Chapter XIII: The Lull in November (8)

I beg your paper to print this, and to start a subscription for this far corner of France, where the tide of war throws its wreckage. The Winter is ahead, and with hunger, cold, lack of supplies, and isolation will create untold suffering. Paris, too, is now sending refugees from its besieged gates. Every corner is already filled, and hundreds pour in every day. The garages, best hotels, villas, and cafés are already filled with "those that suffer for honor's sake." The Croix Rouge does splendid work for the wounded soldiers, but who will help these victims of war? Fifty cents will buy shoes for a baby's feet. Ten cents will buy ten pieces of bread. A dollar will buy a widow a shawl. Who will give? Deny yourselves some little pleasure--a cigar, a drink of soda water, a theatre seat--and send the price to these starved, beaten people, innocent of any crime.

You American women, who tuck your children into their clean beds at night, remember these children, reared as carefully as yours, without relatives, money, or future. They will be placed on farms to do a peasant's work with peasants. These women bereft of all that was dear face a barren future. These aged men anticipate for their only remaining blessing death, which will take them from a world which has used them ill.

America is neutral. Let her remain so, but compassion has no nationality. We are all children of one Father. Send us help. These poor creatures hold out to you pleading hands for succor.

NINA LARREY DURYEE.

P.S.--I beg you to publish this. I am the daughter-in-law of the Gen. Duryee of the Duryee Zouaves, who fought through our civil war with honor. Our Ambassador, Mr. Herrick, and his wife know me socially. Any funds you can gather please send to M. Grolard, Marie de Dinard, Municipality de Dinard, Ille-et-Vilaine, France, or to Le Banque Boutin, Dinard, France.

*A New Russia Meets Germany*

*By Perceval Gibbon.*

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 26, 1914.]

VILNA, Russia, Sept. 28.--For a fact as great as Russia one needs a symbol by which to apprehend it For me, till now, the symbol has been a memory of Moscow in the Winter of 1905, the Winter of revolution, when the barricades were up in the streets and the dragoons worked among the crowds like slaughtermen in a shambles. Toward that arched gateway leading from the Red Square into the Kremlin came soldiers on foot, bringing with them prisoners dredged out of the turmoil, two armed men to each battered and terrified captive, whose white and bloodstained face stared startling and ghastly between the gray uniform greatcoats. The first of them came to the deep arch, in whose recess is a lamplit shrine; I stood aside to see them go past. The soldiers were wrenching the man along by the arms, each holding him on one side; I recall yet the prisoner's lean, miserable face, with the suggestion it had of dissolute and desperate youth; and as they came abreast of the faintly gleaming ikon in the gate they let him go for a moment. His dazed eyes wandered up to the shrine; he was already bareheaded, and with a shaking, uncertain hand he crossed himself in the intricate Russian fashion. The soldiers who guarded him, too--they shuffled their rifles to a convenient hold to have a right hand free; they crossed themselves and their lips moved. Then they were through the arch and out upon the snow within the walls, and once again they had hold of their man and were thrusting him along to the prison which for him was the antechamber of death.

That was Russia then. Prisoner and captors, soldiers and revolutionaries, blinded and bewildered by the rush and dazzle of affairs, straining asunder yet linked, knitted into a unity of the spirit which they neither understood nor questioned.

But a week ago, on those still, dreary lands which border the Prussian frontier, there was evidence of a Russia that has been born or made since those hectic days in Moscow. The Germans who had forced Gen. Rennenkampf to withdraw to the border were making an attempt to envelop his left wing. Their columns, issuing from the maze of lakes and hills in Masurenland, came across the border on both banks of the little River Amulew, and fell upon him. There is a road in those parts that drifts south along the frontier, an unmade, unholy Russian road, ribbed with outcrops of stone, a purgatory to travel upon till the snow clothes it and one can go by sledge. Away to the southwest, beyond the patches of firwood and the gray, steeply [Transcriber: original 'steply'] rolling land, there toned the far diapason of artillery; strings of army transport, Red Cross vehicles, and miscellaneous men straggled upon the road.

From beyond the nearest shoulder of land sounded suddenly some gigantic and hoarse whistle, an ear-shattering roar of warning and urgency. There was shouting and a stir of movement; the wagons and Red Cross vans began to pull out to one side; and over the brow of the hill, hurtling into sight, huge, unbelievably swift, roaring upon its whistle, tore a great, gray-painted motor lorry, packed with khaki-clad infantrymen. It was going at a hideous speed, leaping its tons of weight insanely from rock ridge to traffic-churned slough in the road; there was only time to note its immensity and uproar and the ranked faces of the men swaying in their places, and it was by, and another was bounding into sight behind it. A hundred and odd of them, each with thirty men on board--three battalions to reinforce the threatened left wing--a mighty instrument of war, mightily wielded. It was Russia as she is today, under way and gathering speed.

At Rennenkampf's headquarters at Wirballen, where formerly one changed trains going from Berlin to Petersburg, one sees the fashion in which Russia shapes for war. Here, beneath a little bridge with a black and white striped sentry box upon it, its muddy banks partitioned with rotten planks into goose-pens, runs that feeble stream which separates Russia from Germany. Upon its further side, what is left of Eydtkuhnen, the Prussian frontier village, looms drearily through its screen of willows--walls smoke-blackened and roofless, crumbling in piles of fallen brick across its single street, which was dreary enough at its best. To the north and south, and behind to the eastward, are the camps, a city full, a country full of men armed and equipped; the mean and ugly village thrills to the movement and purpose. On the roof of the schoolhouse there lifts itself against the pale Autumn sky the cobweb mast and stays of the wireless apparatus, and in the courtyard below and in the shabby street in front there is a surge of automobiles, motor cycles, mounted orderlies--all the message-carrying machinery of a staff office. The military telephone wires loop across the street, and spray out in a dozen directions over the flat and trodden fields; for within the dynamic kernel to all this elaborate shell is Rennenkampf, the Prussian-Russian who governs the gate of Germany.

Here is the brain of the army. Its limbs go swinging by at all hours, in battalions and brigades, or at the trot, with a jingle of bits and scabbards, or at the walk, with bump and clank, as the gun wheels clear the ruts. It is the infantry--that fills the eye--fine, big stuff, man for man the biggest infantry in the world.

Their uniform of peaked cap, trousers tucked into knee-boots, and khaki blouse is workmanlike, and the serious middle-aged officers trudging beside them are hardly distinguishable from the men. They have not yet learned the use of the short, broad-bladed bayonets; theirs are of the old three-cornered section type with which the Bulgarians drove the Turks to Chataldja; but there is something else that they have learned. Since the first days of the mobilization that brought them from their homes there is not a man among them that has tasted strong drink. In 1904 the men came drunk from their homes to the centres; one saw them about the streets and on the railways and in the gutters. But these men have been sober from the start, and will perforce be sober to the end.

Of all that elaborate and copious machinery of war which Russia has built up since her failure in Manchuria there is nothing so impressive as this. Her thousand and odd aeroplanes, her murderously expert artillery, her neat and successful field wireless telegraph, even her strategy, count as secondary to it. The chief of her weaknesses in the past has been the slowness of her mobilization; Germany, with her plans laid and tested for a mobilization in four days, could count on time enough to strike before Russia could move. She used her advantage to effect when Austria planted the seed of this present war by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; she was able to present Russia in all her unpreparedness with the alternatives of war in twenty-four hours or accepting the situation. But this time it has been different.

At Petrograd one sees how different. Hither from the northern and eastern Governments come the men who are to swell Rennenkampf's force. Their cadres, the skeletons of the battalions of which they are the flesh, are waiting for them--officers, organization, equipment, all is ready. The endless trains decant them; they swing in leisurely columns through the streets to their depots, motley as a circus--foresters, moujiks in fetid sheepskins, cattlemen, and rivermen, Siberians, tow-haired Finns, the wide gamut of the races of Russia, all big or biggish, with those impassive, blunt-featured faces that mask the Russian soul, and all sober. No need now to make men of them before making soldiers; no inferno at the way side-stations and troop trains turning up days late. It is as if, at the cost of those annual 780,000,000 rubles, Russia had bought the clue to victory.

West beyond Eydtkuhnen, under the pearl-gray northern sky, lies East Prussia. Hereabout it is flat and fertile, with lavish, eye-fatiguing levels of cornland stretching away to Insterburg and beyond to Königsberg's formidable girdle of forts. Here are many villages, and scattered between them innumerable hamlets of only two or three houses, and a small town or two. Most of them are empty now; the German army that leans its back on the Vistula's fortresses has cleared this country like a dancing floor for its work. It has rearranged it as one rearranges the furniture in a room; whole populations have been transported, roads broken, bridges blown up, strategically unnecessary; villages burned. Nothing remains on the ground that has not its purpose assigned--not even the people, and their purpose has been clear for some time past. The Russians have been over this ground already, and fell back from it after their defeat between Osterode and Allenstein. Their advance was through villages lifeless and deserted and over empty roads; the retreat was through a country that swarmed with hostile life. Roads were blocked with farm carts, houses along their route took fire mysteriously, signaling their movement and direction, and answered from afar by other conflagrations; bridges that had been sound enough before blew up at the last moment. What the Belgians were charged with, and their country laid waste for, all East Prussia is organized to do daily as an established and carefully schooled auxiliary to the army.

A few days since there arrived a prisoner, driven in on foot by a mounted Cossack, sent back by the officer commanding the reconnoissance party which had captured him. He came up the street, shuffling at a quick walk to keep ahead of the horse and the thin, sinister Cossack--an elderly farmer, in work-stained clothes, with the lean neck and pursed jaws of a hard bargainer. In all his bearing and person there was evident the man of toilsome life who had prospered a little; in that soldier-thronged street, in his posture of a prisoner with the Cossack's revolver at his back, he was conspicuous and grotesque. His eyes, under the gray pent of his brows, were uneasy, and through all his commonplace quality and his show of fortitude there was a gleam of the fear of death that made him tragic. He had been found on his farm doing nothing in particular; it was out of simply general suspicion that the Russian officer had ordered him to be searched. The result was the discovery of a typewritten paper, giving precise instructions as to how a German civilian in East Prussia must act toward the enemy--how to signal movements of infantry, of cavalry, of artillery; how to estimate the numbers of a body of men, and what to say if questioned, and the like--a document conceived and executed with true Prussian exactitude and clearness, a masterpiece in the literature of espionage.

For him there was no hope; even The Hague Convention, which permits mine-laying, does not protect spies, however earnestly and dangerously they serve their country. He passed, always at the same forced shuffle of reluctant feet, toward his judges and his doom.

*Belgian Cities Germanized*

*By Cyril Brown,*

Staff Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.

BRUSSELS, Nov. 4.--Of all the war capitals of Europe, Brussels under the German occupation is probably the gayest and the most deceptive. It certainly outrivals Berlin in life and brilliancy, as Berlin outshines London. The Germans are free spenders afield; their influx here by thousands has put large sums of money into circulation, resulting in a spell of artificial, perhaps superficial, prosperity.

The crowds surging all day up and down the principal shopping street, the Rue Neuve, overflow the sidewalks and fill the street. Well-dressed crowds promenade along the circular boulevard all afternoon and into the night. Places of amusement and the cafés are crowded. The hundreds of automobiles loaded with officers speeding about the streets, with musical military horns blowing, add to the gay illusion.

Nowhere save at the Great Headquarters in France, where the Kaiser stays when not haranguing his troops at the front, will you see such a brilliant galaxy of high officers--and every day seems a holiday in Brussels.

You catch the sinister undercurrent in the more obscure little cafés. Here you will find some Belgian patriot who is glad of the chance to unbosom himself to a safe American. Perhaps he will speak with unprintable bitterness of the shame of the Brussels women who, he says, wave handkerchiefs and smile friendly greetings at the singing troop trains passing through the suburbs on their way to the front, or give flowers and cigars to the returning streams of wounded. They ought to be shot as traitresses, he says. For the honor of the Belgian women, he adds, these form only a small percentage.

You are not surprised when well-informed neutral residents tell you that these people "have murder in their hearts, and that if the Germans ever retreat in a rout through Belgium, Heaven help the straggler and the rear guard." Nor that copies of English papers, whose reading is forbidden, are nevertheless smuggled in, and that copies of The London Times fetch as high as 200 francs, reading circles being often formed at 20 francs per head.

But there are no hopeful signs here of a German retreat. Brussels has not been "practically evacuated." On the contrary, one gets overwhelmingly the impression that the Germans expect to stay forever. No cannon are posted on commanding avenues or squares. There are no serious measures for the defense of the capital. The military and civil Governments occupy the principal public buildings, and seem to be working with typical German thoroughness. The Government offices begin to assume an air of permanence.

As conquerors go, the invaders seem to be bearing themselves well. There is apparently no desire to "rub it in," the military Government seemingly pursuing the wise policy of trying to spare the feelings of the natives as much as possible, perhaps in the impossible hope of ultimately conciliating them. German flags are flown sparingly. Only small squads of Landsturm are now occasionally seen marching through the streets. Even from the bitterest Belgians one hears no stories of "insult, shame, or wrong."

At the same time, swift and harsh punishment is meted out to any one whose actions are thought to tend to impair German military authority or dignity. Thus placards posted on many street corners day before yesterday informed the people that a Belgian city policeman had been sentenced to five years' imprisonment for "interfering with a German official in the discharge of his duty, assaulting a soldier, and attempting to free a prisoner." For this, also, a fine of 5,000,000 france ($1,000,000) was imposed on the City of Brussels. Another policeman was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for alleged similar offenses.

An interesting history of the German occupation can be reconstructed from these same placards pasted on buildings. Here is one, dating from the early days, forbidding bicycle riding in the country and announcing that civilian cyclists will be shot at sight. If you look long enough you can also find a mutilated specimen of ex-Burgomaster Max's famous "dementi," in which he virtually calls the German Military Governor of Liége and, by implication, the German Government, "liar." The Bruxellois must be fickle and quick to forget, for I did not hear the picturesque Max's name mentioned once.

The realities of the military occupation are brought home to the people perhaps most at the Gare du Nord and the Place de la Gare, where the Civic Guards, in their curious comic opera caps, are reinforced by German gendarmes with rifles slung over their shoulders. Civilians are not allowed to cross this square in front of the railway station. "Keep to the sidewalk" is the brusque order to those who stray. Also the park in front of the Royal Palace is closed to the public. Three bright red gasoline tank wagons among the trees give it an incongruous touch, while the walks and drives are used as an exercising ground for officers' mounts. All the windows of the Royal Palace are decorated with the sign of the Red Cross.

Brussels just now is humorously a victim of the double standard--not moral, but financial. All kinds of money go here on the basis of 1 mark equaling 1 franc 25 centimes, but shopkeepers still fix prices and waiters bring bills in francs, and when payment is tendered in marks you generally get change in both--a proceeding that involves elaborate mathematical computations. At the next table to you in the restaurant of the Palace Hotel, once a favorite stopping place for Anglo-American travelers, but now virtually an exclusive German officers' club, with the distinction of a double guard posted at the front door, sits a short, fiercely mustached General of some sort--evidently a person of great importance from the commotion his entry caused among all the other officers in the room. In his buttonhole he wears the Iron Cross of the second class, the Iron Cross of the first class pinned to his breast, and underneath the rare "Pour le Merite Order, with Swords." His bill amounts to about 7 francs, for he consumed the regular 4-franc table d'hôte, plus a full bottle of red Burgundy. He tenders a blue 100-mark bill in payment and gets in return a baffling heap of change, including 1 and 2 franc Belgium paper notes, 5 and 10 mark German bills, Belgian and German silver, and Belgian nickel coins with holes punched in the centres. The General takes out his pencil and begins elaborate calculations on the menu--then sends for the head waiter. It takes some time and much talk to convince him that he is not being "short changed." The double standard furnishes many of these humorous interludes.

Equally exasperating is the double time standard. The Germans set their official clocks and watches by Berlin time, but have made no attempt to force it on the natives, who continue loyal to Belgian time, which is one hour behind Berlin.

Brand Whitlock, the American Minister to Belgium, who runs a strong risk of having a statue erected to him some day by the grateful Belgian people, is quite the happiest, most relieved-looking person in Brussels since he heard the good news that all America was hard at work collecting food for the Belgians and that England would not prevent its delivery. Soon after the German occupation of Brussels a committee was organized to give food to the poor here, of which Mr. Whitlock and the Spanish Minister were patrons. Three weeks ago the Ministerial allies discovered that the situation was exceedingly grave, not only here but all over Belgium. Committees came to see Mr. Whitlock from Louvain, Liége, Namur, Charleroi, Mons, Dinant, &c., and the people, I was told, were within four weeks of absolute starvation. Mr. Whitlock got the German Military Governor of Belgium, Field Marshal von der Goltz, to give the Spanish Minister and himself a guarantee in writing that any food sent in for the poor Belgians would not be requisitioned for the German Army.

The next thing was to get the permission of England; so two weeks ago Secretary Gibson was sent to London with Baron Lambert, a banker, and M. Franqui to get England's permission as well as a first shipment of food. Two weeks ago Mr. Whitlock sent a long letter to the State Department and to President Wilson, asking them to do something. At least one phrase of Mr. Whitlock's coinage has been going the rounds here. In the various preliminary discussions as to whose responsibility it was to take care of the Belgian people there was considerable talk about Hague conventions. "Starving people can't eat Hague conventions" was his answer.

Minister Whitlock also feels vastly relieved that he has got practically all non-official Americans out of Belgium, the twoscore still here being mostly resident business men, with a sprinkling of the boldest tourists, who are staying "to see the fun," in spite of Ministerial warnings.

Mr. Whitlock believes he has broken the world's record by being eight Ministers at once. At one time he was representing Germany, Austria, Great Britain, Japan, Servia, Denmark, and Lichtenstein. When he told a German officer that he represented Lichtenstein--which is said to be a small sovereign State somewhere, dependent on Austria--the officer laughed and said: "Theoretically, Germany is still at war with Lichtenstein and has been since 1866, it having been overlooked in the peace shuffle." The reason for representing Denmark, which isn't at war with anybody, is that the Danish Minister is equally accredited to Belgium and The Hague, and had no Secretary to leave behind when he departed Hagueward. Of course, the American flag does not fly over the Danish Legation here. In addition, the French and Russian interests were also offered to Mr. Whitlock, but he was so full of responsibility that he had to ask to be excused.

* * * * *

LOUVAIN, Nov. 5.--Louvain now presents the ghastly spectacle of a dead city, buried under ruins, slowly coming to life again, and continues to give full scope to the morbid streak in human nature; for sightseers continue to flock here in increasing numbers from Antwerp, Brussels, and, in fact, all over Belgium, excepting from over the deadline of the operating zone. With the Bruxellois especially the trip is a favorite outing on a pleasant Sunday. The Germans have succeeded in restoring the train service to the extent of two passenger trains daily between here and Brussels and one between here and Antwerp, and the military authorities pursue a surprisingly liberal policy in giving traveling passes to the Belgian population. In addition to those who come by train, a steady procession of automobiles passes through all day; and next week, when a Berlin-Brussels express service is to be started, the local touring season will have a further boom.

About 5 per cent of the original population have come crawling back, and the three companies of Landsturm garrisoned here, together with the sightseers, form their source of revenue. The more courageous shopkeepers who have come back and reopened their stores are coining money as never in peace times--especially the little confectionery and pastry shops, where the soldiers off duty come for afternoon coffee, and the one tailor's shop which is open. Workmen are putting the finishing touches to the new pine-board roof on the cathedral and are making efforts to "restore" the stone exterior. The famous Gothic Hôtel de Ville is now protected by a high board fence, and two bearded Landsturm men mount guard there day and night. A gang of laborers is making headway in cleaning up the interior of the hopelessly ruined University Library, and the streets are all cleared of débris. The academic halls of the main university building, which suffered little damage, are not silent, for one of the Landsturm companies is quartered there. I found half a hundred of them and two cows in the university quadrangle or campus. The men were all unshaven, but of a good-natured sort, and many were the rough German jokes as they watched a comrade milking the cows preparatory to their slaughter on the spot by the company butcher, who stood in waiting, while at the same time the gray-haired university castellan was getting ready to take a time exposure of the cows.

"And yet they say we Germans are barbarians," laughed an under officer. "I bet you won't find that the French soldiers, or the highly civilized English gentlemen, either, have a photographer come to take a picture of the cows they are about to eat."

The venerable university guardian continued to do a brisk business making group pictures and solo portraits of Landsturm under officers and men at two francs per dozen postcards, till a Lieutenant appeared on the scene and the bugle sounded in the court for "boot inspection." All promptly lined up in double file against the brick university wall and presented feet for the critical eye of the inspector--all except the company cooks, who were busy among their pots and pans and open-air cook stoves set up in the academic stone portico.

The last of the former students of the University of Louvain was probably the well-dressed, meek-looking young Chinese, eating luncheon at the near-by restaurant--the only one open in town. The German soldiers, fortunately, did not mistake him for a Japanese, and he has not been molested.

There are touches of grim humor among the ruins. Here on the main street, for example, is a pink placard stuck on a stick on top of the heap of brick and mortar that was once a store. It reads: "Elegant corsets: Removed to Rue Malines 21." And again, on a number of houses that escaped the torch are pasted neatly printed little signs bearing the legend: "This house is to be protected. Soldiers are not allowed to enter houses or to set fire to them without orders from the Kommandantur."

The inhabitants who have no stores to keep seem continually to wander aimlessly in the streets; and here, too, is the sight, common now all over Belgium, of many women with children begging. Especially they linger around the entrances to the barracks, for hunger has given them a keen nose for bread, and they have soon learned that the soldier will give them what they have left over from their ample rations. The German Government is trying to stimulate the return of the population, and is apparently doing its best to help them to earn a living by providing work.

* * * * *

ANTWERP, Nov. 6.--The Germans are working incessantly to repair the fortifications of Antwerp, mount new and heavier guns, and put the whole place into a state of defense. The importance attached to their almost feverish activities is indicated by the fact that Field Marshal von der Goltz, the Military Governor of Belgium, ran over from Brussels and made a tour of inspection of the double girdle of forts yesterday. His Excellency von Frankenberg and Ludwigsdorf, Personal Adjutant of the Military Governor of Antwerp, said to me in the course of a cordial interview:

"We have two principal interests in our work here: First, that Antwerp shall become a place of great military importance again and be prepared against attacks from the enemy, although that contingency doesn't seem very probable."

His Excellency was unwilling to hazard a guess as to how long the Germans could hold Antwerp against an allied siege, but said: "I believe we could hold out longer against the Allies than they did against the Germans. Our second interest is to revive trade and industry and the life of the city generally. When we first came here there were only soldiers and hungry dogs on the streets; now, as you can see, the dead city is coming to life in short order."

He scouted the idea that the people of Belgium had been or were on the brink of starvation as the result of German occupation, saying that the very contrary was the case. "Belgium is a country which cannot sustain itself--it produces only enough food for roughly 3,000,000 out of its 5,000,000 population, because Belgium is an industrial country, and food for the remaining 2,000,000 has to be imported. Heretofore most of this food has come from Holland, whence some is still coming, but in no great quantity. We have taken the problem of food supply up with the Belgian Government, as much as there is one left, namely, with the municipalities, and at our suggestion an 'Intercommunistic Commission' has been organized, so that everything possible can be done to help the country. This commission sits in Brussels, and when any town or village or district has no more food on hand the fact is reported and it gets from the commission what is required. What food supplies we found here we took charge of to prevent their being plundered, and also because we, as a belligerent, had to supply our own necessities; that is the right of war. But by no means have we used up all the food supplies ourselves, nor set them aside for our own use; but a large part has been set aside for this commission, to be used for the poor, and another part will be given back in a short time for trade purposes, so that commerce will be revived again.

"There is no place in Belgium where the people have starved. Their most pressing need now would appear to be money, for many are unemployed and many others disinclined to work. At one place where we were told the people were starving we found stores crammed full of food--but the inhabitants had no money and the shopkeepers wouldn't give them credit.

"Everything is being done by us to revive business so that the people can again earn money. If America had not been so tender-hearted as to send foodstuffs, and if the food supply had run out, we should certainly have considered it our duty to bring food from Germany, for we are for the time being the Government here, and it is our duty to see that the people do not starve."

German newspaper readers are not aware that their Kaiser had a narrow escape from the bombs of the Allies' airmen at Thielt, for the fact of the War Lord's recent invasion of Belgium has been kept as nearly a dead secret as possible. I learned from an especially well-informed source in Brussels that the object of the Kaiser's visit was not only to encourage his troops but to reprove his Generals. According to this informant, who is frequently in touch with high officers in their more mellow moods, when military reticence somewhat relaxes, the Kaiser was said to be in a towering rage at the failure of his army to make headway against the English and Belgians on the coast, and to have decided to go in person to see about it; also there has been considerable cautiously veiled criticism of his persistent "interference" in the conduct of the campaign.

Having last seen the Kaiser two weeks ago motoring at the German Great Headquarters in Eastern France, I picked up his trail at Louvain, through which place he passed by night a week ago in a special train in the direction of Lille, after a scouting pilot engine had returned and reported "all safe." On his return journey from Flanders he was rumored to have "put up" at the Palais d'Arenberg in Brussels.

It is significant that the following notice has been placarded on the outside of the building occupied by the Military Government, next door to the Hotel St. Antoine: "Reports that the French and English are marching on Antwerp are without foundation; the public is warned against helping to circulate these false reports." All day crowds hang about the door where this notice is posted among official German news bulletins. The burghers of Antwerp are well informed about the varying fortunes of the war, for several papers printed in French are allowed to appear, under the German censorship, which seems surprisingly easygoing here and eminently fair, allowing them to print not merely the official German accounts circulated by the Wolff Bureau, but the official English, French, Russian, and even Belgian bulletins as well, in addition to matter copied from the Dutch papers, which are also allowed to circulate here.

If things look doubtful in the north, the Germans are looking confidently to the south, where the next big victory is hoped for. I learn that Gen. von Beseler, "the conqueror of Antwerp," as his popular picture postcard title reads, is now in charge of operations around Verdun, and that four of the new 42-centimeter mortars, in addition to more than thirty of the 30.5-centimeter, are already in place there. On the strength of this combination well-informed German officers confidently expect the quick fall of Verdun as soon as Beseler gives the order for the "Brummers" to speak--rather high-priced oratory, for I was told by an artillery officer that it cost the taxpayers 36,000 marks ($9,000) every time one of the 42-centimeter mortars was fired.

*The Belgian Ruin*

*By J.H. Whitehouse, M.P.*

[An Associated Press Interview, Published Oct. 2, 1914.]

LONDON, Oct. 1.--A graphic picture of the desolation of Belgium was brought to London today by J.H. Whitehouse, member of Parliament from Lanarkshire, who has just returned from a tour around Antwerp for the purpose of assisting in the relief measures.

"Having always regarded war as the negation of all that is good," said Mr. Whitehouse tonight, "I desired to see what its ravages were in a country exposed to all its fury, and what steps were possible to mitigate them. I do not think that any one here has realized the plight of the civilian population of Belgium today, and can only attempt to give any picture of this by describing some of my own experiences."

Mr. Whitehouse made the journey outside Antwerp with two military cars, attended by Belgian officials. In describing the damage which he says the Belgians had to inflict upon themselves to supplement the defenses of Antwerp, he said:

"Hundreds of thousands of trees had been cut down, so that at some points of our journey we had the impression of passing through a wilderness of roots. The tree trunks had all been removed so as to afford no cover to the enemy. All houses had been blown up or otherwise destroyed. Later we passed through the country which had been flooded as a further measure of defense. The damage resulting from these precautionary measures alone amounted to £10,000,000, ($50,000,000.)

"In the villages all ordinary life was arrested. Women and children were standing or sitting dumb and patient by the roadside. Half way to Termonde we could plainly hear the booming of guns and saw many evidences of the battle which was then raging.

"I had read newspaper accounts of the destruction of Termonde and had seen photographs, but they had not conveyed to my mind any realization of the horror of what actually happened. Termonde a few weeks ago was a beautiful city of about 16,000 inhabitants--a city in which the dignity of its buildings harmonized with the natural beauty of its situation, a city which contained some buildings of surpassing interest.

"I went through street after street, square after square, and I found every house entirely destroyed with all its contents. It was not the result of the bombardment; it was systematic destruction. In each house a separate bomb had been placed, which had blown up the interior and set fire to the contents. All that remained in every case were portions of the outer walls, which were still constantly falling, and inside the cinders of the contents of the buildings. Not a shred of furniture or anything else remained.

"This sight continued throughout the entire extent of what had been a considerable town. It had an indescribable influence upon observers which no printed description or even pictorial record could give. This influence was increased by the utter silence of the city, broken only by the sound of the guns.

"Of the population I thought that not a soul remained. I was wrong, for as we turned into a square where the wreck of what had been one of the most beautiful of Gothic churches met my eyes a blind woman and her daughter groped among the ruins. They were the sole living creatures in the whole town.

"Shops, factories, churches, and houses of the wealthy--all were similarly destroyed. One qualification only have I to make of this statement: Two or perhaps three houses bore the German command in chalk that they were not to be burned. These remained standing, but deserted, amid the ruins on either side. Where a destroyed house had obviously contained articles of value looting had taken place.

"I inquired what had become of the population. It was a question to which no direct reply could be given. They had fled in all directions. Some had reached Antwerp, but a greater number were wandering about the country, panic-stricken and starving. Many were already dead.

"What happened at Termonde was similar to what had happened in other parts of Belgium under military occupation of Germany. The result is that conditions have been set up for the civilian population throughout the occupied territory of unexampled misery. Comparatively few refugees have reached this country. Others remain wandering about Belgium, flocking into other towns and villages, or flying to points a little way across the Dutch frontier.

"Sometimes when a town has been bombarded the Germans have withdrawn and the civilians have returned to their homes, only to flee again at the renewed attack. A case in point is Malines, which, on Sunday last, as I was about to try to reach it, was again bombarded. The inhabitants were then unable to leave, as the town was surrounded, but when the bombardment ceased there was a great exodus.

"The whole life of the nation has been arrested. Food supplies which would ordinarily reach the civilian population are being taken by the German troops for their own support. The peasants and poor are without the necessities of life, and conditions of starvation grow more acute every day. Even where there is a supply of wheat available the peasants are not allowed to use their windmills, owing to the German fear that they will send signals to the Belgian Army.

"We are, therefore, face to face with a fact which has rarely, if ever, occurred in the history of the world--an entire nation is in a state of famine, and that within half a day's journey of our own shores.

"The completeness of the destruction in each individual case was explained to me later by the Belgian Ministers, who described numerous appliances which the German soldiers carried for destroying property. Not only were hand bombs of various sizes and descriptions carried, but each soldier was supplied with a quantity of small black disks a little bigger than a sixpenny piece. I saw some of these disks which had been taken from German soldiers on the field of battle. These were described to me as composed of compressed benzine. When lighted they burned brilliantly for a few minutes, and are sufficient to start whatever fire is necessary after the explosion of a bomb.

"To the conditions of famine and homelessness which exist on such a stupendous scale there must be added one which is bad--the mental panic in which many survivors remain. I understood how inevitable this was when I saw and heard what they passed through; eyewitnesses of unimpeachable character described the sufferings of women and children at Liége. As they fled from their burning houses, clinging to their husbands and fathers, they were violently pulled from them and saw them shot a few yards from them.

"I should supplement what I have said regarding the condition of Belgium with some reference to Antwerp itself, where the excited Government now sits. It is a wonderful contrast to the rest of the country, and the first impression of the visitor is that there is little change between its life now and in the days of peace. I approached it by water, and in the early morning it rose before me like a fairy city. Its skyline was beautifully broken by the spires and towers of its churches, including the incomparable Gothic Cathedral.

"When I entered its shops were open, its streets crowded, and everywhere there was eager activity. By midday the streets became congested. Early editions of the papers were eagerly bought and great crowds assembled wherever a telegram giving news could be read. This continued until early evening, but by 8 o'clock a most extraordinary change had fallen upon the city.

"Not a light of any kind in house or shop was to be seen. No lamps were lit in the streets and the city was plunged into absolute darkness. Not a soul remained in the streets. To the darkness there was added profound silence. It was as though this amazing city had been suddenly blotted out."

*The Wounded Serb*

[From The London Times, Oct. 18, 1914.]

VALIEVO, Sept. 25.

Valievo lies at the terminus of a narrow-gauge railway which joins the Belgrade-Salonika line at Mladinovatz. Along this single track of iron road the entire transport of the Servian Army is being effected. Westward come trains packed with food, fodder, munitions, and troops; eastward go long convoys crowded with maimed humanity. At Mladinovatz all this mass of commissariat and suffering must needs be transferred from or to the broad-gauge line. In this situation lies not the least of the problems which beset the Servians in their struggle with the Austrian invaders.

Valievo itself is a picturesque little town which in peace time is famous as the centre of the Servian prune trade. Its cobbled streets are, in the main, spacious and well planned. There still remain a few relics of the Turkish occupation--overhanging eaves, trellised windows, and the like--but these one must needs seek in the by-ways. I picture Valievo under normal conditions as one of the most attractive of Balkan townships.

Nor has the tableau lost anything in the framing, for it is encircled by a molding of verdant hills which run off into a sweep of seeming endless woods. The vista from my hotel window is almost aggravatingly English. Across the red-tiled roofs of intervening cottages rises the hillside--a checkerboard of grassy slopes and patches of woodland intersected by a brown road which runs upward until the summit, surmounted by a whitewashed shrine, amid a cluster of walnut trees, touches the gray sky.

But Valievo is not now to be seen under normal conditions. From the street below rises the sound of clatter and creak as the rude oxen wagons bump over the cobblestones. Morning, noon, and night they rumble along unceasingly, and whenever I look down I see martial figures clad in tattered, muddy, and blood-stained uniforms, with rudely bandaged body or head or foot. Every now and then a woman breaks from the crowd of waiting loiterers and rushes up to a maimed acquaintance. They exchange but a few sentences, and then she turns, buries her head in her apron, and stumbles along the street wailing a bitter lament for some husband, brother, or son who shall return no more. A friend supports and leads her home; but the onlooking soldiers regard the scene with indifference and snap out a rude advice "not to make a fuss." They brook no wailing for Serbs who have died for Servia.

The town itself has been transformed into one huge camp of wounded. All adaptable buildings--halls, cafés, school-rooms--have been rapidly commandeered for hospitals. Sometimes there are beds, more often rudely made straw mattresses, for little Servia, worn out by two hard wars, is ill-equipped to resist the onslaught of a great power. For 16 days a fierce battle has been raging near the frontier, and wounded have been pouring in much more rapidly than accommodation can be found for them.

And in the streets--what misery! The lame, the halt, the maimed. Men with damaged leg or foot hopping along painfully by the aid of a friendly baton; men nursing broken arms or shattered hands; men with bandaged heads; men being carried from operating shops to café floors; men with body wounds lying on stretchers--all with ragged, blood-bespattered remnants of what once were uniforms. One sees little of the glory of war in Valievo. The Servian Medical Staff, deprived on this occasion of outside assistance, and short alike of doctors, surgeons, nurses, and material, is striving heroically to cope with its task. Where they have been able to equip hospitals the work has been very creditably done. One building is almost exclusively devoted to cases where amputations have been necessary. It is clean, orderly, and the patients are obviously well cared for. Here, when I entered a ward of some thirty beds in which every man lay with a bandaged stump where his leg should be, I think I saw the Servian spirit at its best. They had been newly operated upon, their sufferings must have been great, and for them all the future is black with forebodings. There is no patriotic fund in little Servia. Yet amid all the pain of body and uncertainty of mind that must have been theirs they did not complain. All they desired to know was whether the Schwaba (Austrians) had been beaten out of Servia.

But it is when one leaves the organized hospitals and wends one's way through the crowds of wounded who block the pavements, and enters a lower-class café, that the appalling tragedy of it all fills even the spectator with a sense of hopelessness. There, like cattle upon their bed of straw, lie sufferers from all manner of hurts. They remain mute and uncomplaining, just as they have been dropped down from the incoming oxen transports. Their wounds--three, four, or five days old--have yet received no attention save the primitive first-aid of the battlefield. Blood poisoning is setting in; limbs that prompt dressing would have saved are fast becoming victims for the surgeon's knife. Most of them know the risk they run, for this is their third war--often, too, their third wound--in two short years. Yet the doctors cannot come, because every man of them is already doing more than human energy allows. It is a heartrending sight to look down upon this helpless mass and to realize that many of them have been sentenced to painful death for mere lack of primitive medical attention.

One wonders whether, now that half Europe has been transformed into a vast slaughterhouse, appeals for sympathy can be other than in vain.

*ANOTHER "HAPPY THOUGHT."*

By WINIFRED ARNOLD.

The world is so full
Of a number of Kings!--
That's probably what is the
Matter with things.

*Spy Organization in England*

*British Home Office Communication, Oct. 9.*

In view of the anxiety naturally felt by the public with regard to the system of espionage on which Germany has placed so much reliance and to which attention has been directed by recent reports from the seat of war, it may be well to state briefly the steps which the Home Office, acting on behalf of the Admiralty and War Office, has taken to deal with the matter in this country. The secrecy which it has hitherto been desirable in the public interest to observe on certain points cannot any longer be maintained owing to the evidence which it is necessary to produce in cases against spies that are now pending.

It was clearly ascertained five or six years ago that the Germans were making great efforts to establish a system of espionage in this country, and in order to trace and thwart these efforts a Special Intelligence Department was established by the Admiralty and the War Office which has ever since acted in the closest co-operation with the Home Office and metropolitan police and the principal provincial police forces. In 1911, by the passing of the Official Secrets act, 1911, the law with regard to espionage, which had hitherto been confused and defective, was put on a clear basis and extended so as to embrace every possible mode of obtaining and conveying to the enemy information which might be useful in war.

The Special Intelligence Department, supported by all the means which could be placed at its disposal by the Home Secretary, was able in three years, from 1911 to 1914, to discover the ramifications of the German Secret Service in England. In spite of enormous efforts and lavish expenditure of money by the enemy, little valuable information passed into their hands. The agents, of whose identity knowledge was obtained by the Special Intelligence Department, were watched and shadowed without, in general, taking any hostile action or allowing them to know that their movements were watched. When, however, any actual step was taken to convey plans or documents of importance from this country to Germany, the spy was arrested, and in such case evidence sufficient to secure his conviction was usually found in his possession. Proceedings under the Official Secrets act were taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and in six cases sentences were passed varying from eighteen months to six years' penal servitude. At the same time steps were taken to mark down and keep under observation all the agents known to be engaged in this traffic, so that when any necessity arose the police might lay hands on them at once; and, accordingly, on the 4th of August, before the declaration of war, instructions were given by the Home Secretary for the arrest of twenty known spies, and all were arrested. This figure does not cover a large number--upward of 200--who were noted as under suspicion or to be kept under special observation. The great majority of these were interned at or soon after the declaration of war.

None of the men arrested in pursuance of the orders issued on Aug. 4 has yet been brought to trial, partly because the officers whose evidence would have been required were engaged in urgent duties in the early days of the war, but mainly because the prosecution by disclosing the means adopted to track out the spies and prove their guilt would have hampered the Intelligence Department in its further efforts. They were and still are held as prisoners under the powers given to the Secretary of State by the Aliens Restriction act. One of them, however, who established a claim to British nationality, has now been formally charged; and, the reasons for delay no longer existing, it is a matter for consideration whether the same course should now be taken with regard to some of the other known spies.

Although this action taken on August 4 is believed to have broken up the spy organization which had been established before the war, it is still necessary to take the most rigorous measures to prevent the establishment of any fresh organization and to deal with individual spies who might previously have been working in this country outside the organization, or who might be sent here under the guise of neutrals after the declaration of war. In carrying this out the Home Office and War Office have now the assistance of the cable censorship, and also of the postal censorship, which, established originally to deal with correspondence with Germany and Austria, has been gradually extended (as the necessary staff could be obtained) so as to cover communications with those neutral countries through which correspondence might readily pass to Germany or Austria. The censorship has been extremely effective in stopping secret communications by cable or letter with the enemy, but as its existence was necessarily known to them it has not, except in a few instances, produced materials for the detection of espionage.