Chapter III: Part 3

I had my glasses on them, gentlemen, and I saw that periscope come up. “No. 3 gun, commence firing, fire, fire, fire.” And they did, and I picked that shell right up as it came out of the gun—a black, six-inch explosive shell. I saw it go through the air in its flight, and I saw it strike the water eight inches—a foot—in front of that periscope and it went into the conning tower. I saw that periscope go end over end, whipping through that water, and I saw plates go off his conning tower, and I saw smoke all over the scene where we had hit the enemy.

When Captain Rice was called upon for a speech he said:

“Gentlemen, I’d much rather take the _Mongolia_ through the war zone than make a speech. All I will say is that I am ready to go again, and I hope I have another chance at a _U_-boat.”

HE KNEW WHAT TO DO

A short time back, while a certain general was inspecting a regiment just about to depart for new quarters, he asked a young subaltern what would be his next order if he was in command of a regiment passing over a plain in a hostile country, and he found his front blocked by artillery, a brigade of cavalry on his right flank, and a morass on his left, while his retreat was cut off by a large body of infantry.

“Halt! Order arms, ground arms, kneel down, say your prayers!” replied the subaltern.

THAT WAS THE HYMN NUMBER

Here is a story which if it is not true ought to be. The soldier in the train was dilating on his changed life.

“They took me from my home,” he said, “and put me in barracks; they took away my clothes and put me in khaki; they took away my name and made me ‘No. 575’; they took me to church, where I’d never been before, and they made me listen to a sermon for forty minutes. Then the parson said, ‘No. 575, Art thou weary, art thou languid?’ And I got seven days’ C.B. for giving him a civil answer.”

STORIES FROM THE FRONT

INTIMATE stories of life in the trenches “somewhere in France” are told in two letters that describe in man-to-man fashion incidents that present an unusual picture of the battle front, full of color as well as of darkening shadows. The letters were written by Mr. Stevenson P. Lewis, serving with the American Ambulance Corps, to his cousin, Mr. W. O. Curtiss, of Toledo, Ohio. They are dated May 21 and 26, and extracts are printed in the Toledo _Blade_. Mr. Lewis has no complaint to make of the food. He finds the horse meat “a little tough,” but seemingly palatable. He writes:

We get good food, but miss the extra dishes. We get the famous army bread, rather sour taste, but am used to it now—no butter, of course; oatmeal without milk or sugar, horse meat, potatoes, and various flavors of jam. The horse meat is usually a little tough, but otherwise pretty good. Have biscuits and chocolate at the canteen. A couple of pieces of hardtack, with water and chocolate, do for a dinner very well when away from camp.

We have considerable time just now, with nothing to fill in, and I can’t quite go it, so I hike out for walks and have picked up quite a few good pictures and souvenirs. Picked up an eagle with spread wings—German silver, a decoration worn on a German officer’s helmet, inscribed “_Mitt Gott für König und Vaterland_.” It is rather a rare find, as the old spiked helmet is not worn any more.

Sunday we had a visit from Germany in the shape of an airplane which dropped five bombs in the next village. Two French machines gave chase and brought him down, but he caused considerable excitement until he reached the ground. They always come over at a high altitude and do not seem in any hurry to leave, regardless of the shrapnel shots placed around the planes. This one, the second we have seen come down, made two complete turns and then dived straight down.

We have had some trouble with some of the men in charge, due to the wandering of one of our men into the first line trenches. The man guilty has acted ever since he arrived as though missing in essential brain cells, but this time he crowned his former efforts—walked up a valley with _Boche_ trenches on one side, French on the other, he down the middle in No Man’s Land. Lucky he came back at all. The French called him over to their trenches, otherwise I suppose he would be walking into Berlin by this time.

We are working with an English ambulance section, taking turns making runs to field stations, where the wounded are sent direct from trenches. We carry them from these first-aid posts back to another post, and the English section, with its large cars, carry them ten or fifteen miles farther back. Then the order is reversed. The English are a mighty interesting lot, and most of them have been in service since 1914, hence have seen action all along this front. The hardest driving is at night running up to the posts just back of the lines, for all the moving is done then. The road is crowded with ammunition trucks, supplies, guns, and troops, and with no lights it is uncertain what is coming or going. Several men have ditched their cars and run by the station, but no serious accidents have occurred. Star shells sent up at intervals give a blinding light and the whole country-side is as light as day for a short time, then suddenly dark. It is this quick change that makes it hard to adjust our vision.

This English section has been through the hottest fighting on this front, having been posted at Verdun last year and running to the most advanced posts, but never lost a man and had only a few slight accidents. A person would think they were playing a safe game, but not so, after hearing of some bombardments they ran through. One man in the British ambulance corps has the Victoria Cross, the hardest war medal of any to get. He drove his car up the lines in plain sight of the Germans. One of the stretcher bearers having been killed, he rushed out on to No Man’s Land with another man and rescued several men, put them into his car, and drove off, all the time being the object of German fire.

The English are world-beaters in the flying game, as I suppose you have heard. The minute a _Boche_ plane appears over their lines, a couple of fast monoplanes are after it and usually bring it down. Heard of one air battle between five English machines and ten Germans; five of the German machines were brought down and the remaining five headed for Berlin with two English planes after them. The English did not lose a machine. Again there were three German “sausages” (observation balloons), and three English aviators, each in a machine, were detailed to bring them down, each aviator to take a balloon. Two of the Englishmen each got their balloon, but the Germans, seeing what had happened, lowered the third balloon. However, the Englishman ordered to get it, being ruffled a bit because he did not get a chance to get his “bag” as the other two did, dived down over the balloon resting in German territory, setting it afire and killing a number of Germans. He was wounded badly, but succeeded in bringing his machine back. He was awarded the Victoria Cross. Many other war medals are given, but a man who gets the Victoria Cross really has done a feat of individual bravery.

FUNNY THEY HADN’T MET

Pretty Lady Visitor (at private hospital)—“Can I see Lieutenant Barker, please?”

Matron—“We do not allow ordinary visiting. May I ask if you’re a relative?”

Visitor (boldly)—“Oh, yes! I’m his sister.”

Matron—“Dear me! I’m very glad to meet you. I’m his mother.”

NO END TO THE GAME

Two American lads were discussing the war.

“It’ll be an awful long job, Sam,” said one.

“It will,” replied the other.

“You see, these Germans is takin’ thousands and thousands of Russian prisoners, and the Russians is takin’ thousands and thousands of German prisoners. If it keeps on, all the Russians will be in Germany and all the Germans in Russia. And then they’ll start all over again, fightin’ to get back their ’omes.”

UNCLE SAM, DETECTIVE

THE detective work accomplished by the United States Government since its entry into the war has been worthy of a Sherlock Holmes, and yet few persons, reading only the results of this remarkably developed system, have realized that a Government heretofore finding it unnecessary to match wits with foreign spy bureaus has suddenly taken a high rank in this unpleasant but absolutely essential branch of war-making—as it has in all others. The public read of the intercepted dispatches from the Argentine to Germany by way of Sweden, and of the Bernstorff messages, but without a realization of the problem that a cipher dispatch presents to one who has not the key. And probably the average reader is unaware that, in both the army and navy, experts have been trained to decipher code messages, with the result that both the making and the reading of such dispatches have been reduced to an almost mathematical science. The Philadelphia _Press_, in outlining the instruction given in this important work at the Army Service schools, says:

What is taught the military will furnish an idea of the task of the code experts in the State Department, and of the basis of the science that has unmasked the German plans with respect to vessels to be _spurlos versenkt_ and of legislators to be influenced through the power of German gold.

“It may as well be stated,” says Capt. Parker Hitt—that is, he was a captain of infantry when he said it—“that no practicable military cipher is mathematically indecipherable if intercepted; the most that can be expected is to delay for a longer or shorter time the deciphering of the message by the interceptor.”

The young officer is warned that one doesn’t have to rely in these times upon capturing messengers as they speed by horse from post to post. All radio messages may be picked up by every operator within the zone, and the interesting information is given that if one can run a fine wire within one hundred feet of a buzzer line or within thirty feet of a telegraph line, whatever tidings may be going over these mediums may be copied by induction.

In order that the student may not lose heart, it is pointed out in the beginning that many European powers use ciphers that vary from extreme simplicity to “a complexity which is more apparent than real.” And as to amateurs, who make up ciphers for some special purpose, it’s dollars to doughnuts that their messages will be read just as easily as though they had printed them in box-car letters.

At every headquarters of an army the intelligence department of the General Staff stands ready to play checkers with any formidable looking document that comes along in cipher, and there is mighty little matter in code that stands a ghost of a chance of getting by.

The scientific dissection of ciphers starts with the examination of the general system of language communication, which, with everybody excepting friend Chinaman, is an alphabet composed of letters that appear in conventional order.

It was early found by the keen-eyed gentlemen who analyzed ciphers that if one took ten thousand words of any language and counted the letters in them the number of times that any one letter would recur would be found practically identical with their recurrence in any other ten thousand words. From this discovery the experts made frequency tables, which show just how many times one may expect to find a letter e or any other letter in a given number of words or letters. These tables were made for ten thousand letters and for two hundred letters, so that one might get an idea how often to expect to find given letters in both long and short messages or documents.

Thus we find the following result:

_Letters_

10000 200
A 778 16
B 141 3
C 296 6
D 402 8
E 1277 26
F 197 4
G 174 3
H 595 12
I 667 13
J 51 1
K 74 2
L 372 7
M 288 6
N 686 14
O 807 16
P 223 4
Q 8 ..
R 651 13
S 622 12
T 855 17
U 308 6
V 112 2
W 176 3
X 27 ..
Y 196 4
Z 17 ..

It is found that in any text the vowels A E I O U represent 38.37 per cent; that the consonants L N R S T represent 31.86 per cent, and that the consonants J K Q X Z stand for only 1.77 per cent. One doesn’t want to shy away from these figures as being dry and dull, because they form part of a story as interesting as any detective narrative that was ever penned by a Conan Doyle.

For the usual purposes of figuring a cipher the first group is given the value of 40 per cent, the second group 30 per cent, and the last 2 per cent. And then one is introduced to the order of frequency in which letters appear in ordinary text. It is:

E T O A N I R S H D L U C M P F Y W G B V K J X Z Q.

Tables are then made for kinds of matter that is not ordinary, taken from various kinds of telegraphic and other documents, which will alter only slightly the percentage values of the letters as shown in a table from ordinary English.

Having gone along thus far, the expert figures how many times he can expect to find two letters occurring together. These are called digraphs, and one learns that AH will show up once in a thousand letters, while HA will be found twenty-six times. These double-letter combinations form a separate table all of their own, and the common ones are set aside, as TH, ER, ON, OR, etc., so they can be readily guessed or mathematically figured against any text.

Tables of frequency are figured out for the various languages, particularly German, and the ciphers are divided into two chief classes, substitution and transposition. The writer in _The Press_ says:

Now you will remember those percentages of vowels and consonants. Here is where they come in. When a message is picked up the army expert counts the times that the vowels recur, and if they do not check with the 40 per cent for the common vowels, with the consonant figures tallying within 5 per cent of the key, he knows that he is up against a substitution cipher. The transposition kind will check to a gnat’s heel.

When the expert knows exactly what he is up against he is ready to apply the figures and patiently unravel the story. It may take him hours, and maybe days, but sooner or later he will get it to a certainty.

If he has picked up a transposition fellow he proceeds to examine it geometrically, placing the letters so that they form all sorts of squares and rectangles that come under the heads of simple horizontals, simple verticals, alternate horizontals, alternate verticals, simple diagonals, alternate diagonals, spirals reading clockwise, and spirals reading counter-clockwise. Once one gets the arrangement of the letters, the reading is simple.

For instance, ILVGIOIAEITSRNMANHMNG comes along the wire. It doesn’t figure for a substitution cipher and you try the transposition plan. There are twenty-one letters in it, and the number at once suggests seven columns of three letters each. Try it on your piano:

I L V G I O I
A E I T S R N
M A N H M N G

And reading down each column in succession you get “I am leaving this morning.”

After passing over several simple ciphers as not “classy” enough to engage the reader’s attention, the writer takes up one of a much more complicated nature, which, however, did not get by Uncle Sam’s code wizards. Follow the deciphering of this example by Captain Hitt:

He began with an advertisement which appeared in a London newspaper, which read as follows:

“M. B. Will deposit £27 14_s._ 5_d._ to-morrow.”

The next day this advertisement in cipher appeared:

“M. B. CT OSB UHGI TP IPEWF H CEWIL NSTTLE FJNVX XTYLS FWKKHI BJLSI SQ VOI BKSM XMKUL SK NVPONPN GSW OL IEAG NPSI HYJISFZ CYY NPUXQG TPRJA VXMXI AP EHVPPR TH WPPNEL. UVZUA MMYVSF KNTS ZSZ UAJPQ DLMMJXL JR RA PORTELOGJ CSULTWNI XMKUHW XGLN ELCPOWY OL. ULJTL BVJ TLBWTPZ XLD K ZISZNK OSY DL RYJUAJSSGK. TLFNS UVD W FQGCYL FJHVSI YJL NEXV PO WTOL PYYYHSH GQBOH AGZTIQ EYFAX YPMP SQA CI XEYVXNPPAII UV TLFTWMC FU WBWXGUHIWU. AIIWG HSI YJVTI BJV XMQN SFX DQB LRTY TZ QTXLNISVZ. GIFT AII UQSJGJ OHZ XFOWFV BXAI CTWY DSWTLTTTPKFRHG IVX QCAFV TP DIIS JBF ESF JSC MCCF HNGK ESBP DJPQ NLU CTW ROSB CSM.”

Now just off-hand, the average man would shy away from this combination as a bit of news that he really did not care to read. But to the cipher fiend it was a thing of joy, and it illustrates one of the many cases that they are called upon to read, and the methods by which they work.

As a starting-point the cipher-man assumed that the text was in English because he got it out of an English newspaper, but he did not stop there. He checked it from a negative view-point by finding the letter _w_ in it, which does not occur in the Latin languages, and by finding that the last fifteen words of the message had from two to four letters each, which would have been impossible in German.

Then he proceeds to analyze. The message has 108 groups that are presumably words, and there are 473 letters in it. This makes an average of 4.4 letters to the group, whereas one versed in the art normally expects about five. There are ninety vowels of the AEIOU group and seventy-eight letters JKQXZ. Harking back to that first statement of percentages, it is certain that this is a substitution cipher because the percentage does not check with the transposition averages.

The canny man with the sharp pencil then looks for recurring groups and similar groups in his message and he finds that they are:

AIIWG AII BKSM BKAI CT CTWY CTW DLMMJXL DL ESF ESBP FJNVX FJHVSI NPSI NPUXQG OSB OSY ROSB OL OL PORTELOGJ PO SQ SQA TP TP TLBWTPZ TLFNS TLFTWMC UVZUA UVD UV SMKUL XMKUHW YJL YJVTI.

Passing along by the elimination route he refers to his frequency tables to see how often the same letters occur, and he finds that they are all out of proportion, and he can proceed to hunt the key for several alphabets.

He factors the recurring groups like a small boy doing a sum in arithmetic when he wants to find out how many numbers multiplied by each other will produce a larger one. The number of letters between recurring groups and words is counted and dissected in this wise:

AII AII 45, which equals 3x3x5
BK BK 345, which equals 23x3x5
CT CT 403, no factors
CTW CTW 60, which equals 2x2x2x5
DL DL 75, which equals 3x5x5
ES ES 14, which equals 2x7
FJ FJ 187, no factors
NP NP 14, which equals 2x7
OL OL 120, which equals 2x2x2x3x5
OS OS 220, which equals 11x2x2x5
OSB OSB 465, which equals 31x3x5
PO PO 105, which equals 7x3x5
SQ SQ 250, which equals 2x5x5x5
TLF TLF 80, which equals 2x2x2x2x5
TP TP 405, which equals 3x3x3x3x5
UV UV 115, which equals 23x5
XMKU XMKU 120, which equals 2x2x2x3x5
UV UV 73, no factors
YJ YJ 85, which equals 17x5

Now the man who is doing the studying takes a squint at this result and he sees that the dominant factor all through the case is the figure 5, so he is reasonably sure that five alphabets were used, and that the key-word had, therefore, five letters, so he writes the message in lines of five letters each and makes a frequency table for each one of the five columns he has formed, and he gets the following result:

Col. 1. Col. 2. Col. 3. Col. 4. Col. 5.
A 2 A 9 A 1 A 1 A 2
B— B 3 B 3 B— B 7
C 7 C 1 C 3 C 4 C—
D 2 D 2 D 1 D— D 3
E 4 E— E 2 E 7 E—
F 3 F— F 9 F 3 F 5
G 9 G— G 3 G 2 G 2
H 3 H 5 H 3 H 3 H 2
I 2 I 2 I 7 I 17 I 2
J 5 J 1 J 6 J— J 9
K 6 K 5 K— K 1 K 1
L— L 19 L 2 L 5 L 1
M— M— M 7 M 4 M 3
N 7 N 3 N 4 N— N 5
O 5 O— O 9 O 1 O—
P 7 P 7 P 8 P 4 P—
Q 5 Q— Q— Q 2 Q 6
R— R 1 R 1 R 6 R 1
S— S 8 S 6 S 12 S 7
T 7 T 3 T 5 T 1 T 14
U 7 U 3 U 6 U— U 1
V 5 V— V 2 V 5 V—
W 3 W 4 W— W 5 W 7
X 2 X— X 4 X 8 X 6
Y 4 Y 5 Y— Y 3 Y 7
Z— Z 5 Z 3 Z— Z 3

Now, having erected these five enigmatical columns, Captain Hitt juggles them until he uncovers the hidden message, thus:

“In the table for column 1 the letter G occurs 9 times,” he says with an air of a man having found something that is perfectly plain. “Let us consider it tentatively as E.

“Then, if the cipher alphabet runs regularly and in the direction of the regular alphabet, C (7 times) is equal to A, and the cipher alphabet bears a close resemblance to the regular frequency table. Note that TUV (equal to RST) occurring respectively 7, 7, and 5 times and the non-occurrence of B, L, M, R, S, Z (equal to Z, J, K, P, Q, and X, respectively).

“In the next table L occurs 19 times, and taking it for E with the alphabet running the same way, A is equal to H. The first word of our message, CT, thus becomes AM when deciphered with these two alphabets, and the first two letters of the key are CH.

“Similarly in the third table we may take either F or O for E, but a casual examination shows that the former is correct and A is equal to B.

“In the fourth table I is clearly E and A is equal to E.

“The fifth table shows that T is equal to 14 and J is equal to 9. If we take J as equal to E then T is equal to O, and in view of the many Es already accounted for in the other columns this may be all right. It checks as correct if we apply the last three alphabets to the second word of our message, OSB, which deciphers NOW. Using these alphabets to decipher the whole message we find it to read:

“‘M. B. Am now safe on board a barge moored below Tower Bridge, where no one will think of looking for me. Have good friends but little money owing to action of police. Trust, little girl, you still believe in my innocence although things seem against me. There are reasons why I should not be questioned. Shall try to embark before the mast in some outward-bound vessel. Crews will not be scrutinized as sharply as passengers. There are those who will let you know my movements. Fear the police may tamper with your correspondence, but later on, when hue and cry have died down, will let you know all.’”

It all seems simple to the man who follows the idea closely, but Captain Hitt proceeds to make further revelations of the art. He adds:

“The key to this message is CHBEF, which is not intelligible as a word, but if put into figures, indicating that the 2d, 7th, 1st, 4th, and 5th letter beyond the corresponding letter of the message has been used as a key it becomes 27145, and we connect it with the personal which appeared in the same paper the day before reading:

“‘M. B. Will deposit £27 14_s._ 5_d._ tomorrow.’”

This is only one of the many methods for getting under the hide of a coded message that our bright men of the Army and their cousins of the State and Navy departments have worked out through years of study and application.

DRIVING IS TOO GOOD FOR THEM

He—“And that night we drove the Germans back two miles.”

She—“Drove them, indeed. I’d have made them walk every step of it.”

NOW THEY DON’T SPEAK

The Host—“I thought of sending some of these cigars out to the Front.”

The Victim—“Good idea! But how can you make certain that the Germans will get them?”

DIDN’T RAISE HIS BOY TO BE A “SLACKER”

THEY don’t raise their boys to be gun-shy down in the mountains of Kentucky, so when John Calhoun Allen, of Clay County, heard that his son had been arrested in New York as a “slacker” he was “plumb mad.”

The young man was rounded up with a bunch of other “conscientious objectors” and taken before Judge Mayer in the Federal Court. John C. junior told the judge that during his boyhood in the Kentucky mountains he had witnessed so much bloodshed that he was now opposed to fighting and had a horror of killing a man or, in fact, of being killed himself. The judge was puzzled. He had never heard before of a Kentuckian with any such complaint, so he packed the young man off to Bellevue for the “once-over” while he communicated the facts to his father down in Clay County, and, says the New York _Times_:

The answer arrived in the form of the 6 feet 2 inches of John Allen himself. The mountaineer came into court just before the noon hour. He wore the boots and the corduroy trousers of the Kentucky hills. His shirt was blue, collarless, and home-made. His coat was old-fashioned, and in his hand he carried his big black sombrero.

“May it please your honor,” said United States District Attorney Knox, “we have with us the father of John Calhoun Allen.”

The mountaineer looked the Judge squarely in the eye and bowed. Tall and erect, he towered above every other man in the court room and he was not in the least embarrassed.

“Judge,” he said, “I got your letter and I thank you for it, and I started to answer it in writin’, but decided that maybe it was better that I come here myself and see what’s the matter with that boy of mine. It ain’t like our folks to act as that youngster has acted, and I assure you that I am plumb mad about it. I have five boys, and this one who is in trouble here is the oldest. Two of my lads are already in the Army and the two youngest will be there soon as they are old enough.

“And so I have come all the way from Kentucky to get this one who I hear is a backslider. All I ask is for you to let me take my boy back to Kentucky with me, and I will see to it that he comes to time when his country calls. There ain’t going to be no quitters in the Allen family. My boys that are already in the Army ain’t twenty-one yet. This one is my oldest and he’s the first to miss the trail, but he’ll find the trail again or I’ll know the reason why.”

“I have the utmost confidence in you,” said Judge Mayer after the old man finished, “and I shall release your son in your custody, confident that you will see to it that he obeys the law and registers.”

“He’ll register all right, Judge,” replied the old man, “and I tell you that if he don’t, something will happen in the public square back home, and all the folks will have a chance to see with their own eyes that the Allens don’t stand for no quitters at a time when the country needs all the men it can get.”

In the meantime Marshal McCarthy had sent to the Tombs for young Allen, and the young man was waiting in the Marshal’s office when his father arrived. They are self-contained people down in the Kentucky mountains. Their feelings are deep, but well controlled, so that when father and son met there was no show of emotion on the part of either. But the sight of his son softened the father’s anger. He placed his hand gently on the younger man’s shoulder, and this is the way _The Times_ describes the scene that followed:

“Son,” said the father, “don’t you know what it means to do what you tried to do? Don’t you know that you don’t come from no such stock as these slackers and quitters, or whatever else you call such cattle? Don’t you know that, boy? Well, if you don’t, it’s time you started learnin’. Now you ain’t crazy, for our folks don’t go crazy, and you are goin’ to register, and you are goin’ to fight, and fight your darnedest, too, if your country calls you. Now just put that in your head and let it stay there. I don’t want to hurt you, and I ain’t if you do right; but I just want to say that if you don’t do right, when I get you back home I will take you into the public square and shoot you myself in the presence of all the folks.”

The boy, with tears in his eyes, said he would register just as quickly as he could.

“And I’ll fight, too, if they want me,” the boy added.

“Of course you will, for if you didn’t you wouldn’t be my son,” the old man replied.

And that was the end of the Allen incident.

“That old fellow is one of the kind that makes the country great. He is a real American,” said Judge Mayer afterward.

Just before he left the Federal Building, John Allen asked one of the deputy marshals what case was being tried before Judge Mayer. (It was the case of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.)

“I noticed a man and a woman and I wondered who they were. What did they do?” he asked.

“They are anarchists and they are on trial for urging men not to register for the war,” the Marshal replied.

“Those are the kind’er folks who are responsible for boys like this one of mine gettin’ in trouble,” John Allen observed. “We don’t have folks like that down our way.”

CONSOLING INFORMATION

Mrs. S. Kensington—“We have such good news from the front! Dear Charles is safely wounded, at last!”

HE WAS ALL RIGHT

Doctor—“Why were you rejected?”

Applicant (smiling)—“For imbecility.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Nothing; I have an income of six thousand dollars.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“What does you wife do?”

“Nothing; she is richer than I.”

“You are no imbecile. Passed for general service.”

THE 100-POUND TERROR OF THE AIR

WHEN he registered at a New York hotel the clerk looked him over with a supercilious eye. He was a trifle undersized, to be sure, and youngish—twenty-two and weighing only one hundred pounds. And the name, W. A. Bishop, hastily scrawled on the register, meant nothing to the clerk—probably some college stripling in town to give Broadway the once-over. But a little later the same clerk looked at that name on the hotel roster with a sensation as nearly approaching awe as a New York hotel clerk is capable of feeling; for he had learned that the diminutive guest was the world-famous Maj. William Avery Bishop, of the British Royal Flying Corps, who in three months won every decoration Great Britain has created to pin upon the breasts of her gallant fighters.

Mars is a grim god and an exacting master, but he sometimes “smoothes his wrinkled front” at the blandishments of the little god of Love. And it was so in the case of Major Bishop when the gallant knight of the air checked the war-god in the hotel coat room and slipped away with Dan Cupid to Toronto, where his sweetheart was waiting to welcome him. They are to be married before he returns to the front.

The St. Louis _Post-Dispatch_ reckons Bishop as the greatest air fighter since Guynemer. It says of his exploits:

So far as is known, Major Bishop is the only living man who has a right to wear not only the Military Medal but the Order of Distinguished Service, and not only that, but the Victoria Cross. Yet he is only twenty-two years old, and he blushed and stammered like a schoolboy when he tried to explain something about air fighting at a Canadian club dinner in New York. However, here is his record as piled up in five months at the front:

One hundred and ten single combats with German fliers.

Forty-seven Hun airplanes sent crashing to the earth.

Twenty-three other planes sent down, but under
conditions which made it impossible to know certainly
that they and their pilots had been destroyed.

Thrilling escapes without number, including one fall of
4,000 feet with his machine in flames.

The most daredevil feat of the war—an attack
single-handed on a _Boche_ airdrome, in which he
destroyed three enemy machines.

These feats not only won medals for the hero, but rapid promotion. With his appointment as Major, he was also named chief instructor of aerial gunnery—which is his chief hobby—and commander of an airplane squadron.

Bishop went to Europe from his home in Owen Sound, a little Ontario town, where his father is County Registrar, in the spring of 1915 as a cavalry private. Cavalrymen have an easy time these days waiting for the trench warfare to end and the coming of the open fighting, when they can get at the Hun. Bishop didn’t want to wait, so he was transferred to the flying corps. He made no particular impression on these officers, but finally got a place as observer in the spring of 1916. His machine was shot down presently, and when he came out of hospital he was given three months’ leave, most of which he spent at home.

When he went back last fall he tried again, and this time succeeded in qualifying as a pilot. He spent the early winter training in England, and finally reached the front in February. Then things began to happen.

His first enemy plane was brought down within a few days, under circumstances which have not been told, but which were enough to win the Military Medal. By Easter his record was such that he was made flight commander and captain. He celebrated by attacking three German planes single-handed. Four others came to their rescue. He got two; then out of ammunition, he went home. This brought him the D. S. O.

Bishop won the Victoria Cross in a sensational air battle. Here is the official account as given in _The Post-Dispatch_:

“Captain Bishop flew first to an enemy airdrome. Finding no enemy machine about, he flew to another about three miles distant and about twelve miles within enemy lines. Seven machines, some with their engines running, were on the ground. He attacked these from a height of fifty feet, killing one of the mechanics.

“One of the machines got off the ground, but Captain Bishop, at a height of sixty feet, fired fifteen rounds into it at close range. A second machine got off the ground, into which he fired thirty rounds at 150 yards. It fell into a tree. Two more machines rose from the airdrome, one of which he engaged at a height of 1,000 feet, sending it crashing to the ground. He then emptied a whole drum of cartridges into the fourth hostile machine and flew back to the station.

“Four hostile scouts were 1,000 feet above him for a mile during his return journey, but they would not attack. His machine gun was badly shot about by machine gun fire from the ground.”

Apparently the official reporter was not interested in the Captain’s condition. The damaged machine gun accounts for his strategic retreat, which satisfies officialdom. On Bishop’s behalf, it should be remembered that an aviator lives very close to his machine gun during a fracas—if he lives.

Anyhow, Bishop got the V. C. for this before-breakfast excursion. When he was given a furlough, a few weeks ago, it was suggested that he stop at Buckingham Palace on his way home. There a rather small man with a light beard and a crown pinned the three medals on the breast of the Canadian.

Major Bishop himself is inclined to complain a little at the tools with which he has to work. His faith in incendiary bullets has been shattered, for instance.

“You want to bring the Hun down in flames if you can,” he explained. “That is the nicest way. But you can’t be sure of doing that. I shot six incendiary bullets into one fellow’s petrol tank one day, and the thing wouldn’t blow up.”

Good shooting is what does the trick, he says, and plenty of it.

“Don’t trust to one bullet to kill a Hun. Get him in the head if you can, or at least in the upper part of the body. But get him several times—one bullet is never sure to kill one. Get hunks of them into him; into his head. That does it. The greatest thing to teach the new man is how to shoot.”

Sounds rather bloodthirsty, but this 100-pound fighter knows his enemy and of what he is capable. While Bishop finds bombing quite interesting, he prefers dueling, which he says is still seeking higher altitudes; in fact, when one is flying above 22,000 feet he is never sure that he will not be attacked from above. The unexpected appeals to Bishop, who cites the following as an enjoyable occasion:

“I was about 10,000 feet up, going through a cloud bank, without a thing in my mind but to get back six or seven miles behind the Hun lines and see what was going on, when I heard the rattle of machine guns. I looked back and there were three Huns coming straight for me. We all started firing at about 300 yards. I gave all I had to one fellow and he came to within about ten yards of me before swerving. He went by in flames. I turned on the second and he fell, landing only about 100 yards from the first one, which shows how fast we were going.

“I was excited, and the third machine escaped,” he added apologetically.

An attack, two duels, and two victories while the planes were traveling less than a quarter of a mile, at over 100 miles an hour! Time, perhaps ten seconds.

It was Bishop, according to reports, who invented the plan of diving down and shooting the Germans from behind during an attack. He did not discuss the origin of the idea, but denied that it did much damage. Oh, yes, an occasional machine gun nest, but, then, there are only a few men in these. The real effect was moral. It distracts the Hun to be shot in the back. Also it greatly encourages the infantry who are charging.

“They cheer like mad,” he grinned. “They think we are killing thousands of Huns.”

Traditions gather thick around such a man. Tommy has no demigods in his religion, but he does the best he can with his heroes. So Tommy says that Bishop brought down nine machines in a two-hour fight one day. But Tommy’s best story of him is given to illustrate the nerve which enjoys being called on to fight for life on a split second’s notice.

A Hun flier had used an incendiary bullet on Bishop’s petrol tank that did work, Tommy reports. The battle had been at a low altitude, about two miles up. Bishop’s plane flamed up, and he fell. He was on the point of jumping and had loosed the straps that held him into the fuselage. Airmen dislike being burned to death. But he decided to make a try for life at the risk of this, and after he had fallen 4,000 feet or so took the levers again and pulled up the nose of the plane, straightening her out. Of course, his engine was out, so he began to tail dive, and went a few more thousand feet that way. Then he succeeded in straightening her out once more, but side-slipped, and finally banked just as he struck. One wing of his flaming machine hit first and broke the fall. The loosened straps let him jump clear. He was just behind the British lines, and Tommy rushed up and gathered him in and extinguished the fire in his blazing clothing.

He was not hurt.

THE WATCH-DOGS OF THE TRENCHES

THERE are stories a-plenty of the dash and fire of youth in the trenches. But by no means are all the men young who are battling on the front in France. There are the territorials, the line defenders, the men of the provinces, with wives and children at home.

“They are wonderful, these older fellows,” said an officer enthusiastically, after a visit to the trenches. “They ought to be decorated—every one of them!”

It is of these watch-dogs of the trenches that René Bazin has written in _Lisez-Moi_, and the article, translated by Mary L. Stevenson, is printed in the Chicago _Tribune_. Mr. Bazin says:

I am proud of the young fighters, but those I am proudest of are the older ones. These have passed the age when the hot blood coursing through their veins drives them to adventure; they are leaving behind wife, children, present responsibilities, and future plans—those things hardest to cast off. Leaving all this, as they have done, without a moment’s hesitation, is proof enough of their courage. And from the beginning of the war to the present time I have never talked to a solitary commanding officer that he has not eulogized his territorials.

They are essentially trench defenders, lookout men. The young ones do the coursing. These attack, the others guard. But how they do guard, how they hold the ground, once won! Nearing the front, if you meet them on the march as they are about to be relieved, you can recognize them even from afar by two signs: they march without any military coquetry, even dragging their feet a little, and they have everything with them that they can possibly carry—sacks, blankets, cans, bagpipes, cartridge-boxes, with the neck of a bottle sticking out of their trousers pocket. Even when you get near enough to see their faces many of these men do not look at you; they are intent upon their own thoughts. They know the hard week ahead of them. But the wind and rain are already old friends; the mud of the trenches does not frighten them; patience has long been their lot; they accept death’s lottery, knowing well that they are protecting those they have left behind, and they go at it as to a great task whose harvest may not be reaped or even known until months later.

In truth, these men from the provinces—vine-growers, teamsters, little peasant farmers, the most numerous of all among today’s combatants—will have played a magnificent rôle in the Great War. History will have to proclaim this, in justice to the French villages, and may the Government see fit to honor and aid these silent heroes who will have done so much to save the country.

They disappear quickly, lost in the defiles or swallowed up by the mist, which night has thickened. Once in the trenches, they find the work begun the previous week and which has been carried on by their comrades’ hands, and when it comes their turn to guard the battlements they hide themselves in the same holes in the clay wall. No unnecessary movements, no flurry, no bravados, no setting off of flashes or grenade and bomb-throwing, by which the younger troops immediately show their presence in the trenches, and which only provokes a reply from the enemy.

They are holding fast, but they keep still about it. Suddenly the _Boches_ are coming. There are some splendid sharpshooters in this regiment, and in the attack of the Seventh and in the surprise attempt of the Fourteenth at daybreak it was seen what these men could do. An officer said to me: “They suffer the least loss; they excel in shelters of earthwork, they merge right into the turf.”

Many of the sectors of the front are held by this guard of older men. When the German reserves were hurled in pursuit of the Belgian Army in 1914, threatening the shores of Pas de Calais, a territorial division checked the onslaught of the best troops of the German Empire. Of their work in the trenches, Mr. Bazin writes:

But do not let anyone think theirs is a life of inaction; work is not lacking; even night is a time of reports, of revictualing, of reconnoitering, or repairing barbed-wire entanglements.

When the sector is quiet, however, the territorial enjoys some free hours. He writes a great deal; makes up for all the time past when he wrote almost no letters at all and for all the time to come when he promises himself to leave the pen hidden on the groove of the ink-well, idle on the mantel. One of them said to me: “They have put up a letter-box in my village. What will it be good for after the war—a swallow’s nest?”

Many of these letters contain only a recital of uneventful days and the prescribed formalities of friendship or love, banal to the general public but dear enough to those who are waiting and who will sit around the lamp of an evening and comment on every word. I know young women throughout the country who receive a letter from their husbands every day. The war has served as a school for adults. Sometimes expediency entirely disappears and it is the race which speaks, and the hidden faith, and the soul which perhaps has never thus been laid bare.

Here is a letter which has been brought to my notice. For a year it had been carried in the pocket of a territorial who wrote it as his last will and testament, and when he was killed it was sent to his widow. Read it and see if you would not like to have had him who wrote it as a friend and neighbor:

“My dear, today, as I am writing these lines, my heart feels very big, and if you ever read them it will be because I died doing my duty. I ask you, before I go, to bring up our children in honor and in memory of me, for I have loved them very dearly, and I shall have died thinking of them and of you. Tell them I died on the field of honor, and that I ask them to offer the same sacrifice the day France shall need their arms and hearts. Preserve my certificate of good conduct, and later make them know that their father would like to have lived for them and for you, whom I have always held so dear. Now, I do not want you to pass the rest of your life worshiping one dead. On the contrary, if during your life you meet some good, industrious young fellow capable of giving you loyal aid in rearing our children, join your life with his and never speak to him of me, for if he loves you it would only cast the shadow of a dead man upon him—it is over, my dear. I love you now and forever, even through eternity. Good-bye! I shall await you over there. Your adoring JEAN.”

As showing the dogged, determined character of these men, Mr. Bazin relates the following incident:

Lately, when both wind and rain were raging, an officer told me of going up to two lookout men, immovable at their posts in the first line trench, and joking with them, he said:

“Let’s see, what do you need?”

“Less mud.”

“I am in the same boat. What else?”

“This and that—”

“You shall have it, I promise you. Tired?”

“A little.”

“Discouraged?”

They made a terrible face, looked at him, and together replied: “If you have come to say such things as that, sir, you better not have come at all. Discouraged? No, indeed! We’re not the kind who get discouraged!”

ALL IN THE SAME COUNTRY

The German officer who confiscated a map of Cripple Creek belonging to an American traveler, and remarked that “the German Army might get there some time,” should be classed with the London banker who said to a solicitous mother seeking to send cash to San Antonio, Texas, for her wandering son: “We haven’t any correspondent in San Antonio, but I’ll give you a draft on New York, and he can ride in and cash it any fine afternoon.”

GENERAL BELL REDEEMS HIS PROMISE

THE youngsters at Camp Upton looked with admiring and envious eyes at the ribbons pinned on the left breast of the man who entered headquarters. Then they looked up at the face of the wearer of these emblems of service in the Indian Wars, Cuba, and the Philippines, and they saw a sturdy campaigner of field and desert, his face bronzed by many scorching suns. On the left sleeve of his coat were the three bars of a sergeant with the emblem of the supply department in the inverted V.

This ghost of the old Army seemed to feel a little out of place for a moment, and then he turned to Sergeant Dunbaugh and said:

“I’d like to see the General, if you please.”

“Have you an appointment?” asked Dunbaugh a bit hesitatingly.

“Well, no, but the General told me to come back, so I am here.”

As the General was then out in the camp Sergeant Dunbaugh suggested that the old soldier tell him just what he wanted to see him about, and, says the New York _Sun_:

So the story of Sergeant Busick was told—the story of a once trim young trooper and a once dashing lieutenant of the Seventh Cavalry, immortalized by Custer and honored by a whole army.

Twenty years ago Edward Busick was assigned as a private to G Troop of the Seventh, stationed at Fort Apache, Arizona. At that time G was officially lacking a captain, so a certain young lieutenant was acting commander, and for his orderly he chose one Trooper Busick.

One evening, a year later, the lieutenant received sudden orders to report immediately to a staff post. All that night his orderly worked with him packing his personal belongings and helping him get ready for an early-morning start. It was a long job, and a hard one, but the orderly didn’t mind the work in the least; all he cared about was the loss of his troop commander.

“Don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again, Busick, but if I do, and there’s anything I can do for you, I’ll be glad to do it,” the lieutenant told him when the job was finished and the last box had been nailed down.

It wasn’t very much for a lieutenant to say to his orderly, but it meant a great deal to this trim young trooper. Somehow, in the old Army, orderlies get to thinking a great deal of their officers and Busick happened to be just that particular kind. He had an especially good memory, too.

The whirligig of fate that seems to have so much to do with Army affairs sent the lieutenant to the Philippines, where, as colonel of the suicide regiment, he won everlasting honor for his regiment and a Congressional medal for valor for himself. Then on up he jumped until his shoulder-straps bore the single star of a brigadier. Then another star was added, and he became chief of staff and ranking officer in the whole Army.