Various - The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915

V >> Various >> The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915

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"Who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get here?" snapped
the Prussian Major. A kind letter of introduction from Ambassador
Gerard, requesting "all possible courtesy and assistance from the
authorities of the countries through which he may pass," and emblazoned
with the red seal of the United States of America, which had worked like
magic on all previous occasions, had no effect on Major Nikolai. Neither
had a letter from the American Consul at Cologne, nor a letter of
introduction to Gen. von Buelow, nor any one of a dozen other impressive
documents produced in succession for his benefit.

"No foreign correspondents are permitted to be at the Great
Headquarters. None has been allowed to come here. If we allow one to
remain, fifty others will want to come, and we should be unable to keep
an eye on all of them," he explained. "You must go back to Berlin at
once."

Reluctant permission was finally obtained to remain one night on the
possibly unwarranted intimation that the great American people would
consider it a "national affront" if an American newspaperman was not
allowed to stay and see the American Military Attache, Major Langhorne,
who was away on a sightseeing tour near Verdun, but would be back in the
morning. However, a long cross-examination had to be undergone at the
hands of the venerable Herr Chief of the Secret Field Police Bauer, who
was taking no chances at harboring an English spy in the Houptquartier
disguised as a correspondent.

I found Major Langhorne standing the strain of the campaign
[Transcriber: original 'compaign'] well, and I gathered the impression
that he intended to see the thing through, and that there was much which
America could learn from the titanic operations of the Germans. Major
Langhorne and the Argentinian, Brazilian, Chilean, Spanish, Rumanian,
and Swedish military attaches are luxuriously quartered a mile and a
half out of town in the handsome villa of M. Noll, the landscape
painter, present whereabouts unknown. The attaches all have a sense of
humor, "otherwise," said one of them, "we could never stand being cooped
up here together." The gardener's daughter, a pretty young Frenchwoman,
the only servant who remained behind when the household fled at the
approach of the Germans, is both cook and housekeeper, and when I
arrived I found the seven military attaches resolved into a board of
strategy trying to work out the important problem of securing a pure
milk supply for her four-month-old baby.

Work consists of occasional motor runs to various points along the long
front. I was told that recently Major Langhorne ran into some heavy
shrapnel and shell fire, and was lucky to get away with a whole skin.
When asked to tell about it, Major Langhorne passed it off laughingly as
"all in the day's work."

In spite of the fact that they are engaged in keeping their end up in a
life-and-death fight for national existence, the Great General Staff has
found time to give the American Military Attache every possible
opportunity to see actual fighting.

The foreign military attaches have made many of their expeditions in
company with the small band of German war correspondents, who live in
another villa close by, under the constant chaperonage of Major von
Rohrscheldt. They are allowed to see much, but send little. The relative
position of the press in Germany is indicated by the fact that these
German war correspondents are nicknamed "hunger candidates." A military
expert who was well posted on American journalism explained to me,
however, that the very tight censorship lid was not for the purpose of
withholding news from the German people, but to keep valuable
information from being handed to the enemy. He pointed out that the
laconic German official dispatches dealt only with things actually
accomplished, and were very bare of detail, while, on the other hand,
the French and English press had been worth more than several army corps
to the Germans, concluding, "It may be poor journalism, but it's the
right way to make war."

* * * * *

KAISERIN'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.

Oct. 22.--It was hard to realize today that a great war was going on.
Every building in town occupied by the Germans was decorated with the
German flag in honor of the Kaiserin's birthday, and at night the
principal ones, including that occupied by the "War Cabinet," were
specially illuminated. All morning long, quantities of Generals came
rolling up in touring cars to the Kaiser's door to pay their homage and
offer congratulations. About noon the Crown Prince and staff arrived by
motor from the direction of the headquarters of his army. The Crown
Prince, who characteristically sat on the front seat next to the
chauffeur, looked as boyish and immature as his former pictures--his
military cap cocked slightly on one side. The responsibility of leading
an army had apparently not had a sobering effect on the Crown Prince as
yet, but I was told that the guiding brain and genius in the Crown
Prince's army headquarters was not that of the Crown Prince, but of his
chief adviser, Gen. von Haeseler, the brilliant cavalry leader of the
war of 1870 and now the "grand old man" of the German Army, sharing with
von Zeppelin the distinction of being the oldest living German Generals.
It seemed still harder to realize that men were fighting and dying not
fifty miles away when, after luncheon, Kaiser, Crown Prince, and staffs
went for a two hours' automobile ride, the Crown Prince leaving late in
the afternoon to rejoin his command.

The only warlike notes in the day's picture were a German military
aeroplane--one of the famous Taubes--that flew at a high altitude over
the Great Headquarters toward the enemies' lines; a battalion of Saxon
Landsturm that rested for an hour at the railroad station, then started
on the final hike for the front, refreshed by a glimpse of their
motoring Kaiser, and toward evening four automobile loads of wounded
German officers, who arrived from the direction of Rheims, where it was
rumored the French had made four desperate attempts to break through.

Here one gets more and more the impression that the Germans in their
war-making have learned a lesson from the hustling Americans--that they
have managed to graft American speed to their native thoroughness,
making a combination hard to beat. For instance, there is a regular
relay service of high-power racing motor cars between the Great
Headquarters and Berlin, the schedule calling for a total running time
of something under a day and a half, beating the best time at present
possible by train by four hours. One of the picked drivers, who has the
last lap--through France--said his running schedule required him to
average sixty miles an hour, and this running at night. A network of
fast relay automobile services is also run from the Great Headquarters,
through Belgium, linking up Brussels and Antwerp, and to the principal
points on the long line of battle.

How great a role the motor car plays among the Germans may be gathered
from an estimate made to the writer that 40,000 cars were in use for
military purposes. Many thousands of these are private automobiles
operated by their wealthy owners as members of the Volunteer War
Automobile Corps, of which Prince Waldemar, son of the sailor Prince
Henry, is chief. Their ranks include many big business men, captains of
industry, and men of social prominence and professional eminence.

They wear a distinctive uniform, that of an infantry officer, with a
collar of very dark red, and a short, purely ornamental sword or dagger.

* * * * *

BACK TO LUXEMBURG.

LUXEMBURG, Oct. 24.--I have just returned from the German Great
Headquarters in France, the visit terminating abruptly on the fourth
day, when one of the Kaiser's secret field police woke me up at 7
o'clock in the morning and regretfully said that his instructions were
to see that I "did not oversleep" the first train out. The return
journey along one of the German main lines of communication--through
Eastern France, across a corner of Belgium and through Luxemburg--was
full of interest, and confirmed the impression gathered at the centre of
things, the Great Headquarters, that this twentieth century warfare is
in the last analysis a gigantic business proposition which the Board of
Directors (the Great General Staff) and the thirty-six department heads
are conducting with the efficiency of a great American business
corporation.

The west-bound track is a continuous procession of freight trains--fresh
consignments of raw material--men and ammunition--being rushed to the
firing line to be ground out into victories. The first shipment we pass
is an infantry battalion--first ten flatcars loaded with baggage,
ammunition, provision wagons, and field kitchens, the latter already
with fire lighted and soup cooking as the long train steams slowly
along, for the trenches are only fifty miles away, and the Germans make
a point of sending their troops into battle with full stomachs.

After the flatcars come thirty box cars, all decorated with green
branches and scrawled over with chalked witticism at the expense of the
French and Russians. The men cheer as our train passes. A few kilometers
further backed on to a siding, is a train of some twenty flatcars, each
loaded with a touring car. Then we pass a battery of artillery on
flatcars, the guns still garlanded with flowers; then a short freight
train--six cars loaded with nothing but spare automobile tires--then a
long train of heavy motor trucks, then more infantry trains, then an
empty hospital train going back for another load, then a train of
gasoline tank cars, more cheering infantry, more artillery, another
empty hospital train, a pioneer train, a score of flatcars loaded with
long, heavy piles, beams, steel girders, bridge spans, and lumber, then
a passenger train load of German railway officials and servants going to
operate the railways toward the coast, more infantry, food trains,
ammunition trains, train loads of railway tracks already bolted to metal
ties and merely needing to be laid down and pieced together, and so on
in endless succession all through France and through Belgium. The
two-track road, shaky in spots, especially when crossing rivers, is
being worked to capacity, and how well the huge traffic is handled is
surprising even to an American commuter.

Our fast train stops at the mouth of a tunnel, then crawls ahead
charily, for the French, before retreating, dynamited the tunnel. One
track has been cleared, but the going is still bad. To keep it from
being blocked again by falling debris the Germans have dug clean through
the top of the hill, opening up a deep well of light into the tunnel.
Looking up, you see a pioneer company in once cream-colored, now
dirty-colored, fatigue uniform still digging away and terracing the
sides of the big hole to prevent slides. Half an hour later we go slow
again in crossing a new wooden bridge over the Meuse--only one track as
yet. It took the German pioneers nearly a week to build the substitute
for the old steel railway bridge dynamited by the French, whose four
spans lie buckled up in the river. The pioneers are at work driving
piles to carry a second track. The process is interesting. A
forty-man-power pile driver is rigged upon the bow end of a French river
barge with forty soldiers tugging at forty strands of the main rope.
The "gang" foreman, a Captain in field gray, stands on the river bank
and bellows the word of command. Up goes the heavy iron weight; another
command, and down it drops on the pile. It looks like a painfully slow
process, but the bridges are rebuilt just the same.

Further on, a variety of interest is furnished to a squad of French
prisoners being marched along the road. Then a spot of ant-hill-like
activity where a German railway company is at work building a new branch
line, hundreds of them having pickaxes and making the dirt fly. You half
expect to see a swearing Irish foreman. It looks like home--all except
the inevitable officer (distinguished by revolver and field glass)
shouting commands.

The intense activity of the Germans in rebuilding the torn-up railroads
and pushing ahead new strategic lines, is one of the most interesting
features of a tour now in France. I was told that they had pushed the
railroad work so far that they were able to ship men and ammunition
almost up to the fortified trenches. The Germanization of the railroads
here has been completed by the importation of station Superintendents,
station hands, track walkers, &c., from the Fatherland. The stretch over
which we are traveling, for example, is in charge of Bavarians. The
Bavarian and German flags hang out at every French station we pass.
German signs everywhere, even German time. It looks as if they thought
to stay forever.

Now we creep past a long hospital train, full this time, which has
turned out on a siding to give us the right of way--perhaps thirty
all-steel cars--each fitted with two tiers of berths, eight to a side,
sixteen to a car. Every berth is taken. One car is fitted up as an
operating room, but fortunately no one is on the operating table as we
crawl past. Another car is the private office of the surgeon in charge
of the train. He is sitting at a big desk receiving reports form the
orderlies. During the day we pass six of these splendidly appointed new
all-steel hospital trains, all full of wounded. Some of them are able
to sit up in their bunks and take a mild interest in us. Once, by a
queer coincidence, we simultaneously pass the wounded going one way and
cheering fresh troops going the other.

*How the Belgians Fight*

[By a Correspondent of The London Daily News.]

LONDON, Oct. 28.--Writing from an unnamed place in Belgium a
correspondent of The Daily News says:

"The regiment I am concerned with was fifteen days and nights in the
Antwerp trenches in countless engagements. It withdrew at dawn, hoping
then to rest. It marched forty-five kilometers with shouldered rifles.
In the next five days it marched nearly 200 kilometers until it reached
the Nieuport and Dixmude line. By an error of judgment it got two days
of drill and inspection in place of resting, then took its place in the
front line on the Yser to face the most desperate of the German
efforts."

The correspondent quotes a young volunteer in this regiment as follows:

"---- was evacuated by the Germans, and we were sent in at
nightfall. As soon as they saw our lights they began shelling us. We
lost terribly. A number of the men ran up the streets, but we got them
together. I had about twenty and retired in order. We were 600 who went
in, and must have left a third there.

"In the morning we moved down to reinforce a network of trenches on our
bank of the Yser. There was a farm on our right, and some of our men
were firing at it, but the door opened and three officers in Belgian
uniform came out shouting to us to cease fire, so we sent a detachment
to the farm, and they were swept away by machine gun fire from the
windows. No, I don't know what happened afterward about the farm. I lost
sight of it.

"We got into the trenches. They lay longways behind a raised artificial
bank on our side of the river. At the northern end of them were mazes of
cross trenches protecting them in case the Germans got across the bridge
there and started to enfilade us. They were full of water. I was firing
for six hours myself thigh deep in muddy water.

"The Germans got across the bridge. We could not show head or hand over
our bank. German machine guns shot us from crevices in their raised bank
across the river only a few yards away. I was hours and hours dragging
our wounded out of the cross trenches at the northern end of the bank
southward and behind a mound till there was no more room for them there,
and bringing up new men singly and two or three at a time from further
down the trenches to take their places. We lost our officers, but I got
the men to listen to me.

"Some Germans shelled us with a cross fire. They got into the cross
trenches. They fired down our lines from the side. We had to run back. I
was too tired and sleepy to drag my feet. I think I must have fallen
asleep.

"We had an order to advance again. The French were behind us on either
wing in support. I was too tired to get up. Some one kicked me. I looked
up. They were three of my friends, volunteers like myself. We had all
joined together. They apologized and ran forward. They are all wounded
now, but we are all still alive, and I never have been hit once in
thirty-four fights.

"I got up. So did a man lying on the field in front of me. He was shot
through the head and fell back on me. I got up again. A shell burst
beside me and I saw three men, who were running past, just disappear. I
was lying on my face again, and could not lift my head, either through
fear or sleep, I don't know which.

"I found myself running forward again. I called to men lying and running
near and held my revolver at them. We were all charging with bayonets
back at the Germans shooting us from our own trenches under the raised
bank. They did not wait for us. They looked like frightened gray beetles
as they scrambled up away over our bank and down into the river. It was
dusk, but we shot at them over the bank. The water seemed full of them.
We crouched in a big trench in muddy water behind the bank. No, we did
not sleep, but my head and eyes seemed to go to sleep from time to time.

"There were perhaps 200 left of our 600. I think there was one officer
further along, but it was quite dark. Some of the men talked very low.
Then I heard voices whispering and talking near us on the river side of
our bank. It was of earth perhaps five feet high and six feet thick. On
the other side the slope fell steeply to the river.

"I sent a hush along the line. We listened quite silent. I thought I
heard German words, an order passed along on the other side. I crawled
up on to the bank, not showing my head, you know. It was really about
300 Germans who had stayed there on our side under the bank, fearing to
cross the river under our fire. So we stayed all through the night. We
did not sleep nor did they.

"There was just six feet of piled wet earth between us. We only
whispered and could hear them muttering and the sound of their belts
creaking and of water bottles being opened.

"There was a thick gray mist hanging low in the morning. I crawled on to
the bank again, holding my revolver out-stretched. A gray figure stood
up in the mist below close to me. He looked like a British soldier in
khaki. He said: 'It's all right, we are English,' and I said, 'But your
accent isn't,' and I shot him through with my revolver. Some of our men
crept to the bank, but they shot them, and some of theirs climbed over,
but we fired at their heads or arms as they showed only a few feet
away, and they fell backward [Transcriber: original 'bakward'] or on to
us or lay hanging on the bank. Then we all waited.

"As it grew lighter they did not dare move away, and none of us could
get out alive or over the bank to use the bayonet. A few men made holes
in the looser earth, and so we fired at each other through the bank here
and there. Our guns could not help us, and theirs could not shoot
across, for we were all together, and yet we could not get at each
other. Some of the men--theirs and ours--got over lower down, so there
was firing now and then, and two men were killed near me sliding down
into the water in the trenches.

"Somebody threw a cartridge case across close to me. On a paper inside
was scrawled one word: 'Surrender!' We did not know if they wanted to
surrender themselves or wanted us to surrender. They were more numerous,
but we were better placed, so we went on scrapping and crawling around
to get a shot at them.

"Perhaps it was the French who got round at the ends. There was heavy
firing. We heard quite close through the raised bank a few slipping down
on the river edge and water splashing. Some of us pulled ourselves up on
to the bank. I heard our men scrambling up on either side of me, but
could not see them. I think I was too sleepy. I shouted to charge, and
then must have fallen over on my head, rolling down the bank.

"I am on the way down with these wounded. There are fifteen of us unhit
here, but I think we came away just now with nearly a hundred out of our
600 of yesterday."

He was doing gallant Captain's work, a young, slight, ordinary Belgian
trooper, a volunteer private in the ranks, muddy, limping, and
unspeakably tired in muscle and nerve. His story is as nearly as
possible in his own words, interrupted by blanks in his own
consciousness of events--lapses familiar to men whose muscles and nerves
are exhausted, but who must still work on without sleep.

For the following ten hours, without pause, he acted as interpreter and
most capable adviser in getting long trains of stretchers with his
wounded Belgian compatriots down and on to the British hospital ships.

*A Visit to the Firing Line in France*

[By a Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

PARIS, Sept. 30.--In company with several representatives of American
newspapers, I was permitted to pass several days in "the zone of
military activity," on credentials obtained at the personal request of
Ambassador Herrick, that we might describe the destruction caused by the
Germans in unfortified towns. Although I have given a parole to say
nothing concerning the movement of the troops or to mention certain
points that I visited, I am now permitted to send a report of a part of
my experiences.

We crossed the entire battlefield of the Marne, passed directly behind
the lines of the battle still raging on the Aisne, accidentally getting
under fire for an entire afternoon, and lunching in a hotel to the
orchestra of bursting shells, one end of the building being blown away
during the bombardment. We witnessed a battle between an armored French
monoplane and a German battery, and also had the experience of being
accused of being German spies by two men wearing the English uniform,
who, on failing to account for their own German accent, were speedily
taken away under guard with their "numbers up," as the French Commandant
expressed what awaited them.

On account of our exceptional credentials we were able to see more
actual war than many correspondents, who when they learned that permits
to go to the front were not forthcoming, went anyway, usually falling
into the hands of the military authorities before getting far. In fact,
getting arrested has been the chief occupation of the war correspondents
in this war, even our accidental view of the fighting being sufficient
to cause our speedy return to Paris under parole.

Going over the battlefield of the Marne, we found the battle had
followed much the same tactics as a cyclone, in that in some places
nothing, not even the haystacks, had been disturbed, while in others
everything, the villages, roads, and fields, had been utterly devastated
by shells. We talked with the inhabitants of every village and always
heard the same story--that during occupation the Germans, evidently
having been ordered to be on their good behavior after the Belgian
atrocities, had offered little trouble to the civilians, and had
confined their activities to looting and wasting the provisions. Also
that when retreating they had destroyed all the food they were unable to
carry.

Our baptism of fire appropriately came while we were in a church. At
noon of the second day we motored into a deserted village, and were
stopped by a sentry who acknowledged our credentials, but warned us if
we intended to proceed to beware of bullets. But there was not a hostile
sound to alarm us.

As we drove carelessly over the brow of a hill where the road dipped
down a valley into the town, we were in direct line with the German
fire, as great holes in the ground and fallen trees testified. It is a
wonder our big motor car was not an immediate mark. On the way in we
noticed a church steeple shot completely off, so after finding an inn,
where the proprietor came from the cellar and offered to guard our car
and prepare luncheon, we decided first to examine the church. The
innkeeper explained that we had come during a lull in the bombardment,
but the silent, deserted place lulled all sense of danger. The verger
showed us over the church and we were walking through the ruined nave
when suddenly we heard a sound like the shrill whistling of the wind.

"It begins again," our conductor said simply. As the speech ended we
heard a loud boom and the sound of falling masonry as a shell struck the
far end of the building. We hurried to the hotel, the shells screaming
overhead. We saw the buildings tumbling into ruins, glass falling in
fine powder and remnants of furniture hanging grotesquely from scraps of
masonry.

All my life I had wondered what would be the sensation if I ever were
under fire--would I be afraid? To my intense relief I suddenly became
fatalistic. I was under fire with a vengeance, but instead of being
afraid I kept saying to myself, "Being afraid won't help matters;
besides nothing will happen if we just keep close to the walls and away
from the middle street."

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