In the Claws of the German Eagle by Albert Rhys Williams

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IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE

ALBERT RHYS WILLIAMS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

My thanks go to the Editors of The Outlook for permission to
reproduce the articles which first appeared in that magazine.

Also to many friends all the way from Maverick to Pasadena.
Above all to Frank Purchase, my comrade in the first weeks of the
war and always.

Contents

Instead of a Preface

Part I
The Spy-Hunters Of Belgium

Chapter
I. A Little German Surprise Party
II. Sweating Under The German Third Degree
III. A Night On A Prison Floor
IV. Roulette And Liberty

Part II
On Foot With The German Army

V. The Gray Hordes Out Of The North
VI. In The Black Wake Of The War
VII. A Duelist From Marburg
VIII. Thirty-Seven Miles In A Day

Part III
With The War Photographers In Belgium

IX. How I Was Shot As A German Spy
X. The Little Belgian Who Said, "You Betcha"
XI. Atrocities And The Socialist

Part IV
Love Among The Ruins

Chapter

XII. The Beating Of "The General"
XIII. America In The Arms Of France
XIV. No-Man's-Land

Afterword

Instead Of A Preface

The horrible and incomprehensible hates and brutalities of the
European War! Unspeakable atrocities! Men blood-lusting like a lot
of tigers!

Horrible they are indeed. But my experiences in the war zone
render them no longer incomprehensible. For, while over there, in
my own blood I felt the same raging beasts. Over there, in my own
soul I knew the shattering of my most cherished principles.

It is not an unique experience. Whoever has been drawn into the
center of the conflict has found himself swept by passions of
whose presence and power he had never dreamed.

For example: I was a pacifist bred in the bone. Yet, caught in Paris
at the outbreak of the war, my convictions underwent a rapid
crumbling before the rising tide of French national feeling. The
American Legion exercised a growing fascination over me. A little
longer, and I might have been marching out to the music of the
Marseillaise, dedicated to the killing of the Germans. Two weeks
later I fell under the spell of the self-same Germans. That long gray
column swinging on through Liege so mesmerized me that my
natural revulsion against slaughter was changed to actual
admiration.

Had an officer right then thrust a musket into my hand, I could
have mechanically fallen into step and fared forth to the killing of
the French. Such an experience makes one chary about dispensing
counsels of perfection to those fighting in the vortex of the world-storm.
Whenever I begin to get shocked at the black crimes of the belligerents,
my own collapse lies there to accuse me.

It is in the spirit of a non-partisan, then, that this chronicle of
adventure in those crucial days of the early war is written. It is a
welter of experiences and reactions which the future may use as
another first-hand document in casting up its own conclusions.
There is no careful culling out of just those episodes which support
a particular theory, such as the total and complete depravity of the
German race.

Despite my British ancestry, the record tries to be impartial--
without pro- or anti-German squint. If the reader had been in my
skin, zigzagging his way through five different armies, the things
which I saw are precisely the ones which he would have seen. So I
am not to blame whether these episodes damn the Germans or
bless them. Some do, and some don't. What one ran into was
largely a matter of luck.

For example: In Brussels on September 27, 1914, I fell in with a
lieutenant of the British army. With an American passport he had
made his way into the city through the German lines. We both
desired to see Louvain, but all passage thereto was for the
moment forbidden. Starting out on the main road, however, sentry
after sentry passed us along until we were halted near staff
headquarters, a few miles out of the city, and taken before the
commandant. We informed him of our overweening desire to view
the ruins of Louvain. He explained, as sarcastically as he could,
that war was not a social diversion, and bade us make a quick
return to Brussels, swerving neither to the right nor left as we went.

As we were plodding wearily back, temptation suddenly loomed up
on our right in the shape of a great gas-bag which we at first took
to be a Zeppelin. It proved to be a stationary balloon which was
acting as the eye of the artillery. It was signaling the range to the
German gunners beneath, who were pounding away at the Belgians.
In our excitement over the spectacle, we went plunging across fields
until we gained a good view of the great swaying thing, tugging away
at the slender filament of rope which bound it to the earth.

Sinking down into the grass, we were so intent upon the sharp
electric signaling as to be oblivious to aught else, until a voice rang
a harsh challenge from behind. Jumping to our feet, we faced a
squad of German soldiers and an officer who said:

"What are you doing here?"

"Came out to see the big balloon," we somewhat naively informed
him.

"Very good!" he said. And then, quite as if he were rewarding our
manifest zeal for exploration, he added, "Come along with me and
you can see the big commandant, too."

Three soldiers ahead and three behind, we were escorted down
the railroad track in silence until we began to pass some cars filled
with the recently wounded in a fearfully shot-to-pieces state. Some
one mumbled "Englishmen!" and the whole crowd, bandaged and
bleeding as they were, rose to the occasion and greeted us with
derisive shouts.

"Put the blackguards to work," growled one.

"No! Kill the damn spies!" shouted another, as he pulled himself
out of the straw, "kill them!"

A huge fellow almost wild from his wounds bellowed out: "Why
don't you stick your bayonet into the cursed Englishmen?" No
doubt it would have eased his pain a bit to see us getting a taste of
the same thing he was suffering.

Our officer, as if to make concessions to this hue and cry, growled
harshly: "Don't look around! Damn you! and take your hands out of
your pockets!"

We heaved sighs of relief as we left this place of pain and hate
behind. But a new terror took hold of us as a turn in the track
brought our destination into view. It was the staff headquarters in
which, two hours before, the commandant had ordered us to make
direct return to Brussels.

"Wait here," said the officer as he walked inside.

We stood there trying to appear unconcerned while we cursed the
exploring bent in our constitutions, and mentally composed
farewell letters to the folks at home.

But luck does sometimes light upon the banners of the daring. It
seems that in the two hours since we had left headquarters a
complete change had been made in the staff. At any rate, an
officer whom we had not seen before came out and addressed us
in English. We told him that we were Americans.

"Well, let's see what you know about New York," he said.

We displayed an intensive knowledge of Coney Island and the
Great White Way, which he deemed satisfactory.

"Nothing like them in Europe!" he assured us. "I did enjoy those
ten years in America. I would do anything I could for one of you
fellows."

He backed this up by straightway ordering our release, and
authenticated his claim to American residence by his last shot:

"Now boys, beat it back to Brussels."

We stood not on the order of our beating, but beat at once.

One may pick out of such an experience precisely what one
wishes to pick out: the imbecile hatred in the Teuton--the perfidy of
the British--the efficiency or the blundering of the German--or
perchance the foolhardiness of the American, just as his
nationalistic bias leads him.

So, from the narratives in this book, one may select just the
material which supports his theory as to the merits or demerits of
any nation. To myself, out of these insights into the Great
Calamity, there has come re-enforcement to my belief in the
essential greatness of the human stuff in all nations. Along with
this goes a faith that in the New Internationalism mankind will lay
low the military Frankenstein that he has created, and realize the
triumphant brotherhood of all human souls.

Part I
The Spy-Hunters Of Belgium

Chapter I

A Little German Surprise Party

"Two days and the French will be here! Three days at the outside,
and not an ugly Boche left. Just mark my word!"

This the patriarchal gentleman in the Hotel Metropole whispered to
me about a month after the Germans had captured Brussels. They
had taken away his responsibilities as President of the Belgian
Red Cross, so that now he had naught to do but to sit upon the
lobby divan, of which he covered much, being of extensive girth.
But no more extensive than his heart, from which radiated a genial
glow of benevolence to all--all except the invaders, the sight or
mention of whom put harshness in his face and anger in his voice.

"Scabbard-rattler!" he mumbled derisively, as an officer
approached. "Clicks his spurs to get attention! Wants you to look
at him. Don't you do it. I never do." He closed his eyes tightly, as if
in sleep.

Oftentimes he did not need to feign his slumber. But sinking slowly
down into unconsciousness his native gentleness would return
and a smile would rest upon his lips; I doubt not that in his dreams
the Green-Gray troops of Despotism were ridden down by the Blue
and Red Republicans of France.

Once even he hummed a snatch of the Marseillaise. An extra loud
blast from the distant cannonading stirred him from his reverie. "Ah
ha!" he exclaimed, clasping my arm, the artillery--"it's getting nearer
all the time. They are driving back the Boches, eh? We'll be free
to-morrow, certain. Then we'll celebrate together in my country-
home."

Walking over to the door, he peered down the street as if he
already expected to catch a glint of the vanguard of the Blue and
Red. Twice he did this and returned with confidence unshaken.
"Mark my word," he reiterated; "three days at the outside and we
shall see the French!"

That was in September, 1914. Those three days passed away into
as many weeks, into as many months, and into almost as many
years. I cannot help wondering whether the same hopes stirred
within him at each fresh outburst of cannonading on the Somme.
And whether through those soul-sickening months that white-
haired man peered daily down those Brussels streets, yearning for
the advent of the Red and Blue Army of Deliverance. Red and
Blue it was ever in his mind. If once it had come in its new uniform
of somber hue, it would have been a disappointing shock I fear.
He was an old man then; he is now perhaps beyond all such
human hurts. His pain was as real as anything I saw in all the war.
I had little time to dwell upon it, however, for presently I was put
into a situation that called for all my wits. I was introduced to it by
the announcement of the porter:

"An American gentleman to see you, sir."

That was joyful news to one held within the confines of a captive
city, from which all exit was, for the time being, closely barred.

It was September 28th, my birthday, too. The necessity of
celebrating this in utter boredom was a dismal prospect. Now this
came upon me like a little surprise-party.

Picking up a bit of paper on which I had been scribbling down a
few memoranda that I feared might escape my mind, I hastened
into the hallway to meet a somewhat spare, tall, and extremely
erect-appearing man. He greeted me with a smile and a bow--a
rather dry smile and a rather stiff bow for an American.

So I queried, "You're an American, are you?"

"Not exactly," he responded; "but I would like to talk with you."

Without the shadow of a suspicion, I told him it would be a great
relief from the tedium of the day to talk to any one.

"But I would prefer to talk to you in your room," he added.

"Certainly," I responded, stepping toward the elevator.

The hotel was practically deserted, so I was somewhat surprised
when two men, one a huge fellow built on a superdreadnaught
plan, followed us in and got out with us on the fifth floor. The
superdreadnaught sailed on into my room, which seemed a
breach of propriety for an un-introduced stranger. He closed the
door rudely behind him. I was prepared to resent this altogether
high-handed intrusion, when my tall guest said, very simply, "I am
representing the Imperial German Government."

I rallied under the shock sufficiently to say, "Will you take a chair?"

"No," came the laconic reply, "I will take you--and this," he said,
reaching for the piece of scribble-paper I had in my hands, "and
any baggage you have in your room."

I assured him that I had none, as I really expected to stay in
Brussels but a day. He pretended not to hear my reply, and said,

"We better take it with us, for we will probably need it."

He looked under the bed and unlocked the closet door. Finding
nothing, he asked for the key to my room. I handed it over, Room
Number 502.

"You will be so good as to follow me now."

Now every one knows that the Spy-Season in Europe opened with
the beginning of the war. Spy hunting became at once a veritable
mania.

Consequently no self-respecting person returns from the war-zone
without at least one hair-raising story of being taken as a spy.
Being just an average species of American, I exhale no particular
air of mystery or villainy; yet I suffered a score of times the laying
on of hands by German, French, Belgian, and even Dutch authorities.

But this experience is marked off from all my other ordeals in four
ways. In the first place, instead of casually falling into the hands of
my captors, they came after me in full force. In the second place, a
specific charge of using money for bribing information was laid
against me, and witnesses were at hand. In the third place, the
leader of the party arrested me in civilian dress, but before
examination and trial he changed to military uniform. In the fourth
place, the officials were in such a surly mood that my message to
the American Ambassador was undelivered, and at the last trial
before the American representatives there was no apology, but
rather the sullen attitude of those who had been balked in bagging
their game.

When my captor bade me follow him I asked:

"Can I leave word with my friends?" For an answer he smiled
satirically. By accident or design, the time chosen for my taking off
was one when both of my two casual acquaintances were out of
the hotel.

"Not now, but a little later perhaps, when this is fixed up," my
captor answered me.

We stepped into a carriage. The two assistants at the little surprise
party walked away, and my rising sense of fear was allayed by the
friendly offer of a cigarette. It was a brand-new experience to ride
away to prison in royal state like this. The almost pleasant attitude
of my companion reassured me. "After all," I mused, "this is a
lucky stroke; a little uncertain perhaps, but on the whole an
interesting way to while away the tedium of an otherwise eventless
birthday."

We stopped before the Belgian Government building, on the Rue
de la Loi, the headquarters of the German staff. At a word the
sentries dropped back and my companion bade me walk down a
long, dark corridor. I opened a door at the end, and found myself in
a room with a few officers in chairs, and a large array of
documents upon a table.

The moment I came within the safe confines of that room the
whole attitude of my captor changed. His mask of friendliness
dropped away. Perhaps his spirit responded and adapted itself to
the official atmosphere of the headquarters. Anyhow, at once he
froze up into the most rigid formality. Sitting down, he wrote out
what I deemed was the report of the morning's proceedings. I
watched him writing with all the semblance and precision of a
machine, except for a half-smile that sometimes flickered upon his
close-pressed lips.

He was a machine, or, more precisely, a cog in the great fighting
machine that was producing death and destruction to Belgium.
Just as the Germans have put men through a certain mold and
turned out the typical German soldier, in like manner through other
molds they have turned out according to pattern the German
secret service man. He is a kind of spy-destroyer performing in his
sphere the same service that the torpedo-boat destroyer does in
its domain. This man was the German reincarnation of Javert, the
police inspector who hung so relentlessly upon the flanks of Jean
Valjean. In his stolid silence I read an iron determination to "get"
me, and in that flickering smile I saw an inhuman delight in putting
the worst construction upon my case as he wrote it down.
Hereafter he shall be known as Javert.

Towards Javert I sustain a very distinct aversion. This is not the
result of any evil twist put into my constitution by original sin. Quite
the contrary. Hitherto I have always felt that I, like the man in
Oscar Wilde's play, could forgive anybody anything, any time,
anywhere. One can forgive even a hangman for doing his duty,
however it may thwart one's plans. Some men must play the part
of prosecutor and devil's advocate.

But such was the cold, cynical delight in this fellow's doing his duty,
such was his arrogant, overbearing attitude toward the helpless
peasant prisoners, that I know my prayers for the end of the war
were not motivated entirely by selfless considerations. I am
hankering to get into the neighborhood of this fellow when he
doesn't hold all the trump cards. In justice to Javert, I must say that
he reciprocated my feeling magnificently, and, inasmuch as he
was the cat and I the mouse, and a very small one at that, he
probably found much more spiritual satisfaction in the exercise of
his feelings than I did in mine. That is why I was anxious to have
the war end and embrace the first opportunity to change our roles.
I yearned to give him his proper place in the sun.

Having completed my case, he demanded my papers, and then
bade me open the door. There was a soldier waiting, and with him
ahead and Javert behind, I was escorted into the courtyard. Here
a double-door was opened, and I was thrust into a room filled with
a motley collection of persons guarded by a dozen soldiers with
rifles ready.

The sight was anything but reassuring. I turned toward Javert and
asked, somewhat frantically, I fear: "What is all this for? Aren't you
going to do anything about my case?"

My hitherto cool, smiling manner must have been an irritation to
him. A German official, especially a petty one, takes everything
with such deadly seriousness that he can't understand us taking
things so debonairly, especially when it is his own magisterial self.

So I think he thoroughly enjoyed my first signs of perturbation, and
said: "Your case will be settled in a little while--perhaps directly."
He turned to a soldier, bade him watch me, and disappeared.

About five minutes later I heard outside the command "Halt!" to a
squad of soldiers. The doors opened and Javert reappeared, this
time in the full uniform of an officer. For the moment I thought he
had come with a firing squad and they were going to make short
shrift of me. The grim humor of disposing of my case thus
"directly" came home to me. But merely flicking the ashes from his
cigarette, he glanced round the room without offering the slightest
recognition, and then disappeared. How he made his change from
civilian clothes so quickly I can't understand. It seemed like a
vainglorious display of his uniform in order to let us take full
cognizance of his eminence.

I began now a survey of my surroundings. Our room was in fact a
hallway crammed with soldiers and prisoners. The soldiers, with
fixed bayonets in their rifles, stood guard at the door. The
prisoners, some thirty-five in number, were ranged on benches,
overturned boxes, and on the floor. We were of every description,
from well-groomed men of the city to artisans and peasants from
the fields. The most interesting of the peasants was a young fellow
charged with carrying dispatches through the lines to Antwerp. The
most interesting of the well-dressed urban group was a theater
manager charged with making his playhouse the center of
distribution for the forbidden newspapers smuggled into Brussels.
There was a Belgian soldier in uniform, woefully battered and
beaten; and for the first time I saw a German soldier without his
rifle. He, too, was a prisoner waiting trial, having been sent up to
the headquarters accused of muttering against an under officer.

All these facts I learned later. Then I sat paralyzed in an
atmosphere charged with smoke and silence. The smoke came
not from the prisoners, for to them it was forbidden, but from the
soldiers, who rolled it up in great clouds. The silence came from
the suspicion that one's next neighbor might be a spy planted
there to catch him in some unwary statement. Each man would
have sought relief from the strain by unbosoming his hopes and
fears to his neighbor, but he dared not. That is one fearful curse of
any cause that is buttressed by a system of espionage. It scatters
everywhere the seeds of suspicion. All society is shot through with
cynical distrust. It poisons the springs at the very source--one's
faith in his fellows. Ordinarily one regards the next man as a
neighbor until he proves himself a spy. In Europe he is a scoundrel
and a spy until he proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is
a neighbor.

And then one is never certain. People were everywhere aghast to
find even their life-long friends in the pay of the enemy. A large
military establishment draws spies as certainly as a carcass draws
vermin; the one is the inevitable concomitant of the other. It is the
Nemesis of all human brotherhood.

Now to be taken as a prisoner of war was to most men more of a
Godsend than a tragedy. The prisoner knew that he was to be
corralled in a camp. But he was alive at any rate and he had but to
await the end of the war--then it was home again. The pictures
show phalanxes of these men smiling as if they were glad to be
captives. On the other hand there are no smiles in the pictures of
the spies and francs-tireurs. They know that they are fated for a
hasty trial, a drumhead decision, and to be shot at dawn. The
prospect of that walk through the early morning dews to the
execution-ground made their shoulders droop along with their
spirits.

With these thoughts on our mind we held our tongues and kept
our eyes on the door, wondering who would be the next guest to
arrive, and mentally conjecturing what might be the cause of his
incarceration.

The last arrival wore a small American flag wound round his arm,
and around his waist he wore a belt which contained 100 pounds
in gold. He spotted me, and, coming over to my corner, opened up
a conversation in English. I thought at first that this was merely a
clumsy German ruse to trap me into some indiscreet talking. To
his kindly advances I curtly returned "Yeses" and "Noes."

His name was Obels, a Belgian by birth but speaking English as
well as German, French, and Flemish. He was an invaluable
reporter for a great Chicago paper, and in his zeal for news had
run smack into the Germans at Malines, and had been at once
whisked off by automobile to Brussels for trial as a spy. He had a
passionate devotion to his calling. No mystic could have been
more consecrated to his Holy Church. I fully believe that he would
have consented to be shot as a spy with a smile on his face if he
could have got the story of the shooting to his paper. He was one
of the most straightforth fellows I have ever met, and yet I
regarded him there as I would a low-browed scoundrel. For a long
time I would not speak to him. I dared not. He might have been a
spy set to worm out any confidences, and then carry them to
Javert.

Left to himself, each man let his most pessimistic thoughts drag
his spirits down. Gloom is contagious, and it soon became as
heavy in the room as the gray clouds of smoke. The one bright,
hopeful spot was the lone woman prisoner. She alone refused to
succumb to the depressing atmosphere, and sought to play
woman's ancient role of comforter. She tried to smile, and
succeeded admirably, for she was very pretty. A wretched-looking
lad huddled up on a bag in the corner tried to reciprocate, but with
the tears glistening in his eyes he made a sorry failure of it. We
were a hard crowd to smile to, and growing tired of her attempts to
appear light-hearted, she at last gave herself up to her own
grievances, and soon was looking quite as doleful as the rest of
us. Our gloom was thrown into sharp relief by a number of soldiers
grouped around a table in the corner laughing and shouting over a
game of cards which they were playing for small stakes. We
dragged out the long afternoon staring doggedly at the bayonets of
our guards.

Only once did the guards show any awareness of our existence.
That was when suddenly the arrival of "Herr Major" was announced.
As the door was opened to let him pass through our hall to the stairway,
with a hoarse shout we were ordered to our feet. As his exalted
personage paraded by we stood, hats in hand, with bared heads,
with such humble and respectful expression as may be outwardly
assumed towards a fellow-being whom all secretly despised or
desired to kill. Was there really a murderous gleam in the averted
eyes of those Belgians arrayed in salute before the Herr Major, or
was it my imagination that put it there? Perhaps you can tell.

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