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Hindenburg's March into London
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Contents
PAGE
OLD ENGLAND AND YOUNG GERMANY . .21 WITH THE EASTERN ARMY TO CALAIS . . 45 CROSSING THE CHANNEL .... 69 BATTLES IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND . 85
HEROES 117
THE NIGHT BETWEEN THE BATTLES . . 145 FIGHT OF AIRMEN OVER THE THAMES . . 161 THE LAST BATTLE OF THE CENTURY . .179 BEFORE THE GATES OF LONDON . . . 207 THE ENTRY INTO THE CITY . . . .225
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Introduction
PROBABLY no book has so taken possession of the popular imagination of any country as " The March of Hindenburg into London" has taken hold of that of Germany, where it is at present selling in hundreds of thousands as fast as publishers can turn it out, and being devoured by man, woman, and child, from the Statesmen in the Wilhelmstrasse down to the babes of the kindergarten.
A few years ago a book on the same lines, dealing with the taking of Paris* and the final division of France between Germany and Italy, produced a similar sort of furore, but this was nothing compared with the outburst produced by the present volume, for of course England is now openly acknowledged to have been all along the real objective of the world war which
* " How Germany Crushed France," by Adolf Sommerfeldt. A translation, edited with a Preface, by L. G. Redmond-Howard.
II
Hindenburg's March into London
is now threatening the very foundations of civilisation.
Such an admission is of the very first importance, even though it comes from such a source as an indiscreet romance as this, which might be aptly described as "a diplomatist speaking in his cups," for while it incriminates Germany up to the very hilt it is the final justification of our belated and much- debated intervention.
Nay, more — events have added a certain element of Nemesis to our respective attitudes, one to the other, for while on the one hand another twenty years of peace would have finally consolidated the hard-won victories of painstaking German science and determination, on the other hand nothing but a European conflagration could have roused lethargical England from a comatose state, which was as much of a danger to herself as, witness the event, it was to the whole evolution of mankind.
In fact, a paradox as undeniable as it was unexpected, has gradually been appearing, till it now dominates the whole of the sixteen
12
Introduction
months of war, namely, that far from being the first step in a series of downward strides, England probably owes more to the Kaiser's folly than to anything else in her history since the Armada, by the folly of another sovereign, finally established her freedom of religion.
Instead of the war tending to an invasion of our shores by German hordes, nothing has more thoroughly , cleansed them from aliens whom we had been inclined to enthrone in our midst with a semi-superstitious respect which would have made any respectable demi-god blush. In the process we were led to over- rate their strength as much as they were led to underestimate our power, so we have as much reason to bless our good fortune as they have to curse their ill- fortune that this persistent illusion is finally dispelled.
Had the present bombastic adventure been by way of warning, or even by way of threat, and had it come from the pen of an Englishman, like, say, " The Battle of Dorking/' or Wells' " War in the Air," or even William le Queux's " Invasion," we might have questioned its good taste, but we could have felt no qualms
13
Hindenburg's March into London
in taking it as a tribute to Germany's greatness ; but coming at this belated hour from the pen of an unknown poet of the Fatherland after months of continual fiascos, which only their colossal proportions prevent from becoming apparent, it simply indicates a blindness and an unconscious sense of irony, which will some day place " Hindenburg's March into London" among their masterpieces of satirical self- criticism.
In a word, nearly every one of the plans of the German Government have miscarried, and this to such a degree that the day must inevitably come when the German people will call it to reckoning for the colossal catastrophe which now threatens all their labours and efforts, and it is only a matter of time for the realisation of the fact that, far from advancing the threatened invasion of England, the Kaiser has made it for ever impossible.
Thus, when the German Gibbon, sitting upon the banks of the Rhine, takes up his pen to start " The Decline and Fall of the Teutonic Empires," he will probably start his first chapter with the invasion of England, and how the
14
Introduction
Kaiser stopped it at the very moment when to all appearance it was within an ace of success. Possibly he will not find it necessary to warn his readers that he does not use the word " invasion " in any military sense, for he will go on to explain that he uses the word "invasion" in a far more complete sense than the mere militarism sense, when he might begin in this fashion : —
"About the year 1914 there was hardly any department of life or thought in which Germany was not the dominating influence, and this not merely in countries like France and Russia and England, but throughout the world.
" In another twenty years of peace the Fatherland would have held the world within the palm of her hand had it not been for the colossal folly of Wilhelm II., who, by an unexpected declaration of war upon Europe in the August of that year, suddenly withdrew the clutch of her life force and precipitated the country upon a downward career which was destined to end in financial and moral catastrophe.
" Critics and philosophers," he will probably add, " are to this day incapable of giving a satisfactory explanation for the coupe defoudre by which the last of the Hohenzollerns plunged Europe into war, save upon the supposition of a tinge of insanity which had become hereditary.
" Suffice it to say that within six months the seas had been absolutely swept of our shipping, our trade brought to a standstill, and our country encircled with a ring of steel which was gradually to strangle us to exhaustion.
15
Hindenburg's March into London
" The tragedy was all the more colossal in that it was a step so absolutely unnecessary, for on all sides we had already won the hearts of those whom our own folly — or rather that of our ruler — had turned into our enemies.
" Thus, for example, England, which even then controlled the world's commerce and directed the democracy of civilization, was as completely under our control as she could have been under an army of occupation, but not- withstanding the combined warnings of her most able politicians and the most important sections of her Press, she was sublimely unconscious of the fact.
" England, in other words, was already passively in our power — practically a German colony — and it only needed a few more years of persistent, organised co-operation before her whole empire should fall into our hands as naturally as a ripe pear falls to the ground.
"Already in her colonies our goods were flooding her own markets and cutting out the Mother Country, and where German trade did not do so, American trade was doing it, so that England's commercial downfall was prac- tically within a measurable distance, and as America was fast becoming Germanised, this would have meant a com- plete world victory for the Fatherland.
" German citizens sat in England's Parliament and were members of her Privy Council, and from these high places down to the lowest stations every position of importance in office and factory was becoming filled with our advance agents, and even so-called British firms were often financed entirely from Berlin and Frankfort.
" In her Universities, German thought had long become a synonym for culture and science. German philosophers like Kant, Fichte, Haeckel, and Nietzsche ruled supreme. Historians like Lord Acton openly avowed their admiration
16
Introduction
of our methods and thoroughness as exemplified by the models of Ranke and Dollinger. Doctors and scientists revelled in the latest German invention or discovery, like those of Koch and Ehrlich. Literary men and dramatists found in our native masterpieces endless sources whence to draw a national school. Schiller, Heine, and Goethe were looked upon as the greatest poets that ever lived, while Bernard Shaw was regarded as a genius simply because he was a good translator and adaptor of Teutonic ideals. The music of Wagner, Bach, and Beethoven could fill the Queen's Hall or the Albert Hall any night when native talent might starve for years • while nearly all the younger men in art looked to Munich with hardly less reverence than they did to Athens. Politicians likewise caught the craze ; bill after bill went through the House of Commons, such as Old Age Pensions and Insurance, simply because they were already in force in Germany • in a word, the Englishman was being deprived of his individuality.
" In one thing alone did he retain it, and that was in the matter of militarism, which was, after all, the least important of all, for even the Englishman's religion was being Germanised away into modernistic negations, like Tyrrel's and R. J. Campbell's, who had only to mention some unknown professor from one of the German universities to have the most astounding statements believed under the title of the New Theology.
" It was at such a time as this that Wilhelm the Second suddenly came in with the one move that could arouse the Englishman's resentment and awake him to the conscious- ness that his country was already invaded.
" In vain did our economists warn the Kaiser of the danger of an open attack, and point out the inevitable victory unaided peace would bring to Germany, viz., that
17 c
Hindenburg's March into London
the whole world would wake up only when it was too late, and the last prize had been secured.
" He could not have played more into the hands of the British had he been in the pay of their Government ; he could not have freed England more thoroughly had he been at the head of an army of victorious invaders, like the Norman Conqueror, and then suddenly ordered them to re-embark; and however humiliating it may be for us Germans to admit, history endorses the verdict that it was the Kaiser who saved England, and in so doing began the decline and fall of the German Empire."
There is no necessity, however, to resort to prophecy, for we can actually see the process of National Salvation going on before our eyes.
England but a few years ago was looked upon by Europe as the world's greatest tyrant, she is now enthroned over all as the champion of outraged right and nationality, while Germany, that was to have led Europe against the Yellow Peril, has stooped to acts which have not only disgraced the white races but even disgusted the black races, who are flocking over under England's standards in order to break her barbaric power.
A few mad months of debauch by your regiments, oh ! hapless Monarch, have robbed of their reward a century of your people's toil
18
Introduction
and idealism, which might have taken the place of England as pioneer of civilisation.
The only possible rival to England as ruler of the waves, you have by one single act — the sinking of the Lusitania — showed a horrified world what you meant by your freedom of the seas, and made the nations realise what our Fleet has saved them from.
All these things and more we owe to you — Kaiser Wilhelm — and we cannot but tell you of our gratitude for the way you have averted the invasion of our land.
We leave our vengeance to your own people- it is their's in a far truer sense than it is our's.
You fondly hoped that, like the Roman Caesars, these thousands of gladiators you would send to their doom would still hail you " faire well " on the threshold of death ; instead, it is they who are witnessing your own suicide, in the full consciousness that your fall will mean their salvation.
That is why we say, " Not we who are about to die," but " we who are about to live, salute you."
L. G. REDMOND-HOWARD. London: Lincoln's Inn, 1915. C 2
Old England and Young Germany
HINDENBURG'S MARCH INTO LONDON
OLD ENGLAND AND YOUNG GERMANY
OLD ENGLAND was the most successful and the most ruthless schoolmistress the world had ever seen.
Zealously and with extreme talent, she had adapted herself to playing the part of a political schoolmistress, whose aim for centuries had been to educate the countries of the European continent in accordance with England's wish and will ; England, indeed, had reason to be satisfied with the results of her exertions. This rare teacher set bounds and limits to any strong will or youthful force which might arise, or strive for supremacy anywhere in Europe. Favourites were fostered, the strengthening of whom might be of use to her later ; England overthrew the plans of others and helped to forge new plans. She delighted in those countries who, not rising above a mediocre
23
Hindenburg's March into London
level in their attainments and ability, were satisfied with the endowments Nature had given them, and gave England no trouble in any way. England, indeed, wanted her rest. She looked with no friendly eye upon any strenuous and forceful disturbers of the peace. Above all, she did not like zeal for geography in her proteges, and could show herself extremely ungracious if the Continental States poked their noses out of Europe and wanted to have a look in and see what was going on in the big world. The little would-be Powers on the Continent were to rest satisfied with the study of the map of Europe ! What lay beyond that was a private matter for Old England.
Her primary aim was to keep the Continental countries as average-size Powers. With the zeal of an anxious guardian, she watched to see that none of them had too much pocket-money to spend and become too enterprising. If one of them wished to look at the wide world, and even to settle down somewhere in it, Old England took care that the domestic peace of these foolhardy Powers was disturbed, and they always had enough work inside their four frontiers to keep them away from other objects.
Towards needy parasites and starvelings she might on occasion be very friendly and ready to assist, but, notwithstanding all sympathy, abated never a jot of her school-teacher's
24
Old England and Young Germany
dignity. The Channel maintained the distance of authority between her and those whom she sought to take under a guardian care, full of noble love for one's fellows. She was at all times ready to make the greatest financial sacrifices if the rate of interest was a good one.
It must be put down to the credit of Old England that her political professions bore a decidedly liberal stamp. She was by no means anxious that her compeers on the Continent should sit with folded hands, but, on the con- trary, looked on approvingly if now and again they flew at each other's throats. It was a pleasurable sight to schoolmistress England to see the little Continental soldiers play and go to war. War, indeed ! She laughed then, as only the Devil can laugh. She was remote from the fighting, and at most, if the war did not take the required course, brought her silver bullets into play. When fighting stopped, however, she was always on top, and always managed to lead the peace negotiations into such a course that even the victorious country was enfeebled for years to come. That England at the peace negotiations would at last play some trump was as established a fact as the " Amen " after the sermon.
"If two quarrel, the Briton rejoices" has long been a proverb. In the course of centuries but few had seriously endeavoured to catch
25
Hindenburg's March into London
the measure of Mephistopheles, and none had succeeded.
The wilder the turmoil in Europe, the more might England rejoice, for the countries which had got their heads battered were afterwards easily the most docile. England took counsel of her big banks as to whether European peace should be maintained or whether it was expe- dient in the policy of power, and in the interests of business, to rig up a war again. The business books of her banks and trading-houses are the best sources for the history of European countries, for in them the ultimate subterranean connections are laid bare.
Old England wished to attend upon earth to the business of God Almighty. And while she looked with godly dignity to the maintenance of order in Europe, and liked to keep in leading strings those who would fain be great on the Continent, she was free, undisturbed to develop her world-wide business, establishing herself comfortably on the shores of all oceans, parcel- ling up entire continents, sated with prosperity, and living magnificently and joyously. Yes, it was a pleasure to live ! England had a con- siderable patrimony at the bank, and knew herself to be respected and feared in her educational dignity, and she now hoped to enjoy repose.
26
Old England and Young Germany
Then in the year 1870 something quite unheard of happened. About that time there all at once appeared in Europe in the fore- ground a youth in the fullness of his strength — young Germany ! He was a sprig of the good, stupid old-German Michael, who had fared especially badly owing to his horizon bounded by the church tower, and his secluded mode of living. Michael had to sit very far behind in the European State class, and during the last five hundred years he was always several decades behind the others. Young Michael, however, the fair-haired, blue-eyed fellow, was oi a different mould ! To the schoolmistress on the other side of the Channel he looked a very slippery fish ! She could not turn an eye away from the fellow as he carried on all sorts of suspicious games, built guns diligently and with surpassing skill, speedily developed engineering and weaving as good as the British, and made it his task to overtake his mistress in all depart- ments in which Germany had been the pupil of Britain. He had assiduous talent in working, experimenting, investigating and inventing, had drawers full of patents, and wanted to know things better than anyone else in chemistry and medicine. Fortunately, the young fellow was still very far from worldly wise and allowed everybody to peep into his laboratory and workshops, so that even countries of prey such as Japan might imitate many things.
27
Hindenburg's March into London
The young fellow was endowed with a capacity for taking pains and a self-conscious- ness quite inadmissible in this age. He joined in all great movements, and positively played the part of the discoverer of Europe. He discovered the French painters before the French ; English poets before the English ; Slavonic dramatists before the Russians ; and Roman beauty before the Italians. Young Michael knew something and could do some- thing, and who could know what he still had up his sleeve ? With rash temerity he wished first of all to renew humanity on sentimental principles, and one of his most fanciful ideas was, indeed, the so-called " social care." By this, of course, one only spoils the poor and reduces the profit of contractors. Such humanitarian tendencies were not to the liking of the English schoolmistress, who said in the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham : " Let every Briton do what is of use to him. Let every Briton see that he is good at arithmetic and church-going — as regards love of one's fellows, it is quite sufficient to occasionally encourage those who are laden and weary with a pious proverb ! Or can anyone seriously assert that social care is required for money- making ? A curious people these Germans ! "
The young fellow developed visibly. He lived entirely his young, strong life and bothered little about the good tone in which England
28
Old England and Young Germany
wished to educate him. He continually called forth blame and fault-finding, but young Michael continued quite unabashed to concern himself with world-wide commerce, diligently studied over-seas geography, laboured arduously, and cared not two straws for what other people thought about him.
In his relations with his European neighbours he was of an honesty which has now grown quite old-fashioned. He paid so little attention in his diplomacy to craftiness and ingratiating methods, that he often watched with a sigh how Albion got the better of him in diplomatic world business. This honesty was an inheritance from the old worthy, unsuspicious, and thereby often befooled, led by the nose, and sorely tried German Michael.
Greatly to his detriment, young Michael had no idea of adopting the new methods of diplo- macy, but looked upon himself as unfortunately unfitted for diplomatic flirting, renounced the creation of a lying press abroad in his favour, and missed the opportunity for many relations which can only be opened in drawing-rooms when smoking a good cigar.
Full of worthy simplicity and blissful trust- fulness, he thought that with honest work he would do more in the world than by coquetting and skirmishing, by taking pleasure in small liaisons, and striving against solemn ententes cordiales. He, with a proud half smile, passed
29
Hindenburg's March into London
by all the useful, petty English statesmen's craft, unfortunately did not count wire-pulling and the tricks of past masters in the art of intrigue as being the work of diplomacy, and failed to see that Bismarck was now out of date, and that modern diplomacy of the English school must often be encountered by employing similar tactics. With his large blue eyes he walked a straight road through the world and worked bravely onwards. His art and his science gained him fame, his industry accumu- lated money, and his trade conquered country after country.
To the Briton the doings of the young fellow became more and more distasteful. Old England wanted to have rest and enjoy the rich patrimony of her fathers, and now this pushful and go-ahead fellow came along— naturally she felt herself threatened more and more every day in the comfortable enjoyment of life. England had, on the other hand, no need to work six days in the week ; the country could afford to devote at least two days to sports and games. In Germany, with its own peculiar trend of ideas, it was thought that in the age of world economy only that party could be on top which worked to the limits of its strength, and gave the utmost to earnest creation.
Old England and Young Michael — a cleft between two worlds.
30
Old England and Young Germany
In addition to harvesting fame and earning money, young Michael did many other things which were no less distasteful to the school- mistress of Europe. His most suspicious pastime he indulged at the water's edge. This ill- advised scion of good old Michael began to build big shipyards and to create for himself, so far as he could, a serviceable fleet !
Was he so rash, such a megalomaniac as seriously to desire a voice in the business of the world ?
Against the suspicious games of the young coxcomb on the seashore measures must abso- lutely be taken ! England might, perhaps, have admitted a strong military Power as having equal rights, but never again a seafaring people as serious competitors ! For so venturesome a country, looking forward to the future, as young Germany, his deliberate building of a fleet might finally only form the stepping-stone for the development of strength which opened up limitless possibilities ! Even without an equal fleet, young Germany had one for commerce, and ran undaunted around the whole globe, in order to look for customers for its industry ; even without a strong fleet its merchant navy was in all the corners of the world and earned money, much more than it ought to. What if it created a fleet of the same rank as the English and placed it at the service of its trade and industry ? The suspicious doings in Kiel
Hindenburg's March into London
and Stettin and Wilhelmshaven gave Old England many sleepless nights.
Envy and fear taught the English to hate young Germany, but they did not at first quite know how to give vent to this hate. Though, it is true, those who talked politics over their beer and gin, recommended a very simple means for Britain to rid herself of the German Alps : Young Michael must first be harassed with diplomatic pin-pricks, and then fallen upon and attacked from all sides with bludgeons ! His ambitions should be driven out of him and his Zeppelins blown up ! He should be made as powerless and lamb-like as Michael in the pre-Bismarck period. With pen and sword steps must be taken to compel this people, these tillers of the soil, to return once more to the existence for which it was fitted in the poverty of 1815 or, still better, 1648 !
Those who did not talk politics over their beer, but in the St. James's district over their whiskies-and-sodas, recommended the same fighting tactics, though by a different path. In their incendiary speeches in Hyde Park they reasoned thus :
" Men of England ! That Germany has become so provokingly prosperous and is not yet content with its wealth, that it takes our customers away and reduces the receipts of the British Empire, is well known, but that is not its most dangerous activity. The claws of the
32
Old England and Young Germany
German phantom clutch deeper ! The un- broken, primeval strength of young Germany, the whole of that red-cheeked existence, this strenuousness — that, men of England, is the lasting threat to the world's peace ! Just look at this young Michael ! Those muscles ! That entire frame breathing strength ! That posi- tively criminal and provoking health ! Look, that is how his militarism agrees with this barbarian ! The moral for us is : militarism must be driven out of him ! Is it not con- ceivable that this coarse-natured fellow would knock out both Russians and French at once ? But what would then become of the balance of power, my men ? Would England then be the man at the helm ? Nothing less than European equilibrium is in danger, and therefore the hour is one of bitter earnestness ! . . ."
After such speeches even the public-house politicians felt that their devilish plans were ennobled. The war-seekers of the streets had got wind into their sails.
Balance of power — that was the word ! Translated into German : English predomi- nance and vindication of threatened school- masterly dignity !
Old England wanted to sit comfortably and in unrestricted enjoyment at the well-covered table, and suddenly a stressful new-comer, full of ideas, appeared. Against these far-reaching plans one had to be on one's guard every
33 D
Hindenburg's March into London
moment ! Well-to-do England was really not called upon to put up with discomfort for any length of time, and possibly to allow its authority as mistress of the world to be under- mined. And that, too, by a young jackanapes ! Really, England must give him at once a thorough drubbing ! There would have to be a thorough account, sooner or later, with the impudent coxcomb ! Germany must be thrown back into that poverty so essential to English well-being and which was the reason of its docility in past centuries, and thus in all secrecy they egged on war. A deciding war between the sleepy culture of England and the alert youthfulness of Germany.
To venture upon the struggle alone with young Michael was positively dangerous. In order to get the sturdy fellow under, England had to secure quite a number of confederates. And then it would one day fall with all its weight on the fellow ! Under the motto, " Down with Prussian militarism ! " England founded the world-historical " Isolation Society for the Destruction and Dividing Up of Germany."
They first succeeded in getting the French shouters for revanche to join. How could Marianne have withstood the tender Edward !
Against German militarism ! With this battle-
34
Old England and Young Germany
cry Russia also had to be decoyed. That Russia had a few divisions more under the colours than Germany was unimportant. The Isolation Society was not petty and narrow- minded in connection with the entrance for- malities. A noble picture this, showing how the gentlemen from the Thames embrace the Muscovite brother heart, how John Bull pressed friend Wanzislaus to his breast ! What did it matter that the faithful ones from the paradise of the Little Father could not read or write, and smelt of vodka ! Albion could not help herself. Stimulated by repulsion for German militarism, she could no longer restrain her heartfelt liking for Russian despotism. Being unable to endure listening to the shooting on German troop drilling-grounds, she turned, full of fervour, to Holy Russia, where, alongside the rifle-fire of the giant army, the crack of the knout could be heard, and occasionally, too, bomb explosions.
A paragraph in the articles of the Isolation Society provided that Russia should first ignite the torch of war. Criminal desires sought a noble pretext — what could be nobler than to protect the murderers of Royal children ?
As it was a question of holy crusade, of chivalry, and of truly pure moral humanity against the truly worthless German Huns, Japan, Italy, and Montenegro were also
35 D 2
Hindenburg's March into London
invited. And the same Albion which in measureless conceit and mocking Phariseeism turned up her nose at having to sit at the table of the nations along with German barbarians, concluded a bond of sweet union with the Bashkirs and Congo niggers, with Senegalese and Gurkhas, Basutos and Australians.
The devilish plan for the destruction ot Germany was settled in London, had been considered for years carefully in all its details, and if signs and wonders had not happened, it must, in human judgment, have led to com- plete success. In a couple of weeks Michael's arrogance and temerity were to be crushed ! Crawling on his knees, he should helplessly
implore mercy !
* * * *
The great day had come. On the English tree of poison the fruit was ripe. Accord- ing to the articles of the British Isolation Society the torch flamed up in Russia first. It was, in truth, ignited two years too soon ; but otherwise everything went as laid down in the programme : the powder of half the world caught fire on these great August days.
To God-given Albion, which was chosen from aforetime only for the maintenance of peace, and hated nothing more passionately than the thunder of cannon on the Continent, the outbreak of war came as such an entire surprise that in the first days of August it
36
Old England and Young Germany
suffered from a severe nervous shock. The attack manifested itself in sudden and serious loss of memory. It suddenly knew no longer that, with France, it had long since made mili- tary arrangements with Belgium ; it no longer believed in the least that in Maubeuge, as early as 1913, it had had mountains of munitions piled up. The fact quite escaped its recollec- tion that it had compelled Belgium to develop Antwerp into the most powerful fortress in the world — Albion suffered a very complete loss of memory. The cry ''War!" had struck the peace-loving people like a bolt from the blue : the consequence was this dreadful paralysis of the power of memory. But Albion's heart, which beat only for peace and human rights, had still remained the old one, and therefore it could not look on inactive when Germany now marched into Belgium. Full of holy indigna- tion, it called upon the entire civilised world to avenge the malignancy of the Huns in falling unexpectedly on bashful and virtuous Belgium.
When Britain had gathered all her accom- plices for praiseworthy deeds, and the capital of the Isolation Society was to begin work and pay out dividends, the English newspapers one day blurted out bluntly what Grey, Sazonoff, and Delcass6 had in mind :
" The new German Michael is to be shot down and cut up into pieces, so that he only keeps his eyes to weep for his misfortune."
37
Hindenbuag's March into London
Poor young Michael ! Why wert thou un- willing to walk in the footsteps of the good old stupid Michael ? Now your future is black as thunder. And all this you have yourself to thank for. It is owing to your ruddy health, quite out of keeping with modern fashion.
* * * *
So pious and gentlemanlike a nation as the British waged war, of course, for very high ideals — namely, for freedom and lofty human rights. It was a war of civilisation against the uncivilised habits of barbarians, and for that reason England has set itself the great and noble task in the war, in beautiful association with Kaffirs and Cossacks, of starving German women and children ! The British had only mobilised as defenders of international law, but soon they thrust international law aside with a superior smile, and acted on the model of those merry Bavarians who had joyously shouted : " Now for a jolly scrimmage and no policeman near ! " Albion, too, was happy at having speedily got rid of the policeman of the world State, international law, with its troublesome limitations of crude high - handedness and despotism.
It was the war of gentlemen against Boches and Huns, and these gentlemen indulged themselves in the most repulsive suspicions against our Kaiser. Gentlemen ministers took as the bases of their inflammatory speeches
38
Old England and Young Germany
army orders in which the Kaiser was said to have ordered his troops in secret to slaughter the British. Their clergymen interposed in the Church prayers the words : " Lord God, thou hast clouded over the spirit of the German Kaiser with madness : let Thy wrath be appeased and be gracious unto him again ! " In the Press they discussed the question whether Attila, after the overthrow of his vandal hordes, is simply to be deposed or banished, or whether short shrift is to be given him !
Every fresh day brought new and shameful slanders — it was the war of gentlemen against German want of culture.
The military and economic forces of an entire world were conjured up against Germany and its ally. In alliance with lies and cunning, the British succeeded in temporarily angering Germany by a series of petty tricks, meannesses, and pin-pricks, but one thing they failed to effect : they could not bend the neck of the fair German youth ! Young Michael in the second year of war possessed the same laughing con- fidence of victory as on the first day of mobilisation ! Meantime the young fellow had developed ! Heavens ! What elbows he had ! The left in Flanders, and the right on the Black Sea. With legs wide spread he stood in
39
Hindenburg' s March into London
Central Europe and pushed his iron-mounted soldier's boot every day a bit further into the enemy country. He let the furious English pack yelp on and only spit now and again over the Channel : Hurrah ! for the Zeppelins and the valiant German fliers !
Seven or eight against two or three and no success, and for the future only bad bills in pocket — the distress was great. The Isolation Society was confronted with the most terrible collapse a group of speculators had ever experienced, and the fault for the enormous bankruptcy, the loss of thousands of millions, was ascribed to the man whose name was pronounced with a shiver, and yet secretly with a solemn reverence —
Hindenburg !
Unless signs and wonders happened, Eng- land's diabolical plans should have led to complete success. Now signs did happen, and a true son of the people among these miracles was Hindenburg.
He was already before the gates of St. Petersburg. If this great battle leader, who with puzzling perspicacity always marched his armies up at the point where they were most disagreeable to the Russians at the moment, should one day have no occupation in the East ? What then ?
Could this genius among generals read only Russian maps and not English ones also ?
40
Old England and Young Germany
Those were questions of despair, to which there was no answer.
Beside herself, Albion saw how the Russian legions which had once, with the primeval force of the Flood, broken into East Prussia and Galicia, fell to pieces under the merciless pursuit of Hindenburg's inferior numbers ; how the war-mongers of the Quadruple Alliance, the men after the pattern of Grey, from Nikolai Nikolaiewitch to the divine Gabriele, one after the other sank down into the darkness of the world's history.
Would this uncanny Hindenburg, after settling Russia, take a holiday for recuperation, or lead his armies to the West ? Might Hin- denburg be the stormer before the gates of London ? Such ideas shook people's nerves on the other side of the Channel. • As the Allied Powers got no further with their own strength, and in spite of large premiums gained over no new satellites, they looked around among the members of their company for the scapegoat on whom they should throw the responsibility for the failure of the carefully contrived surprise attack.
While the noble gentlemen under the banner of the faithful ones mutually decorated each other with orders, they secretly clenched their fists against each other, and the sweet-bitter world war began to bloom forth in a humorous aspect.
Hindenburg's March into London
The Russian newspaper contained the Paris report that Joffre was preparing a great new offensive, and appended to the report the caustic comment that this time success could not be wanting because it was the twenty-fifth, the jubilee of the offensive ! The French growled against the British because they made themselves comfortable in Calais like a pig in clover. England was angered with Italy for being unable to smash up Austria, for it would like to send nobles of Rome to accompany its niggers in the trenches ! Italy, however, re- proached the English with niggardliness and meanness in paying out the Judas millions, and declared that, made wise by experience, it would only carry out big offensives on the Isonzo and South Tyrol in the future, provided the amount was remitted beforehand. The Italians also railed against the Serbians and Montenegrins ; and to complete the circle, Serbia vented her spleen at the menacing military position against its holy protector, the patron of her Sarajevo murderers.
The Russian bear, however, was bleeding from nose and ears, and all four paws, even if he was no longer in a position to dance to England's whistle. The lying Press of the Allied countries, it is true, continued, under the able guidance of Albion, to declare that Russia stood before the world, the most ready for battle of all the countries.
42
Old England and Young Germany
One fine day, however, the editor of the Times made a painful mistake. He had inserted the consoling article which was then due with regard to Russia's enormous reserves and new working plans of the steam roller, and in another column of the same number he had to record the very latest news, the world-wide event fraught with such consequences — the conclusion of a separate peace between Germany and Russia. The sorrow round about was great. Russia had given notice to the London managers of the Isolation Society of its withdrawal from the firm. It had retired from the scene of war and now had to concern itself with its own troubles, because everywhere in the country lightning was in the air, as though the severest storm was only now to visit the Empire of the knout.
Hindenburg, however, ordered ten thousand special trains of Falkenhayn.
43
With the Eastern Army to Calais
With the Eastern Army to Calais
WITH THE EASTERN ARMY TO CALAIS
WITH the dawn the alert conquerors of the Russians appear like the missionaries of a new age. For fourteen days the trains roll along uninterruptedly on the great lines from East to West. They travel amid merry songs and mirthful speech, and bring to the Western frontier the joyful confidence and the whole of the great stress of action of the Eastern frontier. The people gather about the rail- way lines as if they were festive streets. The journey of the Eastern Army to the Western front is a triumphal progress without compare. Now the great days have come, when the faithful sentinels there in the West become outposts, advanced posts of a giant army, habituated to victory and lusting for deeds— an army which has accomplished its first great task, and is about to seek a new sphere of work.
On their waggons the soldiers have written Russian and Galician place names ; these names are not merely inscribed in the record of honour of the regiment, they are also entered in the books of the world's history. The
47
Hindenburg's March into London
regimental colours will carry many names on them for thousands of years to come.
The advance in the West will now be impetuous. The anticipation of crowning the proud German work by decisive deeds burns like tropical fire in their stout hearts. The will to decide the fate of the world fills them all to the last man ; they all feel mighty and holy.
The enthusiasm with which the grey-clad soldiers are greeted on their passage even exceeds the jubilation of the August days of 1914. For now joyous confidence is accom- panied by the satisfaction of success. Enthu- siastic and joyously expectant men of storm and stress at that time marched out in the dark uncertainty of a world-wide war, but now an army of men tried in the storm assembles for the last deed. Waves of jubilation roll along- side the trains through the country. The troops need not this time keep secret the fact that they are going from one frontier to the other ; the whole world may know now. Hurrah ! The Eastern Army in now marching. On the chalk cliffs of Dover the German cry of jubilation shall resound : Hindenburg's million army is on the road with seven-league boots !
In all regions through which our Eastern armies pass, people who have been compelled to stay at home in these years of war, come thronging from miles around. On the railway
48
With the Eastern Army to Calais
stations where the troops get refreshments, the people press in dense crowds in order to greet its victorious sons. They wish to look the brave men in the eyes and shake the hands of those who now travel from the storms of one world to those of another.
They are lusty fellows going to reap new laurels. Wind and weather on Russian soil have imparted a healthy brown to their faces. All is muscle and steel in these sinewy frames. Faces are as if carved in oak ; clear-cut, tough features are firmly outlined. Plump cheeks have, it is true, had to yield up something of their fullness in snow and ice, in marsh and burning sun, and to many a man of the Land- sturm hard nights of war have added a few wrinkles. The war has been a wholesome training for those who had waxed fat in peace ; and if war, that iron-bearded doctor, and close- handed cook undertake the treatment, they do not rest before the last ounce of superfluous flesh has melted away. Quill-drivers, however, have had their breasts expanded by the war ; many of them will feel stifled when again com- pelled to sit at the desk. Many an eye which seemed to grow tired in a monotonous occupa- tion now gleams with fresh life. These eyes have looked through hell on the Russian battle- fields ; they know no more fear. The town-bred generation of these times has once again come to know gnomes and elves, and gods of the
49 E
Hindenburg's March into London
woods and forests, and has led an heroic life of nature. Those who had been mildewing in the towns were here thrown upon themselves, and many a man first discovered himself. Many of them went into the field as Mr. Nobody, and now high orders adorn their breasts. All have felt the hardening breath of Mother Earth, and are in process of moulding their future according to their plans.
The people wishes to do the impossible ; it wishes to reward the bravery of its sons with small gifts. It wishes to do good in some way to those who have given it new life. Hearts are overfilled with thankfulness and with secret wishes — each one would like to whisper secretly into the ear of the grey-clad man : " Go hard at them over there during the coming weeks ! Be it an evil day for him who seeks to stop you ! He will do not so a second time ! Thus Goethe admonishes you."
An old mother has bought a dainty morsel out of her meagre resources, and hands the modest gift of love to a soldier with the words :
" Take it, do ; it is a long way to London ! "
In the German journey to England she also intimately participates, for in France and Russia her sons have fallen. Many a small but precious thing is also stowed away in the knapsack — many an old man in the Landsturm is now having the time of his life. The troops
50
With the Eastern Army to Calais
are travelling from one bloody field to the other, but their heart is as though their way lay through the Land of Plenty ; the most choice delicacies come through the windows into the waggons. They have scarcely been half a day's journey on their way to the heart of Germany, but already they begin to pick and choose among what is offered them by men and beautiful girls. The young maidens of Berlin who wish to treat the passing battalions with chocolates and savoury sandwiches hear a fellow from Munich say to them quite openly :
"If you had a measure of Hofbrau beer and a veal sausage ! — I have had enough of cold cake and lemonade ! "
Even wreaths are now declined with thanks by the lionised Bavarians, for in their small travelling warehouses they have already created a department for flowers. A corporal of the Light Horse, who, however, cannot refuse a lovely giver, says :
" Throw it in, for Heaven's sake ! I tell you we have had flowers enough to make a garland from Zeebrugge to Grey's Ministry of Lies ! And we have still got to settle our account over there . . . ! "
They are a merry people. They do not talk about the storm of battle and the labour of war which again awaits them ; they only want " to get a peep at the Englishmen at close quarters " !
51 2 E
Hindenburg's March into London
The waggons are not big enough to contain all the merry conceits and poems in chalk, the rhymes in which are more difficult to find than the enemy in the best masked positions ! The popular rhyme of " John Bull " and " Vest Full " is repeated in scores of doggerel verses. Indeed, the John Bull rhymers already suspect a professional poet of being the author of " Tsarislaus is done for ; now, Englishman, your turn has come ! "
The pontoon men are, of course, described as the " Channel Fleet." And on a munition waggon, connoisseurs of the English ladies' world have hung a small placard :
" With great care ! Incendiary bombs ! Mark : Pride of the suffragettes ! "
Berlin Army Medical Corps men have written over their department :
" Medical Society for combatting the English disease. We shall teach the youngster how to walk ! "
On one waggon merry Landwehr men, who have known London on their travels, have hung puppet figures : one puppet represents an Englishman with considerably developed jaws ; right and left of him hang Indians, Congo niggers, Gurkhas, Zulu Kaffirs and cannibals. Above them are the words :
" All-British Shopping Week ! A patriotic week in which a good Briton will only buy goods of British origin."
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With the Eastern Army to Calais
It had been since 1911 a favourite method of fighting the insinuating " Made in Germany " goods. Fifty- two times in the year an " All- British Shopping Week," and then the tottering German industry would have been completely disposed of !
Now they are off! Thousands of handker- chiefs wave a last greeting, and longingly fair maiden lips murmur, "Au revoir !"
" We shall be back before long ; we only want just to run over to London and to insure Germany with the London Political Society against burglary for all times. We only want to clear the General Post Office of the four thousand telegraphists, of the manipulators of lies who have brought the whole thing on . . . ! "
"Au revoir ! "
The next giant train contains joyous Saxons. In one compartment the merry superscription appears :
" Notice ! The Corps Midwife. Applications for delivery* of the Agreement of London con- cerning a separate peace may be made here."
Another train carries a giant gun to the Western front.
" Fat Bertha in her nightdress."
" The poor girl has a bad cough. ..."
* " Dissolution " — a play on the two meanings of the word. — TRANS.
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Hindenburg's March into London
And one of the gunners of fat Bertha says gravely :
" Just you wait and see how she will thrive when she is able to work in sea air ! "
Now " Halloas" and " I have the honour" resound. Merry Austrians come in. Kaiser- jagers, Bosnians, blue-eyed Saxons from Tran- sylvania and the Tyrolean Landsturm, fellows from the Otztal and Pinzgau, Passei and Ober- vintschgau ; Styrians, who have made their homes in the interior of rocks and by stone firesides ; Honveds, who once hewed them- selves a victorious path over the storm-swept slopes of the Carpathians — all are proud at being able to fight on under Hindenburg ! They wish to do their share in order that the great days may come soon, very soon, with which the historian will one day begin a new chapter of the world's history. No one is under any illusion ; it will be no easy task to get at the breakers of the world's peace on their island. The last victories of the German and Austrian flags will demand their toughest strength. The climber along the winding path to the last proud height finds each ridge more steep — of that these Austrian Alpinists are well aware.
Joyous confidence flows out of their carriages.
Over one compartment they have written
"G.m.b.H."* They really mean them to
stand for " Grenzregulierungskommission mit
* A kind of German limited company. — TRANS.
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With the Eastern Army to Calais
brillantem Humor" (Boundary Regulating Commission with brilliant Humour). Yes, indeed, they have the golden humour of Vienna. They chaff every girl, but appear to be experienced philosophers in more serious things of life. A man of the battalions of Vienna excavation engineers, a fellow with the Virginian wisp of straw behind his ear and adorned with a full beard which appears to have been cut with the Bessarabian hedge- trimming shears, is watching a Prussian Hussar who is saying farewell to his girl on the plat- form. Seeing the young cavalryman about to clasp the maiden passionately to his breast at the parting kiss, he says warningly :
" Just you listen to me and stop all that silly sadness ! Be sensible and do not play the fool ! Many a fellow has gone unscratched through a dozen battles and at the end, by gum, has at last been clean knocked out by a bullet ! "
All the wits have their tongues wagging. With " God preserve you ! " and " Victory and safe home ! " the train rolls out, and the next one is received with a rousing hurrah.
Thus it is on all lines from East to West from early morning to late at night, and then again till the morning. And joyful confidence is the keynote of them all. The German people stands around gratefully to greet its valiant sons. And all those who cannot join the
Hindenburg's March into London
colours still have a fiery wish, an important commission to give the Channel voyagers. . . .
Certainly many a man now breathes with relief when he has passed the noisy station and can once more be alone with wood and meadow, together with a few genial comrades. For many the journey through the lands of Germany is far too solemn for them still to be responsive to small jokes. For the army of 1914 is the people. And as manifold as the aspect of the soul of the Germans, of so many kinds of soul are the soldiers in this war made up. This army has no mind for the pleasures of the barracks ; each one looks upon the things of life quite in his own way.
Many would prefer not to be acclaimed, not even to be addressed on this journey. For they are now once more in process of discover- ing their German fatherland ; like children who travel by railway for the first time, they feast their eyes on the landscape. For months they have marched through an enemy country and have seen nothing but want and care, devastated meadows and torn-up fields, with bloody shreds of clothing and scattered household goods. They have fought on the ruin-covered fields of Galicia, have marched over hideous mounds of Russian skulls, and now they again see German soil ! Around uninjured villages extends the
56
With the Eastern Army to Calais
kindly solemnity of the German forests ; hamlets set in poplars peep out of the cradles of the valleys ; proud country mansions greet them from undevastated meadow. German soil and above it the radiant German sky — take off thy shoes, for the ground is holy !
When they had to seek shelter in Polish stables and within carbonised Russian walls, when they marched through lands which bled from a thousand wounds, distant Germany appeared to them in blessed dreams as in a fairy tale — now they are for two days allowed to dwell within this golden reality ! When crossing the German frontier, many of them ceased the games upon which they were engaged.
Now the eyes brighten up and feast to satiety on the uninjured magnificence of the meadows and stretches of forest ; it is as if they found all this for the first time. For long months they have lived in thick air, impregnated with iron, and seen untold misery ; now they come out of the air of death into the fragrant air of the German forests, and they would like to absorb the fragrance of German soil into every fibre. Longing pent up within the heart now descends upon the German landscape like a storm of birds into a field of sweet fruit.
Can it be really true that this country has stood in combat with a world of enemies ? As far as the eye can reach there is pastoral
57
Hindenburg's March into London
happiness and undisturbed arable soil. Was it this thrice-blessed land which England desired to put to hunger ? Curls of smoke above the houses speak eloquently of a goodly evening meal. . . .
The soldiers travel onwards intoxicated with the pleasure of home ; the rough-skinned men are lost in longing thoughts . . . somewhere over there behind the forest lies their home . . . !
Songs ring out. " Thee, my silent valley, I greet a thousand times ! " For soldier songs they now have no heart ; they strike up old German national songs deeply imbued with feeling and speaking of the dear home. For the army of 1914 is the nation.
But this happiness which fills the hearts of the soldiers when journeying through the land of their home no longer intoxicates ; it stimu- lates more and ever more ; it calls them out ! They wish no longer to be onlookers at this homely peace ; they want to have the good right to their home. They wish to stake all in order to secure the world's peace ! Between the verses of their home songs they clench their fists. Their thoughts go in quest of those who grudged the Germans their peace ; their hearts fill to overflowing with hate against the pedlars and envious men of Albion !
There are many refined natures among the soldiers, who, at the beginning of the war,
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With the Eastern Army to Calais
disliked nothing more than all poems of hate and preachings of hate, and all that increased hate among nations. Since they have realised, however, what Albion with her hypocrisy was aiming at — how she bought over traitors to Germany with her base money ; how craftiness and jealousy were brought into the field against the German sword ; how Albion used coloured vermin to destroy highly cultured German men — then their motto became :
" Give unto peace that which is of peace, and unto war that which is of war ! "
He indeed is an unworthy man who in peace sows discord between the nations, but unworthy likewise is he who in this war desires to abate a hating heart.
Peering, dreaming, and clenching their fists, Hindenburg's men voyage on through the German lands. No, they do not want for long to be dreamers of German home blessings and comfort ! They desire with their swords to conquer the peace of the world. They wish with the whole of their strength to fight down what still stands between them and that
happiness.
* * * *
In Berlin the rumour has spread abroad that Hindenburg was going through to the Western front in the evening ; he will certainly be the guest of the Kaiser for a couple of hours ! The whole of Berlin remained on foot till late
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Hindenburg's March into London
at night, and contrived all sorts of honours for the great vanquisher of the Russians.
Hindenburg did not come. He was already over the Rhine. A word of the great Field- Marshal passes from mouth to mouth :
" The Russian collapse is a remarkable past success, but it is not yet time for festivities and rejoicings."
And many of his faithful warriors have become one in sentiment with him. Without great talk they go out to new struggles, calmly, with restrained strength and keen eye, but without boastfulness. For over there they have lived the elevated life of action, and clearly distinguish words from war and its essentials. They wave away all great hymns of heroic deeds. What they did was to them a matter of course. They will not, however, be able to avoid the word " heroism " if they should ever have to write history about themselves. Russia's power, with its fabulous proportions ; Russia's army, with its gigantic figures overthrown ! He who has put his hand to the accomplishment of this German master work may, in truth, accept a laudatory word from a faithful heart. If there ever were heroes, he is a hero. And if no enemy ever came under his sword in the Russian campaign, he is a hero in what he has suffered.
They do not like noise, and have grown un- accustomed to all ceremoniousness. As the trains roll on through the country, many of
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With the Eastern Army to Calais
them look back meditatively into the past. Here on these tilled fields the great Frederick once drilled his Guards. When England was already comfortably endowed with wealth, the sweat still poured from men's brows here. And where the small troop from which the Prussian army sprung was trained, a victorious million army rushes by after the lapse of a century and a half. It wants at last to be at the nation against whom Frederick the Great uttered warnings.
On the long journey there is hardly a district within which a place does not recall a battle. Germany has had to fight its way hard, bitterly hard, through the centuries. Germany may truly be proud of the victorious army which, after long schooling in the spirit of Frederick the Unique, had performed the unexpected, and now bears up its spirit to meet a second thundering battle.
On the journey towards the Rhine the thoughts of many go delving deep ; many among them have had their views enlarged as to the world's horizon for the first time by this war. The teacher in field-gr^y passes by a village school. When he again stands before his boys, he will no longer speak at length about Ludwig the child and Karl the fat ; he will show what Mother Earth means to the nations of to-day, and how the power of the soil and history combine as secret educators and give its
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Hindenburg's March into London
importance to the nation. And thus he will let his scholars know their own mind as men of the present time.
And the young clergyman in field-grey who sees soldiers at the stations standing by the mourning mothers of their fallen comrades, has in this man-devouring war become fully aware of the last philosophic and social content of the simple words which Jesus spoke on the Cross :
" Mother, behold thy son ! Son, behold thy mother ! ''
War-time teaches us to dig deep.
And amid the far-travelling thoughts of one and the longing, melancholy songs of the other, yet another good-humouredly cracks bad jokes. And perhaps it is well so.
While two Landwehr men here were going into the connection of the ultimate things of existence in war and peace, they heard in the neighbouring compartment two Landsturm men talking of English financial policy. One says :
"In the Dardanelles you see the entire shabby sordidness in money matters of the English. For the head of a German-Turk delivered dead or alive to the English Army they have offered in all six pounds ! Our Kaiser is more liberal. For a certain head he has offered the order ' Pour le Merite ' ! "
"Which head?"
" For the bridge-head of Calais ! "
Moods of inspiration, and oaths, and good
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With the Eastern Army to Calais
and bad jokes intermingled — such is the life of the soldier in the pauses between the fight.
The first troops from the East now see the Rhine ! The soldiers grow silent and look into the distance. Solemnity encompasses them, they breathe deeply ; they have gone cross-wise through the German Fatherland, and they know what peace is. ...
A brilliant sunlit day wafts blue and golden hues over the land of the Rhine. On the shores of the river joyous children gambol. Young wayfarers pass singing on their road.
14 You boys down there, wander merrily far over hill and dale, steel your body and feed your souls by looking ! Enjoy your youth with all your heart, and value the happiness in that you will at one time reap what we now sow for you ! Remain thus simple in your ways, ye young wandering youths with the oak twigs in your shaggy hats, and let your eyes drink deep of the beauty of the German meadows ! Do not become old-fashionedly wise in these great days ! Do not feed your young souls with book-learning alone! Wander through the German countries in merry mood and light humour, as though the German land had from the inception of the world lain so, free from care in the sun, and as though it cannot be otherwise for all eternity. Life will soon
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Hindenburg's March into London
enough make known to you her marginal notes ! Keep your love for your native soil, and honour your German mother-speech — that is for the present all that you have to do ! Be proud of your native land, for in this pride is all : the will never to yield up a morsel of this happiness, the courage of a strong man's life, readiness for war."
This is the last will and testament of the soldier, the last holy will before they march out to new battles.
What the valiant men feel as they pass over the Rhine is deeper than all words. A golden consciousness of happiness is within them, and the determination to fall with might and main upon those who deprived Germany and the world of peace by wanton intrigue.
* # # #
Between Aachen and Brussels Kaiser William holds the greatest review of troops of all times. The conquerors of the Tsar's army march once more before their Kaiser before going on to the last decisive battles at the front. Full of pride, the German hosts once more feel the keen blue eyes of the mightiest prince of the earth resting upon them. They greet him whom in love and blind hate the thoughts of the entire world surround, who was for twenty - five years guardian of the peace of the world, who now stands at the centre-point of the greatest war in the world's history, and will perhaps live on
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With the Eastern Army to Calais
through the thousands of years to come as the greatest German in the history of Germany ! How much moral force must lie in the Kaiser if the political pedlars and intrigue weavers of Albion feel themselves so severely endangered in their business success by the nature and action of the Kaiser that they rage against him and call to their aid common lies and slander ! In the eyes of his soldiers the Kaiser reads the reply to all the repulsive attacks from the other side of the Channel.
And side by side with the Kaiser the troops of the East see their Hindenburg again !
He is the soldier after the heart of the god of war !
He is the general with mildly beaming eyes, which, however, at times shine with a keen glint of steel which recalls Moltke.
The great German of powerful old Germanic figure, in whose rough features, chiselled by iron power of will, there is something of the pride which Bismarck displayed when in arms against all the assailants of Germany.
He is the Director of battles fertile in strategic forms, whose plans show the great forecast of the master, the creative artist who, regardless of all obstacles and with implacable sternness, aimed at the final objective, and yet, to the discomfiture of the enemy, made ingenious use of the clause " Alterations of the programme reserved ! "
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Hindenburg's March into London
He is the mysterious wizard who knew how to put the cap of Fortunatus on his troops, who at times appeared to hesitate long, and then suddenly hit out so vigorously that the prisoners were counted in tens of thousands.
The man of deeds whom the times have exalted as they rarely have anyone ! The immortal hero who will live long among the people in the splendour of his knightly accoutre- ments of steel !
And now our faithful watchers of the Western front are released from the unspeakable tortures of trench warfare. Heroism of unique magnitude lay in the tenacity with which they held out in their tough endurance in their clay holes, in the bravery with which they baffled forward lunges like the rushes of a mad bull, and in their behaviour under the nerve-racking hail of shells which raged day and night and scarcely gave an instant's breathing space. Now the time is come for preparing the storm- ing ladders in the trenches.
The Eastern motor batteries and the Essen giants which jointly blew away the Russian fortress ramparts, now reach the French and English entrenchments and earth bastions, bring out the enemy columns from their concealments and dug-outs, and set the avalanche rolling westward. They beset Dunkirk and Calais in masses, shoot the two fortresses to atoms, and prepare the way for the world-famed collapse
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With the Eastern Army to Calais
of the French army and the British Continental troops.
Various field battles, as to the issue of which the world is not in doubt for an instant, break out, for now the German army, for the first time, has an ally in its ranks which alone, it is true, can do nothing, but in combination with bravery must force the victory — that is, numbers, superiority in numbers.
The millions of the Eastern Army overrun all the trenches in the Channel. Now shudder, Albion !
A giant swarm of Zeppelins, of whose size even German soldiers did not venture to dream, travelled one foggy morning to the west coast of England and sought out the British Navy. With a thousand bombs fifty full hits were made. Explosions completed the work of destruction. Almost at the same time a gigantic fleet of submarines broke into the British naval harbour and completed the work.
England had-' her Sedan. She was now to experience her Paris !
67 F 2
Crossing the Channel
Crossing the Channel
CROSSING THE CHANNEL
IT is night.
Off Zeebrugge, Dunkirk, and Calais one ship after another lies moored. There is a bustle and business in the harbours, as though the entire continent had packed up its bundles in order to emigrate to another world ? Was it to a better world ? It was into one of the cold hells of which Asiatic religions tell. To be at the throat of a cold devil who for hundreds of years has carried on politics from office chairs, and, cold to the heart, has sought with skill and success to determine the fates of nations according to the entries of his business books.
Along the coast of Dunkirk numberless German regiments are bivouacked, awaiting the command to go on board, and in Calais and Zeebrugge lie the mighty ships under steam which will bring after the troops munitions and provisions and the thousand varied implements of war which a giant army requires in its train.
Hindenburg's March into London
The ambition of the troops who here await the hour of crossing has not achieved its great object. When the young heroes went west- wards from Ukraine, they hoped to be the first to tread the coast of England, and now they have learnt that fifty battalions have been over there for the past two days.
" Oh, the deuce take it ! During two months' fighting I was always in the front rank, and whenever, after a thousand years, our children's children still talk of the great event, they will say we came too late ! " says one, stroking his yellow stubbly beard, which in droll fashion recalls his home among the goats of the Swabian Alps. " Our German fellows must have swept over John Bull like bad weather ! "
Yes, the first blows in 'preparation of the invasion were dreadfully hard, but brief. " Tragic, but simple." The storming of the Fortress Britannia was so boldly and safely carried up to the ramparts of the Straits, as though the English fortress were only one in a dozen. For eight days new giant Krupp guns had felt their way over to Dover and Folke- stone, and had destroyed everything living on the south coast of England, reducing all the work of human hands to nothing. Under the sustained fire of the monsters of Essen and Pilsen the great fortification works were ham- mered into dust. While landings of troops
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Crossing the Channel
were simulated between Yarmouth and the mouth of the Thames, the three waterways from Zeebrugge, Dunkirk, and Calais to England had been secured east and west by a steel wall of torpedo boats and mines and submarines. Finally the Kaiser sent his cousin the promised little surprise . . . and for the last forty-eight hours two army corps had stood on the shores of the island.
The whole of England is aroused in wild and furious hate against the Germans. They are now once more calling upon the entire world to assist them against the intruders. But no one crowds on to a sinking ship. It is true England has still assembled a respectable number of foreign battalions and coloured people from all parts of the world on its island in order to repel the invasion, but they will no longer succeed in bringing in foreign reserves. Now for the first time in centuries England is thrown on her own resources. Now she shall show what she can do when she gets no foreign team to draw her State wagon ! The need over there is great just now. . . .
All night long the cranes rattle at the new German moorages in North France. Boxes and cases, items of equipment, many thousands of necessary things, lie heaped up on the wharves — requirements for man, animal, and guns. One goods train after the other traverses Flanders, and the treasures which they bring
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Hindenburg's March into London
from the well-filled storehouses of Germany are lowered into the holds in Zeebrugge and Calais.
In the district of Dunkirk there is scarcely a house or a shed in which German troops do not pass the night. From here during this night happy dreams wander by way of England to the home, for the last thought of this outward journey to hard, decisive battles is peace — a world peace !
Major Sigwart and Lieutenant Eickstadt can get no sleep, and they go out upon voyages of discovery. In the vicinity of the town they see pioneers and companies of engineers still engaged in building an enormous shore hotel at midnight. A bomb-proof roof frame quite peculiar in shape is being built for it. ... High guests are expected — Zeppelins ! Four at a time. At the side of this hall a peculiar cross stands erect. On the trunk of an ash- tree, the crown of which has been shot away by shell, a propeller blade has been nailed crosswise, and a wooden tablet bears the inscription in handwriting :
" Here rest the brave men of the Jubilee airship Z 100. In the fog of the Channel they came too near to the fortress works. . . .
The cross and the hall behind it — these were a picture from which Major Sigwart could not tear himself away for some time.
" The picture is, as it were, a simile of
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Crossing the Channel
German character," he says to Lieutenant Eickstadt. " Failures do not hold back the German ; they only bring pride in his diligence. Behind the cross of the dead is ... the Will to Conquer ! "
During the entire night our " Blue Jackets," in field-grey, put away the travelling luggage of his Lordship the German Army — cavalry horses, motor-cars, oversea outfit down to the proverbial last spat-button.
In the midst of the busy turmoil the warning call of watchful posts cries out from the distance. Sirens howl. A squadron of aeroplanes is coming flying along from the Channel. The horrid guests in field-grey are now on the threshold of England, and the latter is making the last endeavour to prevent the shipment of new armies. The need is great over there. . . .
There they come ! The French and Italian machines appear here and there among the English. In her hour of utmost need England, by merciless financial operations, has compelled her impoverished vassal States to support her with soldiers and weapons and munitions . . . the soldiers, the guns, and the munitions have been appropriated by our submarines, but the flying men have punctually joined their allies, in order to ward off unimaginable evil
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Hindenburg's March into London
from the money supplier of the three-fourths bankrupts.
The buzzing comes nearer and threateningly nearer.
Bombs fall down like rain and hail in pre- historic times. A thunder resounds, as though stars crushed to atoms fell from the heavens. German guns growl. A couple of German aeroplanes have bravely accepted battle two thousand five hundred metres high, but must yield to a ten-fold superior force. Infantry take sporadic aim. Every second a flash of lightning illumines the clouds, and every flash is a hit. Our gunners keep steady and aim well. One aeroplane drops into the sea ; four, five, find a grave along the fringe of the coast. And many of them stagger like a lame bird, and will scarcely find their way home.
A terrible hit : a German ship is on fire !
A sinking ship, with lakes of blood and rust of powder, fragments of aeroplanes, gurgling waves, men writhing in anguish — that is the result of a few minutes. The dreadful ghost went as quickly as he came.
An English battle aeroplane while still in the air receives orders to fly to the Irish Sea, because from there British submarines have reported by wireless that their compass has been destroyed. The bird will pilot the fishes to the harbour.
The swell foams with a murmur against the
Crossing the Channel
breakwater. Searchlights scrutinise earth and sky. On swaying stages the companies leave the European continent, but their confidence passes as surely as on iron bridges over to the British Isle. They would now like to strike up a merry song, but must restrain their German pride and the longing for action which would express itself in song — the water might have ears ! Furthermore, in German fashion, the fact has not been concealed from the troops that yesterday a British submarine succeeded in sinking a German troop transport.
There was no handkerchief waving, no beckoning of women's hands, and all lights were shaded, but in all eyes was the fire of enthu- siasm ! And this holy fire in the eyes of the grey seafarers will be shaded no more by any power in the world.
Man and steed are weary beyond expression ; they still have in their limbs the fatigues of the last battle for Boulogne. But the pride of being now in at the finish keeps the troopers awake ! When the anchors are raised and two torpedo boats attend as convoy, the last rifleman becomes aware that he is now living through a great and memorable moment in the world's history. Now he is penetrating into the sanctuary of the British ! Now for the tables of the traffickers and money-changers, who still offer the doves of peace for sale in the market of the world, when they thought
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Hindenburg's March into London
they had already completed the work of isolation, and the Russian war party had already given the signal. Now the All-holiest of the British Nation is in danger, the treasures between Threadneedle Street and Princes Street ! The need in the business region of the Bank of England is great.
The engines throb ; the ship seeks its way through the night. No sign of light on the shore betrays how far behind Dunkirk already lies. Enormous fires farther back inland write upon the nightly sky that the European continent, thanks to England's zealous and well-directed exertions for many years, has become a sea of blood. It contains, however, two uninjured and blooming oases — the German Empire and the Danube country.
Diffidently at first, and then full of proud will to conquer, the day dawns.
In the Eastern sky the struggle of light against darkness has broken out, a few ramparts of cloud have already been gained by the outposts of day, and this Eastern Army also passes over to take the West by storm. Sullen black masses are called up, but radi- antly the young day appears ! In front of it the North Sea, it is true, lies like a blood-red carpet. . . .
The morning colours the chalky cliffs of the English coast a pink hue, and greets the German army hosts. The eyes of the young
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Crossing the Channel
heroes gleam afresh. They would, however, not have been good Germans if here and there one of them had not been made meditative by the morning dawn which filled their souls with pictures of home and a gentle melancholy. Silent and quite lost in themselves, many of them wonder what the day will bring . . . and how things will be when they cross again. . . . Will the return passage be over the Channel or over that black stream which washes the Isle of the Dead ?
Here is seated a group of young enthusiasts in front of the picture of Nature, while there one greets the morning light thus :
" There you are, I can write a picture post- card at last ! " War poetry and Landsturm prose !
But all of them are to-day writing picture cards, both the poets and the realists among those clad in field-grey. To-day even the negligent one, who otherwise gives the field post little to do, will write.
" Dear Sweetheart, — To-day we have at last got so far. Gott strafe England ! . . ."
" Dearest Gustel ! Hurrah ! Now we are at them ! We are just going over now, and shall give the British business offices a good fumigation and kill the envy germs ! " . . .
" Dear old Gal, — We are on the job now ! As soon as you get this 'ere letter your bloke will have run his sword through the knot which
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Hindenburg's March into London
that crafty old Edward thought he tied so smartly ! " . . .
They had not written with such enthusiasm since the days of August, 1914.
Gazing, writing, and dreaming, the troops get nearer to their goal ; soon they will be islanders !
" Stop ! "
The ship trembles in all its joints, it has been brought to a stop so suddenly.
A mine is floating before the bow !
This fragment from the gigantic iron rampart of England escaped the mine fishers. But the two smart battle steeds which, with long trail- ing manes of smoke, leap along and athwart the vessel have sharp eyes ! Soon the ominous monster of the sea has been deprived of its sting.
From England distant rolling thunder of guns is wafted. Things may be already pretty hot over there ! But the confidence of our soldiers is unshakable. They see endless black clouds floating above the Channel, funnel after funnel : Germany is on the march. And they see the three fighting comrades who are cross- ing with them — three heavy guns, which, with their cruel, hard blows, have helped to smash down the ramparts of the Russian fortresses. The three forty-two-centimetre guns are now asleep like buffaloes worn out with fatigue. The gunners will awaken them over there and teach them to rumble again !
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Crossing the Channel
A stiff breeze arises. The ever-living waters of the Channel breathe hot. On the port side the waves greedily lick the ship's walls. To landsmen it is a movingly beautiful picture to see the waves spray over the torpedo boats and mount high along the sides of the steamer. During the millions of years in which the waves of the sea have washed the round ball of the earth, the sea has never been fed with so many ships as during these years of war, and now it seems that its voracity had grown with the plenitude of its indulgence. A toothsome morsel certainly it would have been, a war-equipped regiment of German world-war victors ! Watchful the deck officers stand, and with their keen-eyed glasses scan the horizon. Each sailor peers with vulture eyes . . . now the rank and work of the individual fighters can no longer be measured by the idea of duty ; now each one from the enormous stress of his soul gives his last, for each one knows that Germany from hour to hour is waiting for news, and that the entire world is holding its breath during these days! It is now a fight to the last man ! Now each one has the fate of Germany in his hands.
The chalk cliffs have moved nearer and nearer.
" Hurrah ! Dover ! "
A picturesque bay it may have been in time of peace, but now the sea swells about a
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Hindenburg's March into London
heap of ruins. In the clefts of the rocks there are still here and there trails of smoke showing where shots have fallen, and fires raging.
Rattling, the anchor seeks the bottom. The two small, smart little steeds with floating manes snort for a couple of minutes, then they gallop back to convoy another regiment. Per- haps they are already bringing over him who, with his staff, dwells in Dunkirk in the vicinity of the Telefunken wireless apparatus, and directs the battle which has flamed up in England.
After the troops have climbed up and have passed the ruins of the fortifications and barracks, they halt at a field altar. At the threshold of England the clergyman wishes to speak to the soldiers of watching and praying : that the heart should be humble before God, and the neck stiff before the enemy ! That the heart should pray and the eye be watchful ! He reads from the Bible the text in which all his thoughts are to be summed up :
" The Lord will be with thee and not with- draw His hand from thee, nor abandon thee, until thou "
" An aviator ! "
" Fall out ! "
" Seek cover ! "
As soon as the troops are able to creep
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forward out of their cover they once more gather round their preacher. He reads on :
" The Lord will be with thee and not withdraw His hand from thee, nor abandon thee, until thou hast accomplished every- thing ! "
" Until thou hast accomplished every- thing . . . ! "
This is what the soldiers take with them from the divine service into the battle.
83 G 2
Battles in the South of England
Battles in the South of England
BATTLES IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND
THE main roads on which the troops landed to-day march into the south-eastern counties of England present a harrowing picture. The German corps, which after the keenly contested battle in the hopfields of Kent are now already on their victorious march passing through the county of Sussex, so richly endowed by nature with landscape beauty, have had to face a sharpshooters' warfare, exceeding in its atrocities the performances of Belgian black- guards. The German commanders have been compelled to take stern measures of reprisal. They will be a warning to English craft and cunning.
In order to make the position of things quite clear to his King's Grenadiers of Dresden, Major Sigwart assembles them around him and reads over to them a proclamation taken yesterday from a miscreant caught red-handed and shot on the spot, the chairman and leader of some local council.
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" Fellow citizens ! The hordes of German Huns have raised their coarse barbarian fists against us ! The deadly enemies of all pro- gress of civilisation, the tramplers on all human rights, graze their horses on the holy fields of Britain ! The Moloch of Prussian militarism opens wide its evil-smelling jaws and threatens to grasp us between its teeth ! Gentlemen of Britain ! we ask you, will you suffer these Germans — who, owing to their notorious want of education, could only find a footing in London, the City of Culture, as waiters and barbers — will you suffer them to be in your native land for one hour longer ? Ladies of Britain ! we ask you, will you allow the fat sons of the sauerkraut ' Hausfraus ' to pass through the streets of your home ? If you will not suffer this, then ' To Arms.' Your King appeals to you in a difficult hour. See that each parish, each house, becomes a trap from which not a single German rat shall escape alive."
The soldiers now know how comfortable it will be in the quarters of this battle area ! With revolver heroes and mixers of poison !
Major Sigwart enjoins the utmost caution upon his men, and admonishes them to be mistrustful at every step.
He concludes his address by saying :
" For hatred there is no such thing as the
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Battles in the South of England
world's history. Hate has never learnt from the past. The heart of England will not be instructed even by the fate of Belgium ! We shall repeat the lesson of Louvain upon the shooters from behind hedges if need be ! We want an honourable battle with soldiers ! But bandits shall not harm the hair on a German soldier's head with impunity ! "
For the Major no further stern orders or forcible measures are necessary on the forward march. The German advance companies have already become wary. . . .
If the troops are preceded by dreams of happiness in the direction of London, they march gallantly forward ! Our field-grey clad men are merry and of good cheer.
But soon the bitterly hard reality breaks into their dreams. The frightful traces of furious recent battles already show themselves. Every hedge, every farm, has become a red milestone to the German and Austrian armies on their victorious march. Many a hastily knocked together cross of rough birch on the road carries a helmet of field-grey.
The road runs through landscapes of devas- tated beauty. The parks of English lords have been crushed under foot and overturned by the war. Yew trees, centuries old, bleed out of wet, gleaming, splintered wounds. They
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Hindenburg's March into London
have survived for many hundreds of years, and knew nothing of the fact that upon earth there is at times the turmoil of war. Yes, Old England has in the course of centuries been fortunate indeed ! It waged war often enough, and allowed other nations to suffer and paid vassals to fight for it, and its old yews learnt nothing of all the unspeakable heart's suffer- ing which the much-tried Continent had to endure !
The gardener War has worked wondrous changes in the park-like meadows in which huge shell holes yawn. And on the green sward he has intertwined his poppy-red tendrils. He has ploughed over all the gardens of Sussex, and where War runs his plough along the digging is deep. What can the giant shell have been looking for in the elegant old man- sion ? It has fetched out weapons, stones, pillars, shreds of concrete, table slabs — with all these things it laid about it and extinguished all life far around.
And on the fields of these fertile lands there now grow nothing but steel sheaves with steel ears, pyramids of rifles. Every bend of the land swarms with German and Austrian troops hastening to battle.
At a railway junction in South Sussex a large number of prisoners from the recent battles may be seen.
" War puts many a man on his feet ! But
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Battles in the South of England
many cavalry men above all ! " jokes a Grenadier officer, as several English cavalry squadrons in smart khaki uniforms passed the German troops towards the railway station, in order from there to undertake that journey to the heart of Germany and the Danube which had been dreamt of some ten years before, though in a somewhat different way.
The caravans of prisoners there resting are really strange medley of peoples. Indian horse- men with false precious stones in their turbans lie alongside ragged Montenegrins ; North Indian Sikhs, men of Madagascar, Senegalese, Basutos from the Cape, Gurkhas, Indians, Black South Sea Islanders, and City of London Reservists are encamped side by side. England has shrunk from no expense in the service of humanity : pioneers of civilisation from the darkest corners of the world were to show the vile German Huns what education and manners are.
Repellent Congo negroes, whose torn faces still bear all the marks of Belgian colonial atrocities, relate gleefully how noble ladies of London, formerly murdering Suffragettes, had kissed them as liberators ! They show how their arms were allowed to encircle the fair ones — their hands look like the claws of beasts of prey.
" Phew, deuce take it ! " says a German Landwehr man. " They do not know that for
Hindenburg's March into London
the pious English ladies there is nothing now more worthy of worship than a noble gentleman from a heathen land. And what should one not do indeed to promote the comfort of the brave forces who are to free the world from the German barbarians ! "
Some prisoners look serious and meditative, but the coloured ones have not yet realised that on the British Islands they were employed as wretched serfs, and that only by chance have they escaped their higher destination of terminating their life as miserable food for cannon in England.
Under the leadership of a man from Monaco, an international public organise a little game in the street trench. Soon, however, they give a thorough drubbing to their banker, the expert from Monte Carlo, for having tricked them. The game room is cleared by the German Landsturm.
Major Sigwart asks his adjutant to take a photo of the encamped caravans.
" Write under the picture : ' English Muni- tions/ "
# # # #
In the west of Sussex the storm of battle rages hard. The reserves are hurried forward to this field. They march swiftly onwards.
It now begins to smell of chlorine. Our Grenadiers are approaching the fields where the battalion will no doubt be used to-morrow.
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The parks and meadows bear harrowing testimony to the recent combats. Perforated helmets lie here, wheel spokes smashed, horse trappings. Steel fragments of gigantic shells glitter in the sun like iron-pointed clubs of the Middle Ages, in the hands of the torturers. For hours by road the shells came here to help build a cemetery of many miles in extent.
With widely opened eyes and convulsively outstretched legs the horses lie. Stately race- horses they may have been. They were in- tended, no doubt, to be shown at Epsom before hundreds of thousands. Instead of the many- coloured jockeys, crows and ravens are riding on them.
The acrid pestilential smell would bar the road to novices. Our soldiers have become inured to this, and it would have to pour thickly indeed on the heroes of Arras and Gilgenburg before it weakened their courage. They know that the road to victory looks a little different from what it is pictured at times in festive addresses. . . .
After many hours of march the Grenadiers reach that portion of the recent battlefield where the Army Medical Corps columns are still at work. Waggons travel by from which pitiful groaning is heard. Here from a heap of boulders a couple of boots project dripping with blood. The feet; are still within them. The hospital assistants will hardly find the
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body which corresponds to that smashed skull over there. An English horseman has had his veins burst by the air pressure of a shell, so that his face is overrun with black blood. On a railway embankment hewn-down Pomeranians lie alongside Highlanders torn to pieces. And on the same embankment there still stands a big board on which the words appear in huge letters :
" Off to Berlin ! Great tennis tournament. Balls supplied by the Government ! Great attraction ! Fine sport in Flanders ! Followed by winter festival on the French Rhine ! Feasts of victory in the ruins of Krupp in Essen ! Visit to the caves of militarism, the barracks of Berlin ! Apply at once ! Good sport guar- anteed ! Hurry up, and be sure you are there before the great finish."
Now the great finish has come and they were there. At the foot of this repulsive board lies a heap of corpses. They will certainly have fought bravely, those sinewy figures of tough young sporting men, before they were mown down by machine-guns.
The entire landscape, which may have pre- sented most attractive pictures during peace, is desecrated by ugly advertising boards. While our battalion rests it lies opposite a huge board :
" Beecham's Pills are the best. Beecham's Pills cure."
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A company clerk climbs up and corrects it in red pencil :
" Germans' Pills are the best. Germans' Pills cure."
Major Sigwart takes pleasure in such little merry pranks. His motto is : " Cheerfulness helps men valiantly forward, but a sullen face is certainly concealed desertion of colours."
To your guns ! Onwards and ever onwards ! The day of the last great victory must be achieved by infantry on the move.
They march until evening. Then our Grenadiers put up their tents.
Even before midnight an orderly comes rushing to the city of tents. . . .
An alarm !
The Major calls the outposts in. In a couple of minutes the battalion is ready for the march. Stumbling they go onwards in the night.
After midnight the organ of battle begins to play through its entire gamut. Dull, growling songs of bards. In the nightly sky flicker the searchlights. The, battalion is getting nearer to the area of battle, where there is no night and no rest.
Now the gun-fire can be heard shot after shot. Machine-guns rattle off hardjjessons. Shells moan. Now heavy battalions of howitzers
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shriek out their battle-cry. Alongside the growl of these huge beasts the rifle fire sounds like the wretched pattering of rain, and the short and hasty rattle of the machine-guns resembles the harmless noise of a woodpecker.
Pale dawns the morning, and the Grena- diers march and still march. Their brows are wet and their knapsacks weigh hundred- weights.
Behind the bushes miserably clad forms come slouching forward, hunger driving them from their lairs. They raise their arms high and shout and lament, and behave as though possessed by the devil. They only calm down when they are assured again and again by German officers through interpreters that they will not be used on Krupp's shooting ranges as targets.
Orderlies dash from the commander's head- quarters to the staffs. The battalion is ordered on by forced marches.
The regiments of artillery overtake in mad gallop the quick-stepping Grenadiers. Brigades of horsemen fly by on the dusty roads and powder the infantry with dust. No cloth dyes could in so masterly a fashion clothe the infantry men in protective colour and impart to their uniforms the exact creamy hue of English land- scapes as the cavalry and artillery do in an instant.
Orderlies bringing new orders come flying
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up. The battalion is to be carried forward in cars.
What an outcry as the first troops get into a captured London motor-bus on which there still stands in big letters :
" Come with us ! Kitchener wants you ! This car is at the disposal, free of charge, of all who wish to enter."
Hurrah for Kitchener ! We accept the kindly offer with thanks ! We are coming !
Our Grenadiers arrive punctually on the border of the battlefield. Every thicket of trees swarms with troops. Alongside the battalion are mounted Silesian Jaegers waiting the telephone call. They have sat up and once more slapped the necks of their horses.
Artillery, too, is in readiness in the thicket, and awaits the command to join in the battle, which rages ever more thunderously towards the west.
On the outskirts of the wood Major Sigwart informs his officers of the position :
Over there, on the westerly horizon, lies Gibbet Hill, and in front of it, on its eastern slope, passes the embankment of the railway from London to Portsmouth. These are the first objectives on the road to London.
On the border of the battlefield ! Here the line pregnant with meaning is drawn which divides two worlds.
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Hindenburg's March into London
Up to this point manoeuvre experiences suffice, together with the careful preparatory work of the military scientists. Here, however, the work of will begins, and the mobilisation of the highest moral forces. Up to here it was a question of the readiness for marching of the great mass, but now each individual must set up his man. Up to here the conduct of war has been wise and semi-mechanical manipulation, but now a keen eye, speedy decision, and a courageous heart are needed.
Riders dismount ! The interior of the modern battlefield belongs to the infantry.
The reserve battalions on the margin of the battlefield receive the order to make their way into the foremost trenches, in order to strengthen the firing line. Much blood has been shed there. The battalions are to jump into the hard-fought trenches . . . and the soldiers burn to go to the assistance of their sorely pressed brothers.
The battalion falls out into thin lines and groups, and each small group must now see to make its own way forward safely. The ground is not favourable for bringing up reserves. Hedges, walls, and clumps of trees offer cover. Where, however, the reserve troops have to run over an open piece of ground an awful rain of iron pours down on them. Between the
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tree clumps Death stands and demands toll of the passers-by.
The storm of battle rages dreadfully. The reverberation of the explosions never dies down, as the declining growl is at once caught up by the next shell. Although over there, behind bush and trench, the lust of death looks out greedily for what it may grasp ; though in the battered trenches, scarcely affording any shelter, death and suffering encompass them about, the groups yet have the will victoriously to advance, and this will finds the way. Now here, now there, they dash forward without intermission and without hesitation. The foremost trenches, miles in length, draw to themselves like magnets the small iron chips of the companies.
A long and dangerous stealthy march brings the battalion of Major Sigwart to the trenches in front. Death has called only twelve of his brave fellows to pass another way.
The Grenadiers have run breathlessly, as if a paradise opened before them, and now they have reached a hell.
"They don't fire badly, those English chaps ! "
This means, when translated into civilian language, "The battle is raging fiercely." In none of the battles of this world-wide war did the fury attain to the terrific pitch, to the desperate blind rage,, of the collisions and
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contests which are to be fought out on English soil.
Hiss and scream and buzz go on unceasingly. And the English shots do not travel up into the blue of the sky. They know their way well about these parts, are able to locate the enemy and strike upon the roof of his subterranean dwellings. Ramparts break down, wire en- tanglements are reduced to shreds, and waves of earth are dashed into the trenches. A glance at the battle area makes it clear how obstinate the struggle will be ! From a hundred thou- sand bloodthirsty guns fire is belched — from machine-guns, howitzers, and armour-plated cannon.
The German guns leave no shot unanswered, and the German gunners, too, if they had been unskilled beforehand, would have learnt to aim on the great Russian and French shooting ranges. And the Austrians have had their
o
war training at the Isonzo. The mine-throwers —the machines revived from the Middle Ages, resembling a crouching dog in shape — belch death and destruction, and where heavy torpedo shells alight it is a holiday there too.
True, the troops have during the lengthy struggles of this world-wide war learnt the way to protect themselves like cave bears against the dangers of the battle, but the German soldiers have no further liking for fresh position warfare ! When the English lyddite shells waft
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their stinking greenish-yellow sulphur fumes against them, they feel the desire grow within them to get fresh air by storming the enemy positions and thus get nearer to the great objective. The longings of both general and private look beyond the enemy entrenchments away to London ! For only there can the world's peace be secured, and nowhere else.
The enemy has his eyes and ears everywhere. He is well-informed as to the strength of the advance German regiments, and knows that in the German trenches storming columns are assembling who are to be directed towards Gibbet Hill. He then begins to feel his way with his heaviest guns from this hill into the German entrenchments. His shots fall slowly, like the thunderous step of some invisible fabulous being. At each step an approaching monster strikes fire from the earth. The dreadful hoof blows come nearer and nearer. Soon the monster has reached the entrenchments of our Grenadiers, and steps and hovers about them, crushing down the artificial structures here and there until evening. It is a torture which no words can describe to have to suffer under the steps of this fury- breathing, invisible, giant-hoofed monster. The Grenadiers, however, keep undismayed to their work, and keep also their underground prisons and excavations in as good condition as they are able.
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Suddenly a shot fired at a high angle hits the bottom of the trench ; it gets jammed between the boards and is held a moment as though it had first to think of the command with which the gunners sent it on its way. A tremendous burst ... a clap of thunder . . . a spout of fire and smoke ... a wild whirlwind dance . . .
A little afterwards a similar uncanny visitor finds its way into the trench of the other wing of the battalion. Will the men survive the next few moments ? The steel visitor lies powerless, inanimate. It seems to have lost its will of destruction in its tearing flight. Any moment, however, its senses may return, and its rage . . . those few seconds are pregnant with awful fear.
Two Pioneer non-commissioned officers take the hot mass of steel on the straps of their guns and drag it carefully away.
The soldiers grip the hands of both of them with quite unmilitary heartiness. Many a quiet heroic act of this great war will remain hidden in oblivion.
The enemy also brings up reinforcements- East Yorkshire Volunteers, Highlanders, London Scottish. Has a trace of humanity been moved in British hearts ? Has Albion done away with this coloured animal vermin ?
No, it is only saving its Blacks, as it still has ammunition of its own and of American
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manufacture. The Africans and Indians will, however, certainly be used up to the last man before a treaty of peace is signed. The niggers are now still enjoying drill, or an easy time— whichever you like.
The telephone brings the order to the corps :
" To-morrow morning at four o'clock the artillery will open fire on the enemy positions on the railway embankment and Gibbet Hill. Charge to take place at 7.30."
A bit of railway embankment and Gibbet Hill ! . . . In the decision of the fate of the world it is a question of the possession of hedges, craters torn by shells, waste heaps. . . .
Late in the afternoon the artillery fight still continues along the entire front, as in the morning. Pillars of refuse and dust as high as houses blow over the trenches. The inter- change proceeds mercilessly. One would think that the shells must at last rend apart the blue silk of the heavens. They appear to lunge blindly forward into the horizon, but each has its carefully computed instructions to kill and destroy. An aiming device contrived by human cunning shows them how they are to satisfy their lust of blood upon human beings.
The evening comes. The battle, however, does not cease. The guns continue coughing
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during the night as though to clear the powder smoke out of their mouths.
At a late hour the Berlin Landwehr man Watzlit reports himself to Major Sigwart. He no longer looks smart ; his comrades call him 44 Quizzy lugs," because his ears stand out at an angle, and he has a very dry humour. He hands the Major quite a respectable little bag of gold pieces.
Reservist Watzlit has been on patrol duty during the day. On a silent meadow an English airman descended near him, being compelled to land by our artillery. This air- man, with a mistaken notion of the German character, wanted to bribe him with fifty thou- sand marks in bright gold.
44 I said to him, 4 Set I set /'
44 What did you say?"
44 That's English, sir. In English 4 i ' is pronounced like 4 ei ' and 4 e ' like 4 i,' sir. 4 Sie Esel' (4 You donkey '), I said to him in English. 4 Do you think I am an Italiano that you want to bribe me ? ' I certainly won't have it said of us that we are uneducated."
44 Did he understand your English ? "
44 Didn't look as if he did, sir. But I kept hold of him by the collar and spoke to him in German : then he understood. I said to him : 4 Gold must be paid into the Reichsbank in Germany. The nearest office of the Reichs- bank is Doberitz. I shall get you a ticket to
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Doberitz, so that you can pay in your gold yourself.' '
While merry laughter was aroused for an instant by this colloquy, a shell fragment as big as a fist came flying along and claimed a young ensign as its victim. War is a capricious master, and will at times suffer no merry face.
* * * *
Now it is night.
The Grenadiers are now converted into treasure seekers of rare ability. They are burying their dead brothers who were the victims of the hoof blows of the giant monster. The Pioneers dig their way into saps, and behind steel shields work their way forward in the open field to the enemy entrenchments. Fire leaps to meet them from trench and bush. They stick doggedly to their difficult work, however, and prepare the way for the charging troops to-morrow morning.
Sleep well, young Grenadiers ! To-morrow morning at half-past seven Fate will deal hardly with you ! Master Hindenburg requires all from those who fight under his colours !
* * * *
In the small hours of the morning, on the stroke of four, a noise like an inferno resounds across the battle area. Over the German line,
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miles in length, numberless steel throats spout fire. The earth quakes beneath the feet. Black masses of smoke gather above the enemy positions. The enemy does not remain idle. From Gibbet Hill the British guns send down their thunder shots. The salvoes ring out uninterruptedly. High flames up the de- structive wrath of the German battalions. The explosions of mines thrown forward like rockets tear up the wondrous land traversed by Martian canals.
" Boom ! boom ! " sing out the cannons.
" Ha, ha, ha ! " reply the rifles, as though laughing at the call of death.
Suddenly a hideous uproar breaks forth. Has the Lord God given the sign for the destruction of the world ? No, the forty-two- centimetre Pilsen and Essen guns join in the battle. They cover up the enemy trenches, lift up English batteries, and grind enemy entrenchments to dust and ashes. They plant the railway embankment between Goclalming and Petersfield with dark vegetation as high as a house, and the small guns hang up their shrapnel clouds like enormous caps of wool on the black thicket.
For hours the fearful battle of guns rages. Now those buffaloes who had slept during the journey across are awakened. Now they snort, and out of their nostrils pointed flames project,
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Battles in the South of England
The great hour draws nearer and nearer.
The clocks in London strike seven. The storming columns are already assembling in the German trenches. It is now high time to make the final preparations. But look, two worthy Saxon Grenadiers on the left wing there are still sitting and drinking a cup of canteen coffee.
" What ! " says one. " The English starve us ? If they have not succeeded in doing so by sea, it is jolly certain they won't on land ! And now just let's have a Dresden good fat sandwich. Boys, if the marmalade fellows over there knew what a jolly life we still have here ! "
. And with unshakable calmness they drink their coffee and eat their sandwich twenty minutes before the order to charge.
These two Grenadiers won the world war. Their merry calm is indeed not indifference nor yet gallows humour. It is a feeling of pride in a consciousness of strength. They know that success will be theirs. In them is the good German spirit of unshakable confidence that a right cause must conquer, and when the ladders are put up for the charge these two men will be in front.
Shortly before seven- thirty the infernal thunder of battle suddenly ceases. It is the rest of the lion crouching for a spring.
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On the stroke of seven-thirty the young lions stretch their limbs. God be with you, valiant German youth !
" Hurrah ! " resounds somewhere. Now there is no further hesitating for German soldiers whose blood is up. The first line bursts out. The hurrah swells into a jubilating storming song which leads the troops into the battle over an immeasurable front, the battle in which man will stand against man.
In three minutes the first English trench is captured. The English retire in flight to their second line. With wonderful speed and without a fight they at the last moment evacuate their trenches. . . . Cowardice or cunning ?
Forward ! There is no time to philosophise here ! Eyes front and steady ahead.
Lieutenant Eichstadt leaps up out of the conquered trench.
" Hurr ! "
He does not end the hurrah. He turns as in a circle, having received a shot in the head. A sergeant-major springs forward and finishes Lieutenant Eichstadt's hurrah. Then he, too, feels about him.
Farther down a first lieutenant tries to dash forward with a group. A machine-gun smashes his body.
A cruel hail of shrapnel bullets pours down
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on to the valiant conquerors of the British trench.
A new storming line has moved forward from the German trenches. These brave fellows, too, are swept when half-way by the fire coming from hitherto unlocated guns. In this land, of which it is difficult to obtain a general view, the German artillery has not succeeding in detecting all the enemy batteries. Now the men hidden in ambush fall upon the German storming columns.
The latter, taken by surprise when half-way, throw themselves on the ground and endeavour to protect themselves with the sandbags and protective shields which they have taken with them.
Dreaded moments have now come for the brave Grenadiers. They are in deadly peril. English guns, which have got the range exactly, pour down a hail on their ranks from Gibbet Hill. They can go neither forward nor back- ward, nor get away from this place of horror. No torture of the Middle Ages could have contrived such suffering.
Now the Scots charge forward from the other side against our Grenadiers — two battalions of the brave Scots Black Watch regiment. They have made a sad mistake, little thinking what small effect this slight set-back would have on the warriors' wrath and the battle readiness of German troops.
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The broken German charge has, however, had one great result : it has effectively cleared up the position. The German artillery now knows in what lairs destruction is concealed. While our brave German warriors crawl back to their trenches, the artillery takes up the work with double energy.
The English army commander thinks the moment favourable for converting the " de- feated "... troops by leaflets. An aviator drops bombs which are filled with leaflets instead of dynamite.
" German soldiers ! You have been dragged over the Channel in order to shed your blood uselessly ! They have not ventured to tell you you are already cut off from your home ! England is surrounded by our submarines. There is no escape for you ! Already the French are crossing the Rhine and carrying devastation into your land, where your wives and children weep for you. . . . Austrians ! In the Vienna Prater the Italians and Serbians are already celebrating feasts of victory ! Your leaders keep you tied here, although they know they are committing against you the greatest crime known to the world's history ! They will, however, rather sacrifice your blood than their vanity. While you are driven on English soil to meet the bloody collapse of German militarism, your children are starving, your mothers are weeping, and your wives and
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Battles in the South of England
sweethearts are despairing ! Deliver up your arms ! Report yourselves to our advanced posts ! Then we, full of mercy, will open the trap in which you must meet a miserable end ! You have furnished proof enough that you love your Fatherland and know how to wield your arms. Your plans were great ; your end is terrible ! We hardly venture to answer to the world's history for what circumstances compel us to do — to destroy a brave army to the last man ! Break away from Hindenburg, the wretched barbarian, in whose eyes you have failed, and surrender ! "
Thus a happy fate at times on English soil provides something which helps on the German soldiers in their darkest hours as a gallant and cheery companion — humour !
The German artillery has now settled its account with the English guns, and thoroughly searched out all hiding places. With clenched teeth and burning eyes, the Grenadiers await the order for the second charge.
For some moments the firing abates.
And now forward once more ! Many a brave German who led the first charge is no more. The heroes are dead, but their fury lives on in the hearts of their comrades. And this fury now again resounds over the long front, and swells into a battle song which drowns the English naval guns and grips and drags for- ward the last man.
in
Hindenburg's March into London
Now there is no further halting. The enemy lines begin to waver. Mightily our troops dash on. Over the railway embankment they swarm ! An enormous quantity of war material is already ours.
German reserves press on behind. Men without arms plead for mercy.
The iron hurricane sweeps up the eastern slope of the Gibbet Hill. Thousands are hauled out of their caves and sent back as prisoners to the German trenches.
A few bold Englishmen remain calmly aligned, taking aim with their guns.
"Hi!"
" You there ! "
They are dead. . . .
Below the cross on Gibbet Hill a few stub- bornly defended entrenchments still hold out. One fort after the other is captured by means of hand-grenade attacks.
Hurrah ! On the cross which crowns the ridge the German, Austrian, and Bulgarian colours are already hoisted.
A black boxer strikes about him right and left like a madman, his voice overtopping the din of battle. He gets into a hand-to-hand engagement with several men from up above.
" It's my turn."
Our artillery whips the last strength out of the horses. The guns take the height. And now Fate descends on the back-flowing tide. of
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the English divisions. The gunners see that fleeing groups are pinned to earth and will never again serve the will of a general.
A group of Austrians has already taken up its post on Gibbet Hill ; they are motor battery observers. Soon the big guns sing out " Rule Britannia " in the metallic roaring bass after the fugitives, and complete the work of destruc- tion of several hard-hit battalions.
Twilight sinks over the field. It brings no evening peace. With fiery breath the guns work on. Amid the roar of howitzers and the thunder of motors long trains run into the other world !
The day has been a hard one. And still no fresh and joyful chase begins ; no Blucher's victorious march with flying colours. The British are bringing fresh reserves up and building new entrenchments under the cover of night against the North Downs, in order to keep off the Day of Judgment from London.
Major Sigwart endeavours to collect his battalion. He counts twenty different regi- mental numbers on the helmets of his storming columns. Of his brave officers he finds not one, and many a well-known face in the ranks of his brave men is missing.
Again it is night. The stars twinkle and look upon pain increased ten thousand fold.
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Hindenburg's March into London
And the night is so mild, not a night in which one would wish to die. . . .
Towards midnight the Commander-General sends a joyful message, just to hand by orderlies, to the encampments of troops :
" Germans, Austrians, and Turks have fought the decisive battle at the Pyramids ! The British Army is in great part broken up ; the rest have been captured."
The battle most pregnant in consequences in the world war won by the new Triple Alliance.
Now the refrain is struck up joyously through the German ranks :
" Deutschland, Deutschland iiber A lies ! "
Now the song has first received its last deep meaning. It now rings out with the solemnity of a choral song over the night-clad land.
An English searchlight has been picking out the ground. Suddenly enemy rearguards direct a murderous shell fire on them. As soon, however, as the howling of this night storm abates for an instant, one hears the men here and there singing on the more joyously :
" Deutschland, Deutschland iiber A lies / "
No German stage manager has ever been able to stage the song so effectively as was done this night by the British.
Here and there rockets are sent up on the other side. They look like feelers of the two gigantic fabulous creatures who face each other snarling and baring their teeth.
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Our Grenadiers look forward full of holy confidence to the coming days. And if the English build a hell around London the German will break through. The Grenadiers still have in their memory the golden words in which the chaplain explained the Scriptural word before Dover :
" The Lord will be with thee and not take away His hand from thee, nor abandon thee, until thou hast completed all."
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Heroes
HEROES
WHILE the nations contend grimly rand doggedly against the fate which the enemy seeks to impose upon them, many a soldier has to struggle against forces of fate known to him alone. Many a soldier is, at times, faced by greatly superior forces of attack and whispering devils, and grits his teeth, defends himself, and hews his way through, conquers, and yet remains a hero not known to Fame. But even he contributes his share to the fame of the Army.
The fame of the Army is like a bar of gold ; each soldier has contributed his carat to it. The literature of war is the endeavour to coin this bar and to return to each individual what is his. The gallant men out there do not want to have what is theirs returned to them ; they do not want a great noise to be made of their own deeds. They, however, call upon the poets of their land to write what has not happened anywhere or ever, and what is yet cut from the tree of living reality.
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From the fame of the Allied Armies, that precious bar of gold, I strike a few medals and tender them to the nameless heroes. And we also speak of an Englishman — every inch a man.
LEOPOLD VON IMMENTOFL AND ANNEMARIE
As a hero unsung First Lieutenant von Immentofl fell upon English soil.
The young man of Vienna, Baron Leopold von Immentofl, had two tastes which hardly seemed to go well together : he diligently searched through castles and cloisters for old paintings, and side by side with this paid homage to equine sports. He cultivated the study of the history of art, and his means enabled him to keep a small racing stable in England. He had, indeed, himself ridden at Epsom.
When, in quest of a Joshua Reynolds portrait, he had reached New York in the early weeks of 1914, he came to know and love Miss Edith, the daughter of a multiple Chicago millionaire who was esteemed and feared on the Corn Exchange. Late in the summer the wedding was to be celebrated in Trouville, and then the young couple intended to go to Dorking, in the neighbourhood of Epsom. Edith's father had had a country
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Heroes
house built for them there, a romantic little castle in an old park on the southern slope of the North Downs.
As Leopold von Immentofl necessarily thought himself to be well secured in financial matters, he had, in the rashness and intoxica- tion of his happiness, indulged freely his inclination as an amateur of works of art. In his enthusiasm for classical paintings, he had taken advantage of a favourable opportunity for purchase, and had employed a part of his fortune of three-quarters of a million crowns in the acquisition of a fine coast landscape by Turner, the picture of a girl by Gainsborough, and some Hogarth caricatures of the eighteenth century. He had had a picture gallery fitted up at his manor of Dorking, and was just on the point of going to America and fetching his bride away, when the political situation of the world suddenly grew strained. He was first lieutenant in a Heavy Howitzer Division, and was required to report himself in Prague on August 3rd.
In the first weeks of 1915 he wrote from Poland to Miss Edith :
" . . . And am I to write to you also about the fate of my pictures ? They will, I hope, be well taken care of by my English friends. Such art treasures are the property of mankind. I have received no news, and do not wish now to hear anything about horses and pictures . . .
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Heavens, what things happens here in the field ! Do not think me a sentimental visionary on account of what I am writing to you about my experience. War is not a handicraft ; it requires more than a sharp eye and a skilled hand. War is a stern and wise teacher, taking all mankind into the school and testing its very heart. Eye to eye, it puts deep questions to which it requires no answer. However much one may struggle against it during the first black war nights on Russian soil, they come, those questions — even those which concern wealth and property — and, behold, overnight many an idol is shattered. So much money we both of us could not get together as I have given away in this night in a heavy dream of the need of the world. . . .
" And after the nights with their questions come the days with their great experiences ! As an enthusiastic soldier, I have always been in favour of going heart and soul into the struggle, but I shall never forget the hour when for the first time I directed my death- dealing monsters against men. The first shell fell in a marching Russian column ; the second rent asunder soldiers of an ammunition division who were just sitting around the saucepan — at such a moment one clenches one's jaws an instant ! But one gets used to putting one's feelings out of the question and doing in cold blood what is required by a soldier's holy duty.
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Soon the bloody work of the furies of war do not affright you further.
" And yet, what I to-day passed through has again unsettled everything within me. Let me relate to you briefly, and you will ask whether a human heart is strong enough to bear what I have borne. It was necessary to find the range of a Russian entrenchment with our heavy howitzers ; the shell pierced a hill and tore up unshrouded bodies from the earth and threw the rigid limbs in a ghastly whirlwind dance high in the air. The mound of earth covered a grave where masses lay buried ; the shells had torn the dead from their eternal slumber. . . . Let who can j get over such an experience.
" And do you now still wish to know about the pictures ? . . ."
Thus had written Leopold von Immentofl, the man of the picture craze.
As an experienced connoisseur of English conditions, and an enthusiastic admirer of Hindenburg's able conduct of war, he had, after the collapse of Russia, only the one wish to continue fighting under Hindenburg. And his division might well pride itself, for it was included in the Army of Invasion.
The hero Hindenburg had built an iron rampart on the elevation of the forest ridge, against trre English battalions and cavalry
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squadrons ; against this ridge the blind and furious force of their storming attacks broke, and their last hope of freeing the island from the invaders was shattered. Now the time has come for the German regiments again to fly their colours. They march onward to London.
The division of Lieutenant von Immentofl, which in its laborious onward march gained the direction towards Redhill and Reigate, suddenly received orders, by a half-turn to the left, to advance towards Dorking. Dorking ! The town to which, in his visions of happiness, he was a pilgrim ! There where his manor awaited him and his future bride ! He thanked the Fates. In smiling colours he pictured to himself how he would march in there with the German victors. He would then know for certain whether his precious pictures were among the cat spa ws of war. No ; this region had hitherto been spared all the stress of war, and he would be able to thank the guardians of the pictures.
Next morning, when the sun had fought the fog down, looking through the telescope he saw the distant towers of Dorking gleam. And now, red-gabled, cumbrous, rises the manor with its three proud towers out of the mists ! Incomparable works of art are contained within this house on the outskirts of the wood ; generations have helped to get together the
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fortune which lies in those pictures — 750,000 crowns.
There is a liveliness among the German columns, as though for this place on the southern slope of the North Downs the test of fate were impending. The coming fight will be a hot one ! Now Leopold von Immentofl no longer finds himself helped over questions of bitter earnestness by the cheerful talk of his comrades.
In the vicinity of a battery of soldiers a flying division makes its last preparations. There is a flight lieutenant who is a good friend of ImmentofTs, and the latter would like to ask him to spare his private castle from bombs should he have to send his devil's gifts to this region. Here, however, no whispered request is of any use ; there is only one thing he knows, and that is duty.
The stream of battle breaks loose.
Shrieking and hissing, the guns rage against each other ; machine-guns rattle off their songs of hate, and rifle alongside rifle forms an iron hedge as far as the eye stretches. A hellish growling and spitting fills the air. Death and destruction rain from the skies.
The telephone rings :
'The division of First Lieutenant von Immentofl is to demolish "
No, surely that is impossible ! He inquires again, as though he had not rightly understood.
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The voice of the adjutant repeats sharply and clearly :
11 The division of First Lieutenant von Immentofl is to destroy the castle-like building with the three towers in front of Dorking. Enemy observation posts have been observed on the towers."
Night swims before the first lieutenant's eyes ! Irreplaceable art treasures ! And a fortune ! All his belongings, those costly treasures which are the property of the whole of mankind, he is to devote to destruction ! Was ever a human breast torn by such anguish ? Was ever brain driven into such a conflict -of emotions?
He had once written from Russia to his future bride that in the field of battle greater things were at stake than money and property and earthly treasures, and that in his breast he had already cast down many idols — and now, when he is ordered to destroy his picture gallery, he becomes suddenly aware that what he had written then were mere resounding phrases. Only now war, the great elucidator, tears the mask of phrases from his soul.
The struggle between duty and amour prop ye lasts but a few seconds.
He gives the order to load.
Never did any order issue from Leopold's lips so hoarsely and brokenly. The gunners train the howitzers on the object, but he does
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not check the aim, because there is a mist before his eyes.
It must be ! He pulls himself together. The thunderous word "duty" stands before him like an implacable superior requiring strict obedience, and not allowing himself to be moved one iota from a command, he then tries quadrant and level and the whole of the wondrous work of the modern aiming apparatus, and corrects the aim — this time it must be a hit.
" Ready to fire ! "
The upward pointed tube looks like the neck of some rearing beast of prey. Leopold von Immentofl delays the last order one second more, as a counter order might come which would put an end to all the torture of his soul.
No telephone. No orderly.
The division has been waiting a couple of seconds longer than usual for the short word which will send the picrine-filled cylinder on its frightful journey. If the soldiers had known that this word would, perhaps, decide a human fate, and as to the existence or non-existence of sacred things from the Temple of Art, and as to the future of the first lieutenant . . .
Finally he chokes out the word :
" Fire ! "
All hands are raised to the ears. One man pulls the long cord as though he was opening a cage containing a dangerous bird of prey.
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With a shriek of unearthly shrillness, the fire- spitting giant shell mounts up and away, swings as high as Mont Blanc, and looks around from above for its prey.
The mad flight lasts for minutes. First Lieutenant von Immentofl stands at the tele- scope awaiting the monstrous ... he is pale, red, and then again deathly pale. The minutes are of untold length to him, and his feet refuse their function.
There, now the bird of prey swoops down with the avidity of a vulture ; the shell tears its way through the roof of the little castle, tears up the masonry, envelops the building in a cloud of dust and ashes and greenish-yellow smoke.
Flames now burst out of the windows. They complete the work of destruction. The flames are now feeding on a morsel worth three-quarters of a million ; they are now licking the colours of old Masters.
Leopold von Immentofl reports to head- quarters through the telephone that he has scored a hit — yes, he had.
To his bride he writes that he now stands before the void.
The letter will never reach her, because Miss Edith has come to Europe with ladies and gentlemen of the American Red Cross Corps and is already on German - English soil.
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Hot went the battle on the following day. The wrath gleams white hot. Each side plies the other hard with metal. Between the forest ridge and the North Downs runs the battle line. Lightnings dart from small white clouds. Small shot comes pattering down — shot for man's sport. The mood is that of a dying world.
Close by Leopold von Immentofl an English shell lands. He stands amid a column of clay, powder smoke, and iron fragments.
" Boys . . . keep at it ! " he breathes, and then falls.
" Lord, our first lieutenant . . . ! "
A gunner jumps forward and sees the blood streaming from the legs of the lieutenant. Another lifts up a fragment of steel beside the lieutenant, which is moist with blood, and throws it back, muttering, into the clay. Three pairs of ready hands are round Leopold von Immentofl ; they cut the trousers and boots from his body with the shears for cutting steel wire, and bind up his wounds roughly.
He is carried back on an ammunition truck. In a small English cottage Annemarie, the German nurse, takes him in hand. She will stand faithfully at his side during those difficult hours, and under her care he will patiently await the surgeon's knife.
Miss Edith has, after wandering to and fro for days, found Leopold's division. She has
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at last reached the cottage where her intended bridegroom lies prostrate on a bed of straw with smashed legs.
It is evening. In the flickering light of a candle Edith stands by the bed of her bride- groom in the cottage and spreads treasures of wool and linen before him, feeds him with the costliest dainties, and regards it almost as an insulting suspicion that Sister Annemarie should always see that things are right here and not leave entirely to her the care of Leopold. The latter holds Edith's hand as though it was the last treasure which has remained to him through all the vicissitudes of fate. By cheerful chatter she endeavours to while away the time ; with her millions she builds golden bridges into the future, but she cannot get rid of the feeling that talk of this kind has lost all meaning to him. He puts questions which lie remarkably far away from gold and property. It is no longer her Leopold of formerly.
Now, listen ! Is not that the inhumanly shrill, bloodthirstily strident hiss of a shell ?
A roar of thunder bursts upon the silence. The shell must have struck quite near.
Did it by pure hazard find its way to the vicinity of the cottage with the Red Cross flag, or was it sent there by devilish computation ? The cottage in which Edith and Sister Anne- marie are with Leopold, appears to have
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cracked in all its framework under the bursting of the exploding shell. A poisonous breath fills the air and causes the lungs to labour. Gleaming lights glide ghost-like past the window.
Suddenly outside the hasty clatter of horses' hoofs and despairing cries. With bated breath it is handed on from man to man :
" Save yourselves ! "
In a house which is already on fire mountains of hand grenades lie. When the flames eat their way through to the heap the explosion will be frightful.
Signal horns blare out. Death lurks prowl- ing in the village, in order, at one stroke, to reap an ample harvest and convert the hamlet into a cemetery.
Miss Edith dashes out thinking only for her own safety. She implores help for her bride- groom, and runs crying and lamenting into the night ; her exertions for Leopold exhaust them- selves in desperate cries for help.
Sister Annemarie, however, faithfully per- forms her duty. She is busying herself quickly about Leopold and endeavours to drag him out as best she can.
Only a few steps. A blinding flash. A roar of thunder. The earth trembles. The village is torn asunder by a hail of iron.
Annemarie is no more.
Leopold von Immentofl has also been thrown
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to the ground by fists of steel, and from many veins his heart's blood soaks into the English soil. But by a miracle he has remained alive.
Laboriously, with a rare gleam in his eyes, he scribbles his last letter.
" Thus it shall stand as a sign in the field and shall press like a mighty army corps into the future. Whoever has lived through this war dies rich ! That is written by a beggar who directed the guns against his own property, and he then spun his dreams about his last anchor, thou, dearest Edith, and he now sees that thou also hast become apostate. Weep not for me ; apostate you have become, and even though you adorn my grave day after day with red roses.
" You came to please with money and goods, to alleviate want, and you meant well. But there is something which stands high above the services of your love and your cold gold. Your love, Edith, was great, but there was not a readiness for death. Now, however, the only thing which avails in Europe is to be prepared with the rest.
" Tens of thousands of undaunted men I saw step before the devouring fire, and I saw thee, Annemarie, thou German woman — the song of heroism and duty will also sing of you, German nurse. War is more, Edith, than the great sensation of the old world, which
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one must, without fail, view from a vantage point.
" Every day brought me testimony of the old German truth. Therefore I say it again : even though he were as poor as a beggar, who- ever has lived in this war dies rich ! Money, it is true, is no longer happiness and wealth, just as death is no longer suffering and darkness. Heroes of duty you call those who now march behind victory's accustomed flags ? More they are ! Warriors of primeval stress, fighters for the soul of the world ; fighters for the world of Goethe, Kant, Durer, and Beethoven.
" Great is the aim and great the stake. Thousands and again thousands have been claimed by death ; but all, Germans and Austrians, died in the Germanic longing. This longing is the happiness of this age. Where now, Death, is thy sting ? Where is thy cruelty ? Come, poor wretch ! Thou hast lost thy sting and thy scourge, and all thy weapons are dull. For a long time now our thoughts have no longer receded from thee in cowardly fashion. Come, perform your bloody office. Thou thoughtest to do us harm, but hast been to us the gates to the great German future. Thou hast in these days grown to be the greatest event in life ; oh, bony visitant, to die is to the valiant as a holy sowing in the certain hope of a good harvest. For our great
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German Fatherland, from Hamburg to Trieste, the century of greatest happiness shall open
out from this war "
On this Death took the pencil out of the tremulous hand and drew a line beneath the records of an unsung hero of this great time.
SIR JOHN FALCONER
In the trenches of a Prussian Garde du Corps Regiment huge missiles from the heaviest English naval guns have penetrated, and no German aviator's camera has yet succeeded in discovering the Cyclopean cave in which these appalling one-eyed giants lurk. The battered-in trench has to be evacuated. In the first attempt to retake it brave German soldiers remained lying between the two lines. Six severely wounded Lifeguardsmen writhe since this morning in death agony between the entrench- ments, and none can help them.
Two German Army Medical Corps men have endeavoured, under cover of the Red Cross, to reach them with a stretcher, but the Gurkhas and Kaffirs over there shot them both down- shot them down mercilessly, and their animal yell of joy was distinctly heard. The six hold up their hands imploring assistance like chil- dren, but they must continue to bear their cruelly hard fate. They have but the one hope — that aid may reach them in the night.
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Night — that did once exist. In the battles of to-day there is no more night. Searchlights take care that the riflemen shall have a toler- able field even during the night. Before the time comes for a German charge, the six can have no aid. The reserves are still far off. The poor tortured men, therefore, must look forward to that night from which only the Lord God will some time awaken them.
The new morning dawns, and death has released one of them. Five groan like dying animals, and their moans rend the hearts of the soldiers. If one were, however, to venture towards them, it would mean but one more lying on the field. Those who lie there com- plaining and imploring in their deathly need lie in the close vicinity of a thousand feeling people, before the eyes of faithful regimental comrades, and must die as though lost in the desert. It is beyond human power to think this thought out to its last issue. Advanced outposts narrate how the negroes and Indians take delight with sardonic grins in the sight of the dying Lifeguardsmen. For the latter are five of the wretched vermin who had been declared by the British to be a barbarian race. The Huns must be destroyed who sought to attack a knightly, civilised nation ! The Gurkhas and Kaffirs will see to that.
Then an English officer leaps forward out ot the trenches. It is Major John Falconer.
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When making an inspection of the trenches of the coloured people he arrived at this place of torture and heard the moaning of the Guardsmen.
" A Samaritan, however, was journeying and came that way, and when he saw the five who had fallen among the murderers he had compassion on them "
Major Falconer throws down his sabre and waves a white handkerchief.
Our Guardsmen are no longer taken in by such crude trickery. They have been made wary by experience. The white cloths of the Gurkhas have often done service for the pur- pose of criminal attacks and cost the blood of many trusting comrades. They shoot at the Major, and aim well. He appears to have received a shot in the lung ; he clasps his hand to his chest, but continues running. With tottering steps he comes to where the wounded men lie writhing.
The Guardsmen put their guns down from their shoulders.
As well as he can, John Falconer helps the five men to creep like lame animals towards the German trenches. He then wants to drag himself back to his line.
Now the captain of the Garde du Corps Company climbs over the rampart of the trench, goes towards the English Major, and shakes his hand silently.
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" Bravo ! Bravo ! " resounds at this moment from the German throats.
John Falconer falls. The Prussian captain beckons to two Gurkhas to take the Major away. They carry him back. No further commands will issue from his mouth in this war.
Amid the most embittered struggle in the world's history, men with hearts stood for a moment face to face. Through the black clouds of war the sun radiated for one instant and shone upon the deed of a British nobleman.
LIEUTENANT HAUSSMANN
The Germans in their onward march have overrun the property of Lord Charles Westbury. The English troops who had converted the romantic old park into a strong fortress were compelled to evacuate this section of country without a fight, in order to avoid the danger of being completely surrounded. Lieutenant Haussmann is to take possession of his lordship's country house with a company of Pomeranian infantry, late in the afternoon.
The house is locked. On the lieutenant ringing, a servant in livery appears and asks, as though they were on some happy island far away from the din of war :
" Your name, sir ? "
The soldiers laugh at the solemn formalities,
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but in the house of an English lord people know what is proper.
" Announce a German officer."
After the servant has made the announcement in the drawing-room, Lieutenant Haussmann is asked to enter. He is there received by the master and lady of the house with an amiability stamped with the best Society form, as though the lieutenant were an old club friend who had accepted an invitation to a reception of the British aristocracy.
Lord Charles Westbury regrets that they were brought together in the hour of need of his unhappy country, and does not conceal how deeply it wounds his British honour to have to shelter a German.
" I will tell you quite honestly that I sincerely hate the Germans. As, however, Fate has now decreed otherwise than what the just English cause deserves, I bow to the irrevocable. I know my duty as a host. You may rest assured, sir, that a Britisher honours a gentleman even in his opponent."
Lieutenant Haussmann at once feels as though the noble lord only gives such a straightforward expression to his hatred of Germans to produce, for some reason or other, the impression that he was sans peur et sans reproche. Sacred assurances that all friction will be avoided are very cheap when a draft of Pomeranian infantry are in the vicinity.
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Lord Charles Westbury gives Lieutenant Haussmann to understand during the conversa- tion that he himself had not been satisfied with the new course of things in England. He had never approved the war, and he counted the revolting free-lance work with which they had sought to stay the invading army in the South of England as among the most rascally malpractices which man had ever been capable of. Quite by chance his glance appears to fall on Bernard Shaw's " The Man of Destiny."
" Look here," he says, " I hold with Shaw, who once wrote : ' The Englishman is never embarrassed for a great moral gesture. Nothing is so bad and nothing so good that you will not see an Englishman perform it, but you will never prove to an Englishman that he is wrong, because he does everything on principle. He conducts warfare on patriotic principles, he commits fraud on business principles, he con- verts free nations into slaves on principles of moral policy.' It is regrettable that I should have to say this to an enemy of England : I echo Shaw's words from the bottom of my heart."
Lieutenant Haussmann gets the impression that this lord, with his sharp judgments on modern England, only wishes to say : " Yes, look at me ; I am one of the Good Old School ! Do not, for heaven's sake, be mistrustful in my
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house, which it is true you have every reason to be."
Lady Ruth, the lady of the house, asks Lieutenant Haussmann to go to the dining- room, as he must certainly be hungry.
In the dining-room Lieutenant Haussmann is introduced to the daughter of the house, Lady Margery, who is married to an English officer. Her husband is at the front. The young Lady Margery appears to be a merry war grass widow. She talks with Lieutenant Haussmann and makes his stay at her father's country house seem very agreeable in every respect. She has curled her hair after the style of the Madonna of Botticelli. The Gurkha-coloured silk dress with the French red scarf only strikes one as a narrow setting in which, broad and deep and in well-cared-for fulness, her dtcolleti bosom is exposed. How she hates these Germans ! But her glances aim at bewitching them.
Lieutenant Haussmann notes these glances, and also partakes of the choicest delicacies on the table. He is not afraid of poison ; a draft of Pomeranians is a good antidote. He makes a cheerful repast and also drinks a glass of dry wine. In spite of assiduous persuasion, he only takes one. Although for weeks his only beverage has been canteen coffee, he feels that this post requires a sober man with all his wits about him. He feels as though for some
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reason they are trying to prevent him from being on his guard.
Casually, as it were, the hostess says to him :
" Of course, your men will be well looked after so far as we can serve them up a simple dinner in haste."
Lieutenant Haussmann enjoins upon his men to be very much on their guard.
" Apparently modelled," he says, "on the Belgian School division. Siren tricks "
That is enough for them. They have already observed themselves that no great marches will be necessary to surround and take prisoners the strikingly complaisant " Kitchen Dragoons " of this estate.
Lady Margery will now be quite pleased to show the lieutenant the sights of the park, the centuries-old idyllic natural foliage, the romantic grottos. For many months no person of the fair sex has been in the company of Lieutenant Haussmann, and now he is at liberty to walk in the sunny favour of a benign young lady, who beams upon him, the motto is : Keep your eyes open, young man.
He has more important things to do now than to go promenading. He politely but decidedly gives orders to check all the persons on this estate. That is certainly not nice action on the part of a guest, but it is extremely useful ; quite a suspiciously large number of people come to light during this inventory.
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Footmen, chauffeurs, gamekeepers, a mani- curist, a poodle washer, and numbers of villagers who say they are here in connection with supplies. Lieutenant Haussmann shakes his head at this party and gives a hint to his Pomeranians.
He then asks that a room should be shown him. There, with sharpened senses, he collects further observations as to what is proceeding in this house. The Belgian rascals of the August days of 1914 were only willing pupils of British instigators ; now our brave troops have to deal with the masters of the game of intrigue them- selves. Keep your eyes open, you fair young Pomeranian country squire. Do not fall into the trap.
Lieutenant Haussmann, towards evening, has another conversation with Lady Margery, who can talk so charmingly and engagingly. It would be nicer for him to pass his time chatting to her. In truth, in this long and indescribably hard war, the hour comes for many a field soldier in which the sight of a fair maiden offers him more pleasure than the greatest victory after a hot field battle could afford him.
He struggles awhile with the devil whisper- ing temptation within him. The service to which he belongs, his sense of duty is clear and sharp ; he conquers and remains a hero. As a true German he remains on the watch.
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In the evening, when the measure of his suspicion is full, he goes out and knocks at the door of a room in which he suspects a hotbed of craft and cunning.
Lady Ruth is at once most serviceably on the spot. " That," she says, "is Lady Margery's bedroom ; you will not have the presump- tion "
" I require you to open at once ! "
A voice from within :
" But, sir, I have just undressed "
His Lordship joined them.
" Sir, I do not venture to think that the evil reputation that German officers are barbarian chiefs should be in the least degree justified."
" I order that the door be opened at once ! "
Lieutenant Haussmann alarms the sentinels by firing off a revolver.
The door is thrust in by gun-stocks.
"What is this?"
The lieutenant points to an extensive tele- phone plant and carrier pigeon baskets.
" There used to be carrier pigeons in these, but, of course, since the Germans have been in the country "
A squad of men come breathless up the stairs. At this very moment a flight of carrier pigeons have gone out of this room, and a stupid fate is so careless as to allow a little letter to fall into Lieutenant Haussmann's hands, which a village maiden who had just
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turned up had brought out of her stocking : 11 Three brigades of Germans and twenty heavy guns are half-way between Lenham and Head- corn ! "
Lieutenant Haussmann gives orders to take away all the persons in the house.
They raise a great outcry. Asseverations of innocence, wringing of hands, fainting fits, kicking and scratching — sirens become ter- magants. Margery falls foul of the ungentle- manly Hun officer and clenches her fist at him. The Pomeranians make as though to grasp their gun-stocks.
The noble lord is as white as a sheet and, tottering, bears the sweat of dread on his brow. He knows that to-morrow perhaps the sighs of death will go forth, against a wall.
That Lieutenant Haussmann made these prisoners is a fact which will be praised by no commemorative tablet. But this result was only brought about after a severe struggle. A young lieutenant had fought and won a splendid victory over himself.
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The Night Between the Battles
The Night Between the Battles
THE NIGHT BETWEEN THE BATTLES
DEAR JOHANNA, —
It was a hard day ! Now it is night, and I am with you in thought. I am not merry to- day, not one of the always contented warriors of whom you read in books of the moment. At night one sometimes gets moods of all serious- ness. Yes, by day merry speeches and old soldiers' songs calm one's nerves ; but these nights on foreign soil . . . ! If at night one lies on the borders of the battlefield, and the ocean storm sweeps over the British Islands, it is as though the field of combat had something mysterious and uncanny about it, as though somewhere there the gigantic paws of a great unknown fate waited upon the child of man in his powerlessness. These nights grip your heart. . . .
I saw Landwehrmen moist-eyed sitting at the candle-light. They said they had taken strong pinches of snuff, but I knew better ; they had been telling themselves about their
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children. I saw a fellow sitting by the grave of his lieutenant and playing on the mouth- organ the song which his lieutenant was fond of hearing. Then he threw the mouth-organ into the river, as though it had no further sound. During these nights the heart of the most hardened soldier is at times penetrated. And the storm-tried field soldier gives way to the softest emotions of the soul.
In the hours between the battles one lies miles away from the stress and din of combat ; these night hours are detached from the course of time, they belong to memory and to Providence. They belong to wife, mother, the fair-haired girl — to thee, Johanna !
At night the soul deserts the colours. As soon as it has no superiors with stern com- mands over it, it mounts up and flies away like a bird of passage which goes seeking the land of the sun : it wings its flight to the land of longing. Each night I celebrate my union with thee, beloved !
Amid the wild shell-fire one dreams the most blessed dream that ever a warrior dreamt : one enters London in stately procession, marching with bands playing past Grey's windows, and bringing the world's peace home to one's Fatherland ! As the conquerors of the world war one returns to the house of one's German maiden.
Upon this hot feast of dreams the telephone
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The Night Between the Battles
at times breaks in ... that small, cold devil in my dug-out recalls me from Nirvana back to the border of the battlefield. The birds of passage of longing have at once vanished in the clouds, and the entire man once more belongs to his hard duty.
The candle in the trench has burnt low, and slowly the minutes creep by. One leaves the care of the moment to the watching sentinels, and care for the future to the stars and the God above the stars. Then I am again with thee, beloved ! True, into my blessed dream other pictures peer, streaming with blood, frightful. In ghostly semblance there appear to me the massive-toothed jaws of an English Minister and war-maker, or I see bloodstained English, claw-like hands, which greedily grasp the globe. ... In the wonderful interplay of the pictures I may then again perceive quiet pictures of home, and once more there is a telephone call. The latter suddenly converts Hans tb^ dreamer into a sober field soldier. I am on my service round. For to-day the night's rest is over.
On English soil the armies get no more sleep. The nights are filled with noise and haste like the days. On the roads behind the front all night long the measured tread of battalions is heard, and the rapid clatter of hoofs.
The fronts do not grow rigid by night, the 149
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battalions always remain in motion, reserve columns grow denser at the point where to-morrow the General Staff desires to drive in the wedge. The line becomes a mighty, gigantic springboard, as hard as iron. Care- fully, late in the evening, the canteen bring up their steaming coppers, and the soldiers partake of their breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. The pioneers hammer out straight in front of the trenches those ramparts which have been shot in, and sharpen again the barbs of blunted wire entanglements.
Plump in the middle of the entrenchment a shot and an outcry — an English shell has struck home. One killed ! And all this a minute incident which gets not a moment's attention.
Listening posts report what they have heard, and shortly afterwards the drums far behind the line again call the utterly weary combatants to the gun, now here, now there . . . the roll of the drums reverberates through the night, as though Death were playing with bony fingers on coffin lids.
These nights on English soil are not black, nor yet silvery with moonlight. These nights are fiery red. As if from sacrificial altars, gigantic red flickering flames leap up to the sky, and speak to the gods of the plight of the world. Over yonder a brilliantly white blinding flash — is Death already swinging his steel scythe ? They are the erratic beams of the
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searchlights which probe heaven and earth. Like saucer eyes, these machine suns peer into the night, but the apparently vacuous eye belongs to an indeed fine brain ; behind these eyes quiver the nerves of battalions eager for action. Suddenly one looks right into the heart of these giant silver funnels, with which the enemy sucks up all that he desires to know. Like the eye of a gendarme the searchlight looks around it, and wherever a group of rash nightly loiterers are not punctually at their quarters in the trenches and dug-outs, the artillery flashes out in an instant !
When the lids have fallen on these eyes, night lies darker than before, for the space of a minute. Radiating, long-tailed stars now ris9 in the heaven, balls of light. Circumspectly, saving their light, they rise up ; at the climax of their arc they throw down their magnificence of light in squandering plenty over the field of battle, and then die away. They have seen all that the General seated at the map table wishes to know. They, however, bring not only news of lusty life, they also gleam into the cleft and undergrowth and spy out the suffering of a thousand hearts.
Suddenly to the north-east the horizon flames over with the clearness of day. In the German lines a ray of light has shot up — a fearful clap of thunder, and soon after it a far more dreadful growl comes through the air : a giant shot has
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blown up an English munitions depot, and inflicted fearful punishment. Now the shots, thirsting for blood, search out the night-clad land, flames shoot gleaming out of the cannon's mouth. It is a sight of awful beauty and picturesque charm, because the trajectories of the shots become singing rainbows by night.
A falling star drops. It really looks as though the howitzers with their vertical fire had smashed a star. Coloured signalling balls, a dance of the searchlight rays, rains of sparks before the mouths of the heavy guns flashes of light from the rifles, gleams from the mortars, whole towns and villages burning — such are the light festivals, O Lord, of your earthly children ! Pyrotechnic grotesques, such as the earth has not yet seen ! And their stage manager ? Death the Tartuffe.
This nightly aspect of the battlefields of to-day is harrowing. And only the dawn of the morning can drive it out.
Thus, dearest, are the nights between the battles. By night everything which must fear by day creeps out on the edge of the battlefield. They are not creatures fearing the light. Now those of the Red Cross are passing over the battlefield.
I shortly accompanied the field service of our war dogs, which, under the guidance of our
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The Night Between the Battles
brave men of the Army Medical Corps, went on a nightly patrol through bush and brushwood in order to save those miserable beings who have lost the last thing that helps them over all need — their comrades.
One of the unkempt fellows called us to a hedge bush and showed us a piteous picture. A young Bavarian cavalryman, with a pretty boy's face, lay there in the throes of death. A shell had crushed his limbs. He raved in wild fever. I wanted to hand him my flask, but his soul appeared to have already travelled too far for him to take any pleasure in food and drink and earthly comforts.
I stroked his brow. He then grew calmer. He might have felt as if his mother was placing her hand on him with a blessing, for after a time he burst out as in a wild dream :
" Mother, don't let me miss it ... don't let me miss it ... London . . . London . . . Mother, don't let me miss it. ..."
We placed him on the stretcher.
He will, however, miss it. His mother will never waken him again. He must sleep through the great day on which his comrades with bands playing will enter London
And again war dogs call from a thicket of box-trees, one here and another there. . . .
Soldiers take the squirming bodies of their comrades on their backs and save friend and enemy from the dance of death, spectrally
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swaying on the battlefield. Thanatos, the Demon of Death, passes with black wings and lowered torch over the blood-besprinkled ground. . . .
I once at night helped to look at those whom the storm of battle had dashed to the ground. I helped to examine where, in a thousand com- rades, there was still life. Only he who has done this knows what war is.
Grey in black — beloved, such are the pictures. And yet these quiet nightly feasts of Death have something unspeakably elevating, some- thing which grips man entirely to his inmost heart and shakes him, and puts great and infinitely deep questions to him. For each one of the fallen is a hero. Each of the dead here is an Amen to the prayer of the German Army :
" Lord, let us subdue England ! " # # # *
Yesterday we buried the funny man of our company, Theodor Nietzelmeyer, a sunny person whose splendidly ironical sayings always called forth fresh laughter amid these long struggles full of privations. We are not
foing home even though day is breaking ! hortly before the storming of Kiev he was allotted to me as a Russian interpreter, the loyal Landsturm man, Theodor Nietzelmeyer, a locksmith by profession, baptised in genuine Spree water, and gifted with a humour which extracted from the most ticklish situation
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something to maintain good temper, even though it was a dry, saucy joke. Dear Johanna, will you have believed that I should ever take pleasure in little Berlin jokes ? Many a thing to which one attaches one's soul is reduced to naught in value by war. And other things, which one turned up one's nose at, it teaches us to treasure. One of the greatest gifts of Heaven is, to the soldier in campaigning, a ready humour. Where pious sense and good humour are combined, with such people I would lie for ten years in the trenches ! But mockers and ill-humoured sulkers are the secret allies of England.
If a despondent mood seemed likely at any time to spread in the company, Theodor Nietzelmeyer, in a lecture lasting for hours, would describe a parting from his " better half." " Theodor," said she, " don't get putting yourself in front, because they shoot fast at superiors ! " Nietzelmeyer was a lance-corporal. On his patrol rounds he was regularly exposed to sly attacks by doves, hens, and geese, and, in self-defence, as is well known, shooting is permitted. His whole pride was his helmet, shot through six times. He asserted that it had been worn by the chief of the parish of Kuhschnappel, in the battle of Gilgenburg, and that, after the six shots, the poor fellow had had his brain "amputated." He had now returned to office, and no one in the parish had
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observed any change in the gracious head. Nietzelmeyer, in a fight in East Prussia, had shown his helmet above the trench in order to tease the Russians, and this had brought his helmet the six holes.
Quite a specially brilliant piece of his Berlin art of narration was when he told of the trick he played at Tannenberg. As a capable locksmith and interpreter he had, in the turmoil of that gigantic battle, connected himself up to a Russian telephone wire, had conversed with the Russian Army Corps commander on the military position, and convinced him that it would be advisable to send several regiments to the immediate vicinity of the Masurian Marshes. . . .
Some would have liked to sift his anecdotes and find out the grain of truth in them, but his stories were a true balsam ! During the first months of war I read once again " Faust " and Fichte's " True War," but now one's nerves do not allow the mind to collect itself sufficiently for philosophical reading. After the first six months of war, heavy literature has no further attraction for the men in the trenches. Their motto is : Good humour is half the victory !
And this sunny man was yesterday called up by Death into his world of shades. Last night we buried Theodor Nietzelmeyer.
He had learnt that his son, the young volunteer Grenadier Guard, had fallen in the
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vicinity. Throughout the night he had searched for him who was all on earth to him. The stars of God and the fire at the edge of the battlefield helped him to find the body. Then out of tent canvas he prepared a shroud to bear him to his last resting-place. . . . Quickly he began to dig a grave for him ... in blind ardour he worked onwards, when a ball of light was pointed at him — and a column of enemy rifles ! Now his helmet, in addition to the six humorous holes, bore the seventh, the dreadful last.
Without pain, Nietzelmeyer died a splendid soldier's death.
Last night I stood with the comrades of his draft around both of them, the young Grenadier and our hero of fatherly love. How I closed his eyes, which had so often with their roguish laughter cheered up the company, is a thing I shall never forget. He held his right hand to the helmet, as though in death he still wished to greet his Kaiser. Nietzelmeyer had been present at Lyck ! And he who saw the Kaiser there, as he stood in the market-place amid fragments and boulders, smoking ruins and cruel devastation, and yet in the most magni- ficent victor's wreath, amid a crowd of field- grey jubilating victors from all regions of Germany — whoever saw this will retain this world-historical picture of the Kaiser before his eyes until death !
Hindenburg's March into London
I had both put into the same grave. It was done silently, no one speaking a word. With compressed lips, we threw earth upon the dead, but no word of preaching speeds the departed into eternity here. What avail words here in the field ! In a corner of the great European cathedral in which the Master of the World now preaches to humanity, there is no chatter.
We stood yet awhile impressed with the weight of this touching and heroic action of the father who went on English soil to look for his son. With tear-dimmed eyes we prayed. One cannot believe that with a couple of blows of the spade and a wet hole in the clay, far from wife and child and bride and friend, now day after day thousands of human lives are to be ended, and one cowers as beneath an implacable fate that has come upon the whole of mankind, and that can be nowhere better conjured up than on British soil ! And that by German weapons !
We bound poles together into a cross for the grave, crowned it with the perforated helmet, and wrote on a shield of wood :
" Here father and son lie, Dreaming of Greater Germany."
When we took off our helmets in the last greeting, the solemnity of a high office was about us, and the field bells were tolling— the guns.
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We went back to our underground cavern. Flares blazing over burning villages held the watch of death without.
Dear Johanna, such are the nights between the battles. They are the time of our silent celebration of the dead. I torture you with dark pictures, and I will never write to you again at night. . . .
By day, between merry songs, I shall write you ! When we have hit out lustily, and when the radiant eyes of our comrades are about me ! When the order for the last great charge is given, which, if God wills, is to bring us over the barrier chain of the North Downs — then I will write you !
Lord God, fulfil in me what the young Bavarian horseman implored in vain : " Mother, let me not miss it ... let me not miss it . . . London . . . London . . . Mother, let me not miss it. . . ."
Farewell, beloved ! For us here the short night is over. The gates of the East already garb themselves in ruddy hue to the young day. Now bursts forth the morning song of the birds, the birds with bombs. And machine-guns say their morning greetings. As of iron stands the German guard, his eye directed to the north. Ready to fire, we look out for the enemy. The stubborn field-grey faces are coloured bronze
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by the ruddy morning. This German wall of iron and bronze will be broken by no enemy.
In the evening soft longing for peace and home is uppermost in the soul, and the holy wrath of combat weakens. But in the morning it blooms again a fiery red ! One longs furiously to break through and compel the coming of the hour which gives us the great about-face, and command that restores us to our homes.
This great hour, beloved, is no longer distant ! Only London now — and the British blood- guiltiness is avenged, and a world war is at an end!
Sleep well, beloved !
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Fight of Aviators Over the Thames
M
FIGHT OF AVIATORS OVER THE THAMES
IN the trough of the valley at Cuckfield lies the aviation camp of the Third Corps of Invasion. Shortly after midnight the telephone rings in the subterranean business room of the Aviation Dep6t :
" The squadron to go out on scouting duty at sunrise in the direction of Aldershot, Guild- ford, and Reigate."
The chief object is to ascertain the strength of the English reserves brought forward.
In the half-darkness eighty Taubes carry out their grand toilet. So many busy hands are about them as though eighty brides were being prepared for the altar. Every little metal strip and band, every seam in the canvas, every loop of steel, is once more checked. A dozen little things have to be thought of, as the slightest manipulation is important in the success of the flight. It is as everywhere in life : whoever wants to do something great must first of all dispose of a host of necessary petty things.
Wedding flight ? Revolvers, carbines, bombs, and arrows — it is a wedding of blood.
Towards the East the morning mists are filled with feeble light. The engines are ready. The motors whirr and the propellers practise
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once more on the earth what they are to do in the clouds. Impetuously the engines tug at their fetters ; they chafe and roar with impatience ; their^gaze is directed northwards, to the chain of the North Downs, behind which extends the broad depression of the Thames Valley.
" Let loose ! " orders Captain von Brendecke, the commander of the squadron, and he mounts first. He is the observer, Lieutenant Prohl steering.
The eighty aircraft set out in small swarms. First they grope a few yards, clumsy and ungainly ; then they dart forward, snorting with rage, like prehistoric monsters. Now the wonder is repeated : the heavy colossi become easily controlled birds. Doves,* indeed ? They are eagles with widespread wings- German eagles, which to-day at last wish to see what their minds have been bent on for months — London !
They do not fly high, because the mist still fills the air. Thin curtains of gauze enshroud the stage on which the final act of the greatest tragedy of the war is to be shortly played.
According to map, watch, and compass, they must now be near the enemy. Every nerve is tense. The airmen know that their reports play a part on Hindenburg's map table.
Hurrah ! There is movement now in the * A play on the word Taide, which means Dove. 164
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mist ! Gentle morning gusts tear apart the troublesome veil. No sooner, however, have the glasses detected assemblages of troops, than the first infantry shots come whistling up, with as much promptitude and decision as though the riflemen had been all night long on the watch for these birds of prey. The airmen open the admission valve full, and at seventy- five miles per hour the machines rise in great curves into the blue sky.
The barometer shows 220 metres.
Suddenly clouds of shrapnel stand next to the machines. The guns which were directed against the German lines have now been turned towards them — eighty aircraft are an attractive thing, and must pay to fire at. As the motors absorb every sound, the airmen do not hear the firing of the shrapnel. Therefore it is somewhat uncanny to see suddenly spring up out of nothing next to the aircraft these white ghost-like giant fists, which wish to grip and set fire to and crush.
The machines dart onwards and drown the noise around them. They resemble frightened children who sing in bad weather so as not to hear the thunder. No ! the valiant scouts in the air know not fear. Until they can give a reply to whence and whither, how many of the enemy troops, they do not think of seeking protective shelter. Let the guns spew shot after shot ! Let the machine-guns below cast
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their thousand lightning forks into the air, they will not succeed very easily in hitting a bird.
The barometer now shows the dizzy height of 2,800 metres.
Calmly the observers scan the landscape.
A flash is seen over there.
44 Oh ! that is it, is it ? "
The oblong quadrangles down there amid the wood of the park are those guns which yesterday sent down their shots like lightning from a clear sky and remained undiscovered till now. So that is their hiding-place. Quickly a note is made of everything worth knowing about them. Every suspicious spot which can be detected on the distorted face of the English parkland is recorded by the observers on the map ; they scan and measure, make notes, bend overboard again, allow their hungry soldier's eyes to gaze upon the land, and write and draw, and with the prism glass continuously detect new zigzag lines, new entrenchments. Be careful, you imitators of Icarus in field- grey ; the shells are finding their way nearer and nearer to you, and aim at your life. Truly, the dizzy height is no longer habitable. The air pressure of the exploding shells strikes so hard on the machines that they stagger as though no longer subject to a conscious will. Here and there English lead already licks the wings. But in the north gleam the roofs of London — with that proud pros-
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pect German soldiers will find even Hell habitable.
The aircraft, surrounded by death, are not without defence. They now spout out their poison. The first bomb drops. As soon as it has left the car it unfolds its black, white, and red band — thus adorned it cannot disappear from the eye of the airman. With a fluttering strip of ribbon in his heart, thus death rides down on to the earth. Waving colours with destruction as heavy as the lead attached to them — such is war !
Thus the squadrons aimed at become in an instant a swarming heap of ants. During the days of the hard calamities of war with which England and her accomplices have visited the entire world, it is an indescribably majestic feeling to send down lightnings on English soil, to exact retribution for the crime of the English intriguers who, in frivolous temerity, once began to play with the idea of the world-wide war.
Strong gusts arise — what is majestic man then in his feebleness ? The aeroplanes oscil- late, they dart upwards and slip downwards as in a witches' dance. But the iron will conquers. The propellers whirl, the taut wires sing. The pilots in the whirlwind and amid the shrapnel fire have their hands firmly on the steering gear and lever ; the observers have, in smartly drawn lines, securely noted the
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positions of the troops below, and now and again, almost mechanically, they throw a sur- reptitious triumphant glance on the roofs of London, which will, in a few days, no doubt witness the bloodiest struggle in the world's history.
As the sun has now risen, and the morning light imparts shadow and light to the land- scape, the camera starts work. With a single glance it spies out every corner, and does not forget like the human eye. It hauls good booty out of the enemy camps, between the forest ridge and North Downs and grips it firmly. Its keen eye and its memory helps to win the battles of to-day.
The valiant scouts are suddenly filled with affright. Two comrades have been hit home. The aeroplane is torn to shreds and tatters. Bits of steel and limbs — human limbs — drop down. Blood drips from the sky.
Then anger gives animation. A train is coming along ; it seems to be bringing ammu- nition. They fly over it, and when eighty battle-planes aim misfortune follows and deadly distress. Was it even a troop transport train ?
The day brightens up into one of rare clear- ness. The shells hiss ever more fiercely. Still higher the machines mount.
The Germans look steadily into the opponent's cards ; they now know where are his trumps.
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Another hour and Hindenburg will lead his cards.
Tiny black points suddenly appear in the northern horizon. The points grow and assume wings. Five, six, eight, twenty, fifty, one hundred — it is a giant squadron.
" Rise ! " Captain von Brendecke shouts above the roar of the motor, and points out to Lieutenant Prohl, sitting at the steering- wheel, swarms of approaching attackers. There are one hundred and twenty ! Such squadrons the world has not yet seen ! Hands grip the steering-wheel more firmly, and hearts beat.
Now the moment has come ! Loosen the rifle and take aim ! Up here there is no war of position ; here only Blucher's spirit conquers.
" Upwards ! " An ascending war is the war in the air ; he who is highest is the victor. They rise almost to the height of twenty Cologne Cathedrals.
The squadrons now go at each other full tilt. The aeroplanes greet each other with powder and lead, dash hard by their opponents to get off their path ; they turn at sharp angles and abrupt curves, and seek to checkmate each other by cunning and force. They swing their cars round at a speed which makes them cant over on the tips of their wings, and while lying in the curve the carbines seek their living target.
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It is a wondrous, a blood-red, harrowing witches' dance up there.
The Englishman succeeds in flying over Captain von Brendecke's aeroplane at a short distance. He throws a bomb. By a hair's breadth it escapes the tail end of the German craft. Once on its way it seeks for victims ; in a couple of seconds it kills the horses of a British squadron.
The English flying men shoot with sang- froid and with sure aim ; many a German is already setting his teeth together to overcome the pain of his injury. The German machine- guns, rotating on their pivots, also do not fire into the blue sky. One English pilot seat carries nothing but a corpse. The machine staggers, fires aimlessly hither and thither, then, falling from the fighting swarm, carries with it another aeroplane, and both fall, burning, into the abyss.
The guns below have long been silent, but against friend and foe the common enemy comes rushing along with ever-increasing violence, and, wildly roaring, the storm rides from the ocean over the land. The forcible gusts convert the empire of the air into a battle country, full of difficult obstacles. Just as though pits had been dug up aloft, the aeroplanes glide into holes, get jammed, and are held stationary for seconds together. But the battle continues. Each seeks to gain the
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higher position over the other. The machines are taxed to their utmost. The propellers revolve with mad speed. Eyes gleam. Every muscle is tense.
Lieutenant Prohl received a blow on the head as though struck with a mallet. He feels his helmet and finds a bullet. The steel framing of the helmet has stopped it, but it must have embedded itself a couple of millimetres in the cranium ; blood runs down his temples.
The captain has heard the short shout, and looks round at Lieutenant Prohl.
The lieutenant, casually :
" Nothing, Captain. A small splinter ran into me."
And they continue the fight. Here none can get away, for they are three to two. The air battle consists of single combats, of surprise attacks and duels, a cruelly hard tournament for life and death. Revolver balls rattle against the armouring of the frames ; rifle balls crash into the aluminium of the radiator plates. Here the lining of the framework is smashed up, there a revolution counter is dashed to pieces. At times the craft of the individual groups gather together into a battle of masses and lamed birds drop head over heels into the depth. Whether friend or enemy, it will be difficult to find out below.
And in the thick of the fight for life or death, the German airmen again and again cast a
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glance to the sea of stone — London, the world city, the cold city of envy. There will be hot days for London ! A glance at the roofs of London fills the German outposts, hard pressed by superior forces, with fresh courage.
Now they are the witnesses of a heroic deed of thrilling greatness. As though they had vowed themselves voluntarily to death, two English aircraft dash, like men running amok, at a specially dreaded German battle-plane, which is equipped with new and mysterious weapons, and has already shot down seven English birds. They grip it fore and aft, hook themselves in its rods, a couple of last shots — a cluster dashes down from the height of the Zugspitze. Below there is motion among the fragments for barely a second. Such harrow- ingly great deeds only mature where the world's history stands in front of final decisions fraught with the greatest consequences.
Captain Brendecke has also met his death. The weather is so fascinatingly transparent to- day that for an instant he bent overboard to get a view of a simulated artillery station and the work of a Fougass minefield. And he would have been able to make important reports — if lead had not entered his spinal marrow. The car now floats like a ferry on the Acheron. The captain is dead. And the helmet of the lieutenant is stuck by blood to
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his head. This war is at times endless murder ; only the greatness of the object and a clear conscience can sustain German men to endure