Italy at War and the Allies in the West Part 8

"Those are three men," he continued. "The man at the right lives in the first of this row of cottages. The man in the middle lives in the fourth house in the row. But the man at the left is a farmer, and lives in this isolated farmhouse out here in the country."

"A very clever guess," I remarked, scepticism showing in my tone, I fear.

"We do not guess in this business," he replied reprovingly. "We _know_." And he handed me the next photograph, taken a few seconds later. There was no doubt about it; the pin-point of a man at the right had left his two companions and was turning in at the first of the row of cottages. Another photograph was produced. It showed the second man entering the gate of the fourth cottage. And the final picture of the series showed the remaining speck plodding on alone toward his home in the country.

"An officer of some importance is evidently making this house his headquarters," remarked the commandant, indicating another tiny rectangle. "If he wasn't of some importance he wouldn't have a telephone."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "You don't mean to tell me that you can photograph a telephone-wire from a mile in the air?"

"Not quite," he admitted, "but sometimes, if the light happens to be right, we can get photographs of its shadow."

And sure enough, stretching across the ploughed fields, I could see, through the gla.s.s, a phantom line, intersected at regular intervals by short and somewhat thicker lines. It was the shadow of a field-telephone and its poles! And the airplane from which that photograph was taken was so high that it must have looked like a mere speck to one on the ground. There's war magic for you.

You will ask, of course, why the Germans don't maintain over the Allied lines a similar system of aerial observation. They do--when the Allies let them. But the Allies now have in commission on the Western Front such an enormous number of aircraft--I think I have said elsewhere the French alone probably have close to seven thousand machines--and they have made such great improvements in their anti-aircraft guns that to-day it is a comparatively rare thing to see a German flier over territory held by the Allies. The moment that a German flier takes the air, half a dozen Allied airmen rise to meet and engage him, and, in the rare event of his being able to elude them and get over the Allied lines, the "Archies," as the anti-aircraft guns are called on the British front, get into noisy action. (Their name, it is said, came from a London music-hall song which was exceedingly popular at the beginning of the war. When the sh.e.l.ls from the German A. A. guns burst harmlessly around the British airmen they would hum mockingly the concluding line of the song: "Archibald, certainly not!") Unable to keep their fliers in the air, the Germans are to all intents and purposes blind. They are unable to regulate the fire of their artillery or to direct their infantry attacks; they do not know what damage their sh.e.l.ls are doing; and they have no means of learning what is going on behind the enemy's lines.

It is obvious, therefore, that to have and keep control of the air is a very, very important thing.

No one who has been in Europe during the past two years can have failed to notice the unpopularity of the Belgians among the French and English. This is regrettable but true. Also it is unjust. When I left Belgium in the late autumn of 1914 the Belgians were looked on as a nation of heroes. They were acclaimed as the saviors of Europe.

Nothing was too good for them. The sight of a Belgian uniform in the streets of London or Paris was the signal for a popular ovation. When the red-black-and-yellow banner was displayed on the stage of a music-hall the audience rose en ma.s.se. The story of the defense of Liege sent a thrill of admiration round the world. But in the two and a half years that have pa.s.sed since then there has become noticeable among French and English--particularly among the English--a steadily growing dislike for their Belgian allies; a dislike which has, in certain quarters, grown into a thinly veiled contempt. I have repeatedly heard it a.s.serted that the Belgian has been spoiled by too much charity, that he is lazy and ungrateful and complaining, that he has become a professional pauper, that he has been greatly overrated as a fighter, and that he has had enough of the war and is ready to quit.

The truth of the matter is this: The majority of the Belgians who fled before the advancing Germans belonged to the lower cla.s.ses; they were for the most part uneducated and lacking in mental discipline. Is it any wonder, then, that they gave way to blind panic when the stories of the barbarities practised by the invaders reached their ears, or that their heads were turned by the hysterical enthusiasm, the lavish hospitality, with which they were received in England? That as a result of being thus lionized, many of these ignorant and mercurial people became fault-finding and overbearing, there is no denying. Nor can it be truthfully gainsaid that, for a year or more after the war began, there hung about the London restaurants and music-halls a number of young Belgians who ought to have been with their army on the firing-line. But, if my memory serves me rightly, I think that I saw quite a number of English youths doing the same thing. Every country has its slackers, and Belgium is no exception. But to attempt to belittle the glorious heroism of the Belgian nation because of a few young slackers or the ingrat.i.tude and ill-manners of some ignorant peasants, is an unworthy and despicable thing. The a.s.sertion that the Belgians are lacking in courage is as untruthful as it is cruel. Ask the Germans who charged up the fire-swept slopes of Liege--those of them left alive--if the Belgians are cowards. Ask those who saw the fields of Aerschot and Vilvorde and Termonde and Malines strewn with Belgian dead. Go stand for a few days--and nights--beside the Belgians who are holding those mud-filled trenches on the Yser. And remember that the Belgians were fighting while the English were still only talking about it. Nor forget that, had not their heroic resistance given France a breathing-spell in which to complete her tardy mobilization, the Germans would now, in all probability, be in Paris.

The truth is that the civilized world owes to the Belgians a debt which it can never repay. We of America are honored to be counted among their Allies.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] In order to keep pace with the steady improvement in range and accuracy of anti-aircraft artillery, aviators have found it necessary to operate at constantly increasing alt.i.tudes, so that it is now not uncommon for aerial combats to be fought at a height of 20,000 feet.

Hence, many airplanes are now equipped with oxygen-bags for use in the rarefied atmosphere of the higher levels. The aviators operating on the Italian front experience such intense cold during the winter months that a system has been evolved for heating their caps, gloves, and boots by electricity generated by the motor.

[G] For an account of this, the longest-range bombardment in history, see Mr. Powell's "Vive la France!"