Chapter XIII: The Lull in November (4)

Wooden signs printed in black letters, "Verboten," (forbidden,) now ornament the pretty little park, with its fountain still playing, outside the railroad station. The paths are guarded by picked grenadiers, not Landsturm men this time, while an officer of the guard makes his ceaseless rounds. Opposite the railroad station, on the other side of the little park, is an unpretentious villa of red brick and terra cotta trimmings, but two guard houses painted with red-white-black stripes flank the front door and give it a look of importance. The street at either end is barred by red, white and black striped poles and strapping grenadiers on guard are clustered thick about it. You don't need to ask who lives there. The red brick house (it would not rent for more than $100 a month in any New York suburb) is the present temporary residence of the Over War Lord. Its great attraction for the Kaiser, I am told, is the large, secluded garden in the rear where this other "man of destiny" loves to walk and meditate or, more usually, talk--though the few remaining French inhabitants could have a frequent opportunity of seeing him walk in the little closed public park if they were interested, but the natives seem outwardly utterly apathetic.

Several of the Kaiser's household, in green Jäger uniforms, were lounging around the door for an early morning airing, while secret service men completed the picture by hovering in the immediate neighborhood. You can tell that they are German secret service agents because they all wear felt alpine hats, norfolk jackets, waterproof cloth capes and a bored expression. They have been away from Berlin for nearly three months now. About fifty of them constitute the "Secret Field Police" and their station house is half a block away from the Kaiser's residence.

Just around the corner from the Kaiser, within a stone's throw of his back door, is another red-brick house with terra-cotta trimmings, rather larger and more imposing. The names of its new residents, "Hahnke," "Caprivi," and "Graf von Moltke," are scrawled in white chalk on the stone post of the gateway. Further up the same street another chalk scrawl on a quite imposing mansion informed me that "The Imperial Chancellor" and "The Foreign Office" had set up shop there. Near by were Grand Admiral von Tirpitz's field quarters. A bank building on another principal street bore the sign, "War Cabinet."

The Great General Staff occupies the quaint old Hotel de Ville. An unmolested ramble showed that all the best residences and business buildings in the heart of the town were required to house the members of the Great Headquarters, who number, in addition to the Kaiser and his personal entourage, thirty-six chiefs or department heads, including the Imperial Chancellor, the War Minister, the Chief of the Great General Staff, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, the Chief of the Ammunition Supply, the Chief of the Field Railways, the Chief of the Field Telephone and Telegraph Service, the Chief of the Sanitary Service, the Chief of the Volunteer Automobile Corps, &c., making, with secretaries, clerks, ordonnances, and necessary garrison, a community of 1,200 souls.

I could not help wondering why the Allies' aviators weren't "on the job." A dozen, backed up by an intelligent Intelligence Department, could so obviously settle the fortunes of the war by blowing out the brains of their enemy. Perhaps that is why the whereabouts of the Great Headquarters is guarded as a jealous secret. The soldiers at the front don't know where it is, nor the man on the street at home, and, of course, its location is not breathed in the German press. Theoretically, only those immediately concerned are "in the know." Visitors are not allowed, neutral foreign correspondents are told by the authorities in Berlin that "it is impossible" to go to the Grosser Hauptquartier.

Two aeroplane guns are mounted on the hills across the river at a point immediately opposite the Kaiser's residence, while near them a picked squad of sharpshooters is on the watch night and day for hostile fliers. To further safeguard not only the person of the Kaiser but the brains of the fighting machine the spy hunt is kept up here with unrelenting pertinacity.

"We went over the town with a fine-tooth comb and cleaned out all the suspicious characters the very first day we arrived," said a friendly detective.

"There are no cranks or anarchists left here. Today the order is going out to arrest all men of military age--between 18 and 45--but there are few, if any, left. We also made a house-to-house search for arms and collected three wagonloads, mostly old.

"Our Kaiser is as safe here now as he would be anywhere in Germany. We know every one who arrives and leaves town. It seems impossible for a spy to slip in and still more to slip out again through the lines--but we are always on the watch for the impossible. The fear of spies is not a delusion or a form of madness, as you suggest. Here is one case of my personal knowledge: A German Boy Scout of 16, who had learned to speak French and English perfectly at school, volunteered his services and was attached to the staff of an army corps. This young chap succeeded in slipping into Rheims, where he was able to locate the positions of the French batteries and machine guns, and make his way back to our lines with this invaluable information. For this feat the boy received the Iron Cross. After being in the field for six weeks he got home-sick, however, and has been allowed to go home for a visit."

From a spectacular point of view the Great Headquarters is rather disappointing. A few mixed patrols of Uhlans, dragoons, and hussars occasionally ride through the principal streets to exercise their horses. Occasionally, too, you see a small squad of strapping grenadiers, who break into the goose step on the slightest provocation as when they pass a General or other officer of the Great General Staff, whom you recognize by the broad red stripes on their "field gray" trousers.

There is no pomp or ceremony even when royalty is running around at large. Thus when the King of Saxony arrived in town, a few hours after I did, no fuss was made whatever. The Saxon King and his staff, three touring car loads, all in field gray, drove straight to the villa assigned them, and, after reciprocal informal visits between King and Kaiser, the former left to visit some of the battlefields on which Saxon troops had fought, and later paid a visit to his troops at the front. For this exploit, the Kaiser promptly bestowed on him the Iron Cross, first and second class, on his return to town.

Even the Kaiser's heart is not covered with medals, nor does he wear the gorgeous white plume parade helmet nowadays, when going out for a horse-back ride or a drive. I saw him come from a motor run late in the afternoon--four touring cars full of staff officers and personal entourage--and was struck by the complete absence of pomp and ceremony. In the second car sat the Kaiser, wearing the dirty green-gray uniform of his soldiers in the field. At a distance of fifteen feet, the Over War Lord looked physically fit, but quite sober--an intense earnestness of expression that seemed to mirror the sternness of the times.

The Kaiser goes for a daily drive or ride about the countryside usually in the afternoon, but occasionally he is allowed to have a real outing by his solicitous entourage--a day and more rarely a [Transcriber: text missing in original]

"His Majesty is never so happy as when he is among his troops at the front," another transplanted Berlin detective told me. "If his Majesty had his way he would be among them all the time, preferably sleeping under canvas and roughing it like the rest--eating the 'simple' food prepared by his private field kitchen. But his life is too valuable to be risked in that way, and his personal Adjutant, von Plessen, who watches over his Majesty like a mother or a governess, won't let him go to the front often. His Majesty loves his soldiers and would be among them right up at the firing line if he were not constantly watched and kept in check by his devoted von Plessen." However, the Kaiser sleeps within earshot of the not very distant thunder of the German heavy artillery pounding away at Rheims, plainly heard here at night when the wind blows from the right direction.

Of barbarism or brutality the writer saw no signs, either here or at other French villages occupied by the Germans. The behavior of the common soldiers toward the natives is exemplary and in most cases kindly. There are many touches of human interest. I saw about a hundred of the most destitute hungry townsfolk, mostly women with little children, hanging around one of the barracks at the outskirts of the town until after supper the German soldiers came out and distributed the remnants of their black bread rations to them. It is not an uncommon sight to see staff officers as well as soldiers stopping on the streets to hand out small alms to the begging women and children. Many of the shops in town were closed and boarded up at the approach of the Prussians, but small hotel keepers, café proprietors, and tradesmen who had the nerve to remain and keep open are very well satisfied with the German invasion in one way, for they never made so much money before in their lives. Most of the German soldiers garrisoned here have picked up a few useful words of French; all of them can, and do, call for wine, white or red, in the vernacular. Moreover, they pay for all they [Transcriber: original 'them'] consume. I was astonished to see even the detectives paying real money for what they drank. Several tradesmen told me they had suffered chiefly at the hands of the French soldiers themselves, who had helped themselves freely to their stock before retreating, without paying, saying it was no use to leave good wine, for the Prussian swine.

I had not prowled around the Great Headquarters for many hours when the Secret Field Police, patrolling all the streets, showed signs of curiosity, and to forestall the orthodox arrest and march to headquarters (already experienced [Transcriber: original 'experience'] once, in Cologne) waited upon Lieut. Col. von Hahnke, Military Commandant of the city, and secured immunity in the form of the Commandant's signature on a scrap of paper stamped in purple ink with the Prussian eagle. Commandant Hahnke, after expressing the opinion that it was good that American newspaper men were coming to Germany to see for themselves, and hoping that "the truth" was beginning to become known on the other side, courteously sent his Adjutant along to get me past the guard at the Great General Staff and introduce me to Major Nikolai, Chief of Division III. B., in charge of newspaper correspondents and Military Attachés. Here, however, the freedom of the American press came into hopeless, but humorous, collision with the Prussian militarism.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get here?" snapped the Prussian Major. A kind letter of introduction from Ambassador Gerard, requesting "all possible courtesy and assistance from the authorities of the countries through which he may pass," and emblazoned with the red seal of the United States of America, which had worked like magic on all previous occasions, had no effect on Major Nikolai. Neither had a letter from the American Consul at Cologne, nor a letter of introduction to Gen. von Buelow, nor any one of a dozen other impressive documents produced in succession for his benefit.

"No foreign correspondents are permitted to be at the Great Headquarters. None has been allowed to come here. If we allow one to remain, fifty others will want to come, and we should be unable to keep an eye on all of them," he explained. "You must go back to Berlin at once."

Reluctant permission was finally obtained to remain one night on the possibly unwarranted intimation that the great American people would consider it a "national affront" if an American newspaperman was not allowed to stay and see the American Military Attaché, Major Langhorne, who was away on a sightseeing tour near Verdun, but would be back in the morning. However, a long cross-examination had to be undergone at the hands of the venerable Herr Chief of the Secret Field Police Bauer, who was taking no chances at harboring an English spy in the Houptquartier disguised as a correspondent.

I found Major Langhorne standing the strain of the campaign [Transcriber: original 'compaign'] well, and I gathered the impression that he intended to see the thing through, and that there was much which America could learn from the titanic operations of the Germans. Major Langhorne and the Argentinian, Brazilian, Chilean, Spanish, Rumanian, and Swedish military attachés are luxuriously quartered a mile and a half out of town in the handsome villa of M. Noll, the landscape painter, present whereabouts unknown. The attachés all have a sense of humor, "otherwise," said one of them, "we could never stand being cooped up here together." The gardener's daughter, a pretty young Frenchwoman, the only servant who remained behind when the household fled at the approach of the Germans, is both cook and housekeeper, and when I arrived I found the seven military attachés resolved into a board of strategy trying to work out the important problem of securing a pure milk supply for her four-month-old baby.

Work consists of occasional motor runs to various points along the long front. I was told that recently Major Langhorne ran into some heavy shrapnel and shell fire, and was lucky to get away with a whole skin. When asked to tell about it, Major Langhorne passed it off laughingly as "all in the day's work."

In spite of the fact that they are engaged in keeping their end up in a life-and-death fight for national existence, the Great General Staff has found time to give the American Military Attaché every possible opportunity to see actual fighting.

The foreign military attachés have made many of their expeditions in company with the small band of German war correspondents, who live in another villa close by, under the constant chaperonage of Major von Rohrscheldt. They are allowed to see much, but send little. The relative position of the press in Germany is indicated by the fact that these German war correspondents are nicknamed "hunger candidates." A military expert who was well posted on American journalism explained to me, however, that the very tight censorship lid was not for the purpose of withholding news from the German people, but to keep valuable information from being handed to the enemy. He pointed out that the laconic German official dispatches dealt only with things actually accomplished, and were very bare of detail, while, on the other hand, the French and English press had been worth more than several army corps to the Germans, concluding, "It may be poor journalism, but it's the right way to make war."

* * * * *

KAISERIN'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.

Oct. 22.--It was hard to realize today that a great war was going on. Every building in town occupied by the Germans was decorated with the German flag in honor of the Kaiserin's birthday, and at night the principal ones, including that occupied by the "War Cabinet," were specially illuminated. All morning long, quantities of Generals came rolling up in touring cars to the Kaiser's door to pay their homage and offer congratulations. About noon the Crown Prince and staff arrived by motor from the direction of the headquarters of his army. The Crown Prince, who characteristically sat on the front seat next to the chauffeur, looked as boyish and immature as his former pictures--his military cap cocked slightly on one side. The responsibility of leading an army had apparently not had a sobering effect on the Crown Prince as yet, but I was told that the guiding brain and genius in the Crown Prince's army headquarters was not that of the Crown Prince, but of his chief adviser, Gen. von Haeseler, the brilliant cavalry leader of the war of 1870 and now the "grand old man" of the German Army, sharing with von Zeppelin the distinction of being the oldest living German Generals. It seemed still harder to realize that men were fighting and dying not fifty miles away when, after luncheon, Kaiser, Crown Prince, and staffs went for a two hours' automobile ride, the Crown Prince leaving late in the afternoon to rejoin his command.

The only warlike notes in the day's picture were a German military aeroplane--one of the famous Taubes--that flew at a high altitude over the Great Headquarters toward the enemies' lines; a battalion of Saxon Landsturm that rested for an hour at the railroad station, then started on the final hike for the front, refreshed by a glimpse of their motoring Kaiser, and toward evening four automobile loads of wounded German officers, who arrived from the direction of Rheims, where it was rumored the French had made four desperate attempts to break through.

Here one gets more and more the impression that the Germans in their war-making have learned a lesson from the hustling Americans--that they have managed to graft American speed to their native thoroughness, making a combination hard to beat. For instance, there is a regular relay service of high-power racing motor cars between the Great Headquarters and Berlin, the schedule calling for a total running time of something under a day and a half, beating the best time at present possible by train by four hours. One of the picked drivers, who has the last lap--through France--said his running schedule required him to average sixty miles an hour, and this running at night. A network of fast relay automobile services is also run from the Great Headquarters, through Belgium, linking up Brussels and Antwerp, and to the principal points on the long line of battle.

How great a rôle the motor car plays among the Germans may be gathered from an estimate made to the writer that 40,000 cars were in use for military purposes. Many thousands of these are private automobiles operated by their wealthy owners as members of the Volunteer War Automobile Corps, of which Prince Waldemar, son of the sailor Prince Henry, is chief. Their ranks include many big business men, captains of industry, and men of social prominence and professional eminence.

They wear a distinctive uniform, that of an infantry officer, with a collar of very dark red, and a short, purely ornamental sword or dagger.

* * * * *

BACK TO LUXEMBURG.

LUXEMBURG, Oct. 24.--I have just returned from the German Great Headquarters in France, the visit terminating abruptly on the fourth day, when one of the Kaiser's secret field police woke me up at 7 o'clock in the morning and regretfully said that his instructions were to see that I "did not oversleep" the first train out. The return journey along one of the German main lines of communication--through Eastern France, across a corner of Belgium and through Luxemburg--was full of interest, and confirmed the impression gathered at the centre of things, the Great Headquarters, that this twentieth century warfare is in the last analysis a gigantic business proposition which the Board of Directors (the Great General Staff) and the thirty-six department heads are conducting with the efficiency of a great American business corporation.

The west-bound track is a continuous procession of freight trains--fresh consignments of raw material--men and ammunition--being rushed to the firing line to be ground out into victories. The first shipment we pass is an infantry battalion--first ten flatcars loaded with baggage, ammunition, provision wagons, and field kitchens, the latter already with fire lighted and soup cooking as the long train steams slowly along, for the trenches are only fifty miles away, and the Germans make a point of sending their troops into battle with full stomachs.

After the flatcars come thirty box cars, all decorated with green branches and scrawled over with chalked witticism at the expense of the French and Russians. The men cheer as our train passes. A few kilometers further backed on to a siding, is a train of some twenty flatcars, each loaded with a touring car. Then we pass a battery of artillery on flatcars, the guns still garlanded with flowers; then a short freight train--six cars loaded with nothing but spare automobile tires--then a long train of heavy motor trucks, then more infantry trains, then an empty hospital train going back for another load, then a train of gasoline tank cars, more cheering infantry, more artillery, another empty hospital train, a pioneer train, a score of flatcars loaded with long, heavy piles, beams, steel girders, bridge spans, and lumber, then a passenger train load of German railway officials and servants going to operate the railways toward the coast, more infantry, food trains, ammunition trains, train loads of railway tracks already bolted to metal ties and merely needing to be laid down and pieced together, and so on in endless succession all through France and through Belgium. The two-track road, shaky in spots, especially when crossing rivers, is being worked to capacity, and how well the huge traffic is handled is surprising even to an American commuter.

Our fast train stops at the mouth of a tunnel, then crawls ahead charily, for the French, before retreating, dynamited the tunnel. One track has been cleared, but the going is still bad. To keep it from being blocked again by falling débris the Germans have dug clean through the top of the hill, opening up a deep well of light into the tunnel. Looking up, you see a pioneer company in once cream-colored, now dirty-colored, fatigue uniform still digging away and terracing the sides of the big hole to prevent slides. Half an hour later we go slow again in crossing a new wooden bridge over the Meuse--only one track as yet. It took the German pioneers nearly a week to build the substitute for the old steel railway bridge dynamited by the French, whose four spans lie buckled up in the river. The pioneers are at work driving piles to carry a second track. The process is interesting. A forty-man-power pile driver is rigged upon the bow end of a French river barge with forty soldiers tugging at forty strands of the main rope. The "gang" foreman, a Captain in field gray, stands on the river bank and bellows the word of command. Up goes the heavy iron weight; another command, and down it drops on the pile. It looks like a painfully slow process, but the bridges are rebuilt just the same.

Further on, a variety of interest is furnished to a squad of French prisoners being marched along the road. Then a spot of ant-hill-like activity where a German railway company is at work building a new branch line, hundreds of them having pickaxes and making the dirt fly. You half expect to see a swearing Irish foreman. It looks like home--all except the inevitable officer (distinguished by revolver and field glass) shouting commands.

The intense activity of the Germans in rebuilding the torn-up railroads and pushing ahead new strategic lines, is one of the most interesting features of a tour now in France. I was told that they had pushed the railroad work so far that they were able to ship men and ammunition almost up to the fortified trenches. The Germanization of the railroads here has been completed by the importation of station Superintendents, station hands, track walkers, &c., from the Fatherland. The stretch over which we are traveling, for example, is in charge of Bavarians. The Bavarian and German flags hang out at every French station we pass. German signs everywhere, even German time. It looks as if they thought to stay forever.

Now we creep past a long hospital train, full this time, which has turned out on a siding to give us the right of way--perhaps thirty all-steel cars--each fitted with two tiers of berths, eight to a side, sixteen to a car. Every berth is taken. One car is fitted up as an operating room, but fortunately no one is on the operating table as we crawl past. Another car is the private office of the surgeon in charge of the train. He is sitting at a big desk receiving reports form the orderlies. During the day we pass six of these splendidly appointed new all-steel hospital trains, all full of wounded. Some of them are able to sit up in their bunks and take a mild interest in us. Once, by a queer coincidence, we simultaneously pass the wounded going one way and cheering fresh troops going the other.

*How the Belgians Fight*

[By a Correspondent of The London Daily News.]

LONDON, Oct. 28.--Writing from an unnamed place in Belgium a correspondent of The Daily News says:

"The regiment I am concerned with was fifteen days and nights in the Antwerp trenches in countless engagements. It withdrew at dawn, hoping then to rest. It marched forty-five kilometers with shouldered rifles. In the next five days it marched nearly 200 kilometers until it reached the Nieuport and Dixmude line. By an error of judgment it got two days of drill and inspection in place of resting, then took its place in the front line on the Yser to face the most desperate of the German efforts."

The correspondent quotes a young volunteer in this regiment as follows:

"---- was evacuated by the Germans, and we were sent in at nightfall. As soon as they saw our lights they began shelling us. We lost terribly. A number of the men ran up the streets, but we got them together. I had about twenty and retired in order. We were 600 who went in, and must have left a third there.

"In the morning we moved down to reinforce a network of trenches on our bank of the Yser. There was a farm on our right, and some of our men were firing at it, but the door opened and three officers in Belgian uniform came out shouting to us to cease fire, so we sent a detachment to the farm, and they were swept away by machine gun fire from the windows. No, I don't know what happened afterward about the farm. I lost sight of it.

"We got into the trenches. They lay longways behind a raised artificial bank on our side of the river. At the northern end of them were mazes of cross trenches protecting them in case the Germans got across the bridge there and started to enfilade us. They were full of water. I was firing for six hours myself thigh deep in muddy water.

"The Germans got across the bridge. We could not show head or hand over our bank. German machine guns shot us from crevices in their raised bank across the river only a few yards away. I was hours and hours dragging our wounded out of the cross trenches at the northern end of the bank southward and behind a mound till there was no more room for them there, and bringing up new men singly and two or three at a time from further down the trenches to take their places. We lost our officers, but I got the men to listen to me.

"Some Germans shelled us with a cross fire. They got into the cross trenches. They fired down our lines from the side. We had to run back. I was too tired and sleepy to drag my feet. I think I must have fallen asleep.

"We had an order to advance again. The French were behind us on either wing in support. I was too tired to get up. Some one kicked me. I looked up. They were three of my friends, volunteers like myself. We had all joined together. They apologized and ran forward. They are all wounded now, but we are all still alive, and I never have been hit once in thirty-four fights.

"I got up. So did a man lying on the field in front of me. He was shot through the head and fell back on me. I got up again. A shell burst beside me and I saw three men, who were running past, just disappear. I was lying on my face again, and could not lift my head, either through fear or sleep, I don't know which.

"I found myself running forward again. I called to men lying and running near and held my revolver at them. We were all charging with bayonets back at the Germans shooting us from our own trenches under the raised bank. They did not wait for us. They looked like frightened gray beetles as they scrambled up away over our bank and down into the river. It was dusk, but we shot at them over the bank. The water seemed full of them. We crouched in a big trench in muddy water behind the bank. No, we did not sleep, but my head and eyes seemed to go to sleep from time to time.

"There were perhaps 200 left of our 600. I think there was one officer further along, but it was quite dark. Some of the men talked very low. Then I heard voices whispering and talking near us on the river side of our bank. It was of earth perhaps five feet high and six feet thick. On the other side the slope fell steeply to the river.

"I sent a hush along the line. We listened quite silent. I thought I heard German words, an order passed along on the other side. I crawled up on to the bank, not showing my head, you know. It was really about 300 Germans who had stayed there on our side under the bank, fearing to cross the river under our fire. So we stayed all through the night. We did not sleep nor did they.

"There was just six feet of piled wet earth between us. We only whispered and could hear them muttering and the sound of their belts creaking and of water bottles being opened.

"There was a thick gray mist hanging low in the morning. I crawled on to the bank again, holding my revolver out-stretched. A gray figure stood up in the mist below close to me. He looked like a British soldier in khaki. He said: 'It's all right, we are English,' and I said, 'But your accent isn't,' and I shot him through with my revolver. Some of our men crept to the bank, but they shot them, and some of theirs climbed over, but we fired at their heads or arms as they showed only a few feet away, and they fell backward [Transcriber: original 'bakward'] or on to us or lay hanging on the bank. Then we all waited.

"As it grew lighter they did not dare move away, and none of us could get out alive or over the bank to use the bayonet. A few men made holes in the looser earth, and so we fired at each other through the bank here and there. Our guns could not help us, and theirs could not shoot across, for we were all together, and yet we could not get at each other. Some of the men--theirs and ours--got over lower down, so there was firing now and then, and two men were killed near me sliding down into the water in the trenches.

"Somebody threw a cartridge case across close to me. On a paper inside was scrawled one word: 'Surrender!' We did not know if they wanted to surrender themselves or wanted us to surrender. They were more numerous, but we were better placed, so we went on scrapping and crawling around to get a shot at them.

"Perhaps it was the French who got round at the ends. There was heavy firing. We heard quite close through the raised bank a few slipping down on the river edge and water splashing. Some of us pulled ourselves up on to the bank. I heard our men scrambling up on either side of me, but could not see them. I think I was too sleepy. I shouted to charge, and then must have fallen over on my head, rolling down the bank.

"I am on the way down with these wounded. There are fifteen of us unhit here, but I think we came away just now with nearly a hundred out of our 600 of yesterday."

He was doing gallant Captain's work, a young, slight, ordinary Belgian trooper, a volunteer private in the ranks, muddy, limping, and unspeakably tired in muscle and nerve. His story is as nearly as possible in his own words, interrupted by blanks in his own consciousness of events--lapses familiar to men whose muscles and nerves are exhausted, but who must still work on without sleep.

For the following ten hours, without pause, he acted as interpreter and most capable adviser in getting long trains of stretchers with his wounded Belgian compatriots down and on to the British hospital ships.

*A Visit to the Firing Line in France*

[By a Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

PARIS, Sept. 30.--In company with several representatives of American newspapers, I was permitted to pass several days in "the zone of military activity," on credentials obtained at the personal request of Ambassador Herrick, that we might describe the destruction caused by the Germans in unfortified towns. Although I have given a parole to say nothing concerning the movement of the troops or to mention certain points that I visited, I am now permitted to send a report of a part of my experiences.

We crossed the entire battlefield of the Marne, passed directly behind the lines of the battle still raging on the Aisne, accidentally getting under fire for an entire afternoon, and lunching in a hotel to the orchestra of bursting shells, one end of the building being blown away during the bombardment. We witnessed a battle between an armored French monoplane and a German battery, and also had the experience of being accused of being German spies by two men wearing the English uniform, who, on failing to account for their own German accent, were speedily taken away under guard with their "numbers up," as the French Commandant expressed what awaited them.

On account of our exceptional credentials we were able to see more actual war than many correspondents, who when they learned that permits to go to the front were not forthcoming, went anyway, usually falling into the hands of the military authorities before getting far. In fact, getting arrested has been the chief occupation of the war correspondents in this war, even our accidental view of the fighting being sufficient to cause our speedy return to Paris under parole.

Going over the battlefield of the Marne, we found the battle had followed much the same tactics as a cyclone, in that in some places nothing, not even the haystacks, had been disturbed, while in others everything, the villages, roads, and fields, had been utterly devastated by shells. We talked with the inhabitants of every village and always heard the same story--that during occupation the Germans, evidently having been ordered to be on their good behavior after the Belgian atrocities, had offered little trouble to the civilians, and had confined their activities to looting and wasting the provisions. Also that when retreating they had destroyed all the food they were unable to carry.

Our baptism of fire appropriately came while we were in a church. At noon of the second day we motored into a deserted village, and were stopped by a sentry who acknowledged our credentials, but warned us if we intended to proceed to beware of bullets. But there was not a hostile sound to alarm us.

As we drove carelessly over the brow of a hill where the road dipped down a valley into the town, we were in direct line with the German fire, as great holes in the ground and fallen trees testified. It is a wonder our big motor car was not an immediate mark. On the way in we noticed a church steeple shot completely off, so after finding an inn, where the proprietor came from the cellar and offered to guard our car and prepare luncheon, we decided first to examine the church. The innkeeper explained that we had come during a lull in the bombardment, but the silent, deserted place lulled all sense of danger. The verger showed us over the church and we were walking through the ruined nave when suddenly we heard a sound like the shrill whistling of the wind.

"It begins again," our conductor said simply. As the speech ended we heard a loud boom and the sound of falling masonry as a shell struck the far end of the building. We hurried to the hotel, the shells screaming overhead. We saw the buildings tumbling into ruins, glass falling in fine powder and remnants of furniture hanging grotesquely from scraps of masonry.

All my life I had wondered what would be the sensation if I ever were under fire--would I be afraid? To my intense relief I suddenly became fatalistic. I was under fire with a vengeance, but instead of being afraid I kept saying to myself, "Being afraid won't help matters; besides nothing will happen if we just keep close to the walls and away from the middle street."

On the way we met two men in English uniform who later denounced us as spies. We hailed them, and they replied that they had been cut off from their regiment and were now fighting with the French. Just as luncheon was announced eight soldiers filed into the hotel, arrested us, and marched us before the Commandant, who saw that our papers were all right, but suggested that on account of the dangerous position we leave as soon as possible. We asked permission to finish our luncheon. It was lucky that we were arrested then--before the accusation that we were spies--for when that question arose there was no doubt in the mind of the Commandant concerning us, so our accusers' charge merely reacted upon themselves.

During the episode of arrest there was another lull in the bombardment, which began again as we were seated at luncheon. All through the meal the shells whistled and screamed overhead, and the dishes rattled constantly on the table.

When the meal was over the proprietor called us to witness what had happened to the far wing of the hotel. It was completely demolished. "Alert" had just been sounded, and the soldiers were running through the streets. We ran out in time to see a building falling half a block away, completely filling the street by which we had entered the town an hour earlier.

In a few minutes we heard the sharp crackle of infantry fire about half a mile away, and we had a sudden desire to get away before the automobile retreat was cut off. Just then we heard the sound of an aero engine overhead. It was flying so low that through a glass we could easily see the whirring propeller. The machine was mounted with a rapid-fire gun which was trying to locate the German gunners, who immediately abandoned the destruction of the town in an attempt to bring it down. For ten minutes we saw shells bursting all about it. At times it was lost in smoke, but when the smoke cleared there was the monoplane still blazing away, always mounting to a higher level, and finally disappearing toward the French lines.

There was another lull in the cannonade, and we were permitted to pass down the street near the river, where, by peering around a building, we could see where the German batteries were secreted in the hills. We were warned not to get into the street which led to the bridge, as the Germans raked that street with their fire if a single person appeared. We then took advantage of a lull in the firing and departed to the south at seventy miles an hour, in order to beat the shells, if any were aimed our way as we crossed the rise of the hill.

*Unburied Dead Strew Lorraine*

*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*

DIJON, Sept. 26.--Although great interest is concentrated upon the northwest side of the line of of battle in France, it must not be forgotten that the east side is also of high importance. The operation of the French and German forces along the jagged frontier from north to south is of vital influence upon the whole field of war, and any great movement of troops in this direction affects the strategy of the Generals to command on the furthermost wings.

It was a desire to know something of what had been happening in the east which led me to travel to the extreme right. Few correspondents have been in this part of the field since the beginning of the war. It is far from their own line of communications. For this reason there have been no detailed narratives of the fighting in Lorraine, and a strange silence has brooded over those battlefields. The spell of it has been broken only by official bulletins telling in a line or two the uncertain result of the ceaseless struggle for mastery.

Here are regiments of young men who have the right already to call themselves veterans, for they have been fighting continually for six weeks in innumerable engagements, for the most part unrecorded in official dispatches. I had seen them answering the call to mobilization, singing joyously as they marched through the streets. Then they were smart fellows, clean shaven and spruce in their new blue coats and scarlet trousers. Now war has put its dirt upon them and seems to have aged them by fifteen years, leaving its ineffaceable imprint upon their faces. Their blue coats have changed to a dusty gray, but they are hard and tough for the most part, and Napoleon himself would not have wished for better fighting men.

Now for the first time since the beginning of the war there will be a little respite on the Lorraine frontier, and in the wooded country of the two lost provinces there will be time to bury the dead which incumber its fields. Words are utterly inadequate to describe the horrors of the region to the east of the Meurthe, in and around the little towns of Blamont, Badonviller, Cirey-les-Forges, Arracourt, Château-Salins, Morhauge, and Baudrecourt, where for six weeks there has been incessant fighting. After the heavy battle of Sept. 4, when the Germans were repulsed with severe losses after an attack in force, both sides retired for about twelve miles and dug themselves into lines of trenches which they still hold; but every day since that date there has been a kind of guerrilla warfare, with small bodies of men fighting from village to village and from wood to wood, the forces on each side being scattered over a wide area in advance of their main lines. This method of warfare is even more terrible than a pitched battle.

"It is absurd to talk of Red Cross work," said one of the French soldiers who had just come out of the trenches at Lunéville. "It has not existed as far as many of these fights are concerned How could it? A few litter-carriers came with us on some of our expeditions, but they were soon shot down, and after that the wounded just lay where they fell, or crawled away into the shelter of the woods. Those of us who were unhurt were not allowed to attend to our wounded comrades; it is against orders. We have to go on regardless of losses. My own best comrade was struck down by my side. I heard his cry and saw him lying there with blood oozing through his coat. My heart wept to leave him. He wanted me to take his money, but I just kissed his hand and went on, I suppose he died, for I could not find him when we retreated."

]

Another French soldier lay wounded at the edge of a wood ten miles from Lunéville. When he recovered consciousness he saw there were only dead and dying men around him. He remained for two days, unable to move his shattered limbs, and cried out for death to relieve him of his agony. At night he was numbed by cold; in the day thirst tortured him to the point of madness. Faint cries and groans came to his ears across the field. It was on the morning of the third day that French peasants came to rescue those who still remained alive.

There have been several advances made by the French into Lorraine, and several retirements. On each occasion men have seen new horrors which have turned their stomachs. There are woods not far from Nancy from which there comes a pestilential stench which steals down the wind in gusts of obscene odor. For three weeks and more dead bodies of Germans and Frenchmen have lain rotting there. There are few grave diggers. The peasants have fled from their villages, and the soldiers have other work to do; so that the frontier fields on each side are littered with corruption, where plague and fever find holding ground.

I have said that this warfare on the frontier is pitiless. This is a general statement of a truth to which there are exceptions. One of these was a reconciliation on the battlefield between French and German soldiers who lay wounded and abandoned near the little town of Blamont. When dawn came they conversed with each other while waiting for death. A French soldier gave his water bottle to a German officer who was crying out with thirst. The German sipped a little and then kissed the hand of the man who had been his enemy. "There will be no war on the other side," he said.

Another Frenchman, who came from Montmartre, found a Luxembourger lying within a yard of him whom he had known as a messenger in a big hotel in Paris. The young German wept to see his old acquaintance. "It is stupid," he said, "this war. You and I were happy when we were good friends in Paris. Why should we have been made to fight with each other?" He died with his arms around the neck of the soldier who told me the story, unashamed of his own tears.

I could tell a score of tales like this, told to me by men whose eyes were still haunted by the sight of these things; and perhaps one day they will be worth telling, so that people of little imagination may realize the meaning of this war and put away false heroics from their lips. It is dirty business, with no romance in it for any of those fine young Frenchmen I have learned to love, who still stay in the trenches on the frontier lines or march a little way into Lorraine and back again.

Some of those trenches on either side are still filled with men leaning forward with their rifles pointing to the enemy--quite dead, in spite of their lifelike posture.

*Along the German Lines Near Metz*

[Correspondence of The Associated Press.]

WITH THE GERMAN ARMY BEFORE METZ, Sept. 30, (by Courier to Holland and Mail to New York.)--A five-day trip to the front has taken the correspondent of The Associated Press through the German fortresses of Mainz, Saarbrücken, and Metz, through the frontier regions between Metz and the French fortress line from Verdun to Toul, into the actual battery positions from which German and Austrian heavy artillery were pounding their eight and twelve-inch shells into the French barrier forts and into the ranks of the French field army which has replaced the crumbling fortifications of steel and cement with ramparts of flesh and blood.

Impressions at the end are those of some great industrial undertaking with powerful machinery in full operation and endless supply trains bringing up the raw materials for manufacture rather than of war as pictured.

From a point of observation on a hillside above St. Mihiel the great battlefield on which a German army endeavoring to break through the line of barrier forts between Verdun and Toul and the opposing French forces could be surveyed in its entirety. In the foreground lay the level valley of the Meuse, with the towns of St. Mihiel and Banoncour nestling upon the green landscape. Beyond and behind the valley rose a tier of hills on which the French at this writing obstinately hold an intrenched position, checking the point of the German wedge, while the French forces from north and south beat upon the sides of the triangle, trying to force it back across the Meuse and out from the vitals of the French fortress line.

Bursting shells threw up their columns of white or black fog around the edge of the panorama. Cloudlets of white smoke here and there showed where a position was being brought under shrapnel fire. An occasional aeroplane could be picked out hovering over the lines, but the infantry and the field battery positions could not be discerned even with a high-power field glass, so cleverly had the armies taken cover. The uninitiated observer would have believed this a deserted landscape rather than the scene of a great battle, which, if successful for the Germans, would force the main French Army to retreat from its intrenched positions along the Aisne River.

About three miles away, across the Meuse, a quadrangular mound of black, plowed-up earth on the hillside marked the location of Fort Les Paroches, which had been silenced by the German mortars the night before. Fort Camp des Romains, so named because the Roman legions had centuries ago selected this site for a strategic encampment, had been stormed by Bavarian infantry two days earlier after its heavy guns had been put out of action, and artillery officers said that Fort Lionville, fifteen miles to the south and out of the range of vision, was then practically silenced, only one of its armored turrets continuing to answer the bombardment.

The correspondent had spent the previous night at the fortress town of Metz, sleeping under the same roof with Prince Oscar of Prussia, invalided from the field in a state of physical breakdown; Prince William of Hohenzollern, father-in-law of ex-King Manuel, and other officers, either watching or engaged in the operations in the field, and had traveled by automobile to the battlefront thirty-five miles to the west. For the first part of the distance the road led through the hills on which are located the chain of forts comprising the fortress of Metz; but, although the General Staff officer in the car pointed now and then to a hill as the site of this or that fort, traces of the fortifications could only occasionally be made out. Usually they were so skillfully masked and concealed by woods or blended with the hillsides that nothing out of the ordinary was apparent, in striking contrast to the exposed position of the forts at the recently visited fortress of Liége, which advertised their presence from the sky line of the encompassing hills and fairly invited bombardment.

The country as far as the frontier town of Gorze seemed bathed in absolute peace. No troops were seen, rarely were automobiles of the General Staff encountered, and men and women were working in the field and vineyards as if war were a thousand miles away instead of only next door.

Beyond Gorze, however, the road leading southwest through Chambley and St. Benoît Vigneuilles to St. Mihiel was crowded with long columns of wagons and automobile trucks bearing reserve ammunition, provisions, and supplies to the front, or returning empty for new loads to the unnamed railroad base in the rear. Strikingly good march discipline was observed, part of the road being always left free from the passage of staff automobiles or marching troops. Life seemed most comfortable for the drivers and escorts, as the army in advance had been so long in position, and its railroad base was so near, that supplying it involved none of the sleepless nights and days and almost superhuman exertions falling to the lot of the train in the flying march of the German armies toward Paris.

A few miles beyond Gorze the French frontier was passed, and from this point on the countryside, with its deserted farms, rotting shocks of wheat, and uncut fields of grain, trampled down by infantry and scarred with trenches, excavations for batteries, and pits caused by exploding shells, showed war's devastating heel prints.