Part 1 (1/2)
The Land of Deepening Shadow.
by D. Thomas Curtin.
CHAPTER I
GETTING IN
Early in November, 1915, I sailed from New York to Rotterdam.
I spent nearly a month in Holland completing my preparations, and at length one grey winter morning I took the step that I dreaded.
I had left Germany six months before with a feeling that to enter it again and get safely out was hopeless, foolish, dangerous, impossible. But at any rate I was going to try.
At Zevenaar, while the Dutch customs officials were examining my baggage, I patronised the youth selling apple cakes and coffee, for after several months' absence from Germany my imagination had been kindled to contemplate living uncomfortably on short rations for some time as the least of my troubles. Furthermore, the editorial opinion vouchsafed in the Dutch newspaper which I had bought at Arnhem was that Austria's reply to the ”Ancona” Note made a break with America almost a certainty. Consequently as the train rolled over the few remaining miles to the frontier I crammed down my apple cakes, resolved to face the unknown on a full stomach.
The wheels ground under the brakes, I pulled down the window with a bang and looked out no longer upon the soft rolled military cap of Holland but upon the business-like spiked helmet of Germany. I steeled myself. There was no backing out now. I had crossed the German frontier.
The few pa.s.sengers filed into the customs room, where a corps of skilled mechanics prised open the contents of bags and trunks.
Each man was an expert in his profession. A hand plunged into one of my bags and emerged with several bars of chocolate, the wrappers of which were shorn off before the chocolate was well out of the bag. A bottle of liniment, the brand that made us forget our sprains and bruises in college days, was brought to light, and with commendable dexterity the innocent label was removed in a twinkling with a specially constructed piece of steel. The label had a picture of a man with a very extensive moustache--the man who had made the liniment famous, or _vice versa_--but the trade name and proprietor must go unsung in the Fatherland, for the Government has decreed that travellers entering Germany may bring only three things containing printed matter, viz.: railroad tickets, money and pa.s.sports.
When the baggage squad had finished its task and replaced all unsuspected articles, the bags were sealed and sent on to await the owner, whose real troubles now began.
I stepped into a small room where I was asked to hand over all printed matter on my person. Two reference books necessary for my work were tried and found not guilty, after which they were enclosed in a large envelope and sent through the regular censor.
Switched into a third room before I had a chance even to bid good-bye to the examiners in the second, I found myself standing before a small desk answering questions about myself and my business asked tersely by an inquisitor who read from a lengthy paper which had to be filled in, and behind whom stood three officers in uniform. These occasionally interpolated questions and always glared into my very heart. When I momentarily looked away from their riveted eyes it was only to be held transfixed by the scrutinising orbs of a sharp, neatly dressed man who had been a pa.s.senger on the train. He plays the double role of detective-interpreter, and he plays it in first-cla.s.s fas.h.i.+on.
While the man behind the desk was writing my biography, the detective--or rather the interpreter, as I prefer to think of him, because he spoke such perfect English--cross-examined me in his own way. As the grilling went on I did not know whether to be anxious about the future or to glow with pride over the profound interest which the land of Goethe and Schiller was displaying in my life and literary efforts.
Had I not a letter from Count Bernstorff?
I was not thus blessed.
Did I not have a birth certificate? Whom did I know in Germany?
Where did they live? On what occasions had I visited Germany during my past life? On what fronts had I already seen fighting?
What languages did I speak, and the degree of proficiency in each?
Many of my answers to these and similar questions were carefully written down by the man at the desk, while his companions in the inquisition glared, always glared, and the room danced with soldiers pa.s.sing through it.
At length my pa.s.sport was folded and returned to me, but my credentials and reference books were sealed in an envelope. They would be returned to me later, I was told.
I was shunted along into an adjoining small room where nimble fingers dexterously ran through my clothing to find out if I had overlooked declaring anything.
Another shunting and I was in a large room. I rubbed elbows with more soldiers along the way, but n.o.body spoke. Miraculously I came to a halt before a huge desk, much as a bar of glowing iron, after gliding like a living thing along the floor of a rolling mill, halts suddenly at the bidding of a distant hand.
Behind the desk stood men in active service uniforms--men who had undoubtedly faced death for the land which I was seeking to enter.
They fired further questions at me and took down the data on my pa.s.sport, after which I wrote my signature for the official files.
Attacks came hard and fast from the front and both flanks, while a silent soldier thumbed through a formidable card file, apparently to see if I were a _persona non grata_, or worse, in the records.