diff options
Diffstat (limited to '42374-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 42374-0.txt | 6414 |
1 files changed, 6414 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/42374-0.txt b/42374-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2dc60c9 --- /dev/null +++ b/42374-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6414 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42374 *** + +TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES" + +[Illustration: "THE THREE ADMIRALS:" REAR ADMIRAL ROBINSON, U. S. N. +(LEFT), VICE ADMIRAL BROWNING, R. N. (CENTER), REAR ADMIRAL GROSSET +(FRENCH) (RIGHT)] + + + + + TO KIEL IN THE + "HERCULES" + + BY + LIEUT. LEWIS R. FREEMAN, R. N. V. R. + + Official Correspondent with the Grand Fleet, and Member + of Staff of Allied Naval Armistice Commission + + _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM + PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR_ + + [Illustration] + + NEW YORK + DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY + 1919 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1919 + BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. + + + VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY + + BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I INTO GERMAN WATERS 1 + + II GETTING DOWN TO WORK 31 + + III FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF "STARVING GERMANY" 61 + + IV ACROSS THE SANDS TO NORDERNEY 92 + + V NORDHOLZ, THE DEN OF THE ZEPPELINS 122 + + VI MERCHANT SHIPPING 154 + + VII THE BOMBING OF TONDERN 179 + + VIII THROUGH THE CANAL TO THE BALTIC 198 + + IX TO WARNEMÜNDE AND RÜGEN 224 + + X JUTLAND AS A GERMAN SAW IT 255 + + XI BACK TO BASE 283 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + PAGE + + "The Three Admirals." Rear Admiral Robinson, U. S. N. + (left), Vice Admiral Browning, R. N. (center), Rear + Admiral Grosset, (French) (right) _Frontispiece_ + + Heligoland in sight! 18 + + Members of the Allied Naval Commission, Admiral Browning + in center 34 + + The Allied Naval Commission and Staff, taken on board + _Hercules_ 34 + + The Padre of the _Hercules_ talking with newly arrived + British prisoners 40 + + In the Elbe, Hamburg 166 + + Railroad station at Hamburg 166 + + Floating dock for lifting submarines in Kiel Harbour 182 + + Birdseye view of Kiel 192 + + In Kiel dockyard 192 + + H. M. S. _Viceroy_ entering Kiel Canal lock at Brunsbüttel 200 + + Semaphore station on Kiel Canal, from _Hercules_ 206 + + Kiel dockyard from the Harbour 214 + + Foreshore of Kiel Harbour with the Kaiserlich Yacht + Club at left of grove of trees 220 + + _Hindy_ (left) and German pilot who claimed to have + launched the torpedo which damaged the _Sussex_ 228 + + British prisoners and German sailors at Warnemünde 240 + + View of Kiel Canal from nearmost turret of the _Hercules_ 258 + + _Hercules_, with three V class destroyers in Kiel Harbour 266 + + H. M. S. _Hercules_ and H. M. S. _Constance_ in Kiel locks 286 + + + + +TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES" + + + + +TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES" + + + + +I + +INTO GERMAN WATERS + + +"The _Regensburg_ has been calling us for some time," said the chief +signal officer as he came down for his belated "watch" luncheon in the +ward-room, "and it looks as though we might expect to see her come +nosing up out of the mist any time after two o'clock. She excuses +herself for being late at the rendezvous by saying that the fog has been +so thick in the Bight that she had to anchor during the night. It's not +any too good a prospect for a look-see at Heligoland, for our course +hardly takes us within three miles of it at the nearest." + +It was in a fog that the _Hercules_ had dropped down through the moored +lines of the Grand Fleet the previous morning, it was in a fog that she +had felt her way out of the Firth of Forth and by devious mine-swept +channels to the North Sea, and it was still in a fog that she--the +first surface warship of the Allies to penetrate deeply into them since +the Battle of the Bight, not long after the outbreak of the war--was +approaching German waters. Indeed, the whole last act of the great +naval drama--from the coming of the _Königsberg_ to the Forth, with +a delegation to receive the terms of surrender, to the incomparable +pageant of the surrender itself--had been played out behind the fitful +and uncertain raisings and lowerings of a fog-curtain; and now the +epilogue--wherein there was promise that much, if not all, that had +remained a mystery throughout the unfolding of the war drama itself +should be finally revealed--was being held up through the wilfulness +of this same perverse scene-shifter. The light cruiser, _Regensburg_, +which, "according to plan," was to have met us at nine that morning at a +rendezvous suggested by the German Naval Staff, and pilot the _Hercules_ +through the mine-fields, had not been sighted by early afternoon. +Numerous floating mines, rolling lazily in the bow-wave spreading to +port and starboard and ogling us with leering, moon-faced impudence +in the fog, had been sighted since daybreak, auguring darkly of the +explosive barrier through which we were passing by the "safe course" the +Germans (in lieu of the promised charts which had failed to arrive) had +advised us by wireless to follow. + +Now mines, floating or submerged, are not pleasant things to navigate +among. Although, theoretically, it is impossible for any ship to run +into a floating mine even if she tries (the bow-wave tending to throw +it off, as many experiments have proved); and although, theoretically, +a ship fitted with paravanes cannot bring her hull into contact with +a moored mine; yet the fact remained that ships were being lost right +along from both kinds. It seemed high time, then, in the case of the +_Hercules_ and her escorting destroyers, that the German Navy, which +had undertaken to see them safely through the mine barrier, and which +knew more about the pattern of its death-traps than any one else, should +begin to shoulder some of its responsibilities. It was good news that +the _Regensburg_ was about to make a tardy appearance and hand over a +hostage in the form of a German pilot. + + * * * * * + +The blank grey fog-curtain which trailed its misty folds across the +ward-room scuttles discouraged all of the grate-side loungers whom I +tried to bestir to go up at two o'clock to watch for the appearance of +the _Regensburg_, and, meeting, with no better success in the snugly +comfortable "commission-room" into which the former gun-room had been +converted for the voyage, I mounted alone the iron ladders which led to +the lofty vantage of the signal bridge. There was only a few hundred +yards of visibility, but the even throb of the engines, the swift run +of the foam along the sides, and the sharp sting of the air on my cheek +told that there had been little if any abatement of the steady speed of +seventeen knots at which _Hercules_ had been steaming since she passed +May Island the previous day at noon. The _Regensburg_, the chief yeoman +of signals told me, had made a W.T. to say that she had been compelled +by the fog to slow down again, and this, he figured, might make it +between three and four o'clock before we picked her up. "There's no use +waiting for the Huns, sir," he said, with a tired smile. "The hanging +back habit, which they were four years in cultivating, seems to have +grown on them so that they're hanging back even yet. Best go down and +wait where it's warm, and I'll send a boy to call you when we know for +certain when she'll turn up." + +My foot was on the ladder, when the sight of a seagull dancing a giddy +_pas seul_ on the titillating horn of a mine bobbing off astern recalled +a story an Italian destroyer skipper had once told me, of how he had +seen an Albanian sea eagle blow itself up as a consequence of executing +a precisely similar manoeuvre. I lingered to get the chief yeoman's +opinion of what I had hitherto considered a highly apocryphal yarn, +and when he was called away to take down a signal to pass back to the +destroyers, the loom of what looked to me like a ship taking shape in +the fog drew me over to the starboard rail. It dissolved and disappeared +as my glass focussed on it, only to raise its amorphous blur again a +point or so further abeam. Then I recognized it, and smiled indulgent +welcome to an old friend of many watches--the first cousin to the +mirage, the looming shape which a man peering hard into thick fog keeps +_thinking_ he sees at one end or the other of the arc of his angle of +vision. + +Any man actually on watch knows better than to let his mind take +liberties with "fog pictures," and not a few of those who have done so +have had the last picture of the series merge into a reality of wind and +water and a good ship banging itself to pieces on a line of submerged +rocks. But I--as so often in voyages of late--was on the bridge without +duties or responsibilities. I was free to let the pictures take what +form they would; and it must have been what the chief yeoman had just +said about the weariness of waiting for the Huns that turned my mind to +what I had heard and seen of the four-year vigil of the Grand Fleet. + +There was a picture of Scapa as I had seen it on my earliest visit from +the basket of a kite balloon towed from the old _Campania_, the same +_Campania_ which now rested on the bottom of the Firth of Forth, and +the top-masts of which we had passed a half cable's length to port as +the _Hercules_ steamed out the day before. There were golden sun-notes +weaving in a Maypole dance with rollicking slate-black cloud shadows in +that picture; but in the next--where the surface of the Flow was beaten +to the whiteness of the snow-clad hills hemming it in--the brooding +light was darkly sinister and ominous of import, for that was the winter +day when we had word that two destroyers, which the might of the Grand +Fleet was powerless to save, were being banged to bits against a cliff +a few miles outside the gates. Then there was a picture of an Orkney +midsummer midnight--just such a night, the officer of the watch told me, +as the one on which he had seen the _Hampshire_, with Kitchener pacing +the quarter-deck alone, pass out to her doom two years previously--with +a fitful green light flooding the Flow, reflected from the sun circling +just below the northern horizon, and every kite balloon in the air at +the time being torn from its cable and sent flying towards Scandinavia +before the ninety-mile gale which had sprung up from nowhere without +warning. + +Visions of golf on Flotta, picnics under the cliffs of Hoy, and climbs +up the peat-boggy sides of the Ward Hill of the "Mainland," gave place +to those of squadron boxing competitions--savage but cleanly fought +bouts in a squared circle under the elevated guns of "Q" turret, with +the funnels, superstructures, and improvised grandstands alive with +bluejackets--and regattas, pulled off in various and sundry craft +between the long lines of anchored battleships. A long series (these +more like panoramas) of hurried unmoorings and departures--by division, +by squadron, and with all the Grand Fleet, through every square mile of +the North Sea from the Bight to far up the coast of Norway--finished up +at Rosyth, in that strange fortnight just before the end, when all but +those on the "inside" thought the persistent "short notice" was due to +a desire to keep the men aboard on account of the 'flu, and not to the +fact of which the Admiralty appear to have been so well advised, that +the German naval authorities--for the first and last time--were making +desperate efforts to get their ships out for the long-deferred _Tag_. + +Then the fog-bank ahead--or so it seemed--was splashed with the gay +colour of "Armistice Night," when all the spare signal lights (to say +nothing of a lot that couldn't be spared) of the Grand Fleet streaked +the sky with joyous spurts and fountains of fire, when stealthy pirate +bands from the K-boats dropped through the ward-room skylights of the +light cruisers and carried off prisoners who had to be ransomed with +champagne, when Admirals danced with matelots on the forecastles of the +battle-cruisers, and all the pent-up feelings of four years ascended +in one great expansive "whouf" of gladness. I recalled with a chuckle +how the "General" signal which the Commander-in-Chief had made ordering +the historic occasion to be celebrated by "splicing the main brace" +according to immemorial custom in the Navy, was preceded by "Negative +6th B.S.," in consideration of the sad fact that the Yankee ships had +nothing aboard to "splice" with. That didn't prevent them, though, from +bending a white ensign on their flag halliards, hoisting it to the main +topmast of the _New York_, and illuminating it with all the searchlights +of the squadron. That happy tribute, I recalled, to the flag of the Navy +with which the Americans had served with such distinction for a year, +had started the sacking of the signal light lockers, and that picture +ended as it began, with the dour Scotch heavens lanced with coloured +flame spurts which the dark tide of the Firth gave back in crinkly +reflections. + +The next picture to sharpen into focus on the fog-curtain was that of a +long, trim three-funnelled cruiser, with a white flag at her fore and +the German naval ensign at her main, heading in toward the mouth of the +Firth of Forth under the escort of a squadron of British light cruisers +and destroyers. I had witnessed the meeting of the _Königsberg_, which +was bringing over Admiral Meurer and other German naval officers to +arrange the details of the surrender of the High Sea Fleet, from the +foretop of the _Cassandra_. The rendezvous, at which the _Königsberg_ +had been directed by wireless to meet the Sixth Light Cruiser Squadron +ordered to escort her in, chanced to fall in an area under which a +German submarine, a fortnight previously, had planted its full load +of mines. These, in the regular course of patrol, had been discovered +and swept up within a day or two, but since that fact had not been +communicated to the Germans, the _Königsberg_, doubtless thinking the +English sense of humour had prompted them to prepare for her a bit of +a surprise in the way of a lift by a German petard, skulked off to the +southward, where she was only rounded up after two hours of rending the +ether with wireless calls. There were two things I remembered especially +in connection with that historic meeting--one was the mob of civilians +(probably would-be delegates from the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council) +jostling the officers on the roomy bridge of the _Königsberg_, and +the other was the fluent cursing of the gunnery lieutenant of the +_Cassandra_, who was with me in the foretop, over the unkind fate which +had robbed him of the chance of opening up with his six-inch guns on the +first Hun warship he had set eyes on since the war began. I thought I +had heard in the course of the past year all that the British sailor had +to say of the German as a naval foe; but L---- said several new things +that afternoon, and said them well. + +Poor old _Cassandra_! Although we did not get word of it until a day +or two after our arrival in Wilhelmshaven, within a very few hours of +the time I was thinking of her there in the fog of the Bight, she had +collided with a mine in the Baltic and gone to the bottom. + +There was another picture of the _Königsberg_ ready to follow on as the +first dissolved. This was the brilliantly lighted hull of her--the only +undarkened ship of the hundreds in the Firth of Forth that night--as I +saw it an hour before daybreak the following morning, when I set off +from the _Cassandra_ in a motor launch to be present in the _Queen +Elizabeth_ during the historic conference which was to take place there +that day. Admiral Beatty had refused to receive the revolutionary +delegates at the preliminary conference which had been held in the +British flagship the previous night, and as a consequence it appears +that Admiral Meurer and his staff were summoned to make a report +to their "superiors" on their return. This strange meeting had been +convened shortly after midnight (so the captain of the M.L., which had +been patrolling round the _Königsberg_ all night, told me), but still, +five hours later, as "M.L. 262" slid quietly by at quarter speed, the +rumble of guttural Teutonic voices raised in heated argument welled +out of the open scuttles of what had probably been the ward-room. It +occurred to me even then that this rumble of angry dispute was prophetic +of what Germany had ahead in the long night that was closing upon her. + +Although "M.L. 262" ended up an hour later with her propellers tangled +in the cable of Ox-Guard boom, I managed to get on the flagship in time +to see Admiral Meurer and his party come climbing up out of the fog to +her quarter-deck. The conference lasted, with short intervals, until +long after dark, and the next picture I saw was that of five German +naval officers, chagrined and crestfallen, being piped over the side to +the barge which was to take them to the destroyer standing by in the fog +to return with them to the _Königsberg_ at her anchorage, Inchkeith. +It was "Officers' Night" for the kinema in the "Q.E.," and they were +showing a "made-in-California" film called the "Rise and Fall of Julius +Cæsar." I remember distinctly that Casca had just driven the first +thrust, and the mob of conspirators were thronging upon Cæsar round the +"base of Pompey's statue," when the commander sent me word that the +guests were about to depart. + +The captain of the fleet, the captain, the commander, the officer of +the watch and the boatswain were waiting at the head of the starboard +gangway as I stepped on deck, and out of the fog, which had thickened +till I could not see the muzzles of the guns of "Y" turret, the Germans +were advancing from aft. The frown on Admiral Meurer's heavy brows was +magnified by the cross light of the "yard-arm group" at the gangway, and +his mouth, with its thin hard lips, showed as a straight black line. +With a click of the heels and the characteristic automaton bow of the +German, he saluted the British officers in turn, beginning with the +captain of the fleet, stepped down the short gangway and disappeared +into the waiting barge to the shrilling of the pipes. Bowing and +clicking, the others followed suit, a weedy "sub," with an enormous roll +of papers under his arm, going over last. + +The _Oak_, herself invisible in the fog, groped blindly with her +searchlight to pick up the barge. "We must hold the light steady," +facetiously quoted the Press correspondent at my elbow from a speech of +President Wilson's which had appeared in the morning papers, and then +added thoughtfully, "It may be a _light_ that kind need for guidance, +but if I had the leading of them for the next generation it would be by +a ring in the nose." + +Now, panorama resumed. It was the day of the surrender, and the +_Cardiff_, with her high-flown kite balloon in tow, was leading the +line of German battle-cruisers out of the eastern mist. I was watching +from the bridge of the _Erin_, and an officer beside me, recognizing +the _Seydlitz_, flying the rear-admiral's flag, in the lead, with the +_Moltke_ and _Derfflinger_ next in line, told how, from the light +cruiser in which he had chased them at Dogger Bank, he had seen at +least two of the three, leaving the _Blücher_ to her fate, dashing +for the shelter of their minefields with flames swirling about their +mastheads. Another spoke casually of how, in the _Tiger_ at Jutland, he +had been for a wild minute or two, while his ship was rounding a "windy +corner" as Beatty turned north to meet the British Battle Fleet, under +the concentrated fire of all the battle-cruisers--with the exception +of the _Hindenburg_, but with the _Lützow_ added--now steaming past +us. We remarked the "flattery of imitation" in the resemblance of the +_Hindenburg_ with her long run of forecastle and "flare" bows, to the +_Repulse_ and _Renown_, and of the symmetrical, two-funnelled _Bayern_ +as she appeared between the _Kaisers_ and the _Königs_ in the German +battleship line to the British _Queen Elizabeth_ class laid down before +the war. The _Queen Elizabeth_ herself, falling out of line to take the +salute of the ships of the fleet she had led to victory as they passed, +brought that reel of panorama to an end. + +The next was of five ships of the _Kaiser_ class, as they had appeared +from the _Emperor of India_, which, with the rest of the Second +Division, was escorting a squadron of the enemy to Scapa for internment. +We saw the German ships at closer range now, and the better we saw them +the worse they looked. Their fine solidity was less impressive than from +a distance, for now our glasses revealed the filth of the decks, the +lack of paint, and the slovenly, sullen attitude of the motley garbed +figures lounging along the rails. We passed within a biscuit toss of +the _Kaiserin_ when their leading ship, the _Friedrich der Grosse_, +lost her bearings in some way and failed to follow the _Canada_ through +the anti-submarine boom off the end of Flotta, an action which only the +smartest kind of seamanship on the part of the division of _Iron Dukes_ +prevented from developing into a serious disaster. Most of the Huns--to +judge by the expression on the faces leering across at us--would have +welcomed a smash; but it was avoided by a hair, and they ultimately +straightened themselves out, straggled through into the Flow, and on to +their more or less final resting-place, off the inner entrance to Gutter +Sound. + +The final picture, as it chanced, which my fancy projected on the +curtain of the fog was one that embraced what I saw from the steam +pinnace which was taking me to the _Impérieuse_, on my way back to +Rosyth. An angry Orkney sunset was flaring over the hills of Hoy--a +sullenly red glow, gridironed by thin strata of black cloud like +the bars of a grate--and a sinister squall was advancing from the +direction of Stromness to the northward. For a few moments the hot +light of the sunset had silhouetted the confused hulls of battleships +and battle-cruisers against the silvered seas beyond, and revealed the +disordered phalanx of the moored destroyers blocking the mouth of Gutter +Sound; then it was quenched by the onrush of the storm clouds, and all +that was left of the High Seas Fleet disappeared into shadow and driving +rain. + +It was a far cry, I reflected, from the Kaiser's "Our future lies upon +the seas!" and Admiral Rodman's "The German ships are of no use to +anybody; the simplest solution of the problem of their disposition is +to take the whole lot to sea and sink them." And yet-- + +Suddenly, stereoscopically clear, on the blank sheet of the fog left +as the High Sea Fleet faded from sight, the head-on silhouette of an +unmistakably German light cruiser appeared. For an instant the soaring +mast and the broad bridge suggested that my fancy had materialized the +_Königsberg_ again. Then the rat-a-tat of a signal searchlight recalled +me to my senses, and it did not need the chief yeoman of signals' "There +she is, sir; sending away a boat to bring us a pilot," to tell me we +had finally rendezvoused with the _Regensburg_. I descended to the +quarter-deck to see the pilot come over the side. + +Very smartly handled was that cutter from the _Regensburg_. I remember +that especially because it was almost the only German boat that came +alongside during all the visit which did not either ram the gangway, or +else miss it more than the length of a boat-hook. They explained this by +saying that most of the skilled men had left the navy, and that their +boats, as a consequence, were in the hands of comparative novices. At +any rate, at least one first-class crew of boat-pullers had remained in +the _Regensburg_, and they brought their cutter alongside the gangway as +neatly as though the _Hercules_ were lying in harbour. + +Three men, each carrying a small suit-case, came over the side and +saluted the officer of the day and the intelligence officer of +the admiral's staff, who awaited them at the head of the gangway. +The first was a three-stripe officer of the rank the Germans call +Korvettenkapitän, the second a warrant officer, and the third +(as we presently were informed) a qualified merchant pilot. The +Korvettenkapitän was slender of figure, and had a well-bred, gentlemanly +appearance not in the least suggestive of the "Hunnishness" one +associated--and with good reason, too, as subsequent experience +proved--with the German naval officer. His flushed expression showed +plainly that he felt deeply the humiliation of the task assigned him of +taking the first enemy warships into a German harbour. His head remained +bowed a moment after his final salute; then he took a deep breath, +squared his shoulders, and asked to be conducted to the bridge at once +in order to take advantage of the improved visibility in pushing on in +through the minefields. + +If one felt a touch of involuntary sympathy for the senior naval +officer, a glance at the sinister figure of the merchant pilot was +an efficacious antidote. Thick-set and muscular of build, with +slack-hanging ape-like arms and bandy legs, his corded bull neck +was crowned with the prognathous-jawed head of a gorilla, and a +countenance that might well have been a composite of the saturnine +phizzes of Trotsky and Liebknecht. One knew in an instant that here was +the super-Bolshevik, and looked for the red band on his sleeve, which +could only have been temporarily removed while he appeared among the +Engländers to spy upon the naval officer whom the revolutionists would +not permit to act alone. The way things stood between the two became +evident almost at once, for the officer informed the British interpreter +at the first opportunity that he could not be responsible for the pilot, +while the latter, when some query from the Korvettenkapitän respecting +the position of a certain buoy was repeated to him, contented himself +with drawing his fingers significantly across his throat, clucking in +apparent imitation of a severed wind-pipe, and continuing the guzzling +of the plate of "kedgeree" which had been engaging his undivided +attention at the moment of interruption. + +[Illustration: HELIGOLAND IN SIGHT!] + +After putting a German pilot aboard each of the four destroyers, the +_Regensburg's_ cutter was hoisted in, and we got under weigh again. The +visibility had improved considerably, and presently a darker blur on the +misty skyline resolved itself into the familiar profile of Heligoland. +At first only the loom of the great cliff was discernible, but by the +time this had been brought abeam a slender strip of low-lying ground +with warehouses, cranes, and the masts of ships, was distinctly visible. +All hands crowded to the starboard side to have a glimpse of Germany's +famous island outpost, but the nearest thing to a demonstration I saw +was by two marines, who were doing a bit of a shuffle on the precarious +footing of a turret top and singing lustily: + + "Oh, won't it be grand out in Hel-i-go-land, + When we've wound up the Watch on the Rhine!" + +Whatever illusions they had formed of the "grandness" of Heligoland they +were allowed to keep, for the only ones who were given to see at close +range the dismal greyness of the island fortress were the members of +one of the "air" parties, who made a hurried visit in a destroyer to +see that the provisions of the Armistice had been carried out at the +seaplane station. + +The thickening fog-banks which shut off our view of Heligoland were not +long in thinning the guiding _Regensburg_ to a dusky phantom nosing +uncertainly into the misty smother in the direction of where our charts +indicated the Bight should be narrowing to the shallow waters of Jade +Bay, in an inner corner of which lay Wilhelmshaven. We had counted on +getting there that evening, and a wireless had already been received +saying that a German Naval Commission was standing by to come off for a +preliminary conference. After heading in for a couple of hours through +seas which I heard an officer coming off watch describe as "composed +of about equal parts of water, misplaced buoys and floating mines," +all hopes of arriving that night were dashed by a signal from the +_Regensburg_, saying that she had been compelled to anchor on account +of the fog. Calling her destroyer "chicks" about her to mother them for +the night, the _Hercules_ let go what was probably the first anchor a +British surface ship had dropped into German mud since the outbreak of +the war. + +The unexpected delay made it necessary for both the _Hercules_ and the +destroyer to put up their pilots for the night. This was managed in the +former by giving the officer the flag captain's sea-cabin, and slinging +hammocks for his two assistants outside. Doubtless the opportunity to +enjoy a change of food was not unwelcome to any of them. They were +served with the regular ward-room dinner. The officer declined the +offer of drinks, and said he had his own cigarettes. The other two made +a clean sweep of anything that they could get hold of. Even these had +cigarettes, but the young signalman who had the temerity to smoke one +which was proffered him in exchange for one of his own, advanced that as +an excuse for a mess he made of taking down a searchlight signal from a +destroyer two hours later. + +"That ---- Bolshevik," said the lad the next day, in telling me about +the tragedy, "declared the fag he giv' me was made of baccy smuggled +into Germany by a friend of his. I tells him that was no kind of reason +for him using me to smuggle the smoke out of Germany. And I tells him it +tastes to me like rope end, that baccy, and, what's more, that I'd be +very happy to return it to him with a rope end. I can't say for certain +whether he twigged that little joke or not." + +From one of the destroyers, too, there came the next day a story of +similar friction in the matter of dispensing hospitality to the guest of +the night. The latter, unlike the one who was sent to the _Hercules_, +appears to have been a typical Hun. Beginning by introducing himself +as a relative of the ex-Kaiser, he ended up by all but going on +strike because no sheets could be provided for the bunk in the cabin +which--through turning out its owner to "sling" in the ward-room--had +been given him for the night. That alone had been a considerable +concession under the circumstances, for, through the presence of two +extra flying officers, two "subs" had given up their cabins, and were +sleeping in the ward-room already. It must have been a really amusing +show that young sprig of Junkerism put up. He mentioned the matter of +linen several times, finally rising to the crescendo of "I must have the +sheets by nine o'clock, and it now lacks but five minutes of that time." +I was never able to verify the story that the steward really gave him +the sheets of notepaper that one of the Yankee officers volunteered to +contribute. How mad the young exquisite was about the whole affair may +be judged from the fact that he left behind him in the morning his own +personal and private cake--only slightly used--of toilet soap. Whether +this was pure swank--high princely disdain of an object of value--or +whether he was blind with passion and overlooked it, they could never +quite make up their minds in the _V----_. + +The fog lapped and curled dankly round the _Hercules_ that night, +wrapping the ship in a clammy shroud of cold moisture that dripped +eerily from the rigging and sent a chill to the marrow of the bones of +the men and officers on watch. But below there was warmth and comfort. +The ward-room celebrated the occasion with a "rag" to the music of its +own Jazz band, while in the admiral's cabin the kinema man, who had been +brought along to film the historic features of the voyage, entertained +with a movie of a South American revolution, a picture full of the play +of hot passion and fierce jealousy, enacted in and around an ancient +castle which none but a Californian could have recognized as a building +of the recent San Diego Exposition. "The Admiral's Movies," "With a +Complete Change of Program Nightly," became one of the star turns of the +voyage from that time on. + +Cut off though we were by the fog from sighting anything farther away +than the riding lights of the nearest destroyer, strange voices of the +new world we had moved into since morning kept reaching the _Hercules_ +on the wings of the wireless. Now it was the _Regensburg_ calling to +say, "I am lying off Outer Jade Lightship and illuminating it with my +searchlight." Not much help, that, on a night when a searchlight itself +was quenched to a will-o'-the-wisp at a cable's length. Then there was +a message from the main fount of some "Workmen's and Soldiers' Council" +requesting that the Allied Naval Commission should receive a delegation +of its members at Wilhelmshaven. It was not a long message, but the +reply flashed back to it was, I understand, a good deal shorter. There +was chatter between ship and ship, and even the call--from somewhere +in the Baltic, I believe--of a steamer in distress. The name of the +_Moewe_, in an otherwise unintelligible message, caused hardly the +flutter it would have had we picked it up in the same waters a month +earlier. + +There was little news to us in a message from some land station telling +all and sundry that the "high-sea-ship" _Regensburg_ was "_zu Anker bei +aussen Jade Feuerschiff_," that the _Hercules_ and destroyers were "_zu +Anker bei Weser Feuerschiff_," and that there was "_noch Nebel_." The +_Regensburg_ had already told us where she was and our own position we +knew: also the fact that "fog continues." + +A groan from Germany in travail reached us in a message from the +"Soldatenrat" of the "Fortress of Borkum" to the Council in Berlin. +They disapproved most heartily of the attitude of the meeting of the +"_Gross Berliner_" councils for Greater Germany. They greatly regretted +the attempt of one part of the people to establish a dictatorship over +another, and considered that this showed a lamentable lack of confidence +in "_unserem Volke_"--"our people." "_Wir wollen Demokratie und keine +Diktatur_," they concluded; "we want a democracy and no dictator." + +Then we heard the German battleship _König_ (which, in company with the +_Dresden_, a destroyer and two transports, we had sighted that morning +tardily _en voyage_ to make up the promised quota at Scapa) calling to +the _Revenge_--at that time the flagship of the squadron watching the +interned ships--for guidance. "Am near to the point of assembly with +the other ships," she said in German, "and bad weather is coming on. +Cannot stop with _Dresden_ in tow. What course can I take from point of +assembly?" + +Deep called to deep when the C.-in-C. of the Grand Fleet at Rosyth told +the C.-in-C. of the High Sea Fleet what arrangements were being made +to send back the surplus crews of the interned ships, and for a while +the vibrant ether let fall such familiar names as _Karlsruhe_, _Emden_, +_Nürnberg_, _Hindenburg_, _Kaiser_, _Von der Tann_ and _Friedrich der +Grosse_, men from all of which, we learned, were to be started homeward +in a transport called the _Pretoria_. + +There was hint of "family trouble" in the German Navy in a signal from +Admiral Von Reuter at Scapa to the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea +Fleet at Wilhelmshaven. "Request that third group (of transports) may +include a flag officer to relieve me," it ran in translation, "as I am +returning home with it on account of sickness." + +That signal, I think, gave the ward-room more quiet enjoyment than any +of the others, for it was the first forerunning flutter of the German +wings beginning to beat against the bars of Scapa. "I've often been a +prey to that same complaint during our four years at Scapa," said the +commander musingly, in the interval following the passing round of the +wireless wail. "Of course Admiral Von Reuter is sick--homesick. Who +wasn't? _Who isn't?_ But there was no use in sending a signal to any one +complaining about it. But isn't it worth just about all we went through +in sticking it there for four years to be able to think of the Huns +being interned there, and in their own ships? They're not quite so comfy +as ours to live in, you know. I wonder what Herr C.-in-C.'s answer will +be." + +That answer was picked up in good time. "First group of transports have +arrived back safely," the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea Fleet began +inconsequentially, adding abruptly, "Admiral Von Beuter is advised to +stay where he is, if at all possible." That pleased the ward-room so +much that the Junior Officers' Glee Club was sent to the piano to create +a "Scapa atmosphere" by singing songs of the strenuous early months of +the war. "Coaling, coaling, coaling, always jolly well coaling," to the +air of "Holy, Holy, Holy!" reached my ears even in the secluded retreat +of the "commission-room," to which I had retired to write up my diary. + +But the most amusing message of all was one which the senior +interpreter--one time a distinguished Cambridge professor of modern +languages--was dragged out of his bunk at something like three o'clock +in the morning to translate. Everything sent out in German was being +meshed in our wireless net on the off-chance that information of +importance might be picked up, and, for some reason, the message in +question impressed the night operator--as it lay before him, fresh +caught, upon his pad, as being of especial significance. This was +what I deciphered on the sheet of naval signal paper which the senior +interpreter, returning all a-shiver to his bunk after making the desired +translation in the coding room, threw at my head when I awoke in the +next bunk and asked sleepily for the news. + + (?) to (?). + + "Good morning. Request the time according to you. My watch + is fast, I think." + +It was probably from the skipper of one trawler to his "opposite number" +in another. It was on my lips to ask Lieut. B---- if he expected to +be called when the reply was picked up, but the ominous glare in the +unpillowed eye he turned in my direction as I started to speak made me +change my mind. + +The fog was still thick at daybreak of the following morning, but by +ten o'clock the visibility had improved sufficiently to appear to make +it worth while to get under weigh. Heading easterly at twelve knots, +we shortly came to a buoy-marked channel which, according to our +directions, promised to lead in to the anchorage off Wilhelmshaven we +desired to reach. The _Regensburg_, which had evidently gone in ahead, +was not sighted again, but two powerful armed patrol boats came out to +keep us company. It was soon possible to see for several miles, the low +line of the Frisian coast coming into sight to port and starboard. + +Presently we passed, on opposite courses, a German merchant steamer. +Luckily, some one on the bridge observed in time that she had a man +standing by the flag halyards at her stern, and so we were prepared to +return with the white ensign what must have been the first dip a British +ship had had from a German since August, 1914. When the second and third +steamers encountered also dipped their red, white, and black bunting, +followed by similar action on the part of two tugs and a lighthouse +tender, it became evident that general orders in that connection had +been issued. That was our first hint of the "conciliatory" tactics which +it soon became apparent all of that part of Northern Germany with which +there was a chance of any of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission +coming in contact had been instructed to follow. + +The steeples and factory chimneys of Wilhelmshaven began appearing over +the port bow at noon, and a half-hour later _Hercules_ had dropped +anchor about a mile off a long stone mole which curved out from the +dockyard. Almost immediately a launch was seen putting out of the +entrance, and presently it came bumping alongside the starboard gangway. +Rear-Admiral Goette, a smooth-shaven, heavy set man of about fifty, was +the first up to the quarter-deck, where his salute was returned by the +captain, commander, the officer of the day, and several officers of +Admiral Browning's staff. His puckered brow indicated something of the +mental strain he was under, a strain the effects of which became more +and more evident every time he came off for a conference. + +The thirteen other members of the Commission under Admiral Goette's +presidency followed him up the gangway. The first of these, a tall blond +officer of fine bearing, was on the list as Kapitan z. S. von Müller, +but it was not until after the final conference, over a fortnight later, +that we learned for certain that he was the able and resolute commander +of the _Emden_, famous in the first year of the war for her destruction +of Allied commerce and the fine fight he had put up before being forced +to the beach of North Cocos Island by the faster and heavier armed +_Sydney_. If it was a fact, as has been suggested, that the Germans put +Von Müller on their Naval Armistice Commission because of the admiration +that had been expressed in the British papers of his brave and sporting +conduct on the latter occasion, the effect of this fine piece of +Teutonic subtlety was completely lost. As I have said, his real identity +was not discovered until the last of the conferences was over. + +As soon as the last of the German officers had reached the quarter-deck +and completed his round of heel-clicking salutes, the party was +conducted directly to Admiral Browning's cabin, where the first of a +series of conferences calculated deeply to influence Germany's naval +future for many years to come was entered into without delay. + + + + +II + +GETTING DOWN TO WORK + + +An unfailing test of the treatment the Germans would have meted out +to the Allies had their respective positions been reversed during the +armistice interval, was furnished by the attitude of all the enemy +people--from the highest official representatives to the crowds on the +streets--with whom Admiral Browning's Naval Commission was thrown in +contact. This was especially noticeable in the case of naval officers, +and with none of these more so than with the greater part of those +constituting the commission, presided over by Rear-Admiral Goette, +which met the Allied Commission to arrange the details of carrying out +the provisions of the armistice relating to maritime affairs. Fully +expecting from the representatives of the victorious Allies the same +treatment they had extended to the beaten Russians at Brest-Litovsk, +and the beaten Rumanians at Bucharest, they adopted from the outset an +attitude of sullen distrust, evidently with the idea that it was the one +best calculated to minimize the concessions they would be called upon to +make. When it transpired that the Allied commissioners appeared to have +no intention of exercising their victor's prerogative of humiliating the +emissaries of a beaten enemy--as no Prussian could ever have refrained +from doing in similar circumstances--but that, on the other hand, the +former were neither disposed to bargain, "negotiate," nor in any way +to abate one whit from their just demands, the attitude of the Germans +changed somewhat. They were more reasonable and easy to deal with; yet +to the last there was always discernible that feeling of thinly veiled +contempt which the beaten bully cannot conceal for a victor who fails to +treat him as he himself would have treated any adversary he had downed. + +The opening conference between the Allied and German commissions was +held in Admiral Browning's dining cabin in the _Hercules_, as were all +of those which followed. The German officers, leaving their overcoats +and caps in a cabin set aside for them as an ante-room, were conducted +to the conference room, where the heads of the Allied Commission were +already assembled and in their places. Most of the Germans were in frock +coats (of fine material and extremely well cut), with small dirk-like +swords at hip, and much-bemedalled. There was none of them, so far as +one could see, without one grade or another of the Iron Cross, worn +low on the left breast (or just about over the liver, to locate it more +exactly), with its black-and-white ribbon rove through a lapel. Only +Captain Von Müller wore the coveted "Pour le Mérite," doubtless for his +commerce destruction with the _Emden_. Admiral Goette wore two rows of +ribbons, but none of the decorations themselves. + +The Allied delegates rose as the Germans entered, remaining standing +until the latter had been shown to the places assigned them. At the +right of the main table, as seen from the door, was seated Admiral +Browning, with Rear-Admiral Grasset, of the French Navy, on his right, +and Rear-Admiral Robinson, of the American Navy, on his left. Captain +Lowndes, Admiral Browning's Chief of Staff, sat next to Admiral +Robinson, in the fourth chair on the Allied side of the table. The Flag +Lieutenants of the French and American Admirals, and the two officers +representing respectively Japan and Italy, occupied chairs immediately +beyond the senior officers of the Commission. At two smaller tables +in the rear were several British Flag officers, with secretaries and +stenographers. The official British interpreter, Lieut. Bullough, +R.N.V.R., sat at the head of the table. The heads of the Allied +sub-commissions representing the flying services and shipping did not +occupy seats during all of the conference, but were called in during the +discussion of matters in which they were interested. + +Admiral Goette was seated directly opposite Admiral Browning at the +main table, with Commander (or Korvettenkapitän) Hinzman on his right, +and Commander Lohman on his left. The former--a shifty-eyed individual, +with a pasty complexion and a "mobile" mouth which, in its peculiar +expansions and contractions, furnished an accurate index of the state +of its owner's mind--was from the General Naval Staff in Berlin, which +accounted, doubtless, for the fact that Admiral Goette turned to him +for advice in connection with practically every question discussed. +Commander Lohman had charge of merchant shipping interests, which were +principally in connection with the return of British tonnage interned in +German harbours at the outbreak of the war. Captain Von Müller sat at +the left-hand corner of the table, and Captain Bauer, Chief of Staff, in +the corresponding place on the right. At a smaller table opposite the +door the eight remaining German officers were seated. These were mostly +engineers, or from the flying or submarine services, and were consulted +as questions in their respective lines arose from time to time. + +[Illustration: MEMBERS OF THE ALLIED NAVAL COMMISSION, ADMIRAL BROWNING +IN CENTER] + +[Illustration: THE ALLIED NAVAL COMMISSION AND STAFF, TAKEN ON BOARD +"HERCULES"] + +Without wasting time in preliminaries, Admiral Browning got down +to business at once by intimating that, since the time which he could +remain in German waters was limited, it would be desirable that the +very considerable number of visits of inspection necessary to satisfy +the Commission that the terms of the armistice had been complied with +should begin without delay. The Germans had a formidable array of +reasons ready to show why all, or nearly all, of these visits would be +practically out of the question. The disturbed state of the country, +the uncertain situation in Berlin, the lack of discipline among the men +remaining in the ships and at the air stations, the shortage of petrol, +the possibility of the hostility of the people in some sections--such as +Hamburg and Bremen--to Allied visitors--these were a few of the reasons +advanced why it would be difficult or dangerous to go to this place or +that, and why the best and simplest way would be to be content with the +assurance of the German Commission that everything, everywhere, was just +as the armistice terms had stipulated. Of course, at Wilhelmshaven, +where things were quiet at the moment, and where they still had a +certain amount of authority, there should be no great difficulty in +going over the remaining warships and visiting the air-station; but as +for going to Hamburg, or Bremen, or visiting any of the more distant +naval air stations--that was impossible at the present. + +Asked bluntly, if the search of the warships could begin that afternoon, +Admiral Goette replied that it was impossible, for the reason he was +not yet in a position to guarantee the personal safety of any parties +landing even at the dockyard. Moreover, he would not be in position +to give such a guarantee until the matter had been discussed with the +Workmen's and Soldiers' Council. Of course, if the party cared to take +the chance of landing without a guarantee of safety-- + +That was really just about as far as that first conference got in the +way of definite arrangements, or even assurances. Admiral Goette was +given very plainly to understand, however, that it was the intention +of the Allied Commission to visit and inspect, in accordance with the +terms laid down in the armistice, not only all of the remaining German +warships, but also all interned British merchantmen, irrespective of +where they were, and all naval airship and seaplane stations, on the +Baltic as well as the North Sea side. Also, that full and complete +guarantee of the safety of every party landed must be given before +the first visit was made. Failing this, it would be necessary for the +Commission to return to England and report that the assistance promised +by Germany in carrying out the armistice terms had not been given. + +The deep corrugation in Admiral Goette's brow grew deeper still when he +heard this plain warning, and the corners of his hard cynical mouth drew +down at the corners as the thin lips were compressed in his effort at +self-control. Shuffling uneasily in his chair, he leaned over as though +to speak to the sardonic Hinzman on his right, but thought better of +it, and straightened up again. Then his deep-set eyes wandered to the +large-scale map of the Western Front which occupied most of the wall +of the cabin toward which he faced. The row of pins, which had marked +the line of the Front at the moment of the armistice, but had now been +moved up and over the Rhine in three protuberant bridgeheads, evidently +brought home to him the futility of any further circumlocutions for the +present. The muscles of the aggressively squared shoulders relaxed, the +combative lines of the face melted into furrows of deepest depression, +and the pugnacious jaw was drawn in as the iron-grey head was bowed in +submission. His throaty "It shall be done as you say, sir," told that +the first lesson had sunk home. + +An undertaking on the part of the German Commission to secure, and to +send off at an as early hour as practicable the following morning, the +required "safe conduct," brought the first conference to a close. The +kinema man, who endeavoured to take a picture of the departure from +cover, in order not to offend the sensibilities of his distinguished +subjects, spoiled a film as a consequence of his consideration. +Observing that the galley scuttle opened out upon the quarter-deck, but +not (in his haste) that the pots of beans simmering on the range were +filling the air with clouds of steam as thick as fragrant, set up his +machine just inside. Engrossed in turning the crank as one Hun after +another went through his heel-clicking round of salutes, he failed to +notice the translucent mask of moisture condensing on his lens. The +natural result was that this particular reel of film, when it came to +be developed, had very little to differentiate it from another reel he +exposed the following morning on the men "doubling round," the latter +having been taken with the cap over the lens. + +The situation as it presented itself that evening was far from +encouraging. Having no information whatever of our own as to conditions +ashore, we had, perforce, to take the word of the Germans that many of +the projected visits of inspection could only be undertaken subject +to much difficulty and delay, if at all. There was not even positive +assurance that a safe conduct would be forthcoming for the landing in +Wilhelmshaven, where the headquarters of the German Naval Command were +located at the moment, and where there had been a minimum of disorder. +The wireless caught ominous fragments pointing to an imminent _coup +d'état_ in Berlin, while rioting was already taking place in Hamburg +and Bremen, and Kiel was completely under the control of the workmen +and soldiers. It certainly looked as though, the armistice agreement +notwithstanding, we had struck Northern Germany in the closed season for +touring. + +A ray of light in the gloom which hung over the ship that night came in +the form of two British prisoners of war who managed to induce a German +launch they had found at the quay to bring them off to the _Hercules_. +Cheery souls they were, after all their two years of starvation and +rough treatment in one of the worst prison camps in Germany. When the +armistice was signed, they said, they had been released, given a ticket +which was made out to carry them in the Fourth or "Military" class on +any German railway, and told they were free to go home. This appears to +have been done at a good many prison camps, and where these were within +a few days' march of the Western Front, or of Holland, it probably +saved a good deal of time over waiting for regular transport by the +demoralized and congested railway systems. The cruelty of this criminal +evasion of responsibility was most felt in the parts of the country +more remote from the Western Front, where many hundreds of miles had to +be covered before the prisoners had any chance of getting in touch with +friends. In the cases of most of these unfortunate derelicts long delays +were inevitable, and, not infrequently, much hardship. There was little +interference, apparently, with the exercise of the travel privilege, but +the almost total absence of authoritative information concerning the +departure of ships from Baltic ports, by which considerable numbers of +British were repatriated _viâ_ Denmark and Sweden, resulted in an almost +interminable series of wanderings. + +[Illustration: THE PADRE OF THE "HERCULES" TALKING WITH NEWLY ARRIVED +BRITISH PRISONERS] + +The case of the two men I have mentioned was typical of the experiences +undergone by prisoners from camps in northern or central Germany. +Released, as I have described, when the armistice was signed, they had +broken away from their fellows, the bulk of whom were starting to drift +toward the Western Front, and struck out for the North Sea coast, acting +on the theory that navigation would be opened up at once, and that this +route, therefore, would offer the easiest and quickest way of getting +home. Well off for money and fairly considerately treated on the food +score, they found travelling simple enough, but extremely tedious and +full of delays. Arriving at Emden, they learned that there had been +no provision whatever made for dispatching ships with prisoners from +there, and that--both on account of the lack of shipping and the danger +of navigating the still unswept minefields--there was no prospect of +anything of the kind in the near future. Instead of crossing over the +neighbouring frontier of Holland, as they might easily have done, they +pushed north to Bremen and Hamburg on the chance that there might be +ships from one of these formerly busy ports by which they could find +their way back to England. Disappointed again, they were about to go +on to Kiel, when they read in a newspaper of the arrival of a British +battleship at Wilhelmshaven. Rightly conjecturing that they were at +last on the "home trail," they effected the best series of connections +possible to the once great naval base, where no obstacles were placed in +the way of their getting put off to the _Hercules_ without delay. + +As the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council had been endeavouring to +establish touch with the Commission ever since the arrival of the +_Hercules_ in German waters, and as the way the "authorities" had +co-operated in getting these men put off to the ship looked just a +bit suspicious, it was only natural that the latter should be put +through a very thorough examination calculated to establish their +identity as British prisoners beyond a doubt. This was being proceeded +with by the Commander and the Major of Marines in a room of the after +superstructure, when a steward came up from the galley to ask what the +new arrivals would like to have for supper. There was quite a list to +choose from, it appears. They could have roast beef, said the steward, +or sausage and "mashed," or steak and kidney pie, or--"Stop right there, +mytey," cut in one of the men, raising his hand with the gesture of a +crossings policeman halting the flow of the traffic. "No use goin' any +further. 'Styke an' kidney' fer mine." Then, turning to the Commander +apologetically, "Begging your pardon, sir, but wot was it you was askin' +'bout wot engagement we wus captured in?" "I don't think we need trouble +any further about that, my man," replied the Commander with a grin. +"That 'styke an' kidney' marks you for British all right, and if you'll +vouch for your mate here, we'll take your word that he's on the level +too. We'll send you home by the first mail destroyer, and be glad of the +chance to do it. That won't be for a couple of days yet, but I dare say +you'll be able to make yourself at home in the _Hercules_ until then." + +As the first of the hundred or more prisoners for whom the _Hercules_ +ultimately acted as a "clearing house" in passing home to England, +these two men were very welcome on their own account, but especially so +for the news they brought of conditions ashore. It was quiet everywhere +they had been in Northern Germany, they said. Nobody was starving, and +where the people took any notice of them at all, it was--since the +armistice--invariably of a friendly character. "W'y, 'pon my word, sir," +said one of them, where I found him that night in a warm corner of one +of the mess decks, the centre of an admiring circle of matelots, who +were crowding in with offerings of everything from mugs of bitter beer +to cakes of chocolate; "'pon my word, all you 'ave to do is to tyke a +kyke o' perfumed soap to the beach when you land, an' they'll all come +an' eat right out o' yer 'and. W'y, the gurls--" + +Although the Allied Naval Armistice Commission could hardly be expected +to smooth its way with "kykes o' perfumed soap," yet all these men had +to tell, in that it went to prove how greatly the officers of the German +Commission had (to use a charitable term) exaggerated the difficulties +to be encountered in getting about ashore, was distinctly encouraging. +Indeed, it left those of us who talked with them quite prepared to +expect the "guarantee of safety," which came off in the morning, with +word that arrangements had been made for parties to land at once for +the inspection of warships and the seaplane station. It even forecasted +the message received in the course of the afternoon, to the effect that +conditions now appeared to be favourable to the arranging of visits +to Norderney, Borkhum, Nordholz, and the other seaplane and Zeppelin +stations which the Allied Commission had expressed a desire to see. The +Hamburg visit was still in the air, pending the receipt of guarantees +of safety, but there was no longer any doubt that it would be arranged, +and, moreover, as promptly as the Commission saw fit to insist upon. + +For the purpose of the search of warships, and the inspection of +merchant ships and air stations, the staff of the Allied Commission +had been divided into several parties. The senior party, which was to +confine its work entirely to warships and land fortifications, had at +least one member of each of the Allied nationalities represented in the +Commission. The head of it was the Flag Commander of the _Hercules_, and +the technical duties in connection with its work devolved principally +upon the British and American naval gunnery experts which it always +included, and at least one engineer officer. + +There were two "air" parties, one for the inspection of seaplane +stations, and the other for that of airship stations. The senior +flying officer was Brigadier-General Masterman, R.A.F., who was one of +England's pioneers in the development of lighter-than-air machines, his +experience dating back to the experiments with the ill-fated _Mayfly_. +His interest was in Zeppelins, and he had the leadership of the party +formed for the inspection of airship stations. This party included one +other British officer and two Americans. + +Colonel Clark-Hall was the head of the second "air" party, which had +charge of the inspection of seaplane stations. He had flown in a +seaplane in the first year of the war at Gallipoli, and more recently +had directed flying operations from the _Furious_, with the Grand Fleet. +Having sent off the aeroplanes whose bombs had practically wiped out +the Zeppelin station at Tondern, near the Danish border, the previous +summer, he had an especial interest in seeing at first hand the effects +of that raid, though otherwise his interest was centred in seaplane +stations. Two American flying officers, and one British, completed the +"seaplane station" party. + +The Shipping Board, which had in hand the matter of the return to +England of the two score and more of British ships in German harbours, +was headed by Commodore George P. Bevan, R.N., the Naval Adviser of the +Minister of Shipping, who had distinguished himself earlier in the war +as commander of the British trawler patrol in the Mediterranean. With +him were associated Commander John Leighton, R.N.R., who had achieved +notable success in effecting the return to England of the numerous +British merchant ships in Baltic ports at the outbreak of the war, and +Mr. Percy Turner, a prominent shipbuilder and Secretary to the Minister +of Shipping. The actual inspection of the ships in German harbours was +to be done by Commander Leighton, with such assistance as was needed +from officers of the _Hercules_. + +It fell to the lot of the senior of the warship-searching party to make +the first landing. As this party, with at least one member from each +nationality, was more or less a "microcosm" of the Commission itself, it +was decreed that it should make its visits in state, in the full pomp +and panoply of--peace. This meant, one supposed, frock coats, cocked +hats, and swords, but as all the former had been sent ashore, by order, +early in the war, and as none of the Americans had even the latter, it +was evident at once that there was no use competing in a dress parade +with the Germans, who were operating at their own base, so to speak. The +best that could be done was to borrow swords--from any of the ward-room +officers chancing to have theirs along--for the Americans, and let +it go at that. The "International" members, whose principal duty, in +connection with the searches, was to walk about the upper decks and +look dignified, managed to wear their swords from the time they left +the _Hercules_ to their return; the others, who had really to look for +things, and, therefore, to clamber up and down steel ladders of boiler +rooms and the "trunks" of turrets, after numerous annoying trippings up, +had finally to "stack arms" in order to get on with their search. + +Although none of the officers of the Commission had taken part in the +search of the German ships interned at Scapa, they had heard enough of +their filthiness and lack of discipline to be prepared to encounter the +same things when the inspection of the ships still remaining in home +waters was undertaken. In spite of this, the conditions--the dirtiness, +the slothfulness, the apparent utter disregard of the men for such few +of their officers as still remained--were everywhere much worse than +had been anticipated. This may well be accounted for by the fact that +the surrendered ships were manned entirely by volunteers, and these, +naturally, being the men less revolutionary in spirit and more amenable +to discipline, had taken better care of themselves and their quarters +than those who remained behind. At any rate, every one of the ships +remaining to the German Navy was an offence to the eye, and most of them +to the nose as well. If it was true, as had been said, that sloth and +filth are the high hand-maidens of Bolshevism, there is little doubt +that these twin trollops were in a position to hand the dregs of the +ex-Kaiser's fleet over to their mistress any day she wanted it. + +We had, as yet, no definite hint of what attitude the men of the +Workmen's and Soldiers' Council were going to take toward parties landed +to carry out the work of the Allied Commission, and that was one of the +things which it was expected this first search of the warships in the +Wilhelmshaven dockyard would reveal. The beginning was not auspicious, +for in the very first ship visited the whole of the remaining crew were +found loitering indolently about the decks, in direct contravention of +the clause in the armistice which provided that all men should be sent +ashore during the visits of Allied searching parties. The captain, on +being appealed to, shrugged his shoulders and said that he was quite +helpless. "I ordered them to leave half an hour ago," he explained to +the interpreter, "and here they are still. I have no authority over +them, as you see; so what is there to do? I am sorry, but you see the +position I am in. I trust you will understand how humiliating a one +it is for an officer of the Imperial"--he checked himself at the word +_Kaiserliche_, and added merely, "German Navy." + +"And, believe me, it _was_ humiliating," said one of the American +officers in telling of the incident later. "I had to keep reminding +myself that the man was a brother officer of the swine that sank the +_Lusitania_, and so many hospital ships, to stop myself from telling him +how gol darned sorry I was for any one that had got let in for a mess +like that." + +The situation was scarcely less embarrassing for the officer at the head +of the Allied party than for the Germans. Fortunately the Flag Commander +was fully equal to the emergency. "If these men are not out on the dock +in ten minutes," he said to the captain, "I shall have no alternative +but to return at once to the _Hercules_ and report that the facilities +for search stipulated in the armistice have not been granted me." +Glancing at his wrist-watch, he sauntered over to the other side of the +deck. + +The effect of the words (which appeared to have been understood by some +of the men standing near even in English) was galvanic. Blue-jackets +were streaming down the gangways before the orders had been passed +on to them by their officers, and the ship, save for a few cooks in +the galley, was emptied well within the time-limit assigned. It had +evidently been an attempt upon the part of the men to show contempt +for their officers, and was not intended to interfere with the work +of the searching party. Although we observed countless instances of +indiscipline in one form or another, on no subsequent occasion did it +appear in a way calculated to annoy or delay one of the Allied parties. +On the contrary, indeed, the men--and especially the representatives of +the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council--were almost invariably more than +willing to do anything to help. This spirit, it is needless to say, made +progress much faster and easier, and a continuance of it boded hopefully +for the completion of the Commission's program within the limit of the +original period of armistice. + +It seems to have been the strong--and, I have no doubt, entirely +sincere--desire of both the German naval officers and the members of +the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council to get the inspection over and the +Allied Commission out of the way that led to a co-operation between +the two which I can hardly conceive as existing in connection with +their other relations. The representatives of the Workmen and Soldiers +appeared quite reconciled to the ruling of the Commission that the +latter was to have no direct dealings with them, and they exhibited no +evidences of ill-feeling over the failure of their attempts to establish +such relations. The Naval authorities and the Council had evidently +come to an agreement by which the latter were to be allowed to have +a representative--"watching" but not "talking"--with every Allied +party landing, in return for which privilege the Council undertook +to prevent any interference from the men remaining in ships or air +stations visited. Later, when journeys by railway were undertaken, and +a guarantee of freedom from molestation by the civilian population was +required, a second Workmen's and Soldiers' representative--a sort of a +"plain clothes" detective--was added. Both white-banded men were there +to help, not to interfere. Indeed, the men seemed fully to realize the +need of a higher mentality than their own in the conduct of the more or +less complicated negotiations with the Allied representatives, and were +therefore content to support their officers in an attempt to make the +best of what was a sorry situation for both. + +A slight hitch which occurred in the arrangements of the "seaplane +station" party one morning, when the officer who was to have accompanied +it failed to turn up on the landing at the appointed hour, showed +how slender was the thread by which the authority of the once proud +and domineering German naval officer hung. After cooling their heels +in the slush of the dockyard for half an hour, the party returned +to the _Hercules_ to await an explanation. This came an hour later, +when the officer in question, very red in the face, came bumping up +to the gangway in a madly driven motor-boat, and clambered up to the +quarter-deck to make his apologies. + +"I am very sorry," he ejaculated volubly, "but it was not understood +by the _Arbeiter und Soldatenrat_ that it was I who was to go with you +today. In consequence, the permit to wear my sword and epaulettes and +other markings of an officer was not sent to me, and so I could not be +allowed to travel by the tramway until I had made known the trouble by +telephone and had the permit sent. It was even very difficult for me to +be allowed to speak over the telephone. You must see how very hard life +is for us officers as things are now." + +It appears that even the officers going about with the Allied naval +sub-commissions were only allowed to wear their designating marks for +the occasion, and that, unless a special permit from the Workmen's and +Soldiers' Council was shown, these had to be removed as soon as they +went ashore. The constant "self-pity" which the officers kept showing +in the matter of their humiliating predicament was the one thing needed +to extinguish the sparks of sympathy which would keep flaring up in +one's breast unless one stopped to think how thoroughly deserved--how +poetically just--it all was. + +With one or two exceptions, all the best of Germany's capital ships +were known to have been surrendered, and this applied to light cruisers +and destroyers as well. The U-boat situation was somewhat obscure, but +it was supposed--incorrectly, as transpired later--that a fairly clean +sweep of the best of the under-water craft had also been made. The +most interesting ships which the Allied Commission expected to see in +German waters were the battleship _Baden_, sister of the surrendered +_Bayern_, and the battle-cruiser _Mackensen_, sister of the surrendered +_Hindenburg_. The _Regensburg_ and _Königsberg_, which had been left +to the Germans to "get about in," were also considered worthy of study +at close range as examples of the latest type of German light cruiser. +The _Mackensen_, still far from completed, was in a yard on the Elbe at +Hamburg. The others were inspected at Wilhelmshaven. + +I think I am speaking conservatively when I say that all of the Allied +officers who saw them from the inside were distinctly disappointed in +even these most modern examples of German naval construction. After +the extremely good fight that practically every one of them--from the +_Emden_ and _Königsberg_ and the ships of Von Spee's squadron at the +Falklands to the battle-cruisers of Von Hipper at Jutland--had put up +when it was once drawn into action, it was only natural to expect that +some radical departures in construction, armament, and gunnery control +would be revealed on closer acquaintance. This did not prove to be the +case, though it is only fair to say that, in the matter of gunnery +control, there was little opportunity to pass judgment, owing to the +fact that, in every instance, the Germans--as they had a perfect right +to do--had removed all the instruments and gear calculated to give any +indication of the character of the installation. + +The German ships were found to be extremely well built, especially in +the solidity of construction of their hulls, the fact that they were not +intended to be lived in by a full ship's company all of the time making +it easy to multiply bulkheads and dispense with doors. But there was +nothing new in this fact to those who knew the amount of hammering the +_Seydlitz_ and _Derfflinger_ had survived at Dogger Bank and Jutland. +Even so, however, there was nothing to indicate that these latest of +German ships would stand more punishment than any unit of the Grand +Fleet after the stiffening all British capital ships received as a +consequence of what was learned at Jutland. + +In several respects it was evident that the Germans had merely become +tardy converts to British practice. The tripod mast, which dates back +something like a decade in British capital ships, and which has, since +the war, been built in light cruisers and even destroyer leaders, was +only adopted by the Germans with the laying down of the _Bayern_ and +_Hindenburg_. Similarly, the armament--both main and secondary--of the +respective classes of battleship and battle-cruiser to which these two +ships give the name, is a frank admission on the part of the Germans +that the British were five years ahead of them in the matter of guns. + +Gunnery control, the one thing above all others which the British Navy +was interested in when it came to an intimate study of the German +ships, is, unfortunately, one of the things upon which the least light +has been shed. The German, since he had to disarm, did the job with +characteristic Teutonic thoroughness. The transmitting stations in all +of the modern ships--the one point where there would have been a great +concentration of special instruments of control--looked like unfurnished +rooms in their emptiness. So, too, the foretops and what must have +been the director towers. One moot point may, however, be regarded as +settled. There have been many who maintained that, since the German fire +was almost invariably extremely accurate in the opening stages of an +action, and tended to fall off rapidly after the ship came under fire +herself, the enemy gunnery control involved the use of a very elaborate +and highly complicated installation of special instruments, many of +which were too delicate to stand the stress of continued action. The +British and American officers who went over the latest of the enemy's +ships, however, are agreed that all the evidence available points +to this not being the case--that the German gunnery control, on the +contrary, was undoubtedly as simple as it was efficient, and that the +fact that it had not stood up well in action was probably more due to +human than mechanical failure. + +It is considered as by no means improbable that the good shooting of +the German ships was largely traceable to the excellence of their +range-finders and the special training of those who used them. Whether +it is true or not that France and England have succeeded since the war +in making optical glass equal to that of Jena, there is no doubt that +the latter was superior in the first years of the war. The German ships +unquestionably had more accurate range-finders than did the British, +and it is also known now that the Germans took great care in testing the +eyesight of the men employed to handle these instruments, and that much +attention was given to their training. It is believed that upon these +simple points alone, rather than upon the use of a highly complicated +system of control, the admitted excellence of German gunnery was based. +There is no reason to believe that they had anything better than the +British for laying down the "rate of change," and keeping the enemy +under fire once he had been straddled. + +Although it was known to the British sailor in a general sort of way +that the Germans only spent a comparatively small part of their time +aboard their ships, the tangible evidence of this remarkable state of +affairs--in the vast blocks of barracks at Wilhelmshaven and the very +crude, inadequate living quarters in even the most modern of the ships +searched--gave him only less of a shock, and aroused in him only less +contempt, than did the filth and indiscipline of the German sailors. The +German officer who assured one of the searching parties that their ships +were made "to fight in, not to live in," told the literal truth, and it +only accentuates the bitter irony of the fact that, when finally they +refused to fight, they had to begin to be lived in willy-nilly. + +"You can't tell me there isn't a God in Israel, now that we've got the +Huns at Scapa living in their own ships," said an officer on coming off +to the _Hercules_ one night after his first day spent in going over +some of the remnants of the German Navy at Wilhelmshaven. That same +thought is awakening no end of comfort in the breast of many a British +naval officer this winter, who would otherwise have been down on his +luck for having still to stand to his guns after the war was over. In a +previous chapter I have told how we intercepted a wireless from Admiral +Von Reuter, saying that he had "gone sick" at Scapa and asking to be +relieved. That was not the last by any means that we were to hear of +the "hardships" of life in those German "fighting ships" at good old +Scapa. The veritable howls of protest rising from the Orkneys were +echoing in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel during all the time the Commission +spent in German waters. Some mention of the "sad plight" of the German +sailors there was made at every conference, and it was at the final +one, I believe, that Admiral Goette said that the "cruel conditions" +under which the men in the interned ships were being compelled to live +at Scapa Flow was alone responsible for the fact that it had been so +far impossible to find a crew to man the _Baden_, which he had agreed +some days previously should be delivered in place of the uncompleted +_Mackensen_. + +Except for the several modern ships I have mentioned, the search of the +naval units remaining in German ports resolved itself into a more or +less monotonous clambering over a lot of obsolete hulks--from many of +which even the guns had been removed--to see that no munitions remained +in their magazines. There was always the same inevitable filth to be +waded through, always the same gloweringly sullen--or, worse still by +way of variation, cringingly obsequious--officers to be endured. The +sullen ones usually improved when they found that no "indignities" were +to be heaped upon them, and that they had only to answer a few questions +and show the way round; but you had to keep a weather eye lifting for +the obsequious ones to prevent their helping you up ladders by steadying +your elbow, rubbing imaginary spots of grease off your monkey jacket, +and--the invariable finale--offering you a limp, moist hand to shake at +parting. The latter, like the ruthless U-boat warfare, was dangerous +principally on account of its unexpectedness. When adequate "counter +measures" were devised against it, it became less threatening, but had +always to be looked out for. I don't recall, though, hearing any one +confess to having been "surprised" into shaking hands after the first +day or two. + +The search of the warships at Wilhelmshaven was finished in a couple of +days, while the few old cruisers and destroyers at Emden were inspected +in the three hours between going and returning railway journeys, +taking about the same length of time. At Hamburg and Bremen there +were principally merchant ships and U-boats, and the search of--and +for--both of these is a story of its own. The remainder of the work on +the North Sea side consisted in journeys--by train, motor, destroyer, +or launch--to, and the inspection of, Germany's principal seaplane and +airship stations, and of these highly interesting visits I shall write +in later chapters. + + + + +III + +FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF "STARVING GERMANY" + + +Our visit to the island of Norderney was a memorable one for two +reasons--first, because we inspected there what is not only the largest +of Germany's seaplane stations, but also probably the largest and best +equipped in all Europe; and second, because the journey there gave +us, all in the course of a few hours, our first after-the-war glimpse +of a German city, German countryside, a German railway, and what had +once been a German summer resort. The couple of days spent in the +search of the German warships had given no opportunity whatever to see +anything more than an interminable succession of dirty mess decks, empty +magazines, disgruntled officers, slovenly sailors, and cluttered docks. +Steeples and factory chimneys and the loom of lofty barracks located +Wilhelmshaven without revealing it. The steady dribble of pedestrians +along the waterfront road might have been made up of Esquimaux or +Kanakas, for all that we could see. One wondered if their emaciated +frames were dressed in paper suits, and if their tottering feet clumped +along in wooden clogs. The excellence of the material of the untidy +garb of the sailors, and the well-fed appearance of the latter, seemed +to point to the contrary. But still one couldn't be sure. We knew that +Germany had never made the mistake of under-feeding or under-clothing +her soldiers and sailors, and that where any one had to go without +it was always the civilians who suffered. We wanted to see how those +civilians had stood the "starvation blockade" against which they had +protested so loudly, and now--through our visits to the various naval +air stations--the veil was about to be lifted. + +The fog--the interminable fog which never lifted for more than a +few hours at a time during the whole of our three weeks in German +waters--banked thick above the green stream of the swift-running tide +as our picket boat shoved off from the _Hercules_ at eight o'clock +that morning, and there was just sufficient visibility to pick up the +successive buoys marking the course to the entrance to the basin. +Running in just ahead of an antique torpedo-boat with the usual indolent +sailors slouching along its narrow decks, we stepped out upon the +longest pontoon landing I have ever seen. Twenty yards wide, and over a +hundred in length, it was constructed so as to rise and fall with flow +and ebb of what must have been a very considerable tide. + +No one being on the landing to receive the party, we started walking +in toward its shoreward end. The men on the torpedo-boats stared at +us with insolent curiosity, without the suggestion of the shuffle of +a foot toward standing at attention as even the "brassiest" of our +several "brass-hats" passed by; but from the galley of a tug moored +on the opposite side the cook grinned wide-mouthed welcome. She was a +fine, upstanding, double-braided blonde of generous proportions, and the +bulging bulk of her overflowed the narrow companion-way into which she +was wedged as the raw red flesh of her arm swelled over the line of its +rolled-up sleeve. + +"No traces of under-feeding in that figure," said a British flying +officer, with the critically impersonal glance he would have given to +the wings of a machine he was about to take the air in. "No," acquiesced +one of the Americans; "and there's no fear of _schrecklichkeit_ in that +face, either. Pipe that 'welcome-to-our-fair-city' grin, won't you. +Could you beat it for a display of ivories?" + +And so we came to "starving Germany." + +A bustling young flying lieutenant came hurrying to meet us at the shore +end of the landing, apologizing for his tardiness by saying that it was +due to "trouble about the cars." After seeing the motley collection +of motors which awaited us outside the gate, one had no difficulty in +believing him; indeed, it was hard to see how there could be anything +but "trouble about the cars." The best of them was an ancient Mercedes, +the pneumatic tyres of which, worn down to the treads, looked as +though they would puncture on the smooth face of a paving stone. Two +others--one of them looked like a sort of "perpetuation" of a collision +between a Daimler lorry and a Benz runabout, and the other was an +out-and-out mongrel with no visible marks of ancestry--had the remains +of what had once been solid tyres of _ersatz_ rubber bound to the rims +with bits of tarred rope. The fourth and last was _ersatz_ throughout. +That is to say, it seemed to be made--from its paper upholstery to its +steel-spring tyres--of "other things" than those from which the normal +cars one has always known are made of. + +I had heard much of those spring tyres, so, taking advantage of +the general rush for the pneumatically tyred Mercedes and the +"rheumatically" tyred nondescripts, I lifted an oiled-paper curtain and +plumped down on the woven paper cushion of old "_Ersatz_." As the other +cars were quite filled up with the remainder of our party, the escorting +German officer came in with me. + +"The imitation rubber," he began slowly and precisely, "makes many good +things, but not the good motor tyres. It is resilient, but not elastic. +It will stand the pushing but not the pulling. It is not strong, not +tough, like the rubber from the tree. Ah, the English were very lucky +always to have the real rubber. If that had been so with Germany--" + +Just to what extent a continuous supply of real rubber would have +modified the situation for Germany I did not learn, for we started up +just then, and the rest of the sentence was lost in the mighty whirl of +sound in which we were engulfed. The best comparison I can make of the +noise that car made--as heard from within--is to a sustained crescendo +of a super-Jazz band, the cymbals of which were represented by the +clankity-clank of the component parts of the steel tyres banging against +each other and the pavement, and the drums of which were the rhythmic +thud-thud of the _ersatz_ body on the lifeless springs. Although the +other cars were rattling heavily on their own account, the ear-rending +racket of the steel-tyres dominated the situation completely, and at the +first turn I caught an impressionistic blend of blue and khaki uniforms +as their occupants leaned out to see what was in pursuit of them. + +"It was unlike any sound I ever heard before," said one of them in +describing it later. "It was positively Bolshevik!" All in all, I +think "Bolshevik" is more fittingly descriptive than "Jazz-band-ic." It +carries a suggestion of "savageness" quite lacking in the latter, and +"savage" that raucous tornado of sound surely was. I could never allow +myself to contemplate the primal chaos one of the American officers +tried to conjure up by asking what it would be like to hear two motor +convoys of steel-tyred trucks passing each other during a bombardment. +The only sensible comment I heard on that question was from the +officer who cut in with, "Please tell me how you'd know there _was_ a +bombardment?" + +There was one thing that steel-tyred car did well, though, and that +was to respond to its emergency brake. The occasion for the use of +the latter arose when a turning bridge was suddenly opened fifteen or +twenty yards ahead of the leading car, imposing upon the latter the +necessity of stopping dead inside that distance or taking a header into +a canal. The Mercedes, skating airily along on its wobbly tyres, managed +it by inches after streaking the pavement with two broad belts of the +last "real tree rubber" left in Germany. The leading nondescript--the +Benz-Daimler blend--gave the Mercedes a sharp bump before losing +the last of its momentum, and all but the last of its fluttering +"rope-_ersatz_-rubber" tyres, while its mate only came to a standstill +after skidding sideways on its rims. But my steel-tyred chariot, the +instant its emergency brake was thrown on, simply set its teeth into the +red brick pavement, and, spitting sparks like a dragon, stopped as dead +as though it had run against a stone wall. My companion and I, having +nothing to set _our_ teeth into, simply kept going right on. I, luckily, +only butted the chauffeur, who--evidently because the same thing had +happened to him before--took it all in good part; but the dapper young +officer, who planted the back of his head squarely between the shoulder +blades of the august Workmen's and Soldiers' representative riding +beside the driver, got a good swearing at for not aiming lower and +allowing the back of the seat to absorb his inertia. Quite apart from +the sparks kicked up by the tyres, and the stars shaken down by my jolt, +it was a highly illuminating little incident. + +We ran more slowly after we crossed the bridge--which also meant more +quietly, or rather, less noisily--and for the first time I noticed what +a new world we seemed to have come into since we left the immediate +vicinity of the docks. It was not so much that we were now passing down +a street of small shops, where before we had been among warehouses and +factories, as the difference in appearance and spirit of the people. No +one--not even the labourer going to his morning work--had anything of +the slovenly hang-dog air of the sailors we had seen in the ships and +about the dockyard. The streets and the shops were clean, and even the +meanest of the people neatly and comfortably dressed. We had come out of +the atmosphere of revolution into that of ordinary work-a-day Germany. + +As we rounded a corner and came clattering into the main street of the +city, the change was even more marked. At first blush there was hardly a +suggestion of war, or of war's aftermath. The big shop-windows were full +of goods, with here and there the forerunning red-and-green decorations +of the coming holidays. Here was an art shop's display of etchings and +coloured prints, there a haberdasher's stock of scarves and shirts +and gloves. Even a passing glance, it is true, revealed a prominently +displayed line of false shirt fronts; but, then, your German always was +partial to "dickeys." A florist's window, in which a fountain plashed +above a basin of water-lilies, was golden with splendid chrysanthemums, +and in the milliner's window hard by a saffron-plumed confection of +ultra-marine held high revel with a riotous thing of royal purple plush. + +Noting my eager interest in the gay window panorama, my companion, +leaning close to my ear to make himself heard above the clatter of the +tyres, shouted jerkily with the jolt of the car, "We are fond of the +bright colours, we Germans, and we make the very good dyes. I think you +have missed very much the German dyes since the war, and will now be +very glad of the chance to have them again. We have learned much during +the war, and they are now better than ever before. We laugh very much +when we capture the French soldier with the faded blue uniform, for then +we know that the French cannot make the dye that will hold its colour. +But the German--" + +"Waiting with the goods," I said to myself as I drew away from the +dissertation to watch a tramcar disgorging its load at a crossing. + +We were now running through the heart of Wilhelmshaven, and it was the +early office crowd that was thronging the streets. How well they were +dressed, and how well fed they looked! There were no hollow eyes or +emaciated forms in that crowd. One who has seen famines in China and +India knows the hunger look, the hunger pallor, the hunger apathy. There +is no mistaking them. But we had not seen any of them in the German +ships or dockyards, we did not see them that day in Wilhelmshaven, +and we were not destined to see them in Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, or +anywhere else we went in the course of our many hundreds of miles +of travel in Northern Germany. So far as Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and +Schleswig-Holstein were concerned, I have no hesitation in saying that +the starvation whine, which arose from the moment the ink was dry upon +the armistice agreement and which still persists, was sheer--to be +charitable, let us say--panic. + +Presently, as we began to pass some huge masses of buildings which, +four or five stories in height, appeared to run on through two or three +blocks of the not unattractive park-like grounds with which they were +surrounded, my companion, indicating them with a proud wave of his +hand, started speaking again. I could not hear him distinctly--for we +were speeding up faster now, and consequently making more noise--but I +thought I caught the drift of what he was trying to say. + +"Ja, ja," I roared back. "Ich verstehe sehr gut. Der naval barracks. +Der German High Sea Fleet Base." I think that was hardly the way he +was trying to put it, but his vigorous nod of assent showed that I had +at least gathered the sense of his observations. As we slowed down at +the next corner he put me completely right by saying, "Not for the +ships themselves, the big barracks, but for the men when the ships were +here. I think you make a joke." I admitted the shrewd impeachment +with a grin, but hardly thought it necessary to add that I was afraid +he had still missed the best part of the joke. He was a diverting lad, +that young flying officer, and he told me many interesting things in +the course of the day. Some of them were true, as subsequent events +or observations proved; but one of them at least was a calculated and +deliberate lie, told with the purpose of inducing one of the "air" +parties to give up the plan it had formed of visiting a certain station. +I will set down that significant little incident in its proper place. + +Although, as we learned later, the fact that a party from the Allied +Commission was to land and pass through the city that day had been +carefully withheld from the people, the latter exhibited very little +surprise at the appearance of officers in uniforms which they seemed to +recognize at once as foreign. They had been instructed that they were to +make no demonstration of any kind when Allied officers were encountered +in the streets, and, docile as ever, they carried out the order to the +letter. A mild, unresentful curiosity would perhaps best describe the +attitude of all the people who saw us that day, both in Wilhelmshaven +and at the country stations. + +The fact that many of the streets were dressed with flags and greenery, +and that all of the children, both boys and girls, trudging along +to school carried the red, white, and black emblem in their hands, +suggested to me at first that it was part of a patriotic display, a sort +of flaunting the new-found freedom in the face of the "invader." But my +companion assured me that the decorations were in honour of the expected +arrival home of two regiments of Wilhelmshaven Marines from the Front. +"We have been _en fête_ for a week now in hourly expectation of their +coming, and every day the children have put on their best clothes and +carried flags in their hands. But the railway service is very bad, and +always are they disappointed. You will see the arch of welcome at the +railway station. Wilhelmshaven is very proud of its Marine soldiers." + +The "arch" at the station turned out to be the evergreen and +bunting-decorated entrance to a long shed set with tables, at which +refreshments were to be served to the returning warriors. It was +surmounted with a shield bearing the words "Willkommen Soldaten," and an +eight-line stanza of verse which I did not have time to copy. The gist +of it was that the soldiers were welcomed home to "Work and Liberty." +It was thoroughly bad verse, said one of our interpreters, but the +sentiments were--for Germany--"restrained and dignified." There was +nothing about the "unbeaten soldiers," of whom we had been reading as +welcomed home in Berlin and other parts of Germany. + +There was a small crowd at the station entrance as our cars drove +up, but it parted quietly and made way for us to pass inside. One or +two sailors stood at attention and saluted--though whether German or +Allied officers it was impossible to tell--and several civilians bowed +solemnly and took off their hats. One of these reached out and made +temporary captive an irreverent street gamin who--purely in a spirit +of fun, apparently--started "goose-stepping" along in our wake. A bevy +of minxes of the shop-girl type giggled sputteringly, getting much +apparent amusement the while out of pretending to keep each other +quiet. One gaudily garbed pair, standing easily at gaze in the middle +of the waiting-room, stared brazenly and ogled frank invitation. An +austere dame--she might have been an opulent naval captain's frau--drew +a languid hand from what looked like a real ermine muff to lift a +tortoise-shell lorgnette and pass us one by one in critical review. Then +the old ticket-puncher, touching his cap as though he had recognized the +party as the Board of Directors on a surreptitious tour of inspection, +passed us through the gate and on the platform and our waiting train. + +Our special consisted of a luggage van and a passenger coach, drawn +by an engine in a very advanced state of what appeared to be neglect. +Though all its parts were there, these, except where rubbed clean by +friction, were thick with rust and scaled with flaking paint. The worst +trouble, however, seemed to come from lack of lubrication, for in the +places where every other locomotive I had seen before was dripping with +oil, this one showed only caked graphite and hard, dry steel. While +there is little doubt that the Germans made a point of turning out their +worst engines and motor cars for the use of the Allied sub-commissions +in order to give an impression that things were really in a desperate +way with them, it is still beyond question that their railway stock +deteriorated greatly during the war, and that a shortage of lubricating +oils was one of their very worst difficulties. + +The passenger coach was equally divided between first- and second-class +compartments. Entering at the second-class end, our party distributed +itself between the first two compartments reached. By the time one of +the several German officers who had now joined us pointed out the big +figure "2" on the windows, we were so comfortably settled that no one +deemed it worth while to move. As a matter of fact, on the German +railways, with their four or five classes, there is gentler gradation +between class and class than in France or England; and between first and +second--save that the former is upholstered in dark-red plush and the +latter in light-green--the difference is hardly noticeable. The main +difference is, I believe, in the price, and the fact that only six are +allowed in the first-class against eight in the second. We extracted a +good deal of amusement out of the fact that the several Workmen's and +Soldiers' representatives made no mistake, and lost no time, in marking +a first-class compartment for their own. + +We had been somewhat perplexed on our arrival at the station to note +that the two uniformed Workmen's and Soldiers' representatives had +been joined by two civilians, each wearing the white arm-band of the +revolutionary council. But presently one of the latter, hat in hand, +came to the door of our compartment to explain. The naval authorities, +he said, had requested that the Workmen and Soldiers should guarantee +the safety of all Allied parties landing from civilian attack, and in +consequence he had been sent along as a "hostage." At least the German +term he used was one which could be translated as hostage, but after +talking it over we came to the conclusion that the man's _rôle_ was +more analogous to that of a "plain clothes" special policeman. There +was one of these men attached to every party that made a train journey +on the North Sea side (all stations in the Baltic littoral were reached +by destroyer, so that no "protection" from the civilian population was +necessary), and they were neither of any trouble nor--so far as I was +ever able to discern--any use. + +Leaving a handful of morning papers behind him as a propitiatory +offering, our "hostage" bowed himself out of the door and backed off +down the corridor--still bowing--to rejoin his colleagues in the +first-class section of the car. In the quarter of an hour there was +still to wait before the line was clear for the departure of our train, +we had our first chance for a peep into Germany through the window of +the Press. + +The four-page sheets turned out to be copies of _Vorwärts_, the +_Kölnische Volkszeitung und Handels-Blatt_, the _Weser Zeitung_, of +Bremen, the _Wilhelmshavener Tageblatt_, and the _Republik_. The +latter styled itself the _Sozialdemokratisches Organ für Oldenburg und +Ostfriesland_, and the _Mitteilungsblatt der Arbeiter und Soldatenräte_. +It claimed to be in its thirty-second year, but admitted that all this +time, except the fortnight since the revolution, it had borne the name +of _Oldenburger Volksblatt_. It had little in the way of news from +either the outside world or the interior, the few columns which it +gave up to this purpose being filled with accounts of the formation +of republics in various other provinces, and attacks upon members of +the acting Government in Berlin. Evidently under some sort of orders, +it mentioned the arrival of the _Hercules_ at Wilhelmshaven without +comment. A socialistic sheet of Hamburg, which turned up the next +day, showed less restraint in this connection, for it stated that the +Allied Commission had altered its decision not to meet the Workmen's +and Soldiers' representatives, and that negotiations were now in +progress in which the latter were taking a prominent part. Tangible +evidence of the truth of this statement, it added, might be found in the +fact that delegates from the Workmen and Soldiers accompanied Allied +parties whenever they landed. _Vorwärts_ tried to convey the same false +impression to its readers, but rather less brazenly. The _Kölnische +Volkszeitung_ printed a dispatch from London, in which the _Daily Mail_ +was quoted as supporting the "_australischen Premierministers Hughes'_" +demand of an indemnity of "_acht milliarden Pfund Sterling_" from +Germany, and proceeded to prove in the course of an impassioned leader +of two columns why the demanding of any indemnity at all was in direct +violation of the pledged word of the Allies, to say nothing of Wilson's +Fourteen Points. A significant circumstance was the inclusion in each +paper of a part of a column of comment on the movement of prices of +"_Landesprodukte_" on the American markets. + +The advertisements, which took up rather more than half of each sheet, +proved by long odds more interesting than the news. These were quite +in best "peace time" style. The _Metropol-Variete_ (_Neu renoviert!_) +informed all and sundry that "_Vier elegante junge Damen!_" disported +themselves in its "_Kabarett_" every evening. The head-line of the great +"_Spezialitäten Programm_" in the theatre was "_Die Grosse Sensation: +Martini Szeny, genannt der 'Ausbrecher-König'!_" A number in the +_Metropol's_ program which appealed to us more than all the others, +however, was one which was featured further down the list, for there, +sandwiched between "KITTY DEANOS UND PARTNER, _Kunstschutzen_," and +"HANS ROMANS, _Liedersanger_," appeared "LITTLE WILLY, _Trapez-Volant_." + +"And all the time we thought he was in Holland," dryly commented the +American officer who made the discovery. + +One could not help wondering respecting the "etymology" of "Little +Willy," and whether that "Flying Trapezist" knew that he bore the +favourite Allied nickname for His ex-Royal and Imperial Highness, +Frederick Wilhelm Hohenzollern, Crown Prince of Germany, etc., etc. + +Evidence that Hun "piracy" had not been confined to their U-boats was +unearthed in the discovery that the Adler-Theatre of Bremen advertised +two performances of "DIE MODERNE EVA" for that very day--_Heute +Sonntag_! "I ran across the chap who wrote 'The Modern Eve' somewhere +out California way," said the same American who had spoken before. "He +was some bore, too, take it from me; but he never deserved anything +as bad as this, for the show itself was pretty nifty," and he began +humming, in extemporaneously translated German the words of "Good-bye +Everybody," the popular "song hit" from "The Modern Eve." + +It was a Berlin theatre which advertised "2 _Vorstellungen_ 2" of +"Hamlet," which ended up the notice with "RAUCHEN STRENG VERBOTEN!" in +large type. "If they burn the same stuff in Berlin that our Workmen and +Soldier friends in the first-class are putting up that smoke barrage in +the corridor with," said an airship officer, "it would have to be a case +of '_Rauchen Streng Verboten_' or gas masks." + +A number of booksellers advertised long lists of "_Neue Werke_," +but one searched these in vain for any of the notorious polemics +directed against the Allies, or yet for the writings of any of the +great protagonists of the "Deutschland Ueber Alles" movement. Most of +them appeared to be "Romances" or out-and-out "Thrillers." Bachem, of +Köln, described "_Der Meister_" as "_Der Roman eines Spiritisten_"; +"_Wettertannen_" as a "_Tiroler Roman aus der Gegenwart von Hans +Schrott_"; "_Wenn Irland dich ruft_" as "_Der Roman eines Fliegers_"; +and "_Der blutige Behrpfennig_" as "_Erzählung aus dem Leben eines +Priesters_." Although one would have thought that the German people had +had quite enough of that kind of thing from their late Government, every +book I saw advertised in any of these papers was fiction. + +Perhaps the most optimistic of all these advertisements was that of the +"Kismet Laboratorium," of Berlin, in the _Republik_, which claimed to +make a preparation for the improvement of the female form divine. Now +that the war was over, it read, they no longer felt any hesitation in +announcing that their great discovery was based on a certain product +which could only be obtained from British India. As their pre-war stock +had only been eked out by dilution with an not entirely satisfactory +substitute, it was with great pleasure that they informed their many +customers that they hoped shortly to conclude arrangements by which +the famous "Bakatal-Busenwasser" could again be furnished in all its +pristine purity and strength. + +So here, it appears, was an indirect admission to prove wrong the +individual who averred that the German chemists could make out of coal +tar anything in the world except a gentleman. It seems that all the time +they had been dependent upon British India for even the "makings" of a +lady. It would have been interesting to know what the "arrangements" +were by which the supply was to be renewed. We were discussing that +question when the train started, and a "flat" wheel on the "bogey" +immediately under our compartment put an end to casual conversation. + +On the outskirts of the town we passed by a great series of sidings +closely packed with oil-tank-cars from all parts of the Central Empires. +The most of them were marked in German, but with names which indicated +beyond a doubt that they had been employed in serving the Galician +fields of Austria. On many more the name of Rumania appeared in one +form or another, and several bore the names of the British concerns +from which they had been seized when the rich oilfields of that unlucky +country fell to Mackensen's armies. A considerable number of cars +were marked with Russian characters, which led to the assumption that +they had been seized in Courland or the Ukraine, and that they had +originally run to and from the greatest of the world's oilfields at +Baku, on the Caspian. There was a persistent report at one time that +Germany was constructing an oil-pipe-line from the Galician fields to +Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. Although quite practicable from an engineering +standpoint, this appears never to have been seriously considered, +probably on account of the great demand for labour and material it would +have made at a time when both could be used to better advantage in other +ways. + +Seeing me standing at the window in the corridor looking at the +oil-cars, my young companion of the steel-tyred auto came out of his +compartment and moved up beside me. "As you will see," he said with his +slow precision, "we never lacked badly for the oil for our U-boats. +The one time that we had the great worry was when the Russians had the +fields of Galicia. That cut off our only large supply. But luckily we +had great stocks in hand when the war started, and these were quite +sufficient for our needs until the Russians had been driven out of +Austria. If they had remained there, it is hard to see how we could have +kept going after our reserve was finished. But they did not stay, the +poor Russians, and they did not even have the wits to destroy the wells +properly. We had them producing again at full capacity in a few months. +Now, if they had been destroyed like the English destroyed the wells in +Rumania it would have been different. _There_, in many places, we found +it the cheaper to drill the new wells. Ah, the English are very thorough +when they have the time, both in making and un-making." + +As we passed through the suburbs of Wilhelmshaven we began to get some +inkling of where the food came from. All back yards and every spare +patch of ground were in vegetables. Nowhere in England or France have I +seen the surface of the earth so fully occupied, so thoroughly turned +to account. Some thrifty cultivators, after filling up their available +ground with rows of cabbages and Brussels sprouts, appeared to have been +growing beans and peas in hanging baskets and boxes of earth set up on +frames. One genius had erected a forcing bed for what (to judge from +the dead stalks) looked like cucumbers or squashes on the thatched roof +of his cowshed. The only thing needed to cap the climax of agricultural +industry would have been a "hanging garden" suspended from captive +balloons. + +As we ran out of the suburban area and into the open country the +allotments gave place to large and well-tilled farms, or rather to farms +which had been well tilled in the season favourable to cultivation. +At the moment work was practically at a standstill on account of the +incessant rains which had inundated considerable areas and left the +ground heavy, water-logged, and temporarily unfit for the plough. +The results of a really bountiful harvest, however, were to be seen +in bulging barns and sheds and plethoric haystacks and fodder piles. +The surest evidence that there had actually been an over-supply of +vegetables was the careless way in which such things as cabbages, +swedes, and beets were being handled in transport. A starving people +does not leave food of this kind to rot along the road nor in the +station yards, evidences of which we saw every now and then for the next +forty miles. + +Practically the whole of the North Sea littoral of Germany between the +Kiel Canal and the Dutch border--across the central section of which we +were now passing--is the same sort of a flat, sea-level expanse, and has +the same rich, alluvial soil, as the plains of Flanders. This region, +like Denmark and Holland, had been largely given over to dairying +before the war. The conversion of it from a pastoral to an agricultural +country, by ploughing up the endless miles of meadows, has resulted +in a huge output of foodstuffs, and has put the people inhabiting it +well beyond the risk of anything approaching starvation, no matter how +long the blockade might be kept up. The officers accompanying us were +quite frank in stating that the farmers had prospered and waxed wealthy +by selling their surplus in the nearest industrial centres, such as +Bremen and Hamburg. The pinch, they said, would come when the people +began trying to restock their dairy farms again, for at least a half +of the cattle had been killed off as their pastures had been put under +cultivation. + +Judging by the very few cattle in sight--in comparison with the number +one has always seen in the fields in dairying regions--one would be +inclined to estimate the reduction of stock at a good deal more than +half. The fact that it is the local custom to keep the best of their +stock stabled during the most inclement months of the winter doubtless +had a good deal to do with the few animals in sight. As a matter of +fact, there was really very little grazing left for those that might +have been turned out. Sheep were also extremely scarce, but as this was +not a region where they were ever found in great numbers one remarked +their absence less than that of cattle. + +But the most astonishing thing of all was that not a single pig was +sighted on either the going or returning journey. The sight of what +appeared to be a long-empty sty started a comparison of observations +from which it transpired that no one watching from either of our two +compartments had so much as clapped an eye on what the world has long +regarded as Germany's favourite species of live stock. After that we all +began standing "pig lookout," but the only "View Halloo" raised was a +false one, the "_schwein_" turning out to be a _dachshund_, and a very +scrawny one at that. Piqued by this astonishing porcine elusiveness, +the "air" parties (upon which most of the land travel devolved) met +in the ward-room of the _Hercules_ that evening and contributed to +form a "Pig Pool," the whole of which was to go to the first member +who could produce incontestable evidence that he had seen a pig upon +German soil. Astounding as it may seem, this prize was never awarded. +The claim of one aspirant was ruled out because, on cross-questioning, +he had to admit that his "pig" wore a German naval uniform and had +tried, by vigorous lying, to head him off from a hangar containing a +very interesting type of a new seaplane. Another claimant proved that +he had actually seen a pig, but only to have the prize withheld when it +transpired that he had flushed nothing more lifelike than the plaster +image of a pig which, cleaver in hand, stood as a butcher's sign in a +village on the island of Rügen. A third claimant _would_ have won the +award had he chanced along five minutes sooner when the villagers were +butchering a pig on the occasion when his party visited the Great Belt +Islands to inspect the forts. Even in this case, though, we should have +had to weigh carefully the evidence of an Irish-American officer of the +same party, who said that it was "a dead cert that pig had died from hog +cholera a good hour before it was killed!" + +Although the fact that none of the members of the various Allied +sub-commissions saw so much as a single live hog during the course of +the many hundred miles travelled by train, motor, carriage, or foot +in North-Western Germany, does not mean that the species has become +extinct there by any means, there is still no doubt that the numbers of +this popular and appropriate symbol of the Hun's _grossness_ have been +greatly reduced, and that _schweine_ will be among the top items on +their list of "immediate requirements" forwarded to the Allied Relief +Committee. + +Hurried as was this first of our journeys across Oldenburg, I was still +able to see endless evidence not only of the intensive cultivation, +but also the careful and scientific fertilization, which I had good +opportunity to study later at closer range in Mecklenburg and +Schleswig. Stable manure and mulches of sedulously conserved decaying +vegetable matter were being everywhere applied to the land according to +the most approved modern practice. This I had expected to see, for I +already knew the German as an intelligent and well-instructed farmer, +but what did surprise me was clear proof that the supply of artificial +fertilizers--phosphates, nitrates, and lime--was being fairly well +maintained. Truck loads of these indispensable adjuncts to sustained +production standing in station sidings showed that, and so did the state +of the fields themselves; for the fresh young shoots of winter wheat, +which I saw everywhere pushing up and taking full advantage of the +almost unprecedentedly mild December weather, showed no traces of the +"hungriness" I have so often noted during the last year or two in some +of the over-cropped and under-fertilized fields of England. + +What with prisoners and the unremitting labour of women and children, +Germany accomplished remarkable things in the way of production. The +area of cultivation was not only largely increased, but the production +of the old fields was also kept at a high level. In no part of the world +have I ever seen fairer farmsteads than those through which the party +inspecting the Great Belt forts north of Kiel drove for many miles one +day. They struck me as combining something of the picturesqueness of a +Somerset farm with the prosperous efficiency of a California ranch. And +it is as a California rancher myself that I say that I only wish I had +soil and outbuildings that would come anywhere nearly up to the average +of those throughout this favoured region of Schleswig. It is true that +many of the people thereabouts are Danish, and I even saw a Danish flag +discreetly displayed behind the neat lace curtains of one farmhouse. +But, Danish or German, they are producing huge quantities of good +food, enough to keep the people of less fertile regions of "starving +Deutschland" far from want. + +It was just before our arrival at Norddeich at the end of this first +day's railway journey that I spoke to the German officer who had joined +me at the window of the corridor about the very well-fed look of the +people we had seen on the streets of Wilhelmshaven and at the stations +of the towns and villages through which we had been passing. "It is +true," he replied, "that we have never suffered for food in this part +of the country, and that is because it is so largely agricultural. But +wait until you go to the industrial centres. In Hamburg and Bremen, it +is there that you will see the want and hunger. It is for those poor +people that the Allies must provide much food without delay." + +Personally, I did not go either to Hamburg or Bremen, being absent with +parties visiting the Zeppelin stations at Nordholz and Tondern at the +time the Shipping Board of the Naval Commission was inspecting British +merchantmen interned in these once great ports. A member of that board, +however, assured me that he had observed no material difference in the +appearance of the people in the streets of Bremen and Hamburg and those +of Wilhelmshaven. His party had taken "potluck" at the Hotel Atlantic +in Hamburg, where the food had been found ample in quantity and not +unappetizing, even on a meatless day. + +"But what of the poor?" I asked. "Did you see anything of the quarters +that would correspond to the slums of London or Liverpool?" + +"Germany," he replied, "to her credit, has very few places where the +housing is outwardly so bad as in many British industrial cities I could +name. We did not see much of the parts of Bremen and Hamburg where +the working-classes live; but we did see a good deal of the workers +themselves. I know under-feeding when I see it, for I was in Russia +but a few months ago. But, so far as I could see, the chief difference +between the men in the dockyards and shipbuilding establishments +of Hamburg and those of the Tyne and Clyde was that the former were +working harder. They merely glanced up at us as we passed, with little +curiosity and no resentment, and went right on with the job in hand. +No, everything considered, I should not say that any one is suffering +seriously for lack of food in either Bremen or Hamburg." + +"No one is suffering seriously for lack of food." That was the feeling +of all of us at the end of our first day in "starving Germany," and (if +I may anticipate) it was also our verdict when the _Hercules_ sailed for +England, three weeks later. + + + + +IV + +ACROSS THE SANDS TO NORDERNEY + + +The names of "Norderney" and "Borkum" on the list of seaplane stations +to be inspected seemed to strike a familiar chord of memory, but it +was not until I chanced upon a dog-eared copy of "The Riddle of the +Sands" on a table in the "Commission Room" of the _Hercules_ that it +dawned upon me where I had heard them before. There was no time at +the moment to re-turn the pages of this most consummately told yarn +of its kind ever written, but, prompted by a happy inspiration, I +slipped the grimy little volume into my pocket. And there (as the +clattering special which was to take us to Norddeich, _en route_ to +Norderney, turned off from the Bremen mainline a few miles outside of +Wilhelmshaven) I found it again, just as the green water-logged fields +and bogs of the "land of the seven _siels_" began to unroll in twin +panoramas on either side. Opening the book at random somewhere toward +the middle, my eye was drawn to a paragraph beginning near the top of +the page facing a much-pencilled chart. "... The mainland is that +district of Prussia that is known as East Friesland." (I remember now +that it was "Carruthers," writing in the _Dulcibella_, off Wangerogg, +who was describing the "lay of the land.") "It is a short, flat-topped +peninsula, bounded on the west by the Ems estuary and beyond that by +Holland, and on the east by the Jade estuary; a low-lying country, +containing great tracts of marsh, and few towns of any size; on the +north side none. Seven islands lie off the coast. All, except Borkum, +which is round, are attenuated strips, slightly crescent-shaped, rarely +more than a mile broad, and tapering at the ends; in length averaging +about six miles, from Norderney and Juist, which are seven and nine +respectively, to little Baltrum, which is only two and a half." + +As I turned the book sideways to look at the chart the whole fascinating +story came back with a rush. What man who has ever knocked about in +small boats, tramped roads and poked about generally in places where he +had no business to poke could forget it? The East Friesland peninsula, +with its "seven little rivers" and "seven channels" and "seven islands," +was the "take off" for the German army which was to cross the North +Sea in barges to land on the sands of "The Wash" for the invasion of +England. And this very line over which our rickety two-car special +was clinkety-clanking--I wished that "Carruthers" could have seen what +a pitiful little old single-track it had become--was the "strategic +trunk" over which the invading cohorts were to be shunted in their +thousands to the waiting deep-sea-going barges in the canalized _siels_. +There was Essen, which was to have been the "nodal centre" of the +great embarkation, and scarcely had I located it on the map before its +tall spire was stabbing the north-western skyline as we drew in to the +station. + +A raw-boned, red-faced girl, her astonishingly powerful frame clad in a +man's greasy overall, lowered the barrier at the high-road crossing, the +same barrier, I reflected, which had held up "Carruthers," Von Brunning, +and the two "cloaked gentlemen" on the night of the great adventure. +Four "land girls," in close-fitting brown corduroys, with great baskets +of red cabbages on their shoulders, were just trudging off down the road +to Dornum, the very "cobbled causeway flanked with ditches and willows, +and running cheek by jowl with the railway track" which "Carruthers" had +followed by midnight, with "fleecy clouds and a half moon overhead," +in search of the Benser Tief. There was even a string of mighty barges +towing down the narrow canal of the "Tief" when we crossed its rattling +bridge a few minutes later. And just as "Carruthers" described, the road +and railway clung closely together all the way to Dornum, and about +halfway were joined by a third companion in the shape of a puny stream, +the Neues Tief. "Wriggling and doubling like an eel, choked with sedges +and reeds," it had no more pretensions to being navigable now than then. +It still "looped away into the fens out of sight, to reappear again +close to Dornum in a more dignified guise," and it still skirted the +town to the east, where there was a towpath and a piled wharf. The only +change I was able to note in the momentary halt of the train was that +the "red-brick building with the look of a warehouse, roofless as yet +and with workmen on the scaffolds," had now been covered with red tile +and filled with red cabbages. + +It was at Dornum that "Carruthers" (who was masquerading as a German +sailor on his way to visit a sister living on Baltrum) fell in at a +primitive _Gasthaus_ with an ex-crimp, drunken with much _schnappsen_, +who insisted on accompanying him on a detour to Dornumersiel, where he +had planned to do a hasty bit of spying. From the right-hand window I +caught a brief glimpse of the ribbon of the coastward road, down the +length of which the oddly-assorted pair--the Foreign Office _précis_ +writer and the one-time "shanghai" artist--had stumbled arm-in-arm, +treating each other in every gin-shop on the way. + +"Carruthers'" detour to the coast carried him out of sight of the +railway, so that he missed the little red-brick schoolhouse, close up by +the track, where the buxom mistress had her whole brood of young Fritzes +and Gretchens lined up along the fence of the right-of-way to wave and +cheer our train as it passed. How she received word of the coming of the +"Allied Special" we could only conjecture, but it was probably through +some Workmen's and Soldiers' Council friend in the railway service. But +even so, as the schoolhouse was three miles from the nearest station +and had nothing suggestive of a telephone line running to it, she must +have had her _banzai_ party standing by in readiness a good part of +the forenoon session. Hurriedly dropping a window (they work rather +hard on account of the stiffness of the thick paper strap), I was just +able to gather that the burden of the greeting was "Good morning, good +morning, sir!" repeated many times in guttural chorus. If any of them +were shouting "Welcome!" as one or two of our party thought they heard, +it escaped my ears. They did the thing so well one was sure it had been +rehearsed, and wondered how long it had been since those same throaty +trebles had been raised in the "Hymn of Hate." If "Carruthers" spying +visit to Dornumersiel resulted in anything more "revealing" than the dig +in the ribs one of the youngsters got from the mistress for (apparently) +not cheering lustily enough, he neglected to set it down in his story. +This little incident prepared us for much we were to see later in the +way of German "conciliation" methods. + +"Carruthers," when he returned to the railway again and took train at +Hage, made the journey from the latter station to Norden in ten minutes. +The fact that our special took twenty is sufficient commentary on the +deterioration of German road-beds and rolling stock. Norden, which +is the junction point for Emden, to the south, and Norddeich, to the +north, is a good-sized town, and we noticed here that the streets were +beflagged and arched with evergreen as at Wilhelmshaven, doubtless in +expectation of returning troops. While our engines were being changed, +a couple of workmen, standing back in the depths of a tool-house, kept +waving their hands ingratiatingly every time the armed guard (who always +paced up and down the platform while the train was at a station) turned +his back. What they were driving at--unless co-operating with the +children in the general "conciliation" program--we were not able to make +out. + +From Norden to Norddeich was a run of but three or four miles, but a bad +road-bed and a worse engine made the journey a tedious if fitting finale +to our painful progress across the East Frisian peninsula. Halting but a +few moments at the main station, the train was shunted to a spur which +took it right out to the quay where the great dyke bent inward to form a +narrow artificial harbour. A few steps across the slippery moss-covered +stones, where the falling tide had bared the sloping landing, took us to +where a small but powerfully engined steam launch was waiting to convey +the party to Norderney. Manned by naval ratings, it had the same aspect +of neglect which characterized all of the warships we had visited. The +men saluted smartly, however, and on our expressing a wish to remain in +the open air in preference to the stuffy cabin, they tumbled below and +brought up cushions and ranged them along the deck-house to sit upon. +The Allied officers dangled their legs to port, the German officers to +starboard, while the ex-sailor and the "plain clothes" detective from +the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council disposed themselves authoritatively +in the wheel-house. + +A few minutes' run between heavy stone jetties brought us to the +open sea, where the launch began threading a channel which seemed to +be marked mostly by buoys, but here and there by close-set rows of +saplings, now just beginning to show their scraggly tops above the +falling water. It was the sight of these latter marks--so characteristic +of these waters--that reminded me that we had at last come out into the +real hunting ground of the _Dulcibella_, where "Davies" and "Carruthers" +had puzzled out the solution of "The Riddle of the Sands." Norderney +and Juist and Borkum and the other of the "seven islands" strung their +attenuated lengths in a broken barrier to seaward, and between them +and the mainland we were leaving astern stretched the amazing mazes of +the sands, alternately bared and covered by the ebb and flow of the +tides. Two-thirds of the area, according to "Carruthers," were dry at +low water, when the "remaining third becomes a system of lagoons whose +distribution is controlled by the natural drift of the North Sea as it +forces its way through the intervals between the islands. Each of these +intervals resembles the bar of a river, and is obstructed by dangerous +banks over which the sea pours at every tide, scooping out a deep pool. +This fans out and ramifies to east and west as the pent-up current +frees itself, encircles the islands, and spreads over the intervening +flats. But the further it penetrates the less scouring force it has, +and as a result no island is girt completely by a low-water channel. +About midway at the back of each of them is a 'watershed,' only covered +for five or six hours out of the twelve. A boat, even of the lightest +draught, navigating behind the islands must choose its moment for +passing these." + +"I trust we have 'chosen _our_ moment' carefully," I said to myself +after reading those lines and reflecting what a large part of their time +the _Dulcibella_, _Kormoran_, and all the other craft in the "Riddle" +had spent careened upon sand-spits. To reassure myself, I leaned back +and asked one of the German officers if boats didn't run aground pretty +often on that run. "Oh, yes, most often," was the reply, "but only at +low water or when the fog is very thick. With this much water, and when +we can see as far as we can now"--there was about a quarter of a mile of +visibility--"there is no danger. Our difficulty will come when we try to +return this evening on the low water." + +It may have been my imagination, but I thought he put a shade more +accent on that _try_ than a real optimist would have done under similar +circumstances. But then, I told myself, it was hardly a time when one +could expect a German officer to be optimistic about anything. + +Heading out through the well-marked channel of the _Buse Tief_, between +the sands of the _Itzendorf Plate_ to port and _Hohe Riff_ to starboard, +twenty minutes found the launch in the opener waters off the west end of +Norderney where, with its light draught, it had no longer to thread the +winding of the buoyed fairway. Standing on northward until the red roofs +and white walls of the town sharpened into ghostly relief on the curtain +of the mist, course was altered five or six points to starboard, and we +skirted a broad stretch of sandy beach, from the upper end of which the +even slopes of concreted "runs" were visible, leading back to where, +dimly outlined in their darker opacity, a long row of great hangars +loomed fantastically beyond the dunes. Doubling a sharp spit, the launch +nosed in and brought up alongside the landing of a slip notched out of +the side of the little natural harbour. + +The Commander of the station--a small man, but wiry and exceedingly +well set up--met us as we stepped off the launch. Then, and throughout +the visit, his quiet dignity of manner and ready (but not too ready) +courtesy struck a welcome mean between the incongruous blends of +sullenness and subserviency we had encountered in meeting the officers +in the German warships. He saluted each member of the party as he +landed, but tactfully refrained from offering his hand to any but +the attached German officers. It was this attitude on the part of +the Commander, together with the uniformly courteous but uneffusive +demeanour of the other officers with whom we were thrown in contact, +that made the visit to Norderney perhaps the pleasantest of all the many +inspections carried out in Germany. + +Walking inland along a brick-paved road, we passed a large canteen or +recreation club (with a crowd of curious but quite respectful men lined +up along the verandah railings to watch us go by) before turning in to +a fine new brick-and-tile building which appeared to be the officers' +Casino. Leaving our overcoats in the reception room, we joined the dozen +or more officers awaiting us at the entrance and fared on by what had +once been flower-bordered walks to the hangars. As we came out upon +the "tarmac"--here, as with all German seaplane and airship stations, +the runs for the machines in front of the hangars are paved with +concrete instead of the tarred macadam which is used so extensively in +England and France--the men of the station were seen to be drawn up by +companies, as for a review. Each company stood smartly to attention at +the order of its officers as the party came abreast of it, and we--both +Allied and German officers--saluted in return. As we passed on, each +company in turn broke rank and quietly dispersed to barracks, their +officers following on to join the party in the furtherest hangar, where +the inspection was to begin. The discipline appeared to be faultless, +and it was soon evident that the men and their officers had arrived at +some sort of a "working understanding" to tide them over the period of +inspection, if not longer. + +The two representatives of the Workmen and Soldiers who had accompanied +our party from Wilhelmshaven were allowed to be present during the +inspection, and with them two other "white-banders" who appeared to have +been elected to represent the men of the station. All other men had been +cleared out of the sheds in conformity with the stipulations of the +armistice. Some unauthorized individual--apparently a mechanic--who, +halfway through the inspection, was noticed following the party, was +summarily ordered out by the Commander. He obeyed somewhat sullenly, but +though we subsequently saw him in gesticulative confab with some of his +mates on the outside, he did not venture again into any of the hangars. +That was the nearest approach to insubordination we saw in Norderney. + +The officers of the station--now that we saw them, a score or more in +number, all together--were a fine, business-like looking lot. All of +them wore some kind of a decoration, most of them several, and among +these were two or three of the highly-prized Orders "_Pour le Mérite_." +As Norderney was the "star" seaplane station, that body of keen-eyed, +square-jawed young flying officers undoubtedly included the cleverest +naval pilots at Germany's disposal. What their many decorations had been +given for there was, of course, no way of learning; nor did we find out +whether the presence of so many of them at the inspection was voluntary +or by order. Though, like their Commander, quiet and reserved, they were +invariably courteous and willing in doing anything to facilitate the +tedious progress of inspection. + +There was an amusing little incident which occurred during the course +of inspection in connection with a very smart young German officer, +who, from the moment I first saw him at the door of the Casino, I kept +telling myself I had encountered somewhere before. For half an hour +or more--while checking the names and numbers of the machines in my +notebook as inspection was completed--my mind was running back through +one German colony or foreign settlement after another, trying to find +the scene into which that florid face (with its warm, wide-set eyes and +its full, sensual mouth) fitted. Dar-es-Salaam, Windhoek, Tsingtau, Yap, +Apia, Herbertshöhe--I scurried back through them all without uncovering +a clue. Where else had I met Germans? The southern "panhandle" of +Brazil, the south of Chile, Bagdad-- That was the first name to awaken a +sense of "nearness." "Bagdad, Bagdad Railway, Assur, Mosul," I rambled +on, and just as I began to recall that I had encountered Germans +scattered all along the caravan route from the Tigris to Syria, the +object of my interest turned up those soulful eyes of his to look at +one of the American officers clambering into the "house" of the "Giant" +monoplane seaboat under inspection at the moment--and I had him. + +"Aleppo! 'Du Bist Wie Eine Blume!'" I chortled exultantly, my mind going +back to a night in June, 1912, when, the day after my arrival from the +desert, the American Consul had taken me to a party at the Austrian +Consulate in honour of some one or other who was about to depart for +home--wherever that was. Young Herr X---- (I even recalled the name now) +and his brother, both on the engineering staff of the Bagdad Railway, +were among the guests, the former very smitten with a sloe-eyed sylph +of a Greek Levantine, whose mother (so a friendly gossip told me) +had been a dancer in a café chantant in Beirut before she married the +Smyrna hairdresser who afterwards made a fortune buying licorice root +from the Arabs. The girl (there was no denying the lissome grace of +her serpentine slenderness) was sipping her pink rose-leaf sherbet in +a balcony above the open court when Herr X---- had been asked to sing +along towards midnight, and the fervid passion of his upturned glances +as he sung "Du Bist Wie Eine Blume" as an encore to "Ich Liebe Dich" +had made enough of an impression on my mind to need no more than the +reminder vouchsafed me to recall it. + +Evidently (perhaps because I had not furnished him with a similar +reason) Herr Romeo did not trace any connection between my present +well-rounded, "sea-faring" figure and the sun-dried, fever-wrecked +anatomy I had dragged into Aleppo in 1912, for I noted that his eyes +had passed over me impersonally twice or thrice without a flicker of +recognition. The explosiveness of my exultant chortle, however, must +have assailed the ear of the German officer standing a couple of paces +in front of me, for he turned round quickly and asked if I had spoken to +him. + +"No--er--not exactly," I stammered, adding, at the promptings of a +sudden reckless impulse, "but I would like to ask if you knew when +Lieutenant X---- over there left the Bagdad Railway for the flying +service?" + +"He was at the head office in Frankfurt when the war began, and joined +shortly afterwards," the young officer replied promptly, stepping back +beside me. Then, as the somewhat surprising nature of the query burst +upon him, a look of astonishment flushed his face and a pucker of +suspicion drew his bushy brows together in a perturbed frown. "But may I +ask--" he began. + +"And his brother who was with him in Aleppo--the one with the scar on +his cheek and the top of one ear sliced off," I pressed; "where is he?" + +"Died of fever in Nishbin," again came the prompt answer. "But" +(blurting it out quickly) "how do you know about them?" + +Being human, and therefore weak, it was not in me to enlighten him with +the truth, and to add that I was merely a second-class Yankee hack +writer, temporarily togged out in an R.N.V.R. uniform to regularize +my position of "Keeper of the Records" of the Allied Naval Armistice +Commission. No, I couldn't do that. Indeed, everything considered, I am +inclined to think that I rendered a better service to the Allied cause +when I squared my shoulders importantly and delivered myself oracularly +of, "It is our business to know" (impressive pause) "all." + +My reward was worthy of the effort. "Ach, it is but true," sighed the +young officer resignedly. "The English Intelligence is wonderful, as we +have too often found out." + +"It is not bad," I admitted modestly, as I strolled over to make a note +of the fact that the machine-gun mounting of one of the _Frederichafens_ +had not been removed. + +I could see that my young friend was bursting to impart to Lieutenant +X---- the fact that he was a "marked man," but it was just as well that +no opportunity offered in the course of the inspection. That the ominous +news had been broken at luncheon, however, I felt certain from the fact +that when, missing X---- from the group of officers who saluted us from +the doorway of the Casino on our departure, I cast a furtive glance at +the upper windows, it surprised him in the act of withdrawing behind +one of the lace curtains. I only hope he has nothing on his conscience +in the way of hospital bombings and the like. If he has, it can hardly +have failed to occur to him that his name is inscribed on the Allies' +"black-list," and that he will have to stand trial in due course. + +It's a strange thing, this cropping up of half-remembered faces in new +surroundings. The very next day, in the course of the visit to the +Zeppelin station at Nordholz--but I will not anticipate. + +Under the terms of the armistice the Germans agreed to render all naval +seaplanes unfit for use by removing their propellers, machine-guns, and +bomb-dropping equipment, and dismantling their wireless and ignition +systems. To see that this was carried out on a single machine was not +much of a task, but multiplied by the several scores in such a station +as Norderney, it became a formidable labour. To equalize the physical +work, the sub-commission for seaplane stations arranged that the British +and American officers included in it should take turn-and-turn about in +active inspection and checking the result of the latter with the lists +furnished in advance by the Germans. At Norderney the "active service" +side of the program fell to the lot of the two American officers to +carry out. The swift pace they set at the outset slowed down materially +toward the finish, and it was a pair of very weary officers that dropped +limply from the last two _Albatrosses_ and sat down upon a pontoon to +recover their breath. It was, I believe, Lieut.-Commander L---- who, +ruefully rubbing down a cramp which persisted in knotting his left +calf, declared that he had just computed that his combined clamberings +in the course of the inspection were equal to ascending and descending a +mountain half a mile high. + +Practically all of the machines at Norderney were of the tried and +proven types--_Brandenburgs_, _Albatrosses_, _Frederichafens_, _Gothas_, +etc.--already well-known to the Allies. (It was not until the great +experimental station at Warnemünde, in the Baltic, was visited a +fortnight later that specimens of the latest types were revealed.) The +Allied experts of the party were greatly impressed with the excellence +of construction of all of the machines, none of them appearing to have +suffered in the least as a consequence of a shortage of materials. The +steel pontoons in particular--a branch of construction to which the +Germans had given much attention, and with notable success--came in for +especially favourable comment. (The Commander of the station, by the +way, showed us one of these pontoons which he had had fitted with an +engine and propeller and used in duck-shooting.) The general verdict +seemed to be that the Germans had little to learn from any one in the +building of seaplanes, and that this was principally due to the fact +that they had concentrated upon it for oversea work, where the British +had been going in more and more for swift "carrier" ships launching +aeroplanes. It was by aeroplanes launched from the "carrier" _Furious_ +that the great Zeppelin station at Tondern was practically destroyed +last summer, and there is no doubt that this kind of a combination can +accomplish far more effective work--providing, of course, that the power +using it has command of the sea--than anything that can be done by +seaplanes. It was the fact that Germany did _not_ have control of the +sea, rather than any lack of ingenuity or initiative, that pinned her to +the seaplane, and, under the circumstances, it has to be admitted that +she made very creditable use of the latter. + +The one new type of machine at Norderney (although the existence of it +had been known to the Allies for some time) was the "giant" monoplane +seaboat, quite the most remarkable machine of the kind in the world at +the present time. Though its span of something like 120 feet is less +than that of a number of great aeroplanes already in use, its huge +breadth of wing gave it a plane area of enormous size. The boat itself +was as large--and apparently as seaworthy--as a good-sized steam launch, +and so roomy that one could almost stand erect inside of it. It quite +dwarfed anything of the kind I had ever seen before. Nor was the boat, +spacious as it was, the only closed-in space. Twenty feet or more above +the deck of it, between the wings, was a large "box" containing, among +other things, a very elaborately equipped _sound-proof_ wireless room. +The technical instruments of control and navigation--especially the very +compact "Gyro" compasses--stirred the Allied experts to an admiration +they found difficult to restrain. + +One of the German officers who had accompanied us from Wilhelmshaven +told me something of the history of this greatest of monoplanes. +"This flying boat," he said, while we waited for the somewhat lengthy +inspection to be completed, "was the last great gift that Count +Zeppelin" (he spoke the name with an awe that was almost adoration) +"gave to his country before he died. He was terribly disappointed by +the failure of the Zeppelin airship as an instrument for bombing, +and the last months of his life were spent in designing something to +take its place. He realized that the size of the mark the airship +offered to the constantly improving anti-aircraft artillery, together +with the invention of the explosive bullet and the increasing speed +and climbing power of aeroplanes, put an end for ever to the use of +Zeppelins where they would be exposed to attack. He set about to design +a heavier-than-air machine that would be powerful enough to carry a +really great weight of bombs, and the 'Giant' you see here is the result. + +"As Count Zeppelin did not believe that it would ever be possible to +land a machine of this weight and size on the earth, he made it a flying +boat. But it was not intended for flights over water at all in the +first place--that was to be simply for rising from and landing in. It +was to be kept at one of our seaplane stations on the Belgian coast, as +near as possible to the Front, and from here it was to go for bombing +flights behind the enemy lines. But before it was completed experience +had proved that it was quite practicable to land big machines on the +earth, and so the 'Giant' found itself superseded as a bomber. It was +then that it was brought to the attention of the Naval Flying Service, +and we, recognizing in it the possibilities of an ideal machine for +long-distance reconnaissance, took it over and completed it. Now, +although a few changes have been made in the direction of making it more +of a 'sea' machine, it does not differ greatly from the original designs +of Count Zeppelin." + +As to how the machine had turned out in practice he was, naturally, +rather non-committal. The monoplane, he thought, had the advantage over +a biplane for sea use that its wings were much higher above the water, +and therefore much less likely to get smashed up by heavy waves. He +admitted that this machine had proved extremely difficult to fly--or +rather to land--and that it had been employed exclusively for "school" +purposes, for the training of pilots to fly the others of the same type +that had been building. Now that the war was over, he had some doubts as +to whether these would ever be completed. "We are having to modify so +many of our plans, you see," he remarked naïvely. + +On the fuselage of several of the machines there were evidences that +signs or marks had been scratched out and painted over, and I took it +that the words or pictures so recently obliterated had probably been of +a character calculated to be offensive to the visiting Allied officers. +One little thing had been overlooked, however, or else left because it +was in a corner somewhat removed from the ebb and flow of the tide of +inspection. I discovered it while passing along to the machine shops in +the rear of one of the hangars, and later contrived to manoeuvre myself +back to it for a confirmatory survey. It was nothing more or less than a +map of the United States which some angry pilot had thoroughly _strafed_ +by stabbing with a penknife blade. I was not able to study it long +enough to be sure just what the method of the madness was, but--from the +fact that the environs of New York, Pittsburg, Philadelphia and Detroit +had been literally pecked to pieces--it seemed possible that it might +have been an attack on the industrial centres--perhaps because they were +turning out so much munitions for the Allies. + +There were two other maps tacked up on the same wall. One was of Africa, +with the ex-German colonies coloured red, with lighter shaded areas +overflowing from them on to British, Belgian, French, and Portuguese +possessions. This may have been (I have since thought) a copy of the +famous map of "Africa in 1920," issued in Germany early in the war, +but I had no time to puzzle out the considerable amount of explanatory +lettering on it. So far as I could see, this map was unmarked, not even +a black mourning border having been added. + +The third map was of Asia, and a long, winding and apparently rather +carefully made cut running from the north-west corner toward the centre +completely defeated me to account for. The fact that it ran through Asia +Minor, Northern Syria, and down into Mesopotamia seemed to point to some +connection with the Bagdad Railway--perhaps a _strafe_ at an enterprise +which, first and last, had deflected uselessly so huge an amount of +German money and material. + +The inspection over and the terms of the armistice having been found +most explicitly carried out, we returned to the reception room of the +Casino for lunch. Although the Commander protested that all arrangements +had been made for serving us with _mittagessen_, our senior officer, +acting under orders, replied that we had brought our own food and that +this, with a pitcher of water, would be quite sufficient. The water +was sent, and with it two beautiful long, slender bottles of _Hock_ +which--as they were never opened--only served to accentuate the flatness +of the former. + +We heard the officers of the station trooping up the stairs as we +unrolled our sandwiches, and just as we were pulling up around the table +some one threw open a piano in the room above our heads and struck +three ringing chords. "Bang!"--interval--"Bang!"--interval--"Bang!" +they crashed one after the other, and the throb of them set the windows +rattling and the pictures (paintings of the station's fallen pilots) +swaying on the wall. + +"Prelude in G flat," breathed Major N---- tensely, as he waited with eye +alight and ear acock for the next notes. "My word, the chap's a master!" + +But the next chord was never struck. Instead, there was a gruff order, +the scrape of feet on the floor, and the slam of a closed piano, +followed by the confused rumble of several angry voices speaking at the +same time. Then silence. + +"Looks like the majority of our hosts don't think 'Inspection Day's' +quite the proper occasion for tinkling Rachmaninoff on the ivories," +observed Lieutenant-Commander L----, U.S.N., after which he and Major +N---- began discussing plans for educating the popular taste for "good +music" and the rest of us fell to on our sandwiches. + +The fog--that all-pervading East Frisian fog--which had been thickening +steadily during the inspection, settled down in a solid bank while we +sat at lunch. With a scant dozen yards of visibility, the Commander +rated the prospects of crossing to the mainland so unfavourable that he +suggested our remaining for the night at one of the Norderney hotels +still open, and going over to Borkum (which we were planning to reach by +destroyer) the next morning by launch. It was the difficulty in securing +a prompt confirmation of what would have been a time-saving change of +schedule which led Captain H---- to reject the plan and decide in favour +of making an attempt to reach Norddeich in, and in spite of, the fog. +The Commander shook his head dubiously. "My men who know the passage +best have left the station," he said; "but I will do the best I can for +you, and perhaps you will have luck." He saw us off at the landing with +the same quiet courtesy with which he had received us. He was a very +likable chap, that Commander; perhaps the one individual with whom we +were thrown into intimate contact in the course of the whole visit to +whom one would have thought of applying that term. + +Noticing that the launch in which we were backing away from the landing +was at least double the size of the one in which we had crossed, I asked +one of the German officers if the greater draught of it was not likely +to increase our chances of running aground. + +"Of course," he replied; "but the larger cabin will also be much more +comfortable if we have to wait for the next tide to get off." + +As the launch swung slowly round in the mud-and-sand stained welter of +reversed screws, I bethought me of the "Riddle" again, and fished it +forth from my pocket. It was disappointing to leave without having had +a glimpse of the town where "Dollmann" and his "rose-brown-cheeked" +daughter Clara had lived, but the fog closed us round in a grey-walled +cylinder scarcely more in diameter than the launch was long. But we were +right on the course, I reflected, of the dinghy which "Davies" piloted +with such consummate skill through just such a fog ("five yards or +so was the radius of our vision," wrote "Carruthers") to Memmert to +spy on the conference at the salvage plant on that desolate sand-spit. +I turned up the chapter headed "Blindfold to Memmert," and read how, +sounding with a notched boathook in the shallows that masterly young +sailor had felt his way across the _Buse Tief_ to the eastern outlet of +the _Memmert Balje_, the only channel deep enough to carry the dinghy +through the half-bared sandbanks between Juist and the mainland. Our +own problem, it seemed to me, was a very similar one to that which +confronted "Davies," only, in our case, it was the entrance of the +channel where the _Buse Tief_ narrowed between the _Hohes Riff_ and the +_Itzendorf Plate_ that had to be located. Failing that, we were destined +to roost till the next tide on a sandbank, and that meant we were out +for all night, as there would be no chance of keeping to a channel, +however well marked, in both fog and darkness. + +Ten minutes went by--fifteen--twenty--with no sign of the buoy which +marked the opening we were trying to strike. Now the engines were eased +down to quarter-speed, and she lost way just in time to back off from +a shining _glacis_ of steel-grey sand that came creeping out of the +fog. For the next ten minutes, with bare steerage way on, she nosed +cautiously this way and that, like a man groping for a doorway in the +dark. Then a hail from the lookout on the bow was echoed by exclamations +of relief from the German officers. "Here is the outer buoy," one of +them called across to us reassuringly; "the rest of the way is well +marked and easy to follow. We will soon be at Norddeich." + +Presently a fresh buoy appeared as we nosed on shoreward, then a +second, and then a third, continuing the line of the first two. Speed +was increased to "half," and the intervals of picking up the marks +correspondingly cut down. Confident that there was nothing more to worry +about, I pulled out "The Riddle" again, for I had just recalled that it +was about halfway to Norddeich, in the _Buse Tief_, that "Carruthers" +had brought off his crowning exploit, the running aground of the tug +and "invasion" lighter--with Von Brunning, Boehme, and the mysterious +"cloaked passenger"--as they neared the end of the successful night +trial trip in the North Sea. Substituting himself for the man at the +wheel by a ruse, he had edged the tug over to starboard and was just +thinking "What the Dickens'll happen to her?" when the end came; "a +_euthanasia_ so mild and gradual (for the sands are fringed with mud) +that the disaster was on us before I was aware of it. There was just +the tiniest premonitory shuddering as our keel clove the buttery medium, +a cascade of ripples from either beam, and the wheel jammed to rigidity +in my hands as the tug nestled up to her final resting-place." + +And very like that it was with us. It was a guttural oath from somewhere +forward rather than any perceptible jar that told me the launch had +struck, and it was not till after the screw had been churning sand +for half a minute that there was any perceptible heel. It had come +about through one of the buoys being missing and the next in line out +of place, one of the Germans reckoned; but whatever the cause, there +we were--stuck fast. Or, at least, we would have been with any less +resourceful and energetic a crew. If their very lives had depended on +it, those four or five German seamen could not have worked harder, nor +to better purpose, to get that launch free. At the end of a quarter of +an hour their indefatigable efforts were rewarded, and a half hour later +we were settling ourselves in the warm compartment of our waiting train. +The Hun has no proper sense of humour. Reverse the _rôles_, and any +British bluejackets I have ever known would have run a German Armistice +Commission on to the first sandbank that hove in sight, and damned the +consequences. + + + + +V + +NORDHOLZ, THE DEN OF THE ZEPPELINS + + +I have written in a previous chapter of the great contrast observed +between the _morale_ of the men at Norderney, and the other seaplane +stations visited by parties from the Allied Naval Commission, and that +of those in the remaining German warships, accounting for the difference +by the fact that the former had been kept busier than the latter, and +that they had not suffered the shame of the "Great Surrender" which has +cast a black, unlifting shadow upon the dregs of the High Sea Fleet. +Whether the airships were kept as busy as the seaplanes right up to the +end it would be difficult to say, but, whatever may be the reason for +it, we found the _morale_ of the great Zeppelin stations suffered very +little if at all in comparison with that of the working bases of the +naval heavier-than-air machines. + +For all the barbarity of many of their raids, there was splendid stuff +in the officers and crews of the Zeppelins which engaged in the campaign +of "frightfulness" against England, and it is idle to deny it. In a +better cause, or even in worthier work for an indifferent cause, the +skill and courage repeatedly displayed would have been epic. Considering +what these airships faced on every one of their later raids--what their +commanders and crews must have known were the odds against them after +the night when the destruction of the first Zeppelin over Cuffley, in +September, 1916, proved that the British had effectually solved the +problem of igniting the hydrogen of the inner ballonettes--one cannot +but conclude that the _morale_ of the whole personnel must have been +very high during even this trying period. If it had not been high, there +would undoubtedly have been mutinies at the airship stations, such as +are known to have occurred on so many occasions among the submarine +crews. Even in the light of present knowledge, there is nothing to +indicate that there had ever been serious trouble in getting Zeppelin +crews for the most hazardous of raids. So far as could be gathered from +our visits to the great airship stations of the North Sea littoral, +this very excellent _morale_ prevailed to the last; indeed, practically +everything seen indicated that it still prevails. + +Of the several German naval airship stations visited by parties from +the Allied Commission, the most important were Althorn, Nordholz, and +Tondern. The interest in the latter was largely sentimental, due to +the fact that it was practically wiped out last summer as the result of +a bombing raid by aeroplanes launched from the _Furious_. It was known +that little had been done to rehabilitate it as a service station since +that time, and the Commission's airship experts' desire to visit what +was left of the sheds was actuated by a wish to see what damage had been +done rather than by any feeling that the station really counted any +longer as a base of Germany's naval air service. Our visit to the ruins +of Tondern, and what we learned there of the way it was destroyed, is a +story by itself, and I will tell it in a separate chapter. + +Germany had very ambitious plans for the development of the Althorn +station, and it is probable at one time that it was intended that it +should supersede even the mighty Nordholz as the premier home of naval +Zeppelins. If such were really the intention, however, there is no doubt +that it was effectually put an end to by a great fire and explosion +which occurred there about the middle of last year, the material +destruction from which--in sheds and Zeppelins--was vastly greater even +than that from the British raid on Tondern. The Germans speak of this +disaster with a good deal of bitterness, usually alluding to the cause +as "mysterious," but rather giving the impression that they believe it +to have been the work of "Allied agents." If this is true, the job will +stand as a fair offset against any single piece of work of the same +character that German agents perpetrated in France, Britain, or America. +Only the blowing up of the great Russian national arsenal in the second +year of the war is comparable to it for the amount of material damage +wrought. Althorn remained a station of some importance down to the end +of the war, however, and that the Germans still expected to do important +work from there was indicated by the fact that one of its new sheds +housed the great "L-71," the largest airship in the world at the present +time. + +But it was in the great Nordholz station that the airship sub-commission +was principally interested, not only for what it was at the +moment--incomparably the greatest and most modern of German Zeppelin +aerodromes--but also for what had been accomplished from there in the +past, and even for what might conceivably be done from there in the +future. Nordholz is a name that would have been burned deep into the +memories of South and East Coast Britons had it been known three years +ago, as it is now, that practically all of the Zeppelin raids over +England were launched from there. The popular idea at the time--which +even appears to have persisted with most Londoners down to the +present--was that airship stations had been constructed in Belgium, +and that these alternated with those of Germany in dispatching raiders +across the North Sea to England. A single glimpse of such a station as +Nordholz is enough to show that the huge amount of labour and expense +involved in building even a comparatively temporary aerodrome fit for +regular Zeppelin work would have been fatal to the idea of establishing +such installations in Belgium, or anywhere else where Germany did not +feel certain of remaining in fairly permanent control. The station at +Jamboli, in Bulgaria, for instance, is known to have been able only to +dispose of one or two Zeppelins, and considerable intervals between +flights were imperative for keeping them in trim. It would never have +been equal to the strain of steady raiding. + +There were other German airship stations within cruising distance of +England, but Nordholz was so much the best equipped, especially in +the first years of the war when Zeppelin raiding was the most active, +that the most of the work, and by long odds the most effective of it, +was done from there. There were grim tales to be told by that band of +hard-eyed, straight-mouthed, bull-necked pilots--all that survived +some scores of raids over England and some hundreds of reconnaissance +flights over the North Sea--who received and conducted round the +Naval Commission party, though, unfortunately, we did not meet upon a +footing that made it possible more than to listen to the account of an +occasional incident suggested by something we were seeing at the moment. + +The route which our party traversed from Wilhelmshaven to the Nordholz +airship station--the latter lies six or eight miles south of the Elbe +estuary in the vicinity of Cuxhaven--was a different one from any +followed on our previous visits, all of which had taken us more to the +south or east. It was through the same low-lying, dyked-in country, +however, where the water difficulty, unlike most other parts of the +world, was one of drainage rather than of irrigation. Great Dutch +windmills turned ponderously under the impulse of the light sea-breeze, +as they pumped the water off the flooded land. Cultivation, as in the +region traversed to the south, was at a standstill, but overflowing +barns--great capacious structures they were, with brick walls and lofty +thatched roofs--proved that the harvest had been a generous one. + +Instead of routing our two-car special over the all-rail route _viâ_ +Bremen, distance and time were saved by leaving it at a small terminus +opposite Bremerhaven, crossing to the latter by tug, and proceeding +north in more or less direct line to our destination. Little time was +lost in getting from one train to the other. The tug, which had been +held in readiness for our arrival, cast off as soon as the last of +the party had clambered over its side, and the short run across the +grey-green tide of the estuary was made in less than a quarter of an +hour. Four powerful army cars--far better machines, these, than the +dirigible junk heaps we had been compelled to use at Wilhelmshaven--were +waiting beside the slip, and another ten minutes of what struck me as +very fast and reckless driving, considering it was through the main +streets of a good-sized city, brought us to the station and another +two-car special. Both going and returning, it was the best "clicking" +lot of connections any of the parties made in the course of the whole +visit, showing illuminatingly what our "hosts" could do in that line +when they were minded to. + +Swift as was our passage through the streets of Bremerhaven, there was +still opportunity to observe many evidences of the vigorous growth it +had made the decade preceding the outbreak of the war, and of the plans +that had been made in expectation of a continuation of that growth. +Blocks and blocks of imposing new buildings--now but half-tenanted--and +the nuclei of what had been budding suburbs were more suggestive of +the appearance of a Western American mushroom metropolis after the +collapse of a boom than a town of Europe. The railway station--a fine +example of Germany's so-called "New Art" architecture--in its spacious +waiting-rooms, broad subways, and commodious train sheds looked capable +of serving the city of half a million or so which it had confidently +been expected the empire's second port would become at the end of +another few years. As things have turned out, Bremerhaven will at least +have the consolation of knowing that it is not likely to be troubled +with "station crushes" for some decades to come. + +The astonishingly well-dressed and orderly crowd of a thousand or more +waiting outside the portal of the station in expectation of the arrival +of a train-load of returning soldiers made no unfriendly demonstration +of any character. On the contrary, indeed, as at Wilhelmshaven, a number +of children waved their hands as our cars drove up, and a goodly number +of men solemnly bared their heads as we filed past. The special which +awaited us at a platform reached after walking through a long vaulted +subway running beneath the tracks consisted, like the one we had left +on the other side of the river, of an engine and two cars. The rolling +stock of this one was in better shape than that of the other, however, +and with a better maintained road-bed to run over, the last leg of our +journey was covered at an average speed of over thirty miles an hour, +quite the fastest we travelled by train anywhere in Germany. + +For the most of the way the line continued running through mile after +mile of water-logged, sea-level areas crossed by innumerable drainage +canals and bricked roadways gridironing possible inundation areas with +their raised embankments. At the end of an hour, however, the patches +of standing water disappeared, and presently the bulk of the great +sheds of Nordholz began to notch the northern skyline, where they stood +crowning the crest of the first rising ground in the littoral between +the Dutch frontier and the Elbe. With only a minute or two of delay in +the Nordholz yards, the train was switched to the airship station's own +spur, and at the end of another mile had pulled up on a siding directly +opposite the main entrance. + +The commander of the station, with two or three other officers, was +waiting to receive us as we stepped out on the ground. Ranged up +alongside this row of heel-clicking, frock-coated, be-medalled and +be-sworded Zeppelin officers was an ancient individual of a type +which seemed to recall the fatherly old Jehus of the piping days +of Oberammergau. Every time the officers saluted, he raised his +hat, bowed low from the waist, and exclaimed, "Good morning to you, +gentlemen." When the last of us had been thus greeted, he called out a +comprehensive, "This way to the carriages, gentlemen," and trotted off +ahead, bell-wether fashion, through the gate. + +Here we found waiting four small brakes and a diminutive automobile, the +sum total of the station's resources in rapid transit, according to the +commander. Getting into the motor to precede us as pilot, he asked the +party to dispose itself as best it could in the horse-drawn vehicles. +Then, with old "Jehu" holding the reins of the first vehicle and men in +air-service uniform--utter strangers to horses they were, too--tooling +the other three, we started off along a well-paved road. + +A long row of very attractive red brick-and-tile houses of agreeably +varied design were apparently the homes of married officers. Our way led +past only the first five or six of them, but a stirring of lace curtains +in every one of these told that we were running the gauntlet of hostile +glances all the way. One glowering Frau--though in the semi-negligée +of a "Made-in-Germany" _kimono_ of pale mauve, her Brunhildian brow +was crowned with a "permanently Marcelled" _coiffure_ of the kind one +sees in hairdressers' windows--disdained all cover, and so stepped out +upon her veranda just in time to see the elder of her blonde-braided +offspring in the act of waving a Teddy Bear--or it may have been a +woolly lamb or a dachshund--at the tail of the procession of invading +_Engländers_. She was swooping--a mauve-tailed comet with a Gorgon +head--on the luckless "fraternisatress" as my brake turned a corner and +the loom of a block of barracks shut "The Row" from sight, but a series +of shrill squeals, piercing through the raucous grind of steel tyres +on asphalt pavement, told that punishment swift and terrible was being +meted out. + +"More activity there than I saw in all of Bremerhaven," laconically +observed the Yankee Ensign sitting next me. "Who said the German woman +was lacking in temperament?" + +Driving through the barracks area--where all the men in sight invariably +saluted or stood at attention as we passed--and down an avenue between +small but thickly set pines, the road debouched into the open, and +for the first time we saw all the sheds of the great station at +comparatively close range. Then we were in a position to understand with +what care the site had been chosen and laid out. Occupying the only +rising ground near the coast south of the Kiel Canal, it is quite free +from the constant inundations which threaten the alluvial plain along +the sea. The sheds are visible from a great distance, but it is only +when one draws near them that their truly gigantic size becomes evident. +Of modern buildings of utility, such as factories and exhibition +structures, I do not recall one that is so impressive as these in sheer +immensity. Yet the proportions of the sheds are so good that constant +comparison with some familiar object of known size, such as a man, alone +puts them in their proper perspective. + +The sheds are built in pairs, standing side by side, and on a plan which +has brought each pair on the circumference of a circle two kilometres +in diameter. The chord of the arc drawn from one pair of sheds to the +next in sequence is a kilometre in length, while the same distance +separates each pair on the circumference from the huge revolving shed +in the centre of the circle. The whole plan has something of the mystic +symmetry of an ancient temple of the sun. Of the half-dozen pairs of +sheds necessary to complete the circle, four had been constructed and +were in use. Each shed was built to house two airships, or four for the +pair. This gave a capacity of sixteen Zeppelins for the four pairs of +sheds, while the two housed in the revolving shed in the centre brought +the total capacity of the station up to eighteen--a larger number, I +believe, than were ever over England at one time. + +Scarcely less impressive than the immensity of the sheds and the broad +conception of the general plan of the station was the solidity of +construction. Everything, from the quarters of the men and the officers +to the hangars themselves, seemed built for all time, and to play its +part in the fulfilment of some far-reaching plan. Costly and scarce as +asphalt must have been in Germany, the many miles of roads connecting +the various sheds were laid deep with it, and, as I had a chance to see +where repairs were going on, on a heavy base of concrete. The sheds +were steel-framed, concrete-floored, and with pressed asbestos sheet +figuring extensively in their sides. All the daylight admitted (as we +saw presently) filtered through great panes of yellow glass in the roof, +shutting out the ultra-violet rays of the sun, which had been found to +cause airship fabric to deteriorate rapidly. + +The barracks of the men were of brick and concrete, and were built with +no less regard for appearance than utility. So, too, the officers' +quarters and the Casino, and the large and comfortable-looking houses +for married officers I have already mentioned. All had been built very +recently, many in the by no means uneffective "New Art" style, to the +simple solidity of which the Germans seemed to have turned in reaction +from the Gothic. Beyond all doubt Germany was planning years ahead with +Nordholz, both as to war and peace service. They were quite frank in +speaking of the ambitions they still have in respect of the latter, and +(from casual remarks dropped once or twice by officers) I should be very +much surprised if their plans for developing the Zeppelin as a super-war +machine have been entirely shelved. + +The road along which we drove to reach the first pair of sheds to be +visited ran through extensive plantations of scraggly screw-pine, +which appear to have been set--before the site was chosen for an +air station--for the purpose of binding together the loose soil and +preventing its shifting in the heavy winds. Wherever the trees had +encroached too closely upon the hangars, the plantations had been +burned off. Over one considerable area the accumulations of ash in the +depressions showed the destruction to have been comparatively recent, +and this I learned had been burned over, in the panic which followed the +blowing up of the Tondern sheds by British bombing machines last summer, +in order to minimize the risk from the raid which Nordholz itself never +ceased to expect right down to the day of the armistice. + +The staggering size of the great sheds became more and more impressive +as we drew nearer, and when the procession finally turned and went +clattering down the roadway between one of the pairs, the towering walls +to left and right blotted out the sky like the cliffs of a rocky cañon. +Halfway through this great defile the officers of the station were +waiting to receive and conduct us round. A hard, fit, capable-looking +lot of chaps they were. Every one of them had at least one decoration, +most of them many, and among these were two or three Orders _Pour de +Mérite_, the German V.C. One at least of them--the great long-distance +pilot, Von Butlar--was famous internationally, and few among the senior +of them (as I was assured shortly) but had been over England more than +once. They were the best of Germany's surviving Zeppelin pilots, and +one was interested to compare the type with that of the pick of her +sea-pilots as we had seen them at Norderney. + +Running my eye round their faces as the mingled parties began moving +slowly toward the side door of the first shed to be inspected, I +recognized at once in these Zeppelin officers the same hard, cold, +steady eyes, the same aggressive jaw, and the same wide, thin-lipped +mouth that had predominated right through the officers we had met at +Norderney. These, I should say, are characteristic of the great majority +of the outstanding men of both of Germany's air services. The steady +eye and the firm jaw are, indeed, characteristic of most successful +flying men, but it is the "hardness," not to say cruelty, of the mouth +which differentiates the German from the high-spirited, devil-may-care +air-warrior of England and America. + +These Zeppelin pilots seemed to me to run nearer to the German naval +officer type than did the seaplane officers. The latter were nearly +always slender of body, wiry and light of foot, where (though there were +several exceptions, including the great Von Butlar) the former were +mainly of generous girth, with the typical German bull neck corrugating +into rolls of fat above the backs of their collars. A Major of the +R.A.F., who had been walking at my side and doing a bit of "sizing up" +on his own account, put the difference rather well when he said, as we +waited our turn to pass in through the small side door of the great +grey wall of the shed: "If I was taking temporary refuge in a hospital, +convent, or orphan asylum during a German air raid, I'd feel a lot +better about it if I knew that it was some of those seaplane chaps +flying overhead rather than some of this batch. That thick-set one +there, with the cast in his eye and the corded neck, has a face that +wouldn't need much make-up for the Hun villain in a Lyceum melodrama. +Yes, I'm sure these Zepp. drivers will average a jolly lot 'Hunnier' +than the run of their seaplane men." + +Up to that moment my experience of German airships had been limited to +the view of them as slender silver pencils of light gliding swiftly +across the searchlight-slashed skies of London, and three or four +inspections of the tangled masses of aluminium and charred wood which +remained when ill-starred raiders had paid the supreme penalty. I was +indebted to the Zeppelins for a number of thrills, but only two or +three of them (and one was in the form of a bomb which gave me a shower +bath of plate glass in Kingsway) were comparable to the sheer wave of +amazement which swept over me when, having passed from the cold grey +light of the winter morning into the warm golden glow of the interior of +the big shed to which we had come, I looked up and beheld the towering +loom of the starboard side of "L-68," with the sweeping lines of her, +fining to points at both ends, exaggerating monstrously a length which +was sufficiently startling even when expressed in figures. The secret of +the hold which the Zeppelin had for so long on the imagination of the +German people was not hard for me to understand after that. It was easy +to see how they could have been led to believe that it could lay Paris +and London in ruins, and that the very sight of it would in time cause +the enemies of their country to sue for peace. One saw, too, how hard it +must have been for them finally to believe that the Zeppelin had been +mastered by the aeroplane, and that the high hopes they had built upon +it had really crashed with the fallen raiders. + +There were two Zeppelins in the shed we had entered--"L-68" and +another monster of practically the same size. The former, with great +irregularly shaped strips of fabric dangling all along its under side, +suggested a gigantic shark in process of being ripped up the belly for +skinning. Being deflated, the weight of its frame was supported by +a number of heavy wooden props evenly distributed along either side +from end to end. Its mate, on the other hand, being full of hydrogen +and practically ready for flight, had to be prevented from rising and +bumping against the yellow skylights by a series of light cables, the +upper ends of which were attached at regular intervals along both +sides of the framework, while below they were made fast to heavy steel +shoes which ran in grooves set in the concrete floor. The latter +contrivance--especially an arrangement for the instant slipping of +the cable--was very cleverly devised and greatly interested the Allied +experts. + +There were two or three things the popular mind had credited the modern +Zeppelin with embodying which we did not find in these latest examples +of German airship development. One of these was an "anti-bomb protector" +on the top, something after the style of the steel nets erected over +London banks and theatres for the purpose of detonating dropped +explosives before they penetrated the roof. The fact that attempts to +destroy Zeppelins by bomb had invariably--with the exception of the +one brought down by Warneford in Belgium in 1915--resulted in failure, +was doubtless largely responsible for this belief in the existence of +a protecting net, whereas the reason for those failures is probably to +be found in the fact that only about one bomb in a hundred will find +enough resistance in striking an airship to detonate. At any rate, +there were no indications that either the earlier or later Zeppelins we +saw had ever been protected in this way. Indeed, we did not even see a +single one of the machine-guns, which every one had taken for granted +were mounted on top of all Zeppelins to resist aeroplane attack, though +these, of course, with their platforms, may well have been removed in +the course of the disarmament imposed by the armistice terms. + +Nor had these late airships the bright golden colour of those that one +saw over London in the earlier raids. That the refulgent tawniness of +them was not due entirely to the reflected beams of the searchlights was +proved by the uncharred fragments of fabric one had picked up at Cuffley +and Potters' Bar. But the German designers had been giving a good deal +of study to invisibility, since that time, with the result that these +new airships were coloured over all their exposed surfaces a dull slaty +black that would hardly reflect a beam of bright sunshine. + +The cars, which were both smaller and lighter than those from the +airships brought down in England, were all underslung, and none of them +was enclosed in the framework, as had often been stated. Even these were +not built entirely of metal, heavy fabric being used to close up all +spaces where strength was not required. The bomb-dropping devices had +been removed, but the numbered "switchboard" in the rearmost car, from +which they could be released, still remained. The cars, free from every +kind of protuberance that could meet the resistance of the air, were +effectively and gracefully "stream-lined." The framework and bodies of +the cars were made of the light but strong "duraluminum" alloy, which +the Germans have spent many years in perfecting for this purpose. A +small fragment of strut which I picked up under "L-68" has proved, on +comparison, considerably lighter in specific gravity than similar pieces +from three of the Zeppelins brought down early in the war. Indeed, in +spite of its admixture of heavier metals for "stiffening," the latest +alloy seems scarcely heavier than aluminum itself. + +The inspection of an airship to see that it had been disarmed according +to the provisions of the armistice was, as may be imagined, rather +more of a job than a similar inspection of even a "giant" seaplane. In +a Zeppelin that is more or less the same size as the _Mauretania_ the +distances are magnificent, and while most of the inspection was confined +to the cars, that of the wireless, with a search for possible concealed +machine-gun mountings, involved not a little climbing and clambering. +One's first sight of the interior of a deflated Zeppelin--in an inflated +one the bulging ballonettes obstruct the view considerably--is quite as +impressive in its way as the premier survey of it from the outside. No +'tween decks prospect in the largest ship afloat, cut down as it is by +bulkheads, offers a fifth of the unbroken sweep of vision that one finds +opened before him as he climbs up inside the tail of a modern airship. +Although airy ladders and soaring lengths of framework intervene, they +are no more than lace-work fretting the vast space, and the eye roams +free to where the side-braces of the narrow "walk" seem to run together +in the nose. Only, so consummate the illusion wrought on the eye and +brain by the strange perspective, that "meeting point" seems more like +six hundred miles away than six hundred feet. The effect is more like +looking to the end of the universe than to the end of a Zeppelin. +No illusion ever devised on the stage to give "distance" to a scene +could be half so convincing. All that was "cosmic" in you vibrated in +sympathy, and it took but a shake of the reins of the imagination to +fancy yourself tripping off down that unending "Road to Anywhere" to the +music of the Spheres. You-- + +"Gee, but ain't that a peach of a little 'Gyro'?" filtering up through +the fabric beneath my feet awakened me to the fact that the inspection +of "L-68" having reached the rearmost car, was near its finish. +Clambering back to earth, I found the party just reassembling to go to +the carriages for the drive to the great revolving shed, which was the +next to be visited. + +Its central revolving shed is perhaps the most arresting feature of +the Nordholz station. It is built on the lines of a "twin" engine +turntable, with each track housed over, and with every dimension +multiplied twenty-five or thirty-fold. The turning track is laid in a +bowl-shaped depression about ten feet deep and seven hundred feet in +diameter. The floors of both sheds (which stand side by side, with only +a few feet between) are flush with the level of the ground, so that the +airships they house may be run out and in without a jolt. The turning +mechanism, which is in the rear of the sheds and revolves with them, is +entirely driven by electricity. The shifting of a lever sets the whole +great mass in motion, and stops it to a millimetre of the point desired, +the latter being indicated on a dial by a needle showing the direction +of the wind. + +The Germans assured us--and on this point the British and American +airship experts were in full agreement with them--that the revolving +shed is absolutely the ideal installation, as it makes it possible to +launch or house a ship directly _into_ the wind, and so allows them to +be used on days when it would be out of the question to launch them +from, or return them to, an ordinary hangar. The one point against it +seems to be its almost prohibitive cost. This central shed at Nordholz +was designed some time before the war, and was completed a year or so +after its outbreak. The Germans did not tell what it had cost, but +they did say that the latter was so great--both in money and in steel +deflected from other uses--that they had not contemplated the building +of another during the continuance of the war. + +Another interesting admission of a Zeppelin officer at Nordholz was to +the effect that one of their greatest difficulties had arisen through +the fact that it had been found practicable and desirable to increase +the size of airships far more rapidly than had been contemplated when +most of the existing sheds were designed. Thus many hangars--even at +Nordholz, where practice was most advanced--had become almost useless +for housing the latest Zeppelins. The proof of this was seen at one +of the older sheds which we visited, where both of the airships it +contained had been cut off fore and aft to reduce their lengths +sufficiently to allow them inside. Thirty or forty feet of the framework +of the bows and sterns of each, stripped of their covering fabric, were +standing in the corners. They assured us that while an airship thus +"bobbed" at both ends was not necessarily considered out of commission, +it would take several days of rush work to get it ready for flight, +and that during most of this time sixty to eighty feet of it--the +combined length of the nose and tail which had to be cut off to bring it +inside--would have to remain sticking out, exposed to the weather. + +To any one who, like myself, was not an airship expert, but had been +"among those present" at a number of the earlier raids on London, the +last shed visited was the most interesting of all, for it contained +what is in many respects Germany's most historic Zeppelin, the famous +"L-14." Twenty-four bombing flights over England were claimed for this +remarkable veteran, besides many scores of reconnaissance voyages. +All of the surviving pilots appeared to have an abiding belief in +her invulnerability--a not unnatural attitude of the fatalist toward +an instrument which has succeeded in defying fate. This is the way +one of them expressed it, who came and stood by my side during the +quarter-hour in which the inspecting officers were climbing about inside +the glistening yellow shell of the historic raider in an endeavour to +satisfy themselves, that she was, temporarily at least, incapable of +further activities:-- + +"It will sound strange to you to hear me say it," he said, "but it is a +fact that all of the officers and men at Nordholz firmly believed that +L-14 could not be destroyed. Always we gave her the place of honour in +starting first away for England, and most times she was the last to +come back--of those that did come back. After a while, no matter how +long she was late, we always said, 'Oh, but it is old L-14; no use to +worry about her; she will come home at her own time.' And come home +she always did. All of our greatest pilots flew in her at one time or +another and came back safe. Then they were given newer and faster ships, +and sometimes they came home, and sometimes they did not. ----, who was +experimenting with one of the smaller swift types of half-rigids when +it was brought down north of London--the first to be destroyed over +England--had flown L-14 many times, and come home safe, and so had, +----, our greatest pilot, who was also lost north of London, very near +where the other was brought down, and where we think you had some kind +of trap. L-14 saw these and many other Zeppelins fall in flames and the +more times she came home the more was our belief in her strength. The +pilot who flew her was supposed to take more chances (because she really +ran no risks, you see), and if you have ever read of how one Zeppelin +in each raid always swooped low to drop her bombs, you now know that +she was that one. Because we had this superstitious feeling about her +we were very careful that, in rebuilding and repairing her, much of her +original material should be left, so that whatever gave her her charmed +life should not be removed. Although our duraluminum of the present is +much lighter and stronger than the first we made, L-14 still has most +of her original framework; and, although improved technical instruments +have been installed, all her cars are much as when she was built. You +will see how much clumsier and heavier they are than those of the newer +types. And now, for some months, we have used L-14 as a 'school' ship, +in which to train our young pilots. You see, her great traditions must +prove a wonderful inspiration to them." + +A few minutes later I had a hint of one type of this "inspiration," +when a pilot (who had fallen into step with me as we took a turn across +the fields on foot to see the hangars of the "protecting flight" of +aeroplanes) mentioned that he had taken part in a number of the 1916 +raids over the Midland industrial centres. Knowing the Stygian blackness +in which this region was wrapped during all of the Zeppelin raiding +time, I asked him if he had not found it difficult to locate his +objectives in a country which was plunged in complete darkness. + +"Not so difficult as you might think," was the reply. "There were always +the rivers and canals, which we knew perfectly from careful study. +Besides, a town is a very large mark, and you seem to 'sense' the +nearness of great masses of people, anyhow. Perhaps the great anxiety +they are in establishes a sort of mental contact with you, whose brain +is very tense and receptive. Effective bombing is very largely a matter +of psychology, you see." + +I saw. Indeed, I think I saw rather more than he intended to convey. + +The inspection over and everything having been found as stipulated in +the armistice, we were conducted to the Officers' Casino for lunch. +Each member of the party, as had been the practice from the outset, +having brought a package of sandwiches from the ship in his pocket, it +was intimated to the Commander of the station that we would not need to +trouble him to have the luncheon served, which he said had been prepared +for us. The same situation had arisen at Norderney and several other +of the stations previously visited, and in each of these instances +our "hosts" of the day had acquiesced in the plainly expressed desire +of the senior officer of the party that we should confine our menu +to what we carried in our own "nose-bags." Nordholz, however--quite +possibly with no more than an enlarged idea of what were its duties +under the circumstances--was not to be denied. A couple of plates of +very appetizing German red-cabbage _sauerkraut_, with slices of ham and +blood sausage, were waiting upon a large sidetable as we entered the +reception-room, and to these, as fast as a very nervous waiter could +bring them in, were added the following: a large loaf of _pumpernickel_, +a pitcher of chicken _consommé_, a huge beefsteak, with a fried egg +sitting in the middle of it, for each member of the party, two dishes +of apple sauce, and eight bottles of wine--four of white and four of +red. The steaks--an inch thick, six inches in diameter, and grilled to a +turn--were quite the largest pieces of meat I had seen served outside of +Ireland since the war. The _hock_ bore the label "_Dürkheimer_," and the +other bottles, which were of non-German origin, "_Ungarischer Rotwein_." + +"Although I'd hate to hurt their feelings," said the senior officer of +the party, surveying the Gargantuan repast with a perplexed smile, "I +should like to confine myself to my sandwiches and leave a note asking +them to forward this to some of our starving prisoners. Since we've +been feeding their pilots and commissioners in the _Hercules_, however, +I suppose there's no valid reason why we should hesitate to partake of +this banquet. I'll leave you free to decide for yourselves what you want +to do on that score." We did. It was the American Ensign who, smacking +his lips over the last of his steak, pronounced it the best "hunk of +cow" he had had since he was at a Mexican _barbecue_ at Coronado; but +it was the General who had a second helping of apple sauce, and wondered +how they made it so "smooth and free from lumps," and what it was they +put in it to give that "very delicate flavour." + +Hung around all four walls of the room were perhaps a dozen oil +paintings of flying officers in uniform, and although they bore no +names, we knew (from what had been told us of a similar display in the +reception-room at Norderney) that they were portraits of pilots who had +lost their lives in active service. One--a three-quarters length of a +small wiry man, with gimlet eyes and a jaw that would have made that of +a wolf-trap look soft and flexible in comparison--I recognized at once +as having been reproduced in the German papers as the portrait of the +great Schramm, who had been killed when his Zeppelin was brought down +at Potters' Bar. Another--the bust of a man of rather a bulkier figure +than the first, but with a face a shade less brutal--was also strangely +familiar. I felt sure I had seen before that terribly determined jaw, +that broad nose with its wide nostrils, that receding brow, with the +bony lumps above the eyes, and the tentacles of my memory went groping +for when and where, while I went on sipping my glass of _Rotwein_ and +listening to Major P----[1] and Ensign E---- comparing sensations on +dropping from airplanes with parachutes. + + [1] Major Pritchard, who subsequently distinguished himself + by landing from R-34, after its transatlantic flight, + with a parachute. + +"If the Huns," the former was saying, "had had proper parachutes most of +the crews of the Zepps brought down in England could have landed safely +instead of being burned in the air. Of the remains of the crew of the +one brought down at Cuffley, hardly a fragment was recognizable as that +of a man. But if--" + +Like a flash it came to me. The warm, comfortable room, with its solid +"New Art" furniture and the table stacked with plates of food and wine +bottles, faded away, and I saw a tangled heap of metal and burning +debris, sprawling across a stubble field and hedgerow, and steaming in +the cold early morning drizzle that was quenching its still smouldering +fires. Five hours previously that wreckage had been a raiding Zeppelin, +charging blindly across London, pursued by searchlights and gun-fire. +I had watched the ghostly shape disappear in the darkness as it shook +off the beams of the searchlights, and when it appeared again it was as +a descending comet of streaming flame streaking earthward across the +north-western heavens. After walking all the rest of the night--with +a lift from an early morning milk cart--I had arrived on the scene at +daybreak, and before the cordon of soldiers which later kept the crowds +back had been drawn. They had just cut a way through the wreckage to +one of the cars, and were cooling down the glowing metal with a stream +pumped by a little village fire-engine. Then they began taking out +what remained of the bodies of the crew. Some had been almost entirely +consumed by the fierce flames, and it is literally true that many of the +blackened fragments were hardly recognizable as human. But there was one +notable exception. By a miracle, the chest and head of the body of what +had undoubtedly been the commanding officer had been spared the direct +play of the flames. The fingers gripping the steering wheel were charred +to the bone, but the upper part of the tunic was so little scorched +that it still held the Iron Cross pinned into it. The blonde eyebrows, +beneath the bony cranial protuberances, were scarcely singed, and even +the scowl and the tightly compressed lips seemed to express intense +determination rather than death agony. That portrait--and doubtless most +of the others that looked down upon our strange luncheon party that day +at Nordholz--must have been painted from life. + + + + +VI + +MERCHANT SHIPPING + + +The difference between the work of the Shipping Board of the Allied +Naval Armistice Commission and that of the other sub-commissions was +well defined by one of its members when he facetiously described it as +"the only branch of the business that pays dividends." The work of the +sub-commissions for the inspection of warships, seaplane and airship +stations and forts, in that it was for the purpose of seeing that +certain disarmament or demolition had been carried out, was largely +destructive; that of the Shipping Board, on the other hand, which had +as its end the return to the Allies of all of their merchant ships +interned in German harbours, was constructive. The Shipping Board began +to "pay dividends" (in the form of steamers dispatched for home ports) +almost from the day of the arrival of the _Hercules_ in Wilhelmshaven, +and these continued steadily until the last of the interned ships +surviving--a number had, unfortunately, been lost in mine-sweeping and +other dangerous work in which the Germans had employed them--had found +its way back to resume its place as a carrier of men and merchandise +and restore the heavily depleted tonnage of the country to which it +belonged. + +At the outbreak of the war there were ninety-six Allied vessels in +German harbours, and all of these were promptly placed under embargo. +Of these, eighty were British, fourteen Belgian, and two French. As +all of the French and Belgian ships were small craft, their tonnage +was practically negligible. Besides these embargoed ships, the Allied +Commission had been directed to demand and arrange for the return of the +thirty-one--twenty-one British, eight Belgian, one American, and one +Brazilian--Allied ships which had been condemned in German Prize Courts +since the outbreak of the war. Ten of these, it was subsequently learned +when the question came up in conference, had been sunk, the Germans +having made a practice of using Allied ships in their hands for all work +involving great risk. + +The question of the return of mercantile tonnage was taken up in the +course of the first conference in the _Hercules_ at Kiel. Admiral +Goette was requested to produce a complete list of all Allied and +American ships lying at the time in German ports, including all +mercantile vessels which had been condemned in Prize Courts. This list +was to show clearly which vessels were considered seaworthy, and if +unseaworthy, from what cause. It was also requested that information +should be given as to which of these ships were fitted for mine-seeking +or mine-sweeping, as it was planned to leave these temporarily in +German hands in order to facilitate the efforts she was supposed to +be making to clear the way for navigation. It was directed that ships +ready to take the sea should be bunkered and ballasted at once, and +that towage should be provided for sailing ships. All explosives were +to be removed, and the Germans were ordered to provide a steamer to +bring back the crews from the ports at which the embargoed ships had +been delivered--the Tyne, in case of British vessels, and Dunkerque for +French. + +In respect to the ships considered unseaworthy, Admiral Goette was +requested to arrange for all machinery, boilers, tanks, and spaces +to be opened up, and the equipment made ready for inspection by the +Sub-Commission for Shipping. Following this inspection, immediate +facilities for dry docking and the carrying out of such repairs as the +Sub-Commission considered necessary to prepare each vessel for sea were +to be provided. + +Although more than three weeks had passed since the signing of the +armistice, Admiral Goette admitted at once on the presentation of these +demands that not only had no seaworthy Allied ship started on its voyage +home, but that nothing whatever had been done in the way of repairing +any of those not seaworthy. He agreed, however, to do what he could +to expedite matters from that time on in the case of the embargoed +ships, but protested that, as the ships condemned in the Prize Courts +had, according to German law, ceased to be Allied vessels, he had no +authority to deliver them. On being told that the Allied Commission had +been appointed to deal with the terms of the armistice, not to discuss +matters of German or any other law, he finally gave way and agreed to +furnish a list of the prize ships. He made the reservation, however, +that the "question of legality," since it did not concern the conferring +commissions, should be taken up later between the interested Governments. + +Indeed, protests, as preliminaries to acquiescence, formed the major +part of the German notes on the shipping question, as will be seen from +the following extracts. "I herewith bring officially to your notice," +the President of the German Sub-Commission wrote after the first +conference, (1) "that we do not recognize the obligations demanded by +the Allies to deliver embargo ships on the 17th December by the fact +that we are willing to deliver them at the earliest possible moment"; +and (2) "that embargo ships proceeding out at the request of the Allies +without having been reconditioned in a manner to put them in the same +condition in which they were at the beginning of the war will leave +prematurely under protest. Germany declines any further obligations +with regard to these ships." Writing after the first extension of the +armistice and referring to that fact, he intimates that "the period for +fulfilling the provisions of Article XXX" (the repair of ships) "is also +prolonged until January 17, 1919. Accordingly Germany is not obliged to +hand over the interned ships before the 17th January. In spite of this +Germany will make every endeavour in the future also to deliver these +interned ships as soon as possible, and, as hitherto, will seek to carry +out the terms of the armistice most loyally.... Without being under any +obligation to do so, and merely in order to furnish further proofs of +the loyal and business-like intentions of carrying out the terms of the +armistice, measures have been taken for carrying on reconditioning, as +far as that is possible and without prejudice, in accordance with the +newest regulations of the British Lloyd." + +The same formula, it will be observed, was followed in connection with +each subject under consideration. There was first the protest, then an +intimation that the wish of the Allies should be carried out in spite of +the fact there was no obligation to do so, and finally the invariable +"patting of themselves on the back" on the part of the Germans for the +"loyalty of spirit" thus displayed. + +There was a subtle appeal to British sportsmanship in this paragraph +from one of the communications of the President of the German Shipping +Commission. "I again request you to signify your approval that the +German embargo steamer, _Marie_ (ex _Dave Hill_), now lying in Batavia, +in recognition of her signal services during the war, both from the +military point of view and seamanship, should be permitted first to put +in with her crew to a German port; the ship will then, after handing +over her German fittings, be delivered as quickly as arranged in the +Tyne." + +It was not stated what the "signal services" of the _Marie_ had been +in the war, nor for whom they had been performed; but I am under the +impression she was the ship which was credited with the very fine +exploit of running the British blockade of East Africa, delivering a +cargo of arms and munitions to Von Letow, and then making her escape +to the Dutch Indies. As this cargo was the one thing which enabled the +East African campaign to be carried on to the end of the war (when +it must otherwise inevitably have terminated a year or two earlier), +there can be no two ways of looking at the "signal service" the _Marie_ +performed--for the Germans. + +Owing to the difficulty in securing crews to take the ships to the Tyne, +Admiral Goette requested that the Allied Commission should furnish in +advance a guarantee of safety for those who could be induced to make the +voyage. Admiral Browning's reply was a counter-demand for a guarantee of +safety for the parties landing from the _Hercules_ to carry out their +inspections of German ships and air stations. "The word of my Commission +is given here and now," he said, "in the presence of many witnesses, +for the security of any German subject who may, in the course of the +execution of the armistice, land in Great Britain. It is not customary +to give written assurances regarding the honourable observation of +the law of nations, but in the case of Germany we are obliged to ask +for guarantees in writing because of the description which has been +furnished us of the state of the country. We are obliged to ask before +we take any steps to see that the terms of the armistice are executed, +that the parties should be able to perform their duties without danger, +let, or hindrance." + +Admiral Goette conceded this demand, and then went on to press his own +in a statement highly illuminative of the abject position the German +naval authorities found themselves in their relations with both the +men of the warships and merchant sailors. "I wish to explain," he +said, "that the request which we make is not to be construed into an +expression of suspicion or distrust. It is merely in the interests of +the men themselves, as we experienced in the case of the personnel of +the submarines taken to English ports that the men were obviously under +great apprehension that something might happen to them on coming into +English parts. The guarantee is merely wanted as something definite +to show the crews, as we have great difficulty in getting the men to +believe us. That is why we also suggest that the German Commission +should receive the minutes of the conference, as they would be quite +enough for our purpose in order to be able to show the men in print that +the declaration has been actually made." + +The mutual guarantees were subsequently given in writing as follows:-- + + GUARANTEE BY THE GOVERNMENT AT BERLIN AS TO THE SAFETY OF + MEMBERS OF THE ALLIED COMMISSION DURING THEIR STAY IN + GERMANY. + + Berlin. + _December_ 6, 1918. + + Foreign Office. + No. 172192. + + The safety of the members of the Allied Commission and + of the representatives of the United States is guaranteed + by the Government of the State for the whole extent of + German territory. All representatives and functionaries of + the Administration of the State, the Federal States and + Municipalities of the Army and of the Navy are requested to give + them every protection and to assist them in every way in the + unhindered execution of their work. + + The Government of the State. + + (_Signed_) EBERT. + HAASE. + + GUARANTEE AS TO SECURITY OF GERMAN CREWS OF MERCHANT VESSELS + + H.M.S. _Hercules_. + _December_ 6, 1918. + + The Allied Naval Armistice Commission. + No. 0379. + + In reply to your verbal request of yesterday, 5th December, + 1918, we hereby authorize you to communicate to those + concerned our assurance that the security of the crews sent + over in merchant vessels, restored under Article XXX, Terms of + Armistice, will be properly safeguarded on their arrival in + British or French ports. + + A copy of this document will be forwarded to the Admiralty + in London and to the Ministry of Marine in Paris accordingly. + + (_Signed_) M. E. Browning, _Vice-Admiral_. + (_Signed_) M. F. A. Grasset, _Contre-Amiral_. + + To Rear-Admiral Ernst Goette. + +Guarantees having been provided, the following instructions were handed +to the German Commission regarding the carrying out of inspections under +the terms of the armistice:-- + +1. The Allied Naval Commission shall be received on board each +mercantile vessel to be inspected by officers of approximately +equivalent rank and conducted through the vessel, visiting such places +and compartments as the Allied Commission may wish. + +2. All compartments are to be adequately lighted. + +3. All vessels shall be cleared of men before and during the inspection, +with the exception of those necessary to open up machinery, doors, +hatches, etc. + +4. If guns are mounted they are to be uncovered, and all explosives +removed from the vessel. + +The Allied inspection parties were instructed as follows:-- + +(_a_) To satisfy themselves that all Allied vessels are bunkered, +ballasted, and sufficiently manned for the passage to the Tyne, in the +case of British and Belgian vessels, and to Dunkerque, in the case of +French vessels. + +(_b_) To ensure that the necessary repairs and dry docking of +unseaworthy ships are carried out by the German authorities. + +(_c_) To ascertain that sufficient deck and engine stores are provided +for the passage. + +(_d_) That all ships' papers, including Log Book and Register, +confiscated on internment are returned. + +(_e_) That ammunition and explosives are landed from the vessels which +have been used for war purposes. + +The arrival of the lists of embargo and prize ships showed them to be +scattered about among a large number of ports on both the North Sea +and the Baltic. As lack of time precluded the possibility of visiting +Danzig or any other Baltic ports east of Kiel, it was arranged that all +seaworthy ships in these ports should proceed to Kiel for inspection. +After completing the inspection of the five ships in Wilhelmshaven (two +of which were found to have machinery defects which made it impossible +to deliver them without extensive repairs), the Shipping Board departed +by train for Hamburg and Bremerhaven, where the greater part of their +work was to be done. Before they rejoined the _Hercules_ three days +later at Kiel over thirty British ships had been inspected and the +preliminary steps taken for their return to the Tyne. + +Admiral Goette's report at the first conference respecting conditions +at Hamburg and the vicinity had made it appear probable that a visit +to the Elbe would be entirely out of the question, and even after +guarantees of safety had arrived it still seemed that venturing there +would be attended by uncertainty if not danger. "In the Elbe," the +President of the German Commission had said, "power is entirely in the +hands of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council, and Naval Officers have +no authority or influence whatever. One of the chief supports of the +Workmen's and Soldiers' Council is the light cruiser _Augsburg_. There +are also some torpedo-boats, mine-sweeping vessels and other small craft +there which should be disarmed; but officers at Wilhelmshaven have no +power to see to it, nor can they give any definite information as to +what is there.... The Elbe is much less under the influence of the +Berlin Government than either Wilhelmshaven or Kiel. The Elbe Republic +appears to have been much more radical than the others from the start, +and has from the beginning of the Revolution refused to co-operate with +the Naval Officers, while such co-operation was at once in effect in +Wilhelmshaven and Kiel." + +It is by no means improbable that Admiral Goette was quite sincere in +this summary of conditions on the Elbe; indeed, so far as the lack +of authority on the part of Naval Officers was concerned, it was +an accurate statement of the case. But in assuming that this would +necessarily make it impossible for the Allied Shipping Board to carry +out their work he proved quite wrong. Contemptuous as they were of their +ex-officers, the men, far from displaying any desire to interfere with +the work of the Commission, proved themselves no less willing than their +mates in Wilhelmshaven to help in any way they could. The Workmen's and +Soldiers' Council took over the protection of the party from the moment +of its arrival, and, save for a single incident which could hardly have +been classed as "preventable," nothing of an untoward nature occurred in +the course of the visit. + +[Illustration: IN THE ELBE, HAMBURG] + +[Illustration: RAILROAD STATION AT HAMBURG] + +At Hamburg the party put up at the Hotel Atlantic, where they +reported that their comfort was extremely well looked after in every +way. Occupying a wing to themselves and using a private dining-room, +they saw little of the other guests. They were not allowed to linger in +the foyer or any of the public rooms on the ground floor, and as soon as +they had reached their rooms an armed guard of the Workmen and Soldiers +took station at the entrance to the corridor. These precautions appeared +quite unnecessary, as no signs of unfriendliness of any kind were in +evidence. + +The rooms were large and furnished with all their pre-war luxuriousness. +The linen was abundant and of fine quality. The steam heaters had to +be turned off to prevent the rooms becoming overheated. The response +from the hot-water taps was immediate. The brass fittings were still +in place, and there were no signs of _ersatz_ towels, sheets, or even +lace curtains. Soap was the only thing missing, but that difficulty +was common to all Germany. Food (even on one of the days which was +meatless) was both abundant and wholesome--"well up to the average in a +first-class English hotel," as one of the members put it. There was an +ample and varied wine list to order from, including--besides many Rhine +and Hungarian brands--several French and Italian brandies and liqueurs. +There was some discussion over the cigars, the only point upon which +the Commission were unanimous being that they were not tobacco, and +that any member desiring to experiment in the effect of them upon a +human being should do so upon himself, and in his own room. German +"substitute" tobacco looks better than it smokes; in fact, the only way +in which the Workmen's and Soldiers' guards attached to our parties were +in the least obnoxious was through putting up "smoke barrages," and even +these were avoidable except in turrets, magazines, shaft tunnels, and +other enclosed spaces. + +The inspection of the twenty-four British ships in the Elbe revealed +the fact that it had been the German practice to convert the best of +the embargo steamers into mine-layers, net-layers, seaplane carriers, +and other types of war auxiliaries. These had been kept in the best of +condition, and, allowing for the hard service they had been engaged in, +were in practically as good shape as when first seized. The second-grade +steamers and sailing vessels had merely been laid up and left to go +to rack and ruin. Stripped of everything in the way of metal or gear +that was likely to prove of use elsewhere, unpainted, uncared-for and +covered with four-and-a-half years' accumulation of rust and filth, they +presented a sorry sight. Although yielding little in the way of metal +or technical instruments, the sailing ships had furnished useful loot in +the form of hempen ropes and canvas, of both of which they were stripped +to the last ravellings. + +There was one very interesting discovery made in connection with the +inspection of these laid-up ships in the Elbe. _A number of them were +found to have been filled with concrete, with the evident intention of +using them as block ships._ Naturally, no explanation of what had been +in the wind to prompt this action was volunteered, but the fact that the +work had been done at a comparatively recent date pointed strongly to +the probability that the Germans, stung to the quick by the blocking of +Zeebrugge and Ostend, were preparing a reply, most likely against the +entrance to the Tyne. One has only to look at the chart to understand +that the latter is a readily "blockable" estuary--to any adequately +equipped force able to reach the proper point. Needless to say, such +a contingency was not unprovided against, and it would have been a +near-miracle if even the most dare-devil leadership could have brought +such a force halfway across the North Sea. Whether the armistice put +an end to uncompleted preparations, or whether the plan was given up +in despair before that time (perhaps through a failure to secure the +necessary force of volunteers), there was nothing to indicate, though +doubtless revelations throwing light on this interesting mystery will be +forthcoming from Germany before long. + +Fortunately, the concrete had been put into these ships in the form of +blocks instead of being poured, so that the clearing of their holds was +not a serious matter. + +The drives in motor-cars through the streets of Hamburg revealed the +same well-dressed, well-fed crowds which had been so much in evidence +in Wilhelmshaven, and not even in the docks or shipyards were there +any signs of the starvation we had been assured prevailed in all the +great industrial centres. The people were mildly curious but not in +the least unfriendly. The only occasion on which anything unpleasant +occurred was when a navvy, splashed by the mud from one of the leading +cars, petulantly slammed his shovel through the glass of the next in +line. The nerves and tempers of the three French shipping commissioners +were the only things beside the glass which suffered seriously as a +consequence of this contretemps. The Workmen's and Soldiers' guards +promptly asserted their authority by arresting the captious culprit, +profuse apologies for the indignity were offered by the German officers +conducting the party at the time, and later the President of their +Shipping Commission called on Commodore Bevan at the hotel to make +formal expression of regrets. + +There was a refreshing naïveté in the explanation offered by one of the +German officers of the reason for this little incident. "It was all the +fault of the chauffeur," he said. "The man used to drive for Admiral +X---- of the General Staff, and he forgot that he must no longer let his +car throw mud on the street workmen." + +The German naval officer who received the Allied party on one of the +British merchantmen was found in a state of considerable excitement. +He had been fired at from the darkness the night before, he said, and +missed by a hair. Interpreting this as a warning against wearing his +naval uniform ashore, he had dressed in civil attire that morning, +brought his uniform along in a parcel, and changed into it on board. + +"You'd pity any one but a Hun for having to do a thing like that," was +the dry comment of one of the British members of the party when this +tale of woe was translated to him. + +An instance of the unquenchable optimism of the German industrialist +regarding the eagerly awaited future when the seas and the markets of +the world are again open to him was furnished in the course of a visit +to the great Blohm and Voss yards, which occupy about the same position +on the Elbe as do those of John Brown or Fairfields on the Clyde, +or Harland and Wolff at Belfast. Several of the embargo ships were +undergoing repairs here, and in going over one of these it was pointed +out by Commodore Bevan that it ought to be ready to put to sea some days +inside the limit set by the Germans for the completion of reconditioning. + +"It is quite true the ship will be in a state to make the voyage to +the Tyne by the time you say," replied Herr M----, the Director who +was showing the party round, "but it will take a number of days longer +to put it in the same state it was when placed under embargo. It would +be a short-sighted policy on our part to send a badly repaired ship +out of our yards at the present time, for it would be certain to react +seriously in the matter of future orders. You must bear in mind, sir, +that we have a world-wide reputation for thoroughness to maintain." + +He appeared far from reassured when he was told that the condition he +sent the British ships home in would have no effect whatever upon his +future business with the rest of the world; moreover, he must have found +that the longer he pondered that plain statement the less comfort there +was to be extracted from it. It is astonishing how few Germans appear to +realize that there are other things besides workmanship and quality--to +say nothing of long credits, state subsidies and pushful salesmen--that +will profoundly affect the future of German trade. + +The inspection of the eight interned vessels at Bremerhaven brought out +nothing of more than routine interest, but the visit to the great home +port of the North German Lloyd on the Weser, just as had the one to +that of the Hamburg-Amerika Line on the Elbe, offered an incomparable +opportunity to see at first hand the staggering blow which the war +had dealt to German shipping and--through shipping--to German foreign +trade. Although the fact that I had been attached for the moment to the +sub-commissions inspecting seaplane and Zeppelin stations prevented +my visiting Hamburg and Bremerhaven with the Shipping Board, an +illuminating glimpse of the latter was offered me during the passage of +the Weser in the course of the journey to Nordholz. + +Although the day was overcast and there was some mistiness on the water, +one could still see far enough up and down stream during the passage +to note the effects of the complete stagnation which had settled from +the outbreak of the war upon this second of Germany's great maritime +ports. The name BREMERHAVEN had appeared in raised gilt letters +across the stern of every one of the hundreds of North German Lloyd +steamers, and from New York to Shanghai, from Sydney to Durban, one was +confronted with it in most of the ports of the world, but especially +those of the Far East and Australia. I had seen it on the black-hulled, +buff-funnelled freighters that were carrying Dutch goods from Ternate +to Batavia, Chinese goods from Tientsin to Foochow, Japanese goods +from Kobe to Nagasaki, British goods between Sandakan and Singapore. +The "Crossed Keys" house-flag was known throughout the East as the +symbol of that notorious German trade policy of heavy rate-cutting +until competition had been killed and then a forcing up of tariffs to +just under a figure which would be calculated to revive competition. +But while the Germans had plotted thus ruthlessly to strangle foreign +competition, between their own lines nothing of the kind was ever +allowed to go on. The Hamburg-Amerika and the Norddeutscher-Lloyd, with +three or four other German lines of secondary importance, had divided up +the world into "spheres" of trade, with no line encroaching upon that +of another except for certain inevitable "over-lapping" in passenger +traffic on the Mediterranean and North Atlantic routes. + +The lines of the Norddeutscher-Lloyd were stretched like the tentacles +of an octopus over the Indian Ocean and the Eastern Pacific, and at the +outbreak of the war it was sucking trade from every British, French, +Dutch, and Scandinavian line that plied to the ports of Australia, +Malaysia, China, and the Philippines upon which it had fastened its +slimy grip. The "N.D.L." was more than a German steamship line; it +was Germany itself--Germany beginning to rivet down the edges of its +"places in the sun." It was Herr Heiniken, the president of this great +instrument of "Deutschland Ueber Alles," who, in Hongkong in 1911, +exclaimed to a diplomat with whom he was discussing the Kaiser's Agadir +bluff: "War! that, sir, is the one thing I want to avoid. What do we +want to spend money and men on war when--within ten years at our present +rate of progress--we can win everything that the most successful war +could possibly give us? War might be a short cut to German world-power; +and again, it might not. But hegemony by the trade route--provided only +we continue to enjoy the freedom we have today--is sure. Our ships and +merchants have already won half the battle, and victory is in sight if +they are only allowed to go on." + +Herr Heiniken was a hard-headed, clear-seeing man, and one shudders to +think how much truth there was in the words quoted. But the slower, more +round-about "trade route" to world-power did not suit the hot-headed +Junkers, and they forced their country to attempt to reach by the +short-cut of war what was almost within the reach of their merchants +and shippers. And that day at Bremerhaven we saw one of the results. +There, sluddered down into the slime from which he rose, his tentacles +all either severed or drawn in, was the remains of the "N.D.L." octopus. +Miles and miles of what were once black-and-buff freighters and liners +were lying so deep in harbour silt that it would have taken a dredger +to get them out of their slips. The tangles of sagging, weed-fringed +mooring cables running over and about them--for all the world as though +they had been meshed in the web of a Gargantuan spider--accentuated the +helpless immobility of craft that had once flaunted the arrogant red, +white, and black bunting of the German merchant marine in the uttermost +corners of the Seven Seas. + +That river full of rotting ships was more than quiet--it was _dead_. +The anchorage of the interned High Sea Fleet, off the inner entrance +to Gutter Sound in Scapa Flow, was the first cemetery I had seen of +the ships of the power whose ruler had proclaimed that its future +was upon the sea. Bremerhaven was another graveyard of that ambient +ambition. And the rusting hulks of the remains of the "N.D.L." fleet +was not all that was buried in the port of opulent Bremen. The ships +were only the tombstones. Deep in the mud beneath their keels was +sunk the crumpled framework of a plan which was a long way farther on +the way to consummation than most of Americans and Britons will ever +realize--Germany's scheme to attain world domination by trade. Germany +will, in time undoubtedly have another merchant marine, and she may even +begin striving before long toward world domination by any means, fair or +foul, that offers a chance of success. But there is a slight probability +that she will ever again hit upon any road that will take her so far +toward the goal of "_Deutschland Ueber Alles_" as did the "trade route," +the way to which is now all but closed. There was the dankness of mould +in the wind that blew across the graveyard of the high ambitions that +lie buried beyond hope of resurrection in the mud beneath the weed-foul +bottoms of the ships of Bremerhaven. + +The whole atmosphere of the stagnant waterfront was brooding and gloomy, +and as we drew near to the landing I was conscious of a pronounced +depression, for no man who loves the sea can remain unmoved at the sight +of neglected ships. To this mood the cheery chatter of a young American +Ensign, who had just sauntered out on deck after warming his toes at the +charcoal brazier in the tug's cabin, came as a welcome diversion. + +"There's a lot of funny things chalked up on the walls around the +docks," he said, running his eyes over the signs along the front, "but +the one word that is written over the whole darn layout is 'Ichabod.' +'N.D.L.' is the only other to run 'one-two-three' with it. By the look +of things I take it that stands for 'No D----m Luck.'" + + + + +VII + +THE BOMBING OF TONDERN + + +The German airship station at Tondern was by no means the largest of +the enemy naval stations, but its position gave it an importance not +measured by the number of its sheds or its airships. + +Situated in Schleswig, not far from the Danish border, its ships were +available equally for reconnaissance in the North Sea or the Baltic, +including the Kattegat, and all the devious straits and passages +between Denmark and the Scandinavian Peninsula. In a way, with the +seaplane station at Sylt, it formed the first line of defence against +the ever increasing British mine-laying sorties in the North Sea and +Kattegat. The actual attacks against these mine-layers came to be left +more and more to the seaplanes, though, in the first years of the war, +considerable bomb-dropping was attempted here from Zeppelins. The +vulnerability of the airship to aeroplane attack--and, notably, the +destruction of a Zeppelin by a plane launched from the light cruiser +_Yarmouth_--put an end to their work in this _rôle_, and compelled them +to confine their activities entirely to reconnaissance. It was the +great effectiveness of the long observation flights from Tondern which +determined the R.N.A.S. to make a strong endeavour to put an end to the +menace by destroying the sheds. Besides greatly hampering the British +mine-laying program they were also credited with supplying the Germans +with invaluable information for both their surface raids and submarine +attacks on the Norwegian convoys. + +The only way in which Tondern could be reached was by machines launched +from a carrier ship, and for this purpose the _Furious_, on account of +her great speed and size, was perhaps better adapted than even a ship +of the type of the _Argus_, in spite of the fact that the latter was +specially built for the work, while the former was converted from a +cruiser of the _Courageous_ class. The raid, as any attempt of the kind +must be, was prepared for some time in advance, and was only launched +when it appeared that all conditions were especially favourable for its +success. Probably the astonishing Admiralty intelligence service played +an important, perhaps a decisive, part. + +There was one point which favoured a raid upon Tondern as compared +with an air attack upon one of the stations farther south. This was +its proximity to the Danish border, which offered an alternative way +of escape if return to the vicinity of the carrier ship should be +impracticable. This was fully reckoned with in planning the raid, for +it was well understood that the presence of numerous chaser squadrons +from the German coastal seaplane stations might effectually bar the way +back to the _Furious_ or her escorting destroyers. Of the raid from the +British standpoint I can tell little or no more than was revealed in the +bulletin issued by the Admiralty a few days after it took place. This +said, in effect, that a number of aeroplanes, launched from a carrier +ship, had carried out a raid upon the Zeppelin sheds at Tondern shortly +after daylight; that, in spite of the vigorous anti-aircraft fire +encountered, hits had been observed upon at least two of the sheds, and +that it was believed that any airships they contained must have been +destroyed; and that some of the pilots had been picked up at sea, while +others had landed safely in Denmark. Two or three were still unaccounted +for, and might have either been lost in the sea or been taken prisoner +by the enemy. This number was subsequently reduced to one, and he, it +was reckoned, must have sunk with his machine in the sea. + +This was all the public were told of what was undoubtedly the most +successful raid of its kind ever carried out, except for the usual more +or less conflicting versions from Denmark and Holland. No one seemed to +know for certain whether any Zeppelins had been destroyed or not, and +if the Admiralty Intelligence Department knew, it kept its knowledge +to itself. The fact that the British mine-laying squadrons had, from +that time on, less to report of Zeppelin activity in the Skager Rak was +encouraging, however, and seemed to show that the Zeppelins were being +kept out of harm's way. + +Under the armistice agreement the Allied Naval Commission had the right +of visiting any of the German naval air stations. This gave them an +opportunity to see at first hand what damage had been inflicted in +the Tondern raid. So one of the sub-commissions put this station upon +their itinerary. One officer in particular--he had directed the raiding +operations from the _Furious_--was especially anxious to go. But luck +was against him, for the destroyer in which he was visiting the Borkum +and Heligoland stations was delayed by fog, and he was too late to go +with the Tondern party. + +[Illustration: FLOATING DOCK FOR LIFTING SUBMARINES IN KIEL HARBOR] + +The efforts made by the Germans, first, to prevent this Tondern visit +being scheduled at all, and, after it was decided upon, so to delay +it that the party making it should only arrive after dark and thus +have limited opportunities for observation, were a revelation of Hun +psychology. "The Hun," said an officer of one of the air-station +parties on his return to the _Hercules_ one evening, "is one of the +most truthful individuals in the world--just as long as he knows you +are in a position to find out the truth anyway. But if he thinks he can +prevent your finding out the truth by lying, there seems to be no limit +to the lengths he will go." Then he went on to tell of how an unusually +affable and courteous young German flying officer, who had conducted +his party to Norderney two days previously, had taken every occasion to +point out how much trouble, and how profitless and uninteresting a visit +to Tondern would be. He said that the station was a long distance out +of the way, that reaching it would involve trips of some hours by both +train and destroyer, that it was not in a region under the control of +the Wilhelmshaven authorities, and that there was nothing to see anyway, +as the sheds had been dismantled before they were bombed, and that +there were no airships in them at the time they were destroyed. Pressed +on the latter point, he had reiterated the statement, adding that the +raid, though it was well planned and executed, had been a great waste of +effort. "It will take much time, and you will see nothing, nothing at +all, I assure you." + +"When I told him," continued the British officer, "that we would go +ahead with the visit for sentimental reasons, if for no others, he +seemed a good deal upset, and this morning he did not turn up at all. +The commander who came in his stead told me quite frankly that there +were two Zeppelins destroyed at Tondern, and that he was to go in person +with the party to see, as he put it, that it was 'properly received.' +He had such an 'open-and-above-board' manner about everything that I'm +inclined to think there's some 'catch' in his plan. It's probably on the +score of time, or connections, or something of that kind. He says that, +between destroyer, launch, and train, it is an eight-hour journey; but I +have made up a schedule that will give us a good two hours of daylight +there if there is no slip up on the Huns' end of the arrangements. We +push off in the _Viceroy_ at seven in the morning, and ought to be at +Tondern by three. When we rejoin her again at Brunsbüttel's another +matter." + +Just where the "slip up" was meant to come became evident the next +morning, when the German pilot was half an hour late in coming off to +the _Viceroy_. As the sixty-mile run to Brunsbüttel was to have been +covered at a rate of but fifteen miles an hour, a destroyer capable of +doing close to thirty-five had no difficulty in making up the lost time, +though once she was all but compelled to anchor on account of fog, +which closed down just before the outer Elbe lightship was picked up. +The railway station, close beside the gates of the Kiel Canal, was in +plain view from the deck of the _Viceroy_, but the delay in sending off +the promised tug to take us to the landing, with a further delay in the +starting of the waiting special, set back our departure from Brunsbüttel +an hour behind the time scheduled. + +As all the trains previously put at the disposal of the Allied +Commission had been given the right of way over everything else on +the line, we had good reason to believe that this time might also be +made up in the course of the run across absolutely level country which +separated us from Tondern. It was little more than one hundred miles. +When, far from making up time, we continued to lose it--both by waits +at stations and by slow running between them--our mounting suspicions +that the Germans meant to keep us hanging about till after dark seemed +to be confirmed. A protest to the Korvettenkapitän conducting the party +brought only a shrug of the shoulders and the assertion that the bad +conditions of the track and the engine made greater speed too dangerous. +As there was no doubt that the engine was clanking and banging a good +deal, and that the bogey immediately under our compartment had at least +one "flat" wheel, about the only reply we could make to this was to +point out that the twelve-car train which had just passed us was doing +at least twice our speed. + +"Ah! but that train had the good engine," was the naïve reply. It +hardly seemed worth while asking why our special had not also been +provided with a "good" engine. Some sort of directions were given to the +engineer, however, and there was sufficient acceleration of speed (at +the expense, it appeared, of cutting off the steam heating the car) to +bring us into Tondern station with something like three-quarters of an +hour of daylight still to the good. This was so contrary to the plans +of our hosts that the train was kept waiting in the station for fifteen +minutes on the pretext that the party of officers from the town who were +to accompany us had not yet arrived. The crowd on the platform, amongst +which Danish types predominated, seemed to be genuinely friendly, but a +couple of Red Cross girls who stepped forward to offer refreshments were +waved savagely back by an armed guard. + +The ragged silhouettes of the bombed sheds were in plain sight, but a +mile or so distant, when (the German officers having arrived and taken +their places in a spare compartment) the train, with much wheezing and +clanking, started up again and ran slowly out on to the spur towards +the airship station. It would be but a few minutes more, we told +ourselves, and there would still be light enough to see the general +lay of things. The engine never increased its snail's-pace of three +miles an hour all the way, and when it came to a stop at last, close +beside a towering wall of steel, there was barely light enough to show +the top of the wall against the dusky, low-hanging clouds of the early +twilight. Our conductor had maintained his schedule to the minute. When +we alighted he was voluble in his explanation of how the track of the +spur was in such a state of disrepair that a greater speed would have +been attended by the risk of derailment. There was nothing that we could +say to refute this specious protestation, until, on our return journey +an hour or two later, the engine (which had been making steam in the +interim) whisked the two cars over that same spur at the giddy rate of +twenty miles an hour--a good six times as fast as we had come. + +The commander of the station, saying that, as the hour was late, +we doubtless would desire to get the inspection over as quickly +as possible, started off into the darkness at a brisk pace, the +rest--British, Americans, and Germans--stumbling along in pursuit as +best they could. Entering the shed by a side door near which the +train had stopped, we found it so poorly lighted that the opposite +wall showed but dimly, while the ends and the soaring arches of the +roof were lost in dusky obscurity. At that first glimpse--probably the +fresh smell of the cement under foot and the palpable newness of the +pressed asbestos siding under one of the lights had something to do +with it--the shed gave one the impression of being just on the point of +completion. The description of the station furnished to us mentioned no +such structure, so that we were rather at a loss. No explanation was +volunteered, however, and our guide pushed on straight across, with the +evident intention of passing out through the opposite door. But the +senior Allied officer, an American, of commander's rank, stopped him +with a request for more light. Half a dozen switches were then thrown +over, and flooded the great structure with the brilliant radiance of +countless incandescent globes. At once the huge building was revealed as +a double Zeppelin shed of the largest size, just at the end of a long +spell of restoration after being badly damaged. Fragments of duraluminum +and charred pieces of wood and fabric, swept together in great heaps at +the sides, told more of the story, and great fresh patches at several +points in the roof the rest of it. This was the shed in which the two +Zeppelins, which the Germans admitted losing when the station was bombed +by the planes from the _Furious_, had been destroyed. It was the least +damaged of the sheds bombed, said the German commander, and it had +been rebuilt with materials from two other sheds both of which were in +process of demolition. + +I saw the Yankee officer's eyes glistening as the picture those words +conjured up flashed before them, and heard his muttered "Some raid that, +by cripes!" + +"If you are zatisfied, ve vill now go on to der oder sheds," the German +commander said presently, and we followed him out into the deepening +twilight. + +Tondern had nothing of the regularity of plan of Nordholz, nor, luckily, +the latter's magnificent distances. We found the two remaining sheds, +or what was left of them, at less than half a mile from the first. +One was nothing but a foundation, with prostrate steel pillars and +girders scattered about over it, and numerous deep pools of water. I +say deep, because it took two of his colleagues to fish out one of the +party who stumbled into it, and he, by the irony of fate, was a stout +German officer, with a deep bass voice and a magnificent vocabulary. We +had to take the German's word for it that this shed had been a small +one, which they were demolishing because it had been obsolete, and not +because it had been damaged by bombs. + +Men were at work pulling down a section of the next shed as we came up, +but they shambled away at a word from one of their officers. This one, +said the station commander, was much the worst damaged of the two bombed +in the raid, but, by good luck, there had been no airships in it at +the time. The reason that it was more badly knocked to pieces than the +other, in spite of the fact that, in the latter, the explosion of the +Zeppelins was added to that of the bombs, was due to its doors having +been tightly closed. This had caused the full force of the exploding +bombs to be exerted against the walls and roof of the shed, whereas, in +the first one, much of that force had been dissipated through the open +front of the structure. + +Save a flare or two by which the men had been working, there was no +lights in this shed, but, picking our way over heaps of broken glass and +asbestos sheeting, we managed to find a point from which the tangled +and twisted girders of a still undemolished section of the roof were +silhouetted against a stratum of western clouds, yet bright in the last +of the sunset glow. For the most part they bulged outward, where the +up-gush of the explosion had exerted its force against the roof, but in +two places they bent sharply inward, and ended in jagged bars of torn +metal. These were the places, the Germans told us, where two of the +bombs burst through. One of them explained the remarkable fact of the +great holes being almost exactly in a line down the middle of the roof +by saying: "Poof! they fly so low they could not miss. Any airman could +do that. But they did miss with one bomb, though," he said, brightening. +"Come mit me. I show you," and he led the way to a spot forty or fifty +feet in front of the wrecked building, where his electric torch revealed +a round hole in the earth about five feet in diameter by four feet deep. +"I think that bomb miss der top of der shed by one half-metre," he said, +sighting along his outstretched arm at what was evidently reckoned the +angle of a bomb from a low-flying machine. "Yes, it miss der shed by +half a metre; but it kills five men chust der same. Not so bad after +all, perhapds." Your Hun officer is ever a cold-blooded reckoner, and +one of the reasons he is so useful is that he never lets sentiment blur +his perspective. + +From various things heard and seen in the course of that hurried night +visit of inspection to Tondern it would have been possible to piece out +a fairly accurate picture of how the great raid must have appeared to +the Germans stationed there at the time. It will be better, however, to +set down a brief _résumé_ of the connected account I heard at Nordholz +from Von Butlar, Germany's most famous surviving airship pilot, who +had, as will be seen, good reason for remembering what occurred on that +eventful morning. + +[Illustration: BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF KIEL] + +[Illustration: IN KIEL DOCKYARD] + +Von Butlar's[2] chief claim to distinction is his notable long-distance +flights, the most remarkable of which was in connection with an attempt +to carry medical supplies to General Von Letow in German East Africa. +The German European forces there were being decimated by malaria at +the time, and Von Letow had sent word by wireless that unless a supply +of quinine reached him by a certain date he would be unable to carry +on. As this campaign was diverting far too much British effort for the +Germans to let it come to an end while any card still remained to be +played, it was decided to make an attempt to send relief by Zeppelin. +A rendezvous was arranged, and after some delay an airship, under Von +Butlar's command, was dispatched from a station in Bulgaria, the nearest +practicable point from which a start could be made. The delay alone +caused the failure of the boldly conceived project, for, flying without +a hitch of any kind, Von Butlar had already crossed the Mediterranean, +Lower and Upper Egypt, and was well over the Sudan when Von Letow +informed him by wireless that the British had occupied the point where +he was to have landed, and that, as it was not practicable to rendezvous +with him in a sufficiently open region elsewhere, it would be best for +him to return home. This remarkable feat was successfully accomplished, +Von Butlar bringing his airship safely to earth at a point on the +Turkish shores of the Black Sea. + + [2] Since returning to England I have received information + which, while confirming the fact that he commanded "L-59" + when it was commissioned, makes it probable that Von + Butlar was transferred to another Zeppelin before the + East African flight was attempted. A pilot by the name + of Bugholz is believed to have been in command on that + occasion. Although Von Butlar's representation of himself + as the hero of the remarkable African flight appears to + have been a case of pure "swank," there is every reason + to believe that his account of the Tondern raid is + substantially correct.--L. R. F. + +A scarcely less remarkable flight was one in which Von Butlar claimed +to have crossed the North Sea to near the Yorkshire coast, to have +passed north in sight of Rosyth, Invergordon, and Scapa Flow, to have +flown across to Norway, gaining useful information respecting convoy +and patrol movements, and back to his home station at Tondern or +Nordholz. The Admiralty, which had some information about this latter +flight, had credited Von Butlar with having been in the air 104 hours, +but he assured several members of the Commission that the actual time +was little short of six days. He also claimed to have taken a useful +photograph of the Grand Fleet at anchor at Scapa Flow. + +At the time of the Tondern raid, Von Butlar was flying from there, +one of the two Zeppelins destroyed being that which he commanded. As +he speaks little, if any, English, the following account is a free +translation of the story he related to us in German of what occurred on +that occasion. "We always recognized," he said, "from the time that we +learned that the British were developing swift flying-machine carriers, +that Tondern was especially vulnerable to an attack of this kind, and we +prepared against it as best we could. We had expected, however, that it +would come in the form of a raid by seaplanes, which would, of course, +have been comparatively heavy and slow, and which would have had to +return to the sea to land, and against these our defence would probably +have been effective. Where we deceived ourselves was in underrating the +risks that your men were willing to take, such as, for instance, that +of landing in the sea in an ordinary aeroplane on the chance of being +picked up in the comparatively short time such a machine will float." + +"We were not prepared for such a raid at any time, but especially at +the moment at which it occurred. We had had a protecting flight of +light fighting aeroplanes at Tondern, but the landing ground had never +been properly levelled. There had been many accidents, and a number of +the machines were always disabled. This trouble became so bad toward +the middle of last summer that it was finally decided to withdraw the +protecting flight, which was badly needed at the moment elsewhere, until +the landing ground had been improved. As usual, your Admiralty seem to +have learned of this within a few hours and to have decided to take +advantage of it at once. From the way your machines were flying when +they appeared, I am practically certain that they felt sure of being +opposed by nothing worse than gun-fire. + +"We received warning, of course, when the raiding planes were still +over the sea, but, unless some of the machines at once sent up from the +coastal stations could stop them, there was nothing for us to do but to +give them the warmest reception we could with the anti-aircraft guns, in +which we were fairly strong. Our gunners were well trained, and if your +planes had kept high, as they would have done if they had been expecting +a strong attack by a superior force of protecting machines, they would +most probably have been prevented from doing much harm, instead of just +about wiping the station off the map, as they did. + +"When we had the warning, most of those without special duties went to +the _abri_, which had been provided at all stations for use in case of +raids. But I was so concerned over the danger to my own ship that I +remained outside. It was quite light by the time they appeared. At first +they were flying high, but while they were still small specks I saw +them begin to plane down, as though following a pre-arranged plan. It +was all over in a minute or two after that. Part of them headed for one +shed and part for the other. Diving with their engines all out--or so it +seemed--they came over with the combined speed from their drop and the +pull of their propellers. Down they came, till they seemed to be going +to ram the sheds. Then, one after another, they flattened out and passed +lengthwise over their targets at a height of about forty metres, kicking +loose bombs as they went. + +"Our guns simply had no chance at all with them. In fact, one of the +guns came pretty near to getting knocked out itself. It was so reckless +a piece of work that I couldn't help noticing it, even while my own +airship was beginning to burst into flames. One of the pilots, it seems, +must have found that he had a bomb or two left at about the same time he +spotted the position of one of the guns that was firing at him. Banking +steeply, round he came, dived straight at the battery, letting go a bomb +as his sight came on when he was no more than fifteen metres above it. +Then he waved his hand and dashed off after the other machines, which +were already scattering to avoid the German planes beginning to converge +on them from all directions. It was one of the finest examples of nerve +I ever saw. + +"The precaution we had taken of opening the doors of the main shed saved +it from total destruction, for the airships, instead of exploding, +only burned comparatively slowly; but Tondern, as an air station, had +practically ceased to exist from that moment." + + + + +VIII + +THROUGH THE CANAL TO THE BALTIC + + +The _Hercules_ and her four escorting destroyers (the latter having been +scattered during the last few days to various ports and air stations in +connection with the inspection being pushed all along the German North +Sea coast) were to have rendezvoused at Brunsbüttel by dark of the 10th, +in order to be ready to start through the Kiel Canal at daybreak the +following morning. At the appointed time, however, only the _Viceroy_, +which had pushed through that morning with the "air" party en route to +the Zeppelin station at Tondern, was on hand. The _Hercules_, which had +got under weigh from Wilhelmshaven during the forenoon, reported that +she had been compelled to anchor off the Elbe estuary on account of +the thickness of the fog, and the _Verdun_, coming on from her visit +to Borkum and Heligoland, had been delayed from a similar cause. The +_Vidette_ and _Venetia_, which were helping the "shipping" and "warship" +parties get around the harbours of Bremen and Hamburg, signalled that +their work was still uncompleted and that they would have to proceed +later to Kiel "on their own." + +Returning to Brunsbüttel from the Tondern visit well along toward +midnight, the absence of the _Hercules_ compelled the four of us who +had made that arduous journey in the _Viceroy_ (the accommodations in +the "V's" appear to be as elastic as the good nature of their officers +is boundless), to spend the night aboard, and the impossibility of +rejoining our own ships in the morning was responsible for the fact +that we continued with her--the first British destroyer to pass through +the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal--on to Kiel. It was a passage as memorable as +historic. + +An improving visibility toward morning enabled the _Hercules_ to get +under weigh again before daybreak, and in the first grey light of the +winter dawn she came nosing past us and on up to the entrance of the +canal. At each end of the latter there are two locks--lying side by +side--for both "outgoing" and "incoming" ships. The right-side one of +the "incoming" pair was reserved for the _Hercules_, while the other was +kept clear for the _Regensburg_--flying Admiral Goette's flag--and the +two British destroyers. The difference in level between the canal and +the waters of the Elbe, varying considerably with the tide, is only a +few feet at most, and the locking through, as a consequence, only the +matter of minutes. + +The _Hercules_ and _Regensburg_ were already in their respective locks +as the _Viceroy_, with the _Verdun_ half a cable's length astern, came +gliding up out of the fog, the former already beginning to show her +great bulk above the side as she lifted with the in-pouring water. The +attention of the score or so of Germans standing on the wall between +the locks was centred, not on the _Hercules_, as one might have +expected, but on the _Regensburg_, the most of them being gathered in a +gesticulative group abreast the latter's bow. The reason for this we saw +presently. + +[Illustration: H. M. S. "VICEROY" ENTERING KIEL CANAL LOCK AT +BRUNSBÜTTEL] + +The handling of the British destroyers on this occasion was one of the +smartest things of the kind I ever saw. Indeed, under the circumstances, +"spectacular" is a fitter word to describe it than "smart." Without +reducing the speed of her engines by a revolution, the _Viceroy_ +continued right on into the narrow water-lane of the lock at the same +pace as she had approached its entrance. Certainly she was doing ten +knots, and probably a good bit over that. On into the still more +restricted space between the _Regensburg_ and the right side of the +dock she drove, while the waterside loafers--scenting a smash--grinned +broadly in anticipation of the humiliation of the Englanders. Straight +at the loftily looming lock gate she drove, and I remember distinctly +seeing men who were crossing the canal on the bridge made by the folded +flaps break into a run to avoid the imminent crash. And she never did +slow down; she _stopped_. While there was still a score of yards to +go the captain threw the engine-room telegraph over to "Stop!" and +"Half-Speed Astern!" and, straining like a dog in leash as the reversed +propellers killed her headway, stop she did. The superlative _finesse_ +of the thing (for they had seen something before of the handling of +ships in narrow places) fairly swept the gathering dock-side vultures +off their feet with astonishment, and one little knot of sailors all but +broke into a cheer. Then the _Verdun_ came dashing up and repeated the +same spectacular manoeuvre in our wake; only, instead of bringing up a +few feet short of the lock gates, it was the stern of the _Viceroy_, +with its festoon of poised depth-charges, that her axe-like bow backed +away from after nosing up close enough to sniff, if not to scratch, the +paint. + +"You've impressed the Huns right enough, sir," I remarked to the captain +as he rang down, "Finished with the Engines," and turned to descend the +ladder of the bridge; "but wasn't it just a bit--" + +"Yes, it was rather slow," he cut in apologetically in answer to what +he thought I was going to say; "but I didn't dare to take any chances +of coming a cropper in strange waters. Now, if it had been the 'Pen' at +Rosyth, we might have shown them what one of the little old 'V's' can do +when it comes to a pinch." + +At the time I thought he was joking--that I had seen the extreme limit +that morning of the "handiness" of the modern destroyer. But the +_Viceroy_, astonishing as that performance had been, still had something +up her sleeve. A week later, in the fog-shrouded entrance to Kiel Fiord, +where a slip would have been a good deal more serious matter than the +telescoping of a bow on a lock gate, I saw how much. + +From the vantage of the bridge I saw, just before descending for +breakfast, what it had been that had deflected the attention of the +lock-side loafers from the _Hercules_ to the _Regensburg_. That most +graceful of light cruisers had paid the penalty of being left with a +most disgraceful crew. _She_ had rammed the lock gate full and square, +and--from the look of her bows--while she still had a good deal of way +on. We had remarked especially the trim lissomeness of those bows when +she met us off the Jade on the day the _Hercules_ arrived in German +waters. And now the sharp stem was bent several feet to port, while +all back along her "flare" the buckled plating heaved in undulant +corrugations like the hide on the neck of an old bull rhino. As it was +the kind of repair that would take a month or more in dock to effect, +there was nothing for the Germans to do but go on using her as she was. +Luckily, she did not appear to be making much water. She followed us +through the canal without difficulty, and--as the days when she would +be called on to shake out her thirty knots were gone for ever--it is +probable that she served Admiral Goette as well for a flagship as any +other of her undamaged sisters would have. But they were never able to +smooth out her "brow of care" during all our stay in German waters; +indeed, I shall be greatly surprised if (to use the expressive term I +heard a bluejacket in the _Viceroy_ apply to it that morning) she does +not come poking that "cauliflower nose" in front of her when she is +finally handed over for internment at Scapa. + +Although they would be dwarfed beside such great structures as the Pedro +Miguel or Gatun locks of the Panama Canal, the locks at Brunsbüttel +are fine solid works, displaying on every hand evidences of the great +attention which had been given to providing for their rapid operation +under pressure, as when the High Sea Fleet was being rushed through +from the Baltic to the North Sea. Having been enlarged primarily to +"double the strength of the German Fleet," expense had not mattered in +the way it would have had the canal been expected to justify itself +commercially. The merchant traffic of the waterway for many years to +come would not have demanded the double locks at either end; but naval +exigencies called for speedy operation at any cost, and they were built. + +Everything about the locks was in extremely good repair. Even the great +agate and onyx mosaic of the name KAISER WILHELM KANAL, set between +the double-headed eagles of the Imperial arms, was swept and polished +to display it to best advantage. The locks were only the front window +display, however, for the badly eroded banks of the canal itself +testified to the same lack of maintenance as the railways were suffering +from. As our pilot reported that the revolutionists had spent the +night obliterating all the Imperial names--such as _Kaiserstrasse_ and +_Kronprintzstrasse_--in Brunsbüttel, one felt safe in assuming that the +gaudy mosaic on the lock wall had been furbished as a decoration, not as +a symbol. + +The _Hercules_, having been raised to the proper level, was locked +out into the canal, along which she proceeded at the steady six-knot +speed laid down as the limit not to be exceeded by ships of her size. +Although of considerably less displacement than a number of the largest +of the German capital ships, she was of greater draught than any of +these, and even the burning of several hundred tons of coal in the +voyage from Rosyth still left her drawing slightly more than the thirty +odd feet that the German naval command had set as the limit. This had +been figured out in advance, however, and an oiling all round of the +destroyers before leaving Wilhelmshaven had brought her up just the few +inches necessary to making the passage without inflicting injury to +herself or to the canal. + +The _Hercules_ had traversed about a mile of the canal before the +_Viceroy_ was locked out to follow in her wake, and something like that +interval was preserved throughout most of the passage. The _Verdun_ +kept about a quarter of a mile astern of the _Viceroy_, with the +_Regensburg_--but so far back as to be out of sight--bringing up the +rear. Two squat patrol launches--one on either quarter, a couple of +hundred yards astern--followed the _Hercules_ all the way, but for just +what purpose we could not make out. + +For the first few miles the country on either side of the canal was +of the same low-lying nature as that through which all of our railway +journeys from Wilhelmshaven had been made. Ditched and dyked marshland +alternated with stretches of bog and broad sheets of stagnant water +where the drainage system had proved unequal to carrying off the +overflow in the inundations following the winter rains. Cultivation was +at a standstill here, probably until the water-logged soil dried out in +the spring. Like the East Frisian peninsula, the region was essentially +a grazing rather than an agricultural one, and the farmers were paying +the penalty of having broken up grassland that was only dry enough for +cultivation during a few months of the year. Cattle were scarce, sheep +scarcer, and such of the inhabitants as were visible around the dismal +farmsteads had the dull, purposeless air of people with nothing to do +and plenty of time to do it in. + +[Illustration: SEMAPHORE STATION ON KIEL CANAL, FROM "HERCULES"] + +As we fared inland only the gradually heightening banks told that the +country was increasing in elevation. Ponds and bogs were still frequent, +and it was not until the first low hills were reached that there +appeared to be enough drainage for the land to shake itself free of +water. Here the country took on a more cheerful aspect, due principally +to the fact that the people, many of whom were working, seemed less +"bogged down"--mentally and physically--than their countrymen in the +water-logged areas near the sea. Most of them were capable of +recognizing us as Allied warships (something which few of the others +appeared to have done), and when this had sunk home they usually hurried +down to the bank of the canal for a closer view. Most of these isolated +farming people were undemonstrative, and it was not until the more +sophisticated inhabitants of the villages and towns were encountered +that women and children were seen to wave their hands and men to doff +their hats and bow. Most of the population, both agricultural and +industrial, is found toward the Kiel rather than the Brunsbüttel end of +the canal. + +At one point we came upon two men and a girl feverishly engaged in +skinning a horse, which appeared to have dropped dead in the furrow. +Or rather, they had already skinned it and were busy cutting up the +carcass. Watching through my glass from the bridge of the _Viceroy_, I +saw all three of them rush helter-skelter over a hill and out of sight +as the _Hercules_ came abreast of them, only to hurry back and resume +their grisly work when she had disappeared around a bend just ahead. +When they again took to their heels on sighting the _Viceroy_, I asked +the pilot what they were afraid of. The law required, he replied, +that the authorities should be notified of the death of any head of +live stock in order that the meat (in case it was deemed fit for +human consumption) should be distributed through the regular rationing +channels. These people, he thought, were in the act of stealing their +own dead horse, and doubtless their guilty consciences made them fear +they would be reported and delivered up to justice. + +Since witnessing this incident I have found myself rather less inclined +to dwell in retrospect on that huge, juicy "beefsteak" I had devoured +with such gusto when it was the _pièce de résistance_ on the menu of our +luncheon at the Nordholz Zeppelin station a couple of days previously. + +Through the low country the construction of the canal had evidently been +only a matter of dredging, but the multiplication in size and number of +the "dumps" as the elevation increased showed that there had been places +where digging on an extensive scale had been necessary, especially in +connection with the widening and deepening operations. The fact that +most of the "dumps" appeared to consist of earth of a very loose and +sandy nature, some of them so much so that they had been planted thickly +with young trees to prevent their being shifted by the winds, showed +that the excavation problem had been a comparatively simple one, more of +the nature of that at Suez than Panama, where so much of the way had to +be blasted through solid rock. + +The looseness of the earth had made it necessary to cut the banks at as +low an angle as forty-five degrees in places to prevent caving, and at +these points the under-water part of the channel was faced with roughly +cut stone to minimize erosion. As this work was only carried a few feet +above the surface of the water, it required but slight speed on the +part of a large ship to produce a wave high enough to splash over on to +the unprotected earth and bring it down in slides. This had doubtless +happened very often in the course of the frequent shuttling to and fro +of the High Sea Fleet, for the stonework was heavily undermined in many +places, with few signs to indicate that much had been done in the way of +repairs. + +Except in the locks (and even there the concrete was cracking badly in +places, particularly at the Kiel end), the canal shows many evidences +of the haste of its construction and the serious deterioration it has +suffered from heavy use and poor maintenance. It will require much money +and labour to put it in proper condition, and neither of these is likely +to be over plentiful in Germany for some years to come. + +Our first glimpse of Allied prisoners in their "natural habitat" +occurred at a point about twenty miles inland from Brunsbüttel, where +a new and very lofty railway viaduct was being thrown across the +canal. The extensive groups of huts along the bank in the shadow of +the half-completed final span of steel looked, from the distance, like +ordinary workmen's quarters. As we drew nearer, however, broad belts of +barbed wire surrounding those on the right side suggested that they were +used as a prison camp even before our glasses had revealed the motley +clad group on the bank waving to the _Hercules_. As the _Viceroy_ came +abreast the excited and constantly augmenting crowd, we saw that the +uniforms were mostly French and Russian, though there were three or +four men in the grey of Italy and at least one with the unmistakable +cap of the Serbs. A hulking chap in khaki, whom I was making the object +of an especially close scrutiny on the chance that he might be British +or American, put an end to doubt by slapping his chest resoundingly and +announcing proudly, "_Je suis Belge!_" From the fact that they were all +in good spirits, we took it that they were getting enough to eat and +that prospects for repatriation were favourable. + +We had quite given up hope of sighting any British when suddenly, from +behind a barbed-wire barrier fencing off the last groups of huts, rang +out a cry of "'Ow's ol'Blighty?" Sweeping my glass round to the quarter +from whence the query came, I focussed on a phiz which, despite its +mask of lather, I should have recognized as Cockney just as surely in +Korea or Katmandu as on the banks of the Kiel Canal. Waving his brush +jauntily in response to the salvo of delighted howls boomed out by the +bluejackets lining the starboard rail, he turned back to the little +pocket mirror on the side of the hut and resumed his interrupted shave. + +"Can you beat that, I ask you?" gasped an American Flying officer who +had just clambered up to the bridge. "Here it is the first time that +'Tommy' has seen his country's flag in anywhere from one to four years; +and yet, even when he must know he could get a lift home for the asking, +all he does is to--go on scraping his face! I say, can you beat it?" + +The captain did not reply, but his indulgent grin indicated a +sympathetic understanding of "British repressiveness." + +But if this particular "Tommy" had been somewhat casual in his greeting, +there was nothing to complain of on that score in the reception given +us by the next British prisoners we encountered, a few miles further +along. The incident--one of the most dramatic of the visit--occurred +just after the _Hercules_ had passed under the great railway viaduct +which crosses the canal almost midway between Brunsbüttel and Kiel. +Wherever practicable, I might explain, all railways have been carried +across the canal at a height sufficient to allow even the lofty topmasts +of the German warships to pass under by a comfortable margin. Not one +of the several viaducts runs much under two hundred feet above the +canal, and to attain this height at an easy grade long approaches +have been necessary. Some of these--partly steel trestle, partly +embankment--stretched beyond eyescope to left and right; but at the +viaduct in question the ascent was made by means of two great spiral +loops at either end. + +A segment of the loop on the left ran close beside the canal in the form +of a steep embankment, and as the _Hercules_ glided under the viaduct +I saw (we had closed up to within a few hundred yards of her at the +time) a long train of passenger cars, drawn by two puffing engines, just +beginning the heavy climb. Suddenly I caught the flash of what I took to +be a red flag being wildly waved from one of the car windows, and I was +just starting to tell the captain that we were about to pass a trainload +of revolutionaries when the gust of a mighty cheer swept along the +waters to us and set the radio aerials ringing above my head. + +"You can't tell me that's a 'Bolshie' yell," observed the American +officer decisively. "Nothing but Yanks or Tommies could cough up a roar +like that, believe me." + +Then I saw that all the canal-ward sides of the dozen or more coaches +were wriggling with khaki arms and shoulders (for all the world as +though a great two-hundred-yard-long centipede had been pinned up there +and left to squirm), and that what I had taken for the red flag of +anarchy was only the mass effect of a number of fluttering bandannas. +Again and again they cheered the _Hercules_ and the White Ensign, with a +fresh salvo for the _Viceroy_, which they sighted just before the curve +of the loop the train was ascending cut off their view of the canal. +That was all we ever heard or saw of them. We were never even sure +whether they were British or American. We felt certain, however, that +the fact that most of them were still in khaki indicated that their stay +in the "Land of Kultur" had not been a long one, and, moreover, that +they were already on the first leg of their journey home. + +Prisoners working on the land--mostly Russian--were more and more in +evidence as we neared the Kiel end of the canal. The majority of them +still wore their army uniforms, but otherwise there was little to +differentiate them--a short distance away at least--from the native +peasant labour. None of them appeared to be under guard, and in many +places they were working side by side with German farm hands of both +sexes. At a number of points I saw Russians lounging indolently in +groups consisting mostly of Germans (several of which included women) +that had gathered along the banks of the canal to watch us pass, and two +or three times I observed unmistakable Russian prisoners (or perhaps +ex-prisoners) walking arm-in-arm and apparently in animated conversation +with German girls. They seem quite to have taken root in the country. +Indeed, the pilot of the _Viceroy_ for the first half of the passage +through the canal--he was a Schleswig man, strongly Danish in appearance +and probably in sympathies--assured me that the Germans had had the +greatest difficulty in getting Russian prisoners to leave the country +at all, and that there had been frequent "desertions" from trains and +boats whenever it had been attempted. This may well have been true, +though--with labour in Germany as much in demand as it was throughout +the war--I doubt very much if a great deal in the way of repatriation of +Russians had ever been attempted. + +[Illustration: KIEL DOCKYARD FROM THE HARBOR] + +With the towns and villages increasing in size and number as we came +to the fertile rolling country toward the Baltic end of the canal, +evidences multiplied that the population expected our coming and +that, directly or indirectly, they had been instructed to adopt a +"conciliatory" bearing. In the farming region toward the North Sea end +their bearing had been more suggestive of indifference than anything +else; but in the crowds that came down to line the railed "promenades" +along the banks an ingratiating attitude was at once apparent. Some of +these people, of course, were of Danish extraction and probably sincere, +especially a number who waved their hands from well inside their +doorways, as though to avoid being observed by their neighbours; but for +the most part it was the same nauseating exhibition we had already seen +repeated so often at railway stations all over the North Sea littoral. + +The only individual we saw in the whole passage who thoroughly convinced +me of his sincerity was a bloated ruffian who hailed us from the stern +of the barge he had edged into a ferry slip to give us room to pass. +"Go back to England, you English swine!" he roared to the accompaniment +of a lewd gesture. We learned later that he gave both the _Hercules_ +and _Verdun_ the same peremptory orders. Yes, he was quite sincere, +that old bargee, and for that reason I have always thought more kindly +of him than of all the rest of his grimacing brethren and sistern we +saw along the canal that day. A spectacled student (though it is quite +possible he was trying to put the same sentiment in politer language) +was rather less convincing. "English gentlemen," he cried, drawing his +loose-jointed frame up to its full height and glaring at the bridge of +the _Viceroy_ from under his peaked cap, "why do you come here?" That +may have been intended for a protest, or, again, he may merely have been +"swanking" his linguistic accomplishments. + +The bluejackets were splendid. There were places--notably at several +industrial establishments where crowds of rather "on-coming" girls in +trousers exerted their blonde witcheries to the full in endeavours to +"start something"--when the least sign of friendliness from the ship +would have undoubtedly been met with loud acclaim. But not a British +hand did I see lifted in response to the hundreds waved from the banks, +while many a simpering grin died out as the moon-face behind it passed +under the steady stare of the imperturbable _matelots_ lining the rails +of the steadily steaming warships. + +The length of the Kiel Canal is just under a hundred kilometres (about +sixty miles), so that--at the speed of ten kilometres an hour to which +we were limited--the passage required about ten hours, exclusive of +the time spent in locking in and out. As it was an hour after dawn +when we began the passage at Brunsbüttel, the short winter day was not +long enough to make it possible to reach the other end in daylight. +By five o'clock darkness had begun to settle over the waters, and the +grey mists, piling ever thicker in the narrow notch between the hills, +deepened through violet to purple before taking on the black opacity +of the curtain of the night. Then the lights came on--parallel rows of +incandescents narrowing to mist-softened wedges of blurred brightness +ahead and astern--and we continued cleaving our easy effortless way +through the ebony water. + +The blank squares of lighted villa windows heralded the approach to +Kiel; then factories, black, still, and stagnant, with the tracery of +overhead cranes and the bulk of tall chimneys showing dimly through the +mists; then the locks. As the difference between the canal level and the +almost tideless Baltic is only a matter of inches, locking-out was even +a more expeditious operation than locking in from the Elbe at the other +end. There was just time to note that the "_Kaiser Wilhelm_" mosaic, +there as at Brunsbüttel, had been scrubbed up bright and clean, when the +gates ahead folded inward and the way into the Baltic was open. Half an +hour later, after steaming slowly across a harbour past many moored +warships, we were tying up alongside the _Hercules_, where she had come +to anchor a mile off Kiel dockyard. + + * * * * * + +The fog lifted during the night, and for an hour or two the following +morning there were even signs that our long-lost friend, the sun, was +struggling to show his face through the sinister shoals of cumulo-nimbus +banked frowningly across the south-eastern heavens. It was evident +dirty weather was brewing, but for the moment Kiel and its harbour were +revealed in all their loveliness. Completely land-locked from the open +Baltic, the beautiful little fiord disclosed a different prospect in +whichever direction one turned his eyes. The famous _Kaiserliche_ Yacht +Club was close at hand over the port quarter of the _Hercules_, with a +villa-bordered strand opening away to the right. The airy filagree of +lofty cranes revealed the location of what had been Europe's greatest +naval dockyard, while masses of red roofs disclosed the heart of Kiel +itself. Heavily wooded hills, still green, rippled along the skyline +on the opposite side of the fiord, with snug little bays running back +into them at frequent intervals as they billowed away toward the Baltic +entrance. Singularly attractive even in winter, it must have been a +veritable yachtsman's paradise in summer. Recalling the marshes and bogs +of the Jade, I marvelled at the restraint of the German naval officer +whom I had heard say that he and his wife "much _preferred_ Kiel to +Wilhelmshaven." + +The warships in the harbour proved far less impressive by daylight +than at night. Looming up through the mists in the darkness, they had +suggested the presence of a formidable fleet. Now they appeared as +obsolete hulks, from several of which even the guns had been removed. +There was not a modern capital ship left in Kiel; in fact, the only +warship of any class which could fairly lay claim to that designation +was the _Regensburg_, which had managed to push her broken nose through +the canal and was now lying inshore of us, apparently alongside some +sort of quay or dock. The most interesting naval craft (if such a term +could be applied to it) in sight was a floating submarine dock, anchored +a cable's length on the port beam of the _Hercules_, but even that--as +was proved on inspection--was far from being the latest thing of its +kind. + +The British ships were the object of a good deal of interest, especially +during the first few hours of the day while the fog held off. Various +and sundry small craft put off with parties to size us up at close +range, amongst these--significant commentary on the fact that at every +one of the conferences, including the one held that very day, the +Germans had advanced "petrol shortage" as the reason why cars could +not be provided to reach this or that station--being a number of motor +launches. As all of these seemed to be in the hands of white-banded +sailors or dockyard "mateys," the inference might have been drawn that +the petrol used was not under the control of the naval authorities; +but so many of the other "reasons," advanced to discourage, if not to +obstruct, inspections which the Germans, for one reason or another, did +not want to have made turned out to be fictitious, that one was tempted +to believe that "the absolute lack of petrol" was on all fours with them. + +Most of these excursion parties kept at a respectful distance, but there +was one launch-load of men and girls from the docks, which persisted in +circling close to the ships, and even in coming up under the stern of +the _Hercules_, and offering to exchange cap ribbons. The two-word reply +of one of the bluejackets to these overtures would hardly do to print, +but its effect was crushing. Nothing but poor steering prevented that +launch from taking the shortest course back to the dockyard landing. + +[Illustration: FORESHORE OF KIEL HARBOR WITH THE KAISERLICH YACHT CLUB +AT LEFT OF GROVE OF TREES] + +The German Naval Armistice Commission which came off to the +_Hercules_ at Kiel to discuss arrangements for inspection in the Baltic +differed from that at Wilhelmshaven only in a few of the subordinate +members. Rear-Admiral Goette continued to preside, with the tall, +blonde Von Müller, of the first _Emden_, and the shifty, pasty-faced +Hinzmann, of the General Staff at Berlin, as his chief advisers. +Commander Lohmann still presided over the German sub-commission for +shipping, but there was a new officer in charge of "air" arrangements. +This latter individual, who proved to be one of the most "Hunnish" Huns +we encountered anywhere, I shall have something to say of in the next +chapter. + +That the German Commission had been "stiffened" under the influence of +new forces in Kiel was evident from the opening of the conference; in +fact, a good part of this opening Baltic sitting was devoted to reducing +them to the same state of "sweet reasonableness" in which they had risen +from the closing sitting at Wilhelmshaven. One of the most astonishing +of their contentions arose in connection with three unsurrendered +U-boats, which had been discovered in the course of warship inspection +at Wilhelmshaven. Asked when these might be expected ready to proceed +to Harwich, Admiral Goette replied that his Government did not +consider themselves under obligation to deliver the boats at all. The +justification advanced for this remarkable stand constituted one of the +most delightful instances of characteristic Hun reasoning that developed +in the course of the visit. This was the gist of it: "We agreed to +deliver all U-boats in condition to proceed to sea in the first fourteen +days of the armistice," contended the Germans; "but--although we don't +deny that they _should_ have been delivered in that period--the fact +that they _were not_ so delivered releases us from our obligation to +deliver them now. As evidence of our good faith, however, we propose +that the vessels in question be disarmed and remain in German ports." + +The Germans had so thoroughly convinced themselves that this fantastic +interpretation would be accepted by the Allied Commission that Admiral +Goette did not consider himself able to concede Admiral Browning's +demand (that the three submarines should be surrendered at once) without +referring the matter back to Berlin. Definite settlement, indeed, was +not arrived at until the final conference nearly a week later, and in +that time news had been brought of several score U-boats completed, or +nearing completion, in the yards of the Elbe and the Weser. + +There was no phase of the Allied Commission's activities which some +endeavour was not made to obstruct or circumscribe in the course of +this opening session at Kiel. The German sub-commission for shipping +reported that their Government did not feel called upon to grant the +claim of the Allies for the return of vessels seized as prizes; the +inability to arrange for special trains and the lack of petrol would +make it impossible to reach certain air stations by land, while, so far +as the experiment station at Warnemünde was concerned, the armistice did +not give the Allies the right to visit it at all; as for the Great Belt +forts, they were already disarmed, and really not worth the trouble of +inspecting anyway. + +And so it went through some hours, the upshot of it being that the +Germans, as at Wilhelmshaven, "vowing they would ne'er consent, +consented." Merchant ship inspection began that afternoon, continuing +throughout the remainder of the stay at Kiel as one steamer after +another came in from this or that Baltic port and dropped anchor. The +following day search of the numerous old warships was started, and the +day after that word came that the way had even been cleared for the +inspection of the great experimental seaplane station at Warnemünde. For +the first time there was promise that the work of the Commission would +be completed within the period of the original armistice. + + + + +IX + +TO WARNEMÜNDE AND RÜGEN + + +There had been a half-mile or more of visibility when we got under weigh +at eight o'clock, but in the mouth of Kiel Fiord a solid wall of fog +was encountered, behind the impenetrable pall of which all objects more +than a few yards ahead were completely cut off. The mist-muffled wails +of horns and whistles coughed eerily in the depths of the blank smother +to port and starboard, and once the beating of a bucket or saucepan +heralded the spectre of a "bluff lee-boarded fishing lugger" as the bare +steerage way imparted by its flapping yellow mainsail carried it clear +of the _Viceroy's_ sharp stem. + +Three or four more units of that same fatalistic fishing fleet had been +missed by equally narrow margins when, looming high above us as they +sharpened out of the fog, appeared the bulging bows of what looked to be +a large merchantman. At the same instant, too late by many seconds to be +of any use as a warning, the snort of a deep-toned whistle ripped out in +response to the querulous shriek of our own syren. + +When two ships, steaming on opposite courses at something like ten +knots, meet in a fog the usual result is a collision, and nothing but +the quick-wittedness of the captain of the _Viceroy_ prevented one on +this occasion. The stranger, in starboarding his helm, bared a long +expanse of rusty paunch for the nose of the destroyer to bury itself +in, as a sword-fish stabs a whale, and that is what must inevitably +have happened--with disastrous consequences to both vessels in all +probability--had the _Viceroy_ also attempted to avoid collision by +turning to port. Realizing this with a sure judgment, the captain fell +back on an alternative which would hardly have been open to him with a +destroyer less powerfully built and engined than the latest "V's." I +have already told how, in the lock at Brunsbüttel, he had stopped his +ship dead, just short of the gates, by going astern with the engines at +the proper moment. Here, in scarcely more time than it takes to tell +it, he not only stopped her dead but had her backing (at constantly +accelerating speed) away from the slowly turning merchantman. The jar +(followed by a prolonged throbbing) was almost as sharp as when the +air-brakes are set on the wheels of a speeding express, and the outraged +wake of her, like the back of a cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong +way, arched in a tumbling fountain high above her quivering stern. But +back she went, and so gave the burly freighter room to blunder by in. + +There was just time to note her high bulwarks, two or three +suspicious-looking superstructures (which one's passing acquaintance +with "Q" boats suggested as possibly masking guns), and a folded +seaplane housed on the poop, before the menacing apparition thinned and +melted into the fog as suddenly as it had appeared. + +"I think that ship is the _Wolf_," volunteered the pilot, watching +with side-cast eyes the effects of the announcement. "You will perhaps +remember it as the great raider of the Indian Ocean." + +The captain looked up quickly from the chart as though about to say +something; then thought better of it, and, with a wistful smile, turned +back to his study of the channel. I had seen him smile resignedly like +that a few days previously off the Elbe estuary when a speeding widgeon, +whose line of flight had promised to carry it right over the forecastle, +had sheered off without giving him a shot. What he had said on that +occasion was, "Hang the blighter; another chance missed!" + +Going aft to breakfast, I was hailed by Korvettenkapitän M---- (the +officer commanding all Baltic air stations who was accompanying us to +Warnemünde and Rügen), warming himself at the engine-room hatchway, and +informed that the ship just sighted was "the famous raider, _Moewe_, +that has been so many times through the English blockade." It was he +that was correct, as it turned out. We found the _Moewe_ anchored three +or four cables' lengths on the port bow of the _Hercules_ when we +returned to Kiel the following evening. + +They were two thoroughly typical specimens of their kind, the pilot and +the flight commander, so much so that either would have been pounced +on with delight by a cartoonist looking for a model for a figure of +"Hun Brutality." The former claimed to have served most of the war +in U-boats, and from the fact that he was only a "one-striper," one +reckoned that he was a promoted rating of some kind. He was tall, dark, +and powerful of build, with hard black eyes glowering from under bushy +brows. He talked of his submarine exploits with the greatest gusto, +among these being (according to his claim) the launching of the torpedo +which damaged the _Sussex_. It is possible that he was quite as useful a +U-boat officer as he said he was (for he looked fully capable of doing +a number of the things one had heard of U-boat officers doing); but he +turned out, as the sequel proved, only an indifferent pilot. + +The flight officer is easiest described by saying that he was like what +one would imagine Hindenburg to have been at thirty-five or thereabouts. +The resemblance to the great Field-Marshal was physical only, for +the anti-type, far from having the "bluff, blunt fighter" air of the +former, was a subtle intriguer of the highest order. Just how "subtle" +he was may be judged from the fact that within ten minutes of coming +aboard that morning he had drawn one of the British officers aside to +warn him of the menace to England in Wilson's "fourteen points," and +that, a quarter of an hour after the snub this kindly advice won him, +he had cornered one of the American officers to bid him beware of the +inevitable attack his country must very soon expect from England and +Japan. + +[Illustration: "HINDY" (LEFT) AND GERMAN PILOT WHO CLAIMED TO HAVE +LAUNCHED THE TORPEDO WHICH DAMAGED THE "SUSSEX"] + +A half-hour more "by luck and lead" took us out of the fog, and an +almost normal visibility made it possible for the _Viceroy_ to increase +to her "economic" cruising speed of seventeen knots. The red roofs of +the summer hotels along Warnemünde's waterfront began pushing above the +horizon a little after noon, and by one we were heading in to where +the mouth of a broad canal opened up behind a long stone breakwater. +A large ferry steamer, flying the Danish flag, was just rounding the +end of the breakwater and turning off to the north-west, and from the +word "ARMISTICE" painted on her sides in huge white letters we +took it she was engaged in repatriating Allied prisoners by way of +Copenhagen. As we closed her, this impression was confirmed by the sight +of two men in the unmistakable uniforms of British officers pacing +the after-deck arm-in-arm. Surprised that they appeared to be taking +no notice of the _Viceroy_, with the White Ensign at her stern doing +its best to flap them a message of encouragement, I raised my glass +and scanned them closely. Then the dark glasses both were wearing, and +their slow uncertain steps, at once suggested the sad explanation of +their indifference. There was no doubt the sight of both was seriously +affected, and that they were probably hardly able more than to feel +their way around. As nothing less than "Rule Britannia" or "God Save the +King" on the syren would have given them any hint of how things stood, +we had to pass on unrecognized. + +Running a quarter of a mile up the canal, the _Viceroy_ went alongside +the wall a hundred yards above the railway station. The news of our +arrival had spread quickly in the town, and among a considerable crowd +which assembled along the waterfront were a number of British prisoners, +most of them in their khaki. Several German sailors--one or two of them +with white bands on their arms--to whom the Tommies had been talking, +kept discreetly in the background, but the latter, grinning with delight +and exchanging good-natured chaff with the bluejackets, caught our +mooring lines and helped make them fast. They looked in extremely good +condition and spirits, the consequence--as we learned presently--of +having had a considerable accumulation of prisoners' stores turned over +to them since the armistice. Beer, they said, was the only thing they +were short of, and this difficulty they seemed in a fair way to remedy +when I left with the "air" party for the seaplane station. + +The great Warnemünde experiment station occupied the grounds of what +appeared to have been some kind of a pre-war industrial or agricultural +exposition. Crossing the canal in a launch, a few steps took us to and +through a somewhat pretentious entrance arch, from where it was several +hundred yards to the first of a long row of wood and steel hangars. +The Commander of the station had received us at the landing; the rest +of the officers met us in the roadway in front of the first shed to +be inspected. Evidences of the resentment they undoubtedly felt over +having to give way in the matter of the visit (it had been the German +contention that Warnemünde, not being a service station, was not liable +to inspection under the terms of the armistice) were not lacking, but +as these were mostly confined to scowling glances they did not interfere +seriously with the work in hand. + +As the Allied Commission, in the conference of a couple of days +previously at Kiel, had insisted on the visit to Warnemünde on the +grounds of satisfying itself that what the Germans claimed was an +experiment station was not used for service work, inspection was limited +to the comparatively perfunctory checking over of the machines against +a list furnished in advance, seeing that they displayed no evidences +of having been used for anything more than experimental flights, and +ascertaining that they had been properly disarmed. This, as soon as +it became evident that the station was in fact quite what the Germans +had claimed it to be, was done very rapidly, the inspection of well +over a hundred machines, housed in eight or ten different sheds, being +completed within three hours. + +The machines were, of course, an extremely interesting assortment, +for practically all of them were either new designs or else old ones +in process of development. There was the last word in steel pontoons, +with which the Germans have been so successful, and also a number of +the very striking all-metal _Junker_ machines, in the construction of +which wood, and even fabric, has been replaced by the light but tough +alloy called "duraluminum." One of the German officers volunteered the +information that the principal advantage of the latter over the ordinary +machine was the fact that more of it could be salved after a crash. +The fact that there was nothing to burn sometimes rendered it possible +to save an injured pilot entangled in the wreckage, where the wood +and fabric of an ordinary machine would have made him a funeral pyre. +Against these advantages, he added, stood the handicap of greater weight +and the fact that the metal wings occasionally deflected into the pilot +or petrol tank a bullet which would have passed harmlessly through wood +and fabric. + +There were several of the late _Travemunde_ and _Sablatnig_ types, +medium-sized machines which, with their powerful engines and trim lines, +looked extremely useful. A large double-engined Gotha torpedo-launching +seaplane was viewed with a good deal of interest by the experts of the +party, because it was a type to the development of which it had been +expected that the Germans had given a great deal of attention. Down to +the very day of the armistice the Grand Fleet--whether at Rosyth or +Scapa--was never considered entirely free from the menace of an attack +by a flotilla of torpedo-carrying seaplanes, and it was a matter of +considerable surprise to the sub-commission for naval air stations when +it transpired in the course of their visits to the German North Sea +and Baltic bases to find a practically negligible strength in these +types. The almost prohibitive odds against getting a seaplane carrier +within striking distance of either of the Grand Fleet bases--handicap +imposed by the complete surface command of the North Sea by the +British--was undoubtedly responsible for Germany's failure to develop +a type of machine which there was little chance of finding an occasion +to use. Even this one at Warnemünde--representing as it did the latest +development of its type--was far from being equal to machines with which +the British were practising torpedo-launching a year before the end of +the war. + +The most imposing exhibit at Warnemünde was a "giant" seaplane rivalling +in size the great monoplane flying boat we had seen at Norderney. The +two were so different in type that it was difficult to compare them, +though it is probable that in engine power--both of them had four +engines of from 250 to 300 horse-power each--and in wing area they were +about equal. The Warnemünde machine--which was a biplane, with two +pontoons instead of a "boat"--had a somewhat greater spread of wing, +but this must have been compensated for by the vastly greater breadth of +those of the monoplane. Superior seaworthiness had been claimed for the +latter on account of the greater height of its wings from the water when +afloat; but that was _ex parte_ evidence, and we had no chance to hear +what Warnemünde had to say in favour of _its_ pet. + +An incident which occurred in connection with the inspection of the +"giant" furnished a very graphic idea of the really colossal size of it. +In order to get over it the more quickly, all of the several members +of the Allied party climbed up and took a hand in the work. Whether +the German officers thought some of the gear might be carried off by +the visitors, whether they were afraid the secrets of some of their +technical instruments might be discovered, or whether they were simply +"doing the honours of the occasion," we were never quite sure. At any +rate, up swarmed at least a dozen of them, scrambling like a crowd at +a ticket turnstile to get inside. In a jiffy they had disappeared, +swallowed completely by the capacious fuselage. Not even a head was in +sight. Only the clatter of many tongues and the clang of boots tramping +on steel plates told that close to a score of men were jostling each +other in the cavernous maw of the mighty "amphibian." + +Only the Commander of the station--a somewhat porcine-looking +individual, whose rotund figure furnished ample explanation why _he_ had +not joined the scramble--and myself were left on _terra firma_. Plainly +disturbed by the thought that Germany's supreme achievement in aerial +science was passing under the eye of the enemy, he paced up and down +moodily for a minute or two and then, with clearing brow, came over and +asked me what was the horse-power of the largest "Inglisch Zeeblane." + +"I really can't tell you," I replied, half angry, half amused at the +supreme cheek of the man. + +"Ach, but vy will you not tell me?" he urged wheedlingly. "Der war iss +over; ve vill now have no more zeecrets. Today you see all ve haf. +Preddy soon ve come und see all you haf. There iss much ve can learn +from you, und much you can learn from us. Ve vill haf no more zeecrets." + +There were several things that I wanted to say to that Hun optimist, +and it required no little restraint to pass them over and confine +myself to suggesting that he should take up the matter of the exchange +of "zeecrets" with Commander C----, the Senior Officer of-the party. +He looked at the latter (who was just descending) irresolutely once or +twice, and then, doubtless seeing nothing encouraging in the set of +Commander C---- 's lean Yankee jaw, shrugged his fat shoulders and +resumed his moody pacings. We encountered a number of eager "searchers +for knowledge" in the course of the visit, but no other that I heard of +who employed quite such a "Prussian mass tactics" style of attack as +this one. + +Going from shed to shed as the inspection progressed, one noticed +at once the much greater extent to which wood had figured in their +construction than in that of those of the North Sea stations. Only +the frames were of steel, and even the fireproof asbestos sheeting +which figured so extensively in the great Zeppelin sheds had been very +sparingly employed. As this also proved to be the practice in the two +large stations we visited the next day on the island of Rügen, it +was assumed that the comparative cheapness of wood in the Baltic had +been responsible for the freedom with which it had been employed to +save steel and concrete. The inevitable penalty of this inflammable +construction had been paid at Warnemünde, where the tangled masses of +wreckage in the ruins of a burned hangar indicated that all the machines +it had contained were destroyed with the building. + +When we returned to the _Viceroy_ after the inspection was over, we +found a number of British prisoners aboard as the guests of the +bluejackets. Several of them had asked for "rashers, or anything +greasy," but for tobacco and "home comforts" they appeared to be rather +better off than their hosts. The captain said that he had offered +passages back to the _Hercules_ to any that cared to go, but they had +all declined with thanks, saying that they were helping to distribute +food for other prisoners passing through Warnemünde on their way home +_viâ_ Denmark, and that they would not return home until this work was +finished. We left them without any misgivings save, perhaps, on the +score that they seemed rather too tolerant of the presence among them of +a number of white-banded German sailors. + +During our absence the German harbour master had come aboard to warn +the captain that, as it was _verboten_ to use the turning basin after +five o'clock, it would be necessary for him to proceed there before +that hour. When the captain thanked him and replied that he hoped to be +able to carry on without resorting to the turning basin, the astonished +official warned him that it was highly dangerous to go out backwards, +that even the German T.B.D.'s never thought of doing so mad a thing. +The sight of the _Viceroy_ going astern at a good ten or twelve knots +straight down the middle of that half a mile or more of canal must have +been something of an eye-opener to that _Kaiserliche_ harbour master. + +Passing close to the railway station on the way out we had a brief +glimpse of the sorry spectacle of a huge mass of Russian prisoners, who +appeared to have been dumped there from one train to wait for another, +going heaven knows where. A thousand or more in number, they had +overflowed the narrow strip of platform under the train-shed, and as we +passed some hundreds of them, huddling together like sheep for warmth +and with no protection save the square of red blankets thrown over their +hunched shoulders, were soaking up the rain which came drizzling down +through the early winter twilight. + +"Russian prisoners that we now send back to their homes," explained +Korvettenkapitän M---- as I passed his perch in the hot-air stream from +the engine-room hatchway. "They do not like to leave Germany, but we +have not now the food for them." + +"Out of the frying-pan into the fire," commented the chief. "A return to +Russia is the one thing left worse than what they've been through here. +Poor devils--but listen to that! Talk about your bird singing in the +rain----" + +Deep, reverberant, pulsing like the throb of a mighty organ, the strains +of what might have been either a hymn or a marching song were wafted to +our ears on the wings of the deepening dusk. For two or three minutes +the strangely moving sound, rising and falling like the roll of a surf +on a distant shore, followed us down the canal before it was quenched in +the roar of the accelerating fans as the bridge rang down for increased +speed. The German was the first to break the silence in which we had +listened. + +"The Russians are a strange people," he said, with a note of sincerity +in his voice I had never remarked before. "There is always sadness in +their happiness, and always hope in their despair. I think they can +never be broken." + +For the first and last time I was inclined to agree with him. + +A three-hour run at a speed of fifteen knots brought us to the island +of Rügen, where we anchored in shallow water three or four miles off +the station of Büg, which we were scheduled to inspect in the morning. +It was only a fair-weather anchorage, however, and the lee shore, +together with a falling barometer and a rising wind, caused the pilot +to advise running round to the somewhat better protection of Tromper +Bay, on the opposite side of the island. This shift, which there was +no real necessity for making, involved an alteration of plan, for the +shores of Tromper Bay (where we now had to attempt a landing) were +four or five miles from Wiek, the second station to be inspected, and +entirely cut off from communication with Büg by a long lagoon. Under the +circumstances, the only practicable plan seemed to be to walk to Wiek +across the island, go from there to Büg by launch, and then endeavour +to rejoin the destroyer at her first anchorage of the night before, +to which she would return in the interim. This intricate itinerary we +finally succeeded in following, but it almost killed poor "Hindenburg," +the fat German flying officer escorting the party, who had confidently +counted on doing all of his travelling by launch. + +[Illustration: BRITISH PRISONERS AND GERMAN SAILORS AT WARNEMÜNDE] + +The motor launch refusing to start in the morning, the whaler was used +to land the inspection party. As there appeared to be nothing in the +way of a quay or landing-stage, the most likely place to get ashore +seemed to be a dismantled pier, the piles of which were visible from +the deck of the destroyer. "Hindy" (the name had already begun to stick +to him), however, promptly appointing himself as pilot, in spite of the +fact that he knew no more of that particular stretch of coast than any +one else in the party, ruled in favour of landing directly upon the +beach. Pulling straight in on the course he indicated, the heavily laden +whaler grounded a couple of hundred yards from the shore, and was +only worried off by all hands going aft and raising the stranded bow. +Commander C---- took over the direction of affairs at this juncture, +and the incidence of events was such that "Hindy" did not essay the +leadership _rôle_ again for some hours, and even then but transiently. + +The old pier, to the end of which the whaler was now pulled, had +evidently been wrecked in a storm of many years before and never +repaired. Its planking was gone entirely, but two strings of timbers +running along the tops of the tottering piles offered a possible, though +precarious, means of reaching the two-hundred-yard-distant beach. When +two of the American officers clambered up, however, they found the +timbers so slippery with moss that it was a sheer physical impossibility +to stand erect and walk along them. The only alternative was to sit +astride one of them and slither along shoreward, a few inches at a time. +This they did, pushing along a thick roll of filthy slime in front of +them as they went, and stopping every now and then to disengage the +end of a projecting spike that was holding their trousers. Following +behind one of them, I found the progress both vile and painful, even +after his wiggle-waggle advance had swabbed up the worst of the slime +and uncovered the longest of the spikes lurking to ambush the seat of +my trousers. It must have been unspeakable for the two self-sacrificing +pioneers. + +Halfway in, the timbers, less exposed to the splashing spray, offered a +better footing, and from there, following the lead of Commander C----, +we managed to stand up and walk. Not until we reached the end and jumped +off on to the firm sand and began to count noses before striking off +inland did any one notice that "Hindy" was missing. The account of that +worthy's doings in the meantime I had that evening after our return to +the _Viceroy_ from the coxswain of the whaler. + +For the first time "Hindy" had neglected to insist on the precedence +due to his rank as a "three-striper" and push out in the lead at a +landing. On the contrary, it appears, he had lingered in the stern +sheets of the whaler until the last of the Allied officers had slid +along out of hearing, and then coolly ordered two of the crew to wade +ashore carrying him between them. He would show them, he said, how the +German sailors joined hands to make a chair for their officers on such +an occasion. Failing in this manoeuvre, he had suggested that two of the +oars be lashed together with the strip of bunting in the stern sheets +and laid along across the tops of the piles to give him a firm footing. +Two of the bluejackets, he explained, could go with him and "relay" +this improvised gangway along ahead. It was only when the coxswain, in +English probably too idiomatic to convey its full meaning to a German, +expressed his lack of sympathy with this ingenious proposal that he +screwed up his nerve to tackling the "wiggle-waggle" mode of progression. + +Given a leg up by the whaler's crew, he wriggled astride the nearest +longitudinal strip of timber and began his snail-like, shoreward crawl. +At the end of a quarter of an hour he had barely reached the less +slippery timbering halfway in, but here, instead of getting up on his +hind legs, as the rest of us had done, and ambling along on his feet, +the shivering wretch still persisted in embracing the slimy beam with +his fat thighs and continuing to worry on "wiggle-waggle." + +Finally Commander C----, whose eyes for the last fifteen minutes had +been turning back and forth between the ludicrously swaying figure on +the pier and the hands of his watch, uttered an impatient exclamation +and squared his shoulders with the air of a man who has come to a great +decision. + +"We're already two hours behind time," he said, buttoning his waterproof +and pulling on his gloves, "and it's touch and go whether we can finish +in time to return tonight to Kiel per schedule. It's a cert we won't +make it if we have to wait any longer for our tortoise-shaped and +tortoise-gaited friend out there. There's a disagreeable duty to be +performed, and since it is not of a nature that I can conscientiously +order one of my subordinate officers to do, I guess it's up to me to +pull it off myself. Kindly note that I'm wearing gloves." + +Vaulting lightly from the sand to a line of timbering running parallel, +at a distance of about five feet, to the one upon which "Hindy" was +slithering along, he trotted out opposite the latter, reached across, +lifted that protesting bundle of anatomy to his feet, and then, leading +him by the hand, started back for the beach. The German followed +like Mary's Little Lamb as long as he had the dynamic pressure of +the American's fingers to give him courage, but when Commander C---- +withdrew his guiding hand after he had led his fellow tight-rope walker +in above the sand, "Hindy's" nerve went with it. Trying to sludder down +astride the timber again after tottering drunkenly for a moment, he +lost his balance and tried to jump. The drop was not over five feet, +and to soft sand at that; but the remains of a riveter I once saw fall +to the pavement of Broadway from the fortieth story of the new Singer +building looked less inert than the shivering pancake that fat Prussian +made when he hit the beach of Rügen. There was really very little to +choose between it and a flatulent jelly-fish slowly dissolving in the +embrace of a mass of stranded seaweed a few yards away; indeed, the +subtle suggestion of that comparison may have had something to do with +the reflex action behind a kick I saw some one aim at the jelly-fish in +passing. + +That was the last we saw of "Hindy" (except as a wavering blur on the +rearward horizon) for nearly two hours. + +Striking inland through the dunes and a plantation of young pine trees, +we emerged at a crossroad where a signboard conveyed the information +that Wiek (our immediate objective) was six and four-tenths kilometres +distant. "If we can hike that four miles inside of an hour there's a +fair chance of cleaning up the whole job today," said Commander C----, +striking out along the lightly metalled highway with a swinging stride. +"'Hindy' will have to get along as best he can. We won't need him for +the inspection anyhow." + +Passing several rather dismal summer hotels (one of which was called +the "Strand Palace"), we came to a picturesque little village of brick +and thatch houses, with brightly curtained windows, and standing in +well-kept flower gardens. The villagers evidently a half-agricultural, +half-fisher folk--could have had no warning of our coming, as even +the station at Wiek was expecting us from the opposite direction, and +by launch. Quite uninstructed in the matter of adopting "conciliatory" +tactics (as those of so many of the places previously visited had so +plainly been), they simply went their own easy way, displaying neither +fear, resentment, nor even a great amount of curiosity. Most of the +shops, except those of the butchers, were fairly well stocked, the +displays of Christmas toys (among which were some very ingeniously +constructed "working" Zeppelins) being really attractive. + +Beyond the village the Wiek road, which turned off at right angles from +the main highway, became no more than a muddy track. Deeply rutted and +slippery with the last of the snow which had drifted into it from a +recent storm, walking in it became so laborious that we finally took +to the fields, across the light sandy loam of which we just managed to +maintain the four-miles-an-hour stride necessary to keep from falling +behind schedule. The several peasants encountered (mostly women with +baskets of beets or cabbages on their backs) regarded us with stolid +impersonal disinterest, and seemed hardly equal to the mental effort of +figuring out where the motley array of uniforms came from. + +A tall spire gave us the bearing for Wiek, and we passed close by the +ancient stone church which it surmounted in skirting the village on a +short-cut to the air station. This took us to the rear entrance of the +latter (instead of the main one where we were naturally expected to +come) and had the interesting sequel of bringing us face to face with a +sentry wearing a red band on his sleeve, the first of that particular +brand of revolutionist we had encountered. Although failing to stand at +attention as we approached, he was otherwise quite respectful in his +demeanour and made haste to dispatch a messenger informing the Commander +of the station of our arrival. A number of other "red-banders" were seen +in passing through the barracks area on the way to the sheds, one of +them even going so far as to click heels and salute. + +In spite of the flutter of red at the rear, there was no evidence of +anything Bolshevik in the display set out for us in the shop-window. +The men lounging about the sheds fell in at once on the order of the +Commander, paraded smartly, and when dismissed showed no disposition +to hang about the doors, as had occasionally been the case at other +stations. They apparently had not even insisted on one of their +representatives being present during the inspection. None but the five +or six officers receiving the party conducted it around. These were +all keen-eyed, quick-moving youngsters, but the fact that they were +comparatively sparsely decorated seemed to indicate that the station was +not of an importance to command the services of the "star turn" men we +had seen at Norderney, Borkum, and other North Sea bases. + +There was one thing which turned up in the course of the inspection +which was not upon the list furnished us by the Germans, and that was +a large stack of second-hand furniture which I stumbled across in an +out-of-the-way corner of the first shed visited. An unmistakable French +name on the back of a red plush-upholstered divan first suggested +the lot was an imported one, and looking closer I discovered a +half-obliterated maker's mark, with the letters "Brux-l-s" following +it. Diverting one of the inspecting officers in that direction as +opportunity offered, I asked him what he thought the word had been. +"Probably the Belgian spelling of Brussels," he replied promptly, "and +certainly the English spelling of loot." When the German Commander +chanced to mention, a few minutes later, that his flight had only +recently come from Zeebrugge, both conjectures seemed to be confirmed. + +The inspection was over by the time "Hindy" arrived, and we departed +for Büg immediately he had completed the wash-down and brush-up that +his brother officers, who treated him with a good deal of deference, +insisted on his having. He was too dead beat to display temper when he +had been bundled into the launch, and he impressed me as telling the +bare literal truth when he said it was the hardest walk he had ever +taken in his life. + +A half-hour's run brought the launch alongside the landing-stage at +Büg, which ideally located station occupied a quarter of a mile of the +narrow spit of sand separating the broad, shallow lagoon we had just +crossed from the open Baltic. Concrete runways sloped down to both +strands, so that seaplanes could be launched in either direction. It +was an admirably planned and equipped station in every respect. An +hour's inspection showed that the provisions of the armistice, here as +at all of the other stations visited, had been satisfactorily carried +out. A novel feature of the visit was the presence of a couple of +photographers--evidently official ones, judging from the fine machines +they had--who waylaid the party at every corner and exposed a large +number of plates. + +"Hindy," who had disappeared shortly after we landed, turned up again +about the time the inspection of the last hangar was completed, +picking his teeth and considerably restored in aplomb by the hearty +_mittagessen_ he had regaled himself with at the Commander's mess. +Not until then were we informed that the station had no launch or +boat of any kind available on the Baltic side. This meant that +the _Viceroy_--she had now come to anchor three or four miles +off-shore--would have to send a boat in for us, and that an hour's time +had been wasted before making a signal for it. Hastily writing a message +requesting that the motor launch or whaler be sent in to the landing, +Commander C---- handed it to the Commander of the station, suggesting +that it be made by "Visual" to the _Viceroy_ in International Morse. +Here "Hindy," brave with much beer, asserted his authority again. +Snatching the paper from the station Commander's hand, he read over the +signal with a frown of disapproval, and then handed it back to Commander +C----. + +"That is much too long and complicated for a German signalman to send in +English," he growled. "You should write only, 'Send boat immediately.' +That is quite enough." + +There was a look in Commander C----'s face like that it had worn when he +turned and left "Hindy" in a heap on the beach by the jelly-fish, but he +controlled himself and spoke with considerable restraint. + +"Since the _Viceroy_ is not my private yacht," he said quietly, "any +signal I make to her will begin 'Request.' I might add that if I were +her captain, and a passenger of mine made me a signal like the one you +suggest, he could wait till--till the Baltic froze over before I'd +send a boat to take him off. Unless you're prepared to wait that long, +you can't do better than see that the signal is made exactly as I have +written it." + +In spite of its "length and complication," that signal, as we saw it +later in the _Viceroy_, was identical with the original to a T. + +It was rather hard luck that Büg, which was the first station we +visited without carrying our own lunch in the form of sandwiches, was +also the only one where we were not offered shelter and refreshment. +"Hindy" disappeared again during the next hour of waiting, and even +had to be sent for when the whaler finally did arrive. The rest of +us were so thoroughly chilled from standing out in the biting Baltic +wind that we were only too glad to warm up a bit by "double-banking" +the oars with the whaler's crew on the pull back to the destroyer. +The sight of American and British officers bending to the sweeps with +common bluejackets created a tremendous furore at the station. The +photographers rushed out to the end of the jetty to make a permanent +record of the astonishing sight, and from the significant glances all +of the Germans were exchanging one gathered that they thought that +theirs was not the only Navy in which there had been a revolution. + +Climbing up to the bridge shortly after the _Viceroy_ got under weigh +for the run back to Kiel, I found the captain on watch with a hulking +Number 8-bore shot-gun under his arm, at which vicious weapon the German +pilot, pressing as far away from it as the restricted space allowed, +kept stealing apprehensive sidelong glances with eyes ostensibly +searching the horizon through his binoculars. On asking the captain +what the artillery was for, he motioned me back beside the range-finder +stand, where he presently joined me. + +"I'm watching for ducks--great place for them along here," he said in a +low voice; "but don't give it away to the Hun. He seems to think it's +for _him_. It's old B----'s gun. He shot ducks with it from the bridge +of his E-boat all over the Bight during the war." + +"You don't mean to say that you'd stop the destroyer and circle back to +pick up a duck in case you happened to wing one?" I asked incredulously. + +"Wouldn't I?" he laughed. "Just tumble up if you hear a shot and see. +There's no finer duckboat in the world than a destroyer if you got the +sea room to handle her in." + +It was an hour or two later that I was shaken out of a doze on a +ward-room divan by a sudden jar, followed by the threshing of reversed +screws. "The skipper's got his bird," I thought, and forthwith scrambled +out and up the ladder, especially anxious to arrive in time to see +the expressions on the face of the Germans when they realized that +the "mad Englander" was going back in his warship to pick up a duck. +Compared to that it turned out to have been an event of no more than +passing interest which had happened. The pilot (perhaps because his +mind was absorbed in the menace of that terrible 8-bore) had merely +missed--by three or four miles as it transpired presently--the gate of +the anti-submarine net fencing off that neck of the Baltic, with the +result that the _Viceroy_ had barged into that barrage at something like +seventeen knots. Cutting through the first of what proved to be a double +net, she brought up short against the second, the while her spinning +propellers wound in and chewed to bits a considerable length of the +former. + +The seas were agitated for a half-mile on either side by the straining +of the outraged booms, while from the savagely slashing screws floated +up a steady stream of mangled metal floats like _wienerwursts_ emerging +from a sausage machine. Luckily, the cables of the nets were rusted and +brittle, so that the propellers readily tore loose from them without +injury. Backing off clear, the pilot ran down the boom until the buoys +marking the gate were sighted, and from there it was comparatively open +going to Kiel, which we reached at nine-thirty that evening. + + + + +X + +JUTLAND AS A GERMAN SAW IT + + +It must have been the unspeakable position of humiliation he found +himself in as a consequence of being ignored, flouted, and even +openly insulted by the men he had once treated as no more worthy of +consideration than the deck beneath his feet that was responsible for +the fact that the German naval officer with whom the members of the +staff of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission were thrown in contact +almost invariably assumed an air of injured martyrdom, missing no +opportunity to draw attention to, and endeavour to awaken sympathy in, +his sad plight. He took advantage of any kind of a pretext to "tell his +troubles," and when nothing occurred in the natural course of events +to provide an excuse, he invented one. Thus, a Korvettenkapitän in one +of the ships searched at Wilhelmshaven took advantage of the fact that +a man to whom he gave an order about opening a water-tight door in a +bulkhead slouched over and started discussing with the white-banded +representative of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council, to speak at some +length of the "terrible situation" with which he had been faced at the +time when the High Sea Fleet had been ordered out last November for a +decisive naval battle. The filthy condition his ship was in furnished +the inspiration for another officer to tell at some length of how he +had hung his head with shame since the day he had been baulked of "The +Day." An ex-submarine officer--acting as pilot in one of the British +destroyers in the Baltic--did not feel that he could leave the ship +without setting right some comments on German naval gunnery, which he +had found in a London paper left in his cabin. + +And so it went. Now and then one of them, after volunteering an account +of something in his own naval experience, would counter with some more +or less shrewdly interpolated query calculated to draw a "revealing" +reply; but for the most part they were content with a passive listener. +That fact relieved considerably the embarrassment this action on the +part of the Germans placed Allied officers, who were under orders +to hold no "unnecessary conversation" in the course of their tours +of inspection. A "monologue" could in no way be construed as a +"conversation," and when, as was almost invariably the case, it was up +on a subject in which the "audience" was deeply interested, it was felt +that there was no contravention of the spirit of the order in listening +to it. The statements and comment I am setting down in this article +were heard in the course of such "monologues" delivered by this or that +German naval officer with whom I was thrown--often for as long as two or +three days at stretch--in connection with the journeys and inspection +routine of the party to which I chanced to be attached at the moment. In +only two or three instances--notably in the case of an officer in the +flying service who endeavoured to dissuade us from visiting the Zeppelin +station at Tondern by giving a false account of the damage inflicted in +the course of the British bombing raid of last summer--did statements +made under these circumstances turn out to be deliberate untruths. On +the contrary, indeed, much that I first heard in this way I have later +been able to confirm from other sources, and to this--statements which +there is good reason to believe are quite true--I am endeavouring to +confine myself here. In matter of opinions expressed, the German naval +officer has, of course, the same right to his own as has anybody else, +and, as one of the few things remaining to him at the end of the war +that he _did_ have a right to, I did not, and shall not, try to dispute +them. + +Perhaps the one most interesting fact brought out in connection with +all I heard in this way--it is confirmed, directly and indirectly, +from so many different sources that I should consider it as definitely +established beyond all doubt--was that _at no time from August, 1914, +to November, 1918, did the German seriously plan for a stand-up, +give-and-take fight to a finish with the British Fleet_. Never, not +in the flush of his opening triumphs on land, nor yet even in the +desperation of final defeat, did the hottest heads on the General Naval +Staff at Berlin believe that there was sufficient chance of a victory +in a gunnery duel to make it worth while trying under any conditions +whatever. The way a number of officers referred to their final attempt +to take the High Sea Fleet to sea after it became apparent that +Ludendorff was beaten beyond all hope of recovery in France, gave the +impression at first that an "all out" action was contemplated, that all +was to be hazarded on a single throw, win or lose. It is probable, even, +that the great majority of the officers afloat, and certainly all of the +men (for fear of the results of such an action is the reason ascribed +by all for the series of mutinies which finally put the navy out of the +reckoning as a fighting force) believed this to be the case. But those +officers who, either before or after the event, were in a position to +know the details of the real plans, were in substantial agreement that +it was not intended to bring the High Sea Fleet into action with +the Grand Fleet, but rather to use it as a bait to expose the latter +to a submarine "ambush" on a scale ten times greater than anything of +the kind attempted before, and then to lure such ships as survived the +U-boat attack into a minefield trap. Should a sufficiently heavy toll +have been taken of the capital ships of the Grand Fleet in this way, +then--but not until then--would the question of a general fleet action +have been seriously considered. + +[Illustration: VIEW OF KIEL CANAL FROM NEARMOST TURRET OF THE "HERCULES"] + +But although the General Naval Staff, and doubtless most of the senior +officers of the German navy, realized from the outset that the High Sea +Fleet would certainly be hopelessly outmatched in a gunnery battle and +that their only chance of victory would have to come through a reduction +of the strength of the Grand Fleet in capital ships by mine or torpedo, +the greatest efforts were made to prevent any such comprehension of the +situation finding its way to the lower decks. The men were constantly +assured that their fleet was quite capable of winning a decisive victory +at any time that the necessity arose, and there is not doubt that they +believed this implicitly--until the day after Jutland. Then they knew +the truth, and they never recovered from the effects of it. That was +where Jutland marked very much more of an epoch for the German navy +than it did for the British. The latter, cheated out of a victory +which was all but within its grasp, was more eager than ever to renew +the fight at the first opportunity. The several very salutary lessons +learned at a heavy cost--and not the least of these was a very wholesome +respect for German gunnery--were not forgotten. Structural defects were +corrected in completed ships and avoided in those building. Technical +equipment, which had been found unequal to the occasion, was replaced. +New systems were evolved where the old had proved wanting. Great as was +the Grand Fleet increase in size from Jutland down to the end of the +war, its increase of efficiency was even greater. + +With the High Sea Fleet, though several notable units were added to its +strength during the last two years of the war, in every other respect +it deteriorated steadily from Jutland right down to the mutinies +which were the forerunners of the great surrender. This was due, far +more than to anything else, to the fact that the real hopelessness of +opposing the Grand Fleet in a give-and-take fight began to sink home +to the Germans from the moment the first opening salvoes of the latter +smothered the helpless and disorganized units of the High Sea Fleet +in that last half-hour before the shifting North Sea mists and the +deepening twilight saved them from the annihilation they had invited +in trying to destroy Beatty's battle-cruisers before Jellicoe arrived. +What the most of their higher officers had always known, the men knew +from that day on, and, cowed by that knowledge, were never willing to +go into battle again. From what I gathered from a number of sources I +have no hesitation in affirming that, up to Jutland, the men of the +High Sea Fleet would have taken it out in the full knowledge that it +was to meet the massed naval might of Britain, and, moreover, that they +would have gone into action confidently and bravely, just as they did +at Jutland. But it is equally clear that, after Jutland, any move which +the men themselves knew was likely to bring them into action with the +British battle fleet would instantly have precipitated the same kind of +revolt as that which started at Kiel last November and culminated in +the surrender. It was the increasing "jumpiness" of the men, causing +them to suspect that every sally out of harbour might be preliminary +to the action which they had been living in increasing dread of every +day and night for the preceding two years and a half, which finally +made it practically impossible for the Germans to get out into the +Bight sufficient forces to protect even their mine-sweeping craft. As +a consequence, it is by no means unlikely that the continuation of +the war for another few months might well have found the German navy, +U-boats and all, effectually immobilized in harbour behind ever-widening +barriers of mines. + +By long odds the most reasoned and illuminative discussion I heard of +German naval policy, from first to last, was that of an officer who +was Gunnery Lieutenant of the _Deutschland_ at Jutland, and whom I met +through his having had charge of the arrangements of the visits of the +airship party of the Allied Naval Commission to the various Zeppelin +stations in the North Sea littoral. Of a prominent militarist family--he +claimed that his father was a director of Krupps--and a great admirer +of the Kaiser (whom I once heard him refer to as an "idealist who did +all that he could to prevent the war"), he was extremely well informed +on naval matters, both those of his own country and--so far as German +information went--the Allies. Harbouring a very natural bitterness +against the revolution, and especially against the mutinous sailors of +the navy, he spoke the more freely because he felt that he had no future +to look forward to in Germany, which (as he told me on a number of +occasions) he intended to leave as soon as the way was open for him to +go to South America or the Far East. Also, where he confined himself to +statements of fact rather than opinion or conjecture, he spoke truly. I +have yet to find an instance in which he made an intentional endeavour +to create a false impression. + +It was in the course of our lengthy and somewhat tedious railway journey +to the Zeppelin station at Nordholz that Korvettenkapitän C---- first +alluded to his life in the High Sea Fleet. "I was the gunnery officer of +the _Deutschland_ during the first two years of the war," he volunteered +as he joined me at the window of the corridor of our special car, from +which I was trying to catch a glimpse of the suburban area of stagnant +Bremerhaven; "but I transferred to the Zeppelin service as soon as I +could after the battle of Horn Reef because I felt certain--from the +depression of the men, which seemed to get worse rather than better as +time went on--that there would never be another naval battle. Although +we lost few ships (less than you did by a considerable margin, I think +I am correct in saying), yet the terrible battering we received from +only a part of the English fleet, and especially the way in which we +were utterly smothered during the short period your main battle fleet +was in action, convinced the men that they were very lucky to have got +away at all, and seemed to make them determined never to take chances +against such odds again. I knew that if we ever got them into action +again, it would have to be by tricking them--making them think they +were going out for something else--and that is why I felt sure the day +of our surface navy was over, and why I went into the Zeppelin service +to get beyond contact with the terrible dry-rot that began eating at the +hearts of the High Sea Fleet from the day they came home from the battle +of Horn Reef. What has happened since then has proved my fears were +well founded, for the men, becoming more and more suspicious every time +preparations were made to go to sea, finally refused to go out at all. +And that was the end." + +Commander C---- (to give his equivalent British rank) volunteered a good +deal more about Jutland on this occasion, as well as of the strategy in +connection with those final plans which went awry through the failure +of men, but it will be best, perhaps, to let this appear in its proper +sequence in a connected account of what he told, in the course of the +several days we were thrown together, of the German naval problems +generally, and his own experiences and observations at Horn Reef in +particular. + +"We were greatly disappointed when England came into the war," he said, +"but hardly dismayed. We had built all our ships on the theory that it +was the English fleet they were to fight against, and we felt confident +that we had plans that had a good chance of ultimately proving +successful. But those plans did not contemplate--either at the outset, +or at any subsequent stage of the war down to the very end--a gunnery +battle to a finish. The best proof of that fact is the way the guns were +mounted in our capital ships, with four aft and only two forward. That +meant that their _rôle_ was to inflict what damage they could in swift +attacks, and that they were expected to do their heaviest fighting while +being chased back to harbour. Since the British fleet had something like +a three-to-two advantage over us in modern capital ships, and about +two-to-one in weight of broadside, I think you will agree that this was +not only the best plan for us to follow, but practically the only one. + +"I think it will hardly surprise you when I say that, up to the outbreak +of the war, we knew a great deal more about your navy than you did +about ours. To offset that--and of much greater importance--is the fact +that your knowledge of our navy and its plans during the war was far +better than ours of yours. You always seem to score in the end. But at +the outset, as I have said, we were the better informed, and, among +other things, we knew that we had better mines than you had, and (as I +think was fully demonstrated during the first two years) we had a far +better conception in advance of the possibilities of using them--both +offensively and defensively--than you had. During the first two years +and a half your mines turned out to be even worse than we had expected, +and it is an actual fact that some of the more reckless of our U-boat +commanders used to fish them up and tow them back to base to make +punchbowls of. In the last twenty months you not only had two or three +types of mine (one of them American, I think) that were better than +anything we ever had, but you were also using them on a scale, and with +an effectiveness, we had never dreamed of. + +"We also thought we had a better torpedo than you had--that it would +run farther, straighter, keep depth better, and do more damage when +it struck. I still think we have something of the best of it on that +score, though at no time was our superiority so great as we reckoned. +Your torpedoes ran better than they detonated, and--especially in the +first two years--a very large number of fair hits on all classes of our +lighter craft were spoiled by 'duds.' This, I am sorry to say, was not +reported nearly so frequently during the last year and a half. + +[Illustration: "HERCULES," WITH THREE V-CLASS DESTROYERS IN KIEL HARBOR] + +"But it was on the torpedo that we counted to wear down the British +margin of strength in capital ships to a point where the High Sea +Fleet would have a fair chance of success in opposing it. We expected +that our submarines would take a large and steady toll of any warships +you endeavoured to blockade us with, and that they would even make the +risk of patrol greater than you would think it worth while to take. +Although we made an encouraging beginning by sinking three cruisers, +we were doomed to heavy disappointment over the U-boat as a destroyer +of warships. We failed to reckon on the almost complete immunity +the speed of destroyers, light cruisers, battle-cruisers, and even +battleships would give them from submarine attack, and we never dreamed +how terrible an enemy of the U-boat the destroyer--especially after +the invention of the depth-charge--would develop into. As for the use +of the submarine against merchant shipping, to our eternal regret we +never saw what it could do until after we had tried it. If any German +had had the imagination to have realized this in advance, so that we +could have had a fleet of a hundred and fifty U-boats ready to launch +on an unrestricted campaign against merchant shipping the day war was +declared, I think you will not deny that England would have had to +surrender within two months. + +"We also made the torpedo a relatively more important feature of the +armament of all of our ships--from destroyers to battleships--than +you did. They were to be our "last ditch" defence in the event of our +being drawn into a general fleet action--just such an action, in fact, +as the battle of Horn Reef was. We knew all about your gunnery up to +the outbreak of the war, and the fact that the big-gun target practices +were only at moderate ranges--mostly under 16,000 metres--told us that +you were not expecting to engage us at greater ranges. But all the time +we were meeting with good success in shooting at ranges up to, and even +a good deal over, 20,000 metres, and so we felt sure of having all the +best of a fight at such ranges. We knew that our 11-inch guns would +greatly out-range your 12-inch (perhaps you already know that even +the 8.2-inch guns of the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ out-ranged the +12-inch guns of the _Invincible_ and _Indefatigable_ at the Falkland +battle), and we hoped they might even have the best of your 13.5's. +We also knew that our ships were better built than yours to withstand +the plunging fall of long-distance shots, and we felt sure that our +explosive was more powerful than your lyddite. I am not sure that +this proved to be the case, though there is no question that our hits +generally did more harm than yours because more of them penetrated decks +and armour. + +"Feeling confident, then, of having the best of a long-range action, +our plan was, as I have said, to use the torpedo as a 'last ditch' +defence in case the English fleet tried to reduce the range to one at +which it could be sure of securing a higher percentage of hits and thus +making the greater weight of its broadside decisively felt. In such a +contingency we planned to literally fill the sea with torpedoes, on +the theory that enough of them must find their targets to damage the +enemy fleet sufficiently to force it to open out the range again, and +perhaps to cripple it to an extent that would open the way for us to +win a decisive victory. Theoretically, this plan was quite sound, for +it was based on the generally recognized fact that from three to five +torpedoes--the number varying according to the range and the interval +between the targets--launched one after the other at a line of ships +_cannot_ fail to hit at least one of them, providing, of course, that +they all run properly. + +"Well, almost the identical conditions under which we had planned and +practised to run our torpedo barrage were reproduced at Horn Reef when +the British battle fleet came into action near the end of the day, but +it failed because the English Admiral anticipated it--probably because +he knew in advance, as you always seemed to know everything we were +doing or intended to do, what to expect--by turning away while still +at the extreme limit of effective torpedo range. Most of our spare +torpedoes went for almost nothing, so far as damage to the enemy was +concerned, in that 'barrage,' and it would have gone hard with us had +there been enough daylight remaining for the English fleet to have +continued the action. Its superior speed would have allowed it to make +the range whatever its commander desired, and--even before half of the +battleships of it were firing--we were absolutely crushed by sheer +weight of metal, and it would not have been long before every one of our +ships would have been incapable of replying. You will see, then, that, +in the sense that it postponed the brunt of the attack of the English +battle fleet attack until it was too late for it to be effective, our +torpedo barrage undoubtedly saved the High Sea Fleet from complete +destruction. + +"Our lavish expenditure of torpedoes at that juncture, though, compelled +us to forgo the great opportunity which was now presented to us to +do your fleet heavy damage in a night action. Darkness, as you know, +goes far to equalize the difference in numbers of opposing fleets, and +makes an action very largely a series of disjointed duels between ship +and ship. In these duels the odds are all in favour of the ship with +the best system of recognition, the most powerful searchlights, and +the most effective searchlight control. We believed that we had much +the best of you in all of these particulars, and (although it was our +plan to avoid contact as far as possible on account of our shortage of +torpedoes) such encounters as could not be avoided proved this to be +true beyond any doubt. You seemed to have no star shells at all (so far +as any of our ships reported), and our searchlights were not only more +powerful than yours, but seemed also to be controlled in a way to bring +them on to the target quicker. It may be that the fact that our special +night-glasses were better than anything of the kind you had contributed +to this result. In any case, in almost every clash in the darkness it +was the German's guns which opened fire first. Practically every one +of our surviving ships reported this to have been the case, but with +those that were lost, of course, it is likely the English opened up +first. Another way in which we scored decisively in this phase of the +action was through solving the reply to your night recognition signal, +or at least a part of it. One of our cruisers managed to bluff one of +your destroyers into revealing this, and then passed it on to as many +of our own ships as she could get in touch with. We only had the first +two or three letters of the reply to your challenge, but the showing of +even these is known to have been enough to make more than one of your +destroyer commanders hesitate a few seconds in launching a torpedo, +only to realize his mistake after he had been swept with a broadside +from the secondary armament of a cruiser or battleship which left him +in a sinking condition. It was an English destroyer that hesitated at +torpedoing the _Deutschland_ until I almost blew it out of the water +with my guns, that afterwards launched a torpedo, even while it was +just about to go down, that finished the _Pommern_, the flagship of my +squadron." + +Commander C----'s account of his personal observations at Jutland threw +light on a number of points that the Allied public--and even those to +whom the best information on the subject was available--were never able +to make up their mind upon. + +"The English people," he said, "to judge from what I read in your +papers, always deceived themselves about two things in connection with +the battle you call Jutland. One of them was that the High Sea Fleet +came out with the purpose of offering battle to the English fleet, or at +least endeavouring to cut off and destroy its battle-cruiser squadron. +This is not the case. Quite to the contrary, indeed; it was the English +fleet that went out to catch us. We had been planning for some time a +cruiser raid on the shipping between England and Norway--which was not +so well protected then, or even for a year and a half more, as it was +the last year--and the High Sea Fleet and Von Hipper's battle-cruisers +were out to back up the raiding craft. As usual, your Intelligence +Bureau learned of this plan, and the English fleet came out to +spoil it. It was Von Hipper, not Beatty, who was surprised when the +battle-cruisers sighted each other. Beatty's surprise came a few minutes +later, when two of his ships were blown up almost before they had fired +a shot. That seemed to vindicate, right then and there, our belief in +our superior gunnery and the inferior construction of the English ships. +Unfortunately, there was nothing quite so striking occurred after that +to support that vindication. The other English battle-cruiser, and the +several armoured cruisers, sunk were destroyed as a consequence of +exposing themselves to overwhelming fire. It was the chance of finishing +off all the English battle-cruisers before the battle fleet came to +their rescue that tempted Von Scheer to follow Beatty north, and as a +consequence he was all but drawn into the general action that it was his +desire to avoid above anything else. + +"The other thing that the English naval critics (although I think your +Intelligence Bureau must have had the real facts before very long) +deceived themselves and the public about was in the matter of Zeppelin +reconnaissance during, and previous to, the Horn Reef battle. They have +continued to state from that day right down to the end of the war that +it was the German airships which warned Von Scheer of the approach of +Jellicoe, and so enabled the High Sea Fleet to escape. Perhaps the most +conclusive evidence that we _did not_ have airship reconnaissance was +the fact that Von Scheer was not only drawn into action with Jellicoe, +but that he even got into a position where he could not prevent the +English ships from passing to the east of him--that is, between him +and his bases. I will hardly need to tell you that neither of these +things would have happened if we had had airships to keep us advised of +the whereabouts of your battle fleet. It was our intention to have had +Zeppelin scouts preceding us into the North Sea on this occasion--as +we always have done when practicable--but the weather conditions were +not favourable. We _did_ have Zeppelins out on the following day, +and these, I have read, were sighted by the English. But if any were +reported on the day of the battle, I can only say it was a mistake. It +is very easy to mistake a small round cloud, moving with the wind, for a +foreshortened Zeppelin, especially if you are expecting an airship to +appear in that quarter of the sky." + +Of the opening phases of the Jutland battle Commander C---- did not +see a great deal personally. "We were steaming at a moderate speed," +he said, "when Von Hipper's signal was received stating he was +engaging enemy battle-cruisers and leading them south--that is, in +the direction from which we were approaching. As there were a number +of pre-dreadnoughts in the fleet, its speed--as long as it kept +together--was limited to the speed of these. In knots we were doing +perhaps sixteen when the first signal was received, and even after +forming battle line this speed was not materially increased for some +time. I understood the reason for this when I heard that the engine-room +had been ordered to make no more smoke than was positively necessary. We +had given much attention to regulating draught, and on this occasion it +was only a few minutes before there was hardly more than a light grey +cloud issuing from every funnel the whole length of the line. The idea, +of course, was to prevent the English ships from finding out any sooner +than could be helped that they were being led into an 'ambush.' As long +as we did not increase speed it was easy to keep down the smoke, and I +am sure that the first evidence the enemy had of the presence of the +High Sea Fleet was when they saw our masts and funnels. But we saw them +before that--we saw the two great towers of smoke that went high up +into the sky when two of them blew up, and we saw the smoke from their +funnels half an hour before their topmasts came above the horizon. At +this time, although all of the ships of the High Sea Fleet were coal +burners, they were making less smoke than the four oil-burning ships of +the _Queen Elizabeth_ class, which we sighted not long after the English +battle-cruisers. As soon as we began to increase speed, of course, we +made more smoke than they did. + +"The four remaining English battle-cruisers turned north as soon as +they sighted us, and I do not think the fire of the High Sea Fleet did +them much harm. They drew away from us very rapidly, of course, so that +our 'ambush' plan did not come to anything after all. A squadron of +English light cruisers, which were leading the battle-cruisers when we +first sighted them, almost fell into the trap, though, or, at any rate, +their very brave (or very foolish) action in standing on until they +were but little over 10,000 metres from the head of our line gave us +the best kind of a chance to sink the lot of them. That we did not do +this was partly due to the fact that most of the ships of our line were +still endeavouring to reach the English battle-cruisers with long-range +fire, and partly (I must admit it, though my own guns were among those +that failed to find their mark) to poor shooting. These light cruisers +did not turn until we opened fire at something over 10,000 metres; but +although all our squadron concentrated upon them during the hour and +more before the great speed they put on took them out of range, none of +them were sunk, and I am not even sure that any was badly hit. + +"When the four ships of the _Queen Elizabeth_ class came into action +there was a while when they were receiving the concentrated fire of +practically the whole High Sea Fleet, and possibly some of that of our +battle-cruisers as well. Yet it did not appear that--beyond putting one +of them (which we later learned was the _Warspite_) out of control for a +while--we did them much damage. The weight of our fire seemed to affect +theirs a good deal, though, and at this stage of the fight they did not +score many hits upon those of our ships--it was upon the squadron of +_Königs_ that they seemed trying to concentrate--that they gave their +attention to. Later, when the effort to destroy several of the newly +arrived squadron of English battle-cruisers and armoured cruisers drew +a part of our fire, their heavy shells did much damage. + +"The High Sea Fleet's line became considerably broken and extended in +the course of the pursuit of the English battle-cruisers and the _Queen +Elizabeths_, the swifter _Königs_ steaming out well in advance in an +effort to destroy some of the English ships before their battle fleet +came into action, and my own squadron dropping a good way astern. That +was the reason that my ship neither gave nor received much punishment +in the daylight action. It was our battle-cruisers and the more modern +battleships of the High Sea Fleet--principally the latter--which, +tricked by the bad visibility, suddenly found themselves well inside +the range of the deployed battleships of the main English fleet. I can +only say that I am thankful that I did not have to experience at first +hand the example they received of what it meant to face the full fire of +that fleet. The English shooting, which opened a little wild on account +of the mists, soon steadied down, and I have heard officers of four or +five of our ships say that it was becoming impossible to make reply with +their guns when darkness broke off the action. I have already told you +how our torpedo 'barrage'--in forcing the English fleet to sheer off +until it was too late for decisive action--saved a large part, if not +all, of our fleet from destruction. What would have happened in the +event that the attack had been pressed, no one can say. It would all +have depended upon the extent of the damage inflicted by our torpedoes. +I can only say that--as it was a contingency we had prepared for by long +practice--Jellicoe would only have been playing into our hands in taking +his whole fleet inside effective torpedo range, and I have confidence +enough in the plan to wish that he had tried it. It would have meant a +shorter war whatever happened, and, what is more, anything would have +been better for us than what did come to pass--two years of gradual +paralysis of the German navy, with a disgraceful surrender at the end. + +"As I have said, we were anxious to avoid a night action on account of +our shortage of torpedoes, however much such an action would have been +to our advantage had not our supply of these been so nearly exhausted. +So we were a good deal relieved when it became apparent that the enemy +were not making any special effort to get in touch with us again after +darkness fell. As a consequence of this disinclination of both sides to +seek an engagement, such clashes as did occur were the sequel to chance +encounters in the dark, and in most cases they seem to have been broken +off by the common desire of both parties. Some of your destroyers +persisted in their attacks whenever they got in touch with one of our +ships, but we usually made them pay a very heavy price for the damage +inflicted. + +"Von Scheer took the High Sea Fleet back to harbour by passing astern of +the English battle fleet, which had continued on to the south. I think +I am correct in saying that none of the capital ships of either fleet +were in action with those of the other after dark. There were two or +three brushes between cruisers and a good many between destroyers and +various classes of heavier ships. In fact, our principal difficulties +arose through running into several flotillas of destroyers which seemed +to have straggled from the squadrons to which they had been attached. +My squadron, with a division of cruisers, ran right through a flotilla +of about a dozen large English destroyers, and it would be hard to say +which had the worst of it. We lost the _Pommern_ (it would have been my +ship, the _Deutschland_, had not the line been reversed a few minutes +previously) and a cruiser, and had two other cruisers badly damaged, +one from being rammed by a little fighting-cock of a destroyer which +must have committed suicide in doing it. We sank two or three of the +destroyers by gun-fire, and left two or three more stopped and looking +about to blow up. Two of them were seen to be in collision, and there +was also a report that they were firing at each other in the mêlée, but +that was not corroborated. This fight only lasted a few minutes, and we +saw no more English ships of any kind on our way back to harbour. + +"In the matter of the losses at Horn Reef, we have never had any doubt +that those of the English were much heavier than ours, even on your own +admissions. And since we inflicted those losses with a fleet of not much +over half the size of yours, we have always felt justified in claiming +the battle to have been a German victory. The _Lützow_ was our only +really serious loss, though the other battle-cruisers--especially the +_Derfflinger_ and _Seydlitz_--were of little use for many months, so +badly had they been battered by gun-fire. The battleship and cruisers +sunk were out of date, and we lost only one modern light cruiser. We may +have lost as many destroyers as you did, though yours would have footed +up to a greater tonnage, as they average larger than ours. We made a +great mistake in concealing the loss of the _Lützow_ for several days, +for, after that, the people never stopped thinking that there were other +and greater losses not announced. + +"But although the English losses must have been much greater than +ours, I am not sure that they were enough greater to offset the loss +of _morale_ in the men of the German fleet. As I have said, I do not +think--unless we had tricked them into it, as we tried so hard to do at +the end--that we could ever again have got them to take their ships out +in the full knowledge that they were in for a fight to a finish with the +English battle fleet. It would have been better that they had all been +lost fighting at Horn Reef than that they should have survived to bring +upon themselves and their officers a disgrace the like of which has +never been known in naval history." + + + + +XI + +BACK TO BASE + + +The German Naval Armistice Commission, perhaps as a reaction from +its belligerent attitude at the first conference at Kiel, manifested +an increasing amenability to reason with every day that passed, as a +consequence of which the work of the Allied Commission was pushed to a +rapid completion. The search of the warships was completed in a couple +of days, and the decision to limit the inspection of air stations to +those west of Rügen reduced the visits of this character to three, all +easily reached by destroyers. Of the town of Kiel, nothing was seen at +close quarters, visits in that vicinity being limited to the dockyard, +ships in the harbour, and the seaplane station of Holtenau, near the +entrance to the canal. + +Although the Allied ships under embargo hardly arrived at Kiel for +inspection at the rate promised, there was little to indicate that the +Germans were endeavouring to evade their promise of doing everything +possible to facilitate the return of these to the Tyne at the earliest +possible moment. The _City of Leeds_, a powerfully engined little +packet which had been on the Hamburg-Harwich run before the war, +furnished the only glaring instance of deliberate bad faith. The German +Shipping Commission, declaring that her crew had ruined her engines +and boilers by pouring tar into them when she was seized, claimed +that she had been quite useless since that time, and disclaimed any +responsibility for reconditioning her. On inspection by the Allied +Shipping Commission, the statement that the engines had been damaged by +anything but use and neglect was proved to be absolutely false. Why the +Germans should have told so futile a lie was not fully explained, though +as a possible reason it was suggested that some private party, desiring +to keep the ship in his hands, had made a false report of her condition +to the Shipping Commission. + +The arrival and departure of Allied prisoners of war was one of the +most interesting features of the week in Kiel. The most of these were +British--picked up by one or another of the destroyers at this or that +port touched at--but there was one large party of French, from a camp +near Kiel, and several Belgians, Serbs, and Italians from heaven knows +where. These were all made as comfortable as possible in the _Hercules_, +and dispatched to England in the next mail destroyer. Except for a +man now and then who was suffering from a neglected wound, they were +in fairly good condition, a fact, however, which did not lessen their +almost rapturous enjoyment of the heaping pannikins of "good greasy +grub" (as one of them put it) that was theirs for the asking at any +hour of the day they cared to slip up to the galley. Their delight in +the band, in the ship's kinema, in "doubling round" for exercise in the +morning, in anything and everything in the life in this their halfway +station on the road home was a joy to watch. + +Some of the British prisoners came from the same towns or counties +as did men of the ship's company, and the exchange of reminiscences +often went on far into the night. Passing across the flat between +the ward-room and the commission-room late one evening, I heard a +Lancastrian voice from a roll of blankets on the deck protesting to a +bluejacket in the hammock above that "Jinny X----" of Wigan didn't have +yellow hair when he (the owner of the voice) used to know her, and that, +in fact, he'd always thought her rather a "shy 'un." + +"Thot was afore she worked in a 'T.N.T.' fact'ry," replied the +"hammock," with an intonation suggesting that he felt that was +sufficient explanation of both changes. + +A good deal of rivalry developed between the four escorting destroyers +in the matter of picking up prisoners, and to hear their officers +discussing their "bags" or "hauls" when they foregathered at night in +the ward-room of the _Hercules_ reminded one of campers drifting in at +the end of the day and yarning of the ducks they had shot and the fish +they had caught. "If we could have waited another half-hour twenty more +were coming with us," claims _Venetia_. "But even with those," replies +_Vidette_, "you would not have been anywhere near our sixty-nine." +It was this latter "bag," indeed, which proved the record one of the +"season," both in numbers and "quality," for it consisted entirely of +non-commissioned officers from a camp near Hamburg. + +[Illustration: H. M. S. "HERCULES" AND H. M. S "CONSTANCE" IN KIEL LOCKS] + +The same cringing attempts at ingratiation and conciliation which had +been so much in evidence in the attitude of the civil population toward +parties from the Commission when they met in streets or stations seem +also to have been consistently practised in the case of prisoners about +to be repatriated. Although the German takes naturally and easily +to this kind of thing, just as he did to his _schrecklichkeit_ and +general brutalities, there was much in the way he went about making +himself pleasant to returning prisoners that bore the marks of official +inspiration. Several men who came to the _Hercules_ brought copies of +circular letters in English which, after pointing out that they had +invariably been treated with the greatest courtesy and consideration +possible under the very trying circumstances Germany found herself in +on account of the blockade, hoped that they would bear no ill will away +with them, and that the years to come might bring them back to Germany +under happier circumstances. The screeds really had much the tone of an +apologetic country host's farewell to guests whom he has had to keep on +short commons on account of being snowed in or a breakdown on the line. + +One of the best of them was addressed to "English Gentlemen," and went +on as follows:-- + +"You are about to leave the newest, and what we intend to make the +freest, republic in the world. We very much regret that you saw so +little of what aroused our pride in the former Germany--her arts, +sciences, model cities, theatres, schools, industries, and social +institutions, as well as the beauties of our scenery and the real soul +of our people, akin in so many things to your own. + +"But these things will remain a part of the new Germany. Once the +barriers of artificial hatred and misunderstanding have fallen, we hope +that you will learn to know, in happier times, these grander features of +the land whose unwilling guests you have been. A barbed wire enclosure +is not the proper place from which to survey or judge a great nation. +There will be no barbed wire enclosure in the Germany to which you will +return a few months hence. In the meantime we feel that we can count +upon you, forgetting the unpleasanter features of your enforced sojourn +with us, to exert your influence to reunite the bonds of friendship +and commerce which were bringing our countries ever closer and closer +together before their unfortunate severance by the sword of war, and +upon the knitting up again of which the future of both so greatly +depends. + +"Three cheers for peace and good will to all mankind!" + +Rather a delicate little touch, that "bonds of commerce" one! + +Unfortunately, the language in which most of the prisoners described the +state of mind which this kind of thing left them in is not quite suited +for publication. It was one of the mildest of them--a London cockney +who seemed never quite to have got back all the blood he lost when his +thigh was ripped open with shrapnel at the assault on Thiepval--who said +that "Jerry" never would get over being surprised when "a bloke called +'im a b----y blighter arter 'e'd tried to shove a _ersatz_ fag on you +an' 'oped you w'udn't be bearin' 'im any 'ard feelin's in the years to +come." + +The attitude that German girls and women appear to have adopted +toward Allied, and especially British, prisoners from the time the +armistice went into force is not a pleasant thing to write of, and I +confine myself to a single observation which an old sergeant of the +"Contemptibles"--one of the sixty-nine that the _Vidette_ brought from +Hamburg--made on the subject. It was one of the most witheringly biting +characterizations of a nation I have ever heard fall from the lips of +any man. He had been telling me in a humorous sort of way of "raspberry +leaf tea," _ersatz_ coffee of various kinds, paper sheets, and various +and sundry other substitutes, and then, switched off to the subject by a +question regarding a statement a German officer had been heard to make +about the relations of prisoners and women of the country, he spoke of +the ways of the girls of Hamburg since the armistice. + +"There is no doubt," he said, "that the young of both sexes have been +getting more and more shameless in their morals ever since the beginning +of the war, but it is only since we were practically set free by the +armistice that the state of things has come home to prisoners. I don't +think that there are very many British prisoners--certainly no man that +I know personally--who have had anything to do with these young hussies; +but that is not the fault of the girls, for they have pestered us only +less in our camp than upon the street. It's principally because we have +a bit of money now, and sometimes a bit of food that isn't _ersatz_. I +don't think I'm exaggerating very much, sir, when I say that fifty per +cent. of the girls of the lower classes in Hamburg would sell themselves +for a cake of toilet soap or a sixpenny packet of biscuits. _Ersatz_ +food and _ersatz_ women! By God, sir, Germany's a country of substitutes +and prostitutes, and it's glad I am to be seeing the last of it!" + +I have yet to hear the Germany of today summed up more scathingly than +that. + +Speaking of the moral degeneracy of Germany, a poster found by a +member of the Commission in a train by which he was travelling sheds +an interesting light on the subject. It was addressed to the "Youth of +Wilhelmshaven and Rüstringen" by the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, +and the following is a rough translation. + +"The German youth has been a witness of the great liberating act of +the German Revolution. It has witnessed how the fetters of the old +_régime_ were burst and Freedom made her entry into the stronghold of +reaction, the Prussian military state. And it is the youth of today +which will reap the fruits of this great change. It will one day find +as an accomplished fact all that for which the best of the people have +sacrificed themselves. + +"Therefore the most serious duties are laid upon the youth of today, to +which it is becoming increasingly necessary to draw their attention. +Complaints are unfortunately increasing of late that the youth is +lapsing more and more into moral anarchy, which carries with it the +most serious dangers for the future. Revolution does not mean disorder, +but a new order. Remember that the whole future of Germany depends upon +you; you are the trustees of the future. Be conscious of the great +responsibility which rests today upon your young shoulders.... You must +now learn to be equal to the task which awaits you. Obey your teachers +and leaders. That is the first demand made upon all today. + +"We expect, therefore, that you take this warning to heart, and that we +may not be forced to take stronger measures against those among you who +either cannot or will not submit!" + + * * * * * + +There was a suggestion of power and strength in the name itself, and +in setting out to inspect the Great Belt Forts there were few in the +party who had not visions of uncovering the secrets of something very +much in the nature of a Baltic Gibraltar or Heligoland. "Number One" +or the "International" sub-commission turned out in full strength +in anticipation of what had generally been regarded as the crowning, +as it was the concluding, event of the visit. The very protestations +of the Germans only whetted their interest the keener, for it was a +precisely similar line to one they had taken in the matter of the visit +to Tondern, where there _had_ been something worth seeing. "Look out +for surprises in connection with the 'Great Belt' inspection," was the +word, and every one in any way entitled to attach himself to what was to +be the last party landed before the return of the Commission to England +made arrangements to do so. + +Brave with swords, bright with brass hats, aglitter with aiguillettes +was the imposing line of French, British, Italian, American and Japanese +officers who filed across from the _Hercules_ to the _Verdun_ an hour +before dawn on the morning of December 16. An hour after darkness +descended, wet with rain, bespattered with mud, ashiver with cold, those +same officers straggled back to the _Hercules_ again. This is the order +in which one of them summed up the day's observation: "The most notable +event of the inspection," he said as he warmed his chilled frame before +the ward-room fire, "was the sight of the first pig we have clapped eyes +on in Germany; the next so was meeting a Hun with enough of a sense of +humour to take us three miles round by a muddy road and over ploughed +fields and deep ditches to a point he could have reached by a mile of +comparatively dry railway track; and the third was a drive through ten +miles of Schleswig countryside that was beautiful beyond words, even in +the pelting rain. The Great Belt Forts? Oh, yes, we saw them. They were +five holes in the ground on top of one hill, four holes in the ground on +the top of another fifteen miles away, and a dozen or so ancient guns +dumped into the hold of a tug. But--let's talk about the pig." + +There is not much that I can add to the succinct summary of the +inspection of the forts of the "Baltic Gibraltar." What the +sub-commission saw--or rather failed to see--there went a long way +toward confirming the impression (which had been growing stronger ever +since the arrival of the _Hercules_ at Wilhelmshaven) that Germany had +depended upon mines rather than guns for the defence of her coasts. +The porker mentioned was the one I alluded to in an earlier chapter as +just failing to win the officer sighting it the pool which was to go +to the first man who saw a pig in Germany, because an Irish-American +member of the party had testified that it had "died from hog cholera +an hour before it had been killed." The lovely stretch of farming +country driven through showed many signs of its Danish character, and at +several windows I even saw the red-and-white flag of the mother country +discreetly displayed. This region, of course, falls well north of the +line that is expected to form the new Danish boundary. + + * * * * * + +At the final conference with the German Naval Armistice Commission, +which was held in the _Hercules_ on the morning of the 17th, +Admiral Goette and his associates, in striking contrast to their +belligerent attitude at the first meeting in Kiel, proved thoroughly +docile and conciliatory. All of the important points at issue were +conceded--including the surrender of submarines building and the +delivery of the _Baden_ in place of _Mackensen_--and tentative +arrangements were made for future visits of special Allied Commissions +whenever these should be deemed necessary to insure the enforcement +of the provisions of the armistice. Work on the reconditioning of +all Allied merchant ships was to be given precedence over everything +else. Considering that he had no trumps either in his hands or up his +sleeve, Admiral Goette played his end of the game with considerable +skill. Such futile attempts at "bluffing" as he made were invariably +traceable to pressure exerted upon him from the "outside," probably +Berlin. Personally, in spite of the severe nervous strain he was under +(the effects of which were increasingly noticeable at every succeeding +conference), he deported himself with a dignity compatible with his +heavy responsibilities. The same may be said of Captain Von Müller, +which is perhaps as far down the list as it would be charitable to go in +this connection. + + * * * * * + +Weighing anchor at noon of the 18th, the _Hercules_ was locked through +into the canal in good time to see in daylight that section which +had been passed in darkness in coming through from the North Sea. A +rain, which turned into soft snow as the afternoon lengthened, was +responsible for rather less frequent and numerous crowds of spectators +than on the previous passage. The ubiquitous Russian prisoner was +still much in evidence. An especially pathetic figure was that of a +lone _poilu_--still in horizon blue, with the skirts of his bedraggled +overcoat buttoned back in characteristic fashion--whom I sighted just +before dark. Leaning dejectedly on his hoe in a beet-field, he watched +the _Hercules_ pass without so much as lifting a finger. Most likely the +unlucky chap took her for a German, for the rapturous demonstrations +with which a score of his comrades signalized their arrival aboard a few +days before showed very clearly how a French prisoner would greet a +British ship if he knew her nationality. + +The _Hercules_ went into her lock at Brunsbüttel an hour before +midnight. The _Regensburg_, which had preceded her through the canal, +was already in the adjoining lock, and in attempting to pass on the +light cruiser _Constance_ and three British destroyers at the same +operation the canal people made rather a mess of things. There was +a savage crashing and tearing of metal at one stage, followed by a +considerable flow of profanity in two languages. When, the next morning +in the Bight, a signal of condolence was made by the _Hercules_ to +one of the destroyers following in her wake on the "messy" state of +its nose, the reply came back. "Don't worry about my nose. You ought +to see the _Regensburg_. I've got a piece of her side-plating on my +forecastle!" That was the second time the unlucky _Regensburg_ had come +to grief in locking through at Brunsbüttel with the ships of the Allied +Naval Commission. + +Owing to the fog, the Germans were unable, or unwilling, to send a ship +to take off their pilots from the _Hercules_ and escorting destroyers +after the outer limits of the mine-fields had been passed, and it became +necessary as a consequence to carry them on to Rosyth. The change of +air and food incidental to their personally conducted tour to Scapa +(to await the next German transport home) was evidently a by no means +disagreeable prospect to them, judging by the way they took the news. +The steward who reported that the pilot he was looking after had been +"stowing away grub like he expected a long continuance of the blockade," +may have stumbled upon the reason for their philosophic attitude. + +We found the Firth of Forth as we left it--wrapped in fog. There was +just enough visibility to make it possible to find the gates in the +booms and the main channel under the bridge. The historic voyage came to +an end when the _Hercules_, after tying up to the _Queen Elizabeth's_ +buoy for a few hours, went into the dry dock at two-thirty in the +afternoon of the 20th. The Commission left for London the same evening +in a special train provided by the Admiralty. + + +THE END + + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + + +Simple typographical errors were corrected. + +Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant +preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. + +Spelling in "dialect" passages not changed. + +German nouns printed in lower-case have not been changed to upper-case. + +Inconsistently-spaced abbreviations have not been changed. + +The following three typographical errors were corrected by referencing a +later edition of this book: + +Page 90, paragraph ending: "Liverpool or Liverpool?" ended with a comma +and closing quote. + +Page 144 "the latter being" was printed as "the later being". + +Page 287: "model cities" was printed as "model cites". + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's To Kiel in the 'Hercules', by Lewis R. Freeman + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42374 *** |