thinking of seeing anything like that again."

I told her she could probably take a steamer at Naples or Copenhagen, and she seemed greatly relieved--she who had seen mangled men without a flicker of her nerves. Presently she left us to cross what was evidently the aristocratic street of the town.

"They are going over to a little club--the city club," explained the doctor; "that's where we take our meals. We'll go to my room first, though, if you like, before dinner."

Modestly the doctor spoke of his room, but to our surprise he stopped in front of one of the few imposing-looking houses in Gleiwitz. It was one of those venerable places which makes you think that the man who lives there must about own the other inhabitants body and soul. Occupying about four hundred feet, corner frontage, towering amid symmetrical lawns and flower beds, guarded by a ten-foot iron fence, the old-fashioned house stood back like a castle.

"Nothing like it," said the doctor with a smile. "It belongs to one of the richest men in Silesia. He's at the front, in France. He's a captain, by the way, just won the Iron Cross. His wife is in Berlin for the winter, so we're here, Spearmin, Stem and myself, with ten servants to wait on us, and the best of everything for the asking. Not bad, eh?"

While we were listening to a baseball story of the doctor's, we took in the luxurious appointments of his room. Then you thought of the makeshift hospital and how topsy-turvy war turns everything. From his valise, the doctor produced a Russian bayonet, hat and cartridge belt.

"They cost me two marks," he said, "for the whole outfit. I bought them from the driver of an Austrian ammunition wagon. Have a cartridge?" and he passed the belt as one might pass a box of candy. They were ugly-looking bullets, not as pointed as the Germans'. The bayonet also was uglier, curved like an old-fashioned saber.

"It's no good alongside the German bayonet, though," explained Dr. Sanders; "that's longer and straighter. You ought to hear how some of the wounded over at the hospital talk about their bayonets. One fellow was telling me the other day that he had ripped it through the stomachs of three Russians." And even the doctor, hardened to such things, made a grimace.

After a luncheon, where, like the father of a large family, the doctor sat at the head of a long table with his nurses and assistants around him, everybody asking if the Christmas mail from the States had come, we returned to the hospital. We found great excitement. Two officers had been there, the orderly explaining that one was the sanitation commander of all hospitals at Gleiwitz, and that the other was Captain Hoffman of the garrison. What did they want? The orderly didn't know, but it must have been something very important, for they had told him to say to Dr. Sanders that they would return in half an hour, and for him please to be there, whereupon the orderly, to my amazement, looked at me a little suspiciously; indeed, his eyes followed me into the lobby.

"What's the matter with that chap?" I asked the doctor.

"Oh, he's spy crazy," replied Dr. Sanders; "you see, they caught two Russians here the other day, and the captain he speaks of presided at the trial. They put the spies up against the wall of that old barn over there. We could hear the shooting."

The doctor's tone was so casual that you concluded spy-killing to be commonplace at Gleiwitz.

"Come down here a second," continued the doctor. "I want you to take a look at a couple of patients."

As you walked between the cots you were conscious of the gaze of the wounded turned hopefully on this business-like American. Of the peasant class nearly all the soldiers seemed to regain hope at the sight of him. So it was with the two boys off in a corner by themselves. They were rather slender fellows, amazingly young, with mischievous faces. "They live next door to each other," said the doctor, "in a little village in Schleswig-Holstein. The one on the left had a bullet in his brain, the other had his arm fractured by a piece of shrapnel."

"How old are they?"

"The boy who had the bullet in his brain," said the doctor, "is not yet seventeen; the other is a few months older."

They met you with a bold smile, fun darting from their mischievous eyes, like American boys might smile at a foreigner. You saw that they wore the clean, light blue jackets that mark every patient of the American Red Cross, but you thought of the dirty, gray-green uniforms and how long these boys had lain before they were picked up. And then, like many youngsters you see in the first classes of a high school, they became self-conscious, giggling like girls at a first party, and you thought of them at war; and a shuddery sensation came over you.

"You think it's terrible, don't you?" he said. "Wait a minute."

He beckoned Sister Anna, and she joined us.

"Sister Anna," he said, "ask that boy with the brain wound to tell the story that he told me the other day."

Sister Anna's manner was reluctant, and you doubt that she wanted to hear that story again. But she put the request in German, and instantly the eyes of the little fellow grew bright.

"We were near Iwangorod," he began. "Max and I were on outpost duty and got cut off from our regiment. Night came and we started back to find them. We were passing through a little village, just five or six houses, when somebody shot at us." He paused, turning, as if for confirmation, to the other bed, where Max, half sitting up, nodded eagerly. "We'll fix them, Max," I said, "and we ran behind a house, so they couldn't shoot again. Then all lights in the windows went out--every light in the village. I was glad there was no moon. We got some wood, a lot of it. We fixed it in piles beside every house. We broke into a cellar and stole some oil. We emptied the oil on the wood, then we lit it, and ran to the next house, and lit it there." His eyes were burning feverishly. "Pretty soon we had the whole village on fire, didn't we, Max?"

"Ja! Ja!" cried Max, from the other bed.

And you realized that they were suddenly boys no longer, that their faces had reddened in a hectic way, and that into their young minds had come the frightful insanity of war. With a sickening feeling you turned from them, and going away, thought that only last July, back in that Holstein village, they doubtless had been playing the games that German boys play; then you heard Max cry out:

"And when we get better, Doctor, we're going back and each kill a hundred Russians!" And with his white hands you saw the boy lunge as though already he could hear the ripping steel.... What if you were his father?

"There are many like that--eager to get out of bed and back to the front," said the doctor. "Not so young, of course, but they all want another chance at the game; that is, all but the older men. You ought to have been here the other day. Count Talleyrand-Perigord was here. He's the nephew of the great diplomat, French descent of course. The Count has an estate near here. He's a young chap. He's been simply splendid to us. I guess he never did very much work before; you can imagine how a young man of his position spends his time. When the war broke out he volunteered for the Red Cross, and they made him a sort of a personal escort for me, to see that everything goes right over here. He spends his entire time with us. He watches all the operations, is intensely interested, asks all sorts of questions about them, and goes with me from bed to bed, asking the men what they want, doing everything he can for them. I tell you it quite surprised me, a young man of his position, in the French nobility, bucking right down to things. Count Szechenyi, you know, who married Gladys Vanderbilt; he's stationed over just across the Austrian border. He came up the other day to see Count Talleyrand and they dropped in here in the afternoon to visit the patients. I had expected something different from Count Szechenyi. You know what that Austrian count is. But he was just as democratic as if he had been a private in the ranks."

While talking, the doctor had been crossing the theater until he came to a side wall exit door that opened out on what appeared to be a promenade. It was glassed in, like a sun parlor and looked out on what had been a cheap beer-garden. Along one wall we saw a row of muddy brown and black boots. On the floor were piles of uniforms, German, Russian and Austrian, and knapsacks, drilled and nicked with bullets. Kicking over a filthy bundle of field gray, I saw that it was slashed.

"We had to cut most of the uniforms off the wounded," explained the doctor. "Most of them we have thrown out--we had to. If you could only have seen what those men looked like when they were brought in! We get them from the field hospital. This is the first hospital behind the lines, and when they are well enough to be moved, they are sent on to better quarters, further into Germany, but the way those fellows looked. Think of it, some of them had not had their uniforms off for three months. When we took off one man's boot, we found a blood clot two inches thick on the sole of his foot. It had run down from a wound on his leg. Why, some of those men were five days on the battlefield before they were found. One or two were out of their minds. You cannot conceive the horror of it! Later, I'm going to get one of those fellows to tell you his story."

The time had swiftly passed and as we came back into the theater, we saw two gray-cloaked German officers, and at their heels the orderly. They seemed very much excited, and I was sure now that they were going to ask the doctor if he was positive that I was not an English spy. It was something more exciting, though. They conversed in German, and I caught the words, "_Eisener Kreuz_."

"What a piece of luck!" the doctor exclaimed; "one of my patients has been awarded the Iron Cross, and Captain Hoffman of the Gleiwitz garrison has come to make the presentation."

We walked then to the bedside of a mild-looking man, who, you learned, was _Landwehr_, private Grabbe of the second Stralsund. A bulkiness to his leg under the covers showed where he had been wounded, and when he saw the gray-coated officers, a question leaped in his quiet eyes. You wondered if he knew and how many days he had lain there doubting and dreaming if ever they would come. The Captain strode towards him, held out his hand, and said, "I congratulate you." You followed the soldier's eyes as they watched the Captain's hands reach into his coat pocket and draw from it the band of black and white ribbon from which dangled the coveted cross. Without a word the Captain fastened it to the second button of the man's hospital jacket and stepping back, saluted him. You saw the soldier pick up the cross in both hands, stare at it a moment, while his eyes filled a little, and then his mild face turning wonderfully happy, he awkwardly expressed his thanks. As the last stammered word was spoken there burst from all the wounded a huzza. The nurses applauded and, overwrought, the soldier tried to sit upright in bed and bow his thanks. He had half succeeded when we saw him wince, and Dr. Sanders made him lie down. The congratulations over, we left him calling for pencil and paper, for at once he must write home about it. And you wondered how much you would have given could that one minute of this soldier's life be included in your own.

"Wait till I tell you what the fellow did," said the doctor, after the officers had bowed themselves away, "It is one of the duties of the _Landwehr_, you know, to guard the railroads. Late in October, when the Germans were retreating from their lines outside Warsaw, they had to hold the railroads to the last. This man's commander was ordered to hold back the Russians from a little railroad depot. Private Grabbe was given ten men and a machine gun and posted by a little house near the station. He had to keep back an overwhelming number of Russians until an entire battalion was on the train, and then with the little detail make a run for it, Well, as the Russians came in great force, his comrades retreated and left him there alone.

"As I told you, men get crazy in battle. Grabbe did not know that he was alone. He stuck by that machine gun, wounded and alone, mowing down the Russians until the whole German battalion--twelve hundred men--had withdrawn. Still he stuck to that machine gun, slaughtering them so, that by George! the Russians retreated. Grabbe's commander came up presently and asked him where the other men were. Grabbe said he didn't know and then the Commander saw that he was wounded."

Outside a violin began to play, and Dr. Sanders explained that often the local talent dropped in to entertain the wounded. The music continued and we went from bed to bed hearing the different stories; then the music stopped, and in a clear, though childishly quavering voice, a girl began a recitation in the lobby outside. Before he came to Gleiwitz, Dr. Sanders didn't know two German words. Now, as he told me, he knows three. Consequently, as the girl spoke on and the faces of all the wounded suddenly became grim, the doctor wondered why. Then here and there a man began repeating the girl's words, others, too weak to speak, following her words with moving lips. Higher and higher quavered her voice; and suddenly I recognized what she was saying. Before I could tell the doctor, though, she swept into a climax, to fierce "_Jawohls_" from the lips of the wounded.

"I don't know what you're saying," shouted Dr. Sanders, rushing into the lobby, "but stop it. It excites these patients."

He saw that I was grinning, and asked what the joke was. "It's on me, what was that girl speaking?"

"A new poem," I told him. "The name is: 'Murderous England.'"

"So that's it, eh?" And he went up to the girl, whose hair was braided down her back and whose cheap, bright pattern dress came barely below her knees.

"Now, little girl," he said, "when you want to come round to the hospital to entertain the prisoners, you learn how to speak 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or something. Get Sister Anna to teach it to you!" And patting the child on the head, Dr. Sanders gave her a ten-pfennig piece, and asked her who had taught her the poem.

"_Meine Mutter_," replied the child.

We then sat in the lobby for two hours, buying beer for the convalescents and listening to their stories. One man told us how, with two hundred soldiers, he had hid in a Russian barn, and that a shrapnel shell flying through the window had exploded, killing and wounding nearly every one in his company. Another told how he had been on outpost duty with seven other men, and that the Russians had begun machine gun fire at night. All his comrades were either killed or wounded, and he said that although he was only wounded in the arm, he did not dare to get up because the Russians maintained a steady fire for four hours, and that all he could do was to hug the ground with the bullets whizzing over him, knowing that he was growing weaker and weaker every moment. Another had a most interesting experience. While in a shallow trench, he had been hit in the arm and in the leg. The hospital corps got him. The stretcher bearers were taking him back, when suddenly it got too hot for them, and they had to drop him and run for cover. The firing ceased, and, seeing he was alone, the soldier crawled over to a dead German and picked up his rifle. He was half sitting with this in his lap, when he saw some Russians coming. He raised the gun and they ran, and then he discovered they were hospital men. He was cursing his luck, when one of his comrades, a little fellow, who had come back to find him, discovered him. They traveled back to the German lines at intervals of ten minutes, the little fellow having to put him down to rest every so often. Then the doctor began to tell me something about the wounds he had seen as the result of this war.

"What I marvel at is," said Dr. Sanders, "that a man can go into the battleline and come out alive. The amount of lead and steel that is sent flying through the air is appalling. Of course we will not have any statistics on it until after the war is over, but everything I can learn from the wounded, and from the nature of their wounds--and I have men here hit five times--they must be using far, far more ammunition, proportionately of course, than in any war in the world's history. By the way, judging from my patients, the Russians cannot be using dum-dums. I have yet to find one in a man. For every three rifle ball wounds, we get two caused by shrapnel and about one quarter by fragments of bursting shells. We had a man who was hit by a piece of shell--and those fragments are terribly hot. It cut his throat to his ear, but it just stopped at the sheath of the artery. His life was saved by the minute distance. The Germans have the greatest confidence in us here. We have one man here who might have been sent on to another hospital five weeks ago. We didn't send him, though. It was almost a form of paranoia and honestly I dreaded sending that man away. I feared the nervous shock. Doctors who come from the front tell me that they have actually seen cases of men being killed, who only had a bullet wound in their hand. It was the nervous shock that killed them.

"You see those two Russians," and the doctor pointed towards two heavy-faced patients. "Well, they were in mortal terror that we were making them well so as to have more fun by killing them later. It took two weeks to convince them that they would not be put to death. They are pets here now."

The doctor was called away a moment, and as I watched him stride off, his sturdy figure carrying well the olive-drab of the United States army, I noticed again that the heads of the wounded turned, following him with thankful eyes, and it was not difficult longer to understand how these few Americans were able to come into the midst of strange Silesia, and transform that theater, where at night if they forget to shut the door, they can hear the ribald clamor from the cheap cabaret next door; it was not difficult to understand how they, all of them having their first experience with war, had developed an efficiency which the Germans had complimented by sending them the worst cases from the firing line. That sturdy, wide-shouldered man in army olive-drab personified something that made you thrill at the thought that you were an American.

But Dr. Sanders was not the last impression that I had of Gleiwitz, although he waved good-by to me at the train.

As I look back at Gleiwitz now, I can see the flat-floored theater with the gray nurses lighting lamps. The early twilight is coming through the windows. It is all quiet. In two hours the wounded will have supper, and here and there you can hear the deep breathing of sleep. In the lingering light the steel curtain has turned a vague gray and of the three flags, only our own is sharply defined. I see Sister Anna walking softly between the rows of gingham-spread cots, her kind, almost saintly face hallowed by the lamp in her hands. She is beckoning. She raises the lamp so that its pale reflection falls upon a bed. And there I see the boy from the Schleswig-Holstein village, who, with his chum, burned a Russian village, and whose ambition is to kill a hundred men; and the boy's face is buried in the pillow, his arm circling round it, like a baby asleep.

XV

THE SECRET BOOKS OF ENGLAND'S GENERAL STAFF

Of course Germany was prepared. Russia and France were prepared, not so sufficiently, of course, as Germany; yet with their reorganized armies both were judged powerful on land. England though was unprepared. Everybody knew that. The newspapers said so. Statesmen said so, Parliament admitted it. To be sure the British Navy for years was prepared. Winston Churchill announced that. But the empire was not ready for its army was not ready. It was a small army, a quarter of a million men, twice as large as the United States army. It was useful in the colonies. Everybody knew Tommy Atkins. Kipling did that. But for fighting on the continent of Europe was like venturing into a strange land for these soldiers of England's colonial domain. They were not ready. Any Englishman will tell you that. But the most amazing part of it all is that the British army was wonderfully prepared.

This will be merely a document of military wonders; diplomatic considerations will have no part in it. I promise you to abstain from the use of that tiresome word--neutrality.

The English army was ready to go to war. It was ready to go to war in Belgium. Its officers knew everything there was to be known about Belgium. They knew every square mile of Belgium's terrain. They knew what districts were best suited to strategical purposes. They knew what roads best to use for their artillery, what roads best could stand the heavy guns, what roads best could not. They knew every body of water in Belgium. They knew what water was fit to drink and what was not. They knew the current of every stream and the number of boats on it. They knew the number of houses in every Belgian village and the number of soldiers that could be billeted in those houses. They knew the location of every church steeple in Belgium, and whether or not to recommend it as an observation post. They knew what roads their troops could march on without being seen by the aviators of the enemy--what roads were hidden from the sky by the interlacing branches of the big trees. They even knew the best places for their own aviators to land. Every conceivable thing that a modern army should know about a future battleground the British army knew.... How do I know this?

At the battle of Mons in northern France where something happened--the English say it was the French supports; the French blame it on the English--those wonderful soldiers of Great Britain, the professional soldiers, were cut to pieces. The Germans made many prisoners. In the kits of the captured British officers they found some interesting documents. They were books of a size that would fit in a coat pocket. They were about a quarter of an inch to an inch thick. They were printed on white paper and the covers were a light brown. They were finger-marked and muddy. They contained the most amazing collection of military information that any nation ever possessed for its army. Some books were marked _Confidential_; others bore the designation property of His Britannic Majesty's Government; all were prepared by the General Staff, of the English War Office.

All the books were dated 1914, brought right up to the minute. At the Great General Staff in Berlin I saw these books. I sat in Major von Herwarth's room one night and copied their contents until I was overwhelmed with their wonderful detail. I had wanted to take the books to my hotel. It was impossible. They were regarded by the Germans as being so valuable that they could not be taken from this officer's room. I induced the Staff to let me make photographs of the books, of their covers, pages and maps. And when I was finished the officer said to me, "We were very glad to get these books. We were very thankful. Because they are so much better than any information that our General Staff had about Belgium. In fact they are so good, these English books, that we at once had whole pages copied for the use of our officers in Belgium."

The Germans admitting English superiority on a military point! Germany, whom everybody thought was the best prepared nation in Europe, beaten at its own game. So valuable are these books regarded by the General Staff that they are locked in a safe.

As I digested the contents of these English books, I decided that if I had military power behind me, and these books in my pocket, that I could walk, ride, even fly in Belgium--without ever having been there before. I could always know precisely where I was at, where I could best be housed. I saw that each book begins with "roads," and reports the widths, surfacing and nature of the ground on either side of these roads. Every conceivable bit of information about the railroads in Belgium is between the covers, even down to the station masters at small places and the language each one speaks. Rivers, canals, bridges, dikes, have all been tested by the unprepared Englishmen. I thought now English cavalrymen were interested in learning that, "in the village of Eppeghen there are three forges." On another page I learned that "a kindly feeling exists for England because of a school for English children." In Tamines, "a large number of Germans are employed in the electrical work." On page 17 of Volume Two, I read "the farms ... are large solidly built structures, the barns usually being lofty with high eaves. The two storied dwelling houses enclose a barnyard. The Howitzer is the weapon of attack against them and the folds in the ground facilitates its use." Under "Monetary Contributions"; I read, "It may be necessary under certain conditions in an enemy's country to replace supply requisitions in kind by contributions in money."

And the English blame the Germans for their levies in captured cities. In the upper right hand corner of Volume Three, I saw what seemed to be a serial number--349. The other volumes also bore this number. Volume III declares itself to be a report on road, river and billeting conditions in Belgium; it gives information for the country between the river Meuse and the German frontier, going as far south as certain designated military lines. Glancing over this book, I saw on page 20 that the district near the German frontier was particularly suitable for billeting soldiers, that three or four men could be housed with every inhabitant except in Seraing and Liége where only two soldiers could be put up. On page 232 I learned that the billeting report had been reconnoitered every year from 1907 to 1913. This means that in the district covered by this book every dwelling place with a roof over it had been checked up every year for seven years. Thus were proper living accommodations for English soldiers in Belgium verified by the skilled War Office of London.

In Volume IV which gave all military routes for Belgium north and east of the line Brussels, Nivels, Namur, Liége, Vise, I read on page 13 that the reference maps dealing with the section "Brussels-Louvain" were those of the Belgian General Staff of a scale 1/40,000 but that sheets 31 and 31 of the English War Office were also available. Those English sheets were based on a reconnoiter of the entire district made in 1913 by the English. But more significant is it that English officers were referred to the 1/40,000 scale maps of the Belgian staff, which England obviously must at that time have had--as an asset of preparedness.

In the German General Staff I had a number of these English maps photographed. They were drawn by the British War Office and photo-etched by the Ordnance Survey office at Southampton 1912. As you may see from the accompanying illustration their detail is marvelous. Even orchards, ruins and wind mills are designated.

A Staff Officer in possession of one of these books would not have to reconnoiter Belgium. Referring to Volume IV, which devotes a good deal of space to the movement of troops, he would learn that delays in marching might be caused by "a steep ascent for half a mile out of Brussels on the road to Louvain." He would be comforted to know, though, that "there is a good field of fire and fine view from the roadway except between Cortenberg and Louvain where the view is reduced to one half mile. Troops could operate easily anywhere except in the hilly wooded country about Cortenberg to the south." If he wanted an observation post he would learn that at Cortenberg there was a good church steeple. A footnote reassures him that the roadway has been lined with trees which would afford in summer cover from aerial scouts.

These books throw an interesting light upon the question of shelled churches. The Allies have accused the Germans and the Germans have accused the Allies of using church steeples for observation posts. Both armies have used them, both have shelled them. I make this statement because I saw the cathedral of Malines gaping with a hole that could only have come from a German gun--so did the lines run--and because at Houtem, I climbed the steeple of the church of the Annunciation of Mary the Virgin to a German post, and I make this statement because on page 176 of Volume III of these English books on Belgium, I read under "observation points" the names of no less than five churches for a single small district. I photographed this page; you may read the church for yourself.

Page 70 of Volume III assures an English officer that "a few infantry with sandbags could from the parapet of the barrage near the Belgium line hold the approach to Jalhay up to the valley." On page 91, reconnoitered in 1913, he learns that "the best way to attack Terwagne appears to be from the southwest where there is a good deal of dead ground and artillery co-operation could be obtained from Liveliet." On page 122 he learns that "an advance up the Liffe-Thynes valley supported by guns on the Sorraine ridge appears to be the best way of dealing with (two tactical situations which are called) A and B."

Perhaps some of the most interesting bits of military information are contained in the 1914 issue of secret Field Notes which is numbered A 1775. Using this book an English cavalry commander upon turning to page 32 and looking at (a) reads:

"Classes of persons in Belgium who might be useful as guides."

He sees that _Gardes champetres_ are credited with knowing the rural districts well. They should be able to give the English army information about conditions of water, forage, horses, live stock and vehicles. The _gardes forestiers_ know in detail the woods in their own districts. "Rural postmen, many who own bicycles and cycle repairers, especially the official repairers to the touring club of Belgium would be invaluable as guides." The English officers are advised to get hold of the drivers of tradesmen carts as they supply most of the villages from the towns, and would therefore know local roads well.

But to me the climax was reached when I read in this book of English field notes a description of the code in use by the Belgium army for writing orders. I shall quote in part exactly what was written. "The names of units are generally replaced by their initials; the numbers of regiments are written in large arabic figures; those of battalions, squadrons or artillery groups in Roman figures; those of company troops (pelotons) of cavalry and batteries in small arabic figures."

They give an example. (EM 2/III)/10. They explain that this means in code, regimental headquarters and the second company of the third battalion of the Tenth Belgian Infantry of the line. Thus in code EM = Infantry headquarters; 2 = 2nd company; III = 3rd battalion; 10 = 10th infantry.

They give (2 C.M.S.S)/(5 D.A.). They explain that this means the second mechanical motor artillery ammunition column of the Fifth Division. Thus, in code, 2 C.M.S.S. = headquarters 2nd mechanical ammunition column; 5 D.A. = 5th Division, artillery.

And these are code orders of the Belgium army and the English General Staff knew about them before war was declared! And England was unprepared! These books tell me that England was beating the Germans at their own game.

Opening one book I saw a table that ran across two entire pages. This table was filled in the most intimate details regarding a single village.

In one of the road and river reports I read these words, "Data given by the Belgium government railroad cabinet on January 1st, 1912." Thus was the English officer assured of its accuracy. These are the figures that were given for the use of British troops in Belgium.

Locomotives 4,233
Coaches 8,001
Baggage cars 2,714
Goods wagons 86,562
Special wagons,
(for oil, etc.) 2,418

I think I have quoted enough material from these wonderful books to show the thoroughness with which the British soldiers were ready to fight in Belgium. Now the Germans have shot down many British aviators and on one of these men they found a book. It had the same brown paper cover as the road and river reports. It was of the same convenient pocket size. It had the same serial letter A for army, and it was numbered 1775. I saw this book in the General Staff. It is "A report on Belgium south of the line Charleroi, Namur, Liége and Brussels for aviators." I photographed pages 3, 6 and 20 of this book. Page 3 which began the information gave some interesting generalizations on the whole district. On page 6, dealing with Namur, I read that English aviators were told that the glaces of Fort d'Emine provided unlimited open cultivated ground suitable for landing purposes. In other words they were advised by the English War Office that it would be safe to land under the very guns of this Belgian fort. If they were flying in the Liége district they would read on page 20 that five miles out on the east of the Aywaille road they could prepare a very good landing place on grass by the simple removal of some wire fences. They were assured that from the south they would be completely covered by the Belgian guns of Fort d'Emibourg. In other words the British War Office was so well prepared, knew so exactly what it was doing that in July of 1914 it issued a book advising its aviators how to land in places where they would be covered by Belgian forts.

A map accompanied this aviation book. Let us see how this map was used. Examine this map around Liége. You will see numbers running from 89 to 94. An aviator flying over Liége consulting his map knows that each of these numbers has to do with a landing place. Let us suppose he selects 92.

Opening his book, until he finds the index number 92 he reads that "To the southwest towards Neuville and Rotheux the country is very broken and wooded. There is a good level cultivated landing place, however, about 1500 yards south of the Fort de Boucelles.... Where communication with Liége exists." To use this map a British aviator flying over the section south of the line Charleroi, Namur, Liége and Brussels, would see what point he was over and would then look it up by the index number on the map and in the book he would read whether it was wise to make a landing there and just what conditions he would meet.

Here are some bits verbatim from the book.

"In many cases the woods are so stunted and straggling that during winter, aerial observation of troops actually in them would probably be possible.... Somewhat soft after rain. Difficult for a landing.... The spa race course on the Francorchamps road is useless."

In this and other ways were the British aviators cautioned about using their aeroplanes in Belgium.

For the last few years we have all been hearing about the wonderful maps and information that Germany had of all the countries in Europe. No one, however, has ever seen any of these books; and no one has ever publicly quoted any of their contents. I believe they exist. I think, however, that the photographs printed here are the first permanent public records of the most confidential books in use by the army of a world power. I think they have a certain historical significance. At any rate, that England should possess them is amazing--England whom everybody but Germany thought was the least prepared of all.

XVI

THE FUTURE--PEACE OR WAR

_Impressions gained during my talk with the 1914 choice for the Nobel Peace Prize--Professor Ludwig Stein_

In The Hague the Temple of Peace is empty; all over the world ordnance factories are full. Since the day of that first convention in Geneva educated men have organized and pushed the international movement, which is called world peace. Is it a success or a failure?

At his home in Berlin, early in February, I talked with one of the leading men of this movement concerning these things. I asked Professor Ludwig Stein,--whose activities for world peace are well known in America, he having been chosen for the Nobel Peace prize of 1914 which was never awarded, he being formerly one of the three permanent members of the Bern Bureau for International Peace, he having been selected to present the famous declaration of peace to the late Edward the Seventh, whom the peace people called Edward the Peacemaker, he having worked side by side with Andrew Carnegie for the "ideal"--I asked him, could peace soon be made in this war? A deliberate man is Professor Stein, and he thought so long without replying that his personality impressed itself upon you before he had uttered a word--a strange combination of the dreamer and the man of to-day, a contrast of gentle eyes and grim jaw.

"At this time," he said, tapping his finger on the copper-topped smoking table in his study, "peace is impossible. President Wilson's endeavors are futile. Before a decisive result has been reached, peace cannot be thought of. Once Warsaw is captured, it is likely that Russia will make peace; or if not Warsaw, if a large really decisive battle is fought."

It seemed significant that such an apostle of peace as Professor Stein should have so completely given up all faith in the immediate efficacy of his movement. I asked him therefore if he considered it a failure.

"The peace movement," he said, "is like a fire department. If a few houses burn, or the conflagration spreads even over a number of blocks, the fire fighters are effective, but if a whole city burns, like the big Chicago fire, the fire department can do nothing. And if the whole world burns, what can the workers for peace do? Our movement is not strong enough; it is not big enough. For the Balkan war, the firemen were effective, they could confine the burning within that limited area, but when all Europe sprang up in flames, we failed." I mentioned to the Professor that this was a new conception to the peace movement in America, the first admission from a peace-man that the power of the movement was to-day limited. I asked Professor Stein then if we were to think of the movement as being a limited success or was there any chance of it ever attaining something bigger?

"The task of the nineteenth century," he replied, "was to let national feeling grow subconsciously. In Prussia, Fichte, the first rector of the new Berlin University, made his famous 'Speeches for the German Nation.' Jahn preached 'German Unity.' Achim von Arnim collected German songs and war songs of German warriors. Even Schiller wrote in his later years of Germany as the heart and center of Europe, and began to feel more national than Goethe ever did. The idea grew and produced united Italy and united Germany. But this process of attaining national consciousness is not yet achieved. In America it is not nearly finished. It is a sociological, unconsciously pedagogical process. The time will come when nationalism will be thoroughly saturated in each country. When it does and not until then, states will see that it is impossible to produce and consume everything. That will be the beginning of international consciousness. Then the national spirit will become secondary to conscious internationalism. When that time comes, world peace will be possible."

I was going to ask Professor Stein how far off that day was but thought it best first to take up his point, the thorough establishment of the national idea being the beginning of world peace.

"As the national feeling grows," I asked him, "will not the goal for peace become always more remote? It seems to me that international consciousness is dependent upon the people of one country knowing the people of another. How can, for instance, the Russian peasant ever understand the customs and personality of say, the poor man in England? Because of geographical reasons they can never get into touch with one another; how then are the masses of the states of the world ever going to understand each other, and how without this understanding can there ever be world peace?"

Professor Stein believes that this barrier can be overcome.

"Modern science and fast steamers," he replied, "the wireless, and better international trade understanding are constantly bringing together all states. Through journalists, merchants, diplomats and extensive traveling on the part of the people of all countries, the inhabitants of all different parts of the world begin to know each other. A hundred years ago the Roumanian peasant did not know possibly that there was an Argentine. To-day, though, the Roumanian knows that the price he gets for his wheat depends upon what the Argentine farmers get for theirs. I believe that as science progresses and culture spreads over the world, that the geographical barrier to peace can be broken down. Consider Switzerland, it is the ideal. Three races, French, German and Italian, live within its walls, but they are held together by culture."

I pointed out that Switzerland was so small that the French, Germans and Italians had a chance to know and understand their different customs and personalities, and asked Professor Stein if culture was also holding together Austria-Hungary?

"Austria," he said, "is an exception. Politically it is necessary to have the monarchial symbol there, because only in a military state would it be possible for so many different races to live at peace with themselves. Austria is different from Switzerland because it is a crazy quilt of many different, uncultured, mostly illiterate, to some extent nomadic races."

The Professor, who is a great admirer of Herbert Spencer and whom Spencer said understood him better than any Continental thinker, thereupon mentioned the point that the famous Englishman had made.

"Spencer," he said, "wrote that instead of war, a competition in traffic and industry would take place between nations."

"But, Professor," I asked, "does not traffic and industry breed war; what caused this war? Was not commercial jealousy between England and Germany one of the vital causes of the war?"

He admitted that it was, and went on to say:

"After this war, the Englishman will look at his books, he will take his pencil in his hand and he will begin figuring. He will get up a balance sheet, and he will find that war does not pay. England is rational to excess. For years she has been the political clearing house of the world. She could in this way rule five hundred million people as long as these people were not striving for nationalism. But Germany attains its conscious nationalism, and asks herself, Why should I allow the thirty-eight million people of Great Britain, through their political clearing house, to have such a dominate influence on the affairs of the world? Wherefore in the last analysis, this war was caused by the thorough gaining of national consciousness that English diplomacy has no longer been able to retard. And under the industrial system of to-day, things are not done with papers passing through a clearing house, but with blood.

"I regard this war as an expression of the solidarity of the world on the minus side. It is an underground solidarity, but is having, for the moment, a negative influence because commerce is stopped. The United States is feeling it, it is holding up your country. It is holding up China which cannot get money for necessary improvements. But all this is working towards the conscious solidarity of the future, which will be expressed in a positive war; when fighting will be done not with cannons but with contracts; when not blood but ink will be wasted."

"You believe then, Professor," I asked, "that the day will come when there will be no war, when fighting actually will be done with ink? Suppose that day comes, will it be a good thing? Do you consider international peace a friend or an enemy to robust normal manhood? Do you think that war cleans out degenerate tendencies of peaceful civilization?"

Deciding that this was a metaphysical question, Professor Stein preferred not to answer it. He did though say this:

"In the Bible it says that the holy fire must be kept burning on the altar. It is a good thing for the world that there are idealists to keep the fire going. Men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and the puritan and quaker elements, they do their service to the world in this way. The world must have ideals. International peace is an ideal. It is like the point of a compass, the north star that the mariner sees, or the star of the desert. It points the way for those who want to go toward a certain goal. I say, that as an ideal, it is impossible of achievement, because the very way to it shows the people where they really want to go."

"But, Professor," I suggested, "if a nation has only ideals, it is going to get into trouble. I have heard it expressed that the peace movement has done the United States more harm than good. Will you, as one of its hardest workers, give some message to the people of America, on the status of international peace to-day and in the future?"