Part 6 (1/2)
To a greater or less degree other correspondents had similar experiences. I must mention one or two of them, in spite of the fact that they may dim the importance of my own adventures. There was Swing, of Chicago, German by relations.h.i.+p and sympathy, who championed the Kaiser's cause and in his dispatches blew the Teuton horn in the Middle West of America. Swing was given exceptional privileges, including a typewriter and telephone near the Foreign Office. Yet Swing himself was constantly shadowed, and it is a fact that every time he used the telephone (and he was never permitted to speak in English) a Secret Service agent cut in on the wire to listen to the conversation.
An anecdote which I have heard in connection with the same correspondent, although I do not vouch for its accuracy, shows that ”keeping the lid” on newspaper men had its humorous side. It likewise indicates the initiative and aggressiveness of many American correspondents, who, as a rule, went right ahead in the face of military regulations, in some cases risking their lives, and in almost every case refusing to be ”bluffed out,” even where the threatened penalty was death. Swing had made his way to the battle front near--- -----, where he was taken into custody and brought before Von Mumm, then on a visit to Staff Headquarters.
”I find one of your countrymen wizin ze army lines,” is the way Excellency von Mumm is reported as telling the story, ”and I say to him, 'Herr Swing, it iss strongly forbidden zat a newspaper man come to ze front. It is not permitted zat any one come here; you must go away.'
”Very goot, Excellency,” said Swing.
”Ze next day I am extr-r-remely sorry to encounter ze same chentleman, and I say to him, 'Go away at once. If you are not gone in one hour you will be shot!'
”Very goot, Excellency,” answered Herr Swing. ”Auf wiedersehn.”
”Zat Very afternoon, to my sur-r-r-prise and gr-r-reat astonishment, I see him again. He was still in ze army lines. And I say to him, 'Now I have you! This time you will be shot at sunrise!'
”And he look at me and say:--
”'Very goot, Excellency. Zat make perfectly bully story for my paper.'
”And I look at him for a minute, and I do not know whether to shoot him or to laugh.
”And you know, I cannot help myself but to laugh.”
And finally there was the case of Cyril Brown, staff correspondent of the ”New York Times” in Berlin, with whom I floundered through the maze of official red tape and military snares that entangled the reporter at the German capital. Brown is an individual with a sense of humor and a Mark Twain penchant for ten-pfennig cigars. He takes his work seriously, but, unlike most war correspondents, not himself.
After some interesting freight-car adventures of his own planning, he reached the Grosser Hauptquartier, a small city on the Meuse, where at that time the brain of the German fighting machine was located.
This most vulnerable spot of the entire German Empire was, paradoxically, in France. The Kaiser, the King of Saxony, the Crown Prince of Germany, and Field Marshal von Moltke were here holding council of war. It was therefore of utmost importance to conceal the locality. Neutral correspondents were not allowed: the German press, even if it knew, would not dare to breathe its whereabouts. When Brown by strategy got inside the red-and-white striped poles which marked the entrance to the Over War Lord's quarters, he was at once arrested and taken before Major Nikolai, head of the Kaiser's bodyguard and chief of the field detectives.
It was late at night, and it was determined that Brown should go on the first military Postzug, which left at 7 A.M. If he was not gone by that time there were terrible threats of what would happen to him.
It so happened that the day was the Crown Princess's birthday. Soldiers, grenadiers, and servants of the Kaiser's household celebrated the fact.
Brown evaded his intoxicated sentinels and deliberately missed the train. The following morning Major Nikolai discovered him behind the guardhouse, himself feigning intoxication. Major Nikolai was about to throw Brown into jail ”for the duration of the war” when the young man answered:--
”But, Major, I overslept. What loyal German could possibly remain sober on the Crown Princess's birthday?”
”Gott im Himmel!” exclaimed the major, bursting into a laugh; ”vatever can be done mit such a man?”
To-day Brown has free run of the Foreign Office and the War Office in Berlin, and is sending to his paper, in my humble opinion, the best information obtainable in this country on the way in which the German civil and military mind views the ”crisis” with the U. S. A.
Chapter VIII
The Sorrow Of The People
I was conscious of a distinct break between the crisp, official atmosphere of Berlin--where the war hurts least and the mechanical appearance of success is strong--and the sentiment of the rank and file of people whose suffering, as the war continued, became a more and more important factor.
On the night of my second arrival in the capital I sat in the rear of a motion-picture theater, just off the Friedrichstra.s.se. It was a long, dark hallway, such as one may see in any of the cheaper ”movies” on Was.h.i.+ngton Street or Broadway, where the audience sits in silence broken by the whirr of the cinematograph and in darkness pierced by the flickering light upon the screen. The woman in the seat beside mine was the typical Hausfrau of the middle cla.s.s. She was, of course, dressed in mourning: the heavy veil, which was thrown back, revealed the expression so common to the German widow of to-day --that set, defiant look which begs no pity, and seems to say: ”We've lost them once; we 'd endure the same torture again if we had to.”
It was a sad enough story that the reel clicked off, and about as melodramatic as ”movies” usually are. But the woman kept herself well in hand, since the public display of grief is forbidden and they who sorrow must sorrow alone.
A Bavarian boy, as I recall it,--the youngest son,--runs away from home to join his father's regiment in Poland. When his captain calls for volunteers for a dangerous mission, the boy steps forward. For hours they trudge over the snow until surrounded by a Cossack patrol. The Bavarian boy, although having a chance to escape, goes back under fire to succor his wounded comrade. Just as he is about to drag the comrade into the zone of safety, a bullet pierces his lung. For two days he suffers torture on the snow. The body is found and brought home to his mother.