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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of World's War Events, Vol. I, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: World's War Events, Vol. I
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Francis J. Reynolds
+        Allen L. Churchill
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2008 [EBook #25962]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S WAR EVENTS, VOL. I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+For the reader: The notation [oe] is used in this text to indicate the
+presence of the oe-ligature in the original text. Further transcriber's
+notes to be found at the end of the text.
+
+[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME AT RHEIMS]
+
+
+
+
+WORLD'S WAR EVENTS
+
+        RECORDED BY STATESMEN · COMMANDERS
+        HISTORIANS AND BY MEN WHO FOUGHT OR SAW
+        THE GREAT CAMPAIGNS
+
+
+COMPILED AND EDITED BY
+
+FRANCIS J. REYNOLDS
+
+FORMER REFERENCE LIBRARIAN · LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
+
+AND
+
+ALLEN L. CHURCHILL
+
+        ASSOCIATE EDITOR "THE STORY OF THE GREAT WAR"
+        ASSOCIATE EDITOR "THE NEW INTERNATIONAL
+        ENCYCLOPEDIA"
+
+
+
+VOLUME I
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+        P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY
+        NEW YORK
+
+Copyright 1919
+
+BY P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+WORLD'S WAR EVENTS
+
+VOLUME I
+
+        BEGINNING WITH THE CAUSES OF THE WAR
+        AND THE INVASION OF BELGIUM IN
+        1914 AND CARRYING THE HISTORY
+        OF THE WAR TO
+        THE CLOSE OF
+        1915
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  ARTICLE                                        PAGE
+
+      I. WHAT CAUSED THE WAR                       7
+            _Baron Beyens_
+
+     II. THE DEFENSE OF LIÈGE                     41
+            _Charles Bronne_
+
+    III. THE GREAT RETREAT                        62
+            _Sir John French_
+
+     IV. THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE                  73
+            _Sir John French_
+
+      V. HOW THE FRENCH FOUGHT                    83
+            _French Official Account_
+
+     VI. THE RACE FOR THE CHANNEL                 96
+            _French Official Account_
+
+    VII. THE LAST DITCH IN BELGIUM               108
+            _Arno Dosch_
+
+   VIII. WHY TURKEY ENTERED THE WAR              125
+            _Roland G. Usher_
+
+     IX. THE FALKLAND SEA FIGHT                  142
+            _A. N. Hilditch_
+
+      X. CRUISE OF THE EMDEN                     176
+            _Captain Mücke_
+
+     XI. CAPTURE OF TSING-TAO                    198
+            _A. N. Hilditch_
+
+    XII. GALLIPOLI                               221
+            _A. John Gallishaw_
+
+   XIII. GAS: SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES             240
+            _Colonel E. D. Swinton_
+
+    XIV. THE CANADIANS AT YPRES                  248
+            _By the Canadian Record Officer_
+
+     XV. SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA                277
+            _Judicial Decision by Judge J. M. Mayer_
+
+    XVI. MOUNTAIN WARFARE                        313
+            _Howard C. Felton_
+
+   XVII. THE GREAT CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE OF 1915   322
+            _Official Account of the French Headquarters Staff_
+
+  XVIII. THE TRAGEDY OF EDITH CAVELL             348
+            _Brand Whitlock_
+
+    XIX. GALLIPOLI ABANDONED                     366
+            _General Sir Charles C. Monro_
+
+     XX. THE DEATH-SHIP IN THE SKY               375
+            _Perriton Maxwell_
+
+
+
+
+WHAT CAUSED THE WAR
+
+BARON BEYENS
+
+The National Review, June, 1916.
+
+
+I
+
+[Sidenote: Political designs of Francis Ferdinand.]
+
+The Archduke Francis Ferdinand will go down to posterity without having
+yielded up his secret. Great political designs have been ascribed to
+him, mainly on the strength of his friendship with William II. What do
+we really know about him? He was strong-willed and obstinate, very
+Clerical, very Austrian, disliking the Hungarians to such an extent that
+he kept their statesmen at arm's-length, and having no love for Italy.
+He has been credited with sympathies towards the Slav elements of the
+Empire; it has been asserted that he dreamt of setting up, in place of
+the dual monarchy, a "triune State," in which the third factor would
+have been made up for the most part of Slav provinces carved out of the
+Kingdom of St. Stephen. Immediately after he had been murdered, the
+_Vossische Zeitung_ refuted this theory with arguments which seemed to
+me thoroughly sound.
+
+The Archduke, said the Berlin newspaper, was too keen-witted not to see
+that he would thus be creating two rivals for Austria instead of one,
+and that the Serb populations would come within the orbit of Belgrade
+rather than of Vienna. Serbia would become the Piedmont of the Balkans;
+she would draw to herself the Slavs of the Danube valley by a process of
+crystallization similar to that which brought about Italian unity.
+
+[Sidenote: Army and Navy reorganized.]
+
+From year to year the Archduke had acquired more and more weight in the
+governance of the Empire, in proportion as his uncle's will grew weaker
+beneath the burden of advancing age. Thus he had succeeded in his
+efforts to provide Austria-Hungary with a new navy, the counterpart, on
+a more modest scale, of the German fleet, and to reorganize the
+effective army, here again taking Germany for his model. Among certain
+cliques, he was accused of not keeping enough in the background, of
+showing little tact or consideration in the manner of thrusting aside
+the phantom Emperor, who was gently gliding into the winter of the years
+at Schönbrunn amid the veneration of his subjects of every race.
+
+Another charge was that he appointed too many of his creatures to
+important civil and military posts.
+
+[Sidenote: Antagonism of Russia and Austria.]
+
+We may well believe that this prince, observing the gradual decay of the
+monarchy, tried to restore its vigour, and that his first thought was to
+hold with a firm grasp, even before assuming the Imperial crown, the
+cluster of nationalities, mutually hostile and always discontented, that
+go to make up the Dual Empire. So far as foreign relations are
+concerned, we may assume that he was bent on winning her a place in the
+first rank of Powers; that he wished, above all, to see her predominant
+all along the Danube and in the Balkans; that he even aimed at giving
+her the road to Salonika and the Levant, though it were at the price of
+a collision with Russia. This antagonism between the two neighbour
+Empires must have often been among the topics of his conversations with
+William II.
+
+The Archduke needed military glory, prestige won on the battle-field, in
+order to seat his consort firmly on the throne and make his children
+heirs to the Cæsars. He had been suspected, both in Austria and abroad,
+of not wishing to observe the family compact which he had signed at the
+time of his marriage with Countess Sophie Chotek. It was thought that he
+perhaps reserved the right to declare it null and void, in view of the
+constraint that had been put upon him. The successive honours that had
+drawn the Duchess of Hohenberg from the obscurity in which the
+morganatic wife of a German prince is usually wrapped, and had brought
+her near to the steps of the throne, showed clearly that her rise would
+not stop half-way.
+
+[Sidenote: Domestic life of the Archduke.]
+
+The Archduke, like William II himself, was reputed to be an exemplary
+father and husband. He was one of those princes who adore their own
+children, but, under the spur of political ambition, are very prone to
+send the children of others to the shambles. A fine theme for Socialist
+and Republican preachers to enlarge upon!
+
+I often met the heir to the Imperial crown, especially at Vienna in
+1910, where I had the honour of accompanying my Sovereign, and two years
+later at Munich, the Prince Regent's funeral.
+
+On each occasion this Hapsburg, with his heavy features, his scowling
+expression, and his rather corpulent figure (quite different from the
+slim build characteristic of his line), struck me as a singular type.
+His face was certainly not sympathetic, nor was his manner engaging. The
+Duchess of Hohenberg, whom, after having known her as a little girl when
+her father was Austrian Minister at Brussels, I found gracefully doing
+the honours in the Belvedere Palace, had retained in her high station
+the genial simplicity of the Chotek family. This probably did not
+prevent her from cherishing the loftiest ambitions for herself, and
+above all for her eldest son, and from coveting the glory of the double
+crown.
+
+
+II
+
+[Sidenote: Assassination of Francis Ferdinand.]
+
+The news that an assassin's hand had struck down the Archduke and his
+wife, inseparable even in death, burst upon Berlin on the afternoon of
+Sunday, June 28, like an unexpected thunderclap in the midst of a calm
+summer's day. I went over at once to the Austro-Hungarian Embassy, in
+order to express all the horror that I felt at this savage drama. Count
+Szögyen, the senior member of the diplomatic corps, was on the eve of
+resigning the post that he had held for twenty years, honoured by all
+his colleagues. It was whispered that his removal had been asked for by
+the Archduke, who was anxious to introduce young blood into the
+diplomatic service. I found the Ambassador quite overcome by the
+terrible news. He seemed stricken with grief at the thought of his aged
+Sovereign, who had already lost so many of his nearest and dearest, and
+of the Dual Empire, robbed of its most skillful pilot, and with no one
+to steer it now but an octogenarian leaning on a youth of twenty-six. M.
+Cambon had come to the Embassy at the same time, and we left together
+discussing the results, still impossible to foresee clearly, that this
+fatality might have for European affairs.
+
+[Sidenote: Serajevo tragedy a menace.]
+
+From the very next day the tone of the Berlin Press, in commenting on
+the Serajevo tragedy, was full of menace. It expected the Vienna Cabinet
+to send to Belgrade an immediate request for satisfaction, if Serbian
+subjects, as it was believed, were among those who had devised and
+carried out the plot. But how far would this satisfaction go, and in
+what form would it be demanded? There was the rub. The report, issued by
+the semi-official _Lokalanzeiger_, of a pressure exerted by the
+Austro-Hungarian Minister, with a view to making the Serbian Government
+institute proceedings against the anarchist societies of which the
+Archduke and his wife had been the victims, surprised no one, but was
+not confirmed. On the other hand, a softer breeze soon blew from Vienna
+and Budapest, and under its influence the excitement of the Berlin
+newspapers suddenly abated. An order seemed to have been issued: the
+rage and fluster of the public were to be allowed to cool down. The
+Austro-Hungarian Government, so we were informed by the news agencies,
+were quietly taking steps to prosecute the murderers. Count Berchtold,
+in speaking to the diplomatic corps at Vienna, and Count Tisza, in
+addressing Parliament at Budapest, used reassuring language, which
+raised hopes of a peaceful solution.
+
+[Sidenote: Opinion is moderate in Berlin.]
+
+The Wilhelmstrasse also expressed itself in very measured terms on the
+guarantees that would be demanded from Serbia. Herr Zimmermann, without
+knowing (so he said to me) what decision had been arrived at in Vienna,
+thought that no action would be taken in Belgrade until the
+Austro-Hungarian Government had collected the proofs of the complicity
+of Serbian subjects or societies in the planning of the Serajevo crime.
+He had made a similar statement to the Russian Ambassador, who had
+hastened to impart to him his fears for the peace of Europe, in the
+event of any attempt to coerce Serbia into proceeding against the secret
+societies, if they were accused of intrigues against the Austrian
+Government in Bosnia and Croatia. Herr Zimmermann declared to M.
+Sverbeeff that, in his opinion, no better advice could be given to the
+Serbian Government than this: that it should put a stop to the nefarious
+work of these societies and punish the accomplices of the Archduke's
+assassins. The moderation of this remark fairly reflected the general
+state of public opinion in Berlin.
+
+[Sidenote: Kaiser William's opinion.]
+
+But what of the Emperor, the Archduke's personal friend? Would not his
+grief and anger find voice in ringing tones? All eyes were turned
+towards Kiel, where the fatal news reached William II while he was
+taking part in a yacht race on board his own clipper. He turned pale,
+and was heard to murmur: "So my work of the past twenty-five years will
+have to be started all over again!" Enigmatic words which may be
+interpreted in various ways! To the British Ambassador, who was also at
+Kiel, with the British squadron returning from the Baltic, he unburdened
+himself in more explicit fashion: "Es ist ein Verbrechen gegen das
+Deutschtum" ("It is a crime against Germanity"). By this he probably
+meant that Germany, feeling her own interests assailed by the Serajevo
+crime, would make common cause with Austria to exact a full retribution.
+With more self-control than usual, however, he abstained from all
+further public utterances on the subject.
+
+It had been announced that he would go to Vienna to attend the
+Archduke's funeral. What were the motives that prevented him from
+offering to the dead man this last token of a friendship which, at first
+merely political, had become genuine and even tender, with a touch of
+patronage characteristic of the Emperor?
+
+[Sidenote: William II not at the funeral.]
+
+He excused himself on the ground of some slight ailment. The truth is,
+no doubt, that he was disgusted with the wretched stickling for
+etiquette shown by the Grand Chamberlain of the Viennese Court, the
+Prince di Montenuovo, who refused to celebrate with fitting splendour
+the obsequies of the late heir apparent and his morganatic wife. Under
+these circumstances, Vienna could have no desire either for the presence
+of William II or for his criticisms.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser goes to Norway.]
+
+At the beginning of July, the Emperor left for his accustomed cruise
+along the Norwegian coast, and in Berlin we breathed more freely. If he
+could withdraw so easily from the centre of things, it was a sign that
+the storm-clouds that had nearly burst over Serbia were also passing off
+from the Danube valley. Such, I fancy, was the view taken by the British
+Government, for its Ambassador, who was already away on leave, was not
+sent back to Berlin. Other diplomats, among them the Russian Ambassador,
+took their annual holiday as usual. But the Emperor, in the remote
+fiords of Norway, was all the time posted up in the secret designs of
+the Vienna Cabinet. The approaching ultimatum to Serbia was telegraphed
+to him direct by his Ambassador in Vienna, Herr von Tschirsky, a very
+active worker, who strenuously advocated a policy of hostility towards
+Russia, and from the first moment had wanted war.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser decides.]
+
+We may assume that the Emperor, if his mind was not already made up at
+Kiel, came to a decision during his Norwegian cruise. His departure for
+the north had been merely a snare, a device for throwing Europe and the
+Triple Entente off the scent, and for lulling them into a false
+security. While the world imagined that he was merely seeking to soothe
+his nerves and recruit his strength with the salt sea breezes, he was
+biding his time for a dramatic reappearance on the stage of events,
+allowing the introductory scenes to be played in his absence.
+
+
+III
+
+During the first half of July, my colleagues and I at Berlin did not
+live in a fool's paradise. As the deceptive calm caused by Vienna's
+silence was prolonged, a latent, ill-defined uneasiness took hold of us
+more and more. Yet we were far from anticipating that in the space of a
+few days we should be driven into the midst of a diplomatic maelstrom,
+in which, after a week of intense anguish, we should look on, mute and
+helpless, at the shipwreck of European peace and of all our hopes.
+
+[Sidenote: Austria's ultimatum to Serbia.]
+
+The ultimatum, sent in the form of a Note by Baron von Giesl to the
+Serbian Cabinet on July 23, was not disclosed by the Berlin newspapers
+until the following day, in their morning editions. This bolt from the
+blue proved more alarming than anything we had dared to imagine. The
+shock was so unexpected that certain journals, losing their composure,
+seemed to regard the Vienna Cabinet's arraignment as having overshot the
+mark. "Austria-Hungary," said the _Vossische Zeitung_, "will have to
+justify the grave charges that she makes against the Serbian Government
+and people by publishing the results of the preliminary investigations
+at Serajevo."
+
+[Sidenote: Russia would defend Serbia.]
+
+My own conviction, shared by several of my colleagues, was that the
+Austrian and Hungarian statesmen could not have brought themselves to
+risk such a blow at the Balkan kingdom, without having consulted their
+colleagues at Berlin and ascertained that the Emperor William would
+sanction the step. His horror of regicides and his keen sense of
+dynastic brotherhood might explain why he left his ally a free hand, in
+spite of the danger of provoking a European conflict. That danger was
+only too real. Not for one moment did I suppose that Russia would prove
+so careless of Serbia's fate as to put up with this daring assault on
+the latter's sovereignty and independence; that the St. Petersburg
+Cabinet would renounce the principle of "The Balkans for the Balkan
+nations," proclaimed to the Duma two months before by M. Sazonoff, in
+short, that the Russian people would disown the ancient ties of blood
+that united it with the Slav communities of the Balkan peninsula.
+
+The pessimistic feeling of the diplomatic corps was increased on the
+following day, the 25th, by the language addressed to it at the
+Wilhelmstrasse. Herren von Jagow and Zimmermann said that they had not
+known beforehand the contents of the Austrian Note. This was a mere
+quibble: they had not known its actual wording, I grant, but they had
+certainly been apprised of its tenor. They hastened to add, by the way,
+that the Imperial Government approved of its ally's conduct, and did not
+consider the tone of its communication unduly harsh. The Berlin Press,
+still with the exception of the Socialist organs, had recovered from its
+astonishment of the day before; it joined in the chorus of the Vienna
+and Budapest newspapers, from which it gave extracts, and faced the
+prospect of a war with perfect calm, while expressing the hope that it
+would remain localized.
+
+[Sidenote: No signs of peaceful settlement.]
+
+In comparison with the attitude of the German Government and Press, the
+signs pointing to a peaceful settlement seemed faint indeed. They all
+came from outside Germany, from the impressions recorded in foreign
+telegrams. Public opinion in Europe could not grasp the need for such
+hectoring methods of obtaining satisfaction, when there was no case for
+refusing discussion on the normal diplomatic lines. It seemed impossible
+that Count Berchtold should ignore the general movement of reproof which
+appeared spontaneously everywhere but in Berlin against his ultimatum. A
+moderate claim would have seemed just; but Serbia could not be asked to
+accept a demand for so heavy an atonement, couched in a form of such
+unexampled brutality.
+
+[Sidenote: Key to the situation in Berlin.]
+
+The more I reflected on the ghastly situation created by the collusion
+of German and Austro-Hungarian diplomacy, the more certain did I feel
+that the key to that situation (as M. Sazonoff said later) lay in
+Berlin, and that there was no need to look further for the solution of
+the problem. If, however, the choice between peace and war was left to
+the discretion of the Emperor William, whose influence over his ally in
+Vienna had always overruled that of others, then, considering what I
+knew as to His Majesty's personal inclinations and the plans of the
+General Staff, the upshot of it all was no longer in doubt, and no hope
+of a peaceful arrangement could any longer be entertained. I
+communicated this dismal forecast to the French Ambassador, whom I went
+to see on the evening of the 25th. Like myself, M. Cambon laboured under
+no illusions. That very night I wrote to my Government, in order to
+acquaint it with my fears and urge it to be on its guard. This report,
+dated the 26th, I entrusted, as a measure of precaution, to one of my
+secretaries, who at once left for Brussels. Early next morning, my
+dispatch was in the hands of the Belgian Foreign Minister.
+
+[Sidenote: War aimed at Russia and France.]
+
+The ultimatum to Serbia [it ran] is a blow contrived by Vienna and
+Berlin, or rather, contrived here and carried out at Vienna. Requital
+for the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent and the Pan-Serb
+propaganda serves as a stalking-horse. The real aim, apart from the
+crushing of Serbia and the stifling of Jugo-Slav aspirations, is to deal
+a deadly thrust at Russia and France, with the hope that England will
+stand aside from the struggle. In order to vindicate this theory, I beg
+to remind you of the view prevailing in the German General Staff,
+namely, that a war with France and Russia is unavoidable and close at
+hand--a view which the Emperor has been induced to share. This war,
+eagerly desired by the military and Pan-German party, might be
+undertaken to-day under conditions extremely favourable for Germany,
+conditions that are not likely to arise again for some time to come.
+
+After a summary of the situation and of the problems that it raised, my
+report concluded as follows:
+
+        We, too, have to ask ourselves these harassing
+        questions, and keep ourselves ready for the
+        worst; for the European conflict that has
+        always been talked about, with the hope that it
+        would never break out, is to-day becoming a
+        grim reality.
+
+[Sidenote: Dangers for Belgium.]
+
+        The worst contingencies that occurred to me, as
+        a Belgian, were the violation of a part of our
+        territory and the duty that might fall upon our
+        soldiers of barring the way to the
+        belligerents. In view of the vast area over
+        which a war between France and Germany would be
+        fought, dared we hope that Belgium would be
+        safe from any attack by the German army, from
+        any attempt to use her strategic routes for
+        offensive purposes? I could not bring myself to
+        believe that she would be so fortunate. But
+        between such tentatives and a thoroughgoing
+        invasion of my country, plotted a long time in
+        advance and carried out before the real
+        operations of the war had begun, there was a
+        wide gulf, a gulf that I never thought the
+        Imperial Government capable of leaping over
+        with a light heart, because of the European
+        complications which so reckless a disdain for
+        treaties would not fail to involve.
+
+
+IV
+
+Until the end of the crisis, the idea of a preventive war continually
+recurred to my mind. Other heads of legations, however, while sharing
+my anxieties on this point, did not agree with me as to the
+premeditation of which I accused the Emperor and the military chiefs. I
+was not content with putting my questions to the French Ambassador,
+whose unerring judgment always carried great weight with me. I also
+visited his Italian colleague, an astute diplomat, thoroughly versed in
+German statecraft. He had always put me in mind of those dexterous
+agents employed by the sixteenth-century Italian republics.
+
+[Sidenote: Signor Bollati's views.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germany and Austria confident.]
+
+According to Signor Bollati, the German Government, agreeing in
+principle with the Vienna Cabinet as to the necessity for chastising
+Serbia, had not known beforehand the terms of the Austrian Note, the
+violence of which was unprecedented in the language of Chancelleries.
+Vienna, as well as Berlin, was convinced that Russia, in spite of the
+official assurances that had recently passed between the Tsar and M.
+Poincaré regarding the complete readiness of the French and Russian
+armies, was not in a position to enter on a European war, and that she
+would not dare to embark upon so hazardous an adventure. Internal
+troubles, revolutionary intrigues, incomplete armaments, inadequate
+means of communication--all these reasons would compel the Russian
+Government to be an impotent spectator of Serbia's undoing. The same
+confidence reigned in the German and Austrian capitals as regards, not
+the French army, but the spirit prevailing among Government circles in
+Paris.
+
+At present [added the Ambassador] feeling runs so high in Vienna that
+all calm reflection goes by the board. Moreover, in seeking to
+annihilate Serbia's military power, the Austro-Hungarian Cabinet is
+pursuing a policy of personal revenge. It cannot realize the mistakes
+that it made during the Balkan War, or remain satisfied with the
+partial successes then gained with our aid--successes that, whatever
+judgment may be passed upon them, were certainly diplomatic victories.
+All that Count Berchtold sees to-day is Serbia's insolence and the
+criticism he has had to endure even in Austria. By this bold stroke,
+very unexpected from a man of his stamp, he hopes to turn the criticism
+into applause.
+
+The Ambassador held that Berlin had false ideas as to the course that
+the Tsar's Government would adopt. The latter would find itself forced
+into drawing the sword, in order to maintain its prestige in the Slav
+world. Its inaction, in face of Austria's entry into the field, would be
+equivalent to suicide. Signor Bollati also gave me to understand that a
+widespread conflict would not be popular in Italy. The Italian people
+had no concern with the overthrow of the Russian power, which was
+Austria's enemy; it wished to devote all its attention to other
+problems, more absorbing from its own point of view.
+
+[Sidenote: Vienna welcomes war on Serbia.]
+
+The blindness of the Austrian Cabinet with regard to Russian
+intervention has been proved by the correspondence, since published, of
+the French and British representatives at Vienna. The Viennese populace
+was beside itself with joy at the announcement of an expedition against
+Serbia, which, it felt sure, would be a mere military parade. Not for a
+single night were Count Berchtold's slumbers disturbed by the vision of
+the Russian peril. He is, indeed, at all times a buoyant soul, who can
+happily mingle the distractions of a life of pleasure with the heavy
+responsibilities of power. His unvarying confidence was shared by the
+German Ambassador, his most trusted mentor. We can hardly suppose that
+the Austrian Minister shut his eyes altogether to the possibility of a
+struggle with the Slav world. Having Germany as his partner, however,
+he determined, with the self-possession of a fearless gambler, to
+proceed with the game.
+
+At Berlin, the theory that Russia was incapable of facing a conflict
+reigned supreme, not only in the official world and in society, but
+among all the manufacturers who made a specialty of war material.
+
+[Sidenote: Berlin believes Russia weak.]
+
+Herr Krupp von Bohlen, who was more entitled to give an opinion than any
+other of this class, declared on July 28 that the Russian artillery was
+neither efficient nor complete, while that of the German army had never
+before been so superior to all its rivals. It would be madness on
+Russia's part, he inferred, to take the field against Germany under
+these conditions.
+
+
+V
+
+The foreign diplomatic corps was kept in more or less profound ignorance
+as to the _pourparlers_ carried on since the 24th by the Imperial
+Foreign Office with the Triple Entente Cabinets. Nevertheless, to the
+diplomats who were continually going over to the Wilhelmstrasse for
+news, the crisis was set forth in a light very favourable to Austria and
+Germany, in order to influence the views of the Governments which they
+represented. Herr von Stumm, the departmental head of the political
+branch, in a brief interview that I had with him on the 26th, summed up
+his exposition in these words: "Everything depends on Russia." I should
+rather have thought that everything depended on Austria, and on the way
+in which she would carry out her threats against Serbia.
+
+On the following day I was received by Herr Zimmermann, who adopted the
+same line of argument, following it in all its bearings from the origin
+of the dispute.
+
+It was not at our prompting [he said], or in accordance with our advice,
+that Austria took the action that you know of towards the Belgrade
+Cabinet. The answer was unsatisfactory, and to-day Austria is
+mobilizing. She can no longer draw back without risking a collapse at
+home as well as a loss of influence abroad. It is now a question of life
+and death to her. She must put a stop to the unscrupulous propaganda
+which, by raising revolt among the Slav provinces of the Danube valley,
+is leading towards her internal disintegration. Finally, she must exact
+a signal revenge for the assassination of the Archduke. For all these
+reasons Serbia is to receive, by means of a military expedition, a stern
+and salutary lesson. An Austro-Serbian War is, therefore, impossible to
+avoid.
+
+[Sidenote: Attempts to limit conflict.]
+
+England has asked us to join with her, France, and Italy, in order to
+prevent the conflict from spreading and a war from breaking out between
+Austria and Russia. Our answer was that we should be only too glad to
+help in limiting the area of the conflagration, by speaking in a pacific
+sense to Vienna and St. Petersburg; but that we could not use our
+influence with Austria to restrain her from inflicting an exemplary
+punishment on Serbia. We have promised to help and support our Austrian
+allies, if any other nation should try to hamper them in this task. We
+shall keep that promise.
+
+If Russia mobilizes her army, we shall at once mobilize ours, and then
+there will be a general war, a war that will set ablaze all Central
+Europe and even the Balkan peninsula, for the Rumanians, Greeks,
+Bulgarians, and Turks will not be able to resist the temptation to come
+in.
+
+As I remarked yesterday to M. Boghitchevitch [the former Serbian Chargé
+d'Affaires, who was on a flying visit to Berlin, where he had been
+greatly appreciated during the Balkan War], the best advice I can give
+Serbia is that she should make no more than a show of resistance to
+Austria, and should come to terms as soon as possible, by accepting all
+the conditions of the Vienna Cabinet. I added, in speaking to him, that
+if a universal war broke out and went in favor of the Triplice, Serbia
+would probably cease to exist as a nation; she would be wiped off the
+map of Europe. I still hope, though, that such a widespread conflict may
+be avoided, and that we shall succeed in inducing Russia not to
+intervene on Serbia's behalf. Remember that Austria is determined to
+respect Serbia's integrity, once she has obtained satisfaction.
+
+I pointed out to the Under-Secretary that the Belgrade Cabinet's reply,
+according to some of my colleagues who had read it, was, apart from a
+few unimportant restrictions, an unqualified surrender to Austria's
+demands. Herr Zimmermann said that he had no knowledge of this reply (it
+had been handed in two days before to the Austrian Minister at
+Belgrade!) and that, in any case, there was no longer any possibility of
+preventing an Austro-Hungarian military demonstration.
+
+[Sidenote: Serbian reply.]
+
+The Serbian document was not published by the Berlin newspapers until
+the 29th. On the previous day they all reproduced a telegram from
+Vienna, stating that this apparent submission was altogether inadequate.
+The prompt concessions made by the Pasitch Cabinet, concessions that had
+not been anticipated abroad, failed to impress Germany. She persisted in
+seeing only with Austria's eyes.
+
+[Sidenote: Zimmermann's arguments.]
+
+Herr Zimmermann's arguments held solely on the hypothesis that, in the
+action brought by Austria against Serbia, no Power had the right to
+come forward as counsel for the defendant, or to interfere in the trial
+at all. This claim amounted to depriving Russia of her historic rôle in
+the Balkans. Carried to its logical conclusion, the theory meant
+condemning unheard every small State that should be unfortunate enough
+to have a dispute with a great Power. According to the principles of the
+Berlin Cabinet, the great Power should be allowed, without let or
+hindrance, to proceed to the execution of its weak opponent. England,
+therefore, would have had no right to succor Belgium when the latter was
+invaded by Germany, any more than Russia had a right to protect Serbia
+from the Austrian menace.
+
+Russia, it was asserted at the Wilhelmstrasse, ought to be satisfied
+with the assurance that Austria would not impair the territorial
+integrity of Serbia or mar her future existence as an independent State.
+What a hollow mockery such a promise would seem, when the whole country
+had been ravaged by fire and sword! Surely it was decreed that, after
+this "exemplary punishment," Serbia should become the lowly vassal of
+her redoubtable neighbour, living a life that was no life, cowed by the
+jealous eye of the Austrian Minister--really the Austrian Viceroy--at
+Belgrade. Had not Count Mensdorff declared to Sir Edward Grey that
+before the Balkan War Serbia was regarded as gravitating towards the
+Dual Monarchy's sphere of influence? A return to the past, to the tame
+deference of King Milan, was the least that Austria would exact.
+
+[Sidenote: German opinion is misled.]
+
+The version given out by the Imperial Chancellery, besides being
+intended to enlighten foreign Governments, had a further end in view.
+Repeated _ad nauseam_ by the Press, it aimed at misleading German
+public opinion. From the very opening of the crisis, Herr von
+Bethmann-Hollweg and his colleagues strove, with all the ingenuity at
+their command, to hoodwink their countrymen, to shuffle the cards, to
+throw beforehand on Russia, in case the situation should grow worse, the
+odium of provocation and the blame for the disaster, to represent that
+Power as meddling with a police inquiry that did not concern her in the
+least. This cunning man[oe]uvre resulted in making all Germany, without
+distinction of class or party, respond to her Emperor's call at the
+desired moment, since she was persuaded (as I have explained in a
+previous chapter) that she was the object of a premeditated attack by
+Tsarism.
+
+
+VI
+
+[Sidenote: German diplomacy.]
+
+The game of German diplomacy during these first days of the crisis, July
+24 to 28, has already been revealed. At first inclined to bludgeon, it
+soon came to take things easily, even affecting a certain optimism, and
+by its passive resistance bringing to naught all the efforts and all the
+proposals of the London, Paris, and St. Petersburg Cabinets. To gain
+time, to lengthen out negotiations, seems to have been the task imposed
+upon Austria-Hungary's accomplice in order to promote rapid action by
+the Dual Monarchy, and to face the Triple Entente with irrevocable
+deeds, namely the occupation of Belgrade and the surrender of the
+Serbians. But things did not go as Berlin and Vienna had hoped, and the
+determined front shown by Russia, who in answer to the partial
+mobilization of Austria mobilized her army in four southern districts,
+gave food for reflection to the tacticians of the Wilhelmstrasse. Their
+language and their frame of mind grew gentler to a singular degree on
+the fifth day, July 28. It may be recalled, in passing, that in 1913,
+during the Balkan hostilities, Austria and Russia had likewise proceeded
+to partial mobilizations; yet these steps had not made them come to
+blows or even brought them to the verge of hostilities.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser returns to Berlin.]
+
+On the evening of the 26th the Emperor's return was announced in Berlin.
+Why did he come back so suddenly? I think I am justified in saying that,
+at this news, the general feeling among the actors and spectators of the
+drama was one of grave anxiety. Our hearts were heavy within us; we had
+a foreboding that the decisive moment was drawing near. It was the same
+at the Wilhelmstrasse. To the British Chargé d'Affaires Herr von
+Zimmermann frankly confessed his regret at this move, on which William
+II had decided without consulting any one.
+
+Nevertheless, our fears at first seemed to be unwarranted. The 28th was
+marked by a notable loosening of Germany's stiff-necked attitude. The
+British Ambassador, who had returned to Berlin on the previous day, was
+summoned in the evening by the Chancellor. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg,
+while rejecting the conference proposed by Sir Edward Grey, promised to
+use his good offices to induce Russia and Austria to discuss the
+position in an amicable fashion. "A war between the Great Powers must be
+averted," were his closing words.
+
+It is highly probable that the Chancellor at that time sincerely wanted
+to keep the peace, and his first efforts, when he saw the danger coming
+nearer and nearer, succeeded in curbing the Emperor's impatience for
+forty-eight hours. The telegram sent by William II to the Tsar on the
+evening of the 28th is friendly, almost reassuring: "Bearing in mind
+the cordial friendship that has united us two closely for a long time
+past, I am using all my influence to make Austria arrive at a genuine
+and satisfactory understanding with Russia."
+
+How are we to explain, then, the abrupt change of tack that occurred the
+following day at Berlin, or rather, at Potsdam, and the peculiar
+language addressed by the Chancellor to Sir Edward Goschen on the
+evening of the 29th? In that nocturnal scene there was no longer any
+question of Austria's demands on Serbia, or even of the possibility of
+an Austro-Russian war. The centre of gravity was suddenly shifted, and
+at a single stride the danger passed from the southeast of Europe to the
+northwest.
+
+[Sidenote: Will England be neutral?]
+
+What is it that Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg wants to know at once, as he
+comes straight from the council held at Potsdam under the presidency of
+the Emperor? Whether Great Britain would consent to remain neutral in a
+European war, provided that Germany agreed to respect the territorial
+integrity of France. "And what of the French colonies?" asks the
+Ambassador with great presence of mind. The Chancellor can make no
+promise on this point, but he unhesitatingly declares that Germany will
+respect the integrity and neutrality of Holland. As for Belgium,
+France's action will determine what operations Germany may be forced to
+enter upon in that country; but when the war is over, Belgium will lose
+no territory, unless she ranges herself on the side of Germany's foes.
+
+[Sidenote: A bargain proposed.]
+
+Such was the shameful bargain proposed to England, at a time when none
+of the negotiators had dared to speak in plain terms of a European war
+or even to offer a glimpse of that terrifying vision. This interview was
+the immediate result of the decisive step taken by German diplomacy on
+the same day at St. Petersburg. The step in question has been made known
+to us through the diplomatic documents which have been printed by the
+orders of the belligerent Governments, and all of which concur in their
+account of this painful episode. Twice on that day did M. Sazonoff
+receive a visit from the German Ambassador, who came to make a demand
+wrapped up in threats.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany's demands on Russia.]
+
+Count de Pourtalès insisted on Russia contenting herself with the
+promise, guaranteed by Germany, that Austria-Hungary would not impair
+the integrity of Serbia. M. Sazonoff refused to countenance the war on
+this condition. Serbia, he felt, would become a vassal of Austria, and a
+revolution would break out in Russia. Count de Pourtalès then backed his
+request with the warning that, unless Russia desisted from her military
+preparations, Germany would mobilize. A German mobilization, he said,
+would mean war. The results of the second interview, which took place at
+two o'clock in the morning, were as negative as those of the first,
+notwithstanding a last effort, a final suggestion by M. Sazonoff to
+stave off the crisis. His giving in to Germany's brutal dictation would
+have been an avowal that Russia was impotent.
+
+To the Emperor William, who had resumed the conduct of affairs since the
+morning of the 27th--the Emperor William, itching to cut the knot,
+driven on by his Staff and his generals--to him and no other must we
+trace the responsibility for this insolent move which made war
+inevitable. "The heads of the army insisted," was all that Herr von
+Jagow would vouchsafe a little later to M. Cambon by way of explanation.
+The Chancellor, and with him the Foreign Secretary and Under-Secretary,
+associated themselves with these hazardous tactics, from sheer inability
+to secure the adoption of less hasty and violent methods. If they
+believed that this summary breaking off of negotiations would meet with
+success, they were as grievously mistaken as Count de Pourtalès, whose
+reports utterly misled them as to the sacrifices that Russia was
+prepared to make for Serbia.
+
+At all events this upright man, when he realized the appalling effects
+of his blunder, gave free play to his emotion. Such sensitiveness is
+rare indeed in a German, and redounds entirely to his credit.
+
+[Sidenote: Russian military development.]
+
+[Sidenote: French military situation.]
+
+But the Emperor and his council of generals--what was their state of
+soul at this critical moment? Perhaps this riddle will never be wholly
+solved. From the military point of view, which in their eyes claimed
+first attention, they must have rejoiced at M. Sazonoff's answer, for
+never again would they find such a golden opportunity for vanquishing
+Russia and making an end of her rivalry. In 1917 the reorganization of
+her army would have been complete, her artillery would have been at full
+strength, and a new network of strategic railways would have enabled her
+to let loose upon the two Germanic empires a vast flood of fighting men
+drawn from the inexhaustible reservoir of her population. The struggle
+with the colossus of the North, despite the vaunted technical
+superiority of the German army, would in all likelihood have ended in
+the triumph of overwhelming might. In the France of 1917, again, the
+three years' term of service would have begun to produce its full
+results, and her first-line troops would have been both more numerous
+and better trained than at present.
+
+On the other hand, William II could cherish no false hopes as to the
+consequences of this second pressure that he was bringing to bear on
+St. Petersburg. Had it succeeded in 1914 as in 1909, the encounter
+between Germany and the great Slav Empire would only have been put off
+to a later day, instead of being finally shelved. How could the Tsar or
+the Russian people have forgiven the Kaiser for humbling them once more?
+If they had pocketed the affront in silence, it would only have been in
+order to bide their time for revenge, and they would have chosen the
+moment when Russia, in possession of all her resources, could have
+entered upon the struggle with every chance of winning.
+
+[Sidenote: William II and Russia.]
+
+Here an objection may be raised. The German Emperor, some may hold,
+fancying that the weight of his sword in the scale would induce the Tsar
+to shrink from action, had foreseen the anger of the Slav nation at its
+sovereign's timorous scruples, and looked forward to revolutionary
+outbreaks which would cripple the Government for years to come and make
+it unable to think of war, if indeed they did not sweep the Romanoffs
+from the throne. I would answer that this Machiavellian scheme could
+never have entered the head of such a ruler as William II, with his deep
+sense of monarchial solidarity, and his instinctive horror of anarchist
+outrages and of revolution.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser eager to act.]
+
+No: the Emperor, together with the military authorities whose advice he
+took, wished to profit by a juncture which he had awaited with longing,
+and which fickle Fortune might never again offer to his ambition.
+Everything proves it, down to his feverish haste, as soon as M.
+Sazonoff's reply was conveyed to him, to learn the intentions of
+England, and to suggest, on that very day, a bargain that might purchase
+her neutrality. This is why Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg received orders to
+summon the British Ambassador on the night of the 29th. The Emperor
+could not wait until the following morning, so eager was he to act. Is
+this impatience the mark of one who was the victim of a concerted
+surprise? If he had not wanted war, would he not have tried to resume
+negotiations with Russia on a basis more in keeping with her dignity as
+a Great Power, however heavy a blow it was to his own pride that he had
+failed to intimidate her?
+
+
+VII
+
+The abortive efforts to overawe St. Petersburg and the offers made to
+the British Ambassador, as if Great Britain's inaction could be sold to
+the highest bidder, brought results that were not hard to foresee.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Edward Grey's telegram.]
+
+In London, Sir Edward Grey's indignation found immediate vent in the
+following passage of his telegram of July 30 to Sir Edward Goschen: "It
+would be a disgrace for us to make this bargain with Germany at the
+expense of France--a disgrace from which the good name of this country
+would never recover. The Chancellor also in effect asks us to bargain
+away whatever obligation or interest we have as regards the neutrality
+of Belgium. We could not entertain that bargain either."
+
+Through the brazen overtures of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, however, the
+British Cabinet henceforth came to occupy itself, before all things,
+with the fate allotted to our country by the Imperial Government in the
+war that it was preparing. In order to tear off the mask from German
+statesmanship, the surest method was to ask it a straightforward
+question. On July 31, Sir Edward Grey, following the example of the
+Gladstone Ministry of 1870, inquired both of Germany and France whether
+they would respect the neutrality of Belgium. At the same time he gave
+Belgium to understand that Britain counted on her doing her utmost to
+maintain her neutrality.
+
+[Sidenote: Neutrality of Belgium.]
+
+The answer of the Republican Government was frank and unhesitating. It
+was resolved to respect Belgian neutrality, and would only act otherwise
+if the violation of that neutrality by some other Power forced it to do
+so in self-defence.
+
+The Belgian Government, for its part, hastened to assure the British
+Minister at Brussels of its determination to resist with might and main
+should its territory be invaded.
+
+At Berlin, however, the Foreign Secretary eluded Sir Edward Goschen's
+questions. He said that he must consult the Emperor and the Chancellor.
+In his opinion, any answer would entail the risk, in the event of war,
+of partly divulging the plan of campaign. It seemed doubtful to him,
+therefore, whether he would be able to give a reply. This way of
+speaking was perfectly clear in its ambiguity. It did not puzzle Sir
+Edward Grey for a moment. On the following day he declared to the German
+Ambassador that the reply of the German Government was a matter of very
+great regret. Belgian neutrality, he pointed out, was highly important
+in British eyes, and if Belgium was attacked, it would be difficult to
+restrain public feeling in his country.
+
+On the same day, August 1, in accordance with instructions from my
+Government, I read to the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (at the
+same time giving him a copy) a dispatch drafted beforehand and addressed
+to the Belgian Ministers attached to the Powers that had guaranteed our
+neutrality. This dispatch affirmed that Belgium, having observed, with
+scrupulous fidelity, the duties imposed on her as a neutral State by the
+treaties of April 19, 1839, would manifest an unshaken purpose in
+fulfilling them; and that she had every hope, since the friendly
+intentions of the Powers towards her had been so often professed, of
+seeing her territory secure from all assault, if hostilities should
+arise near her frontiers. The Belgian Government added that it had
+nevertheless taken all the necessary steps for maintaining its
+neutrality, but that, in so doing, it had not been actuated by a desire
+to take part in an armed struggle among the Powers, or by a feeling of
+distrust towards any one of them.
+
+Herr Zimmermann listened without a word of comment to my reading of this
+dispatch, which expressed the loyal confidence of my Government in
+Germany's goodwill. He merely took note of my communication. His silence
+did not surprise me, for I had just learnt of Herr von Jagow's evasive
+reply to the British Government concerning Belgium; but it bore out all
+my misgivings. His constrained smile, by the way, told me quite as much
+as his refusal to speak.
+
+[Sidenote: Russia and Germany hasten preparations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Austria mobilizes.]
+
+From the 30th, Russia and Germany--as an inevitable sequel to the
+conversations of the 29th--went forward actively with their military
+preparations. What was the exact nature of these preludes to the German
+mobilization? It was impossible to gain any precise notion at Berlin.
+The capital was rife with various rumors that augured ill for the
+future. We heard tell of regiments moving from the northern provinces
+towards the Rhine. We learnt that reservists had been instructed to keep
+themselves in readiness for marching orders. At the same time, postal
+communication with Belgium and France had been cut off. At the
+Wilhelmstrasse, the position was described to me as follows: "Austria
+will reply to Russia's partial mobilization with a general mobilization
+of her army. It is to be feared that Russia will then mobilize her
+entire forces, which will compel Germany to do the same." As it turned
+out, a general mobilization was indeed proclaimed in Austria on the
+night of the 30th.
+
+Nevertheless, the peace _pourparlers_ went on between Vienna and St.
+Petersburg on the 30th and 31st, although on the latter date Russia, as
+Berlin expected, in answer both to the Austrian and the German
+preparations, had mobilized her entire forces. Even on the 31st these
+discussions seemed to have some chance of attaining their object.
+Austria was now more accurately gauging the peril into which her own
+blind self-confidence and the counsels of her ally were leading her, and
+was pausing on the brink of the abyss. The Vienna Cabinet even consented
+to talk over the gist of its Note to Serbia, and M. Sazonoff at once
+sent an encouraging reply.
+
+It was desirable, he stated, that representatives of all the Great
+Powers should confer in London under the direction of the British
+Government.
+
+Was a faint glimmer of peace, after all, dawning above the horizon?
+Would an understanding be reached, at the eleventh hour, among the only
+States really concerned with the Serbian question? We had reckoned
+without our host. The German Emperor willed otherwise. Suddenly, at the
+instance of the General Staff, and after a meeting of the Federal
+Council, as prescribed by the constitution, he issued the decree of
+_Kriegsgefahrzustand_ (Imminence-of-War). This is the first phase of a
+general mobilization--a sort of martial law, substituting the military
+for the civil authorities as regards the public services (means of
+communication, post, telegraphs, and telephones).
+
+This momentous decision was revealed to us on the 31st by a special
+edition of the _Berliner Lokalanzeiger_, distributed at every street
+corner. The announcement ran as follows:
+
+        RUSSIA WANTS WAR!
+
+        "From official sources we have just received
+        (at 2 P.M.) the following report, pregnant with
+        consequences:
+
+        "'The German Ambassador at St. Petersburg sends
+        us word to-day that a general mobilization of
+        the Russian Army and Navy had previously been
+        ordered. That is why His Majesty the Emperor
+        William has decreed an Imminence-of-War. His
+        Majesty will take up his residence in Berlin
+        to-day.'
+
+        "Imminence-of-War is the immediate prelude to a
+        general mobilization, in answer to the menace
+        that already hangs over Germany to-day, owing
+        to the step taken by the Tsar."
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser's ultimatum to Russia.]
+
+As a drowning man catches at a straw, those who in Berlin saw
+themselves, with horror, faced by an impending catastrophe, clutched at
+a final hope. The German general mobilization had not yet been ordered.
+Who knew whether, at the last moment, some happy inspiration from the
+British Cabinet, that most stalwart champion of peace, might cause the
+weapons to drop from the hands that were about to wield them? Once more,
+however, the Emperor, by his swift moves, shattered this fond illusion.
+On the 31st, at seven o'clock in the evening, he dispatched to the
+Russian Government a summons to demobilize both on its Austrian and on
+its German frontiers. An interval of twelve hours was given for a reply.
+
+It was obvious that Russia, who had refused two days before to cease
+from her military preparations, would not accept the German ultimatum,
+worded as it was in so dictatorial a form and rendered still more
+insulting by the briefness of the interval granted. As, however, no
+answer had come from St. Petersburg by the afternoon of August 1st,
+Herren von Jagow and Zimmermann (so the latter informed me) rushed to
+the Chancellor and the Emperor, in order to request that the decree for
+a general mobilization might at least be held over until the following
+day. They supported their plea by urging that the telegraphic
+communication with St. Petersburg had presumably been cut, and that this
+would explain the silence of the Tsar. Perhaps they still hoped against
+hope for a conciliatory proposal from Russia. This was the last flicker
+of their dying pacifism, or the last awakening of their conscience.
+Their efforts could make no headway against the stubborn opposition of
+the War Minister and the army chiefs, who represented to the Emperor the
+dangers of a twenty-four hours' delay.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany mobilizes.]
+
+The order for a mobilization of the army and navy was signed at five
+o'clock in the afternoon and was at once given out to the public by a
+special edition of the _Lokalanzeiger_. The mobilization was to begin on
+August 2nd. On the 1st, at ten minutes past seven in the evening,
+Germany's declaration of war was forwarded to Russia.
+
+[Sidenote: Pretexts given in Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Heroism of France.]
+
+As all the world knows, the Berlin Cabinet had to resort to wild
+pretexts, such as the committing of acts of hostility (so the military
+authorities alleged) by French aviators on Imperial soil, in order to
+find motives, two days later, for its declaration of war on France.
+Although Germany tried to lay the blame for the catastrophe at Russia's
+door, it was in reality her western neighbour that she wished to attack
+and annihilate first. On this point there can be no possible doubt
+to-day. "Poor France!" said the Berlin newspapers, with feigned
+compassion. They acknowledged that the conduct of the French Government
+throughout the crisis had been irreproachable, and that it had worked
+without respite for the maintenance of peace. While her leaders
+fulfilled this noble duty to mankind, France was offering the world an
+impressive sight--the sight of a nation looking calmly and without fear
+at a growing peril that she had done nothing to conjure up, and,
+regarding her word as her bond, determined in cold blood to follow the
+destiny of her ally on the field of battle. At the same time she offered
+to Germany, who had foolishly counted on her being torn by internal
+troubles and political feuds, the vision of her children closely linked
+together in an unconquerable resolve--the resolve to beat back an
+iniquitous assault upon their country. Nor was this the only surprise
+that she held in store. With the stone wall of her resistance, she was
+soon to change the whole character of the struggle, and to wreck the
+calculations of German strategy.
+
+No one had laboured with more energy and skill to quench the flames lit
+by Austria and her ally than the representative of the Republic at
+Berlin.
+
+"Don't you think M. Cambon's attitude has been admirable?" remarked the
+British Ambassador to me, in the train that was whirling us far away
+from the German capital on August 6th. "Throughout these terrible days
+nothing has been able to affect his coolness, his presence of mind, and
+his insight." I cannot express my own admiration better than by
+repeating this verdict of so capable a diplomat as Sir Edward Goschen,
+who himself took a most active part in the vain attempt of the Triple
+Entente to save Europe from calamity.
+
+
+VIII
+
+[Sidenote: Berlin enthusiastic.]
+
+The Berlin population had followed the various phases of the crisis with
+tremendous interest, but with no outward show of patriotic fervour.
+Those fine summer days passed as tranquilly as usual. Only in the
+evenings did some hundreds of youths march along the highways of the
+central districts, soberly singing national anthems, and dispersing
+after a few cries of "Hoch!" outside the Austro-Hungarian and Italian
+Embassies and the Chancellor's mansion.
+
+On August 2nd I watched the animation of the Sunday crowd that thronged
+the broad avenue of the Kurfürstendamm. It read attentively the special
+editions of the newspapers, and then each went off to enjoy his or her
+favourite pastime--games of tennis for the young men and maidens, long
+bouts of drinking in the beer-gardens, for the more sedate citizens with
+their families. When the Imperial motor-car flashed like a streak of
+lightning down Unter den Linden, it was hailed with loud, but by no
+means frantic, cheers. It needed the outcries of the Press against
+Russia as the instigator of the war, the misleading speeches of the
+Emperor and the Chancellor, and the wily publications of the Government,
+to kindle a patriotism rather slow to take fire. Towards the close of my
+stay, feeling displayed itself chiefly by jeers at the unfortunate
+Russians who were returning post-haste to their native country, and
+blackguardly behaviour towards the staff of the Tsar's Ambassador as he
+was leaving Berlin.
+
+[Sidenote: German people deluded.]
+
+That the mass of the German people, unaware of Russia's peaceful
+intentions, should have been easily deluded, is no matter for
+astonishment. The upper classes, however, those of more enlightened
+intellect, cannot have been duped by the official falsehoods. They knew
+as well as we do that it was greatly to the advantage of the Tsar's
+Government not to provoke a conflict. In fact, this question is hardly
+worth discussing. Once more we must repeat that, in the plans of William
+II and his generals, the Serbian affair was a snare spread for the
+Northern Empire before the growth of its military power should have made
+it an invincible foe.
+
+[Sidenote: Uncertainty regarding Britain.]
+
+[Sidenote: England's attitude.]
+
+There is no gainsaying that uncertainty as to Britain's intervention was
+one of the factors that encouraged Germany. We often asked ourselves
+anxiously at Berlin whether Germany's hand would not have been stayed
+altogether if the British Government had formally declared that it would
+not hold aloof from the war. We even hoped, for a brief moment, that Sir
+Edward Grey would destroy the illusions on which the German people loved
+to batten. The British Foreign Secretary did indeed observe to Prince
+Lichnowsky on July 29th that the Austro-Serbian issue might become so
+great as to involve all European interests, and that he did not wish the
+Ambassador to be misled by the friendly tone of their conversations into
+thinking that Britain would stand aside. If at the beginning she had
+openly taken her stand by the side of her Allies, she might, to be sure,
+have checked the fatal march of events. This, at any rate, is the most
+widespread view, for a maritime war certainly did not enter into the
+calculations of the Emperor and Admiral von Tirpitz, while it was the
+nightmare of the German commercial world. In my opinion, however, an
+outspoken threat from England on the 29th, a sudden roar of the British
+lion, would not have made William II draw back. The memory of Agadir
+still rankled in the proud Germanic soul. The Emperor would have risked
+losing all prestige in the eyes of a certain element among his subjects
+if at the bidding of the Anglo-Saxon he had refused to go further, and
+had thus played into the hands of those who charged him with conducting
+a policy of mere bluff and intimidation. "Germany barks but does not
+bite" was a current saying abroad, and this naturally tended to
+exasperate her. An ominous warning from the lips of Sir Edward Grey
+would only have served to precipitate the onslaught of the Kaiser's
+armies, in order that the intervention of the British fleet might have
+no influence on the result of the campaign, the rapid and decisive
+campaign planned at Berlin.
+
+[Sidenote: British opinion.]
+
+We know, moreover, from the telegrams and speeches of the British
+Foreign Minister, how carefully he had to reckon with public feeling
+among his countrymen in general and among the majority in Parliament. A
+war in the Balkans did not concern the British nation, and the strife
+between Teuton and Slav left it cold. It did not begin to be properly
+roused until it grasped the reality of the danger to France's very
+existence, and it did not respond warmly to the eloquent appeals of Mr.
+Asquith and Sir Edward Grey until the day when it knew that the Germans
+were at the gates of Liège, where they threatened both Paris and
+Antwerp--Antwerp, "that pistol pointed at the heart of England."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the failure of diplomatic efforts to prevent war as a result of the
+deliberate intention of Germany to bring about the conflict, the great
+German war machine was put in motion. It was anticipated by the General
+Staff that the passage across Belgium would be effected without
+difficulty and with the acquiescence of King and people.
+
+How wrong was this judgment is one of the curious facts of history. The
+Germans discovered this error when their armies presented themselves
+before the strong fortress of Liège, the first fortified place in their
+path. Its capture was necessary for the successful passage of the German
+troops.
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of the delay.]
+
+It was captured, but at a cost in time and in their arrangement of plans
+which were a great element in the great thrust--back at the Marne.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEFENCE OF LIÈGE
+
+CHARLES BRONNE
+
+English Review, April, 1915.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Germany invades Belgium.]
+
+On Sunday, August 2nd, while the news was going round that a train had
+entered Luxembourg with German forces, the German Minister at Brussels
+delivered an ultimatum to Belgium demanding the free passage through our
+territory of the German armies. The following day, Monday, the Belgian
+Government replied that the nation was determined to defend its
+neutrality. The same night the German advanced posts entered our
+territory. Tuesday morning they were before Visé, at Warsage, at
+Dolhain, and at Stavelot. The bridges of Visé and Argenteau and the
+tunnels of Troisponts and Nas-Proué were blown up.
+
+[Sidenote: Atrocities begin.]
+
+From this day the atrocities committed by the pioneers of German
+"Kultur" began at Visé with fire and the massacre of inhabitants. On
+Thursday, they were to continue at Warsage and Berneau. On Wednesday,
+August 5th, the investment of Liège began, the bombardment being
+specially directed to the north-west sector which comprises the forts of
+Evegnée, Barchon, and Fléron. In the afternoon the attack extended as
+far as the fort of Chaudfontaine. The region attacked by the foe was
+thus that between the Meuse and the Vesdre, the beautiful country of
+Herve, where cornfields are followed by vineyards, where meadowland
+encroaches on the sides of narrow but picturesque valleys, where small
+but thick woods conceal the number of the assailants. It was found
+necessary to destroy some prosperous little farms, several country
+houses, and pretty villas. This was but a prelude to the devastation
+brought by the soldiers of the Kaiser.
+
+The enemy was in force. Later it was known that around Liège were the
+10th Prussian Army Corps from Aix-la-Chapelle on the way to Visé, the
+7th Corps, which had passed through the Herve country, the 8th, which
+had entered through Stavelot, and also a brigade of the 11th Corps,
+making up a total of about 130,000 men.
+
+[Sidenote: Forts of Liège.]
+
+To resist these forces, General Leman had forts more than twenty-four
+years old and 30,000 men: the 3rd division of the army increased by the
+15th mixed brigade, _i.e._, the 9th, 11th, 12th, and 14th of the line, a
+part of the 2nd Lancers, a battalion of the 1st Carabineers, and the
+Divisional Artillery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thursday, August 6th, was rich in moving incidents.
+
+While the enemy were in force before Barchon, in a night attack, an
+attempt was made on General Leman. The story has been variously told.
+Here is the true version.
+
+[Sidenote: German spies.]
+
+The enemy's spies, so numerous in Liège, had been able to give the most
+exact information regarding the installation of the General Staff in the
+Rue Sainte Foy. They were quite aware that for a week the defender of
+Liège had only been taking two or three hours' rest in his office, so as
+to be more easily in telephonic communication with the forts and
+garrison. These offices in the Rue Sainte Foy were very badly situated,
+at the extreme end of the northern quarter, and were defended only by a
+few gendarmes. General Leman had been warned, however, and the King
+himself had at last persuaded him to take some precautions against a
+possible attempt. He had finally given way to this advice, and a
+rudimentary structure, but a sure one, fitted with electric light and
+telephone, was being set up under the railway tunnel near the Palais
+station.
+
+This was, then, the last night the General would pass at Rue Sainte Foy.
+
+[Sidenote: General Leman in danger.]
+
+Towards half-past four in the morning a body of a hundred men descended
+from the heights of Tawes. Whence did they come? How had they been able
+to penetrate into the town? Some have said that they dressed in Liège
+itself. In reality, they represented themselves to the advanced posts of
+the fort of Pontisse as being Englishmen come to the aid of Liège, and
+asked to be conducted to the General Staff. They were soldiers of a
+Hanoverian regiment, and bore upon their sleeves a blue band with the
+word "Gibraltar." This contributed in no small degree to cause them to
+be taken for British sharpshooters. They were preceded by a spy who had
+put on the Belgian uniform of the 11th of the line and who seemed to
+know the town very well. At Thier-à-Liège, they stopped a moment to
+drink at a wine-shop and then went on. They were more than a hundred in
+number and were preceded by two officers. A detachment of Garde Civique,
+posted at the gas factory of the Rue des Bayards, did not consider it
+their duty to interfere. A few individuals accompanied the troop, crying
+"Vive les Anglais." A few passers-by, better-aware of the situation,
+protested. The troop continued its imperturbable march. The officers
+smiled. Thus they arrived at Rue Sainte Foy where, as we have said, the
+offices of the General Staff of General Leman were installed.
+
+A German officer asked of the sentinel on the door an interview with
+General Leman. The officers of the latter, who now appeared, understood
+the ruse at once, and drew their revolvers. Shots were exchanged. One of
+the officers, Major Charles Marchand, a non-commissioned officer of
+gendarmes, and several gendarmes were killed. The Germans attempted to
+enter the offices, of which the door had been closed. They fired through
+the windows, and even attempted to attack the house by scaling the
+neighbouring walls. General Leman, who was working, ran out on hearing
+the first shots. He was unarmed. He demanded a revolver. Captain Lebbe,
+his aide-de-camp, refused to allow him to expose himself uselessly, and
+begged him to keep himself for the defence of Liège. He even used some
+violence to his chief, and pushed him towards the low door which
+separated the house from the courtyard of a neighbouring cannon foundry.
+With the help of another officer, the captain placed his General in
+safety. While this was happening, the alarm had been given, and the
+Germans, seeing that their attempt to possess themselves of the person
+of General Leman had failed, retired. The guard, which comprised some
+fifty men, fired repeatedly on the retreating party. Some fifty Germans,
+including a standard-bearer and a drummer, were killed. Others were made
+prisoners.
+
+[Sidenote: General Leman in Fort Loncin.]
+
+The General retired to the citadel of Sainte Walburge, and later to the
+fort of Loncin. From there he followed the efforts of the enemy
+attacking anew the north-east and south-east sectors. The environs of
+Fort Boncelles are as difficult to defend as those of the
+Barchon-Evegnée-Fléron front. There is first the discovered part which
+surrounds what remains of the unfortunate village of Boncelles, which
+the Belgians themselves were forced to destroy to free their field of
+fire, but for the rest, there are only woods, that of Plainevaux, which
+reaches to the Ourthe, Neuville, and Vecquée woods, that of Bégnac,
+which continues Saint Lambert wood as far as Trooz and the Meuse.
+
+[Sidenote: Belgian troops fight heroically.]
+
+Every place here swarmed with Germans, 40,000 at least, an army corps
+which had spent a day and a night in fortifying themselves, and had been
+able to direct their artillery towards Plainevaux, to the north of
+Neuville, and upon the heights of Ramet. Thirty thousand men at least
+would have been needed to defend this gap and less than 15,000 were
+available. A similar attack was delivered at the same time between the
+Meuse and the Vesdre. On both sides miracles of heroism were performed,
+but the enemy poured on irresistibly. They were able to pass, on the one
+side, Val Saint Lambert, on the other, between Barchon and the Meuse,
+between Evegnée and Fléron. Fighting took place well into the night, the
+enemy being repulsed at Boncelles twice. The following morning I saw
+pieces of German corpses. The Belgian artillery had made a real carnage,
+and no smaller number of victims fell in the bayonet charges. The 9th
+and the Carabineers, who had fought the day before at Barchon, were
+present here.
+
+[Sidenote: Retreat ordered.]
+
+In the other sector, the soldiers of the 12th of the line particularly
+behaved like heroes. The battle began towards two o'clock in the morning
+at Rétinne where, after prodigies of valour and a great slaughter of the
+enemy, the Belgian troops were forced to retire. The struggle continued
+at Saine and at Queue du Bois. Here Lieutenant F. Bronne and forty of
+his men fell while covering the retreat. In spite of such devotion and
+of a bravery that will not be denied, the enemy passed through. Why?
+Some troops surrendered with their officers, who were afterwards set
+free upon parole at Liège. But this was only a very small exception, and
+it was under the pressure of an enemy four times as numerous that the
+3rd division succumbed after three days of repeated fighting, during
+which the soldiers were compelled to make forced marches from one
+sector to another, and stop the rest of the time in the trenches
+fighting. The enemy's losses were 5,000 killed and 30,000 wounded.
+
+General Leman considered that he had obtained from his troops the
+maximum effort of which they were capable and ordered a retreat. It was
+executed in good order, and the enemy had suffered so severely that they
+did not dream of pursuit. They contented themselves with pushing forward
+as far as the plateau of Saint-Tilman (close to Boncelles) and that of
+Robermont (behind Fléron) some cannons of 15, which had bombarded the
+town the first time on Thursday, August 6th, at four o'clock in the
+morning. No German troops, except some 200 men who entered as prisoners,
+penetrated into the town on this day.
+
+Although this retreat left behind a few men with several guns, it may be
+said to have been effected in good order. I was able to see that for
+myself in passing through with the troops, from the fifth limit of the
+Saint Trond route, near Fort Loncin, up to the centre of the town. The
+auto in which I was seated was able to pass easily.
+
+[Sidenote: Refugees.]
+
+The terrified population from Bressoux began to arrive. There were
+people half-dressed, but who carried some object which to them seemed
+the most precious, sometimes a simple portrait of a loved one. Others
+drove cattle before them. The men carried children, while women followed
+painfully loaded with household goods. Mixed up with them were the Garde
+Civique. It had just been assembled and informed that it was disbanded,
+and a certain number of them had told the inhabitants that the Prussians
+were coming, and that there was nothing better to do than for everyone
+to bolt himself in. The cannon had thundered all night. The citizens of
+Liège had found in their letter-boxes a warning from the burgomaster
+concerning the behaviour of the inhabitants in case of the town being
+occupied by the enemy. This urgent notice, distributed the night before
+between 9 and 11 p.m., foreshadowed an imminent occupation. The hasty
+flight of the people of Bressoux stopped when they had crossed the
+Meuse; but as the bombardment recommenced towards noon, fright again
+seized on the population. The bombardment lasted till two. Some thirty
+shells fell on different parts of the town.
+
+[Sidenote: Bridge of Arches destroyed.]
+
+At half-past twelve a dull noise was heard as far as the furthest fort;
+it was the old Bridge of Arches which gave way, towards the left bank.
+The engineers had just blown it up. It seemed wiser to destroy the
+bridge at Val Bénoit, which left the Germans railway communication. But
+no one thought of this; or rather, orders to that effect were not given
+by the higher authorities. This was afterwards to cause the degradation
+to the ranks of the chief officer of engineers who was responsible for
+this unpardonable lapse.
+
+The second bombardment lasted till two o'clock. Several projectiles now
+fell upon the citadel, where everything was in readiness to set fire to
+the provisions and munitions which remained there along with some
+unserviceable cannon, generally used in the training of the Garde
+Civique. By 10 a.m. the citadel had been evacuated, only very few
+persons remaining, among them a major, who hastily hoisted the white
+flag.
+
+[Sidenote: German envoys in Liège.]
+
+Burgomaster Kleyer awaited developments at the Town Hall. At half-past
+three, he received envoys, who demanded the surrender of the town and
+forts. Put into communication with General Leman, who was all the time
+at Loncin with his Staff, he informed him that if the forts persisted in
+their resistance, the town would be bombarded a third time. General
+Leman replied that the threat was an idle one, that it would be a cruel
+massacre, but that the higher interests of Belgium compelled him to
+impose this sacrifice on the town of Liège.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment of Liège.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gloomy aspect of the town.]
+
+At 9 p.m. fresh shells fell on different parts of the city and caused
+more damage if not more victims. This bombardment lasted till 2 a.m. It
+recommenced at intervals of half-an-hour, and caused two fires, one in
+Rue de Hanque, and the other in Rue de la Commune. After midday, the
+streets were deserted and all dwelling houses closed. In the afternoon a
+convoy of Germans taken prisoners were seen to pass along the
+boulevards, and were then shut up in the Royal Athenæum. Then there was
+an interminable defile of autos and carts conveying both German and
+Belgian wounded, especially the former, those who came from Boncelles
+more particularly. Bodies of stragglers re-entered Liège slowly,
+ignorant of what had happened, as they were either untouched by the
+order to retire, or had been forgotten in the advanced posts or in the
+trenches. They were very tired and hardly had the courage to accelerate
+their pace, except when the few passers-by explained the position in a
+couple of words. The aspect of the town was very gloomy, and the only
+places where any animation was to be seen were around Guillemins
+station, where trains full of fugitives were leaving for Brussels, the
+West quarter, towards which the last of the retiring companies were
+marching, and the North, where many were still ignorant of this
+movement.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans enter Liège.]
+
+On Friday, August 7th, at 3 a.m., the bombardment of Liège began again,
+chiefly directed against the citadel, where only a few soldiers now
+remained. These evacuated the place after setting fire to some
+provisions they were unable to carry off. The population passed through
+hours of anguish, which were destined not to be the last. Everybody
+took refuge in the cellars. Some people lived there for several days in
+fear that a shell might fall upon their house. On this Friday the
+Germans penetrated into the town at five o'clock in the morning by the
+different bridges which had remained intact. They came in through
+Jupille and Bois de Breux chiefly. They seemed tired and, above all,
+hungry. Leaving detachments in the Place de Bavière and near the
+bridges, they successively occupied the Provincial Palace and the
+citadel.
+
+Count Lammsdorf, Chief of the Staff of the 10th Corps, Commander of the
+Army of the Meuse, arrested Burgomaster Kleyer at the Town Hall, and
+conducted him to the citadel, where he at first made him a rather
+reassuring communication as to the fate of the town. . . . He then spoke
+anew and said that he understood all the forts would surrender, in
+default of which the bombardment would recommence. M. Kleyer vainly
+protested against a measure so contrary to the laws both of war and of
+humanity. He was simply authorized to pass through the German lines with
+a safe conduct, to discuss the matter with General Leman, or even with
+the King himself.
+
+[Sidenote: The Burgomaster's task.]
+
+This task of the burgomaster of Liège was a heavy one, and terrible was
+the expectant attitude of the German authorities. Later, some people
+have discussed the attitude he should have taken up and conceived the
+nature of what should have been his reply; they would have desired words
+of defiance on his lips and an immediate answer.
+
+He lacked courage for this, and who will dare to-day to blame him for
+the immense anxiety he felt on hearing of the horrible fate with which
+his beloved town and his unhappy fellow-citizens were threatened?
+
+He gathered together at the Town Hall several communal and provincial
+deputies, some deputies and senators. The general opinion at the
+beginning of the discussion was that it was necessary to obtain the
+surrender of the forts. Someone pointed out that there was not much
+likelihood of getting this decision from General Leman, who had already
+pronounced himself upon that question, and thought it would be necessary
+to continue the work heroically begun of arresting the progress of the
+invader, and that the forts, all intact, would powerfully contribute to
+that end.
+
+It was finally decided to approach General Leman again with a message
+which was entrusted to the burgomaster, the Bishop of Liège, and M.
+Gaston Grégoire, permanent deputy. These gentlemen repaired to the
+citadel in search of the promised safe conduct. They were met there,
+according to the demand of Count Lammsdorf, by some prominent Liège
+citizens, to whom he had expressed his desire to explain the situation.
+
+[Sidenote: Hostages to the Germans.]
+
+At the moment the three delegates were about to depart on their mission,
+with a good faith upon which it would be foolish to insist, the German
+commander declared that all the persons present were detained as
+hostages. He gave as a specious pretext for this violation of right that
+some German soldiers had been killed by civilians in some neighbouring
+villages, and that the hostages would enable the Germans to guard
+against the repetition of such acts, the more so as they were prepared
+to make a striking example at the beginning of the campaign.
+
+All the Liège citizens who had entered the citadel on this day were kept
+there till the next day, Saturday. Moreover, the following persons were
+retained as responsible hostages for three days: 1. Mgr. Rutien, Bishop
+of Liège; 2. M. Kleyer, Burgomaster of Liège; 3. M. Grégoire, Permanent
+Deputy; 4. M. Armand Flechet, Senator; 5. Senator Van Zuylen; 6. Senator
+Edouard Peltzer; 7. Senator Colleaux; 8. Deputy De Ponthière; 9. Deputy
+Van Hoegaerden; 10. M. Falloise, Alderman.
+
+The hostages were shut up in damp case-mates, palliasses were given them
+for the night and, as food, the first day each one had half a loaf and
+some water. The burgomaster and the bishop were, however, allowed to go
+about their duties after they had given their parole to remain at the
+disposal of the German military authorities.
+
+[Sidenote: Last train for Brussels.]
+
+The same day at 9 a.m. the last train left Liège for Brussels with
+numbers of fugitives. The number of persons who abandoned Liège and its
+suburbs may be calculated at some five thousand. From this moment and
+for several days Liège was absolutely cut off from the rest of the
+world, all communications having been cut.
+
+On Saturday, August 8th, while the Germans were methodically organising
+the occupation of Liège, Burgomaster Kleyer was authorised to wait upon
+the King, in order to discuss the surrender of the forts. Furnished with
+a safe conduct and accompanied by a German officer, he reached Waremme
+early in the afternoon, and placed himself in communication with the
+General Staff. The King was consulted, and the reply brought back to
+Liège was the one the mayor had foreseen.
+
+The same day saw the appearance of the following order of the day
+addressed to the soldiers of the army of Liège:--
+
+        "Our comrades of the 3rd Army Division and of
+        the 15th mixed brigade are about to re-enter
+        our lines, after having defended, like heroes,
+        the fortified position of Liège.
+
+[Sidenote: The King encourages the army.]
+
+        "Attacked by forces four times as numerous,
+        they have repulsed all assaults. None of the
+        forts have been taken; the town of Liège is
+        always in our power. Standards and a number of
+        prisoners are the trophies of these combats. In
+        the name of the Nation I salute you, officers
+        and soldiers of the 3rd Army Division and the
+        15th mixed brigade.
+
+        "You have done your duty, done honour to our
+        arms, shown the enemy what it costs to attack
+        unjustly a peaceable people, but one who wields
+        in its just cause an invincible weapon. The
+        Fatherland has the right to be proud of you.
+
+        "Soldiers of the Belgian Army, do not forget
+        that you are in the van of immense armies in
+        this gigantic struggle, and that you await but
+        the arrival of our brothers-in-arms in order to
+        march to victory. The whole world has its eyes
+        fixed upon you. Show it by the vigour of your
+        blows that you mean to live free and
+        independent.
+
+        "France, that noble country which has
+        throughout history been associated with just
+        and generous causes, is hurrying to our aid and
+        her armies will enter our territory.
+
+        "In your name I address them a fraternal
+        salute.                      ALBERT."
+
+[Sidenote: German precautions.]
+
+[Sidenote: Barricades constructed.]
+
+On this day the Germans, who were not yet sure as to the intentions of
+the Belgian field army, and who feared a possible offensive on the part
+of the French advanced guards, put Liège in a state of defence.
+Moreover, they distrusted the civilian population, and fortified
+themselves in the town itself. They placed machine guns at the head of
+the bridges, and upon one of them, Boverie, which they feared might be
+blown up, or might be bombarded by the forts, they placed a curtained
+recess in which they shut up several citizens. They caused the soldiers
+to occupy Quai des Pêcheurs, Quai l'Industrie, and the houses in
+proximity to the bridge, after clearing out the occupants. They placed
+bags of earth in the windows, behind which were installed machine guns.
+In the arteries leading to La Hesbaye and La Campine, and in the streets
+of the latter, they erected barricades, and installed themselves in the
+riverside houses. These labours continued during several days on the
+heights of Saint Nicholas and Hollogne, while the soldiers of the 10th
+Corps installed themselves on the plateau of Cointe, the General Staff
+having taken possession there of a convent, although this had been
+transformed into a hospital. In the town, the German troops, delayed for
+a short time by the necessity of carrying off their dead, shifting their
+wounded, and of taking a much-needed rest, entered in large numbers.
+They occupied the different stations, that of Ans on the Herbignon
+plateau being the last one where they established themselves.
+
+On Sunday, September 6th, there were at Liège more than 100,000 Germans.
+On this day, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the hostages were given
+their unconditional liberty. On the same date, in the neighbourhood of
+Landen, the King, accompanied by the General Staff, reviewed the valiant
+and now reconstituted 3rd Division, reconstituted in spite of the heavy
+losses in officers suffered by certain regiments. General Leman received
+from M. Schollaert, President of the Belgian Chamber, the following
+telegram: "With a heart overflowing with enthusiasm and patriotic pride,
+I acclaim the glorious defender of Liège."
+
+[Sidenote: Praise for defense of the city.]
+
+[Sidenote: President Poincaré honors General Leman.]
+
+With reference to the defence of Liège, letters, despatches, and
+addresses of felicitation were received at Brussels from the Presidents
+of the French Chamber and the French Senate, from the Paris Municipal
+Council, and other French municipalities, words of friendship and
+encouragement were pronounced later in the British Parliament, while the
+King of the Belgians received the congratulations of King George, the
+Tsar, and the President of the French Republic. Finally, M. Poincaré
+sent him the most envied of distinctions, the military medal. The
+resistance of Liège had everywhere aroused grateful enthusiasm, for the
+days, and even the hours gained from the invader were now of inestimable
+value. But while the twelve forts were not yet to harass, as they could,
+the progress of the enemy, Liège, whose hatred of the Prussian is
+ingrained, was to pay dearly for the resistance it had made, and its
+heart was to suffer cruelly over the vexations of which it was to be the
+object, while awaiting pillage and burning.
+
+Here we enter upon a new period, which cannot, however, be separated
+from the siege of Liège, for at this time the forts still held out.
+
+[Sidenote: The twelve forts.]
+
+[Sidenote: Forts on the banks of the Meuse.]
+
+The forts still held out, but the resistance of their garrisons had to
+be heroic. The defences crumbled quite rapidly. We should not be
+surprised at this, but should rather remember that these forts were more
+than twenty years old. Their construction began in 1889, and their
+armament, though modified later in certain details, was not capable of
+resisting the heavy artillery of the Germans. Liège was defended by
+twelve forts, large and small. The most important works were Barchon,
+Fléron, Boncelles, Flémalle, Loncin, and Pontisse. These forts possessed
+five large cupolas and three or four small ones. They were armed with
+two guns of 15 centimetres, four of 12, two howitzers of 21, and three
+or four guns of 5'7, ten more of 5'7 flanking the ditches. The little
+forts counted upon four large and three or four small cupolas. They were
+armed with two pieces of 15, two of 12, a howitzer of 21, three or four
+guns, without cupola, of 5'7, and of seven or eight commanding the
+ditches. The forts are arranged around Liège in the following order:--On
+the left bank of the Meuse: Flémalle, Hollogne, Loncin, Lantin, and
+Pontisse. On the right bank, between the Meuse and the Vesdre: Barchon,
+Evegnée, and Fléron. Between the Vesdre and the Ourthe: Chaudfontaine
+and Embourg. Between the Ourthe and the Meuse: Boncelles. The forts are
+four kilometres apart, except Flémalle-Boncelles and Embourg-Pontisse,
+which are six kilometres apart, while Chaudfontaine and Embourg are only
+two kilometres from one another. The forts are eight kilometres from the
+limits of the town. The forts of Hollogne, Loncin, Lantin, and Liers are
+in grassy country. Boncelles is nearly completely surrounded by woods;
+Embourg and Chaudfontaine dominate the deep and winding valleys of the
+Ourthe and the Vesdre. Pontisse, Flémalle, and Barchon, commanding the
+Meuse, are on broken ground. This last-named fort, with Evegnée and
+Fléron, holds the most important strategic position in the Herve
+country, facing the German frontier, in a land cut up by meadows planted
+with trees and by little woods, traversed by many vales, not very deep,
+but winding.
+
+[Sidenote: War conditions changed.]
+
+It is known that in the Brialmont project the intervening spaces were to
+be defended and fortified with siege artillery. To tell the truth, the
+eminent military engineer, in the pamphlets where he set out the
+project, only allowed for a small mobile garrison, but he confessed
+later that the difficulties which he knew he would meet with in the
+Belgian Parliament over the credits for the fortifications made him
+underestimate the number of men required. Besides which, the conditions
+of war have been greatly modified during the twenty-five years which
+have passed, owing to the increased power of siege guns. So that it may
+be laid down that 80,000, if not 100,000, men were needed to properly
+defend the entrenched camp of Liège.
+
+[Sidenote: Troops in the forts.]
+
+As for the forts, they were each occupied by a battery of artillery (250
+men) and three companies (120 men), a total of 370 men. About 4,500
+artillerymen for the twelve forts.
+
+General Leman was shut up in Loncin, one of the chief forts, which
+commanded the road towards Waremme and Brussels. He had sent away all
+his General Staff with the division, in spite of the supplications of
+his officers, who begged to be allowed to share his fate. He continued
+to direct the longest resistance possible. The enemy was anxious to cut
+all the communications between the forts, but soldiers volunteered for
+carrying messages to the different commanders. Several succeeded, but
+many were killed, for the investment became steadily tightened. Indeed,
+certain gaps, where the ground was most broken, could not be swept by
+the guns from the forts, and, under cover of the night, troops ensconced
+themselves there comfortably. Moreover, the Germans, having received
+reinforcements and heavy artillery, undertook the siege systematically,
+first of Barchon, which it was unable to take by storm any more than
+Boncelles, but which it subjected to a formidable deluge of shells.
+Barchon could only reply haphazard to heavy guns the position of which
+it could not tell. It was, indeed, deprived of its observation posts,
+and was in the position of a blind man desperately parrying the blows of
+an adversary who could see where to strike.
+
+[Sidenote: Fort Barchon taken.]
+
+The struggle was not for long, and the fort, reduced to impotence, left
+a wide breach through which the invader scrambled. Through there he
+could also introduce his heavy siege guns, howitzers of 28, and even
+pieces of 42 cms.
+
+[Sidenote: Forty-two centimetre guns.]
+
+The enemy then followed a tactic which was to succeed rapidly. He
+attacked the different fortifications in a reverse way. Thus Loncin,
+Lantin, Liers, and Pontisse were bombarded by batteries placed in the
+citadel itself and to which the Belgians could not reply without
+shelling the town and doing frightful damage. A battery was also placed
+in a bend of ground up Rue Naniot, under the "Tomb," where some of those
+who fell in 1830 are buried, but it was discovered and had to be
+withdrawn. Forts Boncelles and Embourg were attacked by guns placed on
+the hill at Tilff, a pretty village, which would have been completely
+destroyed had the firing been responded to. Finally, along the line of
+the plateau of Herve, no longer dominated by Barchon and Fléron, now
+destroyed, the enemy was able to bring into the very centre of the town
+four of those howitzers of 42 cms. which were later to bombard Namur,
+Maubeuge, and Antwerp.
+
+The following are the dates on which the different forts succumbed:
+Barchon and Evegnée fell on August 9th. Right from the 5th they had not
+ceased to be the object of continual attacks. They had valiantly
+resisted repeated assaults and field artillery. The heavy pieces poured
+in a hurricane of fire.
+
+Pontisse, which had so usefully barred the passage of the enemy below
+Visé, did not give way till the 12th. On the 13th Embourg surrendered
+after a twenty-six hours' bombardment.
+
+[Sidenote: Forts yield one by one.]
+
+The same day saw the fall of Chaudfontaine and Nameche, where two
+accidents happened worthy of being related. A shell burst on a cupola
+gun as it was finishing its movement after being loaded. The whole gun
+was shattered and ten men were wounded. A little while after, a shell
+entered the fort through the embrasure and set fire to the powder
+magazine. One hundred and ten artillerymen were terribly burned, fifty
+dying upon the spot. The 14th saw the fall of Boncelles, Liers, and
+Fléron. Boncelles from the 5th had offered an admirable resistance.
+Commandant Lefert had been wounded on the 8th, when 200 Germans,
+presenting themselves to surrender, treacherously fired upon him.
+Suffering greatly, he none the less went on directing the defence until
+his officers met together in a kind of council of war, and had him taken
+away in an ambulance. The unfortunate man was seized by a fever and
+became delirious. Boncelles was bombarded unceasingly for a whole day
+and the following morning. It was nearly destroyed, and may be
+considered as the fort which was the centre of the worst carnage of
+German soldiers. The enormous heaps of dead buried around it bear
+witness to the fact. Liers was put out of action by guns installed at
+Sainte Walburge.
+
+[Sidenote: Loncin and Lantin fall.]
+
+To get the better of the obstinate resistance of Fléron (Commandant
+Mozin), the Germans united twenty guns by an electric battery and fired
+them all off at the same time upon the fort, which trembled in its
+massive foundations. No one can have an idea of how demoralising this
+rain of projectiles was. On the 15th, Loncin and Lantin fell, the
+defenders firing until they were overcome by asphyxia. On the 16th, it
+was the turn of Flémalle, and on the 18th, of Hollogne.
+
+We know that it was at Loncin, which dominated the roads of La Hesbaye,
+where General Leman was shut up. Commandant Naessens and Lieutenant
+Monard had the honour of defending the fort under the General's eyes.
+Electrified by the presence of the governor of the fortress, the
+soldiers of Loncin wrote with their blood the most heroic page of the
+heroic defence of Liège. Commandant Naessens modestly narrated the
+story when he had been wounded and transported to the military hospital
+of Saint Laurent. General Leman has also _résuméd_ the different phases
+of the attack, while a prisoner at Magdeburg. We will listen to his
+clear and crisp recital.
+
+[Sidenote: General Leman's story.]
+
+He distinguishes four periods during the bombardment. The first
+commenced on August 14th at 4.15 p.m. The shell fire, directed with
+great exactitude, lasted two hours without interruption. After a break
+of half-an-hour, some 21-centimetre guns opened fire. All night, at
+intervals of ten minutes, they rained shells upon the fort, causing it
+considerable damage. The escarpment was damaged, the protecting walls of
+the left flank battery destroyed, and the shutters of the windows
+pierced. Another unfavourable circumstance was that all the places of
+the escarpment where shelter could be obtained were full of smoke from
+the shells which had burst either in the protecting wall or in the
+ditches. The deleterious gases rendered it impossible to stand in the
+covered places, and forced the General to assemble the garrison in the
+interior and in the gallery. Even in these refuges the stupefying
+effects of the gases allowed themselves to be felt, and weakened the
+fighting value of the garrison.
+
+[Sidenote: Horrors of the bombardments.]
+
+The third period of bombardment began on the 15th at 5.30 a.m. and
+continued until two o'clock in the afternoon. The projectiles caused
+fearful havoc. The vault of the commanding post, where General Leman was
+present with his two adjutants, was subjected to furious shocks, and the
+fort trembled to its foundations. Towards two o'clock, a lull occurred
+in the firing, and the general took advantage of it to inspect the fort.
+He found part of it completely in ruins.
+
+[Sidenote: Currents of poisonous gas.]
+
+The fourth period is described as follows: "It was two o'clock when the
+bombardment recommenced with a violence of which no idea can be given.
+It seemed to us as if the German batteries were firing salvoes. When the
+large shells fell we heard the hissing of the air, which gradually
+increased into a roar like a furious hurricane, and which finished by a
+sudden noise of thunder. At a certain moment of this formidable
+bombardment, I wished to reach the commanding post in order to see what
+was happening, but at the end of a few paces in the gallery I was
+knocked down by a shock of violent air and fell face forward. I got up
+and wished to continue my way, but I was held back by a current of
+poisonous air which invaded the whole space. It was a mixture of the gas
+from the exploded powder and of the smoke of a fire which had started in
+the rooms of the troops where furniture and bedding were kept.
+
+[Sidenote: The fort blown up.]
+
+[Sidenote: General Leman a prisoner.]
+
+"We were thus driven back to the place whence we had come, but the air
+had become unbreathable. We were near to being asphyxiated when my
+adjutant, Major Collard, had the idea of taking off the top of the
+shutter, which gave us a little air. I was, however, obsessed by the
+idea of placing part of the garrison in safety, and I told my comrade I
+desired to reach the counter-escarpment. I managed to pass the gap and
+reach the ditch, which I crossed. What was my amazement when I perceived
+that the fort was blown up, and that the front was strewn with ruins,
+forming a quay reaching from the escarpment to the counter-escarpment.
+Some soldiers were running to and fro upon it. I took them for Belgian
+gendarmes and called to them. But I was being suffocated, giddiness
+seized upon me, and I fell to the ground. When I came to, I found myself
+in the midst of my comrades, who tried to come to my aid. Among them was
+a German major, who gave me a glass of water to drink. As I learnt
+afterwards, it was then about 6.30 p.m. I was placed in an ambulance
+carriage and transported to Liège.
+
+"I was taken, but I had not yet surrendered."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Surrender of Namur.]
+
+Following the capture of Liège the German armies made rapid progress
+through Belgium. After several sharp engagements with Belgian troops,
+which resisted with heroic tenacity, the Germans on August 19 took
+Louvain, and then began the deliberate system of atrocities which
+horrified the civilized world. The most valuable parts of the city,
+including many beautiful and important edifices, were burned, citizens
+were killed and tortured, and the utmost brutality was practiced, under
+the excuse that German troops had been fired upon by citizens of the
+town. On August 17 Brussels had been abandoned by the Belgian Government
+which withdrew to Antwerp. The former city was surrendered without
+resistance. In the meantime the French had hurried their armies to
+assist the Belgian forces and, joined by the available troops of the
+English Expeditionary Force, they encountered the Germans at Charleroi.
+On August 23 the great fortress of Namur was surrendered under the fire
+of the heavy German artillery, and on the following day, the Allied
+armies were defeated at Charleroi, and began the Great Retreat toward
+Paris which was to continue to the banks of the Marne. The French armies
+were under the command of General Joffre, while Sir John French
+commanded the British Expeditionary Force. In the following narrative
+General French describes the heroic performances of his gallant troops
+during the terrible ordeal.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT RETREAT
+
+SIR JOHN FRENCH
+
+
+The transport of the troops from England both by sea and by rail was
+effected in the best order and without a check. Each unit arrived at its
+destination in this country well within the scheduled time.
+
+[Sidenote: Disposition of British forces.]
+
+The concentration was practically complete on the evening of Friday,
+September 21st, and I was able to make dispositions to move the force
+during Saturday, the 22d, to positions I considered most favorable from
+which to commence operations which the French Commander in Chief,
+General Joffre, requested me to undertake in pursuance of his plans in
+prosecution of the campaign.
+
+The line taken up extended along the line of the canal from Condé on the
+west, through Mons and Binche on the east. This line was taken up as
+follows:
+
+From Condé to Mons inclusive was assigned to the Second Corps, and to
+the right of the Second Corps from Mons the First Corps was posted. The
+Fifth Cavalry Brigade was placed at Binche.
+
+In the absence of my Third Army Corps I desired to keep the cavalry
+division as much as possible as a reserve to act on my outer flank, or
+move in support of any threatened part of the line. The forward
+reconnoissance was intrusted to Brigadier General Sir Philip Chetwode
+with the Fifth Cavalry Brigade, but I directed General Allenby to send
+forward a few squadrons to assist in this work.
+
+[Sidenote: Advance on Soignies.]
+
+During the 22d and 23d these advanced squadrons did some excellent work,
+some of them penetrating as far as Soignies, and several encounters took
+place in which our troops showed to great advantage.
+
+2. At 6 A. M. on August 23, I assembled the commanders of the First and
+Second Corps and cavalry division at a point close to the position and
+explained the general situation of the Allies, and what I understood to
+be General Joffre's plan. I discussed with them at some length the
+immediate situation in front of us.
+
+From information I received from French Headquarters I understood that
+little more than one, or at most two, of the enemy's army corps, with
+perhaps one cavalry division, were in front of my position; and I was
+aware of no attempted outflanking movement by the enemy. I was confirmed
+in this opinion by the fact that my patrols encountered no undue
+opposition in their reconnoitring operations. The observations of my
+aeroplanes seemed also to bear out this estimate.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack on Mons line.]
+
+About 3 P. M. on Sunday, the 23d, reports began coming in to the effect
+that the enemy was commencing an attack on the Mons line, apparently in
+some strength, but that the right of the position from Mons and Bray was
+being particularly threatened.
+
+The commander of the First Corps had pushed his flank back to some high
+ground south of Bray, and the Fifth Cavalry Brigade evacuated Binche,
+moving slightly south; the enemy thereupon occupied Binche.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans gain passages of the Sambre.]
+
+The right of the Third Division, under General Hamilton, was at Mons,
+which formed a somewhat dangerous salient; and I directed the commander
+of the Second Corps to be careful not to keep the troops on this salient
+too long, but, if threatened seriously, to draw back the centre behind
+Mons. This was done before dark. In the meantime, about 5 P. M., I
+received a most unexpected message from General Joffre by telegraph,
+telling me that at least three German corps, viz., a reserve corps, the
+Fourth Corps and the Ninth Corps, were moving on my position in front,
+and that the Second Corps was engaged in a turning movement from the
+direction of Tournay. He also informed me that the two reserve French
+divisions and the Fifth French Army on my right were retiring, the
+Germans having on the previous day gained possession of the passages of
+the Sambre between Charleroi and Namur.
+
+3. In view of the possibility of my being driven from the Mons position,
+I had previously ordered a position in rear to be reconnoitred. This
+position rested on the fortress of Maubeuge on the right and extended
+west to Jenlain, southeast of Valenciennes, on the left. The position
+was reported difficult to hold, because standing crops and buildings
+made the siting of trenches very difficult and limited the field of fire
+in many important localities. It nevertheless afforded a few good
+artillery positions.
+
+[Sidenote: British retire to Maubeuge position.]
+
+When the news of the retirement of the French and the heavy German
+threatening on my front reached me, I endeavored to confirm it by
+aeroplane reconnoissance; and as a result of this I determined to effect
+a retirement to the Maubeuge position at daybreak on the 24th.
+
+A certain amount of fighting continued along the whole line throughout
+the night and at daybreak on the 24th the Second Division from the
+neighborhood of Harmignies made a powerful demonstration as if to retake
+Binche. This was supported by the artillery of both the First and Second
+Divisions, while the First Division took up a supporting position in the
+neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this demonstration the Second
+Corps retired on the line Dour-Quarouble-Frameries. The Third Division
+on the right of the corps suffered considerable loss in this operation
+from the enemy, who had retaken Mons.
+
+The Second Corps halted on this line, where they partially intrenched
+themselves, enabling Sir Douglas Haig with the First Corps gradually to
+withdraw to the new position; and he effected this without much further
+loss, reaching the line Bavai-Maubeuge about 7 P. M. Toward midday the
+enemy appeared to be directing his principal effort against our left.
+
+I had previously ordered General Allenby with the cavalry to act
+vigorously in advance of my left front and endeavor to take the pressure
+off.
+
+[Sidenote: General Allenby supports Fifth Division.]
+
+About 7:30 A. M. General Allenby received a message from Sir Charles
+Fergusson, commanding the Fifth Division, saying that he was very hard
+pressed and in urgent need of support. On receipt of this message
+General Allenby drew in the cavalry and endeavored to bring direct
+support to the Fifth Division.
+
+During the course of this operation General De Lisle, of the Second
+Cavalry Brigade, thought he saw a good opportunity to paralyze the
+further advance of the enemy's infantry by making a mounted attack on
+his flank. He formed up and advanced for this purpose, but was held up
+by wire about 500 yards from his objective, and the Ninth Lancers and
+the Eighteenth Hussars suffered severely in the retirement of the
+brigade.
+
+The Nineteenth Infantry Brigade, which had been guarding the line of
+communications, was brought up by rail to Valenciennes on the 22d and
+23d. On the morning of the 24th they were moved out to a position south
+of Quarouble to support the left flank of the Second Corps.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien suffers great losses.]
+
+With the assistance of the cavalry Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was enabled
+to effect his retreat to a new position; although, having two corps of
+the enemy on his front and one threatening his flank, he suffered great
+losses in doing so.
+
+At nightfall the position was occupied by the Second Corps to the west
+of Bavai, the First Corps to the right. The right was protected by the
+fortress of Maubeuge, the left by the Nineteenth Brigade in position
+between Jenlain and Bry, and the cavalry on the outer flank.
+
+4. The French were still retiring, and I had no support except such as
+was afforded by the Fortress of Maubeuge; and the determined attempts of
+the enemy to get round my left flank assured me that it was his
+intention to hem me against that place and surround me. I felt that not
+a moment must be lost in retiring to another position.
+
+I had every reason to believe that the enemy's forces were somewhat
+exhausted and I knew that they had suffered heavy losses. I hoped,
+therefore, that his pursuit would not be too vigorous to prevent me
+effecting my object.
+
+The operation, however, was full of danger and difficulty, not only
+owing to the very superior force in my front, but also to the exhaustion
+of the troops.
+
+The retirement was recommenced in the early morning of the 25th to a
+position in the neighborhood of Le Cateau, and rearguards were ordered
+to be clear of the Maubeuge-Bavai-Eth Road by 5:30 A. M.
+
+[Sidenote: General Allenby covers west flank.]
+
+Two cavalry brigades, with the divisional cavalry of the Second Corps,
+covered the movement of the Second Corps. The remainder of the cavalry
+division, with the Nineteenth Brigade, the whole under the command of
+General Allenby, covered the west flank.
+
+The Fourth Division commenced its detrainment at Le Cateau on Sunday,
+the 23d, and by the morning of the 25th eleven battalions and a brigade
+of artillery with divisional staff were available for service.
+
+I ordered General Snow to move out to take up a position with his right
+south of Solesmes, his left resting on the Cambrai-Le Cateau Road south
+of La Chaprie. In this position the division rendered great help to the
+effective retirement of the Second and First Corps to the new position.
+
+Although the troops had been ordered to occupy the Cambrai-Le
+Cateau-Landrecies position, and the ground had, during the 25th, been
+partially prepared and intrenched, I had grave doubts--owing to the
+information I had received as to the accumulating strength of the enemy
+against me--as to the wisdom of standing there to fight.
+
+[Sidenote: Retirement of French troops on right.]
+
+Having regard to the continued retirement of the French on my right, my
+exposed left flank, the tendency of the enemy's western corps (II.) to
+envelop me, and, more than all, the exhausted condition of the troops, I
+determined to make a great effort to continue the retreat till I could
+put some substantial obstacle, such as the Somme or the Oise, between my
+troops and the enemy, and afford the former some opportunity of rest and
+reorganization. Orders were, therefore, sent to the corps commanders to
+continue their retreat as soon as they possibly could toward the general
+line Vermand-St. Quentin-Ribemont.
+
+The cavalry, under General Allenby, were ordered to cover the
+retirement.
+
+Throughout the 25th and far into the evening, the First Corps continued
+its march on Landrecies, following the road along the eastern border of
+the Forêt de Mormal, and arrived at Landrecies about 10 o'clock. I had
+intended that the corps should come further west so as to fill up the
+gap between Le Cateau and Landrecies, but the men were exhausted and
+could not get further in without rest.
+
+[Sidenote: British brigade in Landrecies.]
+
+[Sidenote: French reserve divisions support First Corps.]
+
+The enemy, however, would not allow them this rest, and about 9:30 P. M.
+a report was received that the Fourth Guards Brigade in Landrecies was
+heavily attacked by troops of the Ninth German Army Corps, who were
+coming through the forest on the north of the town. This brigade fought
+most gallantly, and caused the enemy to suffer tremendous loss in
+issuing from the forest into the narrow streets of the town. This loss
+has been estimated from reliable sources at from 700 to 1,000. At the
+same time information reached me from Sir Douglas Haig that his First
+Division was also heavily engaged south and east of Maroilles. I sent
+urgent messages to the commander of the two French reserve divisions on
+my right to come up to the assistance of the First Corps, which they
+eventually did. Partly owing to this assistance, but mainly to the
+skillful manner in which Sir Douglas Haig extricated his corps from an
+exceptionally difficult position in the darkness of the night, they were
+able at dawn to resume their march south toward Wassigny on Guise.
+
+By about 6 P. M. the Second Corps had got into position with their right
+on Le Cateau, their left in the neighborhood of Caudry, and the line of
+defense was continued thence by the Fourth Division toward Seranvillers,
+the left being thrown back.
+
+During the fighting on the 24th and 25th the cavalry became a good deal
+scattered, but by the early morning of the 26th General Allenby had
+succeeded in concentrating two brigades to the south of Cambrai.
+
+The Fourth Division was placed under the orders of the general officer
+commanding the Second Army Corps.
+
+On the 24th the French cavalry corps, consisting of three divisions
+under General Sordêt, had been in billets north of Avesnes. On my way
+back from Bavai, which was my "Poste de Commandement" during the
+fighting of the 23d and 24th, I visited General Sordêt, and earnestly
+requested his co-operation and support. He promised to obtain sanction
+from his army commander to act on my left flank, but said that his
+horses were too tired to move before the next day. Although he rendered
+me valuable assistance later on in the course of the retirement, he was
+unable for the reasons given to afford me any support on the most
+critical day of all, viz., the 26th.
+
+[Sidenote: British Second Corps and Fourth Division heavily attacked.]
+
+At daybreak it became apparent that the enemy was throwing the bulk of
+his strength against the left of the position occupied by the Second
+Corps and the Fourth Division.
+
+At this time the guns of four German army corps were in position against
+them, and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien reported to me that he judged it
+impossible to continue his retirement at daybreak (as ordered) in face
+of such an attack.
+
+I sent him orders to use his utmost endeavors to break off the action
+and retire at the earliest possible moment, as it was impossible for me
+to send him any support, the First Corps being at the moment incapable
+of movement.
+
+The French cavalry corps, under General Sordêt, was coming up on our
+left rear early in the morning, and I sent an urgent message to him to
+do his utmost to come up and support the retirement of my left flank;
+but owing to the fatigue of his horses he found himself unable to
+intervene in any way.
+
+There had been no time to intrench the position properly, but the troops
+showed a magnificent front to the terrible fire which confronted them.
+
+[Sidenote: British artillery outmatched by four to one.]
+
+The artillery, although outmatched by at least four to one, made a
+splendid fight, and inflicted heavy losses on their opponents.
+
+At length it became apparent that, if complete annihilation was to be
+avoided, a retirement must be attempted; and the order was given to
+commence it about 3:30 P. M. The movement was covered with the most
+devoted intrepidity and determination by the artillery, which had itself
+suffered heavily, and the fine work done by the cavalry in the further
+retreat from the position assisted materially in the final completion of
+this most difficult and dangerous operation.
+
+Fortunately the enemy had himself suffered too heavily to engage in an
+energetic pursuit.
+
+[Sidenote: General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien cited for conspicuous
+service.]
+
+I cannot close the brief account of this glorious stand of the British
+troops without putting on record my deep appreciation of the valuable
+services rendered by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien.
+
+I say without hesitation that the saving of the left wing of the army
+under my command on the morning of the 26th August could never have been
+accomplished unless a commander of rare and unusual coolness,
+intrepidity, and determination had been present to personally conduct
+the operation.
+
+[Sidenote: British retreat holding on line Noyon-Chauny-La Fère.]
+
+The retreat was continued far into the night of the 26th and through the
+27th and 28th, on which date the troops halted on the line
+Noyon-Chauny-La Fère, having then thrown off the weight of the enemy's
+pursuit.
+
+On the 27th and 28th August I was much indebted to General Sordêt and
+the French cavalry division which he commands for materially assisting
+my retirement and successfully driving back some of the enemy on
+Cambrai.
+
+General D'Amade also, with the Sixty-first and Sixty-second French
+Reserve Divisions, moved down from the neighborhood of Arras on the
+enemy's right flank and took much pressure off the rear of the British
+forces located there.
+
+[Sidenote: End of four days' battle at Mons.]
+
+This closes the period covering the heavy fighting which commenced at
+Mons on Sunday afternoon, 23d August, and which really constituted a
+four days' battle.
+
+At this point, therefore, I propose to close the present dispatch.
+
+[Sidenote: Serious losses in British forces.]
+
+I deeply deplore the very serious losses which the British forces have
+suffered in this great battle; but they were inevitable in view of the
+fact that the British Army--only two days after a concentration by
+rail--was called upon to withstand a vigorous attack of five German army
+corps.
+
+It is impossible for me to speak too highly of the skill evinced by the
+two general officers commanding army corps; the self-sacrificing and
+devoted exertions of their staffs; the direction of the troops by
+divisional, brigade, and regimental leaders; the command of the smaller
+units by their officers; and the magnificent fighting spirit displayed
+by non-commissioned officers and men.
+
+[Sidenote: Royal Flying Corps cited for admirable work.]
+
+I wish particularly to bring to your Lordship's notice the admirable
+work done by the Royal Flying Corps under Sir David Henderson. Their
+skill, energy, and perseverance have been beyond all praise. They have
+furnished me with the most complete and accurate information, which has
+been of incalculable value in the conduct of the operations. Fired at
+constantly both by friend and foe, and not hesitating to fly in every
+kind of weather, they have remained undaunted throughout.
+
+Further, by actually fighting in the air, they have succeeded in
+destroying five of the enemy's machines.
+
+I wish to acknowledge with deep gratitude the incalculable assistance I
+received from the General and Personal Staffs at Headquarters during
+this trying period.
+
+[Sidenote: Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray, Major General
+Wilson, Brigade General Hon. Lambton cited for admirable work.]
+
+Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray, Chief of the General Staff;
+Major General Wilson, Sub-Chief of the General Staff; and all under them
+have worked day and night unceasingly with the utmost skill,
+self-sacrifice, and devotion; and the same acknowledgment is due by me
+to Brigadier General Hon. W. Lambton, my Military Secretary, and the
+personal Staff.
+
+[Sidenote: Major General Sir William Robertson cited for admirable
+work.]
+
+In such operations as I have described the work of the Quartermaster
+General is of an extremely onerous nature. Major General Sir William
+Robertson has met what appeared to be almost insuperable difficulties
+with his characteristic energy, skill, and determination; and it is
+largely owing to his exertions that the hardships and sufferings of the
+troops--inseparable from such operations--were not much greater.
+
+[Sidenote: Major General Sir Nevil Macready.]
+
+Major General Sir Nevil Macready, the Adjutant General, has also been
+confronted with most onerous and difficult tasks in connection with
+disciplinary arrangements and the preparation of casualty lists. He has
+been indefatigable in his exertions to meet the difficult situations
+which arose.
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE
+
+SIR JOHN FRENCH
+
+
+                                                 17th September, 1914.
+
+My Lord: In continuation of my dispatch of September 7, I have the honor
+to report the further progress of the operations of the forces under my
+command from August 28.
+
+On that evening the retirement of the force was followed closely by two
+of the enemy's cavalry columns, moving southeast from St. Quentin.
+
+The retreat in this part of the field was being covered by the Third and
+Fifth Cavalry Brigades. South of the Somme General Gough, with the Third
+Cavalry Brigade, threw back the Uhlans of the Guard with considerable
+loss.
+
+[Sidenote: General Chetwode routs German attack.]
+
+General Chetwode, with the Fifth Cavalry Brigade, encountered the
+eastern column near Cerizy, moving south. The brigade attacked and
+routed the column, the leading German regiment suffering very severe
+casualties and being almost broken up.
+
+The Seventh French Army Corps was now in course of being railed up from
+the south to the east of Amiens. On the 29th it nearly completed its
+detrainment, and the French Sixth Army got into position on my left, its
+right resting on Roye.
+
+The Fifth French Army was behind the line of the Oise, between La Fère
+and Guise.
+
+[Sidenote: Vigorous pursuit of retreating German forces.]
+
+The pursuit of the enemy was very vigorous; some five or six German
+corps were on the Somme, facing the Fifth Army on the Oise. At least two
+corps were advancing toward my front, and were crossing the Somme east
+and west of Ham. Three or four more German corps were opposing the Sixth
+French Army on my left.
+
+This was the situation at 1 o'clock on the 29th, when I received a visit
+from General Joffre at my headquarters.
+
+I strongly represented my position to the French Commander in Chief, who
+was most kind, cordial, and sympathetic, as he has always been. He told
+me that he had directed the Fifth French Army on the Oise to move
+forward and attack the Germans on the Somme, with a view to checking
+pursuit. He also told me of the formation of the Sixth French Army on my
+left flank, composed of the Seventh Army Corps, four reserve divisions,
+and Sordêt's corps of cavalry.
+
+[Sidenote: Short retirement towards Compiègne-Soissons.]
+
+I finally arranged with General Joffre to effect a further short
+retirement toward the line Compiègne-Soissons, promising him, however,
+to do my utmost to keep always within a day's march of him.
+
+In pursuance of this arrangement the British forces retired to a
+position a few miles north of the line Compiègne-Soissons on the 29th.
+
+[Sidenote: Right flank of German army in dangerous line of connection.]
+
+The right flank of the Germany Army was now reaching a point which
+appeared seriously to endanger my line of communications with Havre. I
+had already evacuated Amiens, into which place a German reserve division
+was reported to have moved.
+
+Orders were given to change the base to St. Nazaire, and establish an
+advance base at Le Mans. This operation was well carried out by the
+Inspector General of Communications.
+
+[Sidenote: Retirement to the Marne ordered.]
+
+In spite of a severe defeat inflicted upon the Guard Tenth and Guard
+Reserve Corps of the German Army by the First and Third French Corps on
+the right of the Fifth Army, it was not part of General Joffre's plan to
+pursue this advantage; and a general retirement to the line of the
+Marne was ordered, to which the French forces in the more eastern
+theatre were directed to conform.
+
+A new Army (the Ninth) had been formed from three corps in the south by
+General Joffre, and moved into the space between the right of the Fifth
+and left of the Fourth Armies.
+
+While closely adhering to his strategic conception to draw the enemy on
+at all points until a favorable situation was created from which to
+assume the offensive, General Joffre found it necessary to modify from
+day to day the methods by which he sought to attain this object, owing
+to the development of the enemy's plans and changes in the general
+situation.
+
+In conformity with the movements of the French forces, my retirement
+continued practically from day to day. Although we were not severely
+pressed by the enemy, rearguard actions took place continually.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack on British First Cavalry Brigade.]
+
+On the 1st September, when retiring from the thickly wooded country to
+the south of Compiègne, the First Cavalry Brigade was overtaken by some
+German cavalry. They momentarily lost a horse artillery battery, and
+several officers and men were killed and wounded. With the help,
+however, of some detachments from the Third Corps operating on their
+left, they not only recovered their own guns, but succeeded in capturing
+twelve of the enemy's.
+
+Similarly, to the eastward, the First Corps, retiring south, also got
+into some very difficult forest country, and a somewhat severe rearguard
+action ensued at Villers-Cotterets, in which the Fourth Guards Brigade
+suffered considerably.
+
+[Sidenote: British forces in position south of the Marne.]
+
+On September 3 the British forces were in position south of the Marne
+between Lagny and Signy-Signets. Up to this time I had been requested
+by General Joffre to defend the passages of the river as long as
+possible, and to blow up the bridges in my front. After I had made the
+necessary dispositions, and the destruction of the bridges had been
+effected, I was asked by the French Commander in Chief to continue my
+retirement to a point some twelve miles in rear of the position I then
+occupied, with a view to taking up a second position behind the Seine.
+This retirement was duly carried out. In the meantime the enemy had
+thrown bridges and crossed the Marne in considerable force, and was
+threatening the Allies all along the line of the British forces and the
+Fifth and Ninth French Armies. Consequently several small outpost
+actions took place.
+
+On Saturday, September 5, I met the French Commander in Chief at his
+request, and he informed me of his intention to take the offensive
+forthwith, as he considered conditions very favorable to success.
+
+[Sidenote: General Joffre announces intention to take offensive.]
+
+General Joffre announced to me his intention of wheeling up the left
+flank of the Sixth Army, pivoting on the Marne and directing it to move
+on the Ourcq; cross and attack the flank of the First German Army, which
+was then moving in a southeasterly direction east of that river.
+
+He requested me to effect a change of front to my right--my left resting
+on the Marne and my right on the Fifth Army--to fill the gap between
+that army and the Sixth. I was then to advance against the enemy in my
+front and join in the general offensive movement.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle begins Sunday, September 6.]
+
+These combined movements practically commenced on Sunday, September 6,
+at sunrise; and on that day it may be said that a great battle opened on
+a front extending from Ermenonville, which was just in front of the left
+flank of the Sixth French Army, through Lizy on the Marne, Mauperthuis,
+which was about the British centre, Courtecon, which was on the left of
+the Fifth French Army, to Esternay and Charleville, the left of the
+Ninth Army under General Foch, and so along the front of the Ninth,
+Fourth and Third French Armies to a point north of the fortress of
+Verdun.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle concluded September 10. Germans driven to the line
+Soissons-Rheims.]
+
+This battle, in so far as the Sixth French Army, the British Army, the
+Fifth French Army, and the Ninth French Army were concerned, may be said
+to have concluded on the evening of September 10, by which time the
+Germans had been driven back to the line Soissons-Rheims, with a loss of
+thousands of prisoners, many guns, and enormous masses of transport.
+
+About September 3 the enemy appears to have changed his plans and to
+have determined to stop his advance south direct upon Paris, for on
+September 4 air reconnoissances showed that his main columns were moving
+in a southeasterly direction generally east of a line drawn through
+Nanteuil and Lizy on the Ourcq.
+
+On September 5 several of these columns were observed to have crossed
+the Marne, while German troops, which were observed moving southeast up
+the left flank of the Ourcq on the 4th, were now reported to be halted
+and facing that river. Heads of the enemy's columns were seen crossing
+at Changis, La Ferté, Nogent, Château Thierry, and Mezy.
+
+[Sidenote: German columns converging on Montmirail.]
+
+Considerable German columns of all arms were seen to be converging on
+Montmirail, while before sunset large bivouacs of the enemy were located
+in the neighborhood of Coulommiers, south of Rebais, La Ferté-Gaucher,
+and Dagny.
+
+I should conceive it to have been about noon on September 6, after the
+British forces had changed their front to the right and occupied the
+line Jouy-Le Chatel-Faremoutiers-Villeneuve Le Comte, and the advance
+of the Sixth French Army north of the Marne toward the Ourcq became
+apparent, that the enemy realized the powerful threat that was being
+made against the flank of his columns moving southeast, and began the
+great retreat which opened the battle above referred to.
+
+[Sidenote: Position of allies and Germans on September 6.]
+
+On the evening of September 6, therefore, the fronts and positions of
+the Allied Army were roughly as follows:
+
+_Sixth French Army._--Right on the Marne at Meux, left toward Betz.
+
+_British Forces._--On the line Dagny-Coulommiers-Maison.
+
+_Fifth French Army._--At Courtagon, right on Esternay.
+
+_Conneau's Cavalry Corps._--Between the right of the British and the
+left of the French Fifth Army.
+
+The position of the German Army was as follows:
+
+_Fourth Reserve and Second Corps._--East of the Ourcq and facing that
+river.
+
+_Ninth Cavalry Division._--West of Crecy.
+
+_Second Cavalry Division._--North of Coulommiers.
+
+_Fourth Corps._--Rebais.
+
+_Third and Seventh Corps._--Southwest of Montmirail.
+
+[Sidenote: First and Second German army.]
+
+All these troops constituted the First German Army, which was directed
+against the French Sixth Army on the Ourcq, and the British forces, and
+the left of the Fifth French Army south of the Marne.
+
+The Second German Army (IX., X., X.R., and Guard) was moving against the
+centre and right of the Fifth French Army and the Ninth French Army.
+
+On September 7 both the Fifth and Sixth French Armies were heavily
+engaged on our flank. The Second and Fourth Reserve German Corps on the
+Ourcq vigorously opposed the advance of the French toward that river,
+but did not prevent the Sixth Army from gaining some headway, the
+Germans themselves suffering serious losses. The French Fifth Army threw
+the enemy back to the line of the Petit Morin River after inflicting
+severe losses upon them, especially about Montceaux, which was carried
+at the point of the bayonet.
+
+The enemy retreated before our advance, covered by his Second and Ninth
+and Guard Cavalry Divisions, which suffered severely.
+
+Our cavalry acted with great vigor, especially General De Lisle's
+brigade, with the Ninth Lancers and Eighteenth Hussars.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans retreat September 8.]
+
+On September 8 the enemy continued his retreat northward, and our army
+was successfully engaged during the day with strong rearguards of all
+arms on the Petit Morin River, thereby materially assisting the progress
+of the French armies on our right and left, against whom the enemy was
+making his greatest efforts. On both sides the enemy was thrown back
+with very heavy loss. The First Army Corps encountered stubborn
+resistance at La Trétoire, (north of Rebais.) The enemy occupied a
+strong position with infantry and guns on the northern bank of the Petit
+Morin River; they were dislodged with considerable loss. Several machine
+guns and many prisoners were captured, and upward of 200 German dead
+were left on the ground.
+
+[Sidenote: Forcing of Petit Morin September 9.]
+
+The forcing of the Petit Morin at this point was much assisted by the
+cavalry and the First Division, which crossed higher up the stream.
+
+Later in the day a counter-attack by the enemy was well repulsed by the
+First Army Corps, a great many prisoners and some guns again falling
+into our hands.
+
+On this day (September 8) the Second Army Corps encountered considerable
+opposition, but drove back the enemy at all points with great loss,
+making considerable captures.
+
+The Third Army Corps also drove back considerable bodies of the enemy's
+infantry and made some captures.
+
+[Sidenote: British First and Second Army Corps forced passage of Marne.]
+
+On September 9 the First and Second Army Corps forced the passage of the
+Marne and advanced some miles to the north of it. The Third Corps
+encountered considerable opposition, as the bridge at La Ferté was
+destroyed and the enemy held the town on the opposite bank in some
+strength, and thence persistently obstructed the construction of a
+bridge; so the passage was not effected until after nightfall.
+
+During the day's pursuit the enemy suffered heavy loss in killed and
+wounded, some hundreds of prisoners fell into our hands and a battery of
+eight machine guns was captured by the Second Division.
+
+[Sidenote: Sixth French Army heavily engaged west of River Ourcq.]
+
+On this day the Sixth French Army was heavily engaged west of the River
+Ourcq. The enemy had largely increased his force opposing them; and very
+heavy fighting ensued, in which the French were successful throughout.
+
+The left of the Fifth French Army reached the neighborhood of Château
+Thierry after the most severe fighting, having driven the enemy
+completely north of the river with great loss.
+
+The fighting of this army in the neighborhood of Montmirail was very
+severe.
+
+[Sidenote: British and French advance on the line of the Ourcq,
+September 10.]
+
+The advance was resumed at daybreak on the 10th up to the line of the
+Ourcq, opposed by strong rearguards of all arms. The First and Second
+Corps, assisted by the cavalry divisions on the right, the Third and
+Fifth Cavalry Brigades on the left, drove the enemy northward. Thirteen
+guns, seven machine guns, about 2,000 prisoners, and quantities of
+transport fell into our hands. The enemy left many dead on the field.
+On this day the French Fifth and Sixth Armies had little opposition.
+
+[Illustration: BATTLE OF THE MARNE--END OF GERMAN RETREAT AND THE
+INTRENCHED LINE ON THE AISNE RIVER]
+
+[Sidenote: First and Second German armies in full retreat.]
+
+As the First and Second German Armies were now in full retreat, this
+evening marks the end of the battle which practically commenced on the
+morning of the 6th inst.; and it is at this point in the operations that
+I am concluding the present dispatch.
+
+In concluding this dispatch I must call your Lordship's special
+attention to the fact that from Sunday, August 23, up to the present
+date, (September 17,) from Mons back almost to the Seine, and from the
+Seine to the Aisne, the army under my command has been ceaselessly
+engaged without one single day's halt or rest of any kind.
+
+[Sidenote: Continuous fighting of British from Sunday, August 23, to
+September 17, from Mons to Seine and from Seine to the Aisne.]
+
+[Sidenote: Amiens and Rheims captured.]
+
+In the narratives preceding we have seen how the English forces
+conducted themselves during the Great Retreat and at the Marne. It must
+be remembered, however, that they comprised but a small proportion of
+the armies opposing the Germans. The French bore the brunt of the
+attack, and a French army turned the tide of battle. Beginning with the
+first days of September all other military events were overshadowed by
+the Great Retreat. On September 1 the Germans, in spite of French and
+British resistance, had reached Senlis. On September 4th Amiens was
+captured, and two days later the German army entered Rheims. In the
+following narrative is shown, through the official records, how the
+French armies bore themselves during the Great Retreat, the First Battle
+of the Marne, and in the fighting which marked the hurried return of the
+German armies to the banks of the Aisne which they had, with true
+foresight, fortified with such a possible situation in mind.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE FRENCH FOUGHT
+
+THE FRENCH OFFICIAL ACCOUNT
+
+
+The first month of the campaign began with successes and finished with
+defeats for the French troops. Under what circumstances did these come
+about?
+
+[Sidenote: Two principal actions.]
+
+Our plan of concentration had foreseen the possibility of two principal
+actions, one on the right between the Vosges and the Moselle, the other
+on the left to the north of Verdun-Toul line, this double possibility
+involving the eventual variation of our transport. On August 2, owing to
+the Germans passing through Belgium, our concentration was substantially
+modified by General Joffre in order that our principal effort might be
+directed to the north.
+
+From the first week in August it was apparent that the length of time
+required for the British Army to begin to move would delay our action in
+connection with it. This delay is one of the reasons which explain our
+failures at the end of August.
+
+[Sidenote: Mulhouse occupied.]
+
+Awaiting the moment when the operations in the north could begin, and to
+prepare for it by retaining in Alsace the greatest possible number of
+German forces, the General in Chief ordered our troops to occupy
+Mulhouse, (Mülhousen,) to cut the bridges of the Rhine at Huningue and
+below, and then to flank the attack of our troops, operating in
+Lorraine.
+
+This operation was badly carried out by a leader who was at once
+relieved of his command. Our troops, after having carried Mulhouse, lost
+it and were thrown back on Belfort. The work had, therefore, to be
+recommenced afresh, and this was done from August 14 under a new
+command.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy losses.]
+
+Mulhouse was taken on the 19th, after a brilliant fight at Dornach.
+Twenty-four guns were captured from the enemy. On the 20th we held the
+approaches to Colmar, both by the plain and by the Vosges. The enemy had
+undergone enormous losses and abandoned great stores of shells and
+forage, but from this moment what was happening in Lorraine and on our
+left prevented us from carrying our successes further, for our troops in
+Alsace were needed elsewhere.
+
+On August 28 the Alsace army was broken up, only a small part remaining
+to hold the region of Thann and the Vosges.
+
+The purpose of the operations in Alsace was, namely, to retain a large
+part of the enemy's forces far from the northern theatre of operations.
+It was for our offensive in Lorraine to pursue still more directly by
+holding before it the German army corps operating to the south of Metz.
+
+This offensive began brilliantly on August 14. On the 19th we had
+reached the region of Saarburg and that of the Etangs, (lakes,) and we
+held Dieuze, Morhange, Delme, and Château Salins.
+
+[Sidenote: French offensive stopped.]
+
+On the 20th our success was stopped. The cause is to be found in the
+strong organization of the region, in the power of the enemy's
+artillery, operating over ground which had been minutely surveyed, and,
+finally, in the default of certain units.
+
+[Sidenote: German reinforcements.]
+
+On the 22d, in spite of the splendid behavior of several of our army
+corps, notably that of Nancy, our troops were brought back on to the
+Grand Couronne, while on the 23d and 24th the Germans concentrated
+reinforcements--three army corps, at least--in the region of Lunéville
+and forced us to retire to the south.
+
+This retreat, however, was only momentary. On the 25th, after two
+vigorous counter-attacks, one from south to north and the other from
+west to east, the enemy had to fall back. From that time a sort of
+balance was established on this terrain between the Germans and
+ourselves. Maintained for fifteen days, it was afterward, as will be
+seen, modified to our advantage.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle of the north.]
+
+There remained the principal business, the battle of the
+north--postponed owing to the necessity of waiting for the British Army.
+On August 20 the concentration of our lines was finished and the General
+in Chief gave orders for our centre and our left to take the offensive.
+Our centre comprised two armies. Our left consisted of a third army,
+reinforced to the extent of two army corps, a corps of cavalry, the
+reserve divisions, the British Army, and the Belgian Army, which had
+already been engaged for the previous three weeks at Liège, Namur, and
+Louvain.
+
+The German plan on that date was as follows: From seven to eight army
+corps and four cavalry divisions were endeavoring to pass between Givet
+and Brussels, and even to prolong their movements more to the west. Our
+object was, therefore, in the first place, to hold and dispose of the
+enemy's centre and afterward to throw ourselves with all available
+forces on the left flank of the German grouping of troops in the north.
+
+[Sidenote: The offensive fails.]
+
+On August 21 our offensive in the centre began with ten army corps. On
+August 22 it failed, and this reverse appeared serious.
+
+The reasons for it are complex. There were in this affair individual and
+collective failures, imprudences committed under the fire of the enemy,
+divisions ill-engaged, rash deployments, precipitate retreats, a
+premature waste of men, and, finally, the inadequacy of certain of our
+troops and their leaders, both as regards the use of infantry and
+artillery.
+
+In consequence of these lapses the enemy, turning to account the
+difficult terrain, was able to secure the maximum of profit from the
+advantages which the superiority of his subaltern complements gave him.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy crosses the Sambre.]
+
+In spite of this defeat our manoeuvre had still a chance of success, if
+our left and the British Army obtained a decisive result. This was
+unfortunately not the case. On August 22, at the cost of great losses,
+the enemy succeeded in crossing the Sambre and our left army fell back
+on the 24th upon Beaumont-Givet, being perturbed by the belief that the
+enemy was threatening its right.
+
+On the same day, (the 24th,) the British Army fell back after a German
+attack upon the Maubeuge-Valenciennes line. On the 25th and 26th its
+retreat became more hurried. After Landrecies and Le Cateau it fell back
+southward by forced marches. It could not from this time keep its hold
+until after crossing the Marne.
+
+[Sidenote: The British retreat.]
+
+The rapid retreat of the English, coinciding with the defeat sustained
+in Belgian Luxembourg, allowed the enemy to cross the Meuse and to
+accelerate, by fortifying it, the action of his right.
+
+The situation at this moment may be thus summed up: Either our frontier
+had to be defended on the spot under conditions which the British
+retreat rendered extremely perilous, or we had to execute a strategic
+retirement which, while delivering up to the enemy a part of the
+national soil, would permit us, on the other hand, to resume the
+offensive at our own time with a favorable disposition of troops, still
+intact, which we had at our command. The General in Chief determined on
+the second alternative.
+
+[Sidenote: New offensive planned.]
+
+Henceforward the French command devoted its efforts to preparing the
+offensive. To this end three conditions had to be fulfilled:
+
+1. The retreat had to be carried out in order under a succession of
+counter-attacks which would keep the enemy busy.
+
+2. The extreme point of this retreat must be fixed in such a way that
+the different armies should reach it simultaneously, ready at the moment
+of occupying it to resume the offensive all together.
+
+3. Every circumstance permitting of a resumption of the offensive before
+this point should be reached must be utilized by the whole of our forces
+and the British forces.
+
+[Sidenote: Counter-attacks.]
+
+The counter-attacks, executed during the retreat, were brilliant and
+often fruitful. On August 20 we successfully attacked St. Quentin to
+disengage the British Army. Two other corps and a reserve division
+engaged the Prussian Guard and the Tenth German Army Corps, which was
+debouching from Guise. By the end of the day, after various
+fluctuations, the enemy was thrown back on the Oise and the British
+front was freed.
+
+On August 27 we had also succeeded in throwing back upon the Meuse the
+enemy, who was endeavoring to gain a foothold on the left bank. Our
+successes continued on the 28th in the woods of Marfée and of Jaulnay.
+Thanks to them we were able, in accordance with the orders of the
+General in Chief, to fall back on the Buzancy-Le Chesne-Bouvellemont
+line.
+
+Further to the right another army took part in the same movement and
+carried out successful attacks on August 25 on the Othain and in the
+region of Spincourt.
+
+[Sidenote: Recrossing the Meuse.]
+
+On the 26th these different units recrossed the Meuse without being
+disturbed and were able to join in the action of our centre. Our armies
+were, therefore, again intact and available for the offensive.
+
+On August 26 a new army composed of two army corps, five reserve
+divisions, and a Moorish brigade was constituted. This army was to
+assemble in the region of Amiens between August 27 and September 1 and
+take the offensive against the German right, uniting its action with
+that of the British Army, operating on the line of Ham-Bray-sur-Somme.
+
+[Sidenote: The retreat continues.]
+
+The hope of resuming the offensive was from this moment rendered vain by
+the rapidity of the march of the German right wing. This rapidity had
+two consequences, which we had to parry before thinking of advancing. On
+the one hand, our new army had not time to complete its detraining, and,
+on the other hand, the British Army, forced back further by the enemy,
+uncovered on August 31 our left flank. Our line, thus modified,
+contained waves which had to be redressed before we could pass to the
+offensive.
+
+To understand this it is sufficient to consider the situation created by
+the quick advance of the enemy on the evening of September 2.
+
+A corps of cavalry had crossed the Oise and advanced as far as
+Château-Thierry. The First Army, (General von Kluck,) comprising four
+active army corps and a reserve corps, had passed Compiègne.
+
+The Second Army, (General von Bülow,) with three active army corps and
+two reserve corps, was reaching the Laon region.
+
+The Third Army, (General von Hausen,) with two active army corps and a
+reserve corps, had crossed the Aisne between the Château Porcien and
+Attigny.
+
+[Sidenote: The German armies.]
+
+More to the east the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Armies, namely,
+twelve army corps, four reserve corps, and numerous Ersatz formations,
+were in contact with our troops, the Fourth and Fifth Armies between
+Vouziers and Verdun and the others in the positions which have been
+indicated above, from Verdun to the Vosges.
+
+[Sidenote: The left in peril.]
+
+It will, therefore, be seen that our left, if we accepted battle, might
+be in great peril through the British forces and the new French Army,
+operating more to the westward, having given way.
+
+A defeat in these conditions would have cut off our armies from Paris
+and from the British forces and at the same time from the new army which
+had been constituted to the left of the English. We should thus be
+running the risk of losing by a single stroke the advantage of the
+assistance which Russia later on was to furnish.
+
+General Joffre chose resolutely for the solution which disposed of these
+risks, that is to say, for postponing the offensive and the continuance
+of the retreat. In this way he remained on ground which he had chosen.
+He waited only until he could engage in better conditions.
+
+[Sidenote: The limit of the retreat.]
+
+In consequence, on September 1, he fixed as an extreme limit for the
+movement of retreat, which was still going on, the line of
+Bray-sur-Seine, Nogent-sur-Seine, Arcis-sur-Aube, Vitry-le-François, and
+the region to the north of Bar-le-Duc. This line might be reached if the
+troops were compelled to go back so far. They would attack before
+reaching it, as soon as there was a possibility of bringing about an
+offensive disposition, permitting the co-operation of the whole of our
+forces.
+
+On September 5 it appeared that this desired situation existed.
+
+The First German Army, carrying audacity to temerity, had continued its
+endeavor to envelop our left, had crossed the Grand Morin, and reached
+the region of Chauffry, to the north of Rebaix and of Esternay. It aimed
+then at cutting our armies off from Paris, in order to begin the
+investment of the capital.
+
+[Sidenote: The German lines.]
+
+The Second Army had its head on the line Champaubert, Etoges, Bergeres,
+and Vertus.
+
+The Third and Fourth Armies reached to Chalons-sur-Marne and
+Bussy-le-Repos. The Fifth Army was advancing on one side and the other
+from the Argonne as far as Triacourt-les-Islettes and Juivecourt. The
+Sixth and Seventh Armies were attacking more to the east.
+
+But--and here is a capital difference between the situation of September
+5 and that of September 2--the envelopment of our left was no longer
+possible.
+
+In the first place, our left army had been able to occupy the line of
+Sézanne, Villers-St. Georges and Courchamps. Furthermore, the British
+forces, gathered between the Seine and the Marne, flanked on their left
+by the newly created army, were closely connected with the rest of our
+forces.
+
+[Sidenote: Allies' armies ready.]
+
+This was precisely the disposition which the General in Chief had wished
+to see achieved. On the 4th he decided to take advantage of it, and
+ordered all the armies to hold themselves ready. He had taken from his
+right two new army corps, two divisions of infantry, and two divisions
+of cavalry, which were distributed between his left and his centre.
+
+On the evening of the 5th he addressed to all the commanders of armies a
+message ordering them to attack.
+
+[Sidenote: Joffre orders the advance.]
+
+"The hour has come," he wrote, "to advance at all costs, and to die
+where you stand rather than give way."
+
+If one examines on the map the respective positions of the German and
+French armies on September 6 as previously described, it will be seen
+that by his inflection toward Meaux and Coulommiers General von Kluck
+was exposing his right to the offensive action of our left. This is the
+starting point of the victory of the Marne.
+
+[Sidenote: The Battle of the Marne.]
+
+On the evening of September 5 our left army had reached the front
+Penchard-Saint-Soutlet-Ver. On the 6th and 7th it continued its
+attacks vigorously with the Ourcq as objective. On the evening of
+the 7th it was some kilometers from the Ourcq, on the front
+Chambry-Marcilly-Lisieux-Acy-en-Multien. On the 8th, the Germans, who
+had in great haste reinforced their right by bringing their Second and
+Fourth Army Corps back to the north, obtained some successes by attacks
+of extreme violence. They occupied Betz, Thury-en-Valois, and
+Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. But in spite of this pressure our troops held
+their ground well. In a brilliant action they took three standards, and,
+being reinforced, prepared a new attack for the 10th. At the moment that
+this attack was about to begin the enemy was already in retreat toward
+the north. The attack became a pursuit, and on the 12th we established
+ourselves on the Aisne.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy left exposed.]
+
+Why did the German forces which were confronting us and on the evening
+before attacking so furiously retreat on the morning of the 10th?
+Because in bringing back on the 6th several army corps from the south to
+the north to face our left the enemy had exposed his left to the attacks
+of the British Army, which had immediately faced around toward the
+north, and to those of our armies which were prolonging the English
+lines to the right. This is what the French command had sought to bring
+about. This is what happened on September 8 and allowed the development
+and rehabilitation which it was to effect.
+
+[Sidenote: The part of the British.]
+
+On the 6th the British Army had set out from the line Rozcy-Lagny and
+had that evening reached the southward bank of the Grand Morin. On the
+7th and 8th it continued its march, and on the 9th had debouched to the
+north of the Marne below Château-Thierry, taking in flank the German
+forces which on that day were opposing, on the Ourcq, our left army.
+Then it was that these forces began to retreat, while the British Army,
+going in pursuit and capturing seven guns and many prisoners, reached
+the Aisne between Soissons and Longueval.
+
+[Sidenote: The rôle of the French army.]
+
+The rôle of the French Army, which was operating to the right of the
+British Army, was threefold. It had to support the British attacking on
+its left. It had on its right to support our centre, which from
+September 7 had been subjected to a German attack of great violence.
+Finally, its mission was to throw back the three active army corps and
+the reserve corps which faced it.
+
+On the 7th it made a leap forward, and on the following days reached and
+crossed the Marne, seizing, after desperate fighting, guns, howitzers,
+mitrailleuses, and 1,300,000 cartridges. On the 12th it established
+itself on the north edge of the Montagne-de-Reime in contact with our
+centre, which for its part had just forced the enemy to retreat in
+haste.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack on the French centre.]
+
+Our centre consisted of a new army created on August 29 and of one of
+those which at the beginning of the campaign had been engaged in Belgian
+Luxembourg. The first had retreated on August 29 to September 5 from the
+Aisne to the north of the Marne and occupied the general front
+Sézanne-Mailly.
+
+The second, more to the east, had drawn back to the south of the line
+Humbauville-Château-Beauchamp-Bignicourt-Blesmes-Maurupt-le-Montoy.
+
+[Sidenote: A further retreat.]
+
+The enemy, in view of his right being arrested and the defeat of his
+enveloping movement, made a desperate effort from the 7th to the 10th to
+pierce our centre to the west and to the east of Fère-Champenoise. On
+the 8th he succeeded in forcing back the right of our new army, which
+retired as far as Gouragançon. On the 9th, at 6 o'clock in the morning,
+there was a further retreat to the south of that village, while on the
+left the other army corps also had to go back to the line
+Allemant-Connantre.
+
+[Sidenote: Foch out-man[oe]uvres Germans.]
+
+Despite this retreat the General commanding the army ordered a general
+offensive for the same day. With the Morocco Division, whose behavior
+was heroic, he met a furious assault of the Germans on his left toward
+the marshes of Saint Gond. Then with the division which had just
+victoriously overcome the attacks of the enemy to the north of Sézanne,
+and with the whole of his left army corps, he made a flanking attack in
+the evening of the 9th upon the German forces, and notably the guard,
+which had thrown back his right army corps. The enemy, taken by surprise
+by this bold man[oe]uvre, did not resist, and beat a hasty retreat.
+
+[Sidenote: Centre armies established.]
+
+On the 11th we crossed the Marne between Tours-sur-Marne and Sarry,
+driving the Germans in front of us in disorder. On the 12th we were in
+contact with the enemy to the north of the Camp de Chalons. Our other
+army of the centre, acting on the right of the one just referred to, had
+been intrusted with the mission during the 7th, 8th, and 9th of
+disengaging its neighbor, and it was only on the 10th that, being
+reinforced by an army corps from the east, it was able to make its
+action effectively felt. On the 11th the Germans retired. But,
+perceiving their danger, they fought desperately, with enormous
+expenditure of projectiles, behind strong intrenchments. On the 12th the
+result had none the less been attained, and our two centre armies were
+solidly established on the ground gained.
+
+To the right of these two armies were three others. They had orders to
+cover themselves to the north and to debouch toward the west on the
+flank of the enemy, which was operating to the west of the Argonne. But
+a wide interval in which the Germans were in force separated them from
+our centre. The attack took place, nevertheless, with very brilliant
+success for our artillery, which destroyed eleven batteries of the
+Sixteenth German Army Corps.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans retreat on the right.]
+
+On the 10th inst. the Eighth and Fifteenth German Army Corps
+counter-attacked, but were repulsed. On the 11th our progress continued
+with new successes, and on the 12th we were able to face round toward
+the north in expectation of the near and inevitable retreat of the
+enemy, which, in fact, took place from the 13th.
+
+The withdrawal of the mass of the German force involved also that of the
+left. From the 12th onward the forces of the enemy operating between
+Nancy and the Vosges retreated in a hurry before our two armies of the
+East, which immediately occupied the positions that the enemy had
+evacuated. The offensive of our right had thus prepared and consolidated
+in the most useful way the result secured by our left and our centre.
+
+Such was this seven days' battle, in which more than two millions of men
+were engaged. Each army gained ground step by step, opening the road to
+its neighbor, supported at once by it, taking in flank the adversary
+which the day before it had attacked in front, the efforts of one
+articulating closely with those of the other, a perfect unity of
+intention and method animating the supreme command.
+
+[Sidenote: Meaning of the victory.]
+
+To give this victory all its meaning it is necessary to add that it was
+gained by troops which for two weeks had been retreating, and which,
+when the order for the offensive was given, were found to be as ardent
+as on the first day. It has also to be said that these troops had to
+meet the whole German army, and that from the time they marched forward
+they never again fell back. Under their pressure the German retreat at
+certain times had the appearance of a rout.
+
+[Sidenote: Numbers of German prisoners.]
+
+In spite of the fatigue of our men, in spite of the power of the German
+heavy artillery, we took colors, guns, mitrailleuses, shells, more than
+a million cartridges, and thousands of prisoners. A German corps lost
+almost the whole of its artillery, which, from information brought by
+our airmen, was destroyed by our guns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The next objective is the Channel ports.]
+
+After the failure of the German drive against Paris, whose capture was
+the first objective in the plan of campaign of the German General Staff,
+preparations were made to carry out the plans for the second objective,
+the capture of the Channel seaports, and the control of the coasts. The
+Allied commanders were quite aware of this purpose, and made plans to
+circumvent it. Then followed the famous Race for the Channel, which is
+described by official French observers in the pages that follow.
+
+
+
+
+THE RACE FOR THE CHANNEL
+
+FRENCH OFFICIAL ACCOUNT
+
+
+As early as September 11 the Commander in Chief had directed our left
+army to have as important forces as possible on the right bank of the
+Oise. On September 17 he made that instruction more precise by ordering
+"a mass to be constituted on the left wing of our disposition, capable
+of coping with the outflanking movement of the enemy." Everything led us
+to expect that flanking movement, for the Germans are lacking in
+invention. Indeed, their effort at that time tended to a renewal of
+their manoeuvre of August. In the parallel race the opponents were bound
+in the end to be stopped only by the sea; that is what happened about
+October 20.
+
+[Sidenote: Allies in the race to the sea.]
+
+The Germans had an advantage over us, which is obvious from a glance at
+the map--the concentric form of their front, which shortened the length
+of their transports. In spite of this initial inferiority we arrived in
+time.
+
+From the middle of September to the last week in October fighting went
+on continually to the north of the Oise, but all the time we were
+fighting we were slipping northward. On the German side this movement
+brought into line more than eighteen new army corps (twelve active army
+corps, six reserve corps, four cavalry corps). On our side it ended in
+the constitution of three fresh armies on our left and in the transport
+into the same district of the British Army and the Belgian Army from
+Antwerp.
+
+[Sidenote: Resistance in Battle of Flanders.]
+
+For the conception and realization of this fresh and extended
+disposition the French command, in the first place, had to reduce to a
+minimum the needs for effectives of our armies to the east of the Oise,
+and afterwards to utilize to the utmost our means of transport. It
+succeeded in this, and when, at the end of October, the battle of
+Flanders opened, when the Germans, having completed the concentration of
+their forces, attempted with fierce energy to turn or to pierce our
+left, they flung themselves upon a resistance which inflicted upon them
+a complete defeat.
+
+The movement began on our side only with the resources of the army which
+had held the left of our front during the battle of the Marne,
+reinforced on September 15 by one army corps.
+
+This reinforcement, not being sufficient to hold the enemy's offensive
+(district of Vaudelincourt-Mouchy-Uaugy), a fresh army was transported
+more to the left, with the task "of acting against the German right wing
+in order to disengage its neighbor, * * * while preserving a flanking
+direction in its march in relation to the fresh units that the enemy
+might be able to put into line."
+
+[Sidenote: Reinforcements for the First Army.]
+
+To cover the detrainments of this fresh army in the district
+Clermont-Beauvais-Boix a cavalry corps and four territorial divisions
+were ordered to establish themselves on both banks of the Somme. In the
+wooded hills, however, which extend between the Oise and Lassigny the
+enemy displayed increasing activity. Nevertheless, the order still
+further to broaden the movement toward the left was maintained, while
+the territorial divisions were to move toward Bethune and Aubigny. The
+march to the sea went on.
+
+[Sidenote: Alternate reverse and success.]
+
+From the 21st to the 26th all our forces were engaged in the district
+Lassigny-Roye-Peronne, with alternations of reverse and success.
+
+It was the first act of the great struggle which was to spread as it
+went on. On the 26th the whole of the Sixth German Army was deployed
+against us. We retained all our positions, but we could do no more;
+consequently there was still the risk that the enemy, by means of a
+fresh afflux of forces, might succeed in turning us.
+
+Once more reinforcements, two army corps, were directed no longer on
+Beauvais, but toward Amiens. The front was then again to extend. A fresh
+army was constituted more to the north.
+
+From September 30 onward we could not but observe that the enemy,
+already strongly posted on the plateau of Thiepval, was continually
+slipping his forces from south to north, and everywhere confronting us
+with remarkable energy.
+
+[Sidenote: Cavalry operations.]
+
+Accordingly, on October 1 two cavalry corps were directed to make a leap
+forward and, operating on both flanks of the Scarpe, to put themselves
+in touch with the garrison of Dunkirk, which, on its side, had pushed
+forward as far as Douai.
+
+But on October 2 and 3 the bulk of our fresh army was very strongly
+attacked in the district of Arras and Lens. Confronting it were two
+corps of cavalry, the guards, four active army corps, and two reserve
+corps. A fresh army corps was immediately transported and detrained in
+the Lille district.
+
+But once more the attacks became more pressing, and on October 4 it was
+a question whether, in view of the enemy's activity both west of the
+Oise and south of the Somme, and also further to the north, a retreat
+would not have to be made. General Joffre resolutely put this
+hypothesis aside and ordered the offensive to be resumed with the
+reinforcements that had arrived. It was, however, clear that, despite
+the efforts of all, our front, extended to the sea as it was by a mere
+ribbon of troops, did not possess the solidity to enable it to resist
+with complete safety a German attack, the violence of which could well
+be foreseen.
+
+[Sidenote: Transport of the British Army.]
+
+In the Arras district the position was fairly good. But between the Oise
+and Arras we were holding our own only with difficulty. Finally, to the
+north, on the Lille-Estaires-Merville-Hazebrouck-Cassel front, our
+cavalry and our territorials had their work cut out against eight
+divisions of German cavalry, with very strong infantry supports. It was
+at this moment that the transport of the British Army to the northern
+theatre of operations began.
+
+[Sidenote: British Army taken from the Aisne.]
+
+Field Marshal French had, as early as the end of September, expressed
+the wish to see his army resume its initial place on the left of the
+allied armies. He explained this wish on the ground of the greater
+facility of which his communications would have the advantage in this
+new position, and also of the impending arrival of two divisions of
+infantry from home and of two infantry divisions and a cavalry division
+from India, which would be able to deploy more easily on that terrain.
+In spite of the difficulties which such a removal involved, owing to the
+intensive use of the railways by our own units, General Joffre decided
+at the beginning of October to meet the Field Marshal's wishes and to
+have the British Army removed from the Aisne.
+
+It was clearly specified that on the northern terrain the British Army
+should co-operate to the same end as ourselves, the stopping of the
+German right. In other terms, the British Army was to prolong the front
+of the general disposition without a break, attacking as soon as
+possible, and at the same time seeking touch with the Belgian Army.
+
+But the detraining took longer than had been expected, and it was not
+possible to attack the Germans during the time when they had only
+cavalry in the Lille district and further to the north.
+
+[Sidenote: Wearied Belgian troops.]
+
+There remained the Belgian Army. On leaving Antwerp on October 9 the
+Belgian Army, which was covered by 8,000 British bluejackets and 6,000
+French bluejackets, at first intended to retire as far as to the north
+of Calais, but afterwards determined to make a stand in Belgian
+territory. Unfortunately, the condition of the Belgian troops, exhausted
+by a struggle of more than three months, did not allow any immediate
+hopes to be based upon them. This situation weighed on our plans and
+delayed their execution.
+
+On the 16th we made progress to the east of Ypres. On the 18th our
+cavalry even reached Roulers and Cortemark. But it was now evident that,
+in view of the continual reinforcing of the German right, our left was
+not capable of maintaining the advantages obtained during the previous
+few days. To attain our end and make our front inviolable a fresh effort
+was necessary. That effort was immediately made by the dispatch to the
+north of the Lys of considerable French forces, which formed the French
+Army of Belgium.
+
+The French Army of Belgium consisted, to begin with, of two territorial
+divisions, four divisions of cavalry, and a naval brigade. Directly
+after its constitution it was strengthened by elements from other points
+on the front whose arrival extended from October 27 to November 11.
+These reinforcements were equivalent altogether in value to five army
+corps, a division of cavalry, a territorial division, and sixteen
+regiments of cavalry, plus sixty pieces of heavy artillery.
+
+Thus was completed the strategic manoeuvre defined by the instructions
+of the General in Chief on September 11 and developed during the five
+following weeks with the ampleness we have just seen. The movements of
+troops carried out during this period were methodically combined with
+the pursuit of operations, both defensive and offensive, from the Oise
+to the North Sea.
+
+[Sidenote: Five armies co-ordinated.]
+
+On October 22 our left, bounded six weeks earlier by the Noyon district,
+rested on Nieuport, thanks to the successive deployment of five fresh
+armies--three French armies, the British Army, and the Belgian Army.
+
+Thus the co-ordination decided upon by the General in Chief attained its
+end. The barrier was established. It remained to maintain it against the
+enemy's offensive. That was the object and the result of the battle of
+Flanders, October 22 to November 15.
+
+The German attack in Flanders was conducted strategically and tactically
+with remarkable energy. The complete and indisputable defeat in which it
+resulted is therefore significant.
+
+The forces of which the enemy disposed for this operation between the
+sea and the Lys comprised:
+
+[Sidenote: German forces between the sea and the Lys.]
+
+(1) The entire Fourth Army commanded by the Duke of Württemberg,
+consisting of one naval division, one division of Ersatz Reserve, (men
+who had received no training before the war,) which was liberated by the
+fall of Antwerp; the Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-sixth and
+Twenty-seventh Reserve Corps, and the Forty-eighth Division belonging to
+the Twenty-fourth Reserve Corps.
+
+(2) A portion of another army under General von Fabeck, consisting of
+the Fifteenth Corps, two Bavarian corps and three (unspecified)
+divisions.
+
+(3) Part of the Sixth Army under the command of the Crown Prince of
+Bavaria. This army, more than a third of which took part in the battle
+of Flanders, comprised the Nineteenth Army Corps, portions of the
+Thirteenth Corps and the Eighteenth Reserve Corps, the Seventh and
+Fourteenth Corps, the First Bavarian Reserve Corps, the Guards, and the
+Fourth Army Corps.
+
+(4) Four highly mobile cavalry corps prepared and supported the action
+of the troops enumerated above. Everything possible had been done to
+fortify the "morale" of the troops. At the beginning of October the
+Crown Prince of Bavaria in a proclamation had exhorted his soldiers "to
+make the decisive effort against the French left wing," and "to settle
+thus the fate of the great battle which has lasted for weeks."
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of thrusts in Flanders.]
+
+[Sidenote: German plan in Flanders.]
+
+On October 28, Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria declared in an army order
+that his troops "had just been fighting under very difficult
+conditions," and he added: "It is our business now not to let the
+struggle with our most detested enemy drag on longer * * * The decisive
+blow is still to be struck." On October 30, General von Deimling,
+commanding the Fifteenth Army Corps (belonging to General von Fabeck's
+command), issued an order declaring that "the thrust against Ypres will
+be of decisive importance." It should be noted also that the Emperor
+proceeded in person to Thielt and Courtrai to exalt by his presence the
+ardor of his troops. Finally, at the close of October, the entire German
+press incessantly proclaimed the importance of the "Battle of Calais."
+It is superfluous to add that events in Poland explain in a large
+measure the passionate resolve of the German General Staff to obtain a
+decision in the Western theatre of operations at all costs. This
+decision would be obtained if our left were pierced or driven in. To
+reach Calais, that is, to break our left; to carry Ypres, that is, to
+cut it in half; through both points to menace the communications and
+supplies of the British expeditionary corps, perhaps even to threaten
+Britain in her island--such was the German plan in the Battle of
+Flanders. It was a plan that could not be executed.
+
+[Sidenote: Dunkirk the first objective.]
+
+The enemy, who had at his disposal a considerable quantity of heavy
+artillery, directed his efforts at first upon the coast and the country
+to the north of Dixmude. His objective was manifestly the capture of
+Dunkirk, then of Calais and Boulogne, and this objective he pursued
+until November 1.
+
+[Sidenote: Ramscapelle retaken.]
+
+[Sidenote: Allies win the Battle of Calais.]
+
+On October 23 the Belgians along the railway line from Nieuport to
+Dixmude were strengthened by a French division. Dixmude was occupied by
+our marines (fusiliers marins). During the subsequent day our forces
+along the railway developed a significant resistance against an enemy
+superior in number and backed by heavy artillery. On the 29th the
+inundations effected between the canal and the railway line spread along
+our front. On the 30th we recaptured Ramscapelle, the only point on the
+railway which Belgians had lost. On the 1st and 2d of November the enemy
+bombarded Furnes, but began to show signs of weariness. On the 2d he
+evacuated the ground between the Yser and the railway, abandoning
+cannon, dead and wounded. On the 3d our troops were able to re-enter the
+Dixmude district. The success achieved by the enemy at Dixmude at this
+juncture was without fruit. They succeeded in taking the town. They
+could not debouch from it. The coastal attack had thus proved a total
+failure. Since then it has never been renewed. The Battle of Calais, so
+noisily announced by the German press, amounted to a decided reverse for
+the Germans.
+
+The enemy had now begun an attack more important than its predecessor,
+in view of the numbers engaged in it. This attack was intended as a
+renewal to the south of the effort which had just been shattered in the
+north. Instead of turning our flank on the coast, it was now sought to
+drive in the right of our northern army under the shock of powerful
+masses. This was the Battle of Ypres.
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of the Ypres position.]
+
+[Sidenote: British cavalry a connecting link.]
+
+In order to understand this long, desperate, and furious battle we must
+hark back a few days in point of time. At the moment when our cavalry
+reached Roulers and Cortemark (October 28) our territorial divisions
+from Dunkirk, under General Biden, had occupied and organized a
+defensive position at Ypres. It was a point d'appui, enabling us to
+prepare and maintain our connections with the Belgian Army. From October
+23 two British and French army corps were in occupation of this
+position, which was to be the base of their forward march in the
+direction of Roulers-Menin. The delays already explained and the
+strength of the forces brought up by the enemy soon brought to a
+standstill our progress along the line Poelcapelle, Paschendaele,
+Zandvorde, and Gheluvelt. But in spite of the stoppage here, Ypres was
+solidly covered, and the connections of all the allied forces were
+established. Against the line thus formed the German attack was hurled
+from October 25 to November 13, to the north, the east, and the south of
+Ypres. From October 26 on the attacks were renewed daily with
+extraordinary violence, obliging us to employ our reinforcements at the
+most threatened points as soon as they came up. Thus, on October 31, we
+were obliged to send supports to the British cavalry, then to the two
+British corps between which the cavalry formed the connecting link, and
+finally to intercalate between these two corps a force equivalent to two
+army corps. Between October 30 and November 6 Ypres was several times in
+danger. The British lost Zandvorde, Gheluvelt, Messines, and Wytschaete.
+The front of the Allies, thus contracted, was all the more difficult to
+defend; but defended it was without a recoil.
+
+[Sidenote: French reinforcements.]
+
+The arrival of three French divisions in our line enabled us to resume
+from the 4th to the 8th a vigorous offensive. On the 10th and 11th this
+offensive, brought up against fresh and sharper German attacks, was
+checked. Before it could be renewed the arrival of fresh reinforcements
+had to be awaited, which were dispatched to the north on November 12. By
+the 14th our troops had again begun to progress, barring the road to
+Ypres against the German attacks, and inflicting on the enemy, who
+advanced in massed formation, losses which were especially terrible in
+consequence of the fact that the French artillery had crowded nearly 300
+guns on to these few kilometers of front.
+
+Thus the main mass of the Germans sustained the same defeat as the
+detachments operating further to the north along the coast. The support
+which, according to the idea of the German General Staff, the attack on
+Ypres was to render to the coastal attack, was as futile as that attack
+itself had been.
+
+[Sidenote: Losses of the enemy.]
+
+During the second half of November the enemy, exhausted and having lost
+in the Battle of Ypres alone more than 150,000 men, did not attempt to
+renew his effort, but confined himself to an intermittent cannonade. We,
+on the contrary, achieved appreciable progress to the north and south
+of Ypres, and insured definitely by a powerful defensive organization of
+the position the inviolability of our front.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The war in Belgium.]
+
+[Sidenote: Siege of Antwerp.]
+
+[Sidenote: Belgian troops retreat to Ostend.]
+
+[Sidenote: The territory left to the Belgians.]
+
+We have seen that, with the fall of Liège the German armies swept
+through Belgium on their way to Paris. Brussels was abandoned as the
+capital, and the Government moved hastily to Antwerp, where a portion of
+the Belgian army also gathered to defend the city. The remainder of the
+Belgian forces, under the leadership of their gallant King, opposed as
+stoutly as their numbers would permit the advance of the Germans.
+Battles were fought at Alost and Termonde in which the Germans were, for
+the time, repulsed, but their ever-increasing reinforcements enabled
+them to advance despite the efforts of the Belgians to check them. Ghent
+was captured on September 5 and the Belgians, in an effort to stay the
+German advance on Antwerp, opened the dikes and let in the waters of the
+North Sea. Termonde fell on September 13, and seven days later the
+German armies began the siege of Antwerp. The military authorities in
+command of the city had taken whatever measures were possible for
+defense. A body of British marines was hurried to the beleaguered city
+and preparations were made for a long siege. The Germans brought up guns
+of heavy caliber, with which they bombarded the city at long range.
+After a brave defense of two weeks, during which the inhabitants endured
+many hardships, it was plain that further resistance was useless, and
+the city was surrendered on October 10. The Belgian troops in the city,
+and many of the noncombatants escaped. The Belgian troops retreated to
+Ostend, which they reached on October 11 and 12, after having been
+greatly harassed by the pursuing Germans. On the 13th, Ostend was
+evacuated, and was occupied by the Germans, and Bruges on the following
+day. The German forces now controlled the whole of Belgium, with the
+exception of the northwest corner, north of Ypres, to the coast of the
+Channel. This little slip of territory they held throughout the entire
+war, and at what a cost! But the heroic defense of this territory by the
+Belgians saved the French coast cities and prevented the Germans from
+breaking through the line which extended now from the North Sea to
+Belgium.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST DITCH IN BELGIUM
+
+ARNO DOSCH
+
+Copyright, World's Work, January, 1915.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Yser the Belgian's last ditch.]
+
+A little piece of the Low Countries, so small I walked across it in two
+hours, was all that remained of Belgium in the last days of October. A
+tide-water stream, the Yser, ebbed and flowed through the sunken fields,
+and there King Albert with his remnant of an army stopped the German
+military machine in its advance on Calais. If he and his forty thousand
+men had been crushed back ten miles farther they would have been
+fighting on French soil. The Yser was the last ditch in Belgium.
+
+The Belgians were able to hold that mere strip of land against more men
+and better artillery because they had determined to die there. Some of
+those who had not yet paid the price of death told me. They were not
+tragic about it. There was no display of heroics. They said it
+seriously, but they smiled a little, too, over their wine glasses, and
+the next morning they were back in the firing-line.
+
+I counted on my American passport and my _permit de sejour_ in Paris
+seeing me through the zone of the fighting, and they did. At the station
+at Dunkirk, when I admitted I had no _laisser passer_, an obliging
+gendarme led me to his commander, and he placed his visée on my passport
+without question. He asked me whether I was a correspondent, and I
+confessed to it, but it seemed only to facilitate the affair. Earlier
+experiences had made me feel that the French gendarmes were my natural
+enemies, but I have had a kindlier regard for them since.
+
+[Sidenote: Troop trains.]
+
+The train I was on had ten cars full of French and Belgian soldiers. The
+Belgians had all been recently re-equipped. On other troop trains which
+passed us going forward there were many more Belgian soldiers, some of
+whom I had seen only a few hours earlier in the streets of Calais
+without rifles. As their trains passed now I could see them studying the
+mechanism and fondling their new firearms.
+
+Coming in through the suburbs of Dunkirk we passed hundreds of children
+perched on the fences singing the Marseillaise. Nor were their voices
+flat and colorless like most school children's. They felt every word
+they sang, and they put their little hearts into it. Looking back along
+the side of the cars at the faces of soldiers leaning out, I could see
+they were touched by the faith of the children.
+
+[Sidenote: In Dunkirk.]
+
+As I rattled along on the cobbles of Dunkirk half an hour later I heard
+an explosion with a note unfamiliar to me. It sounded close, too, but it
+did not seem to bother the people of the street. A few children ran
+behind their mothers' skirts and a young girl hurried from the middle of
+the street to the protection of an archway, but that was all.
+
+Standing up in the fiacre I could see a thin smoke about three hundred
+feet away in a garden in the direction from which the explosion came,
+and high in the evening sky I could barely make out an aeroplane. "A
+German bomb?" I asked the driver in some excitement.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied, cracking his whip, "we usually get three or four
+every afternoon about this time, but they have not hurt any one."
+
+Dunkirk that night answered the description of what a threatened town
+which was not afraid should look like. It had none of the depressing
+atmosphere of Calais. All the refugees and the wounded were passed on
+to a safer place. It was full of French, English, and Belgian soldiers,
+with a scattering of sailors and breezy officers from both the French
+and English navies. They kept the waiters in the cafés on the run, and
+there was only an occasional bandage showing from under a cap or around
+a hand to indicate these men were engaged in any more serious business
+than a man[oe]uvre.
+
+[Sidenote: Armored motor-car.]
+
+In the street, however, in front of the statue of Jean Bart, an armored
+Belgian motor-car was standing. It was built with a turret where the
+tonneau usually is and it was covered with thick sheet steel right down
+to the ground. Just in front of the driver was a slit with a lip
+extending over it, giving it somewhat the effect of the casque belonging
+to an ancient suit of armor. That was the only opening except the one
+for the barrel of the rapid-fire gun in the turret. The armor was dented
+in a dozen places where bullets had glanced off, but it had only been
+penetrated at one spot, about six inches from the muzzle of the gun.
+From the soldier at the steering gear I learned that that bullet had
+passed over the shoulder of the man in the turret.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment of Nieuport.]
+
+Twenty-four hours later, at Nieuport, when the German shells seemed to
+be falling in every street and on every house, I saw this car again,
+going forward at not less than forty miles an hour. The turret was being
+swung to bring the gun-muzzle forward, as if the gunner were expecting
+to go into action almost immediately. As the last of the Belgian
+trenches were just the other side of the town, I have no doubt that he
+did.
+
+[Sidenote: A walk to the firing line.]
+
+Getting out of Dunkirk was rather more of a problem than going in. To
+obtain permission to ride toward the Belgian line in any kind of
+conveyance was an elaborate performance, and quite properly so, as I
+soon learned. There were preparations for defence going on there which
+should not have been publicly known. The country was full of spies. Four
+suspects had been picked up on the boat coming from Folkestone. If I had
+realized what I was to see in the next few miles I would not have
+attempted what I did. But, as I was anxious to get on and the
+firing-line was only twenty miles away, I decided to walk.
+
+A French hat and a French suit of clothes, I think, were alone
+responsible for my success in passing through the city gate. Two
+military automobiles were stopped and forced to show their credentials,
+but I strolled through unmolested. Once outside, the reservists guarding
+the various barricades let me pass as soon as I showed them my passport
+viséd in Dunkirk. I was stopped many times, too, trying each time not to
+give an appearance of too great interest in the works of defence being
+built all around me.
+
+[Sidenote: Sand-dune barricades.]
+
+Even though this cannot be published for some time I do not feel free to
+tell what these defences were. I have no doubt there are complete
+descriptions of these works in the hands of the German army, their spy
+system is so thorough, but I would not care to have any military secrets
+escape through anything I write. I think I can go so far as to say,
+though, that I received a liberal education in how to barricade
+sand-dunes and low-lying fields.
+
+Ten miles out of Dunkirk I was surprised to see a civilian on a bicycle,
+as civilians were no longer permitted to go near the theatre of war on
+bicycles, a precaution taken against spies. As he approached I
+recognized Mr. J. Obels, the Belgian correspondent of the Chicago _Daily
+News_, whom I had last seen under arrest near Brussels when the German
+army first passed through Belgium. He told me he had been kept in prison
+seventeen days by the German military governor of Brussels, but, once
+released, was given every possible kind of pass. I was relieved to see
+him alive and free.
+
+As Obels left me to continue his journey to Dunkirk and on to London to
+deliver his own "copy," he advised me to go directly to Furnes, the most
+considerable town in what was left of Belgium, and have my passport
+viséd again. So I continued down the long, flat highway, bordered on
+both sides by sunken fields, toward the cannonading I could now hear
+ahead. The road had been fairly full of automobiles, motor-trucks,
+motorcycles, and bicycles over its whole length, but it became crowded
+now with the addition of a long string of Parisian motor-buses taking
+several infantry regiments forward. A whole artillery division of yellow
+French "Schneiders" also took up its share of the wide road, and at the
+barricades there were traffic blockades lasting at times for ten
+minutes.
+
+[Sidenote: The road to Furnes.]
+
+All the way from Dunkirk I had been struck by the character of the land.
+As I approached Furnes, the dykes were being opened and half the fields
+were already inundated. It seemed a poor country for military
+operations. There were at most three highways, all defended. They could
+only be taken at a price no army could afford, and any departure from
+them meant being mired in the heavy fields, now being hastily harvested
+of a bumper crop of sugar-beets: at one place a whole French regiment in
+uniform was gathering the beets preparatory to inundation. With the
+dykes open these fields would be covered with four feet of water half
+the time. The only possible course for an army was over the sand-dunes,
+which lay a mile to the north, looking like the imitation mountains you
+see in the scenic-railways at every amusement resort in the United
+States.
+
+[Sidenote: Tommies' battles on the sand-dunes.]
+
+A reservist with whom I walked a mile or so told me Dunkirk had never
+been successfully attacked except over those sand-dunes, and the English
+and French had fought some of the bloodiest battles of history there
+against the Spanish, when they held Dunkirk. I doubt, though, that they
+were as bloody as the battle I was to see within a few hours.
+
+[Sidenote: Belgian soldiers.]
+
+The old Flemish town of Furnes had much less military precision about it
+than Dunkirk. It was on the very edge of the battle, and an occasional
+shell was dropping in the town. One exploded as I crossed the bridge and
+entered a narrow street, but it was on the far side of town, too far
+away for the soldiers halted in the street to notice. These were tired
+and dirty men, but not too tired to be courteous. They were also passing
+jokes among themselves, and laughing. By that, even if I had not known
+their uniforms, I could have told they were Belgians.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy held at the Yser.]
+
+Every street and every courtyard in Furnes was full of Belgian soldiers.
+They were resting for the day, waiting to go forward at night-fall to
+relieve the men on the firing line only five miles away. Even above the
+noises of the street I could hear the answer of their small field
+artillery to the heavy assault of the German guns. Nothing I heard the
+soldiers say, however, would have given the idea that the Belgians
+considered themselves outclassed by their enemy. They seemed superbly
+unconscious of the absurdity of their position. This was the tenth day
+they had held the Germans at the Yser, and they had done it with rifles
+and machine guns, taking punishment every minute from the big
+fieldpieces the Germans had brought against them. So far they had lost
+twelve thousand men at that ditch, but the thought of giving it up had
+evidently not even occurred to them. They could not give it up, one of
+them explained to me later, it was all they had left. There was a little
+irritation in his tone, too, as he said it, such as one might feel
+toward a child who was slow at grasping a simple fact.
+
+[Sidenote: Military automobiles and wagons.]
+
+The town square was full of military automobiles and a few provision
+wagons. I did not see any fieldpieces or machine guns. Every last one
+was right up on the firing-line. My feet were tired from walking over
+the Belgian blocks, and I held tenaciously to the sidewalk passing
+around the square, though it was mostly taken up with café tables and
+bay trees in boxes. At one point the tables were empty and a single
+sentry was sauntering up and down. I stopped to ask him the way to the
+_gendarmerie_, and, in the middle of giving me the directions, he came
+to attention, as a door opened behind me, and saluted.
+
+[Sidenote: Two Belgian generals.]
+
+Two men came out of the door, one rather tall, with an easy manner, and
+smartly dressed as a general in the Belgian army. The other was older,
+also a general, wearing, if anything, the more gold braid of the two.
+They entered a waiting automobile and drove off as casually as two men
+at home might leave their office for their club.
+
+Something about the first of the two men impressed me as familiar. I had
+only seen his back, but that had arrested my attention. I thought
+possibly I had seen him at the beginning of the war in Brussels, so I
+asked the sentry his name.
+
+[Sidenote: King Albert.]
+
+"That is our king, Albert," he said quite simply.
+
+During the next couple of days I saw the King of Belgium a number of
+times. He spent his nights at a small villa on the seashore at La Panne,
+a hundred yards possibly beyond the hotel where I spent mine. He passed
+through the streets as unnoticed as any one of the other Belgians who
+had retreated from Antwerp and Ghent ahead of the army, but preferred
+the chilly nights in an unheated seaside hotel in Belgium to comfort
+somewhere beyond. It seemed to be a point of courtesy on the part of the
+Belgians not to bother their king with ceremony at this trying time. I
+doubt if he cares much for ceremony, anyhow. Searching around for a
+single adjective to describe him, I should call him off-handed. His
+manner, even then, while alert, was casual. It is easy to see why the
+Belgians love him. If kings had always been as simple and direct as
+Albert, I am inclined to think democracy would have languished.
+
+[Sidenote: Luncheon at La Panne.]
+
+At La Panne, which I reached at noon on a little steam railway running
+from Furnes, I had luncheon with several Belgian soldiers and a Belgian
+in civilian clothes, who told me I would see all the fighting I was
+looking for at Nieuport, just beyond. The civilian, a tall youth with a
+blond beard, volunteered to show me the way to the beach, the shortest
+route, and ended by going all the way. He told me he was recovering from
+an "attack of Congo," which I take to be an intermittent fever. He had
+just been mustered out of the civic guard and was waiting for a uniform
+to join the army. He had the afternoon free and his Belgian sense of
+hospitality impelled him to see that the stranger was properly looked
+after.
+
+For several miles along the wide, flat beach, which stretches
+unobstructed as far as Ostend, except for the piers at Nieuport-les-Bains
+and Westende, there were Belgian soldiers bathing in the shallow water.
+Some of them, cavalrymen, were riding naked into the deeper water, and
+this, mind you, was late October. They were even playing jokes on one
+another, and did not seem to be paying any attention to the fifteen
+English and French cruisers and gunboats which were standing off the
+shore almost opposite them, keeping up a steady stream of fire obliquely
+along the beach at the sand dunes just beyond the pier at
+Nieuport-les-Bains. In these dunes, _five_ miles away, big German guns
+were hidden.
+
+[Sidenote: Fishermen unconcerned.]
+
+Farther on, and even right up to the pier at Nieuport, we passed, along
+the beach behind the shrimp fishermen, who seemed even less interested
+in the novel fight on land and sea. The barelegged men and women were as
+industriously taking advantage of the low-tide as if nothing at all were
+happening. The French and English warships were directly opposite them,
+and, by this time, they were drawing the German fire. German shells,
+probably from siege guns, were plumping down into the water all around
+them only a couple of miles off-shore, but, though the shrimpers looked
+up occasionally when the explosion of a shell fairly shook the face of
+the ocean, their attention would be directed again to their work before
+the column of water raised by the shell had had time to fall again. The
+shelling kept up about an hour, but none of the warships was struck.
+They kept moving at full-speed in an uneven line, making it impossible
+to get their range.
+
+[Sidenote: A panorama of battle.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germans try to cross the Yser.]
+
+Just before we reached the pier heavy cannonading began inland. We
+climbed the sand dunes and there we came suddenly upon a perfect
+panoramic view of the battle all the way from the dunes across the
+inundated fields to Dixmude in the distance. The whole line of battle
+for ten miles was in the midst of a German attack, covered by a terrific
+artillery fire. Over the white, red-tiled cottages of the fishermen,
+almost lost among the lesser sand dunes, we could make out the Belgian
+line by the fire of their rifle and machine guns. At two points we could
+see the Yser Canal and at one of these the Germans were trying to throw
+across a pontoon bridge.
+
+We could see it only through the smoke of breaking shells, but it was
+the most exciting event I have ever witnessed. At three miles or more,
+though, the figures of the men were so small, it was hard to keep the
+fact in mind that those who dropped were not merely stooping, but had
+been shot. Eager to get closer, we ran over the sand dunes, but never
+got another view of it.
+
+[Sidenote: Running to see a battle.]
+
+My Belgian friend knew his way and we trotted along a raised path among
+the fields toward Nieuport. It was under fire, but it seemed worth the
+risk to get close enough so we could see the pontoons being rushed into
+the water. As we neared Nieuport, however, the firing became much more
+active and we stopped for second thought. After catching our breath, we
+decided to pass through the edge of Nieuport and to go on to the village
+of Ramscapelle to the south of it. Few shells seemed to be breaking
+there.
+
+[Sidenote: Almost under fire.]
+
+Along the cross road we took, alternately running and walking. The
+Belgian trenches were perhaps a half mile beyond us, and we could make
+out the tap-tap of the rifle fire which had been only a continuous
+cracking a mile in the rear. Into this the machine guns cut with a whir.
+Spent bullets dropped here and there in the inundated field to the west
+of us, but the German shell fire must have been right in the trenches.
+
+Somewhere before we reached Ramscapelle we crossed a road with military
+automobiles going both ways, but my desire to get behind the sheltering
+buildings of Ramscapelle was too strong at the moment to take it in.
+
+[Sidenote: Fires and explosions in Ramscapelle.]
+
+About a hundred yards from the village there was a house on the edge of
+a canal, and we stopped behind it, safe from bullet-fire, to catch our
+breath again. It was as far as we were destined to get. All at once
+shells began dropping on the village, and I have not seen shells drop so
+fast in so small an area. In the first minute there must have been
+twenty. Three fires broke out almost at once. Between the explosions we
+could hear the falling tiles.
+
+The short October day grew unexpectedly dusk and the fires in the
+village reflected in the water on the fields. After the bombarding had
+been going on without the least let-up for fully fifteen minutes, a bent
+old woman, a man perhaps older but less bent, and a younger woman
+appeared on the road to Furnes just beyond us, hurrying along without
+once looking back. They were the only people we saw and the destruction
+of the town looked like the most ruthless piece of vandalism. It had a
+military purpose, however. The Germans were concentrating an attack on
+it with the hope of reaching Furnes. They occupied it that night, but
+were later driven out again. I have learned since some of the villagers
+remained through that bombardment, and were killed in their houses.
+
+[Sidenote: Destruction of Ramscapelle.]
+
+While we stood sheltered by the house on the canal, speculating as to
+which one of the houses still standing in Ramscapelle would be hit next,
+the light from those on fire reflected on the dark, brackish water of
+the canal, which was running in with the tide. Presently we noticed
+something in the water, and, stooping down in the twilight, we made out
+the body of a man face downward. The color of the coat and the little
+short skirt to it showed it was the body of a German soldier. It passed
+on and was followed by three more before we left. They had been in the
+water several days.
+
+The fire from the trenches died down at dusk and we made our way back
+along the empty crossroad. Half way back to the dunes we passed a Red
+Cross motor ambulance, headed toward Ramscapelle. On the seat beside the
+driver was a young English woman. She was wearing the gray-brown coat
+and gray-brown puttees of the English soldier. We called out to her we
+thought the town was empty, but the only answer we got from the speeding
+ambulance was an assuring wave of the young woman's hand, which was
+evidently meant to inform us she knew where she was going.
+
+[Sidenote: Ambulances and infantry pass.]
+
+On the main road from Nieuport to Furnes, which we followed a short
+distance, there were dozens of ambulances going to the rear and a long
+column of infantry going forward. Headed toward the rear there were also
+many wounded men on foot. They had been dressed at Nieuport, but there
+were not enough ambulances to take them all away. One who was walking
+slowly and painfully told me he had a bullet in his back.
+
+During the afternoon the Schneiders I had seen had evidently been placed
+among the sand dunes, and they were now bombarding the German lines over
+our heads. Crossing over the sand dunes to the beach, we passed under
+two batteries, though we did not see them. We could tell they were
+French, though, by the rapidity of the fire. The French seem to be able
+to fire their guns several times as fast as the Germans or the English.
+
+A cluster of houses belonging to shrimp fishermen was right under these
+batteries, where they were sure to get some of the return fire. But we
+noticed there were lights in every one of the cottages. Inside were the
+same fishermen who were so apathetic about the fight off-shore.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle of the sand dunes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Red flashing of the contact shells.]
+
+The view from the sand dunes was what the war artists on English
+illustrated weeklies try so hard to show. The French batteries were
+using shrapnel on the German trenches, the shrapnel leaving puffs of
+white smoke in long, uneven lines; and the Germans were keeping up their
+steady pounding of contact shells, with a short red flash after each
+explosion. The firing of the guns on both sides gave the effect of
+continuous summer lightning.
+
+Into the panorama the fleet off-shore kept up a new attack on the German
+batteries in the sand dunes just beyond Nieuport-les-Bains. As it was
+dark now we could see where they were only by the streaks of fire from
+their guns. These flashes came and went like the strokes of a dagger, as
+if they were stabbing the dark.
+
+[Sidenote: French soldiers.]
+
+We went back along the beach to avoid being questioned, turning around
+constantly to watch the fleet. At Coxyde a whole company of French
+soldiers was standing along the edge of the water, jumping back in
+surprise when the little waves advanced on them. They told us they were
+from the centre of France and had never seen salt water before.
+
+The shore there is lined with new villas made of light colored bricks.
+One of these had been dynamited, because it belonged to a German and was
+suspected of having a concrete floor for siege guns. I had heard of
+cases of this kind before, but I had never had an opportunity to examine
+one.
+
+[Sidenote: Concrete foundations.]
+
+My private thought was that the villa had probably been built by a
+German with a passion for solidity, but, examining it under a half-full
+moon, I could see the foundations were brick walls two feet thick
+covered with mosaic backed by reinforced concrete about a foot thick. It
+seemed like something more than Teutonic thoroughness.
+
+A little later in La Panne I was shown a concrete tennis court belonging
+to a German which had been punched full of holes. It was in no place
+thick enough, however, to give cause for suspicion that its real
+purpose was in any way sinister.
+
+By the time we regained La Panne I was hardly able to walk as I had been
+going hard all day, a good deal of the way through soft sand. But even
+if I had been much more tired I would have sensed the atmosphere of that
+town. To me the little seaside village, built for summer gayety, had
+more of the romance of war in it than any place I have seen.
+
+The half dozen summer hotels and all the villas were filled with the
+mothers, wives, and children of the Belgian soldiers whose firing line I
+had just left. Their homes had been in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent. Now
+they were in the last little town in Belgium. To some their soldiers had
+already returned, and they were dining as merrily as if to-morrow did
+not hold out a reasonable likelihood of being killed. At the doors of
+the hotels and on the street were many others waiting, and, as the
+street had filled up with another French artillery division bivouacked
+for a few hours, they could not see their men folk until they were close
+at hand.
+
+[Sidenote: Refugees at La Panne.]
+
+Now and then as we passed we could hear little gasps of happiness. For
+some, of course, there were disappointment and bad news. But they must
+have carried their sorrow to their chambers, as La Panne was all gayety.
+
+A comment on the Belgian soldiers made at the beginning of the war
+occurred to me: "They shoot the enemy all day; at night they come home
+and kiss mother. In the morning they kiss mother again and go back to
+shoot some more."
+
+They certainly showed themselves capable of shaking off the horrors of
+war before their women folk. To see them there in La Panne that night
+you might have thought it was all a sham battle if it had not been for
+a conviction of reality that would not shake off.
+
+It was nearly ten o'clock, now but Belgian soldiers relieved from the
+firing line and off duty for the night were still coming into La Panne.
+In the Hotel Des Arcades, which incidentally, has no arcades, the bar
+and the dining room were full of soldiers. Officers and their men were
+eating and drinking together in the pleasant democratic way they have in
+the Belgian army. Room was made for us at the long central table in the
+dining room, and all at the table were solicitous to see that we were at
+once given plenty to eat and drink. Several of the fifteen men at the
+table had hands or heads bandaged, but that did not seem to detract from
+their gayety.
+
+[Sidenote: Spirit of the Belgian soldiers.]
+
+A joke was being told as we sat down, and every one was taking a lively
+interest in it, the narrator was a bearded man of fifty, and he was
+telling to the delight of the others how his son had once got the better
+of him in Brussels before the war. There were other stories of matters
+equally foreign to war. The private on one side of me told me he was the
+manager for Belgium of an American typewriter. The lieutenant on the
+other side was in ordinary times an insurance agent. All the men there
+were in business and talked and acted like a company of young American
+business men.
+
+My first hint that these men had been through any trying experience was
+the apology offered by a new-comer for being late. He entered rather
+gravely and said something about having to take the word to his sister
+of his brother-in-law's death. The whole company turned grave then and
+conversation from being general was carried on for a few minutes between
+those near together. I asked the typewriter agent, to fill an awkward
+pause, whether they had seen much action, and he told me their story.
+
+[Sidenote: The fight on the road to Nieuport.]
+
+This was a crack mitrailleuse company of Brussels. It had been in the
+fight from Liège back to Malines and from Antwerp back to Dixmude and
+Nieuport. Three days before it was told to hold a road into Nieuport. It
+was a road the Germans must take, if they were to advance, but the
+Belgians would not give way. They were too clever with their rapid-fire
+guns to be rushed, and the German bayonet charges only blocked the road
+with their dead. Again and again the gray line came on, but each time it
+crumpled before their fire. They were attacked every hour of the day or
+night, but they were always ready. Finally the Germans got their range
+and dropped shell after shell right among them.
+
+"They blew us all to pieces," the story went on in a low tone at my
+elbow. "Those shells don't leave many wounded, but they littered the
+place with arms and legs. They got a good many of us, but they did not
+seem to be able to get our guns."
+
+I asked what their loss had been, and he looked around the table,
+counting, before he answered.
+
+"Let's see, now," he said. "We lost some at Dixmude first. I think there
+were just seventy last Monday." This was Thursday. "We had a pretty bad
+time," he ended; looking down.
+
+"How many are there now?" I asked, and he answered with a sweep of his
+hand around the table. "Five or six more," he said. There were eighteen
+of them at table now. That meant twenty-three or twenty-four--out of
+seventy.
+
+"The dogs suffered, too," he added. "We've only got eight out of twenty,
+and I just heard the dogs around here have already been pressed into
+service."
+
+[Sidenote: Courtesy of the machine gunners.]
+
+When I went to bed four of the members of that shattered mitrailleuse
+company climbed three flights of stairs to see that I had a comfortable
+room. And these men had just come out of a trench where they had lost
+more than two thirds their number in three days stopping one of the main
+lines of the German advance.
+
+[Sidenote: Back to the lines.]
+
+In the twilight of early morning, when the cannonading had at last died
+down, I heard the movement of troops in the street and saw my friends of
+the night before falling into line and getting their equipment straight.
+By the time I reach the sidewalk they were moving off, some of the men
+helping the dogs with the mitrailleuse.
+
+"Big fight last night," said the typewriter agent smiling. "Company that
+relieved us got it hard. We must hurry back."
+
+They were all very alert and soldierlike in the chill of the morning,
+but they were a pitifully small company as they passed up the road and
+were lost in the sand dunes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In August and September, while on the western front were being fought
+the great initial struggles of the Great War, Turkey, long under German
+political influence, was making ready to cast her lot with the Teutonic
+Powers. Germany had already made diplomatic and military moves which
+indicated that she was certain of a Turkish alliance. The strongest
+figures of the Ottoman Empire, Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey were strongly
+pro-German, although the latter endeavored for a time to conceal his
+real sentiments and intentions under a cloak of pretended neutrality.
+The causes which induced Turkey to side with the Central Powers rather
+than with the Allies are explained in the narrative which follows.
+
+
+
+
+WHY TURKEY ENTERED THE WAR
+
+ROLAND G. USHER
+
+Copyright, World's Work, January, 1915.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Extreme danger of Turkey.]
+
+Many people entirely misunderstand the significance of the declaration
+of war by Turkey against Russia, France, and England. Why these
+despairing gasps of the dying? they ask. What possible chance has this
+weak, moribund state to survive a clash of arms with the Triple Entente?
+Has not the Turk, in fact, dug his own grave and committed suicide? In
+all probability the Turk is in considerable danger, but the danger does
+not arise from his joining Germany. In fact, the war and the present
+international situation provide the Turk with the best opportunity in a
+century to achieve the aims cherished by Turkish statesmen who have the
+best interests of Turkey itself at heart. For several years Turkey has
+been in extreme peril. It was condemned to death by the Triple Entente
+some time ago, and the prediction of the British Prime Minister in a
+recent public speech that this war would end the existence of Turkey as
+an independent power was only the publication of the sentence of death
+long since decided upon. The Sick Man was kept alive by his friends, the
+doctors, largely because they deemed his malady incurable. The moment he
+showed signs of convalescence they agreed to poison him. But for the
+protection of Germany the political existence of Turkey would be already
+a thing of the past. The Turk, therefore, will stand or fall according
+to the decision in this war for or against Germany. He will be
+excessively foolish not to do everything he can to insure a German
+victory.
+
+[Sidenote: Entrance of Turkey into War.]
+
+[Sidenote: Constantinople core of the War.]
+
+The entrance of Turkey into the war has long been foreseen, and its vast
+significance has long been clear to students. Some trained observers go
+much further: Sir Harry Johnston, a traveler, statesman, and diplomat of
+repute, has declared: "Constantinople is really the core of the war." In
+diplomatic circles in Vienna this summer there was a general agreement
+that the loss of Salonika, which the Turk was forced to hand over to
+Greece at the end of the Balkan wars, was a vital blow to the Triple
+Alliance, and its recovery would be of sufficient importance to justify
+the risk of a European war to accomplish it. The situation in the Near
+East and in the Balkans is an integral part of the European war. In
+fact, the war is not a European war at all; it is a world war in the
+most literal sense of the words.
+
+[Sidenote: Control of exit from the Black Sea imperative to Russia.]
+
+At the beginning of the twentieth century keen observers saw clearly
+that the old order of things, which had preserved the Turk so long in
+the face of many enemies, had passed away beyond a peradventure and had
+left the Turk in great peril. Ever since the decay of the strength of
+the Ottoman Empire the Turk had been hardly pressed in Europe by Russia
+and by Austria, both of whom coveted sections of his dominions, and both
+of whom would have been glad to obtain Constantinople, the gateway
+between Europe and Asia. Of the two, Russia was more insistent because
+her interests made the control of the exit from the Black Sea imperative
+for her. The Turk, however, until very recently, was himself strong
+enough to throw considerable obstacles in the face of the invader; he
+was probably, in 1900, more efficient than in 1850; but his enemies had
+grown by leaps and bounds. He was confronted by a new Austria and a new
+Russia.
+
+What was worse, the Balkan nations, who had long been subject peoples,
+ill-organized, poverty stricken, had grown with the help of the Turk's
+enemies into sturdy, self-reliant, independent communities with
+good-sized armies and something approaching national wealth. The long
+years of subjection had left behind a consuming hatred of the Turk in
+their breasts; as Christians, they hated the Turk as the Infidel; and
+they promised themselves some day the control of Constantinople in the
+interest of Christianity. The neighbors of the Turk had grown formidable
+and would be able to make short work of him unless help arrived.
+
+[Sidenote: Industrial growth of Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Old order changes.]
+
+There was none to be had from his past friends; so much was only too
+clear. The shift in the international situation caused by the astounding
+industrial growth of Germany, the rapid development of the German,
+Austrian, and Italian fleets, the increased efficiency of the armies of
+the Triple Alliance had all made the control of the Mediterranean far
+more difficult for England and France. They could no longer spare ships
+and troops in sufficient numbers to rescue the Turk from Russia without
+exposing themselves more than was wise in northern Europe. Besides, the
+designs of the Triple Alliance made it seem only too probable that the
+possession of Constantinople by Russia and the creation of a fleet in
+the Black Sea might be the only means of preserving for the French and
+English control of the western Mediterranean. The old order had changed:
+the Turk's friends were now his enemies bent on his destruction.
+
+[Sidenote: Ambition of new Turkish party.]
+
+[Sidenote: Democratic and nationalist revival.]
+
+Yet there had never been a time when the Sick Man was more desperately
+determined to get well, when life had seemed to him so entirely
+desirable. The passing of the old order caused no grief among the
+Turks--outside of those few henchmen who had long drawn a fat revenue
+from foreign nations. The Turks had become fired with ambition, with
+democratic conceptions, highly inconsistent with the state of things
+which the old order had so long sanctioned. The new democrats declared
+indignantly that Turkey had been for years conducted for the benefit of
+foreign nations; it should be conducted in the future solely in the
+interests of Turkey. They were roused to enthusiasm by the past history
+of the Ottoman empire and burned to reconquer its old provinces, to
+establish a closer relationship between the provinces which remained. An
+imperialistic movement, a nationalistic revival, if you will, was
+preached in Turkey by ardent enthusiasts whose words fell on willing
+ears. To the democratic and nationalist revival was joined religious
+discontent. The Sultan was the religious head of the Mohammedan world.
+Everywhere the true Believers were in chains. Everywhere the infidel
+reigned supreme. From Constantinople to Mecca, from the confines of
+Morocco to the plains of India, the Mohammedan world was ground under
+the heel of the conqueror and the conqueror was the Arch Enemy of Truth.
+There must be, they preached, a great crusade, a united rising to cast
+out the Christian dogs and restore the sceptre of empire to the hand of
+a devout believer in Allah. Turkey, Assyria, Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia,
+India, Egypt, the whole of Africa, should be freed from the yoke of the
+oppressor.
+
+[Sidenote: Great Confederation of States.]
+
+[Sidenote: From Berlin to Bagdad railroad.]
+
+And now appeared an ally, unfortunately a Christian, in fact a
+peculiarly devout Christian, but one able to save the Turk from his
+foes, glad to foster his ambitions. The plans of Germany for her future
+involved the creation of a great confederation of states stretching from
+the North Sea to the Persian Gulf and including Holland, Belgium,
+Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Balkans, Turkey, and Persia.
+These states controlled the great overland roads from central Europe to
+the Persian Gulf and would make possible overland trade with the East. A
+railroad already existed as far as Constantinople, and a railroad from
+Constantinople to Bagdad and the Gulf would not only throw open Asia
+Minor and the great plains of Mesopotamia to European capital, but would
+furnish a perfectly practicable commercial road to the East through
+which in time would flow a trade which would make the great
+Confederation rich. Of this Confederation, Turkey would be an integral
+and essential part. Adrianople, the key to the Balkans; Salonika, key to
+the Ægean; Constantinople, controlling the outlet to the Black Sea and
+the crossing to Asia Minor; the land approaches of the Tigris and
+Euphrates valleys--all these the Turk had, all these an alliance with
+him would give Germany. The stronger the Turkish State, the better
+organized, the larger its army and fleet, the greater its resources, the
+more useful it would be to Germany and the more thoroughly it would
+insure the success of Pan-Germanism.
+
+[Sidenote: England and France sustain courteous hold on Constantinople.]
+
+It had been for the interests of England and France to keep Turkey weak.
+The Turk must hold Constantinople, but must not be strong enough to use
+it; as a tenant, as a nominal owner, he was extremely useful; some one
+had to own it; England and France could not hold it themselves; they
+were determined Russia should not have it; and the Turk was a useful
+_locum tenens_. They, therefore, frowned upon Turkish ambitions for
+democratic government and would, undoubtedly, have sacrificed the Turk
+rather than see an independent Mohammedan State take real control of
+Asia Minor and Northern Africa.
+
+[Sidenote: Pan-Germanic Confederation.]
+
+Germany, on the contrary, wished an active agent to pursue an
+aggressive policy in her favor. If the Sick Man could get out of bed
+only with assistance, Germany was anxious to help him; and the Turk
+vastly preferred an alliance with a Power which was eager to make him
+well to one with Powers almost afraid to keep him alive. The Turks
+wished a capable government, a good army, a State deserving of
+independence, and were overjoyed to find Germany ready and desirous to
+foster this ambition. Indeed, as a member of the Pan-Germanic
+Confederation, the Turk must be strong enough to hold Constantinople and
+the Bagdad Railway in the event of a general European war, without
+depending upon Germany for more than assistance, supplies, and advice.
+Germany and Austria, menaced on both sides at home, would not be able to
+take the risks of sending troops to the Near East, and the Turk would
+have to be strong enough to keep at bay such forces as it seemed likely
+Russia would be able to spare from the battlefields of northern Europe.
+
+[Sidenote: Pan-Islam.]
+
+Germany was equally ready to have the Turk gratify his imperialist and
+religious ambitions. Pan-Islam would destroy the political control of
+England and France in northern Africa and in Egypt. It might even
+overturn the British Empire in India. This would be the greatest
+possible service any one could render Germany, and it might be one which
+Germany could accomplish in no other way. If the Triple Entente was the
+greatest foe of Pan-Islamism, Pan-Germanism should be its greatest
+friend. Where ambition and interest coincide, co-operation is simple.
+
+[Sidenote: Reorganization of Turkey.]
+
+In complete accord, therefore, the Germans and the Turks undertook the
+reorganization of Turkey above five years or more ago. They saw with
+clear vision the real truth about Turkey. With engaging candor they laid
+the blame for the deficiencies of Turkish government upon England and
+France and declared them the work of intention. Turkey, they saw, was
+not a nation in the European sense of the word; it was not even a single
+race. It was not a geographical unit by any means, but a series of
+districts on the whole geographically disconnected. Far from being an
+economic unit with a single interest vital to all its inhabitants, it
+produced nothing essential to the outside world which its inhabitants
+could depend upon exchanging for European manufactured goods.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey's economic interests.]
+
+Its economic interests were potential rather than real; its trade, the
+result of its strategic position rather than of the interests and the
+capacity of its population. Normally and naturally the Turk should be a
+middleman, a distributor rather than a producer. He was placed in
+control of the continental roads between Asia and Central Europe, and
+was able to control the overland trade as soon as it emerged from the
+Caucasus or the Persian Gulf, and maintain that control until the
+continental highway passed into the defiles of the Balkans beyond
+Adrianople. Constantinople itself, controlling the narrow passage which
+formed the exit of the Black Sea, was in a position to foster or hinder
+the entire trade of southern Russia with the rest of the world. In fact,
+it was impossible to deny, and the Germans thoroughly well understood
+it, that the trade of the East with Europe and the trade of Russia with
+the rest of the world might pass through Turkey, but was not likely to
+stay there.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey's important strategic position.]
+
+In this important strategic position, economically valuable to others
+but not to its inhabitants, had been collected a peculiar and
+extraordinary conglomeration of races, creeds, and interests; few of
+which had much in common, and all of which cherished for each other
+antipathies and jealousies almost as old as history. The racial problem
+of Turkey would be less difficult if the races were only located side by
+side in solid masses. With few exceptions the races interpenetrate one
+another to a remarkable extent and the Turk himself is numerically in
+the majority in comparatively few districts of Asia Minor, where the
+bulk of the Turkish population lives, and in scarcely any part of
+European Turkey. The Turks are literally overlords, a ruling class.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey's weak political fabric.]
+
+The Turk has governed this vast territory and this conglomeration of
+races and religions by a peculiarly weak political fabric which seemed
+in the nineteenth century to combine in one structure all the
+disadvantages of centralization, and all those of decentralization.
+Subject peoples have been ruled by a combination of military, civil, and
+religious authority which has been dependent in the long run for its
+support on the army. However, had the subject peoples hated each other
+less cordially, had they been more capable of organization and willing
+to compromise, they might have ended the Turkish rule decades ago, army
+or no army. Some observers, indeed, have thought the Turkish Government
+an artificial sham kept alive by France and England for their own
+purposes. Whatever reasons were to be given, the Germans and the Turks
+saw that Turkey as a nation and Turkey as a state had been, both of
+them, practically non-existent. Both had been names, not realities.
+Turkey had appeared on the European maps. A series of so-called
+statesmen had taken European bribes in Constantinople; numerous
+incompetent and venal officials had robbed the populace with the help of
+the soldiers in the provinces, and this Government plus the army was
+Turkey. Turkey had, indeed, been sick, but that particular kind of
+illness, the Turks thought, could be cured; and the Germans agreed with
+them.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany's willingness to assist Turkey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germany's influence in Turkey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Reasons for Turkey's joining Germany.]
+
+We must not forget as observers the exceeding importance of German
+willingness to assist the ambitions of the educated Turks for
+self-government and for independence from European influence. The
+English and French control of Turkey was fortuitous and artificial and
+depended solely upon the control of a little group of men in
+Constantinople. German influence in Turkey has deep and fundamental
+roots in a large and significant part of the Turkish population and
+appeals to their best and highest impulses. We have here in the last
+analysis the reasons why Turkey has joined Germany in the war. The
+enlightened Turks see in Pan-Germanism a democratic Turkey with
+constitutional self-government, a Turkey developing its own resources, a
+Turkey gradually freeing itself from the fetters of European alliances
+and becoming gradually but certainly strong enough to take its place in
+the Pan-Germanic chain as a state of worth, integrity, and importance.
+They see in the victory of Pan-Germanism the effective promise of the
+realization of such ideals. They see in the defeat of Pan-Germanism
+political and national death, the annexation of Turkey by its enemies,
+and the subjection of the Turks to the rule of the Infidel. For these
+reasons they joined Germany in the first place. For these deep,
+fundamental reasons they hold staunchly to their friend. We shall be
+guilty of quibbling and of shortsightedness if we look for an
+explanation of Turkish policy in the seizure of warships and the breach
+of treaties.
+
+[Sidenote: Reorganization of Turkey.]
+
+The reorganization of Turkey was duly observed by the Triple Entente and
+its purpose thoroughly well understood. Their opposition to it was
+prompt, and Italy attempted by the Tripolitan War to rob the Turk of one
+of his distant provinces. Having seized Tripoli with the consent of the
+Triple Entente, Italy then changed sides, returned to the Triple
+Alliance and took Tripoli with her. The result was a prompt reversal of
+the strategic situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and placed England
+and France in such danger that they saw the moment had probably come
+when it would be positively to their advantage to gratify Russia's
+ambition and allow her to seize Constantinople. The Tripolitan War
+suspended the sword of Damocles over the Turk's head.
+
+[Sidenote: The Balkan War.]
+
+[Sidenote: The loss of Macedonia.]
+
+The Balkan War threatened for a time to annihilate him. The prompt aid
+of Austria and Germany as stout representatives in the international
+conclave, the mobilization of the Austrian army, the knowledge that
+Germany was ready to mobilize, saved the Turk. The ambitions of Bulgaria
+brought her over to the side of the Triple Alliance, which was more than
+ready to assist her in dominating the Balkans. The second war cost
+Bulgaria dear but gave back to the Turk Adrianople. Macedonia, however,
+was lost entirely, and much of Thrace, with Salonika, the key of the
+Ægean, was also lost and fell into the hands of the Turk's enemy,
+Greece.
+
+[Sidenote: Little likelihood of attack on Constantinople.]
+
+The reorganized state was now undeniably in great peril; and the
+probability of an outbreak of a European war in the near future, the
+knowledge that the Turk must himself defend Constantinople and the
+Bagdad Railway, urged the Germans and the Turks to great efforts in
+reorganizing the army and providing equipment. The fleet also received
+attention; two battleships were building in England and another was
+purchased from one of the South American states. There would this time
+be no escape. The death sentence had been passed upon the Turk, and if
+he waited for his enemies to gather and descend upon him defense would
+be problematical. It was, of course, realized that in the long run
+Germany would save Turkey by battles won in France or in Poland, and
+also that German defeats in Europe would in the long run spell the
+downfall of Turkey whatever the Turk did. It was, therefore, advisable
+to postpone action as long as possible. While Russia was exerting
+herself to the utmost to mobilize an army in Poland, there was small
+likelihood of an attack on Constantinople, and the Turk might well
+remain neutral, equip and organize the army, acquire supplies, and
+choose the moment to take the offensive.
+
+[Sidenote: German cruisers at Constantinople.]
+
+England, on the outbreak of the war, seized the two battleships building
+in England, and, therefore, weakened the Turkish strength in the Black
+Sea. The deficiency was supplied by sending two German cruisers to
+Constantinople and selling them to the Turkish Government. Some weeks
+ago the Germans judged that the time had come when the Turk must openly
+join in the war, send his troops to the frontier in order to hold the
+invader as far as possible from Constantinople. Indeed, action at this
+time might allow the Turk to accomplish results of the utmost
+importance. Those who see simply the fact that Russia could easily
+overwhelm the Turk standing alone, that the Balkan States united might
+also dispose of him, entirely fail to grasp the possibilities before the
+Turk at the present moment when Russia is extremely busy in the North,
+when the Balkan States seem hopelessly divided, and when Italy is
+maintaining with determination her neutrality.
+
+[Sidenote: Closing of the Black Sea by Turkey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Enormous value of oil supplies in the Black Sea District.]
+
+The most important thing the Turk has done for Germany has been the
+closing of the Black Sea. The sowing of a few mines in the Straits
+promptly put an end to Russian trade from the Black Sea and dealt
+southern Russia a great blow commercially. Germany thus struck at
+England, because a large part of the English food supply has normally
+come from the Black Sea district, and the desire to protect the grain
+ships through the Mediterranean has been one of England's chief reasons
+for maintaining control of that sea. So large were these supplies
+normally that England has had considerable difficulty in replacing them
+and is destined soon to experience greater difficulty in furnishing a
+supply equivalent in volume and accessibility. The Black Sea district
+also has large oil supplies which would be of enormous value to England
+and France, now that the extensive use of the automobile in warfare has
+made gasolene a supply second in importance only to powder and food. If
+the Turkish navy, augmented by the German cruisers, can dispose of the
+Russian ships in the Black Sea, and this seems not improbable, the Turk
+might annex for Germany this supply of oil. That would be a stroke of
+the utmost consequence.
+
+[Sidenote: Isolation of Russia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of Turkey to Germany.]
+
+Closing the Black Sea by the Turk, plus the closing of the Baltic by the
+German fleet in the North Sea, would also accomplish another extremely
+important result, the absolute and complete isolation of Russia from
+contact with all parts of the world except Germany, Austria, and Turkey.
+The question has often arisen as to the ability of Germany to prolong
+the war in the face of her inability to export goods to her usual
+customers. The complete cessation of manufacture in Germany would sooner
+or later bankrupt the country and bring her to her knees. The Germans
+point out that the isolation of Russia will have precisely the same
+effect on that country unless Russia can find some place where her raw
+products can be exchanged for the manufactured goods which are much more
+necessary in warfare than the crude products which she always has to
+sell. The experience of the past has proved again and again that
+belligerent countries persistently trade with one another when it is
+profitable. The Germans expect to sell their manufactured goods in
+Russia in exchange for the raw materials which Russia produces, just as
+long as their fleet holds the mouth of the Baltic and the Turk controls
+Constantinople. A brisk trade between Germany, Austria, and Russia is
+already reported and if it attains the proportions the Germans expect,
+their commercial problem will have been largely solved. But its
+continued solution will depend upon the maintaining of Turkey in
+Constantinople. If these considerations are as important as the
+Pan-Germanists have usually claimed, it will be obvious that the
+adhesion of the Turk has exceeding importance for Germany and had long
+been arranged in advance.
+
+[Sidenote: Control of the Suez Canal vital to Great Britain.]
+
+The possibilities before the Turkish army, well equipped with modern
+munitions of war and capably officered by Germans, have been by no means
+forgotten. The great objective of Pan-Germanism is not in Europe but in
+Asia and Africa. The defense of the English and French dominions in both
+will have to be made in Europe. The strength of the German army, the
+size of the German fleet, would prevent the English and French from
+dissipating their forces over the vast territory which they claim to
+control. The experienced troops in India, in Egypt, and in Morocco were
+shipped to France upon the outbreak of the war exactly as the Germans
+expected and hoped. Their places were filled by less experienced
+regiments from France, England, and the English colonies. Egypt and the
+Suez Canal, India, and the great defenses would not be so strongly held.
+The Turk occupied a position flanking Persia and a position flanking
+Egypt. A strong, well-trained Turkish army might conceivably capture
+either or both. Assistance from within might well be expected in both,
+and victory in either would exert a moral effect upon the war in Europe
+which would be of the utmost importance. A few hours' possession of the
+Suez Canal, furthermore, would allow the Germans to obstruct it and
+effectually block the approach of England to Australia and India except
+by the long road around Africa. Conceivably this might interfere
+seriously with the English food supplies from Australia and New Zealand,
+particularly with the supplies of meat from the latter. This would be
+more than usually important in view of the deficiency of meat supplies
+in the United States and Canada, and the length of time necessary to
+procure them from the Argentine Republic. It is by these blows at the
+food supply that the Germans expect to make the greatest impression upon
+England. Short of actual invasion, the stoppage of supplies is the only
+method by which the Germans can inflict suffering upon England.
+
+[Sidenote: Bulgaria ally of Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: All Balkan states weakened by Balkan War.]
+
+No one in Berlin or Constantinople has forgotten the existence of the
+Balkans. Servian enmity, Greek hatred for the Turk, are only too
+obvious; Bulgaria is believed to be entirely faithful to the German
+interests; Roumania has never been very trustworthy, and has at times
+been an ally of both the coalitions in Europe. The ability of the Turk,
+of course, to hold Constantinople and above all to take the offensive
+would depend upon the continued neutrality or alliance of the Balkan
+States. Combined, they are amply strong enough to overrun Turkey in
+Europe and probably to invade Asia Minor in force. All the Balkan States
+except Roumania--which is hardly a Balkan State--were very much weakened
+in men and in resources by the late Balkan wars, and will probably have
+considerable difficulty in obtaining any quantity of supplies from
+foreign countries, though we are told of large purchases by the Greeks
+in the United States. The fact, however, that the Turk has taken the
+offensive against Egypt and Persia makes it extremely probable that the
+Balkan hatreds have offset each other. Bulgaria's existence probably
+depends upon Austrian protection. Roumania is probably afraid to take
+the field with Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, and Austria against her, while
+the Greeks and Servians have still to recover from the recent wars. It
+is probable, therefore, that, Bulgaria and Roumania being neutral,
+Servia at war with Austria, Turkey can take from Greece Salonika and
+possibly Macedonia. Should the war in Europe progress favorably for
+Germany, the attitude of the Balkan States toward Germany would be
+influenced and a scramble would ensue to join the victor, which would
+probably result in the extinction of Servia and Greece and the
+strengthening of Bulgaria and Turkey. Naturally, the Turk would retake
+the islands in the Ægean Sea which are now in Italy's hands.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey's position if Germany wins in Europe.]
+
+Let us suppose that all goes as they hope: that the Germans win in
+Europe; that the Turks and Bulgarians take control of the Balkans; that
+the Russians are excluded from Persia, and the English from Egypt. The
+victorious Turkish army is then in a position to advance along the
+Persian Gulf road upon India, and would assail India at her weakest
+point, outflanking the great defenses at Quetta which have been
+developed primarily against Russia.
+
+[Sidenote: Possibilities of Pan-Islam.]
+
+We must not forget to enumerate, among the possibilities, Pan-Islam.
+Success by the Turks in Egypt or Persia would undoubtedly give an
+impulse to Pan-Islam which might put all the fanatical enthusiasm of the
+Mohammedans into a vast uprising which might sweep the French and
+English out of northern Africa and India. The Sultan of Turkey is the
+official head of the Mohammedan religion. His orders Moslems are all
+bound to obey. At present the Mohammedans in the English and French
+possessions, who are, of course, under English and French influence, are
+claiming that the acts of the Sultan are not really his, but those of
+German officers; and the reports at the time of writing indicate that at
+the present moment the order from Constantinople for a holy war will
+probably not be regarded or obeyed. But a victory by Turkish arms would
+probably instantly change the situation and might loose the pent-up
+fanaticism of the most intensely emotional of the Oriental races. Here
+is another weapon in the German arsenal whose use will depend upon the
+coöperation of the Turk.
+
+[Sidenote: Key of situation is Constantinople.]
+
+It should now be evident that there is much to be said for the view that
+the key to the present situation is Constantinople. We are dealing with
+world politics, with a world war which is being fought on the
+battlefields of Europe; but we are dealing with a world war whose
+results are not expected to develop in Europe proper. The key to this
+situation lies in Constantinople, and the Turk holds it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The outbreak of the Great War found the British navy in a high state of
+preparedness, and so preponderant in number of vessels and in weight of
+guns that the German Grand Fleet as a whole was content to remain behind
+the walls of Helgoland. Squadrons were sent out, however, to attack
+isolated British ships, and on August 28 the first naval battle of the
+war occurred in the Bight of Helgoland. Here British and German cruisers
+engaged in a struggle in which the honors were for a time even. The
+arrival of British dreadnoughts quickly turned the scale, and the German
+ships fled to the safety of their harbor. The Germans lost four large
+ships, while the British fleet lost none.
+
+The German navy was revenged in November 3, when a fleet of warships met
+and sunk three British cruisers off the Coronel. On December 9, however,
+a British fleet, after a search of many days, came up with and sank
+three German cruisers, and severely damaged two others in the Battle of
+Falkland Islands.
+
+
+
+
+THE FALKLAND SEA FIGHT
+
+A. N. HILDITCH
+
+Battle Sketches by A. N. Hilditch, Oxford University Press.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Falkland Islands.]
+
+In 1592, John Davis, the arctic explorer, after whom the strait between
+Greenland and the North American mainland is named, made an attempt, in
+company with Thomas Cavendish, to find a new route to Asia by the
+Straits of Magellan. Differences arose between the two leaders. One was
+an explorer: the other had a tendency towards freebooting. They parted
+off the coast of Patagonia. Davis, driven out of his course by stormy
+weather, found himself among a cluster of unknown and uninhabited
+islands, some three hundred miles east of the Straits of Magellan. This
+group, after many changes and vicissitudes, passed finally into the
+hands of Great Britain, and became known as the Falkland Islands.
+
+[Sidenote: Climate surface, and vegetation.]
+
+They consist of two large islands and of about one hundred islets,
+rocks, and sandbanks. The fragments of many wrecks testify to the
+dangers of navigation, though masses of giant seaweed act as buoys for
+many of the rocks. So numerous are the penguins, thronging in battalions
+the smaller islands and the inland lagoons, that the governor of the
+colony is nicknamed King of the Penguins. As New Zealand is said to be
+the most English of British possessions, the Falklands may perhaps be
+appropriately termed the most Scottish. Their general appearance
+resembles that of the Outer Hebrides. Of the population, a large
+proportion are of Scottish extraction. The climate is not unlike that of
+Scotland. The winters are misty and rainy, but not excessively cold. So
+violent are the winds that it is said to be impossible to play tennis or
+croquet, unless walls are erected as shelter, while cabbages grown in
+the kitchen-gardens of the shepherds, the only cultivated ground, are at
+times uprooted and scattered like straw. The surface, much of which is
+bogland, is in some parts mountainous, and is generally wild and rugged.
+Small streams and shallow freshwater tarns abound. A natural curiosity,
+regarded with great wonder, exists in 'stone-rivers'; long, glistening
+lines of quartzite rock débris, which, without the aid of water, slide
+gradually to lower levels. There are no roads. Innumerable sheep, the
+familiar Cheviots and Southdowns, graze upon the wild scurvy-grass and
+sorrel. The colony is destitute of trees, and possesses but few shrubs.
+The one tree that the Islands can boast, an object of much care and
+curiosity, stands in the Governor's garden. The seat of government, and
+the only town, is Port Stanley, with a population of about 950. Its
+general aspect recalls a small town of the western highlands of
+Scotland. Many of the houses, square, white-washed, and grey-slated,
+possess small greenhouse-porches, gay with fuchsias and pelargoniums, in
+pleasing contrast to the prevailing barrenness. A small cathedral,
+Christ Church, and an imposing barracks, generally occupied by a company
+of marines, stand in the midst of the town. The Government House might
+be taken for an Orkney or Shetland manse.
+
+[Sidenote: Government.]
+
+[Sidenote: Prosperity of the colony.]
+
+The administration of the colony and of its dependencies is vested in a
+Governor, aided by a Colonial Secretary, and by an executive and a
+legislative council. The Governor acts as Chief Justice, and the
+Colonial Secretary as Police Magistrate. There is a local jail, capable
+of accommodating six offenders at a time. Its resources are not stated,
+however, to be habitually strained. Education is compulsory: the
+Government maintains schools and travelling teachers. The inhabitants
+are principally engaged in sheep-farming and seafaring industries. The
+colony is prosperous, with a trade that of late years has grown with
+extraordinary rapidity. The dividends paid by the Falkland Islands
+Company might excite the envy of many a London director. Stanley's
+importance has been increased by the erection of wireless installation;
+and as a coaling and refitting station for vessels rounding the Horn,
+the harbour, large, safe, and accessible, is of immense value.
+
+[Sidenote: A raid expected.]
+
+To this remote outpost of empire came tidings of war in August, 1914.
+Great excitement and enthusiasm prevailed. News was very slow in getting
+through: the mails, usually a month in transit, became very erratic. But
+the colony eagerly undertook a share in the burden of the Empire; £2,250
+was voted towards the war-chest; £750 was collected on behalf of the
+Prince of Wales's Fund. Detached, though keen, interest changed,
+however, as the weeks passed, to intimate alarm. The Governor, Mr.
+Allardyce, received a wireless message from the Admiralty that he must
+expect a raid. German cruisers were suspected to be in the
+neighbourhood. Never before had the colony known such bustle and such
+excitement. They, the inhabitants of the remote Falklands, were to play
+a part in the struggle that was tugging at the roots of the world's
+civilization. The exhilaration of expectancy and of danger broke
+suddenly into their uneventful, though not easy, lives. But there was
+cause for keen anxiety. The colonists were, however, reassured for a
+time by a visit from three British warships, the cruisers _Good Hope_,
+_Monmouth_, and _Glasgow_, with the armed liner _Otranto_.
+
+[Sidenote: British warships arrive.]
+
+[Sidenote: Search for German cruisers.]
+
+The _Good Hope_ had, at the declaration of war, been patrolling the
+Irish coast. She was ordered to sweep the Atlantic trade routes for
+hostile cruisers. She reached the coast of North America, after many
+false alarms, stopping English merchantmen on the way, and informing the
+astonished skippers of the war and of their course in consequence. When
+forty miles east of New York, Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock came
+aboard with his staff, and hoisted his flag. The Admiral turned
+southwards, sweeping constantly for the enemy. Passing through the West
+Indies, he proceeded to the coast of Brazil. Here he was joined by the
+_Glasgow_. The _Good Hope_ had picked up the _Monmouth_ previously. The
+three ships, accompanied by the auxiliary cruiser _Otranto_, kept a
+southerly course. The discovery at Pernambuco of twenty-three German
+merchantmen snugly ensconced behind the breakwater, in neutral harbour,
+proved very galling. The Straits of Magellan and the cold Tierra del
+Fuego were at length reached. The squadron was on the scent of three
+German cruisers, the _Leipzig_, _Dresden_, and _Nürnberg_. It was
+suspected that they had gone to coal in this remote corner of the
+oceans. Their secret and friendly wireless stations were heard talking
+in code. The British made swoops upon wild and unsurveyed bays and
+inlets. The land around was covered with ice and snow, and the many huge
+glaciers formed a sight wonderful to behold. But the search had proved
+fruitless. After rounding the Horn several times, the squadron had
+turned towards the Falklands.
+
+[Sidenote: Rumors of disaster.]
+
+The inhabitants could not long rely, however, upon these powerful
+guardians. The squadron, after coaling, departed, again bound for the
+Straits of Magellan and the Pacific. Its strength was certainly adequate
+to tackle with success the three German ships believed to be in the
+vicinity. The colony could depend upon Admiral Cradock to protect it to
+the best of his ability. But it was not improbable that the enemy might
+evade the patrolling cruisers, and descend upon the hapless Falklands
+without warning. The Governor saw the advisability of instant
+preparation. On October 19, he issued a notice that all women and
+children were to leave Stanley. Provisions, stores, and clothes were
+hastily removed into the interior, which was locally termed the 'camp'.
+The colony possessed a Volunteer Rifle Company, some 120 strong, and two
+nine-pounder field-guns. Further volunteers were enrolled and armed.
+Suddenly, on November 3, an alarming wireless message was received. The
+_Good Hope_ and the _Monmouth_ were reported to have been sunk off the
+coast of Chili. It was unsigned. There was no proof of its authenticity.
+But the next day another message followed from the captain of the
+_Glasgow_. The disaster was confirmed. The _Glasgow_, in company with H.
+M. S. _Canopus_, was running with all speed for the Falklands. They were
+probably being followed by the victorious Germans. Four days of acute
+suspense followed. The situation seemed critical. The Governor passed
+several nights without taking off his clothes, in expectancy of wireless
+messages that needed instant decoding. People slept beside their
+telephones. Early in the morning of Sunday, November 8, the two warships
+arrived.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Glasgow_ arrives.]
+
+The _Glasgow_ was badly damaged. An enormous hole, three feet by nine
+feet, gaped in her side. A shell had wrecked Captain Luce's cabin,
+giving off fumes such as rendered unconscious several men who rushed in
+to put out the fire. The vessel had escaped any serious outbreak,
+however, and had suffered only four slight casualties. Warm tributes
+were paid by the captain to the cool and disciplined conduct of both
+officers and men. The _Canopus_ had not been engaged. But a narrative of
+the preceding events may now be appropriate.
+
+[Sidenote: German cruisers in Pacific.]
+
+Vice-Admiral the Graf Maximilian von Spee was in command, at the
+outbreak of hostilities, of the German China fleet stationed at
+Tsing-tao. A successor, indeed, had been appointed, and was on the way
+to relieve him. But just before war was declared von Spee and his
+squadron steamed off into the open seas. To remain at Tsing-tao while
+vastly superior forces were closing in upon him would be to little
+purpose. Commerce raiding offered a field for rendering valuable service
+to the Fatherland. The _Emden_ was dispatched to the southern seas. The
+_Leipzig_ and the _Nürnberg_ proceeded across the Pacific, and began to
+prey upon the western coast of South America. Half the maritime trade of
+Chili was carried in English ships. Many of them might be seized and
+destroyed at little risk. The Admiral, with his two remaining vessels,
+the _Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_, successfully evaded the hostile
+fleets for some time. On September 14 he touched at Apia, in German
+Samoa, familiar to readers of Robert Louis Stevenson. It could be
+remembered how, fifteen years before, this colony, shortly to fall
+before a New Zealand expeditionary force, had been a bone of contention
+between Great Britain and Germany. Captain Sturdee, whom von Spee was
+soon to meet in more arduous operations, had on that occasion commanded
+the British force in the tribal warfare. Eight days later, on September
+22, the two German cruisers arrived off Papeete, in Tahiti, one of the
+loveliest of Pacific islands. A small disarmed French gunboat lying
+there was sunk, and the town was bombarded. The Admiral, planning a
+concentration of German ships, then steamed east across the Pacific. He
+got into touch with friendly vessels. By skilful man[oe]uvring he
+finally brought five warships, with colliers, together near Valparaiso.
+
+[Sidenote: Armament of cruisers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Coal needed.]
+
+[Sidenote: Drake's exploits.]
+
+[Sidenote: Search for cruisers.]
+
+The German ships were all of recent construction. The _Scharnhorst_ and
+the _Gneisenau_ were armoured cruisers of 11,600 tons. The _Leipzig_,
+the _Nürnberg_, and the _Dresden_ were light cruisers of about 3,500
+tons. The armament of the larger vessels included eight 8·2-inch and six
+6-inch guns. The smaller relied upon either ten or twelve 4-inch pieces.
+Each ship carried torpedo tubes, and the speed of each was about
+twenty-two or twenty-three knots an hour. The _Dresden_, however, could
+go to twenty-seven knots. The squadron possessed all-important allies.
+Several German merchant-marine companies, notably the Kosmos, plied
+along the Chilian coast. The tonnage of their vessels, indeed, amounted
+to no less than half that of the English companies. The advance of
+German enterprise in Chili in recent years had been very marked. Von
+Spee's great stumbling-block was coal. The laws of war prevented him
+from sending more than three of his warships into a neutral port at the
+same time, from staying there more than twenty-four hours, from taking
+more coal than was necessary to reach the nearest German harbour, from
+coaling again for three months at a port of the same nationality. But if
+German merchantmen, hampered by no such restrictions, could constantly
+renew his supplies, the difficulty of fuel could be to some extent met.
+Provisions and secret information as to British movements could also be
+obtained through the same source. Such employment of merchantmen,
+however, being contrary to international law, would have to be
+clandestine. The great Pacific coast offered numerous harbours and
+abundant facilities for being utilized as a base under such conditions.
+It showed many historic precedents for bold and adventurous exploits
+which could not fail to appeal to an admiral whose family, ennobled by
+the Emperor Charles VI, took pride in its ancient and aristocratic
+lineage. The occasion seemed opportune, moreover, for the
+accomplishment, by himself, his officers, and men, of deeds which should
+inspire their posterity as British naval traditions, for lack of other,
+at present inspired them. They could recall how, on this very coast, in
+1578-9, Drake, the master raider, had seized a Spanish treasure-ship off
+Valdivia, had descended like a hawk upon Callao, had pounced upon
+another great galleon, taking nearly a million pounds in gold and
+silver; and how the intrepid mariner, sailing off into the unknown
+ocean, had circumnavigated the globe, while the furious de Toledo
+waited, with eleven warships, in the Straits of Magellan. Why, indeed,
+should not the Germans imitate, in the twentieth century, the deeds of
+Drake in the sixteenth? If they preyed ruthlessly upon English
+merchantmen, laden with the wealth of the West, if they made a descent
+upon the Falkland Islands, if then they were to disappear into the wide
+Pacific, a career of splendid adventure and of unbounded usefulness
+would earn for them both the respect and the plaudits of the world.
+Australian and Japanese warships were sweeping the eastern Pacific for
+them. Many British vessels, called from useful employment elsewhere,
+would have to join in the search for them. But so vast was the area that
+they might elude their enemies for months.
+
+British ships were already cruising near the Horn, possibly unaware that
+a concentration of the Germans had been effected. It was not unlikely
+that von Spee might be able to cut off and to destroy stray units of the
+patrolling squadrons. The Graf could see many opportunities of serving
+effectively the cause of the Fatherland. He must utilize them to the
+full.
+
+[Sidenote: Cradock near coast of Chili.]
+
+[Sidenote: German cruisers sighted.]
+
+Sir Christopher Cradock, meanwhile, had rounded the Horn once more, and
+was cruising northwards up the coast of Chili. That coast, indeed, once
+the haunt of corsairs and filibusters, was rich in historic associations
+and in natural beauties. An element of grandeur and of mystery seemed to
+hover around the countless ridges and peaks of the Andes, stretching,
+with the gleam of their eternal snows, for four thousand miles, and
+gazing down across the illimitable waters of the occident. Upon the
+plateaux, miles above sea level, stood old stone temples and pyramids
+which rivalled in massiveness and ingenuity those of Egypt and of
+Babylon. The student of ancient civilizations could trace, in the mystic
+deities of the Incas and Araucanians, a strange similarity to the
+deities of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. Speculation upon this analogy
+formed a fascinating theme. This coast, too, was sacred to memories that
+could not but be dear to sailors as gallant and daring as Cradock, since
+his services in China, in 1900, was known to be. Among other familiar
+British names, Cochrane, Lord Dundonald, had won enduring glory in the
+struggle for Chilian independence, nearly a hundred years before. The
+conditions of naval warfare had, indeed, through the introduction of
+armour and the perfection of weapons, radically changed since Cochrane,
+in a series of singularly audacious exploits, had overcome the fleets of
+Spain. Sea-fighting had become purely a matter of science. The object of
+strategy was to concentrate faster ships and more powerful guns against
+weaker force. The odds with which Cradock was to contend against the
+Germans were greater in proportion, if less in bulk, than the odds with
+which Cochrane had contended, with his peasant crews and his hulks,
+against the Spanish "wooden-walls". Admiral Cradock now knew that there
+were two more cruisers in the neighbourhood than had at first been
+supposed. The _Canopus_ had accordingly been sent to join his squadron.
+But she was a battleship, and much slower than the cruisers. She could
+travel no faster than at eighteen knots. Cradock proceeded northwards,
+ahead of the _Canopus_, made a rendezvous off Concepcion Bay for his
+colliers, and went into Coronel and on to Valparaiso to pick up news and
+receive letters. The squadron then returned to the rendezvous and
+coaled. This completed, the Admiral directed the _Glasgow_ to proceed
+again to Coronel to dispatch certain cables. Captain Luce duly carried
+out his mission, and left Coronel at nine o'clock on Sunday morning,
+November 1, steaming northwards to rejoin the other ships. A gale was
+rising. The wind was blowing strongly from the south. Heavy seas
+continually buffeted the vessel. At two o'clock a wireless signal was
+received from the _Good Hope_. Apparently from wireless calls there was
+an enemy ship to northward. The squadron must spread out in line,
+proceeding in a direction north-east-by-east, the flagship forming one
+extremity, the _Glasgow_ the other. It was to move at fifteen knots. At
+twenty minutes past four in the afternoon, smoke was observed upon the
+horizon. The _Glasgow_ put on speed and approached. Officers soon made
+out the funnels of four cruisers. It was the enemy. The Germans, their
+big armoured cruisers leading, and the smaller behind, gave chase.
+
+[Sidenote: The squadrons approach.]
+
+The _Glasgow_ swept round to northward, calling to the flagship with her
+wireless. Von Spee, anticipating this move, at once set his wireless in
+operation, in order to jamb the British signals. Captain Luce soon
+picked up the _Monmouth_ and the _Otranto_, and the three ships raced
+northwards towards the flagship, the _Glasgow_ leading. At about five
+o'clock the _Good Hope_ was seen approaching. The three ships wheeled
+into line behind her, and the whole squadron now proceeded south. Von
+Spee, coming up from that direction in line ahead, about twelve miles
+off, changed his course and also proceeded south, keeping nearer to the
+coast. The wind was now blowing almost with the force of a hurricane. So
+heavy was the sea that small boats would have been unable to keep
+afloat. But the sky was not completely overcast, and the sun was
+shining. Firing had not opened. The washing of the seas and the roaring
+of the wind deafened the ear to other sounds. The warship of to-day,
+when her great turbines are whirling round at their highest speed, moves
+without throb and almost without vibration through the waves. The two
+squadrons, drawing level, the Germans nearer to the coast, raced in the
+teeth of the gale, in two parallel lines, to the south.
+
+[Sidenote: British vessels.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cradock orders attack.]
+
+Sir Christopher Cradock could not but realize that the situation was
+hazardous. He had three vessels capable of fighting men-of-war. The
+_Otranto_ was only an armed liner, and must withdraw when the battle
+developed. The _Good Hope_ displaced some 14,000 tons, and was armed
+with two 9'2-inch and sixteen 6-inch guns. The _Monmouth_, with a
+tonnage of 9,800, carried fourteen 6-inch pieces, but the _Glasgow_, a
+ship of 4,800 tons, had only two of the 6-inch weapons. It was certain
+that the German 8·2-inch guns, if the shooting was at all good, would be
+found to outrange and outclass the British. Cradock was certainly at a
+disadvantage in gun-power. His protective armour was weaker than that of
+the enemy. Nor did his speed give him any superiority. Though the
+_Glasgow_ was capable of twenty-six knots, the flagship and the
+_Monmouth_ could only go to twenty-three. But there was another
+consideration which the Admiral might weigh. Coming slowly up from the
+south, but probably still a considerable distance off, was the
+battleship _Canopus_. Her presence would give the British a decided
+preponderance. She was a vessel of some 13,000 tons, and her armament
+included four 12-inch and twelve 6-inch pieces. How far was she away?
+How soon could she arrive upon the scene? Evening was closing in.
+Cradock was steering hard in her direction. If the British, engaging the
+enemy immediately, could keep them in play throughout the night, when
+firing must necessarily be desultory, perhaps morning would bring the
+_Canopus_ hastening into the action. It was possible that the Germans
+did not know of her proximity. They might, accepting the contest, and
+expecting to cripple the British next morning at their leisure, find
+themselves trapped. But in any case they should not be allowed to
+proceed without some such attempt being made to destroy them. It must
+not be said that, because the enemy was in greater force, a British
+squadron had taken to flight. Perhaps it would be better, since darkness
+would afford little opportunity of man[oe]uvring for action, to draw
+nearer and to engage fairly soon. It was about a quarter past six. The
+Germans were about 15,000 yards distant. Cradock ordered the speed of
+his squadron to seventeen knots. He then signalled by wireless to the
+_Canopus_, 'I am going to attack enemy now'.
+
+[Sidenote: At closer range.]
+
+[Sidenote: Only gun flashes to direct fire.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Good Hope_ blown up.]
+
+The sun was setting. The western horizon was mantled by a canopy of
+gold. Von Spee's man[oe]uvre in closing in nearer to the shore had
+placed him in an advantageous position as regards the light. The British
+ships, when the sun had set, were sharply outlined against the glowing
+sky. The Germans were partly hidden in the failing light and by the
+mountainous coast. The island of Santa Maria, off Coronel, lay in the
+distance. Von Spee had been gradually closing to within 12,000 yards.
+The appropriate moment for engaging seemed to be approaching. A few
+minutes after sunset, about seven o'clock, the leading German cruiser
+opened fire with her largest guns. Shells shrieked over and short of the
+_Good Hope_, some falling within five hundred yards. As battle was now
+imminent, the _Otranto_ began to haul out of line, and to edge away to
+the south-west. The squadrons were converging rapidly, but the smaller
+cruisers were as yet out of range. The British replied in quick
+succession to the German fire. As the distance lessened, each ship
+engaged that opposite in the line. The _Good Hope_ and the _Monmouth_
+had to bear the brunt of the broadsides of the _Scharnhorst_ and the
+_Gneisenau_. The _Glasgow_, in the rear, exchanged shots with the light
+cruisers, the _Leipzig_ and the _Dresden_. The shooting was deadly. The
+third of the rapid salvos of the enemy armoured cruisers set the _Good
+Hope_ and the _Monmouth_ afire. Shells began to find their mark, some
+exploding overhead and bursting in all directions. In about ten minutes
+the _Monmouth_ sheered off the line to westward about one hundred yards.
+She was being hit heavily. Her foremost turret, shielding one of her
+6-inch guns, was in flames. She seemed to be reeling and shaking. She
+fell back into line, however, and then out again to eastward, her 6-inch
+guns roaring intermittently. Darkness was now gathering fast. The range
+had narrowed to about 5,000 yards. The seven ships were all in action.
+Many shells striking the sea sent up columns of white spray, showing
+weirdly in the twilight. It was an impressive scene. The dim light, the
+heavy seas, the rolling of the vessels, distracted the aim. Some of the
+guns upon the main decks, being near the water-line, became with each
+roll almost awash. The British could fire only at the flashes of the
+enemy's guns. Often the heavy head seas hid even the flashes from the
+gun-layers. It was impossible to gauge the effect of their shells. The
+fore-turret of the _Good Hope_ burst into flames, and she began to fall
+away out of line towards the enemy. The _Glasgow_ kept up a continual
+fire upon the German light cruisers with one of her 6-inch guns and her
+port batteries. A shell struck her below deck, and men waited for the
+planks to rise. No explosion nor fire, however, occurred. But the
+British flagship was now burning brightly forward, and was falling more
+and more out of line to eastward. It was about a quarter to eight.
+Suddenly there was the roar of an explosion. The part about the _Good
+Hope's_ after-funnel split asunder, and a column of flame, sparks, and
+débris was blown up to a height of about two hundred feet. She never
+fired her guns again. Total destruction must have followed. Sir
+Christopher Cradock and nine hundred brave sailors went down in the
+stormy deep. The other ships raced past her in the darkness. The
+_Monmouth_ was in great distress. She left the line after a while, and
+turned back, steaming with difficulty to northwest. She had ceased
+firing. The vessels had been travelling at a rate which varied from
+seven to seventeen knots. The _Glasgow_, now left alone, eased her speed
+in order to avoid shells intended for the _Monmouth_. The Germans
+dropped slowly back. The _Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_ now
+concentrated their salvos upon the _Glasgow_. The range was about 4,500
+yards. A shell struck the second funnel: five others hit her side at the
+waterline, but fortunately not in dangerous places. Luce, her captain,
+since the flagship was no more, was senior officer. He brought his
+vessel round and moved rapidly back.
+
+[Sidenote: _Monmouth_ in distress.]
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy is signalling in Morse.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Glasgow_ draws away.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Monmouth_ finally capsizes.]
+
+The _Monmouth_ had now fallen away to a north-easterly course. Luce
+stood by signalling. Could she steer north-west? She was making water
+badly forward, Captain Brandt answered, and he wanted to get stern to
+sea. The enemy were following, Luce signalled again. There was no reply.
+The _Glasgow_ steamed nearer. The _Monmouth_ was in a sinking condition.
+Her bows were under water, and the men were assembled at the stern. The
+sea was running very high. Rain and mist had come on, though a moon was
+now rising. The enemy had altered course, and were approaching in line
+abreast about 6,000 yards away. A light kept twinkling at regular
+intervals from one of the ships. They were signalling in Morse, and
+evidently were forming plans of action. Firing was still proceeding
+intermittently. It was about half-past eight. Captain Luce could see
+nothing for it but to abandon the _Monmouth_ to her fate. To rescue her
+crew, under such conditions, was impossible, while to stand by and
+endeavour to defend her would be folly. The _Glasgow_ was not armoured,
+and could not contend with armoured vessels. Of the two guns she
+possessed capable of piercing the enemy's armour, one had been put out
+of action ten minutes after the start. If she stayed and fought to the
+end, 370 good lives, in addition to the sufficiently heavy toll of 1,600
+in the _Good Hope_ and the _Monmouth_, would be needlessly sacrificed.
+The _Canopus_, moreover, must be warned. She was coming up from the
+south to sure destruction. She could hardly be expected successfully to
+combat the whole German squadron. Nevertheless, it must have been with
+heavy hearts that the men of the _Glasgow_ turned away to seek safety in
+flight. It is recorded that, as they moved off into the darkness, a
+cheer broke forth from the _Monmouth's_ decks. Before the sinking vessel
+became lost to sight another and a third went up. At about a quarter
+past nine the _Nürnberg_, which had not been engaged in the main action,
+came across the _Monmouth_. It is said that, though in a sinking
+condition, the British ship attempted to ram her enemy. But the
+_Nürnberg_ began to bombard her, and she capsized.
+
+[Sidenote: _Glasgow_ and _Canopus_ start for Rio de Janeiro.]
+
+The _Glasgow_ steamed off in a north-westerly direction. A few minutes
+before nine the enemy became lost to sight. Half an hour later many
+distant flashes of gunfire, the death-struggle of the _Monmouth_, were
+seen. The play of a searchlight, which lasted a few seconds and then
+disappeared, was also observed. The vessel bore round gradually to the
+south. Her wireless was put into operation, and she made efforts to get
+through to the _Canopus_. But the Germans had again set their apparatus
+in motion, and the messages were jambed. Only after some hours was the
+_Glasgow_ successful. Steaming hard at twenty-four knots through the
+heavy seas, her engines and boilers fortunately being intact, she at
+length joined the battleship. The two ships made straight for the
+Falkland Islands.
+
+The news of the disaster stirred great alarm in the colony. Before the
+day on which the ships arrived was out the dismay was further increased.
+The _Canopus_ at first expected to stay ten days. Her presence provided
+substantial relief. If the enemy appeared, she and even the damaged
+_Glasgow_ could give a very good account of themselves. But during the
+morning Captain Grant of the _Canopus_ received a wireless message from
+the Admiralty. He was to proceed immediately to Rio de Janeiro with the
+_Glasgow_. The Brazilian Government had granted the latter permission to
+enter the dry dock there to make urgent repairs. But seven days only
+were allowed for this purpose. In the evening the warships cast off, and
+steamed away to northward.
+
+[Sidenote: The colony almost defenseless.]
+
+[Sidenote: Falklands prepare for attack.]
+
+[Sidenote: Burying the Governor's silver and table linen.]
+
+Stanley was now in an unenviable situation. A powerful German squadron,
+flushed with victory, was probably making for the Islands. The colony
+was almost defenceless. All the opposition that the enemy would meet
+would be from a few hundred volunteers. A wireless message that came
+through emphasized the imminence of the danger. Warnings and
+instructions were outlined. If the enemy landed, the volunteers were to
+fight. But retiring tactics must be adopted. Care should be taken to
+keep out of range of the enemy's big guns. The Governor at once called a
+council of war. There could be little doubt that a descent would be made
+upon the colony. The position was full of peril. But resistance must
+certainly be offered. The few women, children, and old men who still
+remained at Stanley must be sent away immediately. Fortunately the time
+of year was propitious. November is, indeed, in the Falklands considered
+the only dry month. The ground is then covered with a variety of
+sweet-scented flowers. Further, all the stores it was possible to remove
+must be taken into the 'camp'. Quantities of provisions must be hidden
+away at various points within reach of the town. In order to add to the
+mobility of the defending force, it would be well to bring in another
+hundred horses from the 'camp'. Every man should be mounted. These
+measures were duly carried out. Every preparation was made and every
+precaution taken. Everybody began to pack up boxes of goods. Clothes,
+stores, and valuables were all taken away to safety. Books, papers, and
+money were removed from the Government offices, and from the
+headquarters of the Falkland Islands Company. What was not sent away was
+buried. The official papers and code-books were buried every night, and
+dug up and dried every morning. The Governor's tableclothes gave rise to
+much anxiety. It was thought, since they were marked 'G. R.', they would
+be liable to insult by the Germans. They were accordingly buried. This
+conscientious loyalty, however, proved costly. The Governor's silver,
+wrapped in green baize, was, unfortunately, placed in the same hole. The
+tablecloths became mixed up with the baize. The damp got through, and
+the linen was badly stained. There was a feeling that the attack would
+come at dawn. People sat up all night, and only went to bed when morning
+was well advanced. All offices were closed and business was suspended.
+This state of tension lasted several days. At length, from the look-out
+post above the town, a warship, apparently a cruiser, was seen making
+straight for the wireless station. When she got within range she turned
+broadside on. Her decks were cleared for action.
+
+[Sidenote: _Canopus_ arrives.]
+
+There was a call to arms. Church and dockyard bells pealed out the
+alarm. Non-combatants streamed out of the town into the 'camp'. The
+volunteers paraded, and lined up with their horses. It would soon become
+a question whether to resist a landing or to retire. In any event the
+men were ready and provided with emergency rations. But no firing
+sounded. Signals were exchanged between the vessel and the shore. It was
+a false alarm. The new-comer was H. M. S. _Canopus_.
+
+[Sidenote: A serious outlook--decks are cleared for action.]
+
+She had proceeded, in accordance with her orders, towards Rio de Janeiro
+with the _Glasgow_. When two days' journey off her destination, however,
+she received another message. She was directed to return and to defend
+the Falklands in case of attack. These instructions were received with
+mingled feelings. To fight alone a powerful squadron was by no means an
+attractive prospect. Duty, however, was duty. The _Canopus_ turned
+about, and retraced her passage. She set her wireless in operation, and
+tried to get through to Stanley. But for some reason she was unable to
+do so. It was concluded that the Germans had made a raid and had
+destroyed the wireless station. Probably they had occupied the town. The
+outlook seemed serious. The _Canopus_ had her instructions, however, and
+there was no drawing back. The decks were cleared for action. Ammunition
+was served out. Guns were loaded and trained. With every man at his post
+the ship steamed at full speed into the harbour. Great was the relief
+when it was found that all was well.
+
+[Sidenote: German raid anticipated.]
+
+[Sidenote: Shackleton's visit to South Georgia.]
+
+The inhabitants were not less relieved. The presence of the battleship
+was felt to add materially to the security of the town. The Germans
+would probably hesitate before attacking a ship of her size. If they
+sustained damage involving loss of fighting efficiency, there was no
+harbour they could turn to for repair, except so far as their
+seaworthiness was affected. Nevertheless, it was almost certain that
+some raid upon the Islands would be attempted. Guns were landed from the
+ship, and measures were taken to make the defence as effective as
+possible. Perhaps if the enemy blockaded Stanley, the British would be
+able to hold out until other warships, certain to be sent to avenge the
+defeat, arrived. Relief could hardly be expected for two or three weeks.
+The Falklands formed a very distant corner of the Empire. It was
+doubtful, indeed, whether even the ubiquitous German spy had penetrated
+to these remote and barren shores. It could, however, be recalled that,
+in 1882, a German expedition had landed on South Georgia, a dependent
+island of the Falklands, eight hundred miles to their south-east, to
+observe the transit of Venus. Upon that same island, indeed, another
+and a quite unsuspicious expedition had landed, early in that very
+month, November. Sir Ernest Shackleton, the explorer, had left Buenos
+Ayres on the morning of October 26, on his way across the antarctic
+continent. His little vessel of 230 tons, the _Endurance_, passed
+through the war zone in safety, and reached South Georgia on November 5.
+He remained for about a month before leaving for the lonely tracts for
+which his little party was bound. The island was his last link with
+civilization. Though sub-antarctic, it possessed features as up-to-date
+as electric-light, universal even in pigsties and henhouses. And the
+march of man, it was observed, had introduced the familiar animals of
+the farmyard, and even a monkey, into a region whose valleys, destitute
+of tree or shrub, lay clothed with perpetual snow.
+
+[Sidenote: Sturdee's squadron reaches Port Stanley.]
+
+[Sidenote: German cruisers sighted.]
+
+Meanwhile, November passed into December without any appearance of the
+Germans off the Falklands. The tension became very much relieved. Women
+and children were brought back to Stanley, after being away a month or
+six weeks. Messages emanating from the hostile squadron, registered by
+the wireless station, indicated that the enemy were still in the
+vicinity. But the condition of the colony became again almost normal.
+The relief and security were complete when, at length, on Monday,
+December 7, a powerful British squadron, under Vice-Admiral Sir Doveton
+Sturdee, arrived at Port Stanley. There were seven warships, besides the
+_Canopus_. The _Invincible_ and the _Inflexible_ had left Plymouth on
+November 11, and had proceeded to the West Indies. Their mission was to
+avenge Coronel. They had picked up at Albatross Rock the _Carnarvon_,
+_Cornwall_, _Bristol_, _Kent_, _Glasgow_, now repaired, and _Macedonia_,
+an armed liner. All had then steamed southwards towards the Falklands.
+The vessels started coaling. Officers came ashore to stretch their legs.
+Certain stores were laid in. It was anticipated that the squadron would
+depart in search of the enemy on the evening of the following day. That
+search might, indeed, be a matter of months. Early next morning,
+December 8, at about eight o'clock, a volunteer observer posted on
+Sapper's Hill, two miles from Stanley, sighted two vessels upon the
+horizon. Twenty minutes later the smoke of two others came into view in
+the same direction. They were soon recognized as German cruisers. The
+excitement was intense. The news was immediately carried to the
+authorities. It was hastily signalled to the fleet. Most of the ships
+were at anchor in Port William, the outer entrance to Port Stanley. Some
+of the naval officers were aroused from their repose. It is recorded
+that, upon hearing the news, the flag-lieutenant dashed down to Admiral
+Sturdee's cabin, clad in his pyjamas. Sir Doveton was shaving. The
+lieutenant poured forth his information. 'Well,' said the Admiral,
+dryly, 'you had better go and get dressed. We'll see about it later.'[1]
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The writer cannot vouch for the truth of this anecdote,
+which he merely records as given in a letter published in the press. But
+the source from which it was taken, together with many of the preceding
+details of the condition of Stanley during the period of tension, has
+proved so accurate in essential points of fact, that their insertion
+seems justifiable.
+
+[Sidenote: Achievements of the raiders.]
+
+[Sidenote: Supplies hard to obtain.]
+
+[Sidenote: The question of neutrality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Chile's neutrality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Falklands a possible base.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Gneisenau_ and _Nürnberg_ fire on wireless station.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germans are surprised.]
+
+The Graf von Spee had, meanwhile, after the Battle of Coronel, been
+devoting himself to harrying maritime commerce. The Falklands could wait
+for the present. Since the beginning of hostilities the work of his
+light cruisers had been moderately successful. The _Nürnberg_ had cut
+the cable between Bamfield, British Columbia, and Fanning Island. The
+_Leipzig_ had accounted for at least four British merchantmen, and the
+_Dresden_ for at least two more. The armed liner _Eitel Friedrich_ had
+also achieved some success. Several traders had had narrow escapes. The
+Chilian coast was in a state of blockade to British vessels, the ports
+being crowded with shipping that hesitated to venture forth into the
+danger zone. The Germans were masters of the Pacific and South Atlantic
+trade routes. The Straits of Magellan and the Horn formed a great
+waterway of commerce, which for sailing vessels was, indeed, the only
+eastern outlet from the Pacific. But completely as he had the situation
+in hand, von Spee was experiencing increasing problems and difficulties
+with regard to supplies of coal and provisions. Without these he was
+impotent. He had been employing German merchantmen to great advantage
+for refueling. But trouble was brewing with the Chilian authorities.
+Many signs were leading the latter to suspect that, contrary to
+international law, German traders were loading at Chilian ports cargoes
+of coal and provisions, contraband of war, and were transferring them at
+sea to the German warships. There were other causes of complaint. Juan
+Fernandez, the isle of romance and of mystery, the home of the original
+of Robinson Crusoe, was said to have been degraded into use as a base
+for apportioning the booty, coals and victuals, among the belligerent
+vessels. The island was a Chilian possession. It was practically certain
+that von Spee's squadron had stayed there beyond the legal limit of
+time. A French merchantman had, contrary to rule, also been sunk there
+by the _Dresden_, within Chilian territorial waters. Inquiries in other
+quarters were being made, moreover, as to the friendly wireless stations
+which the Germans had been utilizing secretly in Colombia and Ecuador;
+while a rumour was current in the United States that neutral vessels had
+been seized and pillaged on the high seas. Von Spee soon found that he
+was nearing the end even of his illegitimate resources. He had tried the
+patience of the Chilian authorities too far. About the middle of
+November they suddenly prohibited, as a provisional measure, the vessels
+of the Kosmos Company from leaving any Chilian port. On November 24 a
+Government ship was sent to Juan Fernandez to investigate, and to see
+that Chilian neutrality was upheld. Many such signs seemed to warn von
+Spee that the time was appropriate to a sudden disappearance. He
+gathered his squadron for a descent at last upon the Falklands. His
+plans must be, not merely for a raid, but for an occupation. There were
+probably two or three small ships there. They should be sunk. The
+wireless station must be destroyed. The Islands, after a landing had
+been effected and the defence reduced, could be used as a base for the
+German operations. There were large quantities of coal and stores at
+Stanley. The harbour possessed facilities for refitting. To dislodge a
+strong German naval force, with adequate guns, placed in occupation of
+the colony, would be a difficult task for the enemy. The Falklands had
+many possibilities. According to von Spee's information they were feebly
+defended and would fall an easy prey. At length, early in the morning of
+December 8, the Admiral brought his fleet off Stanley. His five cruisers
+approached from the south. They were, of course, observed. A warning
+gun, probably from one of the small ships which he would shortly sink,
+sounded the alarm inside the harbour. There was no need, however, for
+haste. At twenty minutes past nine the _Gneisenau_ and the _Nürnberg_
+moved towards the wireless station, and brought their guns to bear upon
+it. But suddenly from inside the harbour there came the thunder of a big
+gun. Five shells, of very heavy calibre, screamed in quick succession
+from over the low-lying land. One of the vessels was struck. Surprise
+and bewilderment took the Germans. This was most unexpected. The
+_Gneisenau_ and the _Nürnberg_ hastily retired out of range.
+
+[Sidenote: Strength of British squadron.]
+
+[Sidenote: Admiral Sturdee both confident and cautious.]
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy eight miles away.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Canopus_ opens fire.]
+
+Sir Doveton and his fleet, meanwhile, had gone to breakfast. Steam for
+full speed was got up as rapidly as possible. Coaling operations had
+recommenced at 6.30 that morning. The colliers were hurriedly cast off,
+and the decks were cleared for action. Officers and men were delighted
+at the prospect of an early fight. The Germans had saved them a long
+cold search around the Horn by calling for them. There was going to be
+no mistake this time. The enemy could not escape. Sturdee's squadron was
+superior both in weight and speed to the German. It consisted of two
+battle-cruisers of over 17,000 tons, the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_;
+of three cruisers of about 10,000 tons, the _Carnarvon_, _Kent_, and
+_Cornwall_; and of two light cruisers of 4,800 tons, the _Glasgow_ and
+_Bristol_. The primary armament of the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ was
+eight 12-inch guns; of the _Carnarvon_, four 7'5-inch; of the _Kent_ and
+_Cornwall_, fourteen 6-inch; of the _Glasgow_ and _Bristol_, two 6-inch.
+The speed of the battle-cruisers was twenty-eight knots; of the three
+middle-class cruisers, twenty-two to twenty-four knots; and of the light
+cruisers, twenty-five to twenty-six knots. In size, in armament, in
+speed, the British squadron would decidedly preponderate. Admiral
+Sturdee, however, though confident of victory, was determined to take no
+risks, and to minimize loss in men and material by making full use of
+his superior long-range gunfire, and of his superior speed. He would
+wait, screened by the land, until the Germans had drawn nearer.
+Everything should be got ready carefully. Undue excitement was to be
+deprecated. Meanwhile, he watched the enemy closely. At about a quarter
+to nine, Captain Grant of the _Canopus_ reported that the first two
+ships sighted were now about eight miles away: the other two were still
+at a distance of some twenty miles. The _Kent_ passed down the harbour
+and took up a position at the entrance. Five minutes later the smoke of
+a fifth German vessel was observed. When, in about half an hour's time,
+the two leading enemy ships made a threatening move in the direction of
+the wireless station, the Admiral ordered a swift counterstroke.
+Officers upon the hills above the town signalled the range, 11,000
+yards, to the _Canopus_. She opened fire with her 12-inch guns. The
+Germans hoisted their colours and drew back. Their masts and smoke were
+now visible from the upper bridge of the _Invincible_ across the low
+land bounding Port William on the south. Within a few minutes the two
+cruisers altered course and made for the harbour-mouth. Here the _Kent_
+lay stationed. It seemed that the Germans were about to engage her. As,
+however, they approached, the masts and funnels of two large ships at
+anchor within the port became visible to them. The _Gneisenau_ and the
+_Nürnberg_ could hardly expect to contend alone with this force. They at
+once changed their direction, and moved back at increased speed to join
+their consorts.
+
+[Sidenote: Weather unusually fair.]
+
+[Sidenote: Chase begins.]
+
+[Sidenote: More German ships sighted.]
+
+[Sidenote: Battle joined.]
+
+The morning was gloriously fine. The sun shone brightly, the sky was
+clear, the sea was calm, and a breeze blew lightly from the north-west.
+It was one of the rare bright stretches that visit the Islands, for
+usually rain falls, mostly in misty drizzles, on about 250 days in the
+year. At twenty minutes to ten the _Glasgow_ weighed anchor, and joined
+the _Kent_ at the harbour-mouth. Five minutes later the rest of the
+squadron weighed, and began to steam out. The battleship _Canopus_, her
+speed making her unsuitable for a chase, was left in harbour. The
+_Bristol_ and the _Macedonia_ also remained behind for the present. By a
+dexterous use of oil fuel the two battle-cruisers were kept shrouded as
+much as possible in dense clouds of smoke. The enemy for some time could
+not gauge their size. But as vessel after vessel emerged, Admiral von
+Spee grew uneasy. The English were in altogether unexpected strength.
+His squadron could not cope with such force. He had played into the
+enemy's hands, and unless he could outspeed their ships, the game was
+up. Without hesitation, he steamed off at high speed to eastward. The
+British followed, steaming at fifteen to eighteen knots. The enemy, to
+their south-east, were easily visible. At twenty past ten an order for a
+general chase was signalled. The _Invincible_ and the _Inflexible_
+quickly drew to the fore. The Germans were roughly in line abreast,
+20,000 yards, or some eleven miles, ahead. The morning sunlight, the
+gleaming seas, the grey warships, white foam springing from their bows,
+tearing at high speed through the waves, formed a magnificent spectacle.
+Crowds of the inhabitants of Stanley gathered upon the hills above the
+town to view the chase. The excitement and enthusiasm were intense. The
+vessels were in sight about two hours. At about a quarter past eleven it
+was reported from a point in the south of East Falkland that three other
+German ships were in sight. They were probably colliers or transports.
+The _Bristol_ signalled the information to Admiral Sturdee. He at once
+ordered her, with the armed liner _Macedonia_, to hasten in their
+direction and destroy them. The newcomers made off to south-west, and
+the British followed. Meanwhile the rest of the squadron, now travelling
+at twenty-three knots, were slowly closing upon the enemy. The distance
+had narrowed to 15-16,000 yards. The British were within striking
+range. Nevertheless, Sturdee decided to wait till after dinner before
+engaging. His guns could outdistance those of the enemy. It would be
+advisable for him to keep at long range. The Germans, on the other hand,
+would be forced, when firing commenced, to alter course and draw in, in
+order to bring their own guns into play. The men had their midday meal
+at twelve o'clock as usual. It is said that comfortable time was allowed
+afterwards for a smoke. The _Invincible_, _Inflexible_, and _Glasgow_ at
+about 12.30 increased their speed to between twenty-five and
+twenty-eight knots, and went on ahead. Just after a quarter to one there
+was a signal from the Admiral: 'Open fire and engage the enemy.' A few
+minutes later there were sharp commands. The ranges were signalled, and
+the bigger guns were laid. Fiery glares and dense clouds of smoke burst
+suddenly from their muzzles. The air quivered with their thunder. Shells
+went screaming in the direction of the nearest light cruiser, the
+_Leipzig_, which was dropping rapidly astern. The firing was
+uncomfortably accurate. The three smaller German cruisers very soon left
+the line, and made an attempt, veering off to the south, to scatter and
+escape. Flame and smoke issued from the _Leipzig_, before she drew
+clear, where a shell had struck. Sir Doveton Sturdee directed the
+_Glasgow_, _Kent_, and _Cornwall_ to pursue the German light cruisers.
+With his remaining vessels, the _Invincible_, the _Inflexible_, and the
+slower _Carnarvon_, he turned upon the _Scharnhorst_ and the
+_Gneisenau_, and began operations in earnest.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Scharnhorst_ on fire.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Scharnhorst_ sinks.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Gneisenau_ goes down.]
+
+The interval of sunlight which had opened the day with such promise was
+of short duration. The sky became overcast. Soon after four o'clock the
+air was thick with rain-mist. From 1.15 onwards for three hours a fierce
+duel was maintained between the two British battle-cruisers and the two
+German armoured cruisers. The enemy made every effort to get away. They
+replied to the British fire for some time, having dropped back to within
+13,500 yards. But shortly after two o'clock they changed their course,
+and began to haul out to south-east. The _Invincible_ and the
+_Inflexible_ had eased their speed, and the range now widened by about
+3,000 yards. A second chase ensued. A full-rigged sailing-ship appeared
+in the distance at about a quarter to three. Her crew must have beheld
+an awe-inspiring scene. Shortly before the hour firing recommenced. The
+action began to develop. Great coolness and efficiency were shown on
+board the British vessels. Every man was at his battle-station, behind
+armour. Fire-control parties were at their instruments. Water from
+numerous hoses was flooding the decks as a precaution against fire. The
+roaring of the discharges, the screaming of the shells, the clangour of
+metal upon metal, the crashes of the explosions, made up a tumult that
+was painful in its intensity. During intervals in the firing came the
+rushing of the waves and of the breeze, and the grinding and grunting of
+the hydraulic engines in the turrets, where swung, training constantly
+upon the enemy, the greater guns. The Germans soon began to show signs
+of distress. The _Scharnhorst_ particularly suffered. Dense clouds of
+smoke, making it difficult for the British accurately to gauge the
+damage, rose from her decks. Shells rending her side disclosed
+momentarily the dull red glow of flame. She was burning fiercely. The
+firing on both sides was deadly, though the German had slackened
+considerably. But the British vessels, through their preponderance in
+gunfire, suffered little damage. Their 12-inch guns hit their marks
+constantly, while 8·2-inch guns of the _Scharnhorst_ were accurate, but
+ineffective. She veered to starboard at about 3.30, to bring into play
+her starboard batteries. Both her masts and three of her four funnels
+were shot away. At length the German flagship began to settle down
+rapidly in the waters. It was about a quarter past four. There was a
+swirl of the seas and a rush of steam and smoke. The _Scharnhorst_
+disappeared. She went down with her flag flying to an ocean grave,
+bearing 760 brave men and a gallant admiral, whose name will deservedly
+rank high in the annals of German naval history. The _Gneisenau_ passed
+on the far side of her sunken flagship. With the guns of both
+battle-cruisers now bearing upon her alone, the German was soon in sore
+straits. But she fought on gallantly for a considerable time. At
+half-past five she had ceased firing, and appeared to be sinking. She
+had suffered severe damage. Smoke and steam were rising everywhere. Her
+bridge had been shot away. Her foremost funnel was resting against the
+second. Her upper deck was so shattered that it could not be crossed,
+and every man upon it had been killed. An exploding shell had hurled one
+of the gun-turrets bodily overboard. Fire was raging aft. Her colours
+had been shot away several times, and hoisted as often. One of the flags
+was hauled down at about twenty to six, though that at the peak was
+still flying. She began to fire again with a single gun. The
+_Invincible_, the _Inflexible_, and the _Carnarvon_, which had now come
+up, closed in upon the doomed vessel. Firing was recommenced. The
+_Gneisenau_ was not moving. Both her engines were smashed. Shells
+striking the water near her sent up colossal columns of water, which,
+falling upon the ship, put out some of the fires. She soon began to
+settle down in the waves. All her guns were now out of action, and
+Sturdee ordered the "Cease fire". There could be little doubt that her
+stubborn resistance was nearing its end. The German commander lined up
+his men on the decks. The ammunition was exhausted. The ship would soon
+go down. Some six hundred men had already been killed. The survivors had
+better provide themselves with articles for their support in the water.
+At six o'clock the _Gneisenau_ heeled over suddenly. Clouds of steam
+sprang forth. Her stem swung up into the air, and she sank. Large
+numbers of her crew could be seen floating in the icy waves, hanging on
+to pieces of wreckage, and uttering terribly uncanny cries. The sea was
+choppy. Drizzling rain was falling. The British steamed up immediately.
+All undamaged boats were got out. Ropes were lowered. Lifebuoys and
+spars were thrown to the drowning men. But many of them, numbed by the
+freezing water, let go their hold and sank. About 180, among them the
+captain of the _Gneisenau_, were saved. It is said that much agreeable
+surprise, upon the discovery that their anticipations of being shot
+would not be realized, was manifested by the German sailors.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Eitel Friedrich_ escapes.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Leipzig_ is sunk.]
+
+Meanwhile, battle had been in progress elsewhere. The _Bristol_ and the
+_Macedonia_ had overtaken the transports _Baden_ and _Santa Isabel_, had
+captured their crews, and had sunk the ships. The armed liner
+accompanying them, the _Eitel Friedrich_, had, however, made off and got
+away by means of her superior speed. The _Kent_, _Glasgow_ and
+_Cornwall_ had pursued the German light cruisers in a southerly
+direction. The _Dresden_, the fastest, proved too speedy a vessel to
+overtake. She was ahead of her consorts, upon either quarter, and made
+her escape whilst they were being engaged. The _Kent_ gave chase to the
+_Nürnberg_. The _Glasgow_, in pursuit of the _Leipzig_, raced ahead of
+the _Cornwall_, and by about three o'clock in the afternoon had closed
+sufficiently, within 12,000 yards, to open fire with her foremost guns.
+The German ship turned every now and then to fire a salvo. Soon a
+regular battle began which was maintained for some hours. Shells fell
+all around the _Glasgow_. There were several narrow escapes, but the
+casualties were few. Shortly after six a wireless message was received
+from Admiral Sturdee, announcing that the _Scharnhorst_ and the
+_Gneisenau_ had been sunk. A cheer surged up, and the men set to work
+with renewed spirits and energy. The _Cornwall_ had come up some time
+before, and the _Leipzig_ was now severely damaged. But she fought on
+for three more hours. Darkness came on. The German cruiser began to burn
+fore and aft. It was nine o'clock before she at last turned over and
+sank.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Kent_ returns.]
+
+[Sidenote: Sinking of the _Nürnberg_.]
+
+The British vessels had, during the course of the action, steamed miles
+apart, and far out of sight of land. During the evening and night they
+began to get into touch with one another and with Stanley by means of
+their wireless. All the ships except the _Kent_ were accounted for, and
+reported all well. But no reply was forthcoming to the numerous calls,
+"Kent, Kent, Kent", that were sent out. She had, in chase of the
+_Nürnberg_, lost all touch with the rest of the squadron. There was
+great uneasiness. It was feared that she had been lost. The other ships
+were directed to search for her, and for the _Nürnberg_ and the
+_Dresden_. Late in the afternoon of the following day, however, she
+entered Stanley harbour safely. Her wireless had been destroyed, but she
+had sunk the _Nürnberg_, after a very stern struggle. The German
+captain, Schönberg, is reported, indeed, to have said at Honolulu, "The
+_Nürnberg_ will very likely be our coffin. But we are ready to fight to
+the last". He had fought and died true to his words. The German ship was
+ordinarily more than a knot faster than the British. But the engineers
+and stokers of the _Kent_ rose magnificently to the occasion. Fuel was
+piled high. Her engines were strained to the utmost. Soon she was
+speeding through the waves at twenty-five knots, a knot and a half more
+than her registered speed. The _Nürnberg_ drew nearer. At five o'clock
+she was within range, and firing was opened. A sharp action began which
+lasted some two and a half hours. The _Kent_ was struck many times, and
+lost several men. She had one narrow escape. A bursting shell ignited
+some cordite charges, and a flash of flame went down the hoist into the
+ammunition passage. Some empty shell bags began to burn. But a sergeant
+picked up a cordite charge and hurled it out of danger. Seizing a fire
+hose, he flooded the compartment and extinguished the fire. A disastrous
+explosion, which might have proved fatal to the vessel, was thus
+averted. Her silken ensign and jack, presented by the ladies of Kent,
+were torn to ribbons. The gallant captain collected the pieces, some
+being caught in the rigging, and carefully preserved them. The
+_Nürnberg_, however, was soon in sore straits. Many shells struck her,
+and she was set afire. Day drew into evening, and darkness deepened. The
+Germans ceased firing, and the _Kent_, within about 3,000 yards,
+followed suit upon the enemy's colours being hauled down. The _Nürnberg_
+sank just before half-past seven. As she disappeared beneath the
+surface, men upon her quarterdeck were waving the German ensign. The
+_Kent_, after picking up some survivors, put about, and returned to
+Stanley.
+
+Here the rest of the squadron soon gathered. Congratulatory telegrams
+began to pour in to Sir Doveton Sturdee. And the curtain closed, in the
+flush of triumph, upon the most memorable and most dramatic episode in
+the history of the Falklands.
+
+[Sidenote: Exploits of the _Eitel Friedrich_.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Eitel Friedrich_ comes to Newport News.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Dresden_ sinks.]
+
+One further episode remains to complete the story. The _Dresden_ and
+the armed liner _Eitel Friedrich_, the sole survivors of the German
+squadron, made once more for the Pacific. They were lost sight of for
+many weeks. Suspicious movements and activities on the part of German
+merchantmen were, however, again observed. The Government wireless
+station at Valparaiso intercepted messages from the _Dresden_ summoning
+friendly vessels to bring her supplies. Persistent rumours began to be
+circulated that she was hiding in the inlets of southern Chili. During
+January, 1915, the _Eitel Friedrich_ seized and destroyed six vessels,
+chiefly sailing-ships, some in Pacific, most in Atlantic waters. In
+February she accounted for four more. Towards the end of the month a
+British barque was sunk by the _Dresden_. The position was again rapidly
+becoming troublesome. The movement of British shipping, on the Chilian
+coast had to be suspended. But the _Glasgow_ and the _Kent_ were on the
+_Dresden's_ track. The _Kent_ entered Coronel on March 13, coaled, and
+departed the same night. The _Eitel Friedrich_, meanwhile, had arrived
+at Newport News, a United States port, with her engines badly in need of
+repair. Much indignation was aroused among Americans by the announcement
+that one of her victims had been an American vessel. The German liner
+had many prisoners on board. Declarations of a resolve, if he had been
+caught by the British, to have sunk fighting to the last, were
+repeatedly and emphatically declaimed by the German captain. Five days
+later he learned that the _Dresden_ had tamely surrendered off Juan
+Fernandez after a five minutes' action. The _Kent_, at nine o'clock on
+the morning after she had left Coronel, together with the _Glasgow_ and
+the auxiliary cruiser _Orama_, came up with the _Dresden_ near the
+island. A sharp encounter followed. The German cruiser was hit heavily.
+Fire broke out. In five minutes' time she hauled down her colours and
+hoisted a white flag. The crew were taken off. The _Dresden_ continued
+to burn for some time, until finally her magazine exploded and she sank.
+The German officers contended that their vessel was sunk within Chilian
+territorial waters. It had not hitherto been noticeable that their
+consciences were concerned to maintain Chilian neutrality inviolate.
+
+[Sidenote: Results of the Falkland battle.]
+
+The Battle of the Falkland Islands was the first decisive naval contest
+of the war. It removed a formidable menace to the trade routes. It
+relieved British convoys and transports from danger of interruption. It
+freed many battleships and cruisers, engaged in sweeping the oceans, for
+other usefulness. It gave Great Britain effective mastery of the outer
+seas. Henceforth German naval ambition, frustrated in its endeavour to
+disorganize the trade routes, was forced, within the limits of the North
+Sea and of British waters, to seek less adventurous but more
+disreputable ends. A series of bombardments of coast towns was planned.
+A preliminary success was followed by a galling disaster.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the exception of the naval engagements described above, the
+operations of the Germans in the sea was limited chiefly to preying upon
+enemy commerce by isolated vessels. Of these terrors of the sea the most
+famous was the cruiser _Emden_, which began her career on October 29 by
+sinking the Russian cruiser _Jemtchug_ in Penang Harbor. Her career
+until her destruction and the adventures of those of her crew who
+escaped are described in the following chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CRUISE OF THE EMDEN
+
+CAPTAIN MÜCKE
+
+
+[Sidenote: The _Indus_ sunk.]
+
+"We on the _Emden_ had no idea where we were going, as on August 11,
+1914, we separated from the cruiser squadron, escorted only by the
+coaler _Markomannia_. Under way, the _Emden_ picked up three officers
+from German steamers. That was a piece of luck, for afterward we needed
+many officers for the capturing and sinking of steamers, or manning them
+when we took them with us. On September 10 the first boat came in sight.
+We stop her. She proves to be a Greek tramp, chartered from England. On
+the next day we met the _Indus_, bound for Bombay, all fitted up as a
+troop transport, but still without troops. That was the first one we
+sunk. The crew we took aboard the _Markomannia_. 'What's the name of
+your ship?' the officers asked us. '_Emden!_ Impossible. Why, the
+_Emden_ was sunk long ago in battle with the _Ascold_!'
+
+[Sidenote: Capturing ships a habit.]
+
+[Sidenote: Provisions secured.]
+
+"Then we sank the _Lovat_ a troop transport ship, and took the _Kabinga_
+along with us. One gets used quickly to new forms of activity. After a
+few days capturing ships became a habit. Of the twenty-three which we
+captured, most of them stopped after our first signal. When they didn't,
+we fired a blank shot. Then they all stopped. Only one, the _Clan
+Mattesen_, waited for a real shot across the bow before giving up its
+many automobiles and locomotives to the seas. The officers were mostly
+very polite and let down rope ladders for us. After a few hours they'd
+be on board with us. We ourselves never set foot in their cabins, nor
+took charge of them. The officers often acted on their own initiative
+and signaled to us the nature of their cargo; then the Commandant
+decided as to whether to sink the ship or take it with us. Of the cargo,
+we always took everything we could use, particularly provisions. Many of
+the English officers and sailors made good use of the hours of transfer
+to drink up the supply of whisky instead of sacrificing it to the waves.
+I heard that one Captain was lying in tears at the enforced separation
+from his beloved ship, but on investigation found that he was merely
+dead drunk. But much worse was the open betrayal which many practiced
+toward their brother Captains, whom they probably regarded as rivals.
+'Haven't you met the _Kilo_ yet? If you keep on your course two hours
+longer, you must overhaul her,' one Captain said to me of his own
+accord. To other tips from other Captains we owed many of our prizes. I
+am prepared to give their names," Captain Mücke added.
+
+"The Captain of one ship once called out cheerily: 'Thank God I've been
+captured!' He had received expense money for the trip to Australia, and
+was now saved half the journey!
+
+[Sidenote: The process of sinking.]
+
+"We had mostly quiet weather, so that communication with captured ships
+was easy. They were mostly dynamited, or else shot close to the water
+line. The sinking process took longer or shorter, according to where
+they were struck and the nature of the cargo. Mostly the ships keeled
+over on their sides till the water flowed down the smokestacks, a last
+puff of smoke came out, and then they were gone. Many, however, went
+down sharply bow first, the stern rising high in the air.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Kabinga_.]
+
+"On the _Kabinga_ the Captain had his wife and youngster with him. He
+was inclined at first to be disagreeable. 'What are you going to do
+with us? Shall we be set out in boats and left to our fate?' he asked.
+Afterward he grew confidential, like all the Captains, called us 'Old
+Chap,' gave the Lieutenant a nice new oilskin, and as we finally let the
+_Kabinga_ go wrote us a letter of thanks, and his wife asked for an
+Emden armband and a button. They all gave us three cheers as they
+steamed away. 'Come to Calcutta some time!' was the last thing the
+Captain said, 'and catch the pilots so that those [unprintable seaman's
+epithet] fellows will feel something of the war, too.'
+
+"A few days later, by Calcutta, we made one of our richest hauls, the
+_Diplomat_, chock full of tea--we sunk $2,500,000 worth. On the same day
+the _Trabbotch_, too, which steered right straight toward us, literally
+into our arms.
+
+[Sidenote: Madras oil tanks burned.]
+
+"But now we wanted to beat it out of the Bay of Bengal, because we had
+learned from the papers that the _Emden_ was being keenly searched for.
+By Rangoon we encountered a Norwegian tramp, which, for a cash
+consideration, took over all the rest of our prisoners of war. Later on
+another neutral ship rejected a similar request and betrayed us to the
+Japanese into the bargain. On September 23 we reached Madras and steered
+straight for the harbor. We stopped still 3,000 yards before the city.
+Then we shot up the oil tanks. Three or four burned up and illuminated
+the city. They answered. Several of the papers asserted that we left
+with lights out. On the contrary, we showed our lights so as to seem to
+indicate that we were going northward; only later did we put them out,
+turn around, and steer southward. As we left we could see the fire
+burning brightly in the night, and even by daylight, ninety sea miles
+away, we could still see the smoke from the burning oil tanks. Two days
+later we navigated around Ceylon, and could see the lights of Colombo.
+On the same evening we gathered in two more steamers, the _King Lund_
+and _Tyweric_. The latter was particularly good to us, for it brought us
+the very latest evening papers from Colombo, which it had only left two
+hours before.
+
+[Sidenote: Ships that the _Emden_ captured.]
+
+"Everything went well, the only trouble was that our prize, the
+_Markomannia_, didn't have much coal left. We said one evening in the
+mess: 'The only thing lacking now is a nice steamer with 500 tons of
+nice Cardiff coal.' The next evening we got her, the _Burresk_,
+brand-new, from England on her maiden voyage, bound for Hongkong. Then
+followed in order the _Riberia_, _Foyle_, _Grand Ponrabbel_, _Benmore_,
+_Troiens_, _Exfort_, _Grycefale_, _Sankt Eckbert_, _Chilkana_. Most of
+them were sunk; the coal ships were kept. The _Eckbert_ was let go with
+a load of passengers and captured crews. We also sent the _Markomannia_
+away because it hadn't any more coal. She was later captured by the
+English together with all the prize papers about their own captured
+ships. All this happened before October 20; then we sailed southward, to
+Deogazia, southwest of Colombo. South of Lakadiven on Deogazia some
+Englishmen came on board, solitary farmers who were in touch with the
+world only every three months through schooners. They knew nothing about
+the war, took us for an English man-of-war, and asked us to repair their
+motor boat for them. We kept still and invited them to dinner in our
+officers' mess. Presently they stood still in front of the portrait of
+the Kaiser, quite astounded. 'This is a German ship!' We continued to
+keep still. 'Why is your ship so dirty?' they asked. We shrugged our
+shoulders. 'Will you take some letters for us?' they asked. 'Sorry,
+impossible; we don't know what port we'll run into.' Then they left our
+ship, but about the war we told them not a single word.
+
+[Sidenote: Coal steamers captured.]
+
+"Now we went toward Miniko, where we sank two ships more. The Captain of
+one of them said to us: 'Why don't you try your luck around north of
+Miniko? There's lots of ships there now?' On the next day we found three
+steamers to the north, one of them with much desired Cardiff coal. From
+English papers on captured ships we learned that we were being hotly
+pursued. The stokers also told us a lot. Our pursuers evidently must
+also have a convenient base. Penang was the tip given us. There we had
+hopes of finding two French cruisers.
+
+[Sidenote: The fourth smokestack.]
+
+"One night we started for Penang. On October 28 we raised our very
+practicable fourth smokestack--Mücke's own invention. As a result, we
+were taken for English or French. The harbor of Penang lies in a channel
+difficult of access. There was nothing doing by night; we had to do it
+at daybreak. At high speed, without smoke, with lights out, we steered
+into the mouth of the channel. A torpedo boat on guard slept well. We
+steamed past its small light. Inside lay a dark silhouette; that must be
+a warship! But it wasn't the French cruiser we were looking for. We
+recognized the silhouette--dead sure; that was the Russian cruiser
+_Jemtchug_. There it lay, there it slept like a rat. No watch to be
+seen. They made it easy for us. Because of the narrowness of the harbor
+we had to keep close; we fired the first torpedo at 400 yards. Then to
+be sure things livened up a bit on the sleeping warship. At the same
+time we took the crew quarters under fire, five shells at a time. There
+was a flash of flame on board, then a kind of burning aureole. After the
+fourth shell, the flame burned high. The first torpedo had struck the
+ship too deep because we were too close to it, a second torpedo which we
+fired off from the other side didn't make the same mistake. After
+twenty seconds there was absolutely not a trace of the ship to be seen.
+The enemy had fired off only about six shots.
+
+[Sidenote: French ships fight the _Emden_.]
+
+[Sidenote: A burial at sea.]
+
+"But now another ship, which we couldn't see, was firing. That was the
+French _D'Ibreville_, toward which we now turned at once. A few minutes
+later an incoming torpedo destroyer was reported. He mustn't find us in
+that narrow harbor, otherwise we were finished! But it proved to be a
+false alarm; only a small merchant steamer that looked like a destroyer,
+and which at once showed the merchant flag and steered for shore.
+Shortly afterward a second one was reported. This time it proved to be
+the French torpedo boat _Mousquet_. It comes straight toward us. That's
+always remained a mystery to me, for it must have heard the shooting. An
+officer whom we fished up afterward explained to me that they had only
+recognized we were a German warship when they were quite close to us.
+The Frenchman behaved well, accepted battle and fought on, but was
+polished off by us with three broadsides. The whole fight with both
+ships lasted half an hour. The commander of the torpedo boat lost both
+legs by the first broadside. When he saw that part of his crew were
+leaping overboard, he cried out: 'Tie me fast; I will not survive after
+seeing Frenchmen desert their ship!' As a matter of fact, he went down
+with his ship as a brave Captain, lashed fast to the mast. Then we
+fished up thirty heavily wounded; three died at once. We sewed a
+Tri-color (the French flag), wound them in it and buried them at sea,
+with seamen's honors, three salvos. That was my only sea fight. The
+second one I did not take part in."
+
+Mücke, who had been recounting his lively narrative, partly like an
+officer, partly like an artist, and not trying to eliminate the flavor
+of adventure, now takes on quite another tone as he comes to tell of
+the end of the _Emden_:
+
+[Sidenote: Landing on Cocos Island.]
+
+[Sidenote: Order to weigh anchor.]
+
+"On November 9 I left the _Emden_ in order to destroy the wireless plant
+on the Cocos Island. I had fifty men, four machine guns, about thirty
+rifles. Just as we were about to destroy the apparatus it reported:
+'Careful; _Emden_ near.' The work of destruction went smoothly. The
+wireless operator said: 'Thank God! it's been like being under arrest
+day and night lately.' Presently the _Emden_ signaled to us: 'Hurry up.'
+I pack up, but simultaneously wails the _Emden's_ siren. I hurry up to
+the bridge, see the flag 'Anna' go up. That means 'Weigh anchor.' We ran
+like mad into our boat, but already the _Emden's_ pennant goes up, the
+battle flag is raised, they fire from starboard.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Sydney_ traps the _Emden_.]
+
+"The enemy is concealed by the island and therefore not to be seen, but
+I see the shells strike the water. To follow and catch the _Emden_ is
+out of the question; she's going twenty knots, I only four with my steam
+pinnace. Therefore, I turn back to land, raise the flag, declare German
+laws of war in force, seize all arms, set up my machine guns on shore in
+order to guard against a hostile landing. Then I run again in order to
+observe the fight. From the splash of the shells it looked as if the
+enemy had fifteen-centimeter guns, bigger, therefore, than the
+_Emden's_. He fired rapidly, but poorly. It was the Australian cruiser
+_Sydney_."
+
+"Have you heard?" Mücke suddenly asked in between, "if anything has
+happened to the _Sydney_? At the Dardanelles maybe?" And his hatred of
+the _Emden's_ "hangman" is visible for a second in his blue eyes. Then
+he continues:
+
+[Sidenote: The _Emden_ on fire.]
+
+"According to the accounts of the Englishmen who saw the first part of
+the engagement from shore, the _Emden_ was cut off rapidly. Her forward
+smokestack lay across the ship. She went over to circular fighting and
+to torpedo firing, but already burned fiercely aft. Behind the mainmast
+several shells struck home; we saw the high flame. Whether circular
+fighting or a running fight now followed, I don't know, because I again
+had to look to my land defenses. Later I looked on from the roof of a
+house. Now the _Emden_ again stood out to sea about 4,000 to 5,000
+yards, still burning. As she again turned toward the enemy, the forward
+mast was shot away. On the enemy no outward damage was apparent, but
+columns of smoke showed where shots had struck home. Then the _Emden_
+took a northerly course, likewise the enemy, and I had to stand there
+helpless gritting my teeth and thinking: 'Damn it; the _Emden_ is
+burning and you aren't on board!' An Englishman who had also climbed up
+to the roof of the house, approached me, greeted me politely, and asked:
+'Captain, would you like to have a game of tennis with us?'
+
+[Sidenote: The fighting ships disappear.]
+
+"The ships, still fighting, disappeared beyond the horizon. I thought
+that an unlucky outcome for the _Emden_ was possible, also a landing by
+the enemy on Keeling Island, at least for the purpose of landing the
+wounded and taking on provisions. As, according to the statements of the
+Englishmen, there were other ships in the neighborhood, I saw myself
+faced with the certainty of having soon to surrender because of a lack
+of ammunition. But for no price did I and my men want to get into
+English imprisonment. As I was thinking about all this, the masts again
+appear on the horizon, the _Emden_ steaming easterly, but very much
+slower. All at once the enemy, at high speed, shoots by, apparently,
+quite close to the _Emden_. A high, white waterspout showed among the
+black smoke of the enemy. That was a torpedo. I see how the two
+opponents withdrew, the distance growing greater between them; how they
+separate, till they disappear in the darkness. The fight had lasted ten
+hours.
+
+[Sidenote: Mücke seizes a schooner.]
+
+"I had made up my mind to leave the island as quick as possible. The
+_Emden_ was gone; the danger for us growing. In the harbor I had noticed
+a three-master, the schooner _Ayesha_. Mr. Ross, the owner of the ship
+and of the island, had warned me that the boat was leaky, but I found it
+quite a seaworthy tub. Now quickly provisions were taken on board for
+eight weeks, water for four. The Englishmen very kindly showed us the
+best water and gave us clothing and utensils. They declared this was
+their thanks for our 'moderation' and 'generosity.' Then they collected
+the autographs of our men, photographed them, and gave three cheers as
+our last boat put off. It was evening, nearly dark. We sailed away.
+After a short address, amid three hurrahs, I raised the German war flag
+on 'S.M.S. _Ayesha_.'"
+
+[Sidenote: The _Ayesha_ sails westward.]
+
+"The _Ayesha_ proved to be a really splendid ship," Mücke continued, and
+whenever he happens to speak of this sailing ship he grows warmer. One
+notices the passion for sailing which this seaman has, for he was
+trained on a sailing ship and had won many prizes in the regattas at
+Kiel. "But we had hardly any instruments," he narrated, "we had only one
+sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was
+lacking. Luckily I found an old 'Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on
+board; its information went back to the year 1780.
+
+[Sidenote: En route to Padang.]
+
+"At first we had to overhaul all the tackle, for I didn't trust to
+peace, and we had left the English Captain back on the island. I had
+said: 'We are going to East Africa.' Therefore I sailed at first
+westward, then northward. There followed the monsoons, but then also
+long periods of dead calm. Then we scolded! Only two neutral ports came
+seriously under consideration: Batavia and Padang. At Keeling I
+cautiously asked about Tsing-tao, of which I had naturally thought
+first, and so quite by chance learned that it had fallen. Now I decided
+for Padang, because I knew I would be more apt to meet the _Emden_
+there, also because there was a German Consul there, because my schooner
+was unknown there, and because I hoped to find German ships there and
+learn some news. 'It'll take you six to eight days to reach Batavia,' a
+Captain had told me at Keeling. Now we needed eighteen days to reach
+Padang, the weather was so rottenly still.
+
+[Sidenote: Life on board the _Ayesha_.]
+
+"We had an excellent cook on board; he had deserted from the French
+Foreign Legion. But with water we had to go sparingly, each man received
+three glasses daily. When it rained, all possible receptacles were
+placed on deck and the main sail was spread over the cabin roof to catch
+the rain. The whole crew went about naked, in order to spare our wash,
+for the clothing from Keeling was soon in rags. Toothbrushes were long
+ago out of sight. One razor made the rounds of the crew. The entire ship
+had one precious comb.
+
+[Sidenote: A Dutch torpedo boat.]
+
+"As at length we came in the neighborhood of Padang, on November 26, a
+ship appeared for the first time and looked after our name. But the name
+had been painted over, because it was the former English name. As I
+think, 'You're rid of the fellow,' the ship comes again in the evening,
+comes within a hundred yards of us. I send all men below deck. I
+promenade the deck as the solitary skipper. Through Morse signals the
+stranger betrayed its identity. It was the Hollandish torpedo boat
+_Lyn_. I asked by signals, first in English, then twice in German: 'Why
+do you follow me?' No answer. The next morning I find myself in
+Hollandish waters, so I raise pennant and war flag. Now the _Lyn_ came
+at top speed past us. As it passes, I have my men line up on deck, and
+give a greeting. The greeting is answered. Then, before the harbor at
+Padang, I went aboard the _Lyn_ in my well and carefully preserved
+uniform and declared my intentions. The commandant opined that I could
+run into the harbor, but whether I might come out again was doubtful."
+
+[Sidenote: A German ship.]
+
+"On the South Coast," interjected Lieutenant Wellman, who at that time
+lay with a German ship before Padang and only later joined the landing
+corps of the _Emden_, "we suddenly saw a three-master arrive. Great
+excitement aboard our German ship, for the schooner carried the German
+war flag. We thought she came from New Guinea and at once made all boats
+clear, on the _Kleist_, _Rheinland_, and _Choising_, for we were all on
+the search for the _Emden_. When we heard that the schooner carried the
+landing corps, not a man of us would believe it."
+
+[Sidenote: Supplies are refused.]
+
+"They wanted to treat me as a prize!" Mücke now continued. "I said, 'I
+am a man of war,' and pointed to my four machine guns. The harbor
+authorities demanded a certification for pennant and war flag, also
+papers to prove that I was the commander of this warship. I answered,
+for that I was only responsible to my superior officers. Now they
+advised me the most insistently to allow ourselves to be interned
+peacefully. They said it wasn't at all pleasant in the neighborhood.
+We'd fall into the hands of the Japanese or the English. As a matter of
+fact, we had again had great luck. On the day before a Japanese warship
+had cruised around here. Naturally, I rejected all the well-meant and
+kindly advice, and did this in presence of my lieutenants. I demanded
+provisions, water, sails, tackle, and clothing. They replied we could
+take on board everything which we formerly had on board, but nothing
+which would mean an increase in our naval strength. First thing, I
+wanted to improve our wardrobe, for I had only one sock, a pair of
+shoes, and one clean shirt, which had become rather seedy. My comrades
+had even less. But the Master of the Port declined to let us have not
+only charts, but also clothing and toothbrushes, on the ground that
+these would be an increase of armament. Nobody could come aboard, nobody
+could leave the ship without permission. I requested that the Consul be
+allowed to come aboard. This Consul, Herr Schild, as also the Brothers
+Bäumer, gave us assistance in the friendliest fashion. From the German
+steamers boats could come alongside and talk with us. Finally we were
+allowed to have German papers. They were, to be sure, from August. Until
+March we saw no more papers.
+
+[Sidenote: The German ship _Choising_.]
+
+"Hardly had we been towed out again after twenty-four hours, on the
+evening of the 28th, when a searchlight appeared before us. I think:
+'Better interned than prisoner.' I put out all lights and withdrew to
+the shelter of the island. But they were Hollanders and didn't do
+anything to us. Then for two weeks more we drifted around, lying still
+for days. The weather was alternately still, rainy and blowy. At length
+a ship comes in sight--a freighter. It sees us and makes a big curve
+around us. I make everything hastily 'clear for battle.' Then one of our
+officers recognizes her for the _Choising_. She shows the German flag. I
+send up light rockets, although it was broad day, and go with all sails
+set that were still setable, toward her. The _Choising_ is a coaster,
+from Hongkong for Siam. It was at Singapore when the war broke out, then
+went to Batavia, was chartered loaded with coal for the _Emden_, and
+had put into Padang in need, because the coal in the hold had caught
+fire. There we had met her.
+
+[Sidenote: The crew board the _Choising_.]
+
+"Great was our joy now. I had all my men come on deck and line up for
+review. The fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus, in Nature's garb, we gave
+three cheers for the German flag on the _Choising_. The men on the
+_Choising_ told us afterward 'we couldn't make out what that meant,
+those stark naked fellows all cheering!' The sea was too high, and we
+had to wait two days before we could board the _Choising_ on December
+16. We took very little with us; the schooner was taken in tow. In the
+afternoon we sunk the _Ayesha_ and we were all very sad. The good old
+_Ayesha_ had served us faithfully for six weeks. The log showed that we
+had made 1,709 sea miles under sail since leaving Keeling. She wasn't at
+all rotten and unseaworthy, as they had told me, but nice and white and
+dry inside. I had grown fond of the ship, on which I could practice my
+old sailing manoeuvres. The only trouble was that the sails would go to
+pieces every now and then because they were so old.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Ayesha_ is sunk.]
+
+"But anyway she went down quite properly, didn't she?" Mücke turned to
+the officer. "We had bored a hole in her; she filled slowly and then all
+of a sudden plump disappeared! That was the saddest day of the whole
+month. We gave her three cheers, and my next yacht at Kiel will be named
+_Ayesha_, that's sure.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey an ally of Germany.]
+
+"To the Captain of the _Choising_ I had said, when I hailed him: 'I do
+not know what will happen to the ship. The war situation may make it
+necessary for me to strand it.' He did not want to undertake the
+responsibility. I proposed that we work together, and I would take the
+responsibility. Then we traveled together for three weeks, from Padang
+to Hodeida. The _Choising_ was some ninety meters long and had a speed
+of nine miles, though sometimes only four. If she had not accidentally
+arrived I had intended to cruise high along the west coast of Sumatra to
+the region of the northern monsoon. I came about six degrees north, then
+over Aden to the Arabian coast. In the Red Sea the northeastern monsoon,
+which here blows southeast, could bring us to Djidda. I had heard in
+Padang that Turkey is allied with us, so we would be able to get safely
+through Arabia to Germany.
+
+"I next waited for information through ships, but the _Choising_ did not
+know anything definite, either. By way of the _Luchs_, the _Königsberg_,
+and _Kormoran_ the reports were uncertain. Besides, according to
+newspapers at Aden, the Arabs were said to have fought with the English.
+Therein there seemed to be offered an opportunity near at hand to damage
+the enemy. I therefore sailed with the _Choising_ in the direction of
+Aden. Lieutenant Gerdts of the _Choising_ had heard that the Arabian
+railway now already went almost to Hodeida, near the Perim Strait. The
+ship's surgeon there, Docounlang, found confirmation of this in Meyer's
+traveling handbook. This railway could not have been taken over by the
+Englishmen, who always dreamed of it. By doing this they would have
+further and completely wrought up the Mohammedans by making more
+difficult the journey to Mecca. Best of all, we thought, we'll simply
+step into the express train and whizz nicely away to the North Sea.
+Certainly there would be safe journeying homeward through Arabia. To be
+sure, we hadn't maps of the Red Sea; but it was the shortest way to the
+foe, whether in Aden or in Germany.
+
+[Sidenote: On toward Aden.]
+
+"Therefore, courage! Adenwards!"
+
+[Sidenote: Through the Strait of Perim.]
+
+"On the 7th of January, between 9 and 10 o'clock in the evening, we
+sneaked through the Strait of Perim. That lay swarming full of
+Englishmen. We steered along the African coast, close past an English
+cable layer. That is my prettiest delight--how the Englishmen will be
+vexed when they learn that we have passed smoothly by Perim. On the next
+evening we saw on the coast a few lights upon the water. We thought that
+must be the pier of Hodeida. But when we measured the distance by night,
+3,000 meters, I began to think that must be something else. At dawn I
+made out two masts and four smokestacks; that was an enemy ship, and,
+what is more, an armored French cruiser. I therefore ordered the
+_Choising_ to put to sea, and to return at night.
+
+[Sidenote: Mücke's party enters Hodeida.]
+
+"The next day and night the same; then we put out four boats--these we
+pulled to shore at sunrise under the eyes of the unsuspecting Frenchmen.
+The sea reeds were thick. A few Arabs came close to us; then there
+ensued a difficult negotiation with the Arabian Coast Guards. For we did
+not even know whether Hodeida was in English or French hands. We waved
+to them, laid aside our arms, and made signs to them. The Arabs,
+gathering together, begin to rub two fingers together; that means 'We
+are friends.' We thought that meant 'We are going to rub against you and
+are hostile.' I therefore said: 'Boom-boom!' and pointed to the warship.
+At all events, I set up my machine guns and made preparations for a
+skirmish. But, thank God! one of the Arabs understood the word
+'Germans'; that was good.
+
+"Soon a hundred Arabs came and helped us, and as we marched into Hodeida
+the Turkish soldiers, who had been called out against us, saluted us as
+allies and friends. To be sure, there was not a trace of a railway, but
+we were received very well, and they assured us we could get through by
+land. Therefore, I gave red-star signals at night, telling the
+_Choising_ to sail away, since the enemy was near by. Inquiries and
+determination concerning a safe journey by land proceeded. I also heard
+that in the interior, about six days' journey away, there was healthy
+highland where our fever invalids could recuperate. I therefore
+determined to journey next to Sana. On the Kaiser's birthday we held a
+great parade in common with the Turkish troops--all this under the noses
+of the Frenchmen. On the same day we marched away from Hodeida to the
+highland.
+
+"Two months after our arrival at Hodeida we again put to sea. The time
+spent in the highlands of Sana passed in lengthy inquiries and
+discussions that finally resulted in our foregoing the journey by land
+through Arabia, for religious reasons. But the time was not altogether
+lost. The men who were sick with malaria had, for the most part,
+recuperated in the highland air.
+
+[Sidenote: To sea in sambuks.]
+
+"The Turkish Government placed at our disposal two 'sambuks' (sailing
+ships) of about twenty-five tons, fifteen meters long and four meters
+wide. But in fear of English spies, we sailed from Jebaua, ten miles
+north of Hodeida. That was on March 14. At first we sailed at a
+considerable distance apart, so that we would not both go to pot if an
+English gunboat caught us. Therefore, we always had to sail in coastal
+water. That is full of coral reefs, however."
+
+[Sidenote: One sambuk runs on a reef.]
+
+"The Commander," Lieutenant Gerdts said, "had charge of the first
+sambuk; I of the second, which was the larger of the two, for we had
+four sick men aboard. At first everything went nicely for three days.
+For the most part I could see the sails of the first ship ahead of me.
+On the third day I received orders to draw nearer and to remain in the
+vicinity of the first boat, because its pilot was sailing less
+skillfully than mine. Suddenly, in the twilight, I felt a shock, then
+another, and still another. The water poured in rapidly. I had run upon
+the reef of a small island, where the smaller sambuk was able barely to
+pass because it had a foot less draught than mine. Soon my ship was
+quite full, listed over, and all of us--twenty-eight men--had to sit on
+the uptilted edge of the boat. The little island lies at Jesirat Marka,
+200 miles north of Jebaua. To be sure, an Arab boat lay near by, but
+they did not know us. Nobody could help us. If the Commander had not
+changed the order a few hours before and asked us to sail up closer, we
+would probably have drowned on this coral reef--certainly would have
+died of thirst. Moreover, the waters thereabouts are full of sharks, and
+the evening was so squally that our stranded boat was raised and banged
+with every wave. We could scarcely move, and the other boat was nowhere
+in sight. And now it grew dark. At this stage I began to build a raft of
+spars and old pieces of wood, that might at all events keep us afloat.
+
+[Sidenote: The crew finally rescued.]
+
+[Sidenote: Machine guns brought up.]
+
+"But soon the first boat came into sight again. The commander turned
+about and sent over his little canoe; in this and in our own canoe, in
+which two men could sit at each trip, we first transferred the sick. Now
+the Arabs began to help us. But just then the tropical helmet of our
+doctor suddenly appeared above the water in which he was standing up to
+his ears. Thereupon the Arabs withdrew; we were Christians, and they did
+not know that we were friends. Now the other sambuk was so near that we
+could have swam to it in half an hour, but the seas were too high. At
+each trip a good swimmer trailed along, hanging to the painter of the
+canoe. When it became altogether dark we could not see the boat any
+more, for over there they were prevented by the wind from keeping any
+light burning. My men asked 'In what direction shall we swim?' I
+answered: 'Swim in the direction of this or that star; that must be
+about the direction of the boat.' Finally a torch flared up over
+there--one of the torches that were still left from the _Emden_. But we
+had suffered considerably through submersion. One sailor cried out: 'Oh,
+pshaw! it's all up with us now; that's a searchlight.' The man who held
+out best was Lieutenant Schmidt, who later lost his life. About 10
+o'clock we were all safe aboard, but one of our typhus patients, Seaman
+Keil, wore himself out completely by the exertion; he died a week later.
+On the next morning we went over again to the wreck in order to seek the
+weapons that had fallen into the water. You see, the Arabs dive so well;
+they fetched up a considerable lot--both machine guns, all but ten of
+the rifles, though these were, to be sure, all full of water. Later they
+frequently failed to go off when they were used in firing.
+
+[Sidenote: Sami Bey becomes guide.]
+
+"Now we numbered, together with the Arabs, seventy men on the little
+boat, until evening. Then we anchored before Konfida, and met Sami Bey,
+who is still with us. He had shown himself useful even before in the
+service of the Turkish Government, and has done good service as guide in
+the last two months. He is an active man, thoroughly familiar with the
+country. He procured for us a larger boat, of fifty-four tons, and he
+himself, with his wife, sailed alongside on the little sambuk. We sailed
+from the 20th to the 24th unmolested to Lith. There Sami Bey announced
+that three English ships were cruising about in order to intercept us. I
+therefore advised traveling a bit overland. I disliked leaving the sea a
+second time, but it had to be done."
+
+[Sidenote: Travelling overland.]
+
+"Lith is, to be sure, nothing but this," said Mücke, with a sweeping
+gesture toward the desert through which we were traveling, "and
+therefore it was very difficult to get up a caravan at once. We remained
+aboard ship so long. We marched away on the 28th. We had only a vague
+suspicion that the English might have agents here also. We could travel
+only at night, and when we slept or camped around a spring, there was
+only a tent for the sick men. Two days' march from Jeddah, the Turkish
+Government, as soon as it had received news about us, sent us sixteen
+good camels.
+
+[Sidenote: An attack.]
+
+"Suddenly, on the night of April 1, things became uneasy. I was riding
+at the head of the column. All our shooting implements were cleared for
+action, because there was danger of an attack by Bedouins, whom the
+English here had bribed. When it began to grow a bit light, I already
+thought: 'We're through for to-day'; for we were tired--had been riding
+eighteen hours. Suddenly I saw a line flash up before me, and shots
+whizzed over our heads. Down from the camels! Form a fighting line! You
+know how quickly it becomes daylight here. The whole space around the
+desert hillock was occupied. Now, up with your bayonets! Rush 'em! * * *
+They fled, but returned again, this time from all sides. Several of the
+gendarmes that had been given us as an escort are wounded; the machine
+gun operator, Rademacher, falls, killed by a shot through his heart;
+another is wounded; Lieutenant Schmidt, in the rear guard, is mortally
+wounded--he has received a bullet in his chest and abdomen.
+
+[Sidenote: A flag of truce and a barricade.]
+
+"Suddenly they waved white cloths. The Sheik, to whom a part of our
+camels belonged, went over to them to negotiate, then Sami Bey and his
+wife. In the interim we quickly built a sort of wagon barricade, a
+circular camp of camel saddles, rice and coffee sacks, all of which we
+filled with sand. We had no shovels, and had to dig with our bayonets,
+plates, and hands. The whole barricade had a diameter of about fifty
+meters. Behind it we dug trenches, which we deepened even during the
+skirmish. The camels inside had to lie down, and thus served very well
+as cover for the rear of the trenches. Then an inner wall was
+constructed, behind which we carried the sick men. In the very centre we
+buried two jars of water, to guard us against thirst. In addition we had
+ten petroleum cans full of water; all told, a supply for four days. Late
+in the evening Sami's wife came back from the futile negotiations,
+alone. She had unveiled for the first and only time on this day of the
+skirmish, had distributed cartridges, and had conducted herself
+faultlessly.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Schmidt and Rademacher.]
+
+"Soon we were able to ascertain the number of the enemy. There were
+about 300 men; we numbered fifty, with twenty-nine guns. In the night,
+Lieutenant Schmidt died. We had to dig his grave with our hands and with
+our bayonets, and to eliminate every trace above it, in order to protect
+the body. Rademacher had been buried immediately after the skirmish,
+both of them silently, with all honors.
+
+[Sidenote: The men suffer from thirst.]
+
+"The wounded had a hard time of it. We had lost our medicine chest in
+the wreck; we had only little packages of bandages for skirmishes; but
+no probing instrument, no scissors were at hand. On the next day our men
+came up with thick tongues, feverish, and crying 'Water! water!' But
+each one received only a little cupful three times a day. If our water
+supply was exhausted, we would have to sally from our camp and fight our
+way through. Then we should have gone to pot under superior numbers. The
+Arab gendarmes simply cut the throats of those camels that had been
+wounded by shots, and then drank the yellow water that was contained in
+the stomachs. Those fellows can stand anything. At night we always
+dragged out the dead camels that had served as cover, and had been
+shot. The hyenas came, hunting for dead camels. I shot one of these,
+taking it for an enemy in the darkness.
+
+"That continued about three days. On the third day there were new
+negotiations. Now the Bedouins demanded arms no longer, but only money.
+This time the negotiations took place across the camp wall. When I
+declined, the Bedouin said: 'Beaucoup de combat,' (lots of fight.) I
+replied:
+
+"'Please go to it!'
+
+[Sidenote: Troops of the Emir of Mecca.]
+
+"We had only a little ammunition left, and very little water. Now it
+really looked as if we would soon be dispatched. The mood of the men was
+pretty dismal. Suddenly, at about 10 o'clock in the morning, there
+bobbed up in the north two riders on camels, waving white cloths. Soon
+afterward there appeared, coming from the same direction, far back, a
+long row of camel troops, about a hundred; they draw rapidly near by,
+ride singing toward us, in a picturesque train. They were the messengers
+and troops of the Emir of Mecca.
+
+"Sami Bey's wife, it developed, had, in the course of the first
+negotiations, dispatched an Arab boy to Jeddah. From that place the
+Governor had telegraphed to the Emir. The latter at once sent camel
+troops, with his two sons and his personal surgeon; the elder, Abdullah,
+conducted the negotiations; the surgeon acted as interpreter, in French.
+Now things proceeded in one-two-three order, and the whole Bedouin band
+speedily disappeared. From what I learned later, I know definitely that
+they had been corrupted with bribes by the English. They knew when and
+where we would pass and they had made all preparations. Now our first
+act was a rush for water; then we cleared up our camp, but had to
+harness our camels ourselves, for the camel drivers had fled at the
+very beginning of the skirmish. More than thirty camels were dead. The
+saddles did not fit, and my men know how to rig up schooners, but not
+camels. Much baggage remained lying in the sand for lack of pack
+animals.
+
+[Sidenote: The party reaches Mecca.]
+
+"Then, under the safe protection of Turkish troops, we got to Jeddah.
+There the authorities and the populace received us very well. From there
+we proceeded in nineteen days, without mischance, by sailing boat to
+Elwesh, and under abundant guard with Suleiman Pasha in a five-day
+caravan journey toward this place, to El Ula, and now we are seated at
+last in the train and are riding toward Germany--into the war at last!"
+
+"Was not the war you had enough?" I asked.
+
+"Not a bit of it," replied the youngest Lieutenant; "the _Emden_ simply
+captured ships each time; only a single time, at Penang, was it engaged
+in battle, and I wasn't present on that occasion. War? No, that is just
+to begin for us now."
+
+[Sidenote: Mücke's great task.]
+
+"My task since November," said Mücke, "has been to bring my men as
+quickly as possible to Germany against the enemy. Now, at last, I can do
+so."
+
+"And what do you desire for yourself?" I asked.
+
+"For myself," he laughed, and the blue eyes sparkled, "a command in the
+North Sea."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Japan was bound by alliance with Great Britain to join with her to
+attack any aggressor, and to carry out her pledges she, at the outbreak
+of the war, prepared to capture the German stronghold Tsing-tao, the
+capital of the concession of Kiao-chau, which Germany had obtained from
+China, and had converted into a German possession.
+
+
+
+
+CAPTURE OF TSING-TAO
+
+A. N. HILDITCH
+
+Battle Sketches by A. N. Hilditch, Oxford University Press.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Qualities of the Japanese.]
+
+[Sidenote: Count Okuma Prime Minister.]
+
+[Sidenote: Japanese ultimatum.]
+
+Tokyo, capital of Japan, lies at the head of Tokyo Bay, in the
+south-east of Nippon. Its two million inhabitants are distributed among
+houses and streets which present curious intermixtures of Japanese and
+European architecture, customs, or science. The jinrikisha notably has
+been displaced largely by tramcars which, carrying all passengers at a
+uniform rate of four sen, make it possible to travel ten miles for a
+penny. It is an industrial city, but on account of occasional
+earthquakes no very large buildings line the thoroughfares. The
+traveller can here observe to advantage the strange characteristics of
+the most stoical race upon earth, or can contrast, if he will, the
+courteous, imperturbably serene disposition of the most martial nation
+of the East with the present disposition of the most rabidly bellicose
+nation of the West. When Japanese and German, indeed, met in conflict
+before Tsing-tao in the autumn of 1914, there was seen, in the Japanese
+soldier, during a campaign of peculiar hardship and difficulty, a
+revival of the qualities of the old Samurai, with his quiet courage, his
+burning patriotism, his patience, his habitual suppression of emotional
+display singularly distinct from those of the modern Goth. Nor was the
+statesmanship which brought about that conflict less admirable. Japan's
+alliance with Great Britain was at once a solemn pledge and the guiding
+principle of her foreign policy. August 1914 found British interests
+and the vast trade that centred at Hong-kong in danger: German armed
+vessels prowled the seas, and the German naval base of Tsing-tao was
+busy with warlike preparations. Great Britain appealed to Japan to free
+their joint commerce from the menace. The Japanese Prime Minister, Count
+Okuma, might well hesitate, however, before recommending intervention.
+Was he the right minister to direct a war? He was nearer eighty than
+seventy years old, and recently had been for seven years in retirement:
+his Government had a minority in the Diet, and to the Genro his name was
+anathema: he claimed the allegiance of no party, and the powerful
+military and naval clans, Choshiu and Satsuma, were openly hostile. He
+had been raised to power a few months before by public demand for
+progressive government. There were considerations other than domestic or
+personal, indeed, which might have tempted some statesmen to hold their
+hands. To temporize while events revealed themselves in Europe would be
+safer than immediate action; while to remain neutral might lead to the
+transference to the Japanese of much trade with China now in British
+hands, inevitably hampered by the menace of German commerce-destroyers.
+Nevertheless, Count Okuma's Cabinet came to a bold and loyal decision.
+Baron Kato, the Foreign Minister, reassured Great Britain of active
+Japanese aid, and on August 15 sent an ultimatum to Germany. The latter
+was requested to withdraw at once all German armed vessels from Eastern
+waters, and to deliver to Japan before September 15 the entire leased
+territory of Kiao-chau, with a view to its eventual restoration to
+China. The ultimatum was timed to expire at noon on August 23. That day
+arrived without satisfaction having been given to Japan. Within a few
+hours the 2nd Japanese squadron steamed off towards Tsing-tao.
+
+[Sidenote: German Pacific squadron sails.]
+
+[Sidenote: Tsing-tao's importance.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germans prepare defense.]
+
+[Sidenote: Japanese warships approach.]
+
+Before the outbreak of hostilities with Great Britain, Vice-Admiral the
+Graf von Spee, who commanded the German Pacific squadron, had steamed
+away from Tsing-tao with most of his ships. To use Tsing-tao as a naval
+base while engaging in commerce-raiding seemed a sound and a practicable
+plan, since the British and Australian naval forces, though superior,
+were hardly strong enough simultaneously to blockade the harbour and to
+search the seas. The plan was, however, rendered impossible by the
+Japanese ultimatum, and the Admiral, after having lingered for some
+weeks in the Western Pacific, departed for other seas and other
+adventures. Such was the result of Japan's action, and thus dangerous
+were the tactics that Japan's action had frustrated. For Tsing-tao,
+situated upon one of the two peninsulas, divided by two miles of
+waterway, enclosing the bay of Kiao-chau, with its safe and spacious
+anchorage for vessels of any size, constituted one of the most important
+naval bases on the Chinese coast. It had, indeed, been described as the
+key to Northern China. Dominating the eastern coast of the Shantung
+peninsula, the port formed the centre of the semicircular area known as
+Kiao-chau, extending on a radius of 32 miles around the shores of the
+bay, with a population of 60,000. This area was, under the Chinese
+German agreement as to Tsing-tao, influenced and controlled by Germany,
+though not strictly subject to her, and regarded as neutral territory.
+Its surface was mainly mountainous and bare, though the lowlands were
+well cultivated, but in parts it was rich in mineral wealth, large but
+undeveloped supplies of coal being present. In winter the port,
+connected to the junction of Tsi-nan by a German-built railway, was the
+natural outlet for the trade of Northern China. The heights which
+surrounded the bay offered admirable sites for fortification, while the
+land-approaches to Tsing-tao were guarded by formidable defences
+stretched across its peninsula. In many quarters the stronghold was
+regarded as a second Port Arthur. The Germans had paid particular
+attention to defence, so much so, indeed, that over five-sixths of the
+white inhabitants were engaged in military occupations. Five thousand
+German marines constituted the normal garrison, though the outbreak of
+war in August called about a thousand more men--volunteers, reservists,
+and sailors--to the colours. The complement of the _Kaiserin Elizabeth_,
+an Austrian cruiser sheltering in the harbour, left for Tientsin, having
+received orders to disarm their ship, but returned in time to join the
+defenders. The garrison was amply provisioned for five or six months,
+and well provided with weapons, stores, and munitions. Most of the
+German ships off the Chinese coast at the outbreak of war, indeed, had
+made immediately for Tsing-tao, and discharged upon its wharves many
+thousand tons of cargo. When war with Japan became inevitable,
+therefore, the defenders could anticipate a successful resistance,
+provided the expected instantaneous victories in Europe materialized.
+Elaborate preparations were made for the defence. The harbour mouth was
+blocked by three sunken vessels, enabling only small craft to enter.
+Chinese villages within the leased territory, and the bridge where the
+railway crossed the boundary, were destroyed, partial compensation being
+paid to the inhabitants. Native labourers were engaged to throw up
+earthworks to strengthen the town fortifications. Many foreigners,
+women, children, and non-combatants, meanwhile, had left the town. On
+Friday evening, August 21, at roll-call, the Governor, Captain
+Meyer-Waldeck, read out a message from the German Emperor exhorting the
+garrison to defend the town to their utmost, and to do their 'duty to
+the last'. It was listened to stoically. The following day a diversion
+occurred which opened hostilities propitiously for the Germans. The
+British destroyer _Kennet_, encountering the German destroyer _S. 90_
+off the coast, gave chase. The _S. 90_ immediately made for port, and
+the _Kennet_, in the ardour of pursuit, closed in unawares within range
+of the German land batteries. The latter opened fire, and before she
+could draw off the _Kennet_ sustained ten casualties, though little
+material damage. Next day the term of the Japanese ultimatum expired. It
+was doubtful at what point the Japanese would begin operations, or what
+tactics they would adopt. The fear was prevalent among Germans that the
+enemy would enter Chinese territory to reach the town from the land:
+newspapers under German influence, indeed, circulating in Chinese coast
+towns, started a press campaign with the object of stirring the Chinese
+Government to oppose by force any Japanese landing in her territory.
+Outposts were placed by the Germans along the shores of the neutral zone
+to watch for developments: they descried, on August 24, the approach of
+Japanese warships.
+
+Vice-Admiral Sadakichi Kato, who commanded the approaching squadron,
+immediately upon arrival took measures to protect himself against danger
+from mines. Seven islets clustering round the mouth of Kiao-chau Bay
+were occupied, to form a convenient local naval base, while
+mine-sweepers swept the surrounding seas. No less than a thousand mines
+were taken from the water. A blockade of the whole Kiao-chau coast was
+declared, as commencing from 9 a.m., August 27, and war vessels
+patrolled the shores, some seventy miles long. Action soon began, and
+continued during ensuing days, with shells that at intervals screamed
+towards the town. The position was, however, reconnoitred carefully.
+Japanese airmen went up frequently to scan the fortifications and to
+drop bombs. All protruding structures, spires and factory-chimneys, had
+been levelled to the ground by the Germans so as to afford no mark for
+fire. Bombs were dropped on the railway station and on one of the
+numerous barrack buildings. The operations continued spasmodically into
+September, while Kato was awaiting the approach by land of a
+co-operating army, which had now disembarked on the northern coast of
+the Shantung peninsula, about 150 miles due north of Tsing-tao.
+
+[Sidenote: Landing effected.]
+
+[Sidenote: Floods hinder advance.]
+
+The landing was effected on September 2, without hindrance or opposition
+on the part of the Chinese. The Government, following the precedent of
+the Russo-Japanese War, immediately published a declaration refusing to
+hold itself responsible for the obligations of strict neutrality in
+areas that formed, within Lung-kow, Lai-chau, and the neighbourhood of
+Kiao-chau Bay, passage-ways essential to the belligerent troops. It was,
+of course, incumbent upon the Powers involved to respect Chinese
+property and administrative rights. Japan, therefore, was permitted to
+make use of the main roads to transport an army to the rear of
+Tsing-tao. The forces landed composed a division numbering 23,000, and
+commanded by Lieutenant-General Mitsuomi Kamio. An advance-guard was
+sent forward without delay, but soon found its way rendered impassable
+by torrential floods which at this time swept down upon and devastated
+the province of Shantung, bridges, roads, and even villages being
+submerged and destroyed, with great loss of life, largely owing to
+Chinese official incompetence. The Japanese, after covering 20
+kilometres in two days, reached a stream so swollen that crossing was
+impossible. The artillery had to return to Lung-kow. German diplomacy,
+meanwhile, exasperated at its inability to prevent a Japanese landing,
+had not been inactive.
+
+[Sidenote: Chinese neutrality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rivalry of British and Japanese.]
+
+[Sidenote: Japanese advance.]
+
+The German and Austrian ministers at Peking, on hearing of the Japanese
+landing, protested strongly. China, it was claimed, ought to have
+forestalled and resisted the landing, but instead had deliberately
+extended the war-zone in order to facilitate Japanese movements. She
+would be held responsible for any injury to the German cause or
+property. To this China replied that, if it was incumbent upon her to
+prevent by force Japan operating in her territory, it was equally her
+duty to prevent by force Germany fortifying and defending Tsing-tao.
+China had endeavoured, indeed, but unsuccessfully, to preclude
+belligerent operations in her territory: only after the Japanese
+landing, when she was powerless to do otherwise, had she extended the
+zone of war. As to the responsibility, she reiterated her previous
+declaration. The baffled Germans fell back on threats: the right was
+reserved to visit upon China dire consequences for her alleged breach of
+neutrality. The incident, thrown into striking contrast with Germany's
+offer to Belgium, marked the unscrupulousness of German diplomacy, but
+stirred also many doubts among the foreign communities in China, in
+which the British, allied as they were to the Japanese, formed a
+predominating element. An anomaly of the situation was that British
+local interests had long conflicted with Japanese national interests.
+Japan's activities had, at every stage of her recent history, reduced
+British opportunities. Japanese trader competed with British trader for
+the markets of China, and Japan's share of the annual trade expansion
+was increasing, that of Great Britain decreasing. High tariffs and
+preferential rates had closed Corea and Manchuria to British enterprise.
+It is easy to estimate in what commercial jealousy and rivalry such
+circumstances had resulted. While the expediency of the British-Japanese
+alliance was fully recognized, and its consequences admitted to be the
+freedom of the China seas from menace of commerce-destroyers,
+nevertheless the fact remained that the hostilities against Tsing-tao
+would constitute a fresh impulse to Japanese expansion. The operations
+in Shantung were watched with critical eyes by many British in the
+foreign settlements of China. The floods had, meanwhile, subsided
+considerably, and on September 12 Japanese cavalry reached Tsimo, ten
+miles outside the Kiao-chau zone. No trace of the enemy north of the
+Pai-sha River had been seen, beyond a German aeroplane that occasionally
+passed overhead on reconnoitring flights. On the following day a number
+of sharp skirmishes with outposts occurred, and one Japanese patrol
+found its way to the small town of Kiao-chau, situated at the head of
+the bay, some 22 miles from Tsing-tao itself. The brushes with the
+Germans became of daily occurrence, and in one of them a high official
+of the German Legation at Peking, who had volunteered for service, was
+killed. On September 17 the Japanese attacked Wang-ko-huang, 13 miles
+from Tsimo, the enemy being in a fortified position and provided with
+machine-guns. At sunset, however, they abandoned the village and
+withdrew under cover of darkness, leaving behind quantities of equipment
+and supplies. A little later a development came about that brought the
+dissatisfaction of British traders to a head. About September 18, after
+hostile patrols had been driven away from the shore by the fire of
+destroyers, Japanese artillery and troops were landed at Laoshan Bay,
+north of Tsing-tao, just within the leased territory. Why was it
+necessary that troops should have been landed on the northern shore of
+the peninsula of Shantung, 150 miles from their objective, when guns
+could be disembarked with perfect safety on the eastern shore, not 40
+miles from the objective, and within the German zone?
+
+[Sidenote: A British force co-operates.]
+
+The British were not as critical of Japan's strategy as they were
+suspicious of her policy. Dark suggestions got afoot that she had
+ulterior designs upon the whole Chinese province of Shantung. Such views
+could not but have reached the ears of the British authorities at
+Wei-hei-wei and elsewhere, nor could they have been deaf to previous
+murmurs. Diplomatic circles, however, could extend little sympathy to
+the critics. Nevertheless, it was undeniable that the latter were
+aggrieved, and that their attitude might produce unfortunate effects. If
+Great Britain herself took some share in the Tsing-tao operations,
+greater sympathy with their purpose might be induced, and a better state
+of feeling in the Orient between the two peoples might possibly result.
+It must have been some aim such as this that prompted the dispatch of a
+British force to the Tsing-tao area to co-operate with General Kamio, a
+step which the earlier symptoms of the British discontent cannot but
+have influenced. On September 19, however, 1,000 of the 2nd South Wales
+Borderers, a force so small as to be nominal, under Brigadier-General
+Barnardiston, left Tientsin and proceeded to Wei-hei-wei. Transport
+mules having here been taken on board, the expedition on September 22
+coasted down the eastern shore of Shantung, and next day landed at
+Laoshan Bay. A month later, as will be seen, they were joined by 500 of
+the 36th Sikhs.
+
+[Sidenote: Faint opposition.]
+
+[Sidenote: Artillery battle.]
+
+Meanwhile, it was probably about this time, or shortly after, that the
+_Triumph_, a British battleship of nearly 12,000 tons displacement,
+19-1/2 knots speed, and four 10-inch guns primary armament, joined the
+Japanese squadron off Tsing-tao. A spasmodic bombardment had been
+maintained during the preceding weeks, and seaplanes had been busy,
+bombing and range-finding. The wireless station, the electric-power
+station, and several ships in harbour were damaged by explosive
+missiles. Little could be done, however, from the sea alone, and the
+attack by land, owing largely to transport difficulties, had still to
+develop. But the weather was now improving considerably. Another
+set-back to Japanese military ardour was, indeed, constituted by the
+marked reluctance of the Germans to form a line of resistance. German
+outposts, upon encountering hostile patrols, invariably retired after
+offering faint opposition. When the British troops, after a circuitous
+march of 40 miles, much hampered by bad roads, came up in the rear of
+the Japanese, then preparing to assault the enemy's advanced positions
+on high ground between the rivers Pai-sha and Li-tsun, the part that it
+had been arranged they should take in the Japanese attack, on September
+26, fell through owing to a disinclination of the Germans to fight.
+Their resistance was so meagre that the Allies were hardly engaged, and
+next day gained without difficulty the easterly banks of the Li-tsun and
+Chang-tsun rivers, only seven miles north-east of Tsing-tao. The enemy
+at all points fell back, and the advance upon the town continued. The
+Japanese had now drawn their lines across the neck of the narrow
+peninsula upon which Tsing-tao stands. There were indications that the
+main forces were now in contact. The only obstacle, but a formidable
+one, between the invaders and the forts themselves was constituted by
+the dominating height of Prince Heinrich Hill, from whose crest, rising
+some five miles from the town, all the forts could be bombarded. General
+Kamio estimated that three days of fighting would be required for its
+capture: it was as all-important to the defence as to the attack, and
+was sure to be strongly held. The forts themselves, of the latest type,
+were elaborately constructed, and equipped with concrete and steel
+cupolas, mounting high calibre pieces. They commanded both landward and
+seaward approaches to the town, those nearest the invading Japanese
+being situated upon, and named Moltke Berg, Bismarck Berg, and Iltis
+Berg. Earth redoubts and trenches between formed the German line of
+defence. Plans for the most considerable engagement, the assault of
+Prince Heinrich Hill, that had so far taken place, to begin on Sunday,
+September 27, were made by the Japanese General. It developed more
+speedily than had been expected. German artillery opened a terrific
+cannonade upon the Japanese lines, while three warships shelled the
+attacking right wing from the bay. The German fire was heavy and
+accurate. Japanese warships and aeroplanes, and also the British
+battleship _Triumph_, however, created a diversion that relieved the
+assaulting forces. Two of the forts were shelled from the sea, and
+suffered serious injury, a barrack-house and other buildings being,
+moreover, damaged. For many hours the great guns, thundering their
+challenges from sea and land and estuary, maintained continual uproar.
+Darkness began to gather. Fighting continued into the night, and early
+next morning was renewed. But the defenders seemed to lack enthusiasm.
+It is doubtful, indeed, whether their forces were sufficiently numerous
+to hold with strength their advanced positions, and at the same time to
+man adequately their main fortified positions. During the morning of the
+28th the Germans withdrew from Prince Heinrich Hill, leaving fifty of
+their number and four machine-guns in Japanese hands, and many dead upon
+the slopes. The Japanese casualties numbered 150. By noon the whole
+position was in the attackers' hands, and the beleaguered town, visible
+from the height, was now face to face with siege. German officers who
+knew all the points, weak and strong, of the defences, could not but
+realize their inability to withstand the siege guns which Japan would
+sooner or later bring to the attack. But the heavy artillery was yet far
+away. A month was to elapse before the pieces could be dragged across
+the difficult country, and emplaced in prepared positions on Prince
+Heinrich Hill.
+
+[Sidenote: The siege continues.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gunboats sunk.]
+
+This month, which covered the whole of October, saw many interesting
+incidents, and betrayed no signs of idleness on the part of besiegers or
+besieged. The Germans, indeed, proved extraordinarily prodigal in
+ammunition, firing on an average 1,000 to 1,500 shells daily, a fact
+which lent support to the current view that, while undesirous of
+incurring their emperor's displeasure, they realized the hopelessness,
+so far as Tsing-tao was concerned, of their emperor's cause. Warships in
+the bay assisted the cannonade from the forts, and Lieutenant von
+Pluschow, the airman of the single aeroplane the town possessed,
+ventured forth at intervals to reconnoitre or to bomb. Life in the town
+itself continued to be quite normal. Japanese and British, meanwhile,
+drew their lines closer and closer to the fortress by sap and mine,
+though hindered greatly by terrible weather, and occasionally having
+slight encounters with the enemy. In one of these, on October 5, a
+German night-attack was heavily repulsed, forty-seven dead being left
+behind by the attackers. At sea the operations were also spasmodic. At
+the end of September a landing force occupied Lao-she harbour, in the
+vicinity of Tsing-tao, where four abandoned field-guns were taken
+possession of. Mine-sweeping had constantly to be maintained, under fire
+from the shore, and proved a dangerous task. Several vessels thus
+engaged were sunk or damaged, though with comparatively few casualties,
+through coming into contact with mines. Some German gunboats, however,
+among them the _Cormoran_ and the _Iltis_, were apparently sunk about
+this time, either deliberately by the Germans, or from the fire of the
+Japanese guns. A torpedo flotilla bombarded one of the barracks,
+moreover, to some effect, while Japanese aeroplanes were also active.
+Von Pluschow twice attempted to attack vessels of the blockading
+squadron, but unsuccessfully, and on one occasion a Japanese aeroplane
+pursuing him gave a German balloon, floating captive above the town,
+some critical moments before it could be hauled to safety. A few days
+later, about October 7, the rope which held this balloon was, during the
+spasmodic firing, severed by a shot, and the great bag floated away,
+apparently across the bay in the direction of Kiao-chau town and the
+railway line inland. In this quarter, indeed, over the line itself,
+serious friction had arisen between the Japanese and the Chinese
+authorities.
+
+[Sidenote: Railway seized.]
+
+[Sidenote: China protests.]
+
+The line ran from Tsing-tao and Kiao-chau to the junction of Tsi-nan, a
+distance of about 250 miles, passing through the towns of Wei-hsien and
+Tsing-chau. It was German built and almost wholly German owned. From
+some points of view it might reasonably be said to constitute an
+adjunct, if not a part, of the leased territory itself. In any case the
+Japanese claimed that, since the outbreak of war, the line had been
+consistently utilized to bring reservists, supplies, and ammunition to
+the town. The Austrian crew of the disarmed _Kaiserin Elizabeth_, both
+when they left and later returned to Tsing-tao, had used this means of
+transit. The railway, being still under German control, constituted a
+menace in the Japanese rear, which the latter, upon consolidating their
+position towards the end of September, took measures to remove. After
+occupying Wei-hsien, they began to arrange for the seizure of the whole
+line as far as Tsi-nan itself. Hints of such action drew forth protests
+from China, whose Government, however, adopted too compromising an
+attitude. The Japanese Government was firm. China's right to formal
+protest was admitted, but the occupation was stated to be an urgent
+military necessity, and without any prejudice to Chinese claims after
+the war. Since China was unable to enforce the neutrality of the line,
+flagrantly violated by the Germans, the Japanese had no alternative but
+to bring it under their own control. The Chino-German Treaty of 1898 and
+the German Government's charter clearly proved that the railway was
+essentially German. A compromise, hastened by the unhesitating and
+thorough measures taken by the Japanese to effect the occupation, was
+arrived at. The Japanese were temporarily to control the administration,
+while the Chinese conducted the traffic, of the railway. Its fate, since
+China did not admit the contention that it was purely German, was to be
+decided after the war. A bellicose attitude noticeable in Chinese
+military circles became very marked when, three days later, on October
+6, unquestionably in breach of the arrangement, Japanese soldiers
+arrived at Tsi-nan, and took over the control of the rolling stock on
+the Shantung line. It was alleged at Peking that this force had declared
+martial law in the town, which contained, indeed, many German
+sympathizers who, rumour added, had destroyed several collieries there
+in their anxiety to obstruct the Allies. But the Chinese Government
+submitted under further strong protest, and with a request that the
+troops should be withdrawn. The Japanese action occasioned, however,
+further distrust among British residents in the Orient. Meanwhile, a
+second British force, consisting of 500 Sikhs, was being prepared to
+reinforce General Barnardiston.
+
+[Sidenote: Non-combatants depart.]
+
+[Sidenote: Heavy weather.]
+
+[Sidenote: Difficulties on land.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment on Mikado's birthday.]
+
+At one o'clock on October 12, Captain Meyer-Waldeck, the Governor of
+Tsing-tao, received a joint wireless message from the commanders of the
+besieging troops and the blockading squadron, offering a safe escort out
+of the town of Tientsin of neutrals and non-combatants. He at once
+assented. Delegates met next day at ten o'clock to discuss details, and
+on the 15th the American consul, accompanied by German women and
+children and Chinese subjects, left the town. On the previous day there
+had been a combined sea and air attack upon forts Iltis and Kaiser, in
+which the _Triumph_ participated and suffered the only Allied
+casualties. It is recorded that, before reopening bombardment after the
+departure of the non-combatants, the Japanese, ever polite, signalled
+'Are you now quite ready, gentlemen?' For reply a German sniper, taking
+careful but faulty aim, sent a bullet which removed three out of the
+eleven hairs on the signalman's moustache. Two days later, days notable
+for torrential rains, which intensified the discomforts of the troops
+ashore, the Japanese suffered a severe naval loss. The _Takachiho_, an
+old cruiser of some 3,000 tons, which had seen service in the
+Chino-Japanese War, was on patrol duty on Saturday night, October 17,
+when she fouled a mine, released by and adrift in the rough seas.
+Destroyers hastened to her aid, but rescue work was difficult in the
+darkness and the heavy weather. The cruiser sank rapidly. Two hundred
+and seventy-one officers and seamen lost their lives. The rough weather
+which contributed to the disaster continued with little break, and
+hindered operations, till the end of the month. The landing of the Sikh
+contingent at Laoshan Bay on October 21 was, indeed, attended by great
+difficulties and some loss of life. A strong southerly gale had raised
+high seas, and enormous lighters and sampans, employed for
+disembarkation, were thrown high and dry upon the beach. Sixteen
+Japanese were drowned in trying to save other boats that broke loose.
+The Sikhs got safely ashore, but next morning again the winds blew and
+the rains descended, and the camping-ground was soon a miry pool.
+Circumstances other than the weather, however, helped to put the British
+officers out of humour. Trouble ahead threatened in connexion with
+transport arrangements. While the Chinese carts and drivers, brought
+hurriedly from Tientsin, were doubtfully reliable, many of the mules
+were raw and quite unused to harness. When a start for the front was
+preparing on the morning of the 23rd, it was found that the best of the
+harness, which had been purchased from peasants in the locality, had
+been stolen in the night by the people who had brought it in, and that
+what was left was tied up with string. The column, however, at length
+set off, and made a march memorable for hardship and difficulty. From
+Laoshan to Lutin, where a metalled road began, was 30 miles, crossed by
+a track formed at one time by quagmire, at another by slippery boulders.
+During eleven hours 6 miles were covered, by which time the Sikhs were
+completely exhausted with digging carts or mules out of the mud, hauling
+them out with drag-ropes, reloading overturned carts, or unloading those
+immovable. Next day the column was on the road at seven o'clock, and
+covered 13 miles. So deep was the mud in parts that when, owing to the
+rotten harness giving way, a mule would occasionally lurch forward
+suddenly and walk away by itself, the body of the cart would be left
+floating on the surface. One cart was pulled completely off its axles by
+a squad of men, and slid along admirably for a considerable distance.
+Seventy Chinese wheelbarrows, however, obtained from a Japanese dépôt,
+rendered invaluable aid on this day. Tsimo, the halting-place, was
+reached in the evening, and next day, after the first ten miles, saw
+plain sailing. A few days later, on October 30, after the Sikhs had
+rested and recovered, the whole British force, now some 1,500 strong,
+moved up to the front in readiness for the bombardment of Tsing-tao,
+which had been arranged to begin next morning in celebration of the
+birthday of the Mikado. Siege artillery, 150 pieces, including six
+28-cm. howitzers and some heavy naval guns, had now been brought up and
+placed in position. The shelling was timed to start, in royal salute, at
+dawn.
+
+[Sidenote: Oil-tanks blaze.]
+
+Men who, stationed upon Prince Heinrich Hill, could look below upon the
+doomed town, athwart the narrowing peninsula, with the sea, studded with
+grey warships, surrounding, had before them a wonderful spectacle as the
+morning sun, rising from the Pacific, slowly dispersed the darkness. The
+thunder of the great guns broke suddenly upon that stillness which only
+dawn knows, and their discharges flashed redly on the darkling slopes.
+The Japanese shooting, it is related, displayed remarkable accuracy,
+some of the first projectiles bursting upon the enormous oil-tanks of
+the Standard Oil Company and the Asiatic Petroleum Company. A blaze
+roared skywards, and for many hours the heavens were darkened by an
+immense cloud of black petroleum smoke which hung like a pall over the
+town. Shells passing over these fires drew up columns of flame to a
+great height. Chinese coolies could be seen running before the spreading
+and burning oil. Fires broke out also on the wharves of the outer
+harbour, in which during the day a gunboat, apparently damaged fatally
+by a shot which carried away her funnel, disappeared. The redoubts and
+infantry works particularly were heavily bombarded. On the left of the
+German line 100 Chinese in the village of Tao-tung-chien were
+unfortunately caught by shell-fire directed on the redoubt close at
+hand, while the fort of Siao-chau-shan, near by, was set afire. The tops
+of several of the forts were soon concealed by clouds of dust and smoke.
+A heavy fusillade was concentrated upon an observation point which the
+defenders had constructed on a hill in the town, and had considerable
+effect. The Germans did not on this first day of general bombardment
+reply strongly, two only of the forts persistently firing. At length the
+sun sank and night obscured the conflict. It had been a bad day for the
+besieged: and dismantled guns, shattered concrete platforms and
+entrenchments, devastated barbed-wire entanglements, augured the town's
+approaching fate.
+
+[Sidenote: Aeroplanes direct guns.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Triumph_ attacks Fort Bismarck.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Kaiserin Elizabeth_ sinks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Night activity.]
+
+The bombardment continued for a week. During that period the Japanese
+and British guns, directed from land and sea by a balloon, by
+aeroplanes, or by observation stations on the hills, in daytime
+thundered incessantly. The German shelling, though severe, was far less
+heavy, because, it is said, the men in the forts, sheltering most of
+the time in bomb-proof caverns, issued forth only at night, and during
+pauses of the Japanese to return the fire. The airman von Pluschow
+actively directed the replies. The latter seemed not, indeed,
+impartially distributed. The marked attention paid to British troops and
+ships afforded an illustration of that attitude of peculiar malevolence
+which Germans have adopted towards the British nation and name. The
+German airman singled out the British camp, recognizable by its white
+tents, for his bombs, while for the German artillery it had an
+inordinate attraction. Officers on board the _Triumph_, moreover,
+observed that the largest German guns, of 12-inch calibre, were
+consistently directed upon their vessel. But of many projectiles one
+only, which struck the mast, being fired from Hui-tchien-huk, proved
+effective. This hit, however, caused rejoicing in Tsing-tao which, it is
+asserted, would not have been equalled by the sinking of a Japanese
+Dreadnought. The _Triumph_ singled out for attack Fort Bismarck
+especially, and two of the German 6-inch guns were early put out of
+action. The British gunners adopted the ingenious plan of heeling their
+ship by five degrees, and bombarding the enemy, from sight strips
+specially calculated, without exposing themselves or their weapons. It
+became customary aboard to call the bombardment 'pressing the enemy'
+from an exhortation sent by the Japanese Crown Prince to 'press the
+enemy, braving all hardships'. Ashore, indeed, the pressure on the enemy
+developed steadily as the days passed. On November 2 the Austrian
+cruiser _Kaiserin Elizabeth_, which had, with the German gunboats still
+afloat, been engaging vigorously in the fighting, sank, having probably
+been blown up deliberately, and the floating dock also disappeared.
+Iltis Fort, moreover, was silenced, two guns being smashed and
+ammunition giving out, and Japanese infantry advanced and captured an
+eminence in German hands. On another ridge, however, hard by the
+silenced fort, some German naval gunners carried out a ruse which saved
+for the present both their position and their battery, composed of naval
+9-cm. pieces, which were exposed dangerously to fire from sea and land.
+Lieutenant von Trendel, in command, during the night constructed wooden
+models of cannon, which he placed in position 200 yards from his real
+guns. Next morning he exploded powder near by, and drew the fire of the
+besiegers, attracted by the flashes, upon the dummies. That day the
+wireless and electric power stations were wrecked, and large attacking
+forces crept further forward, despite severe fire, and entrenched closer
+to the enemy's lines. In the evening and night the latter showed special
+activity, star rockets and other fireworks being used to illumine the
+opposing positions, which were heavily fusilladed. A German night-attack
+was delivered, but was repulsed. Next day, the 4th, and on the two
+following days, progress was maintained. The Allied trenches were pushed
+forward until they were right up to and almost half round the nearest
+German forts. Many casualties were suffered, but the German fire was
+kept down by the Japanese guns, whose accuracy was remarkable. The
+weather conditions were unfavourable, high winds and heavy rains
+prevailing, and the troops in the trenches had to endure hard
+privations. So effective was the bombardment, however, that during
+November 5 and 6 plans were prepared for the final assault. It was
+arranged that a general infantry attack should be made as soon as
+practicable. The garrisons in the forts, meanwhile, were beginning to
+exhaust their ammunition, of which they had been, during the
+preliminary operations, strangely prodigal. Guns lay silent for other
+reasons than structural injury, though the latter cause, indeed, was
+frequent, a single shot, in one case, from the _Suwo_, the Japanese
+flagship, having destroyed a 24-cm. gun and killed eight men on Fort
+Hui-tchien-huk. In the town itself the streets, not immune from falling
+projectiles, were deserted, and the only centre of social intercourse
+and conviviality was the German Club, where regularly officers or
+non-combatants slipped in for dinner, luncheon, or a glass of beer. But
+it was realized that the end was not far distant.
+
+[Sidenote: Central redoubt taken.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mass attack on forts.]
+
+[Sidenote: The white flag.]
+
+Early in the morning of November 6 the airman von Pluschow flew away
+across Kiao-chau Bay, and did not return. He escaped with the Governor's
+last dispatches into Chinese territory, where his machine was interned.
+That day and night saw no cessation of the firing, the guns of the
+defenders still roaring at intervals. About an hour after midnight the
+first impulse of the general attack took effect. While a particularly
+heavy artillery fire kept the Germans in their bomb-proof shelters, the
+central redoubt of the first line of defence, which had been badly
+shattered by the bombardment, was rushed by a storming party headed by
+General Yoshimi Yamada. Engineers had in the darkness sapped right up to
+the barbed-wire entanglements, which being cut provided way for the
+infantry, who, while part held the enemy in front, rushed the redoubt on
+both flanks. Two hundred prisoners were taken, and the Japanese flag was
+hoisted. The besiegers were through the German line, but the position
+had to be consolidated, or disaster would follow. Danger from the flank
+was, however, soon obviated by advances in other parts of the line. Just
+after five o'clock a battery on Shao-tan Hill was captured; half an hour
+later another battery in Tao-tung-chien redoubt was taken, and Fort
+Chung-shan-wa, the base of the German right wing, fell. The shadows were
+still dense, and the final phase of the siege, viewed from Prince
+Heinrich Hill, presented a sight brilliant with many flashes and flaming
+fireworks, and a sound dominated by the thunder of the batteries. But
+dawn, as the besiegers began in mass to close in upon the main line of
+forts Iltis, Moltke, and Bismarck, was breaking. It was decided to storm
+these positions forthwith, since the German fire, owing to exhaustion of
+the ammunition, was dying away. Governor Meyer-Waldeck, who had been
+wounded, realized now that further resistance was futile. Shortly before
+six o'clock he sent Major von Kayser, his adjutant, accompanied by
+another officer and a trumpeter, from the staff headquarters bearing the
+white flag: at the same time a signal of surrender was made from the
+Observatory. This was not, however, observed, while von Kayser's party,
+coming under fire, was dispersed by a shell which killed the trumpeter
+and the adjutant's horse. Meanwhile, Japanese and British were closing
+in, and were tensely awaiting the final assault. It was never made. Soon
+after seven o'clock a welcome sight relaxed the tension of the troops,
+torn, dirty, and weary, calling forth cheers from the British, and
+shouts of 'Banzai!' from the Japanese. The campaign was over: Tsing-tao
+had fallen. White flags were fluttering from the forts.
+
+[Sidenote: Terms of capitulation.]
+
+[Sidenote: War material taken.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cost of victory.]
+
+That evening delegates from the two armies met and signed the terms of
+capitulation, which were unconditional. Honours of war were accorded the
+defenders, the Governor and his officers being permitted to retain their
+swords. The Allies marched into the town, and on November 10 the
+garrison was formally transferred. Over 4,000 Germans were sent to
+Japan as prisoners, and large quantities of war material were
+confiscated. The captures included 30 field-guns, 100 machine-guns,
+2,500 rifles, 40 motor-cars, £1,200 in bullion, and 15,000 tons of coal.
+All ships in harbour, and also the floating dock, had been destroyed,
+but it seemed probable that the _Kaiserin Elizabeth_ could be
+successfully raised. Sufficient provisions were found to feed 5,000
+persons for three months, and the victors were able to regale their
+appetites with luxuries such as butter, crab, or salmon, which were
+plentiful. Looting, however, was strictly forbidden. For fastidious
+persons the bath, after many weeks, was again available, and proved,
+indeed, in view of steady accumulations of mud, a salutary course.
+Measures, meanwhile, were at once taken to restore the town to its
+normal condition. The troops and sailors were employed in removing
+débris or undischarged land and sea mines. Another Japanese gunboat was
+sunk, and several officers and men lost their lives, while engaged in
+this dangerous work. The victory had to be paid for, indeed, with a
+heavy toll of life and limb. The Japanese casualties numbered 236 killed
+and 1,282 wounded; the British, 12 killed and 53 wounded. On November 16
+the Allies formally took possession of Tsing-tao; and a memorial service
+was held for the dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Plan for Dardanelles campaign.]
+
+The plan of breaking through the Straits of the Dardanelles, and thus
+clearing the way to Constantinople, is believed to have been conceived
+by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the British Admiralty. After
+careful consideration it was approved by the military and naval
+authorities, and plans were made to carry out the project. The initial
+steps are described in the following chapter.
+
+
+
+
+GALLIPOLI
+
+A. JOHN GALLISHAW
+
+Copyright, Century Magazine, July, 1916.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Newfoundlanders in the War.]
+
+Husky, steel-muscled lumbermen; brawny, calloused-handed fishermen;
+loose-jointed, easy-swinging trappers; athletes from the city foot-ball
+and hockey teams; and gawky, long-armed farmers joined the First
+Newfoundland Regiment at the outbreak of war. A rigid medical
+examination sorted out the best of them, and ten months of bayonet
+fighting, physical drill, and twenty-mile route marches over Scottish
+hills had molded these into trim, erect, bronzed soldiers. They were
+garrisoning Edinburgh Castle when word came of the landing of the
+Australians and New-Zealanders at Gallipoli. At Ypres the Canadians had
+just then recaptured their guns and made for themselves a deathless
+name.
+
+[Sidenote: Not militaristic.]
+
+So the Newfoundlanders felt that as colonials they had been overlooked.
+They were not militaristic and hated the ordinary routine of army life,
+but they wanted to do their share. That was the spirit all through the
+regiment. It was the spirit that possessed them on the long-waited-for
+day at Aldershot when Kitchener himself pronounced them "just the men I
+want for the Dardanelles." That day at Aldershot every man was given a
+chance to go back to Newfoundland. They had enlisted for one year only,
+and could demand to be sent home at the end of the year; and when
+Kitchener reviewed them ten months of that year had gone.
+
+[Sidenote: Re-enlistment at Aldershot.]
+
+[Sidenote: The desire to get to the front.]
+
+With the chance to go home in his grasp, every man of the first
+battalion reenlisted for the duration of war. And it is on record, to
+their eternal honor, that during the week preceding their departure from
+Aldershot breaches of discipline were unknown, for over their heads hung
+the fear that they would be punished by being kept back from active
+service. To break a rule that week carried with it the suspicion of
+cowardice. This was the more remarkable because many of the men were
+fishermen, trappers, hunters, and lumbermen who until their enlistment
+had said "Sir" to no man, and who gloried in the reputation given them
+by one inspecting officer as "the most undisciplined lot he had ever
+seen." From the day the Canadians left Salisbury Plain to take their
+places in the trenches in Flanders the Newfoundlanders were obsessed by
+one idea: they had to get to the front.
+
+[Sidenote: Troop-ships in Mudros Harbor.]
+
+So it was with eleven hundred of such eager spirits that I lined up, on
+a Sunday evening early in August, 1915, on the deck of the troop-ship in
+Mudros Harbor, which is the center of the historic island of Lemnos,
+about fifty miles from Gallipoli. Around us lay all sorts of ships, from
+ocean leviathans to tiny launches and rowboats. There were
+gray-and-black-painted troopers, their rails lined with soldiers;
+immense four-funneled men-of-war; and brightly lighted, white hospital
+ships, with their red crosses outlined in electric lights. The landing
+officer left us in a little motor-boat. We watched him glide slowly
+shoreward, where we could faintly discern through the dusk the white of
+the tents that were the headquarters for the people at Lemnos; to the
+right of the tents we could see the hospital for wounded Australians and
+New-Zealanders. A French battleship dipped its flag as it passed, and
+our boys sang "The Marseillaise."
+
+[Sidenote: The Iron Ration.]
+
+A mail that had come that day was being sorted. While we waited, each
+man was served with his "iron ration." This consisted of a one-pound
+tin of pressed corned beef--the much-hated and much-maligned "bully
+beef"--a bag of biscuits, and a small tin that held two tubes of Oxo,
+with tea and sugar in specially constructed air- and damp-proof
+envelopes. This was an emergency ration, to be kept in case of direst
+need, and to be used only to ward off actual starvation. After that we
+were given our ammunition, two hundred and fifty rounds to each man.
+
+[Sidenote: The solitary letter home.]
+
+But what brought home to me most the seriousness of our venture was the
+solitary sheet of letter paper, with its envelope, that was given to
+every man to be used for a parting letter home. For some poor chaps it
+was indeed the last letter. Then we went over the side and aboard the
+destroyer that was to take us to Suvla Bay.
+
+The night had been well chosen for a surprise landing. There was no
+moon, but after a little while the stars came out. Away on the port bow
+we could see the dusky outline of land, and once, when we were about
+half-way, an airship soared phantomlike out of the night, poised over us
+a short time, then ducked out of sight. At first the word ran along the
+line that it was a hostile airship, but a few inquiries soon reassured
+us.
+
+[Sidenote: Approaching Cape Hellas.]
+
+[Sidenote: Passing Anzac.]
+
+[Sidenote: The name Anzac.]
+
+Suddenly we changed our direction. We were near Cape Hellas, which is
+the lowest point of the peninsula of Gallipoli. Under Sir Ian Hamilton's
+scheme it was here that a decoy party of French and British troops were
+to be landed to draw the Turks from Anzac. Simultaneously an
+overwhelming British force was to land at Suvla Bay and Anzac to make a
+surprise attack on the Turks' right flank. Presently we were going
+upshore past the wrecked steamer _River Clyde_, the famous "Ship of
+Troy" from the side of which the Australians had issued after the ship
+had been beached on the shore hitherto nameless, but now known as Anzac.
+Australian New Zealand Army Corps those five letters stand for; but to
+those of us who have been on Gallipoli they stand for a great deal more;
+they represent the achievement of the impossible. They are a glorious
+record of sacrifice, reckless devotion, and unselfish courage; to put
+each letter there cost the men from Australasia ten thousand of their
+best soldiers.
+
+And so we edged our way along, fearing mines or, even more disastrous
+than mines, discovery by the enemy. From the Australasians over at Anzac
+we could hear desultory rifle fire. Once we heard the boom of some big
+guns that seemed almost alongside the ship. Four hours it took us to go
+fifty miles in a destroyer that could make thirty-two knots easily. By
+one o'clock the stars had disappeared, and for perhaps three-quarters of
+an hour we nosed our way through pitch darkness. Gradually we slowed
+down until we had almost stopped. Something scraped along our side.
+Somebody said it was a floating mine, but it turned out to be a buoy
+that had been put there by the navy to mark the channel.
+
+Out of the gloom directly in front some one hailed, and our people
+answered.
+
+"Who have you on board?" we heard a casual English voice say, and then
+came the reply from our colonel:
+
+"Newfoundlanders." There was to me something very reassuring about that
+cool, self-contained voice out of the night. It made me feel that we
+were being expected and looked after.
+
+[Sidenote: Arrival of a launch.]
+
+"Move up those boats," I heard the English voice say, and from right
+under our bow a naval launch with a middy in charge swerved alongside.
+In a little while it, with a string of boats, was securely fastened.
+
+Just before we went into the boats the adjutant passed me.
+
+"Well," he said, "you've got your wish. In a few minutes you'll be
+ashore. Let me know how you like it when you're there a little while."
+
+"Yes, sir," I said. But I never had a chance to tell him. The first
+shrapnel shell fired at the Newfoundlanders burst near him, and he had
+scarcely landed when he was taken off the peninsula, seriously wounded.
+
+[Sidenote: The Newfoundlanders land.]
+
+In a short time we had all filed into the boats. There was no noise, no
+excitement; just now and then a whispered command. I was in a tug with
+about twenty others who formed the rear-guard. The wind had freshened
+considerably, and was now blowing so hard that our unwieldy tug dared
+not risk a landing. We came in near enough to watch the other boats.
+About twenty yards from shore they grounded. We could see the boys jump
+over the side and wade ashore. Through the half-darkness we could barely
+distinguish them forming up on the beach. Soon they were lost to sight.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy artillery in action.]
+
+During the Turkish summer dawn comes early. We transhipped from our tug
+to a lighter. When it grounded on the beach day was just breaking.
+Daylight disclosed a steeply sloping beach, scarred with ravines. The
+place where we landed ran between sheer cliffs. A short distance up the
+hill we could see our battalion digging themselves in. To the left I
+could see the boats of another battalion. Even as I watched, the enemy's
+artillery located them. It was the first shell I had ever heard. It came
+over the hill close to me, screeching through the air like an
+express-train going over a bridge at night. Just above the boat I was
+watching it exploded. A few of the soldiers slipped quietly from their
+seats to the bottom of the boat. At first I did not realize that any
+one had been hit. There was no sign of anything having happened out of
+the ordinary, no confusion. As soon as the boat touched the beach the
+wounded men were carried by their mates up the hill to a temporary
+dressing-station.
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of bombardment.]
+
+[Sidenote: Coolness of the Newfoundlanders.]
+
+The first shell was the beginning of a bombardment. Beachy Bill, a
+battery that we were to become better acquainted with, was in excellent
+shape. Every few minutes a shell burst close to us. Shrapnel-bullets and
+fragments of shell-casing forced us to huddle under the baggage for
+protection. A little to the left some Australians were severely
+punished. Shell after shell burst among them. A regiment of Sikh troops,
+mule-drivers, and transport-men were caught half-way up the beach. Above
+the din of falling shrapnel and the shriek of flying shells rose the
+piercing scream of wounded mules. The Newfoundlanders did not escape.
+That morning Beachy Bill's gunners played no favorites. On all sides the
+shrapnel came in a shower. Less often, a cloud of thick, black smoke and
+a hole twenty feet deep showed the landing-place of a high-explosive
+shell. The most amazing thing was the coolness of the men. The
+Newfoundlanders might have been practising trench-digging in camp in
+Scotland. When a man was hit some one gave him first aid, directed the
+stretcher-bearers where to find him, and coolly resumed digging. In two
+hours our position had become untenable. We had been subjected to a
+merciless and devastating shelling, and our first experience of war had
+cost us sixty-five men. In a new and safer position we dug ourselves in.
+
+[Sidenote: Four miles of graveyard.]
+
+No move could be made in daylight. That evening we received our ration
+of rum, and under cover of darkness moved in open order across the Salt
+Lake for about a mile, then through three miles of knee-high, prickly
+underbrush, to where our division was intrenched. Our orders were to
+reinforce the Irish. The Irish sadly needed reinforcing. Some of them
+had been on the peninsula for months. Many of them are still there. From
+the beach to the firing-line is not over four miles, but it is a ghastly
+four miles of graveyard. Everywhere along the route are small, rude
+wooden crosses, mute record of advances. Where the crosses are thickest
+there the fighting was fiercest, and where the fighting was fiercest
+there were the Irish. On every cross, besides a man's name and the date
+of his death, is the name of his regiment. No other regiments have so
+many crosses as the Dublins and the Munsters. And where the shrapnel
+flew so fast that bodies mangled beyond hope of identity were buried in
+a common grave, there also are the Dublins and Munsters; and the cross
+over them reads "In Memory of Unknown Comrades."
+
+[Sidenote: The incomparable Twenty-ninth.]
+
+[Sidenote: How the hill was taken, and lost.]
+
+The line on the left was held by the Twenty-ninth Division; the Dublins,
+the Munsters, the King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the Newfoundlanders
+made up the 88th Brigade. The Newfoundlanders were reinforcements. From
+the very first days of the Gallipoli campaign the other three regiments
+had formed part of what General Sir Ian Hamilton in his report calls the
+"incomparable Twenty-ninth Division." When the first landing was made,
+this division, with the New-Zealanders, penetrated to the top of a hill
+that commanded the Narrows. For forty-eight hours the result was in
+doubt. The British attacked with bayonet and bombs, were driven back,
+and repeatedly re-attacked. The New-Zealanders finally succeeded in
+reaching the top, followed by the 88th Brigade. The Irish fought on the
+tracks of a railroad that leads into Constantinople. At the end of
+forty-eight hours of attacks and counter-attacks the position was
+considered secure. The worn-out soldiers were relieved and went into
+dug-outs. Then the relieving troops were attacked by an overwhelming
+hostile force, and the hill was lost. A battery placed on that hill
+could have shelled the Narrows and opened to our ships the way to
+Constantinople. The hill was never retaken. When reinforcements came up
+it was too late. The reinforcements lost their way. In his report
+General Hamilton attributes our defeat to "fatal inertia." Just how
+fatal was that inertia is known only to those who formed some of the
+burial-parties.
+
+[Sidenote: Newfoundlanders run in battle.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Turks charge in mass formation.]
+
+[Sidenote: Terrible casualties of the enemy.]
+
+After the first forty-eight hours we settled down to regular trench
+warfare. The routine was four days in the trenches, eight days in rest
+dug-outs, four in the trenches again, and so forth, although two or
+three months later our ranks were so depleted that we stayed in eight
+days and rested only four. We had expected four days' rest after our
+first trip to the firing-line, but at the end of two days came word of a
+determined advance of the enemy. We arrived just in time to beat it off.
+Our trenches, instead of being at the top, were at the foot of the hill
+that meant so much to us. The ground here was a series of four or five
+hogback ridges about a hundred yards apart. Behind these towered the
+hill that was our objective. From the nearest ridge, about seven hundred
+yards in front of us, the Turks had all that day constantly issued in
+mass formation. During that attack we were repaid for the havoc wrought
+by Beachy Bill. As soon as the Turk topped the crest they were subjected
+to a demoralizing rain of shell from the navy and the artillery. Against
+the hazy blue of the sky-line we could see the dark mass clearly
+silhouetted. Every few seconds, when a shell landed in the middle of the
+approaching columns, the sides of the column would bulge outward for an
+instant, then close in again. Meanwhile every man in our trenches stood
+on the firing-platform, head and shoulders above the parapet, with fixed
+bayonet and loaded rifle, waiting for the order to begin firing. Still
+the Turks came on, big, black, bewhiskered six-footers, reforming ranks
+and filling up their gaps with fresh men. Now they were only six hundred
+yards away, but still there was no order to open fire. It was uncanny.
+At five hundred yards our fire was still withheld. When the order came,
+"At four hundred yards, rapid fire," everybody was tingling with
+excitement. Still the Turks came on, magnificently determined. But it
+was too desperate a venture. The chances against them were too great,
+our artillery and machine-gun fire too destructively accurate. Some few
+Turks reached almost to our trenches, only to be stopped by
+rifle-bullets. "Allah! Allah!" yelled the Turks as they came on. A
+sweating, grimly happy machine-gun sergeant between orders was shouting
+to the Turkish army in general, "'Tis not a damn' bit of good to yell to
+Allah now." Our artillery opened huge gaps in their lines; our
+machine-guns piled them dead in the ranks where they stood. Our own
+casualties were very slight, but of the waves of Turks that surged over
+the crest all that day only a mere shattered remnant ever straggled back
+to their own lines.
+
+[Sidenote: The armies in a state of siege.]
+
+That was the last big attack the Turks made. From that time on it was
+virtually two armies in a state of siege. Every night at dark we stood
+to arms for an hour. Every man fixed his bayonet and prepared to repulse
+any attack of the enemy. After that sentry groups were formed, three
+reliefs of two men each. Two men stood with their heads over the parapet
+watching for any movement in the no-man's-land between the lines. That
+accounts for the surprisingly large number of men one sees wounded in
+the head.
+
+At daylight every morning came "Stand to arms" again. Then day duties
+began. In the daytime, by using a periscope, an arrangement of double
+mirrors, a sentry can keep his head below the parapet while he watches
+the ground in front. Sometimes a bullet struck one of the mirrors, and
+the splintered glass blinded the sentry. It was a common thing to see a
+man go to hospital with his face badly lacerated by periscope glass.
+
+[Sidenote: When a shell comes.]
+
+Ordinarily a man is much safer on the firing-line than in the rest
+dug-outs. Trenches are so constructed that even if a shell drops right
+in the traverse where men are, only half a dozen or so suffer. In open
+or slightly protected ground where the dug-outs are the burst of a
+shrapnel-shell covers an area twenty-five by two hundred yards in
+extent.
+
+[Sidenote: Shrapnel and bullets.]
+
+A shell can be heard coming. Experts claim to identify the caliber of a
+gun by the sound the shell makes. Few live long enough to become such
+experts. In Gallipoli the average length of life was three weeks. In
+dug-outs we always ate our meals, such as they were, to the
+accompaniment of "Turkish Delight," the Newfoundlanders' name for
+shrapnel. We had become accustomed to rifle-bullets. When you hear the
+_zing_ of a spent bullet or the sharp crack of an explosive you know it
+has passed you. The one that hits you you never hear. At first we dodged
+at the sound of a passing bullet, but soon we came actually to believe
+the superstition that a bullet would not hit a man unless it had on it
+his regimental number and his name. Then, too, a bullet leaves a clean
+wound, and a man hit by it drops out quietly. The shrapnel makes nasty,
+jagged, hideous wounds, the horrible recollection of which lingers for
+days. It is little wonder that we preferred the firing-line.
+
+[Sidenote: The mode of intrenching.]
+
+Most of our work was done at night. When we wished to advance our line,
+we sent forward a platoon of men the desired distance. Every man carried
+with him three empty sand-bags and his intrenching-tool. Temporary
+protection is secured at short notice by having every man dig a hole in
+the ground that is large and deep enough to allow him to lie flat in it.
+The intrenching-tool is a miniature pickax, one end of which resembles a
+large-bladed hoe with a sharpened and tempered edge. The pick end is
+used to loosen hard material and to break up large lumps; the other end
+is used as a shovel to throw up the dirt. When used in this fashion the
+wooden handle is laid aside, the pick end becomes a handle, and the
+intrenching-tool is used in the same manner as a trowel.
+
+[Sidenote: The necessity for concealment.]
+
+Lying on our stomach, our rifles close at hand, we dug furiously. First
+we loosened up enough earth in front of our heads to fill a sand-bag.
+This sand-bag we placed beside our heads on the side nearest the enemy.
+Out in no-man's-land, with bullets and machine-gun balls pattering about
+us, we did fast work. As soon as we had filled the second and third
+sand-bags we placed them on top of the first. In Gallipoli every other
+military necessity was subordinated to concealment. Often we could
+complete a trench and occupy it before the enemy knew of it.
+
+[Sidenote: The Turks use star-shells.]
+
+Sometimes while we were digging the Turks surprised us by sending up
+star-shells. They burst like rockets high overhead. Everything was
+outlined in a strange, uncanny way that gave the effect of stage-fire.
+At first when a man saw a star-shell he dropped flat on his face; but
+after a good many men had been riddled by bullets, we saw our mistake.
+The sudden blinding glare makes it impossible to identify objects
+before the light fades. Star-shells show only movement. The first stir
+between the lines becomes the target for both sides. So after that, even
+when a man was standing upright, he simply stood still.
+
+[Sidenote: Aëroplanes attacked by artillery.]
+
+Every afternoon from just behind our lines an aëroplane buzzed up. At
+the tremendous height it looked like an immense blue-bottle fly. At
+first the enemy's aëroplanes came out to meet ours, but a few encounters
+with our men soon convinced them of the futility of this. After that
+they relied on their artillery. In the air all around the tiny speck we
+could see white puffs of smoke where their shrapnel was exploding.
+Sometimes those puffs were perilously close to it; at such times our
+hearts were in our mouths. Everybody in the trench craned his neck to
+see. When our aëroplane man[oe]uvered clear you could hear a sigh of
+relief run along the trench.
+
+[Sidenote: An air-man's adventure.]
+
+One of our air-men, Samson, captured a German Taube that he used for
+daily reconnaissance. Every day we watched him hover over the Turkish
+lines, circle clear of their bursting shrapnel, and return to our
+artillery with his report. One day we watched two hostile planes chase
+him back right to our trench. When they came near us we opened rapid
+fire that forced them to turn; but before Samson reached his
+landing-place at Salt Lake we could see that he was in trouble; one of
+the wings of the machine was drooping badly. We watched him land in
+safety, saw him jump out of his seat, and walk about ten yards to a
+waiting motor-ambulance. The ambulance had just turned when a shell hit
+the aëroplane. A second shell blew it to pieces.
+
+[Sidenote: A naval and artillery bombardment.]
+
+But Samson had completed his mission. About half an hour later the navy
+in the bay and our artillery began a bombardment. From our trenches,
+looking through ravines, we could see the men-of-war lined up pouring
+broadsides over our heads into the Turkish lines. From our position in
+the valley we watched our shells demolish the enemy's front-line
+trenches on the hill well to our left. Through field-glasses we could
+see the communication-trenches choked with fleeing Turks. Some of our
+artillery concentrated on the support-trenches, preventing
+reinforcements from coming up. A mule-train of supplies was caught in
+the curtain of fire. The Turks, caught between two fires, could not
+escape. In a few minutes all that was left of the scientifically
+constructed intrenchments was a conglomerate heap of sand-bags,
+equipments, and machine-guns; and on top of it all lay the mangled
+bodies of men and mules.
+
+All through the bombardment we had hoped for the order to go over the
+parapet, but for the Worcesters on our left was reserved the distinction
+of making the charge. High explosives cleared the way for their advance,
+and cheering and yelling they went over the parapet. The Turks in the
+front-line trenches, completely demoralized, fled to the rear. A few,
+too weak or too sorely wounded to run, surrendered.
+
+[Sidenote: The Turk's dislike for German officers.]
+
+Prisoners taken in this engagement told us that the Turkish rank and
+file heartily hated their German officers. One prisoner said that he had
+been an officer, but since the outbreak of this war had been replaced by
+a German. At present the Turks are officered entirely by Germans.
+
+[Sidenote: Losses from disease.]
+
+With the monotony varied occasionally by some local engagement like this
+we dragged through the hot, fly-pestered days and cold, drafty,
+vermin-infested nights of September and early October. By the middle of
+October, 1915, disease and scarcity of water had depleted our ranks;
+instead of having four days on the firing-line and eight days' rest, we
+were holding the firing-line eight days and resting only four. In my
+platoon, of the six non-commissioned officers who started with us, only
+two corporals were left, I and one other. For a week after he had been
+ordered by the doctor to leave the peninsula the other chap hung on,
+pluckily determined not to leave me alone, although staying meant
+keeping awake nearly all night. By this time dysentery and enteric had
+taken toll of more men than bullets. These diseases became epidemic
+until the clearing-stations and the beaches were choked with sick. The
+time we should have been sleeping was spent in digging, but still the
+men worked uncomplainingly. Some, too game to quit, would not report to
+the doctor, working on courageously until they dropped, although down in
+the bay beckoned the Red Cross of the hospital-ship, with its assurance
+of safety, rest, and cleanliness. By sickness and snipers' bullets we
+lost thirty men a day. Every day the sun poured down relentlessly,
+adding to the torment of parched throats and tongues. Every night,
+doubly cold in comparison with the day's burning heat, found us chilled
+and shivering.
+
+[Sidenote: The wounded considered lucky.]
+
+Nobody in the front-line trenches or on the shell-swept area behind ever
+expected to leave the peninsula alive. Their one hope was to get off
+wounded. Every night men leaving the trenches to bring up rations from
+the beach shook hands with their comrades. From every ration party of
+twenty men we always counted on losing two. Those who were wounded were
+looked on as lucky. The best thing we could wish a man was a "cushy
+wound," one that would not prove fatal. But no one wanted to quit. Every
+day rumors flew through the trenches that in four days all the Turks
+would surrender. Men dying from dysentery and enteric lingered to see
+it, but the surrender never materialized.
+
+[Sidenote: Faith in Australians.]
+
+We knew that in the particular section of trench held by us an advance
+was hopeless. Still, we thought that some other parts of the line might
+advance. There was always faith in the invincible Australasians. Early
+in October, 1915, had come the news of the British advance at Loos. The
+report that reached us said that the enemy on the entire Western front
+had begun to retreat. The Australians, catching the Turks napping, took
+two lines of trenches.
+
+[Sidenote: The man who stood on a bomb.]
+
+By the time I left, the sordid monotony had begun to tell on the men.
+Every day officers were besieged with requests for permission to go out
+between the lines to locate snipers. When men were wanted for night
+patrol every one volunteered. Ration parties, which had formerly been a
+dread, were now an eagerly sought variation. Any change was welcome. The
+thought of being killed had lost its fear. Daily intercourse with death
+had robbed it of its horror. One chap had his leg blown off from
+standing on a bomb. Later, in hospital, he told me that he felt
+satisfied. He had always wondered what would happen if a man stood on a
+bomb; now he knew. It illustrates how the men hated the deadly sameness.
+Anything was better than waiting in the trenches, better than being
+killed without a chance to struggle.
+
+[Sidenote: Donnelly's post on Caribou Ridge.]
+
+The men our regiment lost, although they gladly fought a hopeless fight,
+have not died in vain; the foremost advance on the Suvla Bay front,
+Donnelly's Post on Caribou Ridge, was made by Newfoundlanders. It is
+called Donnelly's Post because it is here that Lieutenant Donnelly won
+his military cross. The hitherto nameless ridge from which the Turkish
+machine-guns poured their concentrated death into our trenches stands
+as a monument to the initiative of the Newfoundlanders. It is now
+Caribou Ridge as a recognition of the men who wear the deer's-head
+badge.
+
+[Sidenote: Swept by machine-guns.]
+
+From Caribou Ridge the Turks could enfilade parts of our firing-line.
+For weeks they had continued to pick off our men one by one. You could
+almost tell when your turn was coming. I know, because from Caribou
+Ridge came the bullet that sent me off the peninsula. The machine-guns
+on Caribou Ridge not only swept parts of our trench, but commanded all
+of the intervening ground. Several attempts had been made to rush those
+guns. All had failed, held up by the murderous machine-gun fire. Under
+cover of darkness, Lieutenant Donnelly, with only eight men, surprised
+the Turks in the post that now bears his name. The captured machine-gun
+he used to repulse constantly launched bomb and rifle attacks.
+
+[Sidenote: How Donnelly surprised the Turks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Deeds of great heroism.]
+
+Just at dusk one evening Donnelly stole out to Caribou Ridge and
+surprised the Turks. All night the Turks strove to recover their lost
+ground. Darkness was the Newfoundlanders' ally. When reinforcements
+arrived, Donnelly's eight men were reduced to two. Dawn showed the havoc
+wrought by the gallant little group. The ground in front of the post was
+a shambles of piled-up Turkish corpses. But daylight showed something
+more to the credit of the Newfoundlanders than the mere taking of the
+ridge. It showed one of Donnelly's men, Jack Hynes, who had crawled away
+from his companion to a point about two hundred yards to the left. From
+here he had all alone kept up through the whole night a rapid fire on
+the enemy's flank that duped them into believing that we had men there
+in force. It showed Hynes purposely falling back over exposed ground to
+draw the enemy's attention from Sergeant Greene, who was coolly making
+trip after trip between the ridge and our lines, carrying a wounded man
+in his arms every time until all our wounded were in safety. Hynes and
+Greene were each given a distinguished-conduct medal. None was ever more
+nobly earned.
+
+One Saturday morning near the end of October, 1915, the brigade major
+passed through our lines. Before we took over the trench the occupants
+of the firing-line threw their refuse over the parapet into the short
+underbrush. Since coming in we had made a dump for it. I was sent out
+with five men to remove the rubbish from the underbrush to the dump, and
+this despite the fact that a short distance to our right we had just
+lost two men sent over the parapet in broad daylight to pick up some
+cans.
+
+[Sidenote: The writer is wounded.]
+
+About nine in the morning we started. It was about half-an-hour's work.
+There was no cover for men standing. The small bushes hid men lying or
+sitting. Every little while I gave the men a rest, making them sit in
+the shelter of the underbrush. We had almost finished when the snipers
+somewhere on our left began to bang at us. I ordered the men to cover,
+and was just pointing out a likely place to young Hynes when I felt a
+dull thud in the left shoulder-blade and a sharp pain in my chest. Then
+came a drowsy, languid feeling, and I sank down first on my knees, then
+my head dropped over on my chest, and down I went like a Mohammedan
+saying his prayers. Connecting the hit in the back with the pain in my
+chest, I concluded that I was done for, and can distinctly remember
+thinking quite calmly that I was indeed fortunate to be conscious long
+enough to tell them what to do about my will and so forth. I tried to
+say, "I'm hit," and must have succeeded, because immediately I heard my
+henchman Hynes yell with a frenzied oath: "The corporal's struck! Can't
+you see the corporal's struck?" and heard him curse the Turk. Then I
+heard the others say, "We must get him in out of this." After that I was
+quite clear-headed, and when three or four of the finest boys that ever
+stepped risked their lives to come out over the parapet under fire, I
+was able to tell them how to lift me, and when the stretcher-bearers
+arrived to give me first aid I was conscious enough to tell them where
+to look for the wound. Also I became angry at the crowd who gathered
+around to watch the dressing and make remarks about the amount of blood.
+I asked them if they thought it was a nickel-show. This when I felt
+almost certain I was dying. I don't remember even feeling relieved when
+they told me the bullet had not gone through my heart.
+
+[Sidenote: Hospital at Alexandria.]
+
+That night I was put on board a hospital-ship, and a few days later I
+was in hospital at Alexandria.
+
+[Sidenote: The rear-guard action.]
+
+The night the First Newfoundland Regiment landed in Suvla Bay there were
+about eleven hundred of us. In December, 1915, when the British forces
+evacuated Gallipoli, to the remnant of our regiment fell the honor of
+fighting the rear-guard action. This is the highest recognition a
+regiment can receive; for the duty of the rear-guard in a retreat is to
+keep the enemy from reaching the main body of troops, even if this means
+annihilation for itself. At Lemnos island the next day, when the roll
+was called, of the eleven hundred men who landed when I did, only one
+hundred and seventy-one answered "Here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The German armies, following the Great Retreat from the Marne to the
+Aisne, and after the series of mighty struggles which make up the Battle
+of the Aisne, and the attempts to win the Channel ports, continued the
+efforts to break through the British and French lines. The British held
+the strong line of Ypres, and in March made gains at Neuve Chapelle. In
+April the Germans made a desperate effort to break through at Ypres.
+There followed the Second Battle of Ypres, terrific in itself, but
+especially notable because of the first employment by the Germans of
+poisonous gas.
+
+
+
+
+GAS: SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
+
+COL. E. D. SWINTON
+
+
+[Sidenote: Second Battle of Ypres.]
+
+Since the last summary there has been a sudden development in the
+situation on our front, and very heavy fighting has taken place to the
+north and northeast of Ypres, which can be said to have assumed the
+importance of a second battle for that town. With the aid of a method of
+warfare up to now never employed by nations sufficiently civilized to
+consider themselves bound by international agreements solemnly ratified
+by themselves, and favored by the atmospheric conditions, the Germans
+have put into effect an attack which they have evidently contemplated
+and prepared for some time.
+
+Before the battle began our line in this quarter ran from the
+cross-roads at Broodseinde, east of Zonnebeke on the Ypres-Moorslede
+Road to the cross-roads half a mile north of St. Julien, on the
+Ypres-Poelcapelle Road, roughly following the crest of what is known as
+the Grafenstafel Ridge. The French prolonged the line west of the
+Ypres-Poelcapelle Road, whence their trenches ran around the north of
+Langemarck to Steenstraate on the Yperlee Canal. The area covered by the
+initial attack is that between the canal and the Ypres-Poelcapelle Road,
+though it was afterward extended to the west of the canal and to the
+east of the road.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans plan a gas attack.]
+
+An effort on the part of the Germans in this direction was not
+unexpected, since movements of troops and transport behind their front
+line had been detected for some days. Its peculiar and novel nature,
+however, was a surprise which was largely responsible for the measure of
+success achieved. Taking advantage of the fact that at this season of
+the year the wind not infrequently blows from the north, they secretly
+brought up apparatus for emitting asphyxiating vapor or gas, and
+distributed it along the section of their front line opposite that of
+our allies, west of Langemarck, which faced almost due north. Their plan
+was to make a sudden onslaught southwestward, which, if successful,
+might enable them to gain the crossings on the canal south of Bixschoote
+and place them well behind the British left in a position to threaten
+Ypres.
+
+The attack was originally fixed for Tuesday, the 20th, but since all
+chances of success depended on the action of the asphyxiating vapor it
+was postponed, the weather being unfavorable. On Thursday, the 22d, the
+wind blew steadily from the north, and that afternoon, all being ready,
+the Germans put their plan into execution. Since then events have moved
+so rapidly and the situation has moved so frequently that it is
+difficult to give a consecutive and clear story of what happened, but
+the following account represents as nearly as can be the general course
+of events. The details of the gas apparatus employed by them are given
+separately, as also those of the asphyxiating grenades, bombs, and
+shells of which they have been throwing hundreds.
+
+[Sidenote: The first gas battle in war.]
+
+At some time between 4 and 5 p.m. the Germans started operations by
+releasing gases with the result that a cloud of poisonous vapor rolled
+swiftly before the wind from their trenches toward those of the French
+west of Langemarck, held by a portion of the French Colonial Division.
+Allowing sufficient time for the fumes to take full effect on the troops
+facing them, the Germans charged forward over the practically
+unresisting enemy in their immediate front, and, penetrating through the
+gap thus created, pressed on silently and swiftly to the south and west.
+By their sudden irruption they were able to overrun and surprise a large
+proportion of the French troops billeted behind the front line in this
+area and to bring some of the French guns as well as our own under a hot
+rifle fire at close range.
+
+The first intimation that all was not well to the north was conveyed to
+our troops holding the left of the British line between 5 and 6 p.m. by
+the withdrawal of some of the French Colonials and the sight of the wall
+of vapor following them. Our flank being thus exposed the troops were
+ordered to retire on St. Julien, with their left parallel to but to the
+west of the high road. The splendid resistance of these troops, who
+saved the situation, has already been mentioned by the Commander in
+Chief.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment by shell and gas projectiles.]
+
+Meanwhile, apparently waiting till their infantry had penetrated well
+behind the Allies' line, the Germans had opened a hot artillery fire
+upon the various tactical points to the north of Ypres, the bombardment
+being carried out with ordinary high-explosive shell and shrapnel of
+various calibres and also with projectiles containing asphyxiating gas.
+About this period our men in reserve near Ypres, seeing the shells
+bursting, had gathered in groups, discussing the situation and
+questioning some scattered bodies of Turcos who had appeared; suddenly a
+staff officer rode up shouting "Stand to your arms," and in a few
+minutes the troops had fallen in and were marching northward to the
+scene of the fight.
+
+Nothing more impressive can be imagined than the sight of our men
+falling in quietly in perfect order on their alarm posts amid the scene
+of wild confusion caused by the panic-stricken refugees who swarmed
+along the roads.
+
+[Sidenote: Steadiness of the British.]
+
+In the meantime, to the north and northeast of the town, a confused
+fight was taking place, which gave proof not only of great gallantry and
+steadiness on the part of the troops referred to above, but of
+remarkable presence of mind on the part of their leaders. Behind the
+wall of vapor, which had swept across fields, through woods, and over
+hedgerows, came the German firing line, the men's mouths and noses, it
+is stated, protected by pads soaked in a solution of bicarbonate of
+soda. Closely following them again came the supports. These troops,
+hurrying forward with their formation somewhat broken up by the
+obstacles encountered in their path, looked like a huge mob bearing down
+upon the town. A battery of 4.7-inch guns a little beyond the left of
+our line was surprised and overwhelmed by them in a moment. Further to
+the rear and in a more easterly direction were several field batteries,
+and before they could come into action the Germans were within a few
+hundred yards. Not a gun, however, was lost.
+
+[Sidenote: The left retires slowly.]
+
+One battery, taken in flank, swung around, fired on the enemy at
+point-blank range, and checked the rush. Another opened fire with the
+guns pointing in almost opposite directions, the enemy being on three
+sides of them. It was under the very heavy cannonade opened about this
+time by the Germans, and threatened by the advance of vastly superior
+numbers, that our infantry on our left steadily, and without any sign of
+confusion, slowly retired to St. Julien, fighting every step.
+
+[Sidenote: British reserves arrive.]
+
+Help was not long in arriving, for some of our reserves near Ypres had
+stood to arms as soon as they were aware of the fact that the French
+line had been forced, and the officers on their own initiative, without
+waiting for orders, led them forward to meet the advancing enemy, who,
+by this time, were barely two miles from the town. These battalions
+attacked the Germans with the bayonet, and then ensued a mêlée, in which
+our men more than held their own, both sides losing very heavily.
+
+One German battalion seems to have been especially severely handled, the
+Colonel being captured among several other prisoners. Other
+reinforcements were thrown in as they came up, and, when night fell, the
+fighting continued by moonlight, our troops driving back the enemy by
+repeated bayonet charges, in the course of which our heavy guns were
+recaptured.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans cross the canal.]
+
+By then the situation was somewhat restored in the area immediately
+north of Ypres. Further to the west, however, the enemy had forced their
+way over the canal, occupying Steenstraate and the crossing at Het Sast,
+about three-quarters of a mile south of the former place, and had
+established themselves at various points on the west bank. All night
+long the shelling continued, and about 1.30 a.m. two heavy attacks were
+made on our line in the neighborhood of Broodseinde, east of Zonnebeke.
+These were both repulsed. The bombardment of Ypres itself and its
+neighborhood had by now redoubled in intensity and a part of the town
+was in flames.
+
+In the early morning of Friday, the 23d, we delivered a strong
+counter-attack northward in co-operation with the French. Our advance
+progressed for some little distance, reaching the edge of the wood about
+half a mile west of St. Julien and penetrating it. Here our men got into
+the Germans with the bayonet, and the latter suffered heavily. The
+losses were also severe on our side, for the advance had to be carried
+out across the open. But in spite of this nothing could exceed the dash
+with which it was conducted. One man--and his case is typical of the
+spirit shown by the troops--who had had his rifle smashed by a bullet,
+continued to fight with an intrenching tool. Even many of the wounded
+made their way out of the fight with some article of German equipment as
+a memento.
+
+[Sidenote: The British intrench.]
+
+About 11 a.m., not being able to progress further, our troops dug
+themselves in, the line then running from St. Julien practically due
+west for about a mile, whence it curved southwestward before turning
+north to the canal near Boesinghe. Broadly speaking, on the section of
+the front then occupied by us the result of the operations had been to
+remove to some extent the wedge which the Germans had driven into the
+allied line, and the immediate danger was over.
+
+During the afternoon our counter-attack made further progress south of
+Pilkem, thus straightening the line still more. Along the canal the
+fighting raged fiercely, our allies making some progress here and there.
+During the night, however, the Germans captured Lizerne, a village on
+the main road from Ypres to Steenstraate.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy throws bridges across the canal.]
+
+When the morning of the 24th came the situation remained much the same,
+but the enemy, who had thrown several bridges across the canal,
+continued to gain ground to the west. On our front the Germans, under
+cover of their gas, made a further attack between 3 and 4 a.m. to the
+east of St. Julien and forced back a portion of our line. Nothing else
+in particular occurred until about midday, when large bodies of the
+enemy were seen advancing down the Ypres-Poelcapelle road toward St.
+Julien. Soon after a very strong attack developed against that village
+and the section of the line east of it.
+
+[Sidenote: A French counter-attack.]
+
+Under the pressure of these fresh masses our troops were compelled to
+fall back, contesting every inch of ground and making repeated
+counter-attacks; but until late at night a gallant handful, some 200 to
+300 strong, held out in St. Julien. During the night the line was
+re-established north of the hamlet of Fortuin, about 700 yards further
+to the rear. All this time the fighting along the canal continued, the
+enemy forcing their way across near Boesinghe, and holding Het Sase,
+Steenstraate, and Lizerne strongly. The French counter-attacked in the
+afternoon, captured fifty prisoners, and made some further progress
+toward Pilkem. The Germans, however, were still holding the west bank
+firmly, although the Belgian artillery had broken the bridge behind them
+at Steenstraate.
+
+[Sidenote: German assaults on Broodseinde.]
+
+On the morning of Sunday, the fourth day of the battle, we made a strong
+counter-attack on St. Julien, which gained some ground but was checked
+in front of the village. To the west of it we reached a point a few
+hundred yards south of the wood which had been the objective on the 23d
+and which we had had to relinquish subsequently. In the afternoon the
+Germans made repeated assaults in great strength on our line near
+Broodseinde. These were backed up by a tremendous artillery bombardment
+under the throwing of asphyxiating bombs; but all were beaten off with
+great slaughter to the enemy, and forty-five prisoners fell into our
+hands. When night came the situation remained unchanged.
+
+This determined offensive on the part of the enemy, although it has
+menaced Ypres itself, has not so far the appearance of a great effort to
+break the line and capture the Channel ports. Its initial success was
+gained by the surprise rendered possible by the use of a device which
+Germany pledged herself not to employ.
+
+[Illustration: THE GAS BATTLE OF YPRES]
+
+
+
+
+THE CANADIANS AT YPRES
+
+BY THE CANADIAN RECORD OFFICER
+
+
+[Sidenote: Position of the Canadian Division.]
+
+On April 22 the Canadian Division held a line of, roughly, 5,000 yards,
+extending in a northwesterly direction from the Ypres-Roulers Railway to
+the Ypres-Poelcapelle road, and connecting at its terminus with the
+French troops. The division consisted of three infantry brigades, in
+addition to the artillery brigades. Of the infantry brigades the First
+was in reserve, the Second was on the right, and the Third established
+contact with the Allies at the point indicated above.
+
+[Sidenote: The sudden gas attack.]
+
+The day was a peaceful one, warm and sunny, and except that the previous
+day had witnessed a further bombardment of the stricken town of Ypres,
+everything seemed quiet in front of the Canadian line. At 5 o'clock in
+the afternoon a plan, carefully prepared, was put into execution against
+our French allies on the left. Asphyxiating gas of great intensity was
+projected into their trenches, probably by means of force pumps and
+pipes laid out under the parapets. The fumes, aided by a favorable wind,
+floated backward, poisoning and disabling over an extended area those
+who fell under their effect.
+
+[Sidenote: The French give ground.]
+
+The result was that the French were compelled to give ground for a
+considerable distance. The glory which the French Army has won in this
+war would make it impertinent to labor the compelling nature of the
+poisonous discharges under which the trenches were lost. The French did,
+as every one knew they would do, all that stout soldiers could do, and
+the Canadian Division, officers and men, look forward to many occasions
+in the future in which they will stand side by side with the brave
+armies of France.
+
+The immediate consequences of this enforced withdrawal were, of course,
+extremely grave. The Third Brigade of the Canadian Division was without
+any left, or, in other words, its left was in the air.
+
+[Sidenote: Gap on the Canadian left.]
+
+It became imperatively necessary greatly to extend the Canadian lines to
+the left rear. It was not, of course, practicable to move the First
+Brigade from reserve at a moment's notice, and the line, extending from
+5,000 to 9,000 yards, was naturally not the line that had been held by
+the Allies at 5 o'clock, and a gap still existed on its left.
+
+It became necessary for Brigadier General Turner, commanding the Third
+Brigade, to throw back his left flank southward to protect his rear.
+
+In the course of the confusion which followed upon the readjustments of
+position, the enemy, who had advanced rapidly after his initial
+successes, took four British 4.7 guns in a small wood to the west of the
+village of St. Julien, two miles in the rear of the original French
+trenches.
+
+[Sidenote: Heroism of the Canadian Division.]
+
+The story of the second battle of Ypres is the story of how the Canadian
+Division, enormously outnumbered--for they had in front of them at least
+four divisions, supported by immensely heavy artillery--with a gap still
+existing, though reduced, in their lines, and with dispositions made
+hurriedly under the stimulus of critical danger, fought through the day
+and through the night, and then through another day and night; fought
+under their officers until, as happened to so many, those perished
+gloriously, and then fought from the impulsion of sheer valor because
+they came from fighting stock.
+
+The enemy, of course, was aware--whether fully or not may perhaps be
+doubted--of the advantage his breach in the line had given him, and
+immediately began to push a formidable series of attacks upon the whole
+of the newly-formed Canadian salient. If it is possible to distinguish
+when the attack was everywhere so fierce, it developed with particular
+intensity at this moment upon the apex of the newly formed line, running
+in the direction of St. Julien.
+
+[Sidenote: Assault on the wood.]
+
+It has already been stated that four British guns were taken in a wood
+comparatively early in the evening of the 22d. In the course of that
+night, and under the heaviest machine-gun fire, this wood was assaulted
+by the Canadian Scottish, Sixteenth Battalion of the Third Brigade, and
+the Tenth Battalion of the Second Brigade, which was intercepted for
+this purpose on its way to a reserve trench. The battalions were
+respectively commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Leckie and Lieutenant
+Colonel Boyle, and after a most fierce struggle in the light of a misty
+moon they took the position at the point of the bayonet. At midnight the
+Second Battalion, under Colonel Watson, and the Toronto Regiment,
+Queen's Own, Third Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Rennie, both of
+the First Brigade, brought up much-needed reinforcement, and though not
+actually engaged in the assault were in reserve.
+
+All through the following days and nights these battalions shared the
+fortunes and misfortunes of the Third Brigade. An officer who took part
+in the attack describes how the men about him fell under the fire of the
+machine guns, which, in his phrase, played upon them "like a watering
+pot." He added quite simply, "I wrote my own life off." But the line
+never wavered. When one man fell another took his place, and with a
+final shout the survivors of the two battalions flung themselves into
+the wood. The German garrison was completely demoralized, and the
+impetuous advance of the Canadians did not cease until they reached the
+far side of the wood and intrenched themselves there in the position so
+dearly gained. They had, however, the disappointment of finding that the
+guns had been blown up by the enemy, and later on in the same night a
+most formidable concentration of artillery fire, sweeping the wood as a
+tropical storm sweeps the leaves from a forest, made it impossible for
+them to hold the position for which they had sacrificed so much.
+
+The fighting continued without intermission all through the night, and,
+to those who observed the indications that the attack was being pushed
+with ever-growing strength, it hardly seemed possible that the
+Canadians, fighting in positions so difficult to defend and so little
+the subject of deliberate choice, could maintain their resistance for
+any long period. At 6 A. M. on Friday it became apparent that the left
+was becoming more and more involved, and a powerful German attempt to
+outflank it developed rapidly. The consequences, if it had been broken
+or outflanked, need not be insisted upon. They were not merely local.
+
+[Sidenote: Counter-attack on German lines.]
+
+It was therefore decided, formidable as the attempt undoubtedly was, to
+try and give relief by a counter-attack upon the first line of German
+trenches, now far, far advanced from those originally occupied by the
+French. This was carried out by the Ontario First and Fourth Battalions
+of the First Brigade, under Brigadier General Mercer, acting in
+combination with a British brigade.
+
+It is safe to say that the youngest private in the rank, as he set his
+teeth for the advance, knew the task in front of him, and the youngest
+subaltern knew all that rested upon its success. It did not seem that
+any human being could live in the shower of shot and shell which began
+to play upon the advancing troops. They suffered terrible casualties.
+For a short time every other man seemed to fall, but the attack was
+pressed ever closer and closer.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy's first line trenches taken.]
+
+The Fourth Canadian Battalion at one moment came under a particularly
+withering fire. For a moment--not more--it wavered. Its most gallant
+commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Burchill, carrying, after an old
+fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the
+very moment when his example had infected them, fell dead at the head of
+his battalion. With a hoarse cry of anger they sprang forward, (for,
+indeed, they loved him,) as if to avenge his death. The astonishing
+attack which followed--pushed home in the face of direct frontal fire
+made in broad daylight by battalions whose names should live for ever in
+the memories of soldiers--was carried to the first line of German
+trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the last German who resisted was
+bayoneted, and the trench was won.
+
+The measure of this success may be taken when it is pointed out that
+this trench represented in the German advance the apex in the breach
+which the enemy had made in the original line of the Allies, and that it
+was two and a half miles south of that line. This charge, made by men
+who looked death indifferently in the face, (for no man who took part in
+it could think that he was likely to live,) saved, and that was much,
+the Canadian left. But it did more. Up to the point where the assailants
+conquered, or died, it secured and maintained during the most critical
+moment of all the integrity of the allied line. For the trench was not
+only taken, it was held thereafter against all comers, and in the teeth
+of every conceivable projectile, until the night of Sunday, the 25th,
+when all that remained of the war-broken but victorious battalions was
+relieved by fresh troops.
+
+[Sidenote: The poisonous gas attack.]
+
+It is necessary now to return to the fortunes of the Third Brigade,
+commanded by Brigadier General Turner, which, as we have seen, at 5
+o'clock on Thursday was holding the Canadian left, and after the first
+attack assumed the defense of the new Canadian salient, at the same time
+sparing all the men it could to form an extemporized line between the
+wood and St. Julien. This brigade also was at the first moment of the
+German offensive, made the object of an attack by the discharge of
+poisonous gas. The discharge was followed by two enemy assaults.
+Although the fumes were extremely poisonous, they were not, perhaps
+having regard to the wind, so disabling as on the French lines, (which
+ran almost east to west,) and the brigade, though affected by the fumes,
+stoutly beat back the two German assaults.
+
+Encouraged by this success, it rose to the supreme effort required by
+the assault on the wood, which has already been described. At 4 o'clock
+on the morning of Friday, the 23d, a fresh emission of gas was made both
+upon the Second Brigade, which held the line running northeast, and upon
+the Third Brigade, which, as has been fully explained, had continued the
+line up to the pivotal point, as defined above, and had then spread down
+in a southeasterly direction. It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that two
+privates of the Forty-eighth Highlanders who found their way into the
+trenches commanded by Colonel Lipsett, Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth
+Battalion, perished in the fumes, and it was noticed that their faces
+became blue immediately after dissolution.
+
+[Sidenote: A brief retirement.]
+
+The Royal Highlanders of Montreal, Thirteenth Battalion, and the
+Forty-eighth Highlanders, Fifteenth Battalion, were more especially
+affected by the discharge. The Royal Highlanders, though considerably
+shaken, remained immovable upon their ground. The Forty-eighth
+Highlanders, which, no doubt, received a more poisonous discharge, was
+for the moment dismayed, and, indeed, their trench, according to the
+testimony of very hardened soldiers, became intolerable. The battalion
+retired from the trench, but for a very short distance, and for an
+equally short time, in a few moments they were again their own men. They
+advanced upon and occupied the trenches which they had momentarily
+abandoned.
+
+In the course of the same night the Third Brigade, which had already
+displayed a resource, a gallantry, and a tenacity for which no eulogy
+could be excessive, was exposed (and with it the whole allied case) to a
+peril still more formidable.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans pass gap on left.]
+
+It has been explained, and, indeed, the fundamental situation made the
+peril clear, that several German divisions were attempting to crush or
+drive back this devoted brigade, and in any event to use their enormous
+numerical superiority to sweep around and overwhelm its left wing. At
+some point in the line which cannot be precisely determined the last
+attempt partially succeeded, and in the course of this critical struggle
+German troops in considerable though not in overwhelming numbers swung
+past the unsupported left of the brigade, and, slipping in between the
+wood and St. Julien, added to the torturing anxieties of the long-drawn
+struggle by the appearance, and indeed for the moment the reality, of
+isolation from the brigade base.
+
+[Sidenote: The Royal Highlanders of Montreal.]
+
+In the exertions made by the Third Brigade during this supreme crisis it
+is almost impossible to single out one battalion without injustice to
+others, but though the efforts of the Royal Highlanders of Montreal,
+Thirteenth Battalion, were only equal to those of the other battalions
+who did such heroic service, it so happened by chance that the fate of
+some of its officers attracted special attention.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Captain McCuaig.]
+
+Major Norsworth, already almost disabled by a bullet wound, was
+bayoneted and killed while he was rallying his men with easy
+cheerfulness. The case of Captain McCuaig, of the same battalion, was
+not less glorious, although his death can claim no witness. This most
+gallant officer was seriously wounded, in a hurriedly constructed
+trench, at a moment when it would have been possible to remove him to
+safety. He absolutely refused to move and continued in the discharge of
+his duty.
+
+But the situation grew constantly worse, and peremptory orders were
+received for an immediate withdrawal. Those who were compelled to obey
+them were most insistent to carry with them, at whatever risk to their
+own mobility and safety, an officer to whom they were devotedly
+attached. But he, knowing, it may be, better than they, the exertions
+which still lay in front of them, and unwilling to inflict upon them the
+disabilities of a maimed man, very resolutely refused, and asked of them
+one thing only, that there should be given to him, as he lay alone in
+the trench, two loaded Colt revolvers to add to his own, which lay in
+his right hand as he made his last request. And so, with three revolvers
+ready to his hand for use, a very brave officer waited to sell his life,
+wounded and racked with pain, in an abandoned trench.
+
+On Friday afternoon the left of the Canadian line was strengthened by
+important reinforcements of British troops amounting to seven
+battalions. From this time forward the Canadians also continued to
+receive further assistance on the left from a series of French
+counter-attacks pushed in a northeasterly direction from the canal bank.
+
+[Sidenote: The defenders give ground.]
+
+But the artillery fire of the enemy continually grew in intensity, and
+it became more and more evident that the Canadian salient could no
+longer be maintained against the overwhelming superiority of numbers by
+which it was assailed. Slowly, stubbornly, and contesting every yard,
+the defenders gave ground until the salient gradually receded from the
+apex, near the point where it had originally aligned with the French,
+and fell back upon St. Julien.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy in St. Julien.]
+
+Soon it became evident that even St. Julien, exposed to fire from right
+and left, was no longer tenable in the fact of overwhelming numerical
+superiority. The Third Brigade was therefore ordered to retreat further
+south, selling every yard of ground as dearly as it had done since 5
+o'clock on Thursday. But it was found impossible, without hazarding far
+larger forces, to disentangle the detachment of the Royal Highlanders of
+Montreal, Thirteenth Battalion, and of the Royal Montreal Regiment,
+Fourteenth Battalion. The brigade was ordered, and not a moment too
+soon, to move back. It left these units with hearts as heavy as those
+with which his comrades had said farewell to Captain McCuaig. The German
+tide rolled, indeed, over the deserted village, but for several hours
+after the enemy had become master of the village the sullen and
+persistent rifle fire which survived showed that they were not yet
+master of the Canadian rearguard. If they died, they died worthily of
+Canada.
+
+The enforced retirement of the Third Brigade (and to have stayed longer
+would have been madness) reproduced for the Second Brigade, commanded by
+Brigadier General Curry, in a singularly exact fashion, the position of
+the Third Brigade itself at the moment of the withdrawal of the French.
+The Second Brigade, it must be remembered, had retained the whole line
+of trenches, roughly 2,500 yards, which it was holding at 5 o'clock on
+Thursday afternoon, supported by the incomparable exertions of the Third
+Brigade, and by the highly hazardous employment in which necessity had
+involved that brigade. The Second Brigade had maintained its lines.
+
+[Sidenote: General Curry's maneuvres.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett holds the left.]
+
+It now devolved upon General Curry, commanding this brigade, to
+reproduce the tactical maneuvres with which, earlier in the fight, the
+Third Brigade had adapted itself to the flank movement of overwhelming
+numerical superiority. He flung his left flank around south, and his
+record is, that in the very crisis of this immense struggle he held his
+line of trenches from Thursday at 5 o'clock till Sunday afternoon. And
+on Sunday afternoon he had not abandoned his trenches. There were none
+left. They had been obliterated by artillery. He withdrew his undefeated
+troops from the fragments of his field fortifications, and the hearts of
+his men were as completely unbroken as the parapets of his trenches were
+completely broken. In such a brigade it is invidious to single out any
+battalion for special praise, but it is, perhaps, necessary to the story
+to point out that Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett, commanding the Ninetieth
+Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth Battalion of the Second Brigade, held the
+extreme left of the brigade position at the most critical moment.
+
+The battalion was expelled from the trenches early on Friday morning by
+an emission of poisonous gas, but, recovering in three-quarters of an
+hour, it counter-attacked, retook the trenches it had abandoned, and
+bayoneted the enemy. And after the Third Brigade had been forced to
+retire Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett held his position, though his left
+was in the air, until two British regiments filled up the gap on
+Saturday night.
+
+The individual fortunes of these two brigades have brought us to the
+events of Sunday afternoon, but it is necessary, to make the story
+complete, to recur for a moment to the events of the morning. After a
+very formidable attack the enemy succeeded in capturing the village of
+St. Julien, which has so often been referred to in describing the
+fortunes of the Canadian left. This success opened up a new and
+formidable line of advance, but by this time further reinforcements had
+arrived. Here, again, it became evident that the tactical necessities of
+the situation dictated an offensive movement as the surest method of
+arresting further progress.
+
+[Sidenote: Cheers for the Canadians.]
+
+General Alderson, who was in command of the reinforcements, accordingly
+directed that an advance should be made by a British brigade which had
+been brought up in support. The attack was thrust through the Canadian
+left and centre, and as the troops making it swept on, many of them
+going to certain death, they paused an instant, and, with deep-throated
+cheers for Canada, gave the first indication to the division of the warm
+admiration which their exertions had excited in the British Army.
+
+The advance was indeed costly, but it could not be gainsaid. The story
+is one of which the brigade may be proud, but it does not belong to the
+special account of the fortunes of the Canadian contingent. It is
+sufficient for our purpose to notice that the attack succeeded in its
+object, and the German advance along the line, momentarily threatened,
+was arrested.
+
+[Sidenote: Second and Third Brigades relieved.]
+
+We had reached, in describing the events of the afternoon, the points at
+which the trenches of the Second Brigade had been completely destroyed.
+This brigade, the Third Brigade, and the considerable reinforcements
+which this time filled the gap between the two brigades were gradually
+driven fighting every yard upon a line running, roughly, from Fortuin,
+south of St. Julien, in a northeasterly direction toward Passchendaele.
+Here the two brigades were relieved by two British brigades, after
+exertions as glorious, as fruitful, and, alas! as costly as soldiers
+have ever been called upon to make.
+
+Monday morning broke bright and clear and found the Canadians behind the
+firing line. This day, too, was to bring its anxieties. The attack was
+still pressed, and it became necessary to ask Brigadier General Curry
+whether he could once more call upon his shrunken brigade. "The men are
+tired," this indomitable soldier replied, "but they are ready and glad
+to go again to the trenches." And so once more, a hero leading heroes,
+the General marched back the men of the Second Brigade, reduced to a
+quarter of its original strength, to the very apex of the line as it
+existed at that moment.
+
+[Sidenote: Back to the apex of the line.]
+
+This position he held all day Monday; on Tuesday he was still occupying
+the reserve trenches, and on Wednesday was relieved and retired to
+billets in the rear.
+
+Such, in the most general outline, is the story of a great and glorious
+feat of arms. A story told so soon after the event, while rendering bare
+justice to units whose doings fell under the eyes of particular
+observers, must do less than justice to others who played their
+part--and all did--as gloriously as those whose special activities it is
+possible, even at this stage, to describe. But the friends of men who
+fought in other battalions may be content in the knowledge that they,
+too, shall learn, when time allows the complete correlation of diaries,
+the exact part which each unit played in these unforgettable days. It
+is rather accident than special distinction which had made it possible
+to select individual battalions for mention.
+
+[Sidenote: Signalers and dispatch carriers.]
+
+It would not be right to close even this account without a word of
+tribute to the auxiliary services. The signalers were always cool and
+resourceful. The telegraph and telephone wires being constantly cut,
+many belonging to this service rendered up their lives in the discharge
+of their duty, carrying out repairs with the most complete calmness in
+exposed positions. The dispatch carriers, as usual, behaved with the
+greatest bravery. Theirs is a lonely life, and very often a lonely
+death. One cycle messenger lay upon the ground, badly wounded. He
+stopped a passing officer and delivered his message, together with some
+verbal instructions. These were coherently given, but he swooned almost
+before the words were out of his mouth.
+
+[Sidenote: Artillery and engineers.]
+
+The artillery never flagged in the sleepless struggle in which so much
+depended upon its exertions. Not a Canadian gun was lost in the long
+battle of retreat. And the nature of the position renders such a record
+very remarkable. One battery of four guns found itself in such a
+situation that it was compelled to turn two of its guns directly about
+and fire upon the enemy in positions almost diametrically opposite.
+
+It is not possible in this account to attempt a description of the
+services rendered by the Canadian Engineers or the Medical Corps. Their
+members rivaled in coolness, endurance, and valor the Canadian infantry,
+whose comrades they were, and it is hoped in separate communications to
+do justice to both these brilliant services.
+
+No attempt has been made in this description to explain the recent
+operations except in so far as they spring from, or are connected with,
+the fortunes of the Canadian Division. It is certain that the exertions
+of the troops who reinforced and later relieved the Canadians were not
+less glorious, but the long, drawn-out struggle is a lesson to the whole
+empire. "Arise, O Israel!" The empire is engaged in a struggle, without
+quarter and without compromise, against an enemy still superbly
+organized, still immensely powerful, still confident that its strength
+is the mate of its necessities. To arms, then, and still to arms! In
+Great Britain, in Canada, in Australia there is need, and there is need
+now, of a community organized alike in military and industrial
+co-operation.
+
+That our countrymen in Canada, even while their hearts are still
+bleeding, will answer every call which is made upon them, we well know.
+
+[Sidenote: The Canadian graveyard in Flanders.]
+
+The graveyard of Canada in Flanders is large; it is very large. Those
+who lie there have left their mortal remains on alien soil. To Canada
+they have bequeathed their memories and their glory.
+
+        On Fame's eternal camping ground
+          Their silent tents are spread,
+        And Glory guards with solemn round
+          The bivouac of the dead.
+
+Assaults accompanied with gas were not made on every position of the
+front held by the British to the north of Ypres at the same time. At one
+point it was not until the early morning of Saturday, April 24, that the
+Germans brought this method into operation against a section of our line
+not far from our left flank.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans fire poison gas shells.]
+
+Late on Thursday afternoon the men here saw portions of the French
+retiring some distance to the west, and observed the cloud of vapor
+rolling along the ground southward behind them. Our position was then
+shelled with high explosives until 8 P.M. On Friday also it was
+bombarded for some hours, the Germans firing poison shells for one hour.
+Their infantry, who were intrenched about 120 yards away, evidently
+expected some result from their use of the latter, for they put their
+heads above the parapets, as if to see what the effect had been on our
+men, and at intervals opened rapid rifle fire. The wind, however, was
+strong and dissipated the fumes quickly, our troops did not suffer
+seriously from their noxious effect, and the enemy did not attempt any
+advance.
+
+[Sidenote: Stupefying gas employed.]
+
+On Saturday morning, just about dawn, an airship appeared in the sky to
+the east of our line at this point, and dropped four red stars, which
+floated downward slowly for some distance before they died out. When our
+men, whose eyes had not unnaturally been fixed on this display of
+pyrotechnics, again turned to their front it was to find the German
+trenches rendered invisible by a wall of greenish-yellow vapor, similar
+to that observed on the Thursday afternoon, which was bearing down on
+them on the breeze. Through this the Germans started shooting. During
+Saturday they employed stupefying gas on several occasions in this
+quarter, but did not press on very quickly. One reason for this, given
+by a German prisoner, is that many of the enemy's infantry were so
+affected by the fumes that they could not advance.
+
+To continue the narrative from the night of Sunday, April 25. At 12:30
+A. M., in face of repeated attacks, our infantry fell back from a part
+of the Grafenstafel Ridge, northwest of Zonnebeke, and the line then ran
+for some distance along the south bank of the little Haanebeek stream.
+The situation along the Yperlee Canal remained practically unchanged.
+
+[Sidenote: Line pierced at Broodseinde.]
+
+When the morning of the 26th dawned the Germans, who had been seen
+massing in St. Julien, and to the east of the village on the previous
+evening, made several assaults, which grew more and more fierce as the
+hours passed, but reinforcements were sent up and the position was
+secured. Further east, however, our line was pierced near Broodseinde,
+and a small body of the enemy established themselves in a portion of our
+trenches. In the afternoon a strong, combined counter-attack was
+delivered by the French and British along the whole front from
+Steenstraate to the east of St. Julien, accompanied by a violent
+bombardment. This moment, so far as can be judged at present, marked the
+turning point of the battle, for, although it effected no great change
+in the situation, it caused a definite check to the enemy's offensive,
+relieved the pressure, and gained a certain amount of ground.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack near St. Julien.]
+
+During this counter-attack the guns concentrated by both sides on this
+comparatively narrow front poured in a great volume of fire. From the
+right came the roar of the British batteries, from the left the rolling
+thunder of the _soixante-quinze_, and every now and then above the
+turmoil rose a dull boom as a huge howitzer shell burst in the vicinity
+of Ypres. On the right our infantry stormed the German trenches close to
+St. Julien, and in the evening gained the southern outskirts of the
+village. In the centre they captured the trenches a little to the south
+of the Bois des Cuisinirs, west of St. Julien, and still further west
+more trenches were taken. This represented an advance of some 600 or 700
+yards, but the gain in ground could not at all points be maintained.
+Opposite St. Julien we fell back from the village to a position just
+south of the place, and in front of the Bois des Cuisinirs and on the
+left of the line a similar retirement took place, the enemy making
+extensive use of his gas cylinders and of machine guns placed in farms
+or at other points of vantage. None the less, the situation at nightfall
+was more satisfactory than it had been. We were holding our own well all
+along the line and had made progress at some points. On the right the
+enemy's attacks on the front of the Grafenstafel Ridge had all been
+repulsed.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy lines.]
+
+In the meantime the French had achieved some success, having retaken
+Lizerne and also the trenches round Het Sast, captured some 250
+prisoners, and made progress all along the west bank of the canal. Heavy
+as our losses were during the day, there is little doubt that the enemy
+suffered terribly. Both sides were attacking at different points, the
+fighting was conducted very largely in the open, and the close
+formations of the Germans on several occasions presented excellent
+targets to our artillery, which did not fail to seize its opportunities.
+
+Nothing in particular occurred during the night.
+
+[Sidenote: The new battle lines.]
+
+The morning of the 27th found our troops occupying the following
+positions; North of Zonnebeke the right of the line still held the
+eastern end of the Grafenstafel Ridge, but from here it bent
+southwestward behind the Haanebeek stream, which it followed to a point
+about half a mile east of St. Julien. Thence it curved back again to the
+Vamheule Farm, on the Ypres-Poelcappelle road, running from here in a
+slight southerly curve to a point a little west of the Ypres-Langemarck
+road, where it joined the French. In the last mentioned quarter of the
+field it followed generally the line of a low ridge running from west to
+east. On the French front the Germans had been cleared from the west
+bank of the canal, except at one point, Steenstraate, where they
+continued to hold the bridgehead.
+
+About 1 P. M. a counter-attack was made by us all along the line
+between the canal and the Ypres-Poelcappelle road, and for about an hour
+we continued to make progress. Then the right and centre were checked. A
+little later the left was also held up, and the situation remained very
+much as it had been on the previous day. The Germans were doubtless much
+encouraged by their initial success, and their previous boldness in
+attack was now matched by the stubborn manner in which they clung on to
+their positions. In the evening the French stormed some trenches east of
+the canal, but were again checked by the enemy's gas cylinders.
+
+[Sidenote: German exhaustion.]
+
+The night passed quietly, and was spent by us in reorganizing and
+consolidating our positions. The enemy did not interfere. This is not
+surprising, in view of the fact that by Tuesday evening they had been
+fighting for over five days. Their state of exhaustion is confirmed by
+the statements of the prisoners captured by the French, who also
+reported that the German losses had been very heavy.
+
+On Wednesday, the 28th, there was a complete lull on this sector of our
+line, and the shelling was less severe. Some fighting, however, occurred
+along the canal, the French taking over 100 prisoners.
+
+[Sidenote: Air battles.]
+
+Nothing of any importance has occurred on other parts of the front. On
+the 27th at the Railway Triangle opposite Guinchy, the south side of the
+embankment held by the Germans was blown up by our miners. On the 28th a
+hostile aeroplane was forced to descend by our anti-aircraft guns. On
+coming down in rear of the German lines, it was at once fired upon and
+destroyed by our field artillery. Another hostile machine was brought
+down by rifle fire near Zonnebeke.
+
+Splendid work has been done during the past few days by our airmen, who
+have kept all the area behind the hostile lines under close
+observation. On the 26th they bombed the stations of Staden, Thielt,
+Courtrai, Roubaix, and other places, and located an armored train near
+Langemarck, which was subsequently shelled and forced to retire. There
+have been several successful conflicts in the air, on one occasion a
+pilot in a single seater chasing a German machine to Roulers, and
+forcing it to land.
+
+[Sidenote: Raid on Courtrai].
+
+The raid on Courtrai unfortunately cost the nation a very gallant life,
+but it will live as one of the most heroic episodes of the war. The
+airman started on the enterprise alone in a biplane. On arrival at
+Courtrai he glided down to a height of 300 feet and dropped a large bomb
+on the railway junction. While he did this he was the target of hundreds
+of rifles, of machine guns, and of anti-aircraft armament, and was
+severely wounded in the thigh. Though he might have saved his life by at
+once coming down in the enemy's lines, he decided to save his machine at
+all costs, and made for the British lines. Descending to a height of
+only 100 feet in order to increase his speed, he continued to fly and
+was again wounded, this time mortally. He still flew on, however, and
+without coming down at the nearest of our aerodromes went all the way
+back to his own base, where he executed a perfect landing and made his
+report. He died in hospital not long afterward.
+
+[Sidenote: Steadiness of the Canadians.]
+
+The outstanding feature of the action of the past week has been the
+steadiness of our troops on the extreme left; but of the deeds of
+individual gallantry and devotion which have been performed it would be
+impossible to narrate one-hundredth part. At one place in this quarter a
+machine gun was stationed in the angle of a trench when the German rush
+took place. One man after another of the detachment was shot, but the
+gun still continued in action, through five bodies lay around it. When
+the sixth man took the place of his fallen comrades, of whom one was his
+brother, the Germans were still pressing on. He waited until they were
+only a few yards away, and then poured a stream of bullets on to the
+advancing ranks, which broke and fell back, leaving rows of dead. He was
+then wounded himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Telephone wires cut.]
+
+Under the hot fire to which our batteries were subjected in the early
+part of the engagement telephone wires were repeatedly cut. The wire
+connecting one battery with its observing officer was severed on nine
+separate occasions, and on each occasion repaired by a Sergeant, who did
+the work out in the open under a perfect hail of shells.
+
+About 5 P. M. a dense cloud of suffocating vapors was launched from
+their trenches along the whole front held by the French right and by our
+left from the Ypres-Langemarck road to a considerable distance east of
+St. Julien. The fumes did not carry much beyond our front trenches. But
+these were to a great extent rendered untenable, and a retirement from
+them was ordered.
+
+[Sidenote: Strange appearance of gas battle.]
+
+No sooner had this started than the enemy opened a violent bombardment
+with asphyxiating shells and shrapnel on our trenches and on our
+infantry as they were withdrawing. Meanwhile our guns had not been idle.
+From a distance, perhaps owing to some peculiarity of the light, the gas
+on this occasion looked like a great reddish cloud, and the moment it
+was seen our batteries poured a concentrated fire on the German
+trenches.
+
+Curious situations then arose between us and the enemy. The poison belt,
+the upper part shredding into thick wreaths of vapor as it was shaken by
+the wind, and the lower and denser part sinking into all inequalities of
+the ground, rolled slowly down the trenches. Shells would rend it for a
+moment, but it only settled down again as thickly as before.
+
+Nevertheless, the German infantry faced it, and they faced a hail of
+shrapnel as well. In some cases where the gas had not reached our lines
+our troops held firm and shot through the cloud at the advancing
+Germans. In other cases the men holding the front line managed to move
+to the flank, where they were more or less beyond the affected area.
+Here they waited until the enemy came on and then bayoneted them when
+they reached our trenches.
+
+[Sidenote: A charge through the gas.]
+
+On the extreme left our supports waited until the vapor reached our
+trenches, when they charged through it and met the advancing Germans
+with the bayonet as they swarmed over the parapets.
+
+South of St. Julien the denseness of the vapor compelled us to evacuate
+trenches, but reinforcements arrived who charged the enemy before they
+could establish themselves in position. In every case the assaults
+failed completely. Large numbers were mown down by our artillery. Men
+were seen falling and others scattering and running back to their own
+lines. Many who reached the gas cloud could not make their way through
+it, and in all probability a great number of the wounded perished from
+the fumes.
+
+It is to that extent, from a military standpoint, a sign of weakness.
+Another sign of weakness is the adoption of illegal methods of fighting,
+such as spreading poisonous gas. It is a confession by the Germans that
+they have lost their former great superiority in artillery and are, at
+any cost, seeking another technical advantage over their enemy as a
+substitute.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy sticks at nothing.]
+
+Nevertheless, this spirit, this determination on the part of our enemies
+to stick at nothing must not be underestimated. Though it may not pay
+the Germans in the long run, it renders it all the more obvious that
+they are a foe that can be overcome only by the force of overwhelming
+numbers of men and guns.
+
+Further to the east a similar attack was made about 7 P. M. which seems
+to have been attended with even less success, and the assaulting
+infantry was at once beaten back by our artillery fire.
+
+It was not long before all our trenches were reoccupied and the whole
+line reestablished in its original position. The attack on the French
+met with the same result.
+
+Prisoners captured in the recent fighting, the narrative continues,
+stated that one German corps lost 80 per cent. of its men in the first
+week; that the losses from our artillery fire, even during days when no
+attacks were taking place, had been very heavy and that many of their
+own men had suffered from the effects of the gas.
+
+[Sidenote: German gains due to poison gas.]
+
+In regard to the recent fighting on our left, the German offensive,
+effected in the first instance by surprise, resulted in a considerable
+gain of ground for the enemy. Between all the earlier German efforts,
+the only difference was that on this latest occasion the attempt was
+carried out with the aid of poisonous gases.
+
+There is no reason why we should not expect similar tactics in the
+future. They do not mean that the Allies have lost the initiative in the
+Western theatre, nor that they are likely to lose it. They do mean,
+however, and the fact has been repeatedly pointed out, that the enemy's
+defensive is an active one, that his confidence is still unshaken and
+that he still is able to strike in some strength where he sees the
+chance or where mere local advantage can be secured.
+
+The true idea of the meaning of the operations of the Allies can be
+gained only by bearing in mind that it is their primary object to bring
+about the exhaustion of the enemy's resources in men.
+
+In the form now assumed by this struggle--a war of attrition--the
+Germans are bound ultimately to lose, and it is the consciousness of
+this fact that inspires their present policy. This is to achieve as
+early as possible some success of sufficient magnitude to influence the
+neutrals, to discourage the Allies, to make them weary of the struggle
+and to induce the belief among the people ignorant of war that nothing
+has been gained by the past efforts of the Allies because the Germans
+have not yet been driven back. It is being undertaken with a political
+rather than a strategical object.
+
+[Sidenote: Violent artillery fire.]
+
+The calm that prevailed Thursday and Friday proved to be only the lull
+before the storm. Early Saturday morning it became apparent that the
+Germans were preparing an attack in strength against our line running
+east and northeast from Ypres, for they were concentrating under cover
+of a violent artillery fire, and at about 10 o'clock the battle began in
+earnest.
+
+At that hour the Germans attacked our line from the Ypres-Poelcappelle
+road to within a short distance of the Menin highroad, it being
+evidently their intention while engaging us closely on the whole of this
+sector to break our front in the vicinity of the Ypres-Roulers Railway,
+to the north and to the south of which their strongest and most
+determined assaults were delivered.
+
+Under this pressure our front was penetrated at some points around
+Frezenberg, and at 4:30 o'clock in the afternoon we made a
+counter-attack between the Zonnebeke road and the railway in order to
+recover the lost ground. Our offensive was conducted most gallantly, but
+was checked before long by the fire of machine guns.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy attacks near Menin road.]
+
+Meanwhile, the enemy launched another attack through the woods south of
+the Menin road, and at the same time threatened our left to the north of
+Ypres with fresh masses. Most desperate fighting ensued, the German
+infantry coming on again and again and gradually forcing our troops
+back, though only for a short distance, in spite of repeated
+counter-attacks.
+
+[Sidenote: On the Poelcappelle road.]
+
+During the night the fighting continued to rage with ever-increasing
+fury. It is impossible to say at exactly what hour our line was broken
+at different points, but it is certain that at one time the enemy's
+infantry poured through along the Poelcappelle road, and even got as far
+as Wieltje at 9 P. M.
+
+There was also a considerable gap in our front about Frezenberg, where
+hostile detachments had penetrated. At both points counter-attacks were
+organized without delay. To the east of the salient the Germans first
+were driven back to Frezenberg, but there they made a firm stand, and
+under pressure of fresh reinforcements we fell back again toward
+Verlorenhoek.
+
+[Sidenote: Canadian counter-attack.]
+
+Northeast of the salient a counter-attack carried out by us about 1 A.
+M. was more successful. Our troops swept the enemy out of Wieltje at the
+bayonet's point, leaving the village strewn with German dead and,
+pushing on, regained most of the ground to the north of that point. And
+so the fight surged to and fro throughout the night. All around the
+scene of the conflict the sky was lit up by the flashes of the guns and
+the light of blazing villages and farms, while against this background
+of smoke and flame, looking out in the murky light over the crumbling
+ruins of the old town, rose the battered wreck of the cathedral town and
+the spires of Cloth Hall.
+
+[Sidenote: German assaults on the east.]
+
+When Sunday dawned there came a short respite, and the firing for a time
+died down. The comparative lull enabled us to reorganize and
+consolidate our position on the new line we had taken up and to obtain
+some rest after the fatigue and strain of the night. It did not last
+long, however, and in the afternoon the climax of the battle was
+reached, for, under the cover of intense artillery fire, the Germans
+launched no less than five separate assaults against the east of the
+salient.
+
+To the north and northeast their attacks were not at first pressed so
+hard as on the south of the Menin road, where the fighting was
+especially fierce. In the latter direction masses of infantry were
+hurled on with absolute desperation and were beaten off with
+corresponding slaughter.
+
+At one point, north of the town, 500 of the enemy advanced from the
+wood, and it is affirmed by those present that not a single man of them
+escaped.
+
+[Sidenote: German losses at Château Hooge.]
+
+On the eastern face, at 6:30 P. M., an endeavor was made to storm the
+grounds of the Château Hooge, a little north of the Menin road, but the
+force attempting it broke and fell back under the hail of shrapnel
+poured upon them by our guns. It was on this side, where they had to
+face the concentrated fire of guns, Maxims and rifles again and again in
+their efforts to break their way through, that the Germans incurred
+their heaviest losses, and the ground was literally heaped with dead.
+
+They evidently, for the time being at least, were unable to renew their
+efforts, and as night came on the fury of their offensive gradually
+slackened, the hours of darkness passing in quietness.
+
+During the day our troops saw some of the enemy busily employed in
+stripping the British dead in our abandoned trenches, east of the Hooge
+Château, and several Germans afterward were noticed dressed in khaki.
+
+[Sidenote: A successful day.]
+
+So far as the Ypres region is concerned, this for us was a most
+successful day. Our line, which on the northeast of the salient had,
+after the previous day's fighting, been reconstituted a short distance
+behind the original front, remained intact. Our losses were
+comparatively slight, and, owing to the targets presented by the enemy,
+the action resolved itself on our part into pure killing.
+
+The reason for this very determined effort to crush our left on the part
+of the Germans is not far to seek. It is probable that for some days
+previously they had been in possession of information which led them to
+suppose that we intended to apply pressure on the right of our line, and
+that their great attack upon Ypres on the 7th, 8th, and 9th was
+undertaken with a view to diverting us from our purpose.
+
+In this the Germans were true to their principles, for they rightly hold
+that the best manner of meeting an expected hostile offensive is to
+forestall it by attacking in some other quarter. In this instance their
+leaders acted with the utmost determination and energy and their
+soldiers fought with the greatest courage.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy held in check.]
+
+The failure of their effort was due to the splendid endurance of our
+troops, who held the line around the salient under a fire which again
+and again blotted out whole lengths of the defenses and killed the
+defenders by scores. Time after time along those parts of the front
+selected for assault were parapets destroyed, and time after time did
+the thinning band of survivors build them up again and await the next
+onset as steadily as before.
+
+Here, in May, in defense of the same historic town, have our
+incomparable infantry repeated the great deeds their comrades performed
+half a year ago and beaten back most desperate onslaughts of hostile
+hordes backed by terrific artillery support.
+
+The services rendered by our troops in this quarter cannot at present
+be estimated, for their full significance will only be realized in the
+light of future events. But so far their devotion has indirectly
+contributed in no small measure to the striking success already achieved
+by our allies.
+
+Further south, in the meantime, on Sunday another struggle had been in
+progress on that portion of the front covered by the right of our line
+and the left of the French, for when the firing around Ypres was
+temporarily subsiding during the early hours of the morning another and
+even more tremendous cannonade was suddenly started by the artillery of
+the Allies some twenty miles to the south.
+
+The morning was calm, bright, and clear, and opposite our right, as the
+sun rose, the scene in front of our line was the most peaceful
+imaginable. Away to the right were Guinchy, with its brickfields and the
+ruins of Givenchy. To the north of them lay low ground, where, hidden by
+trees and hedgerows, ran the opposing lines that were about to become
+the scene of the conflict, and beyond, in the distance, rose the long
+ridge of Aubers, the villages crowning it standing out clear cut against
+the sky.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment of Guinchy.]
+
+At 5 o'clock the bombardment began, slowly at first and then growing in
+volume until the whole air quivered with the rush of the larger shells
+and the earth shook with the concussion of guns. In a few minutes the
+whole distant landscape disappeared in smoke and dust, which hung for a
+while in the still air and then drifted slowly across the line of
+battle.
+
+[Sidenote: The battle near Festubert.]
+
+Shortly before 6 o'clock our infantry advanced along our front between
+the Bois Grenier and Festubert. On the left, north of Fromelles, we
+stormed the German first line trenches. Hand-to-hand fighting went on
+for some time with bayonet, rifle, and hand grenade, but we continued to
+hold on to this position throughout the day and caused the enemy very
+heavy loss, for not only were many Germans killed in the bombardment,
+but their repeated efforts to drive us from the captured positions
+proved most costly.
+
+On the right, to the north of Festubert, our advance met with
+considerable opposition and was not pressed.
+
+[Sidenote: A French victory.]
+
+Meanwhile, the French, after a prolonged bombardment, had taken the
+German positions north of Arras on a front of nearly five miles, and had
+pushed forward from two to three miles, capturing 2,000 prisoners and
+six guns. This remarkable success was gained by our allies in the course
+of a few hours.
+
+As may be supposed from the nature of the fighting which has been in
+progress, our losses have been heavy. On other parts of the front our
+action was confined to that of the artillery, but this proved most
+effective later, all the communications of the enemy being subjected to
+so heavy and accurate a fire that in some quarters all movement by
+daylight within range of our lines was rendered impracticable. At one
+place opposite our centre a convoy of ammunition was hit by a shell,
+which knocked out six motor lorries and caused two to blow up. Opposite
+our centre we fired two mines, which did considerable damage to the
+enemy's defenses.
+
+[Sidenote: Air fighting.]
+
+During the day also our aeroplanes attacked several points of
+importance. One of our airmen, who was sent to bomb the canal bridge
+near Don, was wounded on his way there, but continued and fulfilled his
+mission. Near Wytschaete, one of our aviators pursued a German aeroplane
+and fired a whole belt from his machine gun at it. The Taube suddenly
+swerved, righted itself for a second, and then descended from a height
+of several thousand feet straight to the ground.
+
+On the other hand, a British machine unfortunately was brought down over
+Lille by the enemy's anti-aircraft guns, but it is hoped that the
+aviator escaped.
+
+_In regard to the German allegation, that the British used gas in their
+attacks on Hill 60, the Eyewitness says_:
+
+[Sidenote: British had not used gas.]
+
+No asphyxiating gases have been employed by us at any time, nor have
+they yet been brought into play by us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Germany, desperate at her failure to win the rapid victories she had
+anticipated on the land, resorted, in 1915, to a ruthless policy of
+sinking the ships of the belligerent powers, whether or not they were
+engaged on legitimate errands. This policy culminated on May 7, 1915, in
+the sinking of the great transatlantic steamship the _Lusitania_, with
+the loss of over a thousand men, women, and children.
+
+
+
+
+SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA
+
+THE JUDICIAL DECISION BY JUDGE J. M. MAYER
+
+
+[Sidenote: The _Lusitania_ sails.]
+
+On May 1, 1915, the British passenger-carrying merchantman _Lusitania_
+sailed from New York bound for Liverpool, with 1,257 passengers and a
+crew of 702, making a total of 1,959 souls on board, men, women, and
+children. At approximately 2:10 on the afternoon of May 7, 1915, weather
+clear and sea smooth, without warning, the vessel was torpedoed and went
+down by the head in about eighteen minutes, with an ultimate tragic loss
+of 1,195.
+
+[Sidenote: Passengers and equipment.]
+
+So far as equipment went, the vessel was seaworthy in the highest sense.
+Her carrying capacity was 2,198 passengers and a crew of about 850, or
+about 3,000 persons in all. She had 22 open lifeboats capable of
+accommodating 1,322 persons, 26 collapsible boats with a capacity for
+1,283, making a total of 48 boats with a capacity for 2,605 in all, or
+substantially in excess of the requirements of her last voyage. Her
+total of life belts was 3,187, or 1,959 more than the total number of
+passengers, and, in addition, she carried 20 life buoys. She was classed
+100 A1 at Lloyd's being 787 feet long over all, with a tonnage of 30,395
+gross and 12,611 net. She had 4 turbine engines, 25 boilers, 4 boiler
+rooms, 12 transverse bulkheads, dividing her into 13 compartments, with
+a longitudinal bulkhead on either side of the ship for 425 feet,
+covering all vital parts.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Lusitania_ unarmed.]
+
+The proof is absolute that she was not and never had been armed nor did
+she carry any explosives. She did carry some 18 fuse cases and 125
+shrapnel cases, consisting merely of empty shells without any powder
+charge, 4,200 cases of safety cartridges, and 189 cases of infantry
+equipment, such as leather fittings, pouches, and the like. All these
+were for delivery abroad, but none of these munitions could be exploded
+by setting them on fire in mass or in bulk, nor by subjecting them to
+impact. She had been duly inspected on March 17, April 15, 16, and 17,
+all in 1915, and before she left New York the boat gear and boats were
+examined, overhauled, checked up, and defective articles properly
+replaced.
+
+[Sidenote: The drills sufficient.]
+
+There is no reason to doubt that this part of her equipment was in
+excellent order when she left New York. The vessel was under the command
+of a long service and experienced Captain and officered by competent and
+experienced men. The difficulties of the war prevented the company from
+gathering together a crew fully reaching a standard as high as in normal
+times, (many of the younger British sailors having been called to the
+colors,) but, all told, the crew was good and, in many instances, highly
+intelligent and capable. Due precaution was taken in respect of boat
+drills while in port, and the testimony shows that those drills were
+both sufficient and efficient. Some passengers did not see any boat
+drills on the voyage, while others characterized the drills, in effect,
+as formally superficial. Any one familiar with ocean traveling knows
+that it is not strange that boat drills may take place unobserved by
+some of the passengers who, though on deck, may be otherwise occupied or
+who may be in another part of the ship, and such negative testimony must
+give way to the positive testimony that there were daily boat drills,
+the object of which mainly was to enable the men competently and quickly
+to lower the boats.
+
+[Sidenote: Emergency precautions.]
+
+Each man had a badge showing the number of the boat to which he was
+assigned, and a boat list was posted in three different places in the
+ship. Each day of the voyage a drill was held with the emergency boat,
+which was a fixed boat, either No. 13 on the starboard side or No. 14 on
+the port side, according to the weather, the idea, doubtless, being to
+accustom the men quickly to reach the station on either side of the
+ship. The siren was blown and a picked crew from the watch assembled at
+the boat, put on life belts, jumped into the boat, took their places,
+and jumped out again.
+
+Throughout this case it must always be remembered that the disaster
+occurred in May, 1915, and the whole subject must be approached with the
+knowledge and mental attitude of that time. It may be that more
+elaborate and effective methods and precaution have been adopted since
+then, but there is no testimony which shows that these boat drills, as
+practiced on the voyage, were not fully up to the then existing
+standards and practices. There can be no criticism of the bulkhead door
+drills, for there was one each day.
+
+[Sidenote: Speed reduced.]
+
+In November, 1914, the Directors of the Cunard Company, in view of the
+falling off of the passenger traffic, decided to withdraw the
+_Lusitania's_ sister ship, _Mauretania_, and to run the _Lusitania_ at
+three-fourths boiler power, which involved a reduction of speed from an
+average of about twenty-four knots to an average of about twenty-one
+knots. The ship was operated under this reduced boiler power and reduced
+rate of speed for six round trips until and including the fatal voyage,
+although at the reduced rate she was considerably faster than any
+passenger ship crossing the Atlantic at that time. This reduction was in
+part for financial reasons and in part "a question of economy of coal
+and labor in time of war." No profit was expected and none was made,
+but the company continued to operate the ship as a public service. The
+reduction from twenty-four to twenty-one knots is, however, quite
+immaterial to the controversy, as will later appear.
+
+Having thus outlined the personnel, equipment, and cargo of the vessel,
+reference will now be made to a series of events preceding her sailing
+on May 1, 1915.
+
+On February 4, 1915, the Imperial German Government issued a
+proclamation as follows:
+
+[Sidenote: The German proclamation.]
+
+        "1. The waters surrounding Great Britain and
+        Ireland, including the whole English Channel,
+        are hereby declared to be war zone. On and
+        after the 18th of February, 1915, every enemy
+        merchant ship found in the said war zone will
+        be destroyed without its being always possible
+        to avert the dangers threatening the crews and
+        passengers on that account.
+
+        "2. Even neutral ships are exposed to danger in
+        the war zone, as in view of the misuse of
+        neutral flags ordered on January 31 by the
+        British Government and of the accidents of
+        naval war, it cannot always be avoided to
+        strike even neutral ships in attacks that are
+        directed at enemy ships.
+
+        "3. Northward navigation around the Shetland
+        Islands, in the eastern waters of the North Sea
+        and in a strip of not less than thirty miles
+        width along the Netherlands coast is in no
+        danger.
+
+                                          "VON POHL,
+               "Chief of the Admiral Staff of the Navy.
+        "Berlin, February 4, 1915."
+
+[Sidenote: Submarine blockade declared.]
+
+This was accompanied by a so-called memorial, setting forth the reasons
+advanced by the German Government in support of the issuance of this
+proclamation, an extract from which is as follows:
+
+        "Just as England declared the whole North Sea
+        between Scotland and Norway to be comprised
+        within the seat of war, so does Germany now
+        declare the waters surrounding Great Britain
+        and Ireland, including the whole English
+        Channel, to be comprised within the seat of
+        war, and will prevent by all the military means
+        at its disposal all navigation by the enemy in
+        those waters. To this end it will endeavor to
+        destroy, after February 18 next, any merchant
+        vessels of the enemy which present themselves
+        at the seat of war above indicated, although it
+        may not always be possible to avert the dangers
+        which may menace persons and merchandise.
+        Neutral powers are accordingly forewarned not
+        to intrust their crews, passengers, or
+        merchandise to such vessels."
+
+[Sidenote: Protests sent by the United States.]
+
+To this proclamation and memorial the Government of the United States
+made due protest under date of February 10, 1915. On the same day
+protest was made to England by this Government regarding the use of the
+American flag by the _Lusitania_ on its voyage through the war zone on
+its trip from New York to Liverpool of January 30, 1915, in response to
+which, on February 19, Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of State for Foreign
+Affairs, handed a memorandum to Mr. Page, the American Ambassador to
+England, containing the following statement:
+
+[Sidenote: British reply to American protest.]
+
+        "It is understood that the German Government
+        had announced their intention of sinking
+        British merchant vessels at sight by torpedoes
+        without giving any opportunity of making any
+        provisions for saving the lives of noncombatant
+        crews and passengers. It was in consequence of
+        this threat that the _Lusitania_ raised the
+        United States flag on her inward voyage and on
+        her subsequent outward voyage. A request was
+        made by the United States passengers who were
+        embarking on board her that the United States
+        flag should be hoisted, presumably to insure
+        their safety."
+
+The British Ambassador, the Hon. Cecil Spring-Rice, on March 1, 1915,
+in a communication to the American Secretary of State regarding an
+economic blockade of Germany, stated in reference to the German
+proclamation of February 4:
+
+[Sidenote: British statement on the submarine blockade.]
+
+        "Germany has declared that the English Channel,
+        the north and west coasts of France, and the
+        waters around the British Isles are a war area
+        and has officially notified that all enemy
+        ships found in that area will be destroyed, and
+        that neutral vessels may be exposed to danger.
+        This is in effect a claim to torpedo at sight,
+        without regard to the safety of the crew or
+        passengers, any merchant vessel under any flag.
+        As it is not in the power of the German
+        Admiralty to maintain any surface craft in
+        these waters, this attack can only be delivered
+        by submarine agency."
+
+[Sidenote: Submarines sink merchant ships.]
+
+Beginning with the 30th of January, 1915, and prior to the sinking of
+the _Lusitania_ on May 7, 1915, German submarines attacked and seemed to
+have sunk twenty merchant and passenger ships within about 100 miles of
+the usual course of the _Lusitania_, chased two other vessels which
+escaped, and damaged still another.
+
+It will be noted that nothing is stated in the German memorandum as to
+sinking enemy merchant vessels without warning, but, on the contrary,
+the implication is that settled international law as to visit and search
+and an opportunity for the lives of passengers to be safeguarded will be
+obeyed, "although it may not always be possible to avert the dangers
+which may menace persons and merchandise."
+
+As a result of this submarine activity, the _Lusitania_ on its voyages
+from New York to Liverpool, beginning with that of January 30, 1915,
+steered a course further off from the south coast of Ireland than
+formerly.
+
+[Sidenote: Precautions in danger zone.]
+
+In addition, after the German proclamation of February 4, 1915, the
+_Lusitania_ had its boats swung out and provisioned while passing
+through the danger zone, did not use its wireless for sending messages,
+and did not stop at the Mersey Bar for a pilot, but came directly up to
+its berth.
+
+The petitioner and the master of the _Lusitania_ received certain
+advices from the British Admiralty on February 10, 1915, as follows:
+
+        "Vessels navigating in submarine areas should
+        have their boats turned out and fully
+        provisioned. The danger is greatest in the
+        vicinity of ports and off prominent headlands
+        on the coast. Important landfalls in this area
+        should be made after dark whenever possible. So
+        far as is consistent with particular trades and
+        state of tides, vessels should make their ports
+        at dawn."
+
+[Sidenote: Advices from the British Admiralty.]
+
+On April 15 and 16, 1915, and after the last voyage from New York,
+preceding the one on which the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed, the Cunard
+Company and the master of the _Lusitania_ received at Liverpool the
+following advices from the British Admiralty:
+
+        "Confidential Daily Voyage Notice 15th April,
+        1915, issued under Government War Risks Scheme.
+
+        "German submarines appear to be operating
+        chiefly off prominent headlands and landfalls.
+        Ships should give prominent headlands a wide
+        berth.
+
+        "Confidential memorandum issued 16th April,
+        1915:
+
+[Sidenote: Fast steamers follow a zigzag course.]
+
+        "War experience has shown that fast steamers
+        can considerably reduce the chance of
+        successful surprise submarine attacks by
+        zigzagging--that is to say, altering the course
+        at short and irregular intervals, say in ten
+        minutes to half an hour. This course is almost
+        invariably adopted by warships when cruising in
+        an area known to be infested by submarines. The
+        underwater speed of a submarine is very slow
+        and it is exceedingly difficult for her to get
+        into position to deliver an attack unless she
+        can observe and predict the course of the ship
+        attacked."
+
+Sir Alfred Booth, Chairman of the Cunard Line, was a member of the War
+Risks Committee at Liverpool, consisting of ship owners, representatives
+of the Board of Trade and the Admiralty, which received these
+instructions and passed them on to the owners of vessels, including the
+Cunard Company, which distributed them to the individual masters.
+
+[Sidenote: Advertisement in the New York papers.]
+
+On Saturday, May 1, 1915, the advertised sailing date of the _Lusitania_
+from New York to Liverpool on the voyage on which she was subsequently
+sunk, there appeared the following advertisement in the New York
+"Times," New York "Tribune," New York "Sun," New York "Herald," and the
+New York "World," this advertisement being in all instances except one
+placed directly over, under, or adjacent to the advertisement of the
+Cunard Line, regarding the sailing of the _Lusitania_:
+
+        "Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic
+        voyage are reminded that a state of war exists
+        between Germany and her allies and Great
+        Britain and her allies. That the zone of war
+        includes the waters adjacent to the British
+        Isles. That in accordance with formal notice
+        given by the Imperial German Government,
+        vessels flying the flag of Great Britain or of
+        any of her allies are liable to destruction in
+        those waters, and that travelers sailing in the
+        war zone on ships of Great Britain or her
+        allies do so at their own risk."
+
+                        "IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY,
+        "April 22, 1915.          Washington, D. C."
+
+This was the first insertion of this advertisement, although it was
+dated more than a week prior to its publication. Captain Turner, the
+master of the vessel, saw the advertisement or "something of the kind"
+before sailing, and realized that the _Lusitania_ was included in the
+warning. The Liverpool office of the Cunard Company was advised of the
+sailing and the number of passengers by cable from the New York office,
+but no mention was made of the above quoted advertisement. Sir Alfred
+Booth was informed through the press of this advertisement on either
+Saturday evening, May 1, or Sunday morning, May 2.
+
+[Sidenote: _Lusitania_ justified in sailing.]
+
+The significance and construction to be given to this advertisement will
+be discussed infra, but it is perfectly plain that the master was fully
+justified in sailing on the appointed day from a neutral port with many
+neutral and non-combatant passengers, unless he and his company were
+willing to yield to the attempt of the German Government to terrify
+British shipping. No one familiar with the British character would
+expect that such a threat would accomplish more than to emphasize the
+necessity of taking every precaution to protect life and property which
+the exercise of judgment would invite.
+
+And so, as scheduled, the _Lusitania_ sailed, undisguised, with her four
+funnels and a figure so familiar as to be readily discernible not only
+by naval officers and marines, but by the ocean-going public generally.
+
+[Sidenote: In the submarine war zone.]
+
+The voyage was uneventful until May 6. On approaching the Irish coast on
+May 6 the Captain ordered all the boats hanging on the davits to be
+swung out and lowered to the promenade deckrail, and this order was
+carried out under the supervision of Staff Captain Anderson, who later
+went down with the ship. All bulkhead doors which were not necessary for
+the working of the ship were closed, and it was reported to Captain
+Turner that this had been done. Lookouts were doubled, and two extra
+were put forward and one on either side of the bridge; that is, there
+were two lookouts in the crow's-nest, two in the eyes of the ship, two
+officers on the bridge, and a quartermaster on either side of the
+bridge.
+
+Directions were given to the engine room to keep the highest steam they
+could possibly get on the boilers, and in case the bridge rang for full
+speed, to give as much as they possibly could. Orders were also given
+that ports should be kept closed.
+
+[Sidenote: Wireless messages from the Admiralty.]
+
+At 7:50 P. M., on May 6, the _Lusitania_ received the following wireless
+message from the Admiral at Queenstown: "Submarines active off south
+coast of Ireland," and at 7:56 the vessel asked for and received a
+repetition of his message. The ship was then going at a rate of 21 knots
+per hour.
+
+At 8:30 P. M. of the same day the following message was received from
+the British Admiralty:
+
+        "To All British Ships 0005:
+
+        "Take Liverpool pilot at bar and avoid
+        headlands. Pass harbors at full speed; steer
+        midchannel course. Submarines off Fastnet."
+
+[Sidenote: The _Lusitania's_ speed reduced.]
+
+At 8:32 the Admiralty received a communication to show that this message
+had been received by the _Lusitania_, and the same message was offered
+to the vessel seven times between midnight of May 6 and 10 A. M. of May
+7.
+
+At about 8 A. M. on the morning of May 7, on approaching the Irish
+coast, the vessel encountered an intermittent fog, or Scotch mist,
+called "banks" in seafaring language, and the speed was reduced to 15
+knots. Previously the speed, according to Captain Turner's recollection,
+had been reduced to 18 knots. This adjustment of speed was due to the
+fact that Captain Turner wished to run the last 150 miles of the voyage
+in the dark, so as to make Liverpool early on the morning of May 8, at
+the earliest time when he could cross the bar without a pilot.
+
+[Sidenote: Approaching the most dangerous waters.]
+
+Judging from the location of previous submarine attacks, the most
+dangerous waters in the _Lusitania's_ course were from the entrance to
+St. George's Channel to Liverpool Bar. There is no dispute as to the
+proposition that a vessel darkened is much safer from submarine attack
+at night than in the daytime, and Captain Turner exercised proper and
+good judgment in planning accordingly as he approached dangerous waters.
+It is futile to conjecture as to what would or would not have happened
+had the speed been higher prior to the approach to the Irish coast,
+because, obviously, until then the Captain could not figure out his
+situation, not knowing how he might be impeded by fog or other
+unfavorable weather conditions.
+
+On the morning of May 7, 1915, the ship passed about twenty-five or
+twenty-six, and, in any event, at least eighteen and a half miles south
+of Fastnet, which was not in sight. The course was then held up slightly
+to bring the ship closer to land, and a little before noon land was
+sighted, and what was thought to be Brow Head was made out.
+
+Meanwhile, between 11 A. M. and noon, the fog disappeared, the weather
+became clear, and the speed was increased to 18 knots. The course of the
+vessel was S. 87 E. Mag. At 11:25 A. M. Captain Turner received the
+following message:
+
+        "Submarines active in southern part of Irish
+        Channel, last heard of twenty miles south of
+        Coningbeg. Light vessel make certain
+        '_Lusitania_' gets this."
+
+[Sidenote: Submarines reported by wireless.]
+
+At 12:40 P. M. the following additional wireless message from the
+Admiralty was received:
+
+        "Submarines five miles south of Cape Clear,
+        proceeding west when sighted at 10 A. M."
+
+After picking up Brow Head and at about 12:40 P. M., the course was
+altered in shore by about 30 degrees, to about N. 63 or 67 E. Mag.,
+Captain Turner did not recall which. Land was sighted which the Captain
+thought was Galley Head, but he was not sure, and therefore held in
+shore. This last course was continued for an hour at a speed of 18 knots
+until 1:40 P. M., when the Old Head of Kinsale was sighted and the
+course was then changed back to the original course of S. 87 E. Mag.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Lusitania_ torpedoed.]
+
+At 1:50 P. M. the Captain started to take a four-point bearing on the
+Old Head of Kinsale, and while thus engaged and at about 2:30 P. M., as
+heretofore stated, the ship was torpedoed on the starboard side. Whether
+one, two, or three torpedoes were fired at the vessel cannot be
+determined with certainty. Two of the ship's crew were confident that a
+third torpedo was fired and missed the ship. While not doubting the good
+faith of these witnesses, the evidence is not sufficiently satisfactory
+to be convincing.
+
+[Sidenote: Conflicting testimony.]
+
+[Sidenote: Probably two torpedoes.]
+
+[Sidenote: No explosives on board.]
+
+There was, however, an interesting and remarkable conflict of testimony
+as to whether the ship was struck by one or two torpedoes, and
+witnesses, both passengers and crew, differed on this point,
+conscientiously and emphatically. The witnesses were all highly
+intelligent, and there is no doubt that all testified to the best of
+their recollection, knowledge, or impression, and in accordance with
+their honest conviction. The weight of the testimony (too voluminous to
+analyze) is in favor of the "two torpedo" contention, not only because
+of some convincing direct testimony, (as, for instance, Adams, Lehman,
+Morton,) but also because of the unquestioned surrounding circumstances.
+The deliberate character of the attack upon a vessel whose identity
+could not be mistaken, made easy on a bright day, and the fact that the
+vessel had no means of defending herself, would lead to the inference
+that the submarine commander would make sure of her destruction.
+Further, the evidence is overwhelming that there was a second explosion.
+The witnesses differ as to the impression which the sound of this
+explosion made upon them--a natural difference due to the fact, known by
+common experience, that persons who hear the same explosion even at the
+same time will not only describe the sound differently, but will not
+agree as to the number of detonations. As there were no explosives on
+board, it is difficult to account for the second explosion, except on
+the theory that it was caused by a second torpedo. Whether the number of
+torpedoes was one or two is relevant, in this case, only upon the
+question of what effect, if any, open ports had in accelerating the
+sinking of the ship.
+
+While there was much testimony and some variance as to the places where
+the torpedoes struck, judged by the sound or shock of the explosions,
+certain physical effects, especially as to smoke and blown-up débris,
+tend to locate the areas of impact with some approach of accuracy.
+
+From all the testimony it may be reasonably concluded that one torpedo
+struck on the starboard side somewhere abreast of No. 2 boiler room and
+the other, on the same side, either abreast of No. 3 boiler room or
+between No. 3 and No. 4. From knowledge of the torpedoes then used by
+the German submarines, it is thought that they would effect a rupture of
+the outer hull thirty to forty feet long and ten to fifteen feet
+vertically.
+
+[Sidenote: Flooding of boiler rooms and coal bunkers.]
+
+Cockburn, senior Second Engineer, was of opinion that the explosion had
+done a great deal of internal damage. Although the lights were out,
+Cockburn could hear the water coming into the engine room. Water at once
+entered No. 1 and No. 2 boiler rooms, a result necessarily attributable
+to the fact that one or both of the coal bunkers were also blown open.
+Thus, one torpedo flooded some or all of the coal bunkers on the
+starboard side of Nos. 1 and 2 boiler rooms, and apparently flooded both
+boiler rooms.
+
+The effect of the other torpedo is not entirely clear. If it struck
+midway between two bulkheads, it is quite likely to have done serious
+bulkhead injury. The _Lusitania_ was built so as to float with two
+compartments open to the sea, and with more compartments open she could
+not stay afloat. As the side coal bunkers are regarded as compartments,
+the ship could not float with two boiler rooms flooded and also an
+adjacent bunker, and, therefore, the damage done by one torpedo was
+enough to sink the ship.
+
+To add to the difficulties, all the steam had gone as the result of the
+explosions, and the ship could not be controlled by her engines.
+
+Little, senior Third Engineer, testified that in a few seconds after the
+explosion the steam pressure fell from 190 to 50 pounds, his explanation
+being that the main steam pipes or boilers had been carried away.
+
+[Sidenote: Engines disabled.]
+
+The loss of control of and by the engines resulted in disability to stop
+the engines, with the result that the ship kept her headway until she
+sank. That the ship commenced to list to starboard immediately is
+abundantly established by many witnesses.
+
+[Sidenote: The ship's behavior in going down.]
+
+Some of the witnesses, (Lauriat and Adams, passengers; Duncan, Bestic,
+and Johnson, officers,) testified that the ship stopped listing to
+starboard and started to recover and then listed again to starboard
+until she went over.
+
+This action, which is quite likely, must have resulted from the inrush
+of water on the port side. There can be no other adequate explanation
+consistent with elementary scientific knowledge; for, if the ship
+temporarily righted herself, it must have been because the weight of
+water on the two sides was equal or nearly so. The entry of water into
+the port side must, of course, have been due to some rupture on that
+side. Such a result was entirely possible, and, indeed, probable.
+
+The explosive force was sufficiently powerful to blow débris far above
+the radio wires--i. e., more than 160 feet above the water. The boiler
+rooms were not over sixty feet wide, and so strong a force could readily
+have weakened the longitudinal bulkheads on the port side in addition to
+such injury as flying metal may have done. It is easy to understand,
+therefore, how the whole pressure of the water rushing in from the
+starboard side against the weakened longitudinal bulkheads on the port
+side would cause them to give way and thus open up some apertures on the
+port side for the entry of water. Later, when the water continued to
+rush in on the starboard side, the list to starboard naturally again
+occurred, increased and continued to the end. As might be expected, the
+degree of list to starboard is variously described, but there is no
+doubt that it was steep and substantial.
+
+[Sidenote: Ports had all been ordered closed.]
+
+A considerable amount of testimony was taken upon the contention of
+claimants that many of the ship's ports were open, thus reducing her
+buoyancy and substantially hastening her sinking. There is no doubt that
+on May 6 adequate orders were given to close all ports. The testimony is
+conclusive that the ports on Deck F (the majority of which were dummy
+ports) were closed. Very few, if any, ports on E deck were open, and, if
+so, they were starboard ports in a small section of the first class in
+the vicinity where one of the torpedoes did its damage. A very limited
+number of passengers testified that the portholes in their staterooms
+were open, and if their impressions are correct, these portholes,
+concerning which they testified, were all, or nearly all, so far above
+the water that they could not have influenced the situation.
+
+[Sidenote: Sinking not affected by open ports.]
+
+There was conflicting testimony as to the ports in the dining room on D
+deck. The weight of the testimony justifies the conclusion that some of
+these ports were open--how many it is impossible to determine. These
+ports, however, were from twenty-three to thirty feet above water, and
+when the gap made by the explosion and the consequent severe and sudden
+list are considered, it is plain that these open ports were not a
+contributing cause of the sinking, and had a very trifling influence, if
+any, in accelerating the time within which the ship sank.
+
+From the foregoing the situation can be visualized. Two sudden and
+extraordinary explosions, the ship badly listed so that the port side
+was well up in the air, the passengers scattered about on the decks and
+in the staterooms, saloons and companion ways, the ship under headway
+and, as it turned out, only eighteen minutes afloat--such was the
+situation which confronted the officers, crew, and passengers in the
+endeavor to save the lives of those on board.
+
+[Sidenote: Calm heroism of the passengers.]
+
+The conduct of the passengers constitutes an enduring record of calm
+heroism with many individual instances of sacrifice and, in general, a
+marked consideration for women and children. There was no panic, but
+naturally, there was a considerable amount of excitement and rush and
+much confusion, and, as the increasing list rendered ineffective the
+lowering of the boats on the port side, the passengers, as is readily
+understandable, crowded over on the starboard side.
+
+The problem presented to the officers of the ship was one of exceeding
+difficulty, occasioned largely because of the serious list and the
+impossibility of stopping the ship or reducing her headway.
+
+[Sidenote: Lookouts sighted the torpedo.]
+
+[Sidenote: Boats ordered lowered.]
+
+
+The precaution of extra lookouts resulted in a prompt report to the
+Captain, via the bridge, of the sighting of the torpedo. Second Officer
+Heppert, who was on the bridge, immediately closed all watertight doors
+worked from the bridge, and the testimony satisfactorily shows that all
+watertight doors worked by hand were promptly closed. Immediately after
+Captain Turner saw the wake of the torpedo there was an explosion and
+then Turner went to the navigation bridge and took the obvious course,
+i. e., had the ship's head turned to the land. He signaled the engine
+room for full speed astern, hoping thereby to take the way off the ship,
+and then ordered the boats lowered down to the rail and directed that
+women and children should be first provided for in the boats. As the
+engine room failed to respond to the order to go full speed astern, and
+as the ship was continuing under way, Turner ordered that the boats
+should not be lowered until the vessel should lose her headway, and he
+told Anderson, the Staff Captain, who was in charge of the port boats,
+to lower the boats when he thought the way was sufficiently off to allow
+that operation. Anderson's fidelity to duty is sufficiently exemplified
+by the fact that he went down with the ship.
+
+[Sidenote: The officers display courage and skill.]
+
+Jones, First Officer, and Lewis, Acting Third Officer, were in charge of
+the boats on the starboard side and personally superintended their
+handling and launching. Too much cannot be said both for their courage
+and skill, but, difficult as was their task, they were not confronted
+with some of the problems which the port side presented. There, in
+addition to Anderson, were Bestic, Junior Third Officer, and another
+officer, presumably the Second Officer. These men were apparently doing
+the best they could and standing valiantly to their duty. Anderson's
+fate has already been mentioned, and Bestic, although surviving, stuck
+to his post until the ship went down under him. The situation can
+readily be pictured even by a novice.
+
+With the ship listed to starboard, the port boats, of course, swung
+inboard. If enough man power were applied, the boats could be put over
+the rail, but then a real danger would follow. Robertson, the ship's
+carpenter, aptly described that danger in answer to a question as to
+whether it was possible to lower the open boats on the port side. He
+said:
+
+[Sidenote: Port boats could not be lowered.]
+
+"No. To lower the port boats would just be like drawing a crate of
+unpacked china along a dock road. What I mean is that if you started to
+lower the boats you would be dragging them down the rough side of the
+ship on rivets which are what we call "snap-headed rivets"--they stand
+up about an inch from the side of the ship, so you would be dragging the
+whole side of the boat away if you tried to lower the boats with a
+15-degree list."
+
+That some boats were and others would have been seriously damaged is
+evidenced by the fact that two port boats were lowered to the water and
+got away, (though one afterward filled,) and not one boat reached
+Queenstown.
+
+Each boat has its own history, (except possibly Boats 2 and 4,) although
+it is naturally difficult, in each case, to allocate all the testimony
+to a particular boat.
+
+[Sidenote: Accidents in lowering.]
+
+There is some testimony, given in undoubted good faith, that painted or
+rusted davits stuck out, but the weight of the testimony is to the
+contrary. There were some lamentable occurrences on the port side, which
+resulted in spilling passengers, some of whom thus thrown out or injured
+went to their death. These unfortunate accidents, however, were due
+either to lack of strength of the seaman who was lowering, or possibly,
+at worst, to an occasional instance of incompetency due to the personal
+equation so often illustrated, where one man of many may not be equal to
+the emergency. But the problem was of the most vexatious character. In
+addition to the crowding of passengers in some instances was this
+extremely hazardous feat of lowering boats swung inboard from a tilted
+height, heavily weighted by human beings, with the ship still under way.
+It cannot be said that it was negligent to attempt this, because,
+obviously, all the passengers could not be accommodated in the starboard
+boats.
+
+[Sidenote: Six boats get away from starboard.]
+
+On the starboard side, the problem, in some respects, was not so
+difficult, while, in others, troublesome conditions existed quite
+different from those occurring on the port side. Here the boats swung so
+far out as to add to the difficulty of passengers getting in them, a
+difficulty intensified by the fact that many more passengers went to the
+starboard side than to the port side and, also that the ship maintained
+her way. Six boats successfully got away. In the case of the remaining
+boats, some were successfully lowered but later met with some
+unavoidable accident, and some were not successfully launched (such as
+Nos. 1, 5, and 17) for entirely explainable reasons which should not be
+charged to inefficiency on the part of the officers or crew.
+
+[Sidenote: Collapsible boats cut loose.]
+
+The collapsible boats were on the deck under the open lifeboats, and
+were intended to be lifted and lowered by the same davits which lowered
+the open boats after the open boats had gotten clear of the ship. It was
+the duty of the officers to get the open boats away before giving
+attention to the collapsible boats, and that was a question of time.
+These boats are designed and arranged to float free if the ship should
+sink before they can be hoisted over. They were cut loose and some
+people were saved on these boats.
+
+It is to be expected that those passengers who lost members of their
+family or friends, and who saw some of the unfortunate accidents, should
+feel strongly and entertain the impression that inefficiency or
+individual negligence was widespread among the crew. Such an impression,
+however, does an inadvertent injustice to the great majority of the
+crew, who acted with that matter-in-fact courage and fidelity to duty
+which are traditional with men of the sea. Such of these men, presumably
+fairly typical of all, as testified in this court, were impressive not
+only because of inherent bravery, but because of intelligence and
+clear-headedness, and they possessed that remarkable gift of simplicity
+so characteristic of truly fearless men who cannot quite understand why
+an ado is made of acts which seem to them merely the day's work.
+
+Mr. Grab, one of the claimants and an experienced transatlantic
+traveler, concisely summed up the situation when he said:
+
+"They were doing the best they could--they were very brave and working
+as hard as they could without any fear. They didn't care about
+themselves. It was very admirably done. While there was great confusion,
+they did the best they could."
+
+[Sidenote: Captain Turner's comment on the crew.]
+
+It will unduly prolong a necessarily extended opinion to sift the
+voluminous testimony relating to this subject of the boats and the
+conduct of the crew and something is sought to be made of comments of
+Captain Turner, construed by some to be unfavorable but afterward
+satisfactorily supplemented and explained, but if there were some
+instances of incompetency they were very few and the charge of
+negligence in this regard cannot be successfully maintained.
+
+In arriving at this conclusion, I have not overlooked the argument
+earnestly pressed that the men were not sufficiently instructed and
+drilled; for I think the testimony establishes the contrary in the light
+of conditions in May, 1915.
+
+I now come to what seems to be the only debatable question of fact in
+the case, i. e., whether Captain Turner was negligent in not literally
+following the Admiralty advices and, also, in not taking a course
+different from that which he adopted.
+
+[Sidenote: The Captain's judgment free.]
+
+The fundamental principle in navigating a merchantman, whether in times
+of peace or of war, is that the commanding officer must be left free to
+exercise his own judgment. Safe navigation denies the proposition that
+the judgment and sound discretion of the Captain of a vessel must be
+confined in a mental straitjacket. Of course, when movements are under
+military control, orders must be strictly obeyed, come what may. No such
+situation, however, was presented either to the Cunard Steamship Co. or
+Captain Turner. The vessel was not engaged in military service nor under
+naval convoy. True, she was, as between the German and British
+Governments, an enemy ship as to Germany, but she was unarmed and a
+carrier of not merely noncombatants, but, among others, of many citizens
+of the United States, then a neutral country, at peace with all the
+world.
+
+[Sidenote: Admiralty advices considered.]
+
+In such circumstances the Captain could not shield himself automatically
+against error behind a literal compliance with the general advices or
+instructions of the Admiralty, nor can it be supposed that the
+Admiralty, any more than the Cunard Steamship Co., expected him so to
+do. What was required of him was that he should seriously consider and,
+as far as practicable, follow the Admiralty advices and use his best
+judgment as events and exigencies occurred; and if a situation arose
+where he believed that a course should be pursued to meet emergencies
+which required departure from some of the Admiralty advices as to
+general rules of action, then it was his duty to take such course, if in
+accordance with his carefully formed deliberate judgment. After a
+disaster has occurred, it is not difficult for the expert to show how it
+might have been avoided, and there is always opportunity for academic
+discussion as to what ought or ought not to have been done; but the true
+approach is to endeavor, for the moment, to possess the mind of him upon
+whom rested the responsibility.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy obligations in care of merchant ships.]
+
+Let us now see what that responsibility was and how it was dealt with.
+The rules of naval warfare allowed the capture and, in some
+circumstances, the destruction of an enemy merchant ship, but, at the
+same time, it was the accepted doctrine of all civilized nations (as
+will be more fully considered infra) that, as Lord Mersey put it, "there
+is always an obligation first to secure the safety of the lives of those
+on board."
+
+The responsibility, therefore, of Captain Turner, in his task of
+bringing the ship safely to port, was to give heed not only to general
+advices advanced as the outcome of experience in the then developing
+knowledge as to submarine warfare, but particularly to any special
+information which might come to him in the course of the voyage.
+
+[Sidenote: Advices of the Admiralty.]
+
+Realizing that if there was a due warning, in accordance with
+international law, and an opportunity, within a limited time, for the
+passengers to leave the ship, nevertheless that the operation must be
+quickly done, Captain Turner, on May 6, had taken the full precautions,
+such as swinging out the boats, properly provisioned, which have been
+heretofore described. The principal features of the Admiralty advices
+were (1) to give the headlands a wide berth; (2) to steer a midchannel
+course; (3) to maintain as high a speed as practicable; (4) to zigzag,
+and (5) to make ports, if possible, at dawn, thus running the last part
+of the voyage at night.
+
+[Sidenote: Fastnet given a wide berth.]
+
+The reason for the advice as to keeping off headlands was that the
+submarines lurked near those prominent headlands and landfalls to and
+from which ships were likely to go. This instruction Captain Turner
+entirely followed in respect of Fastnet, which was the first point on
+the Irish coast which a vessel bound from New York to Liverpool would
+ordinarily approach closely, and, in normal times, the passing would be
+very near, or even inside of Fastnet. The _Lusitania_ passed Fastnet so
+far out that Captain Turner could not see it. Whether the distance was
+about twenty-five miles, as the Cunard Steamship Co. contends, or about
+eighteen and one-half miles, as the claimants calculate, the result is
+that either distance must be regarded as a wide berth, in comparison
+with the customary navigation at that point, and, besides, nothing
+happened there. At 8:30 P. M. on May 6 the message had been received
+from the British Admiralty that submarines were off Fastnet, so that
+Captain Turner, in this regard, not only followed the general advices,
+but the specific information from the Admiralty.
+
+At 11:25 A. M. on May 7 Captain Turner received the wireless from the
+Admiralty plainly intended for the _Lusitania_, informing him that
+submarines (plural) were active in the southern part of the Irish
+Channel and when last heard of were twenty miles south of Coningbeg
+Light Vessel. This wireless message presented acutely to the Captain
+the problem as to the best course to pursue, always bearing in mind his
+determination and the desirability of getting to the Liverpool Bar when
+it could be crossed while the tide served and without a pilot. Further,
+as was stated by Sir Alfred Booth, "The one definite instruction we did
+give him with regard to that was to authorize him to come up without a
+pilot." The reasons for this instruction were cogent and were concisely
+summed up by Sir Alfred Booth during his examination as a witness as
+follows:
+
+[Sidenote: The Mersey sandbar.]
+
+"It was one of the points that we felt it necessary to make the Captain
+of the _Lusitania_ understand the importance of. The _Lusitania_ can
+only cross the Liverpool Bar at certain states of the tide, and we
+therefore warned the Captain, or whoever might be Captain, that we did
+not think it would be safe for him to arrive off the bar at such a time
+that he would have to wait there, because that area had been infested
+with submarines, and we thought therefore it would be wiser for him to
+arrange his arrival in such a way, leaving him an absolutely free hand
+as to how he would do it, that he could come straight up without
+stopping at all. The one definite instruction we did give him with
+regard to that was to authorize him to come up without a pilot."
+
+The tide would be high at Liverpool Bar at 6:53 on Saturday morning, May
+8. Captain Turner planned to cross the bar as much earlier than that as
+he could get over without stopping, while at the same time figuring on
+passing during the darkness the dangerous waters from the entrance of
+St. George's Channel to the Liverpool Bar.
+
+[Sidenote: The Captain decides to work inshore.]
+
+Having thus in mind his objective, and the time approximately when he
+intended to reach it, the message received at 11:25 A. M. required that
+he should determine whether to keep off land approximately the same
+distance as he was when he passed Fastnet, or to work inshore and go
+close to Coningbeg Lightship. He determined that the latter was the
+better plan to avoid the submarines reported in midchannel ahead of him.
+
+[Sidenote: Taking a bearing.]
+
+When Galley Head was sighted the course was changed so as to haul closer
+to the land, and this course was pursued until 1:40 P. M., at which time
+Captain Turner concluded that it was necessary for him to get his
+bearings accurately. This he decided should be done by taking a
+four-point bearing, during which procedure the ship was torpedoed. It is
+urged that he should have taken a two-point bearing or a cross bearing,
+which would have occupied less time, but if, under all the conditions
+which appealed to his judgment as a mariner, he had taken a different
+method of ascertaining his exact distance and the result would have been
+inaccurate, or while engaged in taking a two-point bearing the ship had
+been torpedoed, then somebody would have said he should have taken a
+four-point bearing. The point of the matter is that an experienced
+Captain took the bearing he thought proper for his purposes, and to
+predicate negligence upon such a course is to assert that a Captain is
+bound to guess the exact location of a hidden and puzzling danger.
+
+[Sidenote: Testimony about the ship's speed.]
+
+Much emphasis has been placed upon the fact that the speed of the ship
+was eighteen knots at the time of the attack instead of twenty-four, or,
+in any event, twenty-one knots, and upon the further fact (for such it
+is) that the ship was not zigzagging as frequently as the Admiralty
+advised or in the sense of that advice.
+
+Upon this branch of the case much testimony was taken, (some in camera,
+as in the Wreck Commissioners' Court,) and, for reasons of public
+interest, the methods of successfully evading submarines will not be
+discussed. If it be assumed that the Admiralty advices as of May, 1915,
+were sound and should have been followed, then the answer to the charge
+of negligence is twofold: (1) that Captain Turner, in taking a
+four-point bearing off the Old Head of Kinsale, was conscientiously
+exercising his judgment for the welfare of the ship, and (2) that it is
+impossible to determine whether, by zigzagging off the Old Head of
+Kinsale or elsewhere, the _Lusitania_ would have escaped the German
+submarine or submarines.
+
+As to the first answer I cannot better express my conclusion than in the
+language of Lord Mersey:
+
+[Sidenote: Lord Mersey's opinion.]
+
+"Captain Turner was fully advised as to the means which in the view of
+the Admiralty were best calculated to avert the perils he was likely to
+encounter, and in considering the question whether he is to blame for
+the catastrophe in which his voyage ended I have to bear this
+circumstance in mind. It is certain that in some respects Captain Turner
+did not follow the advice given to him. It may be (though I seriously
+doubt it) that had he done so his ship would have reached Liverpool in
+safety. But the question remains: Was his conduct the conduct of a
+negligent or of an incompetent man? On this question I have sought the
+guidance of my assessors, who have rendered me invaluable assistance,
+and the conclusion at which I have arrived is that blame ought not to be
+imputed to the Captain. The advice given to him, although meant for his
+most serious and careful consideration, was not intended to deprive him
+of the right to exercise his skilled judgment in the difficult questions
+that might arise from time to time in the navigation of his ship. His
+omission to follow the advice in all respects cannot fairly be
+attributed either to negligence or incompetence.
+
+[Sidenote: Skilled and experienced judgment.]
+
+"He exercised his judgment for the best. It was the judgment of a
+skilled and experienced man, and although others might have acted
+differently, and, perhaps, more successfully, he ought not, in my
+opinion, to be blamed."
+
+[Sidenote: More than one submarine in wait.]
+
+As to the second answer, it is only necessary to outline the situation
+in order to realize how speculative is the assertion of fault. It is
+plain from the radio messages of the Admiralty, (May 6, 7:50 P. M.,
+"Submarines active off south coast of Ireland"; May 6, 8:30 P. M.,
+"Submarines off Fastnet"; the 11:25 message of May 7, supra; May 7,
+11:40 A. M., "Submarines five miles south of Cape Clear, proceeding west
+when sighted at 10 A. M.,") that more than one submarine was lying in
+wait for the _Lusitania_.
+
+[Sidenote: Submarines bold with unarmed vessels.]
+
+A scientific education is not necessary to appreciate that it is much
+more difficult for a submarine successfully to hit a naval vessel than
+an unarmed merchant ship. The destination of a naval vessel is usually
+not known, that of the _Lusitania_ was. A submarine commander, when
+attacking an armed vessel, knows that he, as the attacker, may and
+likely will also be attacked by his armed opponent. The _Lusitania_ was
+as helpless in that regard as a peaceful citizen suddenly set upon by
+murderous assailants. There are other advantages of the naval vessel
+over the merchant ship which need not be referred to.
+
+[Sidenote: Probably two submarines.]
+
+It must be assumed that the German submarine commanders realized the
+obvious disadvantages which necessarily attached to the _Lusitania_,
+and, if she had evaded one submarine, who can say what might have
+happened five minutes later? If there was, in fact, a third torpedo
+fired at the _Lusitania's_ port side, then that incident would strongly
+suggest that, in the immediate vicinity of the ship, there were at least
+two submarines.
+
+It must be remembered also that the _Lusitania_ was still in the open
+sea, considerably distant from the places of theretofore submarine
+activity and comfortably well off the Old Head of Kinsale, from which
+point it was about 140 miles to the Scilly Islands, and that she was
+nearly 100 miles from the entrance to St. George's Channel, the first
+channel she would enter on her way to Liverpool.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack intended to destroy life.]
+
+No transatlantic passenger liner, and certainly none carrying American
+citizens, had been torpedoed up to that time. The submarines, therefore,
+could lay their plans with facility to destroy the vessel somewhere on
+the way from Fastnet to Liverpool, knowing full well the easy prey which
+would be afforded by an unarmed, unconvoyed, well-known merchantman,
+which from every standpoint of international law had the right to expect
+a warning before its peaceful passengers were sent to their death. That
+the attack was deliberate and long contemplated and intended ruthlessly
+to destroy human life, as well as property, can no longer be open to
+doubt. And when a foe employs such tactics it is idle and purely
+speculative to say that the action of the Captain of a merchant ship, in
+doing or not doing something or in taking one course and not another,
+was a contributing cause of disaster or that had the Captain not done
+what he did or had he done something else, then that the ship and her
+passengers would have evaded their assassins.
+
+[Sidenote: The Captain and company not negligent.]
+
+I find, therefore, as a fact, that the Captain and, hence, the Cunard
+Company were not negligent.
+
+The importance of the cause, however, justifies the statement of another
+ground which effectually disposes of any question of liability.
+
+It is an elementary principle of law that even if a person is negligent
+recovery cannot be had unless the negligence is the proximate cause of
+the loss or damage.
+
+There is another rule, settled by ample authority, viz.: that, even if
+negligence is shown, it cannot be the proximate cause of the loss or
+damage if an independent illegal act or a third party intervenes to
+cause the loss.
+
+The question, then, is whether the act of the German submarine commander
+was an illegal act.
+
+[Sidenote: International law.]
+
+The United States courts recognize the binding force of international
+law.
+
+At least since as early as June 5, 1793, in the letter of Mr. Jefferson,
+Secretary of State, to the French Minister, our Government has
+recognized the law of nations as an "integral part" of the laws of the
+land.
+
+To ascertain international law, "resort must be had to the customs and
+usages of civilized nations; and, as evidence of these, to the works of
+commentators and jurists. * * * Such works are resorted to by judicial
+tribunals * * * for trustworthy evidence of what the law really is."
+
+Let us first see the position of our Government, and then ascertain
+whether that position has authoritative support. Mr. Lansing, in his
+official communication to the German Government dated June 9, 1915,
+stated:
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Lansing's communication.]
+
+[Sidenote: Responsibility of the German Government.]
+
+[Sidenote: A principle of humanity.]
+
+"But the sinking of passenger ships involves principles of humanity
+which throw into the background any special circumstances of detail that
+may be thought to affect the cases, principles which lift it, as the
+Imperial German Government will no doubt be quick to recognize and
+acknowledge, out of the class of ordinary subjects of diplomatic
+discussion or of international controversy. Whatever be the other facts
+regarding the _Lusitania_, the principal fact is that a great steamer,
+primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more
+than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war,
+was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning, and
+that men, women, and children were sent to their death in circumstances
+unparalleled in modern warfare. The fact that more than one hundred
+American citizens were among those who perished made it the duty of the
+Government of the United States to speak of these things and once more
+with solemn emphasis to call the attention of the Imperial German
+Government to the grave responsibility which the Government of the
+United States conceives that it has incurred in this tragic occurrence,
+and to the indisputable principle upon which that responsibility rests.
+The Government of the United States is contending for something much
+greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce. It is
+contending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights of humanity,
+which every Government honors itself in respecting and which no
+Government is justified in resigning on behalf of those under its care
+and authority. Only her actual resistance to capture or refusal to stop
+when ordered to do so for the purpose of visit could have afforded the
+commander of the submarine any justification for so much as putting the
+lives of those on board the ship in jeopardy. This principle the
+Government of the United States understands the explicit instructions
+issued on August 3, 1914, by the Imperial German Admiralty to its
+commanders at sea to have recognized and embodied as do the naval codes
+of all other nations, and upon it every traveler and seaman had a right
+to depend. It is upon this principle of humanity, as well as upon the
+law founded upon this principle, that the United States must stand. * * *
+
+[Sidenote: Americans must be safeguarded.]
+
+"The Government of the United States cannot admit that the proclamation
+of a war zone from which neutral ships have been warned to keep away may
+be made to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights either
+of American shipmasters or of American citizens bound on lawful errands
+as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality. It does not
+understand the Imperial German Government to question those rights. It
+understands it, also, to accept as established beyond question the
+principle that the lives of non-combatants cannot lawfully or rightfully
+be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction of an unresisting
+merchantman, and to recognize the obligation to take sufficient
+precaution to ascertain whether a suspected merchantman is in fact of
+belligerent nationality or is in fact carrying contraband of war under a
+neutral flag. The Government of the United States therefore deems it
+reasonable to expect that the Imperial German Government will adopt the
+measures necessary to put these principles into practice in respect of
+the safeguarding of American lives and American ships, and asks for
+assurances that this will be done. (See White Book of Department of
+State entitled 'Diplomatic Correspondence with Belligerent Governments
+Relating to Neutral Rights and Duties, European War, No. 2,' at p. 172.
+Printed and distributed October 21, 1915.)"
+
+The German Government found itself compelled ultimately to recognize the
+principles insisted upon by the Government of the United States, for,
+after considerable correspondence, and on May 4, 1916, (after the
+_Sussex_ had been sunk,) the German Government stated:
+
+[Sidenote: The _Sussex_ agreement.]
+
+"The German submarine forces have had in fact, orders to conduct
+submarine warfare in accordance with the general principles of visit
+and search and destruction of merchant vessels as recognized by
+international law, the sole exception being the conduct of warfare
+against the enemy trade carried on enemy freight ships that are
+encountered in the war zone surrounding Great Britain. * * *
+
+[Sidenote: Merchant ships not to be sunk without warning.]
+
+"The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the Government of
+the United States that the German naval forces have received the
+following orders: In accordance with the general principles of visit and
+search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international
+law, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as naval
+war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human
+lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. See
+Official Communication by German Foreign Office to Ambassador Gerard,
+May 4, 1916. (White Book No. 3 of Department of State, pp. 302, 305.)"
+
+[Sidenote: Right to make a prize.]
+
+There is, of course, no doubt as to the right to make prize of an enemy
+ship on the high seas, and, under certain conditions, to destroy her,
+and equally no doubt of the obligation to safeguard the lives of all
+persons aboard, whether passengers or crew.
+
+Two quotations from a long list of authorities may be given for
+convenience, one stating the rule and the other the attitude which
+obtains among civilized Governments. Oppenheim sets forth as among
+violations of the rules of war:
+
+"(12) Attack on enemy merchantmen without previous request to submit to
+visit."
+
+The observation in Vattel's "Law of Nations" is peculiarly applicable to
+the case of the _Lusitania_:
+
+"Let us never forget that our enemies are men. Though reduced to the
+disagreeable necessity of prosecuting our right by force of arms, let us
+not divest ourselves of that charity which connects us with all mankind.
+Thus shall we courageously defend our country's rights without
+violating those of human nature. Let our valor preserve itself from
+every stain of cruelty and the lustre of victory will not be tarnished
+by inhuman and brutal actions."
+
+[Sidenote: Codes and rules of nations.]
+
+In addition to these authorities are the regulations and practices of
+various Governments. In 1512 Henry VIII. issued instructions to the
+Admiral of the Fleet which accord with our understanding of modern
+international law. Such has been England's course since.
+
+Substantially the same rules were followed in the Russian and Japanese
+regulations, and probably in the codes or rules of many other nations.
+
+The rules recognized and practiced by the United States, among other
+things, provide:
+
+"(10) In the case of an enemy merchantman it may be sunk, but only if it
+is impossible to take it into port, and provided always that the persons
+on board are put in a place of safety. (U. S. White Book, European War,
+No. 3, p. 192.)"
+
+[Sidenote: Humane principles in American wars.]
+
+These humane principles were practiced both in the war of 1812 and
+during our own war of 1861-65. Even with all the bitterness (now happily
+ended and forgotten) and all the difficulties of having no port to which
+to send a prize, Captain Semmes of the _Alabama_ strictly observed the
+rule as to human life, even going so far as to release ships because he
+could not care for the passengers. But we are not confined to American
+and English precedents and practices.
+
+While acting contrary to its official statements, yet the Imperial
+German Government recognized the same rule as the United States, and
+prior to the sinking of the _Lusitania_ had not announced any other
+rule. The war zone proclamation of February 4, 1915, contained no
+warning that the accepted rule of civilized naval warfare would be
+discarded by the German Government.
+
+Indeed, after the _Lusitania_ was sunk, the German Government did not
+make any such claim, but in answer to the first American note in
+reference to the _Lusitania_ the German Foreign Office, per von Jagow,
+addressed to Ambassador Gerard a note dated May 18, 1915, in which,
+inter alia, it is stated in connection with the sinking of the British
+steamer _Falaba_:
+
+[Sidenote: The _Falaba_ case.]
+
+"In the case of the sinking of the English steamer _Falaba_, the
+commander of the German submarine had the intention of allowing
+passengers and crew ample opportunity to save themselves. It was not
+until the Captain disregarded the order to lay to and took to flight,
+sending up rocket signals for help, that the German commander ordered
+the crew and passengers by signals and megaphone to leave the ship
+within ten minutes. As a matter of fact, he allowed them twenty-three
+minutes, and did not fire the torpedo until suspicious steamers were
+hurrying to the aid of the _Falaba_. (White Book No. 2, U. S. Department
+of State, p. 169.)"
+
+Indeed, as late as May 4, 1916, Germany did not dispute the
+applicability of the rule, as is evidenced by the note written to our
+Government by von Jagow of the German Foreign Office, an extract of
+which has been quoted supra.
+
+Further, Section 116 of the German Prize Code, (Huberich and Kind
+translation, p. 68,) in force at the date of the _Lusitania's_
+destruction, conformed with the American rule. It provided:
+
+[Sidenote: Safety of passengers necessary.]
+
+"Before proceeding to a destruction of the vessel the safety of all
+persons on board, and, so far as possible, their effects, is to be
+provided for, and all ship's papers and other evidentiary material
+which, according to the views of the persons at interest, is of value
+for the formulation of the judgment of the prize court, are to be taken
+over by the commander."
+
+Thus, when the _Lusitania_ sailed from New York, her owner and master
+were justified in believing that, whatever else and theretofore
+happened, this simple, humane and universally accepted principle would
+not be violated. Few, at that time, would be likely to construe the
+warning advertisement as calling attention to more than the perils to be
+expected from quick disembarkation and the possible rigors of the sea
+after the proper safeguarding of the lives of passengers by at least
+full opportunity to take to the boats.
+
+It is, of course, easy now in the light of many later events, added to
+preceding acts, to look back and say that the Cunard Line and its
+Captain should have known that the German Government would authorize or
+permit so shocking a breach of international law and so foul an offense,
+not only against an enemy, but as well against peaceful citizens of a
+then friendly nation.
+
+But the unexpected character of the act was best evidenced by the horror
+which it excited in the minds and hearts of the American people.
+
+[Sidenote: Fault with the Imperial German Government.]
+
+[Sidenote: Those who plotted the crime.]
+
+The fault, therefore, must be laid upon those who are responsible for
+the sinking of the vessel, in the legal as well as moral sense. It is,
+therefore, not the Cunard Line, petitioner, which must be held liable
+for the loss of life and property. The cause of the sinking of the
+_Lusitania_ was the illegal act of the Imperial German Government,
+acting through its instrument, the submarine commander, and violating a
+cherished and humane rule observed, until this war, by even the
+bitterest antagonists. As Lord Mersey said, "The whole blame for the
+cruel destruction of life in this catastrophe must rest solely with
+those who plotted and with those who committed the crime."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Italy, bound at the outbreak of the war to Germany and Austria by a
+treaty which formed the so-called Triple Alliance, was in a most
+difficult position. Her people, however, were strongly convinced of the
+aggressive intentions of Germany, and, after careful consideration, the
+Government and the people alike decided to cast their lot with the
+Allies. Active operations were at once begun along the border between
+Italy and Austria, and in this difficult terrain the events which are
+described in the following chapter occurred.
+
+
+
+
+MOUNTAIN WARFARE
+
+HOWARD C. FELTON
+
+Copyright, Munsey's Magazine, May, 1916.
+
+
+[Sidenote: New style of warfare.]
+
+At the outbreak of the great war huge and well-equipped bodies of men,
+led by highly trained officers, rich in the strategic lore of centuries,
+set out to demonstrate the value of the theories that they had learned
+in time of peace. In a few months an entirely new style of warfare
+developed, and most of the military learning of the past was interesting
+chiefly because of its antiquity.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy and Austria fight in the Alps.]
+
+After the tremendous conflict at the Marne and the German rush for
+Calais, which was halted on the line of the Yser, there were on the
+western front no more battles in the old sense of the word. From the
+North Sea to the Swiss frontier, the fighting was just a novel and
+gigantic form of siege warfare. Cavalry became an obsolete arm. Battle
+tactics, in the old sense, ceased to have any meaning. Of strategy
+nothing much remained save the dictionary definition.
+
+And now, since Italy and Austria have locked horns above the clouds,
+among the glaciers and snow-faced slopes of the Alps, even the old
+text-books on mountain warfare have lost their significance. In the
+Trentino and along the Isonzo we see the consummation of a new style of
+mountain fighting, which grew out of the old methods in the struggle for
+the Carpathian passes during the first winter and spring of the war.
+
+In the old days, during a campaign in a mountain region, most of the
+battles were fought on the level--in the literal, not the colloquial
+sense of the word. There was a deal of marching and scouting among crags
+and precipices, but all with the object of obtaining the best position
+in an open valley or upland plain where the real fighting must take
+place. Now the smooth floors of the valleys are comparatively deserted,
+while whole armies are spread out over great peaks and dizzy snow-fields
+thousands of feet above sea-level, chopping trenches in the ice and
+sparring for some vantage-point on a crag that in peace times might tax
+the strength and skill of the amateur mountain-climber.
+
+[Sidenote: Bourcet's "Principles of Mountain Warfare."]
+
+Some time between 1764 and 1770, Pierre de Bourcet wrote a treatise
+entitled "The Principles of Mountain Warfare." This may seem to be going
+a long way back, but Bourcet's volume and that of the young Comte de
+Guilbert on general tactics have historical interest and importance
+because, according to Spenser Wilkinson, they show where some of
+Napoleon's strategic "miracles" were born. Bourcet's observations are as
+vital as if they had been written in 1910, but, as will be seen, many of
+them are somewhat musty in 1916.
+
+[Sidenote: Passes and defiles once the strong positions.]
+
+Bourcet, without the slightest idea of a battle-line extending from
+frontier to sea, lays down as the first principle of mountain warfare
+that when the enemy holds a strong position, the assailant should force
+him to leave it by turning it. These strong positions in the mountains
+were, until this war, the passes and defiles.
+
+"These contracted places," he explains, "as they generally constitute
+the principal objects of the defense, must compel the general who is
+taking the offensive to seek every possible means of turning them, or of
+misleading the enemy by diversions which will weaken him and facilitate
+access to them.
+
+"Suppose, for example, that the general on the defensive should be
+entrenched at all points surrounding his position in such a way as to be
+able to resist any direct attack that might be attempted against him, it
+would be necessary to attempt to turn him by some more distant point,
+choosing positions that would facilitate the scheme, and which, by
+suggesting some different object, could not raise the suspicion that the
+troops there collected were destined for the purpose really in view.
+
+[Sidenote: Unlike modern warfare.]
+
+"It often happens in the mountains that the only passages favorable to
+our plans are interrupted by narrow defiles. In such cases we must avoid
+letting the enemy know our real purpose, and must undertake diversions,
+dividing our forces into small bodies. This method, which would be
+dangerous in any other sort of country, is indispensable in the
+mountains, and is the whole science of this kind of warfare, provided
+that the general who uses it always has the means to reconcentrate his
+forces when necessary."
+
+Bourcet's conclusion is that in such a campaign the offensive has great
+advantages over the defensive. It will always possess the initiative;
+and if it prepares its blow with sufficient secrecy and strikes swiftly,
+the enemy, whose troops are necessarily scattered along the whole line
+menaced, can never be ready to meet the attack.
+
+[Sidenote: Generals understand each other's strategy.]
+
+To-day, the only trouble about this beautifully tricky system of
+strategy is that the defending general would pay no attention to it. The
+Austrian general staff, for instance, knew that the Italians would try
+to smash through the frontier defenses of the Dual Empire, and that the
+natural avenues of attack were up the valley of the Adige, along the
+railway through Pontebba and Malborghetto, or between Malborghetto and
+the sea. The Austrians have enough men and guns to defend all these
+routes and all the tortuous pathways in between. So all they had to do
+was plant themselves on their chosen ground along the whole carefully
+fortified mountain line, and wait for the Italians to attack wherever
+they pleased.
+
+"It is only by marching and countermarching," Bourcet said, "that we can
+hope to deceive the enemy and induce him to weaken himself in certain
+positions in order to strengthen himself in others."
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy cannot be outflanked.]
+
+But this cannot be done in the mountain fighting in the Alps to-day. The
+Italians might march and countermarch as much as they pleased, but there
+is no possible way of turning the enemy out of his position by
+outflanking him. It is a case of frontal attack, with every valley
+blocked and every peak a fortress.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy's great objectives.]
+
+The Italians campaign has two principal objectives--Trent and Gorizia.
+These two lovely cities of Italia Irrendenta are respectively the keys
+to the right and left flank of the Austrian frontier. Trent guards the
+valley of the Adige, one of the few natural highways from Italy into
+Austrian territory. Bourcet himself, in 1735, designed the defense of
+this pathway at Rivoli, just inside the Italian boundary, where he laid
+out what were considered impregnable positions. To the north; where
+Trent lies, the country becomes more and more difficult for an invader,
+and up to this time the Italians have not been able to come within
+striking distance of the great Austrian fortress, though they hold
+Rovereto, and have cut the direct line of communication between Trent
+and Toblach.
+
+[Sidenote: Italian game on the Gorizia front.]
+
+On the Gorizia front they have made what in this war may be considered
+as important gains. Gorizia stands watch over the valley of the Isonzo
+and Austria's Adriatic littoral. Besides occupying Grado and Monfalcone
+in the coastlands, General Cadorna's forces have crossed the Isonzo at
+several points, have smashed through to the north, and now threaten to
+envelop Gorizia. Indeed, many observers believe that Cadorna could at
+any time take the place by a grand assault if he were willing to pay the
+cost in blood.
+
+Despite the very unfavorable character of the country, the Italians have
+gained more ground here in the same period than either the Germans or
+the Anglo-French forces in the flat or rolling plains of Flanders and
+northern France. But the outflanking tactics of Bourcet, with feints and
+swift maneuvering, have had little to do with it. The assailants have
+had to fight their way step by step.
+
+The Austrians had prepared all sorts of disagreeable surprises. They had
+hewn gun-positions out of solid cliffs, skilfully placed so as to cover
+the routes of approach, and had cemented up the embrasures. It was
+merely necessary to knock the cement out and pour shells upon the
+advancing Italians at a range of several miles. The batteries were
+inaccessible to storming parties, and the Italians had to drag up guns
+of equal caliber to put them out of business.
+
+[Sidenote: Ancient methods employed.]
+
+In some places rocks and masses of ice were rolled down the slopes, as
+in the brave old days of the Helvetians; and in this line the Austrians
+introduced an innovation. When the Italians began driving their trenches
+up the steep slopes of Podgora--the Gibraltar of Gorizia--the defenders
+rolled down barrels of kerosene and set them alight with artillery fire.
+This enterprise throve joyously until the Italian gunners got the range
+of the launching-point and succeeded in exploding a few barrels among
+the Austrians themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: Austria had possession of the heights.]
+
+The writer does not mean to give the impression that Italy's job in the
+Alps is all but finished. A glance at the map of the frontier will cure
+any one of such a notion. The Italians were forced to start this
+campaign under every strategic disadvantage. By the frontier delimited
+in 1866, they were left without natural defenses on the north and east.
+All along the Austrian boundary the heights remained in the hands of the
+Hapsburgs as natural menaces to Venetia and Lombardy. Italy received the
+plains, but Austria held the mountain fastnesses that hung above them.
+
+This is so much the case that when Italy declared war, the Austrian
+general orders reminded the troops that they were in the position of men
+on the top floor of a six-story house, defending it from attackers who
+must mount from the street under a plunging fire.
+
+[Sidenote: Chasseurs Alpins in the Vosges.]
+
+But in one way or another the Italians have been doggedly fighting their
+way up the walls of the house. For one thing, their Alpini have brought
+to great perfection the use of skis in military operations on the
+snow-clad slopes. This is the first war in which skis have really come
+to the front. In France, too, the Chasseurs Alpins have been able to
+show the Germans some astonishing things with their long wooden
+snow-shoes in the winter fighting among the crests of the Vosges.
+
+A typical instance of this is the story of the capture of a German post
+on the Alsatian frontier in the winter of 1914-15. The Germans, holding
+the railroad from Ste. Marie to Ste. Croix, were expecting an attack
+from the French position at St. Dié. This impression was deliberately
+strengthened by a heavy artillery fire from St. Dié, while a
+considerable detachment of the Chasseurs Alpins led a body of infantry
+along a winding mountain road to the village of Bonhomme. There they
+posted themselves just out of sight of the German lines, while the
+_chasseurs_ scaled the snow-covered heights and crept along the flank
+of the German position.
+
+When they had reached the desired position, the infantry charged along
+the road and the Chasseurs Alpins simultaneously whizzed down the slope
+on their skis. The swift flank attack did the business, and the Germans
+were driven for some miles down the valley of the Weiss toward Colmar.
+
+[Sidenote: Austrians capture of Mt. Lövchen.]
+
+One of the greatest single mountain successes of the war was the
+Austrian capture of Mount Lövchen, the huge black mass of rock, nearly
+six thousand feet high, which dominates the Austrian port of Cattaro and
+sentinels the little kingdom of Montenegro on the west.
+
+Ever since the war began the Austrians have from time to time made
+attempts to reach the summit of this mighty rock. It is only a matter of
+an hour or two by winding road in peace times, but the Austrians were
+something like eighteen months on the job; and in all this time it is
+doubtful if the defenders ever numbered much more than five thousand. It
+was not captured until the Montenegrins had practically run out of
+ammunition and of reasons for holding the position. The rest of their
+kingdom was overrun, and they were to all intents and purposes out of
+the war.
+
+[Sidenote: Russians in the Carpathians.]
+
+The Russian campaign in the Carpathians, before the great German drive
+of a year ago pushed the Czar's armies back into their own country, also
+illustrates how the mountain warfare of to-day grew by natural
+tendencies from the tactics of Bourcet into the trench warfare of
+northern France.
+
+In the first weeks of the war, when the great offensive movement of the
+Austrian army toward Lublin was crushed by the Grand Duke Nicholas, and
+the broken hosts of the Dual Monarchy were sent flying through Galicia
+and the Carpathians, a cloud of Cossack cavalry followed them and
+penetrated into the plains of Hungary. This last operation was merely a
+raid, however, and the Cossacks were soon galloping back through the
+mountain passes.
+
+Then the Russians laid siege to Przemysl, and occupied the whole of
+Galicia up to the line of the San. Later they pushed on westward to the
+Dunajec, threatening Cracow. This was their high tide. On their left
+flank was the mass of the Carpathians, pierced by a number of passes.
+The more important of these, from west to east, are the Tarnow, Dukla,
+Lupkow, and Uzsok.
+
+[Sidenote: The Carpathian passes.]
+
+The Austrians were rallied after some weeks, and put up something of a
+fight for these "contracted places." The Russians, following the
+precepts of Bourcet, threatened the passage which seemed most desirable,
+because of the railroad facilities, and delivered a heavy blow at the
+Dukla Pass, the least important of the four. Here they pushed through to
+Bartfeld, on the Hungarian plain. Then, however, Mackensen's fearful
+blow smashed the Russian line on the Dunajec and poured the German
+legions across Galicia in the rear of the Carpathian armies, forcing the
+Muscovites to abandon the passes and scurry home.
+
+[Sidenote: Plains more often battlegrounds.]
+
+Mountain warfare has always had a certain romantic glamour, and it has
+filled many pages in the literature of fighting. As a matter of
+historical fact, however, it has played a comparatively small part in
+the world's annals. Almost all the great campaigns have been fought out
+in the lowlands. It is Belgium, for instance, and not Switzerland, that
+has been proverbially the battle-ground of Europe. Napoleon and Suwaroff
+marched armies through the Alps, but only as a means of striking
+unexpectedly at the enemy who occupied the plains beyond.
+
+Up to the time of the present war, mountain campaigns have usually been
+no more than picturesque foot-notes to history, illuminated by the valor
+of raiding clansmen like Roderick Dhu of the Scottish Highlands, or
+guerrilla chiefs like Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese patriot. Hofer's
+struggle against Napoleon was indeed a gallant and notable one, but it
+scarcely entered into the main current of history.
+
+[Sidenote: Garibaldi's mountain campaigns.]
+
+If, however, we include Garibaldi among the mountain fighters--and such
+was the characteristic bent of his remarkable military genius--we must
+accord him a place among the molders of modern Europe, for without his
+flashing sword Italy could not have been liberated and united. His two
+Alpine campaigns against the Austrians were successful and effective,
+but his most brilliant powers were shown in his memorable invasion of
+Sicily in 1860. Chased ashore at Marsala by the Neapolitan war-ships,
+and narrowly escaping capture, he led his followers--one thousand
+red-shirted volunteers armed with obsolete muskets--into the Sicilian
+mountains, where he played such a game that within two months he
+compelled the surrender of a well-equipped army of nearly thirty
+thousand regulars. The history of warfare can show but few exploits so
+daring and so dramatic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most important military movement on the western front in the early
+autumn of 1915 was the great French offensive in Champagne. During the
+preceding months of the spring and summer, there had been hard fighting
+all along the 400-mile line from the North Sea to Switzerland. The
+military results had been small on either side and now the French
+resolved on a mighty offensive which should be decisive in its
+accomplishments. What these results actually were is told in the
+following narrative.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE OF 1915
+
+OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF THE FRENCH HEADQUARTERS STAFF
+
+Copyright, National Review, January, 1916.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Menace of the French in Alsace.]
+
+After the battles of May and June, 1915, in Artois, activity on the
+Western front became concentrated in the Vosges, where, by a series of
+successful engagements, we managed to secure possession of more
+favorable positions and to retain them in spite of incessant
+counter-attacks. The superiority established over the adversary, the
+wearing down of the latter through vain and costly counter-offensives,
+which absorbed in that sector his local resources; the state of
+uncertainty in which the Germans found themselves in view of the menace
+of a French division in Alsace--such were the immediate results of these
+engagements. From the number of the effectives engaged, and the limited
+front along which the attacks took place, those attacks nevertheless
+were no more than local.
+
+[Sidenote: Preparing for a great offensive.]
+
+While those operations were developing, the higher command was carefully
+preparing for a great offensive. The situation of the Russian armies
+imposed on us, as their Allies, obligations the accomplishment of which
+had been made possible by the results of a long course of preparation no
+less than by the aid of circumstances.
+
+[Sidenote: Improved defensive organizations.]
+
+The inaction of the adversary, engaged on the Eastern front in a series
+of operations of which he had not foreseen the difficulties, and thus
+reduced to the defensive on our front, left the initiative of the
+operations in our hands. The landing in France of fresh British troops
+enabled Marshal French to take upon himself the defence of a portion of
+the lines hitherto held by French troops. The improvement of our
+defensive organizations, which made possible certain economies in the
+effectives, the regrouping of units and the creation of new units, also
+had the effect of placing a larger number of men at the disposal of the
+Generalissimo. The increased output of war _matériel_ ensured him the
+necessary means for a complete artillery preparation.
+
+[Sidenote: Joffre's appeal to the troops.]
+
+Among all the elements of success which were thus united at the end of
+the summer of 1915, not the least was the incomparable individual worth
+of the French soldier. It was to the traditional warlike qualities of
+the race that the Generalissimo appealed when, on September 23, 1915, he
+addressed to the troops the following general order, which was read to
+the regiments by their officers:
+
+        "SOLDIERS OF THE REPUBLIC
+
+        "After months of waiting, which have enabled us
+        to increase our forces and our resources, while
+        the adversary has been using up his own, the
+        hour has come to attack and conquer and to add
+        fresh glorious pages to those of the Marne and
+        Flanders, the Vosges and Arras.
+
+        "Behind the whirlwind of iron and fire let
+        loose, thanks to the factories of France, where
+        your brothers have, night and day, worked for
+        us, you will proceed to the attack, all
+        together, on the whole front, in close union
+        with the armies of our Allies.
+
+[Sidenote: The spirit of the soldier.]
+
+        "Your _élan_ will be irresistible. It will
+        carry you at a bound up to the batteries of the
+        adversary, beyond the fortified lines which he
+        has placed before you.
+
+        "You will give him neither pause nor rest until
+        victory has been achieved.
+
+        "Set to with all your might for the deliverance
+        of the soil of la Patrie, for the triumph of
+        justice and liberty.
+
+                                          "J. JOFFRE."
+
+The description of the operations in Champagne will show under what
+conditions our troops acquitted themselves of the task assigned to them,
+and also the value and significance of this success, without precedent
+in the war of positions in which we are at present engaged.
+
+[Sidenote: The German line that was broken.]
+
+The German line that was broken in Champagne is the same that was
+fortified by our adversaries after the victory of the Marne. It rests on
+the western side on the Massif de Moronvillers; to the east it stretches
+as far as the Argonne. It was intended to cover the railway line from
+Challerange to Bazancourt, a line indispensable for the concentration
+movements of the German troops. The offensive front, which extended from
+Auberive to the east of Ville-sur-Tourbe, presents a varied aspect. From
+east to west may be seen:
+
+[Sidenote: A wooded glacis.]
+
+(1) A glacis about eight kilometres in width, the gentle slopes of which
+are covered by numerous little woods. The road from Saint-Hilaire to
+Saint-Souplet, with the Baraque de l'Epine de Vedegrange, marks
+approximately its axis.
+
+[Sidenote: Valley of Souain.]
+
+(2) The hollow, at the bottom of which is the village of Souain and of
+which the first German line followed the further edge. The road from
+Souain to Pomme-Py describes the radius of this semi-circle. The farm of
+Navarin, at a distance of three and a half kilometres to the north of
+Souain, stands on the top of the hills.
+
+[Sidenote: Second German line.]
+
+(3) To the north of Perthes a comparatively tranquil region of uniform
+aspect, forming between the wooded hills of the Trou Bricot and those of
+the Butte du Mesnil a passage three kilometres wide, barred by several
+lines of trenches and ending at a series of heights, the Butte de
+Souain, Hills 195 and 201, and the Butte de Tahure, surmounted by the
+second German line.
+
+[Sidenote: A strong German position.]
+
+(4) To the north of Le Mesnil, a very strong position, bastioned on the
+west by two twin heights (Mamelle Nord and Trapèze), on the east by the
+Butte du Mesnil. The German trenches formed between these two bastions a
+powerful curtain, behind which extended as far as Tahure a thickly
+wooded, undulating region.
+
+(5) To the north of Beauséjour a bare terrain easily practicable, with a
+gentle rise in the direction of Ripon as far as the farm of Maisons de
+Champagne.
+
+[Sidenote: Eastern flank of the German line.]
+
+(6) To the north of Massiges, Hills numbered 191 and 199, describing on
+the map the figure of a hand, very strongly constructed and constituting
+the eastern flank of the whole German line. This tableland slopes down
+gently in the direction of Ville-sur-Tourbe.
+
+[Sidenote: German system of trench defenses.]
+
+The achievements of our troops from September 25 to October 3, 1915, in
+this region may be thus summarised: They scaled the whole of the glacis
+of l'Epine de Vedegrange; they occupied the ridge of the hollow at
+Souain; debouched in the opening to the north of Perthes to the slopes
+of Hill 195 and as far as the Butte de Tahure; carried the western
+bastions of the curtain of le Mesnil; advanced as far as Maisons de
+Champagne and took by assault the "hand" of Massiges. That is to say
+that they captured an area about forty square kilometres in extent. The
+importance of that figure is shown when one examines on the map
+accompanying this report the position of the German trenches, with a
+view to understanding the system of defence adopted by our adversaries.
+Two positions, distant from three to four kilometres from each other,
+stand out clearly. The first is the more dense; the trenches with their
+alleys of communication present at certain points the appearance of a
+wirework chessboard. Everywhere, to a depth of from 300 to 400 metres
+there are at least three parallel lines, sometimes five. The trenches
+are separated from each other as a rule by wire entanglements varying in
+width from 15 to 60 metres.
+
+[Sidenote: The second position.]
+
+[Sidenote: Alleys of communication.]
+
+The second position comprises only one trench, reinforced at certain
+points by a supporting trench. It is everywhere constructed, as is the
+wire network in front of it, in the form of a slope. On top there are
+merely observation stations with machine-gun shelters connected with the
+trench by an alley of communication. Between the two positions the
+terrain was also specially prepared, being cut up by transverse or
+diagonal trenches. The alleys of communication constructed to facilitate
+the firing, which were in many cases protected by wirework, make
+possible, according to the German method, a splitting up of the terrain
+by lateral fire and the maintenance, even after the tide of the
+assailants had flooded the trenches, of centres of resistance, veritable
+strongholds that could only be reduced after a siege. The positions of
+the artillery were established, as were also the camps and provision
+depots, behind the first position, the principal line of defence.
+
+[Sidenote: German organization known.]
+
+The whole German organization was known to us. It was shown on our maps,
+and every defensive work, trench, alley of communication, and clump of
+trees was given a special name or a number preceded by a certain letter,
+according to the sector of attack wherein it was situated. This minute
+precision in the details of the preparation is worthy of being pointed
+out; it constitutes one of the peculiarities of the present war, a
+veritable siege war, in which the objective has to be realised
+beforehand and clearly determined, every piece of ground having to be
+captured by heavy fighting, as was formerly every redan and every
+curtain.
+
+The bombardment of the German positions began on September 22, 1915 and
+was pursued night and day according to a time scheme and a division of
+labour previously determined upon. The results expected were:
+
+[Sidenote: Results of bombardment.]
+
+(1) The destruction of the wire entanglements.
+
+(2) The burial of the defenders in their dug-out.
+
+(3) The razing of the trenches and the demolition of the embrasures.
+
+(4) The stopping-up of the alleys of communication.
+
+[Sidenote: Work of the long-range guns.]
+
+The gun-fire covered not only the first trench but also the supporting
+trench and even the second position, although the distance at which the
+last was situated and the outline of its wire entanglements made it
+difficult to make field observations in that direction. At the same time
+the heavy long-range guns bombarded the headquarters, the cantonments
+and the railway stations; they cut the railway lines, causing a
+suspension of the work of revictualling. The best witnesses to the
+effectiveness of our bombardment are to be found in unfinished letters
+found upon prisoners.
+
+[Sidenote: Letters found on prisoners.]
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 23.
+
+        "The French artillery fired without
+        intermission from the morning of the 21st to
+        the evening of the 23rd, and we all took refuge
+        in our dug-outs. On the evening of the 22nd we
+        were to have gone to get some food, and the
+        French continued to fire on our trenches. In
+        the evening we had heavy losses, and we had
+        nothing to eat."
+
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 25.
+
+        "I have received no news, and probably I shall
+        not receive any for some days. The whole postal
+        service has been stopped; all places have been
+        bombarded to such an extent that no human being
+        could stand against it.
+
+        "The railway line is so seriously damaged that
+        the train service for some time has been
+        completely stopped.
+
+        "We have been for three days in the first line;
+        during those three days the French have fired
+        so heavily that our trenches are no longer
+        visible."
+
+[Sidenote: Number of wounded.]
+
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 24.
+
+        "For the last two days the French have been
+        firing like mad. To-day, for instance, a
+        dug-out has been destroyed. There were sixteen
+        men in it. Not one of them managed to save his
+        skin. They are all dead. Besides that, a number
+        of individual men have been killed and there
+        are a great mass of wounded.
+
+        "The artillery fires almost as rapidly as the
+        infantry. A mist of smoke hangs over the whole
+        battle-front, so that it is impossible to see
+        anything. Men are dropping like flies.
+
+        "The trenches are no longer anything but a
+        mound of ruins."
+
+[Sidenote: Sufferings of the soldiers.]
+
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 24.
+
+        "A rain of shells is pouring down upon us. The
+        kitchen and everything that is sent to us is
+        bombarded at night. The field-kitchens no
+        longer come to us. Oh, if only the end were
+        near! That is the cry every one is repeating.
+        Peace! Peace!"
+
+Extract from the notebook of a man of the 103rd Regiment:
+
+        "From the trench nothing much can now be seen;
+        it will soon be on a level with the ground."
+
+Letter of an artilleryman of the 100th Regiment of Field Artillery:
+
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 25.
+
+        "We have passed through some terrible hours. It
+        was as though the whole world was in a state of
+        collapse. We have had heavy losses. One company
+        of two hundred and fifty men had sixty killed
+        last night. A neighboring battery had sixteen
+        killed yesterday.
+
+[Sidenote: Destructiveness of the French shells.]
+
+        "The following instance will show you the
+        frightful destructiveness of the French shells.
+        A dug-out five metres deep, surmounted by 2
+        metres 50 centimetres of earth and two
+        thicknesses of heavy timber, was broken like a
+        match."
+
+Report made on September 24 in the morning, by the captain commanding
+the 3rd company of the 135th Regiment of Reserve:
+
+        "The French are firing on us with great bombs
+        and machine-guns. We must have reinforcements
+        at once. Many men are no longer fit for
+        anything. It is not that they are wounded, but
+        they are Landsturmers. Moreover the wastage is
+        greater than the losses announced.
+
+        "Send rations immediately; no food has reached
+        us to-day. Urgently want illuminating
+        cartridges and hand grenades. Is the hospital
+        corps never coming to fetch the wounded?"
+
+[Sidenote: German troops exhausted.]
+
+
+                                  "SEPTEMBER 25, 11.45.
+
+        "I urgently beg for reinforcements; the men are
+        dying from fatigue and want of sleep. I have no
+        news of the battalion."
+
+The time fixed for all the attacks on the Champagne front was a
+quarter-past nine in the morning. There was no hesitation. At the time
+mentioned the troops came out of the trenches with the aid of steps or
+scaling ladders and drew up in line before making a rush at the German
+trenches.
+
+The operation was rapidly effected. The objective was at an average
+distance of two hundred metres; this was covered without serious losses.
+The Germans were nearly everywhere surprised, and their defensive fire
+was not opened until after the invading tide of the attackers had passed
+by.
+
+[Sidenote: First German trench penetrated.]
+
+Over the whole attacking front our troops penetrated into the first
+German trench. But subsequently the progress was no longer uniform.
+While certain units continued their forward movement with extreme
+rapidity, others came up against machine guns still in action and either
+stopped or advanced only with difficulty. Some centres of the German
+resistance maintained their position for several hours and even for
+several days.
+
+[Sidenote: Outline of advance in Champagne.]
+
+[Sidenote: The battle a series of assaults.]
+
+A line showing the different stages of our advance in Champagne would
+assume a curiously winding outline, and would reveal on the one hand the
+defensive power of an adversary resolved to stick to the ground at all
+costs and on the other the victorious continuity of the efforts of our
+troops in this hand-to-hand struggle. The battle of Champagne must be
+considered in the light of a series of assaults, executed at the same
+moment, in parallel or convergent directions and having for their object
+either the capture or the hemming in of the first German position, the
+units being instructed to reform in a continuous line before the second
+position.
+
+[Sidenote: Unity of the action.]
+
+In order to understand the development, the terrain must be divided into
+several sectors, in each of which the operations, although closely
+co-ordinated, assumed, as a consequence either of the nature of the
+ground or of the peculiarities of the enemy defences, a different
+character. The unity of the action was nevertheless ensured by the
+simultaneity of the rush, which carried all the troops beyond the first
+position, past the batteries, to the defences established by the enemy
+on the heights to the south of Py.
+
+[Sidenote: At extremities offensive does not progress.]
+
+At the two extremities of our attacking front, subjected to converging
+fires and to counter-attacks on the flanks, our offensive made no
+progress. The fighting which took place in Auberive and round about
+Servon were distinguished by more than one trait of heroism, but they
+were destined to have no other result than that of containing the forces
+of the enemy and of immobilising him at the wings while the attack was
+progressing in the centre.
+
+[Sidenote: Position from Auberive to Souain a triangle.]
+
+[Sidenote: Wire checks the attackers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gains maintained.]
+
+(1) _Sector of l'Epine de Vedegrange._ The first German line was
+established at the base of a wide glacis covered with clumps of trees,
+and formed a series of salients running into each other. At certain
+points it ran along the edge of the woods where the supplementary
+defences were completed by abattis. The position as a whole between
+Auberive and Souain described a vast triangle. To the west of the road,
+from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet, the troops traversed the first
+enemy line and rushed forward for a distance of about a kilometre as far
+as a supporting trench, in front of which they were stopped by the
+wirework. A counterattack debouching from the west and supported by the
+artillery of Moronvillers caused a slight retirement of our left. The
+troops of the right, on the contrary, maintained their gains and
+succeeded on the following days in enlarging and extending them,
+remaining in touch with the units which were attacking on the east of
+the road. The latter had succeeded in a particularly brilliant manner
+in overcoming the difficulties with which they were confronted.
+
+[Sidenote: Nature of the position captured.]
+
+[Sidenote: Prisoners and guns seized.]
+
+The German position which they captured, with its triple and quadruple
+lines of trenches, its small forts armed with machine guns, its woods
+adapted for the purpose in view, constituted one of the most complete
+schemes of defence on the Champagne front and afforded cover to a
+numerous artillery concealed in the woods of the glacis. On this front,
+which was about three and a half kilometres wide, the attack on
+September 25, 1915 achieved a varying success. The troops on the left,
+after having penetrated into the first trench, had their progress
+arrested by machine guns. On the right, however, in spite of the
+obstacle presented by four successive trenches, each of which was
+covered by a network of wire entanglements and was concealed in the
+woods, where our artillery had difficulty in reaching them, the
+attacking troops gained nearly two kilometres, capturing seven hundred
+prisoners, of whom seventeen were officers, and seizing two guns of 77
+and five guns of 105.
+
+The advance recommenced on September 27, 1915. The left took possession
+of the woods lining the road from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet as far
+as the Epine de Vedegrange. Along the whole extent of the wooded heights
+as far as the western side of the hollow at Souain the success was
+identical. Notwithstanding the losses they sustained, notwithstanding
+the fatigue involved in the incessant fighting, the troops pushed
+forward, leaving behind them only a sufficient force to clear the woods
+of isolated groups of the enemy who still remained there. Between 4 and
+6 p.m. we arrived immediately in front of the second German position.
+
+[Sidenote: Second German position penetrated.]
+
+[Sidenote: Results of attack in this sector.]
+
+On the 27th we penetrated into this position at two points. We took
+possession of a trench about a kilometre wide, called the "parallel of
+the Epine de Vedegrange," which is duplicated almost throughout by
+another trench (the parallel of the wood of Chevron), and the wirework
+entanglements of which were intact, and precluded an assault. Further
+east our soldiers also continued, thanks to the conformation of the
+terrain, to penetrate into the enemy trench to a depth of about four
+hundred metres. But it was impossible to take advantage of this breach
+owing to a concentration of the German heavy artillery, a rapidly
+continued defence of the surrounding woods, and the fire of machine guns
+which it was not possible to capture and which were directed from the
+trenches on the right and left of the entry and exit to the breach. The
+results attained in this attacking sector alone may be stated thus:
+fifteen square miles of territory organized for defence throughout
+nearly the whole of its extent; on September 28, forty-four cannon,
+seven of 105 and six of 150, and more than three thousand prisoners.
+
+(2) _Sector of Souain._ The enemy lines round about Souain described a
+wide curve. In the immediate vicinity of our trenches, to the west at
+the Mill and to the east of the wood of Sabot, they swerved to the
+extent of over a kilometre to the north of the village and of the source
+of the Ain.
+
+[Sidenote: Sapping operations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Assault made in three directions.]
+
+When the offensive was decided upon it was necessary, in order to extend
+our lines forward to striking distance, to undertake sapping operations
+in parallel lines, and at times to make dashes by night over the
+intervening ground. The men working underground got into communication
+with the trenches by digging alleys of communication. This difficult
+undertaking was effected with very slight losses, under the eyes and
+under the fire of the enemy. Our parallel lines approached to within a
+distance of two hundred metres of the German trenches. The assault was
+made in three different directions: on the west in the direction of
+Hills 167 and 174; in the centre along a line running parallel with the
+road from Souain to Pomme-Py, in the direction of the farm of Navarin;
+on the east in the direction of the woods intersected by the road from
+Souain to Tahure, and in the direction of the Butte de Souain.
+
+[Sidenote: Machine gun positions surrounded.]
+
+The advance was extremely rapid--on the left two kilometres in less than
+one hour, in the centre three kilometres in forty-five minutes. At 10
+a.m. we had reached the farm of Navarin. Towards the east the forward
+march was more difficult. Some German machine guns stood their ground in
+the wood of Sabot and contributed to the resistance of the enemy. This
+defence was destined to be overcome by surrounding them. Arriving at the
+wooded region in that part where it is intersected by the road from
+Souain to Tahure, the assailants joined up on September 27, 1915 with
+those of our troops who were attacking to the north of Perthes. They
+left behind them only what was barely necessary in the way of troops to
+clear the woods of stragglers.
+
+[Sidenote: The French take guns and supplies.]
+
+Parlementaires were sent to the Germans, who received them with a volley
+of rifle shots and endeavored to escape during the night. The majority
+were killed and the survivors surrendered. Several batteries and a large
+quantity of _matériel_ (supplies of shells and provisions, grenades,
+telephones, wire, light railways) remained in our hands. On the 28th,
+along the entire length of the sector, we were immediately in front of
+the second German position. The troops had shown an unparalleled ardour
+and energy. They had been trained by officers whose courage and spirit
+of self-sacrifice are indicated by this casualty list; a general of
+division and four colonels wounded; two colonels killed.
+
+[Sidenote: Wooded region between Souain and Perthes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Region broken up by mines and trenches.]
+
+(3) _Sector of Perthes._ Between Souain and Perthes stretches a wooded
+region in which already, in February and March, heavy fighting had taken
+place. At that period we had contrived to take possession on the eastern
+extremity of this region of the German defences of the wood of Sabot. We
+had also made progress to the north-west of Perthes, on the summit of
+Hill 200. But between these two positions the Germans had retained a
+strong system of trenches forming a salient almost triangular in shape,
+to which we gave the name of the Pocket (_la Poche_). During the whole
+year a war of mining had been going on, and the region, which was broken
+up by concave constructions and intersected in all directions by
+trenches and alleys of communication, constituted an attacking ground
+all the more difficult because to the north of la Poche the somewhat
+thickly wooded Trou Bricot, the edges of which were in a state of
+defence, obstructed a rapid advance. This wooded region extends over a
+width of a kilometre and a half and a depth of four kilometres. The
+arrangements made for the attack contemplated, after the capture of la
+Poche, the surrounding of the wood of the Trou Bricot. The junction was
+to be made at the road from Souain to Tahure, with the troops assigned
+for the attack on the eastern border of the hollow at Souain.
+
+[Sidenote: The York trench.]
+
+The ground to the east of the Trou Bricot was less difficult. Open and
+comparatively flat, it was defended on the north of Perthes by a triple
+line of trenches distant 100 metres from each other. At a distance of
+1000 metres to 1200 metres a supporting trench, called the "York
+trench," was almost unique in its entire construction. The open country
+beyond stretched for a distance of three kilometres up to the second
+German position (Hill 195, Butte de Tahure). The principal effort was
+directed against this passage, the left flank of the attack being
+secured by a subsidiary action confined to the capture of la Poche.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack preceded by artillery fire.]
+
+At 9 a.m. our artillery directed its fire successively against the
+first-line trenches and the supporting trenches. The attack took place
+in the most perfect order. The assailants were already swarming in the
+German lines when the enemy artillery opened its defensive fire. Our
+counter-batteries hampered the German pieces and our reserves in the
+rear suffered little from their fire.
+
+[Sidenote: La Poche position surrendered.]
+
+[Sidenote: The York trench occupied.]
+
+At 9.45 a.m. the two columns which were attacking the extremities of the
+salient of la Poche joined hands. The position was surrounded. These
+Germans who remained alive inside it surrendered. At the same time a
+battalion was setting foot in the defences of the southern edges of the
+wood of Trou Bricot. The battalions that followed, marching to the
+outside of the eastern edges, executed with perfect regularity a "left
+turn" and came and formed up alongside the alleys of communication as
+far as the supporting trench. At the same moment, in the open country to
+the north of Perthes, the troops surmounted the three first-line
+trenches and, preceded by our artillery, made a quick march towards the
+York trench and occupied it almost without striking a blow.
+
+[Sidenote: Cleaning up the sector.]
+
+Further to the East, along the road from Perthes to Tahure, their
+advance encountered greater difficulties. Some centres of the German
+resistance could not be overcome. A sheltered machine gun continued its
+fire. An infantry officer, with a quartermaster of artillery, succeeded
+in getting into action a gun at a distance of three hundred metres from
+the machine gun and in firing at it at close quarters. Of the troops
+which were advancing to the north of Perthes, some made for the eastern
+border of the wood of Bricot, where they penetrated into the camps,
+ousting the defenders and surprising several officers in bed. Late in
+the afternoon one of our regiments had reached the road from Souain to
+Tahure. Other units were marching straight towards the north, clearing
+out the little woods on the way. They there captured batteries of which
+the artillerymen were riveted to their guns by means of bayonets
+(notably ten pieces of 105 and five of 150).
+
+[Sidenote: Progress hindered by weather.]
+
+The same work was being performed in the woods extending east of the
+road from Perthes to Souain and Tahure, where batteries were charged and
+captured while in action. At this spot a regiment covered four
+kilometres in two hours and captured ten guns, three of 105 and seven of
+77. But, from twelve o'clock midday onwards the rate of progress
+decreased, the bad weather making it impossible for our artillery to see
+what was going on, and rendering the joining up of the different corps
+extremely difficult. From the Buttes de Souain and Tahure the enemy
+directed converging fires on our men, who were advancing along very open
+ground. Nevertheless they continued their advance as far as the slopes
+of Hill 193 and the Butte de Tahure, and there dug themselves in.
+
+[Sidenote: Contact with second German position.]
+
+The night passed without any counter-attack by the enemy. Our artillery,
+including several field batteries, which had arrived immediately after
+the attack beyond the York trench, also brought forward its heavy
+pieces. At dawn the reconstituted regiments made another forward rush
+which enabled them to establish themselves in immediate contact with the
+second German position from the Butte de Souain to the Butte de Tahure,
+and even to seize several advanced posts in that neighbourhood.
+
+But on the lower slopes some of the wire entanglements remained intact;
+a successful assault on them would have been possible only after a fresh
+preparation. Up to October 6, 1915, the troops remained where they were,
+digging trenches and organizing a defensive system which had to be
+constructed all over again on ground devastated by the enemy fire.
+
+[Sidenote: Ravin des Cuisines.]
+
+(4) _Sector of Le Mesnil._ It was to the north of Le Mesnil that we
+encountered the greatest resistance on the part of the adversary. In the
+course of the engagements of the preceding winter we had succeeded in
+securing a foothold on top of the hill numbered 196. The Germans
+remained a little to the east, in a ravine which we continued to call by
+its designation of the "Ravine of the Kitchens" (Ravin des Cuisines).
+Our assault rendered us masters of it, but we could make no further
+progress.
+
+[Sidenote: Fighting on the Butte du Mesnil.]
+
+The German trenches are constructed on the northern slopes of Hill 196,
+and are concealed from field observation so that it is difficult for the
+artillery to play upon them. Moreover, they are flanked on one side by
+the twin heights of the Mamelles, on the other by the Butte du Mesnil.
+To the eastward some of our units contrived on September 25, 1915, to
+penetrate into the trenches of the _butte_ (knoll), but failed to
+maintain their ground, in consequence of a counter-attack supported by
+flank fires. Westward, it was not until the night of the 1st to the 2nd
+of October, 1915, that we captured the northern Mamelle, thus
+surrounding the works of the Trapèze which surmount the southern
+Mamelle.
+
+[Sidenote: Rapid and brilliant advance.]
+
+(5) _Sector of Beauséjour._ The attacks launched north of Beauséjour met
+with a more rapid and more brilliant success. The swarm of invaders
+throwing themselves on the first German lines captured one after the
+other the enemy works in the very sparsely timbered woods called the Fer
+de Lance wood and the Demi-Lune wood, and afterwards all the works known
+as the Bastion. In one rush certain units gained the top of Maisons de
+Champagne, past several batteries, killing the artillerymen as they
+served their pieces. The same movement took the assailants across the
+intricate region of the mine "funnels" of Beauséjour up to the extended
+wood intersected by the road to Maisons de Champagne. Our soldiers then
+came across German artillerymen engaged in unlimbering their guns. They
+killed the drivers and horses; the survivors surrendered.
+
+[Sidenote: Cavalry supports the infantry.]
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy counter-attacks.]
+
+Further westward the left wing of the attacking troops advanced with
+greater difficulty, being hampered by small forts and covered works with
+which the trenches were everywhere protected. It was at this moment that
+the cavalry came unexpectedly to the support of the infantry. Two
+squadrons of hussars having crossed our old trenches in face of a heavy
+defensive artillery fire prepared to gallop against the German batteries
+north of Maisons de Champagne, when they reached that part of the lines
+where the Germans still maintained their position. The latter
+immediately directed the fire of their machine guns against the
+cavalrymen, several of whose horses were hit. The hussars dismounted
+and, with drawn sabres, made for the trenches, while favoured by this
+diversion, the infantrymen resumed their forward movement. The
+resistance of the enemy broke down; more than six hundred Germans were
+captured in this way. In the course of the afternoon and during the day
+of September 25, 1915, some enemy counter-attacks were made from the
+direction of Ripont, but were unsuccessful in ousting us from the summit
+of Maisons de Champagne.
+
+On the following days a fierce struggle took place north of the summit
+in the region of a defensive work known as the "Ouvrage de la Défaite,"
+which was captured by us, lost, then recaptured, and finally evacuated
+in consequence of an extremely violent bombardment.
+
+[Sidenote: Heights of Massiges.]
+
+(6) _Sector of Massiges._ The safety of our troops which had advanced as
+far as the extended wood and Maisons de Champagne was assured by the
+capture of the summits of the heights of Massiges. This sharply
+undulating upland, numbered 199 on the north and 191 on the south,
+constituted in the hands of the Germans a fortress which they believed
+to be impregnable and from the top of which they commanded our positions
+in several directions. At 9.15 a.m. the two first attacking parties
+marched out in columns. The men went forth gaily and deliberately,
+preceded by the firing of the field artillery. By 9.30 a.m. our
+infantry, before the enemy had had time to recover themselves, had
+reached the summit.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy machine gun fire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lines of grenadiers.]
+
+From this moment, subject to machine gun and musketry fire, the men
+could only proceed slowly along the summits by the alleys of
+communication, with hand grenades, supported by the artillery, with whom
+they remained in constant touch by flag-signalling. As the advance of
+our grenadiers continued, the Germans surrendered in large numbers. An
+uninterrupted chain of grenade-bearers, like the chains of
+bucket-holders at a fire in former times, was established in the alleys
+of communication from Massiges forward, and each fresh arrival of
+grenades was accompanied by a fresh advance.
+
+[Sidenote: Value of possessing the heights.]
+
+From September 25 to October 3, 1915, the fight continued in this way
+and was carried on by our soldiers with fierce persistency. The Germans
+hurled upon the spot constant reinforcements and offered an obstinate
+resistance that has rarely been equalled. They stood up to be shot
+down--the machine-gun men at their guns, the grenadiers on their grenade
+chests. All attempts at a counter-attack remained equally unproductive.
+The possession of the heights of Massiges enabled us to extend our gains
+towards Ville-sur-Tourbe, while taking in flank the trenches which we
+had failed to secure by a frontal attack.
+
+The loss of the heights of Massiges appears to have particularly upset
+the German General Staff, which, after having denied the fact,
+represented that the ground which it had lost as a consequence of
+grenade fighting had been abandoned owing to artillery fire.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the enemy.]
+
+The attitude of the enemy was characterized by: (1) Surprise; (2)
+disorganization; (3) a sudden and almost disorderly engagement of the
+reserves; (4) the exhaustion and demoralization of the soldiers.
+
+[Sidenote: Reasons for surprise.]
+
+(1) It is beyond doubt that the Germans were surprised by the extent and
+violence of our attacks. They were expecting a French offensive. The
+orders of the day of Generals von Fleck and Von Ditfurth prove this.
+("The possibility of a great French offensive must be considered": Von
+Ditfurth, August 15. "The French Higher Command appears to be disposed
+to make another desperate effort": Von Fleck, September 26.) But the
+Germans foresaw neither the strength nor the success of the effort.
+During our artillery preparation twenty-nine battalions only were
+brought back to Champagne (the 183rd Brigade, the 5th Division of the
+3rd Corps, and one-half of the 43rd Division of Reserve). In thus
+limiting before the attack the reinforcements of its effectives the
+German General Staff showed that they did not suspect the vigour of the
+blow that was about to be delivered.
+
+The same thing happened with regard to the subordinate forces. Inside
+the shelters in the second line officers were captured while lying down;
+they had an unwarranted confidence in the strength of their first line,
+and the interruption of telephone communications had prevented their
+being informed of the rapid progress of our offensive.
+
+[Sidenote: Rapidity of French attack.]
+
+(2) This rapidity of our attack explains the disorganization of the
+adversary on the morning of September 25. At some points certain
+officers and non-commissioned officers were able to continue the
+resistance until the investment, followed by capitulation. But elsewhere
+there were prompt surrenders. Men were also seen flying before our
+attacking troops and being killed while making for their second
+position.
+
+[Sidenote: How the German reserves were utilized.]
+
+(3) In order to make up for the insufficiency of the local reserves the
+German military authorities had to put in line not only the important
+units which they held at their disposal behind the front (10th Corps
+brought back from Russia), but the local reserves from other sectors
+(Soissonnais, Argonne, Woevre, Alsace), which were despatched to
+Champagne one battalion after another, and even in groups of double
+companies.
+
+Nothing better indicates the disorganization of the German command and
+the significance of the check suffered than the conditions under which
+these reserves were engaged.
+
+The units were despatched to the fight completely disassociated. Among
+the regiments of the 5th Division (3rd Corps), one, the 81st, was
+identified near Massiges, while a battalion of the 12th was at Tahure
+and a battalion of the 32nd at the Trou Bricot. It was the same as
+regards the 56th Division, of which the 88th and 35th Regiments were
+despatched to Massiges and the 91st to Souain, while a battalion of the
+79th took up a position to the west of the Butte de Tahure.
+
+[Sidenote: Haste increased German losses.]
+
+Ill provided with food and munitions, the reinforcements were thrown
+into the engagement on an unknown terrain without indication as to the
+direction they had to take and without their junction with neighbouring
+units having been arranged. Through the haste with which they threw
+their reserves under the fire of our artillery and of our infantry,
+already in possession of the positions, the German General Staff
+considerably increased the number of their losses.
+
+[Sidenote: Soldiers brought by motor-car.]
+
+A letter taken from a soldier of the 118th Regiment furnishes us with
+proof of this: "We were put in a motor-car and proceeded at a headlong
+pace to Tahure, by way of Vouziers. Two hours' rest in the open air,
+with rain falling and then we had a six hours' march to take up our
+positions. On our way we were greeted by the fire of the enemy shells,
+so that, for instance, out of 280 men of the second company, only 224
+arrived safe and sound inside the trenches. These trenches, freshly dug,
+were barely from 35 to 50 centimetres deep. Continually surrounded by
+mines and bursting shells, we had to remain in them and do the best we
+could with them for 118 hours without getting anything hot to eat.
+
+"Hell itself could not be more terrible. To-day, at about twelve o'clock
+noon, 600 men, fresh troops, joined the regiment. In five days we have
+lost as many and more."
+
+[Sidenote: Battalions from many regiments.]
+
+The disorder amid which the reinforcements were engaged appears clearly
+from this fact, that on the only part of the front included between
+Maisons de Champagne and Hill 189 there were on October 2, 1915,
+thirty-two battalions belonging to twenty-one different regiments.
+
+(4) The violence of the shock sustained, and the necessity of replacing
+in the fighting line units which had almost entirely disappeared,
+hampered the German military authorities. On the first day they were
+unable to respond effectively even with their artillery, the fire of
+which along the whole front was badly directed and as a rule poorly
+sustained. The loss of numerous batteries obviously deprived them of a
+portion of their resources.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy endeavors to stem advance.]
+
+[Sidenote: Isolated battalion on the heights of Massiges.]
+
+The following days the enemy seemed to have but one idea, to strengthen
+their second line to stem our advance. The counter-attacks were
+concentrated on a comparatively unimportant part of the battlefront in
+certain places, the loss of which appeared to them to be particularly
+dangerous. Therefore on the heights of Massiges the German military
+authorities threw in succession isolated battalions of the 123rd, 124th,
+and 120th regiments, of the 30th regular regiment and of the 2nd
+regiment of Ersatz Reserve (16th Corps), which were each in turn
+decimated, for these counter-attacks, hastily and crudely prepared, all
+resulted in sanguinary failures. Generally speaking, the offensive
+capacity of the Germans appeared to be broken. The following order of
+the day of General von Ditfurth bears witness to this:
+
+[Sidenote: General von Ditfurth's order.]
+
+"It seemed to me that the infantry at certain points was confining its
+action to a mere defensive. . . . I cannot protest too strongly against
+such an idea, which necessarily results in destroying the spirit of
+offensive in our own troops and in arousing and strengthening in the
+mind of the enemy a feeling of his superiority.
+
+"The enemy is left full liberty of action and our own action is
+subjected to the will of the enemy."
+
+[Sidenote: Prisoners exhausted.]
+
+(5) In an engagement in the open the number of prisoners is an
+indication of the spirit of the enemy. In Champagne the Germans
+surrendered in constituted units (sections or companies), and even in
+groups of several hundred men. They confessed that they were worn out.
+They had been, for the most part, without supplies for several days and
+had suffered more particularly from thirst. They all showed that they
+had been greatly impressed by our uninterrupted artillery fire, the
+feeble response of their own guns, and the extent of their losses.
+
+Here by way of specimen is what was set down by a reserve lieutenant of
+the 90th Regiment of infantry (10th Corps):
+
+"Yesterday I had sixteen men killed by high explosive bombs. The trench
+was nearly filled up. Extreme activity of the French howitzers. Our
+artillery fires shrapnel, but unfortunately does not get the range.
+
+"B . . . was also killed. The second battalion, too, has had heavy losses.
+It is frightful. Those confounded high explosive shells!
+
+[Sidenote: An officer wishes for rain.]
+
+"The weather is becoming fine again. If only it would rain again, or fog
+would come. As it is, the aviators will arrive and we shall have more
+high explosive bombs and flank firing on the trenches. Abominable fine
+weather! Fog, fog, come to our assistance."
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy's lines.]
+
+It is difficult to estimate precisely the German losses. Certain
+indications however serve to indicate their extent. A _vizefeldwebel_
+declares that he is the only man remaining out of his company. A soldier
+of the third battalion of the 123rd Regiment engaged on the 26th, states
+that his regiment was withdrawn from the front after only two days'
+fighting because its losses were too great. The 118th Regiment relieved
+in the trenches the 158th Regiment after it had been reduced to fifteen
+or twenty men per company. Certain units disappeared completely, as for
+instance the 27th Reserve Regiment and the 52nd Regular Regiment,
+which, by the evening of the 25th had left in our hands, the first
+thirteen officers and 933 men, the second twenty-one officers and 927
+men. In order to arrive at the total of the losses certain figures may
+serve as an indication.
+
+[Sidenote: German strength in Champagne.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ninety-three fresh battalions.]
+
+At the beginning of September, 1915 the Germans had on the Champagne
+front seventy battalions. In anticipation of our attack they brought
+there, before September 25, 1915, twenty-nine battalions. This makes
+ninety-nine battalions, representing, if account be taken of the
+corresponding artillery and pioneer formations, 115,000 men directly
+engaged. The losses due to the artillery preparation and the first
+attacks were such that from September 25 to October 15, 1915, the German
+General Staff was compelled to renew its effectives almost in their
+entirety by sending ninety-three fresh battalions.
+
+It may be assumed that the units engaged on September 25 and 26, 1915,
+suffered losses amounting to from 60 to 80 per cent. (even more for
+certain corps, which have entirely disappeared). The new units brought
+into line for the counter-attacks, and subjected in connection with
+these to an incessant bombardment, lost 50 per cent. of their
+effectives, if not more. We think we shall be understating the case if
+we set down 140,000 men as the sum of the German losses in Champagne.
+Account must be taken of the fact that of this number the proportion of
+slightly wounded men able to recuperate rapidly and return to the front
+is, in the case of the Germans, very much below the average proportion
+in connection with other engagements by reason of the fact that they
+were unable to gather up their wounded, and thus left in our hands
+nearly the whole of the troops entrusted with the defence of the first
+position.
+
+[Sidenote: Enthusiasm of the French.]
+
+All those who lived through the engagements of the battle of Champagne
+experienced the sensation of victory. The aspect of the battlefield, the
+long columns of prisoners, the look in the eyes of our soldiers, their
+animation and their enthusiasm, all this gave expression to the
+importance of a success which the Generalissimo recognized in these
+terms.
+
+[Sidenote: Thanks of the commander-in-chief.]
+
+
+                         "Grand Headquarters,
+                                      "OCTOBER 5, 1915.
+
+        "The Commander-in-Chief addresses to the troops
+        under his orders the expression of his profound
+        satisfaction at the results obtained up to the
+        present day by the attacks.
+
+        "Twenty-five thousand prisoners, three hundred
+        and fifty officers, a hundred and fifty guns, a
+        quantity of material which it has not yet been
+        possible to gauge, are the trophies of a
+        victory the echo of which throughout Europe
+        indicates its importance.
+
+        "The sacrifices willingly made have not been in
+        vain. All have been able to take part in the
+        common task. The present is a sure guarantee to
+        us of the future.
+
+        "The Commander-in-Chief is proud to command the
+        finest troops France has ever known.
+
+                                         "J. JOFFRE."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all the brutal atrocities perpetrated by the Germans in Belgium, none
+aroused such world-wide horror and execration as the murder of Edith
+Cavell, an English nurse, on the charge of aiding English and Belgian
+soldiers who escaped from Belgium in order to rejoin their respective
+armies.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF EDITH CAVELL
+
+BRAND WHITLOCK
+
+Copyright, Delineator, November, 1918.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The first letter of inquiry not answered.]
+
+[Sidenote: Reasons given for Miss Cavell's arrest.]
+
+One day in August it was learned at the Legation that an English nurse,
+named Edith Cavell, had been arrested by the Germans. I wrote a letter
+to the Baron von der Lancken to ask if it was true that Miss Cavell had
+been arrested, and saying that if it were I should request that Maître
+de Leval, the legal counselor of the Legation, be permitted to see her
+and to prepare for her defense. There was no reply to this letter, and
+on September tenth I wrote a second letter, repeating the questions and
+the requests made in the first. On the twelfth of September I had a
+reply from the Baron stating that Miss Cavell had been arrested on the
+fifth of August, that she was confined in the prison of St. Gilles, that
+she had admitted having hidden English and French soldiers in her home,
+as well as Belgians, of an age to bear arms, all anxious to get to the
+front, that she had admitted also having furnished these soldiers with
+money to get to France, and had provided guides to enable them to cross
+the Dutch frontier; that the defense of Miss Cavell was in the hands of
+Maître Thomas Braun, and that inasmuch as the German Government, on
+principle, would not permit accused persons to have any interviews
+whatever, he could not obtain permission for Maître de Leval to visit
+Miss Cavell as long as she was in solitary confinement.
+
+[Sidenote: The German mentality.]
+
+[Sidenote: The principle that power makes right.]
+
+[Sidenote: The accused without rights.]
+
+For one of our Anglo-Saxon race and legal traditions to understand
+conditions in Belgium during the German occupation, it is necessary to
+banish resolutely from the mind every conception of right we have
+inherited from our ancestors--conceptions long since crystallized into
+inimitable principles of law and confirmed in our charters of liberty.
+In the German mentality these conceptions do not exist; they think in
+other sequences; they act according to another principle, if it is a
+principle, the conviction that there is only one right, one privilege,
+and that it belongs exclusively to Germany, the right, namely, to do
+whatever they have the physical force to do. These so-called courts, of
+whose arbitrary and irresponsible and brutal nature I have tried to
+convey some notion, were mere inquisitorial bodies, guided by no
+principle save that of interest in their own bloody nature; they did as
+they pleased, and would have scorned a Jeffreys as too lenient, a Lynch
+as too formal, a Spanish _auto da fé_ as too technical, and a tribunal
+of the French Revolution as soft and sentimental. Before them the
+accused had literally no rights, not even to present a defense, and if
+he was permitted to speak in his own behalf, it was only as a generous
+and liberal favor.
+
+It was before such a court that Edith Cavell was to be arraigned. I had
+asked Maître de Leval to provide for her defense, and on his advice,
+inasmuch as Maître Braun was already of counsel in the case, chosen by
+certain friends of Miss Cavell, I invited him into consultation.
+
+[Sidenote: Personality of Edith Cavell.]
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell's character and ability.]
+
+Edith Cavell was a frail and delicate little woman about forty years of
+age. She had come to Brussels some years before the war to exercise her
+calling as a trained nurse. She soon became known to the leading
+physicians of the capital and nursed in the homes of the leading
+families. But she was ambitious, and devoted to her profession, and ere
+long had entered a nursing-home in the Rue de la Clinique, where she
+organized for Doctor Depage a training-school for nurses. She was a
+woman of refinement and education; she knew French as she knew her own
+language; she was deeply religious, with a conscience almost puritan,
+and was very stern with herself in what she conceived to be her duty. In
+her training-school she showed great executive ability, was firm in
+matters of discipline, and brought it to a high state of efficiency. And
+every one who knew her in Brussels spoke of her with that unvarying term
+of respect which her noble character inspired.
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Whitlock engages a defender.]
+
+Some time before the trial, Maître Thomas Braun announced to the
+Legation that for personal reasons he would be obliged to withdraw from
+the case, and asked that some one else appear for Miss Cavell. We
+engaged Maître Sadi Kirschen.
+
+[Sidenote: The court martial in the Senate chamber.]
+
+It was the morning of Thursday, October seventh, that the case came
+before the court martial in the Senate chamber, where the military
+trials always took place, and Miss Cavell was arraigned with the
+Princess de Croy, the Countess de Belleville, and thirty-two others. The
+accused were seated in a circle facing the court, in such a way that
+they could neither see nor communicate with their own counsel, who were
+compelled to sit behind them. Nor could they see the witnesses, who were
+also placed behind them.
+
+The charge brought against the accused was that of having conspired to
+violate the German Military Penal Code, punishing with death those who
+conduct troops to the enemy.
+
+[Sidenote: The trial secret.]
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell's attitude.]
+
+[Sidenote: Admits aiding English soldiers.]
+
+We have no record of that trial; we do not know all that occurred there
+behind the closed doors of that Senate chamber, where for fourscore
+years laws based on another and more enlightened principle of justice
+had been discussed. Miss Cavell did not know, or knew only in the
+vaguest manner, the offense with which she was charged. She did not deny
+having received at her hospital English soldiers whom she nursed and to
+whom she gave money; she did not deny that she knew they were going to
+try to cross the border into Holland. She even took a patriotic pride in
+the fact. She was very calm. She was interrogated in German, a language
+she did not understand, but the questions and responses were translated
+into French. Her mind was very alert, and she was entirely
+self-possessed, and frequently rectified any inexact details and
+statements that were put to her. When, in her interrogatory, she was
+asked if she had not aided English soldiers left behind after the early
+battles of the preceding Autumn about Mons and Charleroi, she said yes;
+they were English and she was English, and she would help her own. The
+answer seemed to impress the court. They asked her if she had not helped
+twenty.
+
+"Yes," she said "more than twenty; two hundred."
+
+"English?"
+
+"No, not all English; French and Belgians, too."
+
+But the French and Belgians were not of her own nationality, said the
+judge--and that made a serious difference. She was subjected to a
+nagging interrogatory. One of the judges said that she had been foolish
+to aid the English because, he said, the English are ungrateful.
+
+"No," replied Miss Cavell, "the English are not ungrateful."
+
+"How do you know they are not?" asked the inquisitor.
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell makes a fatal admission.]
+
+"Because," she answered, "some of them have written to me from England
+to thank me."
+
+It was a fatal admission on the part of the tortured little woman; under
+the German military law her having helped soldiers to reach Holland, a
+neutral country, would have been a less serious offense, but to aid them
+to reach an enemy country, and especially England, was the last offense
+in the eyes of the German military court.
+
+[Sidenote: Rumor that death sentence is asked.]
+
+The trial was concluded on Saturday, and on Sunday one of the nurses in
+Miss Cavell's school came to tell me that there was a rumor about town
+that the prosecuting officer had asked the court to pronounce a sentence
+of death in the cases of the Princess de Croy, the Countess de
+Belleville, and of Miss Cavell, and of several others. I remember to
+have said to Maître de Leval, when he came up to my room to report the
+astounding news:
+
+"That's only the usual exaggeration of the prosecutor; they all ask for
+the extreme penalty, everywhere, when they sum up their cases."
+
+[Sidenote: Leval's opinion of German courts.]
+
+"Yes," said Maître de Leval, "and in German courts they always get it."
+
+Maître de Leval sent a note to Maître Kirschen, asking him to come on
+Monday, at eight-thirty o'clock, to the Legation or to send a word
+regarding Miss Cavell. Maître Kirschen did not send Maître de Leval the
+word he had requested, and on that Sunday, de Leval saw another lawyer
+who had been on the case and could tell him what had taken place at the
+trial. The lawyer thought that the court martial would not condemn Miss
+Cavell to death. At any rate, no judgment had been pronounced, and the
+judges themselves did not appear to be in agreement.
+
+[Sidenote: Leval asks to see Miss Cavell.]
+
+On Monday, the eleventh of October, at eight-thirty in the morning,
+Maître de Leval went to the _Politische Abteilung_ in the Rue
+Lambermont, and found Conrad. He spoke to him of the case of Miss Cavell
+and asked that, now that the trial had taken place, he and the Reverend
+Mr. Gahan, the rector of the English church, be allowed to see Miss
+Cavell. Conrad said he would make inquiries and inform de Leval by
+telephone, and by one of the messengers of the Legation who that morning
+happened to deliver some papers to the _Politische Abteilung_, Conrad
+sent word that neither the Reverend Mr. Gahan nor Maître de Leval could
+see Miss Cavell at that time, but that Maître de Leval could see her as
+soon as the judgment had been pronounced.
+
+[Sidenote: Waiting for judgment to be pronounced.]
+
+[Sidenote: Promise to inform the Legation.]
+
+At eleven-thirty o'clock on the Monday morning, Maître de Leval himself
+telephoned to Conrad, who repeated this statement. The judgment had not
+yet been rendered, he said, and Maître de Leval asked him to let him
+know as soon as the judgment had been pronounced, so that he might go to
+see Miss Cavell. Conrad promised this, but added that even then the
+Reverend Mr. Gahan could not see her, because there were German
+Protestant pastors at the prison, and that if Miss Cavell needed
+spiritual advice or consolation she could call on them. Conrad concluded
+this conversation by saying that the judgment would be rendered on the
+morrow, that is, on Tuesday, or the day after, and that even when it had
+been pronounced it would have to be signed by the Military Governor, and
+that the Legation would be kept informed.
+
+At twelve-ten on the Monday, not having received any news from Maître
+Kirschen, Maître de Leval went to his house, but did not find him there,
+and left his card.
+
+[Sidenote: Leval makes repeated inquiries.]
+
+At twelve-twenty o'clock, Maître de Leval went to the house of the
+lawyer to whom reference has already been made, and left word for him to
+go to his home.
+
+At four o'clock that afternoon the lawyer arrived at the Legation and
+said that he had been to see the Germans at eleven o'clock, and that
+there he had been told no judgment would be pronounced before the
+following day. Before leaving the Legation to go home, Maître de Leval
+told to Gibson all that had happened, and asked him to telephone again
+to Conrad before going home himself. Then at intervals all day long the
+inquiry had been repeated, and the same response was made.
+
+[Sidenote: The chancellerie was closed for the night.]
+
+Monday evening at six-twenty o'clock, Belgian time, Topping, one of the
+clerks of the Legation, with Gibson standing by, again called Conrad on
+the telephone, again was told that the judgment had not been pronounced,
+and that the Political Department would not fail to inform the Legation
+the moment the judgment was confirmed. And the _chancellerie_ was closed
+for the night.
+
+[Sidenote: A nurse informs Leval of the death sentence.]
+
+At nine o'clock that Monday evening, Maître de Leval appeared suddenly
+at the door of my chamber; his face was deadly pallid; he said that he
+had just heard from the nurse who kept him informed, that the judgment
+had been confirmed and that the sentence of death had been pronounced on
+Miss Cavell at half-past four o'clock that afternoon, and that she was
+to be shot at two o'clock the next morning. It seemed preposterous,
+especially the immediate execution of sentence; there had always been
+time at least to prepare and present a plea for mercy. To condemn a
+woman in the evening and then to hurry her out to be shot before another
+dawn! Impossible! It could not be!
+
+[Sidenote: Judgment read in the afternoon.]
+
+[Sidenote: Plea for mercy had been prepared.]
+
+But no; Maître de Leval was certain. That evening he had gone home and
+was writing at his table when about eight o'clock two nurses were
+introduced. One was Miss Wilkinson, little and nervous, all in tears;
+the other, taller and more calm. Miss Wilkinson said that she had just
+learned that the judgment of the court condemned Miss Cavell to death,
+that the judgment had been read to her in her cell at four-thirty that
+afternoon, and that the Germans were going to shoot her that night at
+two o'clock. Maître de Leval told her that it was difficult to believe
+such news, since twice he had been told that the judgment had not been
+rendered and that it would not be rendered before the following day, but
+on her reiteration that she had this news from a source that was
+absolutely certain, de Leval left at once with her and her friends and
+came to the Legation. And there he stood, pale and shaken. Even then I
+could not believe; it was too preposterous; surely a stay of execution
+would be granted. Already in the afternoon, in some premonition, Maître
+de Leval had prepared a plea for mercy, to be submitted to the
+Governor-General, and a letter of transmittal to present to the Baron
+von der Lancken. I asked Maître de Leval to bring me these documents and
+I signed them, and then, at the last minute, on the letter addressed to
+von der Lancken, I wrote these words:
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Whitlock's personal appeal.]
+
+        "MY DEAR BARON:
+
+        "I am too sick to present my request to you in
+        person, but I appeal to your generosity of
+        heart to support it, and save this unfortunate
+        woman from death. Have pity on her."
+
+[Sidenote: Search for the Spanish ambassador.]
+
+I told Maître de Leval to send Joseph at once to hunt up Gibson to
+present my plea and, if possible, to find the Marquis de Villalobar and
+to ask him to support it with the Baron von der Lancken. Gibson was
+dining somewhere; we did not know where Villalobar was. The _Politische
+Abteilung_, in the Ministry of Industry, where Baron von der Lancken
+lived, was only half a dozen blocks away. The Governor-General was in
+his château at Trois Fontaines, ten miles away, playing bridge that
+evening. Maître de Leval went; and I waited.
+
+The nurses from Miss Cavell's school were waiting in a lower room; other
+nurses came for news; they, too, had heard, but could not believe. Then
+the Reverend Mr. H. Stirling T. Gahan, the British chaplain at Brussels
+and pastor of the English church, came. He had a note from some one at
+the St. Gilles prison, a note written in German, saying simply:
+
+[Sidenote: English rector summoned.]
+
+"Come at once; some one is about to die."
+
+[Sidenote: A delay of execution expected.]
+
+He went away to the prison; his frail, delicate little wife remained at
+the Legation, and there, with my wife and Miss Larner, sat with those
+women all that long evening, trying to comfort them, to reassure them.
+Outside a cold rain was falling. Up in my chamber I waited; a stay of
+execution would be granted, of course; they always were; there was not,
+in our time, anywhere, a court, even a court martial, that would condemn
+a woman to death at half-past four in the afternoon and hurry her out
+and shoot her before dawn--not even a German court martial.
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell calm and courageous.]
+
+When Mr. Gahan arrived at the prison that night Miss Cavell was lying on
+the narrow cot in her cell; she arose, drew on a dressing gown, folded
+it about her thin form, and received him calmly. She had never expected
+such an end to the trial, but she was brave and was not afraid to die.
+The judgment had been read to her that afternoon, there in her cell. She
+had written letters to her mother in England and to certain of her
+friends, and entrusted them to the German authorities.
+
+She did not complain of her trial; she had avowed all, she said; and it
+is one of the saddest, bitterest ironies of the whole tragedy that she
+seems not to have known that all she had avowed was not sufficient, even
+under German law, to justify the judgment passed upon her. The German
+chaplain had been kind, and she was willing for him to be with her at
+the last, if Mr. Gahan could not be. Life had not been all happy for
+her, she said, and she was glad to die for her country. Life had been
+hurried, and she was grateful for these weeks of rest in prison.
+
+"Patriotism is not enough," she said, "I must have no hatred and no
+bitterness toward any one."
+
+[Sidenote: Notes made in Bible and prayer-book.]
+
+She received the sacrament, she had no hatred for any one, and she had
+no regrets. In the touching report that Mr. Gahan made there is a
+statement, one of the last that Edith Cavell ever made, which, in its
+exquisite pathos, illuminates the whole of that life of stern duty, of
+human service and martyrdom. She said that she was grateful for the six
+weeks of rest she had just before the end. During those weeks she had
+read and reflected; her companions and her solace were her Bible, her
+prayer-book and the "Imitation of Christ." The notes she made in these
+books reveal her thoughts in that time, and will touch the uttermost
+depths of any nature nourished in that beautiful faith which is at once
+so tender and so austere. The prayer-book with those laconic entries on
+its fly-leaf, in which she set down the sad and eloquent chronology of
+her fate, the copy of the "Imitation" which she had read and marked
+during those weeks in prison--weeks, which, as she so pathetically said,
+had given her rest and quiet and time to think in a life that had been
+"so hurried"--and the passages noted in her firm hand have a deep and
+appealing pathos.
+
+Just before the end, too, as I have said, she wrote a number of letters.
+She forgot no one. Among the letters that she left one was addressed to
+the nurses of her school; and there was a message for a girl who was
+trying to break herself of the morphine habit--Miss Cavell had been
+trying to help her, and she sent her word to be brave, and that if God
+would permit she would continue to try to help her.
+
+[Sidenote: The petitioners fail.]
+
+Midnight came, and Gibson, with a dark face, and de Leval, paler than
+ever. There was nothing to be done.
+
+[Sidenote: Errand of Marquis Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval.]
+
+De Leval had gone to Gibson, and together they went in search of the
+Marquis, whom they found at Baron Lambert's, where he had been dining;
+he and Baron Lambert and M. Francqui were over their coffee. The three,
+the Marquis, Gibson and de Leval, then went to the Rue Lambermont. The
+little Ministry was closed and dark; no one was there. They rang, and
+rang again, and finally the _concierge_ appeared--no one was there, he
+said. They insisted. The _concierge_ at last found a German functionary
+who came down, stood staring stupidly; every one was gone; _son
+Excellence_ was at the theater. At what theater? He did not know. They
+urged him to go and find out. He disappeared inside, went up and down
+stairs two or three times, finally came out and said that he was at Le
+Bois Sacré. They explained that the presence of the Baron was urgent and
+asked the man to go for him; they turned over the motor to him and he
+mounted on the box beside Eugene. They reached the little variety
+theater there in the Rue d'Arenberg. The German functionary went in and
+found the Baron, who said he could not come before the piece was over.
+
+[Sidenote: The sad wait for der Lancken.]
+
+All this while Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval were in the salon at the
+Ministry, the room of which I have spoken so often as the yellow salon,
+because of the satin upholstery of its Louis XVI. furniture of white
+lacquer--that bright, almost laughing little salon, all done in the
+gayest, lightest tones, where so many little dramas were played. All
+three of them were deeply moved and very anxious--the eternal contrast,
+as de Leval said, between things and sentiments. Lancken entered at
+last, very much surprised to find them; he was accompanied by Count
+Harrach and by the young Baron von Falkenhausen.
+
+"What is it, gentlemen?" he said. "Has something serious happened?"
+
+They told him why they were there, and Lancken, raising his hands, said:
+
+"_Impossible!_"
+
+[Sidenote: Der Lancken believes the rumor false.]
+
+He had vaguely heard that afternoon of a condemnation for spying, but he
+did not know that it had anything to do with the case of Miss Cavell,
+and in any event it was impossible that they would put a woman to death
+that night.
+
+"Who has given you this information? Because, to come and disturb me at
+such an hour you must have actual information," he said.
+
+De Leval replied: "Without doubt I consider it so, but I must refuse to
+tell you from whom I received the information. Besides, what difference
+does it make? If the information is true, our presence at this hour is
+justified; if it is not true, I am ready to take the consequences of my
+mistake."
+
+The Baron grew irritated.
+
+"What," he said, "is it on the hint of mere rumor that you come and
+disturb me at such an hour, me and these gentlemen? No, no, gentlemen,
+this news can not be true. Orders are never executed with such
+precipitation, especially when a woman is concerned. Come and see me
+to-morrow. Besides, how do you think that at this hour I can obtain any
+information? The Governor-General must certainly be sleeping."
+
+Gibson, or one of them, suggested to him that a very simple way of
+finding out would be to telephone to the prison.
+
+"Quite right," said he. "I had not thought of that."
+
+He went out, was gone a few minutes and came back embarrassed, so they
+said, even a little bit ashamed, for he said:
+
+[Sidenote: The sad news confirmed.]
+
+"You are right, gentlemen; I have heard by telephone that Miss Cavell
+has been condemned and that she will be shot to-night."
+
+Then de Leval drew out the letter that I had written to the Baron and
+gave it to him, and he read it in an undertone--with a little sardonic
+smile, de Leval said--and when he had finished he handed it back to de
+Leval and said:
+
+[Sidenote: The plea for mercy.]
+
+"But it is necessary to have a plea for mercy at the same time."
+
+"Here it is," said de Leval, and gave him the document. Then they all
+sat down.
+
+[Sidenote: Von der Lancken's attitude.]
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell not a spy.]
+
+I could see the scene as it was described to me by Villalobar, by
+Gibson, by de Leval, in that pretty little Louis XVI. salon that I knew
+so well--Lancken giving way to an outburst of feeling against "that
+spy," as he called Miss Cavell, and Gibson and de Leval by turns
+pleading with him, the Marquis sitting by. It was not a question of
+spying as they pointed out; it was a question of the life of a woman, a
+life that had been devoted to charity, to helping others. She had nursed
+wounded soldiers, she had even nursed German wounded at the beginning of
+the war, and now she was accused of but one thing: having helped English
+soldiers make their way toward Holland. She may have been imprudent, she
+may have acted against the laws of the occupying power, but she was not
+a spy, she was not even accused of being a spy, she had not been
+convicted of spying, and she did not merit the death of a spy. They sat
+there pleading, Gibson and de Leval, bringing forth all the arguments
+that would occur to men of sense and sensibility. Gibson called
+Lancken's attention to their failure to inform the Legation of the
+sentence, of their failure to keep the word that Conrad had given. He
+argued that the offense charged against Miss Cavell had long since been
+accomplished, that as she had been for some weeks in prison a slight
+delay in carrying out the sentence could not endanger the German cause;
+he even pointed out the effect such a deed as the summary execution of
+the death sentence against a woman would have upon public opinion, not
+only in Belgium, but in America, and elsewhere; he even spoke of the
+possibility of reprisals.
+
+[Sidenote: The military authority supreme.]
+
+But it was all in vain. Baron von der Lancken explained to them that the
+Military Governor, that is, General von Saubersweig, was the supreme
+authority in matters of this sort, that an appeal from his decision lay
+only to the Emperor, that the Governor-General himself had no authority
+to intervene in such cases, and that under the provisions of German
+martial law it lay within the discretion of the Military Governor
+whether he would accept or refuse an appeal for clemency. And then
+Villalobar suddenly cried out:
+
+"Oh, come now! It's a woman; you can't shoot a woman like that!"
+
+The Baron paused, was evidently moved.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "it is past eleven o'clock; what can be done?"
+
+[Sidenote: Lancken goes to von Saubersweig.]
+
+It was only von Saubersweig who could act, he had said, and they urged
+the Baron to go to see von Saubersweig. Finally he consented. While he
+was gone Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval repeated to Harrach and von
+Falkenhausen all the arguments that might move them. Von Falkenhausen
+was young, he had been to Cambridge in England, and he was touched,
+though of course he was powerless. And de Leval says that when he gave
+signs of showing pity, Harrach cast a glance at him, so that he said
+nothing more, and then Harrach said:
+
+"The life of one German soldier seems to us much more important than
+that of all these old English nurses."
+
+[Sidenote: Lancken's return.]
+
+At last Lancken returned and, standing there, announced:
+
+"I am exceedingly sorry, but the Governor tells me that only after due
+reflection was the execution decided upon, and that he will not change
+his decision. Under his prerogative he even refuses to receive the plea
+for mercy. Therefore, no one, not even the Emperor, can do anything for
+you."
+
+[Sidenote: The plea for mercy handed back.]
+
+With this he handed my letter and the _requête en grace_ back to Gibson.
+There was a moment of silence in the yellow salon. Then Villalobar
+sprang up and seizing Lancken by the shoulder said to him in an
+energetic tone:
+
+"Baron, I wish to speak to you."
+
+"It is useless," began Lancken.
+
+[Sidenote: The Marquis Villalobar pleads.]
+
+But the old Spanish pride had been mounting in the Marquis, and he
+literally dragged the tall von der Lancken into a little room near by,
+and then voices were heard in sharp discussion, and even through the
+partition the voice of Villalobar:
+
+"It is idiotic, this thing you are going to do; you will have another
+Louvain."
+
+A few moments later they came back, Villalobar in silent rage, Lancken
+very red. And, as de Leval said, without another word, dumb, in
+consternation, filled with an immense despair, they came away.
+
+[Sidenote: The messengers withdraw.]
+
+I heard the report, and they withdrew. A little while and I heard the
+street door open. The women who had waited all that night went out into
+the rain.
+
+The rain had ceased and the air was soft and warm the next morning; the
+sunlight shone through an autumn haze. But over the city the horror of
+the dreadful deed hung like a pall.
+
+[Sidenote: Other prisoners condemned.]
+
+Twenty-six others were condemned with Miss Cavell, four of whom were
+sentenced to death: Philippe Baucq, an architect of Brussels; Louise
+Thuiliez, a school-teacher at Lille; Louis Severin, a pharmacist of
+Brussels; and the Countess Jeanne de Belleville of Montignies-sur-Roc.
+
+[Sidenote: Severe sentences.]
+
+Harman Capian, a civil engineer of Wasmes; Mrs. Ada Bodart of Brussels;
+Albert Libiez, a lawyer of Wasmes; and Georges Derveau, a pharmacist of
+Pâturages, were sentenced each to fifteen years' penal servitude at hard
+labor.
+
+The Princess Maria de Croy was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude
+at hard labor.
+
+Seventeen others were sentenced to hard labor or to terms of
+imprisonment of from two to five years. The eight remaining were
+acquitted.
+
+[Sidenote: The people horrified at Miss Cavell's execution.]
+
+All day long sad and solemn groups stood under the trees in the
+boulevards amid the falling leaves discussing the crime in horrified
+tones. The horror of it pervaded the house. I found my wife weeping at
+evening; no need to ask what was the matter; the wife of the chaplain
+had been there, with some detail of Miss Cavell's last hours: how she
+had arisen wearily from her cot at the coming of the clergyman, drawing
+her dressing-gown about her thin throat.
+
+[Sidenote: The body not given to friends.]
+
+I sent a note to Baron von der Lancken asking that the Governor-General
+permit the body of Miss Cavell to be buried by the American Legation and
+the friends of the dead girl. In reply he came himself to see me in the
+afternoon. He was very solemn, and said that he wished to express his
+regret in the circumstances, but that he had done all he could. The
+body, he said, had already been interred, with respect and with
+religious rites, in a quiet place, and under the law it could not be
+exhumed without an order from the Imperial Government. The
+Governor-General himself had gone to Berlin.
+
+[Sidenote: Whitlock and Villalobar.]
+
+And then came Villalobar, and I thanked him for what he had done. He
+told me much, and described the scene the night before in that anteroom
+with Lancken. The Marquis was much concerned about the Countess Jeanne
+de Belleville and Madame Thuiliez, both French, and hence protégées of
+his, condemned to die within eight days; but I told him not to be
+concerned; that the effect of Miss Cavell's martyrdom did not end with
+her death; it would procure other liberations, this among them; the
+thirst for blood had been slaked and there would be no more executions
+in that group; it was the way of the law of blood vengeance. We talked a
+long time about the tragedy and about the even larger tragedy of the
+war.
+
+"We are getting old," he said. "Life is going; and after the war, if we
+live in that new world, we shall be of the old--the new generation will
+push us aside."
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell's death wins mercy for others.]
+
+Gibson and de Leval prepared reports of the whole matter, and I sent
+them by the next courier to our Embassy at London. But somehow that very
+day the news got into Holland and shocked the world. Richards, of the
+C. R. B., just back from The Hague, said that they had already heard of
+it there and were filled with horror. And even the Germans, who seemed
+always to do a deed and to consider its effect afterward, knew that they
+had another Louvain, another _Lusitania_, for which to answer before the
+bar of civilization. The lives of the three others remaining, of the
+five condemned to death, were ultimately spared, as I had told
+Villalobar they would be. The King of Spain and the President of the
+United States made representations at Berlin in behalf of the Countess
+de Belleville and Madame Thuiliez, and their sentences were commuted to
+imprisonment, as was that of Louis Severin, the Brussels druggist. The
+storm of universal loathing and reprobation for the deed was too much
+even for the Germans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an earlier chapter we have read of the beginning of the attempt to
+cross the Dardanelles and to capture the Peninsula of Gallipoli. After
+great losses and terrible suffering had been endured in these attempts,
+it was decided in December, 1915, by the British war authorities that
+further sacrifices were not justified. Preparations were accordingly
+made to abandon the enterprise. How these plans were carried out is told
+in the chapter following.
+
+
+
+
+GALLIPOLI ABANDONED
+
+GENERAL SIR CHARLES C. MONRO
+
+
+On October 20, 1915, in London, I received instructions to proceed as
+soon as possible to the Near East and take over the command of the
+Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.
+
+[Sidenote: General Monro's orders on arrival.]
+
+My duty on arrival was in broad outline:
+
+(a) To report on the military situation on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
+
+(b) To express an opinion whether on purely military grounds the
+Peninsula should be evacuated or another attempt made to carry it.
+
+(c) The number of troops that would be required--
+
+(1) To carry the Peninsula.
+
+(2) To keep the strait open, and
+
+(3) To take Constantinople.
+
+[Sidenote: Military defects in positions occupied.]
+
+The positions occupied by our troops presented a military situation
+unique in history. The mere fringe of the coast line had been secured.
+The beaches and piers upon which they depended for all requirements in
+personnel and material were exposed to registered and observed artillery
+fire. Our intrenchments were dominated almost throughout by the Turks.
+The possible artillery positions were insufficient and defective. The
+force, in short, held a line possessing every possible military defect.
+The position was without depth, the communications were insecure and
+dependent on the weather.
+
+No means existed for the concealment and deployment of fresh troops
+destined for the offensive--while the Turks enjoyed full powers of
+observation, abundant artillery positions, and they had been given the
+time to supplement the natural advantages which the position presented
+by all the devices at the disposal of the field engineer.
+
+[Sidenote: Disease, loss of competent officers, make-shift
+organization.]
+
+Another material factor came prominently before me. The troops on the
+Peninsula had suffered much from various causes--exposure to shell fire,
+disease, the dearth of competent officers owing to earlier losses, and
+"make-shifts" due to the attachment of Yeomanry and Mounted Brigades to
+the Territorial Divisions. Other arguments, irrefutable in their
+conclusions, convinced me that a complete evacuation was the only wise
+course to pursue.
+
+[Sidenote: Consequences of unusual storms.]
+
+On November 21, 1915 the Peninsula was visited by a storm said to be
+nearly unprecedented for the time of the year. The storm was accompanied
+by torrential rain, which lasted for twenty-four hours. This was
+followed by hard frost and a heavy blizzard. In the areas of the Eighth
+Corps and the Anzac Corps the effects were not felt to a very marked
+degree owing to the protection offered by the surrounding hills. The
+Ninth Corps was less favorably situated, the water courses in this area
+became converted into surging rivers, which carried all before them. The
+water rose in many places to the height of the parapets and all means of
+communications were prevented.
+
+The men, drenched as they were by the rain, suffered from the subsequent
+blizzard most severely. Large numbers collapsed from exposure and
+exhaustion, and in spite of untiring efforts that were made to mitigate
+the suffering I regret to announce that there were 200 deaths from
+exposure and over 10,000 sick evacuated during the first few days of
+December.
+
+From reports given by deserters it is probable that the Turks suffered
+even to a greater degree.
+
+[Sidenote: Difficulties pertaining to withdrawal.]
+
+The problem with which we were confronted was the withdrawal of an army
+of a considerable size from positions in no cases more than 300 yards
+from the enemy's trenches, and its embarkation on open beaches, every
+part of which was within effective range of Turkish guns, and from which
+in winds from the south or southwest, the withdrawal of troops was not
+possible.
+
+I came to the conclusion that our chances of success were infinitely
+more probable if we made no departure of any kind from the normal life
+which we were following both on sea and on land. A feint which did not
+fully fulfill its purpose would have been worse than useless, and there
+was the obvious danger that the suspicions of the Turks would be aroused
+by our adoption of a course the real purport of which could not have
+been long disguised.
+
+[Sidenote: Unsettled weather a menace.]
+
+Rapidity of action was imperative, having in view the unsettled weather
+which might be expected in the Ægean. The success of our operations was
+entirely dependent on weather conditions. Even a mild wind from the
+south or southwest was found to raise such a ground swell as to greatly
+impede communication with the beaches, while anything in the nature of a
+gale from this direction could not fail to break up the piers, wreck the
+small craft, and thus definitely prevent any steps being taken toward
+withdrawal.
+
+[Sidenote: Evacuation of supplies continues satisfactorily.]
+
+Throughout the period December 10 to 18, 1915 the withdrawal proceeded
+under the most auspicious conditions, and the morning of December 18,
+1915, found the positions both at Anzac and Suvla reduced to the numbers
+determined, while the evacuation of guns, animals, stores, and supplies
+had continued most satisfactorily.
+
+It was imperative, of course, that the front-line trenches should be
+held, however lightly, until the very last moment and that the
+withdrawal from these trenches should be simultaneous throughout the
+line.
+
+The good fortune which had attended the evacuation continued during the
+night of the 19th-20th. The night was perfectly calm with a slight haze
+over the moon, an additional stroke of good luck, as there was a full
+moon on that night.
+
+[Sidenote: Final withdrawals from Anzac and Suvla.]
+
+Soon after dark the covering ships were all in position, and the final
+withdrawal began. At 1:30 A. M. the withdrawal of the rear parties
+commenced from the front trenches at Suvla and the left of Anzac. Those
+on the right of Anzac who were nearer the beach remained in position
+until 2 A. M. By 5:30 A. M. the last man had quit the trenches.
+
+At Anzac, four 18-pounder guns, two 5-inch howitzers, one 4.7 naval gun,
+one anti-air craft, and two 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns were left, but they
+were destroyed before the troops finally embarked. In addition,
+fifty-six mules, a certain number of carts, mostly stripped of their
+wheels, and some supplies which were set on fire, were also abandoned.
+
+[Sidenote: A few supplies destroyed.]
+
+At Suvla every gun, vehicle and animal was embarked, and all that
+remained was a small stock of supplies, which were burned.
+
+On December 28, 1915, your Lordship's telegram ordering the evacuation
+of Helles was received, whereupon, in view of the possibility of bad
+weather intervening, I instructed the General Officer Commanding
+Dardanelles Army to complete the operation as rapidly as possible. He
+was reminded that every effort conditional on not exposing the personnel
+to undue risk should be made to save all 60-pounder and 18-pounder
+guns, 6-inch and 4.5 howitzers, with their ammunition and other
+accessories, such as mules, and A. T. carts, limbered wagons, &c.
+
+[Sidenote: Situation on Gallipoli Peninsula.]
+
+[Sidenote: Increase in Turkish artillery.]
+
+At a meeting which was attended by the Vice Admiral and the General
+Officer Commanding Dardanelles Army I explained the course which I
+thought we should adopt to again deceive the Turks as to our intentions.
+The situation on the Peninsula had not materially changed owing to our
+withdrawal from Suvla and Anzac, except that there was a marked
+increased activity in aerial reconnoissance over our positions, and the
+islands of Mudros and Imbros, and that hostile patrolling of our
+trenches was more frequent and daring. The most apparent factor was that
+the number of heavy guns on the European and Asiatic shores had been
+considerably augmented, and that these guns were more liberally supplied
+with German ammunition, the result of which was that our beaches were
+continuously shelled, especially from the Asiatic shore. I gave it as my
+opinion that in my judgment I did not regard a feint as an operation
+offering any prospect of success; and it was decided the navy should do
+their utmost to pursue a course of retaliation against the Turkish
+batteries, but to refrain from any unusually aggressive attitude should
+the Turkish guns remain quiescent.
+
+[Sidenote: General Birdwood's comprehensive plans.]
+
+General Sir W. Birdwood had, in anticipation of being ordered to
+evacuate Helles, made such complete and far-seeing arrangements that he
+was able to proceed without delay to the issue of the comprehensive
+orders which the consummation of such a delicate operation in war
+requires.
+
+[Sidenote: French infantry embarked.]
+
+The evacuation, following the same system as was practiced at Suvla and
+Anzac, proceeded without delay. The French infantry remaining on the
+Peninsula were relieved on the night of January 1-2, 1916, and were
+embarked by the French navy on the following nights. Progress, however,
+was slower than had been hoped, owing to delays caused by accident and
+the weather. One of our largest horse ships was sunk by a French
+battleship, whereby the withdrawal was considerably retarded, and at the
+same time strong winds sprang up which interfered materially with work
+on the beaches. The character of the weather now setting in offered so
+little hope of a calm period of any duration that General Sir W.
+Birdwood arranged with Admiral Sir J. de Robeck for the assistance of
+some destroyers in order to accelerate the progress of re-embarkation.
+
+[Sidenote: Turks shell trenches and beaches.]
+
+Meanwhile the Eighth Corps had maintained the offensive spirit in
+bombing and minor operations with which they had established the moral
+superiority they enjoyed over the enemy. On December 29, 1915 the
+Fifty-second Division completed the excellent work which they had been
+carrying out for so long by capturing a considerable portion of the
+Turkish trenches, and by successfully holding these in the face of
+repeated counter-attacks. The shelling of our trenches and beaches,
+however, increased in frequency and intensity, and the average daily
+casualties continued to increase.
+
+On January 7, 1916, the enemy developed heavy artillery fire on the
+trenches held by the Thirteenth Division, while the Asiatic guns shelled
+those occupied by the Royal Naval Division. The bombardment, which was
+reported to be the heaviest experienced since we landed in April, lasted
+from noon until 5 P. M., and was intensive between 3 and 3:30 P. M.
+
+January 8, 1916 was a bright, calm day, with a light breeze from the
+south. There was every indication of the continuance of favorable
+conditions, and, in the opinion of the meteorological officer, no
+important change was to be expected for at least twenty-four hours. The
+Turkish artillery was unusually inactive. All preparations for the
+execution of the final stage were complete.
+
+[Sidenote: Unfavorable weather.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hostile submarine near by.]
+
+About 7 P. M. the breeze freshened considerably from the southwest, the
+most unfavorable quarter, but the first trip, timed for 8 P. M., was
+dispatched without difficulty. The wind, however, continued to rise
+until, by 11 P. M., the connecting pier between the hulks and the shore
+at "W" Beach was washed away by heavy seas, and further embarkation into
+destroyers from these hulks became impracticable. In spite of these
+difficulties the second trips, which commenced at 11:30 P. M., were
+carried out well up to time, and the embarkation of guns continued
+uninterruptedly. Early in the evening reports had been received from the
+right flank that a hostile submarine was believed to be moving down the
+strait, and about midnight H. M. S. _Prince George_, which had embarked
+2,000 men, and was sailing for Mudros, reported she was struck by a
+torpedo which failed to explode. The indications of the presence of a
+submarine added considerably to the anxiety for the safety of the troop
+carriers, and made it necessary for the Vice Admiral to modify the
+arrangements made for the subsequent bombardment of the evacuated
+positions.
+
+[Sidenote: Gully Beach embarkation completed.]
+
+At 1:50 A. M., Gully Beach reported that the embarkation at that beach
+was complete, and that the lighters were about to push off, but at 2:10
+A. M. a telephone message was received that one of the lighters was
+aground and could not be refloated. The N. T. O. at once took all
+possible steps to have another lighter sent in to Gully Beach, and this
+was, as a matter of fact, done within an hour, but in the meantime, at
+2:30 A. M. it was decided to move the 160 men who had been relanded
+from the grounded lighter to "W" Beach and embark them there.
+
+[Sidenote: Conflagrations show Turks the allies have withdrawn.]
+
+At 3:30 A. M. the evacuation was complete, and abandoned heaps of stores
+and supplies were successfully set on fire by time fuses after the last
+man had embarked. Two magazines of ammunition and explosives were also
+successfully blown up at 4 A. M. These conflagrations were apparently
+the first intimation received by the Turks that we had withdrawn. Red
+lights were immediately discharged from the enemy's trenches, and heavy
+artillery fire opened on our trenches and beaches. This shelling was
+maintained until about 6:30 A. M.
+
+[Sidenote: Good luck and skilled organization forthcoming.]
+
+Apart from four unserviceable fifteen-pounders which had been destroyed
+earlier in the month, ten worn-out fifteen-pounders, one six-inch Mark
+VII gun, and six old heavy French guns, all of which were previously
+blown up, were left on the Peninsula. In addition to the above, 508
+animals, most of which were destroyed, and a number of vehicles and
+considerable quantities of stores, material, and supplies, all of which
+were destroyed by burning, had to be abandoned.
+
+[Sidenote: Competent officers in charge.]
+
+The entire evacuation of the Peninsula had now been completed. It
+demanded for its successful realization two important military
+essentials, viz., good luck and skilled disciplined organization, and
+they were both forthcoming to a marked degree at the hour needed. Our
+luck was in the ascendant by the marvelous spell of calm weather which
+prevailed. But we were able to turn to the fullest advantage these
+accidents of fortune.
+
+Lieutenant General Sir W. Birdwood and his corps commanders elaborated
+and prepared the orders in reference to the evacuation with a skill,
+competence, and courage which could not have been surpassed, and we had
+a further stroke of good fortune in being associated with Vice Admiral
+Sir J. de Robeck, K. C. B., Vice Admiral Wemyss, and a body of naval
+officers whose work remained throughout this anxious period at that
+standard of accuracy and professional ability which is beyond the power
+of criticism or cavil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The form of "frightfulness" in which the Germans placed the greatest
+faith was the terrorizing of the inhabitants of unprotected enemy cities
+by bombs from Zeppelins and aeroplanes. While the objects for which
+these atrocities were perpetrated were not attained, hundreds of
+innocent men, women, and children were murdered. The following narrative
+describes one of these German air raids.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH-SHIP IN THE SKY
+
+PERRITON MAXWELL
+
+Copyright Forum, August, 1916.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The switchman at Walthamstow.]
+
+For twenty-six years old Tom Cumbers had held his job as switchman at
+the Walthamstow railroad junction where the London-bound trains come up
+from Southend to the great city. It was an important post and old Tom
+filled it with stolid British efficiency. A kindly man who felt himself
+an integral part of the giant railroad system that employed him, old Tom
+had few interests beyond his work, his white-haired wife, his reeking
+pipe and the little four-room tenement in Walthamstow which he called
+home. The latter was one of the thousands of two-storied rabbit-hatches
+of sooty, yellow brick, all alike and all incredibly ugly, which
+stretch, mile upon mile, from Walthamstow toward London's tumultuous
+heart.
+
+[Sidenote: The workshops near Epping Forest.]
+
+[Sidenote: An appalling tragedy of the war.]
+
+Within a radius of four dun miles, just on the nearer edge of Epping
+Forest--the scene in a forgotten day of Robin Hood's adventurings--a
+section of these huddling homes of the submerged, together with a street
+of trams and some pathetic shops, constitute this town of Walthamstow.
+It is a sordid, unlovely place, but for some ten thousand
+wage-strugglers it is all of England. There are workshops hereabout in
+which one may mingle one's copious sweat with the grime of machinery and
+have fourteen shillings a week into the bargain--if one is properly
+skilled and muscular and bovinely plodding. Walthamstow is not the place
+where one would deliberately choose to live if bread could be earned
+elsewhere with equal certainty. But for all its dirt and dullness it has
+a spot on the map and a meaning in the dull souls of its inhabitants,
+and here, within half an hour's train travel of the Lord Mayor's Mansion
+and the golden vaults of the Bank of England, transpired on the
+sweltering night of which I write, one of the most witless and appalling
+tragedies of the present war. Forever memorable in the hitherto
+colorless calendar of Walthamstow will be this tragedy in the second
+year of Armageddon.
+
+[Sidenote: An ordinary hot night.]
+
+[Sidenote: News of the war.]
+
+Beyond the stenchful heat-stress of it, there was nothing up to
+half-past eleven to mark this night as different from its fellows of the
+past. From eight o'clock till ten the small activities of the town
+centered chiefly about its tramway terminus, its smudgy station, its
+three or four moving-picture theatres, and its fetid pubs. On the
+pavements, in the roadways and at every crossing, corduroyed men yawned
+and spat, and slatternly women, most of them with whimpering infants in
+their arms, talked of shop or household cares and the frailties of their
+neighbors. Some, more alive to the big events of a clashing world,
+repeated the meagre news of the ha'penny press and dwelt with prideful
+fervor on the latest bit of heroism reported from the front. Now and
+again an outburst of raucous humor echoed above the babble of cockney
+tongues. The maudlin clamor of "a pore lone lidy 'oos 'subing 'ad
+desarted 'er" failed to arouse anyone's curiosity. Ladies in their cups
+are not a rarity in Walthamstow. In side streets, lads in khaki, many of
+them fresh from fields of slaughter "somewhere in Flanders," sported
+boisterously with their factory-girl sweethearts or spooned in the
+shadows. Everywhere grubby children in scant clothing shrilled and
+scampered and got in the way. Humidity enveloped the town like a sodden
+cloak and its humanity stewed in moist and smelly discomfort.
+
+[Sidenote: Street lamps out.]
+
+But shortly after eleven o'clock the whole place became suddenly and
+majestically still and black. People who go to their work at sunrise
+cannot afford the extravagance of midnight revelry, and there are few
+street-lamps alight after ten o'clock in any London suburb in these
+times of martial law. Walthamstow slept in heated but profound oblivion
+of its mean existence. Beyond the town lay, like a prostrate giant
+camel, the heat-blurred silhouette of the classic forest. Low over
+Walthamstow hung the festoons of flat, humid clouds, menacing storm, but
+motionless.
+
+[Sidenote: The rhythm of the Zeppelin.]
+
+[Sidenote: The train to serve as pilot to London.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Zeppelin forced to travel low.]
+
+If there was no disturbance in the clouds themselves there was among
+them something very active, something that drilled its way through them
+with a muffled whirring, something that was oblong and lean and light of
+texture, that was ominous and menacing for all its buoyancy. The sound
+it made was too high up, too thickly shrouded by clouds, to determine
+its precise position. It gave forth a breathing of persistent, definite
+rhythm. This was plainly not the wing-stroke of a nocturnal bird; for no
+bird, big or little, could advertise its flight in such perfect
+pulsation. And yet it was a bird, a Gargantuan, man-made bird with
+murder in its talons and hatred in its heart. From its steel nest in
+Germanized Belgium this whirring monster had soared eight thousand feet
+and crossed the Channel with little fear of discovery. It had penetrated
+the English Coast somewhere down Sheerness way and over Southend and
+then, dropping lower, had sought and found through the haze the tiny
+train whose locomotive had just fluted its brief salutation to
+Walthamstow. To the close-cropped men on the Zeppelin, the string of
+cars far down under their feet, with its side-flare from lighted
+windows, its engine's headlamp and its sparks, had proved a providential
+pilotage. They knew that this train was on the main line, and that it
+would lead them straight to the great Liverpool Street Station, and that
+was London, and it was London wharfs and ammunition works along the
+Thames that they had planned to obliterate with their cylinders of
+mechanical doom. But the moist clouds which aided so materially in
+hiding the Zeppelin's presence from below also worked for its defeat, in
+so far as its ultimate objective was concerned, for to keep the guiding
+train in view it was compelled to travel lower and yet lower--so low,
+indeed, as to make it a target for Kitchener's sentinels.
+
+[Sidenote: The switchman signals "danger."]
+
+[Sidenote: The train stops at Walthamstow.]
+
+Somehow, by sight or intuition or the instant commingling of the two,
+old Tom Cumbers became aware of the danger above him; for he sprang to
+his switch, shut off all the cheery blue and white lights along "the
+line" and swung on with a mighty jerk the ruby signal of danger. The
+engineer in the on-rushing train jammed down his brakes and brought up
+his locomotive with a complaining, grinding moan, a hundred yards beyond
+Walthamstow station. Tom Cumbers had done a greater thing than any other
+in all his existence.
+
+[Sidenote: The German revenge.]
+
+That by his act the Germans in their speeding sky-craft were baffled
+there is no doubt. They had lost their trail of fire; their involuntary
+guide had disappeared in the gloom. The airmen's long journey had
+suddenly become fruitless; their peril from hidden British guns and
+flying scouts was increased tenfold. The heat of the night was as
+nothing to the hot surge of disappointment that must have swept the
+brains of the Zeppelin crew. Their commander, too, must have lost his
+judgment utterly, forgotten his sense of military effectiveness.
+Whatever happened, he sacrificed his soul when he turned his cloud-ship
+aside from the railway line, steered over the shabby roofs of
+Walthamstow and, at less than two thousand feet, unloosed his iron dogs
+of destruction.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombing tenements of a defenseless town.]
+
+I have it on the authority of experienced aviators that it is not
+impossible on a dark night to distinguish buildings of importance like
+St. Paul's or the Houses of Parliament or a great gun factory or a river
+as broad as the Thames with its uprearing and frequent bridges. The
+crowding tenements of Walthamstow could have had no semblance to any of
+these, at any height. It would seem a cheap and worthless revenge, then,
+to wreck an unimportant and defenceless town, having failed to wreck the
+military nerve-center of the world's metropolis. But this is what one of
+Count Zeppelin's soaring dreadnoughts did in this night, in this
+blood-drenched year.
+
+
+[Sidenote: When a bomb explodes.]
+
+Like the mirage of a tropical island the dirigible hung motionless in
+space for a breathless minute. There was a wavering pin-prick of light
+in the carriage suspended from the leviathan's belly--a light that
+fluttered fore and aft as of a man with a fairy lantern running to and
+fro giving orders or taking them. Then faintly discernible against the
+sky, like a rope hung down for anchorage, came a thin, gray streak--the
+tail of a bomb with all hell in its wake. From somewhere near the town's
+centre the earth split and roared apart. The world reeled and a
+brain-shattering crash compounded of all the elements of pain and hurled
+from the shoulders of a thousand thunderclaps smote the senses. It was a
+blast of sickening and malignant fury. It did not so much stun as it
+stopped one--stopped the breath and the heart's beat, suspending
+thought, halting life itself for a fraction of time. One was, somehow,
+aware of existence but without sensation. And then came reaction and
+the realization of what was really taking place. The German's bomb
+landed fully ten blocks away, but you would have taken oath in court
+that it had fallen at your feet, behind you, above you and into your
+very brain.
+
+[Sidenote: Terror of the people.]
+
+[Sidenote: A broken gas main.]
+
+An air raid on Walthamstow, which drab town can boast neither ammunition
+works nor the ownership of war material of any description, could not be
+at once realized. But here was the cyclonic fact, hideously real,
+appallingly actual; and there in the heavens was the buoyant Zeppelin
+maneuvering for further mischief. The reverberation of the first
+explosion was still grumbling back in Epping Forest when all
+Walthamstow, rubbing its eyes, tumbled out into the black streets. Men,
+women, children, all ludicrously clotheless, swarmed aimlessly like bees
+in an overturned hive. Stark terror gripped them. It distorted their
+faces and set their legs quivering. The dullest among these toil-dulled
+people knew what that explosion meant, knew that it was part of the
+punishment promised by the German foe. "Gott strafe England" had come to
+pass. But they could not understand why the enemy had singled them out
+for such drastic distinction. The more alert and cool-headed of the men
+battled with their fellows and shouted instructions to get the women
+folks and the kiddies back indoors and down into their cellars. The
+night-gowned and pajamaed throng could not be persuaded that safety lay
+not in sight of the Zeppelin but away from it. The hypnotism of horror
+lured them on to where twelve houses lay spread about in smoking chaos,
+a plateau of blazing and noisome havoc. Somewhere a gas-main burst with
+a roar and drove the crowd back with its choking fumes as no human hands
+could have done. Women frankly hysterical or swooning were roughly
+thrust aside. Children shrieking in uncomprehending panic were swept
+along with the crowd or trodden upon. Lumbering men ran and shouted and
+cursed and shook hairy fists at the long blot on the clouds. Some of the
+men leaped over iron palings like startled rabbits and flung themselves
+in the grass, face downward and quaking. And yet, I dare say that most
+of these would have walked straight into a familiar danger without the
+waver of an eyelash; it was the unknown peril, the doubt as to how and
+whence this hurtling death might spring upon them out of the night, that
+unhinged their manhood. And while Walthamstow's walls went down and
+great flame-tongues spouted where homes had stood, while the thick, hot
+air was tortured with agonized and inhuman cries, the enemy up above let
+loose another bolt.
+
+[Sidenote: The second bomb as the town blazes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effects of the explosion.]
+
+More terrible than the first explosion was, or seemed, this second one.
+It mowed down half a hundred shrieking souls. And it was curious to note
+the lateral action of the blast when it hit a resisting surface.
+Dynamite explodes with a downward or upward force, lyddite and
+nitro-glycerine and what not other devil's own powers act more or less
+in the same set manner. But the furious ingredients of these bombs
+hurled on Walthamstow contained stuff that released a discharge which
+swept all things from it horizontally, in a quarter-mile, lightning
+sweep, like a scythe of flame. A solid block of shabby villas was laid
+out as flat as your palm by the explosion of this second bomb. Scarcely
+a brick was left standing upright. What houses escaped demolition around
+the edge of the convulsion had their doors and windows splintered into
+rubbish. The concussion of this chemical frenzy was felt, like an
+earthquake, in a ten-mile circle. Wherever the scorching breath of the
+bombs breathed on stone or metal it left a sulphurous, yellow-white
+veneer, acrid in odor and smooth to the touch. Whole street-lengths of
+twisted iron railings were coated with this murderous white-wash.
+
+[Sidenote: More bombs as the Zeppelin rises.]
+
+[Sidenote: Freaks of the explosion.]
+
+Having made sure of its mark, the ravaging Zeppelin rose higher on the
+discharge of its first bomb and still higher after firing the second. At
+the safe distance of four thousand feet it dropped three more shells
+recklessly, haphazard. One of these bored cleanly through a slate-tiled
+roof, through furniture and two floorings and burrowed ten feet into the
+ground without exploding. This intact shell has since been carefully
+analyzed by the experts of the Board of Explosions at the British War
+Office. Another bomb detonated on the steel rails of the Walthamstow
+tram-line and sent them curling skyward from their rivetted foundations
+like serpentine wisps of paper. Great cobblestones were heaved through
+shop windows and partitions and out into the flower-beds of rear
+gardens; some of the cobbles were flung through solid attic blinds and
+others were catapulted through brick walls a foot in thickness. A hole
+as big as a moving-van burned into the road at one place. In a side
+street an impromptu fountain squirted playfully into the dust-burdened
+air, the result of a central water-pipe punctured by a slug from one of
+the bomb's iron entrails. But these things were not noted until dawn and
+comparative peace had returned to Walthamstow and men could count with
+some degree the cost of the reckless invasion.
+
+[Sidenote: British aeroplanes pursue.]
+
+Before the clouds had swallowed up the hateful visitant the noise of its
+attack had aroused the military guards across Epping Forest, in
+Chingford village, and, aided by a search-light, the anti-aircraft-gun
+opened its unavailing fire on the Zeppelin--ineffective, except that its
+returning shrapnel smashed up several roofs and battered some innocent
+heads. The Germans had gauged their skyward path to London along which,
+apparently, they felt reasonably safe from gun-reach. But they had
+barely headed homeward before a flock of army aeroplanes, rising from
+all points of the compass, were in hot pursuit. One of the Britishers
+was shot down by the men aboard the Zeppelin. Neither speed nor daring
+counts for much in an encounter between flying-machines and swift
+dirigibles of the latest types. The advantage lies solely with the one
+that can overfly his adversary. This can be achieved by a biplane or
+monoplane pilot only if he has a long start from the ground and time
+enough to surmount his opponent. This is difficult even in daylight with
+a cloudless sky. Given darkness and clouds, the chances for success are
+tremendously against the smaller craft.
+
+[Sidenote: The old switchman a victim.]
+
+Eight bombs in all were launched on Walthamstow--two of them
+ineffectual. The sixth bomb fell into a field close beside the railway
+line and worked a hideous wonder. It blew into never-to-be-gathered
+fragments all that was mortal of old Tom Cumbers, the signalman. They
+found only his left hand plastered gruesomely against the grassy bank of
+the railway cut--not a hair nor button else.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great series of attacks by the massed German Army against the mighty
+forces of Verdun began in February, 1917, and continued throughout the
+following months. Taken as a whole, it was the most dramatic effort in
+all its phases which took place between the German and French forces.
+The French showed during these terrible months, the spirit of devotion
+and sacrifice which was never excelled during the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 5, "Liege" changed to "Liège" (The Defense of Liège)
+
+Page 11, "again" changed to "against" (against the anarchist)
+
+Page 24, "Petersberg" changed to "Petersburg" (and St. Petersburg
+Cabinets)
+
+Page 28, "thave" changed to "have" (must have rejoiced)
+
+Page 35, "neighbor" changed to "neighbour" to match rest of text (her
+western neighbour)
+
+Page 41, "Liege" changed to "Liège" (strong fortress of Liège)
+
+Page 41, "LIEGE" changed to "LIÈGE"
+
+Page 57, Sidenote: "centimeter" changed to "centimetre" to match text
+(Forty-two centimetre)
+
+Page 74, Sidenote: "Compiegne" changed to "Compiègne" (towards
+Compiègne-Soissons)
+
+Page 77, "Ferte" changed to "Ferté" (Changis, La Ferté, Nogent)
+
+Page 83, "betweeen" changed to "between" (right between the Vosges)
+
+Page 85, "Liége" changed to "Liège" (weeks at Liège Namur)
+
+Page 92, "Chateau" changed to "Château" (Marne below Château-Thierry)
+
+Page 92, Sidenote: "center" changed to "centre" to match text (on the
+French centre)
+
+Page 92, "Chateau" changed to "Château"
+(Humbauville-Château-Beauchamp-Bignicourt)
+
+Page 93, "Fére" changed to "Fère" (east of Fère-Champenoise)
+
+Page 93, Sidenote: "man[oe]uvers" changed to "man[oe]uvres" to match
+text (Foch out-man[oe]uvres Germans)
+
+Page 93, "center" changed to "centre" to match text (Centre armies
+established)
+
+Page 110, "statute" changed to "statue" (in front of the statue)
+
+Page 119, Sidenote: "sand-dunes" changed to "sand dunes" (Battle of the
+sand dunes)
+
+Page 124, "is" changed to "are" (Allies are explained)
+
+Page 136, word "her" inserted into text (to her knees)
+
+Page 137, "strongely" changed to "strongly" (not be so strongly)
+
+Page 169, "most" changed to "must" (crew must have beheld)
+
+Page 171, double word "the" deleted. Original text read: "overtaken the
+the transports".
+
+Page 191, "ships" changed to "ship" (sails of the first ship)
+
+Page 195, "intrument" changed to "instrument" (no probing instrument)
+
+Page 221, "hocky" changed to "hockey" (and hockey teams)
+
+Page 233, Sidenote: "Aeroplanes" changed to "Aëroplanes" (Aëroplanes
+attacked by artillery)
+
+Page 236, "oof" changed to "of" (mere taking of the)
+
+Page 251, "blow" changed to "blown" (been blown up)
+
+Page 276, "asphxiating" changed to "asphyxiating" (No asphyxiating gases)
+
+Page 280, "advoided" changed to "avoided" (always be avoided)
+
+Page 288, "ships's" changed to "ship's" (ship's crew were confident)
+
+Page 288, "volminous" changed to "voluminous" (voluminous to analyze)
+
+Page 302, "that" changed to "than" (conclusion than in)
+
+Page 307, "submarines" changed to "submarine" (submarine warfare in)
+
+Page 314,  word "a" inserted into text (vantage-point on a crag)
+
+Page 310, "N." changed to "No." (Book No. 2, U. S.)
+
+Page 333, "to" changed to "of" (advantage of this)
+
+Page 336, "These" changed to "Those" (Those Germans who)
+
+Page 338, "Trapeze" changed to "Trapèze" (of the Trapèze which)
+
+Page 339, word "the" inserted into text (from the summit)
+
+Page 343, "arrival" changed to "arrived" (224 arrived safe)
+
+Page 356, Sidenote: "executive" changed to "execution" (delay of
+execution)
+
+Page 359, Sidenote: "De-" changed to "Der" (Der Lancken believes)
+
+Page 367, word "had" inserted into text (and they had been)
+
+Both "Ypres-Poelcapelle" and "Ypres-Poelcappelle" appear in the text.
+Both spellings were retained.
+
+Manoeuvre, man[oe]uvre and maneuvre were used and retained.
+
+Both Ripon and Ripont appear in this text. Ripont seems more accurate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of World's War Events, Vol. I, by Various
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of World's War Events, Vol. I, edited by Francis J. Reynolds and Allen L. Churchill.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of World's War Events, Vol. I, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: World's War Events, Vol. I
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Francis J. Reynolds
+        Allen L. Churchill
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2008 [EBook #25962]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S WAR EVENTS, VOL. I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class='tnote'><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> Larger images of the two maps included in
+this text may be seen by clicking on the visible image in the text.</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 527px;">
+<img src="images/vol1-frontis.jpg" width="527" height="309" alt="THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME AT RHEIMS" title="THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME AT RHEIMS" />
+<span class="caption">THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME AT RHEIMS</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>WORLD'S WAR<br />
+EVENTS</h1>
+
+<div class='center'>
+RECORDED BY STATESMEN &middot; COMMANDERS<br />
+HISTORIANS AND BY MEN WHO FOUGHT OR SAW<br />
+THE GREAT CAMPAIGNS<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<br /><span class="smcap">Compiled and Edited by</span></div>
+
+<h2>FRANCIS J. REYNOLDS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'><span class="smcap">Former Reference Librarian &middot; Library of Congress</span><br />
+
+<span class="smcap">and</span></div>
+
+<h2>ALLEN L. CHURCHILL</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">Associate Editor "The Story of the Great War"<br />
+Associate Editor "The New International<br />
+Encyclopedia"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h3>VOLUME I</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/emblem.png" width="75" height="78" alt="Emblem" title="Emblem" />
+</div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+P. F. COLLIER &amp; SON COMPANY<br />
+<span class="smcap">NEW YORK</span><br /></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+<div class='center'>
+<small>Copyright 1919</small><br />
+
+<span class="smcap"><small>By P. F. Collier &amp; Son Company</small></span></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+<h2>WORLD'S WAR<br />
+EVENTS</h2>
+
+<h3>VOLUME I</h3>
+
+<h3>
+BEGINNING WITH THE CAUSES OF THE WAR<br />
+AND THE INVASION OF BELGIUM IN<br />
+1914 AND CARRYING THE HISTORY<br />
+OF THE WAR TO<br />
+THE CLOSE OF<br />
+1915<br /></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'><small>ARTICLE</small></td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">What Caused the War</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Baron Beyens</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Defense of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Liege'">Li&egrave;ge</ins></span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Charles Bronne</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Great Retreat</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Sir John French</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Battle of the Marne</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Sir John French</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">How the French Fought</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>French Official Account</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Race for the Channel</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>French Official Account</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Last Ditch in Belgium</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Arno Dosch</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Why Turkey Entered the War</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Roland G. Usher</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Falkland Sea Fight</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>A. N. Hilditch</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Cruise of the Emden</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Captain M&uuml;cke</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Capture of Tsing-Tao</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>A. N. Hilditch</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gallipoli</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>A. John Gallishaw</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gas: Second Battle of Ypres</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Colonel E. D. Swinton</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Canadians at Ypres</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>By the Canadian Record Officer</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sinking of the Lusitania</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Judicial Decision by Judge J. M. Mayer</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VVI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Mountain Warfare</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Howard C. Felton</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VVII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Great Champagne Offensive of 1915</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Official Account of the French Headquarters Staff</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VVIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Tragedy of Edith Cavell</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Brand Whitlock</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gallipoli Abandoned</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_366">366</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>General Sir Charles C. Monro</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Death-Ship in the Sky</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_375">375</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Perriton Maxwell</i></span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>WHAT CAUSED THE WAR</h2>
+
+<h3>BARON BEYENS</h3>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Political
+designs of
+Francis
+Ferdinand.</div>
+
+<p>The Archduke Francis Ferdinand will go
+down to posterity without having yielded
+up his secret. Great political designs have
+been ascribed to him, mainly on the strength
+of his friendship with William II. What do we
+really know about him? He was strong-willed
+and obstinate, very Clerical, very Austrian, disliking
+the Hungarians to such an extent that
+he kept their statesmen at arm's-length, and
+having no love for Italy. He has been credited
+with sympathies towards the Slav elements of
+the Empire; it has been asserted that he dreamt
+of setting up, in place of the dual monarchy, a
+"triune State," in which the third factor would
+have been made up for the most part of Slav
+provinces carved out of the Kingdom of St.
+Stephen. Immediately after he had been murdered,
+the <i>Vossische Zeitung</i> refuted this theory
+with arguments which seemed to me thoroughly
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>The Archduke, said the Berlin newspaper,
+was too keen-witted not to see that he would
+thus be creating two rivals for Austria instead
+of one, and that the Serb populations
+would come within the orbit of Belgrade rather
+than of Vienna. Serbia would become the Piedmont
+of the Balkans; she would draw to herself
+the Slavs of the Danube valley by a process of
+crystallization similar to that which brought
+about Italian unity.</p>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Army and
+Navy reorganized.</div>
+
+<p>From year to year the Archduke had acquired<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+more and more weight in the governance of the
+Empire, in proportion as his uncle's will grew
+weaker beneath the burden of advancing age.
+Thus he had succeeded in his efforts to provide
+Austria-Hungary with a new navy, the counterpart,
+on a more modest scale, of the German
+fleet, and to reorganize the effective army, here
+again taking Germany for his model. Among
+certain cliques, he was accused of not keeping
+enough in the background, of showing little tact
+or consideration in the manner of thrusting
+aside the phantom Emperor, who was gently
+gliding into the winter of the years at Sch&ouml;nbrunn
+amid the veneration of his subjects of
+every race.</p>
+
+<p>Another charge was that he appointed too
+many of his creatures to important civil and
+military posts.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Antagonism
+of
+Russia
+and
+Austria.</div>
+
+<p>We may well believe that this prince, observing
+the gradual decay of the monarchy, tried
+to restore its vigour, and that his first thought
+was to hold with a firm grasp, even before assuming
+the Imperial crown, the cluster of
+nationalities, mutually hostile and always discontented,
+that go to make up the Dual Empire.
+So far as foreign relations are concerned, we
+may assume that he was bent on winning her
+a place in the first rank of Powers; that he
+wished, above all, to see her predominant all
+along the Danube and in the Balkans; that
+he even aimed at giving her the road to Salonika
+and the Levant, though it were at the
+price of a collision with Russia. This antagonism
+between the two neighbour Empires must
+have often been among the topics of his conversations
+with William II.</p>
+
+<p>The Archduke needed military glory, prestige
+won on the battle-field, in order to seat
+his consort firmly on the throne and make his
+children heirs to the C&aelig;sars. He had been
+suspected, both in Austria and abroad, of not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+wishing to observe the family compact which
+he had signed at the time of his marriage with
+Countess Sophie Chotek. It was thought that
+he perhaps reserved the right to declare it null
+and void, in view of the constraint that had
+been put upon him. The successive honours
+that had drawn the Duchess of Hohenberg from
+the obscurity in which the morganatic wife of
+a German prince is usually wrapped, and had
+brought her near to the steps of the throne,
+showed clearly that her rise would not stop
+half-way.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Domestic
+life of
+the Archduke.</div>
+
+<p>The Archduke, like William II himself,
+was reputed to be an exemplary father and
+husband. He was one of those princes who
+adore their own children, but, under the spur
+of political ambition, are very prone to send
+the children of others to the shambles. A fine
+theme for Socialist and Republican preachers
+to enlarge upon!</p>
+
+<p>I often met the heir to the Imperial crown,
+especially at Vienna in 1910, where I had the
+honour of accompanying my Sovereign, and two
+years later at Munich, the Prince Regent's
+funeral.</p>
+
+<p>On each occasion this Hapsburg, with his
+heavy features, his scowling expression, and
+his rather corpulent figure (quite different from
+the slim build characteristic of his line), struck
+me as a singular type. His face was certainly
+not sympathetic, nor was his manner engaging.
+The Duchess of Hohenberg, whom, after
+having known her as a little girl when her
+father was Austrian Minister at Brussels, I
+found gracefully doing the honours in the Belvedere
+Palace, had retained in her high station
+the genial simplicity of the Chotek family. This
+probably did not prevent her from cherishing
+the loftiest ambitions for herself, and above all
+for her eldest son, and from coveting the glory
+of the double crown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Assassination
+of
+Francis
+Ferdinand.</div>
+
+<p>The news that an assassin's hand had struck
+down the Archduke and his wife, inseparable
+even in death, burst upon Berlin on the afternoon
+of Sunday, June 28, like an unexpected
+thunderclap in the midst of a calm summer's
+day. I went over at once to the Austro-Hungarian
+Embassy, in order to express all the horror
+that I felt at this savage drama. Count
+Sz&ouml;gyen, the senior member of the diplomatic
+corps, was on the eve of resigning the post that
+he had held for twenty years, honoured by all
+his colleagues. It was whispered that his removal
+had been asked for by the Archduke, who
+was anxious to introduce young blood into the
+diplomatic service. I found the Ambassador
+quite overcome by the terrible news. He seemed
+stricken with grief at the thought of his aged
+Sovereign, who had already lost so many of his
+nearest and dearest, and of the Dual Empire,
+robbed of its most skillful pilot, and with no
+one to steer it now but an octogenarian leaning
+on a youth of twenty-six. M. Cambon had come
+to the Embassy at the same time, and we left
+together discussing the results, still impossible
+to foresee clearly, that this fatality might have
+for European affairs.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Serajevo
+tragedy a
+menace.</div>
+
+<p>From the very next day the tone of the Berlin
+Press, in commenting on the Serajevo tragedy,
+was full of menace. It expected the Vienna
+Cabinet to send to Belgrade an immediate request
+for satisfaction, if Serbian subjects, as it
+was believed, were among those who had devised
+and carried out the plot. But how far
+would this satisfaction go, and in what form
+would it be demanded? There was the rub.
+The report, issued by the semi-official <i>Lokalanzeiger</i>,
+of a pressure exerted by the Austro-Hungarian
+Minister, with a view to making<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+the Serbian Government institute proceedings
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'again'">against</ins> the anarchist societies of which the Archduke
+and his wife had been the victims, surprised
+no one, but was not confirmed. On the
+other hand, a softer breeze soon blew from
+Vienna and Budapest, and under its influence
+the excitement of the Berlin newspapers suddenly
+abated. An order seemed to have been
+issued: the rage and fluster of the public were
+to be allowed to cool down. The Austro-Hungarian
+Government, so we were informed by
+the news agencies, were quietly taking steps
+to prosecute the murderers. Count Berchtold,
+in speaking to the diplomatic corps at Vienna,
+and Count Tisza, in addressing Parliament at
+Budapest, used reassuring language, which
+raised hopes of a peaceful solution.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Opinion is
+moderate
+in Berlin.</div>
+
+<p>The Wilhelmstrasse also expressed itself in
+very measured terms on the guarantees that
+would be demanded from Serbia. Herr Zimmermann,
+without knowing (so he said to me)
+what decision had been arrived at in Vienna,
+thought that no action would be taken in Belgrade
+until the Austro-Hungarian Government
+had collected the proofs of the complicity of
+Serbian subjects or societies in the planning of
+the Serajevo crime. He had made a similar
+statement to the Russian Ambassador, who had
+hastened to impart to him his fears for the
+peace of Europe, in the event of any attempt to
+coerce Serbia into proceeding against the secret
+societies, if they were accused of intrigues
+against the Austrian Government in Bosnia
+and Croatia. Herr Zimmermann declared to
+M. Sverbeeff that, in his opinion, no better
+advice could be given to the Serbian Government
+than this: that it should put a stop to
+the nefarious work of these societies and punish
+the accomplices of the Archduke's assassins.
+The moderation of this remark fairly reflected
+the general state of public opinion in Berlin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Kaiser
+William's
+opinion.</div>
+
+<p>But what of the Emperor, the Archduke's
+personal friend? Would not his grief and anger
+find voice in ringing tones? All eyes were
+turned towards Kiel, where the fatal news
+reached William II while he was taking part in
+a yacht race on board his own clipper. He
+turned pale, and was heard to murmur: "So my
+work of the past twenty-five years will have to
+be started all over again!" Enigmatic words
+which may be interpreted in various ways! To
+the British Ambassador, who was also at Kiel,
+with the British squadron returning from the
+Baltic, he unburdened himself in more explicit
+fashion: "Es ist ein Verbrechen gegen das
+Deutschtum" ("It is a crime against Germanity").
+By this he probably meant that Germany,
+feeling her own interests assailed by the
+Serajevo crime, would make common cause with
+Austria to exact a full retribution. With more
+self-control than usual, however, he abstained
+from all further public utterances on the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>It had been announced that he would go to
+Vienna to attend the Archduke's funeral. What
+were the motives that prevented him from
+offering to the dead man this last token of a
+friendship which, at first merely political,
+had become genuine and even tender, with
+a touch of patronage characteristic of the
+Emperor?</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William
+II not
+at the
+funeral.</div>
+
+<p>He excused himself on the ground of some
+slight ailment. The truth is, no doubt, that
+he was disgusted with the wretched stickling
+for etiquette shown by the Grand Chamberlain
+of the Viennese Court, the Prince di Montenuovo,
+who refused to celebrate with fitting
+splendour the obsequies of the late heir apparent
+and his morganatic wife. Under these
+circumstances, Vienna could have no desire
+either for the presence of William II or for his
+criticisms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Kaiser
+goes to
+Norway.</div>
+
+<p>At the beginning of July, the Emperor left
+for his accustomed cruise along the Norwegian
+coast, and in Berlin we breathed more freely.
+If he could withdraw so easily from the centre
+of things, it was a sign that the storm-clouds
+that had nearly burst over Serbia were also
+passing off from the Danube valley. Such, I
+fancy, was the view taken by the British Government,
+for its Ambassador, who was already
+away on leave, was not sent back to Berlin.
+Other diplomats, among them the Russian Ambassador,
+took their annual holiday as usual.
+But the Emperor, in the remote fiords of Norway,
+was all the time posted up in the secret
+designs of the Vienna Cabinet. The approaching
+ultimatum to Serbia was telegraphed to
+him direct by his Ambassador in Vienna, Herr
+von Tschirsky, a very active worker, who strenuously
+advocated a policy of hostility towards
+Russia, and from the first moment had wanted
+war.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Kaiser
+decides.</div>
+
+<p>We may assume that the Emperor, if his
+mind was not already made up at Kiel, came
+to a decision during his Norwegian cruise. His
+departure for the north had been merely a
+snare, a device for throwing Europe and the
+Triple Entente off the scent, and for lulling
+them into a false security. While the world
+imagined that he was merely seeking to soothe
+his nerves and recruit his strength with the
+salt sea breezes, he was biding his time for a
+dramatic reappearance on the stage of events,
+allowing the introductory scenes to be played
+in his absence.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>During the first half of July, my colleagues
+and I at Berlin did not live in a fool's paradise.
+As the deceptive calm caused by Vienna's
+silence was prolonged, a latent, ill-defined uneasiness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+took hold of us more and more. Yet
+we were far from anticipating that in the
+space of a few days we should be driven
+into the midst of a diplomatic maelstrom,
+in which, after a week of intense anguish, we
+should look on, mute and helpless, at the
+shipwreck of European peace and of all our
+hopes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Austria's
+ultimatum
+to Serbia.</div>
+
+<p>The ultimatum, sent in the form of a Note
+by Baron von Giesl to the Serbian Cabinet on
+July 23, was not disclosed by the Berlin newspapers
+until the following day, in their morning
+editions. This bolt from the blue proved
+more alarming than anything we had dared
+to imagine. The shock was so unexpected that
+certain journals, losing their composure,
+seemed to regard the Vienna Cabinet's arraignment
+as having overshot the mark. "Austria-Hungary,"
+said the <i>Vossische Zeitung</i>,
+"will have to justify the grave charges that
+she makes against the Serbian Government
+and people by publishing the results of the
+preliminary investigations at Serajevo."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Russia
+would
+defend
+Serbia.</div>
+
+<p>My own conviction, shared by several of my
+colleagues, was that the Austrian and Hungarian
+statesmen could not have brought themselves
+to risk such a blow at the Balkan kingdom,
+without having consulted their colleagues
+at Berlin and ascertained that the Emperor
+William would sanction the step. His horror
+of regicides and his keen sense of dynastic
+brotherhood might explain why he left his
+ally a free hand, in spite of the danger of provoking
+a European conflict. That danger was
+only too real. Not for one moment did I suppose
+that Russia would prove so careless of
+Serbia's fate as to put up with this daring assault
+on the latter's sovereignty and independence;
+that the St. Petersburg Cabinet would renounce
+the principle of "The Balkans for the
+Balkan nations," proclaimed to the Duma two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+months before by M. Sazonoff, in short, that
+the Russian people would disown the ancient
+ties of blood that united it with the Slav communities
+of the Balkan peninsula.</p>
+
+<p>The pessimistic feeling of the diplomatic
+corps was increased on the following day, the
+25th, by the language addressed to it at the
+Wilhelmstrasse. Herren von Jagow and Zimmermann
+said that they had not known beforehand
+the contents of the Austrian Note. This
+was a mere quibble: they had not known its
+actual wording, I grant, but they had certainly
+been apprised of its tenor. They hastened to
+add, by the way, that the Imperial Government
+approved of its ally's conduct, and did
+not consider the tone of its communication unduly
+harsh. The Berlin Press, still with the
+exception of the Socialist organs, had recovered
+from its astonishment of the day before; it
+joined in the chorus of the Vienna and Budapest
+newspapers, from which it gave extracts,
+and faced the prospect of a war with perfect
+calm, while expressing the hope that it would
+remain localized.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">No signs
+of peaceful
+settlement.</div>
+
+<p>In comparison with the attitude of the German
+Government and Press, the signs pointing
+to a peaceful settlement seemed faint indeed.
+They all came from outside Germany, from the
+impressions recorded in foreign telegrams.
+Public opinion in Europe could not grasp the
+need for such hectoring methods of obtaining
+satisfaction, when there was no case for refusing
+discussion on the normal diplomatic
+lines. It seemed impossible that Count Berchtold
+should ignore the general movement of
+reproof which appeared spontaneously everywhere
+but in Berlin against his ultimatum.
+A moderate claim would have seemed just; but
+Serbia could not be asked to accept a demand
+for so heavy an atonement, couched in a form
+of such unexampled brutality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Key to
+the situation
+in
+Berlin.</div>
+
+<p>The more I reflected on the ghastly situation
+created by the collusion of German and Austro-Hungarian
+diplomacy, the more certain did I
+feel that the key to that situation (as M. Sazonoff
+said later) lay in Berlin, and that there
+was no need to look further for the solution
+of the problem. If, however, the choice between
+peace and war was left to the discretion of
+the Emperor William, whose influence over his
+ally in Vienna had always overruled that of
+others, then, considering what I knew as to
+His Majesty's personal inclinations and the
+plans of the General Staff, the upshot of it all
+was no longer in doubt, and no hope of a peaceful
+arrangement could any longer be entertained.
+I communicated this dismal forecast
+to the French Ambassador, whom I went to see
+on the evening of the 25th. Like myself, M.
+Cambon laboured under no illusions. That
+very night I wrote to my Government, in order
+to acquaint it with my fears and urge it to
+be on its guard. This report, dated the 26th,
+I entrusted, as a measure of precaution, to one
+of my secretaries, who at once left for Brussels.
+Early next morning, my dispatch was in the
+hands of the Belgian Foreign Minister.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">War
+aimed at
+Russia
+and
+France.</div>
+
+<p>The ultimatum to Serbia [it ran] is a blow
+contrived by Vienna and Berlin, or rather, contrived
+here and carried out at Vienna. Requital
+for the assassination of the Austrian heir
+apparent and the Pan-Serb propaganda serves
+as a stalking-horse. The real aim, apart from
+the crushing of Serbia and the stifling of Jugo-Slav
+aspirations, is to deal a deadly thrust at
+Russia and France, with the hope that England
+will stand aside from the struggle. In order
+to vindicate this theory, I beg to remind you of
+the view prevailing in the German General Staff,
+namely, that a war with France and Russia is
+unavoidable and close at hand&mdash;a view which
+the Emperor has been induced to share. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+war, eagerly desired by the military and Pan-German
+party, might be undertaken to-day under
+conditions extremely favourable for Germany,
+conditions that are not likely to arise
+again for some time to come.</p>
+
+<p>After a summary of the situation and of the
+problems that it raised, my report concluded as
+follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>We, too, have to ask ourselves these harassing
+questions, and keep ourselves ready for the
+worst; for the European conflict that has always
+been talked about, with the hope that it
+would never break out, is to-day becoming a
+grim reality.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Dangers
+for
+Belgium.</div>
+
+<p>The worst contingencies that occurred to me,
+as a Belgian, were the violation of a part of our
+territory and the duty that might fall upon our
+soldiers of barring the way to the belligerents.
+In view of the vast area over which a war between
+France and Germany would be fought,
+dared we hope that Belgium would be safe from
+any attack by the German army, from any attempt
+to use her strategic routes for offensive
+purposes? I could not bring myself to believe
+that she would be so fortunate. But between
+such tentatives and a thoroughgoing invasion
+of my country, plotted a long time in advance
+and carried out before the real operations of
+the war had begun, there was a wide gulf, a gulf
+that I never thought the Imperial Government
+capable of leaping over with a light heart, because
+of the European complications which so
+reckless a disdain for treaties would not fail to
+involve.</p></div>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Until the end of the crisis, the idea of a preventive
+war continually recurred to my mind.
+Other heads of legations, however, while sharing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+my anxieties on this point, did not agree
+with me as to the premeditation of which I
+accused the Emperor and the military chiefs.
+I was not content with putting my questions to
+the French Ambassador, whose unerring judgment
+always carried great weight with me. I
+also visited his Italian colleague, an astute
+diplomat, thoroughly versed in German statecraft.
+He had always put me in mind of those
+dexterous agents employed by the sixteenth-century
+Italian republics.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Signor
+Bollati's
+views.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germany
+and
+Austria
+confident.</div>
+
+<p>According to Signor Bollati, the German
+Government, agreeing in principle with the
+Vienna Cabinet as to the necessity for chastising
+Serbia, had not known beforehand the
+terms of the Austrian Note, the violence of
+which was unprecedented in the language of
+Chancelleries. Vienna, as well as Berlin, was
+convinced that Russia, in spite of the official
+assurances that had recently passed between
+the Tsar and M. Poincar&eacute; regarding the complete
+readiness of the French and Russian
+armies, was not in a position to enter on
+a European war, and that she would not
+dare to embark upon so hazardous an adventure.
+Internal troubles, revolutionary intrigues,
+incomplete armaments, inadequate
+means of communication&mdash;all these reasons
+would compel the Russian Government to be
+an impotent spectator of Serbia's undoing. The
+same confidence reigned in the German and
+Austrian capitals as regards, not the French
+army, but the spirit prevailing among Government
+circles in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>At present [added the Ambassador] feeling
+runs so high in Vienna that all calm reflection
+goes by the board. Moreover, in seeking to
+annihilate Serbia's military power, the Austro-Hungarian
+Cabinet is pursuing a policy of
+personal revenge. It cannot realize the mistakes
+that it made during the Balkan War, or remain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+satisfied with the partial successes then
+gained with our aid&mdash;successes that, whatever
+judgment may be passed upon them, were certainly
+diplomatic victories. All that Count
+Berchtold sees to-day is Serbia's insolence and
+the criticism he has had to endure even in Austria.
+By this bold stroke, very unexpected
+from a man of his stamp, he hopes to turn the
+criticism into applause.</p>
+
+<p>The Ambassador held that Berlin had false
+ideas as to the course that the Tsar's Government
+would adopt. The latter would find itself
+forced into drawing the sword, in order to
+maintain its prestige in the Slav world. Its inaction,
+in face of Austria's entry into the field,
+would be equivalent to suicide. Signor Bollati
+also gave me to understand that a widespread
+conflict would not be popular in Italy. The
+Italian people had no concern with the overthrow
+of the Russian power, which was Austria's
+enemy; it wished to devote all its attention
+to other problems, more absorbing from
+its own point of view.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Vienna
+welcomes
+war on
+Serbia.</div>
+
+<p>The blindness of the Austrian Cabinet with
+regard to Russian intervention has been proved
+by the correspondence, since published, of the
+French and British representatives at Vienna.
+The Viennese populace was beside itself with
+joy at the announcement of an expedition
+against Serbia, which, it felt sure, would be a
+mere military parade. Not for a single night
+were Count Berchtold's slumbers disturbed by
+the vision of the Russian peril. He is, indeed,
+at all times a buoyant soul, who can happily
+mingle the distractions of a life of pleasure
+with the heavy responsibilities of power. His
+unvarying confidence was shared by the German
+Ambassador, his most trusted mentor.
+We can hardly suppose that the Austrian
+Minister shut his eyes altogether to the possibility
+of a struggle with the Slav world. Having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+Germany as his partner, however, he determined,
+with the self-possession of a fearless
+gambler, to proceed with the game.</p>
+
+<p>At Berlin, the theory that Russia was incapable
+of facing a conflict reigned supreme,
+not only in the official world and in society,
+but among all the manufacturers who made a
+specialty of war material.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Berlin
+believes
+Russia
+weak.</div>
+
+<p>Herr Krupp von Bohlen, who was more entitled
+to give an opinion than any other of
+this class, declared on July 28 that the Russian
+artillery was neither efficient nor complete,
+while that of the German army had
+never before been so superior to all its rivals.
+It would be madness on Russia's part, he
+inferred, to take the field against Germany
+under these conditions.</p>
+
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>The foreign diplomatic corps was kept in
+more or less profound ignorance as to the
+<i>pourparlers</i> carried on since the 24th by the
+Imperial Foreign Office with the Triple Entente
+Cabinets. Nevertheless, to the diplomats
+who were continually going over to the Wilhelmstrasse
+for news, the crisis was set forth
+in a light very favourable to Austria and Germany,
+in order to influence the views of the
+Governments which they represented. Herr
+von Stumm, the departmental head of the
+political branch, in a brief interview that I had
+with him on the 26th, summed up his exposition
+in these words: "Everything depends on
+Russia." I should rather have thought that
+everything depended on Austria, and on the
+way in which she would carry out her threats
+against Serbia.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day I was received by
+Herr Zimmermann, who adopted the same line<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+of argument, following it in all its bearings
+from the origin of the dispute.</p>
+
+<p>It was not at our prompting [he said], or
+in accordance with our advice, that Austria
+took the action that you know of towards the
+Belgrade Cabinet. The answer was unsatisfactory,
+and to-day Austria is mobilizing. She
+can no longer draw back without risking a
+collapse at home as well as a loss of influence
+abroad. It is now a question of life and death
+to her. She must put a stop to the unscrupulous
+propaganda which, by raising revolt among
+the Slav provinces of the Danube valley, is
+leading towards her internal disintegration.
+Finally, she must exact a signal revenge for
+the assassination of the Archduke. For all
+these reasons Serbia is to receive, by means of
+a military expedition, a stern and salutary lesson.
+An Austro-Serbian War is, therefore, impossible
+to avoid.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Attempts
+to limit
+conflict.</div>
+
+<p>England has asked us to join with her,
+France, and Italy, in order to prevent the conflict
+from spreading and a war from breaking
+out between Austria and Russia. Our answer
+was that we should be only too glad to help
+in limiting the area of the conflagration, by
+speaking in a pacific sense to Vienna and St.
+Petersburg; but that we could not use our influence
+with Austria to restrain her from inflicting
+an exemplary punishment on Serbia.
+We have promised to help and support our
+Austrian allies, if any other nation should try
+to hamper them in this task. We shall keep
+that promise.</p>
+
+<p>If Russia mobilizes her army, we shall at
+once mobilize ours, and then there will be a
+general war, a war that will set ablaze all
+Central Europe and even the Balkan peninsula,
+for the Rumanians, Greeks, Bulgarians,
+and Turks will not be able to resist the temptation
+to come in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As I remarked yesterday to M. Boghitchevitch
+[the former Serbian Charg&eacute; d'Affaires,
+who was on a flying visit to Berlin, where he
+had been greatly appreciated during the Balkan
+War], the best advice I can give Serbia
+is that she should make no more than a show
+of resistance to Austria, and should come to
+terms as soon as possible, by accepting all the
+conditions of the Vienna Cabinet. I added, in
+speaking to him, that if a universal war broke
+out and went in favor of the Triplice, Serbia
+would probably cease to exist as a nation; she
+would be wiped off the map of Europe. I still
+hope, though, that such a widespread conflict
+may be avoided, and that we shall succeed in
+inducing Russia not to intervene on Serbia's
+behalf. Remember that Austria is determined
+to respect Serbia's integrity, once she has obtained
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>I pointed out to the Under-Secretary that
+the Belgrade Cabinet's reply, according to
+some of my colleagues who had read it, was,
+apart from a few unimportant restrictions, an
+unqualified surrender to Austria's demands.
+Herr Zimmermann said that he had no knowledge
+of this reply (it had been handed in two
+days before to the Austrian Minister at Belgrade!)
+and that, in any case, there was no
+longer any possibility of preventing an Austro-Hungarian
+military demonstration.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Serbian
+reply.</div>
+
+<p>The Serbian document was not published by
+the Berlin newspapers until the 29th. On the
+previous day they all reproduced a telegram
+from Vienna, stating that this apparent submission
+was altogether inadequate. The
+prompt concessions made by the Pasitch Cabinet,
+concessions that had not been anticipated
+abroad, failed to impress Germany. She persisted
+in seeing only with Austria's eyes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Zimmermann's
+arguments.</div>
+
+<p>Herr Zimmermann's arguments held solely
+on the hypothesis that, in the action brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+by Austria against Serbia, no Power had the
+right to come forward as counsel for the defendant,
+or to interfere in the trial at all.
+This claim amounted to depriving Russia of
+her historic r&ocirc;le in the Balkans. Carried to its
+logical conclusion, the theory meant condemning
+unheard every small State that should be
+unfortunate enough to have a dispute with a
+great Power. According to the principles of
+the Berlin Cabinet, the great Power should be
+allowed, without let or hindrance, to proceed
+to the execution of its weak opponent. England,
+therefore, would have had no right to
+succor Belgium when the latter was invaded
+by Germany, any more than Russia had a
+right to protect Serbia from the Austrian
+menace.</p>
+
+<p>Russia, it was asserted at the Wilhelmstrasse,
+ought to be satisfied with the assurance
+that Austria would not impair the territorial
+integrity of Serbia or mar her future
+existence as an independent State. What a
+hollow mockery such a promise would seem,
+when the whole country had been ravaged by
+fire and sword! Surely it was decreed that,
+after this "exemplary punishment," Serbia
+should become the lowly vassal of her redoubtable
+neighbour, living a life that was no life,
+cowed by the jealous eye of the Austrian Minister&mdash;really
+the Austrian Viceroy&mdash;at Belgrade.
+Had not Count Mensdorff declared to Sir Edward
+Grey that before the Balkan War Serbia
+was regarded as gravitating towards the Dual
+Monarchy's sphere of influence? A return
+to the past, to the tame deference of King
+Milan, was the least that Austria would
+exact.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+opinion is
+misled.</div>
+
+<p>The version given out by the Imperial Chancellery,
+besides being intended to enlighten
+foreign Governments, had a further end in
+view. Repeated <i>ad nauseam</i> by the Press, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+aimed at misleading German public opinion.
+From the very opening of the crisis, Herr
+von Bethmann-Hollweg and his colleagues
+strove, with all the ingenuity at their command,
+to hoodwink their countrymen, to shuffle
+the cards, to throw beforehand on Russia, in
+case the situation should grow worse, the
+odium of provocation and the blame for the
+disaster, to represent that Power as meddling
+with a police inquiry that did not concern her
+in the least. This cunning man&#339;uvre resulted
+in making all Germany, without distinction of
+class or party, respond to her Emperor's call
+at the desired moment, since she was persuaded
+(as I have explained in a previous chapter)
+that she was the object of a premeditated attack
+by Tsarism.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+diplomacy.</div>
+
+<p>The game of German diplomacy during these
+first days of the crisis, July 24 to 28, has already
+been revealed. At first inclined to
+bludgeon, it soon came to take things easily,
+even affecting a certain optimism, and by its
+passive resistance bringing to naught all the
+efforts and all the proposals of the London,
+Paris, and St. <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Petersberg'">Petersburg</ins> Cabinets. To gain
+time, to lengthen out negotiations, seems to
+have been the task imposed upon Austria-Hungary's
+accomplice in order to promote
+rapid action by the Dual Monarchy, and to
+face the Triple Entente with irrevocable
+deeds, namely the occupation of Belgrade and
+the surrender of the Serbians. But things did
+not go as Berlin and Vienna had hoped, and
+the determined front shown by Russia, who
+in answer to the partial mobilization of Austria
+mobilized her army in four southern districts,
+gave food for reflection to the tacticians
+of the Wilhelmstrasse. Their language and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+their frame of mind grew gentler to a singular
+degree on the fifth day, July 28. It may be recalled,
+in passing, that in 1913, during the
+Balkan hostilities, Austria and Russia had
+likewise proceeded to partial mobilizations;
+yet these steps had not made them come to
+blows or even brought them to the verge of
+hostilities.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Kaiser
+returns to
+Berlin.</div>
+
+<p>On the evening of the 26th the Emperor's
+return was announced in Berlin. Why did he
+come back so suddenly? I think I am justified
+in saying that, at this news, the general feeling
+among the actors and spectators of the drama
+was one of grave anxiety. Our hearts were
+heavy within us; we had a foreboding that the
+decisive moment was drawing near. It was the
+same at the Wilhelmstrasse. To the British
+Charg&eacute; d'Affaires Herr von Zimmermann frankly
+confessed his regret at this move, on which
+William II had decided without consulting
+any one.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, our fears at first seemed to be
+unwarranted. The 28th was marked by a notable
+loosening of Germany's stiff-necked attitude.
+The British Ambassador, who had returned
+to Berlin on the previous day, was
+summoned in the evening by the Chancellor.
+Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, while rejecting
+the conference proposed by Sir Edward Grey,
+promised to use his good offices to induce Russia
+and Austria to discuss the position in an
+amicable fashion. "A war between the Great
+Powers must be averted," were his closing
+words.</p>
+
+<p>It is highly probable that the Chancellor
+at that time sincerely wanted to keep the
+peace, and his first efforts, when he saw
+the danger coming nearer and nearer, succeeded
+in curbing the Emperor's impatience for
+forty-eight hours. The telegram sent by William
+II to the Tsar on the evening of the 28th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+is friendly, almost reassuring: "Bearing in
+mind the cordial friendship that has united
+us two closely for a long time past, I am using
+all my influence to make Austria arrive at a
+genuine and satisfactory understanding with
+Russia."</p>
+
+<p>How are we to explain, then, the abrupt
+change of tack that occurred the following day
+at Berlin, or rather, at Potsdam, and the peculiar
+language addressed by the Chancellor to Sir
+Edward Goschen on the evening of the 29th?
+In that nocturnal scene there was no longer
+any question of Austria's demands on Serbia,
+or even of the possibility of an Austro-Russian
+war. The centre of gravity was suddenly
+shifted, and at a single stride the danger passed
+from the southeast of Europe to the northwest.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Will England
+be
+neutral?</div>
+
+<p>What is it that Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg
+wants to know at once, as he comes
+straight from the council held at Potsdam under
+the presidency of the Emperor? Whether
+Great Britain would consent to remain neutral
+in a European war, provided that Germany
+agreed to respect the territorial integrity of
+France. "And what of the French colonies?"
+asks the Ambassador with great presence of
+mind. The Chancellor can make no promise
+on this point, but he unhesitatingly declares
+that Germany will respect the integrity and
+neutrality of Holland. As for Belgium, France's
+action will determine what operations Germany
+may be forced to enter upon in that
+country; but when the war is over, Belgium
+will lose no territory, unless she ranges herself
+on the side of Germany's foes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A bargain
+proposed.</div>
+
+<p>Such was the shameful bargain proposed to
+England, at a time when none of the negotiators
+had dared to speak in plain terms of a
+European war or even to offer a glimpse of that
+terrifying vision. This interview was the immediate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+result of the decisive step taken by
+German diplomacy on the same day at St.
+Petersburg. The step in question has been
+made known to us through the diplomatic
+documents which have been printed by the
+orders of the belligerent Governments, and all
+of which concur in their account of this painful
+episode. Twice on that day did M. Sazonoff
+receive a visit from the German Ambassador,
+who came to make a demand wrapped up in
+threats.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germany's
+demands
+on Russia.</div>
+
+<p>Count de Pourtal&egrave;s insisted on Russia
+contenting herself with the promise, guaranteed
+by Germany, that Austria-Hungary
+would not impair the integrity of Serbia. M.
+Sazonoff refused to countenance the war on
+this condition. Serbia, he felt, would become
+a vassal of Austria, and a revolution would
+break out in Russia. Count de Pourtal&egrave;s then
+backed his request with the warning that, unless
+Russia desisted from her military preparations,
+Germany would mobilize. A German
+mobilization, he said, would mean war. The
+results of the second interview, which took
+place at two o'clock in the morning, were as
+negative as those of the first, notwithstanding
+a last effort, a final suggestion by M. Sazonoff
+to stave off the crisis. His giving in to Germany's
+brutal dictation would have been an
+avowal that Russia was impotent.</p>
+
+<p>To the Emperor William, who had resumed
+the conduct of affairs since the morning of the
+27th&mdash;the Emperor William, itching to cut the
+knot, driven on by his Staff and his generals&mdash;to
+him and no other must we trace the responsibility
+for this insolent move which made
+war inevitable. "The heads of the army insisted,"
+was all that Herr von Jagow would
+vouchsafe a little later to M. Cambon by way
+of explanation. The Chancellor, and with him
+the Foreign Secretary and Under-Secretary,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+associated themselves with these hazardous
+tactics, from sheer inability to secure the adoption
+of less hasty and violent methods. If they
+believed that this summary breaking off of
+negotiations would meet with success, they
+were as grievously mistaken as Count de Pourtal&egrave;s,
+whose reports utterly misled them as to
+the sacrifices that Russia was prepared to make
+for Serbia.</p>
+
+<p>At all events this upright man, when he
+realized the appalling effects of his blunder,
+gave free play to his emotion. Such sensitiveness
+is rare indeed in a German, and redounds
+entirely to his credit.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Russian
+military
+development.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">French
+military
+situation.</div>
+
+<p>But the Emperor and his council of generals&mdash;what
+was their state of soul at this critical
+moment? Perhaps this riddle will never be
+wholly solved. From the military point of
+view, which in their eyes claimed first attention,
+they must <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'thave'">have</ins> rejoiced at M. Sazonoff's
+answer, for never again would they find such
+a golden opportunity for vanquishing Russia
+and making an end of her rivalry. In 1917
+the reorganization of her army would have
+been complete, her artillery would have been at
+full strength, and a new network of strategic
+railways would have enabled her to let loose
+upon the two Germanic empires a vast flood
+of fighting men drawn from the inexhaustible
+reservoir of her population. The struggle with
+the colossus of the North, despite the vaunted
+technical superiority of the German army,
+would in all likelihood have ended in the triumph
+of overwhelming might. In the France
+of 1917, again, the three years' term of service
+would have begun to produce its full results,
+and her first-line troops would have been both
+more numerous and better trained than at
+present.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, William II could cherish
+no false hopes as to the consequences of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+second pressure that he was bringing to bear
+on St. Petersburg. Had it succeeded in 1914
+as in 1909, the encounter between Germany and
+the great Slav Empire would only have been
+put off to a later day, instead of being finally
+shelved. How could the Tsar or the Russian
+people have forgiven the Kaiser for humbling
+them once more? If they had pocketed the
+affront in silence, it would only have been in
+order to bide their time for revenge, and they
+would have chosen the moment when Russia,
+in possession of all her resources, could have
+entered upon the struggle with every chance of
+winning.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William
+II and
+Russia.</div>
+
+<p>Here an objection may be raised. The German
+Emperor, some may hold, fancying that
+the weight of his sword in the scale would
+induce the Tsar to shrink from action, had
+foreseen the anger of the Slav nation at its
+sovereign's timorous scruples, and looked forward
+to revolutionary outbreaks which would
+cripple the Government for years to come and
+make it unable to think of war, if indeed they
+did not sweep the Romanoffs from the throne.
+I would answer that this Machiavellian scheme
+could never have entered the head of such a
+ruler as William II, with his deep sense of
+monarchial solidarity, and his instinctive horror
+of anarchist outrages and of revolution.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Kaiser
+eager to
+act.</div>
+
+<p>No: the Emperor, together with the military
+authorities whose advice he took, wished
+to profit by a juncture which he had awaited
+with longing, and which fickle Fortune might
+never again offer to his ambition. Everything
+proves it, down to his feverish haste, as soon as
+M. Sazonoff's reply was conveyed to him, to
+learn the intentions of England, and to suggest,
+on that very day, a bargain that might
+purchase her neutrality. This is why Herr von
+Bethmann-Hollweg received orders to summon
+the British Ambassador on the night of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+29th. The Emperor could not wait until the
+following morning, so eager was he to act. Is
+this impatience the mark of one who was the
+victim of a concerted surprise? If he had not
+wanted war, would he not have tried to resume
+negotiations with Russia on a basis more in
+keeping with her dignity as a Great Power,
+however heavy a blow it was to his own pride
+that he had failed to intimidate her?</p>
+
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>The abortive efforts to overawe St. Petersburg
+and the offers made to the British Ambassador,
+as if Great Britain's inaction could
+be sold to the highest bidder, brought results
+that were not hard to foresee.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sir
+Edward
+Grey's
+telegram.</div>
+
+<p>In London, Sir Edward Grey's indignation
+found immediate vent in the following passage
+of his telegram of July 30 to Sir Edward
+Goschen: "It would be a disgrace for us to
+make this bargain with Germany at the expense
+of France&mdash;a disgrace from which the good
+name of this country would never recover. The
+Chancellor also in effect asks us to bargain
+away whatever obligation or interest we have
+as regards the neutrality of Belgium. We could
+not entertain that bargain either."</p>
+
+<p>Through the brazen overtures of Herr von
+Bethmann-Hollweg, however, the British Cabinet
+henceforth came to occupy itself, before all
+things, with the fate allotted to our country by
+the Imperial Government in the war that it
+was preparing. In order to tear off the mask
+from German statesmanship, the surest method
+was to ask it a straightforward question. On
+July 31, Sir Edward Grey, following the example
+of the Gladstone Ministry of 1870, inquired
+both of Germany and France whether
+they would respect the neutrality of Belgium.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+At the same time he gave Belgium to understand
+that Britain counted on her doing her
+utmost to maintain her neutrality.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Neutrality
+of
+Belgium.</div>
+
+<p>The answer of the Republican Government
+was frank and unhesitating. It was resolved
+to respect Belgian neutrality, and would only
+act otherwise if the violation of that neutrality
+by some other Power forced it to do so in self-defence.</p>
+
+<p>The Belgian Government, for its part,
+hastened to assure the British Minister at
+Brussels of its determination to resist with
+might and main should its territory be invaded.</p>
+
+<p>At Berlin, however, the Foreign Secretary
+eluded Sir Edward Goschen's questions. He
+said that he must consult the Emperor and the
+Chancellor. In his opinion, any answer would
+entail the risk, in the event of war, of partly
+divulging the plan of campaign. It seemed
+doubtful to him, therefore, whether he would
+be able to give a reply. This way of speaking
+was perfectly clear in its ambiguity. It did
+not puzzle Sir Edward Grey for a moment. On
+the following day he declared to the German
+Ambassador that the reply of the German Government
+was a matter of very great regret.
+Belgian neutrality, he pointed out, was highly
+important in British eyes, and if Belgium was
+attacked, it would be difficult to restrain public
+feeling in his country.</p>
+
+<p>On the same day, August 1, in accordance
+with instructions from my Government, I read
+to the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (at
+the same time giving him a copy) a dispatch
+drafted beforehand and addressed to the Belgian
+Ministers attached to the Powers that had
+guaranteed our neutrality. This dispatch affirmed
+that Belgium, having observed, with
+scrupulous fidelity, the duties imposed on her
+as a neutral State by the treaties of April 19,
+1839, would manifest an unshaken purpose in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+fulfilling them; and that she had every hope,
+since the friendly intentions of the Powers towards
+her had been so often professed, of seeing
+her territory secure from all assault, if
+hostilities should arise near her frontiers. The
+Belgian Government added that it had nevertheless
+taken all the necessary steps for maintaining
+its neutrality, but that, in so doing, it
+had not been actuated by a desire to take part
+in an armed struggle among the Powers, or
+by a feeling of distrust towards any one of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Herr Zimmermann listened without a word
+of comment to my reading of this dispatch,
+which expressed the loyal confidence of my
+Government in Germany's goodwill. He merely
+took note of my communication. His silence
+did not surprise me, for I had just learnt of
+Herr von Jagow's evasive reply to the British
+Government concerning Belgium; but it bore
+out all my misgivings. His constrained smile,
+by the way, told me quite as much as his refusal
+to speak.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Russia
+and
+Germany
+hasten
+preparations.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Austria
+mobilizes.</div>
+
+<p>From the 30th, Russia and Germany&mdash;as an
+inevitable sequel to the conversations of the
+29th&mdash;went forward actively with their military
+preparations. What was the exact nature
+of these preludes to the German mobilization?
+It was impossible to gain any precise notion at
+Berlin. The capital was rife with various
+rumors that augured ill for the future. We
+heard tell of regiments moving from the northern
+provinces towards the Rhine. We learnt
+that reservists had been instructed to keep
+themselves in readiness for marching orders.
+At the same time, postal communication with
+Belgium and France had been cut off. At the
+Wilhelmstrasse, the position was described to
+me as follows: "Austria will reply to Russia's
+partial mobilization with a general mobilization
+of her army. It is to be feared that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+Russia will then mobilize her entire forces,
+which will compel Germany to do the same."
+As it turned out, a general mobilization was
+indeed proclaimed in Austria on the night of
+the 30th.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the peace <i>pourparlers</i> went on
+between Vienna and St. Petersburg on the 30th
+and 31st, although on the latter date Russia,
+as Berlin expected, in answer both to the Austrian
+and the German preparations, had mobilized
+her entire forces. Even on the 31st these
+discussions seemed to have some chance of attaining
+their object. Austria was now more
+accurately gauging the peril into which her
+own blind self-confidence and the counsels of
+her ally were leading her, and was pausing on
+the brink of the abyss. The Vienna Cabinet
+even consented to talk over the gist of its Note
+to Serbia, and M. Sazonoff at once sent an encouraging
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>It was desirable, he stated, that representatives
+of all the Great Powers should confer
+in London under the direction of the British
+Government.</p>
+
+<p>Was a faint glimmer of peace, after all,
+dawning above the horizon? Would an understanding
+be reached, at the eleventh hour,
+among the only States really concerned with
+the Serbian question? We had reckoned without
+our host. The German Emperor willed
+otherwise. Suddenly, at the instance of the
+General Staff, and after a meeting of the Federal
+Council, as prescribed by the constitution,
+he issued the decree of <i>Kriegsgefahrzustand</i>
+(Imminence-of-War). This is the first phase
+of a general mobilization&mdash;a sort of martial
+law, substituting the military for the civil authorities
+as regards the public services (means
+of communication, post, telegraphs, and telephones).</p>
+
+<p>This momentous decision was revealed to us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+on the 31st by a special edition of the <i>Berliner
+Lokalanzeiger</i>, distributed at every street
+corner. The announcement ran as follows:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">Russia Wants War!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"From official sources we have just received
+(at 2 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>) the following report, pregnant with
+consequences:</p>
+
+<p>"'The German Ambassador at St. Petersburg
+sends us word to-day that a general mobilization
+of the Russian Army and Navy had
+previously been ordered. That is why His
+Majesty the Emperor William has decreed an
+Imminence-of-War. His Majesty will take up
+his residence in Berlin to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>"Imminence-of-War is the immediate prelude
+to a general mobilization, in answer to the
+menace that already hangs over Germany to-day,
+owing to the step taken by the Tsar."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Kaiser's
+ultimatum
+to Russia.</div>
+
+<p>As a drowning man catches at a straw, those
+who in Berlin saw themselves, with horror,
+faced by an impending catastrophe, clutched
+at a final hope. The German general mobilization
+had not yet been ordered. Who knew
+whether, at the last moment, some happy inspiration
+from the British Cabinet, that most
+stalwart champion of peace, might cause the
+weapons to drop from the hands that were
+about to wield them? Once more, however, the
+Emperor, by his swift moves, shattered this
+fond illusion. On the 31st, at seven o'clock in
+the evening, he dispatched to the Russian
+Government a summons to demobilize both
+on its Austrian and on its German frontiers.
+An interval of twelve hours was given for
+a reply.</p>
+
+<p>It was obvious that Russia, who had refused
+two days before to cease from her military
+preparations, would not accept the German<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+ultimatum, worded as it was in so dictatorial
+a form and rendered still more insulting by
+the briefness of the interval granted. As, however,
+no answer had come from St. Petersburg
+by the afternoon of August 1st, Herren von
+Jagow and Zimmermann (so the latter informed
+me) rushed to the Chancellor and the
+Emperor, in order to request that the decree
+for a general mobilization might at least be
+held over until the following day. They supported
+their plea by urging that the telegraphic
+communication with St. Petersburg had presumably
+been cut, and that this would explain
+the silence of the Tsar. Perhaps they still
+hoped against hope for a conciliatory proposal
+from Russia. This was the last flicker of their
+dying pacifism, or the last awakening of their
+conscience. Their efforts could make no headway
+against the stubborn opposition of the
+War Minister and the army chiefs, who represented
+to the Emperor the dangers of a twenty-four
+hours' delay.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germany
+mobilizes.</div>
+
+<p>The order for a mobilization of the army
+and navy was signed at five o'clock in the
+afternoon and was at once given out to the
+public by a special edition of the <i>Lokalanzeiger</i>.
+The mobilization was to begin on August 2nd.
+On the 1st, at ten minutes past seven in the
+evening, Germany's declaration of war was forwarded
+to Russia.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Pretexts
+given in
+Germany.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Heroism
+of France.</div>
+
+<p>As all the world knows, the Berlin Cabinet
+had to resort to wild pretexts, such as the committing
+of acts of hostility (so the military
+authorities alleged) by French aviators on
+Imperial soil, in order to find motives, two days
+later, for its declaration of war on France. Although
+Germany tried to lay the blame for
+the catastrophe at Russia's door, it was in
+reality her western <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'neighbor'">neighbour</ins> that she wished
+to attack and annihilate first. On this point
+there can be no possible doubt to-day. "Poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+France!" said the Berlin newspapers, with
+feigned compassion. They acknowledged that
+the conduct of the French Government throughout
+the crisis had been irreproachable, and that
+it had worked without respite for the maintenance
+of peace. While her leaders fulfilled
+this noble duty to mankind, France was offering
+the world an impressive sight&mdash;the sight of
+a nation looking calmly and without fear at a
+growing peril that she had done nothing to conjure
+up, and, regarding her word as her bond,
+determined in cold blood to follow the destiny
+of her ally on the field of battle. At the same
+time she offered to Germany, who had foolishly
+counted on her being torn by internal troubles
+and political feuds, the vision of her children
+closely linked together in an unconquerable resolve&mdash;the
+resolve to beat back an iniquitous
+assault upon their country. Nor was this the
+only surprise that she held in store. With the
+stone wall of her resistance, she was soon to
+change the whole character of the struggle,
+and to wreck the calculations of German
+strategy.</p>
+
+<p>No one had laboured with more energy and
+skill to quench the flames lit by Austria and
+her ally than the representative of the Republic
+at Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think M. Cambon's attitude
+has been admirable?" remarked the British
+Ambassador to me, in the train that was
+whirling us far away from the German capital
+on August 6th. "Throughout these terrible
+days nothing has been able to affect his coolness,
+his presence of mind, and his insight."
+I cannot express my own admiration better
+than by repeating this verdict of so capable a
+diplomat as Sir Edward Goschen, who himself
+took a most active part in the vain attempt
+of the Triple Entente to save Europe from
+calamity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Berlin
+enthusiastic.</div>
+
+<p>The Berlin population had followed the various
+phases of the crisis with tremendous interest,
+but with no outward show of patriotic
+fervour. Those fine summer days passed as
+tranquilly as usual. Only in the evenings did
+some hundreds of youths march along the highways
+of the central districts, soberly singing
+national anthems, and dispersing after a few
+cries of "Hoch!" outside the Austro-Hungarian
+and Italian Embassies and the Chancellor's
+mansion.</p>
+
+<p>On August 2nd I watched the animation
+of the Sunday crowd that thronged the broad
+avenue of the Kurf&uuml;rstendamm. It read attentively
+the special editions of the newspapers,
+and then each went off to enjoy his or
+her favourite pastime&mdash;games of tennis for the
+young men and maidens, long bouts of drinking
+in the beer-gardens, for the more sedate
+citizens with their families. When the Imperial
+motor-car flashed like a streak of
+lightning down Unter den Linden, it was hailed
+with loud, but by no means frantic, cheers. It
+needed the outcries of the Press against Russia
+as the instigator of the war, the misleading
+speeches of the Emperor and the Chancellor,
+and the wily publications of the Government,
+to kindle a patriotism rather slow to take
+fire. Towards the close of my stay, feeling
+displayed itself chiefly by jeers at the unfortunate
+Russians who were returning post-haste to
+their native country, and blackguardly behaviour
+towards the staff of the Tsar's Ambassador
+as he was leaving Berlin.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+people
+deluded.</div>
+
+<p>That the mass of the German people, unaware
+of Russia's peaceful intentions, should
+have been easily deluded, is no matter for astonishment.
+The upper classes, however, those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+of more enlightened intellect, cannot have been
+duped by the official falsehoods. They knew as
+well as we do that it was greatly to the advantage
+of the Tsar's Government not to provoke
+a conflict. In fact, this question is hardly
+worth discussing. Once more we must repeat
+that, in the plans of William II and his generals,
+the Serbian affair was a snare spread for
+the Northern Empire before the growth of its
+military power should have made it an invincible
+foe.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Uncertainty
+regarding
+Britain.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">England's
+attitude.</div>
+
+<p>There is no gainsaying that uncertainty as to
+Britain's intervention was one of the factors
+that encouraged Germany. We often asked
+ourselves anxiously at Berlin whether Germany's
+hand would not have been stayed altogether
+if the British Government had formally
+declared that it would not hold aloof from the
+war. We even hoped, for a brief moment, that
+Sir Edward Grey would destroy the illusions
+on which the German people loved to batten.
+The British Foreign Secretary did indeed observe
+to Prince Lichnowsky on July 29th that
+the Austro-Serbian issue might become so great
+as to involve all European interests, and that
+he did not wish the Ambassador to be misled
+by the friendly tone of their conversations into
+thinking that Britain would stand aside. If at
+the beginning she had openly taken her stand
+by the side of her Allies, she might, to be sure,
+have checked the fatal march of events. This,
+at any rate, is the most widespread view, for
+a maritime war certainly did not enter into the
+calculations of the Emperor and Admiral von
+Tirpitz, while it was the nightmare of the German
+commercial world. In my opinion, however,
+an outspoken threat from England on the
+29th, a sudden roar of the British lion, would
+not have made William II draw back. The
+memory of Agadir still rankled in the proud
+Germanic soul. The Emperor would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+risked losing all prestige in the eyes of a certain
+element among his subjects if at the bidding
+of the Anglo-Saxon he had refused to go
+further, and had thus played into the hands of
+those who charged him with conducting a
+policy of mere bluff and intimidation. "Germany
+barks but does not bite" was a current
+saying abroad, and this naturally tended to exasperate
+her. An ominous warning from the
+lips of Sir Edward Grey would only have
+served to precipitate the onslaught of the Kaiser's
+armies, in order that the intervention of
+the British fleet might have no influence on the
+result of the campaign, the rapid and decisive
+campaign planned at Berlin.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+opinion.</div>
+
+<p>We know, moreover, from the telegrams and
+speeches of the British Foreign Minister, how
+carefully he had to reckon with public feeling
+among his countrymen in general and among
+the majority in Parliament. A war in the Balkans
+did not concern the British nation, and
+the strife between Teuton and Slav left it cold.
+It did not begin to be properly roused until it
+grasped the reality of the danger to France's
+very existence, and it did not respond warmly
+to the eloquent appeals of Mr. Asquith and
+Sir Edward Grey until the day when it knew
+that the Germans were at the gates of Li&egrave;ge,
+where they threatened both Paris and Antwerp&mdash;Antwerp,
+"that pistol pointed at the
+heart of England."</p>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>The National Review, June, 1916.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>With the failure of diplomatic efforts to prevent
+war as a result of the deliberate intention
+of Germany to bring about the conflict, the
+great German war machine was put in motion.
+It was anticipated by the General Staff that
+the passage across Belgium would be effected
+without difficulty and with the acquiescence
+of King and people.</p>
+
+<p>How wrong was this judgment is one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+curious facts of history. The Germans discovered
+this error when their armies presented
+themselves before the strong fortress of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Liege'">Li&egrave;ge</ins>,
+the first fortified place in their path. Its capture
+was necessary for the successful passage
+of the German troops.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Importance
+of
+the delay.</div>
+
+<p>It was captured, but at a cost in time and in
+their arrangement of plans which were a
+great element in the great thrust&mdash;back at the
+Marne.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>THE DEFENCE OF <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'LIEGE'">LI&Egrave;GE</ins></h2>
+
+<h3>CHARLES BRONNE</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germany
+invades
+Belgium.</div>
+
+<p>On Sunday, August 2nd, while the news
+was going round that a train had entered
+Luxembourg with German forces,
+the German Minister at Brussels delivered an
+ultimatum to Belgium demanding the free
+passage through our territory of the German
+armies. The following day, Monday, the Belgian
+Government replied that the nation was
+determined to defend its neutrality. The same
+night the German advanced posts entered our
+territory. Tuesday morning they were before
+Vis&eacute;, at Warsage, at Dolhain, and at Stavelot.
+The bridges of Vis&eacute; and Argenteau and the
+tunnels of Troisponts and Nas-Prou&eacute; were
+blown up.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Atrocities
+begin.</div>
+
+<p>From this day the atrocities committed by
+the pioneers of German "Kultur" began at Vis&eacute;
+with fire and the massacre of inhabitants. On
+Thursday, they were to continue at Warsage
+and Berneau. On Wednesday, August 5th, the
+investment of Li&egrave;ge began, the bombardment
+being specially directed to the north-west sector
+which comprises the forts of Evegn&eacute;e, Barchon,
+and Fl&eacute;ron. In the afternoon the attack extended
+as far as the fort of Chaudfontaine.
+The region attacked by the foe was thus that
+between the Meuse and the Vesdre, the beautiful
+country of Herve, where cornfields are followed
+by vineyards, where meadowland encroaches
+on the sides of narrow but picturesque
+valleys, where small but thick woods conceal
+the number of the assailants. It was found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+necessary to destroy some prosperous little
+farms, several country houses, and pretty villas.
+This was but a prelude to the devastation
+brought by the soldiers of the Kaiser.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>The enemy was in force. Later it was known
+that around Li&egrave;ge were the 10th Prussian Army
+Corps from Aix-la-Chapelle on the way to Vis&eacute;,
+the 7th Corps, which had passed through the
+Herve country, the 8th, which had entered
+through Stavelot, and also a brigade of the 11th
+Corps, making up a total of about 130,000 men.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Forts of
+Li&egrave;ge.</div>
+
+<p>To resist these forces, General Leman had
+forts more than twenty-four years old and
+30,000 men: the 3rd division of the army increased
+by the 15th mixed brigade, <i>i.e.</i>, the 9th,
+11th, 12th, and 14th of the line, a part of the
+2nd Lancers, a battalion of the 1st Carabineers,
+and the Divisional Artillery.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Thursday, August 6th, was rich in moving
+incidents.</p>
+
+<p>While the enemy were in force before Barchon,
+in a night attack, an attempt was made
+on General Leman. The story has been variously
+told. Here is the true version.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+spies.</div>
+
+<p>The enemy's spies, so numerous in Li&egrave;ge, had
+been able to give the most exact information
+regarding the installation of the General Staff
+in the Rue Sainte Foy. They were quite aware
+that for a week the defender of Li&egrave;ge had only
+been taking two or three hours' rest in his
+office, so as to be more easily in telephonic communication
+with the forts and garrison. These
+offices in the Rue Sainte Foy were very badly
+situated, at the extreme end of the northern
+quarter, and were defended only by a few
+gendarmes. General Leman had been warned,
+however, and the King himself had at last persuaded
+him to take some precautions against a
+possible attempt. He had finally given way to
+this advice, and a rudimentary structure, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+a sure one, fitted with electric light and telephone,
+was being set up under the railway tunnel
+near the Palais station.</p>
+
+<p>This was, then, the last night the General
+would pass at Rue Sainte Foy.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Leman in
+danger.</div>
+
+<p>Towards half-past four in the morning a
+body of a hundred men descended from the
+heights of Tawes. Whence did they come?
+How had they been able to penetrate into the
+town? Some have said that they dressed in
+Li&egrave;ge itself. In reality, they represented themselves
+to the advanced posts of the fort of
+Pontisse as being Englishmen come to the aid
+of Li&egrave;ge, and asked to be conducted to the General
+Staff. They were soldiers of a Hanoverian
+regiment, and bore upon their sleeves a blue
+band with the word "Gibraltar." This contributed
+in no small degree to cause them to
+be taken for British sharpshooters. They were
+preceded by a spy who had put on the Belgian
+uniform of the 11th of the line and who seemed
+to know the town very well. At Thier-&agrave;-Li&egrave;ge,
+they stopped a moment to drink at a wine-shop
+and then went on. They were more than a
+hundred in number and were preceded by two
+officers. A detachment of Garde Civique, posted
+at the gas factory of the Rue des Bayards, did
+not consider it their duty to interfere. A few
+individuals accompanied the troop, crying
+"Vive les Anglais." A few passers-by, better-aware
+of the situation, protested. The troop
+continued its imperturbable march. The officers
+smiled. Thus they arrived at Rue Sainte Foy
+where, as we have said, the offices of the General
+Staff of General Leman were installed.</p>
+
+<p>A German officer asked of the sentinel on the
+door an interview with General Leman. The
+officers of the latter, who now appeared, understood
+the ruse at once, and drew their revolvers.
+Shots were exchanged. One of the
+officers, Major Charles Marchand, a non-commissioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+officer of gendarmes, and several
+gendarmes were killed. The Germans attempted
+to enter the offices, of which the door
+had been closed. They fired through the windows,
+and even attempted to attack the house
+by scaling the neighbouring walls. General
+Leman, who was working, ran out on hearing
+the first shots. He was unarmed. He demanded
+a revolver. Captain Lebbe, his aide-de-camp,
+refused to allow him to expose himself uselessly,
+and begged him to keep himself for the
+defence of Li&egrave;ge. He even used some violence
+to his chief, and pushed him towards the low
+door which separated the house from the courtyard
+of a neighbouring cannon foundry. With
+the help of another officer, the captain placed
+his General in safety. While this was happening,
+the alarm had been given, and the Germans,
+seeing that their attempt to possess
+themselves of the person of General Leman had
+failed, retired. The guard, which comprised
+some fifty men, fired repeatedly on the retreating
+party. Some fifty Germans, including a
+standard-bearer and a drummer, were killed.
+Others were made prisoners.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Leman in
+Fort
+Loncin.</div>
+
+<p>The General retired to the citadel of Sainte
+Walburge, and later to the fort of Loncin.
+From there he followed the efforts of the enemy
+attacking anew the north-east and south-east
+sectors. The environs of Fort Boncelles are
+as difficult to defend as those of the Barchon-Evegn&eacute;e-Fl&eacute;ron
+front. There is first the discovered
+part which surrounds what remains of
+the unfortunate village of Boncelles, which the
+Belgians themselves were forced to destroy to
+free their field of fire, but for the rest, there
+are only woods, that of Plainevaux, which
+reaches to the Ourthe, Neuville, and Vecqu&eacute;e
+woods, that of B&eacute;gnac, which continues Saint
+Lambert wood as far as Trooz and the Meuse.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Belgian
+troops
+fight
+heroically.</div>
+
+<p>Every place here swarmed with Germans,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+40,000 at least, an army corps which had spent
+a day and a night in fortifying themselves, and
+had been able to direct their artillery towards
+Plainevaux, to the north of Neuville, and upon
+the heights of Ramet. Thirty thousand men at
+least would have been needed to defend this
+gap and less than 15,000 were available. A
+similar attack was delivered at the same time
+between the Meuse and the Vesdre. On both
+sides miracles of heroism were performed, but
+the enemy poured on irresistibly. They were
+able to pass, on the one side, Val Saint Lambert,
+on the other, between Barchon and the
+Meuse, between Evegn&eacute;e and Fl&eacute;ron. Fighting
+took place well into the night, the enemy being
+repulsed at Boncelles twice. The following
+morning I saw pieces of German corpses. The
+Belgian artillery had made a real carnage, and
+no smaller number of victims fell in the bayonet
+charges. The 9th and the Carabineers, who
+had fought the day before at Barchon, were
+present here.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Retreat
+ordered.</div>
+
+<p>In the other sector, the soldiers of the 12th
+of the line particularly behaved like heroes.
+The battle began towards two o'clock in the
+morning at R&eacute;tinne where, after prodigies of
+valour and a great slaughter of the enemy, the
+Belgian troops were forced to retire. The
+struggle continued at Saine and at Queue du
+Bois. Here Lieutenant F. Bronne and forty of
+his men fell while covering the retreat. In
+spite of such devotion and of a bravery that
+will not be denied, the enemy passed through.
+Why? Some troops surrendered with their
+officers, who were afterwards set free upon
+parole at Li&egrave;ge. But this was only a very
+small exception, and it was under the pressure
+of an enemy four times as numerous that the
+3rd division succumbed after three days of repeated
+fighting, during which the soldiers were
+compelled to make forced marches from one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+sector to another, and stop the rest of the time
+in the trenches fighting. The enemy's losses
+were 5,000 killed and 30,000 wounded.</p>
+
+<p>General Leman considered that he had obtained
+from his troops the maximum effort of
+which they were capable and ordered a retreat.
+It was executed in good order, and the enemy
+had suffered so severely that they did not dream
+of pursuit. They contented themselves with
+pushing forward as far as the plateau of Saint-Tilman
+(close to Boncelles) and that of
+Robermont (behind Fl&eacute;ron) some cannons of
+15, which had bombarded the town the first
+time on Thursday, August 6th, at four o'clock
+in the morning. No German troops, except
+some 200 men who entered as prisoners, penetrated
+into the town on this day.</p>
+
+<p>Although this retreat left behind a few men
+with several guns, it may be said to have been
+effected in good order. I was able to see that
+for myself in passing through with the troops,
+from the fifth limit of the Saint Trond route,
+near Fort Loncin, up to the centre of the town.
+The auto in which I was seated was able to
+pass easily.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Refugees.</div>
+
+<p>The terrified population from Bressoux began
+to arrive. There were people half-dressed, but
+who carried some object which to them seemed
+the most precious, sometimes a simple portrait
+of a loved one. Others drove cattle before
+them. The men carried children, while women
+followed painfully loaded with household
+goods. Mixed up with them were the Garde
+Civique. It had just been assembled and informed
+that it was disbanded, and a certain
+number of them had told the inhabitants that
+the Prussians were coming, and that there was
+nothing better to do than for everyone to bolt
+himself in. The cannon had thundered all
+night. The citizens of Li&egrave;ge had found in their
+letter-boxes a warning from the burgomaster<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+concerning the behaviour of the inhabitants in
+case of the town being occupied by the enemy.
+This urgent notice, distributed the night before
+between 9 and 11 p.m., foreshadowed an imminent
+occupation. The hasty flight of the
+people of Bressoux stopped when they had
+crossed the Meuse; but as the bombardment recommenced
+towards noon, fright again seized
+on the population. The bombardment lasted
+till two. Some thirty shells fell on different
+parts of the town.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bridge of
+Arches
+destroyed.</div>
+
+<p>At half-past twelve a dull noise was heard as
+far as the furthest fort; it was the old Bridge
+of Arches which gave way, towards the left
+bank. The engineers had just blown it up. It
+seemed wiser to destroy the bridge at Val
+B&eacute;noit, which left the Germans railway communication.
+But no one thought of this; or
+rather, orders to that effect were not given by
+the higher authorities. This was afterwards
+to cause the degradation to the ranks of the
+chief officer of engineers who was responsible
+for this unpardonable lapse.</p>
+
+<p>The second bombardment lasted till two
+o'clock. Several projectiles now fell upon the
+citadel, where everything was in readiness to
+set fire to the provisions and munitions which
+remained there along with some unserviceable
+cannon, generally used in the training of the
+Garde Civique. By 10 a.m. the citadel had
+been evacuated, only very few persons remaining,
+among them a major, who hastily hoisted
+the white flag.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+envoys in
+Li&egrave;ge.</div>
+
+<p>Burgomaster Kleyer awaited developments at
+the Town Hall. At half-past three, he received
+envoys, who demanded the surrender of the
+town and forts. Put into communication with
+General Leman, who was all the time at Loncin
+with his Staff, he informed him that if the forts
+persisted in their resistance, the town would
+be bombarded a third time. General Leman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+replied that the threat was an idle one, that it
+would be a cruel massacre, but that the higher
+interests of Belgium compelled him to impose
+this sacrifice on the town of Li&egrave;ge.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bombardment
+of
+Li&egrave;ge.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gloomy
+aspect
+of the
+town.</div>
+
+<p>At 9 p.m. fresh shells fell on different parts
+of the city and caused more damage if not more
+victims. This bombardment lasted till 2 a.m.
+It recommenced at intervals of half-an-hour,
+and caused two fires, one in Rue de Hanque,
+and the other in Rue de la Commune. After
+midday, the streets were deserted and all dwelling
+houses closed. In the afternoon a convoy
+of Germans taken prisoners were seen to pass
+along the boulevards, and were then shut up
+in the Royal Athen&aelig;um. Then there was an
+interminable defile of autos and carts conveying
+both German and Belgian wounded, especially
+the former, those who came from Boncelles
+more particularly. Bodies of stragglers
+re-entered Li&egrave;ge slowly, ignorant of what had
+happened, as they were either untouched by the
+order to retire, or had been forgotten in the
+advanced posts or in the trenches. They were
+very tired and hardly had the courage to accelerate
+their pace, except when the few passers-by
+explained the position in a couple of words.
+The aspect of the town was very gloomy, and
+the only places where any animation was to be
+seen were around Guillemins station, where
+trains full of fugitives were leaving for Brussels,
+the West quarter, towards which the last
+of the retiring companies were marching, and
+the North, where many were still ignorant of
+this movement.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+enter
+Li&egrave;ge.</div>
+
+<p>On Friday, August 7th, at 3 a.m., the bombardment
+of Li&egrave;ge began again, chiefly directed
+against the citadel, where only a few soldiers
+now remained. These evacuated the place after
+setting fire to some provisions they were unable
+to carry off. The population passed
+through hours of anguish, which were destined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+not to be the last. Everybody took refuge in
+the cellars. Some people lived there for several
+days in fear that a shell might fall upon their
+house. On this Friday the Germans penetrated
+into the town at five o'clock in the morning by
+the different bridges which had remained intact.
+They came in through Jupille and Bois
+de Breux chiefly. They seemed tired and, above
+all, hungry. Leaving detachments in the Place
+de Bavi&egrave;re and near the bridges, they successively
+occupied the Provincial Palace and the
+citadel.</p>
+
+<p>Count Lammsdorf, Chief of the Staff of the
+10th Corps, Commander of the Army of the
+Meuse, arrested Burgomaster Kleyer at the
+Town Hall, and conducted him to the citadel,
+where he at first made him a rather reassuring
+communication as to the fate of the town....
+He then spoke anew and said that he understood
+all the forts would surrender, in default
+of which the bombardment would recommence.
+M. Kleyer vainly protested against a measure
+so contrary to the laws both of war and of
+humanity. He was simply authorized to pass
+through the German lines with a safe conduct,
+to discuss the matter with General Leman, or
+even with the King himself.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Burgomaster's
+task.</div>
+
+<p>This task of the burgomaster of Li&egrave;ge was a
+heavy one, and terrible was the expectant attitude
+of the German authorities. Later, some
+people have discussed the attitude he should
+have taken up and conceived the nature of
+what should have been his reply; they would
+have desired words of defiance on his lips and
+an immediate answer.</p>
+
+<p>He lacked courage for this, and who will dare
+to-day to blame him for the immense anxiety
+he felt on hearing of the horrible fate with
+which his beloved town and his unhappy fellow-citizens
+were threatened?</p>
+
+<p>He gathered together at the Town Hall several<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+communal and provincial deputies, some
+deputies and senators. The general opinion
+at the beginning of the discussion was that it
+was necessary to obtain the surrender of the
+forts. Someone pointed out that there was
+not much likelihood of getting this decision
+from General Leman, who had already pronounced
+himself upon that question, and
+thought it would be necessary to continue the
+work heroically begun of arresting the progress
+of the invader, and that the forts, all intact,
+would powerfully contribute to that end.</p>
+
+<p>It was finally decided to approach General
+Leman again with a message which was entrusted
+to the burgomaster, the Bishop of Li&egrave;ge,
+and M. Gaston Gr&eacute;goire, permanent deputy.
+These gentlemen repaired to the citadel in
+search of the promised safe conduct. They were
+met there, according to the demand of Count
+Lammsdorf, by some prominent Li&egrave;ge citizens,
+to whom he had expressed his desire to explain
+the situation.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hostages
+to the
+Germans.</div>
+
+<p>At the moment the three delegates were about
+to depart on their mission, with a good faith
+upon which it would be foolish to insist, the
+German commander declared that all the persons
+present were detained as hostages. He
+gave as a specious pretext for this violation
+of right that some German soldiers had been
+killed by civilians in some neighbouring villages,
+and that the hostages would enable the
+Germans to guard against the repetition of
+such acts, the more so as they were prepared
+to make a striking example at the beginning
+of the campaign.</p>
+
+<p>All the Li&egrave;ge citizens who had entered the
+citadel on this day were kept there till the next
+day, Saturday. Moreover, the following persons
+were retained as responsible hostages for
+three days: 1. Mgr. Rutien, Bishop of Li&egrave;ge;
+2. M. Kleyer, Burgomaster of Li&egrave;ge; 3. M.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+Gr&eacute;goire, Permanent Deputy; 4. M. Armand
+Flechet, Senator; 5. Senator Van Zuylen; 6.
+Senator Edouard Peltzer; 7. Senator Colleaux;
+8. Deputy De Ponthi&egrave;re; 9. Deputy Van Hoegaerden;
+10. M. Falloise, Alderman.</p>
+
+<p>The hostages were shut up in damp case-mates,
+palliasses were given them for the night
+and, as food, the first day each one had half a
+loaf and some water. The burgomaster and the
+bishop were, however, allowed to go about their
+duties after they had given their parole to remain
+at the disposal of the German military
+authorities.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Last
+train for
+Brussels.</div>
+
+<p>The same day at 9 a.m. the last train left
+Li&egrave;ge for Brussels with numbers of fugitives.
+The number of persons who abandoned Li&egrave;ge
+and its suburbs may be calculated at some five
+thousand. From this moment and for several
+days Li&egrave;ge was absolutely cut off from the rest
+of the world, all communications having been
+cut.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday, August 8th, while the Germans
+were methodically organising the occupation
+of Li&egrave;ge, Burgomaster Kleyer was authorised
+to wait upon the King, in order to discuss the
+surrender of the forts. Furnished with a safe
+conduct and accompanied by a German officer,
+he reached Waremme early in the afternoon,
+and placed himself in communication with the
+General Staff. The King was consulted, and
+the reply brought back to Li&egrave;ge was the one
+the mayor had foreseen.</p>
+
+<p>The same day saw the appearance of the following
+order of the day addressed to the
+soldiers of the army of Li&egrave;ge:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Our comrades of the 3rd Army Division
+and of the 15th mixed brigade are about to re-enter
+our lines, after having defended, like
+heroes, the fortified position of Li&egrave;ge.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The King
+encourages
+the
+army.</div>
+
+<p>"Attacked by forces four times as numerous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+they have repulsed all assaults. None of the
+forts have been taken; the town of Li&egrave;ge is
+always in our power. Standards and a number
+of prisoners are the trophies of these combats.
+In the name of the Nation I salute you, officers
+and soldiers of the 3rd Army Division and the
+15th mixed brigade.</p>
+
+<p>"You have done your duty, done honour to
+our arms, shown the enemy what it costs to attack
+unjustly a peaceable people, but one who
+wields in its just cause an invincible weapon.
+The Fatherland has the right to be proud of
+you.</p>
+
+<p>"Soldiers of the Belgian Army, do not forget
+that you are in the van of immense armies in
+this gigantic struggle, and that you await but
+the arrival of our brothers-in-arms in order to
+march to victory. The whole world has its eyes
+fixed upon you. Show it by the vigour of your
+blows that you mean to live free and independent.</p>
+
+<p>"France, that noble country which has
+throughout history been associated with just
+and generous causes, is hurrying to our aid
+and her armies will enter our territory.</p>
+
+<p>"In your name I address them a fraternal
+salute.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'><span class="smcap">Albert.</span>"<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+precautions.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">
+Barricades
+constructed.</div>
+
+<p>On this day the Germans, who were not yet
+sure as to the intentions of the Belgian field
+army, and who feared a possible offensive on
+the part of the French advanced guards, put
+Li&egrave;ge in a state of defence. Moreover, they
+distrusted the civilian population, and fortified
+themselves in the town itself. They placed machine
+guns at the head of the bridges, and upon
+one of them, Boverie, which they feared might
+be blown up, or might be bombarded by the
+forts, they placed a curtained recess in which
+they shut up several citizens. They caused
+the soldiers to occupy Quai des P&ecirc;cheurs, Quai<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+l'Industrie, and the houses in proximity to the
+bridge, after clearing out the occupants. They
+placed bags of earth in the windows, behind
+which were installed machine guns. In the
+arteries leading to La Hesbaye and La Campine,
+and in the streets of the latter, they
+erected barricades, and installed themselves in
+the riverside houses. These labours continued
+during several days on the heights of Saint
+Nicholas and Hollogne, while the soldiers of
+the 10th Corps installed themselves on the
+plateau of Cointe, the General Staff having
+taken possession there of a convent, although
+this had been transformed into a hospital. In
+the town, the German troops, delayed for a
+short time by the necessity of carrying off their
+dead, shifting their wounded, and of taking a
+much-needed rest, entered in large numbers.
+They occupied the different stations, that of
+Ans on the Herbignon plateau being the last
+one where they established themselves.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday, September 6th, there were at
+Li&egrave;ge more than 100,000 Germans. On this
+day, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the hostages
+were given their unconditional liberty.
+On the same date, in the neighbourhood of
+Landen, the King, accompanied by the General
+Staff, reviewed the valiant and now reconstituted
+3rd Division, reconstituted in spite of
+the heavy losses in officers suffered by certain
+regiments. General Leman received from M.
+Schollaert, President of the Belgian Chamber,
+the following telegram: "With a heart overflowing
+with enthusiasm and patriotic pride,
+I acclaim the glorious defender of Li&egrave;ge."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">
+Praise for
+defense of
+the city.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">President
+Poincar&eacute;
+honors
+General
+Leman.</div>
+
+<p>With reference to the defence of Li&egrave;ge, letters,
+despatches, and addresses of felicitation
+were received at Brussels from the Presidents
+of the French Chamber and the French Senate,
+from the Paris Municipal Council, and other
+French municipalities, words of friendship and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+encouragement were pronounced later in the
+British Parliament, while the King of the Belgians
+received the congratulations of King
+George, the Tsar, and the President of the
+French Republic. Finally, M. Poincar&eacute; sent
+him the most envied of distinctions, the military
+medal. The resistance of Li&egrave;ge had everywhere
+aroused grateful enthusiasm, for the
+days, and even the hours gained from the invader
+were now of inestimable value. But
+while the twelve forts were not yet to harass,
+as they could, the progress of the enemy, Li&egrave;ge,
+whose hatred of the Prussian is ingrained, was
+to pay dearly for the resistance it had made,
+and its heart was to suffer cruelly over the
+vexations of which it was to be the object, while
+awaiting pillage and burning.</p>
+
+<p>Here we enter upon a new period, which cannot,
+however, be separated from the siege of
+Li&egrave;ge, for at this time the forts still held out.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+twelve
+forts.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Forts
+on the
+banks
+of the
+Meuse.</div>
+
+<p>The forts still held out, but the resistance of
+their garrisons had to be heroic. The defences
+crumbled quite rapidly. We should not be surprised
+at this, but should rather remember that
+these forts were more than twenty years old.
+Their construction began in 1889, and their
+armament, though modified later in certain details,
+was not capable of resisting the heavy
+artillery of the Germans. Li&egrave;ge was defended
+by twelve forts, large and small. The most
+important works were Barchon, Fl&eacute;ron, Boncelles,
+Fl&eacute;malle, Loncin, and Pontisse. These
+forts possessed five large cupolas and three or
+four small ones. They were armed with two
+guns of 15 centimetres, four of 12, two howitzers
+of 21, and three or four guns of 5'7, ten
+more of 5'7 flanking the ditches. The little
+forts counted upon four large and three or four
+small cupolas. They were armed with two
+pieces of 15, two of 12, a howitzer of 21, three
+or four guns, without cupola, of 5'7, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+seven or eight commanding the ditches. The
+forts are arranged around Li&egrave;ge in the following
+order:&mdash;On the left bank of the Meuse:
+Fl&eacute;malle, Hollogne, Loncin, Lantin, and Pontisse.
+On the right bank, between the Meuse
+and the Vesdre: Barchon, Evegn&eacute;e, and Fl&eacute;ron.
+Between the Vesdre and the Ourthe: Chaudfontaine
+and Embourg. Between the Ourthe
+and the Meuse: Boncelles. The forts are four
+kilometres apart, except Fl&eacute;malle-Boncelles
+and Embourg-Pontisse, which are six kilometres
+apart, while Chaudfontaine and Embourg
+are only two kilometres from one another.
+The forts are eight kilometres from the
+limits of the town. The forts of Hollogne,
+Loncin, Lantin, and Liers are in grassy country.
+Boncelles is nearly completely surrounded
+by woods; Embourg and Chaudfontaine dominate
+the deep and winding valleys of the
+Ourthe and the Vesdre. Pontisse, Fl&eacute;malle,
+and Barchon, commanding the Meuse, are on
+broken ground. This last-named fort, with
+Evegn&eacute;e and Fl&eacute;ron, holds the most important
+strategic position in the Herve country, facing
+the German frontier, in a land cut up by
+meadows planted with trees and by little
+woods, traversed by many vales, not very deep,
+but winding.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">War
+conditions
+changed.</div>
+
+<p>It is known that in the Brialmont project
+the intervening spaces were to be defended and
+fortified with siege artillery. To tell the truth,
+the eminent military engineer, in the pamphlets
+where he set out the project, only allowed for
+a small mobile garrison, but he confessed later
+that the difficulties which he knew he would
+meet with in the Belgian Parliament over the
+credits for the fortifications made him underestimate
+the number of men required. Besides
+which, the conditions of war have been greatly
+modified during the twenty-five years which
+have passed, owing to the increased power of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+siege guns. So that it may be laid down that
+80,000, if not 100,000, men were needed to properly
+defend the entrenched camp of Li&egrave;ge.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Troops
+in the
+forts.</div>
+
+<p>As for the forts, they were each occupied by
+a battery of artillery (250 men) and three companies
+(120 men), a total of 370 men. About
+4,500 artillerymen for the twelve forts.</p>
+
+<p>General Leman was shut up in Loncin, one
+of the chief forts, which commanded the road
+towards Waremme and Brussels. He had sent
+away all his General Staff with the division,
+in spite of the supplications of his officers, who
+begged to be allowed to share his fate. He
+continued to direct the longest resistance possible.
+The enemy was anxious to cut all the
+communications between the forts, but soldiers
+volunteered for carrying messages to the different
+commanders. Several succeeded, but many
+were killed, for the investment became steadily
+tightened. Indeed, certain gaps, where the
+ground was most broken, could not be swept
+by the guns from the forts, and, under cover
+of the night, troops ensconced themselves there
+comfortably. Moreover, the Germans, having
+received reinforcements and heavy artillery,
+undertook the siege systematically, first of
+Barchon, which it was unable to take by storm
+any more than Boncelles, but which it subjected
+to a formidable deluge of shells. Barchon
+could only reply haphazard to heavy guns the
+position of which it could not tell. It was, indeed,
+deprived of its observation posts, and
+was in the position of a blind man desperately
+parrying the blows of an adversary who could
+see where to strike.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fort
+Barchon
+taken.</div>
+
+<p>The struggle was not for long, and the fort,
+reduced to impotence, left a wide breach
+through which the invader scrambled. Through
+there he could also introduce his heavy siege
+guns, howitzers of 28, and even pieces of 42
+cms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Forty-two
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'centimeter'">centimetre</ins>
+guns.</div>
+
+<p>The enemy then followed a tactic which was
+to succeed rapidly. He attacked the different
+fortifications in a reverse way. Thus Loncin,
+Lantin, Liers, and Pontisse were bombarded
+by batteries placed in the citadel itself and to
+which the Belgians could not reply without
+shelling the town and doing frightful damage.
+A battery was also placed in a bend of ground
+up Rue Naniot, under the "Tomb," where some
+of those who fell in 1830 are buried, but it was
+discovered and had to be withdrawn. Forts
+Boncelles and Embourg were attacked by guns
+placed on the hill at Tilff, a pretty village,
+which would have been completely destroyed
+had the firing been responded to. Finally,
+along the line of the plateau of Herve, no
+longer dominated by Barchon and Fl&eacute;ron, now
+destroyed, the enemy was able to bring into
+the very centre of the town four of those
+howitzers of 42 cms. which were later to bombard
+Namur, Maubeuge, and Antwerp.</p>
+
+<p>The following are the dates on which the different
+forts succumbed: Barchon and Evegn&eacute;e
+fell on August 9th. Right from the 5th they
+had not ceased to be the object of continual attacks.
+They had valiantly resisted repeated
+assaults and field artillery. The heavy pieces
+poured in a hurricane of fire.</p>
+
+<p>Pontisse, which had so usefully barred the
+passage of the enemy below Vis&eacute;, did not give
+way till the 12th. On the 13th Embourg surrendered
+after a twenty-six hours' bombardment.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Forts
+yield one
+by one.</div>
+
+<p>The same day saw the fall of Chaudfontaine
+and Nameche, where two accidents happened
+worthy of being related. A shell burst on a
+cupola gun as it was finishing its movement
+after being loaded. The whole gun was shattered
+and ten men were wounded. A little
+while after, a shell entered the fort through
+the embrasure and set fire to the powder magazine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+One hundred and ten artillerymen were
+terribly burned, fifty dying upon the spot. The
+14th saw the fall of Boncelles, Liers, and
+Fl&eacute;ron. Boncelles from the 5th had offered an
+admirable resistance. Commandant Lefert had
+been wounded on the 8th, when 200 Germans,
+presenting themselves to surrender, treacherously
+fired upon him. Suffering greatly, he
+none the less went on directing the defence
+until his officers met together in a kind of
+council of war, and had him taken away in an
+ambulance. The unfortunate man was seized
+by a fever and became delirious. Boncelles
+was bombarded unceasingly for a whole day
+and the following morning. It was nearly destroyed,
+and may be considered as the fort which
+was the centre of the worst carnage of German
+soldiers. The enormous heaps of dead buried
+around it bear witness to the fact. Liers was
+put out of action by guns installed at Sainte
+Walburge.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Loncin
+and
+Lantin
+fall.</div>
+
+<p>To get the better of the obstinate resistance
+of Fl&eacute;ron (Commandant Mozin), the Germans
+united twenty guns by an electric battery and
+fired them all off at the same time upon the
+fort, which trembled in its massive foundations.
+No one can have an idea of how demoralising
+this rain of projectiles was. On the 15th, Loncin
+and Lantin fell, the defenders firing until
+they were overcome by asphyxia. On the 16th,
+it was the turn of Fl&eacute;malle, and on the 18th,
+of Hollogne.</p>
+
+<p>We know that it was at Loncin, which
+dominated the roads of La Hesbaye, where
+General Leman was shut up. Commandant
+Naessens and Lieutenant Monard had the honour
+of defending the fort under the General's
+eyes. Electrified by the presence of the governor
+of the fortress, the soldiers of Loncin wrote
+with their blood the most heroic page of the
+heroic defence of Li&egrave;ge. Commandant Naessens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+modestly narrated the story when he had
+been wounded and transported to the military
+hospital of Saint Laurent. General Leman has
+also <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;d</i> the different phases of the attack,
+while a prisoner at Magdeburg. We will listen
+to his clear and crisp recital.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Leman's
+story.</div>
+
+<p>He distinguishes four periods during the
+bombardment. The first commenced on August
+14th at 4.15 p.m. The shell fire, directed with
+great exactitude, lasted two hours without interruption.
+After a break of half-an-hour,
+some 21-centimetre guns opened fire. All night,
+at intervals of ten minutes, they rained shells
+upon the fort, causing it considerable damage.
+The escarpment was damaged, the protecting
+walls of the left flank battery destroyed, and
+the shutters of the windows pierced. Another
+unfavourable circumstance was that all the
+places of the escarpment where shelter could
+be obtained were full of smoke from the shells
+which had burst either in the protecting wall
+or in the ditches. The deleterious gases rendered
+it impossible to stand in the covered
+places, and forced the General to assemble the
+garrison in the interior and in the gallery.
+Even in these refuges the stupefying effects of
+the gases allowed themselves to be felt, and
+weakened the fighting value of the garrison.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Horrors
+of the
+bombardments.</div>
+
+<p>The third period of bombardment began on
+the 15th at 5.30 a.m. and continued until two
+o'clock in the afternoon. The projectiles
+caused fearful havoc. The vault of the commanding
+post, where General Leman was present
+with his two adjutants, was subjected to
+furious shocks, and the fort trembled to its
+foundations. Towards two o'clock, a lull occurred
+in the firing, and the general took advantage
+of it to inspect the fort. He found
+part of it completely in ruins.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Currents
+of poisonous
+gas.</div>
+
+<p>The fourth period is described as follows:
+"It was two o'clock when the bombardment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+recommenced with a violence of which no idea
+can be given. It seemed to us as if the German
+batteries were firing salvoes. When the
+large shells fell we heard the hissing of the air,
+which gradually increased into a roar like a
+furious hurricane, and which finished by a sudden
+noise of thunder. At a certain moment of
+this formidable bombardment, I wished to
+reach the commanding post in order to see what
+was happening, but at the end of a few paces
+in the gallery I was knocked down by a shock
+of violent air and fell face forward. I got up
+and wished to continue my way, but I was held
+back by a current of poisonous air which invaded
+the whole space. It was a mixture of the
+gas from the exploded powder and of the smoke
+of a fire which had started in the rooms of the
+troops where furniture and bedding were kept.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The fort
+blown up.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Leman a
+prisoner.</div>
+
+<p>"We were thus driven back to the place
+whence we had come, but the air had become
+unbreathable. We were near to being asphyxiated
+when my adjutant, Major Collard, had
+the idea of taking off the top of the shutter,
+which gave us a little air. I was, however,
+obsessed by the idea of placing part of the
+garrison in safety, and I told my comrade I
+desired to reach the counter-escarpment. I
+managed to pass the gap and reach the ditch,
+which I crossed. What was my amazement
+when I perceived that the fort was blown up,
+and that the front was strewn with ruins, forming
+a quay reaching from the escarpment to
+the counter-escarpment. Some soldiers were
+running to and fro upon it. I took them for
+Belgian gendarmes and called to them. But
+I was being suffocated, giddiness seized upon
+me, and I fell to the ground. When I came to,
+I found myself in the midst of my comrades,
+who tried to come to my aid. Among them was
+a German major, who gave me a glass of water
+to drink. As I learnt afterwards, it was then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+about 6.30 p.m. I was placed in an ambulance
+carriage and transported to Li&egrave;ge.</p>
+
+<p>"I was taken, but I had not yet surrendered."</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>English Review, April, 1915.</small></div>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Surrender
+of Namur.</div>
+
+<p>Following the capture of Li&egrave;ge the German
+armies made rapid progress through Belgium.
+After several sharp engagements with Belgian
+troops, which resisted with heroic tenacity, the
+Germans on August 19 took Louvain, and
+then began the deliberate system of atrocities
+which horrified the civilized world. The most
+valuable parts of the city, including many
+beautiful and important edifices, were burned,
+citizens were killed and tortured, and the utmost
+brutality was practiced, under the excuse
+that German troops had been fired upon by
+citizens of the town. On August 17 Brussels
+had been abandoned by the Belgian Government
+which withdrew to Antwerp. The former
+city was surrendered without resistance. In
+the meantime the French had hurried their
+armies to assist the Belgian forces and, joined
+by the available troops of the English Expeditionary
+Force, they encountered the Germans
+at Charleroi. On August 23 the great
+fortress of Namur was surrendered under the
+fire of the heavy German artillery, and on the
+following day, the Allied armies were defeated
+at Charleroi, and began the Great Retreat toward
+Paris which was to continue to the banks
+of the Marne. The French armies were under
+the command of General Joffre, while Sir John
+French commanded the British Expeditionary
+Force. In the following narrative General
+French describes the heroic performances of
+his gallant troops during the terrible ordeal.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE GREAT RETREAT</h2>
+
+<h3>SIR JOHN FRENCH</h3>
+
+
+<p>The transport of the troops from England
+both by sea and by rail was effected in the
+best order and without a check. Each
+unit arrived at its destination in this country
+well within the scheduled time.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Disposition
+of
+British
+forces.</div>
+
+<p>The concentration was practically complete
+on the evening of Friday, September 21st, and
+I was able to make dispositions to move the
+force during Saturday, the 22d, to positions I
+considered most favorable from which to commence
+operations which the French Commander
+in Chief, General Joffre, requested me
+to undertake in pursuance of his plans in prosecution
+of the campaign.</p>
+
+<p>The line taken up extended along the line of
+the canal from Cond&eacute; on the west, through
+Mons and Binche on the east. This line was
+taken up as follows:</p>
+
+<p>From Cond&eacute; to Mons inclusive was assigned
+to the Second Corps, and to the right of the
+Second Corps from Mons the First Corps was
+posted. The Fifth Cavalry Brigade was placed
+at Binche.</p>
+
+<p>In the absence of my Third Army Corps I
+desired to keep the cavalry division as much
+as possible as a reserve to act on my outer
+flank, or move in support of any threatened
+part of the line. The forward reconnoissance
+was intrusted to Brigadier General
+Sir Philip Chetwode with the Fifth Cavalry
+Brigade, but I directed General Allenby to
+send forward a few squadrons to assist in
+this work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Advance
+on Soignies.</div>
+
+<p>During the 22d and 23d these advanced
+squadrons did some excellent work, some of
+them penetrating as far as Soignies, and several
+encounters took place in which our troops
+showed to great advantage.</p>
+
+<p>2. At 6 A. M. on August 23, I assembled the
+commanders of the First and Second Corps and
+cavalry division at a point close to the position
+and explained the general situation of the
+Allies, and what I understood to be General
+Joffre's plan. I discussed with them at some
+length the immediate situation in front of us.</p>
+
+<p>From information I received from French
+Headquarters I understood that little more
+than one, or at most two, of the enemy's army
+corps, with perhaps one cavalry division, were
+in front of my position; and I was aware of
+no attempted outflanking movement by the
+enemy. I was confirmed in this opinion by the
+fact that my patrols encountered no undue opposition
+in their reconnoitring operations. The
+observations of my aeroplanes seemed also to
+bear out this estimate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Attack
+on Mons
+line.</div>
+
+<p>About 3 P. M. on Sunday, the 23d, reports
+began coming in to the effect that the enemy
+was commencing an attack on the Mons line,
+apparently in some strength, but that the right
+of the position from Mons and Bray was being
+particularly threatened.</p>
+
+<p>The commander of the First Corps had
+pushed his flank back to some high ground
+south of Bray, and the Fifth Cavalry Brigade
+evacuated Binche, moving slightly south; the
+enemy thereupon occupied Binche.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">
+Germans
+gain
+passages
+of the
+Sambre.</div>
+
+<p>The right of the Third Division, under General
+Hamilton, was at Mons, which formed a
+somewhat dangerous salient; and I directed
+the commander of the Second Corps to be careful
+not to keep the troops on this salient too
+long, but, if threatened seriously, to draw back
+the centre behind Mons. This was done before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+dark. In the meantime, about 5 P. M., I received
+a most unexpected message from General
+Joffre by telegraph, telling me that at least
+three German corps, viz., a reserve corps, the
+Fourth Corps and the Ninth Corps, were moving
+on my position in front, and that the Second
+Corps was engaged in a turning movement
+from the direction of Tournay. He also informed
+me that the two reserve French divisions
+and the Fifth French Army on my right
+were retiring, the Germans having on the previous
+day gained possession of the passages of
+the Sambre between Charleroi and Namur.</p>
+
+<p>3. In view of the possibility of my being
+driven from the Mons position, I had previously
+ordered a position in rear to be reconnoitred.
+This position rested on the fortress of Maubeuge
+on the right and extended west to Jenlain,
+southeast of Valenciennes, on the left.
+The position was reported difficult to hold, because
+standing crops and buildings made the
+siting of trenches very difficult and limited the
+field of fire in many important localities. It
+nevertheless afforded a few good artillery
+positions.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+retire to
+Maubeuge
+position.</div>
+
+<p>When the news of the retirement of the
+French and the heavy German threatening on
+my front reached me, I endeavored to confirm
+it by aeroplane reconnoissance; and as a result
+of this I determined to effect a retirement to
+the Maubeuge position at daybreak on the 24th.</p>
+
+<p>A certain amount of fighting continued
+along the whole line throughout the night and
+at daybreak on the 24th the Second Division
+from the neighborhood of Harmignies made a
+powerful demonstration as if to retake Binche.
+This was supported by the artillery of both the
+First and Second Divisions, while the First
+Division took up a supporting position in the
+neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this
+demonstration the Second Corps retired on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+line Dour-Quarouble-Frameries. The Third Division
+on the right of the corps suffered considerable
+loss in this operation from the enemy,
+who had retaken Mons.</p>
+
+<p>The Second Corps halted on this line, where
+they partially intrenched themselves, enabling
+Sir Douglas Haig with the First Corps gradually
+to withdraw to the new position; and he
+effected this without much further loss, reaching
+the line Bavai-Maubeuge about 7 P. M.
+Toward midday the enemy appeared to be directing
+his principal effort against our left.</p>
+
+<p>I had previously ordered General Allenby
+with the cavalry to act vigorously in advance
+of my left front and endeavor to take the
+pressure off.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Allenby
+supports
+Fifth
+Division.</div>
+
+<p>About 7:30 A. M. General Allenby received
+a message from Sir Charles Fergusson, commanding
+the Fifth Division, saying that he was
+very hard pressed and in urgent need of support.
+On receipt of this message General
+Allenby drew in the cavalry and endeavored to
+bring direct support to the Fifth Division.</p>
+
+<p>During the course of this operation General
+De Lisle, of the Second Cavalry Brigade,
+thought he saw a good opportunity to paralyze
+the further advance of the enemy's infantry by
+making a mounted attack on his flank. He
+formed up and advanced for this purpose, but
+was held up by wire about 500 yards from his
+objective, and the Ninth Lancers and the Eighteenth
+Hussars suffered severely in the retirement
+of the brigade.</p>
+
+<p>The Nineteenth Infantry Brigade, which had
+been guarding the line of communications, was
+brought up by rail to Valenciennes on the 22d
+and 23d. On the morning of the 24th they were
+moved out to a position south of Quarouble to
+support the left flank of the Second Corps.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sir
+Horace
+Smith-Dorrien
+suffers
+great
+losses.</div>
+
+<p>With the assistance of the cavalry Sir Horace
+Smith-Dorrien was enabled to effect his retreat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+to a new position; although, having two corps
+of the enemy on his front and one threatening
+his flank, he suffered great losses in doing so.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall the position was occupied by the
+Second Corps to the west of Bavai, the First
+Corps to the right. The right was protected
+by the fortress of Maubeuge, the left by the
+Nineteenth Brigade in position between Jenlain
+and Bry, and the cavalry on the outer
+flank.</p>
+
+<p>4. The French were still retiring, and I had
+no support except such as was afforded by the
+Fortress of Maubeuge; and the determined attempts
+of the enemy to get round my left flank
+assured me that it was his intention to hem
+me against that place and surround me. I felt
+that not a moment must be lost in retiring to
+another position.</p>
+
+<p>I had every reason to believe that the enemy's
+forces were somewhat exhausted and I knew
+that they had suffered heavy losses. I hoped,
+therefore, that his pursuit would not be
+too vigorous to prevent me effecting my
+object.</p>
+
+<p>The operation, however, was full of danger
+and difficulty, not only owing to the very superior
+force in my front, but also to the exhaustion
+of the troops.</p>
+
+<p>The retirement was recommenced in the early
+morning of the 25th to a position in the neighborhood
+of Le Cateau, and rearguards were
+ordered to be clear of the Maubeuge-Bavai-Eth
+Road by 5:30 A. M.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Allenby
+covers
+west flank.</div>
+
+<p>Two cavalry brigades, with the divisional
+cavalry of the Second Corps, covered the movement
+of the Second Corps. The remainder of
+the cavalry division, with the Nineteenth Brigade,
+the whole under the command of General
+Allenby, covered the west flank.</p>
+
+<p>The Fourth Division commenced its detrainment
+at Le Cateau on Sunday, the 23d, and by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+the morning of the 25th eleven battalions and
+a brigade of artillery with divisional staff were
+available for service.</p>
+
+<p>I ordered General Snow to move out to take
+up a position with his right south of Solesmes,
+his left resting on the Cambrai-Le Cateau
+Road south of La Chaprie. In this position the
+division rendered great help to the effective retirement
+of the Second and First Corps to the
+new position.</p>
+
+<p>Although the troops had been ordered to occupy
+the Cambrai-Le Cateau-Landrecies position,
+and the ground had, during the 25th, been
+partially prepared and intrenched, I had grave
+doubts&mdash;owing to the information I had received
+as to the accumulating strength of the
+enemy against me&mdash;as to the wisdom of standing
+there to fight.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Retirement
+of French
+troops on
+right.</div>
+
+<p>Having regard to the continued retirement
+of the French on my right, my exposed left
+flank, the tendency of the enemy's western
+corps (II.) to envelop me, and, more than all,
+the exhausted condition of the troops, I determined
+to make a great effort to continue the
+retreat till I could put some substantial obstacle,
+such as the Somme or the Oise, between
+my troops and the enemy, and afford the former
+some opportunity of rest and reorganization.
+Orders were, therefore, sent to the corps commanders
+to continue their retreat as soon as
+they possibly could toward the general line
+Vermand-St. Quentin-Ribemont.</p>
+
+<p>The cavalry, under General Allenby, were
+ordered to cover the retirement.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the 25th and far into the evening,
+the First Corps continued its march on Landrecies,
+following the road along the eastern
+border of the For&ecirc;t de Mormal, and arrived at
+Landrecies about 10 o'clock. I had intended
+that the corps should come further west so as
+to fill up the gap between Le Cateau and Landrecies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+but the men were exhausted and could
+not get further in without rest.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+brigade in
+Landrecies.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">French
+reserve
+divisions
+support
+First
+Corps.</div>
+
+<p>The enemy, however, would not allow them
+this rest, and about 9:30 P. M. a report was
+received that the Fourth Guards Brigade in
+Landrecies was heavily attacked by troops of
+the Ninth German Army Corps, who were coming
+through the forest on the north of the town.
+This brigade fought most gallantly, and caused
+the enemy to suffer tremendous loss in issuing
+from the forest into the narrow streets of the
+town. This loss has been estimated from reliable
+sources at from 700 to 1,000. At the same
+time information reached me from Sir Douglas
+Haig that his First Division was also heavily
+engaged south and east of Maroilles. I sent
+urgent messages to the commander of the two
+French reserve divisions on my right to come
+up to the assistance of the First Corps, which
+they eventually did. Partly owing to this assistance,
+but mainly to the skillful manner in
+which Sir Douglas Haig extricated his corps
+from an exceptionally difficult position in the
+darkness of the night, they were able at dawn
+to resume their march south toward Wassigny
+on Guise.</p>
+
+<p>By about 6 P. M. the Second Corps had got
+into position with their right on Le Cateau,
+their left in the neighborhood of Caudry, and
+the line of defense was continued thence by
+the Fourth Division toward Seranvillers, the
+left being thrown back.</p>
+
+<p>During the fighting on the 24th and 25th the
+cavalry became a good deal scattered, but by
+the early morning of the 26th General Allenby
+had succeeded in concentrating two brigades to
+the south of Cambrai.</p>
+
+<p>The Fourth Division was placed under the
+orders of the general officer commanding the
+Second Army Corps.</p>
+
+<p>On the 24th the French cavalry corps, consisting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+of three divisions under General Sord&ecirc;t,
+had been in billets north of Avesnes. On my
+way back from Bavai, which was my "Poste
+de Commandement" during the fighting of the
+23d and 24th, I visited General Sord&ecirc;t, and
+earnestly requested his co-operation and support.
+He promised to obtain sanction from
+his army commander to act on my left flank,
+but said that his horses were too tired to move
+before the next day. Although he rendered me
+valuable assistance later on in the course of the
+retirement, he was unable for the reasons given
+to afford me any support on the most critical
+day of all, viz., the 26th.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+Second
+Corps and
+Fourth
+Division
+heavily
+attacked.</div>
+
+<p>At daybreak it became apparent that the
+enemy was throwing the bulk of his strength
+against the left of the position occupied by the
+Second Corps and the Fourth Division.</p>
+
+<p>At this time the guns of four German army
+corps were in position against them, and Sir
+Horace Smith-Dorrien reported to me that he
+judged it impossible to continue his retirement
+at daybreak (as ordered) in face of such an
+attack.</p>
+
+<p>I sent him orders to use his utmost endeavors
+to break off the action and retire at the earliest
+possible moment, as it was impossible for me
+to send him any support, the First Corps being
+at the moment incapable of movement.</p>
+
+<p>The French cavalry corps, under General
+Sord&ecirc;t, was coming up on our left rear early
+in the morning, and I sent an urgent message
+to him to do his utmost to come up and support
+the retirement of my left flank; but owing to
+the fatigue of his horses he found himself unable
+to intervene in any way.</p>
+
+<p>There had been no time to intrench the position
+properly, but the troops showed a magnificent
+front to the terrible fire which confronted
+them.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+artillery
+outmatched
+by four
+to one.</div>
+
+<p>The artillery, although outmatched by at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+least four to one, made a splendid fight, and inflicted
+heavy losses on their opponents.</p>
+
+<p>At length it became apparent that, if complete
+annihilation was to be avoided, a retirement
+must be attempted; and the order was
+given to commence it about 3:30 P. M. The
+movement was covered with the most devoted
+intrepidity and determination by the artillery,
+which had itself suffered heavily, and the fine
+work done by the cavalry in the further retreat
+from the position assisted materially in the
+final completion of this most difficult and
+dangerous operation.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately the enemy had himself suffered
+too heavily to engage in an energetic pursuit.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Sir
+Horace
+Smith-Dorrien
+cited for
+conspicuous
+service.</div>
+
+<p>I cannot close the brief account of this glorious
+stand of the British troops without putting
+on record my deep appreciation of the valuable
+services rendered by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien.</p>
+
+<p>I say without hesitation that the saving of
+the left wing of the army under my command
+on the morning of the 26th August could never
+have been accomplished unless a commander
+of rare and unusual coolness, intrepidity, and
+determination had been present to personally
+conduct the operation.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+retreat
+holding
+on line
+Noyon-Chauny-La
+F&egrave;re.</div>
+
+<p>The retreat was continued far into the night
+of the 26th and through the 27th and 28th, on
+which date the troops halted on the line Noyon-Chauny-La
+F&egrave;re, having then thrown off the
+weight of the enemy's pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>On the 27th and 28th August I was much
+indebted to General Sord&ecirc;t and the French
+cavalry division which he commands for
+materially assisting my retirement and successfully
+driving back some of the enemy on
+Cambrai.</p>
+
+<p>General D'Amade also, with the Sixty-first
+and Sixty-second French Reserve Divisions,
+moved down from the neighborhood of Arras<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+on the enemy's right flank and took much pressure
+off the rear of the British forces located
+there.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">End of
+four days'
+battle at
+Mons.</div>
+
+<p>This closes the period covering the heavy
+fighting which commenced at Mons on Sunday
+afternoon, 23d August, and which really constituted
+a four days' battle.</p>
+
+<p>At this point, therefore, I propose to close
+the present dispatch.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Serious
+losses in
+British
+forces.</div>
+
+<p>I deeply deplore the very serious losses which
+the British forces have suffered in this great
+battle; but they were inevitable in view of the
+fact that the British Army&mdash;only two days
+after a concentration by rail&mdash;was called upon
+to withstand a vigorous attack of five German
+army corps.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible for me to speak too highly
+of the skill evinced by the two general officers
+commanding army corps; the self-sacrificing
+and devoted exertions of their staffs; the direction
+of the troops by divisional, brigade, and
+regimental leaders; the command of the smaller
+units by their officers; and the magnificent
+fighting spirit displayed by non-commissioned
+officers and men.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Royal
+Flying
+Corps
+cited for
+admirable
+work.</div>
+
+<p>I wish particularly to bring to your Lordship's
+notice the admirable work done by the
+Royal Flying Corps under Sir David Henderson.
+Their skill, energy, and perseverance have
+been beyond all praise. They have furnished
+me with the most complete and accurate information,
+which has been of incalculable value
+in the conduct of the operations. Fired at constantly
+both by friend and foe, and not hesitating
+to fly in every kind of weather, they have
+remained undaunted throughout.</p>
+
+<p>Further, by actually fighting in the air, they
+have succeeded in destroying five of the enemy's
+machines.</p>
+
+<p>I wish to acknowledge with deep gratitude
+the incalculable assistance I received from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+General and Personal Staffs at Headquarters
+during this trying period.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote2">Lieutenant
+General
+Sir
+Archibald
+Murray,
+Major
+General
+Wilson,
+Brigade
+General
+Hon.
+Lambton
+cited for
+admirable
+work.</div>
+
+<p>Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray,
+Chief of the General Staff; Major General
+Wilson, Sub-Chief of the General Staff; and all
+under them have worked day and night unceasingly
+with the utmost skill, self-sacrifice,
+and devotion; and the same acknowledgment
+is due by me to Brigadier General Hon. W.
+Lambton, my Military Secretary, and the personal
+Staff.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Major
+General
+Sir
+William
+Robertson
+cited for
+admirable
+work.</div>
+
+<p>In such operations as I have described the
+work of the Quartermaster General is of an extremely
+onerous nature. Major General Sir
+William Robertson has met what appeared to
+be almost insuperable difficulties with his
+characteristic energy, skill, and determination;
+and it is largely owing to his exertions that the
+hardships and sufferings of the troops&mdash;inseparable
+from such operations&mdash;were not much
+greater.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Major
+General
+Sir Nevil
+Macready.</div>
+
+<p>Major General Sir Nevil Macready, the Adjutant
+General, has also been confronted
+with most onerous and difficult tasks in connection
+with disciplinary arrangements and the
+preparation of casualty lists. He has been indefatigable
+in his exertions to meet the difficult
+situations which arose.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE</h2>
+
+<h3>SIR JOHN FRENCH</h3>
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+17th September, 1914.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>My Lord: In continuation of my dispatch
+of September 7, I have the honor to report
+the further progress of the operations
+of the forces under my command from
+August 28.</p>
+
+<p>On that evening the retirement of the force
+was followed closely by two of the enemy's
+cavalry columns, moving southeast from St.
+Quentin.</p>
+
+<p>The retreat in this part of the field was being
+covered by the Third and Fifth Cavalry
+Brigades. South of the Somme General Gough,
+with the Third Cavalry Brigade, threw back
+the Uhlans of the Guard with considerable loss.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Chetwode
+routs
+German
+attack.</div>
+
+<p>General Chetwode, with the Fifth Cavalry
+Brigade, encountered the eastern column near
+Cerizy, moving south. The brigade attacked
+and routed the column, the leading German
+regiment suffering very severe casualties and
+being almost broken up.</p>
+
+<p>The Seventh French Army Corps was now
+in course of being railed up from the south to
+the east of Amiens. On the 29th it nearly
+completed its detrainment, and the French
+Sixth Army got into position on my left, its
+right resting on Roye.</p>
+
+<p>The Fifth French Army was behind the line
+of the Oise, between La F&egrave;re and Guise.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Vigorous
+pursuit of
+retreating
+German
+forces.</div>
+
+<p>The pursuit of the enemy was very vigorous;
+some five or six German corps were on the
+Somme, facing the Fifth Army on the Oise.
+At least two corps were advancing toward my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+front, and were crossing the Somme east and
+west of Ham. Three or four more German
+corps were opposing the Sixth French Army
+on my left.</p>
+
+<p>This was the situation at 1 o'clock on the
+29th, when I received a visit from General
+Joffre at my headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>I strongly represented my position to the
+French Commander in Chief, who was most
+kind, cordial, and sympathetic, as he has always
+been. He told me that he had directed
+the Fifth French Army on the Oise to move
+forward and attack the Germans on the Somme,
+with a view to checking pursuit. He also told
+me of the formation of the Sixth French Army
+on my left flank, composed of the Seventh Army
+Corps, four reserve divisions, and Sord&ecirc;t's
+corps of cavalry.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Short retirement
+towards
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Compiegne'">Compi&egrave;gne</ins>-Soissons.</div>
+
+<p>I finally arranged with General Joffre to
+effect a further short retirement toward the
+line Compi&egrave;gne-Soissons, promising him, however,
+to do my utmost to keep always within
+a day's march of him.</p>
+
+<p>In pursuance of this arrangement the British
+forces retired to a position a few miles north
+of the line Compi&egrave;gne-Soissons on the 29th.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Right
+flank of
+German
+army in
+dangerous
+line of
+connection.</div>
+
+<p>The right flank of the Germany Army was
+now reaching a point which appeared seriously
+to endanger my line of communications with
+Havre. I had already evacuated Amiens, into
+which place a German reserve division was reported
+to have moved.</p>
+
+<p>Orders were given to change the base to St.
+Nazaire, and establish an advance base at Le
+Mans. This operation was well carried out by
+the Inspector General of Communications.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Retirement
+to
+the Marne
+ordered.</div>
+
+<p>In spite of a severe defeat inflicted upon the
+Guard Tenth and Guard Reserve Corps of the
+German Army by the First and Third French
+Corps on the right of the Fifth Army, it was
+not part of General Joffre's plan to pursue this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+advantage; and a general retirement to the
+line of the Marne was ordered, to which the
+French forces in the more eastern theatre were
+directed to conform.</p>
+
+<p>A new Army (the Ninth) had been formed
+from three corps in the south by General Joffre,
+and moved into the space between the right
+of the Fifth and left of the Fourth Armies.</p>
+
+<p>While closely adhering to his strategic conception
+to draw the enemy on at all points until
+a favorable situation was created from
+which to assume the offensive, General Joffre
+found it necessary to modify from day to day
+the methods by which he sought to attain this
+object, owing to the development of the enemy's
+plans and changes in the general situation.</p>
+
+<p>In conformity with the movements of the
+French forces, my retirement continued practically
+from day to day. Although we were
+not severely pressed by the enemy, rearguard
+actions took place continually.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Attack on
+British
+First
+Cavalry
+Brigade.</div>
+
+<p>On the 1st September, when retiring from
+the thickly wooded country to the south of
+Compi&egrave;gne, the First Cavalry Brigade was
+overtaken by some German cavalry. They
+momentarily lost a horse artillery battery, and
+several officers and men were killed and wounded.
+With the help, however, of some detachments
+from the Third Corps operating on their
+left, they not only recovered their own guns,
+but succeeded in capturing twelve of the
+enemy's.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly, to the eastward, the First Corps,
+retiring south, also got into some very difficult
+forest country, and a somewhat severe rearguard
+action ensued at Villers-Cotterets, in
+which the Fourth Guards Brigade suffered considerably.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+forces in
+position
+south
+of the
+Marne.</div>
+
+<p>On September 3 the British forces were in
+position south of the Marne between Lagny and
+Signy-Signets. Up to this time I had been requested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+by General Joffre to defend the passages
+of the river as long as possible, and to
+blow up the bridges in my front. After I had
+made the necessary dispositions, and the destruction
+of the bridges had been effected, I
+was asked by the French Commander in Chief
+to continue my retirement to a point some
+twelve miles in rear of the position I then occupied,
+with a view to taking up a second position
+behind the Seine. This retirement was
+duly carried out. In the meantime the enemy
+had thrown bridges and crossed the Marne in
+considerable force, and was threatening the
+Allies all along the line of the British forces
+and the Fifth and Ninth French Armies. Consequently
+several small outpost actions took
+place.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday, September 5, I met the French
+Commander in Chief at his request, and he informed
+me of his intention to take the offensive
+forthwith, as he considered conditions very
+favorable to success.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Joffre
+announces
+intention
+to take
+offensive.</div>
+
+<p>General Joffre announced to me his intention
+of wheeling up the left flank of the Sixth Army,
+pivoting on the Marne and directing it to move
+on the Ourcq; cross and attack the flank of the
+First German Army, which was then moving in
+a southeasterly direction east of that river.</p>
+
+<p>He requested me to effect a change of front
+to my right&mdash;my left resting on the Marne and
+my right on the Fifth Army&mdash;to fill the gap
+between that army and the Sixth. I was then
+to advance against the enemy in my front and
+join in the general offensive movement.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Battle
+begins
+Sunday,
+September
+6.</div>
+
+<p>These combined movements practically commenced
+on Sunday, September 6, at sunrise;
+and on that day it may be said that a great
+battle opened on a front extending from
+Ermenonville, which was just in front of the
+left flank of the Sixth French Army, through
+Lizy on the Marne, Mauperthuis, which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+about the British centre, Courtecon, which was
+on the left of the Fifth French Army, to Esternay
+and Charleville, the left of the Ninth Army
+under General Foch, and so along the front of
+the Ninth, Fourth and Third French Armies
+to a point north of the fortress of Verdun.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Battle
+concluded
+September
+10.
+Germans
+driven
+to the
+line
+Soissons-Rheims.</div>
+
+<p>This battle, in so far as the Sixth French
+Army, the British Army, the Fifth French
+Army, and the Ninth French Army were concerned,
+may be said to have concluded on the
+evening of September 10, by which time the
+Germans had been driven back to the line Soissons-Rheims,
+with a loss of thousands of prisoners,
+many guns, and enormous masses of transport.</p>
+
+<p>About September 3 the enemy appears to
+have changed his plans and to have determined
+to stop his advance south direct upon Paris, for
+on September 4 air reconnoissances showed
+that his main columns were moving in a
+southeasterly direction generally east of a
+line drawn through Nanteuil and Lizy on the
+Ourcq.</p>
+
+<p>On September 5 several of these columns
+were observed to have crossed the Marne, while
+German troops, which were observed moving
+southeast up the left flank of the Ourcq on the
+4th, were now reported to be halted and facing
+that river. Heads of the enemy's columns were
+seen crossing at Changis, La <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Ferte'">Fert&eacute;</ins>, Nogent,
+Ch&acirc;teau Thierry, and Mezy.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+columns
+converging
+on
+Montmirail.</div>
+
+<p>Considerable German columns of all arms
+were seen to be converging on Montmirail,
+while before sunset large bivouacs of the enemy
+were located in the neighborhood of Coulommiers,
+south of Rebais, La Fert&eacute;-Gaucher, and
+Dagny.</p>
+
+<p>I should conceive it to have been about noon
+on September 6, after the British forces had
+changed their front to the right and occupied
+the line Jouy-Le Chatel-Faremoutiers-Villeneuve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+Le Comte, and the advance of the Sixth
+French Army north of the Marne toward the
+Ourcq became apparent, that the enemy realized
+the powerful threat that was being made
+against the flank of his columns moving southeast,
+and began the great retreat which opened
+the battle above referred to.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Position
+of allies
+and Germans
+on September 6.</div>
+
+<p>On the evening of September 6, therefore,
+the fronts and positions of the Allied Army
+were roughly as follows:</p>
+
+<p><i>Sixth French Army.</i>&mdash;Right on the Marne at
+Meux, left toward Betz.</p>
+
+<p><i>British Forces.</i>&mdash;On the line Dagny-Coulommiers-Maison.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fifth French Army.</i>&mdash;At Courtagon, right on
+Esternay.</p>
+
+<p><i>Conneau's Cavalry Corps.</i>&mdash;Between the
+right of the British and the left of the French
+Fifth Army.</p>
+
+<p>The position of the German Army was as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p><i>Fourth Reserve and Second Corps.</i>&mdash;East of
+the Ourcq and facing that river.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ninth Cavalry Division.</i>&mdash;West of Crecy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Second Cavalry Division.</i>&mdash;North of Coulommiers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fourth Corps.</i>&mdash;Rebais.</p>
+
+<p><i>Third and Seventh Corps.</i>&mdash;Southwest of
+Montmirail.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">First and
+Second
+German
+army.</div>
+
+<p>All these troops constituted the First German
+Army, which was directed against the
+French Sixth Army on the Ourcq, and the British
+forces, and the left of the Fifth French
+Army south of the Marne.</p>
+
+<p>The Second German Army (IX., X., X.R.,
+and Guard) was moving against the centre and
+right of the Fifth French Army and the Ninth
+French Army.</p>
+
+<p>On September 7 both the Fifth and Sixth
+French Armies were heavily engaged on our
+flank. The Second and Fourth Reserve German<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+Corps on the Ourcq vigorously opposed the
+advance of the French toward that river, but
+did not prevent the Sixth Army from gaining
+some headway, the Germans themselves suffering
+serious losses. The French Fifth Army
+threw the enemy back to the line of the Petit
+Morin River after inflicting severe losses upon
+them, especially about Montceaux, which was
+carried at the point of the bayonet.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy retreated before our advance,
+covered by his Second and Ninth and Guard
+Cavalry Divisions, which suffered severely.</p>
+
+<p>Our cavalry acted with great vigor, especially
+General De Lisle's brigade, with the Ninth
+Lancers and Eighteenth Hussars.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+retreat
+September 8.</div>
+
+<p>On September 8 the enemy continued his retreat
+northward, and our army was successfully
+engaged during the day with strong rearguards
+of all arms on the Petit Morin River,
+thereby materially assisting the progress of the
+French armies on our right and left, against
+whom the enemy was making his greatest efforts.
+On both sides the enemy was thrown
+back with very heavy loss. The First Army
+Corps encountered stubborn resistance at La
+Tr&eacute;toire, (north of Rebais.) The enemy occupied
+a strong position with infantry and
+guns on the northern bank of the Petit Morin
+River; they were dislodged with considerable
+loss. Several machine guns and many prisoners
+were captured, and upward of 200 German
+dead were left on the ground.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Forcing
+of Petit
+Morin
+September
+9.</div>
+
+<p>The forcing of the Petit Morin at this point
+was much assisted by the cavalry and the First
+Division, which crossed higher up the stream.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the day a counter-attack by the
+enemy was well repulsed by the First Army
+Corps, a great many prisoners and some guns
+again falling into our hands.</p>
+
+<p>On this day (September 8) the Second Army
+Corps encountered considerable opposition, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+drove back the enemy at all points with great
+loss, making considerable captures.</p>
+
+<p>The Third Army Corps also drove back considerable
+bodies of the enemy's infantry and
+made some captures.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+First and
+Second
+Army
+Corps
+forced
+passage
+of Marne.</div>
+
+<p>On September 9 the First and Second Army
+Corps forced the passage of the Marne and advanced
+some miles to the north of it. The Third
+Corps encountered considerable opposition, as
+the bridge at La Fert&eacute; was destroyed and the
+enemy held the town on the opposite bank
+in some strength, and thence persistently
+obstructed the construction of a bridge;
+so the passage was not effected until after
+nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>During the day's pursuit the enemy suffered
+heavy loss in killed and wounded, some hundreds
+of prisoners fell into our hands and a
+battery of eight machine guns was captured
+by the Second Division.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sixth
+French
+Army
+heavily
+engaged
+west of
+River
+Ourcq.</div>
+
+<p>On this day the Sixth French Army was
+heavily engaged west of the River Ourcq. The
+enemy had largely increased his force opposing
+them; and very heavy fighting ensued, in which
+the French were successful throughout.</p>
+
+<p>The left of the Fifth French Army reached
+the neighborhood of Ch&acirc;teau Thierry after
+the most severe fighting, having driven the
+enemy completely north of the river with
+great loss.</p>
+
+<p>The fighting of this army in the neighborhood
+of Montmirail was very severe.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+and
+French
+advance
+on the
+line of
+the Ourcq,
+September 10.</div>
+
+<p>The advance was resumed at daybreak on the
+10th up to the line of the Ourcq, opposed by
+strong rearguards of all arms. The First and
+Second Corps, assisted by the cavalry divisions
+on the right, the Third and Fifth Cavalry
+Brigades on the left, drove the enemy northward.
+Thirteen guns, seven machine guns,
+about 2,000 prisoners, and quantities of transport
+fell into our hands. The enemy left many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+dead on the field. On this day the French Fifth
+and Sixth Armies had little opposition.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+<a href="images/1-map-big.png"><img src="images/1-map.png" width="600" height="333" alt="BATTLE OF THE MARNE&mdash;END OF GERMAN RETREAT AND THE INTRENCHED LINE ON THE AISNE RIVER" title="BATTLE OF THE MARNE&mdash;END OF GERMAN RETREAT AND THE INTRENCHED LINE ON THE AISNE RIVER" /></a>
+<span class="caption">BATTLE OF THE MARNE&mdash;END OF GERMAN RETREAT AND THE INTRENCHED LINE ON THE AISNE RIVER</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">First and
+Second
+German
+armies
+in full
+retreat.</div>
+
+<p>As the First and Second German Armies
+were now in full retreat, this evening marks
+the end of the battle which practically commenced
+on the morning of the 6th inst.; and
+it is at this point in the operations that I am
+concluding the present dispatch.</p>
+
+<p>In concluding this dispatch I must call your
+Lordship's special attention to the fact that
+from Sunday, August 23, up to the present
+date, (September 17,) from Mons back almost
+to the Seine, and from the Seine to the Aisne,
+the army under my command has been ceaselessly
+engaged without one single day's halt
+or rest of any kind.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Continuous
+fighting of
+British
+from
+Sunday,
+August
+23, to
+September
+17, from
+Mons to
+Seine
+and from
+Seine
+to the
+Aisne.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Amiens
+and
+Rheims
+captured.</div>
+
+<p>In the narratives preceding we have seen
+how the English forces conducted themselves
+during the Great Retreat and at the Marne.
+It must be remembered, however, that they
+comprised but a small proportion of the armies
+opposing the Germans. The French bore the
+brunt of the attack, and a French army turned
+the tide of battle. Beginning with the first
+days of September all other military events
+were overshadowed by the Great Retreat. On
+September 1 the Germans, in spite of French
+and British resistance, had reached Senlis. On
+September 4th Amiens was captured, and two
+days later the German army entered Rheims.
+In the following narrative is shown, through
+the official records, how the French armies bore
+themselves during the Great Retreat, the First
+Battle of the Marne, and in the fighting which
+marked the hurried return of the German
+armies to the banks of the Aisne which they
+had, with true foresight, fortified with such a
+possible situation in mind.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+<h2>HOW THE FRENCH FOUGHT</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FRENCH OFFICIAL ACCOUNT</h3>
+
+
+<p>The first month of the campaign began
+with successes and finished with defeats
+for the French troops. Under what circumstances
+did these come about?</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Two
+principal
+actions.</div>
+
+<p>Our plan of concentration had foreseen the
+possibility of two principal actions, one on the
+right <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'betweeen'">between</ins> the Vosges and the Moselle, the
+other on the left to the north of Verdun-Toul
+line, this double possibility involving the eventual
+variation of our transport. On August 2,
+owing to the Germans passing through Belgium,
+our concentration was substantially
+modified by General Joffre in order that our
+principal effort might be directed to the north.</p>
+
+<p>From the first week in August it was apparent
+that the length of time required for the
+British Army to begin to move would delay our
+action in connection with it. This delay is one
+of the reasons which explain our failures at the
+end of August.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mulhouse
+occupied.</div>
+
+<p>Awaiting the moment when the operations in
+the north could begin, and to prepare for it by
+retaining in Alsace the greatest possible number
+of German forces, the General in Chief ordered
+our troops to occupy Mulhouse, (M&uuml;lhousen,)
+to cut the bridges of the Rhine at
+Huningue and below, and then to flank the attack
+of our troops, operating in Lorraine.</p>
+
+<p>This operation was badly carried out by a
+leader who was at once relieved of his command.
+Our troops, after having carried Mulhouse,
+lost it and were thrown back on Belfort.
+The work had, therefore, to be recommenced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+afresh, and this was done from August 14 under
+a new command.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+losses.</div>
+
+<p>Mulhouse was taken on the 19th, after a brilliant
+fight at Dornach. Twenty-four guns were
+captured from the enemy. On the 20th we held
+the approaches to Colmar, both by the plain
+and by the Vosges. The enemy had undergone
+enormous losses and abandoned great stores
+of shells and forage, but from this moment
+what was happening in Lorraine and on our
+left prevented us from carrying our successes
+further, for our troops in Alsace were needed
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>On August 28 the Alsace army was broken
+up, only a small part remaining to hold the
+region of Thann and the Vosges.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of the operations in Alsace was,
+namely, to retain a large part of the enemy's
+forces far from the northern theatre of operations.
+It was for our offensive in Lorraine to
+pursue still more directly by holding before it
+the German army corps operating to the south
+of Metz.</p>
+
+<p>This offensive began brilliantly on August 14.
+On the 19th we had reached the region of
+Saarburg and that of the Etangs, (lakes,) and
+we held Dieuze, Morhange, Delme, and Ch&acirc;teau
+Salins.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">French
+offensive
+stopped.</div>
+
+<p>On the 20th our success was stopped. The
+cause is to be found in the strong organization
+of the region, in the power of the enemy's artillery,
+operating over ground which had been
+minutely surveyed, and, finally, in the default
+of certain units.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+reinforcements.</div>
+
+<p>On the 22d, in spite of the splendid behavior
+of several of our army corps, notably that of
+Nancy, our troops were brought back on to the
+Grand Couronne, while on the 23d and 24th
+the Germans concentrated reinforcements&mdash;three
+army corps, at least&mdash;in the region of
+Lun&eacute;ville and forced us to retire to the south.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This retreat, however, was only momentary.
+On the 25th, after two vigorous counter-attacks,
+one from south to north and the other
+from west to east, the enemy had to fall back.
+From that time a sort of balance was established
+on this terrain between the Germans
+and ourselves. Maintained for fifteen days, it
+was afterward, as will be seen, modified to our
+advantage.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Battle
+of the
+north.</div>
+
+<p>There remained the principal business, the
+battle of the north&mdash;postponed owing to the
+necessity of waiting for the British Army. On
+August 20 the concentration of our lines was
+finished and the General in Chief gave orders
+for our centre and our left to take the offensive.
+Our centre comprised two armies. Our left
+consisted of a third army, reinforced to the extent
+of two army corps, a corps of cavalry, the
+reserve divisions, the British Army, and the
+Belgian Army, which had already been engaged
+for the previous three weeks at <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Li&eacute;ge'">Li&egrave;ge</ins>, Namur,
+and Louvain.</p>
+
+<p>The German plan on that date was as follows:
+From seven to eight army corps and
+four cavalry divisions were endeavoring to
+pass between Givet and Brussels, and even to
+prolong their movements more to the west.
+Our object was, therefore, in the first place,
+to hold and dispose of the enemy's centre and
+afterward to throw ourselves with all available
+forces on the left flank of the German grouping
+of troops in the north.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+offensive
+fails.</div>
+
+<p>On August 21 our offensive in the centre began
+with ten army corps. On August 22 it
+failed, and this reverse appeared serious.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons for it are complex. There were
+in this affair individual and collective failures,
+imprudences committed under the fire of the
+enemy, divisions ill-engaged, rash deployments,
+precipitate retreats, a premature waste of
+men, and, finally, the inadequacy of certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+of our troops and their leaders, both as regards
+the use of infantry and artillery.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of these lapses the enemy,
+turning to account the difficult terrain, was
+able to secure the maximum of profit from the
+advantages which the superiority of his subaltern
+complements gave him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+crosses
+the
+Sambre.</div>
+
+<p>In spite of this defeat our manoeuvre had
+still a chance of success, if our left and the British
+Army obtained a decisive result. This was
+unfortunately not the case. On August 22, at
+the cost of great losses, the enemy succeeded
+in crossing the Sambre and our left army fell
+back on the 24th upon Beaumont-Givet, being
+perturbed by the belief that the enemy was
+threatening its right.</p>
+
+<p>On the same day, (the 24th,) the British
+Army fell back after a German attack upon the
+Maubeuge-Valenciennes line. On the 25th and
+26th its retreat became more hurried. After
+Landrecies and Le Cateau it fell back southward
+by forced marches. It could not from
+this time keep its hold until after crossing the
+Marne.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+British
+retreat.</div>
+
+<p>The rapid retreat of the English, coinciding
+with the defeat sustained in Belgian Luxembourg,
+allowed the enemy to cross the Meuse
+and to accelerate, by fortifying it, the action
+of his right.</p>
+
+<p>The situation at this moment may be thus
+summed up: Either our frontier had to be defended
+on the spot under conditions which the
+British retreat rendered extremely perilous, or
+we had to execute a strategic retirement which,
+while delivering up to the enemy a part of the
+national soil, would permit us, on the other
+hand, to resume the offensive at our own time
+with a favorable disposition of troops, still intact,
+which we had at our command. The General
+in Chief determined on the second alternative.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">New
+offensive
+planned.</div>
+
+<p>Henceforward the French command devoted
+its efforts to preparing the offensive. To this
+end three conditions had to be fulfilled:</p>
+
+<p>1. The retreat had to be carried out in order
+under a succession of counter-attacks which
+would keep the enemy busy.</p>
+
+<p>2. The extreme point of this retreat must be
+fixed in such a way that the different armies
+should reach it simultaneously, ready at the
+moment of occupying it to resume the offensive
+all together.</p>
+
+<p>3. Every circumstance permitting of a resumption
+of the offensive before this point
+should be reached must be utilized by the whole
+of our forces and the British forces.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Counter-attacks.</div>
+
+<p>The counter-attacks, executed during the retreat,
+were brilliant and often fruitful. On
+August 20 we successfully attacked St. Quentin
+to disengage the British Army. Two other
+corps and a reserve division engaged the Prussian
+Guard and the Tenth German Army Corps,
+which was debouching from Guise. By the end
+of the day, after various fluctuations, the
+enemy was thrown back on the Oise and the
+British front was freed.</p>
+
+<p>On August 27 we had also succeeded in
+throwing back upon the Meuse the enemy, who
+was endeavoring to gain a foothold on the left
+bank. Our successes continued on the 28th in
+the woods of Marf&eacute;e and of Jaulnay. Thanks
+to them we were able, in accordance with
+the orders of the General in Chief, to fall
+back on the Buzancy-Le Chesne-Bouvellemont
+line.</p>
+
+<p>Further to the right another army took part
+in the same movement and carried out successful
+attacks on August 25 on the Othain and
+in the region of Spincourt.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Recrossing
+the
+Meuse.</div>
+
+<p>On the 26th these different units recrossed
+the Meuse without being disturbed and were
+able to join in the action of our centre. Our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+armies were, therefore, again intact and available
+for the offensive.</p>
+
+<p>On August 26 a new army composed of two
+army corps, five reserve divisions, and a Moorish
+brigade was constituted. This army was
+to assemble in the region of Amiens between
+August 27 and September 1 and take the offensive
+against the German right, uniting its
+action with that of the British Army, operating
+on the line of Ham-Bray-sur-Somme.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+retreat
+continues.</div>
+
+<p>The hope of resuming the offensive was from
+this moment rendered vain by the rapidity of
+the march of the German right wing. This
+rapidity had two consequences, which we had
+to parry before thinking of advancing. On the
+one hand, our new army had not time to complete
+its detraining, and, on the other hand, the
+British Army, forced back further by the
+enemy, uncovered on August 31 our left flank.
+Our line, thus modified, contained waves which
+had to be redressed before we could pass to the
+offensive.</p>
+
+<p>To understand this it is sufficient to consider
+the situation created by the quick advance
+of the enemy on the evening of September
+2.</p>
+
+<p>A corps of cavalry had crossed the Oise and
+advanced as far as Ch&acirc;teau-Thierry. The First
+Army, (General von Kluck,) comprising four
+active army corps and a reserve corps, had
+passed Compi&egrave;gne.</p>
+
+<p>The Second Army, (General von B&uuml;low,)
+with three active army corps and two reserve
+corps, was reaching the Laon region.</p>
+
+<p>The Third Army, (General von Hausen,)
+with two active army corps and a reserve corps,
+had crossed the Aisne between the Ch&acirc;teau
+Porcien and Attigny.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+German
+armies.</div>
+
+<p>More to the east the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth
+and Seventh Armies, namely, twelve army
+corps, four reserve corps, and numerous Ersatz<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+formations, were in contact with our troops,
+the Fourth and Fifth Armies between Vouziers
+and Verdun and the others in the positions
+which have been indicated above, from Verdun
+to the Vosges.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The left
+in peril.</div>
+
+<p>It will, therefore, be seen that our left, if
+we accepted battle, might be in great peril
+through the British forces and the new French
+Army, operating more to the westward, having
+given way.</p>
+
+<p>A defeat in these conditions would have cut
+off our armies from Paris and from the British
+forces and at the same time from the new
+army which had been constituted to the left
+of the English. We should thus be running
+the risk of losing by a single stroke the advantage
+of the assistance which Russia later on
+was to furnish.</p>
+
+<p>General Joffre chose resolutely for the solution
+which disposed of these risks, that is to
+say, for postponing the offensive and the continuance
+of the retreat. In this way he remained
+on ground which he had chosen. He
+waited only until he could engage in better
+conditions.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The limit
+of the
+retreat.</div>
+
+<p>In consequence, on September 1, he fixed as
+an extreme limit for the movement of retreat,
+which was still going on, the line of Bray-sur-Seine,
+Nogent-sur-Seine, Arcis-sur-Aube,
+Vitry-le-Fran&ccedil;ois, and the region to the north
+of Bar-le-Duc. This line might be reached if
+the troops were compelled to go back so far.
+They would attack before reaching it, as soon
+as there was a possibility of bringing about an
+offensive disposition, permitting the co-operation
+of the whole of our forces.</p>
+
+<p>On September 5 it appeared that this desired
+situation existed.</p>
+
+<p>The First German Army, carrying audacity
+to temerity, had continued its endeavor to envelop
+our left, had crossed the Grand Morin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+and reached the region of Chauffry, to the
+north of Rebaix and of Esternay. It aimed
+then at cutting our armies off from Paris, in
+order to begin the investment of the capital.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+German
+lines.</div>
+
+<p>The Second Army had its head on the line
+Champaubert, Etoges, Bergeres, and Vertus.</p>
+
+<p>The Third and Fourth Armies reached to
+Chalons-sur-Marne and Bussy-le-Repos. The
+Fifth Army was advancing on one side and
+the other from the Argonne as far as Triacourt-les-Islettes
+and Juivecourt. The Sixth
+and Seventh Armies were attacking more to
+the east.</p>
+
+<p>But&mdash;and here is a capital difference between
+the situation of September 5 and that
+of September 2&mdash;the envelopment of our left
+was no longer possible.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, our left army had been
+able to occupy the line of S&eacute;zanne, Villers-St.
+Georges and Courchamps. Furthermore, the
+British forces, gathered between the Seine and
+the Marne, flanked on their left by the newly
+created army, were closely connected with the
+rest of our forces.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Allies'
+armies
+ready.</div>
+
+<p>This was precisely the disposition which the
+General in Chief had wished to see achieved.
+On the 4th he decided to take advantage of it,
+and ordered all the armies to hold themselves
+ready. He had taken from his right two new
+army corps, two divisions of infantry, and two
+divisions of cavalry, which were distributed
+between his left and his centre.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the 5th he addressed to all
+the commanders of armies a message ordering
+them to attack.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Joffre
+orders the
+advance.</div>
+
+<p>"The hour has come," he wrote, "to advance
+at all costs, and to die where you stand rather
+than give way."</p>
+
+<p>If one examines on the map the respective
+positions of the German and French armies
+on September 6 as previously described, it will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+be seen that by his inflection toward Meaux
+and Coulommiers General von Kluck was exposing
+his right to the offensive action of our
+left. This is the starting point of the victory
+of the Marne.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Battle
+of the
+Marne.</div>
+
+<p>On the evening of September 5 our left army
+had reached the front Penchard-Saint-Soutlet-Ver.
+On the 6th and 7th it continued its attacks
+vigorously with the Ourcq as objective.
+On the evening of the 7th it was some kilometers
+from the Ourcq, on the front
+Chambry-Marcilly-Lisieux-Acy-en-Multien. On the 8th,
+the Germans, who had in great haste reinforced
+their right by bringing their Second
+and Fourth Army Corps back to the north,
+obtained some successes by attacks of extreme
+violence. They occupied Betz, Thury-en-Valois,
+and Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. But in spite of this
+pressure our troops held their ground well. In
+a brilliant action they took three standards,
+and, being reinforced, prepared a new attack
+for the 10th. At the moment that this attack
+was about to begin the enemy was already in
+retreat toward the north. The attack became
+a pursuit, and on the 12th we established ourselves
+on the Aisne.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+left
+exposed.</div>
+
+<p>Why did the German forces which were confronting
+us and on the evening before attacking
+so furiously retreat on the morning of the
+10th? Because in bringing back on the 6th
+several army corps from the south to the north
+to face our left the enemy had exposed his left
+to the attacks of the British Army, which had
+immediately faced around toward the north,
+and to those of our armies which were prolonging
+the English lines to the right. This
+is what the French command had sought to
+bring about. This is what happened on September
+8 and allowed the development and rehabilitation
+which it was to effect.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The part
+of the
+British.</div>
+
+<p>On the 6th the British Army had set out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+from the line Rozcy-Lagny and had that evening
+reached the southward bank of the Grand
+Morin. On the 7th and 8th it continued its
+march, and on the 9th had debouched to the
+north of the Marne below <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Chateau'">Ch&acirc;teau</ins>-Thierry,
+taking in flank the German forces which on
+that day were opposing, on the Ourcq, our left
+army. Then it was that these forces began
+to retreat, while the British Army, going in
+pursuit and capturing seven guns and many
+prisoners, reached the Aisne between Soissons
+and Longueval.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The r&ocirc;le
+of the
+French army.</div>
+
+<p>The r&ocirc;le of the French Army, which was operating
+to the right of the British Army, was
+threefold. It had to support the British attacking
+on its left. It had on its right to
+support our centre, which from September 7
+had been subjected to a German attack of great
+violence. Finally, its mission was to throw
+back the three active army corps and the reserve
+corps which faced it.</p>
+
+<p>On the 7th it made a leap forward, and on
+the following days reached and crossed the
+Marne, seizing, after desperate fighting, guns,
+howitzers, mitrailleuses, and 1,300,000 cartridges.
+On the 12th it established itself on the
+north edge of the Montagne-de-Reime in contact
+with our centre, which for its part had just
+forced the enemy to retreat in haste.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Attack
+on the
+French
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'center'">centre</ins>.</div>
+
+<p>Our centre consisted of a new army created
+on August 29 and of one of those which at the
+beginning of the campaign had been engaged
+in Belgian Luxembourg. The first had retreated
+on August 29 to September 5 from the Aisne
+to the north of the Marne and occupied the
+general front S&eacute;zanne-Mailly.</p>
+
+<p>The second, more to the east, had drawn back
+to the south of the line
+Humbauville-<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Chateau'">Ch&acirc;teau</ins>-Beauchamp-Bignicourt-Blesmes-Maurupt-le-Montoy.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A further
+retreat.</div>
+
+<p>The enemy, in view of his right being arrested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+and the defeat of his enveloping movement,
+made a desperate effort from the 7th to the 10th
+to pierce our centre to the west and to the east
+of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'F&eacute;re'">F&egrave;re</ins>-Champenoise. On the 8th he succeeded
+in forcing back the right of our new army,
+which retired as far as Gouragan&ccedil;on. On the
+9th, at 6 o'clock in the morning, there was a
+further retreat to the south of that village,
+while on the left the other army corps also had
+to go back to the line Allemant-Connantre.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Foch
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'out-man&#339;uvers'">out-man&#339;uvres</ins>
+Germans.</div>
+
+<p>Despite this retreat the General commanding
+the army ordered a general offensive for the
+same day. With the Morocco Division, whose
+behavior was heroic, he met a furious assault
+of the Germans on his left toward the marshes
+of Saint Gond. Then with the division which
+had just victoriously overcome the attacks of
+the enemy to the north of S&eacute;zanne, and with
+the whole of his left army corps, he made a
+flanking attack in the evening of the 9th upon
+the German forces, and notably the guard,
+which had thrown back his right army corps.
+The enemy, taken by surprise by this bold
+man&#339;uvre, did not resist, and beat a hasty retreat.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Centre
+armies established.</div>
+
+<p>On the 11th we crossed the Marne between
+Tours-sur-Marne and Sarry, driving the Germans
+in front of us in disorder. On the 12th
+we were in contact with the enemy to the north
+of the Camp de Chalons. Our other army of
+the centre, acting on the right of the one just
+referred to, had been intrusted with the mission
+during the 7th, 8th, and 9th of disengaging
+its neighbor, and it was only on the 10th
+that, being reinforced by an army corps from
+the east, it was able to make its action effectively
+felt. On the 11th the Germans retired.
+But, perceiving their danger, they fought desperately,
+with enormous expenditure of projectiles,
+behind strong intrenchments. On the
+12th the result had none the less been attained,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+and our two centre armies were solidly established
+on the ground gained.</p>
+
+<p>To the right of these two armies were three
+others. They had orders to cover themselves
+to the north and to debouch toward the west
+on the flank of the enemy, which was operating
+to the west of the Argonne. But a wide interval
+in which the Germans were in force separated
+them from our centre. The attack took
+place, nevertheless, with very brilliant success
+for our artillery, which destroyed eleven batteries
+of the Sixteenth German Army Corps.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+retreat
+on the
+right.</div>
+
+<p>On the 10th inst. the Eighth and Fifteenth
+German Army Corps counter-attacked, but
+were repulsed. On the 11th our progress continued
+with new successes, and on the 12th we
+were able to face round toward the north in
+expectation of the near and inevitable retreat
+of the enemy, which, in fact, took place from
+the 13th.</p>
+
+<p>The withdrawal of the mass of the German
+force involved also that of the left. From the
+12th onward the forces of the enemy operating
+between Nancy and the Vosges retreated in a
+hurry before our two armies of the East, which
+immediately occupied the positions that the
+enemy had evacuated. The offensive of our
+right had thus prepared and consolidated in the
+most useful way the result secured by our left
+and our centre.</p>
+
+<p>Such was this seven days' battle, in which
+more than two millions of men were engaged.
+Each army gained ground step by step, opening
+the road to its neighbor, supported at once
+by it, taking in flank the adversary which the
+day before it had attacked in front, the efforts
+of one articulating closely with those of the
+other, a perfect unity of intention and method
+animating the supreme command.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Meaning
+of the
+victory.</div>
+
+<p>To give this victory all its meaning it is
+necessary to add that it was gained by troops<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+which for two weeks had been retreating, and
+which, when the order for the offensive was
+given, were found to be as ardent as on the
+first day. It has also to be said that these
+troops had to meet the whole German army,
+and that from the time they marched forward
+they never again fell back. Under their pressure
+the German retreat at certain times had
+the appearance of a rout.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Numbers
+of German
+prisoners.</div>
+
+<p>In spite of the fatigue of our men, in spite
+of the power of the German heavy artillery,
+we took colors, guns, mitrailleuses, shells,
+more than a million cartridges, and thousands
+of prisoners. A German corps lost almost the
+whole of its artillery, which, from information
+brought by our airmen, was destroyed by our
+guns.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The next
+objective
+is the
+Channel
+ports.</div>
+
+<p>After the failure of the German drive against
+Paris, whose capture was the first objective
+in the plan of campaign of the German General
+Staff, preparations were made to carry out
+the plans for the second objective, the capture
+of the Channel seaports, and the control of
+the coasts. The Allied commanders were quite
+aware of this purpose, and made plans to circumvent
+it. Then followed the famous Race
+for the Channel, which is described by official
+French observers in the pages that follow.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE RACE FOR THE CHANNEL</h2>
+
+<h3>FRENCH OFFICIAL ACCOUNT</h3>
+
+
+<p>As early as September 11 the Commander
+in Chief had directed our left army to
+have as important forces as possible on
+the right bank of the Oise. On September 17 he
+made that instruction more precise by ordering
+"a mass to be constituted on the left wing of
+our disposition, capable of coping with the outflanking
+movement of the enemy." Everything
+led us to expect that flanking movement, for
+the Germans are lacking in invention. Indeed,
+their effort at that time tended to a renewal of
+their manoeuvre of August. In the parallel
+race the opponents were bound in the end to
+be stopped only by the sea; that is what happened
+about October 20.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Allies
+in the
+race to
+the sea.</div>
+
+<p>The Germans had an advantage over us,
+which is obvious from a glance at the map&mdash;the
+concentric form of their front, which
+shortened the length of their transports. In
+spite of this initial inferiority we arrived in
+time.</p>
+
+<p>From the middle of September to the last
+week in October fighting went on continually
+to the north of the Oise, but all the time
+we were fighting we were slipping northward.
+On the German side this movement
+brought into line more than eighteen new
+army corps (twelve active army corps, six reserve
+corps, four cavalry corps). On our side
+it ended in the constitution of three fresh
+armies on our left and in the transport into
+the same district of the British Army and the
+Belgian Army from Antwerp.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Resistance
+in
+Battle of
+Flanders.</div>
+
+<p>For the conception and realization of this
+fresh and extended disposition the French command,
+in the first place, had to reduce to a
+minimum the needs for effectives of our armies
+to the east of the Oise, and afterwards to utilize
+to the utmost our means of transport. It
+succeeded in this, and when, at the end of
+October, the battle of Flanders opened, when
+the Germans, having completed the concentration
+of their forces, attempted with fierce energy
+to turn or to pierce our left, they flung
+themselves upon a resistance which inflicted
+upon them a complete defeat.</p>
+
+<p>The movement began on our side only with
+the resources of the army which had held the
+left of our front during the battle of the
+Marne, reinforced on September 15 by one
+army corps.</p>
+
+<p>This reinforcement, not being sufficient to
+hold the enemy's offensive (district of Vaudelincourt-Mouchy-Uaugy),
+a fresh army was
+transported more to the left, with the task
+"of acting against the German right wing in
+order to disengage its neighbor, * * * while
+preserving a flanking direction in its march
+in relation to the fresh units that the enemy
+might be able to put into line."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Reinforcements
+for
+the First
+Army.</div>
+
+<p>To cover the detrainments of this fresh army
+in the district Clermont-Beauvais-Boix a cavalry
+corps and four territorial divisions were
+ordered to establish themselves on both banks
+of the Somme. In the wooded hills, however,
+which extend between the Oise and Lassigny
+the enemy displayed increasing activity.
+Nevertheless, the order still further to broaden
+the movement toward the left was maintained,
+while the territorial divisions were to move
+toward Bethune and Aubigny. The march to
+the sea went on.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Alternate
+reverse
+and
+success.</div>
+
+<p>From the 21st to the 26th all our forces
+were engaged in the district Lassigny-Roye-Peronne,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+with alternations of reverse and
+success.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first act of the great struggle
+which was to spread as it went on. On the
+26th the whole of the Sixth German Army was
+deployed against us. We retained all our positions,
+but we could do no more; consequently
+there was still the risk that the enemy, by
+means of a fresh afflux of forces, might succeed
+in turning us.</p>
+
+<p>Once more reinforcements, two army corps,
+were directed no longer on Beauvais, but
+toward Amiens. The front was then again to
+extend. A fresh army was constituted more
+to the north.</p>
+
+<p>From September 30 onward we could not
+but observe that the enemy, already strongly
+posted on the plateau of Thiepval, was continually
+slipping his forces from south to
+north, and everywhere confronting us with remarkable
+energy.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cavalry
+operations.</div>
+
+<p>Accordingly, on October 1 two cavalry corps
+were directed to make a leap forward and,
+operating on both flanks of the Scarpe, to put
+themselves in touch with the garrison of Dunkirk,
+which, on its side, had pushed forward
+as far as Douai.</p>
+
+<p>But on October 2 and 3 the bulk of our
+fresh army was very strongly attacked in
+the district of Arras and Lens. Confronting
+it were two corps of cavalry, the guards,
+four active army corps, and two reserve
+corps. A fresh army corps was immediately
+transported and detrained in the Lille
+district.</p>
+
+<p>But once more the attacks became more
+pressing, and on October 4 it was a question
+whether, in view of the enemy's activity both
+west of the Oise and south of the Somme, and
+also further to the north, a retreat would not
+have to be made. General Joffre resolutely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+put this hypothesis aside and ordered the
+offensive to be resumed with the reinforcements
+that had arrived. It was, however,
+clear that, despite the efforts of all, our front,
+extended to the sea as it was by a mere ribbon
+of troops, did not possess the solidity to
+enable it to resist with complete safety a German
+attack, the violence of which could well
+be foreseen.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Transport
+of the
+British
+Army.</div>
+
+<p>In the Arras district the position was fairly
+good. But between the Oise and Arras we
+were holding our own only with difficulty.
+Finally, to the north, on the Lille-Estaires-Merville-Hazebrouck-Cassel
+front, our cavalry
+and our territorials had their work cut out
+against eight divisions of German cavalry,
+with very strong infantry supports. It was
+at this moment that the transport of the British
+Army to the northern theatre of operations
+began.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+Army
+taken
+from the
+Aisne.</div>
+
+<p>Field Marshal French had, as early as the
+end of September, expressed the wish to see
+his army resume its initial place on the left of
+the allied armies. He explained this wish on
+the ground of the greater facility of which his
+communications would have the advantage in
+this new position, and also of the impending
+arrival of two divisions of infantry from home
+and of two infantry divisions and a cavalry
+division from India, which would be able to
+deploy more easily on that terrain. In spite
+of the difficulties which such a removal involved,
+owing to the intensive use of the railways
+by our own units, General Joffre decided
+at the beginning of October to meet the Field
+Marshal's wishes and to have the British Army
+removed from the Aisne.</p>
+
+<p>It was clearly specified that on the northern
+terrain the British Army should co-operate to
+the same end as ourselves, the stopping of the
+German right. In other terms, the British<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+Army was to prolong the front of the general
+disposition without a break, attacking as soon
+as possible, and at the same time seeking touch
+with the Belgian Army.</p>
+
+<p>But the detraining took longer than had
+been expected, and it was not possible to attack
+the Germans during the time when they
+had only cavalry in the Lille district and further
+to the north.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Wearied
+Belgian
+troops.</div>
+
+<p>There remained the Belgian Army. On leaving
+Antwerp on October 9 the Belgian Army,
+which was covered by 8,000 British bluejackets
+and 6,000 French bluejackets, at first intended
+to retire as far as to the north of Calais, but
+afterwards determined to make a stand in Belgian
+territory. Unfortunately, the condition
+of the Belgian troops, exhausted by a struggle
+of more than three months, did not allow any
+immediate hopes to be based upon them. This
+situation weighed on our plans and delayed
+their execution.</p>
+
+<p>On the 16th we made progress to the east of
+Ypres. On the 18th our cavalry even reached
+Roulers and Cortemark. But it was now evident
+that, in view of the continual reinforcing
+of the German right, our left was not capable
+of maintaining the advantages obtained during
+the previous few days. To attain our end
+and make our front inviolable a fresh effort
+was necessary. That effort was immediately
+made by the dispatch to the north of the Lys of
+considerable French forces, which formed the
+French Army of Belgium.</p>
+
+<p>The French Army of Belgium consisted, to
+begin with, of two territorial divisions, four
+divisions of cavalry, and a naval brigade.
+Directly after its constitution it was strengthened
+by elements from other points on the front
+whose arrival extended from October 27 to November
+11. These reinforcements were equivalent
+altogether in value to five army corps, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+division of cavalry, a territorial division, and
+sixteen regiments of cavalry, plus sixty pieces
+of heavy artillery.</p>
+
+<p>Thus was completed the strategic manoeuvre
+defined by the instructions of the General in
+Chief on September 11 and developed during
+the five following weeks with the ampleness we
+have just seen. The movements of troops carried
+out during this period were methodically
+combined with the pursuit of operations, both
+defensive and offensive, from the Oise to the
+North Sea.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Five
+armies
+co-ordinated.</div>
+
+<p>On October 22 our left, bounded six weeks
+earlier by the Noyon district, rested on Nieuport,
+thanks to the successive deployment of
+five fresh armies&mdash;three French armies, the
+British Army, and the Belgian Army.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the co-ordination decided upon by the
+General in Chief attained its end. The barrier
+was established. It remained to maintain it
+against the enemy's offensive. That was the
+object and the result of the battle of Flanders,
+October 22 to November 15.</p>
+
+<p>The German attack in Flanders was conducted
+strategically and tactically with remarkable
+energy. The complete and indisputable
+defeat in which it resulted is therefore
+significant.</p>
+
+<p>The forces of which the enemy disposed for
+this operation between the sea and the Lys
+comprised:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+forces between
+the sea
+and the
+Lys.</div>
+
+<p>(1) The entire Fourth Army commanded by
+the Duke of W&uuml;rttemberg, consisting of one
+naval division, one division of Ersatz Reserve,
+(men who had received no training before the
+war,) which was liberated by the fall of Antwerp;
+the Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-sixth
+and Twenty-seventh Reserve Corps,
+and the Forty-eighth Division belonging to the
+Twenty-fourth Reserve Corps.</p>
+
+<p>(2) A portion of another army under General<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+von Fabeck, consisting of the Fifteenth
+Corps, two Bavarian corps and three (unspecified)
+divisions.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Part of the Sixth Army under the command
+of the Crown Prince of Bavaria. This
+army, more than a third of which took part in
+the battle of Flanders, comprised the Nineteenth
+Army Corps, portions of the Thirteenth
+Corps and the Eighteenth Reserve Corps, the
+Seventh and Fourteenth Corps, the First Bavarian
+Reserve Corps, the Guards, and the
+Fourth Army Corps.</p>
+
+<p>(4) Four highly mobile cavalry corps prepared
+and supported the action of the troops
+enumerated above. Everything possible had
+been done to fortify the "morale" of the troops.
+At the beginning of October the Crown Prince
+of Bavaria in a proclamation had exhorted his
+soldiers "to make the decisive effort against
+the French left wing," and "to settle thus the
+fate of the great battle which has lasted for
+weeks."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Importance
+of
+thrusts in
+Flanders.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+plan in
+Flanders.</div>
+
+<p>On October 28, Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria
+declared in an army order that his
+troops "had just been fighting under very difficult
+conditions," and he added: "It is our
+business now not to let the struggle with our
+most detested enemy drag on longer * * * The
+decisive blow is still to be struck." On October
+30, General von Deimling, commanding
+the Fifteenth Army Corps (belonging to General
+von Fabeck's command), issued an order
+declaring that "the thrust against Ypres will
+be of decisive importance." It should be noted
+also that the Emperor proceeded in person to
+Thielt and Courtrai to exalt by his presence
+the ardor of his troops. Finally, at the close
+of October, the entire German press incessantly
+proclaimed the importance of the "Battle of
+Calais." It is superfluous to add that events
+in Poland explain in a large measure the passionate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+resolve of the German General Staff to
+obtain a decision in the Western theatre of operations
+at all costs. This decision would be
+obtained if our left were pierced or driven in.
+To reach Calais, that is, to break our left; to
+carry Ypres, that is, to cut it in half; through
+both points to menace the communications
+and supplies of the British expeditionary
+corps, perhaps even to threaten Britain in her
+island&mdash;such was the German plan in the Battle
+of Flanders. It was a plan that could not
+be executed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Dunkirk
+the first
+objective.</div>
+
+<p>The enemy, who had at his disposal a considerable
+quantity of heavy artillery, directed
+his efforts at first upon the coast and the country
+to the north of Dixmude. His objective
+was manifestly the capture of Dunkirk, then of
+Calais and Boulogne, and this objective he
+pursued until November 1.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ramscapelle
+retaken.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Allies
+win the
+Battle of
+Calais.</div>
+
+<p>On October 23 the Belgians along the railway
+line from Nieuport to Dixmude were
+strengthened by a French division. Dixmude
+was occupied by our marines (fusiliers marins).
+During the subsequent day our forces along
+the railway developed a significant resistance
+against an enemy superior in number and
+backed by heavy artillery. On the 29th the inundations
+effected between the canal and the
+railway line spread along our front. On the
+30th we recaptured Ramscapelle, the only point
+on the railway which Belgians had lost. On
+the 1st and 2d of November the enemy bombarded
+Furnes, but began to show signs of
+weariness. On the 2d he evacuated the ground
+between the Yser and the railway, abandoning
+cannon, dead and wounded. On the 3d our
+troops were able to re-enter the Dixmude district.
+The success achieved by the enemy at
+Dixmude at this juncture was without fruit.
+They succeeded in taking the town. They could
+not debouch from it. The coastal attack had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+thus proved a total failure. Since then it has
+never been renewed. The Battle of Calais, so
+noisily announced by the German press,
+amounted to a decided reverse for the Germans.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy had now begun an attack more
+important than its predecessor, in view of
+the numbers engaged in it. This attack was
+intended as a renewal to the south of the effort
+which had just been shattered in the north.
+Instead of turning our flank on the coast, it was
+now sought to drive in the right of our northern
+army under the shock of powerful masses.
+This was the Battle of Ypres.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Importance
+of
+the Ypres
+position.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+cavalry a
+connecting
+link.</div>
+
+<p>In order to understand this long, desperate,
+and furious battle we must hark back a few
+days in point of time. At the moment when
+our cavalry reached Roulers and Cortemark
+(October 28) our territorial divisions from
+Dunkirk, under General Biden, had occupied
+and organized a defensive position at Ypres.
+It was a point d'appui, enabling us to prepare
+and maintain our connections with the Belgian
+Army. From October 23 two British and
+French army corps were in occupation of this
+position, which was to be the base of their
+forward march in the direction of Roulers-Menin.
+The delays already explained and the
+strength of the forces brought up by the enemy
+soon brought to a standstill our progress along
+the line Poelcapelle, Paschendaele, Zandvorde,
+and Gheluvelt. But in spite of the stoppage
+here, Ypres was solidly covered, and the connections
+of all the allied forces were established.
+Against the line thus formed the German
+attack was hurled from October 25 to
+November 13, to the north, the east, and the
+south of Ypres. From October 26 on the attacks
+were renewed daily with extraordinary
+violence, obliging us to employ our reinforcements
+at the most threatened points as soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+as they came up. Thus, on October 31, we
+were obliged to send supports to the British
+cavalry, then to the two British corps between
+which the cavalry formed the connecting link,
+and finally to intercalate between these two
+corps a force equivalent to two army corps.
+Between October 30 and November 6 Ypres was
+several times in danger. The British lost Zandvorde,
+Gheluvelt, Messines, and Wytschaete.
+The front of the Allies, thus contracted, was
+all the more difficult to defend; but defended it
+was without a recoil.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">French
+reinforcements.</div>
+
+<p>The arrival of three French divisions in our
+line enabled us to resume from the 4th to the
+8th a vigorous offensive. On the 10th and
+11th this offensive, brought up against fresh
+and sharper German attacks, was checked. Before
+it could be renewed the arrival of fresh
+reinforcements had to be awaited, which were
+dispatched to the north on November 12. By
+the 14th our troops had again begun to progress,
+barring the road to Ypres against the
+German attacks, and inflicting on the enemy,
+who advanced in massed formation, losses
+which were especially terrible in consequence
+of the fact that the French artillery had
+crowded nearly 300 guns on to these few kilometers
+of front.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the main mass of the Germans sustained
+the same defeat as the detachments operating
+further to the north along the coast.
+The support which, according to the idea of
+the German General Staff, the attack on Ypres
+was to render to the coastal attack, was as
+futile as that attack itself had been.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Losses
+of the
+enemy.</div>
+
+<p>During the second half of November the
+enemy, exhausted and having lost in the Battle
+of Ypres alone more than 150,000 men, did not
+attempt to renew his effort, but confined himself
+to an intermittent cannonade. We, on
+the contrary, achieved appreciable progress to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+the north and south of Ypres, and insured definitely
+by a powerful defensive organization of
+the position the inviolability of our front.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The war
+in Belgium.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Siege of
+Antwerp.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Belgian
+troops
+retreat to
+Ostend.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The territory
+left
+to the
+Belgians.</div>
+
+<p>We have seen that, with the fall of Li&egrave;ge
+the German armies swept through Belgium on
+their way to Paris. Brussels was abandoned
+as the capital, and the Government moved
+hastily to Antwerp, where a portion of the
+Belgian army also gathered to defend the city.
+The remainder of the Belgian forces, under
+the leadership of their gallant King, opposed
+as stoutly as their numbers would permit the
+advance of the Germans. Battles were fought
+at Alost and Termonde in which the Germans
+were, for the time, repulsed, but their ever-increasing
+reinforcements enabled them to advance
+despite the efforts of the Belgians to
+check them. Ghent was captured on September
+5 and the Belgians, in an effort to stay
+the German advance on Antwerp, opened the
+dikes and let in the waters of the North Sea.
+Termonde fell on September 13, and seven
+days later the German armies began the siege
+of Antwerp. The military authorities in command
+of the city had taken whatever measures
+were possible for defense. A body of British
+marines was hurried to the beleaguered city
+and preparations were made for a long siege.
+The Germans brought up guns of heavy caliber,
+with which they bombarded the city at long
+range. After a brave defense of two weeks,
+during which the inhabitants endured many
+hardships, it was plain that further resistance
+was useless, and the city was surrendered on
+October 10. The Belgian troops in the city,
+and many of the noncombatants escaped. The
+Belgian troops retreated to Ostend, which they
+reached on October 11 and 12, after having been
+greatly harassed by the pursuing Germans.
+On the 13th, Ostend was evacuated, and was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+occupied by the Germans, and Bruges on the
+following day. The German forces now controlled
+the whole of Belgium, with the exception
+of the northwest corner, north of Ypres,
+to the coast of the Channel. This little slip
+of territory they held throughout the entire
+war, and at what a cost! But the heroic defense
+of this territory by the Belgians saved
+the French coast cities and prevented the Germans
+from breaking through the line which extended
+now from the North Sea to Belgium.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE LAST DITCH IN BELGIUM</h2>
+
+<h3>ARNO DOSCH</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Yser
+the Belgian's
+last
+ditch.</div>
+
+<p>A little piece of the Low Countries, so
+small I walked across it in two hours, was
+all that remained of Belgium in the last
+days of October. A tide-water stream, the
+Yser, ebbed and flowed through the sunken
+fields, and there King Albert with his remnant
+of an army stopped the German military machine
+in its advance on Calais. If he and his
+forty thousand men had been crushed back ten
+miles farther they would have been fighting on
+French soil. The Yser was the last ditch in
+Belgium.</p>
+
+<p>The Belgians were able to hold that mere
+strip of land against more men and better artillery
+because they had determined to die
+there. Some of those who had not yet paid the
+price of death told me. They were not tragic
+about it. There was no display of heroics.
+They said it seriously, but they smiled a little,
+too, over their wine glasses, and the next morning
+they were back in the firing-line.</p>
+
+<p>I counted on my American passport and my
+<i>permit de sejour</i> in Paris seeing me through the
+zone of the fighting, and they did. At the
+station at Dunkirk, when I admitted I had no
+<i>laisser passer</i>, an obliging gendarme led me
+to his commander, and he placed his vis&eacute;e on
+my passport without question. He asked me
+whether I was a correspondent, and I confessed
+to it, but it seemed only to facilitate the affair.
+Earlier experiences had made me feel that the
+French gendarmes were my natural enemies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+but I have had a kindlier regard for them
+since.</p>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Troop
+trains.</div>
+
+<p>The train I was on had ten cars full of
+French and Belgian soldiers. The Belgians had
+all been recently re-equipped. On other troop
+trains which passed us going forward there
+were many more Belgian soldiers, some of
+whom I had seen only a few hours earlier in
+the streets of Calais without rifles. As their
+trains passed now I could see them studying
+the mechanism and fondling their new firearms.</p>
+
+<p>Coming in through the suburbs of Dunkirk
+we passed hundreds of children perched on the
+fences singing the Marseillaise. Nor were their
+voices flat and colorless like most school children's.
+They felt every word they sang, and
+they put their little hearts into it. Looking
+back along the side of the cars at the faces of
+soldiers leaning out, I could see they were
+touched by the faith of the children.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">In
+Dunkirk.</div>
+
+<p>As I rattled along on the cobbles of Dunkirk
+half an hour later I heard an explosion with a
+note unfamiliar to me. It sounded close, too,
+but it did not seem to bother the people of the
+street. A few children ran behind their
+mothers' skirts and a young girl hurried from
+the middle of the street to the protection of an
+archway, but that was all.</p>
+
+<p>Standing up in the fiacre I could see a thin
+smoke about three hundred feet away in a garden
+in the direction from which the explosion
+came, and high in the evening sky I could barely
+make out an aeroplane. "A German bomb?"
+I asked the driver in some excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," he replied, cracking his whip, "we
+usually get three or four every afternoon about
+this time, but they have not hurt any one."</p>
+
+<p>Dunkirk that night answered the description
+of what a threatened town which was not
+afraid should look like. It had none of the depressing
+atmosphere of Calais. All the refugees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+and the wounded were passed on to a safer
+place. It was full of French, English, and Belgian
+soldiers, with a scattering of sailors and
+breezy officers from both the French and English
+navies. They kept the waiters in the caf&eacute;s
+on the run, and there was only an occasional
+bandage showing from under a cap or around
+a hand to indicate these men were engaged in
+any more serious business than a man&#339;uvre.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Armored
+motor-car.</div>
+
+<p>In the street, however, in front of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'statute'">statue</ins>
+of Jean Bart, an armored Belgian motor-car
+was standing. It was built with a turret where
+the tonneau usually is and it was covered with
+thick sheet steel right down to the ground. Just
+in front of the driver was a slit with a lip extending
+over it, giving it somewhat the effect
+of the casque belonging to an ancient suit of
+armor. That was the only opening except the
+one for the barrel of the rapid-fire gun in the
+turret. The armor was dented in a dozen places
+where bullets had glanced off, but it had only
+been penetrated at one spot, about six inches
+from the muzzle of the gun. From the soldier
+at the steering gear I learned that that bullet
+had passed over the shoulder of the man in the
+turret.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bombardment
+of
+Nieuport.</div>
+
+<p>Twenty-four hours later, at Nieuport, when
+the German shells seemed to be falling in every
+street and on every house, I saw this car again,
+going forward at not less than forty miles an
+hour. The turret was being swung to bring
+the gun-muzzle forward, as if the gunner were
+expecting to go into action almost immediately.
+As the last of the Belgian trenches were just
+the other side of the town, I have no doubt that
+he did.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A walk
+to the
+firing
+line.</div>
+
+<p>Getting out of Dunkirk was rather more of
+a problem than going in. To obtain permission
+to ride toward the Belgian line in any kind of
+conveyance was an elaborate performance, and
+quite properly so, as I soon learned. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+were preparations for defence going on there
+which should not have been publicly known.
+The country was full of spies. Four suspects
+had been picked up on the boat coming from
+Folkestone. If I had realized what I was to
+see in the next few miles I would not have attempted
+what I did. But, as I was anxious
+to get on and the firing-line was only twenty
+miles away, I decided to walk.</p>
+
+<p>A French hat and a French suit of clothes, I
+think, were alone responsible for my success
+in passing through the city gate. Two military
+automobiles were stopped and forced to show
+their credentials, but I strolled through unmolested.
+Once outside, the reservists guarding
+the various barricades let me pass as soon
+as I showed them my passport vis&eacute;d in Dunkirk.
+I was stopped many times, too, trying
+each time not to give an appearance of too great
+interest in the works of defence being built all
+around me.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sand-dune
+barricades.</div>
+
+<p>Even though this cannot be published for
+some time I do not feel free to tell what these
+defences were. I have no doubt there are complete
+descriptions of these works in the hands
+of the German army, their spy system is so thorough,
+but I would not care to have any military
+secrets escape through anything I write.
+I think I can go so far as to say, though, that I
+received a liberal education in how to barricade
+sand-dunes and low-lying fields.</p>
+
+<p>Ten miles out of Dunkirk I was surprised to
+see a civilian on a bicycle, as civilians were no
+longer permitted to go near the theatre of war
+on bicycles, a precaution taken against spies.
+As he approached I recognized Mr. J. Obels,
+the Belgian correspondent of the Chicago <i>Daily
+News</i>, whom I had last seen under arrest near
+Brussels when the German army first passed
+through Belgium. He told me he had been kept
+in prison seventeen days by the German military<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+governor of Brussels, but, once released,
+was given every possible kind of pass. I was
+relieved to see him alive and free.</p>
+
+<p>As Obels left me to continue his journey to
+Dunkirk and on to London to deliver his own
+"copy," he advised me to go directly to Furnes,
+the most considerable town in what was left of
+Belgium, and have my passport vis&eacute;d again.
+So I continued down the long, flat highway,
+bordered on both sides by sunken fields, toward
+the cannonading I could now hear ahead. The
+road had been fairly full of automobiles, motor-trucks,
+motorcycles, and bicycles over its whole
+length, but it became crowded now with the
+addition of a long string of Parisian motor-buses
+taking several infantry regiments forward.
+A whole artillery division of yellow
+French "Schneiders" also took up its share of
+the wide road, and at the barricades there were
+traffic blockades lasting at times for ten
+minutes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The road
+to Furnes.</div>
+
+<p>All the way from Dunkirk I had been struck
+by the character of the land. As I approached
+Furnes, the dykes were being opened
+and half the fields were already inundated.
+It seemed a poor country for military operations.
+There were at most three highways, all
+defended. They could only be taken at a price
+no army could afford, and any departure from
+them meant being mired in the heavy fields,
+now being hastily harvested of a bumper crop
+of sugar-beets: at one place a whole French
+regiment in uniform was gathering the beets
+preparatory to inundation. With the dykes
+open these fields would be covered with four
+feet of water half the time. The only possible
+course for an army was over the sand-dunes,
+which lay a mile to the north, looking like
+the imitation mountains you see in the scenic-railways
+at every amusement resort in the
+United States.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Tommies'
+battles
+on the
+sand-dunes.</div>
+
+<p>A reservist with whom I walked a mile or so
+told me Dunkirk had never been successfully
+attacked except over those sand-dunes, and the
+English and French had fought some of the
+bloodiest battles of history there against the
+Spanish, when they held Dunkirk. I doubt,
+though, that they were as bloody as the battle
+I was to see within a few hours.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Belgian
+soldiers.</div>
+
+<p>The old Flemish town of Furnes had much
+less military precision about it than Dunkirk.
+It was on the very edge of the battle, and an
+occasional shell was dropping in the town. One
+exploded as I crossed the bridge and entered a
+narrow street, but it was on the far side of
+town, too far away for the soldiers halted in the
+street to notice. These were tired and dirty
+men, but not too tired to be courteous. They
+were also passing jokes among themselves, and
+laughing. By that, even if I had not known
+their uniforms, I could have told they were
+Belgians.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+enemy
+held at
+the Yser.</div>
+
+<p>Every street and every courtyard in Furnes
+was full of Belgian soldiers. They were resting
+for the day, waiting to go forward at night-fall
+to relieve the men on the firing line only five
+miles away. Even above the noises of the street
+I could hear the answer of their small field
+artillery to the heavy assault of the German
+guns. Nothing I heard the soldiers say, however,
+would have given the idea that the Belgians
+considered themselves outclassed by their
+enemy. They seemed superbly unconscious of
+the absurdity of their position. This was the
+tenth day they had held the Germans at the
+Yser, and they had done it with rifles and machine
+guns, taking punishment every minute
+from the big fieldpieces the Germans had
+brought against them. So far they had lost
+twelve thousand men at that ditch, but the
+thought of giving it up had evidently not even
+occurred to them. They could not give it up,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+one of them explained to me later, it was all
+they had left. There was a little irritation
+in his tone, too, as he said it, such as one might
+feel toward a child who was slow at grasping
+a simple fact.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Military
+automobiles and
+wagons.</div>
+
+<p>The town square was full of military automobiles
+and a few provision wagons. I did not
+see any fieldpieces or machine guns. Every
+last one was right up on the firing-line. My feet
+were tired from walking over the Belgian
+blocks, and I held tenaciously to the sidewalk
+passing around the square, though it was
+mostly taken up with caf&eacute; tables and bay trees
+in boxes. At one point the tables were empty
+and a single sentry was sauntering up and
+down. I stopped to ask him the way to the
+<i>gendarmerie</i>, and, in the middle of giving me
+the directions, he came to attention, as a door
+opened behind me, and saluted.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Two
+Belgian
+generals.</div>
+
+<p>Two men came out of the door, one rather
+tall, with an easy manner, and smartly dressed
+as a general in the Belgian army. The other
+was older, also a general, wearing, if anything,
+the more gold braid of the two. They entered
+a waiting automobile and drove off as casually
+as two men at home might leave their office for
+their club.</p>
+
+<p>Something about the first of the two men impressed
+me as familiar. I had only seen his
+back, but that had arrested my attention. I
+thought possibly I had seen him at the beginning
+of the war in Brussels, so I asked the
+sentry his name.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">King
+Albert.</div>
+
+<p>"That is our king, Albert," he said quite simply.</p>
+
+<p>During the next couple of days I saw the
+King of Belgium a number of times. He spent
+his nights at a small villa on the seashore at
+La Panne, a hundred yards possibly beyond the
+hotel where I spent mine. He passed through
+the streets as unnoticed as any one of the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+Belgians who had retreated from Antwerp and
+Ghent ahead of the army, but preferred the
+chilly nights in an unheated seaside hotel in
+Belgium to comfort somewhere beyond. It
+seemed to be a point of courtesy on the part of
+the Belgians not to bother their king with ceremony
+at this trying time. I doubt if he cares
+much for ceremony, anyhow. Searching around
+for a single adjective to describe him, I should
+call him off-handed. His manner, even then,
+while alert, was casual. It is easy to see why
+the Belgians love him. If kings had always
+been as simple and direct as Albert, I am inclined
+to think democracy would have languished.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Luncheon
+at La
+Panne.</div>
+
+<p>At La Panne, which I reached at noon on a
+little steam railway running from Furnes, I had
+luncheon with several Belgian soldiers and a
+Belgian in civilian clothes, who told me I would
+see all the fighting I was looking for at Nieuport,
+just beyond. The civilian, a tall youth
+with a blond beard, volunteered to show me the
+way to the beach, the shortest route, and ended
+by going all the way. He told me he was
+recovering from an "attack of Congo," which I
+take to be an intermittent fever. He had just
+been mustered out of the civic guard and was
+waiting for a uniform to join the army. He
+had the afternoon free and his Belgian sense
+of hospitality impelled him to see that the
+stranger was properly looked after.</p>
+
+<p>For several miles along the wide, flat beach,
+which stretches unobstructed as far as Ostend,
+except for the piers at Nieuport-les-Bains and
+Westende, there were Belgian soldiers bathing
+in the shallow water. Some of them, cavalrymen,
+were riding naked into the deeper water,
+and this, mind you, was late October. They
+were even playing jokes on one another, and
+did not seem to be paying any attention to the
+fifteen English and French cruisers and gunboats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+which were standing off the shore almost
+opposite them, keeping up a steady stream of
+fire obliquely along the beach at the sand dunes
+just beyond the pier at Nieuport-les-Bains. In
+these dunes, <i>five</i> miles away, big German guns
+were hidden.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fishermen
+unconcerned.</div>
+
+<p>Farther on, and even right up to the pier at
+Nieuport, we passed, along the beach behind
+the shrimp fishermen, who seemed even less
+interested in the novel fight on land and sea.
+The barelegged men and women were as industriously
+taking advantage of the low-tide
+as if nothing at all were happening. The
+French and English warships were directly opposite
+them, and, by this time, they were drawing
+the German fire. German shells, probably
+from siege guns, were plumping down into the
+water all around them only a couple of miles
+off-shore, but, though the shrimpers looked up
+occasionally when the explosion of a shell fairly
+shook the face of the ocean, their attention
+would be directed again to their work before
+the column of water raised by the shell had had
+time to fall again. The shelling kept up about
+an hour, but none of the warships was struck.
+They kept moving at full-speed in an uneven
+line, making it impossible to get their range.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A panorama
+of battle.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+try to
+cross the
+Yser.</div>
+
+<p>Just before we reached the pier heavy cannonading
+began inland. We climbed the sand
+dunes and there we came suddenly upon a
+perfect panoramic view of the battle all the
+way from the dunes across the inundated fields
+to Dixmude in the distance. The whole line
+of battle for ten miles was in the midst of a
+German attack, covered by a terrific artillery
+fire. Over the white, red-tiled cottages of the
+fishermen, almost lost among the lesser sand
+dunes, we could make out the Belgian line
+by the fire of their rifle and machine guns. At
+two points we could see the Yser Canal and at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+one of these the Germans were trying to throw
+across a pontoon bridge.</p>
+
+<p>We could see it only through the smoke of
+breaking shells, but it was the most exciting
+event I have ever witnessed. At three miles
+or more, though, the figures of the men were so
+small, it was hard to keep the fact in mind that
+those who dropped were not merely stooping,
+but had been shot. Eager to get closer, we
+ran over the sand dunes, but never got another
+view of it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Running
+to see a
+battle.</div>
+
+<p>My Belgian friend knew his way and we
+trotted along a raised path among the fields
+toward Nieuport. It was under fire, but it
+seemed worth the risk to get close enough so we
+could see the pontoons being rushed into the
+water. As we neared Nieuport, however, the
+firing became much more active and we stopped
+for second thought. After catching our breath,
+we decided to pass through the edge of Nieuport
+and to go on to the village of Ramscapelle
+to the south of it. Few shells seemed to be
+breaking there.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Almost
+under
+fire.</div>
+
+<p>Along the cross road we took, alternately
+running and walking. The Belgian trenches
+were perhaps a half mile beyond us, and we
+could make out the tap-tap of the rifle fire
+which had been only a continuous cracking a
+mile in the rear. Into this the machine guns
+cut with a whir. Spent bullets dropped here
+and there in the inundated field to the west of
+us, but the German shell fire must have been
+right in the trenches.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere before we reached Ramscapelle
+we crossed a road with military automobiles
+going both ways, but my desire to get behind
+the sheltering buildings of Ramscapelle was too
+strong at the moment to take it in.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fires and
+explosions
+in Ramscapelle.</div>
+
+<p>About a hundred yards from the village there
+was a house on the edge of a canal, and we
+stopped behind it, safe from bullet-fire, to catch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+our breath again. It was as far as we were
+destined to get. All at once shells began dropping
+on the village, and I have not seen shells
+drop so fast in so small an area. In the first
+minute there must have been twenty. Three
+fires broke out almost at once. Between the
+explosions we could hear the falling tiles.</p>
+
+<p>The short October day grew unexpectedly
+dusk and the fires in the village reflected in
+the water on the fields. After the bombarding
+had been going on without the least let-up for
+fully fifteen minutes, a bent old woman, a man
+perhaps older but less bent, and a younger
+woman appeared on the road to Furnes just
+beyond us, hurrying along without once looking
+back. They were the only people we saw and
+the destruction of the town looked like the
+most ruthless piece of vandalism. It had a
+military purpose, however. The Germans were
+concentrating an attack on it with the hope
+of reaching Furnes. They occupied it that
+night, but were later driven out again. I have
+learned since some of the villagers remained
+through that bombardment, and were killed in
+their houses.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Destruction of
+Ramscapelle.</div>
+
+<p>While we stood sheltered by the house on
+the canal, speculating as to which one of the
+houses still standing in Ramscapelle would be
+hit next, the light from those on fire reflected
+on the dark, brackish water of the canal, which
+was running in with the tide. Presently we
+noticed something in the water, and, stooping
+down in the twilight, we made out the body of
+a man face downward. The color of the coat
+and the little short skirt to it showed it was
+the body of a German soldier. It passed on
+and was followed by three more before we left.
+They had been in the water several days.</p>
+
+<p>The fire from the trenches died down at dusk
+and we made our way back along the empty
+crossroad. Half way back to the dunes we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+passed a Red Cross motor ambulance, headed
+toward Ramscapelle. On the seat beside the
+driver was a young English woman. She was
+wearing the gray-brown coat and gray-brown
+puttees of the English soldier. We called out
+to her we thought the town was empty, but the
+only answer we got from the speeding ambulance
+was an assuring wave of the young woman's
+hand, which was evidently meant to inform
+us she knew where she was going.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ambulances and
+infantry
+pass.</div>
+
+<p>On the main road from Nieuport to Furnes,
+which we followed a short distance, there were
+dozens of ambulances going to the rear and a
+long column of infantry going forward. Headed
+toward the rear there were also many wounded
+men on foot. They had been dressed at Nieuport,
+but there were not enough ambulances
+to take them all away. One who was walking
+slowly and painfully told me he had a bullet
+in his back.</p>
+
+<p>During the afternoon the Schneiders I had
+seen had evidently been placed among the sand
+dunes, and they were now bombarding the
+German lines over our heads. Crossing over
+the sand dunes to the beach, we passed under
+two batteries, though we did not see them.
+We could tell they were French, though, by the
+rapidity of the fire. The French seem to be
+able to fire their guns several times as fast as
+the Germans or the English.</p>
+
+<p>A cluster of houses belonging to shrimp
+fishermen was right under these batteries,
+where they were sure to get some of the return
+fire. But we noticed there were lights in every
+one of the cottages. Inside were the same
+fishermen who were so apathetic about the
+fight off-shore.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Battle
+of the
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'sand-dunes'">sand dunes</ins>.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Red
+flashing
+of the
+contact
+shells.</div>
+
+<p>The view from the sand dunes was what the
+war artists on English illustrated weeklies try
+so hard to show. The French batteries were
+using shrapnel on the German trenches, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+shrapnel leaving puffs of white smoke in long,
+uneven lines; and the Germans were keeping
+up their steady pounding of contact shells,
+with a short red flash after each explosion.
+The firing of the guns on both sides gave the
+effect of continuous summer lightning.</p>
+
+<p>Into the panorama the fleet off-shore kept
+up a new attack on the German batteries in
+the sand dunes just beyond Nieuport-les-Bains.
+As it was dark now we could see where they
+were only by the streaks of fire from their guns.
+These flashes came and went like the strokes
+of a dagger, as if they were stabbing the
+dark.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">French
+soldiers.</div>
+
+<p>We went back along the beach to avoid being
+questioned, turning around constantly to
+watch the fleet. At Coxyde a whole company
+of French soldiers was standing along the edge
+of the water, jumping back in surprise when
+the little waves advanced on them. They told
+us they were from the centre of France and had
+never seen salt water before.</p>
+
+<p>The shore there is lined with new villas made
+of light colored bricks. One of these had been
+dynamited, because it belonged to a German
+and was suspected of having a concrete floor
+for siege guns. I had heard of cases of this
+kind before, but I had never had an opportunity
+to examine one.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Concrete
+foundations.</div>
+
+<p>My private thought was that the villa had
+probably been built by a German with a passion
+for solidity, but, examining it under a
+half-full moon, I could see the foundations
+were brick walls two feet thick covered with
+mosaic backed by reinforced concrete about a
+foot thick. It seemed like something more
+than Teutonic thoroughness.</p>
+
+<p>A little later in La Panne I was shown a
+concrete tennis court belonging to a German
+which had been punched full of holes. It was
+in no place thick enough, however, to give<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+cause for suspicion that its real purpose was
+in any way sinister.</p>
+
+<p>By the time we regained La Panne I was
+hardly able to walk as I had been going hard
+all day, a good deal of the way through soft
+sand. But even if I had been much more tired
+I would have sensed the atmosphere of that
+town. To me the little seaside village, built
+for summer gayety, had more of the romance
+of war in it than any place I have seen.</p>
+
+<p>The half dozen summer hotels and all the
+villas were filled with the mothers, wives, and
+children of the Belgian soldiers whose firing
+line I had just left. Their homes had been in
+Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent. Now they were
+in the last little town in Belgium. To some
+their soldiers had already returned, and they
+were dining as merrily as if to-morrow did not
+hold out a reasonable likelihood of being killed.
+At the doors of the hotels and on the street
+were many others waiting, and, as the street had
+filled up with another French artillery division
+bivouacked for a few hours, they could not
+see their men folk until they were close at
+hand.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Refugees
+at La
+Panne.</div>
+
+<p>Now and then as we passed we could hear
+little gasps of happiness. For some, of
+course, there were disappointment and bad
+news. But they must have carried their sorrow
+to their chambers, as La Panne was all
+gayety.</p>
+
+<p>A comment on the Belgian soldiers made at
+the beginning of the war occurred to me:
+"They shoot the enemy all day; at night they
+come home and kiss mother. In the morning
+they kiss mother again and go back to shoot
+some more."</p>
+
+<p>They certainly showed themselves capable
+of shaking off the horrors of war before their
+women folk. To see them there in La Panne
+that night you might have thought it was all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+a sham battle if it had not been for a conviction
+of reality that would not shake off.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly ten o'clock, now but Belgian
+soldiers relieved from the firing line and off
+duty for the night were still coming into La
+Panne. In the Hotel Des Arcades, which incidentally,
+has no arcades, the bar and the dining
+room were full of soldiers. Officers and
+their men were eating and drinking together
+in the pleasant democratic way they have in
+the Belgian army. Room was made for us at
+the long central table in the dining room, and
+all at the table were solicitous to see that we
+were at once given plenty to eat and drink.
+Several of the fifteen men at the table had
+hands or heads bandaged, but that did not
+seem to detract from their gayety.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Spirit
+of the
+Belgian
+soldiers.</div>
+
+<p>A joke was being told as we sat down, and
+every one was taking a lively interest in it,
+the narrator was a bearded man of fifty, and
+he was telling to the delight of the others how
+his son had once got the better of him in Brussels
+before the war. There were other stories
+of matters equally foreign to war. The private
+on one side of me told me he was the manager
+for Belgium of an American typewriter. The
+lieutenant on the other side was in ordinary
+times an insurance agent. All the men
+there were in business and talked and acted
+like a company of young American business
+men.</p>
+
+<p>My first hint that these men had been through
+any trying experience was the apology offered
+by a new-comer for being late. He entered
+rather gravely and said something about having
+to take the word to his sister of his brother-in-law's
+death. The whole company turned
+grave then and conversation from being general
+was carried on for a few minutes between
+those near together. I asked the typewriter
+agent, to fill an awkward pause, whether they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+had seen much action, and he told me their
+story.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The fight
+on the
+road to
+Nieuport.</div>
+
+<p>This was a crack mitrailleuse company of
+Brussels. It had been in the fight from Li&egrave;ge
+back to Malines and from Antwerp back to
+Dixmude and Nieuport. Three days before it
+was told to hold a road into Nieuport. It was
+a road the Germans must take, if they were
+to advance, but the Belgians would not give
+way. They were too clever with their rapid-fire
+guns to be rushed, and the German bayonet
+charges only blocked the road with their dead.
+Again and again the gray line came on, but
+each time it crumpled before their fire. They
+were attacked every hour of the day or night,
+but they were always ready. Finally the Germans
+got their range and dropped shell after
+shell right among them.</p>
+
+<p>"They blew us all to pieces," the story went
+on in a low tone at my elbow. "Those shells
+don't leave many wounded, but they littered
+the place with arms and legs. They got a
+good many of us, but they did not seem to be
+able to get our guns."</p>
+
+<p>I asked what their loss had been, and he
+looked around the table, counting, before he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see, now," he said. "We lost some at
+Dixmude first. I think there were just seventy
+last Monday." This was Thursday. "We had
+a pretty bad time," he ended; looking down.</p>
+
+<p>"How many are there now?" I asked, and
+he answered with a sweep of his hand around
+the table. "Five or six more," he said. There
+were eighteen of them at table now. That
+meant twenty-three or twenty-four&mdash;out of seventy.</p>
+
+<p>"The dogs suffered, too," he added. "We've
+only got eight out of twenty, and I just heard
+the dogs around here have already been pressed
+into service."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Courtesy
+of the
+machine
+gunners.</div>
+
+<p>When I went to bed four of the members
+of that shattered mitrailleuse company climbed
+three flights of stairs to see that I had a comfortable
+room. And these men had just come
+out of a trench where they had lost more than
+two thirds their number in three days stopping
+one of the main lines of the German advance.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Back to
+the lines.</div>
+
+<p>In the twilight of early morning, when the
+cannonading had at last died down, I heard the
+movement of troops in the street and saw my
+friends of the night before falling into line and
+getting their equipment straight. By the time
+I reach the sidewalk they were moving off,
+some of the men helping the dogs with the
+mitrailleuse.</p>
+
+<p>"Big fight last night," said the typewriter
+agent smiling. "Company that relieved us got
+it hard. We must hurry back."</p>
+
+<p>They were all very alert and soldierlike in
+the chill of the morning, but they were a pitifully
+small company as they passed up the
+road and were lost in the sand dunes.</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Copyright, World's Work, January, 1915.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In August and September, while on the western
+front were being fought the great initial
+struggles of the Great War, Turkey, long under
+German political influence, was making
+ready to cast her lot with the Teutonic Powers.
+Germany had already made diplomatic and
+military moves which indicated that she was
+certain of a Turkish alliance. The strongest
+figures of the Ottoman Empire, Enver Pasha
+and Talaat Bey were strongly pro-German, although
+the latter endeavored for a time to conceal
+his real sentiments and intentions under
+a cloak of pretended neutrality. The causes
+which induced Turkey to side with the Central
+Powers rather than with the Allies <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'is'">are</ins> explained
+in the narrative which follows.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+<h2>WHY TURKEY ENTERED<br />
+THE WAR</h2>
+
+<h3>ROLAND G. USHER</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Extreme
+danger of
+Turkey.</div>
+
+<p>Many people entirely misunderstand the
+significance of the declaration of war by
+Turkey against Russia, France, and England.
+Why these despairing gasps of the dying?
+they ask. What possible chance has this
+weak, moribund state to survive a clash of arms
+with the Triple Entente? Has not the Turk, in
+fact, dug his own grave and committed suicide?
+In all probability the Turk is in considerable
+danger, but the danger does not arise from his
+joining Germany. In fact, the war and the
+present international situation provide the
+Turk with the best opportunity in a century to
+achieve the aims cherished by Turkish statesmen
+who have the best interests of Turkey
+itself at heart. For several years Turkey has
+been in extreme peril. It was condemned to
+death by the Triple Entente some time ago,
+and the prediction of the British Prime Minister
+in a recent public speech that this war
+would end the existence of Turkey as an independent
+power was only the publication of
+the sentence of death long since decided upon.
+The Sick Man was kept alive by his friends, the
+doctors, largely because they deemed his malady
+incurable. The moment he showed signs of
+convalescence they agreed to poison him. But
+for the protection of Germany the political
+existence of Turkey would be already a thing
+of the past. The Turk, therefore, will stand or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+fall according to the decision in this war for
+or against Germany. He will be excessively
+foolish not to do everything he can to insure a
+German victory.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Entrance
+of Turkey
+into War.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Constantinople
+core
+of the
+War.</div>
+
+<p>The entrance of Turkey into the war has long
+been foreseen, and its vast significance has long
+been clear to students. Some trained observers
+go much further: Sir Harry Johnston, a
+traveler, statesman, and diplomat of repute,
+has declared: "Constantinople is really the
+core of the war." In diplomatic circles in
+Vienna this summer there was a general agreement
+that the loss of Salonika, which the Turk
+was forced to hand over to Greece at the end
+of the Balkan wars, was a vital blow to the
+Triple Alliance, and its recovery would be of
+sufficient importance to justify the risk of a
+European war to accomplish it. The situation
+in the Near East and in the Balkans is an
+integral part of the European war. In fact, the
+war is not a European war at all; it is a world
+war in the most literal sense of the words.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Control of
+exit from
+the Black
+Sea imperative
+to Russia.</div>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the twentieth century
+keen observers saw clearly that the old order of
+things, which had preserved the Turk so long
+in the face of many enemies, had passed away
+beyond a peradventure and had left the Turk
+in great peril. Ever since the decay of the
+strength of the Ottoman Empire the Turk had
+been hardly pressed in Europe by Russia and
+by Austria, both of whom coveted sections of
+his dominions, and both of whom would have
+been glad to obtain Constantinople, the gateway
+between Europe and Asia. Of the two,
+Russia was more insistent because her interests
+made the control of the exit from the Black Sea
+imperative for her. The Turk, however, until
+very recently, was himself strong enough to
+throw considerable obstacles in the face of the
+invader; he was probably, in 1900, more efficient
+than in 1850; but his enemies had grown by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+leaps and bounds. He was confronted by a
+new Austria and a new Russia.</p>
+
+<p>What was worse, the Balkan nations, who
+had long been subject peoples, ill-organized,
+poverty stricken, had grown with the help of
+the Turk's enemies into sturdy, self-reliant, independent
+communities with good-sized armies
+and something approaching national wealth.
+The long years of subjection had left behind
+a consuming hatred of the Turk in their
+breasts; as Christians, they hated the Turk as
+the Infidel; and they promised themselves some
+day the control of Constantinople in the interest
+of Christianity. The neighbors of the Turk
+had grown formidable and would be able to
+make short work of him unless help arrived.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Industrial
+growth of
+Germany.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Old order
+changes.</div>
+
+<p>There was none to be had from his past
+friends; so much was only too clear. The shift
+in the international situation caused by the
+astounding industrial growth of Germany, the
+rapid development of the German, Austrian,
+and Italian fleets, the increased efficiency of the
+armies of the Triple Alliance had all made the
+control of the Mediterranean far more difficult
+for England and France. They could no longer
+spare ships and troops in sufficient numbers
+to rescue the Turk from Russia without exposing
+themselves more than was wise in northern
+Europe. Besides, the designs of the Triple
+Alliance made it seem only too probable that
+the possession of Constantinople by Russia and
+the creation of a fleet in the Black Sea might
+be the only means of preserving for the French
+and English control of the western Mediterranean.
+The old order had changed: the
+Turk's friends were now his enemies bent on
+his destruction.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ambition
+of new
+Turkish
+party.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Democratic
+and
+nationalist
+revival.</div>
+
+<p>Yet there had never been a time when the
+Sick Man was more desperately determined to
+get well, when life had seemed to him so entirely
+desirable. The passing of the old order<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+caused no grief among the Turks&mdash;outside of
+those few henchmen who had long drawn a
+fat revenue from foreign nations. The Turks
+had become fired with ambition, with democratic
+conceptions, highly inconsistent with the
+state of things which the old order had so long
+sanctioned. The new democrats declared indignantly
+that Turkey had been for years conducted
+for the benefit of foreign nations; it
+should be conducted in the future solely in the
+interests of Turkey. They were roused to enthusiasm
+by the past history of the Ottoman
+empire and burned to reconquer its old
+provinces, to establish a closer relationship between
+the provinces which remained. An imperialistic
+movement, a nationalistic revival,
+if you will, was preached in Turkey by ardent
+enthusiasts whose words fell on willing ears.
+To the democratic and nationalist revival was
+joined religious discontent. The Sultan was
+the religious head of the Mohammedan world.
+Everywhere the true Believers were in chains.
+Everywhere the infidel reigned supreme. From
+Constantinople to Mecca, from the confines of
+Morocco to the plains of India, the Mohammedan
+world was ground under the heel of the
+conqueror and the conqueror was the Arch
+Enemy of Truth. There must be, they preached,
+a great crusade, a united rising to cast out the
+Christian dogs and restore the sceptre of empire
+to the hand of a devout believer in Allah.
+Turkey, Assyria, Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia,
+India, Egypt, the whole of Africa, should be
+freed from the yoke of the oppressor.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Great
+Confederation
+of
+States.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">From
+Berlin to
+Bagdad
+railroad.</div>
+
+<p>And now appeared an ally, unfortunately a
+Christian, in fact a peculiarly devout Christian,
+but one able to save the Turk from his foes,
+glad to foster his ambitions. The plans of Germany
+for her future involved the creation of a
+great confederation of states stretching from
+the North Sea to the Persian Gulf and including<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Germany,
+Austria, Switzerland, the Balkans, Turkey, and
+Persia. These states controlled the great overland
+roads from central Europe to the Persian
+Gulf and would make possible overland trade
+with the East. A railroad already existed as
+far as Constantinople, and a railroad from
+Constantinople to Bagdad and the Gulf would
+not only throw open Asia Minor and the great
+plains of Mesopotamia to European capital,
+but would furnish a perfectly practicable commercial
+road to the East through which in time
+would flow a trade which would make the great
+Confederation rich. Of this Confederation,
+Turkey would be an integral and essential part.
+Adrianople, the key to the Balkans; Salonika,
+key to the &AElig;gean; Constantinople, controlling
+the outlet to the Black Sea and the crossing to
+Asia Minor; the land approaches of the Tigris
+and Euphrates valleys&mdash;all these the Turk had,
+all these an alliance with him would give Germany.
+The stronger the Turkish State, the
+better organized, the larger its army and fleet,
+the greater its resources, the more useful it
+would be to Germany and the more thoroughly
+it would insure the success of Pan-Germanism.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">England
+and
+France
+sustain
+courteous
+hold on
+Constantinople.</div>
+
+<p>It had been for the interests of England and
+France to keep Turkey weak. The Turk must
+hold Constantinople, but must not be strong
+enough to use it; as a tenant, as a nominal
+owner, he was extremely useful; some one had
+to own it; England and France could not hold
+it themselves; they were determined Russia
+should not have it; and the Turk was a useful
+<i>locum tenens</i>. They, therefore, frowned upon
+Turkish ambitions for democratic government
+and would, undoubtedly, have sacrificed the
+Turk rather than see an independent Mohammedan
+State take real control of Asia Minor
+and Northern Africa.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Pan-Germanic
+Confederation.</div>
+
+<p>Germany, on the contrary, wished an active<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+agent to pursue an aggressive policy in her
+favor. If the Sick Man could get out of bed
+only with assistance, Germany was anxious to
+help him; and the Turk vastly preferred an alliance
+with a Power which was eager to make
+him well to one with Powers almost afraid to
+keep him alive. The Turks wished a capable
+government, a good army, a State deserving
+of independence, and were overjoyed to find
+Germany ready and desirous to foster this ambition.
+Indeed, as a member of the Pan-Germanic
+Confederation, the Turk must be strong
+enough to hold Constantinople and the Bagdad
+Railway in the event of a general European
+war, without depending upon Germany for
+more than assistance, supplies, and advice.
+Germany and Austria, menaced on both sides
+at home, would not be able to take the risks of
+sending troops to the Near East, and the Turk
+would have to be strong enough to keep at bay
+such forces as it seemed likely Russia would
+be able to spare from the battlefields of northern
+Europe.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Pan-Islam.</div>
+
+<p>Germany was equally ready to have the Turk
+gratify his imperialist and religious ambitions.
+Pan-Islam would destroy the political control
+of England and France in northern Africa and
+in Egypt. It might even overturn the British
+Empire in India. This would be the greatest
+possible service any one could render Germany,
+and it might be one which Germany could accomplish
+in no other way. If the Triple Entente
+was the greatest foe of Pan-Islamism,
+Pan-Germanism should be its greatest friend.
+Where ambition and interest coincide, co-operation
+is simple.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Reorganization
+of
+Turkey.</div>
+
+<p>In complete accord, therefore, the Germans
+and the Turks undertook the reorganization of
+Turkey above five years or more ago. They
+saw with clear vision the real truth about Turkey.
+With engaging candor they laid the blame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+for the deficiencies of Turkish government upon
+England and France and declared them the
+work of intention. Turkey, they saw, was not
+a nation in the European sense of the word; it
+was not even a single race. It was not a geographical
+unit by any means, but a series of
+districts on the whole geographically disconnected.
+Far from being an economic unit with
+a single interest vital to all its inhabitants,
+it produced nothing essential to the outside
+world which its inhabitants could depend upon
+exchanging for European manufactured goods.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Turkey's
+economic
+interests.</div>
+
+<p>Its economic interests were potential rather
+than real; its trade, the result of its strategic
+position rather than of the interests and the
+capacity of its population. Normally and naturally
+the Turk should be a middleman, a distributor
+rather than a producer. He was
+placed in control of the continental roads between
+Asia and Central Europe, and was able
+to control the overland trade as soon as it
+emerged from the Caucasus or the Persian Gulf,
+and maintain that control until the continental
+highway passed into the defiles of the Balkans
+beyond Adrianople. Constantinople itself, controlling
+the narrow passage which formed the
+exit of the Black Sea, was in a position to foster
+or hinder the entire trade of southern Russia
+with the rest of the world. In fact, it was impossible
+to deny, and the Germans thoroughly
+well understood it, that the trade of the East
+with Europe and the trade of Russia with the
+rest of the world might pass through Turkey,
+but was not likely to stay there.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Turkey's
+important
+strategic
+position.</div>
+
+<p>In this important strategic position, economically
+valuable to others but not to its inhabitants,
+had been collected a peculiar and extraordinary
+conglomeration of races, creeds, and
+interests; few of which had much in common,
+and all of which cherished for each other antipathies
+and jealousies almost as old as history.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+The racial problem of Turkey would be less
+difficult if the races were only located side by
+side in solid masses. With few exceptions the
+races interpenetrate one another to a remarkable
+extent and the Turk himself is numerically
+in the majority in comparatively few districts
+of Asia Minor, where the bulk of the Turkish
+population lives, and in scarcely any part of
+European Turkey. The Turks are literally
+overlords, a ruling class.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Turkey's
+weak
+political
+fabric.</div>
+
+<p>The Turk has governed this vast territory
+and this conglomeration of races and religions
+by a peculiarly weak political fabric which
+seemed in the nineteenth century to combine in
+one structure all the disadvantages of centralization,
+and all those of decentralization.
+Subject peoples have been ruled by a combination
+of military, civil, and religious authority
+which has been dependent in the long run for
+its support on the army. However, had the subject
+peoples hated each other less cordially, had
+they been more capable of organization and
+willing to compromise, they might have ended
+the Turkish rule decades ago, army or no army.
+Some observers, indeed, have thought the Turkish
+Government an artificial sham kept alive
+by France and England for their own purposes.
+Whatever reasons were to be given, the Germans
+and the Turks saw that Turkey as a nation
+and Turkey as a state had been, both of
+them, practically non-existent. Both had been
+names, not realities. Turkey had appeared on
+the European maps. A series of so-called
+statesmen had taken European bribes in Constantinople;
+numerous incompetent and venal
+officials had robbed the populace with the help
+of the soldiers in the provinces, and this Government
+plus the army was Turkey. Turkey had,
+indeed, been sick, but that particular kind of
+illness, the Turks thought, could be cured; and
+the Germans agreed with them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germany's
+willingness
+to
+assist
+Turkey.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germany's
+influence
+in Turkey.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Reasons
+for
+Turkey's
+joining
+Germany.</div>
+
+<p>We must not forget as observers the exceeding
+importance of German willingness to assist
+the ambitions of the educated Turks for self-government
+and for independence from European
+influence. The English and French control
+of Turkey was fortuitous and artificial and
+depended solely upon the control of a little
+group of men in Constantinople. German influence
+in Turkey has deep and fundamental
+roots in a large and significant part of the
+Turkish population and appeals to their best
+and highest impulses. We have here in the last
+analysis the reasons why Turkey has joined
+Germany in the war. The enlightened Turks
+see in Pan-Germanism a democratic Turkey
+with constitutional self-government, a Turkey
+developing its own resources, a Turkey gradually
+freeing itself from the fetters of European
+alliances and becoming gradually but certainly
+strong enough to take its place in the Pan-Germanic
+chain as a state of worth, integrity,
+and importance. They see in the victory of
+Pan-Germanism the effective promise of the
+realization of such ideals. They see in the defeat
+of Pan-Germanism political and national
+death, the annexation of Turkey by its enemies,
+and the subjection of the Turks to the rule of
+the Infidel. For these reasons they joined
+Germany in the first place. For these deep,
+fundamental reasons they hold staunchly to
+their friend. We shall be guilty of quibbling
+and of shortsightedness if we look for an explanation
+of Turkish policy in the seizure of
+warships and the breach of treaties.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Reorganization
+of
+Turkey.</div>
+
+<p>The reorganization of Turkey was duly observed
+by the Triple Entente and its purpose
+thoroughly well understood. Their opposition
+to it was prompt, and Italy attempted by the
+Tripolitan War to rob the Turk of one of his
+distant provinces. Having seized Tripoli with
+the consent of the Triple Entente, Italy then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+changed sides, returned to the Triple Alliance
+and took Tripoli with her. The result was a
+prompt reversal of the strategic situation in the
+Eastern Mediterranean and placed England
+and France in such danger that they saw the
+moment had probably come when it would be
+positively to their advantage to gratify Russia's
+ambition and allow her to seize Constantinople.
+The Tripolitan War suspended the sword of
+Damocles over the Turk's head.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Balkan
+War.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+loss of
+Macedonia.</div>
+
+<p>The Balkan War threatened for a time to
+annihilate him. The prompt aid of Austria
+and Germany as stout representatives in the
+international conclave, the mobilization of the
+Austrian army, the knowledge that Germany
+was ready to mobilize, saved the Turk. The
+ambitions of Bulgaria brought her over to the
+side of the Triple Alliance, which was more
+than ready to assist her in dominating the
+Balkans. The second war cost Bulgaria dear
+but gave back to the Turk Adrianople. Macedonia,
+however, was lost entirely, and much of
+Thrace, with Salonika, the key of the &AElig;gean,
+was also lost and fell into the hands of the
+Turk's enemy, Greece.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Little
+likelihood
+of attack
+on Constantinople.</div>
+
+<p>The reorganized state was now undeniably in
+great peril; and the probability of an outbreak
+of a European war in the near future, the
+knowledge that the Turk must himself defend
+Constantinople and the Bagdad Railway, urged
+the Germans and the Turks to great efforts in
+reorganizing the army and providing equipment.
+The fleet also received attention; two
+battleships were building in England and another
+was purchased from one of the South
+American states. There would this time be no
+escape. The death sentence had been passed
+upon the Turk, and if he waited for his enemies
+to gather and descend upon him defense would
+be problematical. It was, of course, realized
+that in the long run Germany would save<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+Turkey by battles won in France or in Poland,
+and also that German defeats in Europe would
+in the long run spell the downfall of Turkey
+whatever the Turk did. It was, therefore, advisable
+to postpone action as long as possible.
+While Russia was exerting herself to the utmost
+to mobilize an army in Poland, there was
+small likelihood of an attack on Constantinople,
+and the Turk might well remain neutral,
+equip and organize the army, acquire supplies,
+and choose the moment to take the
+offensive.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+cruisers
+at Constantinople.</div>
+
+<p>England, on the outbreak of the war, seized
+the two battleships building in England, and,
+therefore, weakened the Turkish strength in the
+Black Sea. The deficiency was supplied by
+sending two German cruisers to Constantinople
+and selling them to the Turkish Government.
+Some weeks ago the Germans judged that the
+time had come when the Turk must openly join
+in the war, send his troops to the frontier in
+order to hold the invader as far as possible
+from Constantinople. Indeed, action at this
+time might allow the Turk to accomplish results
+of the utmost importance. Those who see
+simply the fact that Russia could easily overwhelm
+the Turk standing alone, that the Balkan
+States united might also dispose of him,
+entirely fail to grasp the possibilities before the
+Turk at the present moment when Russia is
+extremely busy in the North, when the Balkan
+States seem hopelessly divided, and when Italy
+is maintaining with determination her neutrality.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Closing
+of the
+Black Sea
+by
+Turkey.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enormous
+value
+of oil
+supplies
+in the
+Black Sea
+District.</div>
+
+<p>The most important thing the Turk has done
+for Germany has been the closing of the Black
+Sea. The sowing of a few mines in the Straits
+promptly put an end to Russian trade from the
+Black Sea and dealt southern Russia a great
+blow commercially. Germany thus struck at
+England, because a large part of the English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+food supply has normally come from the Black
+Sea district, and the desire to protect the grain
+ships through the Mediterranean has been one
+of England's chief reasons for maintaining control
+of that sea. So large were these supplies
+normally that England has had considerable
+difficulty in replacing them and is destined
+soon to experience greater difficulty in furnishing
+a supply equivalent in volume and accessibility.
+The Black Sea district also has large
+oil supplies which would be of enormous value
+to England and France, now that the extensive
+use of the automobile in warfare has made
+gasolene a supply second in importance only
+to powder and food. If the Turkish navy, augmented
+by the German cruisers, can dispose
+of the Russian ships in the Black Sea, and this
+seems not improbable, the Turk might annex
+for Germany this supply of oil. That would be
+a stroke of the utmost consequence.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Isolation
+of Russia.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Importance
+of
+Turkey to
+Germany.</div>
+
+<p>Closing the Black Sea by the Turk, plus the
+closing of the Baltic by the German fleet in the
+North Sea, would also accomplish another extremely
+important result, the absolute and complete
+isolation of Russia from contact with all
+parts of the world except Germany, Austria,
+and Turkey. The question has often arisen as
+to the ability of Germany to prolong the war in
+the face of her inability to export goods to her
+usual customers. The complete cessation of
+manufacture in Germany would sooner or later
+bankrupt the country and bring her to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: this word not present in original text">her</ins> knees.
+The Germans point out that the isolation of
+Russia will have precisely the same effect on
+that country unless Russia can find some place
+where her raw products can be exchanged for
+the manufactured goods which are much more
+necessary in warfare than the crude products
+which she always has to sell. The experience
+of the past has proved again and again that
+belligerent countries persistently trade with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+one another when it is profitable. The Germans
+expect to sell their manufactured goods in Russia
+in exchange for the raw materials which
+Russia produces, just as long as their fleet
+holds the mouth of the Baltic and the Turk
+controls Constantinople. A brisk trade between
+Germany, Austria, and Russia is already
+reported and if it attains the proportions the
+Germans expect, their commercial problem
+will have been largely solved. But its continued
+solution will depend upon the maintaining
+of Turkey in Constantinople. If these considerations
+are as important as the Pan-Germanists
+have usually claimed, it will be obvious
+that the adhesion of the Turk has exceeding
+importance for Germany and had long been arranged
+in advance.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Control
+of the
+Suez
+Canal
+vital to
+Great
+Britain.</div>
+
+<p>The possibilities before the Turkish army,
+well equipped with modern munitions of war
+and capably officered by Germans, have been
+by no means forgotten. The great objective
+of Pan-Germanism is not in Europe but in Asia
+and Africa. The defense of the English and
+French dominions in both will have to be made
+in Europe. The strength of the German army,
+the size of the German fleet, would prevent the
+English and French from dissipating their
+forces over the vast territory which they claim
+to control. The experienced troops in India,
+in Egypt, and in Morocco were shipped to
+France upon the outbreak of the war exactly
+as the Germans expected and hoped. Their
+places were filled by less experienced regiments
+from France, England, and the English colonies.
+Egypt and the Suez Canal, India, and
+the great defenses would not be so <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'strongely'">strongly</ins>
+held. The Turk occupied a position flanking
+Persia and a position flanking Egypt. A
+strong, well-trained Turkish army might conceivably
+capture either or both. Assistance
+from within might well be expected in both,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+and victory in either would exert a moral effect
+upon the war in Europe which would be of
+the utmost importance. A few hours' possession
+of the Suez Canal, furthermore, would
+allow the Germans to obstruct it and effectually
+block the approach of England to Australia
+and India except by the long road around
+Africa. Conceivably this might interfere seriously
+with the English food supplies from Australia
+and New Zealand, particularly with the
+supplies of meat from the latter. This would
+be more than usually important in view of the
+deficiency of meat supplies in the United States
+and Canada, and the length of time necessary
+to procure them from the Argentine Republic.
+It is by these blows at the food supply that the
+Germans expect to make the greatest impression
+upon England. Short of actual invasion,
+the stoppage of supplies is the only method by
+which the Germans can inflict suffering upon
+England.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bulgaria
+ally of
+Germany.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">All
+Balkan
+states
+weakened
+by Balkan
+War.</div>
+
+<p>No one in Berlin or Constantinople has forgotten
+the existence of the Balkans. Servian
+enmity, Greek hatred for the Turk, are only too
+obvious; Bulgaria is believed to be entirely
+faithful to the German interests; Roumania
+has never been very trustworthy, and has at
+times been an ally of both the coalitions in
+Europe. The ability of the Turk, of course, to
+hold Constantinople and above all to take the
+offensive would depend upon the continued
+neutrality or alliance of the Balkan States.
+Combined, they are amply strong enough to
+overrun Turkey in Europe and probably to
+invade Asia Minor in force. All the Balkan
+States except Roumania&mdash;which is hardly a
+Balkan State&mdash;were very much weakened in
+men and in resources by the late Balkan wars,
+and will probably have considerable difficulty
+in obtaining any quantity of supplies from
+foreign countries, though we are told of large<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+purchases by the Greeks in the United States.
+The fact, however, that the Turk has taken the
+offensive against Egypt and Persia makes it
+extremely probable that the Balkan hatreds
+have offset each other. Bulgaria's existence
+probably depends upon Austrian protection.
+Roumania is probably afraid to take the field
+with Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, and Austria
+against her, while the Greeks and Servians have
+still to recover from the recent wars. It is
+probable, therefore, that, Bulgaria and Roumania
+being neutral, Servia at war with Austria,
+Turkey can take from Greece Salonika and
+possibly Macedonia. Should the war in Europe
+progress favorably for Germany, the attitude
+of the Balkan States toward Germany would
+be influenced and a scramble would ensue to
+join the victor, which would probably result in
+the extinction of Servia and Greece and the
+strengthening of Bulgaria and Turkey. Naturally,
+the Turk would retake the islands in
+the &AElig;gean Sea which are now in Italy's
+hands.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Turkey's
+position if
+Germany
+wins in
+Europe.</div>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that all goes as they hope:
+that the Germans win in Europe; that the
+Turks and Bulgarians take control of the Balkans;
+that the Russians are excluded from
+Persia, and the English from Egypt. The
+victorious Turkish army is then in a position
+to advance along the Persian Gulf road upon
+India, and would assail India at her weakest
+point, outflanking the great defenses at Quetta
+which have been developed primarily against
+Russia.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Possibilities
+of
+Pan-Islam.</div>
+
+<p>We must not forget to enumerate, among the
+possibilities, Pan-Islam. Success by the Turks
+in Egypt or Persia would undoubtedly give an
+impulse to Pan-Islam which might put all the
+fanatical enthusiasm of the Mohammedans into
+a vast uprising which might sweep the French
+and English out of northern Africa and India.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+The Sultan of Turkey is the official head of the
+Mohammedan religion. His orders Moslems are
+all bound to obey. At present the Mohammedans
+in the English and French possessions,
+who are, of course, under English and French
+influence, are claiming that the acts of the Sultan
+are not really his, but those of German
+officers; and the reports at the time of writing
+indicate that at the present moment the
+order from Constantinople for a holy war will
+probably not be regarded or obeyed. But a victory
+by Turkish arms would probably instantly
+change the situation and might loose the pent-up
+fanaticism of the most intensely emotional
+of the Oriental races. Here is another weapon
+in the German arsenal whose use will depend
+upon the co&ouml;peration of the Turk.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Key of
+situation
+is Constantinople.</div>
+
+<p>It should now be evident that there is much
+to be said for the view that the key to the present
+situation is Constantinople. We are dealing
+with world politics, with a world war which
+is being fought on the battlefields of Europe;
+but we are dealing with a world war whose
+results are not expected to develop in Europe
+proper. The key to this situation lies in Constantinople,
+and the Turk holds it.</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Copyright, World's Work, January, 1915.</small></div>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The outbreak of the Great War found the
+British navy in a high state of preparedness,
+and so preponderant in number of vessels and
+in weight of guns that the German Grand
+Fleet as a whole was content to remain behind
+the walls of Helgoland. Squadrons were sent
+out, however, to attack isolated British ships,
+and on August 28 the first naval battle of the
+war occurred in the Bight of Helgoland. Here
+British and German cruisers engaged in a
+struggle in which the honors were for a time
+even. The arrival of British dreadnoughts
+quickly turned the scale, and the German ships
+fled to the safety of their harbor. The Germans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+lost four large ships, while the British fleet lost
+none.</p>
+
+<p>The German navy was revenged in November
+3, when a fleet of warships met and sunk
+three British cruisers off the Coronel. On December
+9, however, a British fleet, after a search
+of many days, came up with and sank three
+German cruisers, and severely damaged two
+others in the Battle of Falkland Islands.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE FALKLAND SEA FIGHT</h2>
+
+<h3>A. N. HILDITCH</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Falkland
+Islands.</div>
+
+<p>In 1592, John Davis, the arctic explorer,
+after whom the strait between Greenland
+and the North American mainland is
+named, made an attempt, in company with
+Thomas Cavendish, to find a new route to Asia
+by the Straits of Magellan. Differences arose
+between the two leaders. One was an explorer:
+the other had a tendency towards freebooting.
+They parted off the coast of Patagonia. Davis,
+driven out of his course by stormy weather,
+found himself among a cluster of unknown and
+uninhabited islands, some three hundred miles
+east of the Straits of Magellan. This group,
+after many changes and vicissitudes, passed
+finally into the hands of Great Britain, and became
+known as the Falkland Islands.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Climate
+surface,
+and vegetation.</div>
+
+<p>They consist of two large islands and of
+about one hundred islets, rocks, and sandbanks.
+The fragments of many wrecks testify to the
+dangers of navigation, though masses of giant
+seaweed act as buoys for many of the rocks.
+So numerous are the penguins, thronging in
+battalions the smaller islands and the inland
+lagoons, that the governor of the colony is
+nicknamed King of the Penguins. As New Zealand
+is said to be the most English of British
+possessions, the Falklands may perhaps be appropriately
+termed the most Scottish. Their
+general appearance resembles that of the Outer
+Hebrides. Of the population, a large proportion
+are of Scottish extraction. The climate
+is not unlike that of Scotland. The winters are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+misty and rainy, but not excessively cold.
+So violent are the winds that it is said to be impossible
+to play tennis or croquet, unless walls
+are erected as shelter, while cabbages grown
+in the kitchen-gardens of the shepherds, the
+only cultivated ground, are at times uprooted
+and scattered like straw. The surface, much
+of which is bogland, is in some parts mountainous,
+and is generally wild and rugged. Small
+streams and shallow freshwater tarns abound.
+A natural curiosity, regarded with great wonder,
+exists in 'stone-rivers'; long, glistening
+lines of quartzite rock d&eacute;bris, which, without
+the aid of water, slide gradually to lower levels.
+There are no roads. Innumerable sheep, the
+familiar Cheviots and Southdowns, graze upon
+the wild scurvy-grass and sorrel. The colony
+is destitute of trees, and possesses but few
+shrubs. The one tree that the Islands can
+boast, an object of much care and curiosity,
+stands in the Governor's garden. The seat of
+government, and the only town, is Port Stanley,
+with a population of about 950. Its general
+aspect recalls a small town of the western highlands
+of Scotland. Many of the houses, square,
+white-washed, and grey-slated, possess small
+greenhouse-porches, gay with fuchsias and
+pelargoniums, in pleasing contrast to the prevailing
+barrenness. A small cathedral, Christ
+Church, and an imposing barracks, generally
+occupied by a company of marines, stand in the
+midst of the town. The Government House
+might be taken for an Orkney or Shetland
+manse.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Government.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Prosperity
+of the
+colony.</div>
+
+<p>The administration of the colony and of its
+dependencies is vested in a Governor, aided
+by a Colonial Secretary, and by an executive
+and a legislative council. The Governor
+acts as Chief Justice, and the Colonial Secretary
+as Police Magistrate. There is a local
+jail, capable of accommodating six offenders at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+a time. Its resources are not stated, however,
+to be habitually strained. Education is compulsory:
+the Government maintains schools and
+travelling teachers. The inhabitants are principally
+engaged in sheep-farming and seafaring
+industries. The colony is prosperous,
+with a trade that of late years has grown with
+extraordinary rapidity. The dividends paid by
+the Falkland Islands Company might excite
+the envy of many a London director. Stanley's
+importance has been increased by the erection
+of wireless installation; and as a coaling and
+refitting station for vessels rounding the Horn,
+the harbour, large, safe, and accessible, is of
+immense value.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A raid
+expected.</div>
+
+<p>To this remote outpost of empire came tidings
+of war in August, 1914. Great excitement
+and enthusiasm prevailed. News was very
+slow in getting through: the mails, usually a
+month in transit, became very erratic. But the
+colony eagerly undertook a share in the burden
+of the Empire; &pound;2,250 was voted towards the
+war-chest; &pound;750 was collected on behalf of the
+Prince of Wales's Fund. Detached, though
+keen, interest changed, however, as the weeks
+passed, to intimate alarm. The Governor, Mr.
+Allardyce, received a wireless message from the
+Admiralty that he must expect a raid. German
+cruisers were suspected to be in the neighbourhood.
+Never before had the colony known
+such bustle and such excitement. They, the
+inhabitants of the remote Falklands, were to
+play a part in the struggle that was tugging at
+the roots of the world's civilization. The exhilaration
+of expectancy and of danger broke
+suddenly into their uneventful, though not easy,
+lives. But there was cause for keen anxiety.
+The colonists were, however, reassured for a
+time by a visit from three British warships, the
+cruisers <i>Good Hope</i>, <i>Monmouth</i>, and <i>Glasgow</i>,
+with the armed liner <i>Otranto</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+warships
+arrive.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Search for
+German
+cruisers.</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Good Hope</i> had, at the declaration of
+war, been patrolling the Irish coast. She was
+ordered to sweep the Atlantic trade routes for
+hostile cruisers. She reached the coast of
+North America, after many false alarms, stopping
+English merchantmen on the way, and
+informing the astonished skippers of the war
+and of their course in consequence. When forty
+miles east of New York, Rear-Admiral Sir
+Christopher Cradock came aboard with his
+staff, and hoisted his flag. The Admiral turned
+southwards, sweeping constantly for the enemy.
+Passing through the West Indies, he proceeded
+to the coast of Brazil. Here he was joined by
+the <i>Glasgow</i>. The <i>Good Hope</i> had picked up
+the <i>Monmouth</i> previously. The three ships, accompanied
+by the auxiliary cruiser <i>Otranto</i>,
+kept a southerly course. The discovery at
+Pernambuco of twenty-three German merchantmen
+snugly ensconced behind the breakwater,
+in neutral harbour, proved very galling. The
+Straits of Magellan and the cold Tierra del
+Fuego were at length reached. The squadron
+was on the scent of three German cruisers, the
+<i>Leipzig</i>, <i>Dresden</i>, and <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>. It was
+suspected that they had gone to coal in this
+remote corner of the oceans. Their secret and
+friendly wireless stations were heard talking
+in code. The British made swoops upon wild
+and unsurveyed bays and inlets. The land
+around was covered with ice and snow, and the
+many huge glaciers formed a sight wonderful
+to behold. But the search had proved fruitless.
+After rounding the Horn several times, the
+squadron had turned towards the Falklands.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rumors of
+disaster.</div>
+
+<p>The inhabitants could not long rely, however,
+upon these powerful guardians. The
+squadron, after coaling, departed, again bound
+for the Straits of Magellan and the Pacific.
+Its strength was certainly adequate to tackle
+with success the three German ships believed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+to be in the vicinity. The colony could depend
+upon Admiral Cradock to protect it to the best
+of his ability. But it was not improbable that
+the enemy might evade the patrolling cruisers,
+and descend upon the hapless Falklands without
+warning. The Governor saw the advisability
+of instant preparation. On October 19,
+he issued a notice that all women and children
+were to leave Stanley. Provisions, stores, and
+clothes were hastily removed into the interior,
+which was locally termed the 'camp'. The
+colony possessed a Volunteer Rifle Company,
+some 120 strong, and two nine-pounder field-guns.
+Further volunteers were enrolled and
+armed. Suddenly, on November 3, an alarming
+wireless message was received. The <i>Good
+Hope</i> and the <i>Monmouth</i> were reported to have
+been sunk off the coast of Chili. It was unsigned.
+There was no proof of its authenticity.
+But the next day another message followed
+from the captain of the <i>Glasgow</i>. The disaster
+was confirmed. The <i>Glasgow</i>, in company with
+H. M. S. <i>Canopus</i>, was running with all speed
+for the Falklands. They were probably being
+followed by the victorious Germans. Four days
+of acute suspense followed. The situation
+seemed critical. The Governor passed several
+nights without taking off his clothes, in expectancy
+of wireless messages that needed instant
+decoding. People slept beside their telephones.
+Early in the morning of Sunday,
+November 8, the two warships arrived.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Glasgow</i>
+arrives.</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Glasgow</i> was badly damaged. An enormous
+hole, three feet by nine feet, gaped in her
+side. A shell had wrecked Captain Luce's
+cabin, giving off fumes such as rendered unconscious
+several men who rushed in to put out the
+fire. The vessel had escaped any serious outbreak,
+however, and had suffered only four
+slight casualties. Warm tributes were paid by
+the captain to the cool and disciplined conduct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+of both officers and men. The <i>Canopus</i> had not
+been engaged. But a narrative of the preceding
+events may now be appropriate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+cruisers in
+Pacific.</div>
+
+<p>Vice-Admiral the Graf Maximilian von Spee
+was in command, at the outbreak of hostilities,
+of the German China fleet stationed at Tsing-tao.
+A successor, indeed, had been appointed,
+and was on the way to relieve him. But just
+before war was declared von Spee and his
+squadron steamed off into the open seas. To remain
+at Tsing-tao while vastly superior forces
+were closing in upon him would be to little purpose.
+Commerce raiding offered a field for rendering
+valuable service to the Fatherland. The
+<i>Emden</i> was dispatched to the southern seas.
+The <i>Leipzig</i> and the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i> proceeded across
+the Pacific, and began to prey upon the western
+coast of South America. Half the maritime
+trade of Chili was carried in English ships.
+Many of them might be seized and destroyed at
+little risk. The Admiral, with his two remaining
+vessels, the <i>Scharnhorst</i> and the <i>Gneisenau</i>,
+successfully evaded the hostile fleets for some
+time. On September 14 he touched at Apia,
+in German Samoa, familiar to readers of Robert
+Louis Stevenson. It could be remembered
+how, fifteen years before, this colony, shortly
+to fall before a New Zealand expeditionary
+force, had been a bone of contention between
+Great Britain and Germany. Captain Sturdee,
+whom von Spee was soon to meet in more
+arduous operations, had on that occasion commanded
+the British force in the tribal warfare.
+Eight days later, on September 22, the two
+German cruisers arrived off Papeete, in Tahiti,
+one of the loveliest of Pacific islands. A small
+disarmed French gunboat lying there was sunk,
+and the town was bombarded. The Admiral,
+planning a concentration of German ships, then
+steamed east across the Pacific. He got into
+touch with friendly vessels. By skilful man&#339;uvring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+he finally brought five warships,
+with colliers, together near Valparaiso.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Armament
+of
+cruisers.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Coal
+needed.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Drake's
+exploits.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Search for
+cruisers.</div>
+
+<p>The German ships were all of recent construction.
+The <i>Scharnhorst</i> and the <i>Gneisenau</i>
+were armoured cruisers of 11,600 tons. The
+<i>Leipzig</i>, the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>, and the <i>Dresden</i> were
+light cruisers of about 3,500 tons. The armament
+of the larger vessels included eight 8&middot;2-inch
+and six 6-inch guns. The smaller relied
+upon either ten or twelve 4-inch pieces. Each
+ship carried torpedo tubes, and the speed of
+each was about twenty-two or twenty-three
+knots an hour. The <i>Dresden</i>, however, could go
+to twenty-seven knots. The squadron possessed
+all-important allies. Several German merchant-marine
+companies, notably the Kosmos,
+plied along the Chilian coast. The tonnage of
+their vessels, indeed, amounted to no less than
+half that of the English companies. The advance
+of German enterprise in Chili in recent
+years had been very marked. Von Spee's great
+stumbling-block was coal. The laws of war prevented
+him from sending more than three of
+his warships into a neutral port at the same
+time, from staying there more than twenty-four
+hours, from taking more coal than was necessary
+to reach the nearest German harbour,
+from coaling again for three months at a port
+of the same nationality. But if German merchantmen,
+hampered by no such restrictions,
+could constantly renew his supplies, the difficulty
+of fuel could be to some extent met. Provisions
+and secret information as to British
+movements could also be obtained through the
+same source. Such employment of merchantmen,
+however, being contrary to international
+law, would have to be clandestine. The great
+Pacific coast offered numerous harbours and
+abundant facilities for being utilized as a base
+under such conditions. It showed many historic
+precedents for bold and adventurous exploits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+which could not fail to appeal to an admiral
+whose family, ennobled by the Emperor
+Charles VI, took pride in its ancient and aristocratic
+lineage. The occasion seemed opportune,
+moreover, for the accomplishment, by
+himself, his officers, and men, of deeds which
+should inspire their posterity as British naval
+traditions, for lack of other, at present inspired
+them. They could recall how, on this
+very coast, in 1578-9, Drake, the master raider,
+had seized a Spanish treasure-ship off Valdivia,
+had descended like a hawk upon Callao, had
+pounced upon another great galleon, taking
+nearly a million pounds in gold and silver; and
+how the intrepid mariner, sailing off into the
+unknown ocean, had circumnavigated the globe,
+while the furious de Toledo waited, with eleven
+warships, in the Straits of Magellan. Why,
+indeed, should not the Germans imitate, in the
+twentieth century, the deeds of Drake in the
+sixteenth? If they preyed ruthlessly upon
+English merchantmen, laden with the wealth
+of the West, if they made a descent upon the
+Falkland Islands, if then they were to disappear
+into the wide Pacific, a career of splendid
+adventure and of unbounded usefulness
+would earn for them both the respect and the
+plaudits of the world. Australian and Japanese
+warships were sweeping the eastern
+Pacific for them. Many British vessels, called
+from useful employment elsewhere, would have
+to join in the search for them. But so vast was
+the area that they might elude their enemies
+for months.</p>
+
+<p>British ships were already cruising near the
+Horn, possibly unaware that a concentration
+of the Germans had been effected. It was
+not unlikely that von Spee might be able to
+cut off and to destroy stray units of the
+patrolling squadrons. The Graf could see
+many opportunities of serving effectively the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+cause of the Fatherland. He must utilize them
+to the full.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cradock
+near
+coast of
+Chili.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+cruisers
+sighted.</div>
+
+<p>Sir Christopher Cradock, meanwhile, had
+rounded the Horn once more, and was cruising
+northwards up the coast of Chili. That coast,
+indeed, once the haunt of corsairs and filibusters,
+was rich in historic associations and in
+natural beauties. An element of grandeur and
+of mystery seemed to hover around the countless
+ridges and peaks of the Andes, stretching,
+with the gleam of their eternal snows, for four
+thousand miles, and gazing down across the
+illimitable waters of the occident. Upon the
+plateaux, miles above sea level, stood old stone
+temples and pyramids which rivalled in massiveness
+and ingenuity those of Egypt and of
+Babylon. The student of ancient civilizations
+could trace, in the mystic deities of the Incas
+and Araucanians, a strange similarity to the
+deities of the Chaldeans and Babylonians.
+Speculation upon this analogy formed a fascinating
+theme. This coast, too, was sacred
+to memories that could not but be dear to
+sailors as gallant and daring as Cradock, since
+his services in China, in 1900, was known to
+be. Among other familiar British names,
+Cochrane, Lord Dundonald, had won enduring
+glory in the struggle for Chilian independence,
+nearly a hundred years before. The conditions
+of naval warfare had, indeed, through the introduction
+of armour and the perfection of
+weapons, radically changed since Cochrane, in
+a series of singularly audacious exploits, had
+overcome the fleets of Spain. Sea-fighting had
+become purely a matter of science. The object
+of strategy was to concentrate faster ships
+and more powerful guns against weaker force.
+The odds with which Cradock was to contend
+against the Germans were greater in proportion,
+if less in bulk, than the odds with which
+Cochrane had contended, with his peasant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+crews and his hulks, against the Spanish
+"wooden-walls". Admiral Cradock now knew
+that there were two more cruisers in the neighbourhood
+than had at first been supposed. The
+<i>Canopus</i> had accordingly been sent to join his
+squadron. But she was a battleship, and much
+slower than the cruisers. She could travel no
+faster than at eighteen knots. Cradock proceeded
+northwards, ahead of the <i>Canopus</i>, made
+a rendezvous off Concepcion Bay for his colliers,
+and went into Coronel and on to Valparaiso
+to pick up news and receive letters. The
+squadron then returned to the rendezvous and
+coaled. This completed, the Admiral directed
+the <i>Glasgow</i> to proceed again to Coronel to dispatch
+certain cables. Captain Luce duly carried
+out his mission, and left Coronel at nine
+o'clock on Sunday morning, November 1, steaming
+northwards to rejoin the other ships. A
+gale was rising. The wind was blowing strongly
+from the south. Heavy seas continually
+buffeted the vessel. At two o'clock a wireless
+signal was received from the <i>Good Hope</i>. Apparently
+from wireless calls there was an enemy
+ship to northward. The squadron must
+spread out in line, proceeding in a direction
+north-east-by-east, the flagship forming one extremity,
+the <i>Glasgow</i> the other. It was to move
+at fifteen knots. At twenty minutes past four
+in the afternoon, smoke was observed upon the
+horizon. The <i>Glasgow</i> put on speed and approached.
+Officers soon made out the funnels
+of four cruisers. It was the enemy. The Germans,
+their big armoured cruisers leading, and
+the smaller behind, gave chase.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+squadrons
+approach.</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Glasgow</i> swept round to northward, calling
+to the flagship with her wireless. Von Spee,
+anticipating this move, at once set his wireless
+in operation, in order to jamb the British
+signals. Captain Luce soon picked up the
+<i>Monmouth</i> and the <i>Otranto</i>, and the three ships<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+raced northwards towards the flagship, the
+<i>Glasgow</i> leading. At about five o'clock the
+<i>Good Hope</i> was seen approaching. The three
+ships wheeled into line behind her, and the
+whole squadron now proceeded south. Von
+Spee, coming up from that direction in line
+ahead, about twelve miles off, changed his
+course and also proceeded south, keeping
+nearer to the coast. The wind was now blowing
+almost with the force of a hurricane. So
+heavy was the sea that small boats would have
+been unable to keep afloat. But the sky was
+not completely overcast, and the sun was shining.
+Firing had not opened. The washing of
+the seas and the roaring of the wind deafened
+the ear to other sounds. The warship of to-day,
+when her great turbines are whirling round at
+their highest speed, moves without throb and
+almost without vibration through the waves.
+The two squadrons, drawing level, the Germans
+nearer to the coast, raced in the teeth
+of the gale, in two parallel lines, to the
+south.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+vessels.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cradock
+orders
+attack.</div>
+
+<p>Sir Christopher Cradock could not but realize
+that the situation was hazardous. He had
+three vessels capable of fighting men-of-war.
+The <i>Otranto</i> was only an armed liner, and must
+withdraw when the battle developed. The <i>Good
+Hope</i> displaced some 14,000 tons, and was
+armed with two 9'2-inch and sixteen 6-inch
+guns. The <i>Monmouth</i>, with a tonnage of 9,800,
+carried fourteen 6-inch pieces, but the <i>Glasgow</i>,
+a ship of 4,800 tons, had only two of the 6-inch
+weapons. It was certain that the German
+8&middot;2-inch guns, if the shooting was at all good,
+would be found to outrange and outclass the
+British. Cradock was certainly at a disadvantage
+in gun-power. His protective armour
+was weaker than that of the enemy. Nor did
+his speed give him any superiority. Though
+the <i>Glasgow</i> was capable of twenty-six knots,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+the flagship and the <i>Monmouth</i> could only go
+to twenty-three. But there was another consideration
+which the Admiral might weigh.
+Coming slowly up from the south, but probably
+still a considerable distance off, was the
+battleship <i>Canopus</i>. Her presence would give
+the British a decided preponderance. She was
+a vessel of some 13,000 tons, and her armament
+included four 12-inch and twelve 6-inch pieces.
+How far was she away? How soon could she
+arrive upon the scene? Evening was closing
+in. Cradock was steering hard in her direction.
+If the British, engaging the enemy immediately,
+could keep them in play throughout
+the night, when firing must necessarily be desultory,
+perhaps morning would bring the
+<i>Canopus</i> hastening into the action. It was
+possible that the Germans did not know of her
+proximity. They might, accepting the contest,
+and expecting to cripple the British next morning
+at their leisure, find themselves trapped.
+But in any case they should not be allowed to
+proceed without some such attempt being made
+to destroy them. It must not be said that, because
+the enemy was in greater force, a British
+squadron had taken to flight. Perhaps it would
+be better, since darkness would afford little
+opportunity of man&#339;uvring for action, to draw
+nearer and to engage fairly soon. It was about
+a quarter past six. The Germans were about
+15,000 yards distant. Cradock ordered the
+speed of his squadron to seventeen knots. He
+then signalled by wireless to the <i>Canopus</i>, 'I
+am going to attack enemy now'.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">At closer
+range.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Only gun
+flashes to
+direct fire.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Good Hope</i>
+blown up.</div>
+
+<p>The sun was setting. The western horizon
+was mantled by a canopy of gold. Von Spee's
+man&#339;uvre in closing in nearer to the shore
+had placed him in an advantageous position as
+regards the light. The British ships, when the
+sun had set, were sharply outlined against the
+glowing sky. The Germans were partly hidden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+in the failing light and by the mountainous
+coast. The island of Santa Maria, off Coronel,
+lay in the distance. Von Spee had been gradually
+closing to within 12,000 yards. The appropriate
+moment for engaging seemed to be
+approaching. A few minutes after sunset,
+about seven o'clock, the leading German cruiser
+opened fire with her largest guns. Shells
+shrieked over and short of the <i>Good Hope</i>,
+some falling within five hundred yards. As
+battle was now imminent, the <i>Otranto</i> began
+to haul out of line, and to edge away to the
+south-west. The squadrons were converging
+rapidly, but the smaller cruisers were as yet
+out of range. The British replied in quick
+succession to the German fire. As the distance
+lessened, each ship engaged that opposite in
+the line. The <i>Good Hope</i> and the <i>Monmouth</i>
+had to bear the brunt of the broadsides of the
+<i>Scharnhorst</i> and the <i>Gneisenau</i>. The <i>Glasgow</i>,
+in the rear, exchanged shots with the light
+cruisers, the <i>Leipzig</i> and the <i>Dresden</i>. The
+shooting was deadly. The third of the rapid
+salvos of the enemy armoured cruisers set the
+<i>Good Hope</i> and the <i>Monmouth</i> afire. Shells
+began to find their mark, some exploding overhead
+and bursting in all directions. In about
+ten minutes the <i>Monmouth</i> sheered off the line
+to westward about one hundred yards. She
+was being hit heavily. Her foremost turret,
+shielding one of her 6-inch guns, was in flames.
+She seemed to be reeling and shaking. She
+fell back into line, however, and then out again
+to eastward, her 6-inch guns roaring intermittently.
+Darkness was now gathering fast. The
+range had narrowed to about 5,000 yards. The
+seven ships were all in action. Many shells
+striking the sea sent up columns of white spray,
+showing weirdly in the twilight. It was an impressive
+scene. The dim light, the heavy seas,
+the rolling of the vessels, distracted the aim.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+Some of the guns upon the main decks, being
+near the water-line, became with each roll almost
+awash. The British could fire only at the
+flashes of the enemy's guns. Often the heavy
+head seas hid even the flashes from the gun-layers.
+It was impossible to gauge the effect
+of their shells. The fore-turret of the <i>Good
+Hope</i> burst into flames, and she began to fall
+away out of line towards the enemy. The
+<i>Glasgow</i> kept up a continual fire upon the
+German light cruisers with one of her 6-inch
+guns and her port batteries. A shell struck
+her below deck, and men waited for the planks
+to rise. No explosion nor fire, however, occurred.
+But the British flagship was now
+burning brightly forward, and was falling more
+and more out of line to eastward. It was about
+a quarter to eight. Suddenly there was the
+roar of an explosion. The part about the <i>Good
+Hope's</i> after-funnel split asunder, and a column
+of flame, sparks, and d&eacute;bris was blown up to a
+height of about two hundred feet. She never
+fired her guns again. Total destruction must
+have followed. Sir Christopher Cradock and
+nine hundred brave sailors went down in the
+stormy deep. The other ships raced past her
+in the darkness. The <i>Monmouth</i> was in great
+distress. She left the line after a while, and
+turned back, steaming with difficulty to northwest.
+She had ceased firing. The vessels had
+been travelling at a rate which varied from
+seven to seventeen knots. The <i>Glasgow</i>, now
+left alone, eased her speed in order to avoid
+shells intended for the <i>Monmouth</i>. The Germans
+dropped slowly back. The <i>Scharnhorst</i>
+and the <i>Gneisenau</i> now concentrated their
+salvos upon the <i>Glasgow</i>. The range was about
+4,500 yards. A shell struck the second funnel:
+five others hit her side at the waterline, but
+fortunately not in dangerous places. Luce,
+her captain, since the flagship was no more,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+was senior officer. He brought his vessel round
+and moved rapidly back.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Monmouth</i>
+in distress.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy is
+signalling
+in Morse.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Glasgow</i>
+draws
+away.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Monmouth</i>
+finally
+capsizes.</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Monmouth</i> had now fallen away to a
+north-easterly course. Luce stood by signalling.
+Could she steer north-west? She was making
+water badly forward, Captain Brandt answered,
+and he wanted to get stern to sea. The enemy
+were following, Luce signalled again. There
+was no reply. The <i>Glasgow</i> steamed nearer.
+The <i>Monmouth</i> was in a sinking condition.
+Her bows were under water, and the men were
+assembled at the stern. The sea was running
+very high. Rain and mist had come on, though
+a moon was now rising. The enemy had altered
+course, and were approaching in line abreast
+about 6,000 yards away. A light kept twinkling
+at regular intervals from one of the ships.
+They were signalling in Morse, and evidently
+were forming plans of action. Firing was still
+proceeding intermittently. It was about half-past
+eight. Captain Luce could see nothing
+for it but to abandon the <i>Monmouth</i> to her
+fate. To rescue her crew, under such conditions,
+was impossible, while to stand by and
+endeavour to defend her would be folly. The
+<i>Glasgow</i> was not armoured, and could not contend
+with armoured vessels. Of the two guns
+she possessed capable of piercing the enemy's
+armour, one had been put out of action ten minutes
+after the start. If she stayed and fought
+to the end, 370 good lives, in addition to the
+sufficiently heavy toll of 1,600 in the <i>Good Hope</i>
+and the <i>Monmouth</i>, would be needlessly sacrificed.
+The <i>Canopus</i>, moreover, must be warned.
+She was coming up from the south to sure
+destruction. She could hardly be expected successfully
+to combat the whole German squadron.
+Nevertheless, it must have been with
+heavy hearts that the men of the <i>Glasgow</i>
+turned away to seek safety in flight. It is
+recorded that, as they moved off into the darkness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+a cheer broke forth from the <i>Monmouth's</i>
+decks. Before the sinking vessel became lost to
+sight another and a third went up. At about
+a quarter past nine the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>, which had
+not been engaged in the main action, came
+across the <i>Monmouth</i>. It is said that, though
+in a sinking condition, the British ship attempted
+to ram her enemy. But the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>
+began to bombard her, and she capsized.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Glasgow</i>
+and
+<i>Canopus</i>
+start for
+Rio de
+Janeiro.</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Glasgow</i> steamed off in a north-westerly
+direction. A few minutes before nine the
+enemy became lost to sight. Half an hour later
+many distant flashes of gunfire, the death-struggle
+of the <i>Monmouth</i>, were seen. The play
+of a searchlight, which lasted a few seconds
+and then disappeared, was also observed. The
+vessel bore round gradually to the south. Her
+wireless was put into operation, and she made
+efforts to get through to the <i>Canopus</i>. But the
+Germans had again set their apparatus in
+motion, and the messages were jambed. Only
+after some hours was the <i>Glasgow</i> successful.
+Steaming hard at twenty-four knots through
+the heavy seas, her engines and boilers fortunately
+being intact, she at length joined the
+battleship. The two ships made straight for
+the Falkland Islands.</p>
+
+<p>The news of the disaster stirred great alarm
+in the colony. Before the day on which the
+ships arrived was out the dismay was further
+increased. The <i>Canopus</i> at first expected to
+stay ten days. Her presence provided substantial
+relief. If the enemy appeared, she
+and even the damaged <i>Glasgow</i> could give a
+very good account of themselves. But during
+the morning Captain Grant of the <i>Canopus</i> received
+a wireless message from the Admiralty.
+He was to proceed immediately to Rio de
+Janeiro with the <i>Glasgow</i>. The Brazilian Government
+had granted the latter permission to
+enter the dry dock there to make urgent repairs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+But seven days only were allowed for
+this purpose. In the evening the warships cast
+off, and steamed away to northward.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The colony
+almost defenseless.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Falklands
+prepare
+for attack.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Burying
+the
+Governor's
+silver and
+table linen.</div>
+
+<p>Stanley was now in an unenviable situation.
+A powerful German squadron, flushed with
+victory, was probably making for the Islands.
+The colony was almost defenceless. All the
+opposition that the enemy would meet would
+be from a few hundred volunteers. A wireless
+message that came through emphasized the
+imminence of the danger. Warnings and instructions
+were outlined. If the enemy landed,
+the volunteers were to fight. But retiring tactics
+must be adopted. Care should be taken
+to keep out of range of the enemy's big guns.
+The Governor at once called a council of war.
+There could be little doubt that a descent would
+be made upon the colony. The position was
+full of peril. But resistance must certainly
+be offered. The few women, children, and old
+men who still remained at Stanley must be
+sent away immediately. Fortunately the time
+of year was propitious. November is, indeed,
+in the Falklands considered the only dry month.
+The ground is then covered with a variety of
+sweet-scented flowers. Further, all the stores
+it was possible to remove must be taken into
+the 'camp'. Quantities of provisions must be
+hidden away at various points within reach of
+the town. In order to add to the mobility of
+the defending force, it would be well to bring
+in another hundred horses from the 'camp'.
+Every man should be mounted. These measures
+were duly carried out. Every preparation was
+made and every precaution taken. Everybody
+began to pack up boxes of goods. Clothes,
+stores, and valuables were all taken away to
+safety. Books, papers, and money were removed
+from the Government offices, and from
+the headquarters of the Falkland Islands Company.
+What was not sent away was buried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+The official papers and code-books were buried
+every night, and dug up and dried every morning.
+The Governor's tableclothes gave rise to
+much anxiety. It was thought, since they were
+marked 'G. R.', they would be liable to insult
+by the Germans. They were accordingly buried.
+This conscientious loyalty, however, proved
+costly. The Governor's silver, wrapped in
+green baize, was, unfortunately, placed in the
+same hole. The tablecloths became mixed up
+with the baize. The damp got through, and
+the linen was badly stained. There was a feeling
+that the attack would come at dawn. People
+sat up all night, and only went to bed when
+morning was well advanced. All offices were
+closed and business was suspended. This state
+of tension lasted several days. At length, from
+the look-out post above the town, a warship,
+apparently a cruiser, was seen making straight
+for the wireless station. When she got within
+range she turned broadside on. Her decks
+were cleared for action.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Canopus</i>
+arrives.</div>
+
+<p>There was a call to arms. Church and dockyard
+bells pealed out the alarm. Non-combatants
+streamed out of the town into the 'camp'.
+The volunteers paraded, and lined up with their
+horses. It would soon become a question
+whether to resist a landing or to retire. In
+any event the men were ready and provided
+with emergency rations. But no firing sounded.
+Signals were exchanged between the vessel and
+the shore. It was a false alarm. The new-comer
+was H. M. S. <i>Canopus</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A serious
+outlook&mdash;decks
+are
+cleared for
+action.</div>
+
+<p>She had proceeded, in accordance with her
+orders, towards Rio de Janeiro with the <i>Glasgow</i>.
+When two days' journey off her destination,
+however, she received another message.
+She was directed to return and to defend the
+Falklands in case of attack. These instructions
+were received with mingled feelings. To
+fight alone a powerful squadron was by no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+means an attractive prospect. Duty, however,
+was duty. The <i>Canopus</i> turned about, and retraced
+her passage. She set her wireless in
+operation, and tried to get through to Stanley.
+But for some reason she was unable to do so.
+It was concluded that the Germans had made
+a raid and had destroyed the wireless station.
+Probably they had occupied the town. The outlook
+seemed serious. The <i>Canopus</i> had her instructions,
+however, and there was no drawing
+back. The decks were cleared for action. Ammunition
+was served out. Guns were loaded
+and trained. With every man at his post the
+ship steamed at full speed into the harbour.
+Great was the relief when it was found that
+all was well.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+raid anticipated.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Shackleton's
+visit
+to South
+Georgia.</div>
+
+<p>The inhabitants were not less relieved. The
+presence of the battleship was felt to add materially
+to the security of the town. The Germans
+would probably hesitate before attacking
+a ship of her size. If they sustained damage
+involving loss of fighting efficiency, there
+was no harbour they could turn to for repair,
+except so far as their seaworthiness was affected.
+Nevertheless, it was almost certain
+that some raid upon the Islands would be attempted.
+Guns were landed from the ship, and
+measures were taken to make the defence as
+effective as possible. Perhaps if the enemy
+blockaded Stanley, the British would be able
+to hold out until other warships, certain to be
+sent to avenge the defeat, arrived. Relief could
+hardly be expected for two or three weeks. The
+Falklands formed a very distant corner of the
+Empire. It was doubtful, indeed, whether even
+the ubiquitous German spy had penetrated to
+these remote and barren shores. It could, however,
+be recalled that, in 1882, a German expedition
+had landed on South Georgia, a dependent
+island of the Falklands, eight hundred
+miles to their south-east, to observe the transit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+of Venus. Upon that same island, indeed, another
+and a quite unsuspicious expedition had
+landed, early in that very month, November.
+Sir Ernest Shackleton, the explorer, had left
+Buenos Ayres on the morning of October 26,
+on his way across the antarctic continent. His
+little vessel of 230 tons, the <i>Endurance</i>, passed
+through the war zone in safety, and reached
+South Georgia on November 5. He remained
+for about a month before leaving for the lonely
+tracts for which his little party was bound.
+The island was his last link with civilization.
+Though sub-antarctic, it possessed features as
+up-to-date as electric-light, universal even in
+pigsties and henhouses. And the march of man,
+it was observed, had introduced the familiar
+animals of the farmyard, and even a monkey,
+into a region whose valleys, destitute of tree
+or shrub, lay clothed with perpetual snow.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sturdee's
+squadron
+reaches
+Port
+Stanley.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+cruisers
+sighted.</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, November passed into December
+without any appearance of the Germans off the
+Falklands. The tension became very much relieved.
+Women and children were brought back
+to Stanley, after being away a month or six
+weeks. Messages emanating from the hostile
+squadron, registered by the wireless station,
+indicated that the enemy were still in the
+vicinity. But the condition of the colony became
+again almost normal. The relief and
+security were complete when, at length, on
+Monday, December 7, a powerful British squadron,
+under Vice-Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee,
+arrived at Port Stanley. There were seven
+warships, besides the <i>Canopus</i>. The <i>Invincible</i>
+and the <i>Inflexible</i> had left Plymouth on November
+11, and had proceeded to the West
+Indies. Their mission was to avenge Coronel.
+They had picked up at Albatross Rock the
+<i>Carnarvon</i>, <i>Cornwall</i>, <i>Bristol</i>, <i>Kent</i>, <i>Glasgow</i>,
+now repaired, and <i>Macedonia</i>, an armed liner.
+All had then steamed southwards towards the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+Falklands. The vessels started coaling. Officers
+came ashore to stretch their legs. Certain
+stores were laid in. It was anticipated that
+the squadron would depart in search of the
+enemy on the evening of the following day.
+That search might, indeed, be a matter of
+months. Early next morning, December 8, at
+about eight o'clock, a volunteer observer posted
+on Sapper's Hill, two miles from Stanley,
+sighted two vessels upon the horizon. Twenty
+minutes later the smoke of two others came into
+view in the same direction. They were soon
+recognized as German cruisers. The excitement
+was intense. The news was immediately
+carried to the authorities. It was hastily signalled
+to the fleet. Most of the ships were at
+anchor in Port William, the outer entrance to
+Port Stanley. Some of the naval officers were
+aroused from their repose. It is recorded that,
+upon hearing the news, the flag-lieutenant
+dashed down to Admiral Sturdee's cabin, clad
+in his pyjamas. Sir Doveton was shaving. The
+lieutenant poured forth his information. 'Well,'
+said the Admiral, dryly, 'you had better go and
+get dressed. We'll see about it later.'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor"></a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Achievements
+of the
+raiders.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Supplies
+hard to
+obtain.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+question of
+neutrality.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Chile's
+neutrality.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Falklands
+a possible
+base.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Gneisenau</i>
+and
+<i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>
+fire on
+wireless
+station.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+are surprised.</div>
+
+<p>The Graf von Spee had, meanwhile, after the
+Battle of Coronel, been devoting himself to
+harrying maritime commerce. The Falklands
+could wait for the present. Since the beginning
+of hostilities the work of his light cruisers
+had been moderately successful. The <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>
+had cut the cable between Bamfield, British
+Columbia, and Fanning Island. The <i>Leipzig</i>
+had accounted for at least four British merchantmen,
+and the <i>Dresden</i> for at least two
+more. The armed liner <i>Eitel Friedrich</i> had also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+achieved some success. Several traders had
+had narrow escapes. The Chilian coast was
+in a state of blockade to British vessels, the
+ports being crowded with shipping that hesitated
+to venture forth into the danger zone.
+The Germans were masters of the Pacific and
+South Atlantic trade routes. The Straits of
+Magellan and the Horn formed a great waterway
+of commerce, which for sailing vessels
+was, indeed, the only eastern outlet from the
+Pacific. But completely as he had the situation
+in hand, von Spee was experiencing increasing
+problems and difficulties with regard
+to supplies of coal and provisions. Without
+these he was impotent. He had been employing
+German merchantmen to great advantage for
+refueling. But trouble was brewing with the
+Chilian authorities. Many signs were leading
+the latter to suspect that, contrary to international
+law, German traders were loading at
+Chilian ports cargoes of coal and provisions,
+contraband of war, and were transferring them
+at sea to the German warships. There were
+other causes of complaint. Juan Fernandez,
+the isle of romance and of mystery, the home of
+the original of Robinson Crusoe, was said to
+have been degraded into use as a base for apportioning
+the booty, coals and victuals, among
+the belligerent vessels. The island was a
+Chilian possession. It was practically certain
+that von Spee's squadron had stayed there beyond
+the legal limit of time. A French merchantman
+had, contrary to rule, also been sunk
+there by the <i>Dresden</i>, within Chilian territorial
+waters. Inquiries in other quarters were being
+made, moreover, as to the friendly wireless
+stations which the Germans had been utilizing
+secretly in Colombia and Ecuador; while a
+rumour was current in the United States that
+neutral vessels had been seized and pillaged on
+the high seas. Von Spee soon found that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+was nearing the end even of his illegitimate resources.
+He had tried the patience of the
+Chilian authorities too far. About the middle
+of November they suddenly prohibited, as a
+provisional measure, the vessels of the Kosmos
+Company from leaving any Chilian port. On
+November 24 a Government ship was sent to
+Juan Fernandez to investigate, and to see that
+Chilian neutrality was upheld. Many such
+signs seemed to warn von Spee that the time
+was appropriate to a sudden disappearance.
+He gathered his squadron for a descent at last
+upon the Falklands. His plans must be, not
+merely for a raid, but for an occupation. There
+were probably two or three small ships there.
+They should be sunk. The wireless station
+must be destroyed. The Islands, after a landing
+had been effected and the defence reduced,
+could be used as a base for the German operations.
+There were large quantities of coal and
+stores at Stanley. The harbour possessed facilities
+for refitting. To dislodge a strong German
+naval force, with adequate guns, placed in occupation
+of the colony, would be a difficult task
+for the enemy. The Falklands had many possibilities.
+According to von Spee's information
+they were feebly defended and would fall an
+easy prey. At length, early in the morning of
+December 8, the Admiral brought his fleet off
+Stanley. His five cruisers approached from the
+south. They were, of course, observed. A
+warning gun, probably from one of the small
+ships which he would shortly sink, sounded the
+alarm inside the harbour. There was no need,
+however, for haste. At twenty minutes past
+nine the <i>Gneisenau</i> and the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i> moved
+towards the wireless station, and brought their
+guns to bear upon it. But suddenly from inside
+the harbour there came the thunder of a
+big gun. Five shells, of very heavy calibre,
+screamed in quick succession from over the low-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>lying
+land. One of the vessels was struck. Surprise
+and bewilderment took the Germans.
+This was most unexpected. The <i>Gneisenau</i>
+and the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i> hastily retired out of range.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Strength
+of British
+squadron.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Admiral
+Sturdee
+both confident
+and
+cautious.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+eight miles
+away.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Canopus</i>
+opens
+fire.</div>
+
+<p>Sir Doveton and his fleet, meanwhile, had
+gone to breakfast. Steam for full speed was
+got up as rapidly as possible. Coaling operations
+had recommenced at 6.30 that morning.
+The colliers were hurriedly cast off, and the
+decks were cleared for action. Officers and
+men were delighted at the prospect of an early
+fight. The Germans had saved them a long cold
+search around the Horn by calling for them.
+There was going to be no mistake this time.
+The enemy could not escape. Sturdee's squadron
+was superior both in weight and speed to
+the German. It consisted of two battle-cruisers
+of over 17,000 tons, the <i>Invincible</i> and <i>Inflexible;</i>
+of three cruisers of about 10,000 tons,
+the <i>Carnarvon</i>, <i>Kent</i>, and <i>Cornwall;</i> and of two
+light cruisers of 4,800 tons, the <i>Glasgow</i> and
+<i>Bristol</i>. The primary armament of the <i>Invincible</i>
+and <i>Inflexible</i> was eight 12-inch guns;
+of the <i>Carnarvon</i>, four 7'5-inch; of the <i>Kent</i> and
+<i>Cornwall</i>, fourteen 6-inch; of the <i>Glasgow</i> and
+<i>Bristol</i>, two 6-inch. The speed of the battle-cruisers
+was twenty-eight knots; of the three
+middle-class cruisers, twenty-two to twenty-four
+knots; and of the light cruisers, twenty-five
+to twenty-six knots. In size, in armament,
+in speed, the British squadron would decidedly
+preponderate. Admiral Sturdee, however,
+though confident of victory, was determined to
+take no risks, and to minimize loss in men and
+material by making full use of his superior
+long-range gunfire, and of his superior speed.
+He would wait, screened by the land, until the
+Germans had drawn nearer. Everything should
+be got ready carefully. Undue excitement was
+to be deprecated. Meanwhile, he watched the
+enemy closely. At about a quarter to nine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+Captain Grant of the <i>Canopus</i> reported that
+the first two ships sighted were now about eight
+miles away: the other two were still at a distance
+of some twenty miles. The <i>Kent</i> passed
+down the harbour and took up a position at
+the entrance. Five minutes later the smoke
+of a fifth German vessel was observed. When,
+in about half an hour's time, the two leading
+enemy ships made a threatening move in the
+direction of the wireless station, the Admiral
+ordered a swift counterstroke. Officers upon
+the hills above the town signalled the range,
+11,000 yards, to the <i>Canopus</i>. She opened fire
+with her 12-inch guns. The Germans hoisted
+their colours and drew back. Their masts and
+smoke were now visible from the upper bridge
+of the <i>Invincible</i> across the low land bounding
+Port William on the south. Within a few minutes
+the two cruisers altered course and made
+for the harbour-mouth. Here the <i>Kent</i> lay
+stationed. It seemed that the Germans were
+about to engage her. As, however, they approached,
+the masts and funnels of two large
+ships at anchor within the port became visible
+to them. The <i>Gneisenau</i> and the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>
+could hardly expect to contend alone with this
+force. They at once changed their direction,
+and moved back at increased speed to join their
+consorts.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Weather
+unusually
+fair.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Chase
+begins.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">More
+German
+ships
+sighted.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Battle
+joined.</div>
+
+<p>The morning was gloriously fine. The sun
+shone brightly, the sky was clear, the sea was
+calm, and a breeze blew lightly from the north-west.
+It was one of the rare bright stretches
+that visit the Islands, for usually rain falls,
+mostly in misty drizzles, on about 250 days in
+the year. At twenty minutes to ten the <i>Glasgow</i>
+weighed anchor, and joined the <i>Kent</i> at
+the harbour-mouth. Five minutes later the rest
+of the squadron weighed, and began to steam
+out. The battleship <i>Canopus</i>, her speed making
+her unsuitable for a chase, was left in harbour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+The <i>Bristol</i> and the <i>Macedonia</i> also remained
+behind for the present. By a dexterous use of
+oil fuel the two battle-cruisers were kept
+shrouded as much as possible in dense clouds
+of smoke. The enemy for some time could not
+gauge their size. But as vessel after vessel
+emerged, Admiral von Spee grew uneasy. The
+English were in altogether unexpected strength.
+His squadron could not cope with such force.
+He had played into the enemy's hands, and
+unless he could outspeed their ships, the game
+was up. Without hesitation, he steamed off
+at high speed to eastward. The British followed,
+steaming at fifteen to eighteen knots.
+The enemy, to their south-east, were easily
+visible. At twenty past ten an order for a general
+chase was signalled. The <i>Invincible</i> and
+the <i>Inflexible</i> quickly drew to the fore. The
+Germans were roughly in line abreast, 20,000
+yards, or some eleven miles, ahead. The morning
+sunlight, the gleaming seas, the grey
+warships, white foam springing from their
+bows, tearing at high speed through the waves,
+formed a magnificent spectacle. Crowds of the
+inhabitants of Stanley gathered upon the hills
+above the town to view the chase. The excitement
+and enthusiasm were intense. The vessels
+were in sight about two hours. At about a
+quarter past eleven it was reported from a point
+in the south of East Falkland that three other
+German ships were in sight. They were probably
+colliers or transports. The <i>Bristol</i> signalled
+the information to Admiral Sturdee. He
+at once ordered her, with the armed liner
+<i>Macedonia</i>, to hasten in their direction and
+destroy them. The newcomers made off to
+south-west, and the British followed. Meanwhile
+the rest of the squadron, now travelling
+at twenty-three knots, were slowly closing upon
+the enemy. The distance had narrowed to 15-16,000
+yards. The British were within striking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+range. Nevertheless, Sturdee decided to wait
+till after dinner before engaging. His guns
+could outdistance those of the enemy. It would
+be advisable for him to keep at long range.
+The Germans, on the other hand, would be
+forced, when firing commenced, to alter course
+and draw in, in order to bring their own guns
+into play. The men had their midday meal at
+twelve o'clock as usual. It is said that comfortable
+time was allowed afterwards for a
+smoke. The <i>Invincible</i>, <i>Inflexible</i>, and <i>Glasgow</i>
+at about 12.30 increased their speed to between
+twenty-five and twenty-eight knots, and went on
+ahead. Just after a quarter to one there was
+a signal from the Admiral: 'Open fire and engage
+the enemy.' A few minutes later there
+were sharp commands. The ranges were signalled,
+and the bigger guns were laid. Fiery
+glares and dense clouds of smoke burst suddenly
+from their muzzles. The air quivered with their
+thunder. Shells went screaming in the direction
+of the nearest light cruiser, the <i>Leipzig</i>,
+which was dropping rapidly astern. The firing
+was uncomfortably accurate. The three smaller
+German cruisers very soon left the line, and
+made an attempt, veering off to the south, to
+scatter and escape. Flame and smoke issued
+from the <i>Leipzig</i>, before she drew clear, where
+a shell had struck. Sir Doveton Sturdee directed
+the <i>Glasgow</i>, <i>Kent</i>, and <i>Cornwall</i> to pursue
+the German light cruisers. With his remaining
+vessels, the <i>Invincible</i>, the <i>Inflexible</i>,
+and the slower <i>Carnarvon</i>, he turned upon the
+<i>Scharnhorst</i> and the <i>Gneisenau</i>, and began
+operations in earnest.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Scharnhorst</i>
+on
+fire.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Scharnhorst</i>
+sinks.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Gneisenau</i>
+goes down.</div>
+
+<p>The interval of sunlight which had opened
+the day with such promise was of short duration.
+The sky became overcast. Soon after
+four o'clock the air was thick with rain-mist.
+From 1.15 onwards for three hours a fierce
+duel was maintained between the two British<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+battle-cruisers and the two German armoured
+cruisers. The enemy made every effort to get
+away. They replied to the British fire for some
+time, having dropped back to within 13,500
+yards. But shortly after two o'clock they
+changed their course, and began to haul out
+to south-east. The <i>Invincible</i> and the <i>Inflexible</i>
+had eased their speed, and the range now
+widened by about 3,000 yards. A second chase
+ensued. A full-rigged sailing-ship appeared in
+the distance at about a quarter to three. Her
+crew <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'most'">must</ins> have beheld an awe-inspiring scene.
+Shortly before the hour firing recommenced.
+The action began to develop. Great coolness
+and efficiency were shown on board the British
+vessels. Every man was at his battle-station,
+behind armour. Fire-control parties were at
+their instruments. Water from numerous hoses
+was flooding the decks as a precaution against
+fire. The roaring of the discharges, the screaming
+of the shells, the clangour of metal upon
+metal, the crashes of the explosions, made up
+a tumult that was painful in its intensity.
+During intervals in the firing came the rushing
+of the waves and of the breeze, and the grinding
+and grunting of the hydraulic engines in the
+turrets, where swung, training constantly upon
+the enemy, the greater guns. The Germans
+soon began to show signs of distress. The
+<i>Scharnhorst</i> particularly suffered. Dense clouds
+of smoke, making it difficult for the British accurately
+to gauge the damage, rose from her
+decks. Shells rending her side disclosed momentarily
+the dull red glow of flame. She was
+burning fiercely. The firing on both sides was
+deadly, though the German had slackened considerably.
+But the British vessels, through
+their preponderance in gunfire, suffered little
+damage. Their 12-inch guns hit their marks
+constantly, while 8&middot;2-inch guns of the <i>Scharnhorst</i>
+were accurate, but ineffective. She veered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+to starboard at about 3.30, to bring into play
+her starboard batteries. Both her masts and
+three of her four funnels were shot away. At
+length the German flagship began to settle
+down rapidly in the waters. It was about a
+quarter past four. There was a swirl of the
+seas and a rush of steam and smoke. The
+<i>Scharnhorst</i> disappeared. She went down with
+her flag flying to an ocean grave, bearing 760
+brave men and a gallant admiral, whose name
+will deservedly rank high in the annals of German
+naval history. The <i>Gneisenau</i> passed on
+the far side of her sunken flagship. With the
+guns of both battle-cruisers now bearing upon
+her alone, the German was soon in sore straits.
+But she fought on gallantly for a considerable
+time. At half-past five she had ceased firing,
+and appeared to be sinking. She had suffered
+severe damage. Smoke and steam were rising
+everywhere. Her bridge had been shot away.
+Her foremost funnel was resting against the
+second. Her upper deck was so shattered that
+it could not be crossed, and every man upon it
+had been killed. An exploding shell had hurled
+one of the gun-turrets bodily overboard. Fire
+was raging aft. Her colours had been shot
+away several times, and hoisted as often. One
+of the flags was hauled down at about twenty
+to six, though that at the peak was still flying.
+She began to fire again with a single gun. The
+<i>Invincible</i>, the <i>Inflexible</i>, and the <i>Carnarvon</i>,
+which had now come up, closed in upon the
+doomed vessel. Firing was recommenced. The
+<i>Gneisenau</i> was not moving. Both her engines
+were smashed. Shells striking the water near
+her sent up colossal columns of water, which,
+falling upon the ship, put out some of the fires.
+She soon began to settle down in the waves.
+All her guns were now out of action, and
+Sturdee ordered the "Cease fire". There could
+be little doubt that her stubborn resistance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+was nearing its end. The German commander
+lined up his men on the decks. The ammunition
+was exhausted. The ship would soon go
+down. Some six hundred men had already
+been killed. The survivors had better provide
+themselves with articles for their support in
+the water. At six o'clock the <i>Gneisenau</i> heeled
+over suddenly. Clouds of steam sprang forth.
+Her stem swung up into the air, and she sank.
+Large numbers of her crew could be seen floating
+in the icy waves, hanging on to pieces of
+wreckage, and uttering terribly uncanny cries.
+The sea was choppy. Drizzling rain was falling.
+The British steamed up immediately. All
+undamaged boats were got out. Ropes were
+lowered. Lifebuoys and spars were thrown to
+the drowning men. But many of them, numbed
+by the freezing water, let go their hold and
+sank. About 180, among them the captain of
+the <i>Gneisenau</i>, were saved. It is said that
+much agreeable surprise, upon the discovery
+that their anticipations of being shot would not
+be realized, was manifested by the German
+sailors.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Eitel
+Friedrich</i>
+escapes.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Leipzig</i>
+is sunk.</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, battle had been in progress elsewhere.
+The <i>Bristol</i> and the <i>Macedonia</i> had
+overtaken <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'the the'">the</ins> transports <i>Baden</i> and <i>Santa
+Isabel</i>, had captured their crews, and had sunk
+the ships. The armed liner accompanying
+them, the <i>Eitel Friedrich</i>, had, however, made
+off and got away by means of her superior
+speed. The <i>Kent</i>, <i>Glasgow</i> and <i>Cornwall</i> had
+pursued the German light cruisers in a southerly
+direction. The <i>Dresden</i>, the fastest,
+proved too speedy a vessel to overtake. She
+was ahead of her consorts, upon either quarter,
+and made her escape whilst they were being
+engaged. The <i>Kent</i> gave chase to the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>.
+The <i>Glasgow</i>, in pursuit of the <i>Leipzig</i>,
+raced ahead of the <i>Cornwall</i>, and by about
+three o'clock in the afternoon had closed sufficiently,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+within 12,000 yards, to open fire with
+her foremost guns. The German ship turned
+every now and then to fire a salvo. Soon a
+regular battle began which was maintained for
+some hours. Shells fell all around the <i>Glasgow</i>.
+There were several narrow escapes, but the
+casualties were few. Shortly after six a wireless
+message was received from Admiral Sturdee,
+announcing that the <i>Scharnhorst</i> and the
+<i>Gneisenau</i> had been sunk. A cheer surged up,
+and the men set to work with renewed spirits
+and energy. The <i>Cornwall</i> had come up some
+time before, and the <i>Leipzig</i> was now severely
+damaged. But she fought on for three more
+hours. Darkness came on. The German cruiser
+began to burn fore and aft. It was nine o'clock
+before she at last turned over and sank.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Kent</i>
+returns.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sinking
+of the
+<i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The British vessels had, during the course
+of the action, steamed miles apart, and far out
+of sight of land. During the evening and night
+they began to get into touch with one another
+and with Stanley by means of their wireless.
+All the ships except the <i>Kent</i> were accounted
+for, and reported all well. But no reply was
+forthcoming to the numerous calls, "Kent, Kent,
+Kent", that were sent out. She had, in chase
+of the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>, lost all touch with the rest of
+the squadron. There was great uneasiness. It
+was feared that she had been lost. The other
+ships were directed to search for her, and for
+the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i> and the <i>Dresden</i>. Late in the
+afternoon of the following day, however, she entered
+Stanley harbour safely. Her wireless had
+been destroyed, but she had sunk the <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>,
+after a very stern struggle. The German captain,
+Sch&ouml;nberg, is reported, indeed, to have
+said at Honolulu, "The <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i> will very likely
+be our coffin. But we are ready to fight to
+the last". He had fought and died true to his
+words. The German ship was ordinarily more
+than a knot faster than the British. But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+engineers and stokers of the <i>Kent</i> rose magnificently
+to the occasion. Fuel was piled high.
+Her engines were strained to the utmost. Soon
+she was speeding through the waves at twenty-five
+knots, a knot and a half more than her
+registered speed. The <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i> drew nearer.
+At five o'clock she was within range, and firing
+was opened. A sharp action began which lasted
+some two and a half hours. The <i>Kent</i> was
+struck many times, and lost several men. She
+had one narrow escape. A bursting shell ignited
+some cordite charges, and a flash of flame went
+down the hoist into the ammunition passage.
+Some empty shell bags began to burn. But a
+sergeant picked up a cordite charge and hurled
+it out of danger. Seizing a fire hose, he flooded
+the compartment and extinguished the fire. A
+disastrous explosion, which might have proved
+fatal to the vessel, was thus averted. Her
+silken ensign and jack, presented by the ladies
+of Kent, were torn to ribbons. The gallant captain
+collected the pieces, some being caught
+in the rigging, and carefully preserved them.
+The <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i>, however, was soon in sore
+straits. Many shells struck her, and she was
+set afire. Day drew into evening, and darkness
+deepened. The Germans ceased firing, and the
+<i>Kent</i>, within about 3,000 yards, followed suit
+upon the enemy's colours being hauled down.
+The <i>N&uuml;rnberg</i> sank just before half-past seven.
+As she disappeared beneath the surface, men
+upon her quarterdeck were waving the German
+ensign. The <i>Kent</i>, after picking up some survivors,
+put about, and returned to Stanley.</p>
+
+<p>Here the rest of the squadron soon gathered.
+Congratulatory telegrams began to pour in to
+Sir Doveton Sturdee. And the curtain closed,
+in the flush of triumph, upon the most memorable
+and most dramatic episode in the history
+of the Falklands.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Exploits
+of the
+<i>Eitel
+Friedrich</i>.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Eitel
+Friedrich</i>
+comes to
+Newport
+News.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Dresden</i>
+sinks.</div>
+
+<p>One further episode remains to complete the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+story. The <i>Dresden</i> and the armed liner <i>Eitel
+Friedrich</i>, the sole survivors of the German
+squadron, made once more for the Pacific. They
+were lost sight of for many weeks. Suspicious
+movements and activities on the part of German
+merchantmen were, however, again observed.
+The Government wireless station at
+Valparaiso intercepted messages from the <i>Dresden</i>
+summoning friendly vessels to bring her
+supplies. Persistent rumours began to be circulated
+that she was hiding in the inlets of
+southern Chili. During January, 1915, the
+<i>Eitel Friedrich</i> seized and destroyed six vessels,
+chiefly sailing-ships, some in Pacific, most
+in Atlantic waters. In February she accounted
+for four more. Towards the end of the month
+a British barque was sunk by the <i>Dresden</i>. The
+position was again rapidly becoming troublesome.
+The movement of British shipping, on
+the Chilian coast had to be suspended. But the
+<i>Glasgow</i> and the <i>Kent</i> were on the <i>Dresden's</i>
+track. The <i>Kent</i> entered Coronel on March 13,
+coaled, and departed the same night. The <i>Eitel
+Friedrich</i>, meanwhile, had arrived at Newport
+News, a United States port, with her engines
+badly in need of repair. Much indignation was
+aroused among Americans by the announcement
+that one of her victims had been an American
+vessel. The German liner had many prisoners
+on board. Declarations of a resolve, if he had
+been caught by the British, to have sunk fighting
+to the last, were repeatedly and emphatically
+declaimed by the German captain. Five
+days later he learned that the <i>Dresden</i> had
+tamely surrendered off Juan Fernandez after a
+five minutes' action. The <i>Kent</i>, at nine o'clock
+on the morning after she had left Coronel, together
+with the <i>Glasgow</i> and the auxiliary
+cruiser <i>Orama</i>, came up with the <i>Dresden</i> near
+the island. A sharp encounter followed. The
+German cruiser was hit heavily. Fire broke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+out. In five minutes' time she hauled down her
+colours and hoisted a white flag. The crew
+were taken off. The <i>Dresden</i> continued to burn
+for some time, until finally her magazine exploded
+and she sank. The German officers contended
+that their vessel was sunk within Chilian
+territorial waters. It had not hitherto been
+noticeable that their consciences were concerned
+to maintain Chilian neutrality inviolate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Results
+of the
+Falkland
+battle.</div>
+
+<p>The Battle of the Falkland Islands was the
+first decisive naval contest of the war. It removed
+a formidable menace to the trade routes.
+It relieved British convoys and transports
+from danger of interruption. It freed many
+battleships and cruisers, engaged in sweeping
+the oceans, for other usefulness. It gave Great
+Britain effective mastery of the outer seas.
+Henceforth German naval ambition, frustrated
+in its endeavour to disorganize the trade
+routes, was forced, within the limits of the
+North Sea and of British waters, to seek less
+adventurous but more disreputable ends. A
+series of bombardments of coast towns was
+planned. A preliminary success was followed
+by a galling disaster.</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Battle Sketches by A. N. Hilditch, Oxford University Press.</small><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The writer cannot vouch for the truth of this anecdote,
+which he merely records as given in a letter published in
+the press. But the source from which it was taken, together
+with many of the preceding details of the condition of Stanley
+during the period of tension, has proved so accurate in
+essential points of fact, that their insertion seems justifiable.</p></div>
+</div>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>With the exception of the naval engagements
+described above, the operations of the Germans
+in the sea was limited chiefly to preying
+upon enemy commerce by isolated vessels. Of
+these terrors of the sea the most famous was
+the cruiser <i>Emden</i>, which began her career on
+October 29 by sinking the Russian cruiser
+<i>Jemtchug</i> in Penang Harbor. Her career until
+her destruction and the adventures of those of
+her crew who escaped are described in the following
+chapter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CRUISE OF THE EMDEN</h2>
+
+<h3>CAPTAIN M&Uuml;CKE</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Indus</i>
+sunk.</div>
+
+<p>"We on the <i>Emden</i> had no idea where
+we were going, as on August 11,
+1914, we separated from the cruiser
+squadron, escorted only by the coaler <i>Markomannia</i>.
+Under way, the <i>Emden</i> picked up
+three officers from German steamers. That
+was a piece of luck, for afterward we needed
+many officers for the capturing and sinking of
+steamers, or manning them when we took them
+with us. On September 10 the first boat came
+in sight. We stop her. She proves to be a
+Greek tramp, chartered from England. On the
+next day we met the <i>Indus</i>, bound for Bombay,
+all fitted up as a troop transport, but still without
+troops. That was the first one we sunk.
+The crew we took aboard the <i>Markomannia</i>.
+'What's the name of your ship?' the officers
+asked us. '<i>Emden!</i> Impossible. Why, the
+<i>Emden</i> was sunk long ago in battle with the
+<i>Ascold!</i>'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Capturing
+ships a
+habit.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Provisions
+secured.</div>
+
+<p>"Then we sank the <i>Lovat</i> a troop transport
+ship, and took the <i>Kabinga</i> along with us. One
+gets used quickly to new forms of activity.
+After a few days capturing ships became a
+habit. Of the twenty-three which we captured,
+most of them stopped after our first signal.
+When they didn't, we fired a blank shot. Then
+they all stopped. Only one, the <i>Clan Mattesen</i>,
+waited for a real shot across the bow before
+giving up its many automobiles and locomotives
+to the seas. The officers were mostly very
+polite and let down rope ladders for us. After
+a few hours they'd be on board with us. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+ourselves never set foot in their cabins, nor
+took charge of them. The officers often acted
+on their own initiative and signaled to us the
+nature of their cargo; then the Commandant
+decided as to whether to sink the ship or take it
+with us. Of the cargo, we always took everything
+we could use, particularly provisions.
+Many of the English officers and sailors made
+good use of the hours of transfer to drink up
+the supply of whisky instead of sacrificing it to
+the waves. I heard that one Captain was lying
+in tears at the enforced separation from his
+beloved ship, but on investigation found that he
+was merely dead drunk. But much worse was
+the open betrayal which many practiced toward
+their brother Captains, whom they probably
+regarded as rivals. 'Haven't you met the
+<i>Kilo</i> yet? If you keep on your course two
+hours longer, you must overhaul her,' one Captain
+said to me of his own accord. To other
+tips from other Captains we owed many of our
+prizes. I am prepared to give their names,"
+Captain M&uuml;cke added.</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain of one ship once called out
+cheerily: 'Thank God I've been captured!' He
+had received expense money for the trip to Australia,
+and was now saved half the journey!</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The process
+of
+sinking.</div>
+
+<p>"We had mostly quiet weather, so that communication
+with captured ships was easy. They
+were mostly dynamited, or else shot close to
+the water line. The sinking process took longer
+or shorter, according to where they were struck
+and the nature of the cargo. Mostly the ships
+keeled over on their sides till the water flowed
+down the smokestacks, a last puff of smoke
+came out, and then they were gone. Many,
+however, went down sharply bow first, the stern
+rising high in the air.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Kabinga</i>.</div>
+
+<p>"On the <i>Kabinga</i> the Captain had his wife
+and youngster with him. He was inclined at
+first to be disagreeable. 'What are you going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+to do with us? Shall we be set out in boats
+and left to our fate?' he asked. Afterward he
+grew confidential, like all the Captains, called
+us 'Old Chap,' gave the Lieutenant a nice new
+oilskin, and as we finally let the <i>Kabinga</i> go
+wrote us a letter of thanks, and his wife asked
+for an Emden armband and a button. They
+all gave us three cheers as they steamed away.
+'Come to Calcutta some time!' was the last
+thing the Captain said, 'and catch the pilots
+so that those [unprintable seaman's epithet]
+fellows will feel something of the war, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"A few days later, by Calcutta, we made one
+of our richest hauls, the <i>Diplomat</i>, chock full
+of tea&mdash;we sunk $2,500,000 worth. On the same
+day the <i>Trabbotch</i>, too, which steered right
+straight toward us, literally into our arms.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Madras
+oil tanks
+burned.</div>
+
+<p>"But now we wanted to beat it out of the
+Bay of Bengal, because we had learned from
+the papers that the <i>Emden</i> was being keenly
+searched for. By Rangoon we encountered a
+Norwegian tramp, which, for a cash consideration,
+took over all the rest of our prisoners of
+war. Later on another neutral ship rejected
+a similar request and betrayed us to the Japanese
+into the bargain. On September 23 we
+reached Madras and steered straight for the
+harbor. We stopped still 3,000 yards before
+the city. Then we shot up the oil tanks. Three
+or four burned up and illuminated the city.
+They answered. Several of the papers asserted
+that we left with lights out. On the contrary,
+we showed our lights so as to seem to indicate
+that we were going northward; only later did
+we put them out, turn around, and steer southward.
+As we left we could see the fire burning
+brightly in the night, and even by daylight,
+ninety sea miles away, we could still see the
+smoke from the burning oil tanks. Two days
+later we navigated around Ceylon, and could
+see the lights of Colombo. On the same evening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+we gathered in two more steamers, the
+<i>King Lund</i> and <i>Tyweric</i>. The latter was particularly
+good to us, for it brought us the very
+latest evening papers from Colombo, which it
+had only left two hours before.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ships
+that the
+<i>Emden</i>
+captured.</div>
+
+<p>"Everything went well, the only trouble was
+that our prize, the <i>Markomannia</i>, didn't have
+much coal left. We said one evening in the
+mess: 'The only thing lacking now is a nice
+steamer with 500 tons of nice Cardiff coal.' The
+next evening we got her, the <i>Burresk</i>, brand-new,
+from England on her maiden voyage,
+bound for Hongkong. Then followed in order
+the <i>Riberia</i>, <i>Foyle</i>, <i>Grand Ponrabbel</i>, <i>Benmore</i>,
+<i>Troiens</i>, <i>Exfort</i>, <i>Grycefale</i>, <i>Sankt Eckbert</i>, <i>Chilkana</i>.
+Most of them were sunk; the coal ships
+were kept. The <i>Eckbert</i> was let go with a load
+of passengers and captured crews. We also sent
+the <i>Markomannia</i> away because it hadn't any
+more coal. She was later captured by the English
+together with all the prize papers about
+their own captured ships. All this happened
+before October 20; then we sailed southward,
+to Deogazia, southwest of Colombo. South of
+Lakadiven on Deogazia some Englishmen came
+on board, solitary farmers who were in touch
+with the world only every three months
+through schooners. They knew nothing about
+the war, took us for an English man-of-war,
+and asked us to repair their motor boat for
+them. We kept still and invited them to dinner
+in our officers' mess. Presently they stood
+still in front of the portrait of the Kaiser,
+quite astounded. 'This is a German ship!' We
+continued to keep still. 'Why is your ship so
+dirty?' they asked. We shrugged our shoulders.
+'Will you take some letters for us?' they
+asked. 'Sorry, impossible; we don't know what
+port we'll run into.' Then they left our ship,
+but about the war we told them not a single
+word.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Coal
+steamers
+captured.</div>
+
+<p>"Now we went toward Miniko, where we sank
+two ships more. The Captain of one of them
+said to us: 'Why don't you try your luck
+around north of Miniko? There's lots of ships
+there now?' On the next day we found three
+steamers to the north, one of them with much
+desired Cardiff coal. From English papers on
+captured ships we learned that we were being
+hotly pursued. The stokers also told us a lot.
+Our pursuers evidently must also have a convenient
+base. Penang was the tip given us.
+There we had hopes of finding two French
+cruisers.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+fourth
+smokestack.</div>
+
+<p>"One night we started for Penang. On October
+28 we raised our very practicable fourth
+smokestack&mdash;M&uuml;cke's own invention. As a result,
+we were taken for English or French. The
+harbor of Penang lies in a channel difficult of
+access. There was nothing doing by night; we
+had to do it at daybreak. At high speed, without
+smoke, with lights out, we steered into the
+mouth of the channel. A torpedo boat on
+guard slept well. We steamed past its small
+light. Inside lay a dark silhouette; that must
+be a warship! But it wasn't the French cruiser
+we were looking for. We recognized the silhouette&mdash;dead
+sure; that was the Russian
+cruiser <i>Jemtchug</i>. There it lay, there it slept
+like a rat. No watch to be seen. They made
+it easy for us. Because of the narrowness of
+the harbor we had to keep close; we fired the
+first torpedo at 400 yards. Then to be sure
+things livened up a bit on the sleeping warship.
+At the same time we took the crew quarters
+under fire, five shells at a time. There was
+a flash of flame on board, then a kind of burning
+aureole. After the fourth shell, the flame
+burned high. The first torpedo had struck the
+ship too deep because we were too close to it,
+a second torpedo which we fired off from the
+other side didn't make the same mistake. After<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+twenty seconds there was absolutely not a trace
+of the ship to be seen. The enemy had fired off
+only about six shots.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">French
+ships
+fight the
+<i>Emden</i>.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A burial
+at sea.</div>
+
+<p>"But now another ship, which we couldn't
+see, was firing. That was the French <i>D'Ibreville</i>,
+toward which we now turned at once. A
+few minutes later an incoming torpedo destroyer
+was reported. He mustn't find us in
+that narrow harbor, otherwise we were finished!
+But it proved to be a false alarm; only
+a small merchant steamer that looked like a
+destroyer, and which at once showed the merchant
+flag and steered for shore. Shortly afterward
+a second one was reported. This time
+it proved to be the French torpedo boat <i>Mousquet</i>.
+It comes straight toward us. That's always
+remained a mystery to me, for it must
+have heard the shooting. An officer whom we
+fished up afterward explained to me that they
+had only recognized we were a German warship
+when they were quite close to us. The Frenchman
+behaved well, accepted battle and fought
+on, but was polished off by us with three broadsides.
+The whole fight with both ships lasted
+half an hour. The commander of the torpedo
+boat lost both legs by the first broadside. When
+he saw that part of his crew were leaping overboard,
+he cried out: 'Tie me fast; I will not
+survive after seeing Frenchmen desert their
+ship!' As a matter of fact, he went down with
+his ship as a brave Captain, lashed fast to
+the mast. Then we fished up thirty heavily
+wounded; three died at once. We sewed a Tri-color
+(the French flag), wound them in it and
+buried them at sea, with seamen's honors, three
+salvos. That was my only sea fight. The second
+one I did not take part in."</p>
+
+<p>M&uuml;cke, who had been recounting his lively
+narrative, partly like an officer, partly like an
+artist, and not trying to eliminate the flavor
+of adventure, now takes on quite another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+tone as he comes to tell of the end of the
+<i>Emden:</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Landing
+on Cocos
+Island.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Order to
+weigh
+anchor.</div>
+
+<p>"On November 9 I left the <i>Emden</i> in order to
+destroy the wireless plant on the Cocos Island.
+I had fifty men, four machine guns, about
+thirty rifles. Just as we were about to destroy
+the apparatus it reported: 'Careful; <i>Emden</i>
+near.' The work of destruction went smoothly.
+The wireless operator said: 'Thank God! it's
+been like being under arrest day and night
+lately.' Presently the <i>Emden</i> signaled to us:
+'Hurry up.' I pack up, but simultaneously
+wails the <i>Emden's</i> siren. I hurry up to the
+bridge, see the flag 'Anna' go up. That means
+'Weigh anchor.' We ran like mad into our
+boat, but already the <i>Emden's</i> pennant goes up,
+the battle flag is raised, they fire from starboard.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Sydney</i>
+traps the
+<i>Emden</i>.</div>
+
+<p>"The enemy is concealed by the island and
+therefore not to be seen, but I see the shells
+strike the water. To follow and catch the
+<i>Emden</i> is out of the question; she's going
+twenty knots, I only four with my steam pinnace.
+Therefore, I turn back to land, raise the
+flag, declare German laws of war in force, seize
+all arms, set up my machine guns on shore in
+order to guard against a hostile landing. Then
+I run again in order to observe the fight. From
+the splash of the shells it looked as if the enemy
+had fifteen-centimeter guns, bigger, therefore,
+than the <i>Emden's</i>. He fired rapidly, but poorly.
+It was the Australian cruiser <i>Sydney</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard?" M&uuml;cke suddenly asked
+in between, "if anything has happened to the
+<i>Sydney?</i> At the Dardanelles maybe?" And
+his hatred of the <i>Emden's</i> "hangman" is visible
+for a second in his blue eyes. Then he continues:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Emden</i>
+on fire.</div>
+
+<p>"According to the accounts of the Englishmen
+who saw the first part of the engagement
+from shore, the <i>Emden</i> was cut off rapidly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+Her forward smokestack lay across the ship.
+She went over to circular fighting and to torpedo
+firing, but already burned fiercely aft.
+Behind the mainmast several shells struck
+home; we saw the high flame. Whether circular
+fighting or a running fight now followed,
+I don't know, because I again had to look to
+my land defenses. Later I looked on from the
+roof of a house. Now the <i>Emden</i> again stood
+out to sea about 4,000 to 5,000 yards, still burning.
+As she again turned toward the enemy,
+the forward mast was shot away. On the
+enemy no outward damage was apparent, but
+columns of smoke showed where shots had
+struck home. Then the <i>Emden</i> took a northerly
+course, likewise the enemy, and I had to
+stand there helpless gritting my teeth and
+thinking: 'Damn it; the <i>Emden</i> is burning and
+you aren't on board!' An Englishman who had
+also climbed up to the roof of the house, approached
+me, greeted me politely, and asked:
+'Captain, would you like to have a game of
+tennis with us?'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+fighting
+ships
+disappear.</div>
+
+<p>"The ships, still fighting, disappeared beyond
+the horizon. I thought that an unlucky outcome
+for the <i>Emden</i> was possible, also a landing
+by the enemy on Keeling Island, at least
+for the purpose of landing the wounded and
+taking on provisions. As, according to the
+statements of the Englishmen, there were other
+ships in the neighborhood, I saw myself faced
+with the certainty of having soon to surrender
+because of a lack of ammunition. But for no
+price did I and my men want to get into English
+imprisonment. As I was thinking about
+all this, the masts again appear on the horizon,
+the <i>Emden</i> steaming easterly, but very much
+slower. All at once the enemy, at high speed,
+shoots by, apparently, quite close to the <i>Emden</i>.
+A high, white waterspout showed among the
+black smoke of the enemy. That was a torpedo.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+I see how the two opponents withdrew, the distance
+growing greater between them; how they
+separate, till they disappear in the darkness.
+The fight had lasted ten hours.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">M&uuml;cke
+seizes a
+schooner.</div>
+
+<p>"I had made up my mind to leave the island
+as quick as possible. The <i>Emden</i> was gone;
+the danger for us growing. In the harbor I had
+noticed a three-master, the schooner <i>Ayesha</i>.
+Mr. Ross, the owner of the ship and of the
+island, had warned me that the boat was leaky,
+but I found it quite a seaworthy tub. Now
+quickly provisions were taken on board for
+eight weeks, water for four. The Englishmen
+very kindly showed us the best water and gave
+us clothing and utensils. They declared this
+was their thanks for our 'moderation' and 'generosity.'
+Then they collected the autographs
+of our men, photographed them, and gave three
+cheers as our last boat put off. It was evening,
+nearly dark. We sailed away. After a
+short address, amid three hurrahs, I raised the
+German war flag on 'S.M.S. <i>Ayesha</i>.'"</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Ayesha</i>
+sails westward.</div>
+
+<p>"The <i>Ayesha</i> proved to be a really splendid
+ship," M&uuml;cke continued, and whenever he happens
+to speak of this sailing ship he grows
+warmer. One notices the passion for sailing
+which this seaman has, for he was trained on
+a sailing ship and had won many prizes in
+the regattas at Kiel. "But we had hardly any
+instruments," he narrated, "we had only one
+sextant and two chronometers on board, but
+a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily
+I found an old 'Indian Ocean Directory' of
+1882 on board; its information went back to
+the year 1780.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">En route
+to Padang.</div>
+
+<p>"At first we had to overhaul all the tackle,
+for I didn't trust to peace, and we had left
+the English Captain back on the island. I
+had said: 'We are going to East Africa.'
+Therefore I sailed at first westward, then
+northward. There followed the monsoons, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+then also long periods of dead calm. Then
+we scolded! Only two neutral ports came
+seriously under consideration: Batavia and
+Padang. At Keeling I cautiously asked about
+Tsing-tao, of which I had naturally thought
+first, and so quite by chance learned that it
+had fallen. Now I decided for Padang, because
+I knew I would be more apt to meet the
+<i>Emden</i> there, also because there was a German
+Consul there, because my schooner was unknown
+there, and because I hoped to find German
+ships there and learn some news. 'It'll
+take you six to eight days to reach Batavia,'
+a Captain had told me at Keeling. Now we
+needed eighteen days to reach Padang, the
+weather was so rottenly still.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Life on
+board the
+<i>Ayesha</i>.</div>
+
+<p>"We had an excellent cook on board; he
+had deserted from the French Foreign Legion.
+But with water we had to go sparingly, each
+man received three glasses daily. When it
+rained, all possible receptacles were placed on
+deck and the main sail was spread over the
+cabin roof to catch the rain. The whole crew
+went about naked, in order to spare our wash,
+for the clothing from Keeling was soon in rags.
+Toothbrushes were long ago out of sight. One
+razor made the rounds of the crew. The entire
+ship had one precious comb.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A Dutch
+torpedo
+boat.</div>
+
+<p>"As at length we came in the neighborhood
+of Padang, on November 26, a ship appeared
+for the first time and looked after our name.
+But the name had been painted over, because
+it was the former English name. As I think,
+'You're rid of the fellow,' the ship comes again
+in the evening, comes within a hundred yards
+of us. I send all men below deck. I promenade
+the deck as the solitary skipper. Through
+Morse signals the stranger betrayed its identity.
+It was the Hollandish torpedo boat <i>Lyn</i>.
+I asked by signals, first in English, then twice
+in German: 'Why do you follow me?' No<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+answer. The next morning I find myself in
+Hollandish waters, so I raise pennant and war
+flag. Now the <i>Lyn</i> came at top speed past us.
+As it passes, I have my men line up on deck,
+and give a greeting. The greeting is answered.
+Then, before the harbor at Padang, I went
+aboard the <i>Lyn</i> in my well and carefully preserved
+uniform and declared my intentions.
+The commandant opined that I could run into
+the harbor, but whether I might come out
+again was doubtful."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A German
+ship.</div>
+
+<p>"On the South Coast," interjected Lieutenant
+Wellman, who at that time lay with a German
+ship before Padang and only later joined
+the landing corps of the <i>Emden</i>, "we suddenly
+saw a three-master arrive. Great excitement
+aboard our German ship, for the schooner carried
+the German war flag. We thought she
+came from New Guinea and at once made all
+boats clear, on the <i>Kleist</i>, <i>Rheinland</i>, and
+<i>Choising</i>, for we were all on the search for the
+<i>Emden</i>. When we heard that the schooner
+carried the landing corps, not a man of us
+would believe it."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Supplies
+are
+refused.</div>
+
+<p>"They wanted to treat me as a prize!" M&uuml;cke
+now continued. "I said, 'I am a man of war,'
+and pointed to my four machine guns. The
+harbor authorities demanded a certification
+for pennant and war flag, also papers to prove
+that I was the commander of this warship.
+I answered, for that I was only responsible
+to my superior officers. Now they advised me
+the most insistently to allow ourselves to be
+interned peacefully. They said it wasn't at
+all pleasant in the neighborhood. We'd fall
+into the hands of the Japanese or the English.
+As a matter of fact, we had again had great
+luck. On the day before a Japanese warship
+had cruised around here. Naturally, I rejected
+all the well-meant and kindly advice, and
+did this in presence of my lieutenants. I demanded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+provisions, water, sails, tackle, and
+clothing. They replied we could take on board
+everything which we formerly had on board,
+but nothing which would mean an increase in
+our naval strength. First thing, I wanted to
+improve our wardrobe, for I had only one sock,
+a pair of shoes, and one clean shirt, which had
+become rather seedy. My comrades had even
+less. But the Master of the Port declined to
+let us have not only charts, but also clothing
+and toothbrushes, on the ground that these
+would be an increase of armament. Nobody
+could come aboard, nobody could leave the
+ship without permission. I requested that the
+Consul be allowed to come aboard. This Consul,
+Herr Schild, as also the Brothers B&auml;umer,
+gave us assistance in the friendliest fashion.
+From the German steamers boats could come
+alongside and talk with us. Finally we were
+allowed to have German papers. They were,
+to be sure, from August. Until March we saw
+no more papers.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The German
+ship
+<i>Choising</i>.</div>
+
+<p>"Hardly had we been towed out again after
+twenty-four hours, on the evening of the 28th,
+when a searchlight appeared before us. I
+think: 'Better interned than prisoner.' I put
+out all lights and withdrew to the shelter of
+the island. But they were Hollanders and
+didn't do anything to us. Then for two weeks
+more we drifted around, lying still for days.
+The weather was alternately still, rainy and
+blowy. At length a ship comes in sight&mdash;a
+freighter. It sees us and makes a big curve
+around us. I make everything hastily 'clear
+for battle.' Then one of our officers recognizes
+her for the <i>Choising</i>. She shows the German
+flag. I send up light rockets, although it was
+broad day, and go with all sails set that were
+still setable, toward her. The <i>Choising</i> is a
+coaster, from Hongkong for Siam. It was at
+Singapore when the war broke out, then went<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+to Batavia, was chartered loaded with coal for
+the <i>Emden</i>, and had put into Padang in need,
+because the coal in the hold had caught fire.
+There we had met her.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The crew
+board the
+<i>Choising</i>.</div>
+
+<p>"Great was our joy now. I had all my men
+come on deck and line up for review. The
+fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus, in Nature's
+garb, we gave three cheers for the German flag
+on the <i>Choising</i>. The men on the <i>Choising</i> told
+us afterward 'we couldn't make out what that
+meant, those stark naked fellows all cheering!'
+The sea was too high, and we had to wait two
+days before we could board the <i>Choising</i> on
+December 16. We took very little with us;
+the schooner was taken in tow. In the afternoon
+we sunk the <i>Ayesha</i> and we were all very
+sad. The good old <i>Ayesha</i> had served us faithfully
+for six weeks. The log showed that we
+had made 1,709 sea miles under sail since leaving
+Keeling. She wasn't at all rotten and
+unseaworthy, as they had told me, but nice and
+white and dry inside. I had grown fond of
+the ship, on which I could practice my old
+sailing manoeuvres. The only trouble was that
+the sails would go to pieces every now and
+then because they were so old.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Ayesha</i>
+is sunk.</div>
+
+<p>"But anyway she went down quite properly,
+didn't she?" M&uuml;cke turned to the officer. "We
+had bored a hole in her; she filled slowly and
+then all of a sudden plump disappeared! That
+was the saddest day of the whole month. We
+gave her three cheers, and my next yacht at
+Kiel will be named <i>Ayesha</i>, that's sure.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Turkey
+an ally of
+Germany.</div>
+
+<p>"To the Captain of the <i>Choising</i> I had said,
+when I hailed him: 'I do not know what will
+happen to the ship. The war situation may
+make it necessary for me to strand it.' He did
+not want to undertake the responsibility. I
+proposed that we work together, and I would
+take the responsibility. Then we traveled together
+for three weeks, from Padang to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+Hodeida. The <i>Choising</i> was some ninety
+meters long and had a speed of nine miles,
+though sometimes only four. If she had not
+accidentally arrived I had intended to cruise
+high along the west coast of Sumatra to the
+region of the northern monsoon. I came about
+six degrees north, then over Aden to the
+Arabian coast. In the Red Sea the northeastern
+monsoon, which here blows southeast, could
+bring us to Djidda. I had heard in Padang
+that Turkey is allied with us, so we would be
+able to get safely through Arabia to Germany.</p>
+
+<p>"I next waited for information through
+ships, but the <i>Choising</i> did not know anything
+definite, either. By way of the <i>Luchs</i>, the
+<i>K&ouml;nigsberg</i>, and <i>Kormoran</i> the reports were uncertain.
+Besides, according to newspapers at
+Aden, the Arabs were said to have fought with
+the English. Therein there seemed to be offered
+an opportunity near at hand to damage
+the enemy. I therefore sailed with the <i>Choising</i>
+in the direction of Aden. Lieutenant Gerdts
+of the <i>Choising</i> had heard that the Arabian
+railway now already went almost to Hodeida,
+near the Perim Strait. The ship's surgeon
+there, Docounlang, found confirmation of this
+in Meyer's traveling handbook. This railway
+could not have been taken over by the Englishmen,
+who always dreamed of it. By doing this
+they would have further and completely
+wrought up the Mohammedans by making more
+difficult the journey to Mecca. Best of all, we
+thought, we'll simply step into the express train
+and whizz nicely away to the North Sea. Certainly
+there would be safe journeying homeward
+through Arabia. To be sure, we hadn't
+maps of the Red Sea; but it was the shortest
+way to the foe, whether in Aden or in Germany.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">On toward
+Aden.</div>
+
+<p>"Therefore, courage! Adenwards!"</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Through
+the Strait
+of Perim.</div>
+
+<p>"On the 7th of January, between 9 and 10
+o'clock in the evening, we sneaked through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+Strait of Perim. That lay swarming full of
+Englishmen. We steered along the African
+coast, close past an English cable layer. That
+is my prettiest delight&mdash;how the Englishmen
+will be vexed when they learn that we have
+passed smoothly by Perim. On the next evening
+we saw on the coast a few lights upon the
+water. We thought that must be the pier of
+Hodeida. But when we measured the distance
+by night, 3,000 meters, I began to think that
+must be something else. At dawn I made out
+two masts and four smokestacks; that was an
+enemy ship, and, what is more, an armored
+French cruiser. I therefore ordered the <i>Choising</i>
+to put to sea, and to return at night.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">M&uuml;cke's
+party
+enters
+Hodeida.</div>
+
+<p>"The next day and night the same; then we
+put out four boats&mdash;these we pulled to shore
+at sunrise under the eyes of the unsuspecting
+Frenchmen. The sea reeds were thick. A few
+Arabs came close to us; then there ensued a
+difficult negotiation with the Arabian Coast
+Guards. For we did not even know whether
+Hodeida was in English or French hands. We
+waved to them, laid aside our arms, and made
+signs to them. The Arabs, gathering together,
+begin to rub two fingers together; that means
+'We are friends.' We thought that meant 'We
+are going to rub against you and are hostile.'
+I therefore said: 'Boom-boom!' and pointed to
+the warship. At all events, I set up my machine
+guns and made preparations for a skirmish.
+But, thank God! one of the Arabs understood
+the word 'Germans'; that was good.</p>
+
+<p>"Soon a hundred Arabs came and helped us,
+and as we marched into Hodeida the Turkish
+soldiers, who had been called out against us,
+saluted us as allies and friends. To be sure,
+there was not a trace of a railway, but we were
+received very well, and they assured us we
+could get through by land. Therefore, I gave
+red-star signals at night, telling the <i>Choising</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+to sail away, since the enemy was near by. Inquiries
+and determination concerning a safe
+journey by land proceeded. I also heard that
+in the interior, about six days' journey away,
+there was healthy highland where our fever
+invalids could recuperate. I therefore determined
+to journey next to Sana. On the
+Kaiser's birthday we held a great parade in
+common with the Turkish troops&mdash;all this under
+the noses of the Frenchmen. On the same
+day we marched away from Hodeida to the
+highland.</p>
+
+<p>"Two months after our arrival at Hodeida
+we again put to sea. The time spent in the
+highlands of Sana passed in lengthy inquiries
+and discussions that finally resulted in our
+foregoing the journey by land through Arabia,
+for religious reasons. But the time was not
+altogether lost. The men who were sick with
+malaria had, for the most part, recuperated
+in the highland air.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">To sea in
+sambuks.</div>
+
+<p>"The Turkish Government placed at our disposal
+two 'sambuks' (sailing ships) of about
+twenty-five tons, fifteen meters long and four
+meters wide. But in fear of English spies, we
+sailed from Jebaua, ten miles north of Hodeida.
+That was on March 14. At first we sailed at a
+considerable distance apart, so that we would
+not both go to pot if an English gunboat caught
+us. Therefore, we always had to sail in coastal
+water. That is full of coral reefs, however."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">One
+sambuk
+runs on a
+reef.</div>
+
+<p>"The Commander," Lieutenant Gerdts said,
+"had charge of the first sambuk; I of the
+second, which was the larger of the two, for
+we had four sick men aboard. At first everything
+went nicely for three days. For the most
+part I could see the sails of the first <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'ships'">ship</ins>
+ahead of me. On the third day I received orders
+to draw nearer and to remain in the
+vicinity of the first boat, because its pilot was
+sailing less skillfully than mine. Suddenly, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+the twilight, I felt a shock, then another, and
+still another. The water poured in rapidly. I
+had run upon the reef of a small island, where
+the smaller sambuk was able barely to pass
+because it had a foot less draught than mine.
+Soon my ship was quite full, listed over, and all
+of us&mdash;twenty-eight men&mdash;had to sit on the
+uptilted edge of the boat. The little island
+lies at Jesirat Marka, 200 miles north of
+Jebaua. To be sure, an Arab boat lay near by,
+but they did not know us. Nobody could help
+us. If the Commander had not changed the
+order a few hours before and asked us to sail
+up closer, we would probably have drowned on
+this coral reef&mdash;certainly would have died of
+thirst. Moreover, the waters thereabouts are
+full of sharks, and the evening was so squally
+that our stranded boat was raised and banged
+with every wave. We could scarcely move, and
+the other boat was nowhere in sight. And now
+it grew dark. At this stage I began to build a
+raft of spars and old pieces of wood, that might
+at all events keep us afloat.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The crew
+finally
+rescued.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Machine
+guns
+brought
+up.</div>
+
+<p>"But soon the first boat came into sight
+again. The commander turned about and sent
+over his little canoe; in this and in our own
+canoe, in which two men could sit at each trip,
+we first transferred the sick. Now the Arabs
+began to help us. But just then the tropical
+helmet of our doctor suddenly appeared above
+the water in which he was standing up to his
+ears. Thereupon the Arabs withdrew; we were
+Christians, and they did not know that we were
+friends. Now the other sambuk was so near
+that we could have swam to it in half an hour,
+but the seas were too high. At each trip a
+good swimmer trailed along, hanging to the
+painter of the canoe. When it became altogether
+dark we could not see the boat any
+more, for over there they were prevented by
+the wind from keeping any light burning. My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+men asked 'In what direction shall we swim?'
+I answered: 'Swim in the direction of this or
+that star; that must be about the direction of
+the boat.' Finally a torch flared up over there&mdash;one
+of the torches that were still left from
+the <i>Emden</i>. But we had suffered considerably
+through submersion. One sailor cried out:
+'Oh, pshaw! it's all up with us now; that's a
+searchlight.' The man who held out best was
+Lieutenant Schmidt, who later lost his life.
+About 10 o'clock we were all safe aboard, but
+one of our typhus patients, Seaman Keil, wore
+himself out completely by the exertion; he died
+a week later. On the next morning we went
+over again to the wreck in order to seek the
+weapons that had fallen into the water. You
+see, the Arabs dive so well; they fetched up a
+considerable lot&mdash;both machine guns, all but
+ten of the rifles, though these were, to be sure,
+all full of water. Later they frequently failed
+to go off when they were used in firing.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sami Bey
+becomes
+guide.</div>
+
+<p>"Now we numbered, together with the Arabs,
+seventy men on the little boat, until evening.
+Then we anchored before Konfida, and met
+Sami Bey, who is still with us. He had shown
+himself useful even before in the service of the
+Turkish Government, and has done good service
+as guide in the last two months. He is an
+active man, thoroughly familiar with the country.
+He procured for us a larger boat, of fifty-four
+tons, and he himself, with his wife, sailed
+alongside on the little sambuk. We sailed
+from the 20th to the 24th unmolested to Lith.
+There Sami Bey announced that three English
+ships were cruising about in order to intercept
+us. I therefore advised traveling a bit overland.
+I disliked leaving the sea a second time,
+but it had to be done."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Travelling
+overland.</div>
+
+<p>"Lith is, to be sure, nothing but this," said
+M&uuml;cke, with a sweeping gesture toward the
+desert through which we were traveling, "and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+therefore it was very difficult to get up a caravan
+at once. We remained aboard ship so long.
+We marched away on the 28th. We had only
+a vague suspicion that the English might have
+agents here also. We could travel only at
+night, and when we slept or camped around
+a spring, there was only a tent for the sick
+men. Two days' march from Jeddah, the Turkish
+Government, as soon as it had received news
+about us, sent us sixteen good camels.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">An attack.</div>
+
+<p>"Suddenly, on the night of April 1, things
+became uneasy. I was riding at the head of
+the column. All our shooting implements were
+cleared for action, because there was danger of
+an attack by Bedouins, whom the English here
+had bribed. When it began to grow a bit light,
+I already thought: 'We're through for to-day';
+for we were tired&mdash;had been riding eighteen
+hours. Suddenly I saw a line flash up before
+me, and shots whizzed over our heads. Down
+from the camels! Form a fighting line! You
+know how quickly it becomes daylight here.
+The whole space around the desert hillock was
+occupied. Now, up with your bayonets! Rush
+'em! * * * They fled, but returned again,
+this time from all sides. Several of the gendarmes
+that had been given us as an escort are
+wounded; the machine gun operator, Rademacher,
+falls, killed by a shot through his
+heart; another is wounded; Lieutenant Schmidt,
+in the rear guard, is mortally wounded&mdash;he
+has received a bullet in his chest and abdomen.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A flag
+of truce
+and a
+barricade.</div>
+
+<p>"Suddenly they waved white cloths. The
+Sheik, to whom a part of our camels belonged,
+went over to them to negotiate, then Sami Bey
+and his wife. In the interim we quickly built
+a sort of wagon barricade, a circular camp of
+camel saddles, rice and coffee sacks, all of
+which we filled with sand. We had no shovels,
+and had to dig with our bayonets, plates, and
+hands. The whole barricade had a diameter of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+about fifty meters. Behind it we dug trenches,
+which we deepened even during the skirmish.
+The camels inside had to lie down, and thus
+served very well as cover for the rear of the
+trenches. Then an inner wall was constructed,
+behind which we carried the sick men. In the
+very centre we buried two jars of water, to
+guard us against thirst. In addition we had
+ten petroleum cans full of water; all told, a
+supply for four days. Late in the evening
+Sami's wife came back from the futile negotiations,
+alone. She had unveiled for the first
+and only time on this day of the skirmish, had
+distributed cartridges, and had conducted herself
+faultlessly.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Death of
+Schmidt
+and Rademacher.</div>
+
+<p>"Soon we were able to ascertain the number
+of the enemy. There were about 300 men; we
+numbered fifty, with twenty-nine guns. In the
+night, Lieutenant Schmidt died. We had to dig
+his grave with our hands and with our
+bayonets, and to eliminate every trace above
+it, in order to protect the body. Rademacher
+had been buried immediately after the skirmish,
+both of them silently, with all honors.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The men
+suffer
+from
+thirst.</div>
+
+<p>"The wounded had a hard time of it. We
+had lost our medicine chest in the wreck; we
+had only little packages of bandages for skirmishes;
+but no probing <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'intrument'">instrument</ins>, no scissors
+were at hand. On the next day our men came
+up with thick tongues, feverish, and crying
+'Water! water!' But each one received only a
+little cupful three times a day. If our water
+supply was exhausted, we would have to sally
+from our camp and fight our way through.
+Then we should have gone to pot under superior
+numbers. The Arab gendarmes simply
+cut the throats of those camels that had been
+wounded by shots, and then drank the yellow
+water that was contained in the stomachs.
+Those fellows can stand anything. At night
+we always dragged out the dead camels that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+had served as cover, and had been shot. The
+hyenas came, hunting for dead camels. I shot
+one of these, taking it for an enemy in the
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"That continued about three days. On the
+third day there were new negotiations. Now
+the Bedouins demanded arms no longer, but
+only money. This time the negotiations took
+place across the camp wall. When I declined,
+the Bedouin said: 'Beaucoup de combat,' (lots
+of fight.) I replied:</p>
+
+<p>"'Please go to it!'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Troops
+of the Emir
+of Mecca.</div>
+
+<p>"We had only a little ammunition left, and
+very little water. Now it really looked as if
+we would soon be dispatched. The mood of
+the men was pretty dismal. Suddenly, at about
+10 o'clock in the morning, there bobbed up in
+the north two riders on camels, waving white
+cloths. Soon afterward there appeared, coming
+from the same direction, far back, a long
+row of camel troops, about a hundred; they
+draw rapidly near by, ride singing toward us,
+in a picturesque train. They were the messengers
+and troops of the Emir of Mecca.</p>
+
+<p>"Sami Bey's wife, it developed, had, in the
+course of the first negotiations, dispatched an
+Arab boy to Jeddah. From that place the
+Governor had telegraphed to the Emir. The
+latter at once sent camel troops, with his
+two sons and his personal surgeon; the
+elder, Abdullah, conducted the negotiations;
+the surgeon acted as interpreter, in French.
+Now things proceeded in one-two-three order,
+and the whole Bedouin band speedily disappeared.
+From what I learned later, I know
+definitely that they had been corrupted with
+bribes by the English. They knew when and
+where we would pass and they had made all
+preparations. Now our first act was a rush
+for water; then we cleared up our camp, but
+had to harness our camels ourselves, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+camel drivers had fled at the very beginning
+of the skirmish. More than thirty camels were
+dead. The saddles did not fit, and my men
+know how to rig up schooners, but not camels.
+Much baggage remained lying in the sand for
+lack of pack animals.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The party
+reaches
+Mecca.</div>
+
+<p>"Then, under the safe protection of Turkish
+troops, we got to Jeddah. There the authorities
+and the populace received us very well.
+From there we proceeded in nineteen days,
+without mischance, by sailing boat to Elwesh,
+and under abundant guard with Suleiman
+Pasha in a five-day caravan journey toward
+this place, to El Ula, and now we are seated
+at last in the train and are riding toward
+Germany&mdash;into the war at last!"</p>
+
+<p>"Was not the war you had enough?" I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit of it," replied the youngest Lieutenant;
+"the <i>Emden</i> simply captured ships
+each time; only a single time, at Penang, was
+it engaged in battle, and I wasn't present on
+that occasion. War? No, that is just to begin
+for us now."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">M&uuml;cke's
+great
+task.</div>
+
+<p>"My task since November," said M&uuml;cke, "has
+been to bring my men as quickly as possible
+to Germany against the enemy. Now, at last,
+I can do so."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you desire for yourself?" I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"For myself," he laughed, and the blue eyes
+sparkled, "a command in the North Sea."</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>English Review, April, 1915.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Japan was bound by alliance with Great
+Britain to join with her to attack any aggressor,
+and to carry out her pledges she, at the
+outbreak of the war, prepared to capture the
+German stronghold Tsing-tao, the capital of
+the concession of Kiao-chau, which Germany
+had obtained from China, and had converted
+into a German possession.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CAPTURE OF TSING-TAO</h2>
+
+<h3>A. N. HILDITCH</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Qualities
+of the
+Japanese.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Count
+Okuma
+Prime
+Minister.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Japanese
+ultimatum.</div>
+
+<p>Tokyo, capital of Japan, lies at the head
+of Tokyo Bay, in the south-east of Nippon.
+Its two million inhabitants are distributed
+among houses and streets which present
+curious intermixtures of Japanese and
+European architecture, customs, or science.
+The jinrikisha notably has been displaced
+largely by tramcars which, carrying all passengers
+at a uniform rate of four sen, make it
+possible to travel ten miles for a penny. It
+is an industrial city, but on account of occasional
+earthquakes no very large buildings
+line the thoroughfares. The traveller can here
+observe to advantage the strange characteristics
+of the most stoical race upon earth, or
+can contrast, if he will, the courteous, imperturbably
+serene disposition of the most martial
+nation of the East with the present disposition
+of the most rabidly bellicose nation of the
+West. When Japanese and German, indeed,
+met in conflict before Tsing-tao in the autumn
+of 1914, there was seen, in the Japanese soldier,
+during a campaign of peculiar hardship and
+difficulty, a revival of the qualities of the old
+Samurai, with his quiet courage, his burning
+patriotism, his patience, his habitual suppression
+of emotional display singularly distinct
+from those of the modern Goth. Nor was the
+statesmanship which brought about that conflict
+less admirable. Japan's alliance with
+Great Britain was at once a solemn pledge
+and the guiding principle of her foreign policy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+August 1914 found British interests and the
+vast trade that centred at Hong-kong in
+danger: German armed vessels prowled the
+seas, and the German naval base of Tsing-tao
+was busy with warlike preparations. Great
+Britain appealed to Japan to free their joint
+commerce from the menace. The Japanese
+Prime Minister, Count Okuma, might well
+hesitate, however, before recommending intervention.
+Was he the right minister to direct a
+war? He was nearer eighty than seventy years
+old, and recently had been for seven years in
+retirement: his Government had a minority
+in the Diet, and to the Genro his name was
+anathema: he claimed the allegiance of no
+party, and the powerful military and naval
+clans, Choshiu and Satsuma, were openly
+hostile. He had been raised to power a few
+months before by public demand for progressive
+government. There were considerations
+other than domestic or personal, indeed, which
+might have tempted some statesmen to hold
+their hands. To temporize while events revealed
+themselves in Europe would be safer
+than immediate action; while to remain neutral
+might lead to the transference to the
+Japanese of much trade with China now in
+British hands, inevitably hampered by the
+menace of German commerce-destroyers. Nevertheless,
+Count Okuma's Cabinet came to a bold
+and loyal decision. Baron Kato, the Foreign
+Minister, reassured Great Britain of active
+Japanese aid, and on August 15 sent an ultimatum
+to Germany. The latter was requested
+to withdraw at once all German armed vessels
+from Eastern waters, and to deliver to Japan
+before September 15 the entire leased territory
+of Kiao-chau, with a view to its eventual restoration
+to China. The ultimatum was timed to
+expire at noon on August 23. That day arrived
+without satisfaction having been given<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+to Japan. Within a few hours the 2nd Japanese
+squadron steamed off towards Tsing-tao.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+Pacific
+squadron
+sails.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Tsing-tao's
+importance.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+prepare
+defense.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Japanese
+warships
+approach.</div>
+
+<p>Before the outbreak of hostilities with Great
+Britain, Vice-Admiral the Graf von Spee, who
+commanded the German Pacific squadron, had
+steamed away from Tsing-tao with most of his
+ships. To use Tsing-tao as a naval base while
+engaging in commerce-raiding seemed a sound
+and a practicable plan, since the British and
+Australian naval forces, though superior, were
+hardly strong enough simultaneously to blockade
+the harbour and to search the seas. The
+plan was, however, rendered impossible by the
+Japanese ultimatum, and the Admiral, after
+having lingered for some weeks in the Western
+Pacific, departed for other seas and other adventures.
+Such was the result of Japan's action,
+and thus dangerous were the tactics that
+Japan's action had frustrated. For Tsing-tao,
+situated upon one of the two peninsulas,
+divided by two miles of waterway, enclosing
+the bay of Kiao-chau, with its safe and spacious
+anchorage for vessels of any size, constituted
+one of the most important naval bases
+on the Chinese coast. It had, indeed, been
+described as the key to Northern China. Dominating
+the eastern coast of the Shantung
+peninsula, the port formed the centre of the
+semicircular area known as Kiao-chau, extending
+on a radius of 32 miles around the shores
+of the bay, with a population of 60,000. This
+area was, under the Chinese German agreement
+as to Tsing-tao, influenced and controlled by
+Germany, though not strictly subject to her,
+and regarded as neutral territory. Its surface
+was mainly mountainous and bare, though the
+lowlands were well cultivated, but in parts it
+was rich in mineral wealth, large but undeveloped
+supplies of coal being present. In
+winter the port, connected to the junction of
+Tsi-nan by a German-built railway, was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+natural outlet for the trade of Northern China.
+The heights which surrounded the bay offered
+admirable sites for fortification, while the
+land-approaches to Tsing-tao were guarded by
+formidable defences stretched across its peninsula.
+In many quarters the stronghold was regarded
+as a second Port Arthur. The Germans
+had paid particular attention to defence,
+so much so, indeed, that over five-sixths of
+the white inhabitants were engaged in military
+occupations. Five thousand German marines
+constituted the normal garrison, though the
+outbreak of war in August called about a
+thousand more men&mdash;volunteers, reservists,
+and sailors&mdash;to the colours. The complement
+of the <i>Kaiserin Elizabeth</i>, an Austrian cruiser
+sheltering in the harbour, left for Tientsin,
+having received orders to disarm their ship,
+but returned in time to join the defenders. The
+garrison was amply provisioned for five or six
+months, and well provided with weapons,
+stores, and munitions. Most of the German
+ships off the Chinese coast at the outbreak of
+war, indeed, had made immediately for Tsing-tao,
+and discharged upon its wharves many
+thousand tons of cargo. When war with Japan
+became inevitable, therefore, the defenders
+could anticipate a successful resistance, provided
+the expected instantaneous victories in
+Europe materialized. Elaborate preparations
+were made for the defence. The harbour mouth
+was blocked by three sunken vessels, enabling
+only small craft to enter. Chinese villages
+within the leased territory, and the bridge
+where the railway crossed the boundary, were
+destroyed, partial compensation being paid to
+the inhabitants. Native labourers were engaged
+to throw up earthworks to strengthen
+the town fortifications. Many foreigners,
+women, children, and non-combatants, meanwhile,
+had left the town. On Friday evening,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+August 21, at roll-call, the Governor, Captain
+Meyer-Waldeck, read out a message from the
+German Emperor exhorting the garrison to defend
+the town to their utmost, and to do their
+'duty to the last'. It was listened to stoically.
+The following day a diversion occurred which
+opened hostilities propitiously for the Germans.
+The British destroyer <i>Kennet</i>, encountering
+the German destroyer <i>S. 90</i> off the coast, gave
+chase. The <i>S. 90</i> immediately made for port,
+and the <i>Kennet</i>, in the ardour of pursuit,
+closed in unawares within range of the German
+land batteries. The latter opened fire,
+and before she could draw off the <i>Kennet</i> sustained
+ten casualties, though little material
+damage. Next day the term of the Japanese
+ultimatum expired. It was doubtful at what
+point the Japanese would begin operations,
+or what tactics they would adopt. The fear
+was prevalent among Germans that the
+enemy would enter Chinese territory to reach
+the town from the land: newspapers under
+German influence, indeed, circulating in
+Chinese coast towns, started a press campaign
+with the object of stirring the Chinese Government
+to oppose by force any Japanese landing
+in her territory. Outposts were placed by
+the Germans along the shores of the neutral
+zone to watch for developments: they descried,
+on August 24, the approach of Japanese warships.</p>
+
+<p>Vice-Admiral Sadakichi Kato, who commanded
+the approaching squadron, immediately
+upon arrival took measures to protect
+himself against danger from mines. Seven islets
+clustering round the mouth of Kiao-chau
+Bay were occupied, to form a convenient local
+naval base, while mine-sweepers swept the surrounding
+seas. No less than a thousand mines
+were taken from the water. A blockade of the
+whole Kiao-chau coast was declared, as commencing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+from 9 a.m., August 27, and war vessels
+patrolled the shores, some seventy miles
+long. Action soon began, and continued during
+ensuing days, with shells that at intervals
+screamed towards the town. The position was,
+however, reconnoitred carefully. Japanese airmen
+went up frequently to scan the fortifications
+and to drop bombs. All protruding structures,
+spires and factory-chimneys, had been
+levelled to the ground by the Germans so as to
+afford no mark for fire. Bombs were dropped
+on the railway station and on one of the numerous
+barrack buildings. The operations continued
+spasmodically into September, while
+Kato was awaiting the approach by land of
+a co-operating army, which had now disembarked
+on the northern coast of the Shantung
+peninsula, about 150 miles due north of Tsing-tao.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Landing
+effected.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Floods
+hinder
+advance.</div>
+
+<p>The landing was effected on September 2,
+without hindrance or opposition on the part of
+the Chinese. The Government, following the
+precedent of the Russo-Japanese War, immediately
+published a declaration refusing to hold
+itself responsible for the obligations of strict
+neutrality in areas that formed, within Lung-kow,
+Lai-chau, and the neighbourhood of Kiao-chau
+Bay, passage-ways essential to the belligerent
+troops. It was, of course, incumbent
+upon the Powers involved to respect Chinese
+property and administrative rights. Japan,
+therefore, was permitted to make use of the
+main roads to transport an army to the rear
+of Tsing-tao. The forces landed composed a
+division numbering 23,000, and commanded by
+Lieutenant-General Mitsuomi Kamio. An advance-guard
+was sent forward without delay,
+but soon found its way rendered impassable by
+torrential floods which at this time swept down
+upon and devastated the province of Shantung,
+bridges, roads, and even villages being submerged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+and destroyed, with great loss of life,
+largely owing to Chinese official incompetence.
+The Japanese, after covering 20 kilometres in
+two days, reached a stream so swollen that
+crossing was impossible. The artillery had to
+return to Lung-kow. German diplomacy, meanwhile,
+exasperated at its inability to prevent a
+Japanese landing, had not been inactive.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Chinese
+neutrality.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rivalry of
+British
+and
+Japanese.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Japanese
+advance.</div>
+
+<p>The German and Austrian ministers at Peking,
+on hearing of the Japanese landing, protested
+strongly. China, it was claimed, ought
+to have forestalled and resisted the landing,
+but instead had deliberately extended the war-zone
+in order to facilitate Japanese movements.
+She would be held responsible for any injury
+to the German cause or property. To this
+China replied that, if it was incumbent upon
+her to prevent by force Japan operating in her
+territory, it was equally her duty to prevent
+by force Germany fortifying and defending
+Tsing-tao. China had endeavoured, indeed, but
+unsuccessfully, to preclude belligerent operations
+in her territory: only after the Japanese
+landing, when she was powerless to do otherwise,
+had she extended the zone of war. As
+to the responsibility, she reiterated her previous
+declaration. The baffled Germans fell
+back on threats: the right was reserved to visit
+upon China dire consequences for her alleged
+breach of neutrality. The incident, thrown
+into striking contrast with Germany's offer to
+Belgium, marked the unscrupulousness of German
+diplomacy, but stirred also many doubts
+among the foreign communities in China, in
+which the British, allied as they were to the
+Japanese, formed a predominating element. An
+anomaly of the situation was that British local
+interests had long conflicted with Japanese
+national interests. Japan's activities had, at
+every stage of her recent history, reduced British
+opportunities. Japanese trader competed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+with British trader for the markets of China,
+and Japan's share of the annual trade expansion
+was increasing, that of Great Britain decreasing.
+High tariffs and preferential rates
+had closed Corea and Manchuria to British enterprise.
+It is easy to estimate in what commercial
+jealousy and rivalry such circumstances
+had resulted. While the expediency
+of the British-Japanese alliance was fully recognized,
+and its consequences admitted to be
+the freedom of the China seas from menace of
+commerce-destroyers, nevertheless the fact remained
+that the hostilities against Tsing-tao
+would constitute a fresh impulse to Japanese
+expansion. The operations in Shantung were
+watched with critical eyes by many British in
+the foreign settlements of China. The floods
+had, meanwhile, subsided considerably, and on
+September 12 Japanese cavalry reached Tsimo,
+ten miles outside the Kiao-chau zone. No trace
+of the enemy north of the Pai-sha River had
+been seen, beyond a German aeroplane that occasionally
+passed overhead on reconnoitring
+flights. On the following day a number of
+sharp skirmishes with outposts occurred, and
+one Japanese patrol found its way to the small
+town of Kiao-chau, situated at the head of the
+bay, some 22 miles from Tsing-tao itself. The
+brushes with the Germans became of daily occurrence,
+and in one of them a high official of
+the German Legation at Peking, who had volunteered
+for service, was killed. On September
+17 the Japanese attacked Wang-ko-huang, 13
+miles from Tsimo, the enemy being in a fortified
+position and provided with machine-guns.
+At sunset, however, they abandoned the village
+and withdrew under cover of darkness, leaving
+behind quantities of equipment and supplies.
+A little later a development came about that
+brought the dissatisfaction of British traders
+to a head. About September 18, after hostile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+patrols had been driven away from the shore by
+the fire of destroyers, Japanese artillery and
+troops were landed at Laoshan Bay, north of
+Tsing-tao, just within the leased territory.
+Why was it necessary that troops should have
+been landed on the northern shore of the peninsula
+of Shantung, 150 miles from their objective,
+when guns could be disembarked with perfect
+safety on the eastern shore, not 40 miles
+from the objective, and within the German
+zone?</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A British
+force
+co-operates.</div>
+
+<p>The British were not as critical of Japan's
+strategy as they were suspicious of her policy.
+Dark suggestions got afoot that she had
+ulterior designs upon the whole Chinese province
+of Shantung. Such views could not
+but have reached the ears of the British authorities
+at Wei-hei-wei and elsewhere, nor
+could they have been deaf to previous murmurs.
+Diplomatic circles, however, could extend little
+sympathy to the critics. Nevertheless, it was
+undeniable that the latter were aggrieved, and
+that their attitude might produce unfortunate
+effects. If Great Britain herself took some
+share in the Tsing-tao operations, greater sympathy
+with their purpose might be induced, and
+a better state of feeling in the Orient between
+the two peoples might possibly result.
+It must have been some aim such as this that
+prompted the dispatch of a British force to the
+Tsing-tao area to co-operate with General
+Kamio, a step which the earlier symptoms of the
+British discontent cannot but have influenced.
+On September 19, however, 1,000 of the 2nd
+South Wales Borderers, a force so small as to
+be nominal, under Brigadier-General Barnardiston,
+left Tientsin and proceeded to Wei-hei-wei.
+Transport mules having here been taken
+on board, the expedition on September 22
+coasted down the eastern shore of Shantung,
+and next day landed at Laoshan Bay. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+month later, as will be seen, they were joined
+by 500 of the 36th Sikhs.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Faint
+opposition.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Artillery
+battle.</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, it was probably about this time,
+or shortly after, that the <i>Triumph</i>, a British
+battleship of nearly 12,000 tons displacement,
+19-1/2 knots speed, and four 10-inch guns primary
+armament, joined the Japanese squadron
+off Tsing-tao. A spasmodic bombardment had
+been maintained during the preceding weeks,
+and seaplanes had been busy, bombing and
+range-finding. The wireless station, the electric-power
+station, and several ships in harbour
+were damaged by explosive missiles.
+Little could be done, however, from the sea
+alone, and the attack by land, owing largely
+to transport difficulties, had still to develop.
+But the weather was now improving considerably.
+Another set-back to Japanese military
+ardour was, indeed, constituted by the marked
+reluctance of the Germans to form a line of resistance.
+German outposts, upon encountering
+hostile patrols, invariably retired after offering
+faint opposition. When the British troops,
+after a circuitous march of 40 miles, much hampered
+by bad roads, came up in the rear of the
+Japanese, then preparing to assault the enemy's
+advanced positions on high ground between the
+rivers Pai-sha and Li-tsun, the part that it had
+been arranged they should take in the Japanese
+attack, on September 26, fell through owing
+to a disinclination of the Germans to fight.
+Their resistance was so meagre that the Allies
+were hardly engaged, and next day gained
+without difficulty the easterly banks of the Li-tsun
+and Chang-tsun rivers, only seven miles
+north-east of Tsing-tao. The enemy at all points
+fell back, and the advance upon the town continued.
+The Japanese had now drawn their
+lines across the neck of the narrow peninsula
+upon which Tsing-tao stands. There were indications
+that the main forces were now in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+contact. The only obstacle, but a formidable
+one, between the invaders and the forts themselves
+was constituted by the dominating height
+of Prince Heinrich Hill, from whose crest,
+rising some five miles from the town, all the
+forts could be bombarded. General Kamio estimated
+that three days of fighting would be required
+for its capture: it was as all-important
+to the defence as to the attack, and was sure
+to be strongly held. The forts themselves, of
+the latest type, were elaborately constructed,
+and equipped with concrete and steel cupolas,
+mounting high calibre pieces. They commanded
+both landward and seaward approaches
+to the town, those nearest the invading
+Japanese being situated upon, and named
+Moltke Berg, Bismarck Berg, and Iltis Berg.
+Earth redoubts and trenches between formed
+the German line of defence. Plans for the most
+considerable engagement, the assault of Prince
+Heinrich Hill, that had so far taken place, to
+begin on Sunday, September 27, were made by
+the Japanese General. It developed more
+speedily than had been expected. German artillery
+opened a terrific cannonade upon the
+Japanese lines, while three warships shelled the
+attacking right wing from the bay. The German
+fire was heavy and accurate. Japanese
+warships and aeroplanes, and also the British
+battleship <i>Triumph</i>, however, created a diversion
+that relieved the assaulting forces. Two
+of the forts were shelled from the sea, and suffered
+serious injury, a barrack-house and other
+buildings being, moreover, damaged. For many
+hours the great guns, thundering their challenges
+from sea and land and estuary, maintained
+continual uproar. Darkness began to
+gather. Fighting continued into the night, and
+early next morning was renewed. But the defenders
+seemed to lack enthusiasm. It is
+doubtful, indeed, whether their forces were sufficiently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+numerous to hold with strength their
+advanced positions, and at the same time to
+man adequately their main fortified positions.
+During the morning of the 28th the Germans
+withdrew from Prince Heinrich Hill, leaving
+fifty of their number and four machine-guns in
+Japanese hands, and many dead upon the
+slopes. The Japanese casualties numbered 150.
+By noon the whole position was in the attackers'
+hands, and the beleaguered town,
+visible from the height, was now face to face
+with siege. German officers who knew all the
+points, weak and strong, of the defences, could
+not but realize their inability to withstand the
+siege guns which Japan would sooner or later
+bring to the attack. But the heavy artillery
+was yet far away. A month was to elapse before
+the pieces could be dragged across the difficult
+country, and emplaced in prepared positions
+on Prince Heinrich Hill.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The siege
+continues.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gunboats
+sunk.</div>
+
+<p>This month, which covered the whole of October,
+saw many interesting incidents, and betrayed
+no signs of idleness on the part of besiegers
+or besieged. The Germans, indeed,
+proved extraordinarily prodigal in ammunition,
+firing on an average 1,000 to 1,500 shells
+daily, a fact which lent support to the current
+view that, while undesirous of incurring their
+emperor's displeasure, they realized the hopelessness,
+so far as Tsing-tao was concerned, of
+their emperor's cause. Warships in the bay
+assisted the cannonade from the forts, and
+Lieutenant von Pluschow, the airman of the
+single aeroplane the town possessed, ventured
+forth at intervals to reconnoitre or to bomb.
+Life in the town itself continued to be quite
+normal. Japanese and British, meanwhile,
+drew their lines closer and closer to the fortress
+by sap and mine, though hindered greatly by
+terrible weather, and occasionally having slight
+encounters with the enemy. In one of these,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+on October 5, a German night-attack was heavily
+repulsed, forty-seven dead being left behind
+by the attackers. At sea the operations were
+also spasmodic. At the end of September a
+landing force occupied Lao-she harbour, in the
+vicinity of Tsing-tao, where four abandoned
+field-guns were taken possession of. Mine-sweeping
+had constantly to be maintained, under
+fire from the shore, and proved a dangerous
+task. Several vessels thus engaged were
+sunk or damaged, though with comparatively
+few casualties, through coming into contact
+with mines. Some German gunboats, however,
+among them the <i>Cormoran</i> and the <i>Iltis</i>, were
+apparently sunk about this time, either deliberately
+by the Germans, or from the fire
+of the Japanese guns. A torpedo flotilla bombarded
+one of the barracks, moreover, to some
+effect, while Japanese aeroplanes were also active.
+Von Pluschow twice attempted to attack
+vessels of the blockading squadron, but unsuccessfully,
+and on one occasion a Japanese
+aeroplane pursuing him gave a German balloon,
+floating captive above the town, some
+critical moments before it could be hauled to
+safety. A few days later, about October 7, the
+rope which held this balloon was, during the
+spasmodic firing, severed by a shot, and the
+great bag floated away, apparently across the
+bay in the direction of Kiao-chau town and
+the railway line inland. In this quarter, indeed,
+over the line itself, serious friction had
+arisen between the Japanese and the Chinese
+authorities.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Railway
+seized.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">China
+protests.</div>
+
+<p>The line ran from Tsing-tao and Kiao-chau
+to the junction of Tsi-nan, a distance of about
+250 miles, passing through the towns of Wei-hsien
+and Tsing-chau. It was German built
+and almost wholly German owned. From some
+points of view it might reasonably be said to
+constitute an adjunct, if not a part, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+leased territory itself. In any case the Japanese
+claimed that, since the outbreak of war,
+the line had been consistently utilized to bring
+reservists, supplies, and ammunition to the
+town. The Austrian crew of the disarmed
+<i>Kaiserin Elizabeth</i>, both when they left and
+later returned to Tsing-tao, had used this
+means of transit. The railway, being still under
+German control, constituted a menace in
+the Japanese rear, which the latter, upon consolidating
+their position towards the end of
+September, took measures to remove. After
+occupying Wei-hsien, they began to arrange for
+the seizure of the whole line as far as Tsi-nan
+itself. Hints of such action drew forth protests
+from China, whose Government, however,
+adopted too compromising an attitude. The
+Japanese Government was firm. China's right
+to formal protest was admitted, but the occupation
+was stated to be an urgent military
+necessity, and without any prejudice to
+Chinese claims after the war. Since China
+was unable to enforce the neutrality of the
+line, flagrantly violated by the Germans, the
+Japanese had no alternative but to bring it
+under their own control. The Chino-German
+Treaty of 1898 and the German Government's
+charter clearly proved that the railway was
+essentially German. A compromise, hastened
+by the unhesitating and thorough measures
+taken by the Japanese to effect the occupation,
+was arrived at. The Japanese were temporarily
+to control the administration, while the
+Chinese conducted the traffic, of the railway.
+Its fate, since China did not admit the contention
+that it was purely German, was to be
+decided after the war. A bellicose attitude
+noticeable in Chinese military circles became
+very marked when, three days later, on October
+6, unquestionably in breach of the arrangement,
+Japanese soldiers arrived at Tsi-nan,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+and took over the control of the rolling
+stock on the Shantung line. It was alleged
+at Peking that this force had declared martial
+law in the town, which contained, indeed, many
+German sympathizers who, rumour added, had
+destroyed several collieries there in their
+anxiety to obstruct the Allies. But the Chinese
+Government submitted under further strong
+protest, and with a request that the troops
+should be withdrawn. The Japanese action
+occasioned, however, further distrust among
+British residents in the Orient. Meanwhile,
+a second British force, consisting of 500
+Sikhs, was being prepared to reinforce General
+Barnardiston.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Non-combatants
+depart.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Heavy
+weather.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Difficulties
+on
+land.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bombardment
+on
+Mikado's
+birthday.</div>
+
+<p>At one o'clock on October 12, Captain Meyer-Waldeck,
+the Governor of Tsing-tao, received
+a joint wireless message from the commanders
+of the besieging troops and the blockading
+squadron, offering a safe escort out of the town
+of Tientsin of neutrals and non-combatants.
+He at once assented. Delegates met next day
+at ten o'clock to discuss details, and on the
+15th the American consul, accompanied by
+German women and children and Chinese subjects,
+left the town. On the previous day there
+had been a combined sea and air attack upon
+forts Iltis and Kaiser, in which the <i>Triumph</i>
+participated and suffered the only Allied
+casualties. It is recorded that, before reopening
+bombardment after the departure of the
+non-combatants, the Japanese, ever polite, signalled
+'Are you now quite ready, gentlemen?'
+For reply a German sniper, taking careful but
+faulty aim, sent a bullet which removed three
+out of the eleven hairs on the signalman's moustache.
+Two days later, days notable for torrential
+rains, which intensified the discomforts
+of the troops ashore, the Japanese suffered
+a severe naval loss. The <i>Takachiho</i>, an old
+cruiser of some 3,000 tons, which had seen service<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+in the Chino-Japanese War, was on patrol
+duty on Saturday night, October 17, when she
+fouled a mine, released by and adrift in the
+rough seas. Destroyers hastened to her aid,
+but rescue work was difficult in the darkness
+and the heavy weather. The cruiser sank
+rapidly. Two hundred and seventy-one officers
+and seamen lost their lives. The rough weather
+which contributed to the disaster continued
+with little break, and hindered operations, till
+the end of the month. The landing of the Sikh
+contingent at Laoshan Bay on October 21 was,
+indeed, attended by great difficulties and some
+loss of life. A strong southerly gale had raised
+high seas, and enormous lighters and sampans,
+employed for disembarkation, were thrown
+high and dry upon the beach. Sixteen Japanese
+were drowned in trying to save other boats
+that broke loose. The Sikhs got safely ashore,
+but next morning again the winds blew and the
+rains descended, and the camping-ground was
+soon a miry pool. Circumstances other than
+the weather, however, helped to put the British
+officers out of humour. Trouble ahead
+threatened in connexion with transport arrangements.
+While the Chinese carts and
+drivers, brought hurriedly from Tientsin, were
+doubtfully reliable, many of the mules were
+raw and quite unused to harness. When a
+start for the front was preparing on the morning
+of the 23rd, it was found that the best of
+the harness, which had been purchased from
+peasants in the locality, had been stolen in the
+night by the people who had brought it in,
+and that what was left was tied up with string.
+The column, however, at length set off, and
+made a march memorable for hardship and
+difficulty. From Laoshan to Lutin, where a
+metalled road began, was 30 miles, crossed by
+a track formed at one time by quagmire, at
+another by slippery boulders. During eleven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+hours 6 miles were covered, by which time the
+Sikhs were completely exhausted with digging
+carts or mules out of the mud, hauling them
+out with drag-ropes, reloading overturned
+carts, or unloading those immovable. Next
+day the column was on the road at seven
+o'clock, and covered 13 miles. So deep was
+the mud in parts that when, owing to the
+rotten harness giving way, a mule would occasionally
+lurch forward suddenly and walk
+away by itself, the body of the cart would be
+left floating on the surface. One cart was
+pulled completely off its axles by a squad of
+men, and slid along admirably for a considerable
+distance. Seventy Chinese wheelbarrows,
+however, obtained from a Japanese d&eacute;p&ocirc;t,
+rendered invaluable aid on this day. Tsimo,
+the halting-place, was reached in the evening,
+and next day, after the first ten miles, saw
+plain sailing. A few days later, on October 30,
+after the Sikhs had rested and recovered, the
+whole British force, now some 1,500 strong,
+moved up to the front in readiness for the bombardment
+of Tsing-tao, which had been arranged
+to begin next morning in celebration of
+the birthday of the Mikado. Siege artillery,
+150 pieces, including six 28-cm. howitzers and
+some heavy naval guns, had now been brought
+up and placed in position. The shelling was
+timed to start, in royal salute, at dawn.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Oil-tanks
+blaze.</div>
+
+<p>Men who, stationed upon Prince Heinrich
+Hill, could look below upon the doomed town,
+athwart the narrowing peninsula, with the sea,
+studded with grey warships, surrounding, had
+before them a wonderful spectacle as the morning
+sun, rising from the Pacific, slowly dispersed
+the darkness. The thunder of the great
+guns broke suddenly upon that stillness which
+only dawn knows, and their discharges flashed
+redly on the darkling slopes. The Japanese
+shooting, it is related, displayed remarkable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+accuracy, some of the first projectiles bursting
+upon the enormous oil-tanks of the Standard
+Oil Company and the Asiatic Petroleum Company.
+A blaze roared skywards, and for many
+hours the heavens were darkened by an immense
+cloud of black petroleum smoke which
+hung like a pall over the town. Shells passing
+over these fires drew up columns of flame to
+a great height. Chinese coolies could be seen
+running before the spreading and burning oil.
+Fires broke out also on the wharves of the
+outer harbour, in which during the day a gunboat,
+apparently damaged fatally by a shot
+which carried away her funnel, disappeared.
+The redoubts and infantry works particularly
+were heavily bombarded. On the left of the
+German line 100 Chinese in the village of Tao-tung-chien
+were unfortunately caught by shell-fire
+directed on the redoubt close at hand, while
+the fort of Siao-chau-shan, near by, was set
+afire. The tops of several of the forts were
+soon concealed by clouds of dust and smoke.
+A heavy fusillade was concentrated upon an
+observation point which the defenders had constructed
+on a hill in the town, and had considerable
+effect. The Germans did not on this
+first day of general bombardment reply strongly,
+two only of the forts persistently firing.
+At length the sun sank and night obscured the
+conflict. It had been a bad day for the besieged:
+and dismantled guns, shattered concrete
+platforms and entrenchments, devastated
+barbed-wire entanglements, augured the town's
+approaching fate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Aeroplanes
+direct
+guns.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Triumph</i>
+attacks
+Fort
+Bismarck.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Kaiserin
+Elizabeth</i>
+sinks.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Night
+activity.</div>
+
+<p>The bombardment continued for a week.
+During that period the Japanese and British
+guns, directed from land and sea by a balloon,
+by aeroplanes, or by observation stations on
+the hills, in daytime thundered incessantly.
+The German shelling, though severe, was far
+less heavy, because, it is said, the men in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+forts, sheltering most of the time in bomb-proof
+caverns, issued forth only at night, and
+during pauses of the Japanese to return the
+fire. The airman von Pluschow actively directed
+the replies. The latter seemed not, indeed,
+impartially distributed. The marked attention
+paid to British troops and ships afforded
+an illustration of that attitude of
+peculiar malevolence which Germans have
+adopted towards the British nation and name.
+The German airman singled out the British
+camp, recognizable by its white tents, for his
+bombs, while for the German artillery it had
+an inordinate attraction. Officers on board the
+<i>Triumph</i>, moreover, observed that the largest
+German guns, of 12-inch calibre, were consistently
+directed upon their vessel. But of
+many projectiles one only, which struck the
+mast, being fired from Hui-tchien-huk, proved
+effective. This hit, however, caused rejoicing
+in Tsing-tao which, it is asserted, would not
+have been equalled by the sinking of a Japanese
+Dreadnought. The <i>Triumph</i> singled out for
+attack Fort Bismarck especially, and two of
+the German 6-inch guns were early put out of
+action. The British gunners adopted the ingenious
+plan of heeling their ship by five
+degrees, and bombarding the enemy, from sight
+strips specially calculated, without exposing
+themselves or their weapons. It became customary
+aboard to call the bombardment 'pressing
+the enemy' from an exhortation sent by
+the Japanese Crown Prince to 'press the
+enemy, braving all hardships'. Ashore, indeed,
+the pressure on the enemy developed steadily
+as the days passed. On November 2 the Austrian
+cruiser <i>Kaiserin Elizabeth</i>, which had,
+with the German gunboats still afloat, been
+engaging vigorously in the fighting, sank, having
+probably been blown up deliberately, and
+the floating dock also disappeared. Iltis Fort,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+moreover, was silenced, two guns being smashed
+and ammunition giving out, and Japanese infantry
+advanced and captured an eminence in
+German hands. On another ridge, however,
+hard by the silenced fort, some German naval
+gunners carried out a ruse which saved for
+the present both their position and their battery,
+composed of naval 9-cm. pieces, which
+were exposed dangerously to fire from sea and
+land. Lieutenant von Trendel, in command,
+during the night constructed wooden models of
+cannon, which he placed in position 200 yards
+from his real guns. Next morning he exploded
+powder near by, and drew the fire of the besiegers,
+attracted by the flashes, upon the dummies.
+That day the wireless and electric power
+stations were wrecked, and large attacking
+forces crept further forward, despite severe
+fire, and entrenched closer to the enemy's lines.
+In the evening and night the latter showed
+special activity, star rockets and other fireworks
+being used to illumine the opposing positions,
+which were heavily fusilladed. A German
+night-attack was delivered, but was repulsed.
+Next day, the 4th, and on the two following
+days, progress was maintained. The
+Allied trenches were pushed forward until they
+were right up to and almost half round the
+nearest German forts. Many casualties were
+suffered, but the German fire was kept down
+by the Japanese guns, whose accuracy was remarkable.
+The weather conditions were unfavourable,
+high winds and heavy rains prevailing,
+and the troops in the trenches had to
+endure hard privations. So effective was the
+bombardment, however, that during November
+5 and 6 plans were prepared for the final assault.
+It was arranged that a general infantry
+attack should be made as soon as practicable.
+The garrisons in the forts, meanwhile, were beginning
+to exhaust their ammunition, of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+they had been, during the preliminary operations,
+strangely prodigal. Guns lay silent for
+other reasons than structural injury, though
+the latter cause, indeed, was frequent, a single
+shot, in one case, from the <i>Suwo</i>, the Japanese
+flagship, having destroyed a 24-cm. gun and
+killed eight men on Fort Hui-tchien-huk. In
+the town itself the streets, not immune from
+falling projectiles, were deserted, and the only
+centre of social intercourse and conviviality
+was the German Club, where regularly officers
+or non-combatants slipped in for dinner, luncheon,
+or a glass of beer. But it was realized
+that the end was not far distant.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Central
+redoubt
+taken.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mass attack
+on
+forts.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+white
+flag.</div>
+
+<p>Early in the morning of November 6 the airman
+von Pluschow flew away across Kiao-chau
+Bay, and did not return. He escaped with the
+Governor's last dispatches into Chinese territory,
+where his machine was interned. That
+day and night saw no cessation of the firing,
+the guns of the defenders still roaring at intervals.
+About an hour after midnight the first
+impulse of the general attack took effect. While
+a particularly heavy artillery fire kept the Germans
+in their bomb-proof shelters, the central
+redoubt of the first line of defence, which had
+been badly shattered by the bombardment, was
+rushed by a storming party headed by General
+Yoshimi Yamada. Engineers had in the darkness
+sapped right up to the barbed-wire entanglements,
+which being cut provided way for
+the infantry, who, while part held the enemy
+in front, rushed the redoubt on both flanks.
+Two hundred prisoners were taken, and the
+Japanese flag was hoisted. The besiegers were
+through the German line, but the position had
+to be consolidated, or disaster would follow.
+Danger from the flank was, however, soon obviated
+by advances in other parts of the line. Just
+after five o'clock a battery on Shao-tan Hill
+was captured; half an hour later another battery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+in Tao-tung-chien redoubt was taken, and
+Fort Chung-shan-wa, the base of the German
+right wing, fell. The shadows were still dense,
+and the final phase of the siege, viewed from
+Prince Heinrich Hill, presented a sight brilliant
+with many flashes and flaming fireworks,
+and a sound dominated by the thunder of the
+batteries. But dawn, as the besiegers began
+in mass to close in upon the main line of forts
+Iltis, Moltke, and Bismarck, was breaking. It
+was decided to storm these positions forthwith,
+since the German fire, owing to exhaustion of
+the ammunition, was dying away. Governor
+Meyer-Waldeck, who had been wounded, realized
+now that further resistance was futile.
+Shortly before six o'clock he sent Major von
+Kayser, his adjutant, accompanied by another
+officer and a trumpeter, from the staff headquarters
+bearing the white flag: at the same
+time a signal of surrender was made from the
+Observatory. This was not, however, observed,
+while von Kayser's party, coming under fire,
+was dispersed by a shell which killed the trumpeter
+and the adjutant's horse. Meanwhile,
+Japanese and British were closing in, and were
+tensely awaiting the final assault. It was never
+made. Soon after seven o'clock a welcome sight
+relaxed the tension of the troops, torn, dirty,
+and weary, calling forth cheers from the
+British, and shouts of 'Banzai!' from the
+Japanese. The campaign was over: Tsing-tao
+had fallen. White flags were fluttering from
+the forts.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Terms of
+capitulation.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">War
+material
+taken.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cost of
+victory.</div>
+
+<p>That evening delegates from the two armies
+met and signed the terms of capitulation, which
+were unconditional. Honours of war were accorded
+the defenders, the Governor and his
+officers being permitted to retain their swords.
+The Allies marched into the town, and on
+November 10 the garrison was formally transferred.
+Over 4,000 Germans were sent to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+Japan as prisoners, and large quantities of war
+material were confiscated. The captures included
+30 field-guns, 100 machine-guns, 2,500
+rifles, 40 motor-cars, &pound;1,200 in bullion, and
+15,000 tons of coal. All ships in harbour, and
+also the floating dock, had been destroyed, but
+it seemed probable that the <i>Kaiserin Elizabeth</i>
+could be successfully raised. Sufficient provisions
+were found to feed 5,000 persons for three
+months, and the victors were able to regale
+their appetites with luxuries such as butter,
+crab, or salmon, which were plentiful. Looting,
+however, was strictly forbidden. For fastidious
+persons the bath, after many weeks, was again
+available, and proved, indeed, in view of steady
+accumulations of mud, a salutary course. Measures,
+meanwhile, were at once taken to restore
+the town to its normal condition. The troops
+and sailors were employed in removing d&eacute;bris
+or undischarged land and sea mines. Another
+Japanese gunboat was sunk, and several officers
+and men lost their lives, while engaged in this
+dangerous work. The victory had to be paid
+for, indeed, with a heavy toll of life and limb.
+The Japanese casualties numbered 236 killed
+and 1,282 wounded; the British, 12 killed and
+53 wounded. On November 16 the Allies formally
+took possession of Tsing-tao; and a memorial
+service was held for the dead.</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Battle Sketches by A. N. Hilditch, Oxford University Press.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Plan
+for Dardanelles
+campaign.</div>
+
+<p>The plan of breaking through the Straits of
+the Dardanelles, and thus clearing the way to
+Constantinople, is believed to have been conceived
+by Winston Churchill, then First Lord
+of the British Admiralty. After careful consideration
+it was approved by the military and
+naval authorities, and plans were made to carry
+out the project. The initial steps are described
+in the following chapter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GALLIPOLI</h2>
+
+<h3>A. JOHN GALLISHAW</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Newfoundlanders
+in the
+War.</div>
+
+<p>Husky, steel-muscled lumbermen; brawny,
+calloused-handed fishermen; loose-jointed,
+easy-swinging trappers; athletes from the
+city foot-ball and <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'hocky'">hockey</ins> teams; and gawky,
+long-armed farmers joined the First Newfoundland
+Regiment at the outbreak of war. A rigid
+medical examination sorted out the best of
+them, and ten months of bayonet fighting,
+physical drill, and twenty-mile route marches
+over Scottish hills had molded these into trim,
+erect, bronzed soldiers. They were garrisoning
+Edinburgh Castle when word came of the landing
+of the Australians and New-Zealanders at
+Gallipoli. At Ypres the Canadians had just
+then recaptured their guns and made for themselves
+a deathless name.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Not militaristic.</div>
+
+<p>So the Newfoundlanders felt that as colonials
+they had been overlooked. They were not militaristic
+and hated the ordinary routine of army
+life, but they wanted to do their share. That
+was the spirit all through the regiment. It was
+the spirit that possessed them on the long-waited-for
+day at Aldershot when Kitchener
+himself pronounced them "just the men I want
+for the Dardanelles." That day at Aldershot
+every man was given a chance to go back to
+Newfoundland. They had enlisted for one year
+only, and could demand to be sent home at the
+end of the year; and when Kitchener reviewed
+them ten months of that year had gone.</p>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Re-enlistment
+at
+Aldershot.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The desire
+to get to
+the front.</div>
+
+<p>With the chance to go home in his grasp,
+every man of the first battalion reenlisted for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+the duration of war. And it is on record, to
+their eternal honor, that during the week preceding
+their departure from Aldershot breaches
+of discipline were unknown, for over their
+heads hung the fear that they would be punished
+by being kept back from active service.
+To break a rule that week carried with it the
+suspicion of cowardice. This was the more
+remarkable because many of the men were
+fishermen, trappers, hunters, and lumbermen
+who until their enlistment had said "Sir" to
+no man, and who gloried in the reputation
+given them by one inspecting officer as "the
+most undisciplined lot he had ever seen." From
+the day the Canadians left Salisbury Plain to
+take their places in the trenches in Flanders
+the Newfoundlanders were obsessed by one
+idea: they had to get to the front.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Troop-ships
+in
+Mudros
+Harbor.</div>
+
+<p>So it was with eleven hundred of such eager
+spirits that I lined up, on a Sunday evening
+early in August, 1915, on the deck of the troop-ship
+in Mudros Harbor, which is the center of
+the historic island of Lemnos, about fifty miles
+from Gallipoli. Around us lay all sorts of
+ships, from ocean leviathans to tiny launches
+and rowboats. There were gray-and-black-painted
+troopers, their rails lined with soldiers;
+immense four-funneled men-of-war; and brightly
+lighted, white hospital ships, with their red
+crosses outlined in electric lights. The landing
+officer left us in a little motor-boat. We
+watched him glide slowly shoreward, where we
+could faintly discern through the dusk the
+white of the tents that were the headquarters
+for the people at Lemnos; to the right of the
+tents we could see the hospital for wounded
+Australians and New-Zealanders. A French
+battleship dipped its flag as it passed, and our
+boys sang "The Marseillaise."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Iron
+Ration.</div>
+
+<p>A mail that had come that day was being
+sorted. While we waited, each man was served<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+with his "iron ration." This consisted of a one-pound
+tin of pressed corned beef&mdash;the much-hated
+and much-maligned "bully beef"&mdash;a bag
+of biscuits, and a small tin that held two tubes
+of Oxo, with tea and sugar in specially constructed
+air- and damp-proof envelopes. This
+was an emergency ration, to be kept in case of
+direst need, and to be used only to ward off
+actual starvation. After that we were given
+our ammunition, two hundred and fifty rounds
+to each man.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+solitary
+letter
+home.</div>
+
+<p>But what brought home to me most the seriousness
+of our venture was the solitary sheet
+of letter paper, with its envelope, that was given
+to every man to be used for a parting letter
+home. For some poor chaps it was indeed the
+last letter. Then we went over the side and
+aboard the destroyer that was to take us to
+Suvla Bay.</p>
+
+<p>The night had been well chosen for a surprise
+landing. There was no moon, but after a little
+while the stars came out. Away on the port
+bow we could see the dusky outline of land,
+and once, when we were about half-way, an airship
+soared phantomlike out of the night,
+poised over us a short time, then ducked out
+of sight. At first the word ran along the line
+that it was a hostile airship, but a few inquiries
+soon reassured us.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Approaching
+Cape
+Hellas.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Passing
+Anzac.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The name
+Anzac.</div>
+
+<p>Suddenly we changed our direction. We were
+near Cape Hellas, which is the lowest point of
+the peninsula of Gallipoli. Under Sir Ian Hamilton's
+scheme it was here that a decoy party
+of French and British troops were to be landed
+to draw the Turks from Anzac. Simultaneously
+an overwhelming British force was to
+land at Suvla Bay and Anzac to make a surprise
+attack on the Turks' right flank. Presently
+we were going upshore past the wrecked
+steamer <i>River Clyde</i>, the famous "Ship of Troy"
+from the side of which the Australians had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+issued after the ship had been beached on the
+shore hitherto nameless, but now known as
+Anzac. Australian New Zealand Army Corps
+those five letters stand for; but to those of us
+who have been on Gallipoli they stand for a
+great deal more; they represent the achievement
+of the impossible. They are a glorious
+record of sacrifice, reckless devotion, and unselfish
+courage; to put each letter there cost
+the men from Australasia ten thousand of their
+best soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>And so we edged our way along, fearing
+mines or, even more disastrous than mines,
+discovery by the enemy. From the Australasians
+over at Anzac we could hear desultory
+rifle fire. Once we heard the boom of some big
+guns that seemed almost alongside the ship.
+Four hours it took us to go fifty miles in a
+destroyer that could make thirty-two knots
+easily. By one o'clock the stars had disappeared,
+and for perhaps three-quarters of an
+hour we nosed our way through pitch darkness.
+Gradually we slowed down until we had almost
+stopped. Something scraped along our side.
+Somebody said it was a floating mine, but it
+turned out to be a buoy that had been put there
+by the navy to mark the channel.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the gloom directly in front some one
+hailed, and our people answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Who have you on board?" we heard a casual
+English voice say, and then came the reply from
+our colonel:</p>
+
+<p>"Newfoundlanders." There was to me something
+very reassuring about that cool, self-contained
+voice out of the night. It made me feel
+that we were being expected and looked after.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Arrival
+of a
+launch.</div>
+
+<p>"Move up those boats," I heard the English
+voice say, and from right under our bow a
+naval launch with a middy in charge swerved
+alongside. In a little while it, with a string
+of boats, was securely fastened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Just before we went into the boats the adjutant
+passed me.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "you've got your wish. In
+a few minutes you'll be ashore. Let me know
+how you like it when you're there a little
+while."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," I said. But I never had a chance
+to tell him. The first shrapnel shell fired at
+the Newfoundlanders burst near him, and he
+had scarcely landed when he was taken off the
+peninsula, seriously wounded.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Newfoundlanders
+land.</div>
+
+<p>In a short time we had all filed into the
+boats. There was no noise, no excitement;
+just now and then a whispered command. I
+was in a tug with about twenty others who
+formed the rear-guard. The wind had freshened
+considerably, and was now blowing so
+hard that our unwieldy tug dared not risk a
+landing. We came in near enough to watch
+the other boats. About twenty yards from
+shore they grounded. We could see the boys
+jump over the side and wade ashore. Through
+the half-darkness we could barely distinguish
+them forming up on the beach. Soon they were
+lost to sight.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+artillery
+in action.</div>
+
+<p>During the Turkish summer dawn comes
+early. We transhipped from our tug to a
+lighter. When it grounded on the beach day
+was just breaking. Daylight disclosed a steeply
+sloping beach, scarred with ravines. The
+place where we landed ran between sheer cliffs.
+A short distance up the hill we could see our
+battalion digging themselves in. To the left
+I could see the boats of another battalion.
+Even as I watched, the enemy's artillery located
+them. It was the first shell I had ever heard.
+It came over the hill close to me, screeching
+through the air like an express-train going over
+a bridge at night. Just above the boat I was
+watching it exploded. A few of the soldiers
+slipped quietly from their seats to the bottom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+of the boat. At first I did not realize that any
+one had been hit. There was no sign of anything
+having happened out of the ordinary, no
+confusion. As soon as the boat touched the
+beach the wounded men were carried by their
+mates up the hill to a temporary dressing-station.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Beginning
+of bombardment.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Coolness
+of the Newfoundlanders.</div>
+
+<p>The first shell was the beginning of a bombardment.
+Beachy Bill, a battery that we
+were to become better acquainted with, was
+in excellent shape. Every few minutes a shell
+burst close to us. Shrapnel-bullets and fragments
+of shell-casing forced us to huddle under
+the baggage for protection. A little to the left
+some Australians were severely punished. Shell
+after shell burst among them. A regiment of
+Sikh troops, mule-drivers, and transport-men
+were caught half-way up the beach. Above
+the din of falling shrapnel and the shriek of
+flying shells rose the piercing scream of wounded
+mules. The Newfoundlanders did not escape.
+That morning Beachy Bill's gunners played
+no favorites. On all sides the shrapnel came in
+a shower. Less often, a cloud of thick, black
+smoke and a hole twenty feet deep showed the
+landing-place of a high-explosive shell. The
+most amazing thing was the coolness of the
+men. The Newfoundlanders might have been
+practising trench-digging in camp in Scotland.
+When a man was hit some one gave him first
+aid, directed the stretcher-bearers where to
+find him, and coolly resumed digging. In two
+hours our position had become untenable. We
+had been subjected to a merciless and devastating
+shelling, and our first experience of war
+had cost us sixty-five men. In a new and safer
+position we dug ourselves in.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Four
+miles of
+graveyard.</div>
+
+<p>No move could be made in daylight. That
+evening we received our ration of rum, and
+under cover of darkness moved in open order
+across the Salt Lake for about a mile, then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+through three miles of knee-high, prickly underbrush,
+to where our division was intrenched.
+Our orders were to reinforce the Irish. The
+Irish sadly needed reinforcing. Some of them
+had been on the peninsula for months. Many
+of them are still there. From the beach to the
+firing-line is not over four miles, but it is a
+ghastly four miles of graveyard. Everywhere
+along the route are small, rude wooden crosses,
+mute record of advances. Where the crosses
+are thickest there the fighting was fiercest, and
+where the fighting was fiercest there were the
+Irish. On every cross, besides a man's name
+and the date of his death, is the name of his
+regiment. No other regiments have so many
+crosses as the Dublins and the Munsters. And
+where the shrapnel flew so fast that bodies
+mangled beyond hope of identity were buried
+in a common grave, there also are the Dublins
+and Munsters; and the cross over them reads
+"In Memory of Unknown Comrades."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+incomparable
+Twenty-ninth.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">How the
+hill was
+taken, and
+lost.</div>
+
+<p>The line on the left was held by the Twenty-ninth
+Division; the Dublins, the Munsters, the
+King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the Newfoundlanders
+made up the 88th Brigade. The
+Newfoundlanders were reinforcements. From
+the very first days of the Gallipoli campaign
+the other three regiments had formed part of
+what General Sir Ian Hamilton in his report
+calls the "incomparable Twenty-ninth Division."
+When the first landing was made, this
+division, with the New-Zealanders, penetrated
+to the top of a hill that commanded the Narrows.
+For forty-eight hours the result was in
+doubt. The British attacked with bayonet and
+bombs, were driven back, and repeatedly re-attacked.
+The New-Zealanders finally succeeded
+in reaching the top, followed by the
+88th Brigade. The Irish fought on the tracks
+of a railroad that leads into Constantinople.
+At the end of forty-eight hours of attacks and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+counter-attacks the position was considered
+secure. The worn-out soldiers were relieved
+and went into dug-outs. Then the relieving
+troops were attacked by an overwhelming hostile
+force, and the hill was lost. A battery
+placed on that hill could have shelled the Narrows
+and opened to our ships the way to Constantinople.
+The hill was never retaken. When
+reinforcements came up it was too late. The
+reinforcements lost their way. In his report
+General Hamilton attributes our defeat to
+"fatal inertia." Just how fatal was that
+inertia is known only to those who formed some
+of the burial-parties.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Newfoundlanders
+run in
+battle.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Turks
+charge in
+mass formation.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Terrible
+casualties
+of the
+enemy.</div>
+
+<p>After the first forty-eight hours we settled
+down to regular trench warfare. The routine
+was four days in the trenches, eight days in
+rest dug-outs, four in the trenches again, and
+so forth, although two or three months later
+our ranks were so depleted that we stayed in
+eight days and rested only four. We had expected
+four days' rest after our first trip to the
+firing-line, but at the end of two days came
+word of a determined advance of the enemy.
+We arrived just in time to beat it off. Our
+trenches, instead of being at the top, were at
+the foot of the hill that meant so much to us.
+The ground here was a series of four or five
+hogback ridges about a hundred yards apart.
+Behind these towered the hill that was our
+objective. From the nearest ridge, about seven
+hundred yards in front of us, the Turks had
+all that day constantly issued in mass formation.
+During that attack we were repaid for
+the havoc wrought by Beachy Bill. As soon
+as the Turk topped the crest they were subjected
+to a demoralizing rain of shell from
+the navy and the artillery. Against the hazy
+blue of the sky-line we could see the dark mass
+clearly silhouetted. Every few seconds, when
+a shell landed in the middle of the approaching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+columns, the sides of the column would
+bulge outward for an instant, then close in
+again. Meanwhile every man in our trenches
+stood on the firing-platform, head and shoulders
+above the parapet, with fixed bayonet and
+loaded rifle, waiting for the order to begin firing.
+Still the Turks came on, big, black, bewhiskered
+six-footers, reforming ranks and
+filling up their gaps with fresh men. Now
+they were only six hundred yards away, but
+still there was no order to open fire. It was
+uncanny. At five hundred yards our fire was
+still withheld. When the order came, "At four
+hundred yards, rapid fire," everybody was
+tingling with excitement. Still the Turks
+came on, magnificently determined. But it
+was too desperate a venture. The chances
+against them were too great, our artillery and
+machine-gun fire too destructively accurate.
+Some few Turks reached almost to our trenches,
+only to be stopped by rifle-bullets. "Allah!
+Allah!" yelled the Turks as they came on. A
+sweating, grimly happy machine-gun sergeant
+between orders was shouting to the Turkish
+army in general, "'Tis not a damn' bit of
+good to yell to Allah now." Our artillery
+opened huge gaps in their lines; our machine-guns
+piled them dead in the ranks where they
+stood. Our own casualties were very slight,
+but of the waves of Turks that surged over
+the crest all that day only a mere shattered
+remnant ever straggled back to their own lines.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+armies in
+a state of
+siege.</div>
+
+<p>That was the last big attack the Turks made.
+From that time on it was virtually two armies
+in a state of siege. Every night at dark we
+stood to arms for an hour. Every man fixed
+his bayonet and prepared to repulse any attack
+of the enemy. After that sentry groups
+were formed, three reliefs of two men each.
+Two men stood with their heads over the parapet
+watching for any movement in the no-man's-land<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+between the lines. That accounts
+for the surprisingly large number of men one
+sees wounded in the head.</p>
+
+<p>At daylight every morning came "Stand to
+arms" again. Then day duties began. In the
+daytime, by using a periscope, an arrangement
+of double mirrors, a sentry can keep his head
+below the parapet while he watches the ground
+in front. Sometimes a bullet struck one of
+the mirrors, and the splintered glass blinded
+the sentry. It was a common thing to see a
+man go to hospital with his face badly lacerated
+by periscope glass.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">When a
+shell
+comes.</div>
+
+<p>Ordinarily a man is much safer on the firing-line
+than in the rest dug-outs. Trenches are
+so constructed that even if a shell drops right
+in the traverse where men are, only half a
+dozen or so suffer. In open or slightly protected
+ground where the dug-outs are the burst
+of a shrapnel-shell covers an area twenty-five
+by two hundred yards in extent.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Shrapnel
+and
+bullets.</div>
+
+<p>A shell can be heard coming. Experts claim
+to identify the caliber of a gun by the sound
+the shell makes. Few live long enough to become
+such experts. In Gallipoli the average
+length of life was three weeks. In dug-outs
+we always ate our meals, such as they were,
+to the accompaniment of "Turkish Delight,"
+the Newfoundlanders' name for shrapnel. We
+had become accustomed to rifle-bullets. When
+you hear the <i>zing</i> of a spent bullet or the sharp
+crack of an explosive you know it has passed
+you. The one that hits you you never hear.
+At first we dodged at the sound of a passing
+bullet, but soon we came actually to believe the
+superstition that a bullet would not hit a man
+unless it had on it his regimental number and
+his name. Then, too, a bullet leaves a clean
+wound, and a man hit by it drops out quietly.
+The shrapnel makes nasty, jagged, hideous
+wounds, the horrible recollection of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+lingers for days. It is little wonder that we
+preferred the firing-line.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The mode
+of intrenching.</div>
+
+<p>Most of our work was done at night. When
+we wished to advance our line, we sent forward
+a platoon of men the desired distance. Every
+man carried with him three empty sand-bags
+and his intrenching-tool. Temporary protection
+is secured at short notice by having every
+man dig a hole in the ground that is large and
+deep enough to allow him to lie flat in it. The
+intrenching-tool is a miniature pickax, one end
+of which resembles a large-bladed hoe with a
+sharpened and tempered edge. The pick end
+is used to loosen hard material and to break up
+large lumps; the other end is used as a shovel
+to throw up the dirt. When used in this
+fashion the wooden handle is laid aside, the
+pick end becomes a handle, and the intrenching-tool
+is used in the same manner as a trowel.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+necessity
+for concealment.</div>
+
+<p>Lying on our stomach, our rifles close at
+hand, we dug furiously. First we loosened up
+enough earth in front of our heads to fill a
+sand-bag. This sand-bag we placed beside our
+heads on the side nearest the enemy. Out in
+no-man's-land, with bullets and machine-gun
+balls pattering about us, we did fast work. As
+soon as we had filled the second and third
+sand-bags we placed them on top of the first.
+In Gallipoli every other military necessity was
+subordinated to concealment. Often we could
+complete a trench and occupy it before the
+enemy knew of it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Turks
+use star-shells.</div>
+
+<p>Sometimes while we were digging the Turks
+surprised us by sending up star-shells. They
+burst like rockets high overhead. Everything
+was outlined in a strange, uncanny way that
+gave the effect of stage-fire. At first when a
+man saw a star-shell he dropped flat on his
+face; but after a good many men had been
+riddled by bullets, we saw our mistake. The
+sudden blinding glare makes it impossible to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+identify objects before the light fades. Star-shells
+show only movement. The first stir between
+the lines becomes the target for both
+sides. So after that, even when a man was
+standing upright, he simply stood still.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Aeroplanes'">A&euml;roplanes</ins>
+attacked
+by artillery.</div>
+
+<p>Every afternoon from just behind our lines
+an a&euml;roplane buzzed up. At the tremendous
+height it looked like an immense blue-bottle
+fly. At first the enemy's a&euml;roplanes came out
+to meet ours, but a few encounters with our
+men soon convinced them of the futility of this.
+After that they relied on their artillery. In
+the air all around the tiny speck we could see
+white puffs of smoke where their shrapnel was
+exploding. Sometimes those puffs were perilously
+close to it; at such times our hearts were
+in our mouths. Everybody in the trench
+craned his neck to see. When our a&euml;roplane
+man&#339;uvered clear you could hear a sigh of
+relief run along the trench.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">An air-man's
+adventure.</div>
+
+<p>One of our air-men, Samson, captured a German
+Taube that he used for daily reconnaissance.
+Every day we watched him hover over
+the Turkish lines, circle clear of their bursting
+shrapnel, and return to our artillery with his
+report. One day we watched two hostile planes
+chase him back right to our trench. When
+they came near us we opened rapid fire that
+forced them to turn; but before Samson reached
+his landing-place at Salt Lake we could see
+that he was in trouble; one of the wings of the
+machine was drooping badly. We watched
+him land in safety, saw him jump out of his
+seat, and walk about ten yards to a waiting
+motor-ambulance. The ambulance had just
+turned when a shell hit the a&euml;roplane. A
+second shell blew it to pieces.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A naval
+and
+artillery
+bombardment.</div>
+
+<p>But Samson had completed his mission.
+About half an hour later the navy in the bay
+and our artillery began a bombardment. From
+our trenches, looking through ravines, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+could see the men-of-war lined up pouring
+broadsides over our heads into the Turkish
+lines. From our position in the valley we
+watched our shells demolish the enemy's front-line
+trenches on the hill well to our left.
+Through field-glasses we could see the communication-trenches
+choked with fleeing Turks.
+Some of our artillery concentrated on the support-trenches,
+preventing reinforcements from
+coming up. A mule-train of supplies was
+caught in the curtain of fire. The Turks,
+caught between two fires, could not escape. In
+a few minutes all that was left of the scientifically
+constructed intrenchments was a conglomerate
+heap of sand-bags, equipments, and
+machine-guns; and on top of it all lay the
+mangled bodies of men and mules.</p>
+
+<p>All through the bombardment we had hoped
+for the order to go over the parapet, but for
+the Worcesters on our left was reserved the
+distinction of making the charge. High explosives
+cleared the way for their advance, and
+cheering and yelling they went over the parapet.
+The Turks in the front-line trenches, completely
+demoralized, fled to the rear. A few,
+too weak or too sorely wounded to run, surrendered.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Turk's
+dislike for
+German
+officers.</div>
+
+<p>Prisoners taken in this engagement told us
+that the Turkish rank and file heartily hated
+their German officers. One prisoner said that
+he had been an officer, but since the outbreak of
+this war had been replaced by a German. At
+present the Turks are officered entirely by
+Germans.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Losses
+from
+disease.</div>
+
+<p>With the monotony varied occasionally by
+some local engagement like this we dragged
+through the hot, fly-pestered days and cold,
+drafty, vermin-infested nights of September
+and early October. By the middle of October,
+1915, disease and scarcity of water had depleted
+our ranks; instead of having four days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+on the firing-line and eight days' rest, we were
+holding the firing-line eight days and resting
+only four. In my platoon, of the six non-commissioned
+officers who started with us, only
+two corporals were left, I and one other. For
+a week after he had been ordered by the doctor
+to leave the peninsula the other chap hung on,
+pluckily determined not to leave me alone, although
+staying meant keeping awake nearly
+all night. By this time dysentery and enteric
+had taken toll of more men than bullets. These
+diseases became epidemic until the clearing-stations
+and the beaches were choked with
+sick. The time we should have been sleeping
+was spent in digging, but still the men worked
+uncomplainingly. Some, too game to quit,
+would not report to the doctor, working on
+courageously until they dropped, although
+down in the bay beckoned the Red Cross of
+the hospital-ship, with its assurance of safety,
+rest, and cleanliness. By sickness and snipers'
+bullets we lost thirty men a day. Every day
+the sun poured down relentlessly, adding to
+the torment of parched throats and tongues.
+Every night, doubly cold in comparison with
+the day's burning heat, found us chilled and
+shivering.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+wounded
+considered
+lucky.</div>
+
+<p>Nobody in the front-line trenches or on the
+shell-swept area behind ever expected to leave
+the peninsula alive. Their one hope was to
+get off wounded. Every night men leaving the
+trenches to bring up rations from the beach
+shook hands with their comrades. From every
+ration party of twenty men we always counted
+on losing two. Those who were wounded were
+looked on as lucky. The best thing we could
+wish a man was a "cushy wound," one that
+would not prove fatal. But no one wanted to
+quit. Every day rumors flew through the
+trenches that in four days all the Turks would
+surrender. Men dying from dysentery and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+enteric lingered to see it, but the surrender
+never materialized.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Faith in
+Australians.</div>
+
+<p>We knew that in the particular section of
+trench held by us an advance was hopeless.
+Still, we thought that some other parts of the
+line might advance. There was always faith
+in the invincible Australasians. Early in October,
+1915, had come the news of the British
+advance at Loos. The report that reached us
+said that the enemy on the entire Western
+front had begun to retreat. The Australians,
+catching the Turks napping, took two lines
+of trenches.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The man
+who stood
+on a
+bomb.</div>
+
+<p>By the time I left, the sordid monotony had
+begun to tell on the men. Every day officers
+were besieged with requests for permission to
+go out between the lines to locate snipers.
+When men were wanted for night patrol every
+one volunteered. Ration parties, which had
+formerly been a dread, were now an eagerly
+sought variation. Any change was welcome.
+The thought of being killed had lost its fear.
+Daily intercourse with death had robbed it of
+its horror. One chap had his leg blown off
+from standing on a bomb. Later, in hospital,
+he told me that he felt satisfied. He had always
+wondered what would happen if a man
+stood on a bomb; now he knew. It illustrates
+how the men hated the deadly sameness. Anything
+was better than waiting in the trenches,
+better than being killed without a chance to
+struggle.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Donnelly's
+post on
+Caribou
+Ridge.</div>
+
+<p>The men our regiment lost, although they
+gladly fought a hopeless fight, have not died
+in vain; the foremost advance on the Suvla
+Bay front, Donnelly's Post on Caribou Ridge,
+was made by Newfoundlanders. It is called
+Donnelly's Post because it is here that Lieutenant
+Donnelly won his military cross. The
+hitherto nameless ridge from which the Turkish
+machine-guns poured their concentrated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+death into our trenches stands as a monument
+to the initiative of the Newfoundlanders. It
+is now Caribou Ridge as a recognition of the
+men who wear the deer's-head badge.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Swept by
+machine-guns.</div>
+
+<p>From Caribou Ridge the Turks could enfilade
+parts of our firing-line. For weeks they
+had continued to pick off our men one by one.
+You could almost tell when your turn was
+coming. I know, because from Caribou Ridge
+came the bullet that sent me off the peninsula.
+The machine-guns on Caribou Ridge not only
+swept parts of our trench, but commanded all
+of the intervening ground. Several attempts
+had been made to rush those guns. All had
+failed, held up by the murderous machine-gun
+fire. Under cover of darkness, Lieutenant
+Donnelly, with only eight men, surprised the
+Turks in the post that now bears his name.
+The captured machine-gun he used to repulse
+constantly launched bomb and rifle attacks.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">How
+Donnelly
+surprised
+the Turks.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Deeds of
+great
+heroism.</div>
+
+<p>Just at dusk one evening Donnelly stole out
+to Caribou Ridge and surprised the Turks.
+All night the Turks strove to recover their lost
+ground. Darkness was the Newfoundlanders'
+ally. When reinforcements arrived, Donnelly's
+eight men were reduced to two. Dawn showed
+the havoc wrought by the gallant little group.
+The ground in front of the post was a shambles
+of piled-up Turkish corpses. But daylight
+showed something more to the credit of the
+Newfoundlanders than the mere taking <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'oof'">of</ins> the
+ridge. It showed one of Donnelly's men, Jack
+Hynes, who had crawled away from his companion
+to a point about two hundred yards to
+the left. From here he had all alone kept up
+through the whole night a rapid fire on the
+enemy's flank that duped them into believing
+that we had men there in force. It showed
+Hynes purposely falling back over exposed
+ground to draw the enemy's attention from
+Sergeant Greene, who was coolly making trip<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+after trip between the ridge and our lines,
+carrying a wounded man in his arms every time
+until all our wounded were in safety. Hynes
+and Greene were each given a distinguished-conduct
+medal. None was ever more nobly
+earned.</p>
+
+<p>One Saturday morning near the end of October,
+1915, the brigade major passed through
+our lines. Before we took over the trench the
+occupants of the firing-line threw their refuse
+over the parapet into the short underbrush.
+Since coming in we had made a dump for it.
+I was sent out with five men to remove the
+rubbish from the underbrush to the dump, and
+this despite the fact that a short distance to
+our right we had just lost two men sent over
+the parapet in broad daylight to pick up some
+cans.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+writer is
+wounded.</div>
+
+<p>About nine in the morning we started. It
+was about half-an-hour's work. There was no
+cover for men standing. The small bushes hid
+men lying or sitting. Every little while I gave
+the men a rest, making them sit in the shelter
+of the underbrush. We had almost finished
+when the snipers somewhere on our left began
+to bang at us. I ordered the men to cover, and
+was just pointing out a likely place to young
+Hynes when I felt a dull thud in the left
+shoulder-blade and a sharp pain in my chest.
+Then came a drowsy, languid feeling, and
+I sank down first on my knees, then my head
+dropped over on my chest, and down I went
+like a Mohammedan saying his prayers. Connecting
+the hit in the back with the pain in my
+chest, I concluded that I was done for, and
+can distinctly remember thinking quite calmly
+that I was indeed fortunate to be conscious
+long enough to tell them what to do about my
+will and so forth. I tried to say, "I'm hit,"
+and must have succeeded, because immediately
+I heard my henchman Hynes yell with a frenzied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+oath: "The corporal's struck! Can't you
+see the corporal's struck?" and heard him
+curse the Turk. Then I heard the others say,
+"We must get him in out of this." After that
+I was quite clear-headed, and when three or
+four of the finest boys that ever stepped risked
+their lives to come out over the parapet under
+fire, I was able to tell them how to lift me, and
+when the stretcher-bearers arrived to give me
+first aid I was conscious enough to tell them
+where to look for the wound. Also I became
+angry at the crowd who gathered around to
+watch the dressing and make remarks about the
+amount of blood. I asked them if they thought
+it was a nickel-show. This when I felt almost
+certain I was dying. I don't remember even
+feeling relieved when they told me the bullet
+had not gone through my heart.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hospital
+at Alexandria.</div>
+
+<p>That night I was put on board a hospital-ship,
+and a few days later I was in hospital at
+Alexandria.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The rear-guard
+action.</div>
+
+<p>The night the First Newfoundland Regiment
+landed in Suvla Bay there were about eleven
+hundred of us. In December, 1915, when the
+British forces evacuated Gallipoli, to the remnant
+of our regiment fell the honor of fighting
+the rear-guard action. This is the highest
+recognition a regiment can receive; for the duty
+of the rear-guard in a retreat is to keep the
+enemy from reaching the main body of troops,
+even if this means annihilation for itself. At
+Lemnos island the next day, when the roll was
+called, of the eleven hundred men who landed
+when I did, only one hundred and seventy-one
+answered "Here."</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Copyright, Century Magazine, July, 1916.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The German armies, following the Great Retreat
+from the Marne to the Aisne, and after
+the series of mighty struggles which make up
+the Battle of the Aisne, and the attempts to
+win the Channel ports, continued the efforts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+to break through the British and French lines.
+The British held the strong line of Ypres,
+and in March made gains at Neuve Chapelle.
+In April the Germans made a desperate effort
+to break through at Ypres. There followed the
+Second Battle of Ypres, terrific in itself, but
+especially notable because of the first employment
+by the Germans of poisonous gas.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GAS: SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES</h2>
+
+<h3>COL. E. D. SWINTON</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Second
+Battle of
+Ypres.</div>
+
+<p>Since the last summary there has been a
+sudden development in the situation on our
+front, and very heavy fighting has taken
+place to the north and northeast of Ypres,
+which can be said to have assumed the importance
+of a second battle for that town. With
+the aid of a method of warfare up to now never
+employed by nations sufficiently civilized to
+consider themselves bound by international
+agreements solemnly ratified by themselves,
+and favored by the atmospheric conditions, the
+Germans have put into effect an attack which
+they have evidently contemplated and prepared
+for some time.</p>
+
+<p>Before the battle began our line in this quarter
+ran from the cross-roads at Broodseinde,
+east of Zonnebeke on the Ypres-Moorslede Road
+to the cross-roads half a mile north of St.
+Julien, on the Ypres-Poelcapelle Road, roughly
+following the crest of what is known as the
+Grafenstafel Ridge. The French prolonged the
+line west of the Ypres-Poelcapelle Road, whence
+their trenches ran around the north of Langemarck
+to Steenstraate on the Yperlee Canal.
+The area covered by the initial attack is that
+between the canal and the Ypres-Poelcapelle
+Road, though it was afterward extended to
+the west of the canal and to the east of the
+road.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+plan a
+gas attack.</div>
+
+<p>An effort on the part of the Germans in this
+direction was not unexpected, since movements
+of troops and transport behind their front line
+had been detected for some days. Its peculiar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+and novel nature, however, was a surprise
+which was largely responsible for the measure
+of success achieved. Taking advantage of the
+fact that at this season of the year the wind
+not infrequently blows from the north, they
+secretly brought up apparatus for emitting
+asphyxiating vapor or gas, and distributed it
+along the section of their front line opposite
+that of our allies, west of Langemarck, which
+faced almost due north. Their plan was to
+make a sudden onslaught southwestward,
+which, if successful, might enable them to gain
+the crossings on the canal south of Bixschoote
+and place them well behind the British left in
+a position to threaten Ypres.</p>
+
+<p>The attack was originally fixed for Tuesday,
+the 20th, but since all chances of success depended
+on the action of the asphyxiating vapor
+it was postponed, the weather being unfavorable.
+On Thursday, the 22d, the wind blew
+steadily from the north, and that afternoon,
+all being ready, the Germans put their plan
+into execution. Since then events have moved
+so rapidly and the situation has moved so frequently
+that it is difficult to give a consecutive
+and clear story of what happened, but the following
+account represents as nearly as can be
+the general course of events. The details of
+the gas apparatus employed by them are given
+separately, as also those of the asphyxiating
+grenades, bombs, and shells of which they have
+been throwing hundreds.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The first
+gas battle
+in war.</div>
+
+<p>At some time between 4 and 5 p.m. the Germans
+started operations by releasing gases with
+the result that a cloud of poisonous vapor rolled
+swiftly before the wind from their trenches toward
+those of the French west of Langemarck,
+held by a portion of the French Colonial Division.
+Allowing sufficient time for the fumes to
+take full effect on the troops facing them, the
+Germans charged forward over the practically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+unresisting enemy in their immediate front,
+and, penetrating through the gap thus created,
+pressed on silently and swiftly to the south and
+west. By their sudden irruption they were
+able to overrun and surprise a large proportion
+of the French troops billeted behind the front
+line in this area and to bring some of the French
+guns as well as our own under a hot rifle fire
+at close range.</p>
+
+<p>The first intimation that all was not well to
+the north was conveyed to our troops holding
+the left of the British line between 5 and 6 p.m.
+by the withdrawal of some of the French
+Colonials and the sight of the wall of vapor
+following them. Our flank being thus exposed
+the troops were ordered to retire on St. Julien,
+with their left parallel to but to the west of
+the high road. The splendid resistance of
+these troops, who saved the situation, has
+already been mentioned by the Commander in
+Chief.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bombardment
+by
+shell and
+gas projectiles.</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, apparently waiting till their
+infantry had penetrated well behind the Allies'
+line, the Germans had opened a hot artillery
+fire upon the various tactical points to the
+north of Ypres, the bombardment being carried
+out with ordinary high-explosive shell and
+shrapnel of various calibres and also with
+projectiles containing asphyxiating gas. About
+this period our men in reserve near Ypres, seeing
+the shells bursting, had gathered in groups,
+discussing the situation and questioning some
+scattered bodies of Turcos who had appeared;
+suddenly a staff officer rode up shouting "Stand
+to your arms," and in a few minutes the troops
+had fallen in and were marching northward to
+the scene of the fight.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing more impressive can be imagined
+than the sight of our men falling in quietly in
+perfect order on their alarm posts amid the
+scene of wild confusion caused by the panic-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>stricken
+refugees who swarmed along the
+roads.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Steadiness
+of the
+British.</div>
+
+<p>In the meantime, to the north and northeast
+of the town, a confused fight was taking place,
+which gave proof not only of great gallantry
+and steadiness on the part of the troops referred
+to above, but of remarkable presence of
+mind on the part of their leaders. Behind the
+wall of vapor, which had swept across fields,
+through woods, and over hedgerows, came the
+German firing line, the men's mouths and
+noses, it is stated, protected by pads soaked in
+a solution of bicarbonate of soda. Closely following
+them again came the supports. These
+troops, hurrying forward with their formation
+somewhat broken up by the obstacles encountered
+in their path, looked like a huge mob bearing
+down upon the town. A battery of 4.7-inch
+guns a little beyond the left of our line was
+surprised and overwhelmed by them in a
+moment. Further to the rear and in a more
+easterly direction were several field batteries,
+and before they could come into action the
+Germans were within a few hundred yards.
+Not a gun, however, was lost.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The left
+retires
+slowly.</div>
+
+<p>One battery, taken in flank, swung around,
+fired on the enemy at point-blank range, and
+checked the rush. Another opened fire with
+the guns pointing in almost opposite directions,
+the enemy being on three sides of them. It was
+under the very heavy cannonade opened about
+this time by the Germans, and threatened by
+the advance of vastly superior numbers, that
+our infantry on our left steadily, and without
+any sign of confusion, slowly retired to St.
+Julien, fighting every step.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+reserves
+arrive.</div>
+
+<p>Help was not long in arriving, for some of
+our reserves near Ypres had stood to arms as
+soon as they were aware of the fact that the
+French line had been forced, and the officers
+on their own initiative, without waiting for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+orders, led them forward to meet the advancing
+enemy, who, by this time, were barely
+two miles from the town. These battalions
+attacked the Germans with the bayonet, and
+then ensued a m&ecirc;l&eacute;e, in which our men more
+than held their own, both sides losing very
+heavily.</p>
+
+<p>One German battalion seems to have been
+especially severely handled, the Colonel being
+captured among several other prisoners. Other
+reinforcements were thrown in as they came
+up, and, when night fell, the fighting continued
+by moonlight, our troops driving back
+the enemy by repeated bayonet charges, in
+the course of which our heavy guns were
+recaptured.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+cross
+the canal.</div>
+
+<p>By then the situation was somewhat restored
+in the area immediately north of Ypres. Further
+to the west, however, the enemy had forced
+their way over the canal, occupying Steenstraate
+and the crossing at Het Sast, about
+three-quarters of a mile south of the former
+place, and had established themselves at various
+points on the west bank. All night long the
+shelling continued, and about 1.30 a.m. two
+heavy attacks were made on our line in the
+neighborhood of Broodseinde, east of Zonnebeke.
+These were both repulsed. The bombardment
+of Ypres itself and its neighborhood
+had by now redoubled in intensity and a part
+of the town was in flames.</p>
+
+<p>In the early morning of Friday, the 23d, we
+delivered a strong counter-attack northward
+in co-operation with the French. Our advance
+progressed for some little distance, reaching
+the edge of the wood about half a mile west of
+St. Julien and penetrating it. Here our men
+got into the Germans with the bayonet, and
+the latter suffered heavily. The losses were
+also severe on our side, for the advance had
+to be carried out across the open. But in spite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+of this nothing could exceed the dash with
+which it was conducted. One man&mdash;and his
+case is typical of the spirit shown by the troops&mdash;who
+had had his rifle smashed by a bullet,
+continued to fight with an intrenching tool.
+Even many of the wounded made their way
+out of the fight with some article of German
+equipment as a memento.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+British
+intrench.</div>
+
+<p>About 11 a.m., not being able to progress
+further, our troops dug themselves in, the line
+then running from St. Julien practically due
+west for about a mile, whence it curved southwestward
+before turning north to the canal
+near Boesinghe. Broadly speaking, on the section
+of the front then occupied by us the result
+of the operations had been to remove to
+some extent the wedge which the Germans had
+driven into the allied line, and the immediate
+danger was over.</p>
+
+<p>During the afternoon our counter-attack
+made further progress south of Pilkem, thus
+straightening the line still more. Along the
+canal the fighting raged fiercely, our allies
+making some progress here and there. During
+the night, however, the Germans captured
+Lizerne, a village on the main road from Ypres
+to Steenstraate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+enemy
+throws
+bridges
+across the
+canal.</div>
+
+<p>When the morning of the 24th came the
+situation remained much the same, but the
+enemy, who had thrown several bridges across
+the canal, continued to gain ground to the west.
+On our front the Germans, under cover of their
+gas, made a further attack between 3 and 4
+a.m. to the east of St. Julien and forced back
+a portion of our line. Nothing else in particular
+occurred until about midday, when
+large bodies of the enemy were seen advancing
+down the Ypres-Poelcapelle road toward St.
+Julien. Soon after a very strong attack developed
+against that village and the section of
+the line east of it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A French
+counter-attack.</div>
+
+<p>Under the pressure of these fresh masses our
+troops were compelled to fall back, contesting
+every inch of ground and making repeated
+counter-attacks; but until late at night a
+gallant handful, some 200 to 300 strong, held
+out in St. Julien. During the night the line
+was re-established north of the hamlet of
+Fortuin, about 700 yards further to the rear.
+All this time the fighting along the canal continued,
+the enemy forcing their way across near
+Boesinghe, and holding Het Sase, Steenstraate,
+and Lizerne strongly. The French counter-attacked
+in the afternoon, captured fifty prisoners,
+and made some further progress toward
+Pilkem. The Germans, however, were still holding
+the west bank firmly, although the Belgian
+artillery had broken the bridge behind them at
+Steenstraate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+assaults on
+Broodseinde.</div>
+
+<p>On the morning of Sunday, the fourth day
+of the battle, we made a strong counter-attack
+on St. Julien, which gained some ground but
+was checked in front of the village. To the
+west of it we reached a point a few hundred
+yards south of the wood which had been the
+objective on the 23d and which we had had to
+relinquish subsequently. In the afternoon the
+Germans made repeated assaults in great
+strength on our line near Broodseinde. These
+were backed up by a tremendous artillery bombardment
+under the throwing of asphyxiating
+bombs; but all were beaten off with great
+slaughter to the enemy, and forty-five prisoners
+fell into our hands. When night came the
+situation remained unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>This determined offensive on the part of the
+enemy, although it has menaced Ypres itself,
+has not so far the appearance of a great effort
+to break the line and capture the Channel ports.
+Its initial success was gained by the surprise
+rendered possible by the use of a device which
+Germany pledged herself not to employ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 407px;">
+<a href="images/2-map-big.png"><img src="images/2-map.png" width="407" height="600" alt="THE GAS BATTLE OF YPRES" title="THE GAS BATTLE OF YPRES" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE GAS BATTLE OF YPRES</span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE CANADIANS AT YPRES</h2>
+
+<h3>BY THE CANADIAN
+RECORD OFFICER</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Position
+of the
+Canadian
+Division.</div>
+
+<p>On April 22 the Canadian Division held a
+line of, roughly, 5,000 yards, extending
+in a northwesterly direction from the
+Ypres-Roulers Railway to the Ypres-Poelcapelle
+road, and connecting at its terminus with the
+French troops. The division consisted of three
+infantry brigades, in addition to the artillery
+brigades. Of the infantry brigades the First
+was in reserve, the Second was on the right,
+and the Third established contact with the
+Allies at the point indicated above.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+sudden
+gas
+attack.</div>
+
+<p>The day was a peaceful one, warm and sunny,
+and except that the previous day had witnessed
+a further bombardment of the stricken town of
+Ypres, everything seemed quiet in front of the
+Canadian line. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon
+a plan, carefully prepared, was put into execution
+against our French allies on the left.
+Asphyxiating gas of great intensity was projected
+into their trenches, probably by means of
+force pumps and pipes laid out under the parapets.
+The fumes, aided by a favorable wind,
+floated backward, poisoning and disabling over
+an extended area those who fell under their
+effect.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+French
+give
+ground.</div>
+
+<p>The result was that the French were compelled
+to give ground for a considerable distance.
+The glory which the French Army has
+won in this war would make it impertinent to
+labor the compelling nature of the poisonous
+discharges under which the trenches were lost.
+The French did, as every one knew they would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+do, all that stout soldiers could do, and the
+Canadian Division, officers and men, look forward
+to many occasions in the future in which
+they will stand side by side with the brave
+armies of France.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate consequences of this enforced
+withdrawal were, of course, extremely grave.
+The Third Brigade of the Canadian Division
+was without any left, or, in other words, its
+left was in the air.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gap
+on the
+Canadian
+left.</div>
+
+<p>It became imperatively necessary greatly to
+extend the Canadian lines to the left rear. It
+was not, of course, practicable to move the
+First Brigade from reserve at a moment's
+notice, and the line, extending from 5,000 to
+9,000 yards, was naturally not the line that
+had been held by the Allies at 5 o'clock, and
+a gap still existed on its left.</p>
+
+<p>It became necessary for Brigadier General
+Turner, commanding the Third Brigade, to
+throw back his left flank southward to protect
+his rear.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the confusion which followed
+upon the readjustments of position, the
+enemy, who had advanced rapidly after his
+initial successes, took four British 4.7 guns in
+a small wood to the west of the village of St.
+Julien, two miles in the rear of the original
+French trenches.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Heroism
+of the
+Canadian
+Division.</div>
+
+<p>The story of the second battle of Ypres is
+the story of how the Canadian Division, enormously
+outnumbered&mdash;for they had in front of
+them at least four divisions, supported by immensely
+heavy artillery&mdash;with a gap still existing,
+though reduced, in their lines, and with
+dispositions made hurriedly under the stimulus
+of critical danger, fought through the day and
+through the night, and then through another
+day and night; fought under their officers until,
+as happened to so many, those perished gloriously,
+and then fought from the impulsion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+sheer valor because they came from fighting
+stock.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy, of course, was aware&mdash;whether
+fully or not may perhaps be doubted&mdash;of the
+advantage his breach in the line had given him,
+and immediately began to push a formidable
+series of attacks upon the whole of the newly-formed
+Canadian salient. If it is possible to
+distinguish when the attack was everywhere so
+fierce, it developed with particular intensity at
+this moment upon the apex of the newly formed
+line, running in the direction of St. Julien.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Assault
+on the
+wood.</div>
+
+<p>It has already been stated that four British
+guns were taken in a wood comparatively early
+in the evening of the 22d. In the course of that
+night, and under the heaviest machine-gun fire,
+this wood was assaulted by the Canadian Scottish,
+Sixteenth Battalion of the Third Brigade,
+and the Tenth Battalion of the Second Brigade,
+which was intercepted for this purpose on its
+way to a reserve trench. The battalions were
+respectively commanded by Lieutenant Colonel
+Leckie and Lieutenant Colonel Boyle, and after
+a most fierce struggle in the light of a misty
+moon they took the position at the point of the
+bayonet. At midnight the Second Battalion,
+under Colonel Watson, and the Toronto Regiment,
+Queen's Own, Third Battalion, under
+Lieutenant Colonel Rennie, both of the First
+Brigade, brought up much-needed reinforcement,
+and though not actually engaged in the
+assault were in reserve.</p>
+
+<p>All through the following days and nights
+these battalions shared the fortunes and misfortunes
+of the Third Brigade. An officer who
+took part in the attack describes how the men
+about him fell under the fire of the machine
+guns, which, in his phrase, played upon them
+"like a watering pot." He added quite simply,
+"I wrote my own life off." But the line never
+wavered. When one man fell another took his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+place, and with a final shout the survivors of
+the two battalions flung themselves into the
+wood. The German garrison was completely
+demoralized, and the impetuous advance of the
+Canadians did not cease until they reached the
+far side of the wood and intrenched themselves
+there in the position so dearly gained. They
+had, however, the disappointment of finding
+that the guns had been <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'blow'">blown</ins> up by the enemy,
+and later on in the same night a most formidable
+concentration of artillery fire, sweeping
+the wood as a tropical storm sweeps the leaves
+from a forest, made it impossible for them to
+hold the position for which they had sacrificed
+so much.</p>
+
+<p>The fighting continued without intermission
+all through the night, and, to those who observed
+the indications that the attack was being
+pushed with ever-growing strength, it hardly
+seemed possible that the Canadians, fighting
+in positions so difficult to defend and so
+little the subject of deliberate choice, could
+maintain their resistance for any long period.
+At 6 A. M. on Friday it became apparent that
+the left was becoming more and more involved,
+and a powerful German attempt to outflank
+it developed rapidly. The consequences, if it
+had been broken or outflanked, need not be insisted
+upon. They were not merely local.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Counter-attack
+on
+German lines.</div>
+
+<p>It was therefore decided, formidable as the
+attempt undoubtedly was, to try and give relief
+by a counter-attack upon the first line of
+German trenches, now far, far advanced from
+those originally occupied by the French. This
+was carried out by the Ontario First and
+Fourth Battalions of the First Brigade, under
+Brigadier General Mercer, acting in combination
+with a British brigade.</p>
+
+<p>It is safe to say that the youngest private
+in the rank, as he set his teeth for the advance,
+knew the task in front of him, and the youngest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+subaltern knew all that rested upon its
+success. It did not seem that any human being
+could live in the shower of shot and shell
+which began to play upon the advancing troops.
+They suffered terrible casualties. For a short
+time every other man seemed to fall, but the
+attack was pressed ever closer and closer.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy's
+first line
+trenches
+taken.</div>
+
+<p>The Fourth Canadian Battalion at one
+moment came under a particularly withering
+fire. For a moment&mdash;not more&mdash;it wavered.
+Its most gallant commanding officer, Lieutenant
+Colonel Burchill, carrying, after an old
+fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully
+rallied his men and, at the very moment when
+his example had infected them, fell dead at the
+head of his battalion. With a hoarse cry of
+anger they sprang forward, (for, indeed, they
+loved him,) as if to avenge his death. The
+astonishing attack which followed&mdash;pushed
+home in the face of direct frontal fire made
+in broad daylight by battalions whose names
+should live for ever in the memories of soldiers&mdash;was
+carried to the first line of German
+trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the
+last German who resisted was bayoneted, and
+the trench was won.</p>
+
+<p>The measure of this success may be taken
+when it is pointed out that this trench represented
+in the German advance the apex in
+the breach which the enemy had made in the
+original line of the Allies, and that it was two
+and a half miles south of that line. This
+charge, made by men who looked death indifferently
+in the face, (for no man who took part
+in it could think that he was likely to live,)
+saved, and that was much, the Canadian left.
+But it did more. Up to the point where the assailants
+conquered, or died, it secured and
+maintained during the most critical moment
+of all the integrity of the allied line. For the
+trench was not only taken, it was held thereafter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+against all comers, and in the teeth of
+every conceivable projectile, until the night of
+Sunday, the 25th, when all that remained of
+the war-broken but victorious battalions was
+relieved by fresh troops.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+poisonous
+gas
+attack.</div>
+
+<p>It is necessary now to return to the fortunes
+of the Third Brigade, commanded by Brigadier
+General Turner, which, as we have seen, at 5
+o'clock on Thursday was holding the Canadian
+left, and after the first attack assumed the defense
+of the new Canadian salient, at the same
+time sparing all the men it could to form an extemporized
+line between the wood and St.
+Julien. This brigade also was at the first moment
+of the German offensive, made the object
+of an attack by the discharge of poisonous gas.
+The discharge was followed by two enemy
+assaults. Although the fumes were extremely
+poisonous, they were not, perhaps having regard
+to the wind, so disabling as on the French
+lines, (which ran almost east to west,) and the
+brigade, though affected by the fumes, stoutly
+beat back the two German assaults.</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by this success, it rose to the
+supreme effort required by the assault on the
+wood, which has already been described. At
+4 o'clock on the morning of Friday, the 23d,
+a fresh emission of gas was made both upon
+the Second Brigade, which held the line running
+northeast, and upon the Third Brigade,
+which, as has been fully explained, had continued
+the line up to the pivotal point, as defined
+above, and had then spread down in a
+southeasterly direction. It is, perhaps, worth
+mentioning that two privates of the Forty-eighth
+Highlanders who found their way into
+the trenches commanded by Colonel Lipsett,
+Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth Battalion,
+perished in the fumes, and it was noticed that
+their faces became blue immediately after dissolution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A brief
+retirement.</div>
+
+<p>The Royal Highlanders of Montreal, Thirteenth
+Battalion, and the Forty-eighth Highlanders,
+Fifteenth Battalion, were more especially
+affected by the discharge. The Royal
+Highlanders, though considerably shaken, remained
+immovable upon their ground. The
+Forty-eighth Highlanders, which, no doubt, received
+a more poisonous discharge, was for the
+moment dismayed, and, indeed, their trench,
+according to the testimony of very hardened
+soldiers, became intolerable. The battalion retired
+from the trench, but for a very short distance,
+and for an equally short time, in a few
+moments they were again their own men. They
+advanced upon and occupied the trenches
+which they had momentarily abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the same night the Third
+Brigade, which had already displayed a resource,
+a gallantry, and a tenacity for which
+no eulogy could be excessive, was exposed
+(and with it the whole allied case) to a peril
+still more formidable.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+pass gap
+on left.</div>
+
+<p>It has been explained, and, indeed, the fundamental
+situation made the peril clear, that
+several German divisions were attempting to
+crush or drive back this devoted brigade, and
+in any event to use their enormous numerical
+superiority to sweep around and overwhelm
+its left wing. At some point in the line which
+cannot be precisely determined the last attempt
+partially succeeded, and in the course
+of this critical struggle German troops in considerable
+though not in overwhelming numbers
+swung past the unsupported left of the
+brigade, and, slipping in between the wood
+and St. Julien, added to the torturing anxieties
+of the long-drawn struggle by the appearance,
+and indeed for the moment the reality,
+of isolation from the brigade base.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Royal
+Highlanders of
+Montreal.</div>
+
+<p>In the exertions made by the Third Brigade
+during this supreme crisis it is almost impossible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+to single out one battalion without injustice
+to others, but though the efforts of the
+Royal Highlanders of Montreal, Thirteenth
+Battalion, were only equal to those of the other
+battalions who did such heroic service, it so
+happened by chance that the fate of some of
+its officers attracted special attention.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Death of
+Captain
+McCuaig.</div>
+
+<p>Major Norsworth, already almost disabled
+by a bullet wound, was bayoneted and killed
+while he was rallying his men with easy cheerfulness.
+The case of Captain McCuaig, of the
+same battalion, was not less glorious, although
+his death can claim no witness. This most
+gallant officer was seriously wounded, in a
+hurriedly constructed trench, at a moment
+when it would have been possible to remove
+him to safety. He absolutely refused to move
+and continued in the discharge of his duty.</p>
+
+<p>But the situation grew constantly worse,
+and peremptory orders were received for an
+immediate withdrawal. Those who were compelled
+to obey them were most insistent to
+carry with them, at whatever risk to their
+own mobility and safety, an officer to whom
+they were devotedly attached. But he, knowing,
+it may be, better than they, the exertions
+which still lay in front of them, and unwilling
+to inflict upon them the disabilities of a
+maimed man, very resolutely refused, and
+asked of them one thing only, that there should
+be given to him, as he lay alone in the trench,
+two loaded Colt revolvers to add to his own,
+which lay in his right hand as he made his
+last request. And so, with three revolvers
+ready to his hand for use, a very brave officer
+waited to sell his life, wounded and racked
+with pain, in an abandoned trench.</p>
+
+<p>On Friday afternoon the left of the Canadian
+line was strengthened by important reinforcements
+of British troops amounting to
+seven battalions. From this time forward the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+Canadians also continued to receive further
+assistance on the left from a series of French
+counter-attacks pushed in a northeasterly
+direction from the canal bank.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+defenders
+give
+ground.</div>
+
+<p>But the artillery fire of the enemy continually
+grew in intensity, and it became more and
+more evident that the Canadian salient could
+no longer be maintained against the overwhelming
+superiority of numbers by which it
+was assailed. Slowly, stubbornly, and contesting
+every yard, the defenders gave ground until
+the salient gradually receded from the apex,
+near the point where it had originally aligned
+with the French, and fell back upon St. Julien.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+enemy in
+St. Julien.</div>
+
+<p>Soon it became evident that even St. Julien,
+exposed to fire from right and left, was no
+longer tenable in the fact of overwhelming
+numerical superiority. The Third Brigade was
+therefore ordered to retreat further south, selling
+every yard of ground as dearly as it had
+done since 5 o'clock on Thursday. But it was
+found impossible, without hazarding far larger
+forces, to disentangle the detachment of the
+Royal Highlanders of Montreal, Thirteenth
+Battalion, and of the Royal Montreal Regiment,
+Fourteenth Battalion. The brigade was
+ordered, and not a moment too soon, to move
+back. It left these units with hearts as heavy
+as those with which his comrades had said farewell
+to Captain McCuaig. The German tide
+rolled, indeed, over the deserted village, but
+for several hours after the enemy had become
+master of the village the sullen and persistent
+rifle fire which survived showed that they were
+not yet master of the Canadian rearguard. If
+they died, they died worthily of Canada.</p>
+
+<p>The enforced retirement of the Third Brigade
+(and to have stayed longer would have
+been madness) reproduced for the Second Brigade,
+commanded by Brigadier General Curry,
+in a singularly exact fashion, the position of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+the Third Brigade itself at the moment of the
+withdrawal of the French. The Second Brigade,
+it must be remembered, had retained the
+whole line of trenches, roughly 2,500 yards,
+which it was holding at 5 o'clock on Thursday
+afternoon, supported by the incomparable exertions
+of the Third Brigade, and by the highly
+hazardous employment in which necessity had
+involved that brigade. The Second Brigade
+had maintained its lines.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Curry's
+maneuvres.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lieutenant
+Colonel Lipsett
+holds
+the left.</div>
+
+<p>It now devolved upon General Curry, commanding
+this brigade, to reproduce the tactical
+maneuvres with which, earlier in the fight, the
+Third Brigade had adapted itself to the flank
+movement of overwhelming numerical superiority.
+He flung his left flank around south,
+and his record is, that in the very crisis of this
+immense struggle he held his line of trenches
+from Thursday at 5 o'clock till Sunday afternoon.
+And on Sunday afternoon he had not
+abandoned his trenches. There were none left.
+They had been obliterated by artillery. He
+withdrew his undefeated troops from the fragments
+of his field fortifications, and the hearts
+of his men were as completely unbroken as
+the parapets of his trenches were completely
+broken. In such a brigade it is invidious to
+single out any battalion for special praise, but
+it is, perhaps, necessary to the story to point
+out that Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett, commanding
+the Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth
+Battalion of the Second Brigade, held the extreme
+left of the brigade position at the most
+critical moment.</p>
+
+<p>The battalion was expelled from the trenches
+early on Friday morning by an emission of
+poisonous gas, but, recovering in three-quarters
+of an hour, it counter-attacked, retook the
+trenches it had abandoned, and bayoneted the
+enemy. And after the Third Brigade had been
+forced to retire Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett held<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+his position, though his left was in the air,
+until two British regiments filled up the gap on
+Saturday night.</p>
+
+<p>The individual fortunes of these two brigades
+have brought us to the events of Sunday
+afternoon, but it is necessary, to make the
+story complete, to recur for a moment to the
+events of the morning. After a very formidable
+attack the enemy succeeded in capturing
+the village of St. Julien, which has so often
+been referred to in describing the fortunes of
+the Canadian left. This success opened up a
+new and formidable line of advance, but by
+this time further reinforcements had arrived.
+Here, again, it became evident that the tactical
+necessities of the situation dictated an offensive
+movement as the surest method of arresting
+further progress.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cheers
+for the
+Canadians.</div>
+
+<p>General Alderson, who was in command of
+the reinforcements, accordingly directed that
+an advance should be made by a British brigade
+which had been brought up in support.
+The attack was thrust through the Canadian
+left and centre, and as the troops making it
+swept on, many of them going to certain death,
+they paused an instant, and, with deep-throated
+cheers for Canada, gave the first indication
+to the division of the warm admiration
+which their exertions had excited in the
+British Army.</p>
+
+<p>The advance was indeed costly, but it could
+not be gainsaid. The story is one of which the
+brigade may be proud, but it does not belong
+to the special account of the fortunes of the
+Canadian contingent. It is sufficient for our
+purpose to notice that the attack succeeded in
+its object, and the German advance along the
+line, momentarily threatened, was arrested.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Second
+and Third
+Brigades
+relieved.</div>
+
+<p>We had reached, in describing the events of
+the afternoon, the points at which the trenches
+of the Second Brigade had been completely destroyed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+This brigade, the Third Brigade, and
+the considerable reinforcements which this
+time filled the gap between the two brigades
+were gradually driven fighting every yard
+upon a line running, roughly, from Fortuin,
+south of St. Julien, in a northeasterly direction
+toward Passchendaele. Here the two brigades
+were relieved by two British brigades, after
+exertions as glorious, as fruitful, and, alas! as
+costly as soldiers have ever been called upon
+to make.</p>
+
+<p>Monday morning broke bright and clear and
+found the Canadians behind the firing line.
+This day, too, was to bring its anxieties. The
+attack was still pressed, and it became necessary
+to ask Brigadier General Curry whether
+he could once more call upon his shrunken brigade.
+"The men are tired," this indomitable
+soldier replied, "but they are ready and glad to
+go again to the trenches." And so once more, a
+hero leading heroes, the General marched back
+the men of the Second Brigade, reduced to a
+quarter of its original strength, to the very
+apex of the line as it existed at that moment.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Back
+to the
+apex of
+the line.</div>
+
+<p>This position he held all day Monday; on
+Tuesday he was still occupying the reserve
+trenches, and on Wednesday was relieved and
+retired to billets in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>Such, in the most general outline, is the
+story of a great and glorious feat of arms. A
+story told so soon after the event, while rendering
+bare justice to units whose doings fell
+under the eyes of particular observers, must do
+less than justice to others who played their
+part&mdash;and all did&mdash;as gloriously as those
+whose special activities it is possible, even at
+this stage, to describe. But the friends of men
+who fought in other battalions may be content
+in the knowledge that they, too, shall
+learn, when time allows the complete correlation
+of diaries, the exact part which each unit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+played in these unforgettable days. It is rather
+accident than special distinction which had
+made it possible to select individual battalions
+for mention.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Signalers
+and dispatch
+carriers.</div>
+
+<p>It would not be right to close even this account
+without a word of tribute to the auxiliary
+services. The signalers were always cool
+and resourceful. The telegraph and telephone
+wires being constantly cut, many belonging to
+this service rendered up their lives in the discharge
+of their duty, carrying out repairs with
+the most complete calmness in exposed positions.
+The dispatch carriers, as usual, behaved
+with the greatest bravery. Theirs is a lonely
+life, and very often a lonely death. One cycle
+messenger lay upon the ground, badly
+wounded. He stopped a passing officer and delivered
+his message, together with some verbal
+instructions. These were coherently given, but
+he swooned almost before the words were out
+of his mouth.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Artillery
+and engineers.</div>
+
+<p>The artillery never flagged in the sleepless
+struggle in which so much depended upon its
+exertions. Not a Canadian gun was lost in
+the long battle of retreat. And the nature of
+the position renders such a record very remarkable.
+One battery of four guns found itself
+in such a situation that it was compelled
+to turn two of its guns directly about and fire
+upon the enemy in positions almost diametrically
+opposite.</p>
+
+<p>It is not possible in this account to attempt
+a description of the services rendered by the
+Canadian Engineers or the Medical Corps.
+Their members rivaled in coolness, endurance,
+and valor the Canadian infantry, whose comrades
+they were, and it is hoped in separate
+communications to do justice to both these
+brilliant services.</p>
+
+<p>No attempt has been made in this description
+to explain the recent operations except in so far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+as they spring from, or are connected with,
+the fortunes of the Canadian Division. It is
+certain that the exertions of the troops who
+reinforced and later relieved the Canadians
+were not less glorious, but the long, drawn-out
+struggle is a lesson to the whole empire. "Arise,
+O Israel!" The empire is engaged in a struggle,
+without quarter and without compromise,
+against an enemy still superbly organized, still
+immensely powerful, still confident that its
+strength is the mate of its necessities. To
+arms, then, and still to arms! In Great Britain,
+in Canada, in Australia there is need, and
+there is need now, of a community organized
+alike in military and industrial co-operation.</p>
+
+<p>That our countrymen in Canada, even while
+their hearts are still bleeding, will answer
+every call which is made upon them, we well
+know.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Canadian
+graveyard in
+Flanders.</div>
+
+<p>The graveyard of Canada in Flanders is
+large; it is very large. Those who lie there
+have left their mortal remains on alien soil.
+To Canada they have bequeathed their memories
+and their glory.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+On Fame's eternal camping ground<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their silent tents are spread,</span><br />
+And Glory guards with solemn round<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The bivouac of the dead.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Assaults accompanied with gas were not
+made on every position of the front held by the
+British to the north of Ypres at the same time.
+At one point it was not until the early morning
+of Saturday, April 24, that the Germans
+brought this method into operation against a
+section of our line not far from our left flank.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Germans
+fire poison
+gas shells.</div>
+
+<p>Late on Thursday afternoon the men here
+saw portions of the French retiring some distance
+to the west, and observed the cloud of
+vapor rolling along the ground southward behind
+them. Our position was then shelled with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+high explosives until 8 P.M. On Friday also
+it was bombarded for some hours, the Germans
+firing poison shells for one hour. Their infantry,
+who were intrenched about 120 yards
+away, evidently expected some result from their
+use of the latter, for they put their heads above
+the parapets, as if to see what the effect had
+been on our men, and at intervals opened rapid
+rifle fire. The wind, however, was strong and
+dissipated the fumes quickly, our troops did
+not suffer seriously from their noxious effect,
+and the enemy did not attempt any advance.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Stupefying
+gas
+employed.</div>
+
+<p>On Saturday morning, just about dawn, an
+airship appeared in the sky to the east of our
+line at this point, and dropped four red stars,
+which floated downward slowly for some distance
+before they died out. When our men,
+whose eyes had not unnaturally been fixed on
+this display of pyrotechnics, again turned to
+their front it was to find the German trenches
+rendered invisible by a wall of greenish-yellow
+vapor, similar to that observed on the Thursday
+afternoon, which was bearing down on
+them on the breeze. Through this the Germans
+started shooting. During Saturday they employed
+stupefying gas on several occasions in
+this quarter, but did not press on very quickly.
+One reason for this, given by a German
+prisoner, is that many of the enemy's infantry
+were so affected by the fumes that they could
+not advance.</p>
+
+<p>To continue the narrative from the night of
+Sunday, April 25. At 12:30 A. M., in face of
+repeated attacks, our infantry fell back from
+a part of the Grafenstafel Ridge, northwest of
+Zonnebeke, and the line then ran for some distance
+along the south bank of the little Haanebeek
+stream. The situation along the Yperlee
+Canal remained practically unchanged.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Line
+pierced at
+Broodseinde.</div>
+
+<p>When the morning of the 26th dawned the
+Germans, who had been seen massing in St.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+Julien, and to the east of the village on the
+previous evening, made several assaults, which
+grew more and more fierce as the hours passed,
+but reinforcements were sent up and the position
+was secured. Further east, however, our
+line was pierced near Broodseinde, and a small
+body of the enemy established themselves in a
+portion of our trenches. In the afternoon a
+strong, combined counter-attack was delivered
+by the French and British along the whole
+front from Steenstraate to the east of St.
+Julien, accompanied by a violent bombardment.
+This moment, so far as can be judged
+at present, marked the turning point of the
+battle, for, although it effected no great change
+in the situation, it caused a definite check to
+the enemy's offensive, relieved the pressure, and
+gained a certain amount of ground.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Attack
+near St.
+Julien.</div>
+
+<p>During this counter-attack the guns concentrated
+by both sides on this comparatively
+narrow front poured in a great volume of fire.
+From the right came the roar of the British
+batteries, from the left the rolling thunder of
+the <i>soixante-quinze</i>, and every now and then
+above the turmoil rose a dull boom as a huge
+howitzer shell burst in the vicinity of Ypres.
+On the right our infantry stormed the German
+trenches close to St. Julien, and in the evening
+gained the southern outskirts of the village.
+In the centre they captured the trenches a
+little to the south of the Bois des Cuisinirs,
+west of St. Julien, and still further west more
+trenches were taken. This represented an advance
+of some 600 or 700 yards, but the gain
+in ground could not at all points be maintained.
+Opposite St. Julien we fell back from the
+village to a position just south of the place,
+and in front of the Bois des Cuisinirs and on
+the left of the line a similar retirement took
+place, the enemy making extensive use of his
+gas cylinders and of machine guns placed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+farms or at other points of vantage. None the
+less, the situation at nightfall was more satisfactory
+than it had been. We were holding our
+own well all along the line and had made progress
+at some points. On the right the enemy's
+attacks on the front of the Grafenstafel Ridge
+had all been repulsed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+lines.</div>
+
+<p>In the meantime the French had achieved
+some success, having retaken Lizerne and also
+the trenches round Het Sast, captured some
+250 prisoners, and made progress all along the
+west bank of the canal. Heavy as our losses
+were during the day, there is little doubt that
+the enemy suffered terribly. Both sides were
+attacking at different points, the fighting was
+conducted very largely in the open, and the
+close formations of the Germans on several occasions
+presented excellent targets to our artillery,
+which did not fail to seize its opportunities.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in particular occurred during the
+night.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The new
+battle
+lines.</div>
+
+<p>The morning of the 27th found our troops
+occupying the following positions; North of
+Zonnebeke the right of the line still held the
+eastern end of the Grafenstafel Ridge, but from
+here it bent southwestward behind the Haanebeek
+stream, which it followed to a point about
+half a mile east of St. Julien. Thence it curved
+back again to the Vamheule Farm, on the
+Ypres-Poelcappelle road, running from here in
+a slight southerly curve to a point a little west
+of the Ypres-Langemarck road, where it joined
+the French. In the last mentioned quarter of
+the field it followed generally the line of a low
+ridge running from west to east. On the
+French front the Germans had been cleared
+from the west bank of the canal, except at one
+point, Steenstraate, where they continued to
+hold the bridgehead.</p>
+
+<p>About 1 P. M. a counter-attack was made by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+us all along the line between the canal and the
+Ypres-Poelcappelle road, and for about an hour
+we continued to make progress. Then the right
+and centre were checked. A little later the left
+was also held up, and the situation remained
+very much as it had been on the previous day.
+The Germans were doubtless much encouraged
+by their initial success, and their previous boldness
+in attack was now matched by the stubborn
+manner in which they clung on to their
+positions. In the evening the French stormed
+some trenches east of the canal, but were again
+checked by the enemy's gas cylinders.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+exhaustion.</div>
+
+<p>The night passed quietly, and was spent by
+us in reorganizing and consolidating our positions.
+The enemy did not interfere. This is
+not surprising, in view of the fact that by
+Tuesday evening they had been fighting for
+over five days. Their state of exhaustion is confirmed
+by the statements of the prisoners captured
+by the French, who also reported that
+the German losses had been very heavy.</p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday, the 28th, there was a complete
+lull on this sector of our line, and the
+shelling was less severe. Some fighting, however,
+occurred along the canal, the French
+taking over 100 prisoners.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Air
+battles.</div>
+
+<p>Nothing of any importance has occurred on
+other parts of the front. On the 27th at the
+Railway Triangle opposite Guinchy, the south
+side of the embankment held by the Germans
+was blown up by our miners. On the 28th a
+hostile aeroplane was forced to descend by our
+anti-aircraft guns. On coming down in rear of
+the German lines, it was at once fired upon and
+destroyed by our field artillery. Another
+hostile machine was brought down by rifle fire
+near Zonnebeke.</p>
+
+<p>Splendid work has been done during the past
+few days by our airmen, who have kept all the
+area behind the hostile lines under close observation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+On the 26th they bombed the stations
+of Staden, Thielt, Courtrai, Roubaix, and
+other places, and located an armored train near
+Langemarck, which was subsequently shelled
+and forced to retire. There have been several
+successful conflicts in the air, on one occasion a
+pilot in a single seater chasing a German machine
+to Roulers, and forcing it to land.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Raid on
+Courtrai</div>
+
+<p>The raid on Courtrai unfortunately cost the
+nation a very gallant life, but it will live as one
+of the most heroic episodes of the war. The
+airman started on the enterprise alone in a
+biplane. On arrival at Courtrai he glided down
+to a height of 300 feet and dropped a large
+bomb on the railway junction. While he did this
+he was the target of hundreds of rifles, of machine
+guns, and of anti-aircraft armament, and
+was severely wounded in the thigh. Though he
+might have saved his life by at once coming
+down in the enemy's lines, he decided to save
+his machine at all costs, and made for the British
+lines. Descending to a height of only 100
+feet in order to increase his speed, he continued
+to fly and was again wounded, this time
+mortally. He still flew on, however, and without
+coming down at the nearest of our aerodromes
+went all the way back to his own base,
+where he executed a perfect landing and made
+his report. He died in hospital not long afterward.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Steadiness
+of the
+Canadians.</div>
+
+<p>The outstanding feature of the action of the
+past week has been the steadiness of our troops
+on the extreme left; but of the deeds of individual
+gallantry and devotion which have
+been performed it would be impossible to narrate
+one-hundredth part. At one place in this
+quarter a machine gun was stationed in the
+angle of a trench when the German rush took
+place. One man after another of the detachment
+was shot, but the gun still continued in
+action, through five bodies lay around it. When<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+the sixth man took the place of his fallen comrades,
+of whom one was his brother, the Germans
+were still pressing on. He waited until
+they were only a few yards away, and then
+poured a stream of bullets on to the advancing
+ranks, which broke and fell back, leaving
+rows of dead. He was then wounded himself.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Telephone
+wires cut.</div>
+
+<p>Under the hot fire to which our batteries
+were subjected in the early part of the engagement
+telephone wires were repeatedly cut. The
+wire connecting one battery with its observing
+officer was severed on nine separate occasions,
+and on each occasion repaired by a Sergeant,
+who did the work out in the open under a perfect
+hail of shells.</p>
+
+<p>About 5 P. M. a dense cloud of suffocating
+vapors was launched from their trenches along
+the whole front held by the French right and
+by our left from the Ypres-Langemarck road to
+a considerable distance east of St. Julien. The
+fumes did not carry much beyond our front
+trenches. But these were to a great extent
+rendered untenable, and a retirement from
+them was ordered.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Strange
+appearance
+of
+gas battle.</div>
+
+<p>No sooner had this started than the enemy
+opened a violent bombardment with asphyxiating
+shells and shrapnel on our trenches and on
+our infantry as they were withdrawing. Meanwhile
+our guns had not been idle. From a distance,
+perhaps owing to some peculiarity of the
+light, the gas on this occasion looked like a
+great reddish cloud, and the moment it was seen
+our batteries poured a concentrated fire on the
+German trenches.</p>
+
+<p>Curious situations then arose between us and
+the enemy. The poison belt, the upper part
+shredding into thick wreaths of vapor as
+it was shaken by the wind, and the lower
+and denser part sinking into all inequalities
+of the ground, rolled slowly down the trenches.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+Shells would rend it for a moment, but it only
+settled down again as thickly as before.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the German infantry faced it,
+and they faced a hail of shrapnel as well. In
+some cases where the gas had not reached our
+lines our troops held firm and shot through
+the cloud at the advancing Germans. In other
+cases the men holding the front line managed
+to move to the flank, where they were more or
+less beyond the affected area. Here they waited
+until the enemy came on and then bayoneted
+them when they reached our trenches.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A charge
+through
+the gas.</div>
+
+<p>On the extreme left our supports waited
+until the vapor reached our trenches, when
+they charged through it and met the advancing
+Germans with the bayonet as they swarmed
+over the parapets.</p>
+
+<p>South of St. Julien the denseness of the
+vapor compelled us to evacuate trenches, but
+reinforcements arrived who charged the enemy
+before they could establish themselves in position.
+In every case the assaults failed completely.
+Large numbers were mown down by
+our artillery. Men were seen falling and others
+scattering and running back to their own lines.
+Many who reached the gas cloud could not
+make their way through it, and in all probability
+a great number of the wounded perished
+from the fumes.</p>
+
+<p>It is to that extent, from a military standpoint,
+a sign of weakness. Another sign of
+weakness is the adoption of illegal methods of
+fighting, such as spreading poisonous gas. It
+is a confession by the Germans that they have
+lost their former great superiority in artillery
+and are, at any cost, seeking another technical
+advantage over their enemy as a substitute.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+enemy
+sticks at
+nothing.</div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, this spirit, this determination
+on the part of our enemies to stick at nothing
+must not be underestimated. Though it may
+not pay the Germans in the long run, it renders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+it all the more obvious that they are a foe that
+can be overcome only by the force of overwhelming
+numbers of men and guns.</p>
+
+<p>Further to the east a similar attack was
+made about 7 P. M. which seems to have been
+attended with even less success, and the assaulting
+infantry was at once beaten back by our artillery
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before all our trenches were
+reoccupied and the whole line reestablished in
+its original position. The attack on the French
+met with the same result.</p>
+
+<p>Prisoners captured in the recent fighting, the
+narrative continues, stated that one German
+corps lost 80 per cent. of its men in the first
+week; that the losses from our artillery fire,
+even during days when no attacks were taking
+place, had been very heavy and that many of
+their own men had suffered from the effects of
+the gas.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+gains due
+to poison
+gas.</div>
+
+<p>In regard to the recent fighting on our left,
+the German offensive, effected in the first instance
+by surprise, resulted in a considerable
+gain of ground for the enemy. Between all
+the earlier German efforts, the only difference
+was that on this latest occasion the attempt
+was carried out with the aid of poisonous gases.</p>
+
+<p>There is no reason why we should not expect
+similar tactics in the future. They do
+not mean that the Allies have lost the initiative
+in the Western theatre, nor that they are likely
+to lose it. They do mean, however, and the fact
+has been repeatedly pointed out, that the
+enemy's defensive is an active one, that his confidence
+is still unshaken and that he still is
+able to strike in some strength where he sees
+the chance or where mere local advantage can
+be secured.</p>
+
+<p>The true idea of the meaning of the operations
+of the Allies can be gained only by bearing
+in mind that it is their primary object to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+bring about the exhaustion of the enemy's resources
+in men.</p>
+
+<p>In the form now assumed by this struggle&mdash;a
+war of attrition&mdash;the Germans are bound
+ultimately to lose, and it is the consciousness
+of this fact that inspires their present policy.
+This is to achieve as early as possible some
+success of sufficient magnitude to influence the
+neutrals, to discourage the Allies, to make them
+weary of the struggle and to induce the belief
+among the people ignorant of war that nothing
+has been gained by the past efforts of the Allies
+because the Germans have not yet been driven
+back. It is being undertaken with a political
+rather than a strategical object.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Violent
+artillery
+fire.</div>
+
+<p>The calm that prevailed Thursday and Friday
+proved to be only the lull before the storm.
+Early Saturday morning it became apparent
+that the Germans were preparing an attack in
+strength against our line running east and
+northeast from Ypres, for they were concentrating
+under cover of a violent artillery fire,
+and at about 10 o'clock the battle began in
+earnest.</p>
+
+<p>At that hour the Germans attacked our line
+from the Ypres-Poelcappelle road to within a
+short distance of the Menin highroad, it being
+evidently their intention while engaging us
+closely on the whole of this sector to break our
+front in the vicinity of the Ypres-Roulers Railway,
+to the north and to the south of which
+their strongest and most determined assaults
+were delivered.</p>
+
+<p>Under this pressure our front was penetrated
+at some points around Frezenberg, and at 4:30
+o'clock in the afternoon we made a counter-attack
+between the Zonnebeke road and the railway
+in order to recover the lost ground. Our
+offensive was conducted most gallantly, but
+was checked before long by the fire of machine
+guns.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+attacks
+near
+Menin
+road.</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the enemy launched another attack
+through the woods south of the Menin
+road, and at the same time threatened our left
+to the north of Ypres with fresh masses. Most
+desperate fighting ensued, the German infantry
+coming on again and again and gradually forcing
+our troops back, though only for a short
+distance, in spite of repeated counter-attacks.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">On the
+Poelcappelle
+road.</div>
+
+<p>During the night the fighting continued to
+rage with ever-increasing fury. It is impossible
+to say at exactly what hour our line was broken
+at different points, but it is certain that at one
+time the enemy's infantry poured through
+along the Poelcappelle road, and even got as
+far as Wieltje at 9 P. M.</p>
+
+<p>There was also a considerable gap in our
+front about Frezenberg, where hostile detachments
+had penetrated. At both points counter-attacks
+were organized without delay. To the
+east of the salient the Germans first were driven
+back to Frezenberg, but there they made a firm
+stand, and under pressure of fresh reinforcements
+we fell back again toward Verlorenhoek.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Canadian
+counter-attack.</div>
+
+<p>Northeast of the salient a counter-attack carried
+out by us about 1 A. M. was more successful.
+Our troops swept the enemy out of Wieltje
+at the bayonet's point, leaving the village
+strewn with German dead and, pushing on, regained
+most of the ground to the north of that
+point. And so the fight surged to and fro
+throughout the night. All around the scene of
+the conflict the sky was lit up by the flashes of
+the guns and the light of blazing villages and
+farms, while against this background of smoke
+and flame, looking out in the murky light over
+the crumbling ruins of the old town, rose the
+battered wreck of the cathedral town and the
+spires of Cloth Hall.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+assaults
+on the
+east.</div>
+
+<p>When Sunday dawned there came a short respite,
+and the firing for a time died down. The
+comparative lull enabled us to reorganize and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+consolidate our position on the new line we had
+taken up and to obtain some rest after the
+fatigue and strain of the night. It did not
+last long, however, and in the afternoon the
+climax of the battle was reached, for, under the
+cover of intense artillery fire, the Germans
+launched no less than five separate assaults
+against the east of the salient.</p>
+
+<p>To the north and northeast their attacks were
+not at first pressed so hard as on the south of
+the Menin road, where the fighting was especially
+fierce. In the latter direction masses of
+infantry were hurled on with absolute desperation
+and were beaten off with corresponding
+slaughter.</p>
+
+<p>At one point, north of the town, 500 of the
+enemy advanced from the wood, and it is affirmed
+by those present that not a single man
+of them escaped.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+losses at
+Ch&acirc;teau
+Hooge.</div>
+
+<p>On the eastern face, at 6:30 P. M., an endeavor
+was made to storm the grounds of the
+Ch&acirc;teau Hooge, a little north of the Menin
+road, but the force attempting it broke and fell
+back under the hail of shrapnel poured upon
+them by our guns. It was on this side, where
+they had to face the concentrated fire of guns,
+Maxims and rifles again and again in their efforts
+to break their way through, that the Germans
+incurred their heaviest losses, and the
+ground was literally heaped with dead.</p>
+
+<p>They evidently, for the time being at least,
+were unable to renew their efforts, and as night
+came on the fury of their offensive gradually
+slackened, the hours of darkness passing in
+quietness.</p>
+
+<p>During the day our troops saw some of the
+enemy busily employed in stripping the British
+dead in our abandoned trenches, east of the
+Hooge Ch&acirc;teau, and several Germans afterward
+were noticed dressed in khaki.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A successful
+day.</div>
+
+<p>So far as the Ypres region is concerned, this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+for us was a most successful day. Our line,
+which on the northeast of the salient had, after
+the previous day's fighting, been reconstituted
+a short distance behind the original front, remained
+intact. Our losses were comparatively
+slight, and, owing to the targets presented by
+the enemy, the action resolved itself on our
+part into pure killing.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for this very determined effort to
+crush our left on the part of the Germans is
+not far to seek. It is probable that for some
+days previously they had been in possession of
+information which led them to suppose that
+we intended to apply pressure on the right of
+our line, and that their great attack upon Ypres
+on the 7th, 8th, and 9th was undertaken with
+a view to diverting us from our purpose.</p>
+
+<p>In this the Germans were true to their principles,
+for they rightly hold that the best manner
+of meeting an expected hostile offensive is
+to forestall it by attacking in some other
+quarter. In this instance their leaders acted
+with the utmost determination and energy and
+their soldiers fought with the greatest courage.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+enemy
+held in
+check.</div>
+
+<p>The failure of their effort was due to the
+splendid endurance of our troops, who held the
+line around the salient under a fire which again
+and again blotted out whole lengths of the
+defenses and killed the defenders by scores.
+Time after time along those parts of the front
+selected for assault were parapets destroyed,
+and time after time did the thinning band of
+survivors build them up again and await the
+next onset as steadily as before.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in May, in defense of the same historic
+town, have our incomparable infantry repeated
+the great deeds their comrades performed half
+a year ago and beaten back most desperate onslaughts
+of hostile hordes backed by terrific artillery
+support.</p>
+
+<p>The services rendered by our troops in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+quarter cannot at present be estimated, for
+their full significance will only be realized in
+the light of future events. But so far their
+devotion has indirectly contributed in no small
+measure to the striking success already
+achieved by our allies.</p>
+
+<p>Further south, in the meantime, on Sunday
+another struggle had been in progress on that
+portion of the front covered by the right of
+our line and the left of the French, for when
+the firing around Ypres was temporarily subsiding
+during the early hours of the morning
+another and even more tremendous cannonade
+was suddenly started by the artillery of the
+Allies some twenty miles to the south.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was calm, bright, and clear, and
+opposite our right, as the sun rose, the scene in
+front of our line was the most peaceful imaginable.
+Away to the right were Guinchy, with
+its brickfields and the ruins of Givenchy. To
+the north of them lay low ground, where, hidden
+by trees and hedgerows, ran the opposing
+lines that were about to become the scene of the
+conflict, and beyond, in the distance, rose the
+long ridge of Aubers, the villages crowning it
+standing out clear cut against the sky.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bombardment
+of
+Guinchy.</div>
+
+<p>At 5 o'clock the bombardment began, slowly
+at first and then growing in volume until the
+whole air quivered with the rush of the larger
+shells and the earth shook with the concussion
+of guns. In a few minutes the whole distant
+landscape disappeared in smoke and dust,
+which hung for a while in the still air and
+then drifted slowly across the line of battle.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+battle
+near
+Festubert.</div>
+
+<p>Shortly before 6 o'clock our infantry advanced
+along our front between the Bois
+Grenier and Festubert. On the left, north of
+Fromelles, we stormed the German first line
+trenches. Hand-to-hand fighting went on for
+some time with bayonet, rifle, and hand grenade,
+but we continued to hold on to this position<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+throughout the day and caused the enemy
+very heavy loss, for not only were many Germans
+killed in the bombardment, but their repeated
+efforts to drive us from the captured
+positions proved most costly.</p>
+
+<p>On the right, to the north of Festubert, our
+advance met with considerable opposition and
+was not pressed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A French
+victory.</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the French, after a prolonged
+bombardment, had taken the German positions
+north of Arras on a front of nearly five miles,
+and had pushed forward from two to three
+miles, capturing 2,000 prisoners and six guns.
+This remarkable success was gained by our
+allies in the course of a few hours.</p>
+
+<p>As may be supposed from the nature of the
+fighting which has been in progress, our losses
+have been heavy. On other parts of the front our
+action was confined to that of the artillery, but
+this proved most effective later, all the communications
+of the enemy being subjected to
+so heavy and accurate a fire that in some
+quarters all movement by daylight within
+range of our lines was rendered impracticable.
+At one place opposite our centre a convoy of
+ammunition was hit by a shell, which knocked
+out six motor lorries and caused two to blow up.
+Opposite our centre we fired two mines, which
+did considerable damage to the enemy's defenses.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Air
+fighting.</div>
+
+<p>During the day also our aeroplanes attacked
+several points of importance. One of our airmen,
+who was sent to bomb the canal bridge
+near Don, was wounded on his way there, but
+continued and fulfilled his mission. Near
+Wytschaete, one of our aviators pursued a German
+aeroplane and fired a whole belt from his
+machine gun at it. The Taube suddenly
+swerved, righted itself for a second, and then
+descended from a height of several thousand
+feet straight to the ground.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, a British machine unfortunately
+was brought down over Lille by the
+enemy's anti-aircraft guns, but it is hoped that
+the aviator escaped.</p>
+
+<p><i>In regard to the German allegation, that the
+British used gas in their attacks on Hill 60,
+the Eyewitness says:</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+had not
+used gas.</div>
+
+<p>No <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'asphxiating'">asphyxiating</ins> gases have been employed by
+us at any time, nor have they yet been brought
+into play by us.</p>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Germany, desperate at her failure to win the
+rapid victories she had anticipated on the land,
+resorted, in 1915, to a ruthless policy of sinking
+the ships of the belligerent powers, whether or
+not they were engaged on legitimate errands.
+This policy culminated on May 7, 1915, in the
+sinking of the great transatlantic steamship
+the <i>Lusitania</i>, with the loss of over a thousand
+men, women, and children.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></p>
+<h2>SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA</h2>
+
+<h3>THE JUDICIAL DECISION BY
+JUDGE J. M. MAYER</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Lusitania</i>
+sails.</div>
+
+<p>On May 1, 1915, the British passenger-carrying
+merchantman <i>Lusitania</i> sailed
+from New York bound for Liverpool,
+with 1,257 passengers and a crew of 702, making
+a total of 1,959 souls on board, men, women,
+and children. At approximately 2:10 on
+the afternoon of May 7, 1915, weather clear
+and sea smooth, without warning, the vessel
+was torpedoed and went down by the head in
+about eighteen minutes, with an ultimate tragic
+loss of 1,195.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Passengers and
+equipment.</div>
+
+<p>So far as equipment went, the vessel was
+seaworthy in the highest sense. Her carrying
+capacity was 2,198 passengers and a crew of
+about 850, or about 3,000 persons in all. She had
+22 open lifeboats capable of accommodating 1,322
+persons, 26 collapsible boats with a capacity
+for 1,283, making a total of 48 boats with a
+capacity for 2,605 in all, or substantially in
+excess of the requirements of her last voyage.
+Her total of life belts was 3,187, or 1,959 more
+than the total number of passengers, and, in addition,
+she carried 20 life buoys. She was
+classed 100 A1 at Lloyd's being 787 feet long
+over all, with a tonnage of 30,395 gross and 12,611
+net. She had 4 turbine engines, 25 boilers,
+4 boiler rooms, 12 transverse bulkheads, dividing
+her into 13 compartments, with a longitudinal
+bulkhead on either side of the ship for
+425 feet, covering all vital parts.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Lusitania</i>
+unarmed.</div>
+
+<p>The proof is absolute that she was not and
+never had been armed nor did she carry any explosives.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+She did carry some 18 fuse cases and
+125 shrapnel cases, consisting merely of empty
+shells without any powder charge, 4,200 cases
+of safety cartridges, and 189 cases of infantry
+equipment, such as leather fittings, pouches,
+and the like. All these were for delivery
+abroad, but none of these munitions could be
+exploded by setting them on fire in mass or in
+bulk, nor by subjecting them to impact. She
+had been duly inspected on March 17, April
+15, 16, and 17, all in 1915, and before she left
+New York the boat gear and boats were examined,
+overhauled, checked up, and defective
+articles properly replaced.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The drills
+sufficient.</div>
+
+<p>There is no reason to doubt that this part of
+her equipment was in excellent order when she
+left New York. The vessel was under the command
+of a long service and experienced Captain
+and officered by competent and experienced
+men. The difficulties of the war prevented the
+company from gathering together a crew fully
+reaching a standard as high as in normal times,
+(many of the younger British sailors having
+been called to the colors,) but, all told, the crew
+was good and, in many instances, highly intelligent
+and capable. Due precaution was taken
+in respect of boat drills while in port, and the
+testimony shows that those drills were both
+sufficient and efficient. Some passengers did
+not see any boat drills on the voyage, while
+others characterized the drills, in effect, as
+formally superficial. Any one familiar with
+ocean traveling knows that it is not strange
+that boat drills may take place unobserved by
+some of the passengers who, though on deck,
+may be otherwise occupied or who may be in
+another part of the ship, and such negative
+testimony must give way to the positive testimony
+that there were daily boat drills, the object
+of which mainly was to enable the men
+competently and quickly to lower the boats.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Emergency
+precautions.</div>
+
+<p>Each man had a badge showing the number
+of the boat to which he was assigned, and a
+boat list was posted in three different places in
+the ship. Each day of the voyage a drill was
+held with the emergency boat, which was a fixed
+boat, either No. 13 on the starboard side or No.
+14 on the port side, according to the weather,
+the idea, doubtless, being to accustom the men
+quickly to reach the station on either side of
+the ship. The siren was blown and a picked
+crew from the watch assembled at the boat, put
+on life belts, jumped into the boat, took their
+places, and jumped out again.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout this case it must always be
+remembered that the disaster occurred in May,
+1915, and the whole subject must be approached
+with the knowledge and mental attitude of that
+time. It may be that more elaborate and effective
+methods and precaution have been
+adopted since then, but there is no testimony
+which shows that these boat drills, as practiced
+on the voyage, were not fully up to the then
+existing standards and practices. There can
+be no criticism of the bulkhead door drills, for
+there was one each day.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Speed
+reduced.</div>
+
+<p>In November, 1914, the Directors of the
+Cunard Company, in view of the falling off of
+the passenger traffic, decided to withdraw the
+<i>Lusitania's</i> sister ship, <i>Mauretania</i>, and to run
+the <i>Lusitania</i> at three-fourths boiler power,
+which involved a reduction of speed from an
+average of about twenty-four knots to an average
+of about twenty-one knots. The ship was
+operated under this reduced boiler power and
+reduced rate of speed for six round trips until
+and including the fatal voyage, although at the
+reduced rate she was considerably faster than
+any passenger ship crossing the Atlantic at
+that time. This reduction was in part for financial
+reasons and in part "a question of economy
+of coal and labor in time of war." No<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+profit was expected and none was made, but the
+company continued to operate the ship as a public
+service. The reduction from twenty-four
+to twenty-one knots is, however, quite immaterial
+to the controversy, as will later appear.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus outlined the personnel, equipment,
+and cargo of the vessel, reference will
+now be made to a series of events preceding her
+sailing on May 1, 1915.</p>
+
+<p>On February 4, 1915, the Imperial German
+Government issued a proclamation as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+German
+proclamation.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"1. The waters surrounding Great Britain
+and Ireland, including the whole English Channel,
+are hereby declared to be war zone. On and
+after the 18th of February, 1915, every enemy
+merchant ship found in the said war zone will
+be destroyed without its being always possible
+to avert the dangers threatening the crews and
+passengers on that account.</p>
+
+<p>"2. Even neutral ships are exposed to danger
+in the war zone, as in view of the misuse of
+neutral flags ordered on January 31 by the
+British Government and of the accidents of
+naval war, it cannot always be <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'advoided'">avoided</ins> to
+strike even neutral ships in attacks that are
+directed at enemy ships.</p>
+
+<p>"3. Northward navigation around the Shetland
+Islands, in the eastern waters of the North
+Sea and in a strip of not less than thirty miles
+width along the Netherlands coast is in no
+danger.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">"<span class="smcap">Von Pohl</span>,</span><br />
+"Chief of the Admiral Staff of the Navy.<br /></div>
+"Berlin, February 4, 1915."<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Submarine
+blockade
+declared.</div>
+
+<p>This was accompanied by a so-called memorial,
+setting forth the reasons advanced by
+the German Government in support of the issuance
+of this proclamation, an extract from
+which is as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Just as England declared the whole North
+Sea between Scotland and Norway to be comprised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+within the seat of war, so does Germany
+now declare the waters surrounding Great
+Britain and Ireland, including the whole English
+Channel, to be comprised within the seat
+of war, and will prevent by all the military
+means at its disposal all navigation by the
+enemy in those waters. To this end it will endeavor
+to destroy, after February 18 next, any
+merchant vessels of the enemy which present
+themselves at the seat of war above indicated,
+although it may not always be possible to avert
+the dangers which may menace persons and
+merchandise. Neutral powers are accordingly
+forewarned not to intrust their crews, passengers,
+or merchandise to such vessels."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Protests
+sent by
+the United
+States.</div>
+
+<p>To this proclamation and memorial the
+Government of the United States made due protest
+under date of February 10, 1915. On the
+same day protest was made to England by this
+Government regarding the use of the American
+flag by the <i>Lusitania</i> on its voyage through the
+war zone on its trip from New York to Liverpool
+of January 30, 1915, in response to which,
+on February 19, Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of
+State for Foreign Affairs, handed a memorandum
+to Mr. Page, the American Ambassador to
+England, containing the following statement:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+reply to
+American
+protest.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is understood that the German Government
+had announced their intention of sinking
+British merchant vessels at sight by torpedoes
+without giving any opportunity of making any
+provisions for saving the lives of noncombatant
+crews and passengers. It was in consequence
+of this threat that the <i>Lusitania</i> raised the
+United States flag on her inward voyage and
+on her subsequent outward voyage. A request
+was made by the United States passengers who
+were embarking on board her that the United
+States flag should be hoisted, presumably to insure
+their safety."</p></div>
+
+<p>The British Ambassador, the Hon. Cecil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+Spring-Rice, on March 1, 1915, in a communication
+to the American Secretary of State regarding
+an economic blockade of Germany, stated
+in reference to the German proclamation of
+February 4:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+statement
+on the
+submarine
+blockade.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Germany has declared that the English
+Channel, the north and west coasts of France,
+and the waters around the British Isles are a
+war area and has officially notified that all
+enemy ships found in that area will be destroyed,
+and that neutral vessels may be exposed
+to danger. This is in effect a claim to
+torpedo at sight, without regard to the safety
+of the crew or passengers, any merchant vessel
+under any flag. As it is not in the power of
+the German Admiralty to maintain any surface
+craft in these waters, this attack can only be
+delivered by submarine agency."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Submarines
+sink
+merchant
+ships.</div>
+
+<p>Beginning with the 30th of January, 1915,
+and prior to the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i> on
+May 7, 1915, German submarines attacked and
+seemed to have sunk twenty merchant and
+passenger ships within about 100 miles of the
+usual course of the <i>Lusitania</i>, chased two other
+vessels which escaped, and damaged still another.</p>
+
+<p>It will be noted that nothing is stated in the
+German memorandum as to sinking enemy
+merchant vessels without warning, but, on the
+contrary, the implication is that settled international
+law as to visit and search and an opportunity
+for the lives of passengers to be safeguarded
+will be obeyed, "although it may not
+always be possible to avert the dangers which
+may menace persons and merchandise."</p>
+
+<p>As a result of this submarine activity, the
+<i>Lusitania</i> on its voyages from New York to
+Liverpool, beginning with that of January 30,
+1915, steered a course further off from the south
+coast of Ireland than formerly.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Precautions in
+danger
+zone.</div>
+
+<p>In addition, after the German proclamation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+of February 4, 1915, the <i>Lusitania</i> had its boats
+swung out and provisioned while passing
+through the danger zone, did not use its wireless
+for sending messages, and did not stop at
+the Mersey Bar for a pilot, but came directly
+up to its berth.</p>
+
+<p>The petitioner and the master of the <i>Lusitania</i>
+received certain advices from the British
+Admiralty on February 10, 1915, as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Vessels navigating in submarine areas
+should have their boats turned out and fully
+provisioned. The danger is greatest in the vicinity
+of ports and off prominent headlands on the
+coast. Important landfalls in this area should
+be made after dark whenever possible. So far as
+is consistent with particular trades and state of
+tides, vessels should make their ports at dawn."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Advices
+from the
+British
+Admiralty.</div>
+
+<p>On April 15 and 16, 1915, and after the last
+voyage from New York, preceding the one on
+which the <i>Lusitania</i> was torpedoed, the Cunard
+Company and the master of the <i>Lusitania</i> received
+at Liverpool the following advices from
+the British Admiralty:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Confidential Daily Voyage Notice 15th
+April, 1915, issued under Government War
+Risks Scheme.</p>
+
+<p>"German submarines appear to be operating
+chiefly off prominent headlands and landfalls.
+Ships should give prominent headlands a wide
+berth.</p>
+
+<p>"Confidential memorandum issued 16th
+April, 1915:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fast
+steamers
+follow a
+zigzag
+course.</div>
+
+<p>"War experience has shown that fast steamers
+can considerably reduce the chance of successful
+surprise submarine attacks by zigzagging&mdash;that
+is to say, altering the course at
+short and irregular intervals, say in ten minutes
+to half an hour. This course is almost invariably
+adopted by warships when cruising in
+an area known to be infested by submarines.
+The underwater speed of a submarine is very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+slow and it is exceedingly difficult for her to get
+into position to deliver an attack unless she can
+observe and predict the course of the ship
+attacked."</p></div>
+
+<p>Sir Alfred Booth, Chairman of the Cunard
+Line, was a member of the War Risks Committee
+at Liverpool, consisting of ship owners,
+representatives of the Board of Trade and the
+Admiralty, which received these instructions
+and passed them on to the owners of vessels,
+including the Cunard Company, which distributed
+them to the individual masters.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Advertisement
+in
+the New
+York
+papers.</div>
+
+<p>On Saturday, May 1, 1915, the advertised
+sailing date of the <i>Lusitania</i> from New York
+to Liverpool on the voyage on which she was
+subsequently sunk, there appeared the following
+advertisement in the New York "Times,"
+New York "Tribune," New York "Sun," New
+York "Herald," and the New York "World,"
+this advertisement being in all instances except
+one placed directly over, under, or adjacent to
+the advertisement of the Cunard Line, regarding
+the sailing of the <i>Lusitania:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic
+voyage are reminded that a state of war
+exists between Germany and her allies and
+Great Britain and her allies. That the zone
+of war includes the waters adjacent to the British
+Isles. That in accordance with formal notice
+given by the Imperial German Government,
+vessels flying the flag of Great Britain or of
+any of her allies are liable to destruction in
+those waters, and that travelers sailing in the
+war zone on ships of Great Britain or her
+allies do so at their own risk."</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">Imperial German Embassy</span>,<br />
+"April 22, 1915.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Washington, D. C."<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This was the first insertion of this advertisement,
+although it was dated more than a week
+prior to its publication. Captain Turner, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+master of the vessel, saw the advertisement or
+"something of the kind" before sailing, and
+realized that the <i>Lusitania</i> was included in the
+warning. The Liverpool office of the Cunard
+Company was advised of the sailing and the
+number of passengers by cable from the New
+York office, but no mention was made of the
+above quoted advertisement. Sir Alfred Booth
+was informed through the press of this advertisement
+on either Saturday evening, May 1,
+or Sunday morning, May 2.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Lusitania</i>
+justified
+in sailing.</div>
+
+<p>The significance and construction to be given
+to this advertisement will be discussed infra,
+but it is perfectly plain that the master was
+fully justified in sailing on the appointed day
+from a neutral port with many neutral and
+non-combatant passengers, unless he and his
+company were willing to yield to the attempt
+of the German Government to terrify British
+shipping. No one familiar with the British
+character would expect that such a threat
+would accomplish more than to emphasize the
+necessity of taking every precaution to protect
+life and property which the exercise of judgment
+would invite.</p>
+
+<p>And so, as scheduled, the <i>Lusitania</i> sailed,
+undisguised, with her four funnels and a figure
+so familiar as to be readily discernible not only
+by naval officers and marines, but by the ocean-going
+public generally.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">In the
+submarine
+war zone.</div>
+
+<p>The voyage was uneventful until May 6. On
+approaching the Irish coast on May 6 the Captain
+ordered all the boats hanging on the davits
+to be swung out and lowered to the promenade
+deckrail, and this order was carried out under
+the supervision of Staff Captain Anderson, who
+later went down with the ship. All bulkhead
+doors which were not necessary for the working
+of the ship were closed, and it was reported
+to Captain Turner that this had been done.
+Lookouts were doubled, and two extra were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+put forward and one on either side of the
+bridge; that is, there were two lookouts in the
+crow's-nest, two in the eyes of the ship, two
+officers on the bridge, and a quartermaster on
+either side of the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Directions were given to the engine room to
+keep the highest steam they could possibly get
+on the boilers, and in case the bridge rang for
+full speed, to give as much as they possibly
+could. Orders were also given that ports
+should be kept closed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Wireless
+messages
+from the
+Admiralty.</div>
+
+<p>At 7:50 P. M., on May 6, the <i>Lusitania</i> received
+the following wireless message from the
+Admiral at Queenstown: "Submarines active
+off south coast of Ireland," and at 7:56 the
+vessel asked for and received a repetition of
+his message. The ship was then going at a
+rate of 21 knots per hour.</p>
+
+<p>At 8:30 P. M. of the same day the following
+message was received from the British Admiralty:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"To All British Ships 0005:</p>
+
+<p>"Take Liverpool pilot at bar and avoid headlands.
+Pass harbors at full speed; steer midchannel
+course. Submarines off Fastnet."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Lusitania's</i>
+speed
+reduced.</div>
+
+<p>At 8:32 the Admiralty received a communication
+to show that this message had been received
+by the <i>Lusitania</i>, and the same message
+was offered to the vessel seven times between
+midnight of May 6 and 10 A. M. of May 7.</p>
+
+<p>At about 8 A. M. on the morning of May 7,
+on approaching the Irish coast, the vessel encountered
+an intermittent fog, or Scotch mist,
+called "banks" in seafaring language, and the
+speed was reduced to 15 knots. Previously the
+speed, according to Captain Turner's recollection,
+had been reduced to 18 knots. This adjustment
+of speed was due to the fact that Captain
+Turner wished to run the last 150 miles
+of the voyage in the dark, so as to make Liverpool
+early on the morning of May 8, at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+earliest time when he could cross the bar without
+a pilot.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Approaching
+the
+most
+dangerous
+waters.</div>
+
+<p>Judging from the location of previous submarine
+attacks, the most dangerous waters in
+the <i>Lusitania's</i> course were from the entrance
+to St. George's Channel to Liverpool Bar.
+There is no dispute as to the proposition that
+a vessel darkened is much safer from submarine
+attack at night than in the daytime, and Captain
+Turner exercised proper and good judgment
+in planning accordingly as he approached
+dangerous waters. It is futile to conjecture as
+to what would or would not have happened had
+the speed been higher prior to the approach to
+the Irish coast, because, obviously, until then
+the Captain could not figure out his situation,
+not knowing how he might be impeded by fog
+or other unfavorable weather conditions.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of May 7, 1915, the ship
+passed about twenty-five or twenty-six, and, in
+any event, at least eighteen and a half miles
+south of Fastnet, which was not in sight. The
+course was then held up slightly to bring the
+ship closer to land, and a little before noon
+land was sighted, and what was thought to be
+Brow Head was made out.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, between 11 A. M. and noon, the
+fog disappeared, the weather became clear, and
+the speed was increased to 18 knots. The
+course of the vessel was S. 87 E. Mag. At
+11:25 A. M. Captain Turner received the
+following message:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Submarines active in southern part of Irish
+Channel, last heard of twenty miles south of
+Coningbeg. Light vessel make certain '<i>Lusitania</i>'
+gets this."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Submarines
+reported
+by wireless.</div>
+
+<p>At 12:40 P. M. the following additional wireless
+message from the Admiralty was received:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Submarines five miles south of Cape Clear,
+proceeding west when sighted at 10 A. M."</p></div>
+
+<p>After picking up Brow Head and at about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+12:40 P. M., the course was altered in shore
+by about 30 degrees, to about N. 63 or 67 E.
+Mag., Captain Turner did not recall which.
+Land was sighted which the Captain thought
+was Galley Head, but he was not sure, and
+therefore held in shore. This last course was
+continued for an hour at a speed of 18 knots
+until 1:40 P. M., when the Old Head of Kinsale
+was sighted and the course was then changed
+back to the original course of S. 87 E. Mag.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Lusitania</i>
+torpedoed.</div>
+
+<p>At 1:50 P. M. the Captain started to take a
+four-point bearing on the Old Head of Kinsale,
+and while thus engaged and at about 2:30
+P. M., as heretofore stated, the ship was torpedoed
+on the starboard side. Whether one, two,
+or three torpedoes were fired at the vessel cannot
+be determined with certainty. Two of the
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'ships's'">ship's</ins> crew were confident that a third torpedo
+was fired and missed the ship. While not
+doubting the good faith of these witnesses, the
+evidence is not sufficiently satisfactory to be
+convincing.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Conflicting
+testimony.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Probably
+two
+torpedoes.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">No explosives
+on board.</div>
+
+<p>There was, however, an interesting and remarkable
+conflict of testimony as to whether
+the ship was struck by one or two torpedoes,
+and witnesses, both passengers and crew, differed
+on this point, conscientiously and emphatically.
+The witnesses were all highly intelligent,
+and there is no doubt that all testified to
+the best of their recollection, knowledge, or impression,
+and in accordance with their honest
+conviction. The weight of the testimony (too
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'volminous'">voluminous</ins> to analyze) is in favor of the "two
+torpedo" contention, not only because of some
+convincing direct testimony, (as, for instance,
+Adams, Lehman, Morton,) but also because of
+the unquestioned surrounding circumstances.
+The deliberate character of the attack upon a
+vessel whose identity could not be mistaken,
+made easy on a bright day, and the fact that
+the vessel had no means of defending herself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+would lead to the inference that the submarine
+commander would make sure of her destruction.
+Further, the evidence is overwhelming
+that there was a second explosion. The
+witnesses differ as to the impression which
+the sound of this explosion made upon them&mdash;a
+natural difference due to the fact, known
+by common experience, that persons who hear
+the same explosion even at the same time
+will not only describe the sound differently, but
+will not agree as to the number of detonations.
+As there were no explosives on board, it is difficult
+to account for the second explosion, except
+on the theory that it was caused by a second
+torpedo. Whether the number of torpedoes was
+one or two is relevant, in this case, only upon
+the question of what effect, if any, open ports
+had in accelerating the sinking of the ship.</p>
+
+<p>While there was much testimony and some
+variance as to the places where the torpedoes
+struck, judged by the sound or shock of the explosions,
+certain physical effects, especially as
+to smoke and blown-up d&eacute;bris, tend to locate
+the areas of impact with some approach of
+accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>From all the testimony it may be reasonably
+concluded that one torpedo struck on the starboard
+side somewhere abreast of No. 2 boiler
+room and the other, on the same side, either
+abreast of No. 3 boiler room or between No. 3
+and No. 4. From knowledge of the torpedoes
+then used by the German submarines, it is
+thought that they would effect a rupture of the
+outer hull thirty to forty feet long and ten to
+fifteen feet vertically.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Flooding
+of boiler
+rooms
+and
+coal bunkers.</div>
+
+<p>Cockburn, senior Second Engineer, was of
+opinion that the explosion had done a great
+deal of internal damage. Although the lights
+were out, Cockburn could hear the water coming
+into the engine room. Water at once entered
+No. 1 and No. 2 boiler rooms, a result<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+necessarily attributable to the fact that one or
+both of the coal bunkers were also blown open.
+Thus, one torpedo flooded some or all of the
+coal bunkers on the starboard side of Nos. 1
+and 2 boiler rooms, and apparently flooded both
+boiler rooms.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of the other torpedo is not entirely
+clear. If it struck midway between two bulkheads,
+it is quite likely to have done serious
+bulkhead injury. The <i>Lusitania</i> was built so
+as to float with two compartments open to the
+sea, and with more compartments open she
+could not stay afloat. As the side coal bunkers
+are regarded as compartments, the ship could
+not float with two boiler rooms flooded and also
+an adjacent bunker, and, therefore, the damage
+done by one torpedo was enough to sink the
+ship.</p>
+
+<p>To add to the difficulties, all the steam had
+gone as the result of the explosions, and the
+ship could not be controlled by her engines.</p>
+
+<p>Little, senior Third Engineer, testified that
+in a few seconds after the explosion the steam
+pressure fell from 190 to 50 pounds, his explanation
+being that the main steam pipes or boilers
+had been carried away.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Engines
+disabled.</div>
+
+<p>The loss of control of and by the engines resulted
+in disability to stop the engines, with the
+result that the ship kept her headway until she
+sank. That the ship commenced to list to starboard
+immediately is abundantly established by
+many witnesses.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The ship's
+behavior
+in going
+down.</div>
+
+<p>Some of the witnesses, (Lauriat and Adams,
+passengers; Duncan, Bestic, and Johnson, officers,)
+testified that the ship stopped listing
+to starboard and started to recover and then
+listed again to starboard until she went over.</p>
+
+<p>This action, which is quite likely, must have
+resulted from the inrush of water on the port
+side. There can be no other adequate explanation
+consistent with elementary scientific<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+knowledge; for, if the ship temporarily righted
+herself, it must have been because the weight
+of water on the two sides was equal or nearly
+so. The entry of water into the port side must,
+of course, have been due to some rupture on
+that side. Such a result was entirely possible,
+and, indeed, probable.</p>
+
+<p>The explosive force was sufficiently powerful
+to blow d&eacute;bris far above the radio wires&mdash;i. e.,
+more than 160 feet above the water. The boiler
+rooms were not over sixty feet wide, and so
+strong a force could readily have weakened the
+longitudinal bulkheads on the port side in addition
+to such injury as flying metal may have
+done. It is easy to understand, therefore, how
+the whole pressure of the water rushing in from
+the starboard side against the weakened longitudinal
+bulkheads on the port side would cause
+them to give way and thus open up some
+apertures on the port side for the entry of
+water. Later, when the water continued to
+rush in on the starboard side, the list to starboard
+naturally again occurred, increased and
+continued to the end. As might be expected,
+the degree of list to starboard is variously described,
+but there is no doubt that it was steep
+and substantial.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ports had
+all been
+ordered
+closed.</div>
+
+<p>A considerable amount of testimony was
+taken upon the contention of claimants that
+many of the ship's ports were open, thus reducing
+her buoyancy and substantially hastening
+her sinking. There is no doubt that on
+May 6 adequate orders were given to close all
+ports. The testimony is conclusive that the
+ports on Deck F (the majority of which were
+dummy ports) were closed. Very few, if any,
+ports on E deck were open, and, if so, they were
+starboard ports in a small section of the first
+class in the vicinity where one of the torpedoes
+did its damage. A very limited number
+of passengers testified that the portholes in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+their staterooms were open, and if their
+impressions are correct, these portholes, concerning
+which they testified, were all, or nearly
+all, so far above the water that they could not
+have influenced the situation.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sinking
+not affected
+by open
+ports.</div>
+
+<p>There was conflicting testimony as to the
+ports in the dining room on D deck. The weight
+of the testimony justifies the conclusion that
+some of these ports were open&mdash;how many it is
+impossible to determine. These ports, however,
+were from twenty-three to thirty feet above
+water, and when the gap made by the explosion
+and the consequent severe and sudden list are
+considered, it is plain that these open ports
+were not a contributing cause of the sinking,
+and had a very trifling influence, if any, in accelerating
+the time within which the ship sank.</p>
+
+<p>From the foregoing the situation can be visualized.
+Two sudden and extraordinary explosions,
+the ship badly listed so that the port side
+was well up in the air, the passengers scattered
+about on the decks and in the staterooms,
+saloons and companion ways, the ship under
+headway and, as it turned out, only eighteen
+minutes afloat&mdash;such was the situation which
+confronted the officers, crew, and passengers
+in the endeavor to save the lives of those on
+board.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Calm
+heroism
+of the
+passengers.</div>
+
+<p>The conduct of the passengers constitutes an
+enduring record of calm heroism with many individual
+instances of sacrifice and, in general,
+a marked consideration for women and children.
+There was no panic, but naturally, there
+was a considerable amount of excitement and
+rush and much confusion, and, as the increasing
+list rendered ineffective the lowering of the
+boats on the port side, the passengers, as is
+readily understandable, crowded over on the
+starboard side.</p>
+
+<p>The problem presented to the officers of the
+ship was one of exceeding difficulty, occasioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+largely because of the serious list and the impossibility
+of stopping the ship or reducing her
+headway.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lookouts
+sighted
+the
+torpedo.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Boats
+ordered
+lowered.</div>
+
+
+<p>The precaution of extra lookouts resulted in
+a prompt report to the Captain, via the bridge,
+of the sighting of the torpedo. Second Officer
+Heppert, who was on the bridge, immediately
+closed all watertight doors worked from the
+bridge, and the testimony satisfactorily shows
+that all watertight doors worked by hand were
+promptly closed. Immediately after Captain
+Turner saw the wake of the torpedo there was
+an explosion and then Turner went to the navigation
+bridge and took the obvious course, i. e.,
+had the ship's head turned to the land. He
+signaled the engine room for full speed astern,
+hoping thereby to take the way off the ship,
+and then ordered the boats lowered down to the
+rail and directed that women and children
+should be first provided for in the boats. As
+the engine room failed to respond to the order
+to go full speed astern, and as the ship was continuing
+under way, Turner ordered that the
+boats should not be lowered until the vessel
+should lose her headway, and he told Anderson,
+the Staff Captain, who was in charge of the
+port boats, to lower the boats when he thought
+the way was sufficiently off to allow that operation.
+Anderson's fidelity to duty is sufficiently
+exemplified by the fact that he went down with
+the ship.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+officers
+display
+courage
+and skill.</div>
+
+<p>Jones, First Officer, and Lewis, Acting Third
+Officer, were in charge of the boats on the starboard
+side and personally superintended their
+handling and launching. Too much cannot be
+said both for their courage and skill, but, difficult
+as was their task, they were not confronted
+with some of the problems which the port side
+presented. There, in addition to Anderson,
+were Bestic, Junior Third Officer, and another
+officer, presumably the Second Officer. These<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+men were apparently doing the best they could
+and standing valiantly to their duty. Anderson's
+fate has already been mentioned, and
+Bestic, although surviving, stuck to his post
+until the ship went down under him. The
+situation can readily be pictured even by a
+novice.</p>
+
+<p>With the ship listed to starboard, the port
+boats, of course, swung inboard. If enough
+man power were applied, the boats could be
+put over the rail, but then a real danger would
+follow. Robertson, the ship's carpenter, aptly
+described that danger in answer to a question
+as to whether it was possible to lower the open
+boats on the port side. He said:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Port boats
+could
+not be
+lowered.</div>
+
+<p>"No. To lower the port boats would just be
+like drawing a crate of unpacked china along
+a dock road. What I mean is that if you
+started to lower the boats you would be dragging
+them down the rough side of the ship on
+rivets which are what we call "snap-headed
+rivets"&mdash;they stand up about an inch from the
+side of the ship, so you would be dragging the
+whole side of the boat away if you tried to
+lower the boats with a 15-degree list."</p>
+
+<p>That some boats were and others would have
+been seriously damaged is evidenced by the
+fact that two port boats were lowered to the
+water and got away, (though one afterward
+filled,) and not one boat reached Queenstown.</p>
+
+<p>Each boat has its own history, (except possibly
+Boats 2 and 4,) although it is naturally
+difficult, in each case, to allocate all the testimony
+to a particular boat.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Accidents
+in lowering.</div>
+
+<p>There is some testimony, given in undoubted
+good faith, that painted or rusted davits stuck
+out, but the weight of the testimony is to the
+contrary. There were some lamentable occurrences
+on the port side, which resulted in
+spilling passengers, some of whom thus thrown
+out or injured went to their death. These unfortunate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+accidents, however, were due either
+to lack of strength of the seaman who was
+lowering, or possibly, at worst, to an occasional
+instance of incompetency due to the personal
+equation so often illustrated, where one man
+of many may not be equal to the emergency.
+But the problem was of the most vexatious
+character. In addition to the crowding of
+passengers in some instances was this extremely
+hazardous feat of lowering boats swung
+inboard from a tilted height, heavily weighted
+by human beings, with the ship still under way.
+It cannot be said that it was negligent to attempt
+this, because, obviously, all the passengers
+could not be accommodated in the starboard
+boats.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Six boats
+get away
+from starboard.</div>
+
+<p>On the starboard side, the problem, in some
+respects, was not so difficult, while, in others,
+troublesome conditions existed quite different
+from those occurring on the port side. Here
+the boats swung so far out as to add to the
+difficulty of passengers getting in them, a difficulty
+intensified by the fact that many more
+passengers went to the starboard side than to
+the port side and, also that the ship maintained
+her way. Six boats successfully got away. In
+the case of the remaining boats, some were successfully
+lowered but later met with some unavoidable
+accident, and some were not successfully
+launched (such as Nos. 1, 5, and 17) for
+entirely explainable reasons which should not
+be charged to inefficiency on the part of the
+officers or crew.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Collapsible
+boats
+cut loose.</div>
+
+<p>The collapsible boats were on the deck under
+the open lifeboats, and were intended to be
+lifted and lowered by the same davits which
+lowered the open boats after the open boats
+had gotten clear of the ship. It was the duty
+of the officers to get the open boats away before
+giving attention to the collapsible boats, and
+that was a question of time. These boats are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+designed and arranged to float free if the ship
+should sink before they can be hoisted over.
+They were cut loose and some people were saved
+on these boats.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be expected that those passengers
+who lost members of their family or friends,
+and who saw some of the unfortunate accidents,
+should feel strongly and entertain the
+impression that inefficiency or individual negligence
+was widespread among the crew. Such
+an impression, however, does an inadvertent
+injustice to the great majority of the crew, who
+acted with that matter-in-fact courage and
+fidelity to duty which are traditional with men
+of the sea. Such of these men, presumably
+fairly typical of all, as testified in this court,
+were impressive not only because of inherent
+bravery, but because of intelligence and clear-headedness,
+and they possessed that remarkable
+gift of simplicity so characteristic of truly
+fearless men who cannot quite understand why
+an ado is made of acts which seem to them
+merely the day's work.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Grab, one of the claimants and an experienced
+transatlantic traveler, concisely
+summed up the situation when he said:</p>
+
+<p>"They were doing the best they could&mdash;they
+were very brave and working as hard as they
+could without any fear. They didn't care about
+themselves. It was very admirably done.
+While there was great confusion, they did the
+best they could."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Captain
+Turner's
+comment
+on the
+crew.</div>
+
+<p>It will unduly prolong a necessarily extended
+opinion to sift the voluminous testimony relating
+to this subject of the boats and the conduct
+of the crew and something is sought to
+be made of comments of Captain Turner, construed
+by some to be unfavorable but afterward
+satisfactorily supplemented and explained,
+but if there were some instances of
+incompetency they were very few and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+charge of negligence in this regard cannot be
+successfully maintained.</p>
+
+<p>In arriving at this conclusion, I have not
+overlooked the argument earnestly pressed that
+the men were not sufficiently instructed and
+drilled; for I think the testimony establishes
+the contrary in the light of conditions in May,
+1915.</p>
+
+<p>I now come to what seems to be the only
+debatable question of fact in the case, i. e.,
+whether Captain Turner was negligent in not
+literally following the Admiralty advices and,
+also, in not taking a course different from that
+which he adopted.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Captain's
+judgment
+free.</div>
+
+<p>The fundamental principle in navigating a
+merchantman, whether in times of peace or of
+war, is that the commanding officer must be
+left free to exercise his own judgment. Safe
+navigation denies the proposition that the
+judgment and sound discretion of the Captain
+of a vessel must be confined in a mental straitjacket.
+Of course, when movements are under
+military control, orders must be strictly obeyed,
+come what may. No such situation, however,
+was presented either to the Cunard Steamship
+Co. or Captain Turner. The vessel was not
+engaged in military service nor under naval
+convoy. True, she was, as between the German
+and British Governments, an enemy ship as
+to Germany, but she was unarmed and a
+carrier of not merely noncombatants, but,
+among others, of many citizens of the United
+States, then a neutral country, at peace with
+all the world.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Admiralty
+advices
+considered.</div>
+
+<p>In such circumstances the Captain could not
+shield himself automatically against error behind
+a literal compliance with the general advices
+or instructions of the Admiralty, nor can
+it be supposed that the Admiralty, any more
+than the Cunard Steamship Co., expected him
+so to do. What was required of him was that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+he should seriously consider and, as far as
+practicable, follow the Admiralty advices and
+use his best judgment as events and exigencies
+occurred; and if a situation arose where he
+believed that a course should be pursued to
+meet emergencies which required departure
+from some of the Admiralty advices as to general
+rules of action, then it was his duty to take
+such course, if in accordance with his carefully
+formed deliberate judgment. After a
+disaster has occurred, it is not difficult for the
+expert to show how it might have been avoided,
+and there is always opportunity for academic
+discussion as to what ought or ought not to
+have been done; but the true approach is to
+endeavor, for the moment, to possess the mind
+of him upon whom rested the responsibility.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+obligations in
+care of
+merchant ships.</div>
+
+<p>Let us now see what that responsibility was
+and how it was dealt with. The rules of naval
+warfare allowed the capture and, in some circumstances,
+the destruction of an enemy merchant
+ship, but, at the same time, it was the
+accepted doctrine of all civilized nations (as
+will be more fully considered infra) that, as
+Lord Mersey put it, "there is always an obligation
+first to secure the safety of the lives of
+those on board."</p>
+
+<p>The responsibility, therefore, of Captain
+Turner, in his task of bringing the ship safely
+to port, was to give heed not only to general
+advices advanced as the outcome of experience
+in the then developing knowledge as to submarine
+warfare, but particularly to any special
+information which might come to him in the
+course of the voyage.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Advices
+of the
+Admiralty.</div>
+
+<p>Realizing that if there was a due warning,
+in accordance with international law, and an
+opportunity, within a limited time, for the
+passengers to leave the ship, nevertheless that
+the operation must be quickly done, Captain
+Turner, on May 6, had taken the full precautions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+such as swinging out the boats, properly
+provisioned, which have been heretofore described.
+The principal features of the Admiralty
+advices were (1) to give the headlands
+a wide berth; (2) to steer a midchannel course;
+(3) to maintain as high a speed as practicable;
+(4) to zigzag, and (5) to make ports, if
+possible, at dawn, thus running the last part
+of the voyage at night.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fastnet
+given
+a wide
+berth.</div>
+
+<p>The reason for the advice as to keeping off
+headlands was that the submarines lurked near
+those prominent headlands and landfalls to
+and from which ships were likely to go. This
+instruction Captain Turner entirely followed
+in respect of Fastnet, which was the first point
+on the Irish coast which a vessel bound from
+New York to Liverpool would ordinarily
+approach closely, and, in normal times, the
+passing would be very near, or even inside of
+Fastnet. The <i>Lusitania</i> passed Fastnet so far
+out that Captain Turner could not see it.
+Whether the distance was about twenty-five
+miles, as the Cunard Steamship Co. contends,
+or about eighteen and one-half miles, as the
+claimants calculate, the result is that either
+distance must be regarded as a wide berth, in
+comparison with the customary navigation at
+that point, and, besides, nothing happened
+there. At 8:30 P. M. on May 6 the message had
+been received from the British Admiralty that
+submarines were off Fastnet, so that Captain
+Turner, in this regard, not only followed the
+general advices, but the specific information
+from the Admiralty.</p>
+
+<p>At 11:25 A. M. on May 7 Captain Turner received
+the wireless from the Admiralty plainly
+intended for the <i>Lusitania</i>, informing him that
+submarines (plural) were active in the southern
+part of the Irish Channel and when last
+heard of were twenty miles south of Coningbeg
+Light Vessel. This wireless message presented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+acutely to the Captain the problem as to the
+best course to pursue, always bearing in mind
+his determination and the desirability of getting
+to the Liverpool Bar when it could be
+crossed while the tide served and without a
+pilot. Further, as was stated by Sir Alfred
+Booth, "The one definite instruction we did
+give him with regard to that was to authorize
+him to come up without a pilot." The reasons
+for this instruction were cogent and were
+concisely summed up by Sir Alfred Booth during
+his examination as a witness as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Mersey
+sandbar.</div>
+
+<p>"It was one of the points that we felt it necessary
+to make the Captain of the <i>Lusitania</i> understand
+the importance of. The <i>Lusitania</i> can
+only cross the Liverpool Bar at certain states
+of the tide, and we therefore warned the
+Captain, or whoever might be Captain, that we
+did not think it would be safe for him to arrive
+off the bar at such a time that he would have
+to wait there, because that area had been
+infested with submarines, and we thought
+therefore it would be wiser for him to arrange his
+arrival in such a way, leaving him an absolutely
+free hand as to how he would do it, that he
+could come straight up without stopping at
+all. The one definite instruction we did give
+him with regard to that was to authorize him
+to come up without a pilot."</p>
+
+<p>The tide would be high at Liverpool Bar at
+6:53 on Saturday morning, May 8. Captain
+Turner planned to cross the bar as much earlier
+than that as he could get over without stopping,
+while at the same time figuring on passing during
+the darkness the dangerous waters from
+the entrance of St. George's Channel to the
+Liverpool Bar.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Captain
+decides
+to work
+inshore.</div>
+
+<p>Having thus in mind his objective, and the
+time approximately when he intended to reach
+it, the message received at 11:25 A. M. required
+that he should determine whether to keep off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+land approximately the same distance as he
+was when he passed Fastnet, or to work inshore
+and go close to Coningbeg Lightship. He
+determined that the latter was the better plan
+to avoid the submarines reported in midchannel
+ahead of him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Taking a
+bearing.</div>
+
+<p>When Galley Head was sighted the course
+was changed so as to haul closer to the land,
+and this course was pursued until 1:40 P. M.,
+at which time Captain Turner concluded that
+it was necessary for him to get his bearings
+accurately. This he decided should be done by
+taking a four-point bearing, during which procedure
+the ship was torpedoed. It is urged
+that he should have taken a two-point bearing
+or a cross bearing, which would have occupied
+less time, but if, under all the conditions which
+appealed to his judgment as a mariner, he had
+taken a different method of ascertaining his
+exact distance and the result would have been
+inaccurate, or while engaged in taking a two-point
+bearing the ship had been torpedoed,
+then somebody would have said he should have
+taken a four-point bearing. The point of the
+matter is that an experienced Captain took
+the bearing he thought proper for his purposes,
+and to predicate negligence upon such a course
+is to assert that a Captain is bound to guess
+the exact location of a hidden and puzzling
+danger.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Testimony
+about the
+ship's
+speed.</div>
+
+<p>Much emphasis has been placed upon the fact
+that the speed of the ship was eighteen knots
+at the time of the attack instead of twenty-four,
+or, in any event, twenty-one knots, and upon
+the further fact (for such it is) that the ship
+was not zigzagging as frequently as the Admiralty
+advised or in the sense of that advice.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this branch of the case much testimony
+was taken, (some in camera, as in the
+Wreck Commissioners' Court,) and, for reasons
+of public interest, the methods of successfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+evading submarines will not be discussed. If
+it be assumed that the Admiralty advices as of
+May, 1915, were sound and should have been
+followed, then the answer to the charge of
+negligence is twofold: (1) that Captain Turner,
+in taking a four-point bearing off the Old Head
+of Kinsale, was conscientiously exercising his
+judgment for the welfare of the ship, and (2)
+that it is impossible to determine whether, by
+zigzagging off the Old Head of Kinsale or elsewhere,
+the <i>Lusitania</i> would have escaped the
+German submarine or submarines.</p>
+
+<p>As to the first answer I cannot better express
+my conclusion <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'that'">than</ins> in the language of
+Lord Mersey:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lord
+Mersey's
+opinion.</div>
+
+<p>"Captain Turner was fully advised as to the
+means which in the view of the Admiralty were
+best calculated to avert the perils he was likely
+to encounter, and in considering the question
+whether he is to blame for the catastrophe in
+which his voyage ended I have to bear this
+circumstance in mind. It is certain that in
+some respects Captain Turner did not follow
+the advice given to him. It may be (though
+I seriously doubt it) that had he done so his
+ship would have reached Liverpool in safety.
+But the question remains: Was his conduct
+the conduct of a negligent or of an incompetent
+man? On this question I have sought the
+guidance of my assessors, who have rendered
+me invaluable assistance, and the conclusion
+at which I have arrived is that blame ought not
+to be imputed to the Captain. The advice given
+to him, although meant for his most serious
+and careful consideration, was not intended to
+deprive him of the right to exercise his skilled
+judgment in the difficult questions that might
+arise from time to time in the navigation of
+his ship. His omission to follow the advice in
+all respects cannot fairly be attributed either
+to negligence or incompetence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Skilled
+and experienced
+judgment.</div>
+
+<p>"He exercised his judgment for the best. It
+was the judgment of a skilled and experienced
+man, and although others might have acted
+differently, and, perhaps, more successfully, he
+ought not, in my opinion, to be blamed."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">More
+than one
+submarine
+in wait.</div>
+
+<p>As to the second answer, it is only necessary
+to outline the situation in order to realize
+how speculative is the assertion of fault. It
+is plain from the radio messages of the Admiralty,
+(May 6, 7:50 P. M., "Submarines active
+off south coast of Ireland"; May 6, 8:30 P. M.,
+"Submarines off Fastnet"; the 11:25 message
+of May 7, supra; May 7, 11:40 A. M.,
+"Submarines five miles south of Cape Clear,
+proceeding west when sighted at 10 A. M.,") that
+more than one submarine was lying in wait
+for the <i>Lusitania</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Submarines
+bold with
+unarmed
+vessels.</div>
+
+<p>A scientific education is not necessary to
+appreciate that it is much more difficult for a
+submarine successfully to hit a naval vessel
+than an unarmed merchant ship. The destination
+of a naval vessel is usually not known,
+that of the <i>Lusitania</i> was. A submarine commander,
+when attacking an armed vessel, knows
+that he, as the attacker, may and likely will
+also be attacked by his armed opponent. The
+<i>Lusitania</i> was as helpless in that regard as a
+peaceful citizen suddenly set upon by murderous
+assailants. There are other advantages of
+the naval vessel over the merchant ship which
+need not be referred to.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Probably
+two submarines.</div>
+
+<p>It must be assumed that the German submarine
+commanders realized the obvious disadvantages
+which necessarily attached to the
+<i>Lusitania</i>, and, if she had evaded one submarine,
+who can say what might have happened
+five minutes later? If there was, in fact, a
+third torpedo fired at the <i>Lusitania's</i> port
+side, then that incident would strongly suggest
+that, in the immediate vicinity of the ship,
+there were at least two submarines.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It must be remembered also that the <i>Lusitania</i>
+was still in the open sea, considerably
+distant from the places of theretofore submarine
+activity and comfortably well off the Old
+Head of Kinsale, from which point it was about
+140 miles to the Scilly Islands, and that she
+was nearly 100 miles from the entrance to St.
+George's Channel, the first channel she would
+enter on her way to Liverpool.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Attack
+intended
+to destroy
+life.</div>
+
+<p>No transatlantic passenger liner, and certainly
+none carrying American citizens, had
+been torpedoed up to that time. The submarines,
+therefore, could lay their plans with
+facility to destroy the vessel somewhere on the
+way from Fastnet to Liverpool, knowing full
+well the easy prey which would be afforded by
+an unarmed, unconvoyed, well-known merchantman,
+which from every standpoint of international
+law had the right to expect a warning
+before its peaceful passengers were sent to their
+death. That the attack was deliberate and long
+contemplated and intended ruthlessly to destroy
+human life, as well as property, can no
+longer be open to doubt. And when a foe employs
+such tactics it is idle and purely speculative
+to say that the action of the Captain of
+a merchant ship, in doing or not doing something
+or in taking one course and not another,
+was a contributing cause of disaster or that had
+the Captain not done what he did or had he
+done something else, then that the ship and
+her passengers would have evaded their assassins.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Captain
+and company
+not
+negligent.</div>
+
+<p>I find, therefore, as a fact, that the Captain
+and, hence, the Cunard Company were not
+negligent.</p>
+
+<p>The importance of the cause, however, justifies
+the statement of another ground which effectually
+disposes of any question of liability.</p>
+
+<p>It is an elementary principle of law that
+even if a person is negligent recovery cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>
+be had unless the negligence is the proximate
+cause of the loss or damage.</p>
+
+<p>There is another rule, settled by ample authority,
+viz.: that, even if negligence is shown,
+it cannot be the proximate cause of the loss
+or damage if an independent illegal act or a
+third party intervenes to cause the loss.</p>
+
+<p>The question, then, is whether the act of the
+German submarine commander was an illegal act.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">International
+law.</div>
+
+<p>The United States courts recognize the binding
+force of international law.</p>
+
+<p>At least since as early as June 5, 1793, in
+the letter of Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State,
+to the French Minister, our Government has
+recognized the law of nations as an "integral
+part" of the laws of the land.</p>
+
+<p>To ascertain international law, "resort must
+be had to the customs and usages of civilized
+nations; and, as evidence of these, to the works
+of commentators and jurists. * * * Such
+works are resorted to by judicial tribunals
+* * * for trustworthy evidence of what the
+law really is."</p>
+
+<p>Let us first see the position of our Government,
+and then ascertain whether that position
+has authoritative support. Mr. Lansing, in his
+official communication to the German Government
+dated June 9, 1915, stated:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mr. Lansing's
+communication.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Responsibility
+of the
+German
+Government.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A principle
+of humanity.</div>
+
+<p>"But the sinking of passenger ships involves
+principles of humanity which throw into the
+background any special circumstances of detail
+that may be thought to affect the cases,
+principles which lift it, as the Imperial German
+Government will no doubt be quick to
+recognize and acknowledge, out of the class of
+ordinary subjects of diplomatic discussion or
+of international controversy. Whatever be the
+other facts regarding the <i>Lusitania</i>, the principal
+fact is that a great steamer, primarily
+and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+carrying more than a thousand souls who had
+no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was torpedoed
+and sunk without so much as a challenge
+or a warning, and that men, women, and
+children were sent to their death in circumstances
+unparalleled in modern warfare. The
+fact that more than one hundred American
+citizens were among those who perished made
+it the duty of the Government of the United
+States to speak of these things and once more
+with solemn emphasis to call the attention of
+the Imperial German Government to the grave
+responsibility which the Government of the
+United States conceives that it has incurred
+in this tragic occurrence, and to the indisputable
+principle upon which that responsibility
+rests. The Government of the United States is
+contending for something much greater than
+mere rights of property or privileges of commerce.
+It is contending for nothing less high
+and sacred than the rights of humanity, which
+every Government honors itself in respecting
+and which no Government is justified in resigning
+on behalf of those under its care and
+authority. Only her actual resistance to capture
+or refusal to stop when ordered to do so
+for the purpose of visit could have afforded
+the commander of the submarine any justification
+for so much as putting the lives of
+those on board the ship in jeopardy. This
+principle the Government of the United States
+understands the explicit instructions issued on
+August 3, 1914, by the Imperial German Admiralty
+to its commanders at sea to have
+recognized and embodied as do the naval codes
+of all other nations, and upon it every traveler
+and seaman had a right to depend. It is upon
+this principle of humanity, as well as upon
+the law founded upon this principle, that the
+United States must stand. * * *</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Americans
+must be
+safeguarded.</div>
+
+<p>"The Government of the United States cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+admit that the proclamation of a war zone
+from which neutral ships have been warned to
+keep away may be made to operate as in any
+degree an abbreviation of the rights either of
+American shipmasters or of American citizens
+bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant
+ships of belligerent nationality. It does
+not understand the Imperial German Government
+to question those rights. It understands
+it, also, to accept as established beyond question
+the principle that the lives of non-combatants
+cannot lawfully or rightfully be put in
+jeopardy by the capture or destruction of an
+unresisting merchantman, and to recognize the
+obligation to take sufficient precaution to ascertain
+whether a suspected merchantman is
+in fact of belligerent nationality or is in fact
+carrying contraband of war under a neutral
+flag. The Government of the United States
+therefore deems it reasonable to expect that
+the Imperial German Government will adopt
+the measures necessary to put these principles
+into practice in respect of the safeguarding of
+American lives and American ships, and asks
+for assurances that this will be done. (See
+White Book of Department of State entitled
+'Diplomatic Correspondence with Belligerent
+Governments Relating to Neutral Rights and
+Duties, European War, No. 2,' at p. 172.
+Printed and distributed October 21, 1915.)"</p>
+
+<p>The German Government found itself compelled
+ultimately to recognize the principles insisted
+upon by the Government of the United
+States, for, after considerable correspondence,
+and on May 4, 1916, (after the <i>Sussex</i>
+had been sunk,) the German Government stated:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Sussex</i>
+agreement.</div>
+
+<p>"The German submarine forces have had in
+fact, orders to conduct <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'submarines'">submarine</ins> warfare in
+accordance with the general principles of visit
+and search and destruction of merchant vessels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+as recognized by international law, the sole
+exception being the conduct of warfare against
+the enemy trade carried on enemy freight ships
+that are encountered in the war zone surrounding
+Great Britain. * * *</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Merchant
+ships
+not to
+be sunk
+without
+warning.</div>
+
+<p>"The German Government, guided by this
+idea, notifies the Government of the United
+States that the German naval forces have received
+the following orders: In accordance with
+the general principles of visit and search and
+destruction of merchant vessels recognized by
+international law, such vessels, both within and
+without the area declared as naval war zone,
+shall not be sunk without warning and without
+saving human lives, unless these ships attempt
+to escape or offer resistance. See Official Communication
+by German Foreign Office to Ambassador
+Gerard, May 4, 1916. (White Book
+No. 3 of Department of State, pp. 302, 305.)"</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Right to
+make a
+prize.</div>
+
+<p>There is, of course, no doubt as to the right
+to make prize of an enemy ship on the high
+seas, and, under certain conditions, to destroy
+her, and equally no doubt of the obligation to
+safeguard the lives of all persons aboard,
+whether passengers or crew.</p>
+
+<p>Two quotations from a long list of authorities
+may be given for convenience, one stating
+the rule and the other the attitude which obtains
+among civilized Governments. Oppenheim
+sets forth as among violations of the rules
+of war:</p>
+
+<p>"(12) Attack on enemy merchantmen without
+previous request to submit to visit."</p>
+
+<p>The observation in Vattel's "Law of Nations"
+is peculiarly applicable to the case of the
+<i>Lusitania:</i></p>
+
+<p>"Let us never forget that our enemies are men.
+Though reduced to the disagreeable necessity of
+prosecuting our right by force of arms, let us
+not divest ourselves of that charity which connects
+us with all mankind. Thus shall we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+courageously defend our country's rights without
+violating those of human nature. Let our
+valor preserve itself from every stain of cruelty
+and the lustre of victory will not be tarnished
+by inhuman and brutal actions."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Codes and
+rules of
+nations.</div>
+
+<p>In addition to these authorities are the regulations
+and practices of various Governments.
+In 1512 Henry VIII. issued instructions to the
+Admiral of the Fleet which accord with our
+understanding of modern international law.
+Such has been England's course since.</p>
+
+<p>Substantially the same rules were followed
+in the Russian and Japanese regulations, and
+probably in the codes or rules of many other
+nations.</p>
+
+<p>The rules recognized and practiced by the
+United States, among other things, provide:</p>
+
+<p>"(10) In the case of an enemy merchantman
+it may be sunk, but only if it is impossible to
+take it into port, and provided always that the
+persons on board are put in a place of safety.
+(U. S. White Book, European War, No. 3, p.
+192.)"</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Humane
+principles
+in
+American
+wars.</div>
+
+<p>These humane principles were practiced both
+in the war of 1812 and during our own war of
+1861-65. Even with all the bitterness (now
+happily ended and forgotten) and all the difficulties
+of having no port to which to send a
+prize, Captain Semmes of the <i>Alabama</i> strictly
+observed the rule as to human life, even going
+so far as to release ships because he could not
+care for the passengers. But we are not confined
+to American and English precedents and
+practices.</p>
+
+<p>While acting contrary to its official statements,
+yet the Imperial German Government
+recognized the same rule as the United States,
+and prior to the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i> had
+not announced any other rule. The war zone
+proclamation of February 4, 1915, contained no
+warning that the accepted rule of civilized naval<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+warfare would be discarded by the German
+Government.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, after the <i>Lusitania</i> was sunk, the
+German Government did not make any such
+claim, but in answer to the first American note
+in reference to the <i>Lusitania</i> the German Foreign
+Office, per von Jagow, addressed to Ambassador
+Gerard a note dated May 18, 1915, in
+which, inter alia, it is stated in connection with
+the sinking of the British steamer <i>Falaba:</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+<i>Falaba</i>
+case.</div>
+
+<p>"In the case of the sinking of the English
+steamer <i>Falaba</i>, the commander of the German
+submarine had the intention of allowing passengers
+and crew ample opportunity to save
+themselves. It was not until the Captain disregarded
+the order to lay to and took to flight,
+sending up rocket signals for help, that the
+German commander ordered the crew and passengers
+by signals and megaphone to leave the
+ship within ten minutes. As a matter of fact,
+he allowed them twenty-three minutes, and did
+not fire the torpedo until suspicious steamers
+were hurrying to the aid of the <i>Falaba</i>. (White
+Book <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'N.'">No.</ins> 2, U. S. Department of State, p. 169.)"</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, as late as May 4, 1916, Germany did
+not dispute the applicability of the rule, as is
+evidenced by the note written to our Government
+by von Jagow of the German Foreign
+Office, an extract of which has been quoted
+supra.</p>
+
+<p>Further, Section 116 of the German Prize
+Code, (Huberich and Kind translation, p. 68,)
+in force at the date of the <i>Lusitania's</i> destruction,
+conformed with the American rule. It
+provided:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Safety of
+passengers
+necessary.</div>
+
+<p>"Before proceeding to a destruction of the
+vessel the safety of all persons on board, and,
+so far as possible, their effects, is to be provided
+for, and all ship's papers and other evidentiary
+material which, according to the views
+of the persons at interest, is of value for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+formulation of the judgment of the prize court,
+are to be taken over by the commander."</p>
+
+<p>Thus, when the <i>Lusitania</i> sailed from New
+York, her owner and master were justified in
+believing that, whatever else and theretofore
+happened, this simple, humane and universally
+accepted principle would not be violated. Few,
+at that time, would be likely to construe the
+warning advertisement as calling attention to
+more than the perils to be expected from quick
+disembarkation and the possible rigors of the
+sea after the proper safeguarding of the lives
+of passengers by at least full opportunity to
+take to the boats.</p>
+
+<p>It is, of course, easy now in the light of many
+later events, added to preceding acts, to look
+back and say that the Cunard Line and its Captain
+should have known that the German
+Government would authorize or permit so
+shocking a breach of international law and so
+foul an offense, not only against an enemy, but
+as well against peaceful citizens of a then
+friendly nation.</p>
+
+<p>But the unexpected character of the act was
+best evidenced by the horror which it excited
+in the minds and hearts of the American people.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fault
+with the
+Imperial
+German
+Government.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Those who
+plotted
+the crime.</div>
+
+<p>The fault, therefore, must be laid upon those
+who are responsible for the sinking of the vessel,
+in the legal as well as moral sense. It is,
+therefore, not the Cunard Line, petitioner,
+which must be held liable for the loss of life
+and property. The cause of the sinking of the
+<i>Lusitania</i> was the illegal act of the Imperial
+German Government, acting through its instrument,
+the submarine commander, and violating
+a cherished and humane rule observed, until
+this war, by even the bitterest antagonists. As
+Lord Mersey said, "The whole blame for the
+cruel destruction of life in this catastrophe
+must rest solely with those who plotted and
+with those who committed the crime."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Italy, bound at the outbreak of the war to
+Germany and Austria by a treaty which formed
+the so-called Triple Alliance, was in a most
+difficult position. Her people, however, were
+strongly convinced of the aggressive intentions
+of Germany, and, after careful consideration,
+the Government and the people alike decided
+to cast their lot with the Allies. Active operations
+were at once begun along the border between
+Italy and Austria, and in this difficult
+terrain the events which are described in the
+following chapter occurred.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MOUNTAIN WARFARE</h2>
+
+<h3>HOWARD C. FELTON</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">New style
+of warfare.</div>
+
+<p>At the outbreak of the great war huge and
+well-equipped bodies of men, led by
+highly trained officers, rich in the strategic
+lore of centuries, set out to demonstrate
+the value of the theories that they had learned
+in time of peace. In a few months an entirely
+new style of warfare developed, and most of
+the military learning of the past was interesting
+chiefly because of its antiquity.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Italy and
+Austria
+fight in
+the Alps.</div>
+
+<p>After the tremendous conflict at the Marne
+and the German rush for Calais, which was
+halted on the line of the Yser, there were on
+the western front no more battles in the old
+sense of the word. From the North Sea to the
+Swiss frontier, the fighting was just a novel
+and gigantic form of siege warfare. Cavalry
+became an obsolete arm. Battle tactics, in the
+old sense, ceased to have any meaning. Of
+strategy nothing much remained save the dictionary
+definition.</p>
+
+<p>And now, since Italy and Austria have locked
+horns above the clouds, among the glaciers
+and snow-faced slopes of the Alps, even the old
+text-books on mountain warfare have lost their
+significance. In the Trentino and along the
+Isonzo we see the consummation of a new style
+of mountain fighting, which grew out of the
+old methods in the struggle for the Carpathian
+passes during the first winter and spring of
+the war.</p>
+
+
+<p>In the old days, during a campaign in a
+mountain region, most of the battles were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+fought on the level&mdash;in the literal, not the colloquial
+sense of the word. There was a deal of
+marching and scouting among crags and precipices,
+but all with the object of obtaining the
+best position in an open valley or upland plain
+where the real fighting must take place. Now
+the smooth floors of the valleys are comparatively
+deserted, while whole armies are spread
+out over great peaks and dizzy snow-fields thousands
+of feet above sea-level, chopping trenches
+in the ice and sparring for some vantage-point
+on <ins title="Transcriber's Note: this word not present in original">a</ins> crag that in peace times might tax the
+strength and skill of the amateur mountain-climber.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bourcet's
+"Principles
+of
+Mountain
+Warfare."</div>
+
+<p>Some time between 1764 and 1770, Pierre de
+Bourcet wrote a treatise entitled "The Principles
+of Mountain Warfare." This may seem
+to be going a long way back, but Bourcet's
+volume and that of the young Comte de Guilbert
+on general tactics have historical interest
+and importance because, according to Spenser
+Wilkinson, they show where some of Napoleon's
+strategic "miracles" were born. Bourcet's
+observations are as vital as if they had been
+written in 1910, but, as will be seen, many of
+them are somewhat musty in 1916.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Passes
+and defiles
+once the
+strong
+positions.</div>
+
+<p>Bourcet, without the slightest idea of a
+battle-line extending from frontier to sea, lays
+down as the first principle of mountain warfare
+that when the enemy holds a strong position,
+the assailant should force him to leave it
+by turning it. These strong positions in the
+mountains were, until this war, the passes and
+defiles.</p>
+
+<p>"These contracted places," he explains, "as
+they generally constitute the principal objects
+of the defense, must compel the general who
+is taking the offensive to seek every possible
+means of turning them, or of misleading the
+enemy by diversions which will weaken him
+and facilitate access to them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Suppose, for example, that the general on
+the defensive should be entrenched at all points
+surrounding his position in such a way as to
+be able to resist any direct attack that might
+be attempted against him, it would be necessary
+to attempt to turn him by some more
+distant point, choosing positions that would
+facilitate the scheme, and which, by suggesting
+some different object, could not raise the suspicion
+that the troops there collected were
+destined for the purpose really in view.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Unlike
+modern
+warfare.</div>
+
+<p>"It often happens in the mountains that the
+only passages favorable to our plans are interrupted
+by narrow defiles. In such cases we
+must avoid letting the enemy know our real
+purpose, and must undertake diversions, dividing
+our forces into small bodies. This method,
+which would be dangerous in any other sort of
+country, is indispensable in the mountains,
+and is the whole science of this kind of warfare,
+provided that the general who uses it always
+has the means to reconcentrate his forces
+when necessary."</p>
+
+<p>Bourcet's conclusion is that in such a
+campaign the offensive has great advantages
+over the defensive. It will always possess the
+initiative; and if it prepares its blow with sufficient
+secrecy and strikes swiftly, the enemy,
+whose troops are necessarily scattered along
+the whole line menaced, can never be ready to
+meet the attack.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Generals
+understand
+each
+other's
+strategy.</div>
+
+<p>To-day, the only trouble about this beautifully
+tricky system of strategy is that the defending
+general would pay no attention to it.
+The Austrian general staff, for instance, knew
+that the Italians would try to smash through
+the frontier defenses of the Dual Empire, and
+that the natural avenues of attack were up the
+valley of the Adige, along the railway through
+Pontebba and Malborghetto, or between Malborghetto
+and the sea. The Austrians have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+enough men and guns to defend all these routes
+and all the tortuous pathways in between. So
+all they had to do was plant themselves on
+their chosen ground along the whole carefully
+fortified mountain line, and wait for the
+Italians to attack wherever they pleased.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only by marching and countermarching,"
+Bourcet said, "that we can hope to deceive
+the enemy and induce him to weaken himself
+in certain positions in order to strengthen himself
+in others."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+enemy
+cannot
+be outflanked.</div>
+
+<p>But this cannot be done in the mountain
+fighting in the Alps to-day. The Italians might
+march and countermarch as much as they
+pleased, but there is no possible way of turning
+the enemy out of his position by outflanking
+him. It is a case of frontal attack, with
+every valley blocked and every peak a fortress.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Italy's
+great objectives.</div>
+
+<p>The Italians campaign has two principal objectives&mdash;Trent
+and Gorizia. These two lovely
+cities of Italia Irrendenta are respectively the
+keys to the right and left flank of the Austrian
+frontier. Trent guards the valley of the Adige,
+one of the few natural highways from Italy into
+Austrian territory. Bourcet himself, in 1735,
+designed the defense of this pathway at Rivoli,
+just inside the Italian boundary, where he laid
+out what were considered impregnable positions.
+To the north; where Trent lies, the
+country becomes more and more difficult for
+an invader, and up to this time the Italians
+have not been able to come within striking distance
+of the great Austrian fortress, though
+they hold Rovereto, and have cut the direct
+line of communication between Trent and
+Toblach.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Italian
+game on
+the
+Gorizia
+front.</div>
+
+<p>On the Gorizia front they have made what in
+this war may be considered as important gains.
+Gorizia stands watch over the valley of the
+Isonzo and Austria's Adriatic littoral. Besides
+occupying Grado and Monfalcone in the coastlands,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+General Cadorna's forces have crossed
+the Isonzo at several points, have smashed
+through to the north, and now threaten to
+envelop Gorizia. Indeed, many observers believe
+that Cadorna could at any time take the
+place by a grand assault if he were willing to
+pay the cost in blood.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the very unfavorable character of
+the country, the Italians have gained more
+ground here in the same period than either the
+Germans or the Anglo-French forces in the flat
+or rolling plains of Flanders and northern
+France. But the outflanking tactics of Bourcet,
+with feints and swift maneuvering, have had
+little to do with it. The assailants have had to
+fight their way step by step.</p>
+
+<p>The Austrians had prepared all sorts of
+disagreeable surprises. They had hewn gun-positions
+out of solid cliffs, skilfully placed so
+as to cover the routes of approach, and had
+cemented up the embrasures. It was merely
+necessary to knock the cement out and pour
+shells upon the advancing Italians at a range
+of several miles. The batteries were inaccessible
+to storming parties, and the Italians had
+to drag up guns of equal caliber to put them
+out of business.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ancient
+methods
+employed.</div>
+
+<p>In some places rocks and masses of ice were
+rolled down the slopes, as in the brave old days
+of the Helvetians; and in this line the Austrians
+introduced an innovation. When the
+Italians began driving their trenches up the
+steep slopes of Podgora&mdash;the Gibraltar of
+Gorizia&mdash;the defenders rolled down barrels of
+kerosene and set them alight with artillery fire.
+This enterprise throve joyously until the Italian
+gunners got the range of the launching-point
+and succeeded in exploding a few barrels
+among the Austrians themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Austria
+had possession
+of the
+heights.</div>
+
+<p>The writer does not mean to give the impression
+that Italy's job in the Alps is all but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+finished. A glance at the map of the frontier
+will cure any one of such a notion. The
+Italians were forced to start this campaign
+under every strategic disadvantage. By the
+frontier delimited in 1866, they were left without
+natural defenses on the north and east.
+All along the Austrian boundary the heights
+remained in the hands of the Hapsburgs as
+natural menaces to Venetia and Lombardy.
+Italy received the plains, but Austria held the
+mountain fastnesses that hung above them.</p>
+
+<p>This is so much the case that when Italy declared
+war, the Austrian general orders reminded
+the troops that they were in the position
+of men on the top floor of a six-story
+house, defending it from attackers who must
+mount from the street under a plunging fire.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Chasseurs
+Alpins
+in the
+Vosges.</div>
+
+<p>But in one way or another the Italians have
+been doggedly fighting their way up the walls
+of the house. For one thing, their Alpini have
+brought to great perfection the use of skis in
+military operations on the snow-clad slopes.
+This is the first war in which skis have really
+come to the front. In France, too, the Chasseurs
+Alpins have been able to show the Germans
+some astonishing things with their long
+wooden snow-shoes in the winter fighting
+among the crests of the Vosges.</p>
+
+<p>A typical instance of this is the story of
+the capture of a German post on the Alsatian
+frontier in the winter of 1914-15. The Germans,
+holding the railroad from Ste. Marie to
+Ste. Croix, were expecting an attack from the
+French position at St. Di&eacute;. This impression
+was deliberately strengthened by a heavy artillery
+fire from St. Di&eacute;, while a considerable
+detachment of the Chasseurs Alpins led a
+body of infantry along a winding mountain
+road to the village of Bonhomme. There they
+posted themselves just out of sight of the German
+lines, while the <i>chasseurs</i> scaled the snow-covered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+heights and crept along the flank of
+the German position.</p>
+
+<p>When they had reached the desired position,
+the infantry charged along the road and the
+Chasseurs Alpins simultaneously whizzed down
+the slope on their skis. The swift flank attack
+did the business, and the Germans were driven
+for some miles down the valley of the Weiss
+toward Colmar.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Austrians
+capture
+of Mt.
+L&ouml;vchen.</div>
+
+<p>One of the greatest single mountain successes
+of the war was the Austrian capture
+of Mount L&ouml;vchen, the huge black mass of
+rock, nearly six thousand feet high, which
+dominates the Austrian port of Cattaro and
+sentinels the little kingdom of Montenegro on
+the west.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since the war began the Austrians have
+from time to time made attempts to reach the
+summit of this mighty rock. It is only a
+matter of an hour or two by winding road in
+peace times, but the Austrians were something
+like eighteen months on the job; and in all
+this time it is doubtful if the defenders ever
+numbered much more than five thousand. It
+was not captured until the Montenegrins had
+practically run out of ammunition and of reasons
+for holding the position. The rest of
+their kingdom was overrun, and they were to
+all intents and purposes out of the war.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Russians
+in the
+Carpathians.</div>
+
+<p>The Russian campaign in the Carpathians,
+before the great German drive of a year ago
+pushed the Czar's armies back into their own
+country, also illustrates how the mountain warfare
+of to-day grew by natural tendencies from
+the tactics of Bourcet into the trench warfare
+of northern France.</p>
+
+<p>In the first weeks of the war, when the great
+offensive movement of the Austrian army toward
+Lublin was crushed by the Grand Duke
+Nicholas, and the broken hosts of the Dual
+Monarchy were sent flying through Galicia and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+the Carpathians, a cloud of Cossack cavalry
+followed them and penetrated into the plains
+of Hungary. This last operation was merely
+a raid, however, and the Cossacks were soon
+galloping back through the mountain passes.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Russians laid siege to Przemysl,
+and occupied the whole of Galicia up to the
+line of the San. Later they pushed on westward
+to the Dunajec, threatening Cracow.
+This was their high tide. On their left flank
+was the mass of the Carpathians, pierced by
+a number of passes. The more important of
+these, from west to east, are the Tarnow,
+Dukla, Lupkow, and Uzsok.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Carpathian
+passes.</div>
+
+<p>The Austrians were rallied after some weeks,
+and put up something of a fight for these "contracted
+places." The Russians, following the
+precepts of Bourcet, threatened the passage
+which seemed most desirable, because of the
+railroad facilities, and delivered a heavy blow
+at the Dukla Pass, the least important of the
+four. Here they pushed through to Bartfeld,
+on the Hungarian plain. Then, however,
+Mackensen's fearful blow smashed the Russian
+line on the Dunajec and poured the German
+legions across Galicia in the rear of the Carpathian
+armies, forcing the Muscovites to abandon
+the passes and scurry home.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Plains
+more
+often
+battlegrounds.</div>
+
+<p>Mountain warfare has always had a certain
+romantic glamour, and it has filled many pages
+in the literature of fighting. As a matter of
+historical fact, however, it has played a comparatively
+small part in the world's annals.
+Almost all the great campaigns have been
+fought out in the lowlands. It is Belgium,
+for instance, and not Switzerland, that has
+been proverbially the battle-ground of Europe.
+Napoleon and Suwaroff marched armies
+through the Alps, but only as a means of striking
+unexpectedly at the enemy who occupied
+the plains beyond.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Up to the time of the present war, mountain
+campaigns have usually been no more than
+picturesque foot-notes to history, illuminated
+by the valor of raiding clansmen like Roderick
+Dhu of the Scottish Highlands, or guerrilla
+chiefs like Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese patriot.
+Hofer's struggle against Napoleon was indeed
+a gallant and notable one, but it scarcely entered
+into the main current of history.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Garibaldi's
+mountain
+campaigns.</div>
+
+<p>If, however, we include Garibaldi among the
+mountain fighters&mdash;and such was the characteristic
+bent of his remarkable military genius&mdash;we
+must accord him a place among the
+molders of modern Europe, for without his
+flashing sword Italy could not have been liberated
+and united. His two Alpine campaigns
+against the Austrians were successful and effective,
+but his most brilliant powers were shown
+in his memorable invasion of Sicily in 1860.
+Chased ashore at Marsala by the Neapolitan
+war-ships, and narrowly escaping capture, he
+led his followers&mdash;one thousand red-shirted
+volunteers armed with obsolete muskets&mdash;into
+the Sicilian mountains, where he played such
+a game that within two months he compelled
+the surrender of a well-equipped army of nearly
+thirty thousand regulars. The history of warfare
+can show but few exploits so daring and
+so dramatic.</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Copyright, Munsey's Magazine, May, 1916.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The most important military movement on
+the western front in the early autumn of 1915
+was the great French offensive in Champagne.
+During the preceding months of the spring and
+summer, there had been hard fighting all along
+the 400-mile line from the North Sea to Switzerland.
+The military results had been small on
+either side and now the French resolved on a
+mighty offensive which should be decisive in
+its accomplishments. What these results actually
+were is told in the following narrative.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE GREAT CHAMPAGNE<br />
+OFFENSIVE OF 1915</h2>
+
+<h3>OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF THE FRENCH
+HEADQUARTERS STAFF</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Menace
+of the
+French in
+Alsace.</div>
+
+<p>After the battles of May and June, 1915,
+in Artois, activity on the Western front
+became concentrated in the Vosges,
+where, by a series of successful engagements,
+we managed to secure possession of more favorable
+positions and to retain them in spite of incessant
+counter-attacks. The superiority established
+over the adversary, the wearing down
+of the latter through vain and costly counter-offensives,
+which absorbed in that sector his
+local resources; the state of uncertainty in
+which the Germans found themselves in view
+of the menace of a French division in Alsace&mdash;such
+were the immediate results of these engagements.
+From the number of the effectives engaged,
+and the limited front along which the
+attacks took place, those attacks nevertheless
+were no more than local.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Preparing
+for a
+great
+offensive.</div>
+
+<p>While those operations were developing, the
+higher command was carefully preparing for a
+great offensive. The situation of the Russian
+armies imposed on us, as their Allies, obligations
+the accomplishment of which had been
+made possible by the results of a long course
+of preparation no less than by the aid of circumstances.</p>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Improved
+defensive
+organizations.</div>
+
+<p>The inaction of the adversary, engaged on
+the Eastern front in a series of operations of
+which he had not foreseen the difficulties, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+thus reduced to the defensive on our front, left
+the initiative of the operations in our hands.
+The landing in France of fresh British troops
+enabled Marshal French to take upon himself
+the defence of a portion of the lines hitherto
+held by French troops. The improvement of
+our defensive organizations, which made possible
+certain economies in the effectives, the
+regrouping of units and the creation of new
+units, also had the effect of placing a larger
+number of men at the disposal of the Generalissimo.
+The increased output of war <i>mat&eacute;riel</i>
+ensured him the necessary means for a complete
+artillery preparation.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Joffre's
+appeal to
+the troops.</div>
+
+<p>Among all the elements of success which were
+thus united at the end of the summer of 1915,
+not the least was the incomparable individual
+worth of the French soldier. It was to the
+traditional warlike qualities of the race that
+the Generalissimo appealed when, on September
+23, 1915, he addressed to the troops the
+following general order, which was read to the
+regiments by their officers:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='center'>"<span class="smcap">Soldiers of the Republic</span></div>
+
+<p>"After months of waiting, which have enabled
+us to increase our forces and our resources,
+while the adversary has been using up his own,
+the hour has come to attack and conquer and
+to add fresh glorious pages to those of the
+Marne and Flanders, the Vosges and Arras.</p>
+
+<p>"Behind the whirlwind of iron and fire let
+loose, thanks to the factories of France, where
+your brothers have, night and day, worked for
+us, you will proceed to the attack, all together,
+on the whole front, in close union with the
+armies of our Allies.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+spirit
+of the
+soldier.</div>
+
+<p>"Your <i>&eacute;lan</i> will be irresistible. It will carry
+you at a bound up to the batteries of the adversary,
+beyond the fortified lines which he has
+placed before you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You will give him neither pause nor rest
+until victory has been achieved.</p>
+
+<p>"Set to with all your might for the deliverance
+of the soil of la Patrie, for the triumph
+of justice and liberty.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">J. Joffre.</span>"<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The description of the operations in Champagne
+will show under what conditions our
+troops acquitted themselves of the task assigned
+to them, and also the value and significance
+of this success, without precedent in
+the war of positions in which we are at present
+engaged.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+German
+line that
+was
+broken.</div>
+
+<p>The German line that was broken in Champagne
+is the same that was fortified by our
+adversaries after the victory of the Marne. It
+rests on the western side on the Massif de
+Moronvillers; to the east it stretches as far as
+the Argonne. It was intended to cover the
+railway line from Challerange to Bazancourt,
+a line indispensable for the concentration
+movements of the German troops. The offensive
+front, which extended from Auberive
+to the east of Ville-sur-Tourbe, presents a
+varied aspect. From east to west may be
+seen:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A wooded
+glacis.</div>
+
+<p>(1) A glacis about eight kilometres in width,
+the gentle slopes of which are covered by
+numerous little woods. The road from Saint-Hilaire
+to Saint-Souplet, with the Baraque de
+l'Epine de Vedegrange, marks approximately
+its axis.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Valley of
+Souain.</div>
+
+<p>(2) The hollow, at the bottom of which is
+the village of Souain and of which the first
+German line followed the further edge. The
+road from Souain to Pomme-Py describes the
+radius of this semi-circle. The farm of Navarin,
+at a distance of three and a half kilometres to
+the north of Souain, stands on the top of the
+hills.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Second
+German
+line.</div>
+
+<p>(3) To the north of Perthes a comparatively
+tranquil region of uniform aspect, forming
+between the wooded hills of the Trou Bricot
+and those of the Butte du Mesnil a passage
+three kilometres wide, barred by several lines
+of trenches and ending at a series of heights,
+the Butte de Souain, Hills 195 and 201, and
+the Butte de Tahure, surmounted by the second
+German line.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A strong
+German
+position.</div>
+
+<p>(4) To the north of Le Mesnil, a very strong
+position, bastioned on the west by two twin
+heights (Mamelle Nord and Trap&egrave;ze), on the
+east by the Butte du Mesnil. The German
+trenches formed between these two bastions a
+powerful curtain, behind which extended as
+far as Tahure a thickly wooded, undulating
+region.</p>
+
+<p>(5) To the north of Beaus&eacute;jour a bare terrain
+easily practicable, with a gentle rise in
+the direction of Ripon as far as the farm of
+Maisons de Champagne.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Eastern
+flank
+of the
+German
+line.</div>
+
+<p>(6) To the north of Massiges, Hills numbered
+191 and 199, describing on the map the
+figure of a hand, very strongly constructed and
+constituting the eastern flank of the whole
+German line. This tableland slopes down
+gently in the direction of Ville-sur-Tourbe.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+system
+of trench
+defenses.</div>
+
+<p>The achievements of our troops from September
+25 to October 3, 1915, in this region
+may be thus summarised: They scaled the
+whole of the glacis of l'Epine de Vedegrange;
+they occupied the ridge of the hollow at
+Souain; debouched in the opening to the
+north of Perthes to the slopes of Hill 195 and
+as far as the Butte de Tahure; carried the
+western bastions of the curtain of le Mesnil;
+advanced as far as Maisons de Champagne and
+took by assault the "hand" of Massiges. That
+is to say that they captured an area about
+forty square kilometres in extent. The importance
+of that figure is shown when one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+examines on the map accompanying this report
+the position of the German trenches, with a
+view to understanding the system of defence
+adopted by our adversaries. Two positions,
+distant from three to four kilometres from
+each other, stand out clearly. The first is the
+more dense; the trenches with their alleys of
+communication present at certain points the
+appearance of a wirework chessboard. Everywhere,
+to a depth of from 300 to 400 metres
+there are at least three parallel lines, sometimes
+five. The trenches are separated from
+each other as a rule by wire entanglements
+varying in width from 15 to 60 metres.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+second
+position.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Alleys of
+communication.</div>
+
+<p>The second position comprises only one
+trench, reinforced at certain points by a supporting
+trench. It is everywhere constructed,
+as is the wire network in front of it, in the
+form of a slope. On top there are merely observation
+stations with machine-gun shelters
+connected with the trench by an alley of communication.
+Between the two positions the
+terrain was also specially prepared, being cut
+up by transverse or diagonal trenches. The
+alleys of communication constructed to facilitate
+the firing, which were in many cases
+protected by wirework, make possible, according
+to the German method, a splitting up of
+the terrain by lateral fire and the maintenance,
+even after the tide of the assailants had flooded
+the trenches, of centres of resistance, veritable
+strongholds that could only be reduced after a
+siege. The positions of the artillery were
+established, as were also the camps and provision
+depots, behind the first position, the principal
+line of defence.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+organization
+known.</div>
+
+<p>The whole German organization was known
+to us. It was shown on our maps, and every
+defensive work, trench, alley of communication,
+and clump of trees was given a special name
+or a number preceded by a certain letter, according<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+to the sector of attack wherein it was
+situated. This minute precision in the details
+of the preparation is worthy of being pointed
+out; it constitutes one of the peculiarities of
+the present war, a veritable siege war, in which
+the objective has to be realised beforehand
+and clearly determined, every piece of ground
+having to be captured by heavy fighting, as was
+formerly every redan and every curtain.</p>
+
+<p>The bombardment of the German positions
+began on September 22, 1915 and was pursued
+night and day according to a time scheme and
+a division of labour previously determined
+upon. The results expected were:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Results of
+bombardment.</div>
+
+<p>(1) The destruction of the wire entanglements.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The burial of the defenders in their dug-out.</p>
+
+<p>(3) The razing of the trenches and the
+demolition of the embrasures.</p>
+
+<p>(4) The stopping-up of the alleys of communication.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Work
+of the
+long-range
+guns.</div>
+
+<p>The gun-fire covered not only the first trench
+but also the supporting trench and even the
+second position, although the distance at which
+the last was situated and the outline of its
+wire entanglements made it difficult to make
+field observations in that direction. At the
+same time the heavy long-range guns bombarded
+the headquarters, the cantonments and
+the railway stations; they cut the railway lines,
+causing a suspension of the work of revictualling.
+The best witnesses to the effectiveness
+of our bombardment are to be found
+in unfinished letters found upon prisoners.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<div class='right'>
+"<span class="smcap">September 23.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Letters
+found on
+prisoners.</div>
+
+<p>"The French artillery fired without intermission
+from the morning of the 21st to the
+evening of the 23rd, and we all took refuge in
+our dug-outs. On the evening of the 22nd we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+were to have gone to get some food, and the
+French continued to fire on our trenches. In
+the evening we had heavy losses, and we had
+nothing to eat."</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='right'>
+"<span class="smcap">September 25.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"I have received no news, and probably I
+shall not receive any for some days. The
+whole postal service has been stopped; all
+places have been bombarded to such an extent
+that no human being could stand against it.</p>
+
+<p>"The railway line is so seriously damaged
+that the train service for some time has been
+completely stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"We have been for three days in the first
+line; during those three days the French have
+fired so heavily that our trenches are no longer
+visible."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Number of
+wounded.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='right'>
+"<span class="smcap">September 24.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"For the last two days the French have been
+firing like mad. To-day, for instance, a dug-out
+has been destroyed. There were sixteen
+men in it. Not one of them managed to save
+his skin. They are all dead. Besides that,
+a number of individual men have been killed
+and there are a great mass of wounded.</p>
+
+<p>"The artillery fires almost as rapidly as the
+infantry. A mist of smoke hangs over the
+whole battle-front, so that it is impossible to
+see anything. Men are dropping like flies.</p>
+
+<p>"The trenches are no longer anything but
+a mound of ruins."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sufferings
+of the
+soldiers.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='right'>
+
+"<span class="smcap">September 24.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"A rain of shells is pouring down upon us.
+The kitchen and everything that is sent to us
+is bombarded at night. The field-kitchens no
+longer come to us. Oh, if only the end were
+near! That is the cry every one is repeating.
+Peace! Peace!"</p></div>
+
+<p>Extract from the notebook of a man of the
+103rd Regiment:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"From the trench nothing much can now
+be seen; it will soon be on a level with the
+ground."</p></div>
+
+<p>Letter of an artilleryman of the 100th Regiment
+of Field Artillery:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='right'>
+
+"<span class="smcap">September 25.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"We have passed through some terrible
+hours. It was as though the whole world was
+in a state of collapse. We have had heavy
+losses. One company of two hundred and fifty
+men had sixty killed last night. A neighboring
+battery had sixteen killed yesterday.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Destructiveness
+of the
+French
+shells.</div>
+
+<p>"The following instance will show you the
+frightful destructiveness of the French shells.
+A dug-out five metres deep, surmounted by 2
+metres 50 centimetres of earth and two thicknesses
+of heavy timber, was broken like a
+match."</p></div>
+
+<p>Report made on September 24 in the morning,
+by the captain commanding the 3rd company
+of the 135th Regiment of Reserve:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The French are firing on us with great
+bombs and machine-guns. We must have reinforcements
+at once. Many men are no longer
+fit for anything. It is not that they are
+wounded, but they are Landsturmers. Moreover
+the wastage is greater than the losses
+announced.</p>
+
+<p>"Send rations immediately; no food has
+reached us to-day. Urgently want illuminating
+cartridges and hand grenades. Is the
+hospital corps never coming to fetch the
+wounded?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+troops
+exhausted.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='right'>
+"<span class="smcap">September 25, 11.45.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"I urgently beg for reinforcements; the men
+are dying from fatigue and want of sleep. I
+have no news of the battalion."</p></div>
+
+<p>The time fixed for all the attacks on the
+Champagne front was a quarter-past nine in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+the morning. There was no hesitation. At
+the time mentioned the troops came out of
+the trenches with the aid of steps or scaling
+ladders and drew up in line before making a
+rush at the German trenches.</p>
+
+<p>The operation was rapidly effected. The
+objective was at an average distance of two
+hundred metres; this was covered without
+serious losses. The Germans were nearly
+everywhere surprised, and their defensive fire
+was not opened until after the invading tide
+of the attackers had passed by.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">First
+German
+trench
+penetrated.</div>
+
+<p>Over the whole attacking front our troops
+penetrated into the first German trench. But
+subsequently the progress was no longer uniform.
+While certain units continued their forward
+movement with extreme rapidity, others
+came up against machine guns still in action
+and either stopped or advanced only with difficulty.
+Some centres of the German resistance
+maintained their position for several
+hours and even for several days.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Outline of
+advance in
+Champagne.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The battle
+a series of
+assaults.</div>
+
+<p>A line showing the different stages of our
+advance in Champagne would assume a curiously
+winding outline, and would reveal on
+the one hand the defensive power of an adversary
+resolved to stick to the ground at all
+costs and on the other the victorious continuity
+of the efforts of our troops in this hand-to-hand
+struggle. The battle of Champagne must
+be considered in the light of a series of assaults,
+executed at the same moment, in
+parallel or convergent directions and having
+for their object either the capture or the hemming
+in of the first German position, the units
+being instructed to reform in a continuous line
+before the second position.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Unity
+of the
+action.</div>
+
+<p>In order to understand the development, the
+terrain must be divided into several sectors,
+in each of which the operations, although
+closely co-ordinated, assumed, as a consequence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+either of the nature of the ground or
+of the peculiarities of the enemy defences, a
+different character. The unity of the action
+was nevertheless ensured by the simultaneity
+of the rush, which carried all the troops beyond
+the first position, past the batteries, to
+the defences established by the enemy on the
+heights to the south of Py.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">At extremities
+offensive
+does not
+progress.</div>
+
+<p>At the two extremities of our attacking
+front, subjected to converging fires and to
+counter-attacks on the flanks, our offensive
+made no progress. The fighting which took
+place in Auberive and round about Servon
+were distinguished by more than one trait of
+heroism, but they were destined to have no
+other result than that of containing the forces
+of the enemy and of immobilising him at the
+wings while the attack was progressing in the
+centre.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Position
+from
+Auberive
+to Souain
+a triangle.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Wire
+checks the
+attackers.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gains
+maintained.</div>
+
+<p>(1) <i>Sector of l'Epine de Vedegrange.</i> The
+first German line was established at the base
+of a wide glacis covered with clumps of trees,
+and formed a series of salients running into
+each other. At certain points it ran along
+the edge of the woods where the supplementary
+defences were completed by abattis. The position
+as a whole between Auberive and Souain
+described a vast triangle. To the west of the
+road, from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet, the
+troops traversed the first enemy line and
+rushed forward for a distance of about a kilometre
+as far as a supporting trench, in front
+of which they were stopped by the wirework.
+A counterattack debouching from the west and
+supported by the artillery of Moronvillers
+caused a slight retirement of our left. The
+troops of the right, on the contrary, maintained
+their gains and succeeded on the following
+days in enlarging and extending them,
+remaining in touch with the units which were
+attacking on the east of the road. The latter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
+had succeeded in a particularly brilliant manner
+in overcoming the difficulties with which
+they were confronted.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Nature
+of the
+position
+captured.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Prisoners
+and guns
+seized.</div>
+
+<p>The German position which they captured,
+with its triple and quadruple lines of trenches,
+its small forts armed with machine guns, its
+woods adapted for the purpose in view, constituted
+one of the most complete schemes of
+defence on the Champagne front and afforded
+cover to a numerous artillery concealed in the
+woods of the glacis. On this front, which was
+about three and a half kilometres wide, the attack
+on September 25, 1915 achieved a varying
+success. The troops on the left, after having
+penetrated into the first trench, had their
+progress arrested by machine guns. On the
+right, however, in spite of the obstacle presented
+by four successive trenches, each of which was
+covered by a network of wire entanglements
+and was concealed in the woods, where our artillery
+had difficulty in reaching them, the attacking
+troops gained nearly two kilometres,
+capturing seven hundred prisoners, of whom
+seventeen were officers, and seizing two guns of
+77 and five guns of 105.</p>
+
+<p>The advance recommenced on September 27,
+1915. The left took possession of the woods
+lining the road from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet
+as far as the Epine de Vedegrange.
+Along the whole extent of the wooded heights as
+far as the western side of the hollow at Souain
+the success was identical. Notwithstanding
+the losses they sustained, notwithstanding the
+fatigue involved in the incessant fighting, the
+troops pushed forward, leaving behind them
+only a sufficient force to clear the woods of
+isolated groups of the enemy who still remained
+there. Between 4 and 6 p.m. we arrived
+immediately in front of the second German
+position.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Second
+German
+position
+penetrated.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Results of
+attack
+in this
+sector.</div>
+
+<p>On the 27th we penetrated into this position<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+at two points. We took possession of a trench
+about a kilometre wide, called the "parallel of
+the Epine de Vedegrange," which is duplicated
+almost throughout by another trench (the
+parallel of the wood of Chevron), and the
+wirework entanglements of which were intact,
+and precluded an assault. Further east our
+soldiers also continued, thanks to the conformation
+of the terrain, to penetrate into the
+enemy trench to a depth of about four hundred
+metres. But it was impossible to take advantage
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'to'">of</ins> this breach owing to a concentration
+of the German heavy artillery, a rapidly
+continued defence of the surrounding woods,
+and the fire of machine guns which it was not
+possible to capture and which were directed
+from the trenches on the right and left of the
+entry and exit to the breach. The results attained
+in this attacking sector alone may be
+stated thus: fifteen square miles of territory
+organized for defence throughout nearly the
+whole of its extent; on September 28, forty-four
+cannon, seven of 105 and six of 150, and
+more than three thousand prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>(2) <i>Sector of Souain.</i> The enemy lines
+round about Souain described a wide curve.
+In the immediate vicinity of our trenches, to
+the west at the Mill and to the east of the
+wood of Sabot, they swerved to the extent of
+over a kilometre to the north of the village
+and of the source of the Ain.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sapping
+operations.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Assault
+made in
+three
+directions.</div>
+
+<p>When the offensive was decided upon it was
+necessary, in order to extend our lines forward
+to striking distance, to undertake sapping
+operations in parallel lines, and at times to
+make dashes by night over the intervening
+ground. The men working underground got
+into communication with the trenches by digging
+alleys of communication. This difficult
+undertaking was effected with very slight
+losses, under the eyes and under the fire of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
+enemy. Our parallel lines approached to within
+a distance of two hundred metres of the
+German trenches. The assault was made in
+three different directions: on the west in the
+direction of Hills 167 and 174; in the centre
+along a line running parallel with the road
+from Souain to Pomme-Py, in the direction of
+the farm of Navarin; on the east in the direction
+of the woods intersected by the road from
+Souain to Tahure, and in the direction of the
+Butte de Souain.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Machine
+gun positions
+surrounded.</div>
+
+<p>The advance was extremely rapid&mdash;on the
+left two kilometres in less than one hour, in
+the centre three kilometres in forty-five minutes.
+At 10 a.m. we had reached the farm of
+Navarin. Towards the east the forward march
+was more difficult. Some German machine
+guns stood their ground in the wood of Sabot
+and contributed to the resistance of the enemy.
+This defence was destined to be overcome by
+surrounding them. Arriving at the wooded
+region in that part where it is intersected by
+the road from Souain to Tahure, the assailants
+joined up on September 27, 1915 with
+those of our troops who were attacking to the
+north of Perthes. They left behind them only
+what was barely necessary in the way of troops
+to clear the woods of stragglers.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+French
+take guns
+and supplies.</div>
+
+<p>Parlementaires were sent to the Germans,
+who received them with a volley of rifle shots
+and endeavored to escape during the night.
+The majority were killed and the survivors
+surrendered. Several batteries and a large
+quantity of <i>mat&eacute;riel</i> (supplies of shells and
+provisions, grenades, telephones, wire, light
+railways) remained in our hands. On the
+28th, along the entire length of the sector, we
+were immediately in front of the second German
+position. The troops had shown an unparalleled
+ardour and energy. They had been
+trained by officers whose courage and spirit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
+of self-sacrifice are indicated by this casualty
+list; a general of division and four colonels
+wounded; two colonels killed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Wooded
+region
+between
+Souain
+and
+Perthes.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Region
+broken
+up by
+mines and
+trenches.</div>
+
+<p>(3) <i>Sector of Perthes.</i> Between Souain and
+Perthes stretches a wooded region in which
+already, in February and March, heavy fighting
+had taken place. At that period we had
+contrived to take possession on the eastern extremity
+of this region of the German defences
+of the wood of Sabot. We had also made
+progress to the north-west of Perthes, on the
+summit of Hill 200. But between these two
+positions the Germans had retained a strong
+system of trenches forming a salient almost
+triangular in shape, to which we gave the
+name of the Pocket (<i>la Poche</i>). During the
+whole year a war of mining had been going on,
+and the region, which was broken up by concave
+constructions and intersected in all directions
+by trenches and alleys of communication,
+constituted an attacking ground all the
+more difficult because to the north of la Poche
+the somewhat thickly wooded Trou Bricot, the
+edges of which were in a state of defence, obstructed
+a rapid advance. This wooded region
+extends over a width of a kilometre and a half
+and a depth of four kilometres. The arrangements
+made for the attack contemplated, after
+the capture of la Poche, the surrounding of
+the wood of the Trou Bricot. The junction
+was to be made at the road from Souain to
+Tahure, with the troops assigned for the attack
+on the eastern border of the hollow at
+Souain.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The York
+trench.</div>
+
+<p>The ground to the east of the Trou Bricot
+was less difficult. Open and comparatively
+flat, it was defended on the north of Perthes
+by a triple line of trenches distant 100 metres
+from each other. At a distance of 1000 metres
+to 1200 metres a supporting trench, called the
+"York trench," was almost unique in its entire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+construction. The open country beyond
+stretched for a distance of three kilometres
+up to the second German position (Hill 195,
+Butte de Tahure). The principal effort was
+directed against this passage, the left flank of
+the attack being secured by a subsidiary action
+confined to the capture of la Poche.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Attack
+preceded
+by artillery
+fire.</div>
+
+<p>At 9 a.m. our artillery directed its fire successively
+against the first-line trenches and the
+supporting trenches. The attack took place in
+the most perfect order. The assailants were
+already swarming in the German lines when
+the enemy artillery opened its defensive fire.
+Our counter-batteries hampered the German
+pieces and our reserves in the rear suffered
+little from their fire.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">La Poche
+position
+surrendered.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The York
+trench
+occupied.</div>
+
+<p>At 9.45 a.m. the two columns which were
+attacking the extremities of the salient of la
+Poche joined hands. The position was surrounded.
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'These'">Those</ins> Germans who remained alive
+inside it surrendered. At the same time a battalion
+was setting foot in the defences of the
+southern edges of the wood of Trou Bricot.
+The battalions that followed, marching to the
+outside of the eastern edges, executed with perfect
+regularity a "left turn" and came and
+formed up alongside the alleys of communication
+as far as the supporting trench. At the
+same moment, in the open country to the north
+of Perthes, the troops surmounted the three
+first-line trenches and, preceded by our artillery,
+made a quick march towards the York
+trench and occupied it almost without striking
+a blow.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cleaning
+up the
+sector.</div>
+
+<p>Further to the East, along the road from
+Perthes to Tahure, their advance encountered
+greater difficulties. Some centres of the German
+resistance could not be overcome. A
+sheltered machine gun continued its fire. An
+infantry officer, with a quartermaster of artillery,
+succeeded in getting into action a gun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span>
+at a distance of three hundred metres from the
+machine gun and in firing at it at close quarters.
+Of the troops which were advancing to
+the north of Perthes, some made for the eastern
+border of the wood of Bricot, where they
+penetrated into the camps, ousting the defenders
+and surprising several officers in bed. Late
+in the afternoon one of our regiments had
+reached the road from Souain to Tahure.
+Other units were marching straight towards
+the north, clearing out the little woods on the
+way. They there captured batteries of which
+the artillerymen were riveted to their guns by
+means of bayonets (notably ten pieces of 105
+and five of 150).</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Progress
+hindered
+by
+weather.</div>
+
+<p>The same work was being performed in the
+woods extending east of the road from Perthes
+to Souain and Tahure, where batteries were
+charged and captured while in action. At this
+spot a regiment covered four kilometres in two
+hours and captured ten guns, three of 105 and
+seven of 77. But, from twelve o'clock midday
+onwards the rate of progress decreased, the
+bad weather making it impossible for our artillery
+to see what was going on, and rendering
+the joining up of the different corps extremely
+difficult. From the Buttes de Souain and
+Tahure the enemy directed converging fires on
+our men, who were advancing along very open
+ground. Nevertheless they continued their advance
+as far as the slopes of Hill 193 and the
+Butte de Tahure, and there dug themselves in.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Contact
+with
+second
+German
+position.</div>
+
+<p>The night passed without any counter-attack
+by the enemy. Our artillery, including several
+field batteries, which had arrived immediately
+after the attack beyond the York trench, also
+brought forward its heavy pieces. At dawn the
+reconstituted regiments made another forward
+rush which enabled them to establish themselves
+in immediate contact with the second
+German position from the Butte de Souain to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+the Butte de Tahure, and even to seize several
+advanced posts in that neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>But on the lower slopes some of the wire entanglements
+remained intact; a successful
+assault on them would have been possible only
+after a fresh preparation. Up to October 6,
+1915, the troops remained where they were,
+digging trenches and organizing a defensive
+system which had to be constructed all over
+again on ground devastated by the enemy fire.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ravin des
+Cuisines.</div>
+
+<p>(4) <i>Sector of Le Mesnil.</i> It was to the north
+of Le Mesnil that we encountered the greatest
+resistance on the part of the adversary. In
+the course of the engagements of the preceding
+winter we had succeeded in securing a foothold
+on top of the hill numbered 196. The Germans
+remained a little to the east, in a ravine which
+we continued to call by its designation of the
+"Ravine of the Kitchens" (Ravin des Cuisines).
+Our assault rendered us masters of it, but we
+could make no further progress.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fighting
+on the
+Butte du
+Mesnil.</div>
+
+<p>The German trenches are constructed on the
+northern slopes of Hill 196, and are concealed
+from field observation so that it is difficult for
+the artillery to play upon them. Moreover,
+they are flanked on one side by the twin heights
+of the Mamelles, on the other by the Butte du
+Mesnil. To the eastward some of our units contrived
+on September 25, 1915, to penetrate into
+the trenches of the <i>butte</i> (knoll), but failed
+to maintain their ground, in consequence of a
+counter-attack supported by flank fires. Westward,
+it was not until the night of the 1st to
+the 2nd of October, 1915, that we captured the
+northern Mamelle, thus surrounding the works
+of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Trapeze'">Trap&egrave;ze</ins> which surmount the southern
+Mamelle.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rapid and
+brilliant
+advance.</div>
+
+<p>(5) <i>Sector of Beaus&eacute;jour.</i> The attacks
+launched north of Beaus&eacute;jour met with a more
+rapid and more brilliant success. The swarm
+of invaders throwing themselves on the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span>
+German lines captured one after the other the
+enemy works in the very sparsely timbered
+woods called the Fer de Lance wood and the
+Demi-Lune wood, and afterwards all the works
+known as the Bastion. In one rush certain
+units gained the top of Maisons de Champagne,
+past several batteries, killing the artillerymen
+as they served their pieces. The same movement
+took the assailants across the intricate
+region of the mine "funnels" of Beaus&eacute;jour up
+to the extended wood intersected by the road
+to Maisons de Champagne. Our soldiers then
+came across German artillerymen engaged in
+unlimbering their guns. They killed the
+drivers and horses; the survivors surrendered.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cavalry
+supports
+the
+infantry.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+counter-attacks.</div>
+
+<p>Further westward the left wing of the attacking
+troops advanced with greater difficulty,
+being hampered by small forts and covered
+works with which the trenches were everywhere
+protected. It was at this moment that
+the cavalry came unexpectedly to the support
+of the infantry. Two squadrons of hussars
+having crossed our old trenches in face of a
+heavy defensive artillery fire prepared to gallop
+against the German batteries north of Maisons
+de Champagne, when they reached that part
+of the lines where the Germans still maintained
+their position. The latter immediately directed
+the fire of their machine guns against the
+cavalrymen, several of whose horses were hit.
+The hussars dismounted and, with drawn
+sabres, made for the trenches, while favoured
+by this diversion, the infantrymen resumed
+their forward movement. The resistance of
+the enemy broke down; more than six hundred
+Germans were captured in this way. In the
+course of the afternoon and during the day of
+September 25, 1915, some enemy counter-attacks
+were made from the direction of Ripont,
+but were unsuccessful in ousting us from <ins title="Transcriber's Note: this word not present in original text">the</ins>
+summit of Maisons de Champagne.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the following days a fierce struggle took
+place north of the summit in the region of a
+defensive work known as the "Ouvrage de la
+D&eacute;faite," which was captured by us, lost, then
+recaptured, and finally evacuated in consequence
+of an extremely violent bombardment.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Heights
+of
+Massiges.</div>
+
+<p>(6) <i>Sector of Massiges.</i> The safety of our
+troops which had advanced as far as the extended
+wood and Maisons de Champagne was
+assured by the capture of the summits of the
+heights of Massiges. This sharply undulating
+upland, numbered 199 on the north and 191 on
+the south, constituted in the hands of the
+Germans a fortress which they believed to be
+impregnable and from the top of which they
+commanded our positions in several directions.
+At 9.15 a.m. the two first attacking parties
+marched out in columns. The men went forth
+gaily and deliberately, preceded by the firing
+of the field artillery. By 9.30 a.m. our infantry,
+before the enemy had had time to recover
+themselves, had reached the summit.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy
+machine
+gun fire.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lines of
+grenadiers.</div>
+
+<p>From this moment, subject to machine gun
+and musketry fire, the men could only proceed
+slowly along the summits by the alleys of communication,
+with hand grenades, supported by
+the artillery, with whom they remained in
+constant touch by flag-signalling. As the advance
+of our grenadiers continued, the Germans
+surrendered in large numbers. An uninterrupted
+chain of grenade-bearers, like the chains
+of bucket-holders at a fire in former times,
+was established in the alleys of communication
+from Massiges forward, and each fresh arrival
+of grenades was accompanied by a fresh
+advance.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Value of
+possessing
+the
+heights.</div>
+
+<p>From September 25 to October 3, 1915, the
+fight continued in this way and was carried
+on by our soldiers with fierce persistency. The
+Germans hurled upon the spot constant reinforcements<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+and offered an obstinate resistance
+that has rarely been equalled. They stood up
+to be shot down&mdash;the machine-gun men at their
+guns, the grenadiers on their grenade chests.
+All attempts at a counter-attack remained
+equally unproductive. The possession of the
+heights of Massiges enabled us to extend our
+gains towards Ville-sur-Tourbe, while taking in
+flank the trenches which we had failed to
+secure by a frontal attack.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of the heights of Massiges appears
+to have particularly upset the German General
+Staff, which, after having denied the fact,
+represented that the ground which it had lost
+as a consequence of grenade fighting had been
+abandoned owing to artillery fire.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Attitude
+of the
+enemy.</div>
+
+<p>The attitude of the enemy was characterized
+by: (1) Surprise; (2) disorganization; (3) a
+sudden and almost disorderly engagement of
+the reserves; (4) the exhaustion and demoralization
+of the soldiers.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Reasons
+for surprise.</div>
+
+<p>(1) It is beyond doubt that the Germans
+were surprised by the extent and violence of
+our attacks. They were expecting a French
+offensive. The orders of the day of Generals
+von Fleck and Von Ditfurth prove this. ("The
+possibility of a great French offensive must be
+considered": Von Ditfurth, August 15. "The
+French Higher Command appears to be disposed
+to make another desperate effort": Von
+Fleck, September 26.) But the Germans foresaw
+neither the strength nor the success of
+the effort. During our artillery preparation
+twenty-nine battalions only were brought back
+to Champagne (the 183rd Brigade, the 5th
+Division of the 3rd Corps, and one-half of the
+43rd Division of Reserve). In thus limiting
+before the attack the reinforcements of its effectives
+the German General Staff showed that
+they did not suspect the vigour of the blow that
+was about to be delivered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The same thing happened with regard to the
+subordinate forces. Inside the shelters in the
+second line officers were captured while lying
+down; they had an unwarranted confidence in
+the strength of their first line, and the interruption
+of telephone communications had prevented
+their being informed of the rapid progress
+of our offensive.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rapidity
+of French
+attack.</div>
+
+<p>(2) This rapidity of our attack explains the
+disorganization of the adversary on the morning
+of September 25. At some points certain
+officers and non-commissioned officers were
+able to continue the resistance until the investment,
+followed by capitulation. But elsewhere
+there were prompt surrenders. Men were also
+seen flying before our attacking troops and
+being killed while making for their second
+position.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">How the
+German
+reserves
+were
+utilized.</div>
+
+<p>(3) In order to make up for the insufficiency
+of the local reserves the German military
+authorities had to put in line not only the
+important units which they held at their disposal
+behind the front (10th Corps brought
+back from Russia), but the local reserves from
+other sectors (Soissonnais, Argonne, Woevre,
+Alsace), which were despatched to Champagne
+one battalion after another, and even in groups
+of double companies.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing better indicates the disorganization
+of the German command and the significance
+of the check suffered than the conditions under
+which these reserves were engaged.</p>
+
+<p>The units were despatched to the fight completely
+disassociated. Among the regiments of
+the 5th Division (3rd Corps), one, the 81st,
+was identified near Massiges, while a battalion
+of the 12th was at Tahure and a battalion of
+the 32nd at the Trou Bricot. It was the same
+as regards the 56th Division, of which the 88th
+and 35th Regiments were despatched to Massiges
+and the 91st to Souain, while a battalion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+of the 79th took up a position to the west of
+the Butte de Tahure.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Haste
+increased
+German
+losses.</div>
+
+<p>Ill provided with food and munitions, the
+reinforcements were thrown into the engagement
+on an unknown terrain without indication
+as to the direction they had to take and without
+their junction with neighbouring units having
+been arranged. Through the haste with
+which they threw their reserves under the fire
+of our artillery and of our infantry, already in
+possession of the positions, the German General
+Staff considerably increased the number of
+their losses.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Soldiers
+brought
+by
+motor-car.</div>
+
+<p>A letter taken from a soldier of the 118th
+Regiment furnishes us with proof of this:
+"We were put in a motor-car and proceeded at
+a headlong pace to Tahure, by way of Vouziers.
+Two hours' rest in the open air, with rain
+falling and then we had a six hours' march to
+take up our positions. On our way we were
+greeted by the fire of the enemy shells, so that,
+for instance, out of 280 men of the second
+company, only 224 <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'arrival'">arrived</ins> safe and sound inside
+the trenches. These trenches, freshly dug,
+were barely from 35 to 50 centimetres deep.
+Continually surrounded by mines and bursting
+shells, we had to remain in them and do the
+best we could with them for 118 hours without
+getting anything hot to eat.</p>
+
+<p>"Hell itself could not be more terrible. To-day,
+at about twelve o'clock noon, 600 men,
+fresh troops, joined the regiment. In five days
+we have lost as many and more."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Battalions
+from
+many
+regiments.</div>
+
+<p>The disorder amid which the reinforcements
+were engaged appears clearly from this fact,
+that on the only part of the front included
+between Maisons de Champagne and Hill 189
+there were on October 2, 1915, thirty-two
+battalions belonging to twenty-one different
+regiments.</p>
+
+<p>(4) The violence of the shock sustained, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>
+the necessity of replacing in the fighting line
+units which had almost entirely disappeared,
+hampered the German military authorities.
+On the first day they were unable to respond
+effectively even with their artillery, the fire of
+which along the whole front was badly directed
+and as a rule poorly sustained. The loss of
+numerous batteries obviously deprived them of
+a portion of their resources.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enemy endeavors
+to stem
+advance.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Isolated
+battalion
+on the
+heights
+of
+Massiges.</div>
+
+<p>The following days the enemy seemed to have
+but one idea, to strengthen their second line
+to stem our advance. The counter-attacks were
+concentrated on a comparatively unimportant
+part of the battlefront in certain places, the
+loss of which appeared to them to be particularly
+dangerous. Therefore on the heights of
+Massiges the German military authorities
+threw in succession isolated battalions of the
+123rd, 124th, and 120th regiments, of the 30th
+regular regiment and of the 2nd regiment of
+Ersatz Reserve (16th Corps), which were each
+in turn decimated, for these counter-attacks,
+hastily and crudely prepared, all resulted in
+sanguinary failures. Generally speaking, the
+offensive capacity of the Germans appeared to
+be broken. The following order of the day of
+General von Ditfurth bears witness to this:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+von Ditfurth's
+order.</div>
+
+<p>"It seemed to me that the infantry at certain
+points was confining its action to a mere
+defensive.... I cannot protest too strongly
+against such an idea, which necessarily results
+in destroying the spirit of offensive in our own
+troops and in arousing and strengthening in
+the mind of the enemy a feeling of his
+superiority.</p>
+
+<p>"The enemy is left full liberty of action and
+our own action is subjected to the will of the
+enemy."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Prisoners
+exhausted.</div>
+
+<p>(5) In an engagement in the open the number
+of prisoners is an indication of the spirit
+of the enemy. In Champagne the Germans surrendered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>
+in constituted units (sections or
+companies), and even in groups of several
+hundred men. They confessed that they were
+worn out. They had been, for the most part,
+without supplies for several days and had suffered
+more particularly from thirst. They all
+showed that they had been greatly impressed
+by our uninterrupted artillery fire, the feeble
+response of their own guns, and the extent of
+their losses.</p>
+
+<p>Here by way of specimen is what was set
+down by a reserve lieutenant of the 90th Regiment
+of infantry (10th Corps):</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday I had sixteen men killed by high
+explosive bombs. The trench was nearly filled
+up. Extreme activity of the French howitzers.
+Our artillery fires shrapnel, but unfortunately
+does not get the range.</p>
+
+<p>"B... was also killed. The second battalion,
+too, has had heavy losses. It is frightful.
+Those confounded high explosive shells!</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">An officer
+wishes
+for rain.</div>
+
+<p>"The weather is becoming fine again. If
+only it would rain again, or fog would come.
+As it is, the aviators will arrive and we shall
+have more high explosive bombs and flank firing
+on the trenches. Abominable fine weather!
+Fog, fog, come to our assistance."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+enemy's
+lines.</div>
+
+<p>It is difficult to estimate precisely the German
+losses. Certain indications however serve
+to indicate their extent. A <i>vizefeldwebel</i> declares
+that he is the only man remaining out
+of his company. A soldier of the third battalion
+of the 123rd Regiment engaged on the
+26th, states that his regiment was withdrawn
+from the front after only two days' fighting
+because its losses were too great. The 118th
+Regiment relieved in the trenches the 158th
+Regiment after it had been reduced to fifteen or
+twenty men per company. Certain units disappeared
+completely, as for instance the 27th
+Reserve Regiment and the 52nd Regular Regiment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>
+which, by the evening of the 25th had
+left in our hands, the first thirteen officers
+and 933 men, the second twenty-one officers
+and 927 men. In order to arrive at the total
+of the losses certain figures may serve as an
+indication.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">German
+strength
+in Champagne.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ninety-three
+fresh battalions.</div>
+
+<p>At the beginning of September, 1915 the
+Germans had on the Champagne front seventy
+battalions. In anticipation of our attack they
+brought there, before September 25, 1915,
+twenty-nine battalions. This makes ninety-nine
+battalions, representing, if account be
+taken of the corresponding artillery and
+pioneer formations, 115,000 men directly engaged.
+The losses due to the artillery preparation
+and the first attacks were such that from
+September 25 to October 15, 1915, the German
+General Staff was compelled to renew its effectives
+almost in their entirety by sending
+ninety-three fresh battalions.</p>
+
+<p>It may be assumed that the units engaged
+on September 25 and 26, 1915, suffered losses
+amounting to from 60 to 80 per cent. (even
+more for certain corps, which have entirely
+disappeared). The new units brought into
+line for the counter-attacks, and subjected in
+connection with these to an incessant bombardment,
+lost 50 per cent. of their effectives,
+if not more. We think we shall be understating
+the case if we set down 140,000 men as the
+sum of the German losses in Champagne. Account
+must be taken of the fact that of this
+number the proportion of slightly wounded
+men able to recuperate rapidly and return to
+the front is, in the case of the Germans, very
+much below the average proportion in connection
+with other engagements by reason of the
+fact that they were unable to gather up their
+wounded, and thus left in our hands nearly the
+whole of the troops entrusted with the defence
+of the first position.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Enthusiasm
+of
+the
+French.</div>
+
+<p>All those who lived through the engagements
+of the battle of Champagne experienced the
+sensation of victory. The aspect of the battlefield,
+the long columns of prisoners, the look
+in the eyes of our soldiers, their animation and
+their enthusiasm, all this gave expression to
+the importance of a success which the Generalissimo
+recognized in these terms.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Thanks
+of the
+commander-in-chief.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='right'>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Grand Headquarters,</span><br />
+"<span class="smcap">October 5, 1915.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"The Commander-in-Chief addresses to the
+troops under his orders the expression of his
+profound satisfaction at the results obtained
+up to the present day by the attacks.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-five thousand prisoners, three hundred
+and fifty officers, a hundred and fifty guns,
+a quantity of material which it has not yet
+been possible to gauge, are the trophies of a
+victory the echo of which throughout Europe
+indicates its importance.</p>
+
+<p>"The sacrifices willingly made have not been
+in vain. All have been able to take part in
+the common task. The present is a sure guarantee
+to us of the future.</p>
+
+<p>"The Commander-in-Chief is proud to command
+the finest troops France has ever known.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">J. Joffre.</span>"<br />
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Copyright, National Review, January, 1916.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Of all the brutal atrocities perpetrated by the
+Germans in Belgium, none aroused such world-wide
+horror and execration as the murder of
+Edith Cavell, an English nurse, on the charge
+of aiding English and Belgian soldiers who escaped
+from Belgium in order to rejoin their
+respective armies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE TRAGEDY OF EDITH<br />
+CAVELL</h2>
+
+<h3>BRAND WHITLOCK</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The first
+letter of
+inquiry
+not answered.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Reasons
+given for
+Miss
+Cavell's
+arrest.</div>
+
+<p>One day in August it was learned at the
+Legation that an English nurse, named
+Edith Cavell, had been arrested by the
+Germans. I wrote a letter to the Baron von
+der Lancken to ask if it was true that Miss
+Cavell had been arrested, and saying that if
+it were I should request that Ma&icirc;tre de Leval,
+the legal counselor of the Legation, be permitted
+to see her and to prepare for her defense.
+There was no reply to this letter, and on September
+tenth I wrote a second letter, repeating
+the questions and the requests made in the first.
+On the twelfth of September I had a reply
+from the Baron stating that Miss Cavell had
+been arrested on the fifth of August, that she
+was confined in the prison of St. Gilles, that
+she had admitted having hidden English and
+French soldiers in her home, as well as Belgians,
+of an age to bear arms, all anxious to
+get to the front, that she had admitted also
+having furnished these soldiers with money to
+get to France, and had provided guides to
+enable them to cross the Dutch frontier; that
+the defense of Miss Cavell was in the hands of
+Ma&icirc;tre Thomas Braun, and that inasmuch as
+the German Government, on principle, would
+not permit accused persons to have any interviews
+whatever, he could not obtain permission
+for Ma&icirc;tre de Leval to visit Miss Cavell as long
+as she was in solitary confinement.</p>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+German
+mentality.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+principle
+that
+power
+makes
+right.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+accused
+without
+rights.</div>
+
+<p>For one of our Anglo-Saxon race and legal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span>
+traditions to understand conditions in Belgium
+during the German occupation, it is necessary
+to banish resolutely from the mind every
+conception of right we have inherited from our
+ancestors&mdash;conceptions long since crystallized
+into inimitable principles of law and confirmed
+in our charters of liberty. In the German
+mentality these conceptions do not exist; they
+think in other sequences; they act according
+to another principle, if it is a principle, the
+conviction that there is only one right, one
+privilege, and that it belongs exclusively to
+Germany, the right, namely, to do whatever
+they have the physical force to do. These so-called
+courts, of whose arbitrary and irresponsible
+and brutal nature I have tried to convey
+some notion, were mere inquisitorial bodies,
+guided by no principle save that of interest in
+their own bloody nature; they did as they
+pleased, and would have scorned a Jeffreys as
+too lenient, a Lynch as too formal, a Spanish
+<i>auto da f&eacute;</i> as too technical, and a tribunal of
+the French Revolution as soft and sentimental.
+Before them the accused had literally no rights,
+not even to present a defense, and if he was
+permitted to speak in his own behalf, it was
+only as a generous and liberal favor.</p>
+
+<p>It was before such a court that Edith Cavell
+was to be arraigned. I had asked Ma&icirc;tre de
+Leval to provide for her defense, and on his
+advice, inasmuch as Ma&icirc;tre Braun was already
+of counsel in the case, chosen by certain friends
+of Miss Cavell, I invited him into consultation.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Personality
+of
+Edith
+Cavell.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Miss
+Cavell's
+character
+and
+ability.</div>
+
+<p>Edith Cavell was a frail and delicate little
+woman about forty years of age. She had come
+to Brussels some years before the war to exercise
+her calling as a trained nurse. She soon
+became known to the leading physicians of the
+capital and nursed in the homes of the leading
+families. But she was ambitious, and devoted
+to her profession, and ere long had entered a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span>
+nursing-home in the Rue de la Clinique, where
+she organized for Doctor Depage a training-school
+for nurses. She was a woman of refinement
+and education; she knew French as she
+knew her own language; she was deeply religious,
+with a conscience almost puritan, and
+was very stern with herself in what she conceived
+to be her duty. In her training-school
+she showed great executive ability, was firm in
+matters of discipline, and brought it to a high
+state of efficiency. And every one who knew
+her in Brussels spoke of her with that unvarying
+term of respect which her noble character
+inspired.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mr. Whitlock
+engages
+a
+defender.</div>
+
+<p>Some time before the trial, Ma&icirc;tre Thomas
+Braun announced to the Legation that for personal
+reasons he would be obliged to withdraw
+from the case, and asked that some one else
+appear for Miss Cavell. We engaged Ma&icirc;tre
+Sadi Kirschen.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The court
+martial
+in the
+Senate
+chamber.</div>
+
+<p>It was the morning of Thursday, October
+seventh, that the case came before the court
+martial in the Senate chamber, where the military
+trials always took place, and Miss Cavell
+was arraigned with the Princess de Croy, the
+Countess de Belleville, and thirty-two others.
+The accused were seated in a circle facing the
+court, in such a way that they could neither
+see nor communicate with their own counsel,
+who were compelled to sit behind them. Nor
+could they see the witnesses, who were also
+placed behind them.</p>
+
+<p>The charge brought against the accused was
+that of having conspired to violate the German
+Military Penal Code, punishing with death
+those who conduct troops to the enemy.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The trial
+secret.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Miss
+Cavell's
+attitude.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Admits
+aiding
+English
+soldiers.</div>
+
+<p>We have no record of that trial; we do not
+know all that occurred there behind the closed
+doors of that Senate chamber, where for fourscore
+years laws based on another and more
+enlightened principle of justice had been discussed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span>
+Miss Cavell did not know, or knew
+only in the vaguest manner, the offense with
+which she was charged. She did not deny
+having received at her hospital English soldiers
+whom she nursed and to whom she gave money;
+she did not deny that she knew they were going
+to try to cross the border into Holland. She
+even took a patriotic pride in the fact. She
+was very calm. She was interrogated in German,
+a language she did not understand, but
+the questions and responses were translated
+into French. Her mind was very alert, and she
+was entirely self-possessed, and frequently
+rectified any inexact details and statements
+that were put to her. When, in her interrogatory,
+she was asked if she had not aided
+English soldiers left behind after the early
+battles of the preceding Autumn about Mons
+and Charleroi, she said yes; they were English
+and she was English, and she would help her
+own. The answer seemed to impress the court.
+They asked her if she had not helped twenty.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said "more than twenty; two
+hundred."</p>
+
+<p>"English?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not all English; French and Belgians,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>But the French and Belgians were not of her
+own nationality, said the judge&mdash;and that made
+a serious difference. She was subjected to a
+nagging interrogatory. One of the judges said
+that she had been foolish to aid the English
+because, he said, the English are ungrateful.</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied Miss Cavell, "the English are
+not ungrateful."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know they are not?" asked the
+inquisitor.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Miss Cavell
+makes a
+fatal admission.</div>
+
+<p>"Because," she answered, "some of them have
+written to me from England to thank me."</p>
+
+<p>It was a fatal admission on the part of the
+tortured little woman; under the German military<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>
+law her having helped soldiers to reach
+Holland, a neutral country, would have been
+a less serious offense, but to aid them to reach
+an enemy country, and especially England, was
+the last offense in the eyes of the German military
+court.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rumor
+that death
+sentence
+is asked.</div>
+
+<p>The trial was concluded on Saturday, and
+on Sunday one of the nurses in Miss Cavell's
+school came to tell me that there was a rumor
+about town that the prosecuting officer had
+asked the court to pronounce a sentence of
+death in the cases of the Princess de Croy, the
+Countess de Belleville, and of Miss Cavell, and
+of several others. I remember to have said to
+Ma&icirc;tre de Leval, when he came up to my room
+to report the astounding news:</p>
+
+<p>"That's only the usual exaggeration of the
+prosecutor; they all ask for the extreme
+penalty, everywhere, when they sum up their
+cases."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Leval's
+opinion of
+German
+courts.</div>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Ma&icirc;tre de Leval, "and in German
+courts they always get it."</p>
+
+<p>Ma&icirc;tre de Leval sent a note to Ma&icirc;tre Kirschen,
+asking him to come on Monday, at eight-thirty
+o'clock, to the Legation or to send a
+word regarding Miss Cavell. Ma&icirc;tre Kirschen
+did not send Ma&icirc;tre de Leval the word he had
+requested, and on that Sunday, de Leval saw
+another lawyer who had been on the case and
+could tell him what had taken place at the
+trial. The lawyer thought that the court martial
+would not condemn Miss Cavell to death.
+At any rate, no judgment had been pronounced,
+and the judges themselves did not appear
+to be in agreement.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Leval
+asks to
+see Miss
+Cavell.</div>
+
+<p>On Monday, the eleventh of October, at eight-thirty
+in the morning, Ma&icirc;tre de Leval went to
+the <i>Politische Abteilung</i> in the Rue Lambermont,
+and found Conrad. He spoke to him of
+the case of Miss Cavell and asked that, now
+that the trial had taken place, he and the Reverend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span>
+Mr. Gahan, the rector of the English
+church, be allowed to see Miss Cavell. Conrad
+said he would make inquiries and inform de
+Leval by telephone, and by one of the messengers
+of the Legation who that morning happened
+to deliver some papers to the <i>Politische
+Abteilung</i>, Conrad sent word that neither the
+Reverend Mr. Gahan nor Ma&icirc;tre de Leval could
+see Miss Cavell at that time, but that Ma&icirc;tre
+de Leval could see her as soon as the judgment
+had been pronounced.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Waiting
+for judgment
+to
+be pronounced.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Promise
+to inform
+the
+Legation.</div>
+
+<p>At eleven-thirty o'clock on the Monday
+morning, Ma&icirc;tre de Leval himself telephoned
+to Conrad, who repeated this statement. The
+judgment had not yet been rendered, he said,
+and Ma&icirc;tre de Leval asked him to let him know
+as soon as the judgment had been pronounced,
+so that he might go to see Miss Cavell. Conrad
+promised this, but added that even then the
+Reverend Mr. Gahan could not see her, because
+there were German Protestant pastors at the
+prison, and that if Miss Cavell needed spiritual
+advice or consolation she could call on them.
+Conrad concluded this conversation by saying
+that the judgment would be rendered on the
+morrow, that is, on Tuesday, or the day after,
+and that even when it had been pronounced it
+would have to be signed by the Military
+Governor, and that the Legation would be kept
+informed.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve-ten on the Monday, not having
+received any news from Ma&icirc;tre Kirschen, Ma&icirc;tre
+de Leval went to his house, but did not find
+him there, and left his card.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Leval
+makes repeated
+inquiries.</div>
+
+<p>At twelve-twenty o'clock, Ma&icirc;tre de Leval
+went to the house of the lawyer to whom reference
+has already been made, and left word for
+him to go to his home.</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock that afternoon the lawyer
+arrived at the Legation and said that he had
+been to see the Germans at eleven o'clock, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span>
+that there he had been told no judgment would
+be pronounced before the following day. Before
+leaving the Legation to go home, Ma&icirc;tre
+de Leval told to Gibson all that had happened,
+and asked him to telephone again to
+Conrad before going home himself. Then at
+intervals all day long the inquiry had been
+repeated, and the same response was made.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+chancellerie
+was
+closed for
+the night.</div>
+
+<p>Monday evening at six-twenty o'clock, Belgian
+time, Topping, one of the clerks of the Legation,
+with Gibson standing by, again called
+Conrad on the telephone, again was told that
+the judgment had not been pronounced, and
+that the Political Department would not fail to
+inform the Legation the moment the judgment
+was confirmed. And the <i>chancellerie</i> was
+closed for the night.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A nurse
+informs
+Leval of
+the death
+sentence.</div>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock that Monday evening, Ma&icirc;tre
+de Leval appeared suddenly at the door of my
+chamber; his face was deadly pallid; he said
+that he had just heard from the nurse who kept
+him informed, that the judgment had been confirmed
+and that the sentence of death had been
+pronounced on Miss Cavell at half-past four
+o'clock that afternoon, and that she was to be
+shot at two o'clock the next morning. It
+seemed preposterous, especially the immediate
+execution of sentence; there had always been
+time at least to prepare and present a plea for
+mercy. To condemn a woman in the evening
+and then to hurry her out to be shot before
+another dawn! Impossible! It could not be!</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Judgment
+read in
+the afternoon.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Plea for
+mercy had
+been prepared.</div>
+
+<p>But no; Ma&icirc;tre de Leval was certain. That
+evening he had gone home and was writing at
+his table when about eight o'clock two nurses
+were introduced. One was Miss Wilkinson,
+little and nervous, all in tears; the other, taller
+and more calm. Miss Wilkinson said that she
+had just learned that the judgment of the
+court condemned Miss Cavell to death, that
+the judgment had been read to her in her cell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span>
+at four-thirty that afternoon, and that the
+Germans were going to shoot her that night at
+two o'clock. Ma&icirc;tre de Leval told her that it
+was difficult to believe such news, since twice
+he had been told that the judgment had not
+been rendered and that it would not be rendered
+before the following day, but on her
+reiteration that she had this news from a source
+that was absolutely certain, de Leval left at
+once with her and her friends and came to the
+Legation. And there he stood, pale and shaken.
+Even then I could not believe; it was too preposterous;
+surely a stay of execution would be
+granted. Already in the afternoon, in some
+premonition, Ma&icirc;tre de Leval had prepared a
+plea for mercy, to be submitted to the Governor-General,
+and a letter of transmittal to present
+to the Baron von der Lancken. I asked Ma&icirc;tre
+de Leval to bring me these documents and I
+signed them, and then, at the last minute, on
+the letter addressed to von der Lancken, I
+wrote these words:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mr. Whitlock's
+personal
+appeal.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My dear Baron</span>:</p>
+
+<p>"I am too sick to present my request to you
+in person, but I appeal to your generosity of
+heart to support it, and save this unfortunate
+woman from death. Have pity on her."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Search
+for the
+Spanish
+ambassador.</div>
+
+<p>I told Ma&icirc;tre de Leval to send Joseph at
+once to hunt up Gibson to present my plea and,
+if possible, to find the Marquis de Villalobar
+and to ask him to support it with the Baron
+von der Lancken. Gibson was dining somewhere;
+we did not know where Villalobar was.
+The <i>Politische Abteilung</i>, in the Ministry of
+Industry, where Baron von der Lancken lived,
+was only half a dozen blocks away. The
+Governor-General was in his ch&acirc;teau at Trois
+Fontaines, ten miles away, playing bridge
+that evening. Ma&icirc;tre de Leval went; and I
+waited.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The nurses from Miss Cavell's school were
+waiting in a lower room; other nurses came
+for news; they, too, had heard, but could not
+believe. Then the Reverend Mr. H. Stirling
+T. Gahan, the British chaplain at Brussels and
+pastor of the English church, came. He had a
+note from some one at the St. Gilles prison, a
+note written in German, saying simply:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">English
+rector
+summoned.</div>
+
+<p>"Come at once; some one is about to die."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A delay
+of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'executive'">execution</ins>
+expected.</div>
+
+<p>He went away to the prison; his frail, delicate
+little wife remained at the Legation, and
+there, with my wife and Miss Larner, sat with
+those women all that long evening, trying to
+comfort them, to reassure them. Outside a
+cold rain was falling. Up in my chamber I
+waited; a stay of execution would be granted,
+of course; they always were; there was not, in
+our time, anywhere, a court, even a court
+martial, that would condemn a woman to death
+at half-past four in the afternoon and hurry her
+out and shoot her before dawn&mdash;not even a
+German court martial.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Miss
+Cavell
+calm and
+courageous.</div>
+
+<p>When Mr. Gahan arrived at the prison that
+night Miss Cavell was lying on the narrow cot
+in her cell; she arose, drew on a dressing gown,
+folded it about her thin form, and received him
+calmly. She had never expected such an end
+to the trial, but she was brave and was not
+afraid to die. The judgment had been read to
+her that afternoon, there in her cell. She had
+written letters to her mother in England and
+to certain of her friends, and entrusted them
+to the German authorities.</p>
+
+<p>She did not complain of her trial; she had
+avowed all, she said; and it is one of the saddest,
+bitterest ironies of the whole tragedy
+that she seems not to have known that all she
+had avowed was not sufficient, even under
+German law, to justify the judgment passed
+upon her. The German chaplain had been
+kind, and she was willing for him to be with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span>
+at the last, if Mr. Gahan could not be. Life
+had not been all happy for her, she said, and
+she was glad to die for her country. Life had
+been hurried, and she was grateful for these
+weeks of rest in prison.</p>
+
+<p>"Patriotism is not enough," she said, "I
+must have no hatred and no bitterness toward
+any one."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Notes
+made in
+Bible and
+prayer-book.</div>
+
+<p>She received the sacrament, she had no
+hatred for any one, and she had no regrets.
+In the touching report that Mr. Gahan made
+there is a statement, one of the last that Edith
+Cavell ever made, which, in its exquisite pathos,
+illuminates the whole of that life of stern duty,
+of human service and martyrdom. She said
+that she was grateful for the six weeks of rest
+she had just before the end. During those
+weeks she had read and reflected; her companions
+and her solace were her Bible, her
+prayer-book and the "Imitation of Christ." The
+notes she made in these books reveal her
+thoughts in that time, and will touch the uttermost
+depths of any nature nourished in that
+beautiful faith which is at once so tender and
+so austere. The prayer-book with those laconic
+entries on its fly-leaf, in which she set down
+the sad and eloquent chronology of her fate,
+the copy of the "Imitation" which she had
+read and marked during those weeks in prison&mdash;weeks,
+which, as she so pathetically said, had
+given her rest and quiet and time to think in a
+life that had been "so hurried"&mdash;and the passages
+noted in her firm hand have a deep and
+appealing pathos.</p>
+
+<p>Just before the end, too, as I have said, she
+wrote a number of letters. She forgot no one.
+Among the letters that she left one was addressed
+to the nurses of her school; and there
+was a message for a girl who was trying to
+break herself of the morphine habit&mdash;Miss
+Cavell had been trying to help her, and she sent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span>
+her word to be brave, and that if God would
+permit she would continue to try to help her.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The petitioners
+fail.</div>
+
+<p>Midnight came, and Gibson, with a dark
+face, and de Leval, paler than ever. There
+was nothing to be done.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Errand of
+Marquis
+Villalobar,
+Gibson
+and de
+Leval.</div>
+
+<p>De Leval had gone to Gibson, and together
+they went in search of the Marquis, whom they
+found at Baron Lambert's, where he had been
+dining; he and Baron Lambert and M. Francqui
+were over their coffee. The three, the
+Marquis, Gibson and de Leval, then went to
+the Rue Lambermont. The little Ministry was
+closed and dark; no one was there. They rang,
+and rang again, and finally the <i>concierge</i> appeared&mdash;no
+one was there, he said. They insisted.
+The <i>concierge</i> at last found a German
+functionary who came down, stood staring
+stupidly; every one was gone; <i>son Excellence</i>
+was at the theater. At what theater? He did
+not know. They urged him to go and find out.
+He disappeared inside, went up and down
+stairs two or three times, finally came out
+and said that he was at Le Bois Sacr&eacute;. They
+explained that the presence of the Baron was
+urgent and asked the man to go for him;
+they turned over the motor to him and he
+mounted on the box beside Eugene. They
+reached the little variety theater there in the
+Rue d'Arenberg. The German functionary
+went in and found the Baron, who said he
+could not come before the piece was over.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+sad wait
+for der
+Lancken.</div>
+
+<p>All this while Villalobar, Gibson and de
+Leval were in the salon at the Ministry, the
+room of which I have spoken so often as the
+yellow salon, because of the satin upholstery of
+its Louis XVI. furniture of white lacquer&mdash;that
+bright, almost laughing little salon, all done in
+the gayest, lightest tones, where so many little
+dramas were played. All three of them were
+deeply moved and very anxious&mdash;the eternal
+contrast, as de Leval said, between things and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span>
+sentiments. Lancken entered at last, very
+much surprised to find them; he was accompanied
+by Count Harrach and by the young
+Baron von Falkenhausen.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, gentlemen?" he said. "Has
+something serious happened?"</p>
+
+<p>They told him why they were there, and
+Lancken, raising his hands, said:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Impossible!</i>"</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'De-'">Der</ins>
+Lancken
+believes
+the rumor
+false.</div>
+
+<p>He had vaguely heard that afternoon of a
+condemnation for spying, but he did not know
+that it had anything to do with the case of
+Miss Cavell, and in any event it was impossible
+that they would put a woman to death that
+night.</p>
+
+<p>"Who has given you this information? Because,
+to come and disturb me at such an hour
+you must have actual information," he said.</p>
+
+<p>De Leval replied: "Without doubt I consider
+it so, but I must refuse to tell you from whom I
+received the information. Besides, what difference
+does it make? If the information is
+true, our presence at this hour is justified; if
+it is not true, I am ready to take the consequences
+of my mistake."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron grew irritated.</p>
+
+<p>"What," he said, "is it on the hint of mere
+rumor that you come and disturb me at such
+an hour, me and these gentlemen? No, no,
+gentlemen, this news can not be true. Orders
+are never executed with such precipitation, especially
+when a woman is concerned. Come
+and see me to-morrow. Besides, how do you
+think that at this hour I can obtain any information?
+The Governor-General must certainly
+be sleeping."</p>
+
+<p>Gibson, or one of them, suggested to him
+that a very simple way of finding out would
+be to telephone to the prison.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right," said he. "I had not thought
+of that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He went out, was gone a few minutes and
+came back embarrassed, so they said, even a
+little bit ashamed, for he said:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The sad
+news confirmed.</div>
+
+<p>"You are right, gentlemen; I have heard by
+telephone that Miss Cavell has been condemned
+and that she will be shot to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Then de Leval drew out the letter that I had
+written to the Baron and gave it to him, and he
+read it in an undertone&mdash;with a little sardonic
+smile, de Leval said&mdash;and when he had finished
+he handed it back to de Leval and said:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+plea for
+mercy.</div>
+
+<p>"But it is necessary to have a plea for mercy
+at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," said de Leval, and gave him the
+document. Then they all sat down.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Von der
+Lancken's
+attitude.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Miss
+Cavell
+not a spy.</div>
+
+<p>I could see the scene as it was described to
+me by Villalobar, by Gibson, by de Leval, in
+that pretty little Louis XVI. salon that I knew
+so well&mdash;Lancken giving way to an outburst
+of feeling against "that spy," as he called Miss
+Cavell, and Gibson and de Leval by turns pleading
+with him, the Marquis sitting by. It was
+not a question of spying as they pointed out;
+it was a question of the life of a woman, a
+life that had been devoted to charity, to helping
+others. She had nursed wounded soldiers,
+she had even nursed German wounded at the
+beginning of the war, and now she was accused
+of but one thing: having helped English
+soldiers make their way toward Holland. She
+may have been imprudent, she may have acted
+against the laws of the occupying power, but
+she was not a spy, she was not even accused of
+being a spy, she had not been convicted of spying,
+and she did not merit the death of a spy.
+They sat there pleading, Gibson and de Leval,
+bringing forth all the arguments that would
+occur to men of sense and sensibility. Gibson
+called Lancken's attention to their failure to
+inform the Legation of the sentence, of their
+failure to keep the word that Conrad had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span>
+given. He argued that the offense charged
+against Miss Cavell had long since been accomplished,
+that as she had been for some
+weeks in prison a slight delay in carrying out
+the sentence could not endanger the German
+cause; he even pointed out the effect such a
+deed as the summary execution of the death
+sentence against a woman would have upon
+public opinion, not only in Belgium, but in
+America, and elsewhere; he even spoke of the
+possibility of reprisals.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+military
+authority
+supreme.</div>
+
+<p>But it was all in vain. Baron von der
+Lancken explained to them that the Military
+Governor, that is, General von Saubersweig,
+was the supreme authority in matters of this
+sort, that an appeal from his decision lay only
+to the Emperor, that the Governor-General
+himself had no authority to intervene in such
+cases, and that under the provisions of German
+martial law it lay within the discretion of
+the Military Governor whether he would accept
+or refuse an appeal for clemency. And then
+Villalobar suddenly cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come now! It's a woman; you can't
+shoot a woman like that!"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron paused, was evidently moved.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," he said, "it is past eleven
+o'clock; what can be done?"</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lancken
+goes to
+von
+Saubersweig.</div>
+
+<p>It was only von Saubersweig who could act,
+he had said, and they urged the Baron to go
+to see von Saubersweig. Finally he consented.
+While he was gone Villalobar, Gibson and de
+Leval repeated to Harrach and von Falkenhausen
+all the arguments that might move
+them. Von Falkenhausen was young, he had
+been to Cambridge in England, and he was
+touched, though of course he was powerless.
+And de Leval says that when he gave signs of
+showing pity, Harrach cast a glance at him,
+so that he said nothing more, and then Harrach
+said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The life of one German soldier seems to us
+much more important than that of all these old
+English nurses."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lancken's
+return.</div>
+
+<p>At last Lancken returned and, standing
+there, announced:</p>
+
+<p>"I am exceedingly sorry, but the Governor
+tells me that only after due reflection was the
+execution decided upon, and that he will not
+change his decision. Under his prerogative he
+even refuses to receive the plea for mercy.
+Therefore, no one, not even the Emperor, can
+do anything for you."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The plea
+for mercy
+handed
+back.</div>
+
+<p>With this he handed my letter and the
+<i>requ&ecirc;te en grace</i> back to Gibson. There was
+a moment of silence in the yellow salon. Then
+Villalobar sprang up and seizing Lancken by
+the shoulder said to him in an energetic tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Baron, I wish to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is useless," began Lancken.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Marquis
+Villalobar
+pleads.</div>
+
+<p>But the old Spanish pride had been mounting
+in the Marquis, and he literally dragged the
+tall von der Lancken into a little room near
+by, and then voices were heard in sharp discussion,
+and even through the partition the
+voice of Villalobar:</p>
+
+<p>"It is idiotic, this thing you are going to do;
+you will have another Louvain."</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later they came back, Villalobar
+in silent rage, Lancken very red. And, as
+de Leval said, without another word, dumb, in
+consternation, filled with an immense despair,
+they came away.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+messengers
+withdraw.</div>
+
+<p>I heard the report, and they withdrew. A
+little while and I heard the street door open.
+The women who had waited all that night
+went out into the rain.</p>
+
+<p>The rain had ceased and the air was soft and
+warm the next morning; the sunlight shone
+through an autumn haze. But over the city
+the horror of the dreadful deed hung like a
+pall.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Other
+prisoners
+condemned.</div>
+
+<p>Twenty-six others were condemned with
+Miss Cavell, four of whom were sentenced to
+death: Philippe Baucq, an architect of Brussels;
+Louise Thuiliez, a school-teacher at Lille;
+Louis Severin, a pharmacist of Brussels; and
+the Countess Jeanne de Belleville of Montignies-sur-Roc.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Severe
+sentences.</div>
+
+<p>Harman Capian, a civil engineer of Wasmes;
+Mrs. Ada Bodart of Brussels; Albert Libiez, a
+lawyer of Wasmes; and Georges Derveau, a
+pharmacist of P&acirc;turages, were sentenced each
+to fifteen years' penal servitude at hard labor.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess Maria de Croy was sentenced
+to ten years' penal servitude at hard labor.</p>
+
+<p>Seventeen others were sentenced to hard
+labor or to terms of imprisonment of from two
+to five years. The eight remaining were acquitted.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The people
+horrified
+at Miss
+Cavell's
+execution.</div>
+
+<p>All day long sad and solemn groups stood
+under the trees in the boulevards amid the
+falling leaves discussing the crime in horrified
+tones. The horror of it pervaded the house.
+I found my wife weeping at evening; no need
+to ask what was the matter; the wife of the
+chaplain had been there, with some detail of
+Miss Cavell's last hours: how she had arisen
+wearily from her cot at the coming of the
+clergyman, drawing her dressing-gown about
+her thin throat.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The body
+not given
+to friends.</div>
+
+<p>I sent a note to Baron von der Lancken
+asking that the Governor-General permit the
+body of Miss Cavell to be buried by the American
+Legation and the friends of the dead girl.
+In reply he came himself to see me in the afternoon.
+He was very solemn, and said that he
+wished to express his regret in the circumstances,
+but that he had done all he could.
+The body, he said, had already been interred,
+with respect and with religious rites, in a quiet
+place, and under the law it could not be exhumed
+without an order from the Imperial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span>
+Government. The Governor-General himself
+had gone to Berlin.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Whitlock
+and
+Villalobar.</div>
+
+<p>And then came Villalobar, and I thanked
+him for what he had done. He told me much,
+and described the scene the night before in
+that anteroom with Lancken. The Marquis
+was much concerned about the Countess Jeanne
+de Belleville and Madame Thuiliez, both
+French, and hence prot&eacute;g&eacute;es of his, condemned
+to die within eight days; but I told him not to
+be concerned; that the effect of Miss Cavell's
+martyrdom did not end with her death; it
+would procure other liberations, this among
+them; the thirst for blood had been slaked and
+there would be no more executions in that
+group; it was the way of the law of blood
+vengeance. We talked a long time about the
+tragedy and about the even larger tragedy of
+the war.</p>
+
+<p>"We are getting old," he said. "Life is
+going; and after the war, if we live in that new
+world, we shall be of the old&mdash;the new generation
+will push us aside."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Miss
+Cavell's
+death wins
+mercy for
+others.</div>
+
+<p>Gibson and de Leval prepared reports of the
+whole matter, and I sent them by the next
+courier to our Embassy at London. But somehow
+that very day the news got into Holland
+and shocked the world. Richards, of the
+C. R. B., just back from The Hague, said that
+they had already heard of it there and were
+filled with horror. And even the Germans,
+who seemed always to do a deed and to consider
+its effect afterward, knew that they had
+another Louvain, another <i>Lusitania</i>, for which
+to answer before the bar of civilization. The
+lives of the three others remaining, of the five
+condemned to death, were ultimately spared,
+as I had told Villalobar they would be. The
+King of Spain and the President of the United
+States made representations at Berlin in behalf
+of the Countess de Belleville and Madame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span>
+Thuiliez, and their sentences were commuted
+to imprisonment, as was that of Louis Severin,
+the Brussels druggist. The storm of universal
+loathing and reprobation for the deed was too
+much even for the Germans.</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Copyright, Delineator, November, 1918.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In an earlier chapter we have read of the beginning
+of the attempt to cross the Dardanelles
+and to capture the Peninsula of Gallipoli. After
+great losses and terrible suffering had been endured
+in these attempts, it was decided in December,
+1915, by the British war authorities that
+further sacrifices were not justified. Preparations
+were accordingly made to abandon the
+enterprise. How these plans were carried out
+is told in the chapter following.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GALLIPOLI ABANDONED</h2>
+
+<h3>GENERAL SIR CHARLES C. MONRO</h3>
+
+
+<p>On October 20, 1915, in London, I received
+instructions to proceed as soon as possible
+to the Near East and take over the
+command of the Mediterranean Expeditionary
+Force.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Monro's
+orders on
+arrival.</div>
+
+<p>My duty on arrival was in broad outline:</p>
+
+<p>(a) To report on the military situation on
+the Gallipoli Peninsula.</p>
+
+<p>(b) To express an opinion whether on purely
+military grounds the Peninsula should be
+evacuated or another attempt made to carry it.</p>
+
+<p>(c) The number of troops that would be required&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>(1) To carry the Peninsula.</p>
+
+<p>(2) To keep the strait open, and</p>
+
+<p>(3) To take Constantinople.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Military
+defects in
+positions
+occupied.</div>
+
+<p>The positions occupied by our troops presented
+a military situation unique in history.
+The mere fringe of the coast line had been secured.
+The beaches and piers upon which they
+depended for all requirements in personnel and
+material were exposed to registered and observed
+artillery fire. Our intrenchments were
+dominated almost throughout by the Turks.
+The possible artillery positions were insufficient
+and defective. The force, in short, held a line
+possessing every possible military defect. The
+position was without depth, the communications
+were insecure and dependent on the
+weather.</p>
+
+<p>No means existed for the concealment and
+deployment of fresh troops destined for the
+offensive&mdash;while the Turks enjoyed full powers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span>
+of observation, abundant artillery positions,
+and they <ins title="Transcriber's Note: this word not present in the original">had</ins> been given the time to supplement
+the natural advantages which the position
+presented by all the devices at the disposal of
+the field engineer.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Disease,
+loss of
+competent
+officers,
+make-shift
+organization.</div>
+
+<p>Another material factor came prominently
+before me. The troops on the Peninsula had
+suffered much from various causes&mdash;exposure
+to shell fire, disease, the dearth of competent
+officers owing to earlier losses, and "make-shifts"
+due to the attachment of Yeomanry
+and Mounted Brigades to the Territorial
+Divisions. Other arguments, irrefutable in
+their conclusions, convinced me that a complete
+evacuation was the only wise course to
+pursue.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Consequences
+of
+unusual
+storms.</div>
+
+<p>On November 21, 1915 the Peninsula was
+visited by a storm said to be nearly unprecedented
+for the time of the year. The storm
+was accompanied by torrential rain, which
+lasted for twenty-four hours. This was followed
+by hard frost and a heavy blizzard. In
+the areas of the Eighth Corps and the Anzac
+Corps the effects were not felt to a very marked
+degree owing to the protection offered by the
+surrounding hills. The Ninth Corps was less
+favorably situated, the water courses in this
+area became converted into surging rivers,
+which carried all before them. The water rose
+in many places to the height of the parapets
+and all means of communications were prevented.</p>
+
+<p>The men, drenched as they were by the
+rain, suffered from the subsequent blizzard
+most severely. Large numbers collapsed from
+exposure and exhaustion, and in spite of untiring
+efforts that were made to mitigate the
+suffering I regret to announce that there were
+200 deaths from exposure and over 10,000 sick
+evacuated during the first few days of December.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From reports given by deserters it is probable
+that the Turks suffered even to a greater
+degree.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Difficulties
+pertaining to
+withdrawal.</div>
+
+<p>The problem with which we were confronted
+was the withdrawal of an army of a considerable
+size from positions in no cases more than
+300 yards from the enemy's trenches, and its
+embarkation on open beaches, every part of
+which was within effective range of Turkish
+guns, and from which in winds from the south
+or southwest, the withdrawal of troops was
+not possible.</p>
+
+<p>I came to the conclusion that our chances
+of success were infinitely more probable if we
+made no departure of any kind from the normal
+life which we were following both on sea
+and on land. A feint which did not fully fulfill
+its purpose would have been worse than
+useless, and there was the obvious danger that
+the suspicions of the Turks would be aroused
+by our adoption of a course the real purport
+of which could not have been long
+disguised.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Unsettled
+weather a
+menace.</div>
+
+<p>Rapidity of action was imperative, having
+in view the unsettled weather which might be
+expected in the &AElig;gean. The success of our
+operations was entirely dependent on weather
+conditions. Even a mild wind from the south
+or southwest was found to raise such a ground
+swell as to greatly impede communication with
+the beaches, while anything in the nature of
+a gale from this direction could not fail to
+break up the piers, wreck the small craft, and
+thus definitely prevent any steps being taken
+toward withdrawal.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Evacuation
+of
+supplies
+continues
+satisfactorily.</div>
+
+<p>Throughout the period December 10 to 18,
+1915 the withdrawal proceeded under the most
+auspicious conditions, and the morning of December
+18, 1915, found the positions both at
+Anzac and Suvla reduced to the numbers determined,
+while the evacuation of guns, animals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span>
+stores, and supplies had continued most satisfactorily.</p>
+
+<p>It was imperative, of course, that the front-line
+trenches should be held, however lightly,
+until the very last moment and that the withdrawal
+from these trenches should be simultaneous
+throughout the line.</p>
+
+<p>The good fortune which had attended the
+evacuation continued during the night of the
+19th-20th. The night was perfectly calm with
+a slight haze over the moon, an additional
+stroke of good luck, as there was a full moon
+on that night.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Final
+withdrawals
+from
+Anzac and
+Suvla.</div>
+
+<p>Soon after dark the covering ships were all
+in position, and the final withdrawal began.
+At 1:30 A. M. the withdrawal of the rear
+parties commenced from the front trenches at
+Suvla and the left of Anzac. Those on the
+right of Anzac who were nearer the beach remained
+in position until 2 A. M. By 5:30 A. M.
+the last man had quit the trenches.</p>
+
+<p>At Anzac, four 18-pounder guns, two 5-inch
+howitzers, one 4.7 naval gun, one anti-air craft,
+and two 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns were left,
+but they were destroyed before the troops
+finally embarked. In addition, fifty-six mules,
+a certain number of carts, mostly stripped of
+their wheels, and some supplies which were
+set on fire, were also abandoned.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A few
+supplies
+destroyed.</div>
+
+<p>At Suvla every gun, vehicle and animal was
+embarked, and all that remained was a small
+stock of supplies, which were burned.</p>
+
+<p>On December 28, 1915, your Lordship's telegram
+ordering the evacuation of Helles was received,
+whereupon, in view of the possibility of
+bad weather intervening, I instructed the General
+Officer Commanding Dardanelles Army to
+complete the operation as rapidly as possible.
+He was reminded that every effort conditional
+on not exposing the personnel to undue risk
+should be made to save all 60-pounder and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span>
+18-pounder guns, 6-inch and 4.5 howitzers,
+with their ammunition and other accessories,
+such as mules, and A. T. carts, limbered
+wagons, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Situation
+on Gallipoli
+Peninsula.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Increase
+in Turkish
+artillery.</div>
+
+<p>At a meeting which was attended by the
+Vice Admiral and the General Officer Commanding
+Dardanelles Army I explained the
+course which I thought we should adopt to
+again deceive the Turks as to our intentions.
+The situation on the Peninsula had not materially
+changed owing to our withdrawal from
+Suvla and Anzac, except that there was a
+marked increased activity in aerial reconnoissance
+over our positions, and the islands of
+Mudros and Imbros, and that hostile patrolling
+of our trenches was more frequent and daring.
+The most apparent factor was that the number
+of heavy guns on the European and Asiatic
+shores had been considerably augmented, and
+that these guns were more liberally supplied
+with German ammunition, the result of which
+was that our beaches were continuously shelled,
+especially from the Asiatic shore. I gave it as
+my opinion that in my judgment I did not regard
+a feint as an operation offering any prospect
+of success; and it was decided the navy
+should do their utmost to pursue a course of
+retaliation against the Turkish batteries,
+but to refrain from any unusually aggressive
+attitude should the Turkish guns remain
+quiescent.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General
+Birdwood's
+comprehensive
+plans.</div>
+
+<p>General Sir W. Birdwood had, in anticipation
+of being ordered to evacuate Helles, made such
+complete and far-seeing arrangements that he
+was able to proceed without delay to the issue
+of the comprehensive orders which the consummation
+of such a delicate operation in war
+requires.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">French
+infantry
+embarked.</div>
+
+<p>The evacuation, following the same system
+as was practiced at Suvla and Anzac, proceeded
+without delay. The French infantry remaining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span>
+on the Peninsula were relieved on the night of
+January 1-2, 1916, and were embarked by the
+French navy on the following nights. Progress,
+however, was slower than had been hoped, owing
+to delays caused by accident and the
+weather. One of our largest horse ships was
+sunk by a French battleship, whereby the withdrawal
+was considerably retarded, and at the
+same time strong winds sprang up which interfered
+materially with work on the beaches.
+The character of the weather now setting in
+offered so little hope of a calm period of any
+duration that General Sir W. Birdwood arranged
+with Admiral Sir J. de Robeck for the
+assistance of some destroyers in order to accelerate
+the progress of re-embarkation.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Turks
+shell
+trenches
+and
+beaches.</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Eighth Corps had maintained
+the offensive spirit in bombing and minor operations
+with which they had established the
+moral superiority they enjoyed over the enemy.
+On December 29, 1915 the Fifty-second Division
+completed the excellent work which they had
+been carrying out for so long by capturing a
+considerable portion of the Turkish trenches,
+and by successfully holding these in the face
+of repeated counter-attacks. The shelling of
+our trenches and beaches, however, increased
+in frequency and intensity, and the average
+daily casualties continued to increase.</p>
+
+<p>On January 7, 1916, the enemy developed
+heavy artillery fire on the trenches held by
+the Thirteenth Division, while the Asiatic guns
+shelled those occupied by the Royal Naval Division.
+The bombardment, which was reported
+to be the heaviest experienced since we landed
+in April, lasted from noon until 5 P. M., and
+was intensive between 3 and 3:30 P. M.</p>
+
+<p>January 8, 1916 was a bright, calm day, with
+a light breeze from the south. There was every
+indication of the continuance of favorable conditions,
+and, in the opinion of the meteorological<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span>
+officer, no important change was to be expected
+for at least twenty-four hours. The
+Turkish artillery was unusually inactive. All
+preparations for the execution of the final stage
+were complete.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Unfavorable
+weather.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hostile
+submarine
+near by.</div>
+
+<p>About 7 P. M. the breeze freshened considerably
+from the southwest, the most unfavorable
+quarter, but the first trip, timed for 8 P. M.,
+was dispatched without difficulty. The wind,
+however, continued to rise until, by 11 P. M.,
+the connecting pier between the hulks and
+the shore at "W" Beach was washed away by
+heavy seas, and further embarkation into destroyers
+from these hulks became impracticable.
+In spite of these difficulties the second trips,
+which commenced at 11:30 P. M., were carried
+out well up to time, and the embarkation of
+guns continued uninterruptedly. Early in the
+evening reports had been received from the
+right flank that a hostile submarine was believed
+to be moving down the strait, and about
+midnight H. M. S. <i>Prince George</i>, which had
+embarked 2,000 men, and was sailing for
+Mudros, reported she was struck by a torpedo
+which failed to explode. The indications of the
+presence of a submarine added considerably
+to the anxiety for the safety of the troop carriers,
+and made it necessary for the Vice Admiral
+to modify the arrangements made for
+the subsequent bombardment of the evacuated
+positions.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gully
+Beach
+embarkation
+completed.</div>
+
+<p>At 1:50 A. M., Gully Beach reported that
+the embarkation at that beach was complete,
+and that the lighters were about to push off,
+but at 2:10 A. M. a telephone message was received
+that one of the lighters was aground
+and could not be refloated. The N. T. O. at
+once took all possible steps to have another
+lighter sent in to Gully Beach, and this was, as
+a matter of fact, done within an hour, but in
+the meantime, at 2:30 A. M. it was decided to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span>
+move the 160 men who had been relanded from
+the grounded lighter to "W" Beach and embark
+them there.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Conflagrations
+show
+Turks the
+allies have
+withdrawn.</div>
+
+<p>At 3:30 A. M. the evacuation was complete,
+and abandoned heaps of stores and supplies
+were successfully set on fire by time fuses after
+the last man had embarked. Two magazines of
+ammunition and explosives were also successfully
+blown up at 4 A. M. These conflagrations
+were apparently the first intimation
+received by the Turks that we had withdrawn.
+Red lights were immediately discharged
+from the enemy's trenches, and heavy artillery
+fire opened on our trenches and beaches.
+This shelling was maintained until about
+6:30 A. M.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Good
+luck and
+skilled
+organization
+forthcoming.</div>
+
+<p>Apart from four unserviceable fifteen-pounders
+which had been destroyed earlier in the
+month, ten worn-out fifteen-pounders, one six-inch
+Mark VII gun, and six old heavy French
+guns, all of which were previously blown up,
+were left on the Peninsula. In addition to the
+above, 508 animals, most of which were destroyed,
+and a number of vehicles and considerable
+quantities of stores, material, and supplies,
+all of which were destroyed by burning, had to
+be abandoned.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Competent
+officers in
+charge.</div>
+
+<p>The entire evacuation of the Peninsula had
+now been completed. It demanded for its successful
+realization two important military essentials,
+viz., good luck and skilled disciplined
+organization, and they were both forthcoming
+to a marked degree at the hour needed. Our
+luck was in the ascendant by the marvelous
+spell of calm weather which prevailed. But we
+were able to turn to the fullest advantage these
+accidents of fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant General Sir W. Birdwood and
+his corps commanders elaborated and prepared
+the orders in reference to the evacuation with a
+skill, competence, and courage which could not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span>
+have been surpassed, and we had a further
+stroke of good fortune in being associated with
+Vice Admiral Sir J. de Robeck, K. C. B., Vice
+Admiral Wemyss, and a body of naval officers
+whose work remained throughout this anxious
+period at that standard of accuracy and professional
+ability which is beyond the power of
+criticism or cavil.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The form of "frightfulness" in which the
+Germans placed the greatest faith was the terrorizing
+of the inhabitants of unprotected
+enemy cities by bombs from Zeppelins and
+aeroplanes. While the objects for which these
+atrocities were perpetrated were not attained,
+hundreds of innocent men, women, and children
+were murdered. The following narrative
+describes one of these German air raids.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE DEATH-SHIP IN THE SKY</h2>
+
+<h3>PERRITON MAXWELL</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+switchman
+at Walthamstow.</div>
+
+<p>For twenty-six years old Tom Cumbers had
+held his job as switchman at the Walthamstow
+railroad junction where the
+London-bound trains come up from Southend
+to the great city. It was an important post
+and old Tom filled it with stolid British efficiency.
+A kindly man who felt himself an
+integral part of the giant railroad system that
+employed him, old Tom had few interests beyond
+his work, his white-haired wife, his reeking
+pipe and the little four-room tenement in
+Walthamstow which he called home. The
+latter was one of the thousands of two-storied
+rabbit-hatches of sooty, yellow brick, all alike
+and all incredibly ugly, which stretch, mile
+upon mile, from Walthamstow toward London's
+tumultuous heart.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The workshops
+near
+Epping
+Forest.</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">An
+appalling
+tragedy
+of the
+war.</div>
+
+<p>Within a radius of four dun miles, just on
+the nearer edge of Epping Forest&mdash;the scene
+in a forgotten day of Robin Hood's adventurings&mdash;a
+section of these huddling homes of the
+submerged, together with a street of trams and
+some pathetic shops, constitute this town of
+Walthamstow. It is a sordid, unlovely place,
+but for some ten thousand wage-strugglers it
+is all of England. There are workshops hereabout
+in which one may mingle one's copious
+sweat with the grime of machinery and have
+fourteen shillings a week into the bargain&mdash;if
+one is properly skilled and muscular and
+bovinely plodding. Walthamstow is not the
+place where one would deliberately choose to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span>
+live if bread could be earned elsewhere with
+equal certainty. But for all its dirt and dullness
+it has a spot on the map and a meaning
+in the dull souls of its inhabitants, and here,
+within half an hour's train travel of the Lord
+Mayor's Mansion and the golden vaults of the
+Bank of England, transpired on the sweltering
+night of which I write, one of the most
+witless and appalling tragedies of the present
+war. Forever memorable in the hitherto colorless
+calendar of Walthamstow will be this
+tragedy in the second year of Armageddon.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">An
+ordinary
+hot night.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">News of
+the war.</div>
+
+<p>Beyond the stenchful heat-stress of it, there
+was nothing up to half-past eleven to mark
+this night as different from its fellows of the
+past. From eight o'clock till ten the small activities
+of the town centered chiefly about its
+tramway terminus, its smudgy station, its
+three or four moving-picture theatres, and its
+fetid pubs. On the pavements, in the roadways
+and at every crossing, corduroyed men yawned
+and spat, and slatternly women, most of them
+with whimpering infants in their arms, talked
+of shop or household cares and the frailties of
+their neighbors. Some, more alive to the big
+events of a clashing world, repeated the meagre
+news of the ha'penny press and dwelt with
+prideful fervor on the latest bit of heroism reported
+from the front. Now and again an outburst
+of raucous humor echoed above the babble
+of cockney tongues. The maudlin clamor of "a
+pore lone lidy 'oos 'subing 'ad desarted 'er"
+failed to arouse anyone's curiosity. Ladies in
+their cups are not a rarity in Walthamstow.
+In side streets, lads in khaki, many of them
+fresh from fields of slaughter "somewhere in
+Flanders," sported boisterously with their
+factory-girl sweethearts or spooned in the
+shadows. Everywhere grubby children in scant
+clothing shrilled and scampered and got in the
+way. Humidity enveloped the town like a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span>
+sodden cloak and its humanity stewed in moist
+and smelly discomfort.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Street
+lamps out.</div>
+
+<p>But shortly after eleven o'clock the whole
+place became suddenly and majestically still
+and black. People who go to their work at
+sunrise cannot afford the extravagance of midnight
+revelry, and there are few street-lamps
+alight after ten o'clock in any London suburb
+in these times of martial law. Walthamstow
+slept in heated but profound oblivion of its
+mean existence. Beyond the town lay, like a
+prostrate giant camel, the heat-blurred silhouette
+of the classic forest. Low over Walthamstow
+hung the festoons of flat, humid
+clouds, menacing storm, but motionless.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+rhythm
+of the
+Zeppelin.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The train
+to serve
+as pilot to
+London.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+Zeppelin
+forced to
+travel low.</div>
+
+<p>If there was no disturbance in the clouds
+themselves there was among them something
+very active, something that drilled its way
+through them with a muffled whirring, something
+that was oblong and lean and light of
+texture, that was ominous and menacing for
+all its buoyancy. The sound it made was too
+high up, too thickly shrouded by clouds, to
+determine its precise position. It gave forth
+a breathing of persistent, definite rhythm.
+This was plainly not the wing-stroke of a nocturnal
+bird; for no bird, big or little, could
+advertise its flight in such perfect pulsation.
+And yet it was a bird, a Gargantuan, man-made
+bird with murder in its talons and hatred
+in its heart. From its steel nest in Germanized
+Belgium this whirring monster had soared
+eight thousand feet and crossed the Channel
+with little fear of discovery. It had penetrated
+the English Coast somewhere down Sheerness
+way and over Southend and then, dropping
+lower, had sought and found through the haze
+the tiny train whose locomotive had just fluted
+its brief salutation to Walthamstow. To the
+close-cropped men on the Zeppelin, the string
+of cars far down under their feet, with its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span>
+side-flare from lighted windows, its engine's
+headlamp and its sparks, had proved a providential
+pilotage. They knew that this train
+was on the main line, and that it would lead
+them straight to the great Liverpool Street
+Station, and that was London, and it was London
+wharfs and ammunition works along the
+Thames that they had planned to obliterate
+with their cylinders of mechanical doom. But
+the moist clouds which aided so materially in
+hiding the Zeppelin's presence from below also
+worked for its defeat, in so far as its ultimate
+objective was concerned, for to keep the guiding
+train in view it was compelled to travel
+lower and yet lower&mdash;so low, indeed, as to
+make it a target for Kitchener's sentinels.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+switchman
+signals
+"danger."</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The train
+stops at
+Walthamstow.</div>
+
+<p>Somehow, by sight or intuition or the instant
+commingling of the two, old Tom Cumbers became
+aware of the danger above him; for he
+sprang to his switch, shut off all the cheery
+blue and white lights along "the line" and
+swung on with a mighty jerk the ruby signal
+of danger. The engineer in the on-rushing
+train jammed down his brakes and brought up
+his locomotive with a complaining, grinding
+moan, a hundred yards beyond Walthamstow
+station. Tom Cumbers had done a greater
+thing than any other in all his existence.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+German
+revenge.</div>
+
+<p>That by his act the Germans in their speeding
+sky-craft were baffled there is no doubt.
+They had lost their trail of fire; their involuntary
+guide had disappeared in the gloom. The
+airmen's long journey had suddenly become
+fruitless; their peril from hidden British guns
+and flying scouts was increased tenfold. The
+heat of the night was as nothing to the hot
+surge of disappointment that must have swept
+the brains of the Zeppelin crew. Their commander,
+too, must have lost his judgment utterly,
+forgotten his sense of military effectiveness.
+Whatever happened, he sacrificed his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span>
+soul when he turned his cloud-ship aside from
+the railway line, steered over the shabby roofs
+of Walthamstow and, at less than two thousand
+feet, unloosed his iron dogs of destruction.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bombing
+tenements
+of a defenseless
+town.</div>
+
+<p>I have it on the authority of experienced
+aviators that it is not impossible on a dark
+night to distinguish buildings of importance
+like St. Paul's or the Houses of Parliament or
+a great gun factory or a river as broad as the
+Thames with its uprearing and frequent
+bridges. The crowding tenements of Walthamstow
+could have had no semblance to any of
+these, at any height. It would seem a cheap
+and worthless revenge, then, to wreck an unimportant
+and defenceless town, having failed
+to wreck the military nerve-center of the
+world's metropolis. But this is what one of
+Count Zeppelin's soaring dreadnoughts did
+in this night, in this blood-drenched year.</p>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">When a
+bomb
+explodes.</div>
+
+<p>Like the mirage of a tropical island the
+dirigible hung motionless in space for a breathless
+minute. There was a wavering pin-prick
+of light in the carriage suspended from the
+leviathan's belly&mdash;a light that fluttered fore
+and aft as of a man with a fairy lantern running
+to and fro giving orders or taking them.
+Then faintly discernible against the sky, like
+a rope hung down for anchorage, came a thin,
+gray streak&mdash;the tail of a bomb with all hell
+in its wake. From somewhere near the town's
+centre the earth split and roared apart. The
+world reeled and a brain-shattering crash compounded
+of all the elements of pain and hurled
+from the shoulders of a thousand thunderclaps
+smote the senses. It was a blast of sickening
+and malignant fury. It did not so much stun
+as it stopped one&mdash;stopped the breath and the
+heart's beat, suspending thought, halting life
+itself for a fraction of time. One was, somehow,
+aware of existence but without sensation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span>
+And then came reaction and the realization of
+what was really taking place. The German's
+bomb landed fully ten blocks away, but you
+would have taken oath in court that it had
+fallen at your feet, behind you, above you and
+into your very brain.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Terror of
+the
+people.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A broken
+gas main.</div>
+
+<p>An air raid on Walthamstow, which drab
+town can boast neither ammunition works nor
+the ownership of war material of any description,
+could not be at once realized. But here
+was the cyclonic fact, hideously real, appallingly
+actual; and there in the heavens was
+the buoyant Zeppelin maneuvering for further
+mischief. The reverberation of the first explosion
+was still grumbling back in Epping
+Forest when all Walthamstow, rubbing its
+eyes, tumbled out into the black streets. Men,
+women, children, all ludicrously clotheless,
+swarmed aimlessly like bees in an overturned
+hive. Stark terror gripped them. It distorted
+their faces and set their legs quivering. The
+dullest among these toil-dulled people knew
+what that explosion meant, knew that it was
+part of the punishment promised by the German
+foe. "Gott strafe England" had come to
+pass. But they could not understand why the
+enemy had singled them out for such drastic
+distinction. The more alert and cool-headed
+of the men battled with their fellows and
+shouted instructions to get the women folks
+and the kiddies back indoors and down into
+their cellars. The night-gowned and pajamaed
+throng could not be persuaded that safety lay
+not in sight of the Zeppelin but away from it.
+The hypnotism of horror lured them on to
+where twelve houses lay spread about in smoking
+chaos, a plateau of blazing and noisome
+havoc. Somewhere a gas-main burst with a
+roar and drove the crowd back with its
+choking fumes as no human hands could have
+done. Women frankly hysterical or swooning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span>
+were roughly thrust aside. Children shrieking
+in uncomprehending panic were swept
+along with the crowd or trodden upon. Lumbering
+men ran and shouted and cursed and
+shook hairy fists at the long blot on the clouds.
+Some of the men leaped over iron palings like
+startled rabbits and flung themselves in the
+grass, face downward and quaking. And yet,
+I dare say that most of these would have
+walked straight into a familiar danger without
+the waver of an eyelash; it was the unknown
+peril, the doubt as to how and whence
+this hurtling death might spring upon them
+out of the night, that unhinged their manhood.
+And while Walthamstow's walls went down
+and great flame-tongues spouted where homes
+had stood, while the thick, hot air was tortured
+with agonized and inhuman cries, the enemy
+up above let loose another bolt.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The
+second
+bomb as
+the town
+blazes.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Effects
+of the
+explosion.</div>
+
+<p>More terrible than the first explosion was,
+or seemed, this second one. It mowed down
+half a hundred shrieking souls. And it was
+curious to note the lateral action of the blast
+when it hit a resisting surface. Dynamite explodes
+with a downward or upward force, lyddite
+and nitro-glycerine and what not other
+devil's own powers act more or less in the same
+set manner. But the furious ingredients of
+these bombs hurled on Walthamstow contained
+stuff that released a discharge which swept
+all things from it horizontally, in a quarter-mile,
+lightning sweep, like a scythe of flame.
+A solid block of shabby villas was laid out as
+flat as your palm by the explosion of this
+second bomb. Scarcely a brick was left standing
+upright. What houses escaped demolition
+around the edge of the convulsion had their
+doors and windows splintered into rubbish.
+The concussion of this chemical frenzy was
+felt, like an earthquake, in a ten-mile circle.
+Wherever the scorching breath of the bombs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span>
+breathed on stone or metal it left a sulphurous,
+yellow-white veneer, acrid in odor and smooth
+to the touch. Whole street-lengths of twisted
+iron railings were coated with this murderous
+white-wash.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">More
+bombs as
+the Zeppelin
+rises.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Freaks
+of the
+explosion.</div>
+
+<p>Having made sure of its mark, the ravaging
+Zeppelin rose higher on the discharge of its
+first bomb and still higher after firing the second.
+At the safe distance of four thousand
+feet it dropped three more shells recklessly,
+haphazard. One of these bored cleanly through
+a slate-tiled roof, through furniture and two
+floorings and burrowed ten feet into the ground
+without exploding. This intact shell has since
+been carefully analyzed by the experts of the
+Board of Explosions at the British War Office.
+Another bomb detonated on the steel rails of
+the Walthamstow tram-line and sent them
+curling skyward from their rivetted foundations
+like serpentine wisps of paper. Great cobblestones
+were heaved through shop windows
+and partitions and out into the flower-beds of
+rear gardens; some of the cobbles were flung
+through solid attic blinds and others were
+catapulted through brick walls a foot in thickness.
+A hole as big as a moving-van burned
+into the road at one place. In a side street an
+impromptu fountain squirted playfully into the
+dust-burdened air, the result of a central water-pipe
+punctured by a slug from one of the bomb's
+iron entrails. But these things were not noted
+until dawn and comparative peace had returned
+to Walthamstow and men could count with
+some degree the cost of the reckless invasion.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">British
+aeroplanes
+pursue.</div>
+
+<p>Before the clouds had swallowed up the hateful
+visitant the noise of its attack had aroused
+the military guards across Epping Forest, in
+Chingford village, and, aided by a search-light,
+the anti-aircraft-gun opened its unavailing fire
+on the Zeppelin&mdash;ineffective, except that its
+returning shrapnel smashed up several roofs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span>
+and battered some innocent heads. The Germans
+had gauged their skyward path to London
+along which, apparently, they felt reasonably
+safe from gun-reach. But they had barely
+headed homeward before a flock of army aeroplanes,
+rising from all points of the compass,
+were in hot pursuit. One of the Britishers was
+shot down by the men aboard the Zeppelin.
+Neither speed nor daring counts for much in
+an encounter between flying-machines and swift
+dirigibles of the latest types. The advantage
+lies solely with the one that can overfly his adversary.
+This can be achieved by a biplane or
+monoplane pilot only if he has a long start from
+the ground and time enough to surmount his
+opponent. This is difficult even in daylight
+with a cloudless sky. Given darkness and
+clouds, the chances for success are tremendously
+against the smaller craft.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The old
+switchman
+a
+victim.</div>
+
+<p>Eight bombs in all were launched on Walthamstow&mdash;two
+of them ineffectual. The sixth
+bomb fell into a field close beside the railway
+line and worked a hideous wonder. It blew
+into never-to-be-gathered fragments all that
+was mortal of old Tom Cumbers, the signalman.
+They found only his left hand plastered
+gruesomely against the grassy bank of the railway
+cut&mdash;not a hair nor button else.</p>
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><small>Copyright Forum, August, 1916.</small></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The great series of attacks by the massed German
+Army against the mighty forces of Verdun
+began in February, 1917, and continued
+throughout the following months. Taken as a
+whole, it was the most dramatic effort in all
+its phases which took place between the German
+and French forces. The French showed
+during these terrible months, the spirit of devotion
+and sacrifice which was never excelled
+during the war.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+<p>Both "Ypres-Poelcapelle" and "Ypres-Poelcappelle" appear in the text. Both spellings were retained.</p>
+<p>Manoeuvre, man&oelig;uvre and maneuvre were used and retained.</p>
+<p>Both Ripon and Ripont appear in this text. Ripont seems more accurate.</p>
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of World's War Events, Vol. I, by Various
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of World's War Events, Vol. I, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: World's War Events, Vol. I
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Francis J. Reynolds
+        Allen L. Churchill
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2008 [EBook #25962]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S WAR EVENTS, VOL. I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+For the reader: The notation [oe] is used in this text to indicate the
+presence of the oe-ligature in the original text. Further transcriber's
+notes to be found at the end of the text.
+
+[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME AT RHEIMS]
+
+
+
+
+WORLD'S WAR EVENTS
+
+        RECORDED BY STATESMEN . COMMANDERS
+        HISTORIANS AND BY MEN WHO FOUGHT OR SAW
+        THE GREAT CAMPAIGNS
+
+
+COMPILED AND EDITED BY
+
+FRANCIS J. REYNOLDS
+
+FORMER REFERENCE LIBRARIAN . LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
+
+AND
+
+ALLEN L. CHURCHILL
+
+        ASSOCIATE EDITOR "THE STORY OF THE GREAT WAR"
+        ASSOCIATE EDITOR "THE NEW INTERNATIONAL
+        ENCYCLOPEDIA"
+
+
+
+VOLUME I
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+        P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY
+        NEW YORK
+
+Copyright 1919
+
+BY P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+WORLD'S WAR EVENTS
+
+VOLUME I
+
+        BEGINNING WITH THE CAUSES OF THE WAR
+        AND THE INVASION OF BELGIUM IN
+        1914 AND CARRYING THE HISTORY
+        OF THE WAR TO
+        THE CLOSE OF
+        1915
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  ARTICLE                                        PAGE
+
+      I. WHAT CAUSED THE WAR                       7
+            _Baron Beyens_
+
+     II. THE DEFENSE OF LIEGE                     41
+            _Charles Bronne_
+
+    III. THE GREAT RETREAT                        62
+            _Sir John French_
+
+     IV. THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE                  73
+            _Sir John French_
+
+      V. HOW THE FRENCH FOUGHT                    83
+            _French Official Account_
+
+     VI. THE RACE FOR THE CHANNEL                 96
+            _French Official Account_
+
+    VII. THE LAST DITCH IN BELGIUM               108
+            _Arno Dosch_
+
+   VIII. WHY TURKEY ENTERED THE WAR              125
+            _Roland G. Usher_
+
+     IX. THE FALKLAND SEA FIGHT                  142
+            _A. N. Hilditch_
+
+      X. CRUISE OF THE EMDEN                     176
+            _Captain Muecke_
+
+     XI. CAPTURE OF TSING-TAO                    198
+            _A. N. Hilditch_
+
+    XII. GALLIPOLI                               221
+            _A. John Gallishaw_
+
+   XIII. GAS: SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES             240
+            _Colonel E. D. Swinton_
+
+    XIV. THE CANADIANS AT YPRES                  248
+            _By the Canadian Record Officer_
+
+     XV. SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA                277
+            _Judicial Decision by Judge J. M. Mayer_
+
+    XVI. MOUNTAIN WARFARE                        313
+            _Howard C. Felton_
+
+   XVII. THE GREAT CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE OF 1915   322
+            _Official Account of the French Headquarters Staff_
+
+  XVIII. THE TRAGEDY OF EDITH CAVELL             348
+            _Brand Whitlock_
+
+    XIX. GALLIPOLI ABANDONED                     366
+            _General Sir Charles C. Monro_
+
+     XX. THE DEATH-SHIP IN THE SKY               375
+            _Perriton Maxwell_
+
+
+
+
+WHAT CAUSED THE WAR
+
+BARON BEYENS
+
+The National Review, June, 1916.
+
+
+I
+
+[Sidenote: Political designs of Francis Ferdinand.]
+
+The Archduke Francis Ferdinand will go down to posterity without having
+yielded up his secret. Great political designs have been ascribed to
+him, mainly on the strength of his friendship with William II. What do
+we really know about him? He was strong-willed and obstinate, very
+Clerical, very Austrian, disliking the Hungarians to such an extent that
+he kept their statesmen at arm's-length, and having no love for Italy.
+He has been credited with sympathies towards the Slav elements of the
+Empire; it has been asserted that he dreamt of setting up, in place of
+the dual monarchy, a "triune State," in which the third factor would
+have been made up for the most part of Slav provinces carved out of the
+Kingdom of St. Stephen. Immediately after he had been murdered, the
+_Vossische Zeitung_ refuted this theory with arguments which seemed to
+me thoroughly sound.
+
+The Archduke, said the Berlin newspaper, was too keen-witted not to see
+that he would thus be creating two rivals for Austria instead of one,
+and that the Serb populations would come within the orbit of Belgrade
+rather than of Vienna. Serbia would become the Piedmont of the Balkans;
+she would draw to herself the Slavs of the Danube valley by a process of
+crystallization similar to that which brought about Italian unity.
+
+[Sidenote: Army and Navy reorganized.]
+
+From year to year the Archduke had acquired more and more weight in the
+governance of the Empire, in proportion as his uncle's will grew weaker
+beneath the burden of advancing age. Thus he had succeeded in his
+efforts to provide Austria-Hungary with a new navy, the counterpart, on
+a more modest scale, of the German fleet, and to reorganize the
+effective army, here again taking Germany for his model. Among certain
+cliques, he was accused of not keeping enough in the background, of
+showing little tact or consideration in the manner of thrusting aside
+the phantom Emperor, who was gently gliding into the winter of the years
+at Schoenbrunn amid the veneration of his subjects of every race.
+
+Another charge was that he appointed too many of his creatures to
+important civil and military posts.
+
+[Sidenote: Antagonism of Russia and Austria.]
+
+We may well believe that this prince, observing the gradual decay of the
+monarchy, tried to restore its vigour, and that his first thought was to
+hold with a firm grasp, even before assuming the Imperial crown, the
+cluster of nationalities, mutually hostile and always discontented, that
+go to make up the Dual Empire. So far as foreign relations are
+concerned, we may assume that he was bent on winning her a place in the
+first rank of Powers; that he wished, above all, to see her predominant
+all along the Danube and in the Balkans; that he even aimed at giving
+her the road to Salonika and the Levant, though it were at the price of
+a collision with Russia. This antagonism between the two neighbour
+Empires must have often been among the topics of his conversations with
+William II.
+
+The Archduke needed military glory, prestige won on the battle-field, in
+order to seat his consort firmly on the throne and make his children
+heirs to the Caesars. He had been suspected, both in Austria and abroad,
+of not wishing to observe the family compact which he had signed at the
+time of his marriage with Countess Sophie Chotek. It was thought that he
+perhaps reserved the right to declare it null and void, in view of the
+constraint that had been put upon him. The successive honours that had
+drawn the Duchess of Hohenberg from the obscurity in which the
+morganatic wife of a German prince is usually wrapped, and had brought
+her near to the steps of the throne, showed clearly that her rise would
+not stop half-way.
+
+[Sidenote: Domestic life of the Archduke.]
+
+The Archduke, like William II himself, was reputed to be an exemplary
+father and husband. He was one of those princes who adore their own
+children, but, under the spur of political ambition, are very prone to
+send the children of others to the shambles. A fine theme for Socialist
+and Republican preachers to enlarge upon!
+
+I often met the heir to the Imperial crown, especially at Vienna in
+1910, where I had the honour of accompanying my Sovereign, and two years
+later at Munich, the Prince Regent's funeral.
+
+On each occasion this Hapsburg, with his heavy features, his scowling
+expression, and his rather corpulent figure (quite different from the
+slim build characteristic of his line), struck me as a singular type.
+His face was certainly not sympathetic, nor was his manner engaging. The
+Duchess of Hohenberg, whom, after having known her as a little girl when
+her father was Austrian Minister at Brussels, I found gracefully doing
+the honours in the Belvedere Palace, had retained in her high station
+the genial simplicity of the Chotek family. This probably did not
+prevent her from cherishing the loftiest ambitions for herself, and
+above all for her eldest son, and from coveting the glory of the double
+crown.
+
+
+II
+
+[Sidenote: Assassination of Francis Ferdinand.]
+
+The news that an assassin's hand had struck down the Archduke and his
+wife, inseparable even in death, burst upon Berlin on the afternoon of
+Sunday, June 28, like an unexpected thunderclap in the midst of a calm
+summer's day. I went over at once to the Austro-Hungarian Embassy, in
+order to express all the horror that I felt at this savage drama. Count
+Szoegyen, the senior member of the diplomatic corps, was on the eve of
+resigning the post that he had held for twenty years, honoured by all
+his colleagues. It was whispered that his removal had been asked for by
+the Archduke, who was anxious to introduce young blood into the
+diplomatic service. I found the Ambassador quite overcome by the
+terrible news. He seemed stricken with grief at the thought of his aged
+Sovereign, who had already lost so many of his nearest and dearest, and
+of the Dual Empire, robbed of its most skillful pilot, and with no one
+to steer it now but an octogenarian leaning on a youth of twenty-six. M.
+Cambon had come to the Embassy at the same time, and we left together
+discussing the results, still impossible to foresee clearly, that this
+fatality might have for European affairs.
+
+[Sidenote: Serajevo tragedy a menace.]
+
+From the very next day the tone of the Berlin Press, in commenting on
+the Serajevo tragedy, was full of menace. It expected the Vienna Cabinet
+to send to Belgrade an immediate request for satisfaction, if Serbian
+subjects, as it was believed, were among those who had devised and
+carried out the plot. But how far would this satisfaction go, and in
+what form would it be demanded? There was the rub. The report, issued by
+the semi-official _Lokalanzeiger_, of a pressure exerted by the
+Austro-Hungarian Minister, with a view to making the Serbian Government
+institute proceedings against the anarchist societies of which the
+Archduke and his wife had been the victims, surprised no one, but was
+not confirmed. On the other hand, a softer breeze soon blew from Vienna
+and Budapest, and under its influence the excitement of the Berlin
+newspapers suddenly abated. An order seemed to have been issued: the
+rage and fluster of the public were to be allowed to cool down. The
+Austro-Hungarian Government, so we were informed by the news agencies,
+were quietly taking steps to prosecute the murderers. Count Berchtold,
+in speaking to the diplomatic corps at Vienna, and Count Tisza, in
+addressing Parliament at Budapest, used reassuring language, which
+raised hopes of a peaceful solution.
+
+[Sidenote: Opinion is moderate in Berlin.]
+
+The Wilhelmstrasse also expressed itself in very measured terms on the
+guarantees that would be demanded from Serbia. Herr Zimmermann, without
+knowing (so he said to me) what decision had been arrived at in Vienna,
+thought that no action would be taken in Belgrade until the
+Austro-Hungarian Government had collected the proofs of the complicity
+of Serbian subjects or societies in the planning of the Serajevo crime.
+He had made a similar statement to the Russian Ambassador, who had
+hastened to impart to him his fears for the peace of Europe, in the
+event of any attempt to coerce Serbia into proceeding against the secret
+societies, if they were accused of intrigues against the Austrian
+Government in Bosnia and Croatia. Herr Zimmermann declared to M.
+Sverbeeff that, in his opinion, no better advice could be given to the
+Serbian Government than this: that it should put a stop to the nefarious
+work of these societies and punish the accomplices of the Archduke's
+assassins. The moderation of this remark fairly reflected the general
+state of public opinion in Berlin.
+
+[Sidenote: Kaiser William's opinion.]
+
+But what of the Emperor, the Archduke's personal friend? Would not his
+grief and anger find voice in ringing tones? All eyes were turned
+towards Kiel, where the fatal news reached William II while he was
+taking part in a yacht race on board his own clipper. He turned pale,
+and was heard to murmur: "So my work of the past twenty-five years will
+have to be started all over again!" Enigmatic words which may be
+interpreted in various ways! To the British Ambassador, who was also at
+Kiel, with the British squadron returning from the Baltic, he unburdened
+himself in more explicit fashion: "Es ist ein Verbrechen gegen das
+Deutschtum" ("It is a crime against Germanity"). By this he probably
+meant that Germany, feeling her own interests assailed by the Serajevo
+crime, would make common cause with Austria to exact a full retribution.
+With more self-control than usual, however, he abstained from all
+further public utterances on the subject.
+
+It had been announced that he would go to Vienna to attend the
+Archduke's funeral. What were the motives that prevented him from
+offering to the dead man this last token of a friendship which, at first
+merely political, had become genuine and even tender, with a touch of
+patronage characteristic of the Emperor?
+
+[Sidenote: William II not at the funeral.]
+
+He excused himself on the ground of some slight ailment. The truth is,
+no doubt, that he was disgusted with the wretched stickling for
+etiquette shown by the Grand Chamberlain of the Viennese Court, the
+Prince di Montenuovo, who refused to celebrate with fitting splendour
+the obsequies of the late heir apparent and his morganatic wife. Under
+these circumstances, Vienna could have no desire either for the presence
+of William II or for his criticisms.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser goes to Norway.]
+
+At the beginning of July, the Emperor left for his accustomed cruise
+along the Norwegian coast, and in Berlin we breathed more freely. If he
+could withdraw so easily from the centre of things, it was a sign that
+the storm-clouds that had nearly burst over Serbia were also passing off
+from the Danube valley. Such, I fancy, was the view taken by the British
+Government, for its Ambassador, who was already away on leave, was not
+sent back to Berlin. Other diplomats, among them the Russian Ambassador,
+took their annual holiday as usual. But the Emperor, in the remote
+fiords of Norway, was all the time posted up in the secret designs of
+the Vienna Cabinet. The approaching ultimatum to Serbia was telegraphed
+to him direct by his Ambassador in Vienna, Herr von Tschirsky, a very
+active worker, who strenuously advocated a policy of hostility towards
+Russia, and from the first moment had wanted war.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser decides.]
+
+We may assume that the Emperor, if his mind was not already made up at
+Kiel, came to a decision during his Norwegian cruise. His departure for
+the north had been merely a snare, a device for throwing Europe and the
+Triple Entente off the scent, and for lulling them into a false
+security. While the world imagined that he was merely seeking to soothe
+his nerves and recruit his strength with the salt sea breezes, he was
+biding his time for a dramatic reappearance on the stage of events,
+allowing the introductory scenes to be played in his absence.
+
+
+III
+
+During the first half of July, my colleagues and I at Berlin did not
+live in a fool's paradise. As the deceptive calm caused by Vienna's
+silence was prolonged, a latent, ill-defined uneasiness took hold of us
+more and more. Yet we were far from anticipating that in the space of a
+few days we should be driven into the midst of a diplomatic maelstrom,
+in which, after a week of intense anguish, we should look on, mute and
+helpless, at the shipwreck of European peace and of all our hopes.
+
+[Sidenote: Austria's ultimatum to Serbia.]
+
+The ultimatum, sent in the form of a Note by Baron von Giesl to the
+Serbian Cabinet on July 23, was not disclosed by the Berlin newspapers
+until the following day, in their morning editions. This bolt from the
+blue proved more alarming than anything we had dared to imagine. The
+shock was so unexpected that certain journals, losing their composure,
+seemed to regard the Vienna Cabinet's arraignment as having overshot the
+mark. "Austria-Hungary," said the _Vossische Zeitung_, "will have to
+justify the grave charges that she makes against the Serbian Government
+and people by publishing the results of the preliminary investigations
+at Serajevo."
+
+[Sidenote: Russia would defend Serbia.]
+
+My own conviction, shared by several of my colleagues, was that the
+Austrian and Hungarian statesmen could not have brought themselves to
+risk such a blow at the Balkan kingdom, without having consulted their
+colleagues at Berlin and ascertained that the Emperor William would
+sanction the step. His horror of regicides and his keen sense of
+dynastic brotherhood might explain why he left his ally a free hand, in
+spite of the danger of provoking a European conflict. That danger was
+only too real. Not for one moment did I suppose that Russia would prove
+so careless of Serbia's fate as to put up with this daring assault on
+the latter's sovereignty and independence; that the St. Petersburg
+Cabinet would renounce the principle of "The Balkans for the Balkan
+nations," proclaimed to the Duma two months before by M. Sazonoff, in
+short, that the Russian people would disown the ancient ties of blood
+that united it with the Slav communities of the Balkan peninsula.
+
+The pessimistic feeling of the diplomatic corps was increased on the
+following day, the 25th, by the language addressed to it at the
+Wilhelmstrasse. Herren von Jagow and Zimmermann said that they had not
+known beforehand the contents of the Austrian Note. This was a mere
+quibble: they had not known its actual wording, I grant, but they had
+certainly been apprised of its tenor. They hastened to add, by the way,
+that the Imperial Government approved of its ally's conduct, and did not
+consider the tone of its communication unduly harsh. The Berlin Press,
+still with the exception of the Socialist organs, had recovered from its
+astonishment of the day before; it joined in the chorus of the Vienna
+and Budapest newspapers, from which it gave extracts, and faced the
+prospect of a war with perfect calm, while expressing the hope that it
+would remain localized.
+
+[Sidenote: No signs of peaceful settlement.]
+
+In comparison with the attitude of the German Government and Press, the
+signs pointing to a peaceful settlement seemed faint indeed. They all
+came from outside Germany, from the impressions recorded in foreign
+telegrams. Public opinion in Europe could not grasp the need for such
+hectoring methods of obtaining satisfaction, when there was no case for
+refusing discussion on the normal diplomatic lines. It seemed impossible
+that Count Berchtold should ignore the general movement of reproof which
+appeared spontaneously everywhere but in Berlin against his ultimatum. A
+moderate claim would have seemed just; but Serbia could not be asked to
+accept a demand for so heavy an atonement, couched in a form of such
+unexampled brutality.
+
+[Sidenote: Key to the situation in Berlin.]
+
+The more I reflected on the ghastly situation created by the collusion
+of German and Austro-Hungarian diplomacy, the more certain did I feel
+that the key to that situation (as M. Sazonoff said later) lay in
+Berlin, and that there was no need to look further for the solution of
+the problem. If, however, the choice between peace and war was left to
+the discretion of the Emperor William, whose influence over his ally in
+Vienna had always overruled that of others, then, considering what I
+knew as to His Majesty's personal inclinations and the plans of the
+General Staff, the upshot of it all was no longer in doubt, and no hope
+of a peaceful arrangement could any longer be entertained. I
+communicated this dismal forecast to the French Ambassador, whom I went
+to see on the evening of the 25th. Like myself, M. Cambon laboured under
+no illusions. That very night I wrote to my Government, in order to
+acquaint it with my fears and urge it to be on its guard. This report,
+dated the 26th, I entrusted, as a measure of precaution, to one of my
+secretaries, who at once left for Brussels. Early next morning, my
+dispatch was in the hands of the Belgian Foreign Minister.
+
+[Sidenote: War aimed at Russia and France.]
+
+The ultimatum to Serbia [it ran] is a blow contrived by Vienna and
+Berlin, or rather, contrived here and carried out at Vienna. Requital
+for the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent and the Pan-Serb
+propaganda serves as a stalking-horse. The real aim, apart from the
+crushing of Serbia and the stifling of Jugo-Slav aspirations, is to deal
+a deadly thrust at Russia and France, with the hope that England will
+stand aside from the struggle. In order to vindicate this theory, I beg
+to remind you of the view prevailing in the German General Staff,
+namely, that a war with France and Russia is unavoidable and close at
+hand--a view which the Emperor has been induced to share. This war,
+eagerly desired by the military and Pan-German party, might be
+undertaken to-day under conditions extremely favourable for Germany,
+conditions that are not likely to arise again for some time to come.
+
+After a summary of the situation and of the problems that it raised, my
+report concluded as follows:
+
+        We, too, have to ask ourselves these harassing
+        questions, and keep ourselves ready for the
+        worst; for the European conflict that has
+        always been talked about, with the hope that it
+        would never break out, is to-day becoming a
+        grim reality.
+
+[Sidenote: Dangers for Belgium.]
+
+        The worst contingencies that occurred to me, as
+        a Belgian, were the violation of a part of our
+        territory and the duty that might fall upon our
+        soldiers of barring the way to the
+        belligerents. In view of the vast area over
+        which a war between France and Germany would be
+        fought, dared we hope that Belgium would be
+        safe from any attack by the German army, from
+        any attempt to use her strategic routes for
+        offensive purposes? I could not bring myself to
+        believe that she would be so fortunate. But
+        between such tentatives and a thoroughgoing
+        invasion of my country, plotted a long time in
+        advance and carried out before the real
+        operations of the war had begun, there was a
+        wide gulf, a gulf that I never thought the
+        Imperial Government capable of leaping over
+        with a light heart, because of the European
+        complications which so reckless a disdain for
+        treaties would not fail to involve.
+
+
+IV
+
+Until the end of the crisis, the idea of a preventive war continually
+recurred to my mind. Other heads of legations, however, while sharing
+my anxieties on this point, did not agree with me as to the
+premeditation of which I accused the Emperor and the military chiefs. I
+was not content with putting my questions to the French Ambassador,
+whose unerring judgment always carried great weight with me. I also
+visited his Italian colleague, an astute diplomat, thoroughly versed in
+German statecraft. He had always put me in mind of those dexterous
+agents employed by the sixteenth-century Italian republics.
+
+[Sidenote: Signor Bollati's views.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germany and Austria confident.]
+
+According to Signor Bollati, the German Government, agreeing in
+principle with the Vienna Cabinet as to the necessity for chastising
+Serbia, had not known beforehand the terms of the Austrian Note, the
+violence of which was unprecedented in the language of Chancelleries.
+Vienna, as well as Berlin, was convinced that Russia, in spite of the
+official assurances that had recently passed between the Tsar and M.
+Poincare regarding the complete readiness of the French and Russian
+armies, was not in a position to enter on a European war, and that she
+would not dare to embark upon so hazardous an adventure. Internal
+troubles, revolutionary intrigues, incomplete armaments, inadequate
+means of communication--all these reasons would compel the Russian
+Government to be an impotent spectator of Serbia's undoing. The same
+confidence reigned in the German and Austrian capitals as regards, not
+the French army, but the spirit prevailing among Government circles in
+Paris.
+
+At present [added the Ambassador] feeling runs so high in Vienna that
+all calm reflection goes by the board. Moreover, in seeking to
+annihilate Serbia's military power, the Austro-Hungarian Cabinet is
+pursuing a policy of personal revenge. It cannot realize the mistakes
+that it made during the Balkan War, or remain satisfied with the
+partial successes then gained with our aid--successes that, whatever
+judgment may be passed upon them, were certainly diplomatic victories.
+All that Count Berchtold sees to-day is Serbia's insolence and the
+criticism he has had to endure even in Austria. By this bold stroke,
+very unexpected from a man of his stamp, he hopes to turn the criticism
+into applause.
+
+The Ambassador held that Berlin had false ideas as to the course that
+the Tsar's Government would adopt. The latter would find itself forced
+into drawing the sword, in order to maintain its prestige in the Slav
+world. Its inaction, in face of Austria's entry into the field, would be
+equivalent to suicide. Signor Bollati also gave me to understand that a
+widespread conflict would not be popular in Italy. The Italian people
+had no concern with the overthrow of the Russian power, which was
+Austria's enemy; it wished to devote all its attention to other
+problems, more absorbing from its own point of view.
+
+[Sidenote: Vienna welcomes war on Serbia.]
+
+The blindness of the Austrian Cabinet with regard to Russian
+intervention has been proved by the correspondence, since published, of
+the French and British representatives at Vienna. The Viennese populace
+was beside itself with joy at the announcement of an expedition against
+Serbia, which, it felt sure, would be a mere military parade. Not for a
+single night were Count Berchtold's slumbers disturbed by the vision of
+the Russian peril. He is, indeed, at all times a buoyant soul, who can
+happily mingle the distractions of a life of pleasure with the heavy
+responsibilities of power. His unvarying confidence was shared by the
+German Ambassador, his most trusted mentor. We can hardly suppose that
+the Austrian Minister shut his eyes altogether to the possibility of a
+struggle with the Slav world. Having Germany as his partner, however,
+he determined, with the self-possession of a fearless gambler, to
+proceed with the game.
+
+At Berlin, the theory that Russia was incapable of facing a conflict
+reigned supreme, not only in the official world and in society, but
+among all the manufacturers who made a specialty of war material.
+
+[Sidenote: Berlin believes Russia weak.]
+
+Herr Krupp von Bohlen, who was more entitled to give an opinion than any
+other of this class, declared on July 28 that the Russian artillery was
+neither efficient nor complete, while that of the German army had never
+before been so superior to all its rivals. It would be madness on
+Russia's part, he inferred, to take the field against Germany under
+these conditions.
+
+
+V
+
+The foreign diplomatic corps was kept in more or less profound ignorance
+as to the _pourparlers_ carried on since the 24th by the Imperial
+Foreign Office with the Triple Entente Cabinets. Nevertheless, to the
+diplomats who were continually going over to the Wilhelmstrasse for
+news, the crisis was set forth in a light very favourable to Austria and
+Germany, in order to influence the views of the Governments which they
+represented. Herr von Stumm, the departmental head of the political
+branch, in a brief interview that I had with him on the 26th, summed up
+his exposition in these words: "Everything depends on Russia." I should
+rather have thought that everything depended on Austria, and on the way
+in which she would carry out her threats against Serbia.
+
+On the following day I was received by Herr Zimmermann, who adopted the
+same line of argument, following it in all its bearings from the origin
+of the dispute.
+
+It was not at our prompting [he said], or in accordance with our advice,
+that Austria took the action that you know of towards the Belgrade
+Cabinet. The answer was unsatisfactory, and to-day Austria is
+mobilizing. She can no longer draw back without risking a collapse at
+home as well as a loss of influence abroad. It is now a question of life
+and death to her. She must put a stop to the unscrupulous propaganda
+which, by raising revolt among the Slav provinces of the Danube valley,
+is leading towards her internal disintegration. Finally, she must exact
+a signal revenge for the assassination of the Archduke. For all these
+reasons Serbia is to receive, by means of a military expedition, a stern
+and salutary lesson. An Austro-Serbian War is, therefore, impossible to
+avoid.
+
+[Sidenote: Attempts to limit conflict.]
+
+England has asked us to join with her, France, and Italy, in order to
+prevent the conflict from spreading and a war from breaking out between
+Austria and Russia. Our answer was that we should be only too glad to
+help in limiting the area of the conflagration, by speaking in a pacific
+sense to Vienna and St. Petersburg; but that we could not use our
+influence with Austria to restrain her from inflicting an exemplary
+punishment on Serbia. We have promised to help and support our Austrian
+allies, if any other nation should try to hamper them in this task. We
+shall keep that promise.
+
+If Russia mobilizes her army, we shall at once mobilize ours, and then
+there will be a general war, a war that will set ablaze all Central
+Europe and even the Balkan peninsula, for the Rumanians, Greeks,
+Bulgarians, and Turks will not be able to resist the temptation to come
+in.
+
+As I remarked yesterday to M. Boghitchevitch [the former Serbian Charge
+d'Affaires, who was on a flying visit to Berlin, where he had been
+greatly appreciated during the Balkan War], the best advice I can give
+Serbia is that she should make no more than a show of resistance to
+Austria, and should come to terms as soon as possible, by accepting all
+the conditions of the Vienna Cabinet. I added, in speaking to him, that
+if a universal war broke out and went in favor of the Triplice, Serbia
+would probably cease to exist as a nation; she would be wiped off the
+map of Europe. I still hope, though, that such a widespread conflict may
+be avoided, and that we shall succeed in inducing Russia not to
+intervene on Serbia's behalf. Remember that Austria is determined to
+respect Serbia's integrity, once she has obtained satisfaction.
+
+I pointed out to the Under-Secretary that the Belgrade Cabinet's reply,
+according to some of my colleagues who had read it, was, apart from a
+few unimportant restrictions, an unqualified surrender to Austria's
+demands. Herr Zimmermann said that he had no knowledge of this reply (it
+had been handed in two days before to the Austrian Minister at
+Belgrade!) and that, in any case, there was no longer any possibility of
+preventing an Austro-Hungarian military demonstration.
+
+[Sidenote: Serbian reply.]
+
+The Serbian document was not published by the Berlin newspapers until
+the 29th. On the previous day they all reproduced a telegram from
+Vienna, stating that this apparent submission was altogether inadequate.
+The prompt concessions made by the Pasitch Cabinet, concessions that had
+not been anticipated abroad, failed to impress Germany. She persisted in
+seeing only with Austria's eyes.
+
+[Sidenote: Zimmermann's arguments.]
+
+Herr Zimmermann's arguments held solely on the hypothesis that, in the
+action brought by Austria against Serbia, no Power had the right to
+come forward as counsel for the defendant, or to interfere in the trial
+at all. This claim amounted to depriving Russia of her historic role in
+the Balkans. Carried to its logical conclusion, the theory meant
+condemning unheard every small State that should be unfortunate enough
+to have a dispute with a great Power. According to the principles of the
+Berlin Cabinet, the great Power should be allowed, without let or
+hindrance, to proceed to the execution of its weak opponent. England,
+therefore, would have had no right to succor Belgium when the latter was
+invaded by Germany, any more than Russia had a right to protect Serbia
+from the Austrian menace.
+
+Russia, it was asserted at the Wilhelmstrasse, ought to be satisfied
+with the assurance that Austria would not impair the territorial
+integrity of Serbia or mar her future existence as an independent State.
+What a hollow mockery such a promise would seem, when the whole country
+had been ravaged by fire and sword! Surely it was decreed that, after
+this "exemplary punishment," Serbia should become the lowly vassal of
+her redoubtable neighbour, living a life that was no life, cowed by the
+jealous eye of the Austrian Minister--really the Austrian Viceroy--at
+Belgrade. Had not Count Mensdorff declared to Sir Edward Grey that
+before the Balkan War Serbia was regarded as gravitating towards the
+Dual Monarchy's sphere of influence? A return to the past, to the tame
+deference of King Milan, was the least that Austria would exact.
+
+[Sidenote: German opinion is misled.]
+
+The version given out by the Imperial Chancellery, besides being
+intended to enlighten foreign Governments, had a further end in view.
+Repeated _ad nauseam_ by the Press, it aimed at misleading German
+public opinion. From the very opening of the crisis, Herr von
+Bethmann-Hollweg and his colleagues strove, with all the ingenuity at
+their command, to hoodwink their countrymen, to shuffle the cards, to
+throw beforehand on Russia, in case the situation should grow worse, the
+odium of provocation and the blame for the disaster, to represent that
+Power as meddling with a police inquiry that did not concern her in the
+least. This cunning man[oe]uvre resulted in making all Germany, without
+distinction of class or party, respond to her Emperor's call at the
+desired moment, since she was persuaded (as I have explained in a
+previous chapter) that she was the object of a premeditated attack by
+Tsarism.
+
+
+VI
+
+[Sidenote: German diplomacy.]
+
+The game of German diplomacy during these first days of the crisis, July
+24 to 28, has already been revealed. At first inclined to bludgeon, it
+soon came to take things easily, even affecting a certain optimism, and
+by its passive resistance bringing to naught all the efforts and all the
+proposals of the London, Paris, and St. Petersburg Cabinets. To gain
+time, to lengthen out negotiations, seems to have been the task imposed
+upon Austria-Hungary's accomplice in order to promote rapid action by
+the Dual Monarchy, and to face the Triple Entente with irrevocable
+deeds, namely the occupation of Belgrade and the surrender of the
+Serbians. But things did not go as Berlin and Vienna had hoped, and the
+determined front shown by Russia, who in answer to the partial
+mobilization of Austria mobilized her army in four southern districts,
+gave food for reflection to the tacticians of the Wilhelmstrasse. Their
+language and their frame of mind grew gentler to a singular degree on
+the fifth day, July 28. It may be recalled, in passing, that in 1913,
+during the Balkan hostilities, Austria and Russia had likewise proceeded
+to partial mobilizations; yet these steps had not made them come to
+blows or even brought them to the verge of hostilities.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser returns to Berlin.]
+
+On the evening of the 26th the Emperor's return was announced in Berlin.
+Why did he come back so suddenly? I think I am justified in saying that,
+at this news, the general feeling among the actors and spectators of the
+drama was one of grave anxiety. Our hearts were heavy within us; we had
+a foreboding that the decisive moment was drawing near. It was the same
+at the Wilhelmstrasse. To the British Charge d'Affaires Herr von
+Zimmermann frankly confessed his regret at this move, on which William
+II had decided without consulting any one.
+
+Nevertheless, our fears at first seemed to be unwarranted. The 28th was
+marked by a notable loosening of Germany's stiff-necked attitude. The
+British Ambassador, who had returned to Berlin on the previous day, was
+summoned in the evening by the Chancellor. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg,
+while rejecting the conference proposed by Sir Edward Grey, promised to
+use his good offices to induce Russia and Austria to discuss the
+position in an amicable fashion. "A war between the Great Powers must be
+averted," were his closing words.
+
+It is highly probable that the Chancellor at that time sincerely wanted
+to keep the peace, and his first efforts, when he saw the danger coming
+nearer and nearer, succeeded in curbing the Emperor's impatience for
+forty-eight hours. The telegram sent by William II to the Tsar on the
+evening of the 28th is friendly, almost reassuring: "Bearing in mind
+the cordial friendship that has united us two closely for a long time
+past, I am using all my influence to make Austria arrive at a genuine
+and satisfactory understanding with Russia."
+
+How are we to explain, then, the abrupt change of tack that occurred the
+following day at Berlin, or rather, at Potsdam, and the peculiar
+language addressed by the Chancellor to Sir Edward Goschen on the
+evening of the 29th? In that nocturnal scene there was no longer any
+question of Austria's demands on Serbia, or even of the possibility of
+an Austro-Russian war. The centre of gravity was suddenly shifted, and
+at a single stride the danger passed from the southeast of Europe to the
+northwest.
+
+[Sidenote: Will England be neutral?]
+
+What is it that Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg wants to know at once, as he
+comes straight from the council held at Potsdam under the presidency of
+the Emperor? Whether Great Britain would consent to remain neutral in a
+European war, provided that Germany agreed to respect the territorial
+integrity of France. "And what of the French colonies?" asks the
+Ambassador with great presence of mind. The Chancellor can make no
+promise on this point, but he unhesitatingly declares that Germany will
+respect the integrity and neutrality of Holland. As for Belgium,
+France's action will determine what operations Germany may be forced to
+enter upon in that country; but when the war is over, Belgium will lose
+no territory, unless she ranges herself on the side of Germany's foes.
+
+[Sidenote: A bargain proposed.]
+
+Such was the shameful bargain proposed to England, at a time when none
+of the negotiators had dared to speak in plain terms of a European war
+or even to offer a glimpse of that terrifying vision. This interview was
+the immediate result of the decisive step taken by German diplomacy on
+the same day at St. Petersburg. The step in question has been made known
+to us through the diplomatic documents which have been printed by the
+orders of the belligerent Governments, and all of which concur in their
+account of this painful episode. Twice on that day did M. Sazonoff
+receive a visit from the German Ambassador, who came to make a demand
+wrapped up in threats.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany's demands on Russia.]
+
+Count de Pourtales insisted on Russia contenting herself with the
+promise, guaranteed by Germany, that Austria-Hungary would not impair
+the integrity of Serbia. M. Sazonoff refused to countenance the war on
+this condition. Serbia, he felt, would become a vassal of Austria, and a
+revolution would break out in Russia. Count de Pourtales then backed his
+request with the warning that, unless Russia desisted from her military
+preparations, Germany would mobilize. A German mobilization, he said,
+would mean war. The results of the second interview, which took place at
+two o'clock in the morning, were as negative as those of the first,
+notwithstanding a last effort, a final suggestion by M. Sazonoff to
+stave off the crisis. His giving in to Germany's brutal dictation would
+have been an avowal that Russia was impotent.
+
+To the Emperor William, who had resumed the conduct of affairs since the
+morning of the 27th--the Emperor William, itching to cut the knot,
+driven on by his Staff and his generals--to him and no other must we
+trace the responsibility for this insolent move which made war
+inevitable. "The heads of the army insisted," was all that Herr von
+Jagow would vouchsafe a little later to M. Cambon by way of explanation.
+The Chancellor, and with him the Foreign Secretary and Under-Secretary,
+associated themselves with these hazardous tactics, from sheer inability
+to secure the adoption of less hasty and violent methods. If they
+believed that this summary breaking off of negotiations would meet with
+success, they were as grievously mistaken as Count de Pourtales, whose
+reports utterly misled them as to the sacrifices that Russia was
+prepared to make for Serbia.
+
+At all events this upright man, when he realized the appalling effects
+of his blunder, gave free play to his emotion. Such sensitiveness is
+rare indeed in a German, and redounds entirely to his credit.
+
+[Sidenote: Russian military development.]
+
+[Sidenote: French military situation.]
+
+But the Emperor and his council of generals--what was their state of
+soul at this critical moment? Perhaps this riddle will never be wholly
+solved. From the military point of view, which in their eyes claimed
+first attention, they must have rejoiced at M. Sazonoff's answer, for
+never again would they find such a golden opportunity for vanquishing
+Russia and making an end of her rivalry. In 1917 the reorganization of
+her army would have been complete, her artillery would have been at full
+strength, and a new network of strategic railways would have enabled her
+to let loose upon the two Germanic empires a vast flood of fighting men
+drawn from the inexhaustible reservoir of her population. The struggle
+with the colossus of the North, despite the vaunted technical
+superiority of the German army, would in all likelihood have ended in
+the triumph of overwhelming might. In the France of 1917, again, the
+three years' term of service would have begun to produce its full
+results, and her first-line troops would have been both more numerous
+and better trained than at present.
+
+On the other hand, William II could cherish no false hopes as to the
+consequences of this second pressure that he was bringing to bear on
+St. Petersburg. Had it succeeded in 1914 as in 1909, the encounter
+between Germany and the great Slav Empire would only have been put off
+to a later day, instead of being finally shelved. How could the Tsar or
+the Russian people have forgiven the Kaiser for humbling them once more?
+If they had pocketed the affront in silence, it would only have been in
+order to bide their time for revenge, and they would have chosen the
+moment when Russia, in possession of all her resources, could have
+entered upon the struggle with every chance of winning.
+
+[Sidenote: William II and Russia.]
+
+Here an objection may be raised. The German Emperor, some may hold,
+fancying that the weight of his sword in the scale would induce the Tsar
+to shrink from action, had foreseen the anger of the Slav nation at its
+sovereign's timorous scruples, and looked forward to revolutionary
+outbreaks which would cripple the Government for years to come and make
+it unable to think of war, if indeed they did not sweep the Romanoffs
+from the throne. I would answer that this Machiavellian scheme could
+never have entered the head of such a ruler as William II, with his deep
+sense of monarchial solidarity, and his instinctive horror of anarchist
+outrages and of revolution.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser eager to act.]
+
+No: the Emperor, together with the military authorities whose advice he
+took, wished to profit by a juncture which he had awaited with longing,
+and which fickle Fortune might never again offer to his ambition.
+Everything proves it, down to his feverish haste, as soon as M.
+Sazonoff's reply was conveyed to him, to learn the intentions of
+England, and to suggest, on that very day, a bargain that might purchase
+her neutrality. This is why Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg received orders to
+summon the British Ambassador on the night of the 29th. The Emperor
+could not wait until the following morning, so eager was he to act. Is
+this impatience the mark of one who was the victim of a concerted
+surprise? If he had not wanted war, would he not have tried to resume
+negotiations with Russia on a basis more in keeping with her dignity as
+a Great Power, however heavy a blow it was to his own pride that he had
+failed to intimidate her?
+
+
+VII
+
+The abortive efforts to overawe St. Petersburg and the offers made to
+the British Ambassador, as if Great Britain's inaction could be sold to
+the highest bidder, brought results that were not hard to foresee.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Edward Grey's telegram.]
+
+In London, Sir Edward Grey's indignation found immediate vent in the
+following passage of his telegram of July 30 to Sir Edward Goschen: "It
+would be a disgrace for us to make this bargain with Germany at the
+expense of France--a disgrace from which the good name of this country
+would never recover. The Chancellor also in effect asks us to bargain
+away whatever obligation or interest we have as regards the neutrality
+of Belgium. We could not entertain that bargain either."
+
+Through the brazen overtures of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, however, the
+British Cabinet henceforth came to occupy itself, before all things,
+with the fate allotted to our country by the Imperial Government in the
+war that it was preparing. In order to tear off the mask from German
+statesmanship, the surest method was to ask it a straightforward
+question. On July 31, Sir Edward Grey, following the example of the
+Gladstone Ministry of 1870, inquired both of Germany and France whether
+they would respect the neutrality of Belgium. At the same time he gave
+Belgium to understand that Britain counted on her doing her utmost to
+maintain her neutrality.
+
+[Sidenote: Neutrality of Belgium.]
+
+The answer of the Republican Government was frank and unhesitating. It
+was resolved to respect Belgian neutrality, and would only act otherwise
+if the violation of that neutrality by some other Power forced it to do
+so in self-defence.
+
+The Belgian Government, for its part, hastened to assure the British
+Minister at Brussels of its determination to resist with might and main
+should its territory be invaded.
+
+At Berlin, however, the Foreign Secretary eluded Sir Edward Goschen's
+questions. He said that he must consult the Emperor and the Chancellor.
+In his opinion, any answer would entail the risk, in the event of war,
+of partly divulging the plan of campaign. It seemed doubtful to him,
+therefore, whether he would be able to give a reply. This way of
+speaking was perfectly clear in its ambiguity. It did not puzzle Sir
+Edward Grey for a moment. On the following day he declared to the German
+Ambassador that the reply of the German Government was a matter of very
+great regret. Belgian neutrality, he pointed out, was highly important
+in British eyes, and if Belgium was attacked, it would be difficult to
+restrain public feeling in his country.
+
+On the same day, August 1, in accordance with instructions from my
+Government, I read to the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (at the
+same time giving him a copy) a dispatch drafted beforehand and addressed
+to the Belgian Ministers attached to the Powers that had guaranteed our
+neutrality. This dispatch affirmed that Belgium, having observed, with
+scrupulous fidelity, the duties imposed on her as a neutral State by the
+treaties of April 19, 1839, would manifest an unshaken purpose in
+fulfilling them; and that she had every hope, since the friendly
+intentions of the Powers towards her had been so often professed, of
+seeing her territory secure from all assault, if hostilities should
+arise near her frontiers. The Belgian Government added that it had
+nevertheless taken all the necessary steps for maintaining its
+neutrality, but that, in so doing, it had not been actuated by a desire
+to take part in an armed struggle among the Powers, or by a feeling of
+distrust towards any one of them.
+
+Herr Zimmermann listened without a word of comment to my reading of this
+dispatch, which expressed the loyal confidence of my Government in
+Germany's goodwill. He merely took note of my communication. His silence
+did not surprise me, for I had just learnt of Herr von Jagow's evasive
+reply to the British Government concerning Belgium; but it bore out all
+my misgivings. His constrained smile, by the way, told me quite as much
+as his refusal to speak.
+
+[Sidenote: Russia and Germany hasten preparations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Austria mobilizes.]
+
+From the 30th, Russia and Germany--as an inevitable sequel to the
+conversations of the 29th--went forward actively with their military
+preparations. What was the exact nature of these preludes to the German
+mobilization? It was impossible to gain any precise notion at Berlin.
+The capital was rife with various rumors that augured ill for the
+future. We heard tell of regiments moving from the northern provinces
+towards the Rhine. We learnt that reservists had been instructed to keep
+themselves in readiness for marching orders. At the same time, postal
+communication with Belgium and France had been cut off. At the
+Wilhelmstrasse, the position was described to me as follows: "Austria
+will reply to Russia's partial mobilization with a general mobilization
+of her army. It is to be feared that Russia will then mobilize her
+entire forces, which will compel Germany to do the same." As it turned
+out, a general mobilization was indeed proclaimed in Austria on the
+night of the 30th.
+
+Nevertheless, the peace _pourparlers_ went on between Vienna and St.
+Petersburg on the 30th and 31st, although on the latter date Russia, as
+Berlin expected, in answer both to the Austrian and the German
+preparations, had mobilized her entire forces. Even on the 31st these
+discussions seemed to have some chance of attaining their object.
+Austria was now more accurately gauging the peril into which her own
+blind self-confidence and the counsels of her ally were leading her, and
+was pausing on the brink of the abyss. The Vienna Cabinet even consented
+to talk over the gist of its Note to Serbia, and M. Sazonoff at once
+sent an encouraging reply.
+
+It was desirable, he stated, that representatives of all the Great
+Powers should confer in London under the direction of the British
+Government.
+
+Was a faint glimmer of peace, after all, dawning above the horizon?
+Would an understanding be reached, at the eleventh hour, among the only
+States really concerned with the Serbian question? We had reckoned
+without our host. The German Emperor willed otherwise. Suddenly, at the
+instance of the General Staff, and after a meeting of the Federal
+Council, as prescribed by the constitution, he issued the decree of
+_Kriegsgefahrzustand_ (Imminence-of-War). This is the first phase of a
+general mobilization--a sort of martial law, substituting the military
+for the civil authorities as regards the public services (means of
+communication, post, telegraphs, and telephones).
+
+This momentous decision was revealed to us on the 31st by a special
+edition of the _Berliner Lokalanzeiger_, distributed at every street
+corner. The announcement ran as follows:
+
+        RUSSIA WANTS WAR!
+
+        "From official sources we have just received
+        (at 2 P.M.) the following report, pregnant with
+        consequences:
+
+        "'The German Ambassador at St. Petersburg sends
+        us word to-day that a general mobilization of
+        the Russian Army and Navy had previously been
+        ordered. That is why His Majesty the Emperor
+        William has decreed an Imminence-of-War. His
+        Majesty will take up his residence in Berlin
+        to-day.'
+
+        "Imminence-of-War is the immediate prelude to a
+        general mobilization, in answer to the menace
+        that already hangs over Germany to-day, owing
+        to the step taken by the Tsar."
+
+[Sidenote: The Kaiser's ultimatum to Russia.]
+
+As a drowning man catches at a straw, those who in Berlin saw
+themselves, with horror, faced by an impending catastrophe, clutched at
+a final hope. The German general mobilization had not yet been ordered.
+Who knew whether, at the last moment, some happy inspiration from the
+British Cabinet, that most stalwart champion of peace, might cause the
+weapons to drop from the hands that were about to wield them? Once more,
+however, the Emperor, by his swift moves, shattered this fond illusion.
+On the 31st, at seven o'clock in the evening, he dispatched to the
+Russian Government a summons to demobilize both on its Austrian and on
+its German frontiers. An interval of twelve hours was given for a reply.
+
+It was obvious that Russia, who had refused two days before to cease
+from her military preparations, would not accept the German ultimatum,
+worded as it was in so dictatorial a form and rendered still more
+insulting by the briefness of the interval granted. As, however, no
+answer had come from St. Petersburg by the afternoon of August 1st,
+Herren von Jagow and Zimmermann (so the latter informed me) rushed to
+the Chancellor and the Emperor, in order to request that the decree for
+a general mobilization might at least be held over until the following
+day. They supported their plea by urging that the telegraphic
+communication with St. Petersburg had presumably been cut, and that this
+would explain the silence of the Tsar. Perhaps they still hoped against
+hope for a conciliatory proposal from Russia. This was the last flicker
+of their dying pacifism, or the last awakening of their conscience.
+Their efforts could make no headway against the stubborn opposition of
+the War Minister and the army chiefs, who represented to the Emperor the
+dangers of a twenty-four hours' delay.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany mobilizes.]
+
+The order for a mobilization of the army and navy was signed at five
+o'clock in the afternoon and was at once given out to the public by a
+special edition of the _Lokalanzeiger_. The mobilization was to begin on
+August 2nd. On the 1st, at ten minutes past seven in the evening,
+Germany's declaration of war was forwarded to Russia.
+
+[Sidenote: Pretexts given in Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Heroism of France.]
+
+As all the world knows, the Berlin Cabinet had to resort to wild
+pretexts, such as the committing of acts of hostility (so the military
+authorities alleged) by French aviators on Imperial soil, in order to
+find motives, two days later, for its declaration of war on France.
+Although Germany tried to lay the blame for the catastrophe at Russia's
+door, it was in reality her western neighbour that she wished to attack
+and annihilate first. On this point there can be no possible doubt
+to-day. "Poor France!" said the Berlin newspapers, with feigned
+compassion. They acknowledged that the conduct of the French Government
+throughout the crisis had been irreproachable, and that it had worked
+without respite for the maintenance of peace. While her leaders
+fulfilled this noble duty to mankind, France was offering the world an
+impressive sight--the sight of a nation looking calmly and without fear
+at a growing peril that she had done nothing to conjure up, and,
+regarding her word as her bond, determined in cold blood to follow the
+destiny of her ally on the field of battle. At the same time she offered
+to Germany, who had foolishly counted on her being torn by internal
+troubles and political feuds, the vision of her children closely linked
+together in an unconquerable resolve--the resolve to beat back an
+iniquitous assault upon their country. Nor was this the only surprise
+that she held in store. With the stone wall of her resistance, she was
+soon to change the whole character of the struggle, and to wreck the
+calculations of German strategy.
+
+No one had laboured with more energy and skill to quench the flames lit
+by Austria and her ally than the representative of the Republic at
+Berlin.
+
+"Don't you think M. Cambon's attitude has been admirable?" remarked the
+British Ambassador to me, in the train that was whirling us far away
+from the German capital on August 6th. "Throughout these terrible days
+nothing has been able to affect his coolness, his presence of mind, and
+his insight." I cannot express my own admiration better than by
+repeating this verdict of so capable a diplomat as Sir Edward Goschen,
+who himself took a most active part in the vain attempt of the Triple
+Entente to save Europe from calamity.
+
+
+VIII
+
+[Sidenote: Berlin enthusiastic.]
+
+The Berlin population had followed the various phases of the crisis with
+tremendous interest, but with no outward show of patriotic fervour.
+Those fine summer days passed as tranquilly as usual. Only in the
+evenings did some hundreds of youths march along the highways of the
+central districts, soberly singing national anthems, and dispersing
+after a few cries of "Hoch!" outside the Austro-Hungarian and Italian
+Embassies and the Chancellor's mansion.
+
+On August 2nd I watched the animation of the Sunday crowd that thronged
+the broad avenue of the Kurfuerstendamm. It read attentively the special
+editions of the newspapers, and then each went off to enjoy his or her
+favourite pastime--games of tennis for the young men and maidens, long
+bouts of drinking in the beer-gardens, for the more sedate citizens with
+their families. When the Imperial motor-car flashed like a streak of
+lightning down Unter den Linden, it was hailed with loud, but by no
+means frantic, cheers. It needed the outcries of the Press against
+Russia as the instigator of the war, the misleading speeches of the
+Emperor and the Chancellor, and the wily publications of the Government,
+to kindle a patriotism rather slow to take fire. Towards the close of my
+stay, feeling displayed itself chiefly by jeers at the unfortunate
+Russians who were returning post-haste to their native country, and
+blackguardly behaviour towards the staff of the Tsar's Ambassador as he
+was leaving Berlin.
+
+[Sidenote: German people deluded.]
+
+That the mass of the German people, unaware of Russia's peaceful
+intentions, should have been easily deluded, is no matter for
+astonishment. The upper classes, however, those of more enlightened
+intellect, cannot have been duped by the official falsehoods. They knew
+as well as we do that it was greatly to the advantage of the Tsar's
+Government not to provoke a conflict. In fact, this question is hardly
+worth discussing. Once more we must repeat that, in the plans of William
+II and his generals, the Serbian affair was a snare spread for the
+Northern Empire before the growth of its military power should have made
+it an invincible foe.
+
+[Sidenote: Uncertainty regarding Britain.]
+
+[Sidenote: England's attitude.]
+
+There is no gainsaying that uncertainty as to Britain's intervention was
+one of the factors that encouraged Germany. We often asked ourselves
+anxiously at Berlin whether Germany's hand would not have been stayed
+altogether if the British Government had formally declared that it would
+not hold aloof from the war. We even hoped, for a brief moment, that Sir
+Edward Grey would destroy the illusions on which the German people loved
+to batten. The British Foreign Secretary did indeed observe to Prince
+Lichnowsky on July 29th that the Austro-Serbian issue might become so
+great as to involve all European interests, and that he did not wish the
+Ambassador to be misled by the friendly tone of their conversations into
+thinking that Britain would stand aside. If at the beginning she had
+openly taken her stand by the side of her Allies, she might, to be sure,
+have checked the fatal march of events. This, at any rate, is the most
+widespread view, for a maritime war certainly did not enter into the
+calculations of the Emperor and Admiral von Tirpitz, while it was the
+nightmare of the German commercial world. In my opinion, however, an
+outspoken threat from England on the 29th, a sudden roar of the British
+lion, would not have made William II draw back. The memory of Agadir
+still rankled in the proud Germanic soul. The Emperor would have risked
+losing all prestige in the eyes of a certain element among his subjects
+if at the bidding of the Anglo-Saxon he had refused to go further, and
+had thus played into the hands of those who charged him with conducting
+a policy of mere bluff and intimidation. "Germany barks but does not
+bite" was a current saying abroad, and this naturally tended to
+exasperate her. An ominous warning from the lips of Sir Edward Grey
+would only have served to precipitate the onslaught of the Kaiser's
+armies, in order that the intervention of the British fleet might have
+no influence on the result of the campaign, the rapid and decisive
+campaign planned at Berlin.
+
+[Sidenote: British opinion.]
+
+We know, moreover, from the telegrams and speeches of the British
+Foreign Minister, how carefully he had to reckon with public feeling
+among his countrymen in general and among the majority in Parliament. A
+war in the Balkans did not concern the British nation, and the strife
+between Teuton and Slav left it cold. It did not begin to be properly
+roused until it grasped the reality of the danger to France's very
+existence, and it did not respond warmly to the eloquent appeals of Mr.
+Asquith and Sir Edward Grey until the day when it knew that the Germans
+were at the gates of Liege, where they threatened both Paris and
+Antwerp--Antwerp, "that pistol pointed at the heart of England."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the failure of diplomatic efforts to prevent war as a result of the
+deliberate intention of Germany to bring about the conflict, the great
+German war machine was put in motion. It was anticipated by the General
+Staff that the passage across Belgium would be effected without
+difficulty and with the acquiescence of King and people.
+
+How wrong was this judgment is one of the curious facts of history. The
+Germans discovered this error when their armies presented themselves
+before the strong fortress of Liege, the first fortified place in their
+path. Its capture was necessary for the successful passage of the German
+troops.
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of the delay.]
+
+It was captured, but at a cost in time and in their arrangement of plans
+which were a great element in the great thrust--back at the Marne.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEFENCE OF LIEGE
+
+CHARLES BRONNE
+
+English Review, April, 1915.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Germany invades Belgium.]
+
+On Sunday, August 2nd, while the news was going round that a train had
+entered Luxembourg with German forces, the German Minister at Brussels
+delivered an ultimatum to Belgium demanding the free passage through our
+territory of the German armies. The following day, Monday, the Belgian
+Government replied that the nation was determined to defend its
+neutrality. The same night the German advanced posts entered our
+territory. Tuesday morning they were before Vise, at Warsage, at
+Dolhain, and at Stavelot. The bridges of Vise and Argenteau and the
+tunnels of Troisponts and Nas-Proue were blown up.
+
+[Sidenote: Atrocities begin.]
+
+From this day the atrocities committed by the pioneers of German
+"Kultur" began at Vise with fire and the massacre of inhabitants. On
+Thursday, they were to continue at Warsage and Berneau. On Wednesday,
+August 5th, the investment of Liege began, the bombardment being
+specially directed to the north-west sector which comprises the forts of
+Evegnee, Barchon, and Fleron. In the afternoon the attack extended as
+far as the fort of Chaudfontaine. The region attacked by the foe was
+thus that between the Meuse and the Vesdre, the beautiful country of
+Herve, where cornfields are followed by vineyards, where meadowland
+encroaches on the sides of narrow but picturesque valleys, where small
+but thick woods conceal the number of the assailants. It was found
+necessary to destroy some prosperous little farms, several country
+houses, and pretty villas. This was but a prelude to the devastation
+brought by the soldiers of the Kaiser.
+
+The enemy was in force. Later it was known that around Liege were the
+10th Prussian Army Corps from Aix-la-Chapelle on the way to Vise, the
+7th Corps, which had passed through the Herve country, the 8th, which
+had entered through Stavelot, and also a brigade of the 11th Corps,
+making up a total of about 130,000 men.
+
+[Sidenote: Forts of Liege.]
+
+To resist these forces, General Leman had forts more than twenty-four
+years old and 30,000 men: the 3rd division of the army increased by the
+15th mixed brigade, _i.e._, the 9th, 11th, 12th, and 14th of the line, a
+part of the 2nd Lancers, a battalion of the 1st Carabineers, and the
+Divisional Artillery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thursday, August 6th, was rich in moving incidents.
+
+While the enemy were in force before Barchon, in a night attack, an
+attempt was made on General Leman. The story has been variously told.
+Here is the true version.
+
+[Sidenote: German spies.]
+
+The enemy's spies, so numerous in Liege, had been able to give the most
+exact information regarding the installation of the General Staff in the
+Rue Sainte Foy. They were quite aware that for a week the defender of
+Liege had only been taking two or three hours' rest in his office, so as
+to be more easily in telephonic communication with the forts and
+garrison. These offices in the Rue Sainte Foy were very badly situated,
+at the extreme end of the northern quarter, and were defended only by a
+few gendarmes. General Leman had been warned, however, and the King
+himself had at last persuaded him to take some precautions against a
+possible attempt. He had finally given way to this advice, and a
+rudimentary structure, but a sure one, fitted with electric light and
+telephone, was being set up under the railway tunnel near the Palais
+station.
+
+This was, then, the last night the General would pass at Rue Sainte Foy.
+
+[Sidenote: General Leman in danger.]
+
+Towards half-past four in the morning a body of a hundred men descended
+from the heights of Tawes. Whence did they come? How had they been able
+to penetrate into the town? Some have said that they dressed in Liege
+itself. In reality, they represented themselves to the advanced posts of
+the fort of Pontisse as being Englishmen come to the aid of Liege, and
+asked to be conducted to the General Staff. They were soldiers of a
+Hanoverian regiment, and bore upon their sleeves a blue band with the
+word "Gibraltar." This contributed in no small degree to cause them to
+be taken for British sharpshooters. They were preceded by a spy who had
+put on the Belgian uniform of the 11th of the line and who seemed to
+know the town very well. At Thier-a-Liege, they stopped a moment to
+drink at a wine-shop and then went on. They were more than a hundred in
+number and were preceded by two officers. A detachment of Garde Civique,
+posted at the gas factory of the Rue des Bayards, did not consider it
+their duty to interfere. A few individuals accompanied the troop, crying
+"Vive les Anglais." A few passers-by, better-aware of the situation,
+protested. The troop continued its imperturbable march. The officers
+smiled. Thus they arrived at Rue Sainte Foy where, as we have said, the
+offices of the General Staff of General Leman were installed.
+
+A German officer asked of the sentinel on the door an interview with
+General Leman. The officers of the latter, who now appeared, understood
+the ruse at once, and drew their revolvers. Shots were exchanged. One of
+the officers, Major Charles Marchand, a non-commissioned officer of
+gendarmes, and several gendarmes were killed. The Germans attempted to
+enter the offices, of which the door had been closed. They fired through
+the windows, and even attempted to attack the house by scaling the
+neighbouring walls. General Leman, who was working, ran out on hearing
+the first shots. He was unarmed. He demanded a revolver. Captain Lebbe,
+his aide-de-camp, refused to allow him to expose himself uselessly, and
+begged him to keep himself for the defence of Liege. He even used some
+violence to his chief, and pushed him towards the low door which
+separated the house from the courtyard of a neighbouring cannon foundry.
+With the help of another officer, the captain placed his General in
+safety. While this was happening, the alarm had been given, and the
+Germans, seeing that their attempt to possess themselves of the person
+of General Leman had failed, retired. The guard, which comprised some
+fifty men, fired repeatedly on the retreating party. Some fifty Germans,
+including a standard-bearer and a drummer, were killed. Others were made
+prisoners.
+
+[Sidenote: General Leman in Fort Loncin.]
+
+The General retired to the citadel of Sainte Walburge, and later to the
+fort of Loncin. From there he followed the efforts of the enemy
+attacking anew the north-east and south-east sectors. The environs of
+Fort Boncelles are as difficult to defend as those of the
+Barchon-Evegnee-Fleron front. There is first the discovered part which
+surrounds what remains of the unfortunate village of Boncelles, which
+the Belgians themselves were forced to destroy to free their field of
+fire, but for the rest, there are only woods, that of Plainevaux, which
+reaches to the Ourthe, Neuville, and Vecquee woods, that of Begnac,
+which continues Saint Lambert wood as far as Trooz and the Meuse.
+
+[Sidenote: Belgian troops fight heroically.]
+
+Every place here swarmed with Germans, 40,000 at least, an army corps
+which had spent a day and a night in fortifying themselves, and had been
+able to direct their artillery towards Plainevaux, to the north of
+Neuville, and upon the heights of Ramet. Thirty thousand men at least
+would have been needed to defend this gap and less than 15,000 were
+available. A similar attack was delivered at the same time between the
+Meuse and the Vesdre. On both sides miracles of heroism were performed,
+but the enemy poured on irresistibly. They were able to pass, on the one
+side, Val Saint Lambert, on the other, between Barchon and the Meuse,
+between Evegnee and Fleron. Fighting took place well into the night, the
+enemy being repulsed at Boncelles twice. The following morning I saw
+pieces of German corpses. The Belgian artillery had made a real carnage,
+and no smaller number of victims fell in the bayonet charges. The 9th
+and the Carabineers, who had fought the day before at Barchon, were
+present here.
+
+[Sidenote: Retreat ordered.]
+
+In the other sector, the soldiers of the 12th of the line particularly
+behaved like heroes. The battle began towards two o'clock in the morning
+at Retinne where, after prodigies of valour and a great slaughter of the
+enemy, the Belgian troops were forced to retire. The struggle continued
+at Saine and at Queue du Bois. Here Lieutenant F. Bronne and forty of
+his men fell while covering the retreat. In spite of such devotion and
+of a bravery that will not be denied, the enemy passed through. Why?
+Some troops surrendered with their officers, who were afterwards set
+free upon parole at Liege. But this was only a very small exception, and
+it was under the pressure of an enemy four times as numerous that the
+3rd division succumbed after three days of repeated fighting, during
+which the soldiers were compelled to make forced marches from one
+sector to another, and stop the rest of the time in the trenches
+fighting. The enemy's losses were 5,000 killed and 30,000 wounded.
+
+General Leman considered that he had obtained from his troops the
+maximum effort of which they were capable and ordered a retreat. It was
+executed in good order, and the enemy had suffered so severely that they
+did not dream of pursuit. They contented themselves with pushing forward
+as far as the plateau of Saint-Tilman (close to Boncelles) and that of
+Robermont (behind Fleron) some cannons of 15, which had bombarded the
+town the first time on Thursday, August 6th, at four o'clock in the
+morning. No German troops, except some 200 men who entered as prisoners,
+penetrated into the town on this day.
+
+Although this retreat left behind a few men with several guns, it may be
+said to have been effected in good order. I was able to see that for
+myself in passing through with the troops, from the fifth limit of the
+Saint Trond route, near Fort Loncin, up to the centre of the town. The
+auto in which I was seated was able to pass easily.
+
+[Sidenote: Refugees.]
+
+The terrified population from Bressoux began to arrive. There were
+people half-dressed, but who carried some object which to them seemed
+the most precious, sometimes a simple portrait of a loved one. Others
+drove cattle before them. The men carried children, while women followed
+painfully loaded with household goods. Mixed up with them were the Garde
+Civique. It had just been assembled and informed that it was disbanded,
+and a certain number of them had told the inhabitants that the Prussians
+were coming, and that there was nothing better to do than for everyone
+to bolt himself in. The cannon had thundered all night. The citizens of
+Liege had found in their letter-boxes a warning from the burgomaster
+concerning the behaviour of the inhabitants in case of the town being
+occupied by the enemy. This urgent notice, distributed the night before
+between 9 and 11 p.m., foreshadowed an imminent occupation. The hasty
+flight of the people of Bressoux stopped when they had crossed the
+Meuse; but as the bombardment recommenced towards noon, fright again
+seized on the population. The bombardment lasted till two. Some thirty
+shells fell on different parts of the town.
+
+[Sidenote: Bridge of Arches destroyed.]
+
+At half-past twelve a dull noise was heard as far as the furthest fort;
+it was the old Bridge of Arches which gave way, towards the left bank.
+The engineers had just blown it up. It seemed wiser to destroy the
+bridge at Val Benoit, which left the Germans railway communication. But
+no one thought of this; or rather, orders to that effect were not given
+by the higher authorities. This was afterwards to cause the degradation
+to the ranks of the chief officer of engineers who was responsible for
+this unpardonable lapse.
+
+The second bombardment lasted till two o'clock. Several projectiles now
+fell upon the citadel, where everything was in readiness to set fire to
+the provisions and munitions which remained there along with some
+unserviceable cannon, generally used in the training of the Garde
+Civique. By 10 a.m. the citadel had been evacuated, only very few
+persons remaining, among them a major, who hastily hoisted the white
+flag.
+
+[Sidenote: German envoys in Liege.]
+
+Burgomaster Kleyer awaited developments at the Town Hall. At half-past
+three, he received envoys, who demanded the surrender of the town and
+forts. Put into communication with General Leman, who was all the time
+at Loncin with his Staff, he informed him that if the forts persisted in
+their resistance, the town would be bombarded a third time. General
+Leman replied that the threat was an idle one, that it would be a cruel
+massacre, but that the higher interests of Belgium compelled him to
+impose this sacrifice on the town of Liege.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment of Liege.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gloomy aspect of the town.]
+
+At 9 p.m. fresh shells fell on different parts of the city and caused
+more damage if not more victims. This bombardment lasted till 2 a.m. It
+recommenced at intervals of half-an-hour, and caused two fires, one in
+Rue de Hanque, and the other in Rue de la Commune. After midday, the
+streets were deserted and all dwelling houses closed. In the afternoon a
+convoy of Germans taken prisoners were seen to pass along the
+boulevards, and were then shut up in the Royal Athenaeum. Then there was
+an interminable defile of autos and carts conveying both German and
+Belgian wounded, especially the former, those who came from Boncelles
+more particularly. Bodies of stragglers re-entered Liege slowly,
+ignorant of what had happened, as they were either untouched by the
+order to retire, or had been forgotten in the advanced posts or in the
+trenches. They were very tired and hardly had the courage to accelerate
+their pace, except when the few passers-by explained the position in a
+couple of words. The aspect of the town was very gloomy, and the only
+places where any animation was to be seen were around Guillemins
+station, where trains full of fugitives were leaving for Brussels, the
+West quarter, towards which the last of the retiring companies were
+marching, and the North, where many were still ignorant of this
+movement.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans enter Liege.]
+
+On Friday, August 7th, at 3 a.m., the bombardment of Liege began again,
+chiefly directed against the citadel, where only a few soldiers now
+remained. These evacuated the place after setting fire to some
+provisions they were unable to carry off. The population passed through
+hours of anguish, which were destined not to be the last. Everybody
+took refuge in the cellars. Some people lived there for several days in
+fear that a shell might fall upon their house. On this Friday the
+Germans penetrated into the town at five o'clock in the morning by the
+different bridges which had remained intact. They came in through
+Jupille and Bois de Breux chiefly. They seemed tired and, above all,
+hungry. Leaving detachments in the Place de Baviere and near the
+bridges, they successively occupied the Provincial Palace and the
+citadel.
+
+Count Lammsdorf, Chief of the Staff of the 10th Corps, Commander of the
+Army of the Meuse, arrested Burgomaster Kleyer at the Town Hall, and
+conducted him to the citadel, where he at first made him a rather
+reassuring communication as to the fate of the town. . . . He then spoke
+anew and said that he understood all the forts would surrender, in
+default of which the bombardment would recommence. M. Kleyer vainly
+protested against a measure so contrary to the laws both of war and of
+humanity. He was simply authorized to pass through the German lines with
+a safe conduct, to discuss the matter with General Leman, or even with
+the King himself.
+
+[Sidenote: The Burgomaster's task.]
+
+This task of the burgomaster of Liege was a heavy one, and terrible was
+the expectant attitude of the German authorities. Later, some people
+have discussed the attitude he should have taken up and conceived the
+nature of what should have been his reply; they would have desired words
+of defiance on his lips and an immediate answer.
+
+He lacked courage for this, and who will dare to-day to blame him for
+the immense anxiety he felt on hearing of the horrible fate with which
+his beloved town and his unhappy fellow-citizens were threatened?
+
+He gathered together at the Town Hall several communal and provincial
+deputies, some deputies and senators. The general opinion at the
+beginning of the discussion was that it was necessary to obtain the
+surrender of the forts. Someone pointed out that there was not much
+likelihood of getting this decision from General Leman, who had already
+pronounced himself upon that question, and thought it would be necessary
+to continue the work heroically begun of arresting the progress of the
+invader, and that the forts, all intact, would powerfully contribute to
+that end.
+
+It was finally decided to approach General Leman again with a message
+which was entrusted to the burgomaster, the Bishop of Liege, and M.
+Gaston Gregoire, permanent deputy. These gentlemen repaired to the
+citadel in search of the promised safe conduct. They were met there,
+according to the demand of Count Lammsdorf, by some prominent Liege
+citizens, to whom he had expressed his desire to explain the situation.
+
+[Sidenote: Hostages to the Germans.]
+
+At the moment the three delegates were about to depart on their mission,
+with a good faith upon which it would be foolish to insist, the German
+commander declared that all the persons present were detained as
+hostages. He gave as a specious pretext for this violation of right that
+some German soldiers had been killed by civilians in some neighbouring
+villages, and that the hostages would enable the Germans to guard
+against the repetition of such acts, the more so as they were prepared
+to make a striking example at the beginning of the campaign.
+
+All the Liege citizens who had entered the citadel on this day were kept
+there till the next day, Saturday. Moreover, the following persons were
+retained as responsible hostages for three days: 1. Mgr. Rutien, Bishop
+of Liege; 2. M. Kleyer, Burgomaster of Liege; 3. M. Gregoire, Permanent
+Deputy; 4. M. Armand Flechet, Senator; 5. Senator Van Zuylen; 6. Senator
+Edouard Peltzer; 7. Senator Colleaux; 8. Deputy De Ponthiere; 9. Deputy
+Van Hoegaerden; 10. M. Falloise, Alderman.
+
+The hostages were shut up in damp case-mates, palliasses were given them
+for the night and, as food, the first day each one had half a loaf and
+some water. The burgomaster and the bishop were, however, allowed to go
+about their duties after they had given their parole to remain at the
+disposal of the German military authorities.
+
+[Sidenote: Last train for Brussels.]
+
+The same day at 9 a.m. the last train left Liege for Brussels with
+numbers of fugitives. The number of persons who abandoned Liege and its
+suburbs may be calculated at some five thousand. From this moment and
+for several days Liege was absolutely cut off from the rest of the
+world, all communications having been cut.
+
+On Saturday, August 8th, while the Germans were methodically organising
+the occupation of Liege, Burgomaster Kleyer was authorised to wait upon
+the King, in order to discuss the surrender of the forts. Furnished with
+a safe conduct and accompanied by a German officer, he reached Waremme
+early in the afternoon, and placed himself in communication with the
+General Staff. The King was consulted, and the reply brought back to
+Liege was the one the mayor had foreseen.
+
+The same day saw the appearance of the following order of the day
+addressed to the soldiers of the army of Liege:--
+
+        "Our comrades of the 3rd Army Division and of
+        the 15th mixed brigade are about to re-enter
+        our lines, after having defended, like heroes,
+        the fortified position of Liege.
+
+[Sidenote: The King encourages the army.]
+
+        "Attacked by forces four times as numerous,
+        they have repulsed all assaults. None of the
+        forts have been taken; the town of Liege is
+        always in our power. Standards and a number of
+        prisoners are the trophies of these combats. In
+        the name of the Nation I salute you, officers
+        and soldiers of the 3rd Army Division and the
+        15th mixed brigade.
+
+        "You have done your duty, done honour to our
+        arms, shown the enemy what it costs to attack
+        unjustly a peaceable people, but one who wields
+        in its just cause an invincible weapon. The
+        Fatherland has the right to be proud of you.
+
+        "Soldiers of the Belgian Army, do not forget
+        that you are in the van of immense armies in
+        this gigantic struggle, and that you await but
+        the arrival of our brothers-in-arms in order to
+        march to victory. The whole world has its eyes
+        fixed upon you. Show it by the vigour of your
+        blows that you mean to live free and
+        independent.
+
+        "France, that noble country which has
+        throughout history been associated with just
+        and generous causes, is hurrying to our aid and
+        her armies will enter our territory.
+
+        "In your name I address them a fraternal
+        salute.                      ALBERT."
+
+[Sidenote: German precautions.]
+
+[Sidenote: Barricades constructed.]
+
+On this day the Germans, who were not yet sure as to the intentions of
+the Belgian field army, and who feared a possible offensive on the part
+of the French advanced guards, put Liege in a state of defence.
+Moreover, they distrusted the civilian population, and fortified
+themselves in the town itself. They placed machine guns at the head of
+the bridges, and upon one of them, Boverie, which they feared might be
+blown up, or might be bombarded by the forts, they placed a curtained
+recess in which they shut up several citizens. They caused the soldiers
+to occupy Quai des Pecheurs, Quai l'Industrie, and the houses in
+proximity to the bridge, after clearing out the occupants. They placed
+bags of earth in the windows, behind which were installed machine guns.
+In the arteries leading to La Hesbaye and La Campine, and in the streets
+of the latter, they erected barricades, and installed themselves in the
+riverside houses. These labours continued during several days on the
+heights of Saint Nicholas and Hollogne, while the soldiers of the 10th
+Corps installed themselves on the plateau of Cointe, the General Staff
+having taken possession there of a convent, although this had been
+transformed into a hospital. In the town, the German troops, delayed for
+a short time by the necessity of carrying off their dead, shifting their
+wounded, and of taking a much-needed rest, entered in large numbers.
+They occupied the different stations, that of Ans on the Herbignon
+plateau being the last one where they established themselves.
+
+On Sunday, September 6th, there were at Liege more than 100,000 Germans.
+On this day, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the hostages were given
+their unconditional liberty. On the same date, in the neighbourhood of
+Landen, the King, accompanied by the General Staff, reviewed the valiant
+and now reconstituted 3rd Division, reconstituted in spite of the heavy
+losses in officers suffered by certain regiments. General Leman received
+from M. Schollaert, President of the Belgian Chamber, the following
+telegram: "With a heart overflowing with enthusiasm and patriotic pride,
+I acclaim the glorious defender of Liege."
+
+[Sidenote: Praise for defense of the city.]
+
+[Sidenote: President Poincare honors General Leman.]
+
+With reference to the defence of Liege, letters, despatches, and
+addresses of felicitation were received at Brussels from the Presidents
+of the French Chamber and the French Senate, from the Paris Municipal
+Council, and other French municipalities, words of friendship and
+encouragement were pronounced later in the British Parliament, while the
+King of the Belgians received the congratulations of King George, the
+Tsar, and the President of the French Republic. Finally, M. Poincare
+sent him the most envied of distinctions, the military medal. The
+resistance of Liege had everywhere aroused grateful enthusiasm, for the
+days, and even the hours gained from the invader were now of inestimable
+value. But while the twelve forts were not yet to harass, as they could,
+the progress of the enemy, Liege, whose hatred of the Prussian is
+ingrained, was to pay dearly for the resistance it had made, and its
+heart was to suffer cruelly over the vexations of which it was to be the
+object, while awaiting pillage and burning.
+
+Here we enter upon a new period, which cannot, however, be separated
+from the siege of Liege, for at this time the forts still held out.
+
+[Sidenote: The twelve forts.]
+
+[Sidenote: Forts on the banks of the Meuse.]
+
+The forts still held out, but the resistance of their garrisons had to
+be heroic. The defences crumbled quite rapidly. We should not be
+surprised at this, but should rather remember that these forts were more
+than twenty years old. Their construction began in 1889, and their
+armament, though modified later in certain details, was not capable of
+resisting the heavy artillery of the Germans. Liege was defended by
+twelve forts, large and small. The most important works were Barchon,
+Fleron, Boncelles, Flemalle, Loncin, and Pontisse. These forts possessed
+five large cupolas and three or four small ones. They were armed with
+two guns of 15 centimetres, four of 12, two howitzers of 21, and three
+or four guns of 5'7, ten more of 5'7 flanking the ditches. The little
+forts counted upon four large and three or four small cupolas. They were
+armed with two pieces of 15, two of 12, a howitzer of 21, three or four
+guns, without cupola, of 5'7, and of seven or eight commanding the
+ditches. The forts are arranged around Liege in the following order:--On
+the left bank of the Meuse: Flemalle, Hollogne, Loncin, Lantin, and
+Pontisse. On the right bank, between the Meuse and the Vesdre: Barchon,
+Evegnee, and Fleron. Between the Vesdre and the Ourthe: Chaudfontaine
+and Embourg. Between the Ourthe and the Meuse: Boncelles. The forts are
+four kilometres apart, except Flemalle-Boncelles and Embourg-Pontisse,
+which are six kilometres apart, while Chaudfontaine and Embourg are only
+two kilometres from one another. The forts are eight kilometres from the
+limits of the town. The forts of Hollogne, Loncin, Lantin, and Liers are
+in grassy country. Boncelles is nearly completely surrounded by woods;
+Embourg and Chaudfontaine dominate the deep and winding valleys of the
+Ourthe and the Vesdre. Pontisse, Flemalle, and Barchon, commanding the
+Meuse, are on broken ground. This last-named fort, with Evegnee and
+Fleron, holds the most important strategic position in the Herve
+country, facing the German frontier, in a land cut up by meadows planted
+with trees and by little woods, traversed by many vales, not very deep,
+but winding.
+
+[Sidenote: War conditions changed.]
+
+It is known that in the Brialmont project the intervening spaces were to
+be defended and fortified with siege artillery. To tell the truth, the
+eminent military engineer, in the pamphlets where he set out the
+project, only allowed for a small mobile garrison, but he confessed
+later that the difficulties which he knew he would meet with in the
+Belgian Parliament over the credits for the fortifications made him
+underestimate the number of men required. Besides which, the conditions
+of war have been greatly modified during the twenty-five years which
+have passed, owing to the increased power of siege guns. So that it may
+be laid down that 80,000, if not 100,000, men were needed to properly
+defend the entrenched camp of Liege.
+
+[Sidenote: Troops in the forts.]
+
+As for the forts, they were each occupied by a battery of artillery (250
+men) and three companies (120 men), a total of 370 men. About 4,500
+artillerymen for the twelve forts.
+
+General Leman was shut up in Loncin, one of the chief forts, which
+commanded the road towards Waremme and Brussels. He had sent away all
+his General Staff with the division, in spite of the supplications of
+his officers, who begged to be allowed to share his fate. He continued
+to direct the longest resistance possible. The enemy was anxious to cut
+all the communications between the forts, but soldiers volunteered for
+carrying messages to the different commanders. Several succeeded, but
+many were killed, for the investment became steadily tightened. Indeed,
+certain gaps, where the ground was most broken, could not be swept by
+the guns from the forts, and, under cover of the night, troops ensconced
+themselves there comfortably. Moreover, the Germans, having received
+reinforcements and heavy artillery, undertook the siege systematically,
+first of Barchon, which it was unable to take by storm any more than
+Boncelles, but which it subjected to a formidable deluge of shells.
+Barchon could only reply haphazard to heavy guns the position of which
+it could not tell. It was, indeed, deprived of its observation posts,
+and was in the position of a blind man desperately parrying the blows of
+an adversary who could see where to strike.
+
+[Sidenote: Fort Barchon taken.]
+
+The struggle was not for long, and the fort, reduced to impotence, left
+a wide breach through which the invader scrambled. Through there he
+could also introduce his heavy siege guns, howitzers of 28, and even
+pieces of 42 cms.
+
+[Sidenote: Forty-two centimetre guns.]
+
+The enemy then followed a tactic which was to succeed rapidly. He
+attacked the different fortifications in a reverse way. Thus Loncin,
+Lantin, Liers, and Pontisse were bombarded by batteries placed in the
+citadel itself and to which the Belgians could not reply without
+shelling the town and doing frightful damage. A battery was also placed
+in a bend of ground up Rue Naniot, under the "Tomb," where some of those
+who fell in 1830 are buried, but it was discovered and had to be
+withdrawn. Forts Boncelles and Embourg were attacked by guns placed on
+the hill at Tilff, a pretty village, which would have been completely
+destroyed had the firing been responded to. Finally, along the line of
+the plateau of Herve, no longer dominated by Barchon and Fleron, now
+destroyed, the enemy was able to bring into the very centre of the town
+four of those howitzers of 42 cms. which were later to bombard Namur,
+Maubeuge, and Antwerp.
+
+The following are the dates on which the different forts succumbed:
+Barchon and Evegnee fell on August 9th. Right from the 5th they had not
+ceased to be the object of continual attacks. They had valiantly
+resisted repeated assaults and field artillery. The heavy pieces poured
+in a hurricane of fire.
+
+Pontisse, which had so usefully barred the passage of the enemy below
+Vise, did not give way till the 12th. On the 13th Embourg surrendered
+after a twenty-six hours' bombardment.
+
+[Sidenote: Forts yield one by one.]
+
+The same day saw the fall of Chaudfontaine and Nameche, where two
+accidents happened worthy of being related. A shell burst on a cupola
+gun as it was finishing its movement after being loaded. The whole gun
+was shattered and ten men were wounded. A little while after, a shell
+entered the fort through the embrasure and set fire to the powder
+magazine. One hundred and ten artillerymen were terribly burned, fifty
+dying upon the spot. The 14th saw the fall of Boncelles, Liers, and
+Fleron. Boncelles from the 5th had offered an admirable resistance.
+Commandant Lefert had been wounded on the 8th, when 200 Germans,
+presenting themselves to surrender, treacherously fired upon him.
+Suffering greatly, he none the less went on directing the defence until
+his officers met together in a kind of council of war, and had him taken
+away in an ambulance. The unfortunate man was seized by a fever and
+became delirious. Boncelles was bombarded unceasingly for a whole day
+and the following morning. It was nearly destroyed, and may be
+considered as the fort which was the centre of the worst carnage of
+German soldiers. The enormous heaps of dead buried around it bear
+witness to the fact. Liers was put out of action by guns installed at
+Sainte Walburge.
+
+[Sidenote: Loncin and Lantin fall.]
+
+To get the better of the obstinate resistance of Fleron (Commandant
+Mozin), the Germans united twenty guns by an electric battery and fired
+them all off at the same time upon the fort, which trembled in its
+massive foundations. No one can have an idea of how demoralising this
+rain of projectiles was. On the 15th, Loncin and Lantin fell, the
+defenders firing until they were overcome by asphyxia. On the 16th, it
+was the turn of Flemalle, and on the 18th, of Hollogne.
+
+We know that it was at Loncin, which dominated the roads of La Hesbaye,
+where General Leman was shut up. Commandant Naessens and Lieutenant
+Monard had the honour of defending the fort under the General's eyes.
+Electrified by the presence of the governor of the fortress, the
+soldiers of Loncin wrote with their blood the most heroic page of the
+heroic defence of Liege. Commandant Naessens modestly narrated the
+story when he had been wounded and transported to the military hospital
+of Saint Laurent. General Leman has also _resumed_ the different phases
+of the attack, while a prisoner at Magdeburg. We will listen to his
+clear and crisp recital.
+
+[Sidenote: General Leman's story.]
+
+He distinguishes four periods during the bombardment. The first
+commenced on August 14th at 4.15 p.m. The shell fire, directed with
+great exactitude, lasted two hours without interruption. After a break
+of half-an-hour, some 21-centimetre guns opened fire. All night, at
+intervals of ten minutes, they rained shells upon the fort, causing it
+considerable damage. The escarpment was damaged, the protecting walls of
+the left flank battery destroyed, and the shutters of the windows
+pierced. Another unfavourable circumstance was that all the places of
+the escarpment where shelter could be obtained were full of smoke from
+the shells which had burst either in the protecting wall or in the
+ditches. The deleterious gases rendered it impossible to stand in the
+covered places, and forced the General to assemble the garrison in the
+interior and in the gallery. Even in these refuges the stupefying
+effects of the gases allowed themselves to be felt, and weakened the
+fighting value of the garrison.
+
+[Sidenote: Horrors of the bombardments.]
+
+The third period of bombardment began on the 15th at 5.30 a.m. and
+continued until two o'clock in the afternoon. The projectiles caused
+fearful havoc. The vault of the commanding post, where General Leman was
+present with his two adjutants, was subjected to furious shocks, and the
+fort trembled to its foundations. Towards two o'clock, a lull occurred
+in the firing, and the general took advantage of it to inspect the fort.
+He found part of it completely in ruins.
+
+[Sidenote: Currents of poisonous gas.]
+
+The fourth period is described as follows: "It was two o'clock when the
+bombardment recommenced with a violence of which no idea can be given.
+It seemed to us as if the German batteries were firing salvoes. When the
+large shells fell we heard the hissing of the air, which gradually
+increased into a roar like a furious hurricane, and which finished by a
+sudden noise of thunder. At a certain moment of this formidable
+bombardment, I wished to reach the commanding post in order to see what
+was happening, but at the end of a few paces in the gallery I was
+knocked down by a shock of violent air and fell face forward. I got up
+and wished to continue my way, but I was held back by a current of
+poisonous air which invaded the whole space. It was a mixture of the gas
+from the exploded powder and of the smoke of a fire which had started in
+the rooms of the troops where furniture and bedding were kept.
+
+[Sidenote: The fort blown up.]
+
+[Sidenote: General Leman a prisoner.]
+
+"We were thus driven back to the place whence we had come, but the air
+had become unbreathable. We were near to being asphyxiated when my
+adjutant, Major Collard, had the idea of taking off the top of the
+shutter, which gave us a little air. I was, however, obsessed by the
+idea of placing part of the garrison in safety, and I told my comrade I
+desired to reach the counter-escarpment. I managed to pass the gap and
+reach the ditch, which I crossed. What was my amazement when I perceived
+that the fort was blown up, and that the front was strewn with ruins,
+forming a quay reaching from the escarpment to the counter-escarpment.
+Some soldiers were running to and fro upon it. I took them for Belgian
+gendarmes and called to them. But I was being suffocated, giddiness
+seized upon me, and I fell to the ground. When I came to, I found myself
+in the midst of my comrades, who tried to come to my aid. Among them was
+a German major, who gave me a glass of water to drink. As I learnt
+afterwards, it was then about 6.30 p.m. I was placed in an ambulance
+carriage and transported to Liege.
+
+"I was taken, but I had not yet surrendered."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Surrender of Namur.]
+
+Following the capture of Liege the German armies made rapid progress
+through Belgium. After several sharp engagements with Belgian troops,
+which resisted with heroic tenacity, the Germans on August 19 took
+Louvain, and then began the deliberate system of atrocities which
+horrified the civilized world. The most valuable parts of the city,
+including many beautiful and important edifices, were burned, citizens
+were killed and tortured, and the utmost brutality was practiced, under
+the excuse that German troops had been fired upon by citizens of the
+town. On August 17 Brussels had been abandoned by the Belgian Government
+which withdrew to Antwerp. The former city was surrendered without
+resistance. In the meantime the French had hurried their armies to
+assist the Belgian forces and, joined by the available troops of the
+English Expeditionary Force, they encountered the Germans at Charleroi.
+On August 23 the great fortress of Namur was surrendered under the fire
+of the heavy German artillery, and on the following day, the Allied
+armies were defeated at Charleroi, and began the Great Retreat toward
+Paris which was to continue to the banks of the Marne. The French armies
+were under the command of General Joffre, while Sir John French
+commanded the British Expeditionary Force. In the following narrative
+General French describes the heroic performances of his gallant troops
+during the terrible ordeal.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT RETREAT
+
+SIR JOHN FRENCH
+
+
+The transport of the troops from England both by sea and by rail was
+effected in the best order and without a check. Each unit arrived at its
+destination in this country well within the scheduled time.
+
+[Sidenote: Disposition of British forces.]
+
+The concentration was practically complete on the evening of Friday,
+September 21st, and I was able to make dispositions to move the force
+during Saturday, the 22d, to positions I considered most favorable from
+which to commence operations which the French Commander in Chief,
+General Joffre, requested me to undertake in pursuance of his plans in
+prosecution of the campaign.
+
+The line taken up extended along the line of the canal from Conde on the
+west, through Mons and Binche on the east. This line was taken up as
+follows:
+
+From Conde to Mons inclusive was assigned to the Second Corps, and to
+the right of the Second Corps from Mons the First Corps was posted. The
+Fifth Cavalry Brigade was placed at Binche.
+
+In the absence of my Third Army Corps I desired to keep the cavalry
+division as much as possible as a reserve to act on my outer flank, or
+move in support of any threatened part of the line. The forward
+reconnoissance was intrusted to Brigadier General Sir Philip Chetwode
+with the Fifth Cavalry Brigade, but I directed General Allenby to send
+forward a few squadrons to assist in this work.
+
+[Sidenote: Advance on Soignies.]
+
+During the 22d and 23d these advanced squadrons did some excellent work,
+some of them penetrating as far as Soignies, and several encounters took
+place in which our troops showed to great advantage.
+
+2. At 6 A. M. on August 23, I assembled the commanders of the First and
+Second Corps and cavalry division at a point close to the position and
+explained the general situation of the Allies, and what I understood to
+be General Joffre's plan. I discussed with them at some length the
+immediate situation in front of us.
+
+From information I received from French Headquarters I understood that
+little more than one, or at most two, of the enemy's army corps, with
+perhaps one cavalry division, were in front of my position; and I was
+aware of no attempted outflanking movement by the enemy. I was confirmed
+in this opinion by the fact that my patrols encountered no undue
+opposition in their reconnoitring operations. The observations of my
+aeroplanes seemed also to bear out this estimate.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack on Mons line.]
+
+About 3 P. M. on Sunday, the 23d, reports began coming in to the effect
+that the enemy was commencing an attack on the Mons line, apparently in
+some strength, but that the right of the position from Mons and Bray was
+being particularly threatened.
+
+The commander of the First Corps had pushed his flank back to some high
+ground south of Bray, and the Fifth Cavalry Brigade evacuated Binche,
+moving slightly south; the enemy thereupon occupied Binche.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans gain passages of the Sambre.]
+
+The right of the Third Division, under General Hamilton, was at Mons,
+which formed a somewhat dangerous salient; and I directed the commander
+of the Second Corps to be careful not to keep the troops on this salient
+too long, but, if threatened seriously, to draw back the centre behind
+Mons. This was done before dark. In the meantime, about 5 P. M., I
+received a most unexpected message from General Joffre by telegraph,
+telling me that at least three German corps, viz., a reserve corps, the
+Fourth Corps and the Ninth Corps, were moving on my position in front,
+and that the Second Corps was engaged in a turning movement from the
+direction of Tournay. He also informed me that the two reserve French
+divisions and the Fifth French Army on my right were retiring, the
+Germans having on the previous day gained possession of the passages of
+the Sambre between Charleroi and Namur.
+
+3. In view of the possibility of my being driven from the Mons position,
+I had previously ordered a position in rear to be reconnoitred. This
+position rested on the fortress of Maubeuge on the right and extended
+west to Jenlain, southeast of Valenciennes, on the left. The position
+was reported difficult to hold, because standing crops and buildings
+made the siting of trenches very difficult and limited the field of fire
+in many important localities. It nevertheless afforded a few good
+artillery positions.
+
+[Sidenote: British retire to Maubeuge position.]
+
+When the news of the retirement of the French and the heavy German
+threatening on my front reached me, I endeavored to confirm it by
+aeroplane reconnoissance; and as a result of this I determined to effect
+a retirement to the Maubeuge position at daybreak on the 24th.
+
+A certain amount of fighting continued along the whole line throughout
+the night and at daybreak on the 24th the Second Division from the
+neighborhood of Harmignies made a powerful demonstration as if to retake
+Binche. This was supported by the artillery of both the First and Second
+Divisions, while the First Division took up a supporting position in the
+neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this demonstration the Second
+Corps retired on the line Dour-Quarouble-Frameries. The Third Division
+on the right of the corps suffered considerable loss in this operation
+from the enemy, who had retaken Mons.
+
+The Second Corps halted on this line, where they partially intrenched
+themselves, enabling Sir Douglas Haig with the First Corps gradually to
+withdraw to the new position; and he effected this without much further
+loss, reaching the line Bavai-Maubeuge about 7 P. M. Toward midday the
+enemy appeared to be directing his principal effort against our left.
+
+I had previously ordered General Allenby with the cavalry to act
+vigorously in advance of my left front and endeavor to take the pressure
+off.
+
+[Sidenote: General Allenby supports Fifth Division.]
+
+About 7:30 A. M. General Allenby received a message from Sir Charles
+Fergusson, commanding the Fifth Division, saying that he was very hard
+pressed and in urgent need of support. On receipt of this message
+General Allenby drew in the cavalry and endeavored to bring direct
+support to the Fifth Division.
+
+During the course of this operation General De Lisle, of the Second
+Cavalry Brigade, thought he saw a good opportunity to paralyze the
+further advance of the enemy's infantry by making a mounted attack on
+his flank. He formed up and advanced for this purpose, but was held up
+by wire about 500 yards from his objective, and the Ninth Lancers and
+the Eighteenth Hussars suffered severely in the retirement of the
+brigade.
+
+The Nineteenth Infantry Brigade, which had been guarding the line of
+communications, was brought up by rail to Valenciennes on the 22d and
+23d. On the morning of the 24th they were moved out to a position south
+of Quarouble to support the left flank of the Second Corps.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien suffers great losses.]
+
+With the assistance of the cavalry Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was enabled
+to effect his retreat to a new position; although, having two corps of
+the enemy on his front and one threatening his flank, he suffered great
+losses in doing so.
+
+At nightfall the position was occupied by the Second Corps to the west
+of Bavai, the First Corps to the right. The right was protected by the
+fortress of Maubeuge, the left by the Nineteenth Brigade in position
+between Jenlain and Bry, and the cavalry on the outer flank.
+
+4. The French were still retiring, and I had no support except such as
+was afforded by the Fortress of Maubeuge; and the determined attempts of
+the enemy to get round my left flank assured me that it was his
+intention to hem me against that place and surround me. I felt that not
+a moment must be lost in retiring to another position.
+
+I had every reason to believe that the enemy's forces were somewhat
+exhausted and I knew that they had suffered heavy losses. I hoped,
+therefore, that his pursuit would not be too vigorous to prevent me
+effecting my object.
+
+The operation, however, was full of danger and difficulty, not only
+owing to the very superior force in my front, but also to the exhaustion
+of the troops.
+
+The retirement was recommenced in the early morning of the 25th to a
+position in the neighborhood of Le Cateau, and rearguards were ordered
+to be clear of the Maubeuge-Bavai-Eth Road by 5:30 A. M.
+
+[Sidenote: General Allenby covers west flank.]
+
+Two cavalry brigades, with the divisional cavalry of the Second Corps,
+covered the movement of the Second Corps. The remainder of the cavalry
+division, with the Nineteenth Brigade, the whole under the command of
+General Allenby, covered the west flank.
+
+The Fourth Division commenced its detrainment at Le Cateau on Sunday,
+the 23d, and by the morning of the 25th eleven battalions and a brigade
+of artillery with divisional staff were available for service.
+
+I ordered General Snow to move out to take up a position with his right
+south of Solesmes, his left resting on the Cambrai-Le Cateau Road south
+of La Chaprie. In this position the division rendered great help to the
+effective retirement of the Second and First Corps to the new position.
+
+Although the troops had been ordered to occupy the Cambrai-Le
+Cateau-Landrecies position, and the ground had, during the 25th, been
+partially prepared and intrenched, I had grave doubts--owing to the
+information I had received as to the accumulating strength of the enemy
+against me--as to the wisdom of standing there to fight.
+
+[Sidenote: Retirement of French troops on right.]
+
+Having regard to the continued retirement of the French on my right, my
+exposed left flank, the tendency of the enemy's western corps (II.) to
+envelop me, and, more than all, the exhausted condition of the troops, I
+determined to make a great effort to continue the retreat till I could
+put some substantial obstacle, such as the Somme or the Oise, between my
+troops and the enemy, and afford the former some opportunity of rest and
+reorganization. Orders were, therefore, sent to the corps commanders to
+continue their retreat as soon as they possibly could toward the general
+line Vermand-St. Quentin-Ribemont.
+
+The cavalry, under General Allenby, were ordered to cover the
+retirement.
+
+Throughout the 25th and far into the evening, the First Corps continued
+its march on Landrecies, following the road along the eastern border of
+the Foret de Mormal, and arrived at Landrecies about 10 o'clock. I had
+intended that the corps should come further west so as to fill up the
+gap between Le Cateau and Landrecies, but the men were exhausted and
+could not get further in without rest.
+
+[Sidenote: British brigade in Landrecies.]
+
+[Sidenote: French reserve divisions support First Corps.]
+
+The enemy, however, would not allow them this rest, and about 9:30 P. M.
+a report was received that the Fourth Guards Brigade in Landrecies was
+heavily attacked by troops of the Ninth German Army Corps, who were
+coming through the forest on the north of the town. This brigade fought
+most gallantly, and caused the enemy to suffer tremendous loss in
+issuing from the forest into the narrow streets of the town. This loss
+has been estimated from reliable sources at from 700 to 1,000. At the
+same time information reached me from Sir Douglas Haig that his First
+Division was also heavily engaged south and east of Maroilles. I sent
+urgent messages to the commander of the two French reserve divisions on
+my right to come up to the assistance of the First Corps, which they
+eventually did. Partly owing to this assistance, but mainly to the
+skillful manner in which Sir Douglas Haig extricated his corps from an
+exceptionally difficult position in the darkness of the night, they were
+able at dawn to resume their march south toward Wassigny on Guise.
+
+By about 6 P. M. the Second Corps had got into position with their right
+on Le Cateau, their left in the neighborhood of Caudry, and the line of
+defense was continued thence by the Fourth Division toward Seranvillers,
+the left being thrown back.
+
+During the fighting on the 24th and 25th the cavalry became a good deal
+scattered, but by the early morning of the 26th General Allenby had
+succeeded in concentrating two brigades to the south of Cambrai.
+
+The Fourth Division was placed under the orders of the general officer
+commanding the Second Army Corps.
+
+On the 24th the French cavalry corps, consisting of three divisions
+under General Sordet, had been in billets north of Avesnes. On my way
+back from Bavai, which was my "Poste de Commandement" during the
+fighting of the 23d and 24th, I visited General Sordet, and earnestly
+requested his co-operation and support. He promised to obtain sanction
+from his army commander to act on my left flank, but said that his
+horses were too tired to move before the next day. Although he rendered
+me valuable assistance later on in the course of the retirement, he was
+unable for the reasons given to afford me any support on the most
+critical day of all, viz., the 26th.
+
+[Sidenote: British Second Corps and Fourth Division heavily attacked.]
+
+At daybreak it became apparent that the enemy was throwing the bulk of
+his strength against the left of the position occupied by the Second
+Corps and the Fourth Division.
+
+At this time the guns of four German army corps were in position against
+them, and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien reported to me that he judged it
+impossible to continue his retirement at daybreak (as ordered) in face
+of such an attack.
+
+I sent him orders to use his utmost endeavors to break off the action
+and retire at the earliest possible moment, as it was impossible for me
+to send him any support, the First Corps being at the moment incapable
+of movement.
+
+The French cavalry corps, under General Sordet, was coming up on our
+left rear early in the morning, and I sent an urgent message to him to
+do his utmost to come up and support the retirement of my left flank;
+but owing to the fatigue of his horses he found himself unable to
+intervene in any way.
+
+There had been no time to intrench the position properly, but the troops
+showed a magnificent front to the terrible fire which confronted them.
+
+[Sidenote: British artillery outmatched by four to one.]
+
+The artillery, although outmatched by at least four to one, made a
+splendid fight, and inflicted heavy losses on their opponents.
+
+At length it became apparent that, if complete annihilation was to be
+avoided, a retirement must be attempted; and the order was given to
+commence it about 3:30 P. M. The movement was covered with the most
+devoted intrepidity and determination by the artillery, which had itself
+suffered heavily, and the fine work done by the cavalry in the further
+retreat from the position assisted materially in the final completion of
+this most difficult and dangerous operation.
+
+Fortunately the enemy had himself suffered too heavily to engage in an
+energetic pursuit.
+
+[Sidenote: General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien cited for conspicuous
+service.]
+
+I cannot close the brief account of this glorious stand of the British
+troops without putting on record my deep appreciation of the valuable
+services rendered by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien.
+
+I say without hesitation that the saving of the left wing of the army
+under my command on the morning of the 26th August could never have been
+accomplished unless a commander of rare and unusual coolness,
+intrepidity, and determination had been present to personally conduct
+the operation.
+
+[Sidenote: British retreat holding on line Noyon-Chauny-La Fere.]
+
+The retreat was continued far into the night of the 26th and through the
+27th and 28th, on which date the troops halted on the line
+Noyon-Chauny-La Fere, having then thrown off the weight of the enemy's
+pursuit.
+
+On the 27th and 28th August I was much indebted to General Sordet and
+the French cavalry division which he commands for materially assisting
+my retirement and successfully driving back some of the enemy on
+Cambrai.
+
+General D'Amade also, with the Sixty-first and Sixty-second French
+Reserve Divisions, moved down from the neighborhood of Arras on the
+enemy's right flank and took much pressure off the rear of the British
+forces located there.
+
+[Sidenote: End of four days' battle at Mons.]
+
+This closes the period covering the heavy fighting which commenced at
+Mons on Sunday afternoon, 23d August, and which really constituted a
+four days' battle.
+
+At this point, therefore, I propose to close the present dispatch.
+
+[Sidenote: Serious losses in British forces.]
+
+I deeply deplore the very serious losses which the British forces have
+suffered in this great battle; but they were inevitable in view of the
+fact that the British Army--only two days after a concentration by
+rail--was called upon to withstand a vigorous attack of five German army
+corps.
+
+It is impossible for me to speak too highly of the skill evinced by the
+two general officers commanding army corps; the self-sacrificing and
+devoted exertions of their staffs; the direction of the troops by
+divisional, brigade, and regimental leaders; the command of the smaller
+units by their officers; and the magnificent fighting spirit displayed
+by non-commissioned officers and men.
+
+[Sidenote: Royal Flying Corps cited for admirable work.]
+
+I wish particularly to bring to your Lordship's notice the admirable
+work done by the Royal Flying Corps under Sir David Henderson. Their
+skill, energy, and perseverance have been beyond all praise. They have
+furnished me with the most complete and accurate information, which has
+been of incalculable value in the conduct of the operations. Fired at
+constantly both by friend and foe, and not hesitating to fly in every
+kind of weather, they have remained undaunted throughout.
+
+Further, by actually fighting in the air, they have succeeded in
+destroying five of the enemy's machines.
+
+I wish to acknowledge with deep gratitude the incalculable assistance I
+received from the General and Personal Staffs at Headquarters during
+this trying period.
+
+[Sidenote: Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray, Major General
+Wilson, Brigade General Hon. Lambton cited for admirable work.]
+
+Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray, Chief of the General Staff;
+Major General Wilson, Sub-Chief of the General Staff; and all under them
+have worked day and night unceasingly with the utmost skill,
+self-sacrifice, and devotion; and the same acknowledgment is due by me
+to Brigadier General Hon. W. Lambton, my Military Secretary, and the
+personal Staff.
+
+[Sidenote: Major General Sir William Robertson cited for admirable
+work.]
+
+In such operations as I have described the work of the Quartermaster
+General is of an extremely onerous nature. Major General Sir William
+Robertson has met what appeared to be almost insuperable difficulties
+with his characteristic energy, skill, and determination; and it is
+largely owing to his exertions that the hardships and sufferings of the
+troops--inseparable from such operations--were not much greater.
+
+[Sidenote: Major General Sir Nevil Macready.]
+
+Major General Sir Nevil Macready, the Adjutant General, has also been
+confronted with most onerous and difficult tasks in connection with
+disciplinary arrangements and the preparation of casualty lists. He has
+been indefatigable in his exertions to meet the difficult situations
+which arose.
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE
+
+SIR JOHN FRENCH
+
+
+                                                 17th September, 1914.
+
+My Lord: In continuation of my dispatch of September 7, I have the honor
+to report the further progress of the operations of the forces under my
+command from August 28.
+
+On that evening the retirement of the force was followed closely by two
+of the enemy's cavalry columns, moving southeast from St. Quentin.
+
+The retreat in this part of the field was being covered by the Third and
+Fifth Cavalry Brigades. South of the Somme General Gough, with the Third
+Cavalry Brigade, threw back the Uhlans of the Guard with considerable
+loss.
+
+[Sidenote: General Chetwode routs German attack.]
+
+General Chetwode, with the Fifth Cavalry Brigade, encountered the
+eastern column near Cerizy, moving south. The brigade attacked and
+routed the column, the leading German regiment suffering very severe
+casualties and being almost broken up.
+
+The Seventh French Army Corps was now in course of being railed up from
+the south to the east of Amiens. On the 29th it nearly completed its
+detrainment, and the French Sixth Army got into position on my left, its
+right resting on Roye.
+
+The Fifth French Army was behind the line of the Oise, between La Fere
+and Guise.
+
+[Sidenote: Vigorous pursuit of retreating German forces.]
+
+The pursuit of the enemy was very vigorous; some five or six German
+corps were on the Somme, facing the Fifth Army on the Oise. At least two
+corps were advancing toward my front, and were crossing the Somme east
+and west of Ham. Three or four more German corps were opposing the Sixth
+French Army on my left.
+
+This was the situation at 1 o'clock on the 29th, when I received a visit
+from General Joffre at my headquarters.
+
+I strongly represented my position to the French Commander in Chief, who
+was most kind, cordial, and sympathetic, as he has always been. He told
+me that he had directed the Fifth French Army on the Oise to move
+forward and attack the Germans on the Somme, with a view to checking
+pursuit. He also told me of the formation of the Sixth French Army on my
+left flank, composed of the Seventh Army Corps, four reserve divisions,
+and Sordet's corps of cavalry.
+
+[Sidenote: Short retirement towards Compiegne-Soissons.]
+
+I finally arranged with General Joffre to effect a further short
+retirement toward the line Compiegne-Soissons, promising him, however,
+to do my utmost to keep always within a day's march of him.
+
+In pursuance of this arrangement the British forces retired to a
+position a few miles north of the line Compiegne-Soissons on the 29th.
+
+[Sidenote: Right flank of German army in dangerous line of connection.]
+
+The right flank of the Germany Army was now reaching a point which
+appeared seriously to endanger my line of communications with Havre. I
+had already evacuated Amiens, into which place a German reserve division
+was reported to have moved.
+
+Orders were given to change the base to St. Nazaire, and establish an
+advance base at Le Mans. This operation was well carried out by the
+Inspector General of Communications.
+
+[Sidenote: Retirement to the Marne ordered.]
+
+In spite of a severe defeat inflicted upon the Guard Tenth and Guard
+Reserve Corps of the German Army by the First and Third French Corps on
+the right of the Fifth Army, it was not part of General Joffre's plan to
+pursue this advantage; and a general retirement to the line of the
+Marne was ordered, to which the French forces in the more eastern
+theatre were directed to conform.
+
+A new Army (the Ninth) had been formed from three corps in the south by
+General Joffre, and moved into the space between the right of the Fifth
+and left of the Fourth Armies.
+
+While closely adhering to his strategic conception to draw the enemy on
+at all points until a favorable situation was created from which to
+assume the offensive, General Joffre found it necessary to modify from
+day to day the methods by which he sought to attain this object, owing
+to the development of the enemy's plans and changes in the general
+situation.
+
+In conformity with the movements of the French forces, my retirement
+continued practically from day to day. Although we were not severely
+pressed by the enemy, rearguard actions took place continually.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack on British First Cavalry Brigade.]
+
+On the 1st September, when retiring from the thickly wooded country to
+the south of Compiegne, the First Cavalry Brigade was overtaken by some
+German cavalry. They momentarily lost a horse artillery battery, and
+several officers and men were killed and wounded. With the help,
+however, of some detachments from the Third Corps operating on their
+left, they not only recovered their own guns, but succeeded in capturing
+twelve of the enemy's.
+
+Similarly, to the eastward, the First Corps, retiring south, also got
+into some very difficult forest country, and a somewhat severe rearguard
+action ensued at Villers-Cotterets, in which the Fourth Guards Brigade
+suffered considerably.
+
+[Sidenote: British forces in position south of the Marne.]
+
+On September 3 the British forces were in position south of the Marne
+between Lagny and Signy-Signets. Up to this time I had been requested
+by General Joffre to defend the passages of the river as long as
+possible, and to blow up the bridges in my front. After I had made the
+necessary dispositions, and the destruction of the bridges had been
+effected, I was asked by the French Commander in Chief to continue my
+retirement to a point some twelve miles in rear of the position I then
+occupied, with a view to taking up a second position behind the Seine.
+This retirement was duly carried out. In the meantime the enemy had
+thrown bridges and crossed the Marne in considerable force, and was
+threatening the Allies all along the line of the British forces and the
+Fifth and Ninth French Armies. Consequently several small outpost
+actions took place.
+
+On Saturday, September 5, I met the French Commander in Chief at his
+request, and he informed me of his intention to take the offensive
+forthwith, as he considered conditions very favorable to success.
+
+[Sidenote: General Joffre announces intention to take offensive.]
+
+General Joffre announced to me his intention of wheeling up the left
+flank of the Sixth Army, pivoting on the Marne and directing it to move
+on the Ourcq; cross and attack the flank of the First German Army, which
+was then moving in a southeasterly direction east of that river.
+
+He requested me to effect a change of front to my right--my left resting
+on the Marne and my right on the Fifth Army--to fill the gap between
+that army and the Sixth. I was then to advance against the enemy in my
+front and join in the general offensive movement.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle begins Sunday, September 6.]
+
+These combined movements practically commenced on Sunday, September 6,
+at sunrise; and on that day it may be said that a great battle opened on
+a front extending from Ermenonville, which was just in front of the left
+flank of the Sixth French Army, through Lizy on the Marne, Mauperthuis,
+which was about the British centre, Courtecon, which was on the left of
+the Fifth French Army, to Esternay and Charleville, the left of the
+Ninth Army under General Foch, and so along the front of the Ninth,
+Fourth and Third French Armies to a point north of the fortress of
+Verdun.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle concluded September 10. Germans driven to the line
+Soissons-Rheims.]
+
+This battle, in so far as the Sixth French Army, the British Army, the
+Fifth French Army, and the Ninth French Army were concerned, may be said
+to have concluded on the evening of September 10, by which time the
+Germans had been driven back to the line Soissons-Rheims, with a loss of
+thousands of prisoners, many guns, and enormous masses of transport.
+
+About September 3 the enemy appears to have changed his plans and to
+have determined to stop his advance south direct upon Paris, for on
+September 4 air reconnoissances showed that his main columns were moving
+in a southeasterly direction generally east of a line drawn through
+Nanteuil and Lizy on the Ourcq.
+
+On September 5 several of these columns were observed to have crossed
+the Marne, while German troops, which were observed moving southeast up
+the left flank of the Ourcq on the 4th, were now reported to be halted
+and facing that river. Heads of the enemy's columns were seen crossing
+at Changis, La Ferte, Nogent, Chateau Thierry, and Mezy.
+
+[Sidenote: German columns converging on Montmirail.]
+
+Considerable German columns of all arms were seen to be converging on
+Montmirail, while before sunset large bivouacs of the enemy were located
+in the neighborhood of Coulommiers, south of Rebais, La Ferte-Gaucher,
+and Dagny.
+
+I should conceive it to have been about noon on September 6, after the
+British forces had changed their front to the right and occupied the
+line Jouy-Le Chatel-Faremoutiers-Villeneuve Le Comte, and the advance
+of the Sixth French Army north of the Marne toward the Ourcq became
+apparent, that the enemy realized the powerful threat that was being
+made against the flank of his columns moving southeast, and began the
+great retreat which opened the battle above referred to.
+
+[Sidenote: Position of allies and Germans on September 6.]
+
+On the evening of September 6, therefore, the fronts and positions of
+the Allied Army were roughly as follows:
+
+_Sixth French Army._--Right on the Marne at Meux, left toward Betz.
+
+_British Forces._--On the line Dagny-Coulommiers-Maison.
+
+_Fifth French Army._--At Courtagon, right on Esternay.
+
+_Conneau's Cavalry Corps._--Between the right of the British and the
+left of the French Fifth Army.
+
+The position of the German Army was as follows:
+
+_Fourth Reserve and Second Corps._--East of the Ourcq and facing that
+river.
+
+_Ninth Cavalry Division._--West of Crecy.
+
+_Second Cavalry Division._--North of Coulommiers.
+
+_Fourth Corps._--Rebais.
+
+_Third and Seventh Corps._--Southwest of Montmirail.
+
+[Sidenote: First and Second German army.]
+
+All these troops constituted the First German Army, which was directed
+against the French Sixth Army on the Ourcq, and the British forces, and
+the left of the Fifth French Army south of the Marne.
+
+The Second German Army (IX., X., X.R., and Guard) was moving against the
+centre and right of the Fifth French Army and the Ninth French Army.
+
+On September 7 both the Fifth and Sixth French Armies were heavily
+engaged on our flank. The Second and Fourth Reserve German Corps on the
+Ourcq vigorously opposed the advance of the French toward that river,
+but did not prevent the Sixth Army from gaining some headway, the
+Germans themselves suffering serious losses. The French Fifth Army threw
+the enemy back to the line of the Petit Morin River after inflicting
+severe losses upon them, especially about Montceaux, which was carried
+at the point of the bayonet.
+
+The enemy retreated before our advance, covered by his Second and Ninth
+and Guard Cavalry Divisions, which suffered severely.
+
+Our cavalry acted with great vigor, especially General De Lisle's
+brigade, with the Ninth Lancers and Eighteenth Hussars.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans retreat September 8.]
+
+On September 8 the enemy continued his retreat northward, and our army
+was successfully engaged during the day with strong rearguards of all
+arms on the Petit Morin River, thereby materially assisting the progress
+of the French armies on our right and left, against whom the enemy was
+making his greatest efforts. On both sides the enemy was thrown back
+with very heavy loss. The First Army Corps encountered stubborn
+resistance at La Tretoire, (north of Rebais.) The enemy occupied a
+strong position with infantry and guns on the northern bank of the Petit
+Morin River; they were dislodged with considerable loss. Several machine
+guns and many prisoners were captured, and upward of 200 German dead
+were left on the ground.
+
+[Sidenote: Forcing of Petit Morin September 9.]
+
+The forcing of the Petit Morin at this point was much assisted by the
+cavalry and the First Division, which crossed higher up the stream.
+
+Later in the day a counter-attack by the enemy was well repulsed by the
+First Army Corps, a great many prisoners and some guns again falling
+into our hands.
+
+On this day (September 8) the Second Army Corps encountered considerable
+opposition, but drove back the enemy at all points with great loss,
+making considerable captures.
+
+The Third Army Corps also drove back considerable bodies of the enemy's
+infantry and made some captures.
+
+[Sidenote: British First and Second Army Corps forced passage of Marne.]
+
+On September 9 the First and Second Army Corps forced the passage of the
+Marne and advanced some miles to the north of it. The Third Corps
+encountered considerable opposition, as the bridge at La Ferte was
+destroyed and the enemy held the town on the opposite bank in some
+strength, and thence persistently obstructed the construction of a
+bridge; so the passage was not effected until after nightfall.
+
+During the day's pursuit the enemy suffered heavy loss in killed and
+wounded, some hundreds of prisoners fell into our hands and a battery of
+eight machine guns was captured by the Second Division.
+
+[Sidenote: Sixth French Army heavily engaged west of River Ourcq.]
+
+On this day the Sixth French Army was heavily engaged west of the River
+Ourcq. The enemy had largely increased his force opposing them; and very
+heavy fighting ensued, in which the French were successful throughout.
+
+The left of the Fifth French Army reached the neighborhood of Chateau
+Thierry after the most severe fighting, having driven the enemy
+completely north of the river with great loss.
+
+The fighting of this army in the neighborhood of Montmirail was very
+severe.
+
+[Sidenote: British and French advance on the line of the Ourcq,
+September 10.]
+
+The advance was resumed at daybreak on the 10th up to the line of the
+Ourcq, opposed by strong rearguards of all arms. The First and Second
+Corps, assisted by the cavalry divisions on the right, the Third and
+Fifth Cavalry Brigades on the left, drove the enemy northward. Thirteen
+guns, seven machine guns, about 2,000 prisoners, and quantities of
+transport fell into our hands. The enemy left many dead on the field.
+On this day the French Fifth and Sixth Armies had little opposition.
+
+[Illustration: BATTLE OF THE MARNE--END OF GERMAN RETREAT AND THE
+INTRENCHED LINE ON THE AISNE RIVER]
+
+[Sidenote: First and Second German armies in full retreat.]
+
+As the First and Second German Armies were now in full retreat, this
+evening marks the end of the battle which practically commenced on the
+morning of the 6th inst.; and it is at this point in the operations that
+I am concluding the present dispatch.
+
+In concluding this dispatch I must call your Lordship's special
+attention to the fact that from Sunday, August 23, up to the present
+date, (September 17,) from Mons back almost to the Seine, and from the
+Seine to the Aisne, the army under my command has been ceaselessly
+engaged without one single day's halt or rest of any kind.
+
+[Sidenote: Continuous fighting of British from Sunday, August 23, to
+September 17, from Mons to Seine and from Seine to the Aisne.]
+
+[Sidenote: Amiens and Rheims captured.]
+
+In the narratives preceding we have seen how the English forces
+conducted themselves during the Great Retreat and at the Marne. It must
+be remembered, however, that they comprised but a small proportion of
+the armies opposing the Germans. The French bore the brunt of the
+attack, and a French army turned the tide of battle. Beginning with the
+first days of September all other military events were overshadowed by
+the Great Retreat. On September 1 the Germans, in spite of French and
+British resistance, had reached Senlis. On September 4th Amiens was
+captured, and two days later the German army entered Rheims. In the
+following narrative is shown, through the official records, how the
+French armies bore themselves during the Great Retreat, the First Battle
+of the Marne, and in the fighting which marked the hurried return of the
+German armies to the banks of the Aisne which they had, with true
+foresight, fortified with such a possible situation in mind.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE FRENCH FOUGHT
+
+THE FRENCH OFFICIAL ACCOUNT
+
+
+The first month of the campaign began with successes and finished with
+defeats for the French troops. Under what circumstances did these come
+about?
+
+[Sidenote: Two principal actions.]
+
+Our plan of concentration had foreseen the possibility of two principal
+actions, one on the right between the Vosges and the Moselle, the other
+on the left to the north of Verdun-Toul line, this double possibility
+involving the eventual variation of our transport. On August 2, owing to
+the Germans passing through Belgium, our concentration was substantially
+modified by General Joffre in order that our principal effort might be
+directed to the north.
+
+From the first week in August it was apparent that the length of time
+required for the British Army to begin to move would delay our action in
+connection with it. This delay is one of the reasons which explain our
+failures at the end of August.
+
+[Sidenote: Mulhouse occupied.]
+
+Awaiting the moment when the operations in the north could begin, and to
+prepare for it by retaining in Alsace the greatest possible number of
+German forces, the General in Chief ordered our troops to occupy
+Mulhouse, (Muelhousen,) to cut the bridges of the Rhine at Huningue and
+below, and then to flank the attack of our troops, operating in
+Lorraine.
+
+This operation was badly carried out by a leader who was at once
+relieved of his command. Our troops, after having carried Mulhouse, lost
+it and were thrown back on Belfort. The work had, therefore, to be
+recommenced afresh, and this was done from August 14 under a new
+command.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy losses.]
+
+Mulhouse was taken on the 19th, after a brilliant fight at Dornach.
+Twenty-four guns were captured from the enemy. On the 20th we held the
+approaches to Colmar, both by the plain and by the Vosges. The enemy had
+undergone enormous losses and abandoned great stores of shells and
+forage, but from this moment what was happening in Lorraine and on our
+left prevented us from carrying our successes further, for our troops in
+Alsace were needed elsewhere.
+
+On August 28 the Alsace army was broken up, only a small part remaining
+to hold the region of Thann and the Vosges.
+
+The purpose of the operations in Alsace was, namely, to retain a large
+part of the enemy's forces far from the northern theatre of operations.
+It was for our offensive in Lorraine to pursue still more directly by
+holding before it the German army corps operating to the south of Metz.
+
+This offensive began brilliantly on August 14. On the 19th we had
+reached the region of Saarburg and that of the Etangs, (lakes,) and we
+held Dieuze, Morhange, Delme, and Chateau Salins.
+
+[Sidenote: French offensive stopped.]
+
+On the 20th our success was stopped. The cause is to be found in the
+strong organization of the region, in the power of the enemy's
+artillery, operating over ground which had been minutely surveyed, and,
+finally, in the default of certain units.
+
+[Sidenote: German reinforcements.]
+
+On the 22d, in spite of the splendid behavior of several of our army
+corps, notably that of Nancy, our troops were brought back on to the
+Grand Couronne, while on the 23d and 24th the Germans concentrated
+reinforcements--three army corps, at least--in the region of Luneville
+and forced us to retire to the south.
+
+This retreat, however, was only momentary. On the 25th, after two
+vigorous counter-attacks, one from south to north and the other from
+west to east, the enemy had to fall back. From that time a sort of
+balance was established on this terrain between the Germans and
+ourselves. Maintained for fifteen days, it was afterward, as will be
+seen, modified to our advantage.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle of the north.]
+
+There remained the principal business, the battle of the
+north--postponed owing to the necessity of waiting for the British Army.
+On August 20 the concentration of our lines was finished and the General
+in Chief gave orders for our centre and our left to take the offensive.
+Our centre comprised two armies. Our left consisted of a third army,
+reinforced to the extent of two army corps, a corps of cavalry, the
+reserve divisions, the British Army, and the Belgian Army, which had
+already been engaged for the previous three weeks at Liege, Namur, and
+Louvain.
+
+The German plan on that date was as follows: From seven to eight army
+corps and four cavalry divisions were endeavoring to pass between Givet
+and Brussels, and even to prolong their movements more to the west. Our
+object was, therefore, in the first place, to hold and dispose of the
+enemy's centre and afterward to throw ourselves with all available
+forces on the left flank of the German grouping of troops in the north.
+
+[Sidenote: The offensive fails.]
+
+On August 21 our offensive in the centre began with ten army corps. On
+August 22 it failed, and this reverse appeared serious.
+
+The reasons for it are complex. There were in this affair individual and
+collective failures, imprudences committed under the fire of the enemy,
+divisions ill-engaged, rash deployments, precipitate retreats, a
+premature waste of men, and, finally, the inadequacy of certain of our
+troops and their leaders, both as regards the use of infantry and
+artillery.
+
+In consequence of these lapses the enemy, turning to account the
+difficult terrain, was able to secure the maximum of profit from the
+advantages which the superiority of his subaltern complements gave him.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy crosses the Sambre.]
+
+In spite of this defeat our manoeuvre had still a chance of success, if
+our left and the British Army obtained a decisive result. This was
+unfortunately not the case. On August 22, at the cost of great losses,
+the enemy succeeded in crossing the Sambre and our left army fell back
+on the 24th upon Beaumont-Givet, being perturbed by the belief that the
+enemy was threatening its right.
+
+On the same day, (the 24th,) the British Army fell back after a German
+attack upon the Maubeuge-Valenciennes line. On the 25th and 26th its
+retreat became more hurried. After Landrecies and Le Cateau it fell back
+southward by forced marches. It could not from this time keep its hold
+until after crossing the Marne.
+
+[Sidenote: The British retreat.]
+
+The rapid retreat of the English, coinciding with the defeat sustained
+in Belgian Luxembourg, allowed the enemy to cross the Meuse and to
+accelerate, by fortifying it, the action of his right.
+
+The situation at this moment may be thus summed up: Either our frontier
+had to be defended on the spot under conditions which the British
+retreat rendered extremely perilous, or we had to execute a strategic
+retirement which, while delivering up to the enemy a part of the
+national soil, would permit us, on the other hand, to resume the
+offensive at our own time with a favorable disposition of troops, still
+intact, which we had at our command. The General in Chief determined on
+the second alternative.
+
+[Sidenote: New offensive planned.]
+
+Henceforward the French command devoted its efforts to preparing the
+offensive. To this end three conditions had to be fulfilled:
+
+1. The retreat had to be carried out in order under a succession of
+counter-attacks which would keep the enemy busy.
+
+2. The extreme point of this retreat must be fixed in such a way that
+the different armies should reach it simultaneously, ready at the moment
+of occupying it to resume the offensive all together.
+
+3. Every circumstance permitting of a resumption of the offensive before
+this point should be reached must be utilized by the whole of our forces
+and the British forces.
+
+[Sidenote: Counter-attacks.]
+
+The counter-attacks, executed during the retreat, were brilliant and
+often fruitful. On August 20 we successfully attacked St. Quentin to
+disengage the British Army. Two other corps and a reserve division
+engaged the Prussian Guard and the Tenth German Army Corps, which was
+debouching from Guise. By the end of the day, after various
+fluctuations, the enemy was thrown back on the Oise and the British
+front was freed.
+
+On August 27 we had also succeeded in throwing back upon the Meuse the
+enemy, who was endeavoring to gain a foothold on the left bank. Our
+successes continued on the 28th in the woods of Marfee and of Jaulnay.
+Thanks to them we were able, in accordance with the orders of the
+General in Chief, to fall back on the Buzancy-Le Chesne-Bouvellemont
+line.
+
+Further to the right another army took part in the same movement and
+carried out successful attacks on August 25 on the Othain and in the
+region of Spincourt.
+
+[Sidenote: Recrossing the Meuse.]
+
+On the 26th these different units recrossed the Meuse without being
+disturbed and were able to join in the action of our centre. Our armies
+were, therefore, again intact and available for the offensive.
+
+On August 26 a new army composed of two army corps, five reserve
+divisions, and a Moorish brigade was constituted. This army was to
+assemble in the region of Amiens between August 27 and September 1 and
+take the offensive against the German right, uniting its action with
+that of the British Army, operating on the line of Ham-Bray-sur-Somme.
+
+[Sidenote: The retreat continues.]
+
+The hope of resuming the offensive was from this moment rendered vain by
+the rapidity of the march of the German right wing. This rapidity had
+two consequences, which we had to parry before thinking of advancing. On
+the one hand, our new army had not time to complete its detraining, and,
+on the other hand, the British Army, forced back further by the enemy,
+uncovered on August 31 our left flank. Our line, thus modified,
+contained waves which had to be redressed before we could pass to the
+offensive.
+
+To understand this it is sufficient to consider the situation created by
+the quick advance of the enemy on the evening of September 2.
+
+A corps of cavalry had crossed the Oise and advanced as far as
+Chateau-Thierry. The First Army, (General von Kluck,) comprising four
+active army corps and a reserve corps, had passed Compiegne.
+
+The Second Army, (General von Buelow,) with three active army corps and
+two reserve corps, was reaching the Laon region.
+
+The Third Army, (General von Hausen,) with two active army corps and a
+reserve corps, had crossed the Aisne between the Chateau Porcien and
+Attigny.
+
+[Sidenote: The German armies.]
+
+More to the east the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Armies, namely,
+twelve army corps, four reserve corps, and numerous Ersatz formations,
+were in contact with our troops, the Fourth and Fifth Armies between
+Vouziers and Verdun and the others in the positions which have been
+indicated above, from Verdun to the Vosges.
+
+[Sidenote: The left in peril.]
+
+It will, therefore, be seen that our left, if we accepted battle, might
+be in great peril through the British forces and the new French Army,
+operating more to the westward, having given way.
+
+A defeat in these conditions would have cut off our armies from Paris
+and from the British forces and at the same time from the new army which
+had been constituted to the left of the English. We should thus be
+running the risk of losing by a single stroke the advantage of the
+assistance which Russia later on was to furnish.
+
+General Joffre chose resolutely for the solution which disposed of these
+risks, that is to say, for postponing the offensive and the continuance
+of the retreat. In this way he remained on ground which he had chosen.
+He waited only until he could engage in better conditions.
+
+[Sidenote: The limit of the retreat.]
+
+In consequence, on September 1, he fixed as an extreme limit for the
+movement of retreat, which was still going on, the line of
+Bray-sur-Seine, Nogent-sur-Seine, Arcis-sur-Aube, Vitry-le-Francois, and
+the region to the north of Bar-le-Duc. This line might be reached if the
+troops were compelled to go back so far. They would attack before
+reaching it, as soon as there was a possibility of bringing about an
+offensive disposition, permitting the co-operation of the whole of our
+forces.
+
+On September 5 it appeared that this desired situation existed.
+
+The First German Army, carrying audacity to temerity, had continued its
+endeavor to envelop our left, had crossed the Grand Morin, and reached
+the region of Chauffry, to the north of Rebaix and of Esternay. It aimed
+then at cutting our armies off from Paris, in order to begin the
+investment of the capital.
+
+[Sidenote: The German lines.]
+
+The Second Army had its head on the line Champaubert, Etoges, Bergeres,
+and Vertus.
+
+The Third and Fourth Armies reached to Chalons-sur-Marne and
+Bussy-le-Repos. The Fifth Army was advancing on one side and the other
+from the Argonne as far as Triacourt-les-Islettes and Juivecourt. The
+Sixth and Seventh Armies were attacking more to the east.
+
+But--and here is a capital difference between the situation of September
+5 and that of September 2--the envelopment of our left was no longer
+possible.
+
+In the first place, our left army had been able to occupy the line of
+Sezanne, Villers-St. Georges and Courchamps. Furthermore, the British
+forces, gathered between the Seine and the Marne, flanked on their left
+by the newly created army, were closely connected with the rest of our
+forces.
+
+[Sidenote: Allies' armies ready.]
+
+This was precisely the disposition which the General in Chief had wished
+to see achieved. On the 4th he decided to take advantage of it, and
+ordered all the armies to hold themselves ready. He had taken from his
+right two new army corps, two divisions of infantry, and two divisions
+of cavalry, which were distributed between his left and his centre.
+
+On the evening of the 5th he addressed to all the commanders of armies a
+message ordering them to attack.
+
+[Sidenote: Joffre orders the advance.]
+
+"The hour has come," he wrote, "to advance at all costs, and to die
+where you stand rather than give way."
+
+If one examines on the map the respective positions of the German and
+French armies on September 6 as previously described, it will be seen
+that by his inflection toward Meaux and Coulommiers General von Kluck
+was exposing his right to the offensive action of our left. This is the
+starting point of the victory of the Marne.
+
+[Sidenote: The Battle of the Marne.]
+
+On the evening of September 5 our left army had reached the front
+Penchard-Saint-Soutlet-Ver. On the 6th and 7th it continued its
+attacks vigorously with the Ourcq as objective. On the evening of
+the 7th it was some kilometers from the Ourcq, on the front
+Chambry-Marcilly-Lisieux-Acy-en-Multien. On the 8th, the Germans, who
+had in great haste reinforced their right by bringing their Second and
+Fourth Army Corps back to the north, obtained some successes by attacks
+of extreme violence. They occupied Betz, Thury-en-Valois, and
+Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. But in spite of this pressure our troops held
+their ground well. In a brilliant action they took three standards, and,
+being reinforced, prepared a new attack for the 10th. At the moment that
+this attack was about to begin the enemy was already in retreat toward
+the north. The attack became a pursuit, and on the 12th we established
+ourselves on the Aisne.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy left exposed.]
+
+Why did the German forces which were confronting us and on the evening
+before attacking so furiously retreat on the morning of the 10th?
+Because in bringing back on the 6th several army corps from the south to
+the north to face our left the enemy had exposed his left to the attacks
+of the British Army, which had immediately faced around toward the
+north, and to those of our armies which were prolonging the English
+lines to the right. This is what the French command had sought to bring
+about. This is what happened on September 8 and allowed the development
+and rehabilitation which it was to effect.
+
+[Sidenote: The part of the British.]
+
+On the 6th the British Army had set out from the line Rozcy-Lagny and
+had that evening reached the southward bank of the Grand Morin. On the
+7th and 8th it continued its march, and on the 9th had debouched to the
+north of the Marne below Chateau-Thierry, taking in flank the German
+forces which on that day were opposing, on the Ourcq, our left army.
+Then it was that these forces began to retreat, while the British Army,
+going in pursuit and capturing seven guns and many prisoners, reached
+the Aisne between Soissons and Longueval.
+
+[Sidenote: The role of the French army.]
+
+The role of the French Army, which was operating to the right of the
+British Army, was threefold. It had to support the British attacking on
+its left. It had on its right to support our centre, which from
+September 7 had been subjected to a German attack of great violence.
+Finally, its mission was to throw back the three active army corps and
+the reserve corps which faced it.
+
+On the 7th it made a leap forward, and on the following days reached and
+crossed the Marne, seizing, after desperate fighting, guns, howitzers,
+mitrailleuses, and 1,300,000 cartridges. On the 12th it established
+itself on the north edge of the Montagne-de-Reime in contact with our
+centre, which for its part had just forced the enemy to retreat in
+haste.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack on the French centre.]
+
+Our centre consisted of a new army created on August 29 and of one of
+those which at the beginning of the campaign had been engaged in Belgian
+Luxembourg. The first had retreated on August 29 to September 5 from the
+Aisne to the north of the Marne and occupied the general front
+Sezanne-Mailly.
+
+The second, more to the east, had drawn back to the south of the line
+Humbauville-Chateau-Beauchamp-Bignicourt-Blesmes-Maurupt-le-Montoy.
+
+[Sidenote: A further retreat.]
+
+The enemy, in view of his right being arrested and the defeat of his
+enveloping movement, made a desperate effort from the 7th to the 10th to
+pierce our centre to the west and to the east of Fere-Champenoise. On
+the 8th he succeeded in forcing back the right of our new army, which
+retired as far as Gouragancon. On the 9th, at 6 o'clock in the morning,
+there was a further retreat to the south of that village, while on the
+left the other army corps also had to go back to the line
+Allemant-Connantre.
+
+[Sidenote: Foch out-man[oe]uvres Germans.]
+
+Despite this retreat the General commanding the army ordered a general
+offensive for the same day. With the Morocco Division, whose behavior
+was heroic, he met a furious assault of the Germans on his left toward
+the marshes of Saint Gond. Then with the division which had just
+victoriously overcome the attacks of the enemy to the north of Sezanne,
+and with the whole of his left army corps, he made a flanking attack in
+the evening of the 9th upon the German forces, and notably the guard,
+which had thrown back his right army corps. The enemy, taken by surprise
+by this bold man[oe]uvre, did not resist, and beat a hasty retreat.
+
+[Sidenote: Centre armies established.]
+
+On the 11th we crossed the Marne between Tours-sur-Marne and Sarry,
+driving the Germans in front of us in disorder. On the 12th we were in
+contact with the enemy to the north of the Camp de Chalons. Our other
+army of the centre, acting on the right of the one just referred to, had
+been intrusted with the mission during the 7th, 8th, and 9th of
+disengaging its neighbor, and it was only on the 10th that, being
+reinforced by an army corps from the east, it was able to make its
+action effectively felt. On the 11th the Germans retired. But,
+perceiving their danger, they fought desperately, with enormous
+expenditure of projectiles, behind strong intrenchments. On the 12th the
+result had none the less been attained, and our two centre armies were
+solidly established on the ground gained.
+
+To the right of these two armies were three others. They had orders to
+cover themselves to the north and to debouch toward the west on the
+flank of the enemy, which was operating to the west of the Argonne. But
+a wide interval in which the Germans were in force separated them from
+our centre. The attack took place, nevertheless, with very brilliant
+success for our artillery, which destroyed eleven batteries of the
+Sixteenth German Army Corps.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans retreat on the right.]
+
+On the 10th inst. the Eighth and Fifteenth German Army Corps
+counter-attacked, but were repulsed. On the 11th our progress continued
+with new successes, and on the 12th we were able to face round toward
+the north in expectation of the near and inevitable retreat of the
+enemy, which, in fact, took place from the 13th.
+
+The withdrawal of the mass of the German force involved also that of the
+left. From the 12th onward the forces of the enemy operating between
+Nancy and the Vosges retreated in a hurry before our two armies of the
+East, which immediately occupied the positions that the enemy had
+evacuated. The offensive of our right had thus prepared and consolidated
+in the most useful way the result secured by our left and our centre.
+
+Such was this seven days' battle, in which more than two millions of men
+were engaged. Each army gained ground step by step, opening the road to
+its neighbor, supported at once by it, taking in flank the adversary
+which the day before it had attacked in front, the efforts of one
+articulating closely with those of the other, a perfect unity of
+intention and method animating the supreme command.
+
+[Sidenote: Meaning of the victory.]
+
+To give this victory all its meaning it is necessary to add that it was
+gained by troops which for two weeks had been retreating, and which,
+when the order for the offensive was given, were found to be as ardent
+as on the first day. It has also to be said that these troops had to
+meet the whole German army, and that from the time they marched forward
+they never again fell back. Under their pressure the German retreat at
+certain times had the appearance of a rout.
+
+[Sidenote: Numbers of German prisoners.]
+
+In spite of the fatigue of our men, in spite of the power of the German
+heavy artillery, we took colors, guns, mitrailleuses, shells, more than
+a million cartridges, and thousands of prisoners. A German corps lost
+almost the whole of its artillery, which, from information brought by
+our airmen, was destroyed by our guns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The next objective is the Channel ports.]
+
+After the failure of the German drive against Paris, whose capture was
+the first objective in the plan of campaign of the German General Staff,
+preparations were made to carry out the plans for the second objective,
+the capture of the Channel seaports, and the control of the coasts. The
+Allied commanders were quite aware of this purpose, and made plans to
+circumvent it. Then followed the famous Race for the Channel, which is
+described by official French observers in the pages that follow.
+
+
+
+
+THE RACE FOR THE CHANNEL
+
+FRENCH OFFICIAL ACCOUNT
+
+
+As early as September 11 the Commander in Chief had directed our left
+army to have as important forces as possible on the right bank of the
+Oise. On September 17 he made that instruction more precise by ordering
+"a mass to be constituted on the left wing of our disposition, capable
+of coping with the outflanking movement of the enemy." Everything led us
+to expect that flanking movement, for the Germans are lacking in
+invention. Indeed, their effort at that time tended to a renewal of
+their manoeuvre of August. In the parallel race the opponents were bound
+in the end to be stopped only by the sea; that is what happened about
+October 20.
+
+[Sidenote: Allies in the race to the sea.]
+
+The Germans had an advantage over us, which is obvious from a glance at
+the map--the concentric form of their front, which shortened the length
+of their transports. In spite of this initial inferiority we arrived in
+time.
+
+From the middle of September to the last week in October fighting went
+on continually to the north of the Oise, but all the time we were
+fighting we were slipping northward. On the German side this movement
+brought into line more than eighteen new army corps (twelve active army
+corps, six reserve corps, four cavalry corps). On our side it ended in
+the constitution of three fresh armies on our left and in the transport
+into the same district of the British Army and the Belgian Army from
+Antwerp.
+
+[Sidenote: Resistance in Battle of Flanders.]
+
+For the conception and realization of this fresh and extended
+disposition the French command, in the first place, had to reduce to a
+minimum the needs for effectives of our armies to the east of the Oise,
+and afterwards to utilize to the utmost our means of transport. It
+succeeded in this, and when, at the end of October, the battle of
+Flanders opened, when the Germans, having completed the concentration of
+their forces, attempted with fierce energy to turn or to pierce our
+left, they flung themselves upon a resistance which inflicted upon them
+a complete defeat.
+
+The movement began on our side only with the resources of the army which
+had held the left of our front during the battle of the Marne,
+reinforced on September 15 by one army corps.
+
+This reinforcement, not being sufficient to hold the enemy's offensive
+(district of Vaudelincourt-Mouchy-Uaugy), a fresh army was transported
+more to the left, with the task "of acting against the German right wing
+in order to disengage its neighbor, * * * while preserving a flanking
+direction in its march in relation to the fresh units that the enemy
+might be able to put into line."
+
+[Sidenote: Reinforcements for the First Army.]
+
+To cover the detrainments of this fresh army in the district
+Clermont-Beauvais-Boix a cavalry corps and four territorial divisions
+were ordered to establish themselves on both banks of the Somme. In the
+wooded hills, however, which extend between the Oise and Lassigny the
+enemy displayed increasing activity. Nevertheless, the order still
+further to broaden the movement toward the left was maintained, while
+the territorial divisions were to move toward Bethune and Aubigny. The
+march to the sea went on.
+
+[Sidenote: Alternate reverse and success.]
+
+From the 21st to the 26th all our forces were engaged in the district
+Lassigny-Roye-Peronne, with alternations of reverse and success.
+
+It was the first act of the great struggle which was to spread as it
+went on. On the 26th the whole of the Sixth German Army was deployed
+against us. We retained all our positions, but we could do no more;
+consequently there was still the risk that the enemy, by means of a
+fresh afflux of forces, might succeed in turning us.
+
+Once more reinforcements, two army corps, were directed no longer on
+Beauvais, but toward Amiens. The front was then again to extend. A fresh
+army was constituted more to the north.
+
+From September 30 onward we could not but observe that the enemy,
+already strongly posted on the plateau of Thiepval, was continually
+slipping his forces from south to north, and everywhere confronting us
+with remarkable energy.
+
+[Sidenote: Cavalry operations.]
+
+Accordingly, on October 1 two cavalry corps were directed to make a leap
+forward and, operating on both flanks of the Scarpe, to put themselves
+in touch with the garrison of Dunkirk, which, on its side, had pushed
+forward as far as Douai.
+
+But on October 2 and 3 the bulk of our fresh army was very strongly
+attacked in the district of Arras and Lens. Confronting it were two
+corps of cavalry, the guards, four active army corps, and two reserve
+corps. A fresh army corps was immediately transported and detrained in
+the Lille district.
+
+But once more the attacks became more pressing, and on October 4 it was
+a question whether, in view of the enemy's activity both west of the
+Oise and south of the Somme, and also further to the north, a retreat
+would not have to be made. General Joffre resolutely put this
+hypothesis aside and ordered the offensive to be resumed with the
+reinforcements that had arrived. It was, however, clear that, despite
+the efforts of all, our front, extended to the sea as it was by a mere
+ribbon of troops, did not possess the solidity to enable it to resist
+with complete safety a German attack, the violence of which could well
+be foreseen.
+
+[Sidenote: Transport of the British Army.]
+
+In the Arras district the position was fairly good. But between the Oise
+and Arras we were holding our own only with difficulty. Finally, to the
+north, on the Lille-Estaires-Merville-Hazebrouck-Cassel front, our
+cavalry and our territorials had their work cut out against eight
+divisions of German cavalry, with very strong infantry supports. It was
+at this moment that the transport of the British Army to the northern
+theatre of operations began.
+
+[Sidenote: British Army taken from the Aisne.]
+
+Field Marshal French had, as early as the end of September, expressed
+the wish to see his army resume its initial place on the left of the
+allied armies. He explained this wish on the ground of the greater
+facility of which his communications would have the advantage in this
+new position, and also of the impending arrival of two divisions of
+infantry from home and of two infantry divisions and a cavalry division
+from India, which would be able to deploy more easily on that terrain.
+In spite of the difficulties which such a removal involved, owing to the
+intensive use of the railways by our own units, General Joffre decided
+at the beginning of October to meet the Field Marshal's wishes and to
+have the British Army removed from the Aisne.
+
+It was clearly specified that on the northern terrain the British Army
+should co-operate to the same end as ourselves, the stopping of the
+German right. In other terms, the British Army was to prolong the front
+of the general disposition without a break, attacking as soon as
+possible, and at the same time seeking touch with the Belgian Army.
+
+But the detraining took longer than had been expected, and it was not
+possible to attack the Germans during the time when they had only
+cavalry in the Lille district and further to the north.
+
+[Sidenote: Wearied Belgian troops.]
+
+There remained the Belgian Army. On leaving Antwerp on October 9 the
+Belgian Army, which was covered by 8,000 British bluejackets and 6,000
+French bluejackets, at first intended to retire as far as to the north
+of Calais, but afterwards determined to make a stand in Belgian
+territory. Unfortunately, the condition of the Belgian troops, exhausted
+by a struggle of more than three months, did not allow any immediate
+hopes to be based upon them. This situation weighed on our plans and
+delayed their execution.
+
+On the 16th we made progress to the east of Ypres. On the 18th our
+cavalry even reached Roulers and Cortemark. But it was now evident that,
+in view of the continual reinforcing of the German right, our left was
+not capable of maintaining the advantages obtained during the previous
+few days. To attain our end and make our front inviolable a fresh effort
+was necessary. That effort was immediately made by the dispatch to the
+north of the Lys of considerable French forces, which formed the French
+Army of Belgium.
+
+The French Army of Belgium consisted, to begin with, of two territorial
+divisions, four divisions of cavalry, and a naval brigade. Directly
+after its constitution it was strengthened by elements from other points
+on the front whose arrival extended from October 27 to November 11.
+These reinforcements were equivalent altogether in value to five army
+corps, a division of cavalry, a territorial division, and sixteen
+regiments of cavalry, plus sixty pieces of heavy artillery.
+
+Thus was completed the strategic manoeuvre defined by the instructions
+of the General in Chief on September 11 and developed during the five
+following weeks with the ampleness we have just seen. The movements of
+troops carried out during this period were methodically combined with
+the pursuit of operations, both defensive and offensive, from the Oise
+to the North Sea.
+
+[Sidenote: Five armies co-ordinated.]
+
+On October 22 our left, bounded six weeks earlier by the Noyon district,
+rested on Nieuport, thanks to the successive deployment of five fresh
+armies--three French armies, the British Army, and the Belgian Army.
+
+Thus the co-ordination decided upon by the General in Chief attained its
+end. The barrier was established. It remained to maintain it against the
+enemy's offensive. That was the object and the result of the battle of
+Flanders, October 22 to November 15.
+
+The German attack in Flanders was conducted strategically and tactically
+with remarkable energy. The complete and indisputable defeat in which it
+resulted is therefore significant.
+
+The forces of which the enemy disposed for this operation between the
+sea and the Lys comprised:
+
+[Sidenote: German forces between the sea and the Lys.]
+
+(1) The entire Fourth Army commanded by the Duke of Wuerttemberg,
+consisting of one naval division, one division of Ersatz Reserve, (men
+who had received no training before the war,) which was liberated by the
+fall of Antwerp; the Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-sixth and
+Twenty-seventh Reserve Corps, and the Forty-eighth Division belonging to
+the Twenty-fourth Reserve Corps.
+
+(2) A portion of another army under General von Fabeck, consisting of
+the Fifteenth Corps, two Bavarian corps and three (unspecified)
+divisions.
+
+(3) Part of the Sixth Army under the command of the Crown Prince of
+Bavaria. This army, more than a third of which took part in the battle
+of Flanders, comprised the Nineteenth Army Corps, portions of the
+Thirteenth Corps and the Eighteenth Reserve Corps, the Seventh and
+Fourteenth Corps, the First Bavarian Reserve Corps, the Guards, and the
+Fourth Army Corps.
+
+(4) Four highly mobile cavalry corps prepared and supported the action
+of the troops enumerated above. Everything possible had been done to
+fortify the "morale" of the troops. At the beginning of October the
+Crown Prince of Bavaria in a proclamation had exhorted his soldiers "to
+make the decisive effort against the French left wing," and "to settle
+thus the fate of the great battle which has lasted for weeks."
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of thrusts in Flanders.]
+
+[Sidenote: German plan in Flanders.]
+
+On October 28, Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria declared in an army order
+that his troops "had just been fighting under very difficult
+conditions," and he added: "It is our business now not to let the
+struggle with our most detested enemy drag on longer * * * The decisive
+blow is still to be struck." On October 30, General von Deimling,
+commanding the Fifteenth Army Corps (belonging to General von Fabeck's
+command), issued an order declaring that "the thrust against Ypres will
+be of decisive importance." It should be noted also that the Emperor
+proceeded in person to Thielt and Courtrai to exalt by his presence the
+ardor of his troops. Finally, at the close of October, the entire German
+press incessantly proclaimed the importance of the "Battle of Calais."
+It is superfluous to add that events in Poland explain in a large
+measure the passionate resolve of the German General Staff to obtain a
+decision in the Western theatre of operations at all costs. This
+decision would be obtained if our left were pierced or driven in. To
+reach Calais, that is, to break our left; to carry Ypres, that is, to
+cut it in half; through both points to menace the communications and
+supplies of the British expeditionary corps, perhaps even to threaten
+Britain in her island--such was the German plan in the Battle of
+Flanders. It was a plan that could not be executed.
+
+[Sidenote: Dunkirk the first objective.]
+
+The enemy, who had at his disposal a considerable quantity of heavy
+artillery, directed his efforts at first upon the coast and the country
+to the north of Dixmude. His objective was manifestly the capture of
+Dunkirk, then of Calais and Boulogne, and this objective he pursued
+until November 1.
+
+[Sidenote: Ramscapelle retaken.]
+
+[Sidenote: Allies win the Battle of Calais.]
+
+On October 23 the Belgians along the railway line from Nieuport to
+Dixmude were strengthened by a French division. Dixmude was occupied by
+our marines (fusiliers marins). During the subsequent day our forces
+along the railway developed a significant resistance against an enemy
+superior in number and backed by heavy artillery. On the 29th the
+inundations effected between the canal and the railway line spread along
+our front. On the 30th we recaptured Ramscapelle, the only point on the
+railway which Belgians had lost. On the 1st and 2d of November the enemy
+bombarded Furnes, but began to show signs of weariness. On the 2d he
+evacuated the ground between the Yser and the railway, abandoning
+cannon, dead and wounded. On the 3d our troops were able to re-enter the
+Dixmude district. The success achieved by the enemy at Dixmude at this
+juncture was without fruit. They succeeded in taking the town. They
+could not debouch from it. The coastal attack had thus proved a total
+failure. Since then it has never been renewed. The Battle of Calais, so
+noisily announced by the German press, amounted to a decided reverse for
+the Germans.
+
+The enemy had now begun an attack more important than its predecessor,
+in view of the numbers engaged in it. This attack was intended as a
+renewal to the south of the effort which had just been shattered in the
+north. Instead of turning our flank on the coast, it was now sought to
+drive in the right of our northern army under the shock of powerful
+masses. This was the Battle of Ypres.
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of the Ypres position.]
+
+[Sidenote: British cavalry a connecting link.]
+
+In order to understand this long, desperate, and furious battle we must
+hark back a few days in point of time. At the moment when our cavalry
+reached Roulers and Cortemark (October 28) our territorial divisions
+from Dunkirk, under General Biden, had occupied and organized a
+defensive position at Ypres. It was a point d'appui, enabling us to
+prepare and maintain our connections with the Belgian Army. From October
+23 two British and French army corps were in occupation of this
+position, which was to be the base of their forward march in the
+direction of Roulers-Menin. The delays already explained and the
+strength of the forces brought up by the enemy soon brought to a
+standstill our progress along the line Poelcapelle, Paschendaele,
+Zandvorde, and Gheluvelt. But in spite of the stoppage here, Ypres was
+solidly covered, and the connections of all the allied forces were
+established. Against the line thus formed the German attack was hurled
+from October 25 to November 13, to the north, the east, and the south of
+Ypres. From October 26 on the attacks were renewed daily with
+extraordinary violence, obliging us to employ our reinforcements at the
+most threatened points as soon as they came up. Thus, on October 31, we
+were obliged to send supports to the British cavalry, then to the two
+British corps between which the cavalry formed the connecting link, and
+finally to intercalate between these two corps a force equivalent to two
+army corps. Between October 30 and November 6 Ypres was several times in
+danger. The British lost Zandvorde, Gheluvelt, Messines, and Wytschaete.
+The front of the Allies, thus contracted, was all the more difficult to
+defend; but defended it was without a recoil.
+
+[Sidenote: French reinforcements.]
+
+The arrival of three French divisions in our line enabled us to resume
+from the 4th to the 8th a vigorous offensive. On the 10th and 11th this
+offensive, brought up against fresh and sharper German attacks, was
+checked. Before it could be renewed the arrival of fresh reinforcements
+had to be awaited, which were dispatched to the north on November 12. By
+the 14th our troops had again begun to progress, barring the road to
+Ypres against the German attacks, and inflicting on the enemy, who
+advanced in massed formation, losses which were especially terrible in
+consequence of the fact that the French artillery had crowded nearly 300
+guns on to these few kilometers of front.
+
+Thus the main mass of the Germans sustained the same defeat as the
+detachments operating further to the north along the coast. The support
+which, according to the idea of the German General Staff, the attack on
+Ypres was to render to the coastal attack, was as futile as that attack
+itself had been.
+
+[Sidenote: Losses of the enemy.]
+
+During the second half of November the enemy, exhausted and having lost
+in the Battle of Ypres alone more than 150,000 men, did not attempt to
+renew his effort, but confined himself to an intermittent cannonade. We,
+on the contrary, achieved appreciable progress to the north and south
+of Ypres, and insured definitely by a powerful defensive organization of
+the position the inviolability of our front.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The war in Belgium.]
+
+[Sidenote: Siege of Antwerp.]
+
+[Sidenote: Belgian troops retreat to Ostend.]
+
+[Sidenote: The territory left to the Belgians.]
+
+We have seen that, with the fall of Liege the German armies swept
+through Belgium on their way to Paris. Brussels was abandoned as the
+capital, and the Government moved hastily to Antwerp, where a portion of
+the Belgian army also gathered to defend the city. The remainder of the
+Belgian forces, under the leadership of their gallant King, opposed as
+stoutly as their numbers would permit the advance of the Germans.
+Battles were fought at Alost and Termonde in which the Germans were, for
+the time, repulsed, but their ever-increasing reinforcements enabled
+them to advance despite the efforts of the Belgians to check them. Ghent
+was captured on September 5 and the Belgians, in an effort to stay the
+German advance on Antwerp, opened the dikes and let in the waters of the
+North Sea. Termonde fell on September 13, and seven days later the
+German armies began the siege of Antwerp. The military authorities in
+command of the city had taken whatever measures were possible for
+defense. A body of British marines was hurried to the beleaguered city
+and preparations were made for a long siege. The Germans brought up guns
+of heavy caliber, with which they bombarded the city at long range.
+After a brave defense of two weeks, during which the inhabitants endured
+many hardships, it was plain that further resistance was useless, and
+the city was surrendered on October 10. The Belgian troops in the city,
+and many of the noncombatants escaped. The Belgian troops retreated to
+Ostend, which they reached on October 11 and 12, after having been
+greatly harassed by the pursuing Germans. On the 13th, Ostend was
+evacuated, and was occupied by the Germans, and Bruges on the following
+day. The German forces now controlled the whole of Belgium, with the
+exception of the northwest corner, north of Ypres, to the coast of the
+Channel. This little slip of territory they held throughout the entire
+war, and at what a cost! But the heroic defense of this territory by the
+Belgians saved the French coast cities and prevented the Germans from
+breaking through the line which extended now from the North Sea to
+Belgium.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST DITCH IN BELGIUM
+
+ARNO DOSCH
+
+Copyright, World's Work, January, 1915.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Yser the Belgian's last ditch.]
+
+A little piece of the Low Countries, so small I walked across it in two
+hours, was all that remained of Belgium in the last days of October. A
+tide-water stream, the Yser, ebbed and flowed through the sunken fields,
+and there King Albert with his remnant of an army stopped the German
+military machine in its advance on Calais. If he and his forty thousand
+men had been crushed back ten miles farther they would have been
+fighting on French soil. The Yser was the last ditch in Belgium.
+
+The Belgians were able to hold that mere strip of land against more men
+and better artillery because they had determined to die there. Some of
+those who had not yet paid the price of death told me. They were not
+tragic about it. There was no display of heroics. They said it
+seriously, but they smiled a little, too, over their wine glasses, and
+the next morning they were back in the firing-line.
+
+I counted on my American passport and my _permit de sejour_ in Paris
+seeing me through the zone of the fighting, and they did. At the station
+at Dunkirk, when I admitted I had no _laisser passer_, an obliging
+gendarme led me to his commander, and he placed his visee on my passport
+without question. He asked me whether I was a correspondent, and I
+confessed to it, but it seemed only to facilitate the affair. Earlier
+experiences had made me feel that the French gendarmes were my natural
+enemies, but I have had a kindlier regard for them since.
+
+[Sidenote: Troop trains.]
+
+The train I was on had ten cars full of French and Belgian soldiers. The
+Belgians had all been recently re-equipped. On other troop trains which
+passed us going forward there were many more Belgian soldiers, some of
+whom I had seen only a few hours earlier in the streets of Calais
+without rifles. As their trains passed now I could see them studying the
+mechanism and fondling their new firearms.
+
+Coming in through the suburbs of Dunkirk we passed hundreds of children
+perched on the fences singing the Marseillaise. Nor were their voices
+flat and colorless like most school children's. They felt every word
+they sang, and they put their little hearts into it. Looking back along
+the side of the cars at the faces of soldiers leaning out, I could see
+they were touched by the faith of the children.
+
+[Sidenote: In Dunkirk.]
+
+As I rattled along on the cobbles of Dunkirk half an hour later I heard
+an explosion with a note unfamiliar to me. It sounded close, too, but it
+did not seem to bother the people of the street. A few children ran
+behind their mothers' skirts and a young girl hurried from the middle of
+the street to the protection of an archway, but that was all.
+
+Standing up in the fiacre I could see a thin smoke about three hundred
+feet away in a garden in the direction from which the explosion came,
+and high in the evening sky I could barely make out an aeroplane. "A
+German bomb?" I asked the driver in some excitement.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied, cracking his whip, "we usually get three or four
+every afternoon about this time, but they have not hurt any one."
+
+Dunkirk that night answered the description of what a threatened town
+which was not afraid should look like. It had none of the depressing
+atmosphere of Calais. All the refugees and the wounded were passed on
+to a safer place. It was full of French, English, and Belgian soldiers,
+with a scattering of sailors and breezy officers from both the French
+and English navies. They kept the waiters in the cafes on the run, and
+there was only an occasional bandage showing from under a cap or around
+a hand to indicate these men were engaged in any more serious business
+than a man[oe]uvre.
+
+[Sidenote: Armored motor-car.]
+
+In the street, however, in front of the statue of Jean Bart, an armored
+Belgian motor-car was standing. It was built with a turret where the
+tonneau usually is and it was covered with thick sheet steel right down
+to the ground. Just in front of the driver was a slit with a lip
+extending over it, giving it somewhat the effect of the casque belonging
+to an ancient suit of armor. That was the only opening except the one
+for the barrel of the rapid-fire gun in the turret. The armor was dented
+in a dozen places where bullets had glanced off, but it had only been
+penetrated at one spot, about six inches from the muzzle of the gun.
+From the soldier at the steering gear I learned that that bullet had
+passed over the shoulder of the man in the turret.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment of Nieuport.]
+
+Twenty-four hours later, at Nieuport, when the German shells seemed to
+be falling in every street and on every house, I saw this car again,
+going forward at not less than forty miles an hour. The turret was being
+swung to bring the gun-muzzle forward, as if the gunner were expecting
+to go into action almost immediately. As the last of the Belgian
+trenches were just the other side of the town, I have no doubt that he
+did.
+
+[Sidenote: A walk to the firing line.]
+
+Getting out of Dunkirk was rather more of a problem than going in. To
+obtain permission to ride toward the Belgian line in any kind of
+conveyance was an elaborate performance, and quite properly so, as I
+soon learned. There were preparations for defence going on there which
+should not have been publicly known. The country was full of spies. Four
+suspects had been picked up on the boat coming from Folkestone. If I had
+realized what I was to see in the next few miles I would not have
+attempted what I did. But, as I was anxious to get on and the
+firing-line was only twenty miles away, I decided to walk.
+
+A French hat and a French suit of clothes, I think, were alone
+responsible for my success in passing through the city gate. Two
+military automobiles were stopped and forced to show their credentials,
+but I strolled through unmolested. Once outside, the reservists guarding
+the various barricades let me pass as soon as I showed them my passport
+vised in Dunkirk. I was stopped many times, too, trying each time not to
+give an appearance of too great interest in the works of defence being
+built all around me.
+
+[Sidenote: Sand-dune barricades.]
+
+Even though this cannot be published for some time I do not feel free to
+tell what these defences were. I have no doubt there are complete
+descriptions of these works in the hands of the German army, their spy
+system is so thorough, but I would not care to have any military secrets
+escape through anything I write. I think I can go so far as to say,
+though, that I received a liberal education in how to barricade
+sand-dunes and low-lying fields.
+
+Ten miles out of Dunkirk I was surprised to see a civilian on a bicycle,
+as civilians were no longer permitted to go near the theatre of war on
+bicycles, a precaution taken against spies. As he approached I
+recognized Mr. J. Obels, the Belgian correspondent of the Chicago _Daily
+News_, whom I had last seen under arrest near Brussels when the German
+army first passed through Belgium. He told me he had been kept in prison
+seventeen days by the German military governor of Brussels, but, once
+released, was given every possible kind of pass. I was relieved to see
+him alive and free.
+
+As Obels left me to continue his journey to Dunkirk and on to London to
+deliver his own "copy," he advised me to go directly to Furnes, the most
+considerable town in what was left of Belgium, and have my passport
+vised again. So I continued down the long, flat highway, bordered on
+both sides by sunken fields, toward the cannonading I could now hear
+ahead. The road had been fairly full of automobiles, motor-trucks,
+motorcycles, and bicycles over its whole length, but it became crowded
+now with the addition of a long string of Parisian motor-buses taking
+several infantry regiments forward. A whole artillery division of yellow
+French "Schneiders" also took up its share of the wide road, and at the
+barricades there were traffic blockades lasting at times for ten
+minutes.
+
+[Sidenote: The road to Furnes.]
+
+All the way from Dunkirk I had been struck by the character of the land.
+As I approached Furnes, the dykes were being opened and half the fields
+were already inundated. It seemed a poor country for military
+operations. There were at most three highways, all defended. They could
+only be taken at a price no army could afford, and any departure from
+them meant being mired in the heavy fields, now being hastily harvested
+of a bumper crop of sugar-beets: at one place a whole French regiment in
+uniform was gathering the beets preparatory to inundation. With the
+dykes open these fields would be covered with four feet of water half
+the time. The only possible course for an army was over the sand-dunes,
+which lay a mile to the north, looking like the imitation mountains you
+see in the scenic-railways at every amusement resort in the United
+States.
+
+[Sidenote: Tommies' battles on the sand-dunes.]
+
+A reservist with whom I walked a mile or so told me Dunkirk had never
+been successfully attacked except over those sand-dunes, and the English
+and French had fought some of the bloodiest battles of history there
+against the Spanish, when they held Dunkirk. I doubt, though, that they
+were as bloody as the battle I was to see within a few hours.
+
+[Sidenote: Belgian soldiers.]
+
+The old Flemish town of Furnes had much less military precision about it
+than Dunkirk. It was on the very edge of the battle, and an occasional
+shell was dropping in the town. One exploded as I crossed the bridge and
+entered a narrow street, but it was on the far side of town, too far
+away for the soldiers halted in the street to notice. These were tired
+and dirty men, but not too tired to be courteous. They were also passing
+jokes among themselves, and laughing. By that, even if I had not known
+their uniforms, I could have told they were Belgians.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy held at the Yser.]
+
+Every street and every courtyard in Furnes was full of Belgian soldiers.
+They were resting for the day, waiting to go forward at night-fall to
+relieve the men on the firing line only five miles away. Even above the
+noises of the street I could hear the answer of their small field
+artillery to the heavy assault of the German guns. Nothing I heard the
+soldiers say, however, would have given the idea that the Belgians
+considered themselves outclassed by their enemy. They seemed superbly
+unconscious of the absurdity of their position. This was the tenth day
+they had held the Germans at the Yser, and they had done it with rifles
+and machine guns, taking punishment every minute from the big
+fieldpieces the Germans had brought against them. So far they had lost
+twelve thousand men at that ditch, but the thought of giving it up had
+evidently not even occurred to them. They could not give it up, one of
+them explained to me later, it was all they had left. There was a little
+irritation in his tone, too, as he said it, such as one might feel
+toward a child who was slow at grasping a simple fact.
+
+[Sidenote: Military automobiles and wagons.]
+
+The town square was full of military automobiles and a few provision
+wagons. I did not see any fieldpieces or machine guns. Every last one
+was right up on the firing-line. My feet were tired from walking over
+the Belgian blocks, and I held tenaciously to the sidewalk passing
+around the square, though it was mostly taken up with cafe tables and
+bay trees in boxes. At one point the tables were empty and a single
+sentry was sauntering up and down. I stopped to ask him the way to the
+_gendarmerie_, and, in the middle of giving me the directions, he came
+to attention, as a door opened behind me, and saluted.
+
+[Sidenote: Two Belgian generals.]
+
+Two men came out of the door, one rather tall, with an easy manner, and
+smartly dressed as a general in the Belgian army. The other was older,
+also a general, wearing, if anything, the more gold braid of the two.
+They entered a waiting automobile and drove off as casually as two men
+at home might leave their office for their club.
+
+Something about the first of the two men impressed me as familiar. I had
+only seen his back, but that had arrested my attention. I thought
+possibly I had seen him at the beginning of the war in Brussels, so I
+asked the sentry his name.
+
+[Sidenote: King Albert.]
+
+"That is our king, Albert," he said quite simply.
+
+During the next couple of days I saw the King of Belgium a number of
+times. He spent his nights at a small villa on the seashore at La Panne,
+a hundred yards possibly beyond the hotel where I spent mine. He passed
+through the streets as unnoticed as any one of the other Belgians who
+had retreated from Antwerp and Ghent ahead of the army, but preferred
+the chilly nights in an unheated seaside hotel in Belgium to comfort
+somewhere beyond. It seemed to be a point of courtesy on the part of the
+Belgians not to bother their king with ceremony at this trying time. I
+doubt if he cares much for ceremony, anyhow. Searching around for a
+single adjective to describe him, I should call him off-handed. His
+manner, even then, while alert, was casual. It is easy to see why the
+Belgians love him. If kings had always been as simple and direct as
+Albert, I am inclined to think democracy would have languished.
+
+[Sidenote: Luncheon at La Panne.]
+
+At La Panne, which I reached at noon on a little steam railway running
+from Furnes, I had luncheon with several Belgian soldiers and a Belgian
+in civilian clothes, who told me I would see all the fighting I was
+looking for at Nieuport, just beyond. The civilian, a tall youth with a
+blond beard, volunteered to show me the way to the beach, the shortest
+route, and ended by going all the way. He told me he was recovering from
+an "attack of Congo," which I take to be an intermittent fever. He had
+just been mustered out of the civic guard and was waiting for a uniform
+to join the army. He had the afternoon free and his Belgian sense of
+hospitality impelled him to see that the stranger was properly looked
+after.
+
+For several miles along the wide, flat beach, which stretches
+unobstructed as far as Ostend, except for the piers at Nieuport-les-Bains
+and Westende, there were Belgian soldiers bathing in the shallow water.
+Some of them, cavalrymen, were riding naked into the deeper water, and
+this, mind you, was late October. They were even playing jokes on one
+another, and did not seem to be paying any attention to the fifteen
+English and French cruisers and gunboats which were standing off the
+shore almost opposite them, keeping up a steady stream of fire obliquely
+along the beach at the sand dunes just beyond the pier at
+Nieuport-les-Bains. In these dunes, _five_ miles away, big German guns
+were hidden.
+
+[Sidenote: Fishermen unconcerned.]
+
+Farther on, and even right up to the pier at Nieuport, we passed, along
+the beach behind the shrimp fishermen, who seemed even less interested
+in the novel fight on land and sea. The barelegged men and women were as
+industriously taking advantage of the low-tide as if nothing at all were
+happening. The French and English warships were directly opposite them,
+and, by this time, they were drawing the German fire. German shells,
+probably from siege guns, were plumping down into the water all around
+them only a couple of miles off-shore, but, though the shrimpers looked
+up occasionally when the explosion of a shell fairly shook the face of
+the ocean, their attention would be directed again to their work before
+the column of water raised by the shell had had time to fall again. The
+shelling kept up about an hour, but none of the warships was struck.
+They kept moving at full-speed in an uneven line, making it impossible
+to get their range.
+
+[Sidenote: A panorama of battle.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germans try to cross the Yser.]
+
+Just before we reached the pier heavy cannonading began inland. We
+climbed the sand dunes and there we came suddenly upon a perfect
+panoramic view of the battle all the way from the dunes across the
+inundated fields to Dixmude in the distance. The whole line of battle
+for ten miles was in the midst of a German attack, covered by a terrific
+artillery fire. Over the white, red-tiled cottages of the fishermen,
+almost lost among the lesser sand dunes, we could make out the Belgian
+line by the fire of their rifle and machine guns. At two points we could
+see the Yser Canal and at one of these the Germans were trying to throw
+across a pontoon bridge.
+
+We could see it only through the smoke of breaking shells, but it was
+the most exciting event I have ever witnessed. At three miles or more,
+though, the figures of the men were so small, it was hard to keep the
+fact in mind that those who dropped were not merely stooping, but had
+been shot. Eager to get closer, we ran over the sand dunes, but never
+got another view of it.
+
+[Sidenote: Running to see a battle.]
+
+My Belgian friend knew his way and we trotted along a raised path among
+the fields toward Nieuport. It was under fire, but it seemed worth the
+risk to get close enough so we could see the pontoons being rushed into
+the water. As we neared Nieuport, however, the firing became much more
+active and we stopped for second thought. After catching our breath, we
+decided to pass through the edge of Nieuport and to go on to the village
+of Ramscapelle to the south of it. Few shells seemed to be breaking
+there.
+
+[Sidenote: Almost under fire.]
+
+Along the cross road we took, alternately running and walking. The
+Belgian trenches were perhaps a half mile beyond us, and we could make
+out the tap-tap of the rifle fire which had been only a continuous
+cracking a mile in the rear. Into this the machine guns cut with a whir.
+Spent bullets dropped here and there in the inundated field to the west
+of us, but the German shell fire must have been right in the trenches.
+
+Somewhere before we reached Ramscapelle we crossed a road with military
+automobiles going both ways, but my desire to get behind the sheltering
+buildings of Ramscapelle was too strong at the moment to take it in.
+
+[Sidenote: Fires and explosions in Ramscapelle.]
+
+About a hundred yards from the village there was a house on the edge of
+a canal, and we stopped behind it, safe from bullet-fire, to catch our
+breath again. It was as far as we were destined to get. All at once
+shells began dropping on the village, and I have not seen shells drop so
+fast in so small an area. In the first minute there must have been
+twenty. Three fires broke out almost at once. Between the explosions we
+could hear the falling tiles.
+
+The short October day grew unexpectedly dusk and the fires in the
+village reflected in the water on the fields. After the bombarding had
+been going on without the least let-up for fully fifteen minutes, a bent
+old woman, a man perhaps older but less bent, and a younger woman
+appeared on the road to Furnes just beyond us, hurrying along without
+once looking back. They were the only people we saw and the destruction
+of the town looked like the most ruthless piece of vandalism. It had a
+military purpose, however. The Germans were concentrating an attack on
+it with the hope of reaching Furnes. They occupied it that night, but
+were later driven out again. I have learned since some of the villagers
+remained through that bombardment, and were killed in their houses.
+
+[Sidenote: Destruction of Ramscapelle.]
+
+While we stood sheltered by the house on the canal, speculating as to
+which one of the houses still standing in Ramscapelle would be hit next,
+the light from those on fire reflected on the dark, brackish water of
+the canal, which was running in with the tide. Presently we noticed
+something in the water, and, stooping down in the twilight, we made out
+the body of a man face downward. The color of the coat and the little
+short skirt to it showed it was the body of a German soldier. It passed
+on and was followed by three more before we left. They had been in the
+water several days.
+
+The fire from the trenches died down at dusk and we made our way back
+along the empty crossroad. Half way back to the dunes we passed a Red
+Cross motor ambulance, headed toward Ramscapelle. On the seat beside the
+driver was a young English woman. She was wearing the gray-brown coat
+and gray-brown puttees of the English soldier. We called out to her we
+thought the town was empty, but the only answer we got from the speeding
+ambulance was an assuring wave of the young woman's hand, which was
+evidently meant to inform us she knew where she was going.
+
+[Sidenote: Ambulances and infantry pass.]
+
+On the main road from Nieuport to Furnes, which we followed a short
+distance, there were dozens of ambulances going to the rear and a long
+column of infantry going forward. Headed toward the rear there were also
+many wounded men on foot. They had been dressed at Nieuport, but there
+were not enough ambulances to take them all away. One who was walking
+slowly and painfully told me he had a bullet in his back.
+
+During the afternoon the Schneiders I had seen had evidently been placed
+among the sand dunes, and they were now bombarding the German lines over
+our heads. Crossing over the sand dunes to the beach, we passed under
+two batteries, though we did not see them. We could tell they were
+French, though, by the rapidity of the fire. The French seem to be able
+to fire their guns several times as fast as the Germans or the English.
+
+A cluster of houses belonging to shrimp fishermen was right under these
+batteries, where they were sure to get some of the return fire. But we
+noticed there were lights in every one of the cottages. Inside were the
+same fishermen who were so apathetic about the fight off-shore.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle of the sand dunes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Red flashing of the contact shells.]
+
+The view from the sand dunes was what the war artists on English
+illustrated weeklies try so hard to show. The French batteries were
+using shrapnel on the German trenches, the shrapnel leaving puffs of
+white smoke in long, uneven lines; and the Germans were keeping up their
+steady pounding of contact shells, with a short red flash after each
+explosion. The firing of the guns on both sides gave the effect of
+continuous summer lightning.
+
+Into the panorama the fleet off-shore kept up a new attack on the German
+batteries in the sand dunes just beyond Nieuport-les-Bains. As it was
+dark now we could see where they were only by the streaks of fire from
+their guns. These flashes came and went like the strokes of a dagger, as
+if they were stabbing the dark.
+
+[Sidenote: French soldiers.]
+
+We went back along the beach to avoid being questioned, turning around
+constantly to watch the fleet. At Coxyde a whole company of French
+soldiers was standing along the edge of the water, jumping back in
+surprise when the little waves advanced on them. They told us they were
+from the centre of France and had never seen salt water before.
+
+The shore there is lined with new villas made of light colored bricks.
+One of these had been dynamited, because it belonged to a German and was
+suspected of having a concrete floor for siege guns. I had heard of
+cases of this kind before, but I had never had an opportunity to examine
+one.
+
+[Sidenote: Concrete foundations.]
+
+My private thought was that the villa had probably been built by a
+German with a passion for solidity, but, examining it under a half-full
+moon, I could see the foundations were brick walls two feet thick
+covered with mosaic backed by reinforced concrete about a foot thick. It
+seemed like something more than Teutonic thoroughness.
+
+A little later in La Panne I was shown a concrete tennis court belonging
+to a German which had been punched full of holes. It was in no place
+thick enough, however, to give cause for suspicion that its real
+purpose was in any way sinister.
+
+By the time we regained La Panne I was hardly able to walk as I had been
+going hard all day, a good deal of the way through soft sand. But even
+if I had been much more tired I would have sensed the atmosphere of that
+town. To me the little seaside village, built for summer gayety, had
+more of the romance of war in it than any place I have seen.
+
+The half dozen summer hotels and all the villas were filled with the
+mothers, wives, and children of the Belgian soldiers whose firing line I
+had just left. Their homes had been in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent. Now
+they were in the last little town in Belgium. To some their soldiers had
+already returned, and they were dining as merrily as if to-morrow did
+not hold out a reasonable likelihood of being killed. At the doors of
+the hotels and on the street were many others waiting, and, as the
+street had filled up with another French artillery division bivouacked
+for a few hours, they could not see their men folk until they were close
+at hand.
+
+[Sidenote: Refugees at La Panne.]
+
+Now and then as we passed we could hear little gasps of happiness. For
+some, of course, there were disappointment and bad news. But they must
+have carried their sorrow to their chambers, as La Panne was all gayety.
+
+A comment on the Belgian soldiers made at the beginning of the war
+occurred to me: "They shoot the enemy all day; at night they come home
+and kiss mother. In the morning they kiss mother again and go back to
+shoot some more."
+
+They certainly showed themselves capable of shaking off the horrors of
+war before their women folk. To see them there in La Panne that night
+you might have thought it was all a sham battle if it had not been for
+a conviction of reality that would not shake off.
+
+It was nearly ten o'clock, now but Belgian soldiers relieved from the
+firing line and off duty for the night were still coming into La Panne.
+In the Hotel Des Arcades, which incidentally, has no arcades, the bar
+and the dining room were full of soldiers. Officers and their men were
+eating and drinking together in the pleasant democratic way they have in
+the Belgian army. Room was made for us at the long central table in the
+dining room, and all at the table were solicitous to see that we were at
+once given plenty to eat and drink. Several of the fifteen men at the
+table had hands or heads bandaged, but that did not seem to detract from
+their gayety.
+
+[Sidenote: Spirit of the Belgian soldiers.]
+
+A joke was being told as we sat down, and every one was taking a lively
+interest in it, the narrator was a bearded man of fifty, and he was
+telling to the delight of the others how his son had once got the better
+of him in Brussels before the war. There were other stories of matters
+equally foreign to war. The private on one side of me told me he was the
+manager for Belgium of an American typewriter. The lieutenant on the
+other side was in ordinary times an insurance agent. All the men there
+were in business and talked and acted like a company of young American
+business men.
+
+My first hint that these men had been through any trying experience was
+the apology offered by a new-comer for being late. He entered rather
+gravely and said something about having to take the word to his sister
+of his brother-in-law's death. The whole company turned grave then and
+conversation from being general was carried on for a few minutes between
+those near together. I asked the typewriter agent, to fill an awkward
+pause, whether they had seen much action, and he told me their story.
+
+[Sidenote: The fight on the road to Nieuport.]
+
+This was a crack mitrailleuse company of Brussels. It had been in the
+fight from Liege back to Malines and from Antwerp back to Dixmude and
+Nieuport. Three days before it was told to hold a road into Nieuport. It
+was a road the Germans must take, if they were to advance, but the
+Belgians would not give way. They were too clever with their rapid-fire
+guns to be rushed, and the German bayonet charges only blocked the road
+with their dead. Again and again the gray line came on, but each time it
+crumpled before their fire. They were attacked every hour of the day or
+night, but they were always ready. Finally the Germans got their range
+and dropped shell after shell right among them.
+
+"They blew us all to pieces," the story went on in a low tone at my
+elbow. "Those shells don't leave many wounded, but they littered the
+place with arms and legs. They got a good many of us, but they did not
+seem to be able to get our guns."
+
+I asked what their loss had been, and he looked around the table,
+counting, before he answered.
+
+"Let's see, now," he said. "We lost some at Dixmude first. I think there
+were just seventy last Monday." This was Thursday. "We had a pretty bad
+time," he ended; looking down.
+
+"How many are there now?" I asked, and he answered with a sweep of his
+hand around the table. "Five or six more," he said. There were eighteen
+of them at table now. That meant twenty-three or twenty-four--out of
+seventy.
+
+"The dogs suffered, too," he added. "We've only got eight out of twenty,
+and I just heard the dogs around here have already been pressed into
+service."
+
+[Sidenote: Courtesy of the machine gunners.]
+
+When I went to bed four of the members of that shattered mitrailleuse
+company climbed three flights of stairs to see that I had a comfortable
+room. And these men had just come out of a trench where they had lost
+more than two thirds their number in three days stopping one of the main
+lines of the German advance.
+
+[Sidenote: Back to the lines.]
+
+In the twilight of early morning, when the cannonading had at last died
+down, I heard the movement of troops in the street and saw my friends of
+the night before falling into line and getting their equipment straight.
+By the time I reach the sidewalk they were moving off, some of the men
+helping the dogs with the mitrailleuse.
+
+"Big fight last night," said the typewriter agent smiling. "Company that
+relieved us got it hard. We must hurry back."
+
+They were all very alert and soldierlike in the chill of the morning,
+but they were a pitifully small company as they passed up the road and
+were lost in the sand dunes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In August and September, while on the western front were being fought
+the great initial struggles of the Great War, Turkey, long under German
+political influence, was making ready to cast her lot with the Teutonic
+Powers. Germany had already made diplomatic and military moves which
+indicated that she was certain of a Turkish alliance. The strongest
+figures of the Ottoman Empire, Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey were strongly
+pro-German, although the latter endeavored for a time to conceal his
+real sentiments and intentions under a cloak of pretended neutrality.
+The causes which induced Turkey to side with the Central Powers rather
+than with the Allies are explained in the narrative which follows.
+
+
+
+
+WHY TURKEY ENTERED THE WAR
+
+ROLAND G. USHER
+
+Copyright, World's Work, January, 1915.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Extreme danger of Turkey.]
+
+Many people entirely misunderstand the significance of the declaration
+of war by Turkey against Russia, France, and England. Why these
+despairing gasps of the dying? they ask. What possible chance has this
+weak, moribund state to survive a clash of arms with the Triple Entente?
+Has not the Turk, in fact, dug his own grave and committed suicide? In
+all probability the Turk is in considerable danger, but the danger does
+not arise from his joining Germany. In fact, the war and the present
+international situation provide the Turk with the best opportunity in a
+century to achieve the aims cherished by Turkish statesmen who have the
+best interests of Turkey itself at heart. For several years Turkey has
+been in extreme peril. It was condemned to death by the Triple Entente
+some time ago, and the prediction of the British Prime Minister in a
+recent public speech that this war would end the existence of Turkey as
+an independent power was only the publication of the sentence of death
+long since decided upon. The Sick Man was kept alive by his friends, the
+doctors, largely because they deemed his malady incurable. The moment he
+showed signs of convalescence they agreed to poison him. But for the
+protection of Germany the political existence of Turkey would be already
+a thing of the past. The Turk, therefore, will stand or fall according
+to the decision in this war for or against Germany. He will be
+excessively foolish not to do everything he can to insure a German
+victory.
+
+[Sidenote: Entrance of Turkey into War.]
+
+[Sidenote: Constantinople core of the War.]
+
+The entrance of Turkey into the war has long been foreseen, and its vast
+significance has long been clear to students. Some trained observers go
+much further: Sir Harry Johnston, a traveler, statesman, and diplomat of
+repute, has declared: "Constantinople is really the core of the war." In
+diplomatic circles in Vienna this summer there was a general agreement
+that the loss of Salonika, which the Turk was forced to hand over to
+Greece at the end of the Balkan wars, was a vital blow to the Triple
+Alliance, and its recovery would be of sufficient importance to justify
+the risk of a European war to accomplish it. The situation in the Near
+East and in the Balkans is an integral part of the European war. In
+fact, the war is not a European war at all; it is a world war in the
+most literal sense of the words.
+
+[Sidenote: Control of exit from the Black Sea imperative to Russia.]
+
+At the beginning of the twentieth century keen observers saw clearly
+that the old order of things, which had preserved the Turk so long in
+the face of many enemies, had passed away beyond a peradventure and had
+left the Turk in great peril. Ever since the decay of the strength of
+the Ottoman Empire the Turk had been hardly pressed in Europe by Russia
+and by Austria, both of whom coveted sections of his dominions, and both
+of whom would have been glad to obtain Constantinople, the gateway
+between Europe and Asia. Of the two, Russia was more insistent because
+her interests made the control of the exit from the Black Sea imperative
+for her. The Turk, however, until very recently, was himself strong
+enough to throw considerable obstacles in the face of the invader; he
+was probably, in 1900, more efficient than in 1850; but his enemies had
+grown by leaps and bounds. He was confronted by a new Austria and a new
+Russia.
+
+What was worse, the Balkan nations, who had long been subject peoples,
+ill-organized, poverty stricken, had grown with the help of the Turk's
+enemies into sturdy, self-reliant, independent communities with
+good-sized armies and something approaching national wealth. The long
+years of subjection had left behind a consuming hatred of the Turk in
+their breasts; as Christians, they hated the Turk as the Infidel; and
+they promised themselves some day the control of Constantinople in the
+interest of Christianity. The neighbors of the Turk had grown formidable
+and would be able to make short work of him unless help arrived.
+
+[Sidenote: Industrial growth of Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Old order changes.]
+
+There was none to be had from his past friends; so much was only too
+clear. The shift in the international situation caused by the astounding
+industrial growth of Germany, the rapid development of the German,
+Austrian, and Italian fleets, the increased efficiency of the armies of
+the Triple Alliance had all made the control of the Mediterranean far
+more difficult for England and France. They could no longer spare ships
+and troops in sufficient numbers to rescue the Turk from Russia without
+exposing themselves more than was wise in northern Europe. Besides, the
+designs of the Triple Alliance made it seem only too probable that the
+possession of Constantinople by Russia and the creation of a fleet in
+the Black Sea might be the only means of preserving for the French and
+English control of the western Mediterranean. The old order had changed:
+the Turk's friends were now his enemies bent on his destruction.
+
+[Sidenote: Ambition of new Turkish party.]
+
+[Sidenote: Democratic and nationalist revival.]
+
+Yet there had never been a time when the Sick Man was more desperately
+determined to get well, when life had seemed to him so entirely
+desirable. The passing of the old order caused no grief among the
+Turks--outside of those few henchmen who had long drawn a fat revenue
+from foreign nations. The Turks had become fired with ambition, with
+democratic conceptions, highly inconsistent with the state of things
+which the old order had so long sanctioned. The new democrats declared
+indignantly that Turkey had been for years conducted for the benefit of
+foreign nations; it should be conducted in the future solely in the
+interests of Turkey. They were roused to enthusiasm by the past history
+of the Ottoman empire and burned to reconquer its old provinces, to
+establish a closer relationship between the provinces which remained. An
+imperialistic movement, a nationalistic revival, if you will, was
+preached in Turkey by ardent enthusiasts whose words fell on willing
+ears. To the democratic and nationalist revival was joined religious
+discontent. The Sultan was the religious head of the Mohammedan world.
+Everywhere the true Believers were in chains. Everywhere the infidel
+reigned supreme. From Constantinople to Mecca, from the confines of
+Morocco to the plains of India, the Mohammedan world was ground under
+the heel of the conqueror and the conqueror was the Arch Enemy of Truth.
+There must be, they preached, a great crusade, a united rising to cast
+out the Christian dogs and restore the sceptre of empire to the hand of
+a devout believer in Allah. Turkey, Assyria, Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia,
+India, Egypt, the whole of Africa, should be freed from the yoke of the
+oppressor.
+
+[Sidenote: Great Confederation of States.]
+
+[Sidenote: From Berlin to Bagdad railroad.]
+
+And now appeared an ally, unfortunately a Christian, in fact a
+peculiarly devout Christian, but one able to save the Turk from his
+foes, glad to foster his ambitions. The plans of Germany for her future
+involved the creation of a great confederation of states stretching from
+the North Sea to the Persian Gulf and including Holland, Belgium,
+Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Balkans, Turkey, and Persia.
+These states controlled the great overland roads from central Europe to
+the Persian Gulf and would make possible overland trade with the East. A
+railroad already existed as far as Constantinople, and a railroad from
+Constantinople to Bagdad and the Gulf would not only throw open Asia
+Minor and the great plains of Mesopotamia to European capital, but would
+furnish a perfectly practicable commercial road to the East through
+which in time would flow a trade which would make the great
+Confederation rich. Of this Confederation, Turkey would be an integral
+and essential part. Adrianople, the key to the Balkans; Salonika, key to
+the AEgean; Constantinople, controlling the outlet to the Black Sea and
+the crossing to Asia Minor; the land approaches of the Tigris and
+Euphrates valleys--all these the Turk had, all these an alliance with
+him would give Germany. The stronger the Turkish State, the better
+organized, the larger its army and fleet, the greater its resources, the
+more useful it would be to Germany and the more thoroughly it would
+insure the success of Pan-Germanism.
+
+[Sidenote: England and France sustain courteous hold on Constantinople.]
+
+It had been for the interests of England and France to keep Turkey weak.
+The Turk must hold Constantinople, but must not be strong enough to use
+it; as a tenant, as a nominal owner, he was extremely useful; some one
+had to own it; England and France could not hold it themselves; they
+were determined Russia should not have it; and the Turk was a useful
+_locum tenens_. They, therefore, frowned upon Turkish ambitions for
+democratic government and would, undoubtedly, have sacrificed the Turk
+rather than see an independent Mohammedan State take real control of
+Asia Minor and Northern Africa.
+
+[Sidenote: Pan-Germanic Confederation.]
+
+Germany, on the contrary, wished an active agent to pursue an
+aggressive policy in her favor. If the Sick Man could get out of bed
+only with assistance, Germany was anxious to help him; and the Turk
+vastly preferred an alliance with a Power which was eager to make him
+well to one with Powers almost afraid to keep him alive. The Turks
+wished a capable government, a good army, a State deserving of
+independence, and were overjoyed to find Germany ready and desirous to
+foster this ambition. Indeed, as a member of the Pan-Germanic
+Confederation, the Turk must be strong enough to hold Constantinople and
+the Bagdad Railway in the event of a general European war, without
+depending upon Germany for more than assistance, supplies, and advice.
+Germany and Austria, menaced on both sides at home, would not be able to
+take the risks of sending troops to the Near East, and the Turk would
+have to be strong enough to keep at bay such forces as it seemed likely
+Russia would be able to spare from the battlefields of northern Europe.
+
+[Sidenote: Pan-Islam.]
+
+Germany was equally ready to have the Turk gratify his imperialist and
+religious ambitions. Pan-Islam would destroy the political control of
+England and France in northern Africa and in Egypt. It might even
+overturn the British Empire in India. This would be the greatest
+possible service any one could render Germany, and it might be one which
+Germany could accomplish in no other way. If the Triple Entente was the
+greatest foe of Pan-Islamism, Pan-Germanism should be its greatest
+friend. Where ambition and interest coincide, co-operation is simple.
+
+[Sidenote: Reorganization of Turkey.]
+
+In complete accord, therefore, the Germans and the Turks undertook the
+reorganization of Turkey above five years or more ago. They saw with
+clear vision the real truth about Turkey. With engaging candor they laid
+the blame for the deficiencies of Turkish government upon England and
+France and declared them the work of intention. Turkey, they saw, was
+not a nation in the European sense of the word; it was not even a single
+race. It was not a geographical unit by any means, but a series of
+districts on the whole geographically disconnected. Far from being an
+economic unit with a single interest vital to all its inhabitants, it
+produced nothing essential to the outside world which its inhabitants
+could depend upon exchanging for European manufactured goods.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey's economic interests.]
+
+Its economic interests were potential rather than real; its trade, the
+result of its strategic position rather than of the interests and the
+capacity of its population. Normally and naturally the Turk should be a
+middleman, a distributor rather than a producer. He was placed in
+control of the continental roads between Asia and Central Europe, and
+was able to control the overland trade as soon as it emerged from the
+Caucasus or the Persian Gulf, and maintain that control until the
+continental highway passed into the defiles of the Balkans beyond
+Adrianople. Constantinople itself, controlling the narrow passage which
+formed the exit of the Black Sea, was in a position to foster or hinder
+the entire trade of southern Russia with the rest of the world. In fact,
+it was impossible to deny, and the Germans thoroughly well understood
+it, that the trade of the East with Europe and the trade of Russia with
+the rest of the world might pass through Turkey, but was not likely to
+stay there.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey's important strategic position.]
+
+In this important strategic position, economically valuable to others
+but not to its inhabitants, had been collected a peculiar and
+extraordinary conglomeration of races, creeds, and interests; few of
+which had much in common, and all of which cherished for each other
+antipathies and jealousies almost as old as history. The racial problem
+of Turkey would be less difficult if the races were only located side by
+side in solid masses. With few exceptions the races interpenetrate one
+another to a remarkable extent and the Turk himself is numerically in
+the majority in comparatively few districts of Asia Minor, where the
+bulk of the Turkish population lives, and in scarcely any part of
+European Turkey. The Turks are literally overlords, a ruling class.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey's weak political fabric.]
+
+The Turk has governed this vast territory and this conglomeration of
+races and religions by a peculiarly weak political fabric which seemed
+in the nineteenth century to combine in one structure all the
+disadvantages of centralization, and all those of decentralization.
+Subject peoples have been ruled by a combination of military, civil, and
+religious authority which has been dependent in the long run for its
+support on the army. However, had the subject peoples hated each other
+less cordially, had they been more capable of organization and willing
+to compromise, they might have ended the Turkish rule decades ago, army
+or no army. Some observers, indeed, have thought the Turkish Government
+an artificial sham kept alive by France and England for their own
+purposes. Whatever reasons were to be given, the Germans and the Turks
+saw that Turkey as a nation and Turkey as a state had been, both of
+them, practically non-existent. Both had been names, not realities.
+Turkey had appeared on the European maps. A series of so-called
+statesmen had taken European bribes in Constantinople; numerous
+incompetent and venal officials had robbed the populace with the help of
+the soldiers in the provinces, and this Government plus the army was
+Turkey. Turkey had, indeed, been sick, but that particular kind of
+illness, the Turks thought, could be cured; and the Germans agreed with
+them.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany's willingness to assist Turkey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germany's influence in Turkey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Reasons for Turkey's joining Germany.]
+
+We must not forget as observers the exceeding importance of German
+willingness to assist the ambitions of the educated Turks for
+self-government and for independence from European influence. The
+English and French control of Turkey was fortuitous and artificial and
+depended solely upon the control of a little group of men in
+Constantinople. German influence in Turkey has deep and fundamental
+roots in a large and significant part of the Turkish population and
+appeals to their best and highest impulses. We have here in the last
+analysis the reasons why Turkey has joined Germany in the war. The
+enlightened Turks see in Pan-Germanism a democratic Turkey with
+constitutional self-government, a Turkey developing its own resources, a
+Turkey gradually freeing itself from the fetters of European alliances
+and becoming gradually but certainly strong enough to take its place in
+the Pan-Germanic chain as a state of worth, integrity, and importance.
+They see in the victory of Pan-Germanism the effective promise of the
+realization of such ideals. They see in the defeat of Pan-Germanism
+political and national death, the annexation of Turkey by its enemies,
+and the subjection of the Turks to the rule of the Infidel. For these
+reasons they joined Germany in the first place. For these deep,
+fundamental reasons they hold staunchly to their friend. We shall be
+guilty of quibbling and of shortsightedness if we look for an
+explanation of Turkish policy in the seizure of warships and the breach
+of treaties.
+
+[Sidenote: Reorganization of Turkey.]
+
+The reorganization of Turkey was duly observed by the Triple Entente and
+its purpose thoroughly well understood. Their opposition to it was
+prompt, and Italy attempted by the Tripolitan War to rob the Turk of one
+of his distant provinces. Having seized Tripoli with the consent of the
+Triple Entente, Italy then changed sides, returned to the Triple
+Alliance and took Tripoli with her. The result was a prompt reversal of
+the strategic situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and placed England
+and France in such danger that they saw the moment had probably come
+when it would be positively to their advantage to gratify Russia's
+ambition and allow her to seize Constantinople. The Tripolitan War
+suspended the sword of Damocles over the Turk's head.
+
+[Sidenote: The Balkan War.]
+
+[Sidenote: The loss of Macedonia.]
+
+The Balkan War threatened for a time to annihilate him. The prompt aid
+of Austria and Germany as stout representatives in the international
+conclave, the mobilization of the Austrian army, the knowledge that
+Germany was ready to mobilize, saved the Turk. The ambitions of Bulgaria
+brought her over to the side of the Triple Alliance, which was more than
+ready to assist her in dominating the Balkans. The second war cost
+Bulgaria dear but gave back to the Turk Adrianople. Macedonia, however,
+was lost entirely, and much of Thrace, with Salonika, the key of the
+AEgean, was also lost and fell into the hands of the Turk's enemy,
+Greece.
+
+[Sidenote: Little likelihood of attack on Constantinople.]
+
+The reorganized state was now undeniably in great peril; and the
+probability of an outbreak of a European war in the near future, the
+knowledge that the Turk must himself defend Constantinople and the
+Bagdad Railway, urged the Germans and the Turks to great efforts in
+reorganizing the army and providing equipment. The fleet also received
+attention; two battleships were building in England and another was
+purchased from one of the South American states. There would this time
+be no escape. The death sentence had been passed upon the Turk, and if
+he waited for his enemies to gather and descend upon him defense would
+be problematical. It was, of course, realized that in the long run
+Germany would save Turkey by battles won in France or in Poland, and
+also that German defeats in Europe would in the long run spell the
+downfall of Turkey whatever the Turk did. It was, therefore, advisable
+to postpone action as long as possible. While Russia was exerting
+herself to the utmost to mobilize an army in Poland, there was small
+likelihood of an attack on Constantinople, and the Turk might well
+remain neutral, equip and organize the army, acquire supplies, and
+choose the moment to take the offensive.
+
+[Sidenote: German cruisers at Constantinople.]
+
+England, on the outbreak of the war, seized the two battleships building
+in England, and, therefore, weakened the Turkish strength in the Black
+Sea. The deficiency was supplied by sending two German cruisers to
+Constantinople and selling them to the Turkish Government. Some weeks
+ago the Germans judged that the time had come when the Turk must openly
+join in the war, send his troops to the frontier in order to hold the
+invader as far as possible from Constantinople. Indeed, action at this
+time might allow the Turk to accomplish results of the utmost
+importance. Those who see simply the fact that Russia could easily
+overwhelm the Turk standing alone, that the Balkan States united might
+also dispose of him, entirely fail to grasp the possibilities before the
+Turk at the present moment when Russia is extremely busy in the North,
+when the Balkan States seem hopelessly divided, and when Italy is
+maintaining with determination her neutrality.
+
+[Sidenote: Closing of the Black Sea by Turkey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Enormous value of oil supplies in the Black Sea District.]
+
+The most important thing the Turk has done for Germany has been the
+closing of the Black Sea. The sowing of a few mines in the Straits
+promptly put an end to Russian trade from the Black Sea and dealt
+southern Russia a great blow commercially. Germany thus struck at
+England, because a large part of the English food supply has normally
+come from the Black Sea district, and the desire to protect the grain
+ships through the Mediterranean has been one of England's chief reasons
+for maintaining control of that sea. So large were these supplies
+normally that England has had considerable difficulty in replacing them
+and is destined soon to experience greater difficulty in furnishing a
+supply equivalent in volume and accessibility. The Black Sea district
+also has large oil supplies which would be of enormous value to England
+and France, now that the extensive use of the automobile in warfare has
+made gasolene a supply second in importance only to powder and food. If
+the Turkish navy, augmented by the German cruisers, can dispose of the
+Russian ships in the Black Sea, and this seems not improbable, the Turk
+might annex for Germany this supply of oil. That would be a stroke of
+the utmost consequence.
+
+[Sidenote: Isolation of Russia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of Turkey to Germany.]
+
+Closing the Black Sea by the Turk, plus the closing of the Baltic by the
+German fleet in the North Sea, would also accomplish another extremely
+important result, the absolute and complete isolation of Russia from
+contact with all parts of the world except Germany, Austria, and Turkey.
+The question has often arisen as to the ability of Germany to prolong
+the war in the face of her inability to export goods to her usual
+customers. The complete cessation of manufacture in Germany would sooner
+or later bankrupt the country and bring her to her knees. The Germans
+point out that the isolation of Russia will have precisely the same
+effect on that country unless Russia can find some place where her raw
+products can be exchanged for the manufactured goods which are much more
+necessary in warfare than the crude products which she always has to
+sell. The experience of the past has proved again and again that
+belligerent countries persistently trade with one another when it is
+profitable. The Germans expect to sell their manufactured goods in
+Russia in exchange for the raw materials which Russia produces, just as
+long as their fleet holds the mouth of the Baltic and the Turk controls
+Constantinople. A brisk trade between Germany, Austria, and Russia is
+already reported and if it attains the proportions the Germans expect,
+their commercial problem will have been largely solved. But its
+continued solution will depend upon the maintaining of Turkey in
+Constantinople. If these considerations are as important as the
+Pan-Germanists have usually claimed, it will be obvious that the
+adhesion of the Turk has exceeding importance for Germany and had long
+been arranged in advance.
+
+[Sidenote: Control of the Suez Canal vital to Great Britain.]
+
+The possibilities before the Turkish army, well equipped with modern
+munitions of war and capably officered by Germans, have been by no means
+forgotten. The great objective of Pan-Germanism is not in Europe but in
+Asia and Africa. The defense of the English and French dominions in both
+will have to be made in Europe. The strength of the German army, the
+size of the German fleet, would prevent the English and French from
+dissipating their forces over the vast territory which they claim to
+control. The experienced troops in India, in Egypt, and in Morocco were
+shipped to France upon the outbreak of the war exactly as the Germans
+expected and hoped. Their places were filled by less experienced
+regiments from France, England, and the English colonies. Egypt and the
+Suez Canal, India, and the great defenses would not be so strongly held.
+The Turk occupied a position flanking Persia and a position flanking
+Egypt. A strong, well-trained Turkish army might conceivably capture
+either or both. Assistance from within might well be expected in both,
+and victory in either would exert a moral effect upon the war in Europe
+which would be of the utmost importance. A few hours' possession of the
+Suez Canal, furthermore, would allow the Germans to obstruct it and
+effectually block the approach of England to Australia and India except
+by the long road around Africa. Conceivably this might interfere
+seriously with the English food supplies from Australia and New Zealand,
+particularly with the supplies of meat from the latter. This would be
+more than usually important in view of the deficiency of meat supplies
+in the United States and Canada, and the length of time necessary to
+procure them from the Argentine Republic. It is by these blows at the
+food supply that the Germans expect to make the greatest impression upon
+England. Short of actual invasion, the stoppage of supplies is the only
+method by which the Germans can inflict suffering upon England.
+
+[Sidenote: Bulgaria ally of Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: All Balkan states weakened by Balkan War.]
+
+No one in Berlin or Constantinople has forgotten the existence of the
+Balkans. Servian enmity, Greek hatred for the Turk, are only too
+obvious; Bulgaria is believed to be entirely faithful to the German
+interests; Roumania has never been very trustworthy, and has at times
+been an ally of both the coalitions in Europe. The ability of the Turk,
+of course, to hold Constantinople and above all to take the offensive
+would depend upon the continued neutrality or alliance of the Balkan
+States. Combined, they are amply strong enough to overrun Turkey in
+Europe and probably to invade Asia Minor in force. All the Balkan States
+except Roumania--which is hardly a Balkan State--were very much weakened
+in men and in resources by the late Balkan wars, and will probably have
+considerable difficulty in obtaining any quantity of supplies from
+foreign countries, though we are told of large purchases by the Greeks
+in the United States. The fact, however, that the Turk has taken the
+offensive against Egypt and Persia makes it extremely probable that the
+Balkan hatreds have offset each other. Bulgaria's existence probably
+depends upon Austrian protection. Roumania is probably afraid to take
+the field with Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, and Austria against her, while
+the Greeks and Servians have still to recover from the recent wars. It
+is probable, therefore, that, Bulgaria and Roumania being neutral,
+Servia at war with Austria, Turkey can take from Greece Salonika and
+possibly Macedonia. Should the war in Europe progress favorably for
+Germany, the attitude of the Balkan States toward Germany would be
+influenced and a scramble would ensue to join the victor, which would
+probably result in the extinction of Servia and Greece and the
+strengthening of Bulgaria and Turkey. Naturally, the Turk would retake
+the islands in the AEgean Sea which are now in Italy's hands.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey's position if Germany wins in Europe.]
+
+Let us suppose that all goes as they hope: that the Germans win in
+Europe; that the Turks and Bulgarians take control of the Balkans; that
+the Russians are excluded from Persia, and the English from Egypt. The
+victorious Turkish army is then in a position to advance along the
+Persian Gulf road upon India, and would assail India at her weakest
+point, outflanking the great defenses at Quetta which have been
+developed primarily against Russia.
+
+[Sidenote: Possibilities of Pan-Islam.]
+
+We must not forget to enumerate, among the possibilities, Pan-Islam.
+Success by the Turks in Egypt or Persia would undoubtedly give an
+impulse to Pan-Islam which might put all the fanatical enthusiasm of the
+Mohammedans into a vast uprising which might sweep the French and
+English out of northern Africa and India. The Sultan of Turkey is the
+official head of the Mohammedan religion. His orders Moslems are all
+bound to obey. At present the Mohammedans in the English and French
+possessions, who are, of course, under English and French influence, are
+claiming that the acts of the Sultan are not really his, but those of
+German officers; and the reports at the time of writing indicate that at
+the present moment the order from Constantinople for a holy war will
+probably not be regarded or obeyed. But a victory by Turkish arms would
+probably instantly change the situation and might loose the pent-up
+fanaticism of the most intensely emotional of the Oriental races. Here
+is another weapon in the German arsenal whose use will depend upon the
+cooperation of the Turk.
+
+[Sidenote: Key of situation is Constantinople.]
+
+It should now be evident that there is much to be said for the view that
+the key to the present situation is Constantinople. We are dealing with
+world politics, with a world war which is being fought on the
+battlefields of Europe; but we are dealing with a world war whose
+results are not expected to develop in Europe proper. The key to this
+situation lies in Constantinople, and the Turk holds it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The outbreak of the Great War found the British navy in a high state of
+preparedness, and so preponderant in number of vessels and in weight of
+guns that the German Grand Fleet as a whole was content to remain behind
+the walls of Helgoland. Squadrons were sent out, however, to attack
+isolated British ships, and on August 28 the first naval battle of the
+war occurred in the Bight of Helgoland. Here British and German cruisers
+engaged in a struggle in which the honors were for a time even. The
+arrival of British dreadnoughts quickly turned the scale, and the German
+ships fled to the safety of their harbor. The Germans lost four large
+ships, while the British fleet lost none.
+
+The German navy was revenged in November 3, when a fleet of warships met
+and sunk three British cruisers off the Coronel. On December 9, however,
+a British fleet, after a search of many days, came up with and sank
+three German cruisers, and severely damaged two others in the Battle of
+Falkland Islands.
+
+
+
+
+THE FALKLAND SEA FIGHT
+
+A. N. HILDITCH
+
+Battle Sketches by A. N. Hilditch, Oxford University Press.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Falkland Islands.]
+
+In 1592, John Davis, the arctic explorer, after whom the strait between
+Greenland and the North American mainland is named, made an attempt, in
+company with Thomas Cavendish, to find a new route to Asia by the
+Straits of Magellan. Differences arose between the two leaders. One was
+an explorer: the other had a tendency towards freebooting. They parted
+off the coast of Patagonia. Davis, driven out of his course by stormy
+weather, found himself among a cluster of unknown and uninhabited
+islands, some three hundred miles east of the Straits of Magellan. This
+group, after many changes and vicissitudes, passed finally into the
+hands of Great Britain, and became known as the Falkland Islands.
+
+[Sidenote: Climate surface, and vegetation.]
+
+They consist of two large islands and of about one hundred islets,
+rocks, and sandbanks. The fragments of many wrecks testify to the
+dangers of navigation, though masses of giant seaweed act as buoys for
+many of the rocks. So numerous are the penguins, thronging in battalions
+the smaller islands and the inland lagoons, that the governor of the
+colony is nicknamed King of the Penguins. As New Zealand is said to be
+the most English of British possessions, the Falklands may perhaps be
+appropriately termed the most Scottish. Their general appearance
+resembles that of the Outer Hebrides. Of the population, a large
+proportion are of Scottish extraction. The climate is not unlike that of
+Scotland. The winters are misty and rainy, but not excessively cold. So
+violent are the winds that it is said to be impossible to play tennis or
+croquet, unless walls are erected as shelter, while cabbages grown in
+the kitchen-gardens of the shepherds, the only cultivated ground, are at
+times uprooted and scattered like straw. The surface, much of which is
+bogland, is in some parts mountainous, and is generally wild and rugged.
+Small streams and shallow freshwater tarns abound. A natural curiosity,
+regarded with great wonder, exists in 'stone-rivers'; long, glistening
+lines of quartzite rock debris, which, without the aid of water, slide
+gradually to lower levels. There are no roads. Innumerable sheep, the
+familiar Cheviots and Southdowns, graze upon the wild scurvy-grass and
+sorrel. The colony is destitute of trees, and possesses but few shrubs.
+The one tree that the Islands can boast, an object of much care and
+curiosity, stands in the Governor's garden. The seat of government, and
+the only town, is Port Stanley, with a population of about 950. Its
+general aspect recalls a small town of the western highlands of
+Scotland. Many of the houses, square, white-washed, and grey-slated,
+possess small greenhouse-porches, gay with fuchsias and pelargoniums, in
+pleasing contrast to the prevailing barrenness. A small cathedral,
+Christ Church, and an imposing barracks, generally occupied by a company
+of marines, stand in the midst of the town. The Government House might
+be taken for an Orkney or Shetland manse.
+
+[Sidenote: Government.]
+
+[Sidenote: Prosperity of the colony.]
+
+The administration of the colony and of its dependencies is vested in a
+Governor, aided by a Colonial Secretary, and by an executive and a
+legislative council. The Governor acts as Chief Justice, and the
+Colonial Secretary as Police Magistrate. There is a local jail, capable
+of accommodating six offenders at a time. Its resources are not stated,
+however, to be habitually strained. Education is compulsory: the
+Government maintains schools and travelling teachers. The inhabitants
+are principally engaged in sheep-farming and seafaring industries. The
+colony is prosperous, with a trade that of late years has grown with
+extraordinary rapidity. The dividends paid by the Falkland Islands
+Company might excite the envy of many a London director. Stanley's
+importance has been increased by the erection of wireless installation;
+and as a coaling and refitting station for vessels rounding the Horn,
+the harbour, large, safe, and accessible, is of immense value.
+
+[Sidenote: A raid expected.]
+
+To this remote outpost of empire came tidings of war in August, 1914.
+Great excitement and enthusiasm prevailed. News was very slow in getting
+through: the mails, usually a month in transit, became very erratic. But
+the colony eagerly undertook a share in the burden of the Empire; L2,250
+was voted towards the war-chest; L750 was collected on behalf of the
+Prince of Wales's Fund. Detached, though keen, interest changed,
+however, as the weeks passed, to intimate alarm. The Governor, Mr.
+Allardyce, received a wireless message from the Admiralty that he must
+expect a raid. German cruisers were suspected to be in the
+neighbourhood. Never before had the colony known such bustle and such
+excitement. They, the inhabitants of the remote Falklands, were to play
+a part in the struggle that was tugging at the roots of the world's
+civilization. The exhilaration of expectancy and of danger broke
+suddenly into their uneventful, though not easy, lives. But there was
+cause for keen anxiety. The colonists were, however, reassured for a
+time by a visit from three British warships, the cruisers _Good Hope_,
+_Monmouth_, and _Glasgow_, with the armed liner _Otranto_.
+
+[Sidenote: British warships arrive.]
+
+[Sidenote: Search for German cruisers.]
+
+The _Good Hope_ had, at the declaration of war, been patrolling the
+Irish coast. She was ordered to sweep the Atlantic trade routes for
+hostile cruisers. She reached the coast of North America, after many
+false alarms, stopping English merchantmen on the way, and informing the
+astonished skippers of the war and of their course in consequence. When
+forty miles east of New York, Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock came
+aboard with his staff, and hoisted his flag. The Admiral turned
+southwards, sweeping constantly for the enemy. Passing through the West
+Indies, he proceeded to the coast of Brazil. Here he was joined by the
+_Glasgow_. The _Good Hope_ had picked up the _Monmouth_ previously. The
+three ships, accompanied by the auxiliary cruiser _Otranto_, kept a
+southerly course. The discovery at Pernambuco of twenty-three German
+merchantmen snugly ensconced behind the breakwater, in neutral harbour,
+proved very galling. The Straits of Magellan and the cold Tierra del
+Fuego were at length reached. The squadron was on the scent of three
+German cruisers, the _Leipzig_, _Dresden_, and _Nuernberg_. It was
+suspected that they had gone to coal in this remote corner of the
+oceans. Their secret and friendly wireless stations were heard talking
+in code. The British made swoops upon wild and unsurveyed bays and
+inlets. The land around was covered with ice and snow, and the many huge
+glaciers formed a sight wonderful to behold. But the search had proved
+fruitless. After rounding the Horn several times, the squadron had
+turned towards the Falklands.
+
+[Sidenote: Rumors of disaster.]
+
+The inhabitants could not long rely, however, upon these powerful
+guardians. The squadron, after coaling, departed, again bound for the
+Straits of Magellan and the Pacific. Its strength was certainly adequate
+to tackle with success the three German ships believed to be in the
+vicinity. The colony could depend upon Admiral Cradock to protect it to
+the best of his ability. But it was not improbable that the enemy might
+evade the patrolling cruisers, and descend upon the hapless Falklands
+without warning. The Governor saw the advisability of instant
+preparation. On October 19, he issued a notice that all women and
+children were to leave Stanley. Provisions, stores, and clothes were
+hastily removed into the interior, which was locally termed the 'camp'.
+The colony possessed a Volunteer Rifle Company, some 120 strong, and two
+nine-pounder field-guns. Further volunteers were enrolled and armed.
+Suddenly, on November 3, an alarming wireless message was received. The
+_Good Hope_ and the _Monmouth_ were reported to have been sunk off the
+coast of Chili. It was unsigned. There was no proof of its authenticity.
+But the next day another message followed from the captain of the
+_Glasgow_. The disaster was confirmed. The _Glasgow_, in company with H.
+M. S. _Canopus_, was running with all speed for the Falklands. They were
+probably being followed by the victorious Germans. Four days of acute
+suspense followed. The situation seemed critical. The Governor passed
+several nights without taking off his clothes, in expectancy of wireless
+messages that needed instant decoding. People slept beside their
+telephones. Early in the morning of Sunday, November 8, the two warships
+arrived.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Glasgow_ arrives.]
+
+The _Glasgow_ was badly damaged. An enormous hole, three feet by nine
+feet, gaped in her side. A shell had wrecked Captain Luce's cabin,
+giving off fumes such as rendered unconscious several men who rushed in
+to put out the fire. The vessel had escaped any serious outbreak,
+however, and had suffered only four slight casualties. Warm tributes
+were paid by the captain to the cool and disciplined conduct of both
+officers and men. The _Canopus_ had not been engaged. But a narrative of
+the preceding events may now be appropriate.
+
+[Sidenote: German cruisers in Pacific.]
+
+Vice-Admiral the Graf Maximilian von Spee was in command, at the
+outbreak of hostilities, of the German China fleet stationed at
+Tsing-tao. A successor, indeed, had been appointed, and was on the way
+to relieve him. But just before war was declared von Spee and his
+squadron steamed off into the open seas. To remain at Tsing-tao while
+vastly superior forces were closing in upon him would be to little
+purpose. Commerce raiding offered a field for rendering valuable service
+to the Fatherland. The _Emden_ was dispatched to the southern seas. The
+_Leipzig_ and the _Nuernberg_ proceeded across the Pacific, and began to
+prey upon the western coast of South America. Half the maritime trade of
+Chili was carried in English ships. Many of them might be seized and
+destroyed at little risk. The Admiral, with his two remaining vessels,
+the _Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_, successfully evaded the hostile
+fleets for some time. On September 14 he touched at Apia, in German
+Samoa, familiar to readers of Robert Louis Stevenson. It could be
+remembered how, fifteen years before, this colony, shortly to fall
+before a New Zealand expeditionary force, had been a bone of contention
+between Great Britain and Germany. Captain Sturdee, whom von Spee was
+soon to meet in more arduous operations, had on that occasion commanded
+the British force in the tribal warfare. Eight days later, on September
+22, the two German cruisers arrived off Papeete, in Tahiti, one of the
+loveliest of Pacific islands. A small disarmed French gunboat lying
+there was sunk, and the town was bombarded. The Admiral, planning a
+concentration of German ships, then steamed east across the Pacific. He
+got into touch with friendly vessels. By skilful man[oe]uvring he
+finally brought five warships, with colliers, together near Valparaiso.
+
+[Sidenote: Armament of cruisers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Coal needed.]
+
+[Sidenote: Drake's exploits.]
+
+[Sidenote: Search for cruisers.]
+
+The German ships were all of recent construction. The _Scharnhorst_ and
+the _Gneisenau_ were armoured cruisers of 11,600 tons. The _Leipzig_,
+the _Nuernberg_, and the _Dresden_ were light cruisers of about 3,500
+tons. The armament of the larger vessels included eight 8.2-inch and six
+6-inch guns. The smaller relied upon either ten or twelve 4-inch pieces.
+Each ship carried torpedo tubes, and the speed of each was about
+twenty-two or twenty-three knots an hour. The _Dresden_, however, could
+go to twenty-seven knots. The squadron possessed all-important allies.
+Several German merchant-marine companies, notably the Kosmos, plied
+along the Chilian coast. The tonnage of their vessels, indeed, amounted
+to no less than half that of the English companies. The advance of
+German enterprise in Chili in recent years had been very marked. Von
+Spee's great stumbling-block was coal. The laws of war prevented him
+from sending more than three of his warships into a neutral port at the
+same time, from staying there more than twenty-four hours, from taking
+more coal than was necessary to reach the nearest German harbour, from
+coaling again for three months at a port of the same nationality. But if
+German merchantmen, hampered by no such restrictions, could constantly
+renew his supplies, the difficulty of fuel could be to some extent met.
+Provisions and secret information as to British movements could also be
+obtained through the same source. Such employment of merchantmen,
+however, being contrary to international law, would have to be
+clandestine. The great Pacific coast offered numerous harbours and
+abundant facilities for being utilized as a base under such conditions.
+It showed many historic precedents for bold and adventurous exploits
+which could not fail to appeal to an admiral whose family, ennobled by
+the Emperor Charles VI, took pride in its ancient and aristocratic
+lineage. The occasion seemed opportune, moreover, for the
+accomplishment, by himself, his officers, and men, of deeds which should
+inspire their posterity as British naval traditions, for lack of other,
+at present inspired them. They could recall how, on this very coast, in
+1578-9, Drake, the master raider, had seized a Spanish treasure-ship off
+Valdivia, had descended like a hawk upon Callao, had pounced upon
+another great galleon, taking nearly a million pounds in gold and
+silver; and how the intrepid mariner, sailing off into the unknown
+ocean, had circumnavigated the globe, while the furious de Toledo
+waited, with eleven warships, in the Straits of Magellan. Why, indeed,
+should not the Germans imitate, in the twentieth century, the deeds of
+Drake in the sixteenth? If they preyed ruthlessly upon English
+merchantmen, laden with the wealth of the West, if they made a descent
+upon the Falkland Islands, if then they were to disappear into the wide
+Pacific, a career of splendid adventure and of unbounded usefulness
+would earn for them both the respect and the plaudits of the world.
+Australian and Japanese warships were sweeping the eastern Pacific for
+them. Many British vessels, called from useful employment elsewhere,
+would have to join in the search for them. But so vast was the area that
+they might elude their enemies for months.
+
+British ships were already cruising near the Horn, possibly unaware that
+a concentration of the Germans had been effected. It was not unlikely
+that von Spee might be able to cut off and to destroy stray units of the
+patrolling squadrons. The Graf could see many opportunities of serving
+effectively the cause of the Fatherland. He must utilize them to the
+full.
+
+[Sidenote: Cradock near coast of Chili.]
+
+[Sidenote: German cruisers sighted.]
+
+Sir Christopher Cradock, meanwhile, had rounded the Horn once more, and
+was cruising northwards up the coast of Chili. That coast, indeed, once
+the haunt of corsairs and filibusters, was rich in historic associations
+and in natural beauties. An element of grandeur and of mystery seemed to
+hover around the countless ridges and peaks of the Andes, stretching,
+with the gleam of their eternal snows, for four thousand miles, and
+gazing down across the illimitable waters of the occident. Upon the
+plateaux, miles above sea level, stood old stone temples and pyramids
+which rivalled in massiveness and ingenuity those of Egypt and of
+Babylon. The student of ancient civilizations could trace, in the mystic
+deities of the Incas and Araucanians, a strange similarity to the
+deities of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. Speculation upon this analogy
+formed a fascinating theme. This coast, too, was sacred to memories that
+could not but be dear to sailors as gallant and daring as Cradock, since
+his services in China, in 1900, was known to be. Among other familiar
+British names, Cochrane, Lord Dundonald, had won enduring glory in the
+struggle for Chilian independence, nearly a hundred years before. The
+conditions of naval warfare had, indeed, through the introduction of
+armour and the perfection of weapons, radically changed since Cochrane,
+in a series of singularly audacious exploits, had overcome the fleets of
+Spain. Sea-fighting had become purely a matter of science. The object of
+strategy was to concentrate faster ships and more powerful guns against
+weaker force. The odds with which Cradock was to contend against the
+Germans were greater in proportion, if less in bulk, than the odds with
+which Cochrane had contended, with his peasant crews and his hulks,
+against the Spanish "wooden-walls". Admiral Cradock now knew that there
+were two more cruisers in the neighbourhood than had at first been
+supposed. The _Canopus_ had accordingly been sent to join his squadron.
+But she was a battleship, and much slower than the cruisers. She could
+travel no faster than at eighteen knots. Cradock proceeded northwards,
+ahead of the _Canopus_, made a rendezvous off Concepcion Bay for his
+colliers, and went into Coronel and on to Valparaiso to pick up news and
+receive letters. The squadron then returned to the rendezvous and
+coaled. This completed, the Admiral directed the _Glasgow_ to proceed
+again to Coronel to dispatch certain cables. Captain Luce duly carried
+out his mission, and left Coronel at nine o'clock on Sunday morning,
+November 1, steaming northwards to rejoin the other ships. A gale was
+rising. The wind was blowing strongly from the south. Heavy seas
+continually buffeted the vessel. At two o'clock a wireless signal was
+received from the _Good Hope_. Apparently from wireless calls there was
+an enemy ship to northward. The squadron must spread out in line,
+proceeding in a direction north-east-by-east, the flagship forming one
+extremity, the _Glasgow_ the other. It was to move at fifteen knots. At
+twenty minutes past four in the afternoon, smoke was observed upon the
+horizon. The _Glasgow_ put on speed and approached. Officers soon made
+out the funnels of four cruisers. It was the enemy. The Germans, their
+big armoured cruisers leading, and the smaller behind, gave chase.
+
+[Sidenote: The squadrons approach.]
+
+The _Glasgow_ swept round to northward, calling to the flagship with her
+wireless. Von Spee, anticipating this move, at once set his wireless in
+operation, in order to jamb the British signals. Captain Luce soon
+picked up the _Monmouth_ and the _Otranto_, and the three ships raced
+northwards towards the flagship, the _Glasgow_ leading. At about five
+o'clock the _Good Hope_ was seen approaching. The three ships wheeled
+into line behind her, and the whole squadron now proceeded south. Von
+Spee, coming up from that direction in line ahead, about twelve miles
+off, changed his course and also proceeded south, keeping nearer to the
+coast. The wind was now blowing almost with the force of a hurricane. So
+heavy was the sea that small boats would have been unable to keep
+afloat. But the sky was not completely overcast, and the sun was
+shining. Firing had not opened. The washing of the seas and the roaring
+of the wind deafened the ear to other sounds. The warship of to-day,
+when her great turbines are whirling round at their highest speed, moves
+without throb and almost without vibration through the waves. The two
+squadrons, drawing level, the Germans nearer to the coast, raced in the
+teeth of the gale, in two parallel lines, to the south.
+
+[Sidenote: British vessels.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cradock orders attack.]
+
+Sir Christopher Cradock could not but realize that the situation was
+hazardous. He had three vessels capable of fighting men-of-war. The
+_Otranto_ was only an armed liner, and must withdraw when the battle
+developed. The _Good Hope_ displaced some 14,000 tons, and was armed
+with two 9'2-inch and sixteen 6-inch guns. The _Monmouth_, with a
+tonnage of 9,800, carried fourteen 6-inch pieces, but the _Glasgow_, a
+ship of 4,800 tons, had only two of the 6-inch weapons. It was certain
+that the German 8.2-inch guns, if the shooting was at all good, would be
+found to outrange and outclass the British. Cradock was certainly at a
+disadvantage in gun-power. His protective armour was weaker than that of
+the enemy. Nor did his speed give him any superiority. Though the
+_Glasgow_ was capable of twenty-six knots, the flagship and the
+_Monmouth_ could only go to twenty-three. But there was another
+consideration which the Admiral might weigh. Coming slowly up from the
+south, but probably still a considerable distance off, was the
+battleship _Canopus_. Her presence would give the British a decided
+preponderance. She was a vessel of some 13,000 tons, and her armament
+included four 12-inch and twelve 6-inch pieces. How far was she away?
+How soon could she arrive upon the scene? Evening was closing in.
+Cradock was steering hard in her direction. If the British, engaging the
+enemy immediately, could keep them in play throughout the night, when
+firing must necessarily be desultory, perhaps morning would bring the
+_Canopus_ hastening into the action. It was possible that the Germans
+did not know of her proximity. They might, accepting the contest, and
+expecting to cripple the British next morning at their leisure, find
+themselves trapped. But in any case they should not be allowed to
+proceed without some such attempt being made to destroy them. It must
+not be said that, because the enemy was in greater force, a British
+squadron had taken to flight. Perhaps it would be better, since darkness
+would afford little opportunity of man[oe]uvring for action, to draw
+nearer and to engage fairly soon. It was about a quarter past six. The
+Germans were about 15,000 yards distant. Cradock ordered the speed of
+his squadron to seventeen knots. He then signalled by wireless to the
+_Canopus_, 'I am going to attack enemy now'.
+
+[Sidenote: At closer range.]
+
+[Sidenote: Only gun flashes to direct fire.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Good Hope_ blown up.]
+
+The sun was setting. The western horizon was mantled by a canopy of
+gold. Von Spee's man[oe]uvre in closing in nearer to the shore had
+placed him in an advantageous position as regards the light. The British
+ships, when the sun had set, were sharply outlined against the glowing
+sky. The Germans were partly hidden in the failing light and by the
+mountainous coast. The island of Santa Maria, off Coronel, lay in the
+distance. Von Spee had been gradually closing to within 12,000 yards.
+The appropriate moment for engaging seemed to be approaching. A few
+minutes after sunset, about seven o'clock, the leading German cruiser
+opened fire with her largest guns. Shells shrieked over and short of the
+_Good Hope_, some falling within five hundred yards. As battle was now
+imminent, the _Otranto_ began to haul out of line, and to edge away to
+the south-west. The squadrons were converging rapidly, but the smaller
+cruisers were as yet out of range. The British replied in quick
+succession to the German fire. As the distance lessened, each ship
+engaged that opposite in the line. The _Good Hope_ and the _Monmouth_
+had to bear the brunt of the broadsides of the _Scharnhorst_ and the
+_Gneisenau_. The _Glasgow_, in the rear, exchanged shots with the light
+cruisers, the _Leipzig_ and the _Dresden_. The shooting was deadly. The
+third of the rapid salvos of the enemy armoured cruisers set the _Good
+Hope_ and the _Monmouth_ afire. Shells began to find their mark, some
+exploding overhead and bursting in all directions. In about ten minutes
+the _Monmouth_ sheered off the line to westward about one hundred yards.
+She was being hit heavily. Her foremost turret, shielding one of her
+6-inch guns, was in flames. She seemed to be reeling and shaking. She
+fell back into line, however, and then out again to eastward, her 6-inch
+guns roaring intermittently. Darkness was now gathering fast. The range
+had narrowed to about 5,000 yards. The seven ships were all in action.
+Many shells striking the sea sent up columns of white spray, showing
+weirdly in the twilight. It was an impressive scene. The dim light, the
+heavy seas, the rolling of the vessels, distracted the aim. Some of the
+guns upon the main decks, being near the water-line, became with each
+roll almost awash. The British could fire only at the flashes of the
+enemy's guns. Often the heavy head seas hid even the flashes from the
+gun-layers. It was impossible to gauge the effect of their shells. The
+fore-turret of the _Good Hope_ burst into flames, and she began to fall
+away out of line towards the enemy. The _Glasgow_ kept up a continual
+fire upon the German light cruisers with one of her 6-inch guns and her
+port batteries. A shell struck her below deck, and men waited for the
+planks to rise. No explosion nor fire, however, occurred. But the
+British flagship was now burning brightly forward, and was falling more
+and more out of line to eastward. It was about a quarter to eight.
+Suddenly there was the roar of an explosion. The part about the _Good
+Hope's_ after-funnel split asunder, and a column of flame, sparks, and
+debris was blown up to a height of about two hundred feet. She never
+fired her guns again. Total destruction must have followed. Sir
+Christopher Cradock and nine hundred brave sailors went down in the
+stormy deep. The other ships raced past her in the darkness. The
+_Monmouth_ was in great distress. She left the line after a while, and
+turned back, steaming with difficulty to northwest. She had ceased
+firing. The vessels had been travelling at a rate which varied from
+seven to seventeen knots. The _Glasgow_, now left alone, eased her speed
+in order to avoid shells intended for the _Monmouth_. The Germans
+dropped slowly back. The _Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_ now
+concentrated their salvos upon the _Glasgow_. The range was about 4,500
+yards. A shell struck the second funnel: five others hit her side at the
+waterline, but fortunately not in dangerous places. Luce, her captain,
+since the flagship was no more, was senior officer. He brought his
+vessel round and moved rapidly back.
+
+[Sidenote: _Monmouth_ in distress.]
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy is signalling in Morse.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Glasgow_ draws away.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Monmouth_ finally capsizes.]
+
+The _Monmouth_ had now fallen away to a north-easterly course. Luce
+stood by signalling. Could she steer north-west? She was making water
+badly forward, Captain Brandt answered, and he wanted to get stern to
+sea. The enemy were following, Luce signalled again. There was no reply.
+The _Glasgow_ steamed nearer. The _Monmouth_ was in a sinking condition.
+Her bows were under water, and the men were assembled at the stern. The
+sea was running very high. Rain and mist had come on, though a moon was
+now rising. The enemy had altered course, and were approaching in line
+abreast about 6,000 yards away. A light kept twinkling at regular
+intervals from one of the ships. They were signalling in Morse, and
+evidently were forming plans of action. Firing was still proceeding
+intermittently. It was about half-past eight. Captain Luce could see
+nothing for it but to abandon the _Monmouth_ to her fate. To rescue her
+crew, under such conditions, was impossible, while to stand by and
+endeavour to defend her would be folly. The _Glasgow_ was not armoured,
+and could not contend with armoured vessels. Of the two guns she
+possessed capable of piercing the enemy's armour, one had been put out
+of action ten minutes after the start. If she stayed and fought to the
+end, 370 good lives, in addition to the sufficiently heavy toll of 1,600
+in the _Good Hope_ and the _Monmouth_, would be needlessly sacrificed.
+The _Canopus_, moreover, must be warned. She was coming up from the
+south to sure destruction. She could hardly be expected successfully to
+combat the whole German squadron. Nevertheless, it must have been with
+heavy hearts that the men of the _Glasgow_ turned away to seek safety in
+flight. It is recorded that, as they moved off into the darkness, a
+cheer broke forth from the _Monmouth's_ decks. Before the sinking vessel
+became lost to sight another and a third went up. At about a quarter
+past nine the _Nuernberg_, which had not been engaged in the main action,
+came across the _Monmouth_. It is said that, though in a sinking
+condition, the British ship attempted to ram her enemy. But the
+_Nuernberg_ began to bombard her, and she capsized.
+
+[Sidenote: _Glasgow_ and _Canopus_ start for Rio de Janeiro.]
+
+The _Glasgow_ steamed off in a north-westerly direction. A few minutes
+before nine the enemy became lost to sight. Half an hour later many
+distant flashes of gunfire, the death-struggle of the _Monmouth_, were
+seen. The play of a searchlight, which lasted a few seconds and then
+disappeared, was also observed. The vessel bore round gradually to the
+south. Her wireless was put into operation, and she made efforts to get
+through to the _Canopus_. But the Germans had again set their apparatus
+in motion, and the messages were jambed. Only after some hours was the
+_Glasgow_ successful. Steaming hard at twenty-four knots through the
+heavy seas, her engines and boilers fortunately being intact, she at
+length joined the battleship. The two ships made straight for the
+Falkland Islands.
+
+The news of the disaster stirred great alarm in the colony. Before the
+day on which the ships arrived was out the dismay was further increased.
+The _Canopus_ at first expected to stay ten days. Her presence provided
+substantial relief. If the enemy appeared, she and even the damaged
+_Glasgow_ could give a very good account of themselves. But during the
+morning Captain Grant of the _Canopus_ received a wireless message from
+the Admiralty. He was to proceed immediately to Rio de Janeiro with the
+_Glasgow_. The Brazilian Government had granted the latter permission to
+enter the dry dock there to make urgent repairs. But seven days only
+were allowed for this purpose. In the evening the warships cast off, and
+steamed away to northward.
+
+[Sidenote: The colony almost defenseless.]
+
+[Sidenote: Falklands prepare for attack.]
+
+[Sidenote: Burying the Governor's silver and table linen.]
+
+Stanley was now in an unenviable situation. A powerful German squadron,
+flushed with victory, was probably making for the Islands. The colony
+was almost defenceless. All the opposition that the enemy would meet
+would be from a few hundred volunteers. A wireless message that came
+through emphasized the imminence of the danger. Warnings and
+instructions were outlined. If the enemy landed, the volunteers were to
+fight. But retiring tactics must be adopted. Care should be taken to
+keep out of range of the enemy's big guns. The Governor at once called a
+council of war. There could be little doubt that a descent would be made
+upon the colony. The position was full of peril. But resistance must
+certainly be offered. The few women, children, and old men who still
+remained at Stanley must be sent away immediately. Fortunately the time
+of year was propitious. November is, indeed, in the Falklands considered
+the only dry month. The ground is then covered with a variety of
+sweet-scented flowers. Further, all the stores it was possible to remove
+must be taken into the 'camp'. Quantities of provisions must be hidden
+away at various points within reach of the town. In order to add to the
+mobility of the defending force, it would be well to bring in another
+hundred horses from the 'camp'. Every man should be mounted. These
+measures were duly carried out. Every preparation was made and every
+precaution taken. Everybody began to pack up boxes of goods. Clothes,
+stores, and valuables were all taken away to safety. Books, papers, and
+money were removed from the Government offices, and from the
+headquarters of the Falkland Islands Company. What was not sent away was
+buried. The official papers and code-books were buried every night, and
+dug up and dried every morning. The Governor's tableclothes gave rise to
+much anxiety. It was thought, since they were marked 'G. R.', they would
+be liable to insult by the Germans. They were accordingly buried. This
+conscientious loyalty, however, proved costly. The Governor's silver,
+wrapped in green baize, was, unfortunately, placed in the same hole. The
+tablecloths became mixed up with the baize. The damp got through, and
+the linen was badly stained. There was a feeling that the attack would
+come at dawn. People sat up all night, and only went to bed when morning
+was well advanced. All offices were closed and business was suspended.
+This state of tension lasted several days. At length, from the look-out
+post above the town, a warship, apparently a cruiser, was seen making
+straight for the wireless station. When she got within range she turned
+broadside on. Her decks were cleared for action.
+
+[Sidenote: _Canopus_ arrives.]
+
+There was a call to arms. Church and dockyard bells pealed out the
+alarm. Non-combatants streamed out of the town into the 'camp'. The
+volunteers paraded, and lined up with their horses. It would soon become
+a question whether to resist a landing or to retire. In any event the
+men were ready and provided with emergency rations. But no firing
+sounded. Signals were exchanged between the vessel and the shore. It was
+a false alarm. The new-comer was H. M. S. _Canopus_.
+
+[Sidenote: A serious outlook--decks are cleared for action.]
+
+She had proceeded, in accordance with her orders, towards Rio de Janeiro
+with the _Glasgow_. When two days' journey off her destination, however,
+she received another message. She was directed to return and to defend
+the Falklands in case of attack. These instructions were received with
+mingled feelings. To fight alone a powerful squadron was by no means an
+attractive prospect. Duty, however, was duty. The _Canopus_ turned
+about, and retraced her passage. She set her wireless in operation, and
+tried to get through to Stanley. But for some reason she was unable to
+do so. It was concluded that the Germans had made a raid and had
+destroyed the wireless station. Probably they had occupied the town. The
+outlook seemed serious. The _Canopus_ had her instructions, however, and
+there was no drawing back. The decks were cleared for action. Ammunition
+was served out. Guns were loaded and trained. With every man at his post
+the ship steamed at full speed into the harbour. Great was the relief
+when it was found that all was well.
+
+[Sidenote: German raid anticipated.]
+
+[Sidenote: Shackleton's visit to South Georgia.]
+
+The inhabitants were not less relieved. The presence of the battleship
+was felt to add materially to the security of the town. The Germans
+would probably hesitate before attacking a ship of her size. If they
+sustained damage involving loss of fighting efficiency, there was no
+harbour they could turn to for repair, except so far as their
+seaworthiness was affected. Nevertheless, it was almost certain that
+some raid upon the Islands would be attempted. Guns were landed from the
+ship, and measures were taken to make the defence as effective as
+possible. Perhaps if the enemy blockaded Stanley, the British would be
+able to hold out until other warships, certain to be sent to avenge the
+defeat, arrived. Relief could hardly be expected for two or three weeks.
+The Falklands formed a very distant corner of the Empire. It was
+doubtful, indeed, whether even the ubiquitous German spy had penetrated
+to these remote and barren shores. It could, however, be recalled that,
+in 1882, a German expedition had landed on South Georgia, a dependent
+island of the Falklands, eight hundred miles to their south-east, to
+observe the transit of Venus. Upon that same island, indeed, another
+and a quite unsuspicious expedition had landed, early in that very
+month, November. Sir Ernest Shackleton, the explorer, had left Buenos
+Ayres on the morning of October 26, on his way across the antarctic
+continent. His little vessel of 230 tons, the _Endurance_, passed
+through the war zone in safety, and reached South Georgia on November 5.
+He remained for about a month before leaving for the lonely tracts for
+which his little party was bound. The island was his last link with
+civilization. Though sub-antarctic, it possessed features as up-to-date
+as electric-light, universal even in pigsties and henhouses. And the
+march of man, it was observed, had introduced the familiar animals of
+the farmyard, and even a monkey, into a region whose valleys, destitute
+of tree or shrub, lay clothed with perpetual snow.
+
+[Sidenote: Sturdee's squadron reaches Port Stanley.]
+
+[Sidenote: German cruisers sighted.]
+
+Meanwhile, November passed into December without any appearance of the
+Germans off the Falklands. The tension became very much relieved. Women
+and children were brought back to Stanley, after being away a month or
+six weeks. Messages emanating from the hostile squadron, registered by
+the wireless station, indicated that the enemy were still in the
+vicinity. But the condition of the colony became again almost normal.
+The relief and security were complete when, at length, on Monday,
+December 7, a powerful British squadron, under Vice-Admiral Sir Doveton
+Sturdee, arrived at Port Stanley. There were seven warships, besides the
+_Canopus_. The _Invincible_ and the _Inflexible_ had left Plymouth on
+November 11, and had proceeded to the West Indies. Their mission was to
+avenge Coronel. They had picked up at Albatross Rock the _Carnarvon_,
+_Cornwall_, _Bristol_, _Kent_, _Glasgow_, now repaired, and _Macedonia_,
+an armed liner. All had then steamed southwards towards the Falklands.
+The vessels started coaling. Officers came ashore to stretch their legs.
+Certain stores were laid in. It was anticipated that the squadron would
+depart in search of the enemy on the evening of the following day. That
+search might, indeed, be a matter of months. Early next morning,
+December 8, at about eight o'clock, a volunteer observer posted on
+Sapper's Hill, two miles from Stanley, sighted two vessels upon the
+horizon. Twenty minutes later the smoke of two others came into view in
+the same direction. They were soon recognized as German cruisers. The
+excitement was intense. The news was immediately carried to the
+authorities. It was hastily signalled to the fleet. Most of the ships
+were at anchor in Port William, the outer entrance to Port Stanley. Some
+of the naval officers were aroused from their repose. It is recorded
+that, upon hearing the news, the flag-lieutenant dashed down to Admiral
+Sturdee's cabin, clad in his pyjamas. Sir Doveton was shaving. The
+lieutenant poured forth his information. 'Well,' said the Admiral,
+dryly, 'you had better go and get dressed. We'll see about it later.'[1]
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The writer cannot vouch for the truth of this anecdote,
+which he merely records as given in a letter published in the press. But
+the source from which it was taken, together with many of the preceding
+details of the condition of Stanley during the period of tension, has
+proved so accurate in essential points of fact, that their insertion
+seems justifiable.
+
+[Sidenote: Achievements of the raiders.]
+
+[Sidenote: Supplies hard to obtain.]
+
+[Sidenote: The question of neutrality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Chile's neutrality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Falklands a possible base.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Gneisenau_ and _Nuernberg_ fire on wireless station.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germans are surprised.]
+
+The Graf von Spee had, meanwhile, after the Battle of Coronel, been
+devoting himself to harrying maritime commerce. The Falklands could wait
+for the present. Since the beginning of hostilities the work of his
+light cruisers had been moderately successful. The _Nuernberg_ had cut
+the cable between Bamfield, British Columbia, and Fanning Island. The
+_Leipzig_ had accounted for at least four British merchantmen, and the
+_Dresden_ for at least two more. The armed liner _Eitel Friedrich_ had
+also achieved some success. Several traders had had narrow escapes. The
+Chilian coast was in a state of blockade to British vessels, the ports
+being crowded with shipping that hesitated to venture forth into the
+danger zone. The Germans were masters of the Pacific and South Atlantic
+trade routes. The Straits of Magellan and the Horn formed a great
+waterway of commerce, which for sailing vessels was, indeed, the only
+eastern outlet from the Pacific. But completely as he had the situation
+in hand, von Spee was experiencing increasing problems and difficulties
+with regard to supplies of coal and provisions. Without these he was
+impotent. He had been employing German merchantmen to great advantage
+for refueling. But trouble was brewing with the Chilian authorities.
+Many signs were leading the latter to suspect that, contrary to
+international law, German traders were loading at Chilian ports cargoes
+of coal and provisions, contraband of war, and were transferring them at
+sea to the German warships. There were other causes of complaint. Juan
+Fernandez, the isle of romance and of mystery, the home of the original
+of Robinson Crusoe, was said to have been degraded into use as a base
+for apportioning the booty, coals and victuals, among the belligerent
+vessels. The island was a Chilian possession. It was practically certain
+that von Spee's squadron had stayed there beyond the legal limit of
+time. A French merchantman had, contrary to rule, also been sunk there
+by the _Dresden_, within Chilian territorial waters. Inquiries in other
+quarters were being made, moreover, as to the friendly wireless stations
+which the Germans had been utilizing secretly in Colombia and Ecuador;
+while a rumour was current in the United States that neutral vessels had
+been seized and pillaged on the high seas. Von Spee soon found that he
+was nearing the end even of his illegitimate resources. He had tried the
+patience of the Chilian authorities too far. About the middle of
+November they suddenly prohibited, as a provisional measure, the vessels
+of the Kosmos Company from leaving any Chilian port. On November 24 a
+Government ship was sent to Juan Fernandez to investigate, and to see
+that Chilian neutrality was upheld. Many such signs seemed to warn von
+Spee that the time was appropriate to a sudden disappearance. He
+gathered his squadron for a descent at last upon the Falklands. His
+plans must be, not merely for a raid, but for an occupation. There were
+probably two or three small ships there. They should be sunk. The
+wireless station must be destroyed. The Islands, after a landing had
+been effected and the defence reduced, could be used as a base for the
+German operations. There were large quantities of coal and stores at
+Stanley. The harbour possessed facilities for refitting. To dislodge a
+strong German naval force, with adequate guns, placed in occupation of
+the colony, would be a difficult task for the enemy. The Falklands had
+many possibilities. According to von Spee's information they were feebly
+defended and would fall an easy prey. At length, early in the morning of
+December 8, the Admiral brought his fleet off Stanley. His five cruisers
+approached from the south. They were, of course, observed. A warning
+gun, probably from one of the small ships which he would shortly sink,
+sounded the alarm inside the harbour. There was no need, however, for
+haste. At twenty minutes past nine the _Gneisenau_ and the _Nuernberg_
+moved towards the wireless station, and brought their guns to bear upon
+it. But suddenly from inside the harbour there came the thunder of a big
+gun. Five shells, of very heavy calibre, screamed in quick succession
+from over the low-lying land. One of the vessels was struck. Surprise
+and bewilderment took the Germans. This was most unexpected. The
+_Gneisenau_ and the _Nuernberg_ hastily retired out of range.
+
+[Sidenote: Strength of British squadron.]
+
+[Sidenote: Admiral Sturdee both confident and cautious.]
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy eight miles away.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Canopus_ opens fire.]
+
+Sir Doveton and his fleet, meanwhile, had gone to breakfast. Steam for
+full speed was got up as rapidly as possible. Coaling operations had
+recommenced at 6.30 that morning. The colliers were hurriedly cast off,
+and the decks were cleared for action. Officers and men were delighted
+at the prospect of an early fight. The Germans had saved them a long
+cold search around the Horn by calling for them. There was going to be
+no mistake this time. The enemy could not escape. Sturdee's squadron was
+superior both in weight and speed to the German. It consisted of two
+battle-cruisers of over 17,000 tons, the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_;
+of three cruisers of about 10,000 tons, the _Carnarvon_, _Kent_, and
+_Cornwall_; and of two light cruisers of 4,800 tons, the _Glasgow_ and
+_Bristol_. The primary armament of the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ was
+eight 12-inch guns; of the _Carnarvon_, four 7'5-inch; of the _Kent_ and
+_Cornwall_, fourteen 6-inch; of the _Glasgow_ and _Bristol_, two 6-inch.
+The speed of the battle-cruisers was twenty-eight knots; of the three
+middle-class cruisers, twenty-two to twenty-four knots; and of the light
+cruisers, twenty-five to twenty-six knots. In size, in armament, in
+speed, the British squadron would decidedly preponderate. Admiral
+Sturdee, however, though confident of victory, was determined to take no
+risks, and to minimize loss in men and material by making full use of
+his superior long-range gunfire, and of his superior speed. He would
+wait, screened by the land, until the Germans had drawn nearer.
+Everything should be got ready carefully. Undue excitement was to be
+deprecated. Meanwhile, he watched the enemy closely. At about a quarter
+to nine, Captain Grant of the _Canopus_ reported that the first two
+ships sighted were now about eight miles away: the other two were still
+at a distance of some twenty miles. The _Kent_ passed down the harbour
+and took up a position at the entrance. Five minutes later the smoke of
+a fifth German vessel was observed. When, in about half an hour's time,
+the two leading enemy ships made a threatening move in the direction of
+the wireless station, the Admiral ordered a swift counterstroke.
+Officers upon the hills above the town signalled the range, 11,000
+yards, to the _Canopus_. She opened fire with her 12-inch guns. The
+Germans hoisted their colours and drew back. Their masts and smoke were
+now visible from the upper bridge of the _Invincible_ across the low
+land bounding Port William on the south. Within a few minutes the two
+cruisers altered course and made for the harbour-mouth. Here the _Kent_
+lay stationed. It seemed that the Germans were about to engage her. As,
+however, they approached, the masts and funnels of two large ships at
+anchor within the port became visible to them. The _Gneisenau_ and the
+_Nuernberg_ could hardly expect to contend alone with this force. They at
+once changed their direction, and moved back at increased speed to join
+their consorts.
+
+[Sidenote: Weather unusually fair.]
+
+[Sidenote: Chase begins.]
+
+[Sidenote: More German ships sighted.]
+
+[Sidenote: Battle joined.]
+
+The morning was gloriously fine. The sun shone brightly, the sky was
+clear, the sea was calm, and a breeze blew lightly from the north-west.
+It was one of the rare bright stretches that visit the Islands, for
+usually rain falls, mostly in misty drizzles, on about 250 days in the
+year. At twenty minutes to ten the _Glasgow_ weighed anchor, and joined
+the _Kent_ at the harbour-mouth. Five minutes later the rest of the
+squadron weighed, and began to steam out. The battleship _Canopus_, her
+speed making her unsuitable for a chase, was left in harbour. The
+_Bristol_ and the _Macedonia_ also remained behind for the present. By a
+dexterous use of oil fuel the two battle-cruisers were kept shrouded as
+much as possible in dense clouds of smoke. The enemy for some time could
+not gauge their size. But as vessel after vessel emerged, Admiral von
+Spee grew uneasy. The English were in altogether unexpected strength.
+His squadron could not cope with such force. He had played into the
+enemy's hands, and unless he could outspeed their ships, the game was
+up. Without hesitation, he steamed off at high speed to eastward. The
+British followed, steaming at fifteen to eighteen knots. The enemy, to
+their south-east, were easily visible. At twenty past ten an order for a
+general chase was signalled. The _Invincible_ and the _Inflexible_
+quickly drew to the fore. The Germans were roughly in line abreast,
+20,000 yards, or some eleven miles, ahead. The morning sunlight, the
+gleaming seas, the grey warships, white foam springing from their bows,
+tearing at high speed through the waves, formed a magnificent spectacle.
+Crowds of the inhabitants of Stanley gathered upon the hills above the
+town to view the chase. The excitement and enthusiasm were intense. The
+vessels were in sight about two hours. At about a quarter past eleven it
+was reported from a point in the south of East Falkland that three other
+German ships were in sight. They were probably colliers or transports.
+The _Bristol_ signalled the information to Admiral Sturdee. He at once
+ordered her, with the armed liner _Macedonia_, to hasten in their
+direction and destroy them. The newcomers made off to south-west, and
+the British followed. Meanwhile the rest of the squadron, now travelling
+at twenty-three knots, were slowly closing upon the enemy. The distance
+had narrowed to 15-16,000 yards. The British were within striking
+range. Nevertheless, Sturdee decided to wait till after dinner before
+engaging. His guns could outdistance those of the enemy. It would be
+advisable for him to keep at long range. The Germans, on the other hand,
+would be forced, when firing commenced, to alter course and draw in, in
+order to bring their own guns into play. The men had their midday meal
+at twelve o'clock as usual. It is said that comfortable time was allowed
+afterwards for a smoke. The _Invincible_, _Inflexible_, and _Glasgow_ at
+about 12.30 increased their speed to between twenty-five and
+twenty-eight knots, and went on ahead. Just after a quarter to one there
+was a signal from the Admiral: 'Open fire and engage the enemy.' A few
+minutes later there were sharp commands. The ranges were signalled, and
+the bigger guns were laid. Fiery glares and dense clouds of smoke burst
+suddenly from their muzzles. The air quivered with their thunder. Shells
+went screaming in the direction of the nearest light cruiser, the
+_Leipzig_, which was dropping rapidly astern. The firing was
+uncomfortably accurate. The three smaller German cruisers very soon left
+the line, and made an attempt, veering off to the south, to scatter and
+escape. Flame and smoke issued from the _Leipzig_, before she drew
+clear, where a shell had struck. Sir Doveton Sturdee directed the
+_Glasgow_, _Kent_, and _Cornwall_ to pursue the German light cruisers.
+With his remaining vessels, the _Invincible_, the _Inflexible_, and the
+slower _Carnarvon_, he turned upon the _Scharnhorst_ and the
+_Gneisenau_, and began operations in earnest.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Scharnhorst_ on fire.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Scharnhorst_ sinks.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Gneisenau_ goes down.]
+
+The interval of sunlight which had opened the day with such promise was
+of short duration. The sky became overcast. Soon after four o'clock the
+air was thick with rain-mist. From 1.15 onwards for three hours a fierce
+duel was maintained between the two British battle-cruisers and the two
+German armoured cruisers. The enemy made every effort to get away. They
+replied to the British fire for some time, having dropped back to within
+13,500 yards. But shortly after two o'clock they changed their course,
+and began to haul out to south-east. The _Invincible_ and the
+_Inflexible_ had eased their speed, and the range now widened by about
+3,000 yards. A second chase ensued. A full-rigged sailing-ship appeared
+in the distance at about a quarter to three. Her crew must have beheld
+an awe-inspiring scene. Shortly before the hour firing recommenced. The
+action began to develop. Great coolness and efficiency were shown on
+board the British vessels. Every man was at his battle-station, behind
+armour. Fire-control parties were at their instruments. Water from
+numerous hoses was flooding the decks as a precaution against fire. The
+roaring of the discharges, the screaming of the shells, the clangour of
+metal upon metal, the crashes of the explosions, made up a tumult that
+was painful in its intensity. During intervals in the firing came the
+rushing of the waves and of the breeze, and the grinding and grunting of
+the hydraulic engines in the turrets, where swung, training constantly
+upon the enemy, the greater guns. The Germans soon began to show signs
+of distress. The _Scharnhorst_ particularly suffered. Dense clouds of
+smoke, making it difficult for the British accurately to gauge the
+damage, rose from her decks. Shells rending her side disclosed
+momentarily the dull red glow of flame. She was burning fiercely. The
+firing on both sides was deadly, though the German had slackened
+considerably. But the British vessels, through their preponderance in
+gunfire, suffered little damage. Their 12-inch guns hit their marks
+constantly, while 8.2-inch guns of the _Scharnhorst_ were accurate, but
+ineffective. She veered to starboard at about 3.30, to bring into play
+her starboard batteries. Both her masts and three of her four funnels
+were shot away. At length the German flagship began to settle down
+rapidly in the waters. It was about a quarter past four. There was a
+swirl of the seas and a rush of steam and smoke. The _Scharnhorst_
+disappeared. She went down with her flag flying to an ocean grave,
+bearing 760 brave men and a gallant admiral, whose name will deservedly
+rank high in the annals of German naval history. The _Gneisenau_ passed
+on the far side of her sunken flagship. With the guns of both
+battle-cruisers now bearing upon her alone, the German was soon in sore
+straits. But she fought on gallantly for a considerable time. At
+half-past five she had ceased firing, and appeared to be sinking. She
+had suffered severe damage. Smoke and steam were rising everywhere. Her
+bridge had been shot away. Her foremost funnel was resting against the
+second. Her upper deck was so shattered that it could not be crossed,
+and every man upon it had been killed. An exploding shell had hurled one
+of the gun-turrets bodily overboard. Fire was raging aft. Her colours
+had been shot away several times, and hoisted as often. One of the flags
+was hauled down at about twenty to six, though that at the peak was
+still flying. She began to fire again with a single gun. The
+_Invincible_, the _Inflexible_, and the _Carnarvon_, which had now come
+up, closed in upon the doomed vessel. Firing was recommenced. The
+_Gneisenau_ was not moving. Both her engines were smashed. Shells
+striking the water near her sent up colossal columns of water, which,
+falling upon the ship, put out some of the fires. She soon began to
+settle down in the waves. All her guns were now out of action, and
+Sturdee ordered the "Cease fire". There could be little doubt that her
+stubborn resistance was nearing its end. The German commander lined up
+his men on the decks. The ammunition was exhausted. The ship would soon
+go down. Some six hundred men had already been killed. The survivors had
+better provide themselves with articles for their support in the water.
+At six o'clock the _Gneisenau_ heeled over suddenly. Clouds of steam
+sprang forth. Her stem swung up into the air, and she sank. Large
+numbers of her crew could be seen floating in the icy waves, hanging on
+to pieces of wreckage, and uttering terribly uncanny cries. The sea was
+choppy. Drizzling rain was falling. The British steamed up immediately.
+All undamaged boats were got out. Ropes were lowered. Lifebuoys and
+spars were thrown to the drowning men. But many of them, numbed by the
+freezing water, let go their hold and sank. About 180, among them the
+captain of the _Gneisenau_, were saved. It is said that much agreeable
+surprise, upon the discovery that their anticipations of being shot
+would not be realized, was manifested by the German sailors.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Eitel Friedrich_ escapes.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Leipzig_ is sunk.]
+
+Meanwhile, battle had been in progress elsewhere. The _Bristol_ and the
+_Macedonia_ had overtaken the transports _Baden_ and _Santa Isabel_, had
+captured their crews, and had sunk the ships. The armed liner
+accompanying them, the _Eitel Friedrich_, had, however, made off and got
+away by means of her superior speed. The _Kent_, _Glasgow_ and
+_Cornwall_ had pursued the German light cruisers in a southerly
+direction. The _Dresden_, the fastest, proved too speedy a vessel to
+overtake. She was ahead of her consorts, upon either quarter, and made
+her escape whilst they were being engaged. The _Kent_ gave chase to the
+_Nuernberg_. The _Glasgow_, in pursuit of the _Leipzig_, raced ahead of
+the _Cornwall_, and by about three o'clock in the afternoon had closed
+sufficiently, within 12,000 yards, to open fire with her foremost guns.
+The German ship turned every now and then to fire a salvo. Soon a
+regular battle began which was maintained for some hours. Shells fell
+all around the _Glasgow_. There were several narrow escapes, but the
+casualties were few. Shortly after six a wireless message was received
+from Admiral Sturdee, announcing that the _Scharnhorst_ and the
+_Gneisenau_ had been sunk. A cheer surged up, and the men set to work
+with renewed spirits and energy. The _Cornwall_ had come up some time
+before, and the _Leipzig_ was now severely damaged. But she fought on
+for three more hours. Darkness came on. The German cruiser began to burn
+fore and aft. It was nine o'clock before she at last turned over and
+sank.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Kent_ returns.]
+
+[Sidenote: Sinking of the _Nuernberg_.]
+
+The British vessels had, during the course of the action, steamed miles
+apart, and far out of sight of land. During the evening and night they
+began to get into touch with one another and with Stanley by means of
+their wireless. All the ships except the _Kent_ were accounted for, and
+reported all well. But no reply was forthcoming to the numerous calls,
+"Kent, Kent, Kent", that were sent out. She had, in chase of the
+_Nuernberg_, lost all touch with the rest of the squadron. There was
+great uneasiness. It was feared that she had been lost. The other ships
+were directed to search for her, and for the _Nuernberg_ and the
+_Dresden_. Late in the afternoon of the following day, however, she
+entered Stanley harbour safely. Her wireless had been destroyed, but she
+had sunk the _Nuernberg_, after a very stern struggle. The German
+captain, Schoenberg, is reported, indeed, to have said at Honolulu, "The
+_Nuernberg_ will very likely be our coffin. But we are ready to fight to
+the last". He had fought and died true to his words. The German ship was
+ordinarily more than a knot faster than the British. But the engineers
+and stokers of the _Kent_ rose magnificently to the occasion. Fuel was
+piled high. Her engines were strained to the utmost. Soon she was
+speeding through the waves at twenty-five knots, a knot and a half more
+than her registered speed. The _Nuernberg_ drew nearer. At five o'clock
+she was within range, and firing was opened. A sharp action began which
+lasted some two and a half hours. The _Kent_ was struck many times, and
+lost several men. She had one narrow escape. A bursting shell ignited
+some cordite charges, and a flash of flame went down the hoist into the
+ammunition passage. Some empty shell bags began to burn. But a sergeant
+picked up a cordite charge and hurled it out of danger. Seizing a fire
+hose, he flooded the compartment and extinguished the fire. A disastrous
+explosion, which might have proved fatal to the vessel, was thus
+averted. Her silken ensign and jack, presented by the ladies of Kent,
+were torn to ribbons. The gallant captain collected the pieces, some
+being caught in the rigging, and carefully preserved them. The
+_Nuernberg_, however, was soon in sore straits. Many shells struck her,
+and she was set afire. Day drew into evening, and darkness deepened. The
+Germans ceased firing, and the _Kent_, within about 3,000 yards,
+followed suit upon the enemy's colours being hauled down. The _Nuernberg_
+sank just before half-past seven. As she disappeared beneath the
+surface, men upon her quarterdeck were waving the German ensign. The
+_Kent_, after picking up some survivors, put about, and returned to
+Stanley.
+
+Here the rest of the squadron soon gathered. Congratulatory telegrams
+began to pour in to Sir Doveton Sturdee. And the curtain closed, in the
+flush of triumph, upon the most memorable and most dramatic episode in
+the history of the Falklands.
+
+[Sidenote: Exploits of the _Eitel Friedrich_.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Eitel Friedrich_ comes to Newport News.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Dresden_ sinks.]
+
+One further episode remains to complete the story. The _Dresden_ and
+the armed liner _Eitel Friedrich_, the sole survivors of the German
+squadron, made once more for the Pacific. They were lost sight of for
+many weeks. Suspicious movements and activities on the part of German
+merchantmen were, however, again observed. The Government wireless
+station at Valparaiso intercepted messages from the _Dresden_ summoning
+friendly vessels to bring her supplies. Persistent rumours began to be
+circulated that she was hiding in the inlets of southern Chili. During
+January, 1915, the _Eitel Friedrich_ seized and destroyed six vessels,
+chiefly sailing-ships, some in Pacific, most in Atlantic waters. In
+February she accounted for four more. Towards the end of the month a
+British barque was sunk by the _Dresden_. The position was again rapidly
+becoming troublesome. The movement of British shipping, on the Chilian
+coast had to be suspended. But the _Glasgow_ and the _Kent_ were on the
+_Dresden's_ track. The _Kent_ entered Coronel on March 13, coaled, and
+departed the same night. The _Eitel Friedrich_, meanwhile, had arrived
+at Newport News, a United States port, with her engines badly in need of
+repair. Much indignation was aroused among Americans by the announcement
+that one of her victims had been an American vessel. The German liner
+had many prisoners on board. Declarations of a resolve, if he had been
+caught by the British, to have sunk fighting to the last, were
+repeatedly and emphatically declaimed by the German captain. Five days
+later he learned that the _Dresden_ had tamely surrendered off Juan
+Fernandez after a five minutes' action. The _Kent_, at nine o'clock on
+the morning after she had left Coronel, together with the _Glasgow_ and
+the auxiliary cruiser _Orama_, came up with the _Dresden_ near the
+island. A sharp encounter followed. The German cruiser was hit heavily.
+Fire broke out. In five minutes' time she hauled down her colours and
+hoisted a white flag. The crew were taken off. The _Dresden_ continued
+to burn for some time, until finally her magazine exploded and she sank.
+The German officers contended that their vessel was sunk within Chilian
+territorial waters. It had not hitherto been noticeable that their
+consciences were concerned to maintain Chilian neutrality inviolate.
+
+[Sidenote: Results of the Falkland battle.]
+
+The Battle of the Falkland Islands was the first decisive naval contest
+of the war. It removed a formidable menace to the trade routes. It
+relieved British convoys and transports from danger of interruption. It
+freed many battleships and cruisers, engaged in sweeping the oceans, for
+other usefulness. It gave Great Britain effective mastery of the outer
+seas. Henceforth German naval ambition, frustrated in its endeavour to
+disorganize the trade routes, was forced, within the limits of the North
+Sea and of British waters, to seek less adventurous but more
+disreputable ends. A series of bombardments of coast towns was planned.
+A preliminary success was followed by a galling disaster.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the exception of the naval engagements described above, the
+operations of the Germans in the sea was limited chiefly to preying upon
+enemy commerce by isolated vessels. Of these terrors of the sea the most
+famous was the cruiser _Emden_, which began her career on October 29 by
+sinking the Russian cruiser _Jemtchug_ in Penang Harbor. Her career
+until her destruction and the adventures of those of her crew who
+escaped are described in the following chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CRUISE OF THE EMDEN
+
+CAPTAIN MUeCKE
+
+
+[Sidenote: The _Indus_ sunk.]
+
+"We on the _Emden_ had no idea where we were going, as on August 11,
+1914, we separated from the cruiser squadron, escorted only by the
+coaler _Markomannia_. Under way, the _Emden_ picked up three officers
+from German steamers. That was a piece of luck, for afterward we needed
+many officers for the capturing and sinking of steamers, or manning them
+when we took them with us. On September 10 the first boat came in sight.
+We stop her. She proves to be a Greek tramp, chartered from England. On
+the next day we met the _Indus_, bound for Bombay, all fitted up as a
+troop transport, but still without troops. That was the first one we
+sunk. The crew we took aboard the _Markomannia_. 'What's the name of
+your ship?' the officers asked us. '_Emden!_ Impossible. Why, the
+_Emden_ was sunk long ago in battle with the _Ascold_!'
+
+[Sidenote: Capturing ships a habit.]
+
+[Sidenote: Provisions secured.]
+
+"Then we sank the _Lovat_ a troop transport ship, and took the _Kabinga_
+along with us. One gets used quickly to new forms of activity. After a
+few days capturing ships became a habit. Of the twenty-three which we
+captured, most of them stopped after our first signal. When they didn't,
+we fired a blank shot. Then they all stopped. Only one, the _Clan
+Mattesen_, waited for a real shot across the bow before giving up its
+many automobiles and locomotives to the seas. The officers were mostly
+very polite and let down rope ladders for us. After a few hours they'd
+be on board with us. We ourselves never set foot in their cabins, nor
+took charge of them. The officers often acted on their own initiative
+and signaled to us the nature of their cargo; then the Commandant
+decided as to whether to sink the ship or take it with us. Of the cargo,
+we always took everything we could use, particularly provisions. Many of
+the English officers and sailors made good use of the hours of transfer
+to drink up the supply of whisky instead of sacrificing it to the waves.
+I heard that one Captain was lying in tears at the enforced separation
+from his beloved ship, but on investigation found that he was merely
+dead drunk. But much worse was the open betrayal which many practiced
+toward their brother Captains, whom they probably regarded as rivals.
+'Haven't you met the _Kilo_ yet? If you keep on your course two hours
+longer, you must overhaul her,' one Captain said to me of his own
+accord. To other tips from other Captains we owed many of our prizes. I
+am prepared to give their names," Captain Muecke added.
+
+"The Captain of one ship once called out cheerily: 'Thank God I've been
+captured!' He had received expense money for the trip to Australia, and
+was now saved half the journey!
+
+[Sidenote: The process of sinking.]
+
+"We had mostly quiet weather, so that communication with captured ships
+was easy. They were mostly dynamited, or else shot close to the water
+line. The sinking process took longer or shorter, according to where
+they were struck and the nature of the cargo. Mostly the ships keeled
+over on their sides till the water flowed down the smokestacks, a last
+puff of smoke came out, and then they were gone. Many, however, went
+down sharply bow first, the stern rising high in the air.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Kabinga_.]
+
+"On the _Kabinga_ the Captain had his wife and youngster with him. He
+was inclined at first to be disagreeable. 'What are you going to do
+with us? Shall we be set out in boats and left to our fate?' he asked.
+Afterward he grew confidential, like all the Captains, called us 'Old
+Chap,' gave the Lieutenant a nice new oilskin, and as we finally let the
+_Kabinga_ go wrote us a letter of thanks, and his wife asked for an
+Emden armband and a button. They all gave us three cheers as they
+steamed away. 'Come to Calcutta some time!' was the last thing the
+Captain said, 'and catch the pilots so that those [unprintable seaman's
+epithet] fellows will feel something of the war, too.'
+
+"A few days later, by Calcutta, we made one of our richest hauls, the
+_Diplomat_, chock full of tea--we sunk $2,500,000 worth. On the same day
+the _Trabbotch_, too, which steered right straight toward us, literally
+into our arms.
+
+[Sidenote: Madras oil tanks burned.]
+
+"But now we wanted to beat it out of the Bay of Bengal, because we had
+learned from the papers that the _Emden_ was being keenly searched for.
+By Rangoon we encountered a Norwegian tramp, which, for a cash
+consideration, took over all the rest of our prisoners of war. Later on
+another neutral ship rejected a similar request and betrayed us to the
+Japanese into the bargain. On September 23 we reached Madras and steered
+straight for the harbor. We stopped still 3,000 yards before the city.
+Then we shot up the oil tanks. Three or four burned up and illuminated
+the city. They answered. Several of the papers asserted that we left
+with lights out. On the contrary, we showed our lights so as to seem to
+indicate that we were going northward; only later did we put them out,
+turn around, and steer southward. As we left we could see the fire
+burning brightly in the night, and even by daylight, ninety sea miles
+away, we could still see the smoke from the burning oil tanks. Two days
+later we navigated around Ceylon, and could see the lights of Colombo.
+On the same evening we gathered in two more steamers, the _King Lund_
+and _Tyweric_. The latter was particularly good to us, for it brought us
+the very latest evening papers from Colombo, which it had only left two
+hours before.
+
+[Sidenote: Ships that the _Emden_ captured.]
+
+"Everything went well, the only trouble was that our prize, the
+_Markomannia_, didn't have much coal left. We said one evening in the
+mess: 'The only thing lacking now is a nice steamer with 500 tons of
+nice Cardiff coal.' The next evening we got her, the _Burresk_,
+brand-new, from England on her maiden voyage, bound for Hongkong. Then
+followed in order the _Riberia_, _Foyle_, _Grand Ponrabbel_, _Benmore_,
+_Troiens_, _Exfort_, _Grycefale_, _Sankt Eckbert_, _Chilkana_. Most of
+them were sunk; the coal ships were kept. The _Eckbert_ was let go with
+a load of passengers and captured crews. We also sent the _Markomannia_
+away because it hadn't any more coal. She was later captured by the
+English together with all the prize papers about their own captured
+ships. All this happened before October 20; then we sailed southward, to
+Deogazia, southwest of Colombo. South of Lakadiven on Deogazia some
+Englishmen came on board, solitary farmers who were in touch with the
+world only every three months through schooners. They knew nothing about
+the war, took us for an English man-of-war, and asked us to repair their
+motor boat for them. We kept still and invited them to dinner in our
+officers' mess. Presently they stood still in front of the portrait of
+the Kaiser, quite astounded. 'This is a German ship!' We continued to
+keep still. 'Why is your ship so dirty?' they asked. We shrugged our
+shoulders. 'Will you take some letters for us?' they asked. 'Sorry,
+impossible; we don't know what port we'll run into.' Then they left our
+ship, but about the war we told them not a single word.
+
+[Sidenote: Coal steamers captured.]
+
+"Now we went toward Miniko, where we sank two ships more. The Captain of
+one of them said to us: 'Why don't you try your luck around north of
+Miniko? There's lots of ships there now?' On the next day we found three
+steamers to the north, one of them with much desired Cardiff coal. From
+English papers on captured ships we learned that we were being hotly
+pursued. The stokers also told us a lot. Our pursuers evidently must
+also have a convenient base. Penang was the tip given us. There we had
+hopes of finding two French cruisers.
+
+[Sidenote: The fourth smokestack.]
+
+"One night we started for Penang. On October 28 we raised our very
+practicable fourth smokestack--Muecke's own invention. As a result, we
+were taken for English or French. The harbor of Penang lies in a channel
+difficult of access. There was nothing doing by night; we had to do it
+at daybreak. At high speed, without smoke, with lights out, we steered
+into the mouth of the channel. A torpedo boat on guard slept well. We
+steamed past its small light. Inside lay a dark silhouette; that must be
+a warship! But it wasn't the French cruiser we were looking for. We
+recognized the silhouette--dead sure; that was the Russian cruiser
+_Jemtchug_. There it lay, there it slept like a rat. No watch to be
+seen. They made it easy for us. Because of the narrowness of the harbor
+we had to keep close; we fired the first torpedo at 400 yards. Then to
+be sure things livened up a bit on the sleeping warship. At the same
+time we took the crew quarters under fire, five shells at a time. There
+was a flash of flame on board, then a kind of burning aureole. After the
+fourth shell, the flame burned high. The first torpedo had struck the
+ship too deep because we were too close to it, a second torpedo which we
+fired off from the other side didn't make the same mistake. After
+twenty seconds there was absolutely not a trace of the ship to be seen.
+The enemy had fired off only about six shots.
+
+[Sidenote: French ships fight the _Emden_.]
+
+[Sidenote: A burial at sea.]
+
+"But now another ship, which we couldn't see, was firing. That was the
+French _D'Ibreville_, toward which we now turned at once. A few minutes
+later an incoming torpedo destroyer was reported. He mustn't find us in
+that narrow harbor, otherwise we were finished! But it proved to be a
+false alarm; only a small merchant steamer that looked like a destroyer,
+and which at once showed the merchant flag and steered for shore.
+Shortly afterward a second one was reported. This time it proved to be
+the French torpedo boat _Mousquet_. It comes straight toward us. That's
+always remained a mystery to me, for it must have heard the shooting. An
+officer whom we fished up afterward explained to me that they had only
+recognized we were a German warship when they were quite close to us.
+The Frenchman behaved well, accepted battle and fought on, but was
+polished off by us with three broadsides. The whole fight with both
+ships lasted half an hour. The commander of the torpedo boat lost both
+legs by the first broadside. When he saw that part of his crew were
+leaping overboard, he cried out: 'Tie me fast; I will not survive after
+seeing Frenchmen desert their ship!' As a matter of fact, he went down
+with his ship as a brave Captain, lashed fast to the mast. Then we
+fished up thirty heavily wounded; three died at once. We sewed a
+Tri-color (the French flag), wound them in it and buried them at sea,
+with seamen's honors, three salvos. That was my only sea fight. The
+second one I did not take part in."
+
+Muecke, who had been recounting his lively narrative, partly like an
+officer, partly like an artist, and not trying to eliminate the flavor
+of adventure, now takes on quite another tone as he comes to tell of
+the end of the _Emden_:
+
+[Sidenote: Landing on Cocos Island.]
+
+[Sidenote: Order to weigh anchor.]
+
+"On November 9 I left the _Emden_ in order to destroy the wireless plant
+on the Cocos Island. I had fifty men, four machine guns, about thirty
+rifles. Just as we were about to destroy the apparatus it reported:
+'Careful; _Emden_ near.' The work of destruction went smoothly. The
+wireless operator said: 'Thank God! it's been like being under arrest
+day and night lately.' Presently the _Emden_ signaled to us: 'Hurry up.'
+I pack up, but simultaneously wails the _Emden's_ siren. I hurry up to
+the bridge, see the flag 'Anna' go up. That means 'Weigh anchor.' We ran
+like mad into our boat, but already the _Emden's_ pennant goes up, the
+battle flag is raised, they fire from starboard.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Sydney_ traps the _Emden_.]
+
+"The enemy is concealed by the island and therefore not to be seen, but
+I see the shells strike the water. To follow and catch the _Emden_ is
+out of the question; she's going twenty knots, I only four with my steam
+pinnace. Therefore, I turn back to land, raise the flag, declare German
+laws of war in force, seize all arms, set up my machine guns on shore in
+order to guard against a hostile landing. Then I run again in order to
+observe the fight. From the splash of the shells it looked as if the
+enemy had fifteen-centimeter guns, bigger, therefore, than the
+_Emden's_. He fired rapidly, but poorly. It was the Australian cruiser
+_Sydney_."
+
+"Have you heard?" Muecke suddenly asked in between, "if anything has
+happened to the _Sydney_? At the Dardanelles maybe?" And his hatred of
+the _Emden's_ "hangman" is visible for a second in his blue eyes. Then
+he continues:
+
+[Sidenote: The _Emden_ on fire.]
+
+"According to the accounts of the Englishmen who saw the first part of
+the engagement from shore, the _Emden_ was cut off rapidly. Her forward
+smokestack lay across the ship. She went over to circular fighting and
+to torpedo firing, but already burned fiercely aft. Behind the mainmast
+several shells struck home; we saw the high flame. Whether circular
+fighting or a running fight now followed, I don't know, because I again
+had to look to my land defenses. Later I looked on from the roof of a
+house. Now the _Emden_ again stood out to sea about 4,000 to 5,000
+yards, still burning. As she again turned toward the enemy, the forward
+mast was shot away. On the enemy no outward damage was apparent, but
+columns of smoke showed where shots had struck home. Then the _Emden_
+took a northerly course, likewise the enemy, and I had to stand there
+helpless gritting my teeth and thinking: 'Damn it; the _Emden_ is
+burning and you aren't on board!' An Englishman who had also climbed up
+to the roof of the house, approached me, greeted me politely, and asked:
+'Captain, would you like to have a game of tennis with us?'
+
+[Sidenote: The fighting ships disappear.]
+
+"The ships, still fighting, disappeared beyond the horizon. I thought
+that an unlucky outcome for the _Emden_ was possible, also a landing by
+the enemy on Keeling Island, at least for the purpose of landing the
+wounded and taking on provisions. As, according to the statements of the
+Englishmen, there were other ships in the neighborhood, I saw myself
+faced with the certainty of having soon to surrender because of a lack
+of ammunition. But for no price did I and my men want to get into
+English imprisonment. As I was thinking about all this, the masts again
+appear on the horizon, the _Emden_ steaming easterly, but very much
+slower. All at once the enemy, at high speed, shoots by, apparently,
+quite close to the _Emden_. A high, white waterspout showed among the
+black smoke of the enemy. That was a torpedo. I see how the two
+opponents withdrew, the distance growing greater between them; how they
+separate, till they disappear in the darkness. The fight had lasted ten
+hours.
+
+[Sidenote: Muecke seizes a schooner.]
+
+"I had made up my mind to leave the island as quick as possible. The
+_Emden_ was gone; the danger for us growing. In the harbor I had noticed
+a three-master, the schooner _Ayesha_. Mr. Ross, the owner of the ship
+and of the island, had warned me that the boat was leaky, but I found it
+quite a seaworthy tub. Now quickly provisions were taken on board for
+eight weeks, water for four. The Englishmen very kindly showed us the
+best water and gave us clothing and utensils. They declared this was
+their thanks for our 'moderation' and 'generosity.' Then they collected
+the autographs of our men, photographed them, and gave three cheers as
+our last boat put off. It was evening, nearly dark. We sailed away.
+After a short address, amid three hurrahs, I raised the German war flag
+on 'S.M.S. _Ayesha_.'"
+
+[Sidenote: The _Ayesha_ sails westward.]
+
+"The _Ayesha_ proved to be a really splendid ship," Muecke continued, and
+whenever he happens to speak of this sailing ship he grows warmer. One
+notices the passion for sailing which this seaman has, for he was
+trained on a sailing ship and had won many prizes in the regattas at
+Kiel. "But we had hardly any instruments," he narrated, "we had only one
+sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was
+lacking. Luckily I found an old 'Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on
+board; its information went back to the year 1780.
+
+[Sidenote: En route to Padang.]
+
+"At first we had to overhaul all the tackle, for I didn't trust to
+peace, and we had left the English Captain back on the island. I had
+said: 'We are going to East Africa.' Therefore I sailed at first
+westward, then northward. There followed the monsoons, but then also
+long periods of dead calm. Then we scolded! Only two neutral ports came
+seriously under consideration: Batavia and Padang. At Keeling I
+cautiously asked about Tsing-tao, of which I had naturally thought
+first, and so quite by chance learned that it had fallen. Now I decided
+for Padang, because I knew I would be more apt to meet the _Emden_
+there, also because there was a German Consul there, because my schooner
+was unknown there, and because I hoped to find German ships there and
+learn some news. 'It'll take you six to eight days to reach Batavia,' a
+Captain had told me at Keeling. Now we needed eighteen days to reach
+Padang, the weather was so rottenly still.
+
+[Sidenote: Life on board the _Ayesha_.]
+
+"We had an excellent cook on board; he had deserted from the French
+Foreign Legion. But with water we had to go sparingly, each man received
+three glasses daily. When it rained, all possible receptacles were
+placed on deck and the main sail was spread over the cabin roof to catch
+the rain. The whole crew went about naked, in order to spare our wash,
+for the clothing from Keeling was soon in rags. Toothbrushes were long
+ago out of sight. One razor made the rounds of the crew. The entire ship
+had one precious comb.
+
+[Sidenote: A Dutch torpedo boat.]
+
+"As at length we came in the neighborhood of Padang, on November 26, a
+ship appeared for the first time and looked after our name. But the name
+had been painted over, because it was the former English name. As I
+think, 'You're rid of the fellow,' the ship comes again in the evening,
+comes within a hundred yards of us. I send all men below deck. I
+promenade the deck as the solitary skipper. Through Morse signals the
+stranger betrayed its identity. It was the Hollandish torpedo boat
+_Lyn_. I asked by signals, first in English, then twice in German: 'Why
+do you follow me?' No answer. The next morning I find myself in
+Hollandish waters, so I raise pennant and war flag. Now the _Lyn_ came
+at top speed past us. As it passes, I have my men line up on deck, and
+give a greeting. The greeting is answered. Then, before the harbor at
+Padang, I went aboard the _Lyn_ in my well and carefully preserved
+uniform and declared my intentions. The commandant opined that I could
+run into the harbor, but whether I might come out again was doubtful."
+
+[Sidenote: A German ship.]
+
+"On the South Coast," interjected Lieutenant Wellman, who at that time
+lay with a German ship before Padang and only later joined the landing
+corps of the _Emden_, "we suddenly saw a three-master arrive. Great
+excitement aboard our German ship, for the schooner carried the German
+war flag. We thought she came from New Guinea and at once made all boats
+clear, on the _Kleist_, _Rheinland_, and _Choising_, for we were all on
+the search for the _Emden_. When we heard that the schooner carried the
+landing corps, not a man of us would believe it."
+
+[Sidenote: Supplies are refused.]
+
+"They wanted to treat me as a prize!" Muecke now continued. "I said, 'I
+am a man of war,' and pointed to my four machine guns. The harbor
+authorities demanded a certification for pennant and war flag, also
+papers to prove that I was the commander of this warship. I answered,
+for that I was only responsible to my superior officers. Now they
+advised me the most insistently to allow ourselves to be interned
+peacefully. They said it wasn't at all pleasant in the neighborhood.
+We'd fall into the hands of the Japanese or the English. As a matter of
+fact, we had again had great luck. On the day before a Japanese warship
+had cruised around here. Naturally, I rejected all the well-meant and
+kindly advice, and did this in presence of my lieutenants. I demanded
+provisions, water, sails, tackle, and clothing. They replied we could
+take on board everything which we formerly had on board, but nothing
+which would mean an increase in our naval strength. First thing, I
+wanted to improve our wardrobe, for I had only one sock, a pair of
+shoes, and one clean shirt, which had become rather seedy. My comrades
+had even less. But the Master of the Port declined to let us have not
+only charts, but also clothing and toothbrushes, on the ground that
+these would be an increase of armament. Nobody could come aboard, nobody
+could leave the ship without permission. I requested that the Consul be
+allowed to come aboard. This Consul, Herr Schild, as also the Brothers
+Baeumer, gave us assistance in the friendliest fashion. From the German
+steamers boats could come alongside and talk with us. Finally we were
+allowed to have German papers. They were, to be sure, from August. Until
+March we saw no more papers.
+
+[Sidenote: The German ship _Choising_.]
+
+"Hardly had we been towed out again after twenty-four hours, on the
+evening of the 28th, when a searchlight appeared before us. I think:
+'Better interned than prisoner.' I put out all lights and withdrew to
+the shelter of the island. But they were Hollanders and didn't do
+anything to us. Then for two weeks more we drifted around, lying still
+for days. The weather was alternately still, rainy and blowy. At length
+a ship comes in sight--a freighter. It sees us and makes a big curve
+around us. I make everything hastily 'clear for battle.' Then one of our
+officers recognizes her for the _Choising_. She shows the German flag. I
+send up light rockets, although it was broad day, and go with all sails
+set that were still setable, toward her. The _Choising_ is a coaster,
+from Hongkong for Siam. It was at Singapore when the war broke out, then
+went to Batavia, was chartered loaded with coal for the _Emden_, and
+had put into Padang in need, because the coal in the hold had caught
+fire. There we had met her.
+
+[Sidenote: The crew board the _Choising_.]
+
+"Great was our joy now. I had all my men come on deck and line up for
+review. The fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus, in Nature's garb, we gave
+three cheers for the German flag on the _Choising_. The men on the
+_Choising_ told us afterward 'we couldn't make out what that meant,
+those stark naked fellows all cheering!' The sea was too high, and we
+had to wait two days before we could board the _Choising_ on December
+16. We took very little with us; the schooner was taken in tow. In the
+afternoon we sunk the _Ayesha_ and we were all very sad. The good old
+_Ayesha_ had served us faithfully for six weeks. The log showed that we
+had made 1,709 sea miles under sail since leaving Keeling. She wasn't at
+all rotten and unseaworthy, as they had told me, but nice and white and
+dry inside. I had grown fond of the ship, on which I could practice my
+old sailing manoeuvres. The only trouble was that the sails would go to
+pieces every now and then because they were so old.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Ayesha_ is sunk.]
+
+"But anyway she went down quite properly, didn't she?" Muecke turned to
+the officer. "We had bored a hole in her; she filled slowly and then all
+of a sudden plump disappeared! That was the saddest day of the whole
+month. We gave her three cheers, and my next yacht at Kiel will be named
+_Ayesha_, that's sure.
+
+[Sidenote: Turkey an ally of Germany.]
+
+"To the Captain of the _Choising_ I had said, when I hailed him: 'I do
+not know what will happen to the ship. The war situation may make it
+necessary for me to strand it.' He did not want to undertake the
+responsibility. I proposed that we work together, and I would take the
+responsibility. Then we traveled together for three weeks, from Padang
+to Hodeida. The _Choising_ was some ninety meters long and had a speed
+of nine miles, though sometimes only four. If she had not accidentally
+arrived I had intended to cruise high along the west coast of Sumatra to
+the region of the northern monsoon. I came about six degrees north, then
+over Aden to the Arabian coast. In the Red Sea the northeastern monsoon,
+which here blows southeast, could bring us to Djidda. I had heard in
+Padang that Turkey is allied with us, so we would be able to get safely
+through Arabia to Germany.
+
+"I next waited for information through ships, but the _Choising_ did not
+know anything definite, either. By way of the _Luchs_, the _Koenigsberg_,
+and _Kormoran_ the reports were uncertain. Besides, according to
+newspapers at Aden, the Arabs were said to have fought with the English.
+Therein there seemed to be offered an opportunity near at hand to damage
+the enemy. I therefore sailed with the _Choising_ in the direction of
+Aden. Lieutenant Gerdts of the _Choising_ had heard that the Arabian
+railway now already went almost to Hodeida, near the Perim Strait. The
+ship's surgeon there, Docounlang, found confirmation of this in Meyer's
+traveling handbook. This railway could not have been taken over by the
+Englishmen, who always dreamed of it. By doing this they would have
+further and completely wrought up the Mohammedans by making more
+difficult the journey to Mecca. Best of all, we thought, we'll simply
+step into the express train and whizz nicely away to the North Sea.
+Certainly there would be safe journeying homeward through Arabia. To be
+sure, we hadn't maps of the Red Sea; but it was the shortest way to the
+foe, whether in Aden or in Germany.
+
+[Sidenote: On toward Aden.]
+
+"Therefore, courage! Adenwards!"
+
+[Sidenote: Through the Strait of Perim.]
+
+"On the 7th of January, between 9 and 10 o'clock in the evening, we
+sneaked through the Strait of Perim. That lay swarming full of
+Englishmen. We steered along the African coast, close past an English
+cable layer. That is my prettiest delight--how the Englishmen will be
+vexed when they learn that we have passed smoothly by Perim. On the next
+evening we saw on the coast a few lights upon the water. We thought that
+must be the pier of Hodeida. But when we measured the distance by night,
+3,000 meters, I began to think that must be something else. At dawn I
+made out two masts and four smokestacks; that was an enemy ship, and,
+what is more, an armored French cruiser. I therefore ordered the
+_Choising_ to put to sea, and to return at night.
+
+[Sidenote: Muecke's party enters Hodeida.]
+
+"The next day and night the same; then we put out four boats--these we
+pulled to shore at sunrise under the eyes of the unsuspecting Frenchmen.
+The sea reeds were thick. A few Arabs came close to us; then there
+ensued a difficult negotiation with the Arabian Coast Guards. For we did
+not even know whether Hodeida was in English or French hands. We waved
+to them, laid aside our arms, and made signs to them. The Arabs,
+gathering together, begin to rub two fingers together; that means 'We
+are friends.' We thought that meant 'We are going to rub against you and
+are hostile.' I therefore said: 'Boom-boom!' and pointed to the warship.
+At all events, I set up my machine guns and made preparations for a
+skirmish. But, thank God! one of the Arabs understood the word
+'Germans'; that was good.
+
+"Soon a hundred Arabs came and helped us, and as we marched into Hodeida
+the Turkish soldiers, who had been called out against us, saluted us as
+allies and friends. To be sure, there was not a trace of a railway, but
+we were received very well, and they assured us we could get through by
+land. Therefore, I gave red-star signals at night, telling the
+_Choising_ to sail away, since the enemy was near by. Inquiries and
+determination concerning a safe journey by land proceeded. I also heard
+that in the interior, about six days' journey away, there was healthy
+highland where our fever invalids could recuperate. I therefore
+determined to journey next to Sana. On the Kaiser's birthday we held a
+great parade in common with the Turkish troops--all this under the noses
+of the Frenchmen. On the same day we marched away from Hodeida to the
+highland.
+
+"Two months after our arrival at Hodeida we again put to sea. The time
+spent in the highlands of Sana passed in lengthy inquiries and
+discussions that finally resulted in our foregoing the journey by land
+through Arabia, for religious reasons. But the time was not altogether
+lost. The men who were sick with malaria had, for the most part,
+recuperated in the highland air.
+
+[Sidenote: To sea in sambuks.]
+
+"The Turkish Government placed at our disposal two 'sambuks' (sailing
+ships) of about twenty-five tons, fifteen meters long and four meters
+wide. But in fear of English spies, we sailed from Jebaua, ten miles
+north of Hodeida. That was on March 14. At first we sailed at a
+considerable distance apart, so that we would not both go to pot if an
+English gunboat caught us. Therefore, we always had to sail in coastal
+water. That is full of coral reefs, however."
+
+[Sidenote: One sambuk runs on a reef.]
+
+"The Commander," Lieutenant Gerdts said, "had charge of the first
+sambuk; I of the second, which was the larger of the two, for we had
+four sick men aboard. At first everything went nicely for three days.
+For the most part I could see the sails of the first ship ahead of me.
+On the third day I received orders to draw nearer and to remain in the
+vicinity of the first boat, because its pilot was sailing less
+skillfully than mine. Suddenly, in the twilight, I felt a shock, then
+another, and still another. The water poured in rapidly. I had run upon
+the reef of a small island, where the smaller sambuk was able barely to
+pass because it had a foot less draught than mine. Soon my ship was
+quite full, listed over, and all of us--twenty-eight men--had to sit on
+the uptilted edge of the boat. The little island lies at Jesirat Marka,
+200 miles north of Jebaua. To be sure, an Arab boat lay near by, but
+they did not know us. Nobody could help us. If the Commander had not
+changed the order a few hours before and asked us to sail up closer, we
+would probably have drowned on this coral reef--certainly would have
+died of thirst. Moreover, the waters thereabouts are full of sharks, and
+the evening was so squally that our stranded boat was raised and banged
+with every wave. We could scarcely move, and the other boat was nowhere
+in sight. And now it grew dark. At this stage I began to build a raft of
+spars and old pieces of wood, that might at all events keep us afloat.
+
+[Sidenote: The crew finally rescued.]
+
+[Sidenote: Machine guns brought up.]
+
+"But soon the first boat came into sight again. The commander turned
+about and sent over his little canoe; in this and in our own canoe, in
+which two men could sit at each trip, we first transferred the sick. Now
+the Arabs began to help us. But just then the tropical helmet of our
+doctor suddenly appeared above the water in which he was standing up to
+his ears. Thereupon the Arabs withdrew; we were Christians, and they did
+not know that we were friends. Now the other sambuk was so near that we
+could have swam to it in half an hour, but the seas were too high. At
+each trip a good swimmer trailed along, hanging to the painter of the
+canoe. When it became altogether dark we could not see the boat any
+more, for over there they were prevented by the wind from keeping any
+light burning. My men asked 'In what direction shall we swim?' I
+answered: 'Swim in the direction of this or that star; that must be
+about the direction of the boat.' Finally a torch flared up over
+there--one of the torches that were still left from the _Emden_. But we
+had suffered considerably through submersion. One sailor cried out: 'Oh,
+pshaw! it's all up with us now; that's a searchlight.' The man who held
+out best was Lieutenant Schmidt, who later lost his life. About 10
+o'clock we were all safe aboard, but one of our typhus patients, Seaman
+Keil, wore himself out completely by the exertion; he died a week later.
+On the next morning we went over again to the wreck in order to seek the
+weapons that had fallen into the water. You see, the Arabs dive so well;
+they fetched up a considerable lot--both machine guns, all but ten of
+the rifles, though these were, to be sure, all full of water. Later they
+frequently failed to go off when they were used in firing.
+
+[Sidenote: Sami Bey becomes guide.]
+
+"Now we numbered, together with the Arabs, seventy men on the little
+boat, until evening. Then we anchored before Konfida, and met Sami Bey,
+who is still with us. He had shown himself useful even before in the
+service of the Turkish Government, and has done good service as guide in
+the last two months. He is an active man, thoroughly familiar with the
+country. He procured for us a larger boat, of fifty-four tons, and he
+himself, with his wife, sailed alongside on the little sambuk. We sailed
+from the 20th to the 24th unmolested to Lith. There Sami Bey announced
+that three English ships were cruising about in order to intercept us. I
+therefore advised traveling a bit overland. I disliked leaving the sea a
+second time, but it had to be done."
+
+[Sidenote: Travelling overland.]
+
+"Lith is, to be sure, nothing but this," said Muecke, with a sweeping
+gesture toward the desert through which we were traveling, "and
+therefore it was very difficult to get up a caravan at once. We remained
+aboard ship so long. We marched away on the 28th. We had only a vague
+suspicion that the English might have agents here also. We could travel
+only at night, and when we slept or camped around a spring, there was
+only a tent for the sick men. Two days' march from Jeddah, the Turkish
+Government, as soon as it had received news about us, sent us sixteen
+good camels.
+
+[Sidenote: An attack.]
+
+"Suddenly, on the night of April 1, things became uneasy. I was riding
+at the head of the column. All our shooting implements were cleared for
+action, because there was danger of an attack by Bedouins, whom the
+English here had bribed. When it began to grow a bit light, I already
+thought: 'We're through for to-day'; for we were tired--had been riding
+eighteen hours. Suddenly I saw a line flash up before me, and shots
+whizzed over our heads. Down from the camels! Form a fighting line! You
+know how quickly it becomes daylight here. The whole space around the
+desert hillock was occupied. Now, up with your bayonets! Rush 'em! * * *
+They fled, but returned again, this time from all sides. Several of the
+gendarmes that had been given us as an escort are wounded; the machine
+gun operator, Rademacher, falls, killed by a shot through his heart;
+another is wounded; Lieutenant Schmidt, in the rear guard, is mortally
+wounded--he has received a bullet in his chest and abdomen.
+
+[Sidenote: A flag of truce and a barricade.]
+
+"Suddenly they waved white cloths. The Sheik, to whom a part of our
+camels belonged, went over to them to negotiate, then Sami Bey and his
+wife. In the interim we quickly built a sort of wagon barricade, a
+circular camp of camel saddles, rice and coffee sacks, all of which we
+filled with sand. We had no shovels, and had to dig with our bayonets,
+plates, and hands. The whole barricade had a diameter of about fifty
+meters. Behind it we dug trenches, which we deepened even during the
+skirmish. The camels inside had to lie down, and thus served very well
+as cover for the rear of the trenches. Then an inner wall was
+constructed, behind which we carried the sick men. In the very centre we
+buried two jars of water, to guard us against thirst. In addition we had
+ten petroleum cans full of water; all told, a supply for four days. Late
+in the evening Sami's wife came back from the futile negotiations,
+alone. She had unveiled for the first and only time on this day of the
+skirmish, had distributed cartridges, and had conducted herself
+faultlessly.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Schmidt and Rademacher.]
+
+"Soon we were able to ascertain the number of the enemy. There were
+about 300 men; we numbered fifty, with twenty-nine guns. In the night,
+Lieutenant Schmidt died. We had to dig his grave with our hands and with
+our bayonets, and to eliminate every trace above it, in order to protect
+the body. Rademacher had been buried immediately after the skirmish,
+both of them silently, with all honors.
+
+[Sidenote: The men suffer from thirst.]
+
+"The wounded had a hard time of it. We had lost our medicine chest in
+the wreck; we had only little packages of bandages for skirmishes; but
+no probing instrument, no scissors were at hand. On the next day our men
+came up with thick tongues, feverish, and crying 'Water! water!' But
+each one received only a little cupful three times a day. If our water
+supply was exhausted, we would have to sally from our camp and fight our
+way through. Then we should have gone to pot under superior numbers. The
+Arab gendarmes simply cut the throats of those camels that had been
+wounded by shots, and then drank the yellow water that was contained in
+the stomachs. Those fellows can stand anything. At night we always
+dragged out the dead camels that had served as cover, and had been
+shot. The hyenas came, hunting for dead camels. I shot one of these,
+taking it for an enemy in the darkness.
+
+"That continued about three days. On the third day there were new
+negotiations. Now the Bedouins demanded arms no longer, but only money.
+This time the negotiations took place across the camp wall. When I
+declined, the Bedouin said: 'Beaucoup de combat,' (lots of fight.) I
+replied:
+
+"'Please go to it!'
+
+[Sidenote: Troops of the Emir of Mecca.]
+
+"We had only a little ammunition left, and very little water. Now it
+really looked as if we would soon be dispatched. The mood of the men was
+pretty dismal. Suddenly, at about 10 o'clock in the morning, there
+bobbed up in the north two riders on camels, waving white cloths. Soon
+afterward there appeared, coming from the same direction, far back, a
+long row of camel troops, about a hundred; they draw rapidly near by,
+ride singing toward us, in a picturesque train. They were the messengers
+and troops of the Emir of Mecca.
+
+"Sami Bey's wife, it developed, had, in the course of the first
+negotiations, dispatched an Arab boy to Jeddah. From that place the
+Governor had telegraphed to the Emir. The latter at once sent camel
+troops, with his two sons and his personal surgeon; the elder, Abdullah,
+conducted the negotiations; the surgeon acted as interpreter, in French.
+Now things proceeded in one-two-three order, and the whole Bedouin band
+speedily disappeared. From what I learned later, I know definitely that
+they had been corrupted with bribes by the English. They knew when and
+where we would pass and they had made all preparations. Now our first
+act was a rush for water; then we cleared up our camp, but had to
+harness our camels ourselves, for the camel drivers had fled at the
+very beginning of the skirmish. More than thirty camels were dead. The
+saddles did not fit, and my men know how to rig up schooners, but not
+camels. Much baggage remained lying in the sand for lack of pack
+animals.
+
+[Sidenote: The party reaches Mecca.]
+
+"Then, under the safe protection of Turkish troops, we got to Jeddah.
+There the authorities and the populace received us very well. From there
+we proceeded in nineteen days, without mischance, by sailing boat to
+Elwesh, and under abundant guard with Suleiman Pasha in a five-day
+caravan journey toward this place, to El Ula, and now we are seated at
+last in the train and are riding toward Germany--into the war at last!"
+
+"Was not the war you had enough?" I asked.
+
+"Not a bit of it," replied the youngest Lieutenant; "the _Emden_ simply
+captured ships each time; only a single time, at Penang, was it engaged
+in battle, and I wasn't present on that occasion. War? No, that is just
+to begin for us now."
+
+[Sidenote: Muecke's great task.]
+
+"My task since November," said Muecke, "has been to bring my men as
+quickly as possible to Germany against the enemy. Now, at last, I can do
+so."
+
+"And what do you desire for yourself?" I asked.
+
+"For myself," he laughed, and the blue eyes sparkled, "a command in the
+North Sea."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Japan was bound by alliance with Great Britain to join with her to
+attack any aggressor, and to carry out her pledges she, at the outbreak
+of the war, prepared to capture the German stronghold Tsing-tao, the
+capital of the concession of Kiao-chau, which Germany had obtained from
+China, and had converted into a German possession.
+
+
+
+
+CAPTURE OF TSING-TAO
+
+A. N. HILDITCH
+
+Battle Sketches by A. N. Hilditch, Oxford University Press.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Qualities of the Japanese.]
+
+[Sidenote: Count Okuma Prime Minister.]
+
+[Sidenote: Japanese ultimatum.]
+
+Tokyo, capital of Japan, lies at the head of Tokyo Bay, in the
+south-east of Nippon. Its two million inhabitants are distributed among
+houses and streets which present curious intermixtures of Japanese and
+European architecture, customs, or science. The jinrikisha notably has
+been displaced largely by tramcars which, carrying all passengers at a
+uniform rate of four sen, make it possible to travel ten miles for a
+penny. It is an industrial city, but on account of occasional
+earthquakes no very large buildings line the thoroughfares. The
+traveller can here observe to advantage the strange characteristics of
+the most stoical race upon earth, or can contrast, if he will, the
+courteous, imperturbably serene disposition of the most martial nation
+of the East with the present disposition of the most rabidly bellicose
+nation of the West. When Japanese and German, indeed, met in conflict
+before Tsing-tao in the autumn of 1914, there was seen, in the Japanese
+soldier, during a campaign of peculiar hardship and difficulty, a
+revival of the qualities of the old Samurai, with his quiet courage, his
+burning patriotism, his patience, his habitual suppression of emotional
+display singularly distinct from those of the modern Goth. Nor was the
+statesmanship which brought about that conflict less admirable. Japan's
+alliance with Great Britain was at once a solemn pledge and the guiding
+principle of her foreign policy. August 1914 found British interests
+and the vast trade that centred at Hong-kong in danger: German armed
+vessels prowled the seas, and the German naval base of Tsing-tao was
+busy with warlike preparations. Great Britain appealed to Japan to free
+their joint commerce from the menace. The Japanese Prime Minister, Count
+Okuma, might well hesitate, however, before recommending intervention.
+Was he the right minister to direct a war? He was nearer eighty than
+seventy years old, and recently had been for seven years in retirement:
+his Government had a minority in the Diet, and to the Genro his name was
+anathema: he claimed the allegiance of no party, and the powerful
+military and naval clans, Choshiu and Satsuma, were openly hostile. He
+had been raised to power a few months before by public demand for
+progressive government. There were considerations other than domestic or
+personal, indeed, which might have tempted some statesmen to hold their
+hands. To temporize while events revealed themselves in Europe would be
+safer than immediate action; while to remain neutral might lead to the
+transference to the Japanese of much trade with China now in British
+hands, inevitably hampered by the menace of German commerce-destroyers.
+Nevertheless, Count Okuma's Cabinet came to a bold and loyal decision.
+Baron Kato, the Foreign Minister, reassured Great Britain of active
+Japanese aid, and on August 15 sent an ultimatum to Germany. The latter
+was requested to withdraw at once all German armed vessels from Eastern
+waters, and to deliver to Japan before September 15 the entire leased
+territory of Kiao-chau, with a view to its eventual restoration to
+China. The ultimatum was timed to expire at noon on August 23. That day
+arrived without satisfaction having been given to Japan. Within a few
+hours the 2nd Japanese squadron steamed off towards Tsing-tao.
+
+[Sidenote: German Pacific squadron sails.]
+
+[Sidenote: Tsing-tao's importance.]
+
+[Sidenote: Germans prepare defense.]
+
+[Sidenote: Japanese warships approach.]
+
+Before the outbreak of hostilities with Great Britain, Vice-Admiral the
+Graf von Spee, who commanded the German Pacific squadron, had steamed
+away from Tsing-tao with most of his ships. To use Tsing-tao as a naval
+base while engaging in commerce-raiding seemed a sound and a practicable
+plan, since the British and Australian naval forces, though superior,
+were hardly strong enough simultaneously to blockade the harbour and to
+search the seas. The plan was, however, rendered impossible by the
+Japanese ultimatum, and the Admiral, after having lingered for some
+weeks in the Western Pacific, departed for other seas and other
+adventures. Such was the result of Japan's action, and thus dangerous
+were the tactics that Japan's action had frustrated. For Tsing-tao,
+situated upon one of the two peninsulas, divided by two miles of
+waterway, enclosing the bay of Kiao-chau, with its safe and spacious
+anchorage for vessels of any size, constituted one of the most important
+naval bases on the Chinese coast. It had, indeed, been described as the
+key to Northern China. Dominating the eastern coast of the Shantung
+peninsula, the port formed the centre of the semicircular area known as
+Kiao-chau, extending on a radius of 32 miles around the shores of the
+bay, with a population of 60,000. This area was, under the Chinese
+German agreement as to Tsing-tao, influenced and controlled by Germany,
+though not strictly subject to her, and regarded as neutral territory.
+Its surface was mainly mountainous and bare, though the lowlands were
+well cultivated, but in parts it was rich in mineral wealth, large but
+undeveloped supplies of coal being present. In winter the port,
+connected to the junction of Tsi-nan by a German-built railway, was the
+natural outlet for the trade of Northern China. The heights which
+surrounded the bay offered admirable sites for fortification, while the
+land-approaches to Tsing-tao were guarded by formidable defences
+stretched across its peninsula. In many quarters the stronghold was
+regarded as a second Port Arthur. The Germans had paid particular
+attention to defence, so much so, indeed, that over five-sixths of the
+white inhabitants were engaged in military occupations. Five thousand
+German marines constituted the normal garrison, though the outbreak of
+war in August called about a thousand more men--volunteers, reservists,
+and sailors--to the colours. The complement of the _Kaiserin Elizabeth_,
+an Austrian cruiser sheltering in the harbour, left for Tientsin, having
+received orders to disarm their ship, but returned in time to join the
+defenders. The garrison was amply provisioned for five or six months,
+and well provided with weapons, stores, and munitions. Most of the
+German ships off the Chinese coast at the outbreak of war, indeed, had
+made immediately for Tsing-tao, and discharged upon its wharves many
+thousand tons of cargo. When war with Japan became inevitable,
+therefore, the defenders could anticipate a successful resistance,
+provided the expected instantaneous victories in Europe materialized.
+Elaborate preparations were made for the defence. The harbour mouth was
+blocked by three sunken vessels, enabling only small craft to enter.
+Chinese villages within the leased territory, and the bridge where the
+railway crossed the boundary, were destroyed, partial compensation being
+paid to the inhabitants. Native labourers were engaged to throw up
+earthworks to strengthen the town fortifications. Many foreigners,
+women, children, and non-combatants, meanwhile, had left the town. On
+Friday evening, August 21, at roll-call, the Governor, Captain
+Meyer-Waldeck, read out a message from the German Emperor exhorting the
+garrison to defend the town to their utmost, and to do their 'duty to
+the last'. It was listened to stoically. The following day a diversion
+occurred which opened hostilities propitiously for the Germans. The
+British destroyer _Kennet_, encountering the German destroyer _S. 90_
+off the coast, gave chase. The _S. 90_ immediately made for port, and
+the _Kennet_, in the ardour of pursuit, closed in unawares within range
+of the German land batteries. The latter opened fire, and before she
+could draw off the _Kennet_ sustained ten casualties, though little
+material damage. Next day the term of the Japanese ultimatum expired. It
+was doubtful at what point the Japanese would begin operations, or what
+tactics they would adopt. The fear was prevalent among Germans that the
+enemy would enter Chinese territory to reach the town from the land:
+newspapers under German influence, indeed, circulating in Chinese coast
+towns, started a press campaign with the object of stirring the Chinese
+Government to oppose by force any Japanese landing in her territory.
+Outposts were placed by the Germans along the shores of the neutral zone
+to watch for developments: they descried, on August 24, the approach of
+Japanese warships.
+
+Vice-Admiral Sadakichi Kato, who commanded the approaching squadron,
+immediately upon arrival took measures to protect himself against danger
+from mines. Seven islets clustering round the mouth of Kiao-chau Bay
+were occupied, to form a convenient local naval base, while
+mine-sweepers swept the surrounding seas. No less than a thousand mines
+were taken from the water. A blockade of the whole Kiao-chau coast was
+declared, as commencing from 9 a.m., August 27, and war vessels
+patrolled the shores, some seventy miles long. Action soon began, and
+continued during ensuing days, with shells that at intervals screamed
+towards the town. The position was, however, reconnoitred carefully.
+Japanese airmen went up frequently to scan the fortifications and to
+drop bombs. All protruding structures, spires and factory-chimneys, had
+been levelled to the ground by the Germans so as to afford no mark for
+fire. Bombs were dropped on the railway station and on one of the
+numerous barrack buildings. The operations continued spasmodically into
+September, while Kato was awaiting the approach by land of a
+co-operating army, which had now disembarked on the northern coast of
+the Shantung peninsula, about 150 miles due north of Tsing-tao.
+
+[Sidenote: Landing effected.]
+
+[Sidenote: Floods hinder advance.]
+
+The landing was effected on September 2, without hindrance or opposition
+on the part of the Chinese. The Government, following the precedent of
+the Russo-Japanese War, immediately published a declaration refusing to
+hold itself responsible for the obligations of strict neutrality in
+areas that formed, within Lung-kow, Lai-chau, and the neighbourhood of
+Kiao-chau Bay, passage-ways essential to the belligerent troops. It was,
+of course, incumbent upon the Powers involved to respect Chinese
+property and administrative rights. Japan, therefore, was permitted to
+make use of the main roads to transport an army to the rear of
+Tsing-tao. The forces landed composed a division numbering 23,000, and
+commanded by Lieutenant-General Mitsuomi Kamio. An advance-guard was
+sent forward without delay, but soon found its way rendered impassable
+by torrential floods which at this time swept down upon and devastated
+the province of Shantung, bridges, roads, and even villages being
+submerged and destroyed, with great loss of life, largely owing to
+Chinese official incompetence. The Japanese, after covering 20
+kilometres in two days, reached a stream so swollen that crossing was
+impossible. The artillery had to return to Lung-kow. German diplomacy,
+meanwhile, exasperated at its inability to prevent a Japanese landing,
+had not been inactive.
+
+[Sidenote: Chinese neutrality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rivalry of British and Japanese.]
+
+[Sidenote: Japanese advance.]
+
+The German and Austrian ministers at Peking, on hearing of the Japanese
+landing, protested strongly. China, it was claimed, ought to have
+forestalled and resisted the landing, but instead had deliberately
+extended the war-zone in order to facilitate Japanese movements. She
+would be held responsible for any injury to the German cause or
+property. To this China replied that, if it was incumbent upon her to
+prevent by force Japan operating in her territory, it was equally her
+duty to prevent by force Germany fortifying and defending Tsing-tao.
+China had endeavoured, indeed, but unsuccessfully, to preclude
+belligerent operations in her territory: only after the Japanese
+landing, when she was powerless to do otherwise, had she extended the
+zone of war. As to the responsibility, she reiterated her previous
+declaration. The baffled Germans fell back on threats: the right was
+reserved to visit upon China dire consequences for her alleged breach of
+neutrality. The incident, thrown into striking contrast with Germany's
+offer to Belgium, marked the unscrupulousness of German diplomacy, but
+stirred also many doubts among the foreign communities in China, in
+which the British, allied as they were to the Japanese, formed a
+predominating element. An anomaly of the situation was that British
+local interests had long conflicted with Japanese national interests.
+Japan's activities had, at every stage of her recent history, reduced
+British opportunities. Japanese trader competed with British trader for
+the markets of China, and Japan's share of the annual trade expansion
+was increasing, that of Great Britain decreasing. High tariffs and
+preferential rates had closed Corea and Manchuria to British enterprise.
+It is easy to estimate in what commercial jealousy and rivalry such
+circumstances had resulted. While the expediency of the British-Japanese
+alliance was fully recognized, and its consequences admitted to be the
+freedom of the China seas from menace of commerce-destroyers,
+nevertheless the fact remained that the hostilities against Tsing-tao
+would constitute a fresh impulse to Japanese expansion. The operations
+in Shantung were watched with critical eyes by many British in the
+foreign settlements of China. The floods had, meanwhile, subsided
+considerably, and on September 12 Japanese cavalry reached Tsimo, ten
+miles outside the Kiao-chau zone. No trace of the enemy north of the
+Pai-sha River had been seen, beyond a German aeroplane that occasionally
+passed overhead on reconnoitring flights. On the following day a number
+of sharp skirmishes with outposts occurred, and one Japanese patrol
+found its way to the small town of Kiao-chau, situated at the head of
+the bay, some 22 miles from Tsing-tao itself. The brushes with the
+Germans became of daily occurrence, and in one of them a high official
+of the German Legation at Peking, who had volunteered for service, was
+killed. On September 17 the Japanese attacked Wang-ko-huang, 13 miles
+from Tsimo, the enemy being in a fortified position and provided with
+machine-guns. At sunset, however, they abandoned the village and
+withdrew under cover of darkness, leaving behind quantities of equipment
+and supplies. A little later a development came about that brought the
+dissatisfaction of British traders to a head. About September 18, after
+hostile patrols had been driven away from the shore by the fire of
+destroyers, Japanese artillery and troops were landed at Laoshan Bay,
+north of Tsing-tao, just within the leased territory. Why was it
+necessary that troops should have been landed on the northern shore of
+the peninsula of Shantung, 150 miles from their objective, when guns
+could be disembarked with perfect safety on the eastern shore, not 40
+miles from the objective, and within the German zone?
+
+[Sidenote: A British force co-operates.]
+
+The British were not as critical of Japan's strategy as they were
+suspicious of her policy. Dark suggestions got afoot that she had
+ulterior designs upon the whole Chinese province of Shantung. Such views
+could not but have reached the ears of the British authorities at
+Wei-hei-wei and elsewhere, nor could they have been deaf to previous
+murmurs. Diplomatic circles, however, could extend little sympathy to
+the critics. Nevertheless, it was undeniable that the latter were
+aggrieved, and that their attitude might produce unfortunate effects. If
+Great Britain herself took some share in the Tsing-tao operations,
+greater sympathy with their purpose might be induced, and a better state
+of feeling in the Orient between the two peoples might possibly result.
+It must have been some aim such as this that prompted the dispatch of a
+British force to the Tsing-tao area to co-operate with General Kamio, a
+step which the earlier symptoms of the British discontent cannot but
+have influenced. On September 19, however, 1,000 of the 2nd South Wales
+Borderers, a force so small as to be nominal, under Brigadier-General
+Barnardiston, left Tientsin and proceeded to Wei-hei-wei. Transport
+mules having here been taken on board, the expedition on September 22
+coasted down the eastern shore of Shantung, and next day landed at
+Laoshan Bay. A month later, as will be seen, they were joined by 500 of
+the 36th Sikhs.
+
+[Sidenote: Faint opposition.]
+
+[Sidenote: Artillery battle.]
+
+Meanwhile, it was probably about this time, or shortly after, that the
+_Triumph_, a British battleship of nearly 12,000 tons displacement,
+19-1/2 knots speed, and four 10-inch guns primary armament, joined the
+Japanese squadron off Tsing-tao. A spasmodic bombardment had been
+maintained during the preceding weeks, and seaplanes had been busy,
+bombing and range-finding. The wireless station, the electric-power
+station, and several ships in harbour were damaged by explosive
+missiles. Little could be done, however, from the sea alone, and the
+attack by land, owing largely to transport difficulties, had still to
+develop. But the weather was now improving considerably. Another
+set-back to Japanese military ardour was, indeed, constituted by the
+marked reluctance of the Germans to form a line of resistance. German
+outposts, upon encountering hostile patrols, invariably retired after
+offering faint opposition. When the British troops, after a circuitous
+march of 40 miles, much hampered by bad roads, came up in the rear of
+the Japanese, then preparing to assault the enemy's advanced positions
+on high ground between the rivers Pai-sha and Li-tsun, the part that it
+had been arranged they should take in the Japanese attack, on September
+26, fell through owing to a disinclination of the Germans to fight.
+Their resistance was so meagre that the Allies were hardly engaged, and
+next day gained without difficulty the easterly banks of the Li-tsun and
+Chang-tsun rivers, only seven miles north-east of Tsing-tao. The enemy
+at all points fell back, and the advance upon the town continued. The
+Japanese had now drawn their lines across the neck of the narrow
+peninsula upon which Tsing-tao stands. There were indications that the
+main forces were now in contact. The only obstacle, but a formidable
+one, between the invaders and the forts themselves was constituted by
+the dominating height of Prince Heinrich Hill, from whose crest, rising
+some five miles from the town, all the forts could be bombarded. General
+Kamio estimated that three days of fighting would be required for its
+capture: it was as all-important to the defence as to the attack, and
+was sure to be strongly held. The forts themselves, of the latest type,
+were elaborately constructed, and equipped with concrete and steel
+cupolas, mounting high calibre pieces. They commanded both landward and
+seaward approaches to the town, those nearest the invading Japanese
+being situated upon, and named Moltke Berg, Bismarck Berg, and Iltis
+Berg. Earth redoubts and trenches between formed the German line of
+defence. Plans for the most considerable engagement, the assault of
+Prince Heinrich Hill, that had so far taken place, to begin on Sunday,
+September 27, were made by the Japanese General. It developed more
+speedily than had been expected. German artillery opened a terrific
+cannonade upon the Japanese lines, while three warships shelled the
+attacking right wing from the bay. The German fire was heavy and
+accurate. Japanese warships and aeroplanes, and also the British
+battleship _Triumph_, however, created a diversion that relieved the
+assaulting forces. Two of the forts were shelled from the sea, and
+suffered serious injury, a barrack-house and other buildings being,
+moreover, damaged. For many hours the great guns, thundering their
+challenges from sea and land and estuary, maintained continual uproar.
+Darkness began to gather. Fighting continued into the night, and early
+next morning was renewed. But the defenders seemed to lack enthusiasm.
+It is doubtful, indeed, whether their forces were sufficiently numerous
+to hold with strength their advanced positions, and at the same time to
+man adequately their main fortified positions. During the morning of the
+28th the Germans withdrew from Prince Heinrich Hill, leaving fifty of
+their number and four machine-guns in Japanese hands, and many dead upon
+the slopes. The Japanese casualties numbered 150. By noon the whole
+position was in the attackers' hands, and the beleaguered town, visible
+from the height, was now face to face with siege. German officers who
+knew all the points, weak and strong, of the defences, could not but
+realize their inability to withstand the siege guns which Japan would
+sooner or later bring to the attack. But the heavy artillery was yet far
+away. A month was to elapse before the pieces could be dragged across
+the difficult country, and emplaced in prepared positions on Prince
+Heinrich Hill.
+
+[Sidenote: The siege continues.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gunboats sunk.]
+
+This month, which covered the whole of October, saw many interesting
+incidents, and betrayed no signs of idleness on the part of besiegers or
+besieged. The Germans, indeed, proved extraordinarily prodigal in
+ammunition, firing on an average 1,000 to 1,500 shells daily, a fact
+which lent support to the current view that, while undesirous of
+incurring their emperor's displeasure, they realized the hopelessness,
+so far as Tsing-tao was concerned, of their emperor's cause. Warships in
+the bay assisted the cannonade from the forts, and Lieutenant von
+Pluschow, the airman of the single aeroplane the town possessed,
+ventured forth at intervals to reconnoitre or to bomb. Life in the town
+itself continued to be quite normal. Japanese and British, meanwhile,
+drew their lines closer and closer to the fortress by sap and mine,
+though hindered greatly by terrible weather, and occasionally having
+slight encounters with the enemy. In one of these, on October 5, a
+German night-attack was heavily repulsed, forty-seven dead being left
+behind by the attackers. At sea the operations were also spasmodic. At
+the end of September a landing force occupied Lao-she harbour, in the
+vicinity of Tsing-tao, where four abandoned field-guns were taken
+possession of. Mine-sweeping had constantly to be maintained, under fire
+from the shore, and proved a dangerous task. Several vessels thus
+engaged were sunk or damaged, though with comparatively few casualties,
+through coming into contact with mines. Some German gunboats, however,
+among them the _Cormoran_ and the _Iltis_, were apparently sunk about
+this time, either deliberately by the Germans, or from the fire of the
+Japanese guns. A torpedo flotilla bombarded one of the barracks,
+moreover, to some effect, while Japanese aeroplanes were also active.
+Von Pluschow twice attempted to attack vessels of the blockading
+squadron, but unsuccessfully, and on one occasion a Japanese aeroplane
+pursuing him gave a German balloon, floating captive above the town,
+some critical moments before it could be hauled to safety. A few days
+later, about October 7, the rope which held this balloon was, during the
+spasmodic firing, severed by a shot, and the great bag floated away,
+apparently across the bay in the direction of Kiao-chau town and the
+railway line inland. In this quarter, indeed, over the line itself,
+serious friction had arisen between the Japanese and the Chinese
+authorities.
+
+[Sidenote: Railway seized.]
+
+[Sidenote: China protests.]
+
+The line ran from Tsing-tao and Kiao-chau to the junction of Tsi-nan, a
+distance of about 250 miles, passing through the towns of Wei-hsien and
+Tsing-chau. It was German built and almost wholly German owned. From
+some points of view it might reasonably be said to constitute an
+adjunct, if not a part, of the leased territory itself. In any case the
+Japanese claimed that, since the outbreak of war, the line had been
+consistently utilized to bring reservists, supplies, and ammunition to
+the town. The Austrian crew of the disarmed _Kaiserin Elizabeth_, both
+when they left and later returned to Tsing-tao, had used this means of
+transit. The railway, being still under German control, constituted a
+menace in the Japanese rear, which the latter, upon consolidating their
+position towards the end of September, took measures to remove. After
+occupying Wei-hsien, they began to arrange for the seizure of the whole
+line as far as Tsi-nan itself. Hints of such action drew forth protests
+from China, whose Government, however, adopted too compromising an
+attitude. The Japanese Government was firm. China's right to formal
+protest was admitted, but the occupation was stated to be an urgent
+military necessity, and without any prejudice to Chinese claims after
+the war. Since China was unable to enforce the neutrality of the line,
+flagrantly violated by the Germans, the Japanese had no alternative but
+to bring it under their own control. The Chino-German Treaty of 1898 and
+the German Government's charter clearly proved that the railway was
+essentially German. A compromise, hastened by the unhesitating and
+thorough measures taken by the Japanese to effect the occupation, was
+arrived at. The Japanese were temporarily to control the administration,
+while the Chinese conducted the traffic, of the railway. Its fate, since
+China did not admit the contention that it was purely German, was to be
+decided after the war. A bellicose attitude noticeable in Chinese
+military circles became very marked when, three days later, on October
+6, unquestionably in breach of the arrangement, Japanese soldiers
+arrived at Tsi-nan, and took over the control of the rolling stock on
+the Shantung line. It was alleged at Peking that this force had declared
+martial law in the town, which contained, indeed, many German
+sympathizers who, rumour added, had destroyed several collieries there
+in their anxiety to obstruct the Allies. But the Chinese Government
+submitted under further strong protest, and with a request that the
+troops should be withdrawn. The Japanese action occasioned, however,
+further distrust among British residents in the Orient. Meanwhile, a
+second British force, consisting of 500 Sikhs, was being prepared to
+reinforce General Barnardiston.
+
+[Sidenote: Non-combatants depart.]
+
+[Sidenote: Heavy weather.]
+
+[Sidenote: Difficulties on land.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment on Mikado's birthday.]
+
+At one o'clock on October 12, Captain Meyer-Waldeck, the Governor of
+Tsing-tao, received a joint wireless message from the commanders of the
+besieging troops and the blockading squadron, offering a safe escort out
+of the town of Tientsin of neutrals and non-combatants. He at once
+assented. Delegates met next day at ten o'clock to discuss details, and
+on the 15th the American consul, accompanied by German women and
+children and Chinese subjects, left the town. On the previous day there
+had been a combined sea and air attack upon forts Iltis and Kaiser, in
+which the _Triumph_ participated and suffered the only Allied
+casualties. It is recorded that, before reopening bombardment after the
+departure of the non-combatants, the Japanese, ever polite, signalled
+'Are you now quite ready, gentlemen?' For reply a German sniper, taking
+careful but faulty aim, sent a bullet which removed three out of the
+eleven hairs on the signalman's moustache. Two days later, days notable
+for torrential rains, which intensified the discomforts of the troops
+ashore, the Japanese suffered a severe naval loss. The _Takachiho_, an
+old cruiser of some 3,000 tons, which had seen service in the
+Chino-Japanese War, was on patrol duty on Saturday night, October 17,
+when she fouled a mine, released by and adrift in the rough seas.
+Destroyers hastened to her aid, but rescue work was difficult in the
+darkness and the heavy weather. The cruiser sank rapidly. Two hundred
+and seventy-one officers and seamen lost their lives. The rough weather
+which contributed to the disaster continued with little break, and
+hindered operations, till the end of the month. The landing of the Sikh
+contingent at Laoshan Bay on October 21 was, indeed, attended by great
+difficulties and some loss of life. A strong southerly gale had raised
+high seas, and enormous lighters and sampans, employed for
+disembarkation, were thrown high and dry upon the beach. Sixteen
+Japanese were drowned in trying to save other boats that broke loose.
+The Sikhs got safely ashore, but next morning again the winds blew and
+the rains descended, and the camping-ground was soon a miry pool.
+Circumstances other than the weather, however, helped to put the British
+officers out of humour. Trouble ahead threatened in connexion with
+transport arrangements. While the Chinese carts and drivers, brought
+hurriedly from Tientsin, were doubtfully reliable, many of the mules
+were raw and quite unused to harness. When a start for the front was
+preparing on the morning of the 23rd, it was found that the best of the
+harness, which had been purchased from peasants in the locality, had
+been stolen in the night by the people who had brought it in, and that
+what was left was tied up with string. The column, however, at length
+set off, and made a march memorable for hardship and difficulty. From
+Laoshan to Lutin, where a metalled road began, was 30 miles, crossed by
+a track formed at one time by quagmire, at another by slippery boulders.
+During eleven hours 6 miles were covered, by which time the Sikhs were
+completely exhausted with digging carts or mules out of the mud, hauling
+them out with drag-ropes, reloading overturned carts, or unloading those
+immovable. Next day the column was on the road at seven o'clock, and
+covered 13 miles. So deep was the mud in parts that when, owing to the
+rotten harness giving way, a mule would occasionally lurch forward
+suddenly and walk away by itself, the body of the cart would be left
+floating on the surface. One cart was pulled completely off its axles by
+a squad of men, and slid along admirably for a considerable distance.
+Seventy Chinese wheelbarrows, however, obtained from a Japanese depot,
+rendered invaluable aid on this day. Tsimo, the halting-place, was
+reached in the evening, and next day, after the first ten miles, saw
+plain sailing. A few days later, on October 30, after the Sikhs had
+rested and recovered, the whole British force, now some 1,500 strong,
+moved up to the front in readiness for the bombardment of Tsing-tao,
+which had been arranged to begin next morning in celebration of the
+birthday of the Mikado. Siege artillery, 150 pieces, including six
+28-cm. howitzers and some heavy naval guns, had now been brought up and
+placed in position. The shelling was timed to start, in royal salute, at
+dawn.
+
+[Sidenote: Oil-tanks blaze.]
+
+Men who, stationed upon Prince Heinrich Hill, could look below upon the
+doomed town, athwart the narrowing peninsula, with the sea, studded with
+grey warships, surrounding, had before them a wonderful spectacle as the
+morning sun, rising from the Pacific, slowly dispersed the darkness. The
+thunder of the great guns broke suddenly upon that stillness which only
+dawn knows, and their discharges flashed redly on the darkling slopes.
+The Japanese shooting, it is related, displayed remarkable accuracy,
+some of the first projectiles bursting upon the enormous oil-tanks of
+the Standard Oil Company and the Asiatic Petroleum Company. A blaze
+roared skywards, and for many hours the heavens were darkened by an
+immense cloud of black petroleum smoke which hung like a pall over the
+town. Shells passing over these fires drew up columns of flame to a
+great height. Chinese coolies could be seen running before the spreading
+and burning oil. Fires broke out also on the wharves of the outer
+harbour, in which during the day a gunboat, apparently damaged fatally
+by a shot which carried away her funnel, disappeared. The redoubts and
+infantry works particularly were heavily bombarded. On the left of the
+German line 100 Chinese in the village of Tao-tung-chien were
+unfortunately caught by shell-fire directed on the redoubt close at
+hand, while the fort of Siao-chau-shan, near by, was set afire. The tops
+of several of the forts were soon concealed by clouds of dust and smoke.
+A heavy fusillade was concentrated upon an observation point which the
+defenders had constructed on a hill in the town, and had considerable
+effect. The Germans did not on this first day of general bombardment
+reply strongly, two only of the forts persistently firing. At length the
+sun sank and night obscured the conflict. It had been a bad day for the
+besieged: and dismantled guns, shattered concrete platforms and
+entrenchments, devastated barbed-wire entanglements, augured the town's
+approaching fate.
+
+[Sidenote: Aeroplanes direct guns.]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Triumph_ attacks Fort Bismarck.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Kaiserin Elizabeth_ sinks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Night activity.]
+
+The bombardment continued for a week. During that period the Japanese
+and British guns, directed from land and sea by a balloon, by
+aeroplanes, or by observation stations on the hills, in daytime
+thundered incessantly. The German shelling, though severe, was far less
+heavy, because, it is said, the men in the forts, sheltering most of
+the time in bomb-proof caverns, issued forth only at night, and during
+pauses of the Japanese to return the fire. The airman von Pluschow
+actively directed the replies. The latter seemed not, indeed,
+impartially distributed. The marked attention paid to British troops and
+ships afforded an illustration of that attitude of peculiar malevolence
+which Germans have adopted towards the British nation and name. The
+German airman singled out the British camp, recognizable by its white
+tents, for his bombs, while for the German artillery it had an
+inordinate attraction. Officers on board the _Triumph_, moreover,
+observed that the largest German guns, of 12-inch calibre, were
+consistently directed upon their vessel. But of many projectiles one
+only, which struck the mast, being fired from Hui-tchien-huk, proved
+effective. This hit, however, caused rejoicing in Tsing-tao which, it is
+asserted, would not have been equalled by the sinking of a Japanese
+Dreadnought. The _Triumph_ singled out for attack Fort Bismarck
+especially, and two of the German 6-inch guns were early put out of
+action. The British gunners adopted the ingenious plan of heeling their
+ship by five degrees, and bombarding the enemy, from sight strips
+specially calculated, without exposing themselves or their weapons. It
+became customary aboard to call the bombardment 'pressing the enemy'
+from an exhortation sent by the Japanese Crown Prince to 'press the
+enemy, braving all hardships'. Ashore, indeed, the pressure on the enemy
+developed steadily as the days passed. On November 2 the Austrian
+cruiser _Kaiserin Elizabeth_, which had, with the German gunboats still
+afloat, been engaging vigorously in the fighting, sank, having probably
+been blown up deliberately, and the floating dock also disappeared.
+Iltis Fort, moreover, was silenced, two guns being smashed and
+ammunition giving out, and Japanese infantry advanced and captured an
+eminence in German hands. On another ridge, however, hard by the
+silenced fort, some German naval gunners carried out a ruse which saved
+for the present both their position and their battery, composed of naval
+9-cm. pieces, which were exposed dangerously to fire from sea and land.
+Lieutenant von Trendel, in command, during the night constructed wooden
+models of cannon, which he placed in position 200 yards from his real
+guns. Next morning he exploded powder near by, and drew the fire of the
+besiegers, attracted by the flashes, upon the dummies. That day the
+wireless and electric power stations were wrecked, and large attacking
+forces crept further forward, despite severe fire, and entrenched closer
+to the enemy's lines. In the evening and night the latter showed special
+activity, star rockets and other fireworks being used to illumine the
+opposing positions, which were heavily fusilladed. A German night-attack
+was delivered, but was repulsed. Next day, the 4th, and on the two
+following days, progress was maintained. The Allied trenches were pushed
+forward until they were right up to and almost half round the nearest
+German forts. Many casualties were suffered, but the German fire was
+kept down by the Japanese guns, whose accuracy was remarkable. The
+weather conditions were unfavourable, high winds and heavy rains
+prevailing, and the troops in the trenches had to endure hard
+privations. So effective was the bombardment, however, that during
+November 5 and 6 plans were prepared for the final assault. It was
+arranged that a general infantry attack should be made as soon as
+practicable. The garrisons in the forts, meanwhile, were beginning to
+exhaust their ammunition, of which they had been, during the
+preliminary operations, strangely prodigal. Guns lay silent for other
+reasons than structural injury, though the latter cause, indeed, was
+frequent, a single shot, in one case, from the _Suwo_, the Japanese
+flagship, having destroyed a 24-cm. gun and killed eight men on Fort
+Hui-tchien-huk. In the town itself the streets, not immune from falling
+projectiles, were deserted, and the only centre of social intercourse
+and conviviality was the German Club, where regularly officers or
+non-combatants slipped in for dinner, luncheon, or a glass of beer. But
+it was realized that the end was not far distant.
+
+[Sidenote: Central redoubt taken.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mass attack on forts.]
+
+[Sidenote: The white flag.]
+
+Early in the morning of November 6 the airman von Pluschow flew away
+across Kiao-chau Bay, and did not return. He escaped with the Governor's
+last dispatches into Chinese territory, where his machine was interned.
+That day and night saw no cessation of the firing, the guns of the
+defenders still roaring at intervals. About an hour after midnight the
+first impulse of the general attack took effect. While a particularly
+heavy artillery fire kept the Germans in their bomb-proof shelters, the
+central redoubt of the first line of defence, which had been badly
+shattered by the bombardment, was rushed by a storming party headed by
+General Yoshimi Yamada. Engineers had in the darkness sapped right up to
+the barbed-wire entanglements, which being cut provided way for the
+infantry, who, while part held the enemy in front, rushed the redoubt on
+both flanks. Two hundred prisoners were taken, and the Japanese flag was
+hoisted. The besiegers were through the German line, but the position
+had to be consolidated, or disaster would follow. Danger from the flank
+was, however, soon obviated by advances in other parts of the line. Just
+after five o'clock a battery on Shao-tan Hill was captured; half an hour
+later another battery in Tao-tung-chien redoubt was taken, and Fort
+Chung-shan-wa, the base of the German right wing, fell. The shadows were
+still dense, and the final phase of the siege, viewed from Prince
+Heinrich Hill, presented a sight brilliant with many flashes and flaming
+fireworks, and a sound dominated by the thunder of the batteries. But
+dawn, as the besiegers began in mass to close in upon the main line of
+forts Iltis, Moltke, and Bismarck, was breaking. It was decided to storm
+these positions forthwith, since the German fire, owing to exhaustion of
+the ammunition, was dying away. Governor Meyer-Waldeck, who had been
+wounded, realized now that further resistance was futile. Shortly before
+six o'clock he sent Major von Kayser, his adjutant, accompanied by
+another officer and a trumpeter, from the staff headquarters bearing the
+white flag: at the same time a signal of surrender was made from the
+Observatory. This was not, however, observed, while von Kayser's party,
+coming under fire, was dispersed by a shell which killed the trumpeter
+and the adjutant's horse. Meanwhile, Japanese and British were closing
+in, and were tensely awaiting the final assault. It was never made. Soon
+after seven o'clock a welcome sight relaxed the tension of the troops,
+torn, dirty, and weary, calling forth cheers from the British, and
+shouts of 'Banzai!' from the Japanese. The campaign was over: Tsing-tao
+had fallen. White flags were fluttering from the forts.
+
+[Sidenote: Terms of capitulation.]
+
+[Sidenote: War material taken.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cost of victory.]
+
+That evening delegates from the two armies met and signed the terms of
+capitulation, which were unconditional. Honours of war were accorded the
+defenders, the Governor and his officers being permitted to retain their
+swords. The Allies marched into the town, and on November 10 the
+garrison was formally transferred. Over 4,000 Germans were sent to
+Japan as prisoners, and large quantities of war material were
+confiscated. The captures included 30 field-guns, 100 machine-guns,
+2,500 rifles, 40 motor-cars, L1,200 in bullion, and 15,000 tons of coal.
+All ships in harbour, and also the floating dock, had been destroyed,
+but it seemed probable that the _Kaiserin Elizabeth_ could be
+successfully raised. Sufficient provisions were found to feed 5,000
+persons for three months, and the victors were able to regale their
+appetites with luxuries such as butter, crab, or salmon, which were
+plentiful. Looting, however, was strictly forbidden. For fastidious
+persons the bath, after many weeks, was again available, and proved,
+indeed, in view of steady accumulations of mud, a salutary course.
+Measures, meanwhile, were at once taken to restore the town to its
+normal condition. The troops and sailors were employed in removing
+debris or undischarged land and sea mines. Another Japanese gunboat was
+sunk, and several officers and men lost their lives, while engaged in
+this dangerous work. The victory had to be paid for, indeed, with a
+heavy toll of life and limb. The Japanese casualties numbered 236 killed
+and 1,282 wounded; the British, 12 killed and 53 wounded. On November 16
+the Allies formally took possession of Tsing-tao; and a memorial service
+was held for the dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Plan for Dardanelles campaign.]
+
+The plan of breaking through the Straits of the Dardanelles, and thus
+clearing the way to Constantinople, is believed to have been conceived
+by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the British Admiralty. After
+careful consideration it was approved by the military and naval
+authorities, and plans were made to carry out the project. The initial
+steps are described in the following chapter.
+
+
+
+
+GALLIPOLI
+
+A. JOHN GALLISHAW
+
+Copyright, Century Magazine, July, 1916.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Newfoundlanders in the War.]
+
+Husky, steel-muscled lumbermen; brawny, calloused-handed fishermen;
+loose-jointed, easy-swinging trappers; athletes from the city foot-ball
+and hockey teams; and gawky, long-armed farmers joined the First
+Newfoundland Regiment at the outbreak of war. A rigid medical
+examination sorted out the best of them, and ten months of bayonet
+fighting, physical drill, and twenty-mile route marches over Scottish
+hills had molded these into trim, erect, bronzed soldiers. They were
+garrisoning Edinburgh Castle when word came of the landing of the
+Australians and New-Zealanders at Gallipoli. At Ypres the Canadians had
+just then recaptured their guns and made for themselves a deathless
+name.
+
+[Sidenote: Not militaristic.]
+
+So the Newfoundlanders felt that as colonials they had been overlooked.
+They were not militaristic and hated the ordinary routine of army life,
+but they wanted to do their share. That was the spirit all through the
+regiment. It was the spirit that possessed them on the long-waited-for
+day at Aldershot when Kitchener himself pronounced them "just the men I
+want for the Dardanelles." That day at Aldershot every man was given a
+chance to go back to Newfoundland. They had enlisted for one year only,
+and could demand to be sent home at the end of the year; and when
+Kitchener reviewed them ten months of that year had gone.
+
+[Sidenote: Re-enlistment at Aldershot.]
+
+[Sidenote: The desire to get to the front.]
+
+With the chance to go home in his grasp, every man of the first
+battalion reenlisted for the duration of war. And it is on record, to
+their eternal honor, that during the week preceding their departure from
+Aldershot breaches of discipline were unknown, for over their heads hung
+the fear that they would be punished by being kept back from active
+service. To break a rule that week carried with it the suspicion of
+cowardice. This was the more remarkable because many of the men were
+fishermen, trappers, hunters, and lumbermen who until their enlistment
+had said "Sir" to no man, and who gloried in the reputation given them
+by one inspecting officer as "the most undisciplined lot he had ever
+seen." From the day the Canadians left Salisbury Plain to take their
+places in the trenches in Flanders the Newfoundlanders were obsessed by
+one idea: they had to get to the front.
+
+[Sidenote: Troop-ships in Mudros Harbor.]
+
+So it was with eleven hundred of such eager spirits that I lined up, on
+a Sunday evening early in August, 1915, on the deck of the troop-ship in
+Mudros Harbor, which is the center of the historic island of Lemnos,
+about fifty miles from Gallipoli. Around us lay all sorts of ships, from
+ocean leviathans to tiny launches and rowboats. There were
+gray-and-black-painted troopers, their rails lined with soldiers;
+immense four-funneled men-of-war; and brightly lighted, white hospital
+ships, with their red crosses outlined in electric lights. The landing
+officer left us in a little motor-boat. We watched him glide slowly
+shoreward, where we could faintly discern through the dusk the white of
+the tents that were the headquarters for the people at Lemnos; to the
+right of the tents we could see the hospital for wounded Australians and
+New-Zealanders. A French battleship dipped its flag as it passed, and
+our boys sang "The Marseillaise."
+
+[Sidenote: The Iron Ration.]
+
+A mail that had come that day was being sorted. While we waited, each
+man was served with his "iron ration." This consisted of a one-pound
+tin of pressed corned beef--the much-hated and much-maligned "bully
+beef"--a bag of biscuits, and a small tin that held two tubes of Oxo,
+with tea and sugar in specially constructed air- and damp-proof
+envelopes. This was an emergency ration, to be kept in case of direst
+need, and to be used only to ward off actual starvation. After that we
+were given our ammunition, two hundred and fifty rounds to each man.
+
+[Sidenote: The solitary letter home.]
+
+But what brought home to me most the seriousness of our venture was the
+solitary sheet of letter paper, with its envelope, that was given to
+every man to be used for a parting letter home. For some poor chaps it
+was indeed the last letter. Then we went over the side and aboard the
+destroyer that was to take us to Suvla Bay.
+
+The night had been well chosen for a surprise landing. There was no
+moon, but after a little while the stars came out. Away on the port bow
+we could see the dusky outline of land, and once, when we were about
+half-way, an airship soared phantomlike out of the night, poised over us
+a short time, then ducked out of sight. At first the word ran along the
+line that it was a hostile airship, but a few inquiries soon reassured
+us.
+
+[Sidenote: Approaching Cape Hellas.]
+
+[Sidenote: Passing Anzac.]
+
+[Sidenote: The name Anzac.]
+
+Suddenly we changed our direction. We were near Cape Hellas, which is
+the lowest point of the peninsula of Gallipoli. Under Sir Ian Hamilton's
+scheme it was here that a decoy party of French and British troops were
+to be landed to draw the Turks from Anzac. Simultaneously an
+overwhelming British force was to land at Suvla Bay and Anzac to make a
+surprise attack on the Turks' right flank. Presently we were going
+upshore past the wrecked steamer _River Clyde_, the famous "Ship of
+Troy" from the side of which the Australians had issued after the ship
+had been beached on the shore hitherto nameless, but now known as Anzac.
+Australian New Zealand Army Corps those five letters stand for; but to
+those of us who have been on Gallipoli they stand for a great deal more;
+they represent the achievement of the impossible. They are a glorious
+record of sacrifice, reckless devotion, and unselfish courage; to put
+each letter there cost the men from Australasia ten thousand of their
+best soldiers.
+
+And so we edged our way along, fearing mines or, even more disastrous
+than mines, discovery by the enemy. From the Australasians over at Anzac
+we could hear desultory rifle fire. Once we heard the boom of some big
+guns that seemed almost alongside the ship. Four hours it took us to go
+fifty miles in a destroyer that could make thirty-two knots easily. By
+one o'clock the stars had disappeared, and for perhaps three-quarters of
+an hour we nosed our way through pitch darkness. Gradually we slowed
+down until we had almost stopped. Something scraped along our side.
+Somebody said it was a floating mine, but it turned out to be a buoy
+that had been put there by the navy to mark the channel.
+
+Out of the gloom directly in front some one hailed, and our people
+answered.
+
+"Who have you on board?" we heard a casual English voice say, and then
+came the reply from our colonel:
+
+"Newfoundlanders." There was to me something very reassuring about that
+cool, self-contained voice out of the night. It made me feel that we
+were being expected and looked after.
+
+[Sidenote: Arrival of a launch.]
+
+"Move up those boats," I heard the English voice say, and from right
+under our bow a naval launch with a middy in charge swerved alongside.
+In a little while it, with a string of boats, was securely fastened.
+
+Just before we went into the boats the adjutant passed me.
+
+"Well," he said, "you've got your wish. In a few minutes you'll be
+ashore. Let me know how you like it when you're there a little while."
+
+"Yes, sir," I said. But I never had a chance to tell him. The first
+shrapnel shell fired at the Newfoundlanders burst near him, and he had
+scarcely landed when he was taken off the peninsula, seriously wounded.
+
+[Sidenote: The Newfoundlanders land.]
+
+In a short time we had all filed into the boats. There was no noise, no
+excitement; just now and then a whispered command. I was in a tug with
+about twenty others who formed the rear-guard. The wind had freshened
+considerably, and was now blowing so hard that our unwieldy tug dared
+not risk a landing. We came in near enough to watch the other boats.
+About twenty yards from shore they grounded. We could see the boys jump
+over the side and wade ashore. Through the half-darkness we could barely
+distinguish them forming up on the beach. Soon they were lost to sight.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy artillery in action.]
+
+During the Turkish summer dawn comes early. We transhipped from our tug
+to a lighter. When it grounded on the beach day was just breaking.
+Daylight disclosed a steeply sloping beach, scarred with ravines. The
+place where we landed ran between sheer cliffs. A short distance up the
+hill we could see our battalion digging themselves in. To the left I
+could see the boats of another battalion. Even as I watched, the enemy's
+artillery located them. It was the first shell I had ever heard. It came
+over the hill close to me, screeching through the air like an
+express-train going over a bridge at night. Just above the boat I was
+watching it exploded. A few of the soldiers slipped quietly from their
+seats to the bottom of the boat. At first I did not realize that any
+one had been hit. There was no sign of anything having happened out of
+the ordinary, no confusion. As soon as the boat touched the beach the
+wounded men were carried by their mates up the hill to a temporary
+dressing-station.
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of bombardment.]
+
+[Sidenote: Coolness of the Newfoundlanders.]
+
+The first shell was the beginning of a bombardment. Beachy Bill, a
+battery that we were to become better acquainted with, was in excellent
+shape. Every few minutes a shell burst close to us. Shrapnel-bullets and
+fragments of shell-casing forced us to huddle under the baggage for
+protection. A little to the left some Australians were severely
+punished. Shell after shell burst among them. A regiment of Sikh troops,
+mule-drivers, and transport-men were caught half-way up the beach. Above
+the din of falling shrapnel and the shriek of flying shells rose the
+piercing scream of wounded mules. The Newfoundlanders did not escape.
+That morning Beachy Bill's gunners played no favorites. On all sides the
+shrapnel came in a shower. Less often, a cloud of thick, black smoke and
+a hole twenty feet deep showed the landing-place of a high-explosive
+shell. The most amazing thing was the coolness of the men. The
+Newfoundlanders might have been practising trench-digging in camp in
+Scotland. When a man was hit some one gave him first aid, directed the
+stretcher-bearers where to find him, and coolly resumed digging. In two
+hours our position had become untenable. We had been subjected to a
+merciless and devastating shelling, and our first experience of war had
+cost us sixty-five men. In a new and safer position we dug ourselves in.
+
+[Sidenote: Four miles of graveyard.]
+
+No move could be made in daylight. That evening we received our ration
+of rum, and under cover of darkness moved in open order across the Salt
+Lake for about a mile, then through three miles of knee-high, prickly
+underbrush, to where our division was intrenched. Our orders were to
+reinforce the Irish. The Irish sadly needed reinforcing. Some of them
+had been on the peninsula for months. Many of them are still there. From
+the beach to the firing-line is not over four miles, but it is a ghastly
+four miles of graveyard. Everywhere along the route are small, rude
+wooden crosses, mute record of advances. Where the crosses are thickest
+there the fighting was fiercest, and where the fighting was fiercest
+there were the Irish. On every cross, besides a man's name and the date
+of his death, is the name of his regiment. No other regiments have so
+many crosses as the Dublins and the Munsters. And where the shrapnel
+flew so fast that bodies mangled beyond hope of identity were buried in
+a common grave, there also are the Dublins and Munsters; and the cross
+over them reads "In Memory of Unknown Comrades."
+
+[Sidenote: The incomparable Twenty-ninth.]
+
+[Sidenote: How the hill was taken, and lost.]
+
+The line on the left was held by the Twenty-ninth Division; the Dublins,
+the Munsters, the King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the Newfoundlanders
+made up the 88th Brigade. The Newfoundlanders were reinforcements. From
+the very first days of the Gallipoli campaign the other three regiments
+had formed part of what General Sir Ian Hamilton in his report calls the
+"incomparable Twenty-ninth Division." When the first landing was made,
+this division, with the New-Zealanders, penetrated to the top of a hill
+that commanded the Narrows. For forty-eight hours the result was in
+doubt. The British attacked with bayonet and bombs, were driven back,
+and repeatedly re-attacked. The New-Zealanders finally succeeded in
+reaching the top, followed by the 88th Brigade. The Irish fought on the
+tracks of a railroad that leads into Constantinople. At the end of
+forty-eight hours of attacks and counter-attacks the position was
+considered secure. The worn-out soldiers were relieved and went into
+dug-outs. Then the relieving troops were attacked by an overwhelming
+hostile force, and the hill was lost. A battery placed on that hill
+could have shelled the Narrows and opened to our ships the way to
+Constantinople. The hill was never retaken. When reinforcements came up
+it was too late. The reinforcements lost their way. In his report
+General Hamilton attributes our defeat to "fatal inertia." Just how
+fatal was that inertia is known only to those who formed some of the
+burial-parties.
+
+[Sidenote: Newfoundlanders run in battle.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Turks charge in mass formation.]
+
+[Sidenote: Terrible casualties of the enemy.]
+
+After the first forty-eight hours we settled down to regular trench
+warfare. The routine was four days in the trenches, eight days in rest
+dug-outs, four in the trenches again, and so forth, although two or
+three months later our ranks were so depleted that we stayed in eight
+days and rested only four. We had expected four days' rest after our
+first trip to the firing-line, but at the end of two days came word of a
+determined advance of the enemy. We arrived just in time to beat it off.
+Our trenches, instead of being at the top, were at the foot of the hill
+that meant so much to us. The ground here was a series of four or five
+hogback ridges about a hundred yards apart. Behind these towered the
+hill that was our objective. From the nearest ridge, about seven hundred
+yards in front of us, the Turks had all that day constantly issued in
+mass formation. During that attack we were repaid for the havoc wrought
+by Beachy Bill. As soon as the Turk topped the crest they were subjected
+to a demoralizing rain of shell from the navy and the artillery. Against
+the hazy blue of the sky-line we could see the dark mass clearly
+silhouetted. Every few seconds, when a shell landed in the middle of the
+approaching columns, the sides of the column would bulge outward for an
+instant, then close in again. Meanwhile every man in our trenches stood
+on the firing-platform, head and shoulders above the parapet, with fixed
+bayonet and loaded rifle, waiting for the order to begin firing. Still
+the Turks came on, big, black, bewhiskered six-footers, reforming ranks
+and filling up their gaps with fresh men. Now they were only six hundred
+yards away, but still there was no order to open fire. It was uncanny.
+At five hundred yards our fire was still withheld. When the order came,
+"At four hundred yards, rapid fire," everybody was tingling with
+excitement. Still the Turks came on, magnificently determined. But it
+was too desperate a venture. The chances against them were too great,
+our artillery and machine-gun fire too destructively accurate. Some few
+Turks reached almost to our trenches, only to be stopped by
+rifle-bullets. "Allah! Allah!" yelled the Turks as they came on. A
+sweating, grimly happy machine-gun sergeant between orders was shouting
+to the Turkish army in general, "'Tis not a damn' bit of good to yell to
+Allah now." Our artillery opened huge gaps in their lines; our
+machine-guns piled them dead in the ranks where they stood. Our own
+casualties were very slight, but of the waves of Turks that surged over
+the crest all that day only a mere shattered remnant ever straggled back
+to their own lines.
+
+[Sidenote: The armies in a state of siege.]
+
+That was the last big attack the Turks made. From that time on it was
+virtually two armies in a state of siege. Every night at dark we stood
+to arms for an hour. Every man fixed his bayonet and prepared to repulse
+any attack of the enemy. After that sentry groups were formed, three
+reliefs of two men each. Two men stood with their heads over the parapet
+watching for any movement in the no-man's-land between the lines. That
+accounts for the surprisingly large number of men one sees wounded in
+the head.
+
+At daylight every morning came "Stand to arms" again. Then day duties
+began. In the daytime, by using a periscope, an arrangement of double
+mirrors, a sentry can keep his head below the parapet while he watches
+the ground in front. Sometimes a bullet struck one of the mirrors, and
+the splintered glass blinded the sentry. It was a common thing to see a
+man go to hospital with his face badly lacerated by periscope glass.
+
+[Sidenote: When a shell comes.]
+
+Ordinarily a man is much safer on the firing-line than in the rest
+dug-outs. Trenches are so constructed that even if a shell drops right
+in the traverse where men are, only half a dozen or so suffer. In open
+or slightly protected ground where the dug-outs are the burst of a
+shrapnel-shell covers an area twenty-five by two hundred yards in
+extent.
+
+[Sidenote: Shrapnel and bullets.]
+
+A shell can be heard coming. Experts claim to identify the caliber of a
+gun by the sound the shell makes. Few live long enough to become such
+experts. In Gallipoli the average length of life was three weeks. In
+dug-outs we always ate our meals, such as they were, to the
+accompaniment of "Turkish Delight," the Newfoundlanders' name for
+shrapnel. We had become accustomed to rifle-bullets. When you hear the
+_zing_ of a spent bullet or the sharp crack of an explosive you know it
+has passed you. The one that hits you you never hear. At first we dodged
+at the sound of a passing bullet, but soon we came actually to believe
+the superstition that a bullet would not hit a man unless it had on it
+his regimental number and his name. Then, too, a bullet leaves a clean
+wound, and a man hit by it drops out quietly. The shrapnel makes nasty,
+jagged, hideous wounds, the horrible recollection of which lingers for
+days. It is little wonder that we preferred the firing-line.
+
+[Sidenote: The mode of intrenching.]
+
+Most of our work was done at night. When we wished to advance our line,
+we sent forward a platoon of men the desired distance. Every man carried
+with him three empty sand-bags and his intrenching-tool. Temporary
+protection is secured at short notice by having every man dig a hole in
+the ground that is large and deep enough to allow him to lie flat in it.
+The intrenching-tool is a miniature pickax, one end of which resembles a
+large-bladed hoe with a sharpened and tempered edge. The pick end is
+used to loosen hard material and to break up large lumps; the other end
+is used as a shovel to throw up the dirt. When used in this fashion the
+wooden handle is laid aside, the pick end becomes a handle, and the
+intrenching-tool is used in the same manner as a trowel.
+
+[Sidenote: The necessity for concealment.]
+
+Lying on our stomach, our rifles close at hand, we dug furiously. First
+we loosened up enough earth in front of our heads to fill a sand-bag.
+This sand-bag we placed beside our heads on the side nearest the enemy.
+Out in no-man's-land, with bullets and machine-gun balls pattering about
+us, we did fast work. As soon as we had filled the second and third
+sand-bags we placed them on top of the first. In Gallipoli every other
+military necessity was subordinated to concealment. Often we could
+complete a trench and occupy it before the enemy knew of it.
+
+[Sidenote: The Turks use star-shells.]
+
+Sometimes while we were digging the Turks surprised us by sending up
+star-shells. They burst like rockets high overhead. Everything was
+outlined in a strange, uncanny way that gave the effect of stage-fire.
+At first when a man saw a star-shell he dropped flat on his face; but
+after a good many men had been riddled by bullets, we saw our mistake.
+The sudden blinding glare makes it impossible to identify objects
+before the light fades. Star-shells show only movement. The first stir
+between the lines becomes the target for both sides. So after that, even
+when a man was standing upright, he simply stood still.
+
+[Sidenote: Aeroplanes attacked by artillery.]
+
+Every afternoon from just behind our lines an aeroplane buzzed up. At
+the tremendous height it looked like an immense blue-bottle fly. At
+first the enemy's aeroplanes came out to meet ours, but a few encounters
+with our men soon convinced them of the futility of this. After that
+they relied on their artillery. In the air all around the tiny speck we
+could see white puffs of smoke where their shrapnel was exploding.
+Sometimes those puffs were perilously close to it; at such times our
+hearts were in our mouths. Everybody in the trench craned his neck to
+see. When our aeroplane man[oe]uvered clear you could hear a sigh of
+relief run along the trench.
+
+[Sidenote: An air-man's adventure.]
+
+One of our air-men, Samson, captured a German Taube that he used for
+daily reconnaissance. Every day we watched him hover over the Turkish
+lines, circle clear of their bursting shrapnel, and return to our
+artillery with his report. One day we watched two hostile planes chase
+him back right to our trench. When they came near us we opened rapid
+fire that forced them to turn; but before Samson reached his
+landing-place at Salt Lake we could see that he was in trouble; one of
+the wings of the machine was drooping badly. We watched him land in
+safety, saw him jump out of his seat, and walk about ten yards to a
+waiting motor-ambulance. The ambulance had just turned when a shell hit
+the aeroplane. A second shell blew it to pieces.
+
+[Sidenote: A naval and artillery bombardment.]
+
+But Samson had completed his mission. About half an hour later the navy
+in the bay and our artillery began a bombardment. From our trenches,
+looking through ravines, we could see the men-of-war lined up pouring
+broadsides over our heads into the Turkish lines. From our position in
+the valley we watched our shells demolish the enemy's front-line
+trenches on the hill well to our left. Through field-glasses we could
+see the communication-trenches choked with fleeing Turks. Some of our
+artillery concentrated on the support-trenches, preventing
+reinforcements from coming up. A mule-train of supplies was caught in
+the curtain of fire. The Turks, caught between two fires, could not
+escape. In a few minutes all that was left of the scientifically
+constructed intrenchments was a conglomerate heap of sand-bags,
+equipments, and machine-guns; and on top of it all lay the mangled
+bodies of men and mules.
+
+All through the bombardment we had hoped for the order to go over the
+parapet, but for the Worcesters on our left was reserved the distinction
+of making the charge. High explosives cleared the way for their advance,
+and cheering and yelling they went over the parapet. The Turks in the
+front-line trenches, completely demoralized, fled to the rear. A few,
+too weak or too sorely wounded to run, surrendered.
+
+[Sidenote: The Turk's dislike for German officers.]
+
+Prisoners taken in this engagement told us that the Turkish rank and
+file heartily hated their German officers. One prisoner said that he had
+been an officer, but since the outbreak of this war had been replaced by
+a German. At present the Turks are officered entirely by Germans.
+
+[Sidenote: Losses from disease.]
+
+With the monotony varied occasionally by some local engagement like this
+we dragged through the hot, fly-pestered days and cold, drafty,
+vermin-infested nights of September and early October. By the middle of
+October, 1915, disease and scarcity of water had depleted our ranks;
+instead of having four days on the firing-line and eight days' rest, we
+were holding the firing-line eight days and resting only four. In my
+platoon, of the six non-commissioned officers who started with us, only
+two corporals were left, I and one other. For a week after he had been
+ordered by the doctor to leave the peninsula the other chap hung on,
+pluckily determined not to leave me alone, although staying meant
+keeping awake nearly all night. By this time dysentery and enteric had
+taken toll of more men than bullets. These diseases became epidemic
+until the clearing-stations and the beaches were choked with sick. The
+time we should have been sleeping was spent in digging, but still the
+men worked uncomplainingly. Some, too game to quit, would not report to
+the doctor, working on courageously until they dropped, although down in
+the bay beckoned the Red Cross of the hospital-ship, with its assurance
+of safety, rest, and cleanliness. By sickness and snipers' bullets we
+lost thirty men a day. Every day the sun poured down relentlessly,
+adding to the torment of parched throats and tongues. Every night,
+doubly cold in comparison with the day's burning heat, found us chilled
+and shivering.
+
+[Sidenote: The wounded considered lucky.]
+
+Nobody in the front-line trenches or on the shell-swept area behind ever
+expected to leave the peninsula alive. Their one hope was to get off
+wounded. Every night men leaving the trenches to bring up rations from
+the beach shook hands with their comrades. From every ration party of
+twenty men we always counted on losing two. Those who were wounded were
+looked on as lucky. The best thing we could wish a man was a "cushy
+wound," one that would not prove fatal. But no one wanted to quit. Every
+day rumors flew through the trenches that in four days all the Turks
+would surrender. Men dying from dysentery and enteric lingered to see
+it, but the surrender never materialized.
+
+[Sidenote: Faith in Australians.]
+
+We knew that in the particular section of trench held by us an advance
+was hopeless. Still, we thought that some other parts of the line might
+advance. There was always faith in the invincible Australasians. Early
+in October, 1915, had come the news of the British advance at Loos. The
+report that reached us said that the enemy on the entire Western front
+had begun to retreat. The Australians, catching the Turks napping, took
+two lines of trenches.
+
+[Sidenote: The man who stood on a bomb.]
+
+By the time I left, the sordid monotony had begun to tell on the men.
+Every day officers were besieged with requests for permission to go out
+between the lines to locate snipers. When men were wanted for night
+patrol every one volunteered. Ration parties, which had formerly been a
+dread, were now an eagerly sought variation. Any change was welcome. The
+thought of being killed had lost its fear. Daily intercourse with death
+had robbed it of its horror. One chap had his leg blown off from
+standing on a bomb. Later, in hospital, he told me that he felt
+satisfied. He had always wondered what would happen if a man stood on a
+bomb; now he knew. It illustrates how the men hated the deadly sameness.
+Anything was better than waiting in the trenches, better than being
+killed without a chance to struggle.
+
+[Sidenote: Donnelly's post on Caribou Ridge.]
+
+The men our regiment lost, although they gladly fought a hopeless fight,
+have not died in vain; the foremost advance on the Suvla Bay front,
+Donnelly's Post on Caribou Ridge, was made by Newfoundlanders. It is
+called Donnelly's Post because it is here that Lieutenant Donnelly won
+his military cross. The hitherto nameless ridge from which the Turkish
+machine-guns poured their concentrated death into our trenches stands
+as a monument to the initiative of the Newfoundlanders. It is now
+Caribou Ridge as a recognition of the men who wear the deer's-head
+badge.
+
+[Sidenote: Swept by machine-guns.]
+
+From Caribou Ridge the Turks could enfilade parts of our firing-line.
+For weeks they had continued to pick off our men one by one. You could
+almost tell when your turn was coming. I know, because from Caribou
+Ridge came the bullet that sent me off the peninsula. The machine-guns
+on Caribou Ridge not only swept parts of our trench, but commanded all
+of the intervening ground. Several attempts had been made to rush those
+guns. All had failed, held up by the murderous machine-gun fire. Under
+cover of darkness, Lieutenant Donnelly, with only eight men, surprised
+the Turks in the post that now bears his name. The captured machine-gun
+he used to repulse constantly launched bomb and rifle attacks.
+
+[Sidenote: How Donnelly surprised the Turks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Deeds of great heroism.]
+
+Just at dusk one evening Donnelly stole out to Caribou Ridge and
+surprised the Turks. All night the Turks strove to recover their lost
+ground. Darkness was the Newfoundlanders' ally. When reinforcements
+arrived, Donnelly's eight men were reduced to two. Dawn showed the havoc
+wrought by the gallant little group. The ground in front of the post was
+a shambles of piled-up Turkish corpses. But daylight showed something
+more to the credit of the Newfoundlanders than the mere taking of the
+ridge. It showed one of Donnelly's men, Jack Hynes, who had crawled away
+from his companion to a point about two hundred yards to the left. From
+here he had all alone kept up through the whole night a rapid fire on
+the enemy's flank that duped them into believing that we had men there
+in force. It showed Hynes purposely falling back over exposed ground to
+draw the enemy's attention from Sergeant Greene, who was coolly making
+trip after trip between the ridge and our lines, carrying a wounded man
+in his arms every time until all our wounded were in safety. Hynes and
+Greene were each given a distinguished-conduct medal. None was ever more
+nobly earned.
+
+One Saturday morning near the end of October, 1915, the brigade major
+passed through our lines. Before we took over the trench the occupants
+of the firing-line threw their refuse over the parapet into the short
+underbrush. Since coming in we had made a dump for it. I was sent out
+with five men to remove the rubbish from the underbrush to the dump, and
+this despite the fact that a short distance to our right we had just
+lost two men sent over the parapet in broad daylight to pick up some
+cans.
+
+[Sidenote: The writer is wounded.]
+
+About nine in the morning we started. It was about half-an-hour's work.
+There was no cover for men standing. The small bushes hid men lying or
+sitting. Every little while I gave the men a rest, making them sit in
+the shelter of the underbrush. We had almost finished when the snipers
+somewhere on our left began to bang at us. I ordered the men to cover,
+and was just pointing out a likely place to young Hynes when I felt a
+dull thud in the left shoulder-blade and a sharp pain in my chest. Then
+came a drowsy, languid feeling, and I sank down first on my knees, then
+my head dropped over on my chest, and down I went like a Mohammedan
+saying his prayers. Connecting the hit in the back with the pain in my
+chest, I concluded that I was done for, and can distinctly remember
+thinking quite calmly that I was indeed fortunate to be conscious long
+enough to tell them what to do about my will and so forth. I tried to
+say, "I'm hit," and must have succeeded, because immediately I heard my
+henchman Hynes yell with a frenzied oath: "The corporal's struck! Can't
+you see the corporal's struck?" and heard him curse the Turk. Then I
+heard the others say, "We must get him in out of this." After that I was
+quite clear-headed, and when three or four of the finest boys that ever
+stepped risked their lives to come out over the parapet under fire, I
+was able to tell them how to lift me, and when the stretcher-bearers
+arrived to give me first aid I was conscious enough to tell them where
+to look for the wound. Also I became angry at the crowd who gathered
+around to watch the dressing and make remarks about the amount of blood.
+I asked them if they thought it was a nickel-show. This when I felt
+almost certain I was dying. I don't remember even feeling relieved when
+they told me the bullet had not gone through my heart.
+
+[Sidenote: Hospital at Alexandria.]
+
+That night I was put on board a hospital-ship, and a few days later I
+was in hospital at Alexandria.
+
+[Sidenote: The rear-guard action.]
+
+The night the First Newfoundland Regiment landed in Suvla Bay there were
+about eleven hundred of us. In December, 1915, when the British forces
+evacuated Gallipoli, to the remnant of our regiment fell the honor of
+fighting the rear-guard action. This is the highest recognition a
+regiment can receive; for the duty of the rear-guard in a retreat is to
+keep the enemy from reaching the main body of troops, even if this means
+annihilation for itself. At Lemnos island the next day, when the roll
+was called, of the eleven hundred men who landed when I did, only one
+hundred and seventy-one answered "Here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The German armies, following the Great Retreat from the Marne to the
+Aisne, and after the series of mighty struggles which make up the Battle
+of the Aisne, and the attempts to win the Channel ports, continued the
+efforts to break through the British and French lines. The British held
+the strong line of Ypres, and in March made gains at Neuve Chapelle. In
+April the Germans made a desperate effort to break through at Ypres.
+There followed the Second Battle of Ypres, terrific in itself, but
+especially notable because of the first employment by the Germans of
+poisonous gas.
+
+
+
+
+GAS: SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
+
+COL. E. D. SWINTON
+
+
+[Sidenote: Second Battle of Ypres.]
+
+Since the last summary there has been a sudden development in the
+situation on our front, and very heavy fighting has taken place to the
+north and northeast of Ypres, which can be said to have assumed the
+importance of a second battle for that town. With the aid of a method of
+warfare up to now never employed by nations sufficiently civilized to
+consider themselves bound by international agreements solemnly ratified
+by themselves, and favored by the atmospheric conditions, the Germans
+have put into effect an attack which they have evidently contemplated
+and prepared for some time.
+
+Before the battle began our line in this quarter ran from the
+cross-roads at Broodseinde, east of Zonnebeke on the Ypres-Moorslede
+Road to the cross-roads half a mile north of St. Julien, on the
+Ypres-Poelcapelle Road, roughly following the crest of what is known as
+the Grafenstafel Ridge. The French prolonged the line west of the
+Ypres-Poelcapelle Road, whence their trenches ran around the north of
+Langemarck to Steenstraate on the Yperlee Canal. The area covered by the
+initial attack is that between the canal and the Ypres-Poelcapelle Road,
+though it was afterward extended to the west of the canal and to the
+east of the road.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans plan a gas attack.]
+
+An effort on the part of the Germans in this direction was not
+unexpected, since movements of troops and transport behind their front
+line had been detected for some days. Its peculiar and novel nature,
+however, was a surprise which was largely responsible for the measure of
+success achieved. Taking advantage of the fact that at this season of
+the year the wind not infrequently blows from the north, they secretly
+brought up apparatus for emitting asphyxiating vapor or gas, and
+distributed it along the section of their front line opposite that of
+our allies, west of Langemarck, which faced almost due north. Their plan
+was to make a sudden onslaught southwestward, which, if successful,
+might enable them to gain the crossings on the canal south of Bixschoote
+and place them well behind the British left in a position to threaten
+Ypres.
+
+The attack was originally fixed for Tuesday, the 20th, but since all
+chances of success depended on the action of the asphyxiating vapor it
+was postponed, the weather being unfavorable. On Thursday, the 22d, the
+wind blew steadily from the north, and that afternoon, all being ready,
+the Germans put their plan into execution. Since then events have moved
+so rapidly and the situation has moved so frequently that it is
+difficult to give a consecutive and clear story of what happened, but
+the following account represents as nearly as can be the general course
+of events. The details of the gas apparatus employed by them are given
+separately, as also those of the asphyxiating grenades, bombs, and
+shells of which they have been throwing hundreds.
+
+[Sidenote: The first gas battle in war.]
+
+At some time between 4 and 5 p.m. the Germans started operations by
+releasing gases with the result that a cloud of poisonous vapor rolled
+swiftly before the wind from their trenches toward those of the French
+west of Langemarck, held by a portion of the French Colonial Division.
+Allowing sufficient time for the fumes to take full effect on the troops
+facing them, the Germans charged forward over the practically
+unresisting enemy in their immediate front, and, penetrating through the
+gap thus created, pressed on silently and swiftly to the south and west.
+By their sudden irruption they were able to overrun and surprise a large
+proportion of the French troops billeted behind the front line in this
+area and to bring some of the French guns as well as our own under a hot
+rifle fire at close range.
+
+The first intimation that all was not well to the north was conveyed to
+our troops holding the left of the British line between 5 and 6 p.m. by
+the withdrawal of some of the French Colonials and the sight of the wall
+of vapor following them. Our flank being thus exposed the troops were
+ordered to retire on St. Julien, with their left parallel to but to the
+west of the high road. The splendid resistance of these troops, who
+saved the situation, has already been mentioned by the Commander in
+Chief.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment by shell and gas projectiles.]
+
+Meanwhile, apparently waiting till their infantry had penetrated well
+behind the Allies' line, the Germans had opened a hot artillery fire
+upon the various tactical points to the north of Ypres, the bombardment
+being carried out with ordinary high-explosive shell and shrapnel of
+various calibres and also with projectiles containing asphyxiating gas.
+About this period our men in reserve near Ypres, seeing the shells
+bursting, had gathered in groups, discussing the situation and
+questioning some scattered bodies of Turcos who had appeared; suddenly a
+staff officer rode up shouting "Stand to your arms," and in a few
+minutes the troops had fallen in and were marching northward to the
+scene of the fight.
+
+Nothing more impressive can be imagined than the sight of our men
+falling in quietly in perfect order on their alarm posts amid the scene
+of wild confusion caused by the panic-stricken refugees who swarmed
+along the roads.
+
+[Sidenote: Steadiness of the British.]
+
+In the meantime, to the north and northeast of the town, a confused
+fight was taking place, which gave proof not only of great gallantry and
+steadiness on the part of the troops referred to above, but of
+remarkable presence of mind on the part of their leaders. Behind the
+wall of vapor, which had swept across fields, through woods, and over
+hedgerows, came the German firing line, the men's mouths and noses, it
+is stated, protected by pads soaked in a solution of bicarbonate of
+soda. Closely following them again came the supports. These troops,
+hurrying forward with their formation somewhat broken up by the
+obstacles encountered in their path, looked like a huge mob bearing down
+upon the town. A battery of 4.7-inch guns a little beyond the left of
+our line was surprised and overwhelmed by them in a moment. Further to
+the rear and in a more easterly direction were several field batteries,
+and before they could come into action the Germans were within a few
+hundred yards. Not a gun, however, was lost.
+
+[Sidenote: The left retires slowly.]
+
+One battery, taken in flank, swung around, fired on the enemy at
+point-blank range, and checked the rush. Another opened fire with the
+guns pointing in almost opposite directions, the enemy being on three
+sides of them. It was under the very heavy cannonade opened about this
+time by the Germans, and threatened by the advance of vastly superior
+numbers, that our infantry on our left steadily, and without any sign of
+confusion, slowly retired to St. Julien, fighting every step.
+
+[Sidenote: British reserves arrive.]
+
+Help was not long in arriving, for some of our reserves near Ypres had
+stood to arms as soon as they were aware of the fact that the French
+line had been forced, and the officers on their own initiative, without
+waiting for orders, led them forward to meet the advancing enemy, who,
+by this time, were barely two miles from the town. These battalions
+attacked the Germans with the bayonet, and then ensued a melee, in which
+our men more than held their own, both sides losing very heavily.
+
+One German battalion seems to have been especially severely handled, the
+Colonel being captured among several other prisoners. Other
+reinforcements were thrown in as they came up, and, when night fell, the
+fighting continued by moonlight, our troops driving back the enemy by
+repeated bayonet charges, in the course of which our heavy guns were
+recaptured.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans cross the canal.]
+
+By then the situation was somewhat restored in the area immediately
+north of Ypres. Further to the west, however, the enemy had forced their
+way over the canal, occupying Steenstraate and the crossing at Het Sast,
+about three-quarters of a mile south of the former place, and had
+established themselves at various points on the west bank. All night
+long the shelling continued, and about 1.30 a.m. two heavy attacks were
+made on our line in the neighborhood of Broodseinde, east of Zonnebeke.
+These were both repulsed. The bombardment of Ypres itself and its
+neighborhood had by now redoubled in intensity and a part of the town
+was in flames.
+
+In the early morning of Friday, the 23d, we delivered a strong
+counter-attack northward in co-operation with the French. Our advance
+progressed for some little distance, reaching the edge of the wood about
+half a mile west of St. Julien and penetrating it. Here our men got into
+the Germans with the bayonet, and the latter suffered heavily. The
+losses were also severe on our side, for the advance had to be carried
+out across the open. But in spite of this nothing could exceed the dash
+with which it was conducted. One man--and his case is typical of the
+spirit shown by the troops--who had had his rifle smashed by a bullet,
+continued to fight with an intrenching tool. Even many of the wounded
+made their way out of the fight with some article of German equipment as
+a memento.
+
+[Sidenote: The British intrench.]
+
+About 11 a.m., not being able to progress further, our troops dug
+themselves in, the line then running from St. Julien practically due
+west for about a mile, whence it curved southwestward before turning
+north to the canal near Boesinghe. Broadly speaking, on the section of
+the front then occupied by us the result of the operations had been to
+remove to some extent the wedge which the Germans had driven into the
+allied line, and the immediate danger was over.
+
+During the afternoon our counter-attack made further progress south of
+Pilkem, thus straightening the line still more. Along the canal the
+fighting raged fiercely, our allies making some progress here and there.
+During the night, however, the Germans captured Lizerne, a village on
+the main road from Ypres to Steenstraate.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy throws bridges across the canal.]
+
+When the morning of the 24th came the situation remained much the same,
+but the enemy, who had thrown several bridges across the canal,
+continued to gain ground to the west. On our front the Germans, under
+cover of their gas, made a further attack between 3 and 4 a.m. to the
+east of St. Julien and forced back a portion of our line. Nothing else
+in particular occurred until about midday, when large bodies of the
+enemy were seen advancing down the Ypres-Poelcapelle road toward St.
+Julien. Soon after a very strong attack developed against that village
+and the section of the line east of it.
+
+[Sidenote: A French counter-attack.]
+
+Under the pressure of these fresh masses our troops were compelled to
+fall back, contesting every inch of ground and making repeated
+counter-attacks; but until late at night a gallant handful, some 200 to
+300 strong, held out in St. Julien. During the night the line was
+re-established north of the hamlet of Fortuin, about 700 yards further
+to the rear. All this time the fighting along the canal continued, the
+enemy forcing their way across near Boesinghe, and holding Het Sase,
+Steenstraate, and Lizerne strongly. The French counter-attacked in the
+afternoon, captured fifty prisoners, and made some further progress
+toward Pilkem. The Germans, however, were still holding the west bank
+firmly, although the Belgian artillery had broken the bridge behind them
+at Steenstraate.
+
+[Sidenote: German assaults on Broodseinde.]
+
+On the morning of Sunday, the fourth day of the battle, we made a strong
+counter-attack on St. Julien, which gained some ground but was checked
+in front of the village. To the west of it we reached a point a few
+hundred yards south of the wood which had been the objective on the 23d
+and which we had had to relinquish subsequently. In the afternoon the
+Germans made repeated assaults in great strength on our line near
+Broodseinde. These were backed up by a tremendous artillery bombardment
+under the throwing of asphyxiating bombs; but all were beaten off with
+great slaughter to the enemy, and forty-five prisoners fell into our
+hands. When night came the situation remained unchanged.
+
+This determined offensive on the part of the enemy, although it has
+menaced Ypres itself, has not so far the appearance of a great effort to
+break the line and capture the Channel ports. Its initial success was
+gained by the surprise rendered possible by the use of a device which
+Germany pledged herself not to employ.
+
+[Illustration: THE GAS BATTLE OF YPRES]
+
+
+
+
+THE CANADIANS AT YPRES
+
+BY THE CANADIAN RECORD OFFICER
+
+
+[Sidenote: Position of the Canadian Division.]
+
+On April 22 the Canadian Division held a line of, roughly, 5,000 yards,
+extending in a northwesterly direction from the Ypres-Roulers Railway to
+the Ypres-Poelcapelle road, and connecting at its terminus with the
+French troops. The division consisted of three infantry brigades, in
+addition to the artillery brigades. Of the infantry brigades the First
+was in reserve, the Second was on the right, and the Third established
+contact with the Allies at the point indicated above.
+
+[Sidenote: The sudden gas attack.]
+
+The day was a peaceful one, warm and sunny, and except that the previous
+day had witnessed a further bombardment of the stricken town of Ypres,
+everything seemed quiet in front of the Canadian line. At 5 o'clock in
+the afternoon a plan, carefully prepared, was put into execution against
+our French allies on the left. Asphyxiating gas of great intensity was
+projected into their trenches, probably by means of force pumps and
+pipes laid out under the parapets. The fumes, aided by a favorable wind,
+floated backward, poisoning and disabling over an extended area those
+who fell under their effect.
+
+[Sidenote: The French give ground.]
+
+The result was that the French were compelled to give ground for a
+considerable distance. The glory which the French Army has won in this
+war would make it impertinent to labor the compelling nature of the
+poisonous discharges under which the trenches were lost. The French did,
+as every one knew they would do, all that stout soldiers could do, and
+the Canadian Division, officers and men, look forward to many occasions
+in the future in which they will stand side by side with the brave
+armies of France.
+
+The immediate consequences of this enforced withdrawal were, of course,
+extremely grave. The Third Brigade of the Canadian Division was without
+any left, or, in other words, its left was in the air.
+
+[Sidenote: Gap on the Canadian left.]
+
+It became imperatively necessary greatly to extend the Canadian lines to
+the left rear. It was not, of course, practicable to move the First
+Brigade from reserve at a moment's notice, and the line, extending from
+5,000 to 9,000 yards, was naturally not the line that had been held by
+the Allies at 5 o'clock, and a gap still existed on its left.
+
+It became necessary for Brigadier General Turner, commanding the Third
+Brigade, to throw back his left flank southward to protect his rear.
+
+In the course of the confusion which followed upon the readjustments of
+position, the enemy, who had advanced rapidly after his initial
+successes, took four British 4.7 guns in a small wood to the west of the
+village of St. Julien, two miles in the rear of the original French
+trenches.
+
+[Sidenote: Heroism of the Canadian Division.]
+
+The story of the second battle of Ypres is the story of how the Canadian
+Division, enormously outnumbered--for they had in front of them at least
+four divisions, supported by immensely heavy artillery--with a gap still
+existing, though reduced, in their lines, and with dispositions made
+hurriedly under the stimulus of critical danger, fought through the day
+and through the night, and then through another day and night; fought
+under their officers until, as happened to so many, those perished
+gloriously, and then fought from the impulsion of sheer valor because
+they came from fighting stock.
+
+The enemy, of course, was aware--whether fully or not may perhaps be
+doubted--of the advantage his breach in the line had given him, and
+immediately began to push a formidable series of attacks upon the whole
+of the newly-formed Canadian salient. If it is possible to distinguish
+when the attack was everywhere so fierce, it developed with particular
+intensity at this moment upon the apex of the newly formed line, running
+in the direction of St. Julien.
+
+[Sidenote: Assault on the wood.]
+
+It has already been stated that four British guns were taken in a wood
+comparatively early in the evening of the 22d. In the course of that
+night, and under the heaviest machine-gun fire, this wood was assaulted
+by the Canadian Scottish, Sixteenth Battalion of the Third Brigade, and
+the Tenth Battalion of the Second Brigade, which was intercepted for
+this purpose on its way to a reserve trench. The battalions were
+respectively commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Leckie and Lieutenant
+Colonel Boyle, and after a most fierce struggle in the light of a misty
+moon they took the position at the point of the bayonet. At midnight the
+Second Battalion, under Colonel Watson, and the Toronto Regiment,
+Queen's Own, Third Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Rennie, both of
+the First Brigade, brought up much-needed reinforcement, and though not
+actually engaged in the assault were in reserve.
+
+All through the following days and nights these battalions shared the
+fortunes and misfortunes of the Third Brigade. An officer who took part
+in the attack describes how the men about him fell under the fire of the
+machine guns, which, in his phrase, played upon them "like a watering
+pot." He added quite simply, "I wrote my own life off." But the line
+never wavered. When one man fell another took his place, and with a
+final shout the survivors of the two battalions flung themselves into
+the wood. The German garrison was completely demoralized, and the
+impetuous advance of the Canadians did not cease until they reached the
+far side of the wood and intrenched themselves there in the position so
+dearly gained. They had, however, the disappointment of finding that the
+guns had been blown up by the enemy, and later on in the same night a
+most formidable concentration of artillery fire, sweeping the wood as a
+tropical storm sweeps the leaves from a forest, made it impossible for
+them to hold the position for which they had sacrificed so much.
+
+The fighting continued without intermission all through the night, and,
+to those who observed the indications that the attack was being pushed
+with ever-growing strength, it hardly seemed possible that the
+Canadians, fighting in positions so difficult to defend and so little
+the subject of deliberate choice, could maintain their resistance for
+any long period. At 6 A. M. on Friday it became apparent that the left
+was becoming more and more involved, and a powerful German attempt to
+outflank it developed rapidly. The consequences, if it had been broken
+or outflanked, need not be insisted upon. They were not merely local.
+
+[Sidenote: Counter-attack on German lines.]
+
+It was therefore decided, formidable as the attempt undoubtedly was, to
+try and give relief by a counter-attack upon the first line of German
+trenches, now far, far advanced from those originally occupied by the
+French. This was carried out by the Ontario First and Fourth Battalions
+of the First Brigade, under Brigadier General Mercer, acting in
+combination with a British brigade.
+
+It is safe to say that the youngest private in the rank, as he set his
+teeth for the advance, knew the task in front of him, and the youngest
+subaltern knew all that rested upon its success. It did not seem that
+any human being could live in the shower of shot and shell which began
+to play upon the advancing troops. They suffered terrible casualties.
+For a short time every other man seemed to fall, but the attack was
+pressed ever closer and closer.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy's first line trenches taken.]
+
+The Fourth Canadian Battalion at one moment came under a particularly
+withering fire. For a moment--not more--it wavered. Its most gallant
+commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Burchill, carrying, after an old
+fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the
+very moment when his example had infected them, fell dead at the head of
+his battalion. With a hoarse cry of anger they sprang forward, (for,
+indeed, they loved him,) as if to avenge his death. The astonishing
+attack which followed--pushed home in the face of direct frontal fire
+made in broad daylight by battalions whose names should live for ever in
+the memories of soldiers--was carried to the first line of German
+trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the last German who resisted was
+bayoneted, and the trench was won.
+
+The measure of this success may be taken when it is pointed out that
+this trench represented in the German advance the apex in the breach
+which the enemy had made in the original line of the Allies, and that it
+was two and a half miles south of that line. This charge, made by men
+who looked death indifferently in the face, (for no man who took part in
+it could think that he was likely to live,) saved, and that was much,
+the Canadian left. But it did more. Up to the point where the assailants
+conquered, or died, it secured and maintained during the most critical
+moment of all the integrity of the allied line. For the trench was not
+only taken, it was held thereafter against all comers, and in the teeth
+of every conceivable projectile, until the night of Sunday, the 25th,
+when all that remained of the war-broken but victorious battalions was
+relieved by fresh troops.
+
+[Sidenote: The poisonous gas attack.]
+
+It is necessary now to return to the fortunes of the Third Brigade,
+commanded by Brigadier General Turner, which, as we have seen, at 5
+o'clock on Thursday was holding the Canadian left, and after the first
+attack assumed the defense of the new Canadian salient, at the same time
+sparing all the men it could to form an extemporized line between the
+wood and St. Julien. This brigade also was at the first moment of the
+German offensive, made the object of an attack by the discharge of
+poisonous gas. The discharge was followed by two enemy assaults.
+Although the fumes were extremely poisonous, they were not, perhaps
+having regard to the wind, so disabling as on the French lines, (which
+ran almost east to west,) and the brigade, though affected by the fumes,
+stoutly beat back the two German assaults.
+
+Encouraged by this success, it rose to the supreme effort required by
+the assault on the wood, which has already been described. At 4 o'clock
+on the morning of Friday, the 23d, a fresh emission of gas was made both
+upon the Second Brigade, which held the line running northeast, and upon
+the Third Brigade, which, as has been fully explained, had continued the
+line up to the pivotal point, as defined above, and had then spread down
+in a southeasterly direction. It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that two
+privates of the Forty-eighth Highlanders who found their way into the
+trenches commanded by Colonel Lipsett, Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth
+Battalion, perished in the fumes, and it was noticed that their faces
+became blue immediately after dissolution.
+
+[Sidenote: A brief retirement.]
+
+The Royal Highlanders of Montreal, Thirteenth Battalion, and the
+Forty-eighth Highlanders, Fifteenth Battalion, were more especially
+affected by the discharge. The Royal Highlanders, though considerably
+shaken, remained immovable upon their ground. The Forty-eighth
+Highlanders, which, no doubt, received a more poisonous discharge, was
+for the moment dismayed, and, indeed, their trench, according to the
+testimony of very hardened soldiers, became intolerable. The battalion
+retired from the trench, but for a very short distance, and for an
+equally short time, in a few moments they were again their own men. They
+advanced upon and occupied the trenches which they had momentarily
+abandoned.
+
+In the course of the same night the Third Brigade, which had already
+displayed a resource, a gallantry, and a tenacity for which no eulogy
+could be excessive, was exposed (and with it the whole allied case) to a
+peril still more formidable.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans pass gap on left.]
+
+It has been explained, and, indeed, the fundamental situation made the
+peril clear, that several German divisions were attempting to crush or
+drive back this devoted brigade, and in any event to use their enormous
+numerical superiority to sweep around and overwhelm its left wing. At
+some point in the line which cannot be precisely determined the last
+attempt partially succeeded, and in the course of this critical struggle
+German troops in considerable though not in overwhelming numbers swung
+past the unsupported left of the brigade, and, slipping in between the
+wood and St. Julien, added to the torturing anxieties of the long-drawn
+struggle by the appearance, and indeed for the moment the reality, of
+isolation from the brigade base.
+
+[Sidenote: The Royal Highlanders of Montreal.]
+
+In the exertions made by the Third Brigade during this supreme crisis it
+is almost impossible to single out one battalion without injustice to
+others, but though the efforts of the Royal Highlanders of Montreal,
+Thirteenth Battalion, were only equal to those of the other battalions
+who did such heroic service, it so happened by chance that the fate of
+some of its officers attracted special attention.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Captain McCuaig.]
+
+Major Norsworth, already almost disabled by a bullet wound, was
+bayoneted and killed while he was rallying his men with easy
+cheerfulness. The case of Captain McCuaig, of the same battalion, was
+not less glorious, although his death can claim no witness. This most
+gallant officer was seriously wounded, in a hurriedly constructed
+trench, at a moment when it would have been possible to remove him to
+safety. He absolutely refused to move and continued in the discharge of
+his duty.
+
+But the situation grew constantly worse, and peremptory orders were
+received for an immediate withdrawal. Those who were compelled to obey
+them were most insistent to carry with them, at whatever risk to their
+own mobility and safety, an officer to whom they were devotedly
+attached. But he, knowing, it may be, better than they, the exertions
+which still lay in front of them, and unwilling to inflict upon them the
+disabilities of a maimed man, very resolutely refused, and asked of them
+one thing only, that there should be given to him, as he lay alone in
+the trench, two loaded Colt revolvers to add to his own, which lay in
+his right hand as he made his last request. And so, with three revolvers
+ready to his hand for use, a very brave officer waited to sell his life,
+wounded and racked with pain, in an abandoned trench.
+
+On Friday afternoon the left of the Canadian line was strengthened by
+important reinforcements of British troops amounting to seven
+battalions. From this time forward the Canadians also continued to
+receive further assistance on the left from a series of French
+counter-attacks pushed in a northeasterly direction from the canal bank.
+
+[Sidenote: The defenders give ground.]
+
+But the artillery fire of the enemy continually grew in intensity, and
+it became more and more evident that the Canadian salient could no
+longer be maintained against the overwhelming superiority of numbers by
+which it was assailed. Slowly, stubbornly, and contesting every yard,
+the defenders gave ground until the salient gradually receded from the
+apex, near the point where it had originally aligned with the French,
+and fell back upon St. Julien.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy in St. Julien.]
+
+Soon it became evident that even St. Julien, exposed to fire from right
+and left, was no longer tenable in the fact of overwhelming numerical
+superiority. The Third Brigade was therefore ordered to retreat further
+south, selling every yard of ground as dearly as it had done since 5
+o'clock on Thursday. But it was found impossible, without hazarding far
+larger forces, to disentangle the detachment of the Royal Highlanders of
+Montreal, Thirteenth Battalion, and of the Royal Montreal Regiment,
+Fourteenth Battalion. The brigade was ordered, and not a moment too
+soon, to move back. It left these units with hearts as heavy as those
+with which his comrades had said farewell to Captain McCuaig. The German
+tide rolled, indeed, over the deserted village, but for several hours
+after the enemy had become master of the village the sullen and
+persistent rifle fire which survived showed that they were not yet
+master of the Canadian rearguard. If they died, they died worthily of
+Canada.
+
+The enforced retirement of the Third Brigade (and to have stayed longer
+would have been madness) reproduced for the Second Brigade, commanded by
+Brigadier General Curry, in a singularly exact fashion, the position of
+the Third Brigade itself at the moment of the withdrawal of the French.
+The Second Brigade, it must be remembered, had retained the whole line
+of trenches, roughly 2,500 yards, which it was holding at 5 o'clock on
+Thursday afternoon, supported by the incomparable exertions of the Third
+Brigade, and by the highly hazardous employment in which necessity had
+involved that brigade. The Second Brigade had maintained its lines.
+
+[Sidenote: General Curry's maneuvres.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett holds the left.]
+
+It now devolved upon General Curry, commanding this brigade, to
+reproduce the tactical maneuvres with which, earlier in the fight, the
+Third Brigade had adapted itself to the flank movement of overwhelming
+numerical superiority. He flung his left flank around south, and his
+record is, that in the very crisis of this immense struggle he held his
+line of trenches from Thursday at 5 o'clock till Sunday afternoon. And
+on Sunday afternoon he had not abandoned his trenches. There were none
+left. They had been obliterated by artillery. He withdrew his undefeated
+troops from the fragments of his field fortifications, and the hearts of
+his men were as completely unbroken as the parapets of his trenches were
+completely broken. In such a brigade it is invidious to single out any
+battalion for special praise, but it is, perhaps, necessary to the story
+to point out that Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett, commanding the Ninetieth
+Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth Battalion of the Second Brigade, held the
+extreme left of the brigade position at the most critical moment.
+
+The battalion was expelled from the trenches early on Friday morning by
+an emission of poisonous gas, but, recovering in three-quarters of an
+hour, it counter-attacked, retook the trenches it had abandoned, and
+bayoneted the enemy. And after the Third Brigade had been forced to
+retire Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett held his position, though his left
+was in the air, until two British regiments filled up the gap on
+Saturday night.
+
+The individual fortunes of these two brigades have brought us to the
+events of Sunday afternoon, but it is necessary, to make the story
+complete, to recur for a moment to the events of the morning. After a
+very formidable attack the enemy succeeded in capturing the village of
+St. Julien, which has so often been referred to in describing the
+fortunes of the Canadian left. This success opened up a new and
+formidable line of advance, but by this time further reinforcements had
+arrived. Here, again, it became evident that the tactical necessities of
+the situation dictated an offensive movement as the surest method of
+arresting further progress.
+
+[Sidenote: Cheers for the Canadians.]
+
+General Alderson, who was in command of the reinforcements, accordingly
+directed that an advance should be made by a British brigade which had
+been brought up in support. The attack was thrust through the Canadian
+left and centre, and as the troops making it swept on, many of them
+going to certain death, they paused an instant, and, with deep-throated
+cheers for Canada, gave the first indication to the division of the warm
+admiration which their exertions had excited in the British Army.
+
+The advance was indeed costly, but it could not be gainsaid. The story
+is one of which the brigade may be proud, but it does not belong to the
+special account of the fortunes of the Canadian contingent. It is
+sufficient for our purpose to notice that the attack succeeded in its
+object, and the German advance along the line, momentarily threatened,
+was arrested.
+
+[Sidenote: Second and Third Brigades relieved.]
+
+We had reached, in describing the events of the afternoon, the points at
+which the trenches of the Second Brigade had been completely destroyed.
+This brigade, the Third Brigade, and the considerable reinforcements
+which this time filled the gap between the two brigades were gradually
+driven fighting every yard upon a line running, roughly, from Fortuin,
+south of St. Julien, in a northeasterly direction toward Passchendaele.
+Here the two brigades were relieved by two British brigades, after
+exertions as glorious, as fruitful, and, alas! as costly as soldiers
+have ever been called upon to make.
+
+Monday morning broke bright and clear and found the Canadians behind the
+firing line. This day, too, was to bring its anxieties. The attack was
+still pressed, and it became necessary to ask Brigadier General Curry
+whether he could once more call upon his shrunken brigade. "The men are
+tired," this indomitable soldier replied, "but they are ready and glad
+to go again to the trenches." And so once more, a hero leading heroes,
+the General marched back the men of the Second Brigade, reduced to a
+quarter of its original strength, to the very apex of the line as it
+existed at that moment.
+
+[Sidenote: Back to the apex of the line.]
+
+This position he held all day Monday; on Tuesday he was still occupying
+the reserve trenches, and on Wednesday was relieved and retired to
+billets in the rear.
+
+Such, in the most general outline, is the story of a great and glorious
+feat of arms. A story told so soon after the event, while rendering bare
+justice to units whose doings fell under the eyes of particular
+observers, must do less than justice to others who played their
+part--and all did--as gloriously as those whose special activities it is
+possible, even at this stage, to describe. But the friends of men who
+fought in other battalions may be content in the knowledge that they,
+too, shall learn, when time allows the complete correlation of diaries,
+the exact part which each unit played in these unforgettable days. It
+is rather accident than special distinction which had made it possible
+to select individual battalions for mention.
+
+[Sidenote: Signalers and dispatch carriers.]
+
+It would not be right to close even this account without a word of
+tribute to the auxiliary services. The signalers were always cool and
+resourceful. The telegraph and telephone wires being constantly cut,
+many belonging to this service rendered up their lives in the discharge
+of their duty, carrying out repairs with the most complete calmness in
+exposed positions. The dispatch carriers, as usual, behaved with the
+greatest bravery. Theirs is a lonely life, and very often a lonely
+death. One cycle messenger lay upon the ground, badly wounded. He
+stopped a passing officer and delivered his message, together with some
+verbal instructions. These were coherently given, but he swooned almost
+before the words were out of his mouth.
+
+[Sidenote: Artillery and engineers.]
+
+The artillery never flagged in the sleepless struggle in which so much
+depended upon its exertions. Not a Canadian gun was lost in the long
+battle of retreat. And the nature of the position renders such a record
+very remarkable. One battery of four guns found itself in such a
+situation that it was compelled to turn two of its guns directly about
+and fire upon the enemy in positions almost diametrically opposite.
+
+It is not possible in this account to attempt a description of the
+services rendered by the Canadian Engineers or the Medical Corps. Their
+members rivaled in coolness, endurance, and valor the Canadian infantry,
+whose comrades they were, and it is hoped in separate communications to
+do justice to both these brilliant services.
+
+No attempt has been made in this description to explain the recent
+operations except in so far as they spring from, or are connected with,
+the fortunes of the Canadian Division. It is certain that the exertions
+of the troops who reinforced and later relieved the Canadians were not
+less glorious, but the long, drawn-out struggle is a lesson to the whole
+empire. "Arise, O Israel!" The empire is engaged in a struggle, without
+quarter and without compromise, against an enemy still superbly
+organized, still immensely powerful, still confident that its strength
+is the mate of its necessities. To arms, then, and still to arms! In
+Great Britain, in Canada, in Australia there is need, and there is need
+now, of a community organized alike in military and industrial
+co-operation.
+
+That our countrymen in Canada, even while their hearts are still
+bleeding, will answer every call which is made upon them, we well know.
+
+[Sidenote: The Canadian graveyard in Flanders.]
+
+The graveyard of Canada in Flanders is large; it is very large. Those
+who lie there have left their mortal remains on alien soil. To Canada
+they have bequeathed their memories and their glory.
+
+        On Fame's eternal camping ground
+          Their silent tents are spread,
+        And Glory guards with solemn round
+          The bivouac of the dead.
+
+Assaults accompanied with gas were not made on every position of the
+front held by the British to the north of Ypres at the same time. At one
+point it was not until the early morning of Saturday, April 24, that the
+Germans brought this method into operation against a section of our line
+not far from our left flank.
+
+[Sidenote: Germans fire poison gas shells.]
+
+Late on Thursday afternoon the men here saw portions of the French
+retiring some distance to the west, and observed the cloud of vapor
+rolling along the ground southward behind them. Our position was then
+shelled with high explosives until 8 P.M. On Friday also it was
+bombarded for some hours, the Germans firing poison shells for one hour.
+Their infantry, who were intrenched about 120 yards away, evidently
+expected some result from their use of the latter, for they put their
+heads above the parapets, as if to see what the effect had been on our
+men, and at intervals opened rapid rifle fire. The wind, however, was
+strong and dissipated the fumes quickly, our troops did not suffer
+seriously from their noxious effect, and the enemy did not attempt any
+advance.
+
+[Sidenote: Stupefying gas employed.]
+
+On Saturday morning, just about dawn, an airship appeared in the sky to
+the east of our line at this point, and dropped four red stars, which
+floated downward slowly for some distance before they died out. When our
+men, whose eyes had not unnaturally been fixed on this display of
+pyrotechnics, again turned to their front it was to find the German
+trenches rendered invisible by a wall of greenish-yellow vapor, similar
+to that observed on the Thursday afternoon, which was bearing down on
+them on the breeze. Through this the Germans started shooting. During
+Saturday they employed stupefying gas on several occasions in this
+quarter, but did not press on very quickly. One reason for this, given
+by a German prisoner, is that many of the enemy's infantry were so
+affected by the fumes that they could not advance.
+
+To continue the narrative from the night of Sunday, April 25. At 12:30
+A. M., in face of repeated attacks, our infantry fell back from a part
+of the Grafenstafel Ridge, northwest of Zonnebeke, and the line then ran
+for some distance along the south bank of the little Haanebeek stream.
+The situation along the Yperlee Canal remained practically unchanged.
+
+[Sidenote: Line pierced at Broodseinde.]
+
+When the morning of the 26th dawned the Germans, who had been seen
+massing in St. Julien, and to the east of the village on the previous
+evening, made several assaults, which grew more and more fierce as the
+hours passed, but reinforcements were sent up and the position was
+secured. Further east, however, our line was pierced near Broodseinde,
+and a small body of the enemy established themselves in a portion of our
+trenches. In the afternoon a strong, combined counter-attack was
+delivered by the French and British along the whole front from
+Steenstraate to the east of St. Julien, accompanied by a violent
+bombardment. This moment, so far as can be judged at present, marked the
+turning point of the battle, for, although it effected no great change
+in the situation, it caused a definite check to the enemy's offensive,
+relieved the pressure, and gained a certain amount of ground.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack near St. Julien.]
+
+During this counter-attack the guns concentrated by both sides on this
+comparatively narrow front poured in a great volume of fire. From the
+right came the roar of the British batteries, from the left the rolling
+thunder of the _soixante-quinze_, and every now and then above the
+turmoil rose a dull boom as a huge howitzer shell burst in the vicinity
+of Ypres. On the right our infantry stormed the German trenches close to
+St. Julien, and in the evening gained the southern outskirts of the
+village. In the centre they captured the trenches a little to the south
+of the Bois des Cuisinirs, west of St. Julien, and still further west
+more trenches were taken. This represented an advance of some 600 or 700
+yards, but the gain in ground could not at all points be maintained.
+Opposite St. Julien we fell back from the village to a position just
+south of the place, and in front of the Bois des Cuisinirs and on the
+left of the line a similar retirement took place, the enemy making
+extensive use of his gas cylinders and of machine guns placed in farms
+or at other points of vantage. None the less, the situation at nightfall
+was more satisfactory than it had been. We were holding our own well all
+along the line and had made progress at some points. On the right the
+enemy's attacks on the front of the Grafenstafel Ridge had all been
+repulsed.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy lines.]
+
+In the meantime the French had achieved some success, having retaken
+Lizerne and also the trenches round Het Sast, captured some 250
+prisoners, and made progress all along the west bank of the canal. Heavy
+as our losses were during the day, there is little doubt that the enemy
+suffered terribly. Both sides were attacking at different points, the
+fighting was conducted very largely in the open, and the close
+formations of the Germans on several occasions presented excellent
+targets to our artillery, which did not fail to seize its opportunities.
+
+Nothing in particular occurred during the night.
+
+[Sidenote: The new battle lines.]
+
+The morning of the 27th found our troops occupying the following
+positions; North of Zonnebeke the right of the line still held the
+eastern end of the Grafenstafel Ridge, but from here it bent
+southwestward behind the Haanebeek stream, which it followed to a point
+about half a mile east of St. Julien. Thence it curved back again to the
+Vamheule Farm, on the Ypres-Poelcappelle road, running from here in a
+slight southerly curve to a point a little west of the Ypres-Langemarck
+road, where it joined the French. In the last mentioned quarter of the
+field it followed generally the line of a low ridge running from west to
+east. On the French front the Germans had been cleared from the west
+bank of the canal, except at one point, Steenstraate, where they
+continued to hold the bridgehead.
+
+About 1 P. M. a counter-attack was made by us all along the line
+between the canal and the Ypres-Poelcappelle road, and for about an hour
+we continued to make progress. Then the right and centre were checked. A
+little later the left was also held up, and the situation remained very
+much as it had been on the previous day. The Germans were doubtless much
+encouraged by their initial success, and their previous boldness in
+attack was now matched by the stubborn manner in which they clung on to
+their positions. In the evening the French stormed some trenches east of
+the canal, but were again checked by the enemy's gas cylinders.
+
+[Sidenote: German exhaustion.]
+
+The night passed quietly, and was spent by us in reorganizing and
+consolidating our positions. The enemy did not interfere. This is not
+surprising, in view of the fact that by Tuesday evening they had been
+fighting for over five days. Their state of exhaustion is confirmed by
+the statements of the prisoners captured by the French, who also
+reported that the German losses had been very heavy.
+
+On Wednesday, the 28th, there was a complete lull on this sector of our
+line, and the shelling was less severe. Some fighting, however, occurred
+along the canal, the French taking over 100 prisoners.
+
+[Sidenote: Air battles.]
+
+Nothing of any importance has occurred on other parts of the front. On
+the 27th at the Railway Triangle opposite Guinchy, the south side of the
+embankment held by the Germans was blown up by our miners. On the 28th a
+hostile aeroplane was forced to descend by our anti-aircraft guns. On
+coming down in rear of the German lines, it was at once fired upon and
+destroyed by our field artillery. Another hostile machine was brought
+down by rifle fire near Zonnebeke.
+
+Splendid work has been done during the past few days by our airmen, who
+have kept all the area behind the hostile lines under close
+observation. On the 26th they bombed the stations of Staden, Thielt,
+Courtrai, Roubaix, and other places, and located an armored train near
+Langemarck, which was subsequently shelled and forced to retire. There
+have been several successful conflicts in the air, on one occasion a
+pilot in a single seater chasing a German machine to Roulers, and
+forcing it to land.
+
+[Sidenote: Raid on Courtrai].
+
+The raid on Courtrai unfortunately cost the nation a very gallant life,
+but it will live as one of the most heroic episodes of the war. The
+airman started on the enterprise alone in a biplane. On arrival at
+Courtrai he glided down to a height of 300 feet and dropped a large bomb
+on the railway junction. While he did this he was the target of hundreds
+of rifles, of machine guns, and of anti-aircraft armament, and was
+severely wounded in the thigh. Though he might have saved his life by at
+once coming down in the enemy's lines, he decided to save his machine at
+all costs, and made for the British lines. Descending to a height of
+only 100 feet in order to increase his speed, he continued to fly and
+was again wounded, this time mortally. He still flew on, however, and
+without coming down at the nearest of our aerodromes went all the way
+back to his own base, where he executed a perfect landing and made his
+report. He died in hospital not long afterward.
+
+[Sidenote: Steadiness of the Canadians.]
+
+The outstanding feature of the action of the past week has been the
+steadiness of our troops on the extreme left; but of the deeds of
+individual gallantry and devotion which have been performed it would be
+impossible to narrate one-hundredth part. At one place in this quarter a
+machine gun was stationed in the angle of a trench when the German rush
+took place. One man after another of the detachment was shot, but the
+gun still continued in action, through five bodies lay around it. When
+the sixth man took the place of his fallen comrades, of whom one was his
+brother, the Germans were still pressing on. He waited until they were
+only a few yards away, and then poured a stream of bullets on to the
+advancing ranks, which broke and fell back, leaving rows of dead. He was
+then wounded himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Telephone wires cut.]
+
+Under the hot fire to which our batteries were subjected in the early
+part of the engagement telephone wires were repeatedly cut. The wire
+connecting one battery with its observing officer was severed on nine
+separate occasions, and on each occasion repaired by a Sergeant, who did
+the work out in the open under a perfect hail of shells.
+
+About 5 P. M. a dense cloud of suffocating vapors was launched from
+their trenches along the whole front held by the French right and by our
+left from the Ypres-Langemarck road to a considerable distance east of
+St. Julien. The fumes did not carry much beyond our front trenches. But
+these were to a great extent rendered untenable, and a retirement from
+them was ordered.
+
+[Sidenote: Strange appearance of gas battle.]
+
+No sooner had this started than the enemy opened a violent bombardment
+with asphyxiating shells and shrapnel on our trenches and on our
+infantry as they were withdrawing. Meanwhile our guns had not been idle.
+From a distance, perhaps owing to some peculiarity of the light, the gas
+on this occasion looked like a great reddish cloud, and the moment it
+was seen our batteries poured a concentrated fire on the German
+trenches.
+
+Curious situations then arose between us and the enemy. The poison belt,
+the upper part shredding into thick wreaths of vapor as it was shaken by
+the wind, and the lower and denser part sinking into all inequalities of
+the ground, rolled slowly down the trenches. Shells would rend it for a
+moment, but it only settled down again as thickly as before.
+
+Nevertheless, the German infantry faced it, and they faced a hail of
+shrapnel as well. In some cases where the gas had not reached our lines
+our troops held firm and shot through the cloud at the advancing
+Germans. In other cases the men holding the front line managed to move
+to the flank, where they were more or less beyond the affected area.
+Here they waited until the enemy came on and then bayoneted them when
+they reached our trenches.
+
+[Sidenote: A charge through the gas.]
+
+On the extreme left our supports waited until the vapor reached our
+trenches, when they charged through it and met the advancing Germans
+with the bayonet as they swarmed over the parapets.
+
+South of St. Julien the denseness of the vapor compelled us to evacuate
+trenches, but reinforcements arrived who charged the enemy before they
+could establish themselves in position. In every case the assaults
+failed completely. Large numbers were mown down by our artillery. Men
+were seen falling and others scattering and running back to their own
+lines. Many who reached the gas cloud could not make their way through
+it, and in all probability a great number of the wounded perished from
+the fumes.
+
+It is to that extent, from a military standpoint, a sign of weakness.
+Another sign of weakness is the adoption of illegal methods of fighting,
+such as spreading poisonous gas. It is a confession by the Germans that
+they have lost their former great superiority in artillery and are, at
+any cost, seeking another technical advantage over their enemy as a
+substitute.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy sticks at nothing.]
+
+Nevertheless, this spirit, this determination on the part of our enemies
+to stick at nothing must not be underestimated. Though it may not pay
+the Germans in the long run, it renders it all the more obvious that
+they are a foe that can be overcome only by the force of overwhelming
+numbers of men and guns.
+
+Further to the east a similar attack was made about 7 P. M. which seems
+to have been attended with even less success, and the assaulting
+infantry was at once beaten back by our artillery fire.
+
+It was not long before all our trenches were reoccupied and the whole
+line reestablished in its original position. The attack on the French
+met with the same result.
+
+Prisoners captured in the recent fighting, the narrative continues,
+stated that one German corps lost 80 per cent. of its men in the first
+week; that the losses from our artillery fire, even during days when no
+attacks were taking place, had been very heavy and that many of their
+own men had suffered from the effects of the gas.
+
+[Sidenote: German gains due to poison gas.]
+
+In regard to the recent fighting on our left, the German offensive,
+effected in the first instance by surprise, resulted in a considerable
+gain of ground for the enemy. Between all the earlier German efforts,
+the only difference was that on this latest occasion the attempt was
+carried out with the aid of poisonous gases.
+
+There is no reason why we should not expect similar tactics in the
+future. They do not mean that the Allies have lost the initiative in the
+Western theatre, nor that they are likely to lose it. They do mean,
+however, and the fact has been repeatedly pointed out, that the enemy's
+defensive is an active one, that his confidence is still unshaken and
+that he still is able to strike in some strength where he sees the
+chance or where mere local advantage can be secured.
+
+The true idea of the meaning of the operations of the Allies can be
+gained only by bearing in mind that it is their primary object to bring
+about the exhaustion of the enemy's resources in men.
+
+In the form now assumed by this struggle--a war of attrition--the
+Germans are bound ultimately to lose, and it is the consciousness of
+this fact that inspires their present policy. This is to achieve as
+early as possible some success of sufficient magnitude to influence the
+neutrals, to discourage the Allies, to make them weary of the struggle
+and to induce the belief among the people ignorant of war that nothing
+has been gained by the past efforts of the Allies because the Germans
+have not yet been driven back. It is being undertaken with a political
+rather than a strategical object.
+
+[Sidenote: Violent artillery fire.]
+
+The calm that prevailed Thursday and Friday proved to be only the lull
+before the storm. Early Saturday morning it became apparent that the
+Germans were preparing an attack in strength against our line running
+east and northeast from Ypres, for they were concentrating under cover
+of a violent artillery fire, and at about 10 o'clock the battle began in
+earnest.
+
+At that hour the Germans attacked our line from the Ypres-Poelcappelle
+road to within a short distance of the Menin highroad, it being
+evidently their intention while engaging us closely on the whole of this
+sector to break our front in the vicinity of the Ypres-Roulers Railway,
+to the north and to the south of which their strongest and most
+determined assaults were delivered.
+
+Under this pressure our front was penetrated at some points around
+Frezenberg, and at 4:30 o'clock in the afternoon we made a
+counter-attack between the Zonnebeke road and the railway in order to
+recover the lost ground. Our offensive was conducted most gallantly, but
+was checked before long by the fire of machine guns.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy attacks near Menin road.]
+
+Meanwhile, the enemy launched another attack through the woods south of
+the Menin road, and at the same time threatened our left to the north of
+Ypres with fresh masses. Most desperate fighting ensued, the German
+infantry coming on again and again and gradually forcing our troops
+back, though only for a short distance, in spite of repeated
+counter-attacks.
+
+[Sidenote: On the Poelcappelle road.]
+
+During the night the fighting continued to rage with ever-increasing
+fury. It is impossible to say at exactly what hour our line was broken
+at different points, but it is certain that at one time the enemy's
+infantry poured through along the Poelcappelle road, and even got as far
+as Wieltje at 9 P. M.
+
+There was also a considerable gap in our front about Frezenberg, where
+hostile detachments had penetrated. At both points counter-attacks were
+organized without delay. To the east of the salient the Germans first
+were driven back to Frezenberg, but there they made a firm stand, and
+under pressure of fresh reinforcements we fell back again toward
+Verlorenhoek.
+
+[Sidenote: Canadian counter-attack.]
+
+Northeast of the salient a counter-attack carried out by us about 1 A.
+M. was more successful. Our troops swept the enemy out of Wieltje at the
+bayonet's point, leaving the village strewn with German dead and,
+pushing on, regained most of the ground to the north of that point. And
+so the fight surged to and fro throughout the night. All around the
+scene of the conflict the sky was lit up by the flashes of the guns and
+the light of blazing villages and farms, while against this background
+of smoke and flame, looking out in the murky light over the crumbling
+ruins of the old town, rose the battered wreck of the cathedral town and
+the spires of Cloth Hall.
+
+[Sidenote: German assaults on the east.]
+
+When Sunday dawned there came a short respite, and the firing for a time
+died down. The comparative lull enabled us to reorganize and
+consolidate our position on the new line we had taken up and to obtain
+some rest after the fatigue and strain of the night. It did not last
+long, however, and in the afternoon the climax of the battle was
+reached, for, under the cover of intense artillery fire, the Germans
+launched no less than five separate assaults against the east of the
+salient.
+
+To the north and northeast their attacks were not at first pressed so
+hard as on the south of the Menin road, where the fighting was
+especially fierce. In the latter direction masses of infantry were
+hurled on with absolute desperation and were beaten off with
+corresponding slaughter.
+
+At one point, north of the town, 500 of the enemy advanced from the
+wood, and it is affirmed by those present that not a single man of them
+escaped.
+
+[Sidenote: German losses at Chateau Hooge.]
+
+On the eastern face, at 6:30 P. M., an endeavor was made to storm the
+grounds of the Chateau Hooge, a little north of the Menin road, but the
+force attempting it broke and fell back under the hail of shrapnel
+poured upon them by our guns. It was on this side, where they had to
+face the concentrated fire of guns, Maxims and rifles again and again in
+their efforts to break their way through, that the Germans incurred
+their heaviest losses, and the ground was literally heaped with dead.
+
+They evidently, for the time being at least, were unable to renew their
+efforts, and as night came on the fury of their offensive gradually
+slackened, the hours of darkness passing in quietness.
+
+During the day our troops saw some of the enemy busily employed in
+stripping the British dead in our abandoned trenches, east of the Hooge
+Chateau, and several Germans afterward were noticed dressed in khaki.
+
+[Sidenote: A successful day.]
+
+So far as the Ypres region is concerned, this for us was a most
+successful day. Our line, which on the northeast of the salient had,
+after the previous day's fighting, been reconstituted a short distance
+behind the original front, remained intact. Our losses were
+comparatively slight, and, owing to the targets presented by the enemy,
+the action resolved itself on our part into pure killing.
+
+The reason for this very determined effort to crush our left on the part
+of the Germans is not far to seek. It is probable that for some days
+previously they had been in possession of information which led them to
+suppose that we intended to apply pressure on the right of our line, and
+that their great attack upon Ypres on the 7th, 8th, and 9th was
+undertaken with a view to diverting us from our purpose.
+
+In this the Germans were true to their principles, for they rightly hold
+that the best manner of meeting an expected hostile offensive is to
+forestall it by attacking in some other quarter. In this instance their
+leaders acted with the utmost determination and energy and their
+soldiers fought with the greatest courage.
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy held in check.]
+
+The failure of their effort was due to the splendid endurance of our
+troops, who held the line around the salient under a fire which again
+and again blotted out whole lengths of the defenses and killed the
+defenders by scores. Time after time along those parts of the front
+selected for assault were parapets destroyed, and time after time did
+the thinning band of survivors build them up again and await the next
+onset as steadily as before.
+
+Here, in May, in defense of the same historic town, have our
+incomparable infantry repeated the great deeds their comrades performed
+half a year ago and beaten back most desperate onslaughts of hostile
+hordes backed by terrific artillery support.
+
+The services rendered by our troops in this quarter cannot at present
+be estimated, for their full significance will only be realized in the
+light of future events. But so far their devotion has indirectly
+contributed in no small measure to the striking success already achieved
+by our allies.
+
+Further south, in the meantime, on Sunday another struggle had been in
+progress on that portion of the front covered by the right of our line
+and the left of the French, for when the firing around Ypres was
+temporarily subsiding during the early hours of the morning another and
+even more tremendous cannonade was suddenly started by the artillery of
+the Allies some twenty miles to the south.
+
+The morning was calm, bright, and clear, and opposite our right, as the
+sun rose, the scene in front of our line was the most peaceful
+imaginable. Away to the right were Guinchy, with its brickfields and the
+ruins of Givenchy. To the north of them lay low ground, where, hidden by
+trees and hedgerows, ran the opposing lines that were about to become
+the scene of the conflict, and beyond, in the distance, rose the long
+ridge of Aubers, the villages crowning it standing out clear cut against
+the sky.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombardment of Guinchy.]
+
+At 5 o'clock the bombardment began, slowly at first and then growing in
+volume until the whole air quivered with the rush of the larger shells
+and the earth shook with the concussion of guns. In a few minutes the
+whole distant landscape disappeared in smoke and dust, which hung for a
+while in the still air and then drifted slowly across the line of
+battle.
+
+[Sidenote: The battle near Festubert.]
+
+Shortly before 6 o'clock our infantry advanced along our front between
+the Bois Grenier and Festubert. On the left, north of Fromelles, we
+stormed the German first line trenches. Hand-to-hand fighting went on
+for some time with bayonet, rifle, and hand grenade, but we continued to
+hold on to this position throughout the day and caused the enemy very
+heavy loss, for not only were many Germans killed in the bombardment,
+but their repeated efforts to drive us from the captured positions
+proved most costly.
+
+On the right, to the north of Festubert, our advance met with
+considerable opposition and was not pressed.
+
+[Sidenote: A French victory.]
+
+Meanwhile, the French, after a prolonged bombardment, had taken the
+German positions north of Arras on a front of nearly five miles, and had
+pushed forward from two to three miles, capturing 2,000 prisoners and
+six guns. This remarkable success was gained by our allies in the course
+of a few hours.
+
+As may be supposed from the nature of the fighting which has been in
+progress, our losses have been heavy. On other parts of the front our
+action was confined to that of the artillery, but this proved most
+effective later, all the communications of the enemy being subjected to
+so heavy and accurate a fire that in some quarters all movement by
+daylight within range of our lines was rendered impracticable. At one
+place opposite our centre a convoy of ammunition was hit by a shell,
+which knocked out six motor lorries and caused two to blow up. Opposite
+our centre we fired two mines, which did considerable damage to the
+enemy's defenses.
+
+[Sidenote: Air fighting.]
+
+During the day also our aeroplanes attacked several points of
+importance. One of our airmen, who was sent to bomb the canal bridge
+near Don, was wounded on his way there, but continued and fulfilled his
+mission. Near Wytschaete, one of our aviators pursued a German aeroplane
+and fired a whole belt from his machine gun at it. The Taube suddenly
+swerved, righted itself for a second, and then descended from a height
+of several thousand feet straight to the ground.
+
+On the other hand, a British machine unfortunately was brought down over
+Lille by the enemy's anti-aircraft guns, but it is hoped that the
+aviator escaped.
+
+_In regard to the German allegation, that the British used gas in their
+attacks on Hill 60, the Eyewitness says_:
+
+[Sidenote: British had not used gas.]
+
+No asphyxiating gases have been employed by us at any time, nor have
+they yet been brought into play by us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Germany, desperate at her failure to win the rapid victories she had
+anticipated on the land, resorted, in 1915, to a ruthless policy of
+sinking the ships of the belligerent powers, whether or not they were
+engaged on legitimate errands. This policy culminated on May 7, 1915, in
+the sinking of the great transatlantic steamship the _Lusitania_, with
+the loss of over a thousand men, women, and children.
+
+
+
+
+SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA
+
+THE JUDICIAL DECISION BY JUDGE J. M. MAYER
+
+
+[Sidenote: The _Lusitania_ sails.]
+
+On May 1, 1915, the British passenger-carrying merchantman _Lusitania_
+sailed from New York bound for Liverpool, with 1,257 passengers and a
+crew of 702, making a total of 1,959 souls on board, men, women, and
+children. At approximately 2:10 on the afternoon of May 7, 1915, weather
+clear and sea smooth, without warning, the vessel was torpedoed and went
+down by the head in about eighteen minutes, with an ultimate tragic loss
+of 1,195.
+
+[Sidenote: Passengers and equipment.]
+
+So far as equipment went, the vessel was seaworthy in the highest sense.
+Her carrying capacity was 2,198 passengers and a crew of about 850, or
+about 3,000 persons in all. She had 22 open lifeboats capable of
+accommodating 1,322 persons, 26 collapsible boats with a capacity for
+1,283, making a total of 48 boats with a capacity for 2,605 in all, or
+substantially in excess of the requirements of her last voyage. Her
+total of life belts was 3,187, or 1,959 more than the total number of
+passengers, and, in addition, she carried 20 life buoys. She was classed
+100 A1 at Lloyd's being 787 feet long over all, with a tonnage of 30,395
+gross and 12,611 net. She had 4 turbine engines, 25 boilers, 4 boiler
+rooms, 12 transverse bulkheads, dividing her into 13 compartments, with
+a longitudinal bulkhead on either side of the ship for 425 feet,
+covering all vital parts.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Lusitania_ unarmed.]
+
+The proof is absolute that she was not and never had been armed nor did
+she carry any explosives. She did carry some 18 fuse cases and 125
+shrapnel cases, consisting merely of empty shells without any powder
+charge, 4,200 cases of safety cartridges, and 189 cases of infantry
+equipment, such as leather fittings, pouches, and the like. All these
+were for delivery abroad, but none of these munitions could be exploded
+by setting them on fire in mass or in bulk, nor by subjecting them to
+impact. She had been duly inspected on March 17, April 15, 16, and 17,
+all in 1915, and before she left New York the boat gear and boats were
+examined, overhauled, checked up, and defective articles properly
+replaced.
+
+[Sidenote: The drills sufficient.]
+
+There is no reason to doubt that this part of her equipment was in
+excellent order when she left New York. The vessel was under the command
+of a long service and experienced Captain and officered by competent and
+experienced men. The difficulties of the war prevented the company from
+gathering together a crew fully reaching a standard as high as in normal
+times, (many of the younger British sailors having been called to the
+colors,) but, all told, the crew was good and, in many instances, highly
+intelligent and capable. Due precaution was taken in respect of boat
+drills while in port, and the testimony shows that those drills were
+both sufficient and efficient. Some passengers did not see any boat
+drills on the voyage, while others characterized the drills, in effect,
+as formally superficial. Any one familiar with ocean traveling knows
+that it is not strange that boat drills may take place unobserved by
+some of the passengers who, though on deck, may be otherwise occupied or
+who may be in another part of the ship, and such negative testimony must
+give way to the positive testimony that there were daily boat drills,
+the object of which mainly was to enable the men competently and quickly
+to lower the boats.
+
+[Sidenote: Emergency precautions.]
+
+Each man had a badge showing the number of the boat to which he was
+assigned, and a boat list was posted in three different places in the
+ship. Each day of the voyage a drill was held with the emergency boat,
+which was a fixed boat, either No. 13 on the starboard side or No. 14 on
+the port side, according to the weather, the idea, doubtless, being to
+accustom the men quickly to reach the station on either side of the
+ship. The siren was blown and a picked crew from the watch assembled at
+the boat, put on life belts, jumped into the boat, took their places,
+and jumped out again.
+
+Throughout this case it must always be remembered that the disaster
+occurred in May, 1915, and the whole subject must be approached with the
+knowledge and mental attitude of that time. It may be that more
+elaborate and effective methods and precaution have been adopted since
+then, but there is no testimony which shows that these boat drills, as
+practiced on the voyage, were not fully up to the then existing
+standards and practices. There can be no criticism of the bulkhead door
+drills, for there was one each day.
+
+[Sidenote: Speed reduced.]
+
+In November, 1914, the Directors of the Cunard Company, in view of the
+falling off of the passenger traffic, decided to withdraw the
+_Lusitania's_ sister ship, _Mauretania_, and to run the _Lusitania_ at
+three-fourths boiler power, which involved a reduction of speed from an
+average of about twenty-four knots to an average of about twenty-one
+knots. The ship was operated under this reduced boiler power and reduced
+rate of speed for six round trips until and including the fatal voyage,
+although at the reduced rate she was considerably faster than any
+passenger ship crossing the Atlantic at that time. This reduction was in
+part for financial reasons and in part "a question of economy of coal
+and labor in time of war." No profit was expected and none was made,
+but the company continued to operate the ship as a public service. The
+reduction from twenty-four to twenty-one knots is, however, quite
+immaterial to the controversy, as will later appear.
+
+Having thus outlined the personnel, equipment, and cargo of the vessel,
+reference will now be made to a series of events preceding her sailing
+on May 1, 1915.
+
+On February 4, 1915, the Imperial German Government issued a
+proclamation as follows:
+
+[Sidenote: The German proclamation.]
+
+        "1. The waters surrounding Great Britain and
+        Ireland, including the whole English Channel,
+        are hereby declared to be war zone. On and
+        after the 18th of February, 1915, every enemy
+        merchant ship found in the said war zone will
+        be destroyed without its being always possible
+        to avert the dangers threatening the crews and
+        passengers on that account.
+
+        "2. Even neutral ships are exposed to danger in
+        the war zone, as in view of the misuse of
+        neutral flags ordered on January 31 by the
+        British Government and of the accidents of
+        naval war, it cannot always be avoided to
+        strike even neutral ships in attacks that are
+        directed at enemy ships.
+
+        "3. Northward navigation around the Shetland
+        Islands, in the eastern waters of the North Sea
+        and in a strip of not less than thirty miles
+        width along the Netherlands coast is in no
+        danger.
+
+                                          "VON POHL,
+               "Chief of the Admiral Staff of the Navy.
+        "Berlin, February 4, 1915."
+
+[Sidenote: Submarine blockade declared.]
+
+This was accompanied by a so-called memorial, setting forth the reasons
+advanced by the German Government in support of the issuance of this
+proclamation, an extract from which is as follows:
+
+        "Just as England declared the whole North Sea
+        between Scotland and Norway to be comprised
+        within the seat of war, so does Germany now
+        declare the waters surrounding Great Britain
+        and Ireland, including the whole English
+        Channel, to be comprised within the seat of
+        war, and will prevent by all the military means
+        at its disposal all navigation by the enemy in
+        those waters. To this end it will endeavor to
+        destroy, after February 18 next, any merchant
+        vessels of the enemy which present themselves
+        at the seat of war above indicated, although it
+        may not always be possible to avert the dangers
+        which may menace persons and merchandise.
+        Neutral powers are accordingly forewarned not
+        to intrust their crews, passengers, or
+        merchandise to such vessels."
+
+[Sidenote: Protests sent by the United States.]
+
+To this proclamation and memorial the Government of the United States
+made due protest under date of February 10, 1915. On the same day
+protest was made to England by this Government regarding the use of the
+American flag by the _Lusitania_ on its voyage through the war zone on
+its trip from New York to Liverpool of January 30, 1915, in response to
+which, on February 19, Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of State for Foreign
+Affairs, handed a memorandum to Mr. Page, the American Ambassador to
+England, containing the following statement:
+
+[Sidenote: British reply to American protest.]
+
+        "It is understood that the German Government
+        had announced their intention of sinking
+        British merchant vessels at sight by torpedoes
+        without giving any opportunity of making any
+        provisions for saving the lives of noncombatant
+        crews and passengers. It was in consequence of
+        this threat that the _Lusitania_ raised the
+        United States flag on her inward voyage and on
+        her subsequent outward voyage. A request was
+        made by the United States passengers who were
+        embarking on board her that the United States
+        flag should be hoisted, presumably to insure
+        their safety."
+
+The British Ambassador, the Hon. Cecil Spring-Rice, on March 1, 1915,
+in a communication to the American Secretary of State regarding an
+economic blockade of Germany, stated in reference to the German
+proclamation of February 4:
+
+[Sidenote: British statement on the submarine blockade.]
+
+        "Germany has declared that the English Channel,
+        the north and west coasts of France, and the
+        waters around the British Isles are a war area
+        and has officially notified that all enemy
+        ships found in that area will be destroyed, and
+        that neutral vessels may be exposed to danger.
+        This is in effect a claim to torpedo at sight,
+        without regard to the safety of the crew or
+        passengers, any merchant vessel under any flag.
+        As it is not in the power of the German
+        Admiralty to maintain any surface craft in
+        these waters, this attack can only be delivered
+        by submarine agency."
+
+[Sidenote: Submarines sink merchant ships.]
+
+Beginning with the 30th of January, 1915, and prior to the sinking of
+the _Lusitania_ on May 7, 1915, German submarines attacked and seemed to
+have sunk twenty merchant and passenger ships within about 100 miles of
+the usual course of the _Lusitania_, chased two other vessels which
+escaped, and damaged still another.
+
+It will be noted that nothing is stated in the German memorandum as to
+sinking enemy merchant vessels without warning, but, on the contrary,
+the implication is that settled international law as to visit and search
+and an opportunity for the lives of passengers to be safeguarded will be
+obeyed, "although it may not always be possible to avert the dangers
+which may menace persons and merchandise."
+
+As a result of this submarine activity, the _Lusitania_ on its voyages
+from New York to Liverpool, beginning with that of January 30, 1915,
+steered a course further off from the south coast of Ireland than
+formerly.
+
+[Sidenote: Precautions in danger zone.]
+
+In addition, after the German proclamation of February 4, 1915, the
+_Lusitania_ had its boats swung out and provisioned while passing
+through the danger zone, did not use its wireless for sending messages,
+and did not stop at the Mersey Bar for a pilot, but came directly up to
+its berth.
+
+The petitioner and the master of the _Lusitania_ received certain
+advices from the British Admiralty on February 10, 1915, as follows:
+
+        "Vessels navigating in submarine areas should
+        have their boats turned out and fully
+        provisioned. The danger is greatest in the
+        vicinity of ports and off prominent headlands
+        on the coast. Important landfalls in this area
+        should be made after dark whenever possible. So
+        far as is consistent with particular trades and
+        state of tides, vessels should make their ports
+        at dawn."
+
+[Sidenote: Advices from the British Admiralty.]
+
+On April 15 and 16, 1915, and after the last voyage from New York,
+preceding the one on which the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed, the Cunard
+Company and the master of the _Lusitania_ received at Liverpool the
+following advices from the British Admiralty:
+
+        "Confidential Daily Voyage Notice 15th April,
+        1915, issued under Government War Risks Scheme.
+
+        "German submarines appear to be operating
+        chiefly off prominent headlands and landfalls.
+        Ships should give prominent headlands a wide
+        berth.
+
+        "Confidential memorandum issued 16th April,
+        1915:
+
+[Sidenote: Fast steamers follow a zigzag course.]
+
+        "War experience has shown that fast steamers
+        can considerably reduce the chance of
+        successful surprise submarine attacks by
+        zigzagging--that is to say, altering the course
+        at short and irregular intervals, say in ten
+        minutes to half an hour. This course is almost
+        invariably adopted by warships when cruising in
+        an area known to be infested by submarines. The
+        underwater speed of a submarine is very slow
+        and it is exceedingly difficult for her to get
+        into position to deliver an attack unless she
+        can observe and predict the course of the ship
+        attacked."
+
+Sir Alfred Booth, Chairman of the Cunard Line, was a member of the War
+Risks Committee at Liverpool, consisting of ship owners, representatives
+of the Board of Trade and the Admiralty, which received these
+instructions and passed them on to the owners of vessels, including the
+Cunard Company, which distributed them to the individual masters.
+
+[Sidenote: Advertisement in the New York papers.]
+
+On Saturday, May 1, 1915, the advertised sailing date of the _Lusitania_
+from New York to Liverpool on the voyage on which she was subsequently
+sunk, there appeared the following advertisement in the New York
+"Times," New York "Tribune," New York "Sun," New York "Herald," and the
+New York "World," this advertisement being in all instances except one
+placed directly over, under, or adjacent to the advertisement of the
+Cunard Line, regarding the sailing of the _Lusitania_:
+
+        "Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic
+        voyage are reminded that a state of war exists
+        between Germany and her allies and Great
+        Britain and her allies. That the zone of war
+        includes the waters adjacent to the British
+        Isles. That in accordance with formal notice
+        given by the Imperial German Government,
+        vessels flying the flag of Great Britain or of
+        any of her allies are liable to destruction in
+        those waters, and that travelers sailing in the
+        war zone on ships of Great Britain or her
+        allies do so at their own risk."
+
+                        "IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY,
+        "April 22, 1915.          Washington, D. C."
+
+This was the first insertion of this advertisement, although it was
+dated more than a week prior to its publication. Captain Turner, the
+master of the vessel, saw the advertisement or "something of the kind"
+before sailing, and realized that the _Lusitania_ was included in the
+warning. The Liverpool office of the Cunard Company was advised of the
+sailing and the number of passengers by cable from the New York office,
+but no mention was made of the above quoted advertisement. Sir Alfred
+Booth was informed through the press of this advertisement on either
+Saturday evening, May 1, or Sunday morning, May 2.
+
+[Sidenote: _Lusitania_ justified in sailing.]
+
+The significance and construction to be given to this advertisement will
+be discussed infra, but it is perfectly plain that the master was fully
+justified in sailing on the appointed day from a neutral port with many
+neutral and non-combatant passengers, unless he and his company were
+willing to yield to the attempt of the German Government to terrify
+British shipping. No one familiar with the British character would
+expect that such a threat would accomplish more than to emphasize the
+necessity of taking every precaution to protect life and property which
+the exercise of judgment would invite.
+
+And so, as scheduled, the _Lusitania_ sailed, undisguised, with her four
+funnels and a figure so familiar as to be readily discernible not only
+by naval officers and marines, but by the ocean-going public generally.
+
+[Sidenote: In the submarine war zone.]
+
+The voyage was uneventful until May 6. On approaching the Irish coast on
+May 6 the Captain ordered all the boats hanging on the davits to be
+swung out and lowered to the promenade deckrail, and this order was
+carried out under the supervision of Staff Captain Anderson, who later
+went down with the ship. All bulkhead doors which were not necessary for
+the working of the ship were closed, and it was reported to Captain
+Turner that this had been done. Lookouts were doubled, and two extra
+were put forward and one on either side of the bridge; that is, there
+were two lookouts in the crow's-nest, two in the eyes of the ship, two
+officers on the bridge, and a quartermaster on either side of the
+bridge.
+
+Directions were given to the engine room to keep the highest steam they
+could possibly get on the boilers, and in case the bridge rang for full
+speed, to give as much as they possibly could. Orders were also given
+that ports should be kept closed.
+
+[Sidenote: Wireless messages from the Admiralty.]
+
+At 7:50 P. M., on May 6, the _Lusitania_ received the following wireless
+message from the Admiral at Queenstown: "Submarines active off south
+coast of Ireland," and at 7:56 the vessel asked for and received a
+repetition of his message. The ship was then going at a rate of 21 knots
+per hour.
+
+At 8:30 P. M. of the same day the following message was received from
+the British Admiralty:
+
+        "To All British Ships 0005:
+
+        "Take Liverpool pilot at bar and avoid
+        headlands. Pass harbors at full speed; steer
+        midchannel course. Submarines off Fastnet."
+
+[Sidenote: The _Lusitania's_ speed reduced.]
+
+At 8:32 the Admiralty received a communication to show that this message
+had been received by the _Lusitania_, and the same message was offered
+to the vessel seven times between midnight of May 6 and 10 A. M. of May
+7.
+
+At about 8 A. M. on the morning of May 7, on approaching the Irish
+coast, the vessel encountered an intermittent fog, or Scotch mist,
+called "banks" in seafaring language, and the speed was reduced to 15
+knots. Previously the speed, according to Captain Turner's recollection,
+had been reduced to 18 knots. This adjustment of speed was due to the
+fact that Captain Turner wished to run the last 150 miles of the voyage
+in the dark, so as to make Liverpool early on the morning of May 8, at
+the earliest time when he could cross the bar without a pilot.
+
+[Sidenote: Approaching the most dangerous waters.]
+
+Judging from the location of previous submarine attacks, the most
+dangerous waters in the _Lusitania's_ course were from the entrance to
+St. George's Channel to Liverpool Bar. There is no dispute as to the
+proposition that a vessel darkened is much safer from submarine attack
+at night than in the daytime, and Captain Turner exercised proper and
+good judgment in planning accordingly as he approached dangerous waters.
+It is futile to conjecture as to what would or would not have happened
+had the speed been higher prior to the approach to the Irish coast,
+because, obviously, until then the Captain could not figure out his
+situation, not knowing how he might be impeded by fog or other
+unfavorable weather conditions.
+
+On the morning of May 7, 1915, the ship passed about twenty-five or
+twenty-six, and, in any event, at least eighteen and a half miles south
+of Fastnet, which was not in sight. The course was then held up slightly
+to bring the ship closer to land, and a little before noon land was
+sighted, and what was thought to be Brow Head was made out.
+
+Meanwhile, between 11 A. M. and noon, the fog disappeared, the weather
+became clear, and the speed was increased to 18 knots. The course of the
+vessel was S. 87 E. Mag. At 11:25 A. M. Captain Turner received the
+following message:
+
+        "Submarines active in southern part of Irish
+        Channel, last heard of twenty miles south of
+        Coningbeg. Light vessel make certain
+        '_Lusitania_' gets this."
+
+[Sidenote: Submarines reported by wireless.]
+
+At 12:40 P. M. the following additional wireless message from the
+Admiralty was received:
+
+        "Submarines five miles south of Cape Clear,
+        proceeding west when sighted at 10 A. M."
+
+After picking up Brow Head and at about 12:40 P. M., the course was
+altered in shore by about 30 degrees, to about N. 63 or 67 E. Mag.,
+Captain Turner did not recall which. Land was sighted which the Captain
+thought was Galley Head, but he was not sure, and therefore held in
+shore. This last course was continued for an hour at a speed of 18 knots
+until 1:40 P. M., when the Old Head of Kinsale was sighted and the
+course was then changed back to the original course of S. 87 E. Mag.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Lusitania_ torpedoed.]
+
+At 1:50 P. M. the Captain started to take a four-point bearing on the
+Old Head of Kinsale, and while thus engaged and at about 2:30 P. M., as
+heretofore stated, the ship was torpedoed on the starboard side. Whether
+one, two, or three torpedoes were fired at the vessel cannot be
+determined with certainty. Two of the ship's crew were confident that a
+third torpedo was fired and missed the ship. While not doubting the good
+faith of these witnesses, the evidence is not sufficiently satisfactory
+to be convincing.
+
+[Sidenote: Conflicting testimony.]
+
+[Sidenote: Probably two torpedoes.]
+
+[Sidenote: No explosives on board.]
+
+There was, however, an interesting and remarkable conflict of testimony
+as to whether the ship was struck by one or two torpedoes, and
+witnesses, both passengers and crew, differed on this point,
+conscientiously and emphatically. The witnesses were all highly
+intelligent, and there is no doubt that all testified to the best of
+their recollection, knowledge, or impression, and in accordance with
+their honest conviction. The weight of the testimony (too voluminous to
+analyze) is in favor of the "two torpedo" contention, not only because
+of some convincing direct testimony, (as, for instance, Adams, Lehman,
+Morton,) but also because of the unquestioned surrounding circumstances.
+The deliberate character of the attack upon a vessel whose identity
+could not be mistaken, made easy on a bright day, and the fact that the
+vessel had no means of defending herself, would lead to the inference
+that the submarine commander would make sure of her destruction.
+Further, the evidence is overwhelming that there was a second explosion.
+The witnesses differ as to the impression which the sound of this
+explosion made upon them--a natural difference due to the fact, known by
+common experience, that persons who hear the same explosion even at the
+same time will not only describe the sound differently, but will not
+agree as to the number of detonations. As there were no explosives on
+board, it is difficult to account for the second explosion, except on
+the theory that it was caused by a second torpedo. Whether the number of
+torpedoes was one or two is relevant, in this case, only upon the
+question of what effect, if any, open ports had in accelerating the
+sinking of the ship.
+
+While there was much testimony and some variance as to the places where
+the torpedoes struck, judged by the sound or shock of the explosions,
+certain physical effects, especially as to smoke and blown-up debris,
+tend to locate the areas of impact with some approach of accuracy.
+
+From all the testimony it may be reasonably concluded that one torpedo
+struck on the starboard side somewhere abreast of No. 2 boiler room and
+the other, on the same side, either abreast of No. 3 boiler room or
+between No. 3 and No. 4. From knowledge of the torpedoes then used by
+the German submarines, it is thought that they would effect a rupture of
+the outer hull thirty to forty feet long and ten to fifteen feet
+vertically.
+
+[Sidenote: Flooding of boiler rooms and coal bunkers.]
+
+Cockburn, senior Second Engineer, was of opinion that the explosion had
+done a great deal of internal damage. Although the lights were out,
+Cockburn could hear the water coming into the engine room. Water at once
+entered No. 1 and No. 2 boiler rooms, a result necessarily attributable
+to the fact that one or both of the coal bunkers were also blown open.
+Thus, one torpedo flooded some or all of the coal bunkers on the
+starboard side of Nos. 1 and 2 boiler rooms, and apparently flooded both
+boiler rooms.
+
+The effect of the other torpedo is not entirely clear. If it struck
+midway between two bulkheads, it is quite likely to have done serious
+bulkhead injury. The _Lusitania_ was built so as to float with two
+compartments open to the sea, and with more compartments open she could
+not stay afloat. As the side coal bunkers are regarded as compartments,
+the ship could not float with two boiler rooms flooded and also an
+adjacent bunker, and, therefore, the damage done by one torpedo was
+enough to sink the ship.
+
+To add to the difficulties, all the steam had gone as the result of the
+explosions, and the ship could not be controlled by her engines.
+
+Little, senior Third Engineer, testified that in a few seconds after the
+explosion the steam pressure fell from 190 to 50 pounds, his explanation
+being that the main steam pipes or boilers had been carried away.
+
+[Sidenote: Engines disabled.]
+
+The loss of control of and by the engines resulted in disability to stop
+the engines, with the result that the ship kept her headway until she
+sank. That the ship commenced to list to starboard immediately is
+abundantly established by many witnesses.
+
+[Sidenote: The ship's behavior in going down.]
+
+Some of the witnesses, (Lauriat and Adams, passengers; Duncan, Bestic,
+and Johnson, officers,) testified that the ship stopped listing to
+starboard and started to recover and then listed again to starboard
+until she went over.
+
+This action, which is quite likely, must have resulted from the inrush
+of water on the port side. There can be no other adequate explanation
+consistent with elementary scientific knowledge; for, if the ship
+temporarily righted herself, it must have been because the weight of
+water on the two sides was equal or nearly so. The entry of water into
+the port side must, of course, have been due to some rupture on that
+side. Such a result was entirely possible, and, indeed, probable.
+
+The explosive force was sufficiently powerful to blow debris far above
+the radio wires--i. e., more than 160 feet above the water. The boiler
+rooms were not over sixty feet wide, and so strong a force could readily
+have weakened the longitudinal bulkheads on the port side in addition to
+such injury as flying metal may have done. It is easy to understand,
+therefore, how the whole pressure of the water rushing in from the
+starboard side against the weakened longitudinal bulkheads on the port
+side would cause them to give way and thus open up some apertures on the
+port side for the entry of water. Later, when the water continued to
+rush in on the starboard side, the list to starboard naturally again
+occurred, increased and continued to the end. As might be expected, the
+degree of list to starboard is variously described, but there is no
+doubt that it was steep and substantial.
+
+[Sidenote: Ports had all been ordered closed.]
+
+A considerable amount of testimony was taken upon the contention of
+claimants that many of the ship's ports were open, thus reducing her
+buoyancy and substantially hastening her sinking. There is no doubt that
+on May 6 adequate orders were given to close all ports. The testimony is
+conclusive that the ports on Deck F (the majority of which were dummy
+ports) were closed. Very few, if any, ports on E deck were open, and, if
+so, they were starboard ports in a small section of the first class in
+the vicinity where one of the torpedoes did its damage. A very limited
+number of passengers testified that the portholes in their staterooms
+were open, and if their impressions are correct, these portholes,
+concerning which they testified, were all, or nearly all, so far above
+the water that they could not have influenced the situation.
+
+[Sidenote: Sinking not affected by open ports.]
+
+There was conflicting testimony as to the ports in the dining room on D
+deck. The weight of the testimony justifies the conclusion that some of
+these ports were open--how many it is impossible to determine. These
+ports, however, were from twenty-three to thirty feet above water, and
+when the gap made by the explosion and the consequent severe and sudden
+list are considered, it is plain that these open ports were not a
+contributing cause of the sinking, and had a very trifling influence, if
+any, in accelerating the time within which the ship sank.
+
+From the foregoing the situation can be visualized. Two sudden and
+extraordinary explosions, the ship badly listed so that the port side
+was well up in the air, the passengers scattered about on the decks and
+in the staterooms, saloons and companion ways, the ship under headway
+and, as it turned out, only eighteen minutes afloat--such was the
+situation which confronted the officers, crew, and passengers in the
+endeavor to save the lives of those on board.
+
+[Sidenote: Calm heroism of the passengers.]
+
+The conduct of the passengers constitutes an enduring record of calm
+heroism with many individual instances of sacrifice and, in general, a
+marked consideration for women and children. There was no panic, but
+naturally, there was a considerable amount of excitement and rush and
+much confusion, and, as the increasing list rendered ineffective the
+lowering of the boats on the port side, the passengers, as is readily
+understandable, crowded over on the starboard side.
+
+The problem presented to the officers of the ship was one of exceeding
+difficulty, occasioned largely because of the serious list and the
+impossibility of stopping the ship or reducing her headway.
+
+[Sidenote: Lookouts sighted the torpedo.]
+
+[Sidenote: Boats ordered lowered.]
+
+
+The precaution of extra lookouts resulted in a prompt report to the
+Captain, via the bridge, of the sighting of the torpedo. Second Officer
+Heppert, who was on the bridge, immediately closed all watertight doors
+worked from the bridge, and the testimony satisfactorily shows that all
+watertight doors worked by hand were promptly closed. Immediately after
+Captain Turner saw the wake of the torpedo there was an explosion and
+then Turner went to the navigation bridge and took the obvious course,
+i. e., had the ship's head turned to the land. He signaled the engine
+room for full speed astern, hoping thereby to take the way off the ship,
+and then ordered the boats lowered down to the rail and directed that
+women and children should be first provided for in the boats. As the
+engine room failed to respond to the order to go full speed astern, and
+as the ship was continuing under way, Turner ordered that the boats
+should not be lowered until the vessel should lose her headway, and he
+told Anderson, the Staff Captain, who was in charge of the port boats,
+to lower the boats when he thought the way was sufficiently off to allow
+that operation. Anderson's fidelity to duty is sufficiently exemplified
+by the fact that he went down with the ship.
+
+[Sidenote: The officers display courage and skill.]
+
+Jones, First Officer, and Lewis, Acting Third Officer, were in charge of
+the boats on the starboard side and personally superintended their
+handling and launching. Too much cannot be said both for their courage
+and skill, but, difficult as was their task, they were not confronted
+with some of the problems which the port side presented. There, in
+addition to Anderson, were Bestic, Junior Third Officer, and another
+officer, presumably the Second Officer. These men were apparently doing
+the best they could and standing valiantly to their duty. Anderson's
+fate has already been mentioned, and Bestic, although surviving, stuck
+to his post until the ship went down under him. The situation can
+readily be pictured even by a novice.
+
+With the ship listed to starboard, the port boats, of course, swung
+inboard. If enough man power were applied, the boats could be put over
+the rail, but then a real danger would follow. Robertson, the ship's
+carpenter, aptly described that danger in answer to a question as to
+whether it was possible to lower the open boats on the port side. He
+said:
+
+[Sidenote: Port boats could not be lowered.]
+
+"No. To lower the port boats would just be like drawing a crate of
+unpacked china along a dock road. What I mean is that if you started to
+lower the boats you would be dragging them down the rough side of the
+ship on rivets which are what we call "snap-headed rivets"--they stand
+up about an inch from the side of the ship, so you would be dragging the
+whole side of the boat away if you tried to lower the boats with a
+15-degree list."
+
+That some boats were and others would have been seriously damaged is
+evidenced by the fact that two port boats were lowered to the water and
+got away, (though one afterward filled,) and not one boat reached
+Queenstown.
+
+Each boat has its own history, (except possibly Boats 2 and 4,) although
+it is naturally difficult, in each case, to allocate all the testimony
+to a particular boat.
+
+[Sidenote: Accidents in lowering.]
+
+There is some testimony, given in undoubted good faith, that painted or
+rusted davits stuck out, but the weight of the testimony is to the
+contrary. There were some lamentable occurrences on the port side, which
+resulted in spilling passengers, some of whom thus thrown out or injured
+went to their death. These unfortunate accidents, however, were due
+either to lack of strength of the seaman who was lowering, or possibly,
+at worst, to an occasional instance of incompetency due to the personal
+equation so often illustrated, where one man of many may not be equal to
+the emergency. But the problem was of the most vexatious character. In
+addition to the crowding of passengers in some instances was this
+extremely hazardous feat of lowering boats swung inboard from a tilted
+height, heavily weighted by human beings, with the ship still under way.
+It cannot be said that it was negligent to attempt this, because,
+obviously, all the passengers could not be accommodated in the starboard
+boats.
+
+[Sidenote: Six boats get away from starboard.]
+
+On the starboard side, the problem, in some respects, was not so
+difficult, while, in others, troublesome conditions existed quite
+different from those occurring on the port side. Here the boats swung so
+far out as to add to the difficulty of passengers getting in them, a
+difficulty intensified by the fact that many more passengers went to the
+starboard side than to the port side and, also that the ship maintained
+her way. Six boats successfully got away. In the case of the remaining
+boats, some were successfully lowered but later met with some
+unavoidable accident, and some were not successfully launched (such as
+Nos. 1, 5, and 17) for entirely explainable reasons which should not be
+charged to inefficiency on the part of the officers or crew.
+
+[Sidenote: Collapsible boats cut loose.]
+
+The collapsible boats were on the deck under the open lifeboats, and
+were intended to be lifted and lowered by the same davits which lowered
+the open boats after the open boats had gotten clear of the ship. It was
+the duty of the officers to get the open boats away before giving
+attention to the collapsible boats, and that was a question of time.
+These boats are designed and arranged to float free if the ship should
+sink before they can be hoisted over. They were cut loose and some
+people were saved on these boats.
+
+It is to be expected that those passengers who lost members of their
+family or friends, and who saw some of the unfortunate accidents, should
+feel strongly and entertain the impression that inefficiency or
+individual negligence was widespread among the crew. Such an impression,
+however, does an inadvertent injustice to the great majority of the
+crew, who acted with that matter-in-fact courage and fidelity to duty
+which are traditional with men of the sea. Such of these men, presumably
+fairly typical of all, as testified in this court, were impressive not
+only because of inherent bravery, but because of intelligence and
+clear-headedness, and they possessed that remarkable gift of simplicity
+so characteristic of truly fearless men who cannot quite understand why
+an ado is made of acts which seem to them merely the day's work.
+
+Mr. Grab, one of the claimants and an experienced transatlantic
+traveler, concisely summed up the situation when he said:
+
+"They were doing the best they could--they were very brave and working
+as hard as they could without any fear. They didn't care about
+themselves. It was very admirably done. While there was great confusion,
+they did the best they could."
+
+[Sidenote: Captain Turner's comment on the crew.]
+
+It will unduly prolong a necessarily extended opinion to sift the
+voluminous testimony relating to this subject of the boats and the
+conduct of the crew and something is sought to be made of comments of
+Captain Turner, construed by some to be unfavorable but afterward
+satisfactorily supplemented and explained, but if there were some
+instances of incompetency they were very few and the charge of
+negligence in this regard cannot be successfully maintained.
+
+In arriving at this conclusion, I have not overlooked the argument
+earnestly pressed that the men were not sufficiently instructed and
+drilled; for I think the testimony establishes the contrary in the light
+of conditions in May, 1915.
+
+I now come to what seems to be the only debatable question of fact in
+the case, i. e., whether Captain Turner was negligent in not literally
+following the Admiralty advices and, also, in not taking a course
+different from that which he adopted.
+
+[Sidenote: The Captain's judgment free.]
+
+The fundamental principle in navigating a merchantman, whether in times
+of peace or of war, is that the commanding officer must be left free to
+exercise his own judgment. Safe navigation denies the proposition that
+the judgment and sound discretion of the Captain of a vessel must be
+confined in a mental straitjacket. Of course, when movements are under
+military control, orders must be strictly obeyed, come what may. No such
+situation, however, was presented either to the Cunard Steamship Co. or
+Captain Turner. The vessel was not engaged in military service nor under
+naval convoy. True, she was, as between the German and British
+Governments, an enemy ship as to Germany, but she was unarmed and a
+carrier of not merely noncombatants, but, among others, of many citizens
+of the United States, then a neutral country, at peace with all the
+world.
+
+[Sidenote: Admiralty advices considered.]
+
+In such circumstances the Captain could not shield himself automatically
+against error behind a literal compliance with the general advices or
+instructions of the Admiralty, nor can it be supposed that the
+Admiralty, any more than the Cunard Steamship Co., expected him so to
+do. What was required of him was that he should seriously consider and,
+as far as practicable, follow the Admiralty advices and use his best
+judgment as events and exigencies occurred; and if a situation arose
+where he believed that a course should be pursued to meet emergencies
+which required departure from some of the Admiralty advices as to
+general rules of action, then it was his duty to take such course, if in
+accordance with his carefully formed deliberate judgment. After a
+disaster has occurred, it is not difficult for the expert to show how it
+might have been avoided, and there is always opportunity for academic
+discussion as to what ought or ought not to have been done; but the true
+approach is to endeavor, for the moment, to possess the mind of him upon
+whom rested the responsibility.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy obligations in care of merchant ships.]
+
+Let us now see what that responsibility was and how it was dealt with.
+The rules of naval warfare allowed the capture and, in some
+circumstances, the destruction of an enemy merchant ship, but, at the
+same time, it was the accepted doctrine of all civilized nations (as
+will be more fully considered infra) that, as Lord Mersey put it, "there
+is always an obligation first to secure the safety of the lives of those
+on board."
+
+The responsibility, therefore, of Captain Turner, in his task of
+bringing the ship safely to port, was to give heed not only to general
+advices advanced as the outcome of experience in the then developing
+knowledge as to submarine warfare, but particularly to any special
+information which might come to him in the course of the voyage.
+
+[Sidenote: Advices of the Admiralty.]
+
+Realizing that if there was a due warning, in accordance with
+international law, and an opportunity, within a limited time, for the
+passengers to leave the ship, nevertheless that the operation must be
+quickly done, Captain Turner, on May 6, had taken the full precautions,
+such as swinging out the boats, properly provisioned, which have been
+heretofore described. The principal features of the Admiralty advices
+were (1) to give the headlands a wide berth; (2) to steer a midchannel
+course; (3) to maintain as high a speed as practicable; (4) to zigzag,
+and (5) to make ports, if possible, at dawn, thus running the last part
+of the voyage at night.
+
+[Sidenote: Fastnet given a wide berth.]
+
+The reason for the advice as to keeping off headlands was that the
+submarines lurked near those prominent headlands and landfalls to and
+from which ships were likely to go. This instruction Captain Turner
+entirely followed in respect of Fastnet, which was the first point on
+the Irish coast which a vessel bound from New York to Liverpool would
+ordinarily approach closely, and, in normal times, the passing would be
+very near, or even inside of Fastnet. The _Lusitania_ passed Fastnet so
+far out that Captain Turner could not see it. Whether the distance was
+about twenty-five miles, as the Cunard Steamship Co. contends, or about
+eighteen and one-half miles, as the claimants calculate, the result is
+that either distance must be regarded as a wide berth, in comparison
+with the customary navigation at that point, and, besides, nothing
+happened there. At 8:30 P. M. on May 6 the message had been received
+from the British Admiralty that submarines were off Fastnet, so that
+Captain Turner, in this regard, not only followed the general advices,
+but the specific information from the Admiralty.
+
+At 11:25 A. M. on May 7 Captain Turner received the wireless from the
+Admiralty plainly intended for the _Lusitania_, informing him that
+submarines (plural) were active in the southern part of the Irish
+Channel and when last heard of were twenty miles south of Coningbeg
+Light Vessel. This wireless message presented acutely to the Captain
+the problem as to the best course to pursue, always bearing in mind his
+determination and the desirability of getting to the Liverpool Bar when
+it could be crossed while the tide served and without a pilot. Further,
+as was stated by Sir Alfred Booth, "The one definite instruction we did
+give him with regard to that was to authorize him to come up without a
+pilot." The reasons for this instruction were cogent and were concisely
+summed up by Sir Alfred Booth during his examination as a witness as
+follows:
+
+[Sidenote: The Mersey sandbar.]
+
+"It was one of the points that we felt it necessary to make the Captain
+of the _Lusitania_ understand the importance of. The _Lusitania_ can
+only cross the Liverpool Bar at certain states of the tide, and we
+therefore warned the Captain, or whoever might be Captain, that we did
+not think it would be safe for him to arrive off the bar at such a time
+that he would have to wait there, because that area had been infested
+with submarines, and we thought therefore it would be wiser for him to
+arrange his arrival in such a way, leaving him an absolutely free hand
+as to how he would do it, that he could come straight up without
+stopping at all. The one definite instruction we did give him with
+regard to that was to authorize him to come up without a pilot."
+
+The tide would be high at Liverpool Bar at 6:53 on Saturday morning, May
+8. Captain Turner planned to cross the bar as much earlier than that as
+he could get over without stopping, while at the same time figuring on
+passing during the darkness the dangerous waters from the entrance of
+St. George's Channel to the Liverpool Bar.
+
+[Sidenote: The Captain decides to work inshore.]
+
+Having thus in mind his objective, and the time approximately when he
+intended to reach it, the message received at 11:25 A. M. required that
+he should determine whether to keep off land approximately the same
+distance as he was when he passed Fastnet, or to work inshore and go
+close to Coningbeg Lightship. He determined that the latter was the
+better plan to avoid the submarines reported in midchannel ahead of him.
+
+[Sidenote: Taking a bearing.]
+
+When Galley Head was sighted the course was changed so as to haul closer
+to the land, and this course was pursued until 1:40 P. M., at which time
+Captain Turner concluded that it was necessary for him to get his
+bearings accurately. This he decided should be done by taking a
+four-point bearing, during which procedure the ship was torpedoed. It is
+urged that he should have taken a two-point bearing or a cross bearing,
+which would have occupied less time, but if, under all the conditions
+which appealed to his judgment as a mariner, he had taken a different
+method of ascertaining his exact distance and the result would have been
+inaccurate, or while engaged in taking a two-point bearing the ship had
+been torpedoed, then somebody would have said he should have taken a
+four-point bearing. The point of the matter is that an experienced
+Captain took the bearing he thought proper for his purposes, and to
+predicate negligence upon such a course is to assert that a Captain is
+bound to guess the exact location of a hidden and puzzling danger.
+
+[Sidenote: Testimony about the ship's speed.]
+
+Much emphasis has been placed upon the fact that the speed of the ship
+was eighteen knots at the time of the attack instead of twenty-four, or,
+in any event, twenty-one knots, and upon the further fact (for such it
+is) that the ship was not zigzagging as frequently as the Admiralty
+advised or in the sense of that advice.
+
+Upon this branch of the case much testimony was taken, (some in camera,
+as in the Wreck Commissioners' Court,) and, for reasons of public
+interest, the methods of successfully evading submarines will not be
+discussed. If it be assumed that the Admiralty advices as of May, 1915,
+were sound and should have been followed, then the answer to the charge
+of negligence is twofold: (1) that Captain Turner, in taking a
+four-point bearing off the Old Head of Kinsale, was conscientiously
+exercising his judgment for the welfare of the ship, and (2) that it is
+impossible to determine whether, by zigzagging off the Old Head of
+Kinsale or elsewhere, the _Lusitania_ would have escaped the German
+submarine or submarines.
+
+As to the first answer I cannot better express my conclusion than in the
+language of Lord Mersey:
+
+[Sidenote: Lord Mersey's opinion.]
+
+"Captain Turner was fully advised as to the means which in the view of
+the Admiralty were best calculated to avert the perils he was likely to
+encounter, and in considering the question whether he is to blame for
+the catastrophe in which his voyage ended I have to bear this
+circumstance in mind. It is certain that in some respects Captain Turner
+did not follow the advice given to him. It may be (though I seriously
+doubt it) that had he done so his ship would have reached Liverpool in
+safety. But the question remains: Was his conduct the conduct of a
+negligent or of an incompetent man? On this question I have sought the
+guidance of my assessors, who have rendered me invaluable assistance,
+and the conclusion at which I have arrived is that blame ought not to be
+imputed to the Captain. The advice given to him, although meant for his
+most serious and careful consideration, was not intended to deprive him
+of the right to exercise his skilled judgment in the difficult questions
+that might arise from time to time in the navigation of his ship. His
+omission to follow the advice in all respects cannot fairly be
+attributed either to negligence or incompetence.
+
+[Sidenote: Skilled and experienced judgment.]
+
+"He exercised his judgment for the best. It was the judgment of a
+skilled and experienced man, and although others might have acted
+differently, and, perhaps, more successfully, he ought not, in my
+opinion, to be blamed."
+
+[Sidenote: More than one submarine in wait.]
+
+As to the second answer, it is only necessary to outline the situation
+in order to realize how speculative is the assertion of fault. It is
+plain from the radio messages of the Admiralty, (May 6, 7:50 P. M.,
+"Submarines active off south coast of Ireland"; May 6, 8:30 P. M.,
+"Submarines off Fastnet"; the 11:25 message of May 7, supra; May 7,
+11:40 A. M., "Submarines five miles south of Cape Clear, proceeding west
+when sighted at 10 A. M.,") that more than one submarine was lying in
+wait for the _Lusitania_.
+
+[Sidenote: Submarines bold with unarmed vessels.]
+
+A scientific education is not necessary to appreciate that it is much
+more difficult for a submarine successfully to hit a naval vessel than
+an unarmed merchant ship. The destination of a naval vessel is usually
+not known, that of the _Lusitania_ was. A submarine commander, when
+attacking an armed vessel, knows that he, as the attacker, may and
+likely will also be attacked by his armed opponent. The _Lusitania_ was
+as helpless in that regard as a peaceful citizen suddenly set upon by
+murderous assailants. There are other advantages of the naval vessel
+over the merchant ship which need not be referred to.
+
+[Sidenote: Probably two submarines.]
+
+It must be assumed that the German submarine commanders realized the
+obvious disadvantages which necessarily attached to the _Lusitania_,
+and, if she had evaded one submarine, who can say what might have
+happened five minutes later? If there was, in fact, a third torpedo
+fired at the _Lusitania's_ port side, then that incident would strongly
+suggest that, in the immediate vicinity of the ship, there were at least
+two submarines.
+
+It must be remembered also that the _Lusitania_ was still in the open
+sea, considerably distant from the places of theretofore submarine
+activity and comfortably well off the Old Head of Kinsale, from which
+point it was about 140 miles to the Scilly Islands, and that she was
+nearly 100 miles from the entrance to St. George's Channel, the first
+channel she would enter on her way to Liverpool.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack intended to destroy life.]
+
+No transatlantic passenger liner, and certainly none carrying American
+citizens, had been torpedoed up to that time. The submarines, therefore,
+could lay their plans with facility to destroy the vessel somewhere on
+the way from Fastnet to Liverpool, knowing full well the easy prey which
+would be afforded by an unarmed, unconvoyed, well-known merchantman,
+which from every standpoint of international law had the right to expect
+a warning before its peaceful passengers were sent to their death. That
+the attack was deliberate and long contemplated and intended ruthlessly
+to destroy human life, as well as property, can no longer be open to
+doubt. And when a foe employs such tactics it is idle and purely
+speculative to say that the action of the Captain of a merchant ship, in
+doing or not doing something or in taking one course and not another,
+was a contributing cause of disaster or that had the Captain not done
+what he did or had he done something else, then that the ship and her
+passengers would have evaded their assassins.
+
+[Sidenote: The Captain and company not negligent.]
+
+I find, therefore, as a fact, that the Captain and, hence, the Cunard
+Company were not negligent.
+
+The importance of the cause, however, justifies the statement of another
+ground which effectually disposes of any question of liability.
+
+It is an elementary principle of law that even if a person is negligent
+recovery cannot be had unless the negligence is the proximate cause of
+the loss or damage.
+
+There is another rule, settled by ample authority, viz.: that, even if
+negligence is shown, it cannot be the proximate cause of the loss or
+damage if an independent illegal act or a third party intervenes to
+cause the loss.
+
+The question, then, is whether the act of the German submarine commander
+was an illegal act.
+
+[Sidenote: International law.]
+
+The United States courts recognize the binding force of international
+law.
+
+At least since as early as June 5, 1793, in the letter of Mr. Jefferson,
+Secretary of State, to the French Minister, our Government has
+recognized the law of nations as an "integral part" of the laws of the
+land.
+
+To ascertain international law, "resort must be had to the customs and
+usages of civilized nations; and, as evidence of these, to the works of
+commentators and jurists. * * * Such works are resorted to by judicial
+tribunals * * * for trustworthy evidence of what the law really is."
+
+Let us first see the position of our Government, and then ascertain
+whether that position has authoritative support. Mr. Lansing, in his
+official communication to the German Government dated June 9, 1915,
+stated:
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Lansing's communication.]
+
+[Sidenote: Responsibility of the German Government.]
+
+[Sidenote: A principle of humanity.]
+
+"But the sinking of passenger ships involves principles of humanity
+which throw into the background any special circumstances of detail that
+may be thought to affect the cases, principles which lift it, as the
+Imperial German Government will no doubt be quick to recognize and
+acknowledge, out of the class of ordinary subjects of diplomatic
+discussion or of international controversy. Whatever be the other facts
+regarding the _Lusitania_, the principal fact is that a great steamer,
+primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more
+than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war,
+was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning, and
+that men, women, and children were sent to their death in circumstances
+unparalleled in modern warfare. The fact that more than one hundred
+American citizens were among those who perished made it the duty of the
+Government of the United States to speak of these things and once more
+with solemn emphasis to call the attention of the Imperial German
+Government to the grave responsibility which the Government of the
+United States conceives that it has incurred in this tragic occurrence,
+and to the indisputable principle upon which that responsibility rests.
+The Government of the United States is contending for something much
+greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce. It is
+contending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights of humanity,
+which every Government honors itself in respecting and which no
+Government is justified in resigning on behalf of those under its care
+and authority. Only her actual resistance to capture or refusal to stop
+when ordered to do so for the purpose of visit could have afforded the
+commander of the submarine any justification for so much as putting the
+lives of those on board the ship in jeopardy. This principle the
+Government of the United States understands the explicit instructions
+issued on August 3, 1914, by the Imperial German Admiralty to its
+commanders at sea to have recognized and embodied as do the naval codes
+of all other nations, and upon it every traveler and seaman had a right
+to depend. It is upon this principle of humanity, as well as upon the
+law founded upon this principle, that the United States must stand. * * *
+
+[Sidenote: Americans must be safeguarded.]
+
+"The Government of the United States cannot admit that the proclamation
+of a war zone from which neutral ships have been warned to keep away may
+be made to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights either
+of American shipmasters or of American citizens bound on lawful errands
+as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality. It does not
+understand the Imperial German Government to question those rights. It
+understands it, also, to accept as established beyond question the
+principle that the lives of non-combatants cannot lawfully or rightfully
+be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction of an unresisting
+merchantman, and to recognize the obligation to take sufficient
+precaution to ascertain whether a suspected merchantman is in fact of
+belligerent nationality or is in fact carrying contraband of war under a
+neutral flag. The Government of the United States therefore deems it
+reasonable to expect that the Imperial German Government will adopt the
+measures necessary to put these principles into practice in respect of
+the safeguarding of American lives and American ships, and asks for
+assurances that this will be done. (See White Book of Department of
+State entitled 'Diplomatic Correspondence with Belligerent Governments
+Relating to Neutral Rights and Duties, European War, No. 2,' at p. 172.
+Printed and distributed October 21, 1915.)"
+
+The German Government found itself compelled ultimately to recognize the
+principles insisted upon by the Government of the United States, for,
+after considerable correspondence, and on May 4, 1916, (after the
+_Sussex_ had been sunk,) the German Government stated:
+
+[Sidenote: The _Sussex_ agreement.]
+
+"The German submarine forces have had in fact, orders to conduct
+submarine warfare in accordance with the general principles of visit
+and search and destruction of merchant vessels as recognized by
+international law, the sole exception being the conduct of warfare
+against the enemy trade carried on enemy freight ships that are
+encountered in the war zone surrounding Great Britain. * * *
+
+[Sidenote: Merchant ships not to be sunk without warning.]
+
+"The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the Government of
+the United States that the German naval forces have received the
+following orders: In accordance with the general principles of visit and
+search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international
+law, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as naval
+war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human
+lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. See
+Official Communication by German Foreign Office to Ambassador Gerard,
+May 4, 1916. (White Book No. 3 of Department of State, pp. 302, 305.)"
+
+[Sidenote: Right to make a prize.]
+
+There is, of course, no doubt as to the right to make prize of an enemy
+ship on the high seas, and, under certain conditions, to destroy her,
+and equally no doubt of the obligation to safeguard the lives of all
+persons aboard, whether passengers or crew.
+
+Two quotations from a long list of authorities may be given for
+convenience, one stating the rule and the other the attitude which
+obtains among civilized Governments. Oppenheim sets forth as among
+violations of the rules of war:
+
+"(12) Attack on enemy merchantmen without previous request to submit to
+visit."
+
+The observation in Vattel's "Law of Nations" is peculiarly applicable to
+the case of the _Lusitania_:
+
+"Let us never forget that our enemies are men. Though reduced to the
+disagreeable necessity of prosecuting our right by force of arms, let us
+not divest ourselves of that charity which connects us with all mankind.
+Thus shall we courageously defend our country's rights without
+violating those of human nature. Let our valor preserve itself from
+every stain of cruelty and the lustre of victory will not be tarnished
+by inhuman and brutal actions."
+
+[Sidenote: Codes and rules of nations.]
+
+In addition to these authorities are the regulations and practices of
+various Governments. In 1512 Henry VIII. issued instructions to the
+Admiral of the Fleet which accord with our understanding of modern
+international law. Such has been England's course since.
+
+Substantially the same rules were followed in the Russian and Japanese
+regulations, and probably in the codes or rules of many other nations.
+
+The rules recognized and practiced by the United States, among other
+things, provide:
+
+"(10) In the case of an enemy merchantman it may be sunk, but only if it
+is impossible to take it into port, and provided always that the persons
+on board are put in a place of safety. (U. S. White Book, European War,
+No. 3, p. 192.)"
+
+[Sidenote: Humane principles in American wars.]
+
+These humane principles were practiced both in the war of 1812 and
+during our own war of 1861-65. Even with all the bitterness (now happily
+ended and forgotten) and all the difficulties of having no port to which
+to send a prize, Captain Semmes of the _Alabama_ strictly observed the
+rule as to human life, even going so far as to release ships because he
+could not care for the passengers. But we are not confined to American
+and English precedents and practices.
+
+While acting contrary to its official statements, yet the Imperial
+German Government recognized the same rule as the United States, and
+prior to the sinking of the _Lusitania_ had not announced any other
+rule. The war zone proclamation of February 4, 1915, contained no
+warning that the accepted rule of civilized naval warfare would be
+discarded by the German Government.
+
+Indeed, after the _Lusitania_ was sunk, the German Government did not
+make any such claim, but in answer to the first American note in
+reference to the _Lusitania_ the German Foreign Office, per von Jagow,
+addressed to Ambassador Gerard a note dated May 18, 1915, in which,
+inter alia, it is stated in connection with the sinking of the British
+steamer _Falaba_:
+
+[Sidenote: The _Falaba_ case.]
+
+"In the case of the sinking of the English steamer _Falaba_, the
+commander of the German submarine had the intention of allowing
+passengers and crew ample opportunity to save themselves. It was not
+until the Captain disregarded the order to lay to and took to flight,
+sending up rocket signals for help, that the German commander ordered
+the crew and passengers by signals and megaphone to leave the ship
+within ten minutes. As a matter of fact, he allowed them twenty-three
+minutes, and did not fire the torpedo until suspicious steamers were
+hurrying to the aid of the _Falaba_. (White Book No. 2, U. S. Department
+of State, p. 169.)"
+
+Indeed, as late as May 4, 1916, Germany did not dispute the
+applicability of the rule, as is evidenced by the note written to our
+Government by von Jagow of the German Foreign Office, an extract of
+which has been quoted supra.
+
+Further, Section 116 of the German Prize Code, (Huberich and Kind
+translation, p. 68,) in force at the date of the _Lusitania's_
+destruction, conformed with the American rule. It provided:
+
+[Sidenote: Safety of passengers necessary.]
+
+"Before proceeding to a destruction of the vessel the safety of all
+persons on board, and, so far as possible, their effects, is to be
+provided for, and all ship's papers and other evidentiary material
+which, according to the views of the persons at interest, is of value
+for the formulation of the judgment of the prize court, are to be taken
+over by the commander."
+
+Thus, when the _Lusitania_ sailed from New York, her owner and master
+were justified in believing that, whatever else and theretofore
+happened, this simple, humane and universally accepted principle would
+not be violated. Few, at that time, would be likely to construe the
+warning advertisement as calling attention to more than the perils to be
+expected from quick disembarkation and the possible rigors of the sea
+after the proper safeguarding of the lives of passengers by at least
+full opportunity to take to the boats.
+
+It is, of course, easy now in the light of many later events, added to
+preceding acts, to look back and say that the Cunard Line and its
+Captain should have known that the German Government would authorize or
+permit so shocking a breach of international law and so foul an offense,
+not only against an enemy, but as well against peaceful citizens of a
+then friendly nation.
+
+But the unexpected character of the act was best evidenced by the horror
+which it excited in the minds and hearts of the American people.
+
+[Sidenote: Fault with the Imperial German Government.]
+
+[Sidenote: Those who plotted the crime.]
+
+The fault, therefore, must be laid upon those who are responsible for
+the sinking of the vessel, in the legal as well as moral sense. It is,
+therefore, not the Cunard Line, petitioner, which must be held liable
+for the loss of life and property. The cause of the sinking of the
+_Lusitania_ was the illegal act of the Imperial German Government,
+acting through its instrument, the submarine commander, and violating a
+cherished and humane rule observed, until this war, by even the
+bitterest antagonists. As Lord Mersey said, "The whole blame for the
+cruel destruction of life in this catastrophe must rest solely with
+those who plotted and with those who committed the crime."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Italy, bound at the outbreak of the war to Germany and Austria by a
+treaty which formed the so-called Triple Alliance, was in a most
+difficult position. Her people, however, were strongly convinced of the
+aggressive intentions of Germany, and, after careful consideration, the
+Government and the people alike decided to cast their lot with the
+Allies. Active operations were at once begun along the border between
+Italy and Austria, and in this difficult terrain the events which are
+described in the following chapter occurred.
+
+
+
+
+MOUNTAIN WARFARE
+
+HOWARD C. FELTON
+
+Copyright, Munsey's Magazine, May, 1916.
+
+
+[Sidenote: New style of warfare.]
+
+At the outbreak of the great war huge and well-equipped bodies of men,
+led by highly trained officers, rich in the strategic lore of centuries,
+set out to demonstrate the value of the theories that they had learned
+in time of peace. In a few months an entirely new style of warfare
+developed, and most of the military learning of the past was interesting
+chiefly because of its antiquity.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy and Austria fight in the Alps.]
+
+After the tremendous conflict at the Marne and the German rush for
+Calais, which was halted on the line of the Yser, there were on the
+western front no more battles in the old sense of the word. From the
+North Sea to the Swiss frontier, the fighting was just a novel and
+gigantic form of siege warfare. Cavalry became an obsolete arm. Battle
+tactics, in the old sense, ceased to have any meaning. Of strategy
+nothing much remained save the dictionary definition.
+
+And now, since Italy and Austria have locked horns above the clouds,
+among the glaciers and snow-faced slopes of the Alps, even the old
+text-books on mountain warfare have lost their significance. In the
+Trentino and along the Isonzo we see the consummation of a new style of
+mountain fighting, which grew out of the old methods in the struggle for
+the Carpathian passes during the first winter and spring of the war.
+
+In the old days, during a campaign in a mountain region, most of the
+battles were fought on the level--in the literal, not the colloquial
+sense of the word. There was a deal of marching and scouting among crags
+and precipices, but all with the object of obtaining the best position
+in an open valley or upland plain where the real fighting must take
+place. Now the smooth floors of the valleys are comparatively deserted,
+while whole armies are spread out over great peaks and dizzy snow-fields
+thousands of feet above sea-level, chopping trenches in the ice and
+sparring for some vantage-point on a crag that in peace times might tax
+the strength and skill of the amateur mountain-climber.
+
+[Sidenote: Bourcet's "Principles of Mountain Warfare."]
+
+Some time between 1764 and 1770, Pierre de Bourcet wrote a treatise
+entitled "The Principles of Mountain Warfare." This may seem to be going
+a long way back, but Bourcet's volume and that of the young Comte de
+Guilbert on general tactics have historical interest and importance
+because, according to Spenser Wilkinson, they show where some of
+Napoleon's strategic "miracles" were born. Bourcet's observations are as
+vital as if they had been written in 1910, but, as will be seen, many of
+them are somewhat musty in 1916.
+
+[Sidenote: Passes and defiles once the strong positions.]
+
+Bourcet, without the slightest idea of a battle-line extending from
+frontier to sea, lays down as the first principle of mountain warfare
+that when the enemy holds a strong position, the assailant should force
+him to leave it by turning it. These strong positions in the mountains
+were, until this war, the passes and defiles.
+
+"These contracted places," he explains, "as they generally constitute
+the principal objects of the defense, must compel the general who is
+taking the offensive to seek every possible means of turning them, or of
+misleading the enemy by diversions which will weaken him and facilitate
+access to them.
+
+"Suppose, for example, that the general on the defensive should be
+entrenched at all points surrounding his position in such a way as to be
+able to resist any direct attack that might be attempted against him, it
+would be necessary to attempt to turn him by some more distant point,
+choosing positions that would facilitate the scheme, and which, by
+suggesting some different object, could not raise the suspicion that the
+troops there collected were destined for the purpose really in view.
+
+[Sidenote: Unlike modern warfare.]
+
+"It often happens in the mountains that the only passages favorable to
+our plans are interrupted by narrow defiles. In such cases we must avoid
+letting the enemy know our real purpose, and must undertake diversions,
+dividing our forces into small bodies. This method, which would be
+dangerous in any other sort of country, is indispensable in the
+mountains, and is the whole science of this kind of warfare, provided
+that the general who uses it always has the means to reconcentrate his
+forces when necessary."
+
+Bourcet's conclusion is that in such a campaign the offensive has great
+advantages over the defensive. It will always possess the initiative;
+and if it prepares its blow with sufficient secrecy and strikes swiftly,
+the enemy, whose troops are necessarily scattered along the whole line
+menaced, can never be ready to meet the attack.
+
+[Sidenote: Generals understand each other's strategy.]
+
+To-day, the only trouble about this beautifully tricky system of
+strategy is that the defending general would pay no attention to it. The
+Austrian general staff, for instance, knew that the Italians would try
+to smash through the frontier defenses of the Dual Empire, and that the
+natural avenues of attack were up the valley of the Adige, along the
+railway through Pontebba and Malborghetto, or between Malborghetto and
+the sea. The Austrians have enough men and guns to defend all these
+routes and all the tortuous pathways in between. So all they had to do
+was plant themselves on their chosen ground along the whole carefully
+fortified mountain line, and wait for the Italians to attack wherever
+they pleased.
+
+"It is only by marching and countermarching," Bourcet said, "that we can
+hope to deceive the enemy and induce him to weaken himself in certain
+positions in order to strengthen himself in others."
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy cannot be outflanked.]
+
+But this cannot be done in the mountain fighting in the Alps to-day. The
+Italians might march and countermarch as much as they pleased, but there
+is no possible way of turning the enemy out of his position by
+outflanking him. It is a case of frontal attack, with every valley
+blocked and every peak a fortress.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy's great objectives.]
+
+The Italians campaign has two principal objectives--Trent and Gorizia.
+These two lovely cities of Italia Irrendenta are respectively the keys
+to the right and left flank of the Austrian frontier. Trent guards the
+valley of the Adige, one of the few natural highways from Italy into
+Austrian territory. Bourcet himself, in 1735, designed the defense of
+this pathway at Rivoli, just inside the Italian boundary, where he laid
+out what were considered impregnable positions. To the north; where
+Trent lies, the country becomes more and more difficult for an invader,
+and up to this time the Italians have not been able to come within
+striking distance of the great Austrian fortress, though they hold
+Rovereto, and have cut the direct line of communication between Trent
+and Toblach.
+
+[Sidenote: Italian game on the Gorizia front.]
+
+On the Gorizia front they have made what in this war may be considered
+as important gains. Gorizia stands watch over the valley of the Isonzo
+and Austria's Adriatic littoral. Besides occupying Grado and Monfalcone
+in the coastlands, General Cadorna's forces have crossed the Isonzo at
+several points, have smashed through to the north, and now threaten to
+envelop Gorizia. Indeed, many observers believe that Cadorna could at
+any time take the place by a grand assault if he were willing to pay the
+cost in blood.
+
+Despite the very unfavorable character of the country, the Italians have
+gained more ground here in the same period than either the Germans or
+the Anglo-French forces in the flat or rolling plains of Flanders and
+northern France. But the outflanking tactics of Bourcet, with feints and
+swift maneuvering, have had little to do with it. The assailants have
+had to fight their way step by step.
+
+The Austrians had prepared all sorts of disagreeable surprises. They had
+hewn gun-positions out of solid cliffs, skilfully placed so as to cover
+the routes of approach, and had cemented up the embrasures. It was
+merely necessary to knock the cement out and pour shells upon the
+advancing Italians at a range of several miles. The batteries were
+inaccessible to storming parties, and the Italians had to drag up guns
+of equal caliber to put them out of business.
+
+[Sidenote: Ancient methods employed.]
+
+In some places rocks and masses of ice were rolled down the slopes, as
+in the brave old days of the Helvetians; and in this line the Austrians
+introduced an innovation. When the Italians began driving their trenches
+up the steep slopes of Podgora--the Gibraltar of Gorizia--the defenders
+rolled down barrels of kerosene and set them alight with artillery fire.
+This enterprise throve joyously until the Italian gunners got the range
+of the launching-point and succeeded in exploding a few barrels among
+the Austrians themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: Austria had possession of the heights.]
+
+The writer does not mean to give the impression that Italy's job in the
+Alps is all but finished. A glance at the map of the frontier will cure
+any one of such a notion. The Italians were forced to start this
+campaign under every strategic disadvantage. By the frontier delimited
+in 1866, they were left without natural defenses on the north and east.
+All along the Austrian boundary the heights remained in the hands of the
+Hapsburgs as natural menaces to Venetia and Lombardy. Italy received the
+plains, but Austria held the mountain fastnesses that hung above them.
+
+This is so much the case that when Italy declared war, the Austrian
+general orders reminded the troops that they were in the position of men
+on the top floor of a six-story house, defending it from attackers who
+must mount from the street under a plunging fire.
+
+[Sidenote: Chasseurs Alpins in the Vosges.]
+
+But in one way or another the Italians have been doggedly fighting their
+way up the walls of the house. For one thing, their Alpini have brought
+to great perfection the use of skis in military operations on the
+snow-clad slopes. This is the first war in which skis have really come
+to the front. In France, too, the Chasseurs Alpins have been able to
+show the Germans some astonishing things with their long wooden
+snow-shoes in the winter fighting among the crests of the Vosges.
+
+A typical instance of this is the story of the capture of a German post
+on the Alsatian frontier in the winter of 1914-15. The Germans, holding
+the railroad from Ste. Marie to Ste. Croix, were expecting an attack
+from the French position at St. Die. This impression was deliberately
+strengthened by a heavy artillery fire from St. Die, while a
+considerable detachment of the Chasseurs Alpins led a body of infantry
+along a winding mountain road to the village of Bonhomme. There they
+posted themselves just out of sight of the German lines, while the
+_chasseurs_ scaled the snow-covered heights and crept along the flank
+of the German position.
+
+When they had reached the desired position, the infantry charged along
+the road and the Chasseurs Alpins simultaneously whizzed down the slope
+on their skis. The swift flank attack did the business, and the Germans
+were driven for some miles down the valley of the Weiss toward Colmar.
+
+[Sidenote: Austrians capture of Mt. Loevchen.]
+
+One of the greatest single mountain successes of the war was the
+Austrian capture of Mount Loevchen, the huge black mass of rock, nearly
+six thousand feet high, which dominates the Austrian port of Cattaro and
+sentinels the little kingdom of Montenegro on the west.
+
+Ever since the war began the Austrians have from time to time made
+attempts to reach the summit of this mighty rock. It is only a matter of
+an hour or two by winding road in peace times, but the Austrians were
+something like eighteen months on the job; and in all this time it is
+doubtful if the defenders ever numbered much more than five thousand. It
+was not captured until the Montenegrins had practically run out of
+ammunition and of reasons for holding the position. The rest of their
+kingdom was overrun, and they were to all intents and purposes out of
+the war.
+
+[Sidenote: Russians in the Carpathians.]
+
+The Russian campaign in the Carpathians, before the great German drive
+of a year ago pushed the Czar's armies back into their own country, also
+illustrates how the mountain warfare of to-day grew by natural
+tendencies from the tactics of Bourcet into the trench warfare of
+northern France.
+
+In the first weeks of the war, when the great offensive movement of the
+Austrian army toward Lublin was crushed by the Grand Duke Nicholas, and
+the broken hosts of the Dual Monarchy were sent flying through Galicia
+and the Carpathians, a cloud of Cossack cavalry followed them and
+penetrated into the plains of Hungary. This last operation was merely a
+raid, however, and the Cossacks were soon galloping back through the
+mountain passes.
+
+Then the Russians laid siege to Przemysl, and occupied the whole of
+Galicia up to the line of the San. Later they pushed on westward to the
+Dunajec, threatening Cracow. This was their high tide. On their left
+flank was the mass of the Carpathians, pierced by a number of passes.
+The more important of these, from west to east, are the Tarnow, Dukla,
+Lupkow, and Uzsok.
+
+[Sidenote: The Carpathian passes.]
+
+The Austrians were rallied after some weeks, and put up something of a
+fight for these "contracted places." The Russians, following the
+precepts of Bourcet, threatened the passage which seemed most desirable,
+because of the railroad facilities, and delivered a heavy blow at the
+Dukla Pass, the least important of the four. Here they pushed through to
+Bartfeld, on the Hungarian plain. Then, however, Mackensen's fearful
+blow smashed the Russian line on the Dunajec and poured the German
+legions across Galicia in the rear of the Carpathian armies, forcing the
+Muscovites to abandon the passes and scurry home.
+
+[Sidenote: Plains more often battlegrounds.]
+
+Mountain warfare has always had a certain romantic glamour, and it has
+filled many pages in the literature of fighting. As a matter of
+historical fact, however, it has played a comparatively small part in
+the world's annals. Almost all the great campaigns have been fought out
+in the lowlands. It is Belgium, for instance, and not Switzerland, that
+has been proverbially the battle-ground of Europe. Napoleon and Suwaroff
+marched armies through the Alps, but only as a means of striking
+unexpectedly at the enemy who occupied the plains beyond.
+
+Up to the time of the present war, mountain campaigns have usually been
+no more than picturesque foot-notes to history, illuminated by the valor
+of raiding clansmen like Roderick Dhu of the Scottish Highlands, or
+guerrilla chiefs like Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese patriot. Hofer's
+struggle against Napoleon was indeed a gallant and notable one, but it
+scarcely entered into the main current of history.
+
+[Sidenote: Garibaldi's mountain campaigns.]
+
+If, however, we include Garibaldi among the mountain fighters--and such
+was the characteristic bent of his remarkable military genius--we must
+accord him a place among the molders of modern Europe, for without his
+flashing sword Italy could not have been liberated and united. His two
+Alpine campaigns against the Austrians were successful and effective,
+but his most brilliant powers were shown in his memorable invasion of
+Sicily in 1860. Chased ashore at Marsala by the Neapolitan war-ships,
+and narrowly escaping capture, he led his followers--one thousand
+red-shirted volunteers armed with obsolete muskets--into the Sicilian
+mountains, where he played such a game that within two months he
+compelled the surrender of a well-equipped army of nearly thirty
+thousand regulars. The history of warfare can show but few exploits so
+daring and so dramatic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most important military movement on the western front in the early
+autumn of 1915 was the great French offensive in Champagne. During the
+preceding months of the spring and summer, there had been hard fighting
+all along the 400-mile line from the North Sea to Switzerland. The
+military results had been small on either side and now the French
+resolved on a mighty offensive which should be decisive in its
+accomplishments. What these results actually were is told in the
+following narrative.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE OF 1915
+
+OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF THE FRENCH HEADQUARTERS STAFF
+
+Copyright, National Review, January, 1916.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Menace of the French in Alsace.]
+
+After the battles of May and June, 1915, in Artois, activity on the
+Western front became concentrated in the Vosges, where, by a series of
+successful engagements, we managed to secure possession of more
+favorable positions and to retain them in spite of incessant
+counter-attacks. The superiority established over the adversary, the
+wearing down of the latter through vain and costly counter-offensives,
+which absorbed in that sector his local resources; the state of
+uncertainty in which the Germans found themselves in view of the menace
+of a French division in Alsace--such were the immediate results of these
+engagements. From the number of the effectives engaged, and the limited
+front along which the attacks took place, those attacks nevertheless
+were no more than local.
+
+[Sidenote: Preparing for a great offensive.]
+
+While those operations were developing, the higher command was carefully
+preparing for a great offensive. The situation of the Russian armies
+imposed on us, as their Allies, obligations the accomplishment of which
+had been made possible by the results of a long course of preparation no
+less than by the aid of circumstances.
+
+[Sidenote: Improved defensive organizations.]
+
+The inaction of the adversary, engaged on the Eastern front in a series
+of operations of which he had not foreseen the difficulties, and thus
+reduced to the defensive on our front, left the initiative of the
+operations in our hands. The landing in France of fresh British troops
+enabled Marshal French to take upon himself the defence of a portion of
+the lines hitherto held by French troops. The improvement of our
+defensive organizations, which made possible certain economies in the
+effectives, the regrouping of units and the creation of new units, also
+had the effect of placing a larger number of men at the disposal of the
+Generalissimo. The increased output of war _materiel_ ensured him the
+necessary means for a complete artillery preparation.
+
+[Sidenote: Joffre's appeal to the troops.]
+
+Among all the elements of success which were thus united at the end of
+the summer of 1915, not the least was the incomparable individual worth
+of the French soldier. It was to the traditional warlike qualities of
+the race that the Generalissimo appealed when, on September 23, 1915, he
+addressed to the troops the following general order, which was read to
+the regiments by their officers:
+
+        "SOLDIERS OF THE REPUBLIC
+
+        "After months of waiting, which have enabled us
+        to increase our forces and our resources, while
+        the adversary has been using up his own, the
+        hour has come to attack and conquer and to add
+        fresh glorious pages to those of the Marne and
+        Flanders, the Vosges and Arras.
+
+        "Behind the whirlwind of iron and fire let
+        loose, thanks to the factories of France, where
+        your brothers have, night and day, worked for
+        us, you will proceed to the attack, all
+        together, on the whole front, in close union
+        with the armies of our Allies.
+
+[Sidenote: The spirit of the soldier.]
+
+        "Your _elan_ will be irresistible. It will
+        carry you at a bound up to the batteries of the
+        adversary, beyond the fortified lines which he
+        has placed before you.
+
+        "You will give him neither pause nor rest until
+        victory has been achieved.
+
+        "Set to with all your might for the deliverance
+        of the soil of la Patrie, for the triumph of
+        justice and liberty.
+
+                                          "J. JOFFRE."
+
+The description of the operations in Champagne will show under what
+conditions our troops acquitted themselves of the task assigned to them,
+and also the value and significance of this success, without precedent
+in the war of positions in which we are at present engaged.
+
+[Sidenote: The German line that was broken.]
+
+The German line that was broken in Champagne is the same that was
+fortified by our adversaries after the victory of the Marne. It rests on
+the western side on the Massif de Moronvillers; to the east it stretches
+as far as the Argonne. It was intended to cover the railway line from
+Challerange to Bazancourt, a line indispensable for the concentration
+movements of the German troops. The offensive front, which extended from
+Auberive to the east of Ville-sur-Tourbe, presents a varied aspect. From
+east to west may be seen:
+
+[Sidenote: A wooded glacis.]
+
+(1) A glacis about eight kilometres in width, the gentle slopes of which
+are covered by numerous little woods. The road from Saint-Hilaire to
+Saint-Souplet, with the Baraque de l'Epine de Vedegrange, marks
+approximately its axis.
+
+[Sidenote: Valley of Souain.]
+
+(2) The hollow, at the bottom of which is the village of Souain and of
+which the first German line followed the further edge. The road from
+Souain to Pomme-Py describes the radius of this semi-circle. The farm of
+Navarin, at a distance of three and a half kilometres to the north of
+Souain, stands on the top of the hills.
+
+[Sidenote: Second German line.]
+
+(3) To the north of Perthes a comparatively tranquil region of uniform
+aspect, forming between the wooded hills of the Trou Bricot and those of
+the Butte du Mesnil a passage three kilometres wide, barred by several
+lines of trenches and ending at a series of heights, the Butte de
+Souain, Hills 195 and 201, and the Butte de Tahure, surmounted by the
+second German line.
+
+[Sidenote: A strong German position.]
+
+(4) To the north of Le Mesnil, a very strong position, bastioned on the
+west by two twin heights (Mamelle Nord and Trapeze), on the east by the
+Butte du Mesnil. The German trenches formed between these two bastions a
+powerful curtain, behind which extended as far as Tahure a thickly
+wooded, undulating region.
+
+(5) To the north of Beausejour a bare terrain easily practicable, with a
+gentle rise in the direction of Ripon as far as the farm of Maisons de
+Champagne.
+
+[Sidenote: Eastern flank of the German line.]
+
+(6) To the north of Massiges, Hills numbered 191 and 199, describing on
+the map the figure of a hand, very strongly constructed and constituting
+the eastern flank of the whole German line. This tableland slopes down
+gently in the direction of Ville-sur-Tourbe.
+
+[Sidenote: German system of trench defenses.]
+
+The achievements of our troops from September 25 to October 3, 1915, in
+this region may be thus summarised: They scaled the whole of the glacis
+of l'Epine de Vedegrange; they occupied the ridge of the hollow at
+Souain; debouched in the opening to the north of Perthes to the slopes
+of Hill 195 and as far as the Butte de Tahure; carried the western
+bastions of the curtain of le Mesnil; advanced as far as Maisons de
+Champagne and took by assault the "hand" of Massiges. That is to say
+that they captured an area about forty square kilometres in extent. The
+importance of that figure is shown when one examines on the map
+accompanying this report the position of the German trenches, with a
+view to understanding the system of defence adopted by our adversaries.
+Two positions, distant from three to four kilometres from each other,
+stand out clearly. The first is the more dense; the trenches with their
+alleys of communication present at certain points the appearance of a
+wirework chessboard. Everywhere, to a depth of from 300 to 400 metres
+there are at least three parallel lines, sometimes five. The trenches
+are separated from each other as a rule by wire entanglements varying in
+width from 15 to 60 metres.
+
+[Sidenote: The second position.]
+
+[Sidenote: Alleys of communication.]
+
+The second position comprises only one trench, reinforced at certain
+points by a supporting trench. It is everywhere constructed, as is the
+wire network in front of it, in the form of a slope. On top there are
+merely observation stations with machine-gun shelters connected with the
+trench by an alley of communication. Between the two positions the
+terrain was also specially prepared, being cut up by transverse or
+diagonal trenches. The alleys of communication constructed to facilitate
+the firing, which were in many cases protected by wirework, make
+possible, according to the German method, a splitting up of the terrain
+by lateral fire and the maintenance, even after the tide of the
+assailants had flooded the trenches, of centres of resistance, veritable
+strongholds that could only be reduced after a siege. The positions of
+the artillery were established, as were also the camps and provision
+depots, behind the first position, the principal line of defence.
+
+[Sidenote: German organization known.]
+
+The whole German organization was known to us. It was shown on our maps,
+and every defensive work, trench, alley of communication, and clump of
+trees was given a special name or a number preceded by a certain letter,
+according to the sector of attack wherein it was situated. This minute
+precision in the details of the preparation is worthy of being pointed
+out; it constitutes one of the peculiarities of the present war, a
+veritable siege war, in which the objective has to be realised
+beforehand and clearly determined, every piece of ground having to be
+captured by heavy fighting, as was formerly every redan and every
+curtain.
+
+The bombardment of the German positions began on September 22, 1915 and
+was pursued night and day according to a time scheme and a division of
+labour previously determined upon. The results expected were:
+
+[Sidenote: Results of bombardment.]
+
+(1) The destruction of the wire entanglements.
+
+(2) The burial of the defenders in their dug-out.
+
+(3) The razing of the trenches and the demolition of the embrasures.
+
+(4) The stopping-up of the alleys of communication.
+
+[Sidenote: Work of the long-range guns.]
+
+The gun-fire covered not only the first trench but also the supporting
+trench and even the second position, although the distance at which the
+last was situated and the outline of its wire entanglements made it
+difficult to make field observations in that direction. At the same time
+the heavy long-range guns bombarded the headquarters, the cantonments
+and the railway stations; they cut the railway lines, causing a
+suspension of the work of revictualling. The best witnesses to the
+effectiveness of our bombardment are to be found in unfinished letters
+found upon prisoners.
+
+[Sidenote: Letters found on prisoners.]
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 23.
+
+        "The French artillery fired without
+        intermission from the morning of the 21st to
+        the evening of the 23rd, and we all took refuge
+        in our dug-outs. On the evening of the 22nd we
+        were to have gone to get some food, and the
+        French continued to fire on our trenches. In
+        the evening we had heavy losses, and we had
+        nothing to eat."
+
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 25.
+
+        "I have received no news, and probably I shall
+        not receive any for some days. The whole postal
+        service has been stopped; all places have been
+        bombarded to such an extent that no human being
+        could stand against it.
+
+        "The railway line is so seriously damaged that
+        the train service for some time has been
+        completely stopped.
+
+        "We have been for three days in the first line;
+        during those three days the French have fired
+        so heavily that our trenches are no longer
+        visible."
+
+[Sidenote: Number of wounded.]
+
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 24.
+
+        "For the last two days the French have been
+        firing like mad. To-day, for instance, a
+        dug-out has been destroyed. There were sixteen
+        men in it. Not one of them managed to save his
+        skin. They are all dead. Besides that, a number
+        of individual men have been killed and there
+        are a great mass of wounded.
+
+        "The artillery fires almost as rapidly as the
+        infantry. A mist of smoke hangs over the whole
+        battle-front, so that it is impossible to see
+        anything. Men are dropping like flies.
+
+        "The trenches are no longer anything but a
+        mound of ruins."
+
+[Sidenote: Sufferings of the soldiers.]
+
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 24.
+
+        "A rain of shells is pouring down upon us. The
+        kitchen and everything that is sent to us is
+        bombarded at night. The field-kitchens no
+        longer come to us. Oh, if only the end were
+        near! That is the cry every one is repeating.
+        Peace! Peace!"
+
+Extract from the notebook of a man of the 103rd Regiment:
+
+        "From the trench nothing much can now be seen;
+        it will soon be on a level with the ground."
+
+Letter of an artilleryman of the 100th Regiment of Field Artillery:
+
+
+                                         "SEPTEMBER 25.
+
+        "We have passed through some terrible hours. It
+        was as though the whole world was in a state of
+        collapse. We have had heavy losses. One company
+        of two hundred and fifty men had sixty killed
+        last night. A neighboring battery had sixteen
+        killed yesterday.
+
+[Sidenote: Destructiveness of the French shells.]
+
+        "The following instance will show you the
+        frightful destructiveness of the French shells.
+        A dug-out five metres deep, surmounted by 2
+        metres 50 centimetres of earth and two
+        thicknesses of heavy timber, was broken like a
+        match."
+
+Report made on September 24 in the morning, by the captain commanding
+the 3rd company of the 135th Regiment of Reserve:
+
+        "The French are firing on us with great bombs
+        and machine-guns. We must have reinforcements
+        at once. Many men are no longer fit for
+        anything. It is not that they are wounded, but
+        they are Landsturmers. Moreover the wastage is
+        greater than the losses announced.
+
+        "Send rations immediately; no food has reached
+        us to-day. Urgently want illuminating
+        cartridges and hand grenades. Is the hospital
+        corps never coming to fetch the wounded?"
+
+[Sidenote: German troops exhausted.]
+
+
+                                  "SEPTEMBER 25, 11.45.
+
+        "I urgently beg for reinforcements; the men are
+        dying from fatigue and want of sleep. I have no
+        news of the battalion."
+
+The time fixed for all the attacks on the Champagne front was a
+quarter-past nine in the morning. There was no hesitation. At the time
+mentioned the troops came out of the trenches with the aid of steps or
+scaling ladders and drew up in line before making a rush at the German
+trenches.
+
+The operation was rapidly effected. The objective was at an average
+distance of two hundred metres; this was covered without serious losses.
+The Germans were nearly everywhere surprised, and their defensive fire
+was not opened until after the invading tide of the attackers had passed
+by.
+
+[Sidenote: First German trench penetrated.]
+
+Over the whole attacking front our troops penetrated into the first
+German trench. But subsequently the progress was no longer uniform.
+While certain units continued their forward movement with extreme
+rapidity, others came up against machine guns still in action and either
+stopped or advanced only with difficulty. Some centres of the German
+resistance maintained their position for several hours and even for
+several days.
+
+[Sidenote: Outline of advance in Champagne.]
+
+[Sidenote: The battle a series of assaults.]
+
+A line showing the different stages of our advance in Champagne would
+assume a curiously winding outline, and would reveal on the one hand the
+defensive power of an adversary resolved to stick to the ground at all
+costs and on the other the victorious continuity of the efforts of our
+troops in this hand-to-hand struggle. The battle of Champagne must be
+considered in the light of a series of assaults, executed at the same
+moment, in parallel or convergent directions and having for their object
+either the capture or the hemming in of the first German position, the
+units being instructed to reform in a continuous line before the second
+position.
+
+[Sidenote: Unity of the action.]
+
+In order to understand the development, the terrain must be divided into
+several sectors, in each of which the operations, although closely
+co-ordinated, assumed, as a consequence either of the nature of the
+ground or of the peculiarities of the enemy defences, a different
+character. The unity of the action was nevertheless ensured by the
+simultaneity of the rush, which carried all the troops beyond the first
+position, past the batteries, to the defences established by the enemy
+on the heights to the south of Py.
+
+[Sidenote: At extremities offensive does not progress.]
+
+At the two extremities of our attacking front, subjected to converging
+fires and to counter-attacks on the flanks, our offensive made no
+progress. The fighting which took place in Auberive and round about
+Servon were distinguished by more than one trait of heroism, but they
+were destined to have no other result than that of containing the forces
+of the enemy and of immobilising him at the wings while the attack was
+progressing in the centre.
+
+[Sidenote: Position from Auberive to Souain a triangle.]
+
+[Sidenote: Wire checks the attackers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gains maintained.]
+
+(1) _Sector of l'Epine de Vedegrange._ The first German line was
+established at the base of a wide glacis covered with clumps of trees,
+and formed a series of salients running into each other. At certain
+points it ran along the edge of the woods where the supplementary
+defences were completed by abattis. The position as a whole between
+Auberive and Souain described a vast triangle. To the west of the road,
+from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet, the troops traversed the first
+enemy line and rushed forward for a distance of about a kilometre as far
+as a supporting trench, in front of which they were stopped by the
+wirework. A counterattack debouching from the west and supported by the
+artillery of Moronvillers caused a slight retirement of our left. The
+troops of the right, on the contrary, maintained their gains and
+succeeded on the following days in enlarging and extending them,
+remaining in touch with the units which were attacking on the east of
+the road. The latter had succeeded in a particularly brilliant manner
+in overcoming the difficulties with which they were confronted.
+
+[Sidenote: Nature of the position captured.]
+
+[Sidenote: Prisoners and guns seized.]
+
+The German position which they captured, with its triple and quadruple
+lines of trenches, its small forts armed with machine guns, its woods
+adapted for the purpose in view, constituted one of the most complete
+schemes of defence on the Champagne front and afforded cover to a
+numerous artillery concealed in the woods of the glacis. On this front,
+which was about three and a half kilometres wide, the attack on
+September 25, 1915 achieved a varying success. The troops on the left,
+after having penetrated into the first trench, had their progress
+arrested by machine guns. On the right, however, in spite of the
+obstacle presented by four successive trenches, each of which was
+covered by a network of wire entanglements and was concealed in the
+woods, where our artillery had difficulty in reaching them, the
+attacking troops gained nearly two kilometres, capturing seven hundred
+prisoners, of whom seventeen were officers, and seizing two guns of 77
+and five guns of 105.
+
+The advance recommenced on September 27, 1915. The left took possession
+of the woods lining the road from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet as far
+as the Epine de Vedegrange. Along the whole extent of the wooded heights
+as far as the western side of the hollow at Souain the success was
+identical. Notwithstanding the losses they sustained, notwithstanding
+the fatigue involved in the incessant fighting, the troops pushed
+forward, leaving behind them only a sufficient force to clear the woods
+of isolated groups of the enemy who still remained there. Between 4 and
+6 p.m. we arrived immediately in front of the second German position.
+
+[Sidenote: Second German position penetrated.]
+
+[Sidenote: Results of attack in this sector.]
+
+On the 27th we penetrated into this position at two points. We took
+possession of a trench about a kilometre wide, called the "parallel of
+the Epine de Vedegrange," which is duplicated almost throughout by
+another trench (the parallel of the wood of Chevron), and the wirework
+entanglements of which were intact, and precluded an assault. Further
+east our soldiers also continued, thanks to the conformation of the
+terrain, to penetrate into the enemy trench to a depth of about four
+hundred metres. But it was impossible to take advantage of this breach
+owing to a concentration of the German heavy artillery, a rapidly
+continued defence of the surrounding woods, and the fire of machine guns
+which it was not possible to capture and which were directed from the
+trenches on the right and left of the entry and exit to the breach. The
+results attained in this attacking sector alone may be stated thus:
+fifteen square miles of territory organized for defence throughout
+nearly the whole of its extent; on September 28, forty-four cannon,
+seven of 105 and six of 150, and more than three thousand prisoners.
+
+(2) _Sector of Souain._ The enemy lines round about Souain described a
+wide curve. In the immediate vicinity of our trenches, to the west at
+the Mill and to the east of the wood of Sabot, they swerved to the
+extent of over a kilometre to the north of the village and of the source
+of the Ain.
+
+[Sidenote: Sapping operations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Assault made in three directions.]
+
+When the offensive was decided upon it was necessary, in order to extend
+our lines forward to striking distance, to undertake sapping operations
+in parallel lines, and at times to make dashes by night over the
+intervening ground. The men working underground got into communication
+with the trenches by digging alleys of communication. This difficult
+undertaking was effected with very slight losses, under the eyes and
+under the fire of the enemy. Our parallel lines approached to within a
+distance of two hundred metres of the German trenches. The assault was
+made in three different directions: on the west in the direction of
+Hills 167 and 174; in the centre along a line running parallel with the
+road from Souain to Pomme-Py, in the direction of the farm of Navarin;
+on the east in the direction of the woods intersected by the road from
+Souain to Tahure, and in the direction of the Butte de Souain.
+
+[Sidenote: Machine gun positions surrounded.]
+
+The advance was extremely rapid--on the left two kilometres in less than
+one hour, in the centre three kilometres in forty-five minutes. At 10
+a.m. we had reached the farm of Navarin. Towards the east the forward
+march was more difficult. Some German machine guns stood their ground in
+the wood of Sabot and contributed to the resistance of the enemy. This
+defence was destined to be overcome by surrounding them. Arriving at the
+wooded region in that part where it is intersected by the road from
+Souain to Tahure, the assailants joined up on September 27, 1915 with
+those of our troops who were attacking to the north of Perthes. They
+left behind them only what was barely necessary in the way of troops to
+clear the woods of stragglers.
+
+[Sidenote: The French take guns and supplies.]
+
+Parlementaires were sent to the Germans, who received them with a volley
+of rifle shots and endeavored to escape during the night. The majority
+were killed and the survivors surrendered. Several batteries and a large
+quantity of _materiel_ (supplies of shells and provisions, grenades,
+telephones, wire, light railways) remained in our hands. On the 28th,
+along the entire length of the sector, we were immediately in front of
+the second German position. The troops had shown an unparalleled ardour
+and energy. They had been trained by officers whose courage and spirit
+of self-sacrifice are indicated by this casualty list; a general of
+division and four colonels wounded; two colonels killed.
+
+[Sidenote: Wooded region between Souain and Perthes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Region broken up by mines and trenches.]
+
+(3) _Sector of Perthes._ Between Souain and Perthes stretches a wooded
+region in which already, in February and March, heavy fighting had taken
+place. At that period we had contrived to take possession on the eastern
+extremity of this region of the German defences of the wood of Sabot. We
+had also made progress to the north-west of Perthes, on the summit of
+Hill 200. But between these two positions the Germans had retained a
+strong system of trenches forming a salient almost triangular in shape,
+to which we gave the name of the Pocket (_la Poche_). During the whole
+year a war of mining had been going on, and the region, which was broken
+up by concave constructions and intersected in all directions by
+trenches and alleys of communication, constituted an attacking ground
+all the more difficult because to the north of la Poche the somewhat
+thickly wooded Trou Bricot, the edges of which were in a state of
+defence, obstructed a rapid advance. This wooded region extends over a
+width of a kilometre and a half and a depth of four kilometres. The
+arrangements made for the attack contemplated, after the capture of la
+Poche, the surrounding of the wood of the Trou Bricot. The junction was
+to be made at the road from Souain to Tahure, with the troops assigned
+for the attack on the eastern border of the hollow at Souain.
+
+[Sidenote: The York trench.]
+
+The ground to the east of the Trou Bricot was less difficult. Open and
+comparatively flat, it was defended on the north of Perthes by a triple
+line of trenches distant 100 metres from each other. At a distance of
+1000 metres to 1200 metres a supporting trench, called the "York
+trench," was almost unique in its entire construction. The open country
+beyond stretched for a distance of three kilometres up to the second
+German position (Hill 195, Butte de Tahure). The principal effort was
+directed against this passage, the left flank of the attack being
+secured by a subsidiary action confined to the capture of la Poche.
+
+[Sidenote: Attack preceded by artillery fire.]
+
+At 9 a.m. our artillery directed its fire successively against the
+first-line trenches and the supporting trenches. The attack took place
+in the most perfect order. The assailants were already swarming in the
+German lines when the enemy artillery opened its defensive fire. Our
+counter-batteries hampered the German pieces and our reserves in the
+rear suffered little from their fire.
+
+[Sidenote: La Poche position surrendered.]
+
+[Sidenote: The York trench occupied.]
+
+At 9.45 a.m. the two columns which were attacking the extremities of the
+salient of la Poche joined hands. The position was surrounded. These
+Germans who remained alive inside it surrendered. At the same time a
+battalion was setting foot in the defences of the southern edges of the
+wood of Trou Bricot. The battalions that followed, marching to the
+outside of the eastern edges, executed with perfect regularity a "left
+turn" and came and formed up alongside the alleys of communication as
+far as the supporting trench. At the same moment, in the open country to
+the north of Perthes, the troops surmounted the three first-line
+trenches and, preceded by our artillery, made a quick march towards the
+York trench and occupied it almost without striking a blow.
+
+[Sidenote: Cleaning up the sector.]
+
+Further to the East, along the road from Perthes to Tahure, their
+advance encountered greater difficulties. Some centres of the German
+resistance could not be overcome. A sheltered machine gun continued its
+fire. An infantry officer, with a quartermaster of artillery, succeeded
+in getting into action a gun at a distance of three hundred metres from
+the machine gun and in firing at it at close quarters. Of the troops
+which were advancing to the north of Perthes, some made for the eastern
+border of the wood of Bricot, where they penetrated into the camps,
+ousting the defenders and surprising several officers in bed. Late in
+the afternoon one of our regiments had reached the road from Souain to
+Tahure. Other units were marching straight towards the north, clearing
+out the little woods on the way. They there captured batteries of which
+the artillerymen were riveted to their guns by means of bayonets
+(notably ten pieces of 105 and five of 150).
+
+[Sidenote: Progress hindered by weather.]
+
+The same work was being performed in the woods extending east of the
+road from Perthes to Souain and Tahure, where batteries were charged and
+captured while in action. At this spot a regiment covered four
+kilometres in two hours and captured ten guns, three of 105 and seven of
+77. But, from twelve o'clock midday onwards the rate of progress
+decreased, the bad weather making it impossible for our artillery to see
+what was going on, and rendering the joining up of the different corps
+extremely difficult. From the Buttes de Souain and Tahure the enemy
+directed converging fires on our men, who were advancing along very open
+ground. Nevertheless they continued their advance as far as the slopes
+of Hill 193 and the Butte de Tahure, and there dug themselves in.
+
+[Sidenote: Contact with second German position.]
+
+The night passed without any counter-attack by the enemy. Our artillery,
+including several field batteries, which had arrived immediately after
+the attack beyond the York trench, also brought forward its heavy
+pieces. At dawn the reconstituted regiments made another forward rush
+which enabled them to establish themselves in immediate contact with the
+second German position from the Butte de Souain to the Butte de Tahure,
+and even to seize several advanced posts in that neighbourhood.
+
+But on the lower slopes some of the wire entanglements remained intact;
+a successful assault on them would have been possible only after a fresh
+preparation. Up to October 6, 1915, the troops remained where they were,
+digging trenches and organizing a defensive system which had to be
+constructed all over again on ground devastated by the enemy fire.
+
+[Sidenote: Ravin des Cuisines.]
+
+(4) _Sector of Le Mesnil._ It was to the north of Le Mesnil that we
+encountered the greatest resistance on the part of the adversary. In the
+course of the engagements of the preceding winter we had succeeded in
+securing a foothold on top of the hill numbered 196. The Germans
+remained a little to the east, in a ravine which we continued to call by
+its designation of the "Ravine of the Kitchens" (Ravin des Cuisines).
+Our assault rendered us masters of it, but we could make no further
+progress.
+
+[Sidenote: Fighting on the Butte du Mesnil.]
+
+The German trenches are constructed on the northern slopes of Hill 196,
+and are concealed from field observation so that it is difficult for the
+artillery to play upon them. Moreover, they are flanked on one side by
+the twin heights of the Mamelles, on the other by the Butte du Mesnil.
+To the eastward some of our units contrived on September 25, 1915, to
+penetrate into the trenches of the _butte_ (knoll), but failed to
+maintain their ground, in consequence of a counter-attack supported by
+flank fires. Westward, it was not until the night of the 1st to the 2nd
+of October, 1915, that we captured the northern Mamelle, thus
+surrounding the works of the Trapeze which surmount the southern
+Mamelle.
+
+[Sidenote: Rapid and brilliant advance.]
+
+(5) _Sector of Beausejour._ The attacks launched north of Beausejour met
+with a more rapid and more brilliant success. The swarm of invaders
+throwing themselves on the first German lines captured one after the
+other the enemy works in the very sparsely timbered woods called the Fer
+de Lance wood and the Demi-Lune wood, and afterwards all the works known
+as the Bastion. In one rush certain units gained the top of Maisons de
+Champagne, past several batteries, killing the artillerymen as they
+served their pieces. The same movement took the assailants across the
+intricate region of the mine "funnels" of Beausejour up to the extended
+wood intersected by the road to Maisons de Champagne. Our soldiers then
+came across German artillerymen engaged in unlimbering their guns. They
+killed the drivers and horses; the survivors surrendered.
+
+[Sidenote: Cavalry supports the infantry.]
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy counter-attacks.]
+
+Further westward the left wing of the attacking troops advanced with
+greater difficulty, being hampered by small forts and covered works with
+which the trenches were everywhere protected. It was at this moment that
+the cavalry came unexpectedly to the support of the infantry. Two
+squadrons of hussars having crossed our old trenches in face of a heavy
+defensive artillery fire prepared to gallop against the German batteries
+north of Maisons de Champagne, when they reached that part of the lines
+where the Germans still maintained their position. The latter
+immediately directed the fire of their machine guns against the
+cavalrymen, several of whose horses were hit. The hussars dismounted
+and, with drawn sabres, made for the trenches, while favoured by this
+diversion, the infantrymen resumed their forward movement. The
+resistance of the enemy broke down; more than six hundred Germans were
+captured in this way. In the course of the afternoon and during the day
+of September 25, 1915, some enemy counter-attacks were made from the
+direction of Ripont, but were unsuccessful in ousting us from the summit
+of Maisons de Champagne.
+
+On the following days a fierce struggle took place north of the summit
+in the region of a defensive work known as the "Ouvrage de la Defaite,"
+which was captured by us, lost, then recaptured, and finally evacuated
+in consequence of an extremely violent bombardment.
+
+[Sidenote: Heights of Massiges.]
+
+(6) _Sector of Massiges._ The safety of our troops which had advanced as
+far as the extended wood and Maisons de Champagne was assured by the
+capture of the summits of the heights of Massiges. This sharply
+undulating upland, numbered 199 on the north and 191 on the south,
+constituted in the hands of the Germans a fortress which they believed
+to be impregnable and from the top of which they commanded our positions
+in several directions. At 9.15 a.m. the two first attacking parties
+marched out in columns. The men went forth gaily and deliberately,
+preceded by the firing of the field artillery. By 9.30 a.m. our
+infantry, before the enemy had had time to recover themselves, had
+reached the summit.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy machine gun fire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lines of grenadiers.]
+
+From this moment, subject to machine gun and musketry fire, the men
+could only proceed slowly along the summits by the alleys of
+communication, with hand grenades, supported by the artillery, with whom
+they remained in constant touch by flag-signalling. As the advance of
+our grenadiers continued, the Germans surrendered in large numbers. An
+uninterrupted chain of grenade-bearers, like the chains of
+bucket-holders at a fire in former times, was established in the alleys
+of communication from Massiges forward, and each fresh arrival of
+grenades was accompanied by a fresh advance.
+
+[Sidenote: Value of possessing the heights.]
+
+From September 25 to October 3, 1915, the fight continued in this way
+and was carried on by our soldiers with fierce persistency. The Germans
+hurled upon the spot constant reinforcements and offered an obstinate
+resistance that has rarely been equalled. They stood up to be shot
+down--the machine-gun men at their guns, the grenadiers on their grenade
+chests. All attempts at a counter-attack remained equally unproductive.
+The possession of the heights of Massiges enabled us to extend our gains
+towards Ville-sur-Tourbe, while taking in flank the trenches which we
+had failed to secure by a frontal attack.
+
+The loss of the heights of Massiges appears to have particularly upset
+the German General Staff, which, after having denied the fact,
+represented that the ground which it had lost as a consequence of
+grenade fighting had been abandoned owing to artillery fire.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the enemy.]
+
+The attitude of the enemy was characterized by: (1) Surprise; (2)
+disorganization; (3) a sudden and almost disorderly engagement of the
+reserves; (4) the exhaustion and demoralization of the soldiers.
+
+[Sidenote: Reasons for surprise.]
+
+(1) It is beyond doubt that the Germans were surprised by the extent and
+violence of our attacks. They were expecting a French offensive. The
+orders of the day of Generals von Fleck and Von Ditfurth prove this.
+("The possibility of a great French offensive must be considered": Von
+Ditfurth, August 15. "The French Higher Command appears to be disposed
+to make another desperate effort": Von Fleck, September 26.) But the
+Germans foresaw neither the strength nor the success of the effort.
+During our artillery preparation twenty-nine battalions only were
+brought back to Champagne (the 183rd Brigade, the 5th Division of the
+3rd Corps, and one-half of the 43rd Division of Reserve). In thus
+limiting before the attack the reinforcements of its effectives the
+German General Staff showed that they did not suspect the vigour of the
+blow that was about to be delivered.
+
+The same thing happened with regard to the subordinate forces. Inside
+the shelters in the second line officers were captured while lying down;
+they had an unwarranted confidence in the strength of their first line,
+and the interruption of telephone communications had prevented their
+being informed of the rapid progress of our offensive.
+
+[Sidenote: Rapidity of French attack.]
+
+(2) This rapidity of our attack explains the disorganization of the
+adversary on the morning of September 25. At some points certain
+officers and non-commissioned officers were able to continue the
+resistance until the investment, followed by capitulation. But elsewhere
+there were prompt surrenders. Men were also seen flying before our
+attacking troops and being killed while making for their second
+position.
+
+[Sidenote: How the German reserves were utilized.]
+
+(3) In order to make up for the insufficiency of the local reserves the
+German military authorities had to put in line not only the important
+units which they held at their disposal behind the front (10th Corps
+brought back from Russia), but the local reserves from other sectors
+(Soissonnais, Argonne, Woevre, Alsace), which were despatched to
+Champagne one battalion after another, and even in groups of double
+companies.
+
+Nothing better indicates the disorganization of the German command and
+the significance of the check suffered than the conditions under which
+these reserves were engaged.
+
+The units were despatched to the fight completely disassociated. Among
+the regiments of the 5th Division (3rd Corps), one, the 81st, was
+identified near Massiges, while a battalion of the 12th was at Tahure
+and a battalion of the 32nd at the Trou Bricot. It was the same as
+regards the 56th Division, of which the 88th and 35th Regiments were
+despatched to Massiges and the 91st to Souain, while a battalion of the
+79th took up a position to the west of the Butte de Tahure.
+
+[Sidenote: Haste increased German losses.]
+
+Ill provided with food and munitions, the reinforcements were thrown
+into the engagement on an unknown terrain without indication as to the
+direction they had to take and without their junction with neighbouring
+units having been arranged. Through the haste with which they threw
+their reserves under the fire of our artillery and of our infantry,
+already in possession of the positions, the German General Staff
+considerably increased the number of their losses.
+
+[Sidenote: Soldiers brought by motor-car.]
+
+A letter taken from a soldier of the 118th Regiment furnishes us with
+proof of this: "We were put in a motor-car and proceeded at a headlong
+pace to Tahure, by way of Vouziers. Two hours' rest in the open air,
+with rain falling and then we had a six hours' march to take up our
+positions. On our way we were greeted by the fire of the enemy shells,
+so that, for instance, out of 280 men of the second company, only 224
+arrived safe and sound inside the trenches. These trenches, freshly dug,
+were barely from 35 to 50 centimetres deep. Continually surrounded by
+mines and bursting shells, we had to remain in them and do the best we
+could with them for 118 hours without getting anything hot to eat.
+
+"Hell itself could not be more terrible. To-day, at about twelve o'clock
+noon, 600 men, fresh troops, joined the regiment. In five days we have
+lost as many and more."
+
+[Sidenote: Battalions from many regiments.]
+
+The disorder amid which the reinforcements were engaged appears clearly
+from this fact, that on the only part of the front included between
+Maisons de Champagne and Hill 189 there were on October 2, 1915,
+thirty-two battalions belonging to twenty-one different regiments.
+
+(4) The violence of the shock sustained, and the necessity of replacing
+in the fighting line units which had almost entirely disappeared,
+hampered the German military authorities. On the first day they were
+unable to respond effectively even with their artillery, the fire of
+which along the whole front was badly directed and as a rule poorly
+sustained. The loss of numerous batteries obviously deprived them of a
+portion of their resources.
+
+[Sidenote: Enemy endeavors to stem advance.]
+
+[Sidenote: Isolated battalion on the heights of Massiges.]
+
+The following days the enemy seemed to have but one idea, to strengthen
+their second line to stem our advance. The counter-attacks were
+concentrated on a comparatively unimportant part of the battlefront in
+certain places, the loss of which appeared to them to be particularly
+dangerous. Therefore on the heights of Massiges the German military
+authorities threw in succession isolated battalions of the 123rd, 124th,
+and 120th regiments, of the 30th regular regiment and of the 2nd
+regiment of Ersatz Reserve (16th Corps), which were each in turn
+decimated, for these counter-attacks, hastily and crudely prepared, all
+resulted in sanguinary failures. Generally speaking, the offensive
+capacity of the Germans appeared to be broken. The following order of
+the day of General von Ditfurth bears witness to this:
+
+[Sidenote: General von Ditfurth's order.]
+
+"It seemed to me that the infantry at certain points was confining its
+action to a mere defensive. . . . I cannot protest too strongly against
+such an idea, which necessarily results in destroying the spirit of
+offensive in our own troops and in arousing and strengthening in the
+mind of the enemy a feeling of his superiority.
+
+"The enemy is left full liberty of action and our own action is
+subjected to the will of the enemy."
+
+[Sidenote: Prisoners exhausted.]
+
+(5) In an engagement in the open the number of prisoners is an
+indication of the spirit of the enemy. In Champagne the Germans
+surrendered in constituted units (sections or companies), and even in
+groups of several hundred men. They confessed that they were worn out.
+They had been, for the most part, without supplies for several days and
+had suffered more particularly from thirst. They all showed that they
+had been greatly impressed by our uninterrupted artillery fire, the
+feeble response of their own guns, and the extent of their losses.
+
+Here by way of specimen is what was set down by a reserve lieutenant of
+the 90th Regiment of infantry (10th Corps):
+
+"Yesterday I had sixteen men killed by high explosive bombs. The trench
+was nearly filled up. Extreme activity of the French howitzers. Our
+artillery fires shrapnel, but unfortunately does not get the range.
+
+"B . . . was also killed. The second battalion, too, has had heavy losses.
+It is frightful. Those confounded high explosive shells!
+
+[Sidenote: An officer wishes for rain.]
+
+"The weather is becoming fine again. If only it would rain again, or fog
+would come. As it is, the aviators will arrive and we shall have more
+high explosive bombs and flank firing on the trenches. Abominable fine
+weather! Fog, fog, come to our assistance."
+
+[Sidenote: The enemy's lines.]
+
+It is difficult to estimate precisely the German losses. Certain
+indications however serve to indicate their extent. A _vizefeldwebel_
+declares that he is the only man remaining out of his company. A soldier
+of the third battalion of the 123rd Regiment engaged on the 26th, states
+that his regiment was withdrawn from the front after only two days'
+fighting because its losses were too great. The 118th Regiment relieved
+in the trenches the 158th Regiment after it had been reduced to fifteen
+or twenty men per company. Certain units disappeared completely, as for
+instance the 27th Reserve Regiment and the 52nd Regular Regiment,
+which, by the evening of the 25th had left in our hands, the first
+thirteen officers and 933 men, the second twenty-one officers and 927
+men. In order to arrive at the total of the losses certain figures may
+serve as an indication.
+
+[Sidenote: German strength in Champagne.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ninety-three fresh battalions.]
+
+At the beginning of September, 1915 the Germans had on the Champagne
+front seventy battalions. In anticipation of our attack they brought
+there, before September 25, 1915, twenty-nine battalions. This makes
+ninety-nine battalions, representing, if account be taken of the
+corresponding artillery and pioneer formations, 115,000 men directly
+engaged. The losses due to the artillery preparation and the first
+attacks were such that from September 25 to October 15, 1915, the German
+General Staff was compelled to renew its effectives almost in their
+entirety by sending ninety-three fresh battalions.
+
+It may be assumed that the units engaged on September 25 and 26, 1915,
+suffered losses amounting to from 60 to 80 per cent. (even more for
+certain corps, which have entirely disappeared). The new units brought
+into line for the counter-attacks, and subjected in connection with
+these to an incessant bombardment, lost 50 per cent. of their
+effectives, if not more. We think we shall be understating the case if
+we set down 140,000 men as the sum of the German losses in Champagne.
+Account must be taken of the fact that of this number the proportion of
+slightly wounded men able to recuperate rapidly and return to the front
+is, in the case of the Germans, very much below the average proportion
+in connection with other engagements by reason of the fact that they
+were unable to gather up their wounded, and thus left in our hands
+nearly the whole of the troops entrusted with the defence of the first
+position.
+
+[Sidenote: Enthusiasm of the French.]
+
+All those who lived through the engagements of the battle of Champagne
+experienced the sensation of victory. The aspect of the battlefield, the
+long columns of prisoners, the look in the eyes of our soldiers, their
+animation and their enthusiasm, all this gave expression to the
+importance of a success which the Generalissimo recognized in these
+terms.
+
+[Sidenote: Thanks of the commander-in-chief.]
+
+
+                         "Grand Headquarters,
+                                      "OCTOBER 5, 1915.
+
+        "The Commander-in-Chief addresses to the troops
+        under his orders the expression of his profound
+        satisfaction at the results obtained up to the
+        present day by the attacks.
+
+        "Twenty-five thousand prisoners, three hundred
+        and fifty officers, a hundred and fifty guns, a
+        quantity of material which it has not yet been
+        possible to gauge, are the trophies of a
+        victory the echo of which throughout Europe
+        indicates its importance.
+
+        "The sacrifices willingly made have not been in
+        vain. All have been able to take part in the
+        common task. The present is a sure guarantee to
+        us of the future.
+
+        "The Commander-in-Chief is proud to command the
+        finest troops France has ever known.
+
+                                         "J. JOFFRE."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all the brutal atrocities perpetrated by the Germans in Belgium, none
+aroused such world-wide horror and execration as the murder of Edith
+Cavell, an English nurse, on the charge of aiding English and Belgian
+soldiers who escaped from Belgium in order to rejoin their respective
+armies.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF EDITH CAVELL
+
+BRAND WHITLOCK
+
+Copyright, Delineator, November, 1918.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The first letter of inquiry not answered.]
+
+[Sidenote: Reasons given for Miss Cavell's arrest.]
+
+One day in August it was learned at the Legation that an English nurse,
+named Edith Cavell, had been arrested by the Germans. I wrote a letter
+to the Baron von der Lancken to ask if it was true that Miss Cavell had
+been arrested, and saying that if it were I should request that Maitre
+de Leval, the legal counselor of the Legation, be permitted to see her
+and to prepare for her defense. There was no reply to this letter, and
+on September tenth I wrote a second letter, repeating the questions and
+the requests made in the first. On the twelfth of September I had a
+reply from the Baron stating that Miss Cavell had been arrested on the
+fifth of August, that she was confined in the prison of St. Gilles, that
+she had admitted having hidden English and French soldiers in her home,
+as well as Belgians, of an age to bear arms, all anxious to get to the
+front, that she had admitted also having furnished these soldiers with
+money to get to France, and had provided guides to enable them to cross
+the Dutch frontier; that the defense of Miss Cavell was in the hands of
+Maitre Thomas Braun, and that inasmuch as the German Government, on
+principle, would not permit accused persons to have any interviews
+whatever, he could not obtain permission for Maitre de Leval to visit
+Miss Cavell as long as she was in solitary confinement.
+
+[Sidenote: The German mentality.]
+
+[Sidenote: The principle that power makes right.]
+
+[Sidenote: The accused without rights.]
+
+For one of our Anglo-Saxon race and legal traditions to understand
+conditions in Belgium during the German occupation, it is necessary to
+banish resolutely from the mind every conception of right we have
+inherited from our ancestors--conceptions long since crystallized into
+inimitable principles of law and confirmed in our charters of liberty.
+In the German mentality these conceptions do not exist; they think in
+other sequences; they act according to another principle, if it is a
+principle, the conviction that there is only one right, one privilege,
+and that it belongs exclusively to Germany, the right, namely, to do
+whatever they have the physical force to do. These so-called courts, of
+whose arbitrary and irresponsible and brutal nature I have tried to
+convey some notion, were mere inquisitorial bodies, guided by no
+principle save that of interest in their own bloody nature; they did as
+they pleased, and would have scorned a Jeffreys as too lenient, a Lynch
+as too formal, a Spanish _auto da fe_ as too technical, and a tribunal
+of the French Revolution as soft and sentimental. Before them the
+accused had literally no rights, not even to present a defense, and if
+he was permitted to speak in his own behalf, it was only as a generous
+and liberal favor.
+
+It was before such a court that Edith Cavell was to be arraigned. I had
+asked Maitre de Leval to provide for her defense, and on his advice,
+inasmuch as Maitre Braun was already of counsel in the case, chosen by
+certain friends of Miss Cavell, I invited him into consultation.
+
+[Sidenote: Personality of Edith Cavell.]
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell's character and ability.]
+
+Edith Cavell was a frail and delicate little woman about forty years of
+age. She had come to Brussels some years before the war to exercise her
+calling as a trained nurse. She soon became known to the leading
+physicians of the capital and nursed in the homes of the leading
+families. But she was ambitious, and devoted to her profession, and ere
+long had entered a nursing-home in the Rue de la Clinique, where she
+organized for Doctor Depage a training-school for nurses. She was a
+woman of refinement and education; she knew French as she knew her own
+language; she was deeply religious, with a conscience almost puritan,
+and was very stern with herself in what she conceived to be her duty. In
+her training-school she showed great executive ability, was firm in
+matters of discipline, and brought it to a high state of efficiency. And
+every one who knew her in Brussels spoke of her with that unvarying term
+of respect which her noble character inspired.
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Whitlock engages a defender.]
+
+Some time before the trial, Maitre Thomas Braun announced to the
+Legation that for personal reasons he would be obliged to withdraw from
+the case, and asked that some one else appear for Miss Cavell. We
+engaged Maitre Sadi Kirschen.
+
+[Sidenote: The court martial in the Senate chamber.]
+
+It was the morning of Thursday, October seventh, that the case came
+before the court martial in the Senate chamber, where the military
+trials always took place, and Miss Cavell was arraigned with the
+Princess de Croy, the Countess de Belleville, and thirty-two others. The
+accused were seated in a circle facing the court, in such a way that
+they could neither see nor communicate with their own counsel, who were
+compelled to sit behind them. Nor could they see the witnesses, who were
+also placed behind them.
+
+The charge brought against the accused was that of having conspired to
+violate the German Military Penal Code, punishing with death those who
+conduct troops to the enemy.
+
+[Sidenote: The trial secret.]
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell's attitude.]
+
+[Sidenote: Admits aiding English soldiers.]
+
+We have no record of that trial; we do not know all that occurred there
+behind the closed doors of that Senate chamber, where for fourscore
+years laws based on another and more enlightened principle of justice
+had been discussed. Miss Cavell did not know, or knew only in the
+vaguest manner, the offense with which she was charged. She did not deny
+having received at her hospital English soldiers whom she nursed and to
+whom she gave money; she did not deny that she knew they were going to
+try to cross the border into Holland. She even took a patriotic pride in
+the fact. She was very calm. She was interrogated in German, a language
+she did not understand, but the questions and responses were translated
+into French. Her mind was very alert, and she was entirely
+self-possessed, and frequently rectified any inexact details and
+statements that were put to her. When, in her interrogatory, she was
+asked if she had not aided English soldiers left behind after the early
+battles of the preceding Autumn about Mons and Charleroi, she said yes;
+they were English and she was English, and she would help her own. The
+answer seemed to impress the court. They asked her if she had not helped
+twenty.
+
+"Yes," she said "more than twenty; two hundred."
+
+"English?"
+
+"No, not all English; French and Belgians, too."
+
+But the French and Belgians were not of her own nationality, said the
+judge--and that made a serious difference. She was subjected to a
+nagging interrogatory. One of the judges said that she had been foolish
+to aid the English because, he said, the English are ungrateful.
+
+"No," replied Miss Cavell, "the English are not ungrateful."
+
+"How do you know they are not?" asked the inquisitor.
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell makes a fatal admission.]
+
+"Because," she answered, "some of them have written to me from England
+to thank me."
+
+It was a fatal admission on the part of the tortured little woman; under
+the German military law her having helped soldiers to reach Holland, a
+neutral country, would have been a less serious offense, but to aid them
+to reach an enemy country, and especially England, was the last offense
+in the eyes of the German military court.
+
+[Sidenote: Rumor that death sentence is asked.]
+
+The trial was concluded on Saturday, and on Sunday one of the nurses in
+Miss Cavell's school came to tell me that there was a rumor about town
+that the prosecuting officer had asked the court to pronounce a sentence
+of death in the cases of the Princess de Croy, the Countess de
+Belleville, and of Miss Cavell, and of several others. I remember to
+have said to Maitre de Leval, when he came up to my room to report the
+astounding news:
+
+"That's only the usual exaggeration of the prosecutor; they all ask for
+the extreme penalty, everywhere, when they sum up their cases."
+
+[Sidenote: Leval's opinion of German courts.]
+
+"Yes," said Maitre de Leval, "and in German courts they always get it."
+
+Maitre de Leval sent a note to Maitre Kirschen, asking him to come on
+Monday, at eight-thirty o'clock, to the Legation or to send a word
+regarding Miss Cavell. Maitre Kirschen did not send Maitre de Leval the
+word he had requested, and on that Sunday, de Leval saw another lawyer
+who had been on the case and could tell him what had taken place at the
+trial. The lawyer thought that the court martial would not condemn Miss
+Cavell to death. At any rate, no judgment had been pronounced, and the
+judges themselves did not appear to be in agreement.
+
+[Sidenote: Leval asks to see Miss Cavell.]
+
+On Monday, the eleventh of October, at eight-thirty in the morning,
+Maitre de Leval went to the _Politische Abteilung_ in the Rue
+Lambermont, and found Conrad. He spoke to him of the case of Miss Cavell
+and asked that, now that the trial had taken place, he and the Reverend
+Mr. Gahan, the rector of the English church, be allowed to see Miss
+Cavell. Conrad said he would make inquiries and inform de Leval by
+telephone, and by one of the messengers of the Legation who that morning
+happened to deliver some papers to the _Politische Abteilung_, Conrad
+sent word that neither the Reverend Mr. Gahan nor Maitre de Leval could
+see Miss Cavell at that time, but that Maitre de Leval could see her as
+soon as the judgment had been pronounced.
+
+[Sidenote: Waiting for judgment to be pronounced.]
+
+[Sidenote: Promise to inform the Legation.]
+
+At eleven-thirty o'clock on the Monday morning, Maitre de Leval himself
+telephoned to Conrad, who repeated this statement. The judgment had not
+yet been rendered, he said, and Maitre de Leval asked him to let him
+know as soon as the judgment had been pronounced, so that he might go to
+see Miss Cavell. Conrad promised this, but added that even then the
+Reverend Mr. Gahan could not see her, because there were German
+Protestant pastors at the prison, and that if Miss Cavell needed
+spiritual advice or consolation she could call on them. Conrad concluded
+this conversation by saying that the judgment would be rendered on the
+morrow, that is, on Tuesday, or the day after, and that even when it had
+been pronounced it would have to be signed by the Military Governor, and
+that the Legation would be kept informed.
+
+At twelve-ten on the Monday, not having received any news from Maitre
+Kirschen, Maitre de Leval went to his house, but did not find him there,
+and left his card.
+
+[Sidenote: Leval makes repeated inquiries.]
+
+At twelve-twenty o'clock, Maitre de Leval went to the house of the
+lawyer to whom reference has already been made, and left word for him to
+go to his home.
+
+At four o'clock that afternoon the lawyer arrived at the Legation and
+said that he had been to see the Germans at eleven o'clock, and that
+there he had been told no judgment would be pronounced before the
+following day. Before leaving the Legation to go home, Maitre de Leval
+told to Gibson all that had happened, and asked him to telephone again
+to Conrad before going home himself. Then at intervals all day long the
+inquiry had been repeated, and the same response was made.
+
+[Sidenote: The chancellerie was closed for the night.]
+
+Monday evening at six-twenty o'clock, Belgian time, Topping, one of the
+clerks of the Legation, with Gibson standing by, again called Conrad on
+the telephone, again was told that the judgment had not been pronounced,
+and that the Political Department would not fail to inform the Legation
+the moment the judgment was confirmed. And the _chancellerie_ was closed
+for the night.
+
+[Sidenote: A nurse informs Leval of the death sentence.]
+
+At nine o'clock that Monday evening, Maitre de Leval appeared suddenly
+at the door of my chamber; his face was deadly pallid; he said that he
+had just heard from the nurse who kept him informed, that the judgment
+had been confirmed and that the sentence of death had been pronounced on
+Miss Cavell at half-past four o'clock that afternoon, and that she was
+to be shot at two o'clock the next morning. It seemed preposterous,
+especially the immediate execution of sentence; there had always been
+time at least to prepare and present a plea for mercy. To condemn a
+woman in the evening and then to hurry her out to be shot before another
+dawn! Impossible! It could not be!
+
+[Sidenote: Judgment read in the afternoon.]
+
+[Sidenote: Plea for mercy had been prepared.]
+
+But no; Maitre de Leval was certain. That evening he had gone home and
+was writing at his table when about eight o'clock two nurses were
+introduced. One was Miss Wilkinson, little and nervous, all in tears;
+the other, taller and more calm. Miss Wilkinson said that she had just
+learned that the judgment of the court condemned Miss Cavell to death,
+that the judgment had been read to her in her cell at four-thirty that
+afternoon, and that the Germans were going to shoot her that night at
+two o'clock. Maitre de Leval told her that it was difficult to believe
+such news, since twice he had been told that the judgment had not been
+rendered and that it would not be rendered before the following day, but
+on her reiteration that she had this news from a source that was
+absolutely certain, de Leval left at once with her and her friends and
+came to the Legation. And there he stood, pale and shaken. Even then I
+could not believe; it was too preposterous; surely a stay of execution
+would be granted. Already in the afternoon, in some premonition, Maitre
+de Leval had prepared a plea for mercy, to be submitted to the
+Governor-General, and a letter of transmittal to present to the Baron
+von der Lancken. I asked Maitre de Leval to bring me these documents and
+I signed them, and then, at the last minute, on the letter addressed to
+von der Lancken, I wrote these words:
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Whitlock's personal appeal.]
+
+        "MY DEAR BARON:
+
+        "I am too sick to present my request to you in
+        person, but I appeal to your generosity of
+        heart to support it, and save this unfortunate
+        woman from death. Have pity on her."
+
+[Sidenote: Search for the Spanish ambassador.]
+
+I told Maitre de Leval to send Joseph at once to hunt up Gibson to
+present my plea and, if possible, to find the Marquis de Villalobar and
+to ask him to support it with the Baron von der Lancken. Gibson was
+dining somewhere; we did not know where Villalobar was. The _Politische
+Abteilung_, in the Ministry of Industry, where Baron von der Lancken
+lived, was only half a dozen blocks away. The Governor-General was in
+his chateau at Trois Fontaines, ten miles away, playing bridge that
+evening. Maitre de Leval went; and I waited.
+
+The nurses from Miss Cavell's school were waiting in a lower room; other
+nurses came for news; they, too, had heard, but could not believe. Then
+the Reverend Mr. H. Stirling T. Gahan, the British chaplain at Brussels
+and pastor of the English church, came. He had a note from some one at
+the St. Gilles prison, a note written in German, saying simply:
+
+[Sidenote: English rector summoned.]
+
+"Come at once; some one is about to die."
+
+[Sidenote: A delay of execution expected.]
+
+He went away to the prison; his frail, delicate little wife remained at
+the Legation, and there, with my wife and Miss Larner, sat with those
+women all that long evening, trying to comfort them, to reassure them.
+Outside a cold rain was falling. Up in my chamber I waited; a stay of
+execution would be granted, of course; they always were; there was not,
+in our time, anywhere, a court, even a court martial, that would condemn
+a woman to death at half-past four in the afternoon and hurry her out
+and shoot her before dawn--not even a German court martial.
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell calm and courageous.]
+
+When Mr. Gahan arrived at the prison that night Miss Cavell was lying on
+the narrow cot in her cell; she arose, drew on a dressing gown, folded
+it about her thin form, and received him calmly. She had never expected
+such an end to the trial, but she was brave and was not afraid to die.
+The judgment had been read to her that afternoon, there in her cell. She
+had written letters to her mother in England and to certain of her
+friends, and entrusted them to the German authorities.
+
+She did not complain of her trial; she had avowed all, she said; and it
+is one of the saddest, bitterest ironies of the whole tragedy that she
+seems not to have known that all she had avowed was not sufficient, even
+under German law, to justify the judgment passed upon her. The German
+chaplain had been kind, and she was willing for him to be with her at
+the last, if Mr. Gahan could not be. Life had not been all happy for
+her, she said, and she was glad to die for her country. Life had been
+hurried, and she was grateful for these weeks of rest in prison.
+
+"Patriotism is not enough," she said, "I must have no hatred and no
+bitterness toward any one."
+
+[Sidenote: Notes made in Bible and prayer-book.]
+
+She received the sacrament, she had no hatred for any one, and she had
+no regrets. In the touching report that Mr. Gahan made there is a
+statement, one of the last that Edith Cavell ever made, which, in its
+exquisite pathos, illuminates the whole of that life of stern duty, of
+human service and martyrdom. She said that she was grateful for the six
+weeks of rest she had just before the end. During those weeks she had
+read and reflected; her companions and her solace were her Bible, her
+prayer-book and the "Imitation of Christ." The notes she made in these
+books reveal her thoughts in that time, and will touch the uttermost
+depths of any nature nourished in that beautiful faith which is at once
+so tender and so austere. The prayer-book with those laconic entries on
+its fly-leaf, in which she set down the sad and eloquent chronology of
+her fate, the copy of the "Imitation" which she had read and marked
+during those weeks in prison--weeks, which, as she so pathetically said,
+had given her rest and quiet and time to think in a life that had been
+"so hurried"--and the passages noted in her firm hand have a deep and
+appealing pathos.
+
+Just before the end, too, as I have said, she wrote a number of letters.
+She forgot no one. Among the letters that she left one was addressed to
+the nurses of her school; and there was a message for a girl who was
+trying to break herself of the morphine habit--Miss Cavell had been
+trying to help her, and she sent her word to be brave, and that if God
+would permit she would continue to try to help her.
+
+[Sidenote: The petitioners fail.]
+
+Midnight came, and Gibson, with a dark face, and de Leval, paler than
+ever. There was nothing to be done.
+
+[Sidenote: Errand of Marquis Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval.]
+
+De Leval had gone to Gibson, and together they went in search of the
+Marquis, whom they found at Baron Lambert's, where he had been dining;
+he and Baron Lambert and M. Francqui were over their coffee. The three,
+the Marquis, Gibson and de Leval, then went to the Rue Lambermont. The
+little Ministry was closed and dark; no one was there. They rang, and
+rang again, and finally the _concierge_ appeared--no one was there, he
+said. They insisted. The _concierge_ at last found a German functionary
+who came down, stood staring stupidly; every one was gone; _son
+Excellence_ was at the theater. At what theater? He did not know. They
+urged him to go and find out. He disappeared inside, went up and down
+stairs two or three times, finally came out and said that he was at Le
+Bois Sacre. They explained that the presence of the Baron was urgent and
+asked the man to go for him; they turned over the motor to him and he
+mounted on the box beside Eugene. They reached the little variety
+theater there in the Rue d'Arenberg. The German functionary went in and
+found the Baron, who said he could not come before the piece was over.
+
+[Sidenote: The sad wait for der Lancken.]
+
+All this while Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval were in the salon at the
+Ministry, the room of which I have spoken so often as the yellow salon,
+because of the satin upholstery of its Louis XVI. furniture of white
+lacquer--that bright, almost laughing little salon, all done in the
+gayest, lightest tones, where so many little dramas were played. All
+three of them were deeply moved and very anxious--the eternal contrast,
+as de Leval said, between things and sentiments. Lancken entered at
+last, very much surprised to find them; he was accompanied by Count
+Harrach and by the young Baron von Falkenhausen.
+
+"What is it, gentlemen?" he said. "Has something serious happened?"
+
+They told him why they were there, and Lancken, raising his hands, said:
+
+"_Impossible!_"
+
+[Sidenote: Der Lancken believes the rumor false.]
+
+He had vaguely heard that afternoon of a condemnation for spying, but he
+did not know that it had anything to do with the case of Miss Cavell,
+and in any event it was impossible that they would put a woman to death
+that night.
+
+"Who has given you this information? Because, to come and disturb me at
+such an hour you must have actual information," he said.
+
+De Leval replied: "Without doubt I consider it so, but I must refuse to
+tell you from whom I received the information. Besides, what difference
+does it make? If the information is true, our presence at this hour is
+justified; if it is not true, I am ready to take the consequences of my
+mistake."
+
+The Baron grew irritated.
+
+"What," he said, "is it on the hint of mere rumor that you come and
+disturb me at such an hour, me and these gentlemen? No, no, gentlemen,
+this news can not be true. Orders are never executed with such
+precipitation, especially when a woman is concerned. Come and see me
+to-morrow. Besides, how do you think that at this hour I can obtain any
+information? The Governor-General must certainly be sleeping."
+
+Gibson, or one of them, suggested to him that a very simple way of
+finding out would be to telephone to the prison.
+
+"Quite right," said he. "I had not thought of that."
+
+He went out, was gone a few minutes and came back embarrassed, so they
+said, even a little bit ashamed, for he said:
+
+[Sidenote: The sad news confirmed.]
+
+"You are right, gentlemen; I have heard by telephone that Miss Cavell
+has been condemned and that she will be shot to-night."
+
+Then de Leval drew out the letter that I had written to the Baron and
+gave it to him, and he read it in an undertone--with a little sardonic
+smile, de Leval said--and when he had finished he handed it back to de
+Leval and said:
+
+[Sidenote: The plea for mercy.]
+
+"But it is necessary to have a plea for mercy at the same time."
+
+"Here it is," said de Leval, and gave him the document. Then they all
+sat down.
+
+[Sidenote: Von der Lancken's attitude.]
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell not a spy.]
+
+I could see the scene as it was described to me by Villalobar, by
+Gibson, by de Leval, in that pretty little Louis XVI. salon that I knew
+so well--Lancken giving way to an outburst of feeling against "that
+spy," as he called Miss Cavell, and Gibson and de Leval by turns
+pleading with him, the Marquis sitting by. It was not a question of
+spying as they pointed out; it was a question of the life of a woman, a
+life that had been devoted to charity, to helping others. She had nursed
+wounded soldiers, she had even nursed German wounded at the beginning of
+the war, and now she was accused of but one thing: having helped English
+soldiers make their way toward Holland. She may have been imprudent, she
+may have acted against the laws of the occupying power, but she was not
+a spy, she was not even accused of being a spy, she had not been
+convicted of spying, and she did not merit the death of a spy. They sat
+there pleading, Gibson and de Leval, bringing forth all the arguments
+that would occur to men of sense and sensibility. Gibson called
+Lancken's attention to their failure to inform the Legation of the
+sentence, of their failure to keep the word that Conrad had given. He
+argued that the offense charged against Miss Cavell had long since been
+accomplished, that as she had been for some weeks in prison a slight
+delay in carrying out the sentence could not endanger the German cause;
+he even pointed out the effect such a deed as the summary execution of
+the death sentence against a woman would have upon public opinion, not
+only in Belgium, but in America, and elsewhere; he even spoke of the
+possibility of reprisals.
+
+[Sidenote: The military authority supreme.]
+
+But it was all in vain. Baron von der Lancken explained to them that the
+Military Governor, that is, General von Saubersweig, was the supreme
+authority in matters of this sort, that an appeal from his decision lay
+only to the Emperor, that the Governor-General himself had no authority
+to intervene in such cases, and that under the provisions of German
+martial law it lay within the discretion of the Military Governor
+whether he would accept or refuse an appeal for clemency. And then
+Villalobar suddenly cried out:
+
+"Oh, come now! It's a woman; you can't shoot a woman like that!"
+
+The Baron paused, was evidently moved.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "it is past eleven o'clock; what can be done?"
+
+[Sidenote: Lancken goes to von Saubersweig.]
+
+It was only von Saubersweig who could act, he had said, and they urged
+the Baron to go to see von Saubersweig. Finally he consented. While he
+was gone Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval repeated to Harrach and von
+Falkenhausen all the arguments that might move them. Von Falkenhausen
+was young, he had been to Cambridge in England, and he was touched,
+though of course he was powerless. And de Leval says that when he gave
+signs of showing pity, Harrach cast a glance at him, so that he said
+nothing more, and then Harrach said:
+
+"The life of one German soldier seems to us much more important than
+that of all these old English nurses."
+
+[Sidenote: Lancken's return.]
+
+At last Lancken returned and, standing there, announced:
+
+"I am exceedingly sorry, but the Governor tells me that only after due
+reflection was the execution decided upon, and that he will not change
+his decision. Under his prerogative he even refuses to receive the plea
+for mercy. Therefore, no one, not even the Emperor, can do anything for
+you."
+
+[Sidenote: The plea for mercy handed back.]
+
+With this he handed my letter and the _requete en grace_ back to Gibson.
+There was a moment of silence in the yellow salon. Then Villalobar
+sprang up and seizing Lancken by the shoulder said to him in an
+energetic tone:
+
+"Baron, I wish to speak to you."
+
+"It is useless," began Lancken.
+
+[Sidenote: The Marquis Villalobar pleads.]
+
+But the old Spanish pride had been mounting in the Marquis, and he
+literally dragged the tall von der Lancken into a little room near by,
+and then voices were heard in sharp discussion, and even through the
+partition the voice of Villalobar:
+
+"It is idiotic, this thing you are going to do; you will have another
+Louvain."
+
+A few moments later they came back, Villalobar in silent rage, Lancken
+very red. And, as de Leval said, without another word, dumb, in
+consternation, filled with an immense despair, they came away.
+
+[Sidenote: The messengers withdraw.]
+
+I heard the report, and they withdrew. A little while and I heard the
+street door open. The women who had waited all that night went out into
+the rain.
+
+The rain had ceased and the air was soft and warm the next morning; the
+sunlight shone through an autumn haze. But over the city the horror of
+the dreadful deed hung like a pall.
+
+[Sidenote: Other prisoners condemned.]
+
+Twenty-six others were condemned with Miss Cavell, four of whom were
+sentenced to death: Philippe Baucq, an architect of Brussels; Louise
+Thuiliez, a school-teacher at Lille; Louis Severin, a pharmacist of
+Brussels; and the Countess Jeanne de Belleville of Montignies-sur-Roc.
+
+[Sidenote: Severe sentences.]
+
+Harman Capian, a civil engineer of Wasmes; Mrs. Ada Bodart of Brussels;
+Albert Libiez, a lawyer of Wasmes; and Georges Derveau, a pharmacist of
+Paturages, were sentenced each to fifteen years' penal servitude at hard
+labor.
+
+The Princess Maria de Croy was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude
+at hard labor.
+
+Seventeen others were sentenced to hard labor or to terms of
+imprisonment of from two to five years. The eight remaining were
+acquitted.
+
+[Sidenote: The people horrified at Miss Cavell's execution.]
+
+All day long sad and solemn groups stood under the trees in the
+boulevards amid the falling leaves discussing the crime in horrified
+tones. The horror of it pervaded the house. I found my wife weeping at
+evening; no need to ask what was the matter; the wife of the chaplain
+had been there, with some detail of Miss Cavell's last hours: how she
+had arisen wearily from her cot at the coming of the clergyman, drawing
+her dressing-gown about her thin throat.
+
+[Sidenote: The body not given to friends.]
+
+I sent a note to Baron von der Lancken asking that the Governor-General
+permit the body of Miss Cavell to be buried by the American Legation and
+the friends of the dead girl. In reply he came himself to see me in the
+afternoon. He was very solemn, and said that he wished to express his
+regret in the circumstances, but that he had done all he could. The
+body, he said, had already been interred, with respect and with
+religious rites, in a quiet place, and under the law it could not be
+exhumed without an order from the Imperial Government. The
+Governor-General himself had gone to Berlin.
+
+[Sidenote: Whitlock and Villalobar.]
+
+And then came Villalobar, and I thanked him for what he had done. He
+told me much, and described the scene the night before in that anteroom
+with Lancken. The Marquis was much concerned about the Countess Jeanne
+de Belleville and Madame Thuiliez, both French, and hence protegees of
+his, condemned to die within eight days; but I told him not to be
+concerned; that the effect of Miss Cavell's martyrdom did not end with
+her death; it would procure other liberations, this among them; the
+thirst for blood had been slaked and there would be no more executions
+in that group; it was the way of the law of blood vengeance. We talked a
+long time about the tragedy and about the even larger tragedy of the
+war.
+
+"We are getting old," he said. "Life is going; and after the war, if we
+live in that new world, we shall be of the old--the new generation will
+push us aside."
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Cavell's death wins mercy for others.]
+
+Gibson and de Leval prepared reports of the whole matter, and I sent
+them by the next courier to our Embassy at London. But somehow that very
+day the news got into Holland and shocked the world. Richards, of the
+C. R. B., just back from The Hague, said that they had already heard of
+it there and were filled with horror. And even the Germans, who seemed
+always to do a deed and to consider its effect afterward, knew that they
+had another Louvain, another _Lusitania_, for which to answer before the
+bar of civilization. The lives of the three others remaining, of the
+five condemned to death, were ultimately spared, as I had told
+Villalobar they would be. The King of Spain and the President of the
+United States made representations at Berlin in behalf of the Countess
+de Belleville and Madame Thuiliez, and their sentences were commuted to
+imprisonment, as was that of Louis Severin, the Brussels druggist. The
+storm of universal loathing and reprobation for the deed was too much
+even for the Germans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an earlier chapter we have read of the beginning of the attempt to
+cross the Dardanelles and to capture the Peninsula of Gallipoli. After
+great losses and terrible suffering had been endured in these attempts,
+it was decided in December, 1915, by the British war authorities that
+further sacrifices were not justified. Preparations were accordingly
+made to abandon the enterprise. How these plans were carried out is told
+in the chapter following.
+
+
+
+
+GALLIPOLI ABANDONED
+
+GENERAL SIR CHARLES C. MONRO
+
+
+On October 20, 1915, in London, I received instructions to proceed as
+soon as possible to the Near East and take over the command of the
+Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.
+
+[Sidenote: General Monro's orders on arrival.]
+
+My duty on arrival was in broad outline:
+
+(a) To report on the military situation on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
+
+(b) To express an opinion whether on purely military grounds the
+Peninsula should be evacuated or another attempt made to carry it.
+
+(c) The number of troops that would be required--
+
+(1) To carry the Peninsula.
+
+(2) To keep the strait open, and
+
+(3) To take Constantinople.
+
+[Sidenote: Military defects in positions occupied.]
+
+The positions occupied by our troops presented a military situation
+unique in history. The mere fringe of the coast line had been secured.
+The beaches and piers upon which they depended for all requirements in
+personnel and material were exposed to registered and observed artillery
+fire. Our intrenchments were dominated almost throughout by the Turks.
+The possible artillery positions were insufficient and defective. The
+force, in short, held a line possessing every possible military defect.
+The position was without depth, the communications were insecure and
+dependent on the weather.
+
+No means existed for the concealment and deployment of fresh troops
+destined for the offensive--while the Turks enjoyed full powers of
+observation, abundant artillery positions, and they had been given the
+time to supplement the natural advantages which the position presented
+by all the devices at the disposal of the field engineer.
+
+[Sidenote: Disease, loss of competent officers, make-shift
+organization.]
+
+Another material factor came prominently before me. The troops on the
+Peninsula had suffered much from various causes--exposure to shell fire,
+disease, the dearth of competent officers owing to earlier losses, and
+"make-shifts" due to the attachment of Yeomanry and Mounted Brigades to
+the Territorial Divisions. Other arguments, irrefutable in their
+conclusions, convinced me that a complete evacuation was the only wise
+course to pursue.
+
+[Sidenote: Consequences of unusual storms.]
+
+On November 21, 1915 the Peninsula was visited by a storm said to be
+nearly unprecedented for the time of the year. The storm was accompanied
+by torrential rain, which lasted for twenty-four hours. This was
+followed by hard frost and a heavy blizzard. In the areas of the Eighth
+Corps and the Anzac Corps the effects were not felt to a very marked
+degree owing to the protection offered by the surrounding hills. The
+Ninth Corps was less favorably situated, the water courses in this area
+became converted into surging rivers, which carried all before them. The
+water rose in many places to the height of the parapets and all means of
+communications were prevented.
+
+The men, drenched as they were by the rain, suffered from the subsequent
+blizzard most severely. Large numbers collapsed from exposure and
+exhaustion, and in spite of untiring efforts that were made to mitigate
+the suffering I regret to announce that there were 200 deaths from
+exposure and over 10,000 sick evacuated during the first few days of
+December.
+
+From reports given by deserters it is probable that the Turks suffered
+even to a greater degree.
+
+[Sidenote: Difficulties pertaining to withdrawal.]
+
+The problem with which we were confronted was the withdrawal of an army
+of a considerable size from positions in no cases more than 300 yards
+from the enemy's trenches, and its embarkation on open beaches, every
+part of which was within effective range of Turkish guns, and from which
+in winds from the south or southwest, the withdrawal of troops was not
+possible.
+
+I came to the conclusion that our chances of success were infinitely
+more probable if we made no departure of any kind from the normal life
+which we were following both on sea and on land. A feint which did not
+fully fulfill its purpose would have been worse than useless, and there
+was the obvious danger that the suspicions of the Turks would be aroused
+by our adoption of a course the real purport of which could not have
+been long disguised.
+
+[Sidenote: Unsettled weather a menace.]
+
+Rapidity of action was imperative, having in view the unsettled weather
+which might be expected in the AEgean. The success of our operations was
+entirely dependent on weather conditions. Even a mild wind from the
+south or southwest was found to raise such a ground swell as to greatly
+impede communication with the beaches, while anything in the nature of a
+gale from this direction could not fail to break up the piers, wreck the
+small craft, and thus definitely prevent any steps being taken toward
+withdrawal.
+
+[Sidenote: Evacuation of supplies continues satisfactorily.]
+
+Throughout the period December 10 to 18, 1915 the withdrawal proceeded
+under the most auspicious conditions, and the morning of December 18,
+1915, found the positions both at Anzac and Suvla reduced to the numbers
+determined, while the evacuation of guns, animals, stores, and supplies
+had continued most satisfactorily.
+
+It was imperative, of course, that the front-line trenches should be
+held, however lightly, until the very last moment and that the
+withdrawal from these trenches should be simultaneous throughout the
+line.
+
+The good fortune which had attended the evacuation continued during the
+night of the 19th-20th. The night was perfectly calm with a slight haze
+over the moon, an additional stroke of good luck, as there was a full
+moon on that night.
+
+[Sidenote: Final withdrawals from Anzac and Suvla.]
+
+Soon after dark the covering ships were all in position, and the final
+withdrawal began. At 1:30 A. M. the withdrawal of the rear parties
+commenced from the front trenches at Suvla and the left of Anzac. Those
+on the right of Anzac who were nearer the beach remained in position
+until 2 A. M. By 5:30 A. M. the last man had quit the trenches.
+
+At Anzac, four 18-pounder guns, two 5-inch howitzers, one 4.7 naval gun,
+one anti-air craft, and two 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns were left, but they
+were destroyed before the troops finally embarked. In addition,
+fifty-six mules, a certain number of carts, mostly stripped of their
+wheels, and some supplies which were set on fire, were also abandoned.
+
+[Sidenote: A few supplies destroyed.]
+
+At Suvla every gun, vehicle and animal was embarked, and all that
+remained was a small stock of supplies, which were burned.
+
+On December 28, 1915, your Lordship's telegram ordering the evacuation
+of Helles was received, whereupon, in view of the possibility of bad
+weather intervening, I instructed the General Officer Commanding
+Dardanelles Army to complete the operation as rapidly as possible. He
+was reminded that every effort conditional on not exposing the personnel
+to undue risk should be made to save all 60-pounder and 18-pounder
+guns, 6-inch and 4.5 howitzers, with their ammunition and other
+accessories, such as mules, and A. T. carts, limbered wagons, &c.
+
+[Sidenote: Situation on Gallipoli Peninsula.]
+
+[Sidenote: Increase in Turkish artillery.]
+
+At a meeting which was attended by the Vice Admiral and the General
+Officer Commanding Dardanelles Army I explained the course which I
+thought we should adopt to again deceive the Turks as to our intentions.
+The situation on the Peninsula had not materially changed owing to our
+withdrawal from Suvla and Anzac, except that there was a marked
+increased activity in aerial reconnoissance over our positions, and the
+islands of Mudros and Imbros, and that hostile patrolling of our
+trenches was more frequent and daring. The most apparent factor was that
+the number of heavy guns on the European and Asiatic shores had been
+considerably augmented, and that these guns were more liberally supplied
+with German ammunition, the result of which was that our beaches were
+continuously shelled, especially from the Asiatic shore. I gave it as my
+opinion that in my judgment I did not regard a feint as an operation
+offering any prospect of success; and it was decided the navy should do
+their utmost to pursue a course of retaliation against the Turkish
+batteries, but to refrain from any unusually aggressive attitude should
+the Turkish guns remain quiescent.
+
+[Sidenote: General Birdwood's comprehensive plans.]
+
+General Sir W. Birdwood had, in anticipation of being ordered to
+evacuate Helles, made such complete and far-seeing arrangements that he
+was able to proceed without delay to the issue of the comprehensive
+orders which the consummation of such a delicate operation in war
+requires.
+
+[Sidenote: French infantry embarked.]
+
+The evacuation, following the same system as was practiced at Suvla and
+Anzac, proceeded without delay. The French infantry remaining on the
+Peninsula were relieved on the night of January 1-2, 1916, and were
+embarked by the French navy on the following nights. Progress, however,
+was slower than had been hoped, owing to delays caused by accident and
+the weather. One of our largest horse ships was sunk by a French
+battleship, whereby the withdrawal was considerably retarded, and at the
+same time strong winds sprang up which interfered materially with work
+on the beaches. The character of the weather now setting in offered so
+little hope of a calm period of any duration that General Sir W.
+Birdwood arranged with Admiral Sir J. de Robeck for the assistance of
+some destroyers in order to accelerate the progress of re-embarkation.
+
+[Sidenote: Turks shell trenches and beaches.]
+
+Meanwhile the Eighth Corps had maintained the offensive spirit in
+bombing and minor operations with which they had established the moral
+superiority they enjoyed over the enemy. On December 29, 1915 the
+Fifty-second Division completed the excellent work which they had been
+carrying out for so long by capturing a considerable portion of the
+Turkish trenches, and by successfully holding these in the face of
+repeated counter-attacks. The shelling of our trenches and beaches,
+however, increased in frequency and intensity, and the average daily
+casualties continued to increase.
+
+On January 7, 1916, the enemy developed heavy artillery fire on the
+trenches held by the Thirteenth Division, while the Asiatic guns shelled
+those occupied by the Royal Naval Division. The bombardment, which was
+reported to be the heaviest experienced since we landed in April, lasted
+from noon until 5 P. M., and was intensive between 3 and 3:30 P. M.
+
+January 8, 1916 was a bright, calm day, with a light breeze from the
+south. There was every indication of the continuance of favorable
+conditions, and, in the opinion of the meteorological officer, no
+important change was to be expected for at least twenty-four hours. The
+Turkish artillery was unusually inactive. All preparations for the
+execution of the final stage were complete.
+
+[Sidenote: Unfavorable weather.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hostile submarine near by.]
+
+About 7 P. M. the breeze freshened considerably from the southwest, the
+most unfavorable quarter, but the first trip, timed for 8 P. M., was
+dispatched without difficulty. The wind, however, continued to rise
+until, by 11 P. M., the connecting pier between the hulks and the shore
+at "W" Beach was washed away by heavy seas, and further embarkation into
+destroyers from these hulks became impracticable. In spite of these
+difficulties the second trips, which commenced at 11:30 P. M., were
+carried out well up to time, and the embarkation of guns continued
+uninterruptedly. Early in the evening reports had been received from the
+right flank that a hostile submarine was believed to be moving down the
+strait, and about midnight H. M. S. _Prince George_, which had embarked
+2,000 men, and was sailing for Mudros, reported she was struck by a
+torpedo which failed to explode. The indications of the presence of a
+submarine added considerably to the anxiety for the safety of the troop
+carriers, and made it necessary for the Vice Admiral to modify the
+arrangements made for the subsequent bombardment of the evacuated
+positions.
+
+[Sidenote: Gully Beach embarkation completed.]
+
+At 1:50 A. M., Gully Beach reported that the embarkation at that beach
+was complete, and that the lighters were about to push off, but at 2:10
+A. M. a telephone message was received that one of the lighters was
+aground and could not be refloated. The N. T. O. at once took all
+possible steps to have another lighter sent in to Gully Beach, and this
+was, as a matter of fact, done within an hour, but in the meantime, at
+2:30 A. M. it was decided to move the 160 men who had been relanded
+from the grounded lighter to "W" Beach and embark them there.
+
+[Sidenote: Conflagrations show Turks the allies have withdrawn.]
+
+At 3:30 A. M. the evacuation was complete, and abandoned heaps of stores
+and supplies were successfully set on fire by time fuses after the last
+man had embarked. Two magazines of ammunition and explosives were also
+successfully blown up at 4 A. M. These conflagrations were apparently
+the first intimation received by the Turks that we had withdrawn. Red
+lights were immediately discharged from the enemy's trenches, and heavy
+artillery fire opened on our trenches and beaches. This shelling was
+maintained until about 6:30 A. M.
+
+[Sidenote: Good luck and skilled organization forthcoming.]
+
+Apart from four unserviceable fifteen-pounders which had been destroyed
+earlier in the month, ten worn-out fifteen-pounders, one six-inch Mark
+VII gun, and six old heavy French guns, all of which were previously
+blown up, were left on the Peninsula. In addition to the above, 508
+animals, most of which were destroyed, and a number of vehicles and
+considerable quantities of stores, material, and supplies, all of which
+were destroyed by burning, had to be abandoned.
+
+[Sidenote: Competent officers in charge.]
+
+The entire evacuation of the Peninsula had now been completed. It
+demanded for its successful realization two important military
+essentials, viz., good luck and skilled disciplined organization, and
+they were both forthcoming to a marked degree at the hour needed. Our
+luck was in the ascendant by the marvelous spell of calm weather which
+prevailed. But we were able to turn to the fullest advantage these
+accidents of fortune.
+
+Lieutenant General Sir W. Birdwood and his corps commanders elaborated
+and prepared the orders in reference to the evacuation with a skill,
+competence, and courage which could not have been surpassed, and we had
+a further stroke of good fortune in being associated with Vice Admiral
+Sir J. de Robeck, K. C. B., Vice Admiral Wemyss, and a body of naval
+officers whose work remained throughout this anxious period at that
+standard of accuracy and professional ability which is beyond the power
+of criticism or cavil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The form of "frightfulness" in which the Germans placed the greatest
+faith was the terrorizing of the inhabitants of unprotected enemy cities
+by bombs from Zeppelins and aeroplanes. While the objects for which
+these atrocities were perpetrated were not attained, hundreds of
+innocent men, women, and children were murdered. The following narrative
+describes one of these German air raids.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH-SHIP IN THE SKY
+
+PERRITON MAXWELL
+
+Copyright Forum, August, 1916.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The switchman at Walthamstow.]
+
+For twenty-six years old Tom Cumbers had held his job as switchman at
+the Walthamstow railroad junction where the London-bound trains come up
+from Southend to the great city. It was an important post and old Tom
+filled it with stolid British efficiency. A kindly man who felt himself
+an integral part of the giant railroad system that employed him, old Tom
+had few interests beyond his work, his white-haired wife, his reeking
+pipe and the little four-room tenement in Walthamstow which he called
+home. The latter was one of the thousands of two-storied rabbit-hatches
+of sooty, yellow brick, all alike and all incredibly ugly, which
+stretch, mile upon mile, from Walthamstow toward London's tumultuous
+heart.
+
+[Sidenote: The workshops near Epping Forest.]
+
+[Sidenote: An appalling tragedy of the war.]
+
+Within a radius of four dun miles, just on the nearer edge of Epping
+Forest--the scene in a forgotten day of Robin Hood's adventurings--a
+section of these huddling homes of the submerged, together with a street
+of trams and some pathetic shops, constitute this town of Walthamstow.
+It is a sordid, unlovely place, but for some ten thousand
+wage-strugglers it is all of England. There are workshops hereabout in
+which one may mingle one's copious sweat with the grime of machinery and
+have fourteen shillings a week into the bargain--if one is properly
+skilled and muscular and bovinely plodding. Walthamstow is not the place
+where one would deliberately choose to live if bread could be earned
+elsewhere with equal certainty. But for all its dirt and dullness it has
+a spot on the map and a meaning in the dull souls of its inhabitants,
+and here, within half an hour's train travel of the Lord Mayor's Mansion
+and the golden vaults of the Bank of England, transpired on the
+sweltering night of which I write, one of the most witless and appalling
+tragedies of the present war. Forever memorable in the hitherto
+colorless calendar of Walthamstow will be this tragedy in the second
+year of Armageddon.
+
+[Sidenote: An ordinary hot night.]
+
+[Sidenote: News of the war.]
+
+Beyond the stenchful heat-stress of it, there was nothing up to
+half-past eleven to mark this night as different from its fellows of the
+past. From eight o'clock till ten the small activities of the town
+centered chiefly about its tramway terminus, its smudgy station, its
+three or four moving-picture theatres, and its fetid pubs. On the
+pavements, in the roadways and at every crossing, corduroyed men yawned
+and spat, and slatternly women, most of them with whimpering infants in
+their arms, talked of shop or household cares and the frailties of their
+neighbors. Some, more alive to the big events of a clashing world,
+repeated the meagre news of the ha'penny press and dwelt with prideful
+fervor on the latest bit of heroism reported from the front. Now and
+again an outburst of raucous humor echoed above the babble of cockney
+tongues. The maudlin clamor of "a pore lone lidy 'oos 'subing 'ad
+desarted 'er" failed to arouse anyone's curiosity. Ladies in their cups
+are not a rarity in Walthamstow. In side streets, lads in khaki, many of
+them fresh from fields of slaughter "somewhere in Flanders," sported
+boisterously with their factory-girl sweethearts or spooned in the
+shadows. Everywhere grubby children in scant clothing shrilled and
+scampered and got in the way. Humidity enveloped the town like a sodden
+cloak and its humanity stewed in moist and smelly discomfort.
+
+[Sidenote: Street lamps out.]
+
+But shortly after eleven o'clock the whole place became suddenly and
+majestically still and black. People who go to their work at sunrise
+cannot afford the extravagance of midnight revelry, and there are few
+street-lamps alight after ten o'clock in any London suburb in these
+times of martial law. Walthamstow slept in heated but profound oblivion
+of its mean existence. Beyond the town lay, like a prostrate giant
+camel, the heat-blurred silhouette of the classic forest. Low over
+Walthamstow hung the festoons of flat, humid clouds, menacing storm, but
+motionless.
+
+[Sidenote: The rhythm of the Zeppelin.]
+
+[Sidenote: The train to serve as pilot to London.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Zeppelin forced to travel low.]
+
+If there was no disturbance in the clouds themselves there was among
+them something very active, something that drilled its way through them
+with a muffled whirring, something that was oblong and lean and light of
+texture, that was ominous and menacing for all its buoyancy. The sound
+it made was too high up, too thickly shrouded by clouds, to determine
+its precise position. It gave forth a breathing of persistent, definite
+rhythm. This was plainly not the wing-stroke of a nocturnal bird; for no
+bird, big or little, could advertise its flight in such perfect
+pulsation. And yet it was a bird, a Gargantuan, man-made bird with
+murder in its talons and hatred in its heart. From its steel nest in
+Germanized Belgium this whirring monster had soared eight thousand feet
+and crossed the Channel with little fear of discovery. It had penetrated
+the English Coast somewhere down Sheerness way and over Southend and
+then, dropping lower, had sought and found through the haze the tiny
+train whose locomotive had just fluted its brief salutation to
+Walthamstow. To the close-cropped men on the Zeppelin, the string of
+cars far down under their feet, with its side-flare from lighted
+windows, its engine's headlamp and its sparks, had proved a providential
+pilotage. They knew that this train was on the main line, and that it
+would lead them straight to the great Liverpool Street Station, and that
+was London, and it was London wharfs and ammunition works along the
+Thames that they had planned to obliterate with their cylinders of
+mechanical doom. But the moist clouds which aided so materially in
+hiding the Zeppelin's presence from below also worked for its defeat, in
+so far as its ultimate objective was concerned, for to keep the guiding
+train in view it was compelled to travel lower and yet lower--so low,
+indeed, as to make it a target for Kitchener's sentinels.
+
+[Sidenote: The switchman signals "danger."]
+
+[Sidenote: The train stops at Walthamstow.]
+
+Somehow, by sight or intuition or the instant commingling of the two,
+old Tom Cumbers became aware of the danger above him; for he sprang to
+his switch, shut off all the cheery blue and white lights along "the
+line" and swung on with a mighty jerk the ruby signal of danger. The
+engineer in the on-rushing train jammed down his brakes and brought up
+his locomotive with a complaining, grinding moan, a hundred yards beyond
+Walthamstow station. Tom Cumbers had done a greater thing than any other
+in all his existence.
+
+[Sidenote: The German revenge.]
+
+That by his act the Germans in their speeding sky-craft were baffled
+there is no doubt. They had lost their trail of fire; their involuntary
+guide had disappeared in the gloom. The airmen's long journey had
+suddenly become fruitless; their peril from hidden British guns and
+flying scouts was increased tenfold. The heat of the night was as
+nothing to the hot surge of disappointment that must have swept the
+brains of the Zeppelin crew. Their commander, too, must have lost his
+judgment utterly, forgotten his sense of military effectiveness.
+Whatever happened, he sacrificed his soul when he turned his cloud-ship
+aside from the railway line, steered over the shabby roofs of
+Walthamstow and, at less than two thousand feet, unloosed his iron dogs
+of destruction.
+
+[Sidenote: Bombing tenements of a defenseless town.]
+
+I have it on the authority of experienced aviators that it is not
+impossible on a dark night to distinguish buildings of importance like
+St. Paul's or the Houses of Parliament or a great gun factory or a river
+as broad as the Thames with its uprearing and frequent bridges. The
+crowding tenements of Walthamstow could have had no semblance to any of
+these, at any height. It would seem a cheap and worthless revenge, then,
+to wreck an unimportant and defenceless town, having failed to wreck the
+military nerve-center of the world's metropolis. But this is what one of
+Count Zeppelin's soaring dreadnoughts did in this night, in this
+blood-drenched year.
+
+
+[Sidenote: When a bomb explodes.]
+
+Like the mirage of a tropical island the dirigible hung motionless in
+space for a breathless minute. There was a wavering pin-prick of light
+in the carriage suspended from the leviathan's belly--a light that
+fluttered fore and aft as of a man with a fairy lantern running to and
+fro giving orders or taking them. Then faintly discernible against the
+sky, like a rope hung down for anchorage, came a thin, gray streak--the
+tail of a bomb with all hell in its wake. From somewhere near the town's
+centre the earth split and roared apart. The world reeled and a
+brain-shattering crash compounded of all the elements of pain and hurled
+from the shoulders of a thousand thunderclaps smote the senses. It was a
+blast of sickening and malignant fury. It did not so much stun as it
+stopped one--stopped the breath and the heart's beat, suspending
+thought, halting life itself for a fraction of time. One was, somehow,
+aware of existence but without sensation. And then came reaction and
+the realization of what was really taking place. The German's bomb
+landed fully ten blocks away, but you would have taken oath in court
+that it had fallen at your feet, behind you, above you and into your
+very brain.
+
+[Sidenote: Terror of the people.]
+
+[Sidenote: A broken gas main.]
+
+An air raid on Walthamstow, which drab town can boast neither ammunition
+works nor the ownership of war material of any description, could not be
+at once realized. But here was the cyclonic fact, hideously real,
+appallingly actual; and there in the heavens was the buoyant Zeppelin
+maneuvering for further mischief. The reverberation of the first
+explosion was still grumbling back in Epping Forest when all
+Walthamstow, rubbing its eyes, tumbled out into the black streets. Men,
+women, children, all ludicrously clotheless, swarmed aimlessly like bees
+in an overturned hive. Stark terror gripped them. It distorted their
+faces and set their legs quivering. The dullest among these toil-dulled
+people knew what that explosion meant, knew that it was part of the
+punishment promised by the German foe. "Gott strafe England" had come to
+pass. But they could not understand why the enemy had singled them out
+for such drastic distinction. The more alert and cool-headed of the men
+battled with their fellows and shouted instructions to get the women
+folks and the kiddies back indoors and down into their cellars. The
+night-gowned and pajamaed throng could not be persuaded that safety lay
+not in sight of the Zeppelin but away from it. The hypnotism of horror
+lured them on to where twelve houses lay spread about in smoking chaos,
+a plateau of blazing and noisome havoc. Somewhere a gas-main burst with
+a roar and drove the crowd back with its choking fumes as no human hands
+could have done. Women frankly hysterical or swooning were roughly
+thrust aside. Children shrieking in uncomprehending panic were swept
+along with the crowd or trodden upon. Lumbering men ran and shouted and
+cursed and shook hairy fists at the long blot on the clouds. Some of the
+men leaped over iron palings like startled rabbits and flung themselves
+in the grass, face downward and quaking. And yet, I dare say that most
+of these would have walked straight into a familiar danger without the
+waver of an eyelash; it was the unknown peril, the doubt as to how and
+whence this hurtling death might spring upon them out of the night, that
+unhinged their manhood. And while Walthamstow's walls went down and
+great flame-tongues spouted where homes had stood, while the thick, hot
+air was tortured with agonized and inhuman cries, the enemy up above let
+loose another bolt.
+
+[Sidenote: The second bomb as the town blazes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effects of the explosion.]
+
+More terrible than the first explosion was, or seemed, this second one.
+It mowed down half a hundred shrieking souls. And it was curious to note
+the lateral action of the blast when it hit a resisting surface.
+Dynamite explodes with a downward or upward force, lyddite and
+nitro-glycerine and what not other devil's own powers act more or less
+in the same set manner. But the furious ingredients of these bombs
+hurled on Walthamstow contained stuff that released a discharge which
+swept all things from it horizontally, in a quarter-mile, lightning
+sweep, like a scythe of flame. A solid block of shabby villas was laid
+out as flat as your palm by the explosion of this second bomb. Scarcely
+a brick was left standing upright. What houses escaped demolition around
+the edge of the convulsion had their doors and windows splintered into
+rubbish. The concussion of this chemical frenzy was felt, like an
+earthquake, in a ten-mile circle. Wherever the scorching breath of the
+bombs breathed on stone or metal it left a sulphurous, yellow-white
+veneer, acrid in odor and smooth to the touch. Whole street-lengths of
+twisted iron railings were coated with this murderous white-wash.
+
+[Sidenote: More bombs as the Zeppelin rises.]
+
+[Sidenote: Freaks of the explosion.]
+
+Having made sure of its mark, the ravaging Zeppelin rose higher on the
+discharge of its first bomb and still higher after firing the second. At
+the safe distance of four thousand feet it dropped three more shells
+recklessly, haphazard. One of these bored cleanly through a slate-tiled
+roof, through furniture and two floorings and burrowed ten feet into the
+ground without exploding. This intact shell has since been carefully
+analyzed by the experts of the Board of Explosions at the British War
+Office. Another bomb detonated on the steel rails of the Walthamstow
+tram-line and sent them curling skyward from their rivetted foundations
+like serpentine wisps of paper. Great cobblestones were heaved through
+shop windows and partitions and out into the flower-beds of rear
+gardens; some of the cobbles were flung through solid attic blinds and
+others were catapulted through brick walls a foot in thickness. A hole
+as big as a moving-van burned into the road at one place. In a side
+street an impromptu fountain squirted playfully into the dust-burdened
+air, the result of a central water-pipe punctured by a slug from one of
+the bomb's iron entrails. But these things were not noted until dawn and
+comparative peace had returned to Walthamstow and men could count with
+some degree the cost of the reckless invasion.
+
+[Sidenote: British aeroplanes pursue.]
+
+Before the clouds had swallowed up the hateful visitant the noise of its
+attack had aroused the military guards across Epping Forest, in
+Chingford village, and, aided by a search-light, the anti-aircraft-gun
+opened its unavailing fire on the Zeppelin--ineffective, except that its
+returning shrapnel smashed up several roofs and battered some innocent
+heads. The Germans had gauged their skyward path to London along which,
+apparently, they felt reasonably safe from gun-reach. But they had
+barely headed homeward before a flock of army aeroplanes, rising from
+all points of the compass, were in hot pursuit. One of the Britishers
+was shot down by the men aboard the Zeppelin. Neither speed nor daring
+counts for much in an encounter between flying-machines and swift
+dirigibles of the latest types. The advantage lies solely with the one
+that can overfly his adversary. This can be achieved by a biplane or
+monoplane pilot only if he has a long start from the ground and time
+enough to surmount his opponent. This is difficult even in daylight with
+a cloudless sky. Given darkness and clouds, the chances for success are
+tremendously against the smaller craft.
+
+[Sidenote: The old switchman a victim.]
+
+Eight bombs in all were launched on Walthamstow--two of them
+ineffectual. The sixth bomb fell into a field close beside the railway
+line and worked a hideous wonder. It blew into never-to-be-gathered
+fragments all that was mortal of old Tom Cumbers, the signalman. They
+found only his left hand plastered gruesomely against the grassy bank of
+the railway cut--not a hair nor button else.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great series of attacks by the massed German Army against the mighty
+forces of Verdun began in February, 1917, and continued throughout the
+following months. Taken as a whole, it was the most dramatic effort in
+all its phases which took place between the German and French forces.
+The French showed during these terrible months, the spirit of devotion
+and sacrifice which was never excelled during the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 5, "Liege" changed to "Liege" (The Defense of Liege)
+
+Page 11, "again" changed to "against" (against the anarchist)
+
+Page 24, "Petersberg" changed to "Petersburg" (and St. Petersburg
+Cabinets)
+
+Page 28, "thave" changed to "have" (must have rejoiced)
+
+Page 35, "neighbor" changed to "neighbour" to match rest of text (her
+western neighbour)
+
+Page 41, "Liege" changed to "Liege" (strong fortress of Liege)
+
+Page 41, "LIEGE" changed to "LIEGE"
+
+Page 57, Sidenote: "centimeter" changed to "centimetre" to match text
+(Forty-two centimetre)
+
+Page 74, Sidenote: "Compiegne" changed to "Compiegne" (towards
+Compiegne-Soissons)
+
+Page 77, "Ferte" changed to "Ferte" (Changis, La Ferte, Nogent)
+
+Page 83, "betweeen" changed to "between" (right between the Vosges)
+
+Page 85, "Liege" changed to "Liege" (weeks at Liege Namur)
+
+Page 92, "Chateau" changed to "Chateau" (Marne below Chateau-Thierry)
+
+Page 92, Sidenote: "center" changed to "centre" to match text (on the
+French centre)
+
+Page 92, "Chateau" changed to "Chateau"
+(Humbauville-Chateau-Beauchamp-Bignicourt)
+
+Page 93, "Fere" changed to "Fere" (east of Fere-Champenoise)
+
+Page 93, Sidenote: "man[oe]uvers" changed to "man[oe]uvres" to match
+text (Foch out-man[oe]uvres Germans)
+
+Page 93, "center" changed to "centre" to match text (Centre armies
+established)
+
+Page 110, "statute" changed to "statue" (in front of the statue)
+
+Page 119, Sidenote: "sand-dunes" changed to "sand dunes" (Battle of the
+sand dunes)
+
+Page 124, "is" changed to "are" (Allies are explained)
+
+Page 136, word "her" inserted into text (to her knees)
+
+Page 137, "strongely" changed to "strongly" (not be so strongly)
+
+Page 169, "most" changed to "must" (crew must have beheld)
+
+Page 171, double word "the" deleted. Original text read: "overtaken the
+the transports".
+
+Page 191, "ships" changed to "ship" (sails of the first ship)
+
+Page 195, "intrument" changed to "instrument" (no probing instrument)
+
+Page 221, "hocky" changed to "hockey" (and hockey teams)
+
+Page 233, Sidenote: "Aeroplanes" changed to "Aeroplanes" (Aeroplanes
+attacked by artillery)
+
+Page 236, "oof" changed to "of" (mere taking of the)
+
+Page 251, "blow" changed to "blown" (been blown up)
+
+Page 276, "asphxiating" changed to "asphyxiating" (No asphyxiating gases)
+
+Page 280, "advoided" changed to "avoided" (always be avoided)
+
+Page 288, "ships's" changed to "ship's" (ship's crew were confident)
+
+Page 288, "volminous" changed to "voluminous" (voluminous to analyze)
+
+Page 302, "that" changed to "than" (conclusion than in)
+
+Page 307, "submarines" changed to "submarine" (submarine warfare in)
+
+Page 314,  word "a" inserted into text (vantage-point on a crag)
+
+Page 310, "N." changed to "No." (Book No. 2, U. S.)
+
+Page 333, "to" changed to "of" (advantage of this)
+
+Page 336, "These" changed to "Those" (Those Germans who)
+
+Page 338, "Trapeze" changed to "Trapeze" (of the Trapeze which)
+
+Page 339, word "the" inserted into text (from the summit)
+
+Page 343, "arrival" changed to "arrived" (224 arrived safe)
+
+Page 356, Sidenote: "executive" changed to "execution" (delay of
+execution)
+
+Page 359, Sidenote: "De-" changed to "Der" (Der Lancken believes)
+
+Page 367, word "had" inserted into text (and they had been)
+
+Both "Ypres-Poelcapelle" and "Ypres-Poelcappelle" appear in the text.
+Both spellings were retained.
+
+Manoeuvre, man[oe]uvre and maneuvre were used and retained.
+
+Both Ripon and Ripont appear in this text. Ripont seems more accurate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of World's War Events, Vol. I, by Various
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