Chapter II: Sir Edward Grey's Reply (6)

When Crispi, who was passing from his earlier character of conspirator and Radical to that of constitutional statesman, made the tour of the European Chancelleries, in 1877, he found Bismarck profuse in his expression of good-will toward Italy. If we are to believe Crispi, the Chancellor was ready then to draw up a treaty with her, and went so far as to hint that he approved of Italy's aspirations. Among these were the possession of Tunis and a foothold on the east coast of the Adriatic. The next year, at the Berlin Congress, however, Italy's interests were ignored, and, instead, Austria was encouraged to extend her dominion south of the Balkans, and the French were at least not discouraged from coveting a stronger position in the Mediterranean.

Finally, in 1882, France seized Tunis, to the immense indignation of the Italians, who had come to regard that as their predestined province. For it lay only a few hours by steamer from the southern coast of Sicily; it commanded the passage between the western and eastern Mediterranean; and, above all, it was the symbol of Italy's colonial ambition. To have a colony, if not several, was then regarded as the sign of being a first-class power; and that Italy should be tricked out of Tunis seemed to advertise to the world that she was not a first-class power. For her protests availed nothing.

The Italians did not know then, nor for a long time afterward, that _the French seizure of Tunis was directly due to Bismarck's instigation_. Lord Salisbury, also, who seems to have been in the plot, approved it for his own reasons. Bismarck's motives were plain--he wished to entangle France further in African colonial ventures. It had taken forty years, many thousand soldiers' lives, and great expenditures for France to make Algiers reasonably safe. As Tunis would increase the French burdens, it followed that every regiment needed there would diminish the strength of the armies with which France guarded herself from a German attack on her eastern frontier.

Having roused the Italians to wrath by this ruse, Bismarck had no difficulty in persuading them to join the Triple Alliance. He hardly needed to suggest that, if they had felt anxious at the possibility of French hostile pressure before, they had an even greater reason for such anxiety now that the French controlled the Mediterranean south of them. We may suspect also that Bismarck pointed out, as a special inducement, that, if Italy joined the alliance, she would be free from the likelihood of an attack by Austria.

Accordingly, in 1882, Italy entered into partnership with Germany and Austria for mutual defense. The only powers likely to assail them at that time were France and Russia; for England was still isolated, and Bismarck, although he felt a strong antipathy toward the English, was too shrewd a statesman either to scorn or to provoke them. As late as 1889, he approved of Italy's seeking an _entente_ with England.

At the time Italy joined the Triplice she felt, no doubt, an unwonted sense of security. Were not two powerful empires standing by, ready to defend her? Her wounded pride, also, was solaced by her admission on equal terms into such a league. Neither France nor any other could henceforth taunt her with being a second-rate power.

The immediate result of the alliance was the spread of German commercial and financial enterprises throughout the peninsula, and the steady growth of Italian bad feeling toward France. A large group of Italians made Gallophobia their guiding principle. They remembered that, in the sixties, Napoleon III. had maintained at Rome that French garrison which prevented them from emancipating the States of the Church from Papal control, and from completing the unification of Italy. They remembered that Napoleon annexed Nice--Garibaldi's birthplace--to France, and that the French _chassepots_ at Mentana dispersed Garibaldi and his red shirts bent on capturing the Eternal City. In the eighties, the Italians had good reason to suspect that the French Clericals were busy devising some imbroglio through which the Pope might be restored to the temporal power.

A convinced Gallophobe and crafty intriguer like Crispi, therefore, easily inflamed Italian indignation, so recently excited by the seizure of Tunis and by Clerical intrigues, and he counted it a gay feather in his cap when, in 1889, he declared a tariff war on France. Hard times for Italy followed; the commerce of the country was dislocated, and although Crispi tried to get compensation by negotiating special terms for trade with Germany and Austria, the new customers did not make up for the old. Germany could not furnish capital as France had done. Paris was, and is, the financial capital of the European Continent.

On this side Italy lost and Bismarck gained by the Triple Alliance--for he had attained his purpose of splitting France and Italy apart. What advantage did the Italians derive from the agreement? The reply commonly given is, protection. But, we ask, protection from whom? Not from France, because it is clear enough that, whether the Triplice existed or not, Germany would have attacked the French, if they had attacked the Italians; so that Italy had in Germany a logical protector, to whom she need not have sacrificed her initiative.

Her only other possible assailant was Austria, and it may fairly be argued that the alliance restrained Austria from attack; but Austria permitted herself every other unfriendly act toward Italy except open war; and Germany looked placidly on.

The fact that Germany, the chief Protestant nation in Europe, was the ally of Italy, might also be regarded as a support to the Italians in their long conflict with Papal pretensions; but how little Germany cared for Italy's welfare in this struggle appeared in 1903, when Kaiser Wilhelm prevented the election of Cardinal Rampolla as Pope. Rampolla, if not a Liberal, was a devoted Italian; Sarti, who defeated him, was a Reactionary, controlled by the Jesuits, hostile to Italy.

When we look at Germany's action in other affairs we find pleasant words but no tangible profit. From her geographical position Italy claimed an interest in the status of the Balkan Peninsula, and particularly in the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Germany pretended to favor her interests--according to Crispi, Bismarck even went so far as to ask, "Why don't you take Albania?"--but it was Austria that Germany steadily pushed on into the Balkans; and in 1908, when Austria, with Germany's connivance, appropriated Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Italians realized that they had been tricked again, as they were in the case of Tunis.

Since 1908 the Teutonic partners, growing more and more arrogant, have shown indifference to the concerns of their Italian ally, who, seeing no future for her in Europe, swooped down on Tripoli, the only stretch of North African littoral not already possessed by the French and by the English. Persons on the inside at Rome whispered that, if Italy had not occupied Tripoli when she did, Germany would have forestalled her; for the Kaiser, furious at being thwarted in Morocco and at having failed to bully France into submission, as he had done in 1905, had determined to seize Tripoli, come what might. More than one Foreign Office has ample proof to settle this assertion. Its plausibility is patent--Germany was already in close league with Turkey, and, looking forward to a war on England, she saw the advantage of owning territory and a naval base within easy reach of the Suez Canal.

Certain it is that both Germany and Austria frowned on Italy's Libyan enterprise, and that, in their intrigues in the Balkan Peninsula, in 1912 and 1913, they ignored their Italian partner.

And yet as long ago as 1895 Germany admitted that Italy was hardly getting a fair return from her bargain with her Teutonic allies. On March 5, 1895, Senator Lanza reported an interview he had just had with Emperor William, who said; "He had found Count Kálnoky (the Austrian Premier) ... still uneasy lest we (Italy) may come to consider the Triple Alliance insufficiently advantageous, merely because it cannot supply us, at once and in times of peace, with the necessary means of satisfying our desires with regard to the territories of Northern Africa and others as well. His Majesty ... added: 'Wait patiently. Let the occasion but present itself and you shall have whatever you wish.'"[5]

[Footnote 5: Crispi's "Memoirs," iii., 326-7.]

In spite of the Kaiser's assurance, Italy has got less and less return from the Triple Alliance every year since 1895.

It appears, therefore, that Italy long ago opened her eyes as to the real profit the alliance brought her. When England loomed up as the objective which Germany resolved to destroy, Italy quite logically let it be understood that she would not engage in a fight against England. Over thirty years of political alliance had created no sympathy among the Italians for the Germans. Like all other Europeans, they resented the arrogance of the Teutons who strode over their country.

But deeper, far deeper than personal dislike of bad manners was the fundamental antagonism between the Italian and the Prussian ideal. The Italians were pledged to Liberty, the Germans to Autocracy, bulwarked by militarism. In their long struggle for independence the Italians had had the sympathy of the best Englishmen, and in Palmerston, and especially in Lord John Russell, they found very powerful political helpers. But never since Bismarck took the helm of Prussia had one word in behalf of Democracy and Freedom been lisped by Monarch or Minister. For Italy to abandon her democratic ideal and to revert to the feudal-despotic ideal of the Pan-Germanists is unthinkable.

If she goes into the war, as now seems probable, it will be to uphold the Allies, who are fighting against Teutonic ambition inspired by despotic aims. Self-preservation demands that choice--because, should Germany win, she will not spare Italy. A stronger reason than self-interest, or than fear, however, will guide the Italians. In their past civilization and in their modern ideals they belong with the Western powers. They know the origin of their national independence. And if any Ministry should attempt to send them to replenish the wasting armies of Germany and of Austria, they would invoke the memory of Victor Emmanuel and of Garibaldi, of Mazzini and of Cavour, and refuse to be partners in schemes to aggrandize the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns.

"I am the son of Liberty," said Cavour; "to her I owe all that I am." That, too, is Italy's motto, which she will not deny.

HE HEARD THE BUGLES CALLING

BY CAREY C.D. BRIGGS

There's an old red mill at the foot of the hill;
Hear the mill-wheel turning, turning
To the drip of tears through the long, long years
Of my heart's relentless yearning--
Oh, the tender note of the catch in his throat,
Oh, the tear that he dried with laughter;
"I'll be back some day--
Mind the mill while I'm away,"
And he waved one last kiss floating after.
Gone is the miller boy,
Gone from the mill;
Gone up the winding road,
Gone o'er the hill;
Gone with the drum-beat up over the hill,
Where he heard the bugles calling.

There's no grist for the mill or siller for the till,
But I've kept the mill-wheel turning
To the rumble and the beat of a million marching feet,
And my sad heart's muffled yearning.
Oh, the road his brave feet trod, lit with glory up to God,
Oh, the courage of his call shames my sorrow;
"I'll be back some day--
Mind the mill while I'm away,"
And I caught one last kiss for tomorrow.
Gone is the miller boy,
Gone from the mill;
Gone up the winding road,
Gone o'er the hill;
Gone with the drum-beat up over the hill,
Where he heard the bugles calling.

German Soldiers Write Home

Letter of Prince Joachim

The following letter was written by Prince Joachim of
Prussia, son of the Kaiser, to Sergt. Karl Kummer of a
Prussian Regiment of Guards, who had been sent, badly
wounded, to his sister at Teplitz, and whom the Prince had
known for years.

My Dear Kummer: How sincerely I rejoiced to receive your very solicitous letter. I was sure of Kummer for that--that no one could hold him back when the time came to do some thrashing! God grant that you may speedily recover, so that you can enter Potsdam, crowned with glory, admired and envied. Who is nursing you?

The old proud First Guard Regiment has proved that it was ready to conquer and to die. Kummer, if I can in any way help you I shall gladly do so by providing anything that will make you comfortable. You know how happy I have always been for your devotion to the service, and how we two always were for action (Schwung.) I, too, am proud to have been wounded for our beloved Fatherland, and I regret only that I am not permitted to be with the regiment. Well, may God take care of you. Your devoted,

JOACHIM OF PRUSSIA.

Letter of Rudolf Herzog

The following letter, written from the field by Rudolf
Herzog, one of the leading German novelists and poets, was
published in rhymed verse in No. 41 of Die Woche.

It had been a wild week. The storm wind swept with its broom of rain; it lashed us and splashed us, thrashed noses and ears, whistled through our clothing, penetrated the pores of our skin. And in the deluge--sights that made us shudder--gaunt skeleton churches, cracked walls, smoking ruins, piled hillock high; cities and villages--judged, annihilated.

Over there a stone pit; faces grown like the faces of beasts, a picked-up rabble of assassins. A short command. A howling of death. Squarely across the road we surge. A bloody grappling coil; batteries broken and shattered; iron and wood and bits of clothing and bones.

And upon the just and the unjust alike, the lashing rain for days and nights.

We rushed through the gray Ardennes woods, the Chief Lieutenant and I, racing along day after day, wrapped up tightly, our rifles ready, through wood and marsh. No time to lose! No time to lose! Down into the valley of the Meuse!

Of twenty bridges, there remained but beams rolled up by the waters--and yawning gaps.

Now comes the order: In three days new bridges must be finished!

Haste, men! Haste! Rain or no rain, it must be done!

Pioneers and railway builders working together, hunt up material, drag and hammer and ram it together; take the rain for the sweat of their brows; look like fat toiling devils; hang along the banks, lie in the water--after all, in this weather, no one can get any wetter! They speak very little, and never laugh. Three days are short. Nothing, nothing but duty!

Not a thought remained for the distant homeland and dear ones far away; the only thought, by day and by night--on to the enemy, come what may! No mind intent on any other goal. No time to lose! No time to lose! Haste! Haste!

And forward and backward and criss-cross through the gray Ardennes, the Chief Lieutenant and I, racing day after day. Laughter, when we tried it, died sickly on our lips. The bridges! the bridges! and nothing but the bridges! Empty belly, and limbs like lead. Once more, now; all together for a last great heave!

There lies Fumay on the smooth-flowing river; and next to the old bridge, a newly built one stretches from shore to shore--a German roadway, a roadway to good fortune!

Captain of the Guard! You? From the Staff Headquarters?

He shouts my name as he approaches.

"Congratulations! Congratulations!"

And he waves a paper above a hundred heads.

"Telegram from home! Make way there, you rascal! At the home of our poet--I've just learned it--a little war girl has arrived!"

I hold the paper in my outstretched hand. Has the sun broken suddenly into the enemy's land? Light and life on all the ruins?...

I see a new bridge reaching on--

Springtime scatters the shuddering Autumn dreariness.

My little girl! I have a little girl in my home!...

You bring back my smile to me in a heavy time....

I gaze up at the sky and am silent. And far and near the busy, noisy swarm of workers is silent. Every one looks up, seeking some point in the far sky. Officers and men for a single heart-throb listen as to a distant song from the lips of children and from a mother's mouth--stand there and smile around me, in blissful pensiveness, as if there were no longer an enemy. Every one seems to feel the sun, the sun of olden happiness.

And yet, it had merely chanced that on the German Rhine, in an old castle lost amid trees, a dear little German girl was born.

(Written Sept. 17, 1914, in the field.)

Letter of the Duke of Altenburg

From a letter written from the front by the Duke of
Altenburg on Sept. 5, and published in the Altenburger
Zeitung.

We have lived through a great deal and done a great deal, marching, marching continually, without rest or respite. On Aug. 10 we reached Willdorf, near Jülich, by train, and from the 12th of August we marched without a single day of rest except Aug. 16, which we spent in a Belgian village near Liége, until today, when we reached ----. Those have been army marches such as history has never known.

The Turkish Minister of Marine, Who Shares with Enver Pasha the Control of Turkish Affairs.

(_Photo_ © _International News Service._)]

Vice President of the Turkish Parliament, Who Was Sent to Berlin to Take Back to Turkey Mohammedan Prisoners Captured from the Allies.

(_Photo from Press Illustrating Co._)]

The weather was fine, except that a broiling heat blazed down upon us. The regiment can point back to several days' marches of fifty kilometers ----. Everywhere our arrival created great amazement, in Louvain as well as in Brussels, into which the entire ---- marched at one time. At first we were taken for Englishmen in almost every village, and we still are, because the inhabitants cannot realize that we have arrived so early. The Belgians, moreover, in the last few days almost invariably set fire to their own villages.

On Aug. 24 we first entered battle; I led a combined brigade consisting of ----. The regiment fought splendidly, and in spite of the gigantic strain put upon it, it is in the best of spirits and full of the joy of battle. On that day I was for a long time in the sharpest rifle and artillery fire. Since that time there have been almost daily skirmishes and continual long marches; the enemy stalks ahead of us in seven-league boots. On Aug. 26 we put behind us a march of exactly twenty-three hours, from 6:30 o'clock in the morning till 5:30 the next morning. With all that, I was supposed to lead my regiment across a bridge to take a position guarding a new bridge in course of construction; but the bridge, as we discovered in the nick of time, was mined; twenty minutes later it flew into the air.

After resting for three hours in a field of stubble, and after we had all eaten in common with the men in a field kitchen--as we usually do--we continued marching till dark.

The spirit among our men is excellent. Tonight I am to have a real bed--the fourth, I believe, since the war began. Today I undressed for the first time in eight days.

Letter of Paul Oskar Höcker

The German novelist, Paul Oskar Höcker is a Captain of the
Landwehr.

I wanted to write to you from the village of D., which we captured by storm. Hundreds of Frenchmen, upon the retreat of their troops, preferred to flee to the cellars, where they promptly transformed themselves into civilians. Our battalion had orders to conduct investigations, arrest those apparently liable to military service, and to take possession of all arms. Unexpectedly large stores of ammunition thus fell into our hands. Among these seizures were many chests containing dumdum bullets and bearing the stamp of the ammunition factory where they were made. The cartridges were intended for use in carabines. Accordingly, it would seem to be chiefly a question of the unlawful use of these missiles, repulsive to the laws of nations, by bicycle and scout corps.

These bullets lay also in a factory package in a writing desk next to a draft of the last will and testament which Monsieur le Capitaine wrote out on the first day of mobilization: He bequeathed his cash fortune of 110,000 francs, as well as his household furniture and his two hunting dogs, to Mme. Isabelle H. The forsaken Mme. Isabelle, who sought distant and clearer skies two days before our entry into the village, does not, however, seem to have been very fond of animals; for out of the forsaken house there rose piteously the whimpering and whining of the half-starved setters.

But what are the thousand bright recollections of the captured town, what are all the experiences of this campaign, compared to the heavy, heavy days of fighting which our battalion had to battle through near L.!

On Sunday, Oct. 4 the detachment marched from D. in the direction of L. It had been known for some time that the enemy was attempting a movement around our extreme right flank. Continual detrainments of French troops were taking place at L. A further advance was to be permitted to them under no conditions. The march toward L. took place on various roads. A cavalry division cleared the territory north of the city, and dispatched, simultaneously with our own advance, a company of Jaegers and a company of bicycle men against L.

At 1 o'clock we received fire. The point of our column returns it. As ever in small towns and suburbs the skill of the French is great in street fighting, turning to best advantage every protruding corner and extension of a building, and utilizing every alley of trees for firing attacks. Then the Frenchman clears these spaces quickly and hurries for protection to the next block of houses, till he has lured the foe far enough forward to surprise him with a carefully prepared fire from the side.

By leaps and bounds we advance along the broad road to the heights of the two suburbs F. and R. Here for the first time there is a matching of fighting forces. Undoubtedly the foe is far superior to us numerically; and he seems firmly determined not to allow himself to be crowded out of his excellent sheltered positions.

Our battery rolls up, and lets her brazen tongue speak. The infantry fight ceases, until the foremost buildings are set aflame on all three sides. Troop at a time, the French now take to flight, most of them abandoning their cartridges, as is evidenced by the rattle of exploding ammunition on every floor of the buildings.

But R. holds out, while F., at the right of the roadway, and the houses afire on the road toward Lille itself are quickly cleared of the enemy. The bicycle patrol, which has undertaken a determined advance to F., meets no further foe.

But upon the two companies engaged on my right there is poured a murderous fire that presently exacts heavy toll; and in the rough country hereabout it is impossible to discover the masked positions of the sharpshooters and machine guns. The Frenchman is an expert in the location of excellent hiding places, wire entanglements, and the like. He even puts forth infinite efforts to make his fortified positions extremely comfortable nests from which he can enjoy a view of all the points at which, in the irregular lay of the land, the enemy must necessarily halt; and thereupon the Frenchman meets the hesitating column of attack with his concentrated fire.

Four guns are nibbling at the edge of the village with their shells. Perhaps the machine guns, whose monotonous rattle lashes our nerves to the snapping point, may be hidden there in the church tower. But the battery commander hesitates to damage the house of God. So he leaves a gap there, and sweeps the smaller houses. Suddenly one of the machine guns ceases--it must have been concealed in the hedge close to the church; the gun squad serving it must have been found by the fire of our gunners; for presently there is noticeable in that quarter a foot race of red-trousered infantrymen. In the moaning of the shells there mingles the rattling of shrapnel. A whole group tumbles pell-mell; yonder one of them dashes madly this way and that, until a new load strikes him--they move like dolls in a miniature theatre; it is hard to realize at this distance that human lives are being crushed out here.

But an hour later we entered R. Night has fallen. Through the mighty gaps in the gabled roofs of the houses of the narrow street on which we enter shines the moon. Four men of the bicycle corps stand silent at the entrance to the village; the prisoners in their midst, infantrymen in uniform or in rapidly donned civil garb--the tell-tale red of the trousers shows under the short vest of one of them. In the streets lie curious bundles, the corpses of those who have fallen here. A wounded soldier drags wearily up to the subaltern officer's post, with hands raised above his head; it is a Frenchman who has thrown away his blue coat, but still wears his cap. The steps of the incoming battalion ring out on the village pavement. Otherwise an icy silence, night, and the smell of blood and burning.

And now horror creeps over us. We greet Death. He greets us.

In R. scarcely a single house is still inhabited. All have fled to L. In the street that has been assigned to my company, I must have almost every house opened by force, in order that the men, worn out with marching and fighting, may rest. Here and there, in answer to prolonged knocking, one of the inhabitants comes to the door. When the shell fire began they took refuge in their cellars.

In the brightly tiled hall of a pretty house that has escaped damage I sit with the gentlemen for several hours over glasses of mulled wine. We are waiting for orders for the next day. The orders reach us at 1 o'clock that night; the detachment is to take its stand at 7 o'clock beside the church at R., in order to continue the advance toward L.

But during the hours of the night many changes have taken place. The troops driven out of R. have sent their patrols, the black scouts, to the very edge of the suburb again, under cover of darkness; and reports of our cavalry and bicycle men tell that during the night heavy detachments of troops sent from the north have reached L. They talk of 40,000 to 50,000 men, chiefly newly enlisted forces and territorials; but Englishmen, too, are said to be among them. Our assigned task does not include fighting a destructive battle. We are simply to compel the enemy to unfold his forces, for certain strategic reasons the nature of which, of course, we do not know. Accordingly, our small detachment must risk everything in order to lure upon itself as many as possible of the enemy's troops. That, too, is just what happened.

We take our former positions. The cavalry division has departed, with its artillery, its bicycle corps, its Jaegers, and its machine guns. New problems are in store on the right wing for the brave division which has already distinguished itself throughout the entire campaign. We remain alone with our battery--the third battalion of the active regiment and our provincial Landwehr battalion.

It is going to be a heavy, heavy, heavy day of fighting.

Patrols establish the fact that F. is free of the enemy's forces. But as we enter the road toward L. the French machine guns at once announce themselves. They sing and whistle and whirr above our heads. After yesterday's losses (half a column of the Fifth Company is still busy burying our dead, laying our wounded in automobiles and wagons to be sent to the hospitals) our artillery will first shoot breaches in the enemy's lines before we advance.

But at midday the field artillery of the Frenchmen already replies to ours. They must have transshipped, at night, from their positions on the canal to L., in the belief that mighty forces were being assembled here for a further tremendous blow. The object of our assignment would in that case already have been for the most part accomplished. But all of us subordinate officers--who neither possess nor should possess an insight into the strategic movement--we have but a single desire: Forward!

For a few minutes, after the first thundering crash of the French artillery, there is deep silence. It seems as if nature itself were holding its breath. The crash had fallen in the alley of poplars along the road. The roadway is strewn with branches and twigs. Just beside the northern column of our battery the monstrous shell has buried itself in the clay soil. A hail of earth-crumbs has rained upon us. We cannot note any other damage. But all the companies that are still in closed formation spread out in order to offer no compact target.

For hours, now, there continues this terrible cannonading backward and forward, this dreadful argument of batteries. Horrible as is the devastation which such an instrument of murder can wreak, you gradually grow accustomed to the roaring storm. And you almost smile because you still lower your head each time. Until you remember: We greet Death, and he greets us.

"Near the church tower southeast of L. where the railway bridge can be seen, are hostile riflemen, strength several companies."

Our cavalry patrol disappears again--a French machine gun fires at it without hitting--and the battalion commander calls to me:

"Company left across the road, right and left of the farmhouse, developing a column on each side, with wide intervals between!"

Quickly the right wing column darts across. My Turkish professor, the Chief Lieutenant, manages it beautifully. One sharpshooter always darts ahead, throws himself on his belly, creeps on; a second follows. At one, two kilometers, scarcely a headpiece is visible. The left column is less successful. Over the heads of the sharpshooters there at once whistle shells. They feel the air pressure; the tremendous noise grips them.

"Dodge! Lie down! Forward only one at a time, with long pauses! You'll betray our positions, fellows!"

And at this moment there is a clattering sound in the air above. A French airman!

"An airman, Captain!"

"Yes, yes, I've heard him."

The only thing that can help us is to keep from looking up. Only the rows of flesh-colored oval faces, that immediately turn up to greet each flight of an airman, permit the strength of forces to be estimated at such great distances.

Beyond any doubt the foe has overestimated our strength tenfold. Otherwise he would not have put forth these tremendous efforts. His strength, in such fortified positions, would have sufficed to hold an entire army corps in check. And our poor weak brigade?

I lie on my belly, creeping forward. To remain standing would be suicide.

Sst-sst-teewheet--boom-buzz--tsha! Tacktack-tacktack-tack!

It's a bad music. We are being rained upon with iron. We hear it whistle past our ears, we feel it whizz over our helmets. Our artillery covers us in front, so that we cannot fire at the single bodies of advance riflemen. They are drawing to the left toward the entrance to F. Soon the infantry bullets are striking close among us.

Nothing to be seen! Nothing to be seen!

"We must advance further!" I shout into the line of sharpshooters. The battalion commander shouts it at the same time. He wouldn't let any one rob him of the honor of advancing in the foremost row of riflemen. We crawl forward on all fours. After thirty meters, halt. Still nothing to be seen. The land rises in front of us. Fifty meters further; eighty; a hundred. At last we have a clear view ahead. Rifles are advanced.

"Half way to the left, at the entrance to F., sharpshooters, stand!"

A few shots from our ranks. The blue figures falter, fall. But at the same time we have betrayed our position. And now the hail begins anew.

"They all shoot too high! Aim well, men! Every shot a bullseye!"

My voice reaches only the rows of riflemen nearest to me. The clatter and crashing is tremendous, but even more horrible is this singing and whizzing past of shells, especially when the enemy's machine guns sweep us.

"Are those some of our men?" my bugler beside me asks. "They're already standing half way down the road back of us!"

A shiver of horror creeps over us. Yes, they have enticed and held us fast in the midst of their artillery--and on the left their infantry, well protected, has advanced under cover to our flank. And now the French machine gun patters on our right, in monotonous rhythm, in this concert of hell.

Behind us there is no longer a sign of life. Our battery is gone; it must have shot away its ammunition.

"Order of the Brigade Commander: Company retire slowly!" A man at the end of our serried line near the roadside has called the order to me. The order travels by word of mouth along our line. It is a long time before it reaches the riflemen furthest left. And as soon as the slightest movement is noticeable in the beet fields, the deadly hail rattles down upon us again.

My eyeglass is covered with sweat and dirt. I tear it away. Now, as the shells strike, clouds of dirt fly into my eyes. I close them. At my left, a rifleman crawling along, nudges me:

"The dogs!" he mutters: "Now they've got us in a hell of a pinch!"

I can speak no more. We go crawling along another 500 meters. My revolver bangs along on the ground at my left; my fieldglass at my right. For a moment I think of the droll problem given to the officer at the military examination: "What would you do if you saw artillery unfold before you, infantry on your left, and artillery against your flank on the right?" Answer: "I'd order: Take off helmets and pray!"

Take off helmets and pray! Yes, there is now no help for it. Now it's a case of dying decently like gentlemen.

"No running away, men! We're no Frenchmen!"

A minute's stop to take breath, at yon hay-rick on the left. So, there they're advancing, in a gay company, the blue-frocks!

"Left, riflemen, along the church yard wall, stand! Rifle fire!"

And two groups are daring enough to stand upright and fire, although the machine gun fire is sweeping us again. The man next to me is loading his gun; suddenly he throws up an arm:

"Hell! That's pretty warm!" A bullet has passed midway through the cover of his rifle barrel.

"Go on! Slowly! One at a time! Don't crowd!"

On the road we find a man of the second column, pressed against a tree.

"Where is the battalion?"

He points in the direction of R.

"There they are, still fighting, Captain."

Yes, there still stand some riflemen in a rifle fight. An officer with them.

"Forward!" and I point in their direction.

But over there the witches' caldron is boiling more fiercely. The machine guns are nearer there. After a short consultation with the leader of the division I order: "Retire. Singly."

The narrow road through which we retire is swept continually with fire. I climb up to the ridge. Now nothing further matters. Only not to fall alive in the hands of those over there! To die! I stumble over a ridge in the field. A few moments of unconsciousness. Then again the tacktack-tacktack of the machine guns. God, our Lord, Thou art our refuge forever and aye! I pray Thee, I pray Thee, let me die an honest soldier's death. And not suffer long. Now, dear Lord, please; now! If only my fellows don't begin to run!

"Slowly, men; slowly. Halt at the brown stretch of field."

Panting, we lie there. "Rifles in position! Take aim! Fire!"

As soon as a few shots have been fired, there ensues a pause in the firing over there. We make good use of it. Then, "Down on your bellies again!"

I cannot go further.

"Go ahead without me, boys. Greet my people for me. God with you. You've fought well. Damn you, fellow, run, I tell you! Down on your faces! Take breath. Fire!"

When, long ago, I went to my confirmation lesson, the Superintendent once said--ah, what a remarkable man that was!--"I would like only to take a single look at my little garden. I'm a city child, and have grown so fond of the flowers, this little bit of earth!"--Hui! hui! there it whistles over our heads again. I greet Death. And my lips touch the ridge of the field furrow.

Of dust thou art; to dust thou shalt return.

"Boys, you're not afraid? Eh?" And I try to laugh.

"The apes over there! They don't know how to shoot. Such clowns! They'll hit the sky!"

Hui! hui! tack-a-tack-tacktack! Run on! The patent-leathered lackeys can't hit us!

But there lies one of the other company. Dead.

"Don't run! Keep halting! Fire!"

From the village a hail of shrapnel. From the opposite side, the same. But now nobody runs with lowered head. We are now used to the benediction of bullets. Further on, further on!

Of the brigade there's not a trace. When the artillery had shot away its ammunition, the order was given: "Retire, all!" It reached me, in front there with the rifle lines, fully an hour later than the rest.

Scattered stragglers join me.

"Where is our Chief Lieutenant?"

"Wounded in the neck; only a glancing bullet. Has returned slowly on an artillery horse. Midway among the shrapnels. Great fellow."

Nobody knows where the point of reunion is. I lead the rest of the battalion after the other companies. Night is falling. Somewhere a cavalry patrol tells us: They're to bivouac over there at the fort.

We march toward that. Bicycle men come to meet us. We hear from them--no one believed that a single man of us could escape that devil's caldron alive. My orderly (Bursche) comes riding to meet me. His eyes are wet.

"My Captain! My Captain!"

I must press many hands. I warm myself at the bivouac fire. The Quartermaster has brought me a half flask of champagne. There's red wine for the men in the baggage division. It has already been mulled. A plate of rice soup. The earth-crumb is still sticking to my lips. I swallow it down with the first draught of foaming wine: "I greet thee, Life! I greet thee, Earth!" And comrades come up and are glad to see me, old monster, again.

Thank God, my company has suffered only few losses! When I order the Sergeant Major to read the list, only a few are missing. But this one or that one has been seen by some one of his comrades after the fight. Well, then they are only scattered, and will find their way back by and by. The battalion in these two days of fighting lost thirty-eight dead and sixty-six wounded. That includes some light wounds from glancing bullets.

It all lies behind me like a confused dream. We are bivouacking in the casemates of the fort. I awake several times in terror. Deep, deep silence. Only the pacing to and fro of the sentinel on guard. To and fro, to and fro. He is cold.

I creep deeper into the straw. Poor fellow, the sentinel. How soft I've got it! So warm here! I have hot eyes and hot cheeks, but ice-cold hands.

I pity all those who know life and death only from books. War is a great teacher. We learn to love the earth. And thus our homeland becomes so sacred to us.

Damp Humor of the Night Watch

From a field postcard written by a German soldier in the
Franco-Prussian war and sent home by one who recalled it
under similar circumstances in the present one.

I guard this shed,
But who guards me?
Around my head
But night I see.
This only comfort sweet is mine,
To soothe my graveyard cough:
"This town will pay a lovely fine
If some one picks me off."

War Correspondence

The Place of Tombs

By Perceval Gibbon.

[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

Zyrddow, Poland, Received in London Jan. 19.--There is a spot above the river which must not be indicated too explicitly, but whose name signifies in Russian the place of tombs. It is thus christened by the troops who camp in a great forest which shadows the whole position. It is a point at which the new German plan of thrusting toward the railway instead of as hitherto toward the road has produced fighting of more than Homeric quality.

The Russians, who never misjudge the value of ground, were established here in well-made trenches, with the shelter of the forest at their backs for reserves and supports. Upon this iron front the Germans spent themselves in fruitless attacks, incurring crippling losses. It was only after repeated and disastrous failure of these tactics that they began a different method of approach.

Here, as everywhere else, they have a large amount of artillery, and under incessant shell fire they proceeded to sap their way toward the Russian trenches. Incidentally they expended shells enough to last an army through the whole of a small war, and where formerly six acres of trees projected from the main forest there are now no trees at all.

The parapet of their trench is only thirty-five paces from the Russian parapet, and the men crouching behind their shelter can hear the voices of their enemies. None dare lift head or hand to even the loopholes on the breastworks, since the worst shot in the world can send bullet after bullet through any loophole at that distance. The Russians are able to throw hand grenades, with which their trenches are supplied, clear into the German trenches, while the German shelling has had to cease since their own men are in equal danger from any shell aimed at the Russian trenches.

I rode down through the forest in an effort to reach one of the trenches two nights ago, passing from the pale shine of the snow upon the bare fields to sheer darkness. I found the staff established in a spacious dugout some 400 yards behind the actual first line. Here, as always, was a straw-padded, candle-lit interior, with an orderly waiting, with telephone to ear, and all those rough-and-ready contrivances by which men live who have death forever at their elbow. Here, too, their faces disguised by weeks of beard and grimed with the smirch of war, were burly Russian officers, those adequate and quietly confident men who are the strength and inspiration of the Russian Army.

In all the gloom, where all life was balanced on a hair, one thing was steadfast and cordial, and that was the unshaken assurance of these cheerful, expert fighting men in their power to hold the Germans and presently to resume the offensive, to which each one of them looks forward, and advance at last toward the frontier of Germany. None underestimates the enemy. They criticise him in a spirit of absolute professional impartiality, admiring quite frankly the organization and courage of the German infantry, but condemning the artillery and pooh-poohing the cavalry.

Yesterday morning the Germans renewed their bombardment of the positions at Radziwillow, where the fine Russian trench is practically impregnable, and has already cost them huge losses in their attempts to assault it.

I had an illustration of their lack of system in artillery fire while returning along the rear of this position. Their shells sailed up across the woods to the south of the railway, bursting on an empty stretch of fields about a thousand yards away, and turned seven or eight hundred acres of virgin snow into an inferno of smoke and torn earth, but no single shell fell nearer than a thousand yards to any living soul.

During the last day or two I have seen a change in the nature of the fighting on this front. The German procedure has no longer its old character of desperate decision but has become more desultory and their pressure flickers up and down the line as though in a panic of effort to find some point at which the defense is weak.

I learned here from prisoners that the Germans lately have been celebrating victories. Berlin and other cities are said to be gay with flags, and Gen. von Hindenburg has been acclaimed as a national hero. I can only keep my eyes on the small portion of the long front limited by Socahczew on the north and Msczonow on the south, but in regard to this region I can offer my personal testimony that at no point have the Germans gained anything in the nature of a success nor made any attack which has not been immensely more costly in lives to them than to the Russians.

Shelled Tsing-tao With Wireless Aid

By Jefferson Jones,

Staff Correspondent of The Minneapolis Journal and Japan Advertiser.

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Jan. 24, 1915.]

Tokio, Dec. 15.--Far out in the Yellow Sea busy gunners on a Japanese battleship aimed a 12-inch gun at one of the German forts in Tsing-tao. Opening the breech, they removed the smoking cartridge case, put in another loaded one, and waited to learn whether the projectile had scattered death among the enemy or exploded harmlessly in soft earth. They were five or six miles from their target.

The gunners gazed toward the battleship's wireless masts. Presently came a sputter and crackle of electric sparks. An officer appeared in the turret and said, perhaps, "Very good. Put some more in the same place," or, "That one was fifty feet to the right or sixty feet too high." He had received a wireless message from the shore telling exactly where the shell had struck, probably for the first time since naval warfare began.

At the rear of the Japanese lines, where a naval lookout had been erected, I saw several marines focusing horned telescopes on the besieged forts. As soon as a shell landed one of the men would telephone the exact location to the naval wireless station at Sesheco, which relayed the message to the warships.

The fourth day of the siege was the most severe of the whole siege of Tsing-tao. Gen. Johoji on the extreme left, with Gen. Barnardiston of the British expeditionary force, was pressing the intrenched Germans near Moltke Fort. Early in the morning Gen. Johoji had sent a detachment against the triangular pumping station fort, as it was deemed wise not to turn the siege guns on the place, because the fort might be destroyed and the supply of water be cut off in the city when the troops entered. The detachment approached the fort without any resistance from the Germans, and, surrounding it, discovered that there was a small garrison, which had barred itself inside. The Japanese commanded the men to surrender, threatening to dynamite the place. The steel door was opened and twenty-three Germans walked out.

The capture of this fort was the key for the final attack of the Japanese, as it left the central fort and redoubts exposed to fire.

Late in the afternoon the fire became extremely heavy. The Germans seemed to be making sharp resistance to the Japanese, lest they advance within the quarter-mile zone of the redoubt walls. The Japanese infantry, however, were sapping away, and as dusk settled over the field we saw the bright flash of bursting shrapnel from the German forts. It was the first shrapnel sent out by the Germans during the siege.

Ten, twelve, fifteen, and sometimes even twenty shrapnel shells could be counted bursting at one time, all in a straight line, over the Japanese front line, and then the big German searchlights would flash about the field. They would fall on fifteen or twenty Japanese sappers on the top of their trenches placing sandbags, and then the flash would disappear.

Thursday, Nov. 5, seemed only a repetition of what we had seen the day before. All night long the firing kept up, and it was evident that the German garrison at Tsing-tao was making stubborn and gallant resistance.

That night the Japanese forces advanced 200 yards under a heavy shrapnel fire from the Germans. A snowstorm, followed by rain, had filled the trenches with water a foot deep, and it was in these that the Japanese and British forces found themselves during the closing days of the siege.

Friday, Nov. 6, was a bitter morning. A forty-mile gale was blowing off the Yellow Sea, and with the thermometer at 2 below zero it was not any too comfortable, even for those of us who were fortunate enough to get near a charcoal burner.

Toward midnight Gen. Yamada, whose men were intrenched in front of Forts 2 and 3, sent out a detachment to learn the condition of the German garrison opposing him. The men approached the redoubt walls of the forts, climbed ten feet to the bottom, and found themselves face to face with wire entanglements twenty yards wide and running the length of the wall. No Germans were seen. Reinforcements were called for while the scouts were cutting the entanglements. At 1 A.M., Nov. 7, Gen. Yamada with more than 300 men was behind the redoubt walls of Fort 3.

In the meantime, heavily protected on all sides by planks and sandbags, a detachment of 200 Germans with machine guns was watching the approach of Gen. Barnardiston's men, who had been stationed to the right of Gen. Yamada. The Germans were unaware that the Japanese had gained the wall, when suddenly a sentry heard Japanese voices. The signal was given and the Germans rushed from their sandbag houses into the shadow of the wall, hoping to reach their comrades, stationed 500 yards back along the casement walls. Some, perhaps, reached their destination, but the majority of the men were shot down by the Japanese infantry.

The capture of Forts 2 and 3 by Gen. Yamada was quickly reported to Gen. Horiuchi, and within an hour his men had captured Forts 4 and 5 with very little resistance. Gen. Johoji, on the extreme left, with Gen. Barnardiston of the British force, also advanced with the news of the capture of the positions, but the Germans put up a stubborn resistance, and it was not until 6:30 A.M. that the attackers gained the coast fort and Fort 1.

With the capture of the redoubt fortifications there still remained the mountainous forts, Iltis, Bismarck, and Moltke, a quarter of a mile back toward Tsing-tao. With detachments of engineers and infantrymen, Gens. Horiuchi and Yamada ordered the general attack. The men rushed from their trenches for the base of the forts. It was to be a hand-to-hand bayonet attack.

But two guns on the Iltis fort had already been silenced, the four big 28-centimeter mortars on the same fort were useless for use at the base of Iltis, while the other guns had been so placed and sandbagged at the rear of the fort that they could not be quickly brought forward and utilized for work along the steep slopes leading to the forts. Rifles and machine guns were resorted to.

The Japanese, as they charged up the slope, were mowed down by the machine guns, but on they came from all sides--17,000 men against 3,800. The German garrison could not hold out, and the white flag was hoisted from Fort C, close to Gov. Gen. Meyer Waldeck's residence. The surrender came at 7:05 A.M.

THE BROKEN ROSE

(TO KING ALBERT)

By ANNIE VIVANTI CHARTRES.

[From King Albert's Book.]

Shy, youthful, silent--and misunderstood,
In the white glare of Kinghood thou didst stand.
The sceptre in thy hand
Seemed but a flower the Fates had tossed to thee,
And thou wert called, perchance half scornfully,
Albert the Good.

Today thou standest on a blackened grave,
Thy broken sword still lifted to the skies.
Thy pure and fearless eyes
Gaze into Death's grim visage unappalled
And by the storm-swept nations thou art called
Albert the Brave.

Tossed on a blood-red sea of rage and hate
The frenzied world rolls forward to its doom.
But high above the gloom
Flashes the fulgent beacon of thy fame,
The nations thou hast saved exalt thy name--
Albert the Great!

* * * * *

Albert the good, the brave, the great, thy land
Lies at thy feet, a crushed and morient rose
Trampled and desecrated by thy foes.
One day a greater Belgium will be born,
But what of this dead Belgium wracked and torn?
What of this rose flung out upon the sand?

Behold! Afar where sky and waters meet
A white-robed Figure walketh on the sea
(Peace goes before Him and her face is sweet.)
As once He trod the waves of Galilee
He comes again--the tumult sinks to rest,
The stormy waters shine beneath His feet.