What is back of the war

Front matter

'rem

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Date Due

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I On the Doorstep of War .... 1

II German Trench and Battery ... 19

II

OVER the city of Lille, in northern France, thick clouds lowered weightily. An occasional drop of rain spat venge fully from the heavens. Evening was falling. "There will be a storm to-night," remarked the wanderer among strange scenes.

"Oh, no — ^just one of these everlasting rains," replied a German officer, standing in the group. "It is always like this."

"But," persisted the stranger, "listen to that low heavy thunder, so full of body. That means a storm."

"Why, my dear sir," laughed the military one, "that is not thunder — ^that is artillery."

"Artillery! How far away?"

"Oh, I should say that firing is near Comines, about ten miles off."

A little bit abrupt this, with a trace of gentle thrill, to one fresh from Berlin not thirty hours distant by railway — peaceful, busy, casual, matter-of-fact, yet serious Berlin. For this capital of a mighty nation at war shows few signs of being the center of the greatest of all epochal conflicts of history. Shops and

* Written at the German Western Front, January 9th and 10th, 191S.

stores all open; prices normal, even the usual first-of- January sales at reduced figures going on; streets thronged with men and women, thousands of the men of military age; theaters, amusement halls, moving-picture shows crowded with patrons; cafes and Bierstuben filled with quiet, pleasant German folk — apparently almost the Berlin of peace time, except for occasional companies of troops in Feldgrau, and now and then a bandaged soldier on the streets. Indeed, to one expecting marching thousands, closed windows, dour faces, hurrying ambulances, black days and nights, with streets and houses darkened, Berlin surprises the visitor much more than does the fardistant battlefield.

And Lille itself, captured city of France, held by the conquerors ! At first sight you wonder that this can be so. For here, too, the sidewalks are full of people — men, women, children ; here, too, stores and shops are open, purchasers passing in and out ; here, too, the street-cars rumble over the complaining rails.

But for the great number of soldiers thickly clustering everjrwhere, but for the largest of Lille's cafes monopolized by powerful-looking men wearing the uniform of the German officer, and but for that growling menace which you have learned is the sound of cannon instead of the voice of the impatient heavens — but for these war tokens, the newly arrived observer in his first moments of astonishment would never think Lille the victim of conquest.

To be sure, war's reddest advertisement has flared in your face as you enter the Lille station ; for there, on adjoining tracks, two long hospital trains filled with wounded are ready for departure to the permanent hospitals. Also, tall helmeted officers greet you; and rising above the front of the military automobile which you enter, a long edged hook, slanting backward, lifts itself higher than your head. It is to break the wires that sometimes are stretched across roads to cut the throats of those in these military cars, who drive like the wind in darkness as well as light.

Then, too, here and there, what once were great buildings, are now only masses of brick, stone, mortar and twisted iron. But demolished structures, uniformed officers, plunging autos, mangled men — all of these you had expected. And you had not expected evidences of peaceful, orderly and ordinary civil life.

Indeed, it is a long time from your departure from Berlin station that the work of war's strong, rough and efficient hand strikes your eye; a still longer time before even your expectant senses detect war's pungent atmosphere. You are many miles into France when the gaunt walls of shell-destroyed houses first flash past you. A space farther on and you stop for a moment at a good-sized town; three wagons, burdened with great loads of straw, drawn by six powerful horses driven by soldiers; other wagons loaded with provisions; a long train on the siding bearing munitions of war covered with canvas; two coffins resting on the station platform, and one more borne by four stalwart soldiers; along the central street houses smashed and crumpled; in an open space some two hundred sturdy, bearded, middle-aged, grave-faced men in long black uniform overcoats, with black leather caps bearing gold crosses above the peaks — all these are signals of your approach to the still distant fighting zone.

Yet, absurd paradox, just beyond the town a flock of sheep grazing; in a near-by field a peasant plowing; on a roadway a steam roller grunting back and forth in its leveling toil. And then, again, just beyond, scores of provision wagons ranged in military orderliness.

But those three cofHins, burnished oak afifairs with drooping gold wreaths along their sides ! They bear the bodies of those killed in battle whose relatives have been fortunate enough to find and retrieve them from the welter of the slain — only the other day a father had told you of his long but futile search for a missing son.

Or perhaps in these coffins rest the bodies of princes, who also were soldiers and officers and who died fighting at the front — eight of these highest born have already paid this crimson and heroic tribute to their country.

And those serious- faced, big- framed, bewhiskered men in black uniforms. They are the Landsturni — solid citizens, fathers of families, doing guard duty at the bridges along the roads, but splendid soldiers if ever the time comes when they are needed in trench or battery pit.

The crumpled houses of Dinant or shell-riddled Givet fail to produce any reaction of astonishment when you reach them, so much have you seen already of the furrowing of war's rude plowshare. The tearing, smashing work of the German artillery on Givet's picturesque fortress, perched high above the River

French bridge "built for the eternities, blown into gigantic fragments" by the retreating French; steel structure quickly but strongly built by the Germans to replace it; barb wire entanglement to check possible night attempt to dynamite bridge.

Meuse, does give a slight start — here you stand in what once was supposed to be a bomb-proof underground chamber, now open to the sky, its futile yards of masonry and earth protection blown to the winds or toppled into the chamber itself, covering the bodies of French artillerymen, who now lie buried beneath the debris before you; there you 'pick up a large slab from a German melinite shell, its splintered edges knifelike in their sharpness, to bring home as a souvenir. How it must have torn and cut and smashed! It is but one of many similar slivers from a single shell.

But, strange psychology, you are more attracted by the phenomenon of fresh and growing life surrounding this havoc than you are by the cannon's heavy handiwork. The pale green of winter wheat, already coloring faintly the fields below, astonishes you more than the huge pockmarks dug on their faces by the high explosives.

All about life has overtaken death — even the slope from which the fortress hill rises is freshly plowed. An earnest, this, of what you are soon to behold even when beneath the monstrous missiles of great guns screaming over your head. Life, the vitality of nature and the heart of man, triumphant over death's temporary ravaging!

And so on to Lille ; the ponderous arches of mighty bridges which the French had built for the eternities, but which, in their retreat, they had blown into gigantic fragments, tumbled grotesquely about you; rising above you, the equally strong steel structures with which the German engineers already have replaced them ; the wire entanglements in process of construction before your eyes by German soldiers; an aeroplane flying so high above you that it looks like a great bird — all these you note with Jess interest than peasants plowing in the fields, a boy unloading straw from a wagon, cows grazing on the winter herbage, clusters of chickens voraciously busy in the barnyards.

And so you come to the firing-line, the trenches and the batteries, the snap of rifle, the rattling chuckle of the mitrailleuses, the heavy voices of the mortars.

The night is still thick when the military automobile starts with you in its swift journey to the trenches. No lights glow in the windows of villages, whose inhabitants are not yet astir. You hear the crowing of a cock even above the noise of the auto, and once a little dog rushes out, barking his impotent defiance. A curious portent hangs in the sky — the morning star — shining with such a vast circumference that you insist that it is no star at all, but a military arc lamp, suspended by some uncanny wizardry of war.

At a crossing of roads in the open country the automobile is halted. Figures approach with electric lights glowing from their breasts, like uncanny beings from another world. They are the officers you met at dinner many miles away early in this very night, yet long since on duty at the outposts.

Finally, as dawn breaks and the countryside unrolls, you enter a little hamlet. The opposing cannon have already begun their hoarse and throaty quarrel. You go into a church, the walls of which have as many openings made by guns as they have windows fashioned by architect and mason. From piles of litter you pick up a dust covered prayer-book lying in melancholy neglect.

You climb the church tower by a staircase and then by iron ladder, held steadily by soldiers as you mount, until you sit upon the beams from which the church bell swings. Then, through the great slats, you look upon the French and German trenches, startlingly near, and behold the region where the contending artillery are planted, though you can not detect a single battery, so perfectly are they hidden.

"Be careful ! Don't show yourself, or we may get a shot !" comes a warning voice behind you.

And now for the trenches themselves. The cannon's continuous booming no longer greatly impresses you ; but the Schutzengraben hold for you a tingle of expectation. Down the village street you walk on to a broad road bordered by woods ; the crack and rattle of rifle firing smites your ear as if coming from just around the corner.

Between two groups of buildings there is a short open space. The ofificers stoop low as they cross this exposed point and bid you do the like; for standing erect means being seen by the enemy and an invitation to the French marksmen to try their skill on you. You feel ridiculous as you assume this absurd posture; it seems so unnecessary.

Then another unobstructed space which you pass, up to your knees in mud and water, by means of a trench, which conceals you, and so down to a tiny cup in the hills, where a brick house stands, one room for trench reserves waiting their turn and another for the company's officers — the captain a good-looking young lawyer. For, as you are to find, men of all professions, of every calling, are in Germany's battle line — ^writers and shoemakers, poets and bricklayers, masters of great business concerns and their employees, university professors and tailors, blacksmiths and opera singers, many of them volunteers — a very democracy of war.

Wet and muddy overcoats hang on trees or are spread on bushes, for, unusual circumstance, the overworked clouds have not poured out their Niagaras for three hours or more, and once, for a moment, the sun actually has shown his tardy and shamefaced visage.

The garrulous and multitudinous voices of the rifles are very close at hand, just over the crest of the hill which you even now are climbing. You can detect plainly the different sides of this leaden debate, and know that a far heavier fire is coming from one set of trenches than from the other. It is the French who are burning this extra powder, you are told, — they are shooting at least five shots to. every one fired by their German foe. You would have the reason.

"It is nervousness," remarks a German major, who, by the way, speaks English without accent, and whose relationship is American. "Nerves and an oversensitive imagination. Our French friends can not hold themselves in, it appears. I do not say this in unkindness, for they are brave men, but perhaps more emotional and less steady than our men."

What was this? "French friends!" And this from a German officer wearing the iron cross won by gallantry in action ! "French friends" and a compliment, with only the gentlest criticism, from one of those Bavarians whose traditional ferocity when in battle has elicited anew the attention of the world! These chance remarks switch your thought from plunging bullet and rifle pit even as you mount toward them. "French friends!" And spoken in unmistakable tones of friendliness amid such scenes !

And so at last to the trenches, the real fighting trenches. You zigzag to them through similar approaching channels. Five feet deep, at least, they are, with an additional foot and a half of earth dug from them and ridged above them on the side facing the enemy, serving as an added protection for the riflemen.

Just before entering the fighting ditches you see an underground room hollowed from the earth. You are told to go in if you like, and as you cross this warrior threshold you read these words written on a board nailed to the wooden lintel :

"Villa Ruheort — The Hearthstone Is More Precious than Gold."

It is the quarters of noncommissioned officers in charge of this particular firing squad. Clean dry straw carpets the earthen floor. A large cracked mirror stands on a crude stool-like table, on which are lying two or three books. One of them is on Wagner, another a play by Hauptmann. Two of these military earth dwellers are within and greet you pleasantly.

Through the trenches themselves you flounder, with mud or water or their slimy combination slushing far up about your legs. You stoop, under orders, every now and again when, walking over a caved-in lump of earth, your head if unbent is brought above the surface and in sight of the keen-eyed French sharpshooters — you will get a shot if they see your cap.

You pass the men who are doing the fighting. Here and there they have made benches or footholds, on which they stand, an inch or two above the trench's slush. Apertures, perhaps six inches wide by two deep, made by pieces of wood, appear in the loose earth piled above the trench, looking toward the enemy.

Through these the soldiers scan the opposing line, and they fire when an unwary or curious head comes into view, although most of the shooting is done with rifle resting on the top of the earth ridge of the trench. You look yourself and see the French trenches quite plainly with the naked eye ; indeed, they are not a hundred yards away. A little farther on the hostile lines are only forty or fifty yards apart. A clump of trees crests a gentle elevation a short, distance behind the French rifle line, and here French machine guns are in watchful hiding.

The rifle firing, sometimes only a p-f-1-o-t ! p-f-1-o-t ! and again so frequent that it is like scores of giant firecrackers exploded by a single fuse, seems only a few feet away from where you stand. Yet the soldiers by your side do no firing ; no bullets whistle over you; no one near you is wounded or killed, and a curious feeling of unreality and play-acting steals over you.

You have a most unworthy and brutal feeling that you are being cheated. You fervently hope that no one will be hit, no one wounded or killed. And yet. "Well, if somebody is sure to be shot in the trenches to-day, if this be fate's unchangeable decree, let it be now, when I can see, and not half an hour

German fighting trench near Arras, France, January 8, 1915. The French trenches are from forty to an hundred yards away. The good-humored faces and excellent physical condition of the German soldiers are notable. Heavy riQe firing a few feet beyond; "sometimes only a p-f-I-o-t ! p-f-1-o-t ! and again so frequent that it is like scores of giant firecrackers exploded by a single fuse."

later, when I shall be gone" — so runs your almost subconscious thought. You feel under obligation to your editor to miss no red event.

But the kindly smiles, the good-humored faces, the expression of physical contentment which comes of being well fed and cared for ! Once more your mental processes about-face from the clamor of hostilities toward this new view-point. You forget the dramatic phase and go to wondering about these brawny, cheerful-looking soldiers. And what astonishing education — ^you fall in conversation later on in an hour of leisure with one about Chamberlin's books. He speaks English perfectly.

Before leaving by a zigzag exit, exactly like your approach, you note and carefully examine little chambers or dens dug in the earth of the trench's wall, always on the side toward the enemy. They are perhaps seven feet long, four feet wide, three feet deep, the roof and sides kept from caving in by wooden supports. The cold, hard earthen floor is softened and warmed by thick layers of clean dry straw; a flap of canvas or gunnysack shields the entrance from daylight and the chilly air.

Into one after another of these firing-line bedchambers you peer, and in every one a soldier is fast asleep, fully clad, even to boots, overcoat and cap. You have not intruded, for nothing so trivial as the poking about of a civilian investigator awakens these war sleepers.

Thus you learn part of the routine of these particular trenches — twenty- four hours in these Schutzengraben, two hours watching and firing, four hours sleeping in the cubby-holes; then two hours of duty on foot again, and so on; then forty-eight hours of rest in buildings, if any are near by, or, if not, in the equally comfortable, big, semi-underground, roomy bunk places; then three days of real rest a little farther back, but still within quick call; then three more days in some comparatively distant yet neighboring village still farther in the rear, where the soldier alternates between enjoying himself and plowing the fields if the French peasants are not already performing that task.

And then back to the trenches again, and the same routine of service and repose. This routine is not uniform — it varies with different armies, even with various divisions.

And here is a problem for the psychologist burrowing his mole-like way into the hidden causes of human action and preference — ^the men are anxious to get back from the safety and comfort of village life or cozy subterranean comradeship to the danger and discomfort of the fighting pit. You do not in the least understand this soldier choice, but you feel it vaguely yourself long before you are told it. For, lunching an hour later, some miles away, with the general commanding that corps and his staff, in a big attractive house in perfect safety amid engaging companionship, you are ashamed to find that you are not as appreciative as courtesy demands and jttstifies.

You wish you were back there in the rain and mud, the impolite snap of rifles in your ears, bitten by the tang of the unusual and perilous. Can it be that war has its ultimate roots in the far depths of human nature? Can it be man's blind method of relief from soul-rotting, spirit-quenching monotony? Can it be that the fuse which explodes the destroying shell also tears apart those gold and silken meshes with which convention and the ordinary wrap, mummylike, the intellect and aspirations of man ? Can it be — hideous and forbidding thought ! — that the ages have found no better way than this of stirring the waters of the soul from the stagnation of routine?

You would make acquaintance with the great guns whose booming voice is never still, seems never weary ; you would listen more closely to the argument of the artillery — and here luck favors you. It so happens that an officer, with American relationships, has charge of a wide round of inspection as the direct representative of the commander-in-chief of the army. You had met him at dinner and found him attractive, quiet, informed, cordial.

"Come along with me if you like. I shall be glad to have you," says this major-adjutant.

"I should like it very much, but won't my being with you interfere with your duties?"

"Not in the least," he replies, "and you really may happen to see something."

You find that a painter of German battle scenes, who is in high favor with the German army, men and officers alike, also is going. He speaks English perfectly, which adds to your momentary and accidental good fortune. So away plunges the great military auto over the perfect roads of France toward the sound of the cannonade, which grows louder and clearer with every turn of the flying wheels. A square white tower, like an ancient castle with a quaint French village clustered about it, rises from among the trees.

"We are using that as our observation point — we shall be able to see the whole field from there," explains the officer.

The few inhabitants of the village are walking about quite unconcernedly, attending to their daily tasks, the thunder of the guns long since a twice-told tale to them and now a part of their ordinary life. Many German soldiers are in the streets — ^again you note their healthful appearance and the good humor of their faces.

An elderly French peasant walks by, lifting his cap to the German officers, who return his greeting with civility. A French woman stands in a doorway, holding in her arms a laughing child.

Now you go on to the tower and find yourself on its flat, railed-in roof, where a glass of the highest power, mounted on a tripod, sweeps the whole country and brings the far distance almost beneath your feet. Through these lenses a town which you can see with your naked eye appears to be within a five minutes' saunter from where you stand — you can make out the details of a ruined brick house standing at the town's edge.

In the distance, to the right, white cathedral spires rise like a beautiful unreality. The edifice is being shelled because the French are using it for observation purposes, precisely as the Germans are employing the tower on which you stand. This latter, however, is of no artistic value or historic interest, and has no sacred uses. You wonder why the French do not shell it, for it is in possible range of their heaviest ordnance. Also, it is the point from which the effect of the German explosives is noted and directions telephoned to the widely scattered batteries.

"You see that smoke? It is one of the French shells exploding," you are told as a pallid cloud suddenly arises from a field a considerable distance to your right. Then you note another and still another of these flowers of conflict.

And always the harsh but not repellent crash of the cannon's barbaric orchestration! Yes, and the green of recurring life in the fields where this iron dispute is going forward, the tender sproutings of the young wheat in patches here and there !

Yet no crimson event strikes your eye, and once more you feel that nothing really is happening. There is not much of hazard, you think, in going to the batteries themselves.

On your way through the village the foolish and impossible thought strikes you : "I wish some of these villagers spoke English !" And you utter that absurd remark.

"Why, there is one," answers the German physician in medical charge at that point. "There is a peasant girl who, I believe, learned a little English somehow. Her family's house is just around the corner. Go talk to her, if you wish."

You find that the girl in question lives with her mother, aunt and younger brother, in a typical house of the French peasant. Neither she nor any of the inmates seems alarmed; plainly they are on good terms with the German invaders.

"Do these Germans treat you well?" you question.

"Oh, yes, we are well treated," she makes out to say in her broken English.

"You do not fear them, then?"

"No, not now. But we feared them very much before they came."

"You say they have treated you well — but have they done anything for you?"

"When they came we had very little left to eat. The captain of the German light cavalry had his soldiers bake bread for us, and gave it to the people of the village. We all thought that kind," the young woman stumblingly informs you with difficulty, so bad is her little English, of which she is very proud however.

"How will you live through this year?"

"We have a field which my brother, who is only fifteen, and an old servant will cultivate. The Germans have let us have two horses for plowing and other work."

But this comes too pat; you are afflicted with the plague of suspicion. You wish one of these peasants spoke your tongue; very well! presto! your desire is at hand. It is altogether too perfect. You will have none of it — these Germans have overdone it, you feel; and you experience a sensation of resentment. You are offended that they should impose upon your intelligence. But subsequent occurrences make it appear not improbable that you are oversuspicious.

For a similar incident two days later could not possibly have been "arranged." Your interpreter, speaking many tongues, is with you on this second occasion —

German officers watching effect of artillery duel before Arras, France, January 8, 1915. "The harsh but not repellent crash of the cannon's barbaric orchestration." In the French village below the people are going about their daily affairs as if nothing unusual were happening.

you have brought him from America and know his reliabiHty — he is of excellent American family in your own town. (And let no investigator go to all the warring countries without such a dependable aid unless he, himself, speaks all the languages.)

You are passing through the only place in France where, as you are told, savagery has been practised on German wounded — seventy disabled soldiers lying helpless in the town hall were murdered you are informed. Their graves are near the outskirts, marked with simple wooden crosses.

As a punishment and a warning against such practises in the future, the Germans shelled the village, having first told the inhabitants to leave temporarily. The Germans think the murders were committed by rufifians and acquit the general French population of the crime. But they will have no more of it, no matter who did the deed.

You are making photographs of the ruins. One picturesque point can only be had from the upper windows of an opposite building. The German officers have no idea of what you wish or mean to do. A French family, minus its men, is lodged within. The mother gives you permission and, the photograph successfully taken, you talk with her. She holds a child, two or three years old, on her lap.

She admits she was terrified before the Germans came; but they have treated her and everybody well, she informs you, and she fears them no longer. The soldiers like her little girl especially, she says. One stopped and had supper with them once, and afterward played with the child for a long time. When he went away they thought of course that they would never see him again — so many soldiers pass through their village! They were sorry for this, for they liked him.

A week later the little girl was playing on the doorstep when suddenly she gave a joyous cry at the sight of a passing German soldier, and held out her arms to him. It was her friend of the week before who was looking for the house where his tiny playmate lived. He wanted to see her again, and have a romp with her — she was like his own little girl back in Germany ! So, no, indeed, they did not fear the Germans any more — nobody in that town did, the child's mother said.

This incident could not have been "fixed up" or "staged" by any possibility.

Once more that day a chance event bears the same testimony. Nobody could have foreseen it. The sheerest accident brings it to your attention. It happens in a town some thirty miles southeast of Lille, France, through which your auto is speeding. In an elevated garden, the stone wall of which is a few feet above the street, is a row of German soldiers. They are convalescing from wounds and almost fit for the firing-line once more. On the sidewalk beneath are a score of French children.

Between the soldiers and the children a sort of frolic is going forward. The soldiers are throwing bits of chocolate to the children, calling out to them endearing names, and the little ones are accepting and reciprocating both. So conspicuous is the mutual friendliness that, although your automobile is more than an hour late on a schedule to Grand Headquarters, you yet persist in turning back for a little while to get kodak pictures of this comradery between the invaders and the children of the invaded.