The Land of Deepening Shadow Part 4

There are a few professors of international law in Germany, however, who have preserved a legally-balanced att.i.tude despite their sympathies. One of these wrote an article for a law periodical, many of the statements of which were in direct contradiction to statements in the German Press. The German people, for example, were being instructed--a not difficult task--that Britain was violating international law when her vessels hoisted a neutral flag during pursuit. This professor simply quoted paragraph 81 of the German Prize Code which showed that orders to German s.h.i.+ps were precisely the same. Were this known to the German population one of the ten thousand hate tricks would be out of commission. Therefore, this and similar articles must be suppressed, not because they are not true, but because they would interfere with the delusion of hate which saturates the mind of the new Germany. I have seen articles returned to this distinguished writer with the censor stamp: _Not to be published till after the war_.

When a winning Germany began to grow angry at American munition deliveries I heard much talk of the indemnity which the United States would be compelled to pay after Europe had been duly disposed of. Professor Hermann Oncken, of the University of Heidelberg, made this his theme in a widely read booklet, ent.i.tled, "_Deutschlands Weltkrieg und die Deutsch-Amerikaner_."

Professor P. von Gast, of the Technical College of Aachen, does not appear to realise that his country has a sufficient job on her hands in Europe and Africa, but thinks the midst of a great war a suitable time to arouse his countrymen against the United States in Latin America. He explains that the Monroe Doctrine was simply an attempt on the part of the great Anglo-Saxon Republic to gobble up the whole continent to the south for herself. "All the world must oppose America in this attempt," he feels.

Then there is Professor Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who writes on reprisals in the _Juristenblatt_ of July, 1916. It should be borne in mind that he is a professor of law and that he is writing in a book which is read by legal minds and not by the general public; all the more reason that we should expect something that would contain common sense. Professor Bartholdy, after expressing his profound horror over the French raid on Karlsruhe, hastens to explain that such methods can be of not the slightest military advantage to the French, but will only arouse Germany to fight all the harder. He deplores enemy attacks on unfortified districts, and claims that the French military powers confess that such acts are not glorious by their failure to pin decorations on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the aviators who perpetrate them, in the same way as the German Staff honours heroes like Boelke and Immelmann, who fight, as do all German aviators, like men.

There have been many incidents outside of Germany of which the professor apparently has never heard, or else his sense of humour is below the zero mark.

My talks with German professors impressed me with how little most of them keep in touch with the war situation from day to day and from month to month. A Berlin professor of repute with whom I sipped coffee one day in the Cafe Bauer expressed the greatest surprise when he heard that a neutral could actually get from America to Germany. I heard this opinion very often among the common people, but had supposed that doctors of philosophy were somewhat better informed.

During my conversation with another professor, whose war remarks have been circulated in the neutral countries by the Official News Service, he remarked that he read the London Times and other English newspapers regularly.

"Oh, so you get the English papers?" I asked, fully aware that one may do so in Germany.

"Not exactly," returned the professor. "The Government has a very nice arrangement by which condensed articles from the English newspapers are prepared and sent to us professors."

This was the final straw. I had always considered professors to be men who did research work, and I supposed that professors on political science and history consulted original sources when possible. Yet the German professor of the twentieth century, is content to take what the Government gives him and only what the Government gives to him.

Thus we find that the professor is a great power in Germany in the control of the minds of the people, and that the Government controls the mind of the professor. He is simply one of the instruments in the German Government's Intellectual Blockade of the German people.

CHAPTER VI

THE LIE ON THE FILM

At the end of an absorbingly interesting reel showing the Kaiser reviewing his troops, a huge green trade-mark globe revolved with a streamer fluttering _Berlin_. The lights were turned on and the operator looked over his a.s.sortment of reels.

An American had been granted permission to take war films in Germany in the autumn of 1914, to be exhibited in the United States. After he had arrived, however, the authorities had refused to let him take pictures with the army, but, like the proverbial druggist, had offered him something "just as good." In London, on his return journey home, he showed to a few newspaper correspondents the films which Germany had foisted upon him.

"The next film, gentlemen, will depict scenes in East Prussia," the operator announced.

Although I had probably seen most of these pictures in Germany, my interest quickened, for I had been through that devastated province during and after the first invasion. Familiar scenes of ruined villages and refugees scudding from the sulphur storm pa.s.sed before my eyes. Then came the ruined heap of a once stately church tagged _Beautiful Church in Allenburg Destroyed by the Russians_. The destruction seemed the more heinous since a trace of former beauty lived through the ruins, and you could not view this link of evidence against the Russians without a feeling of resentment.

This out-of-the-way church was not architecturally important to the world as is Rheims Cathedral, to be sure, but the destruction seemed just as wanton.

The next picture flashed on the screen showed a Russian church intact, with the simple t.i.tle, _Russian Church at Potetschiki_.

The moral of the sequence was clear. The German Government, up to the minute in all things, knows the vivid educative force of the kinema, and realises the effect of such a sequence of pictures upon her people at home and neutrals throughout the world, It enables them to see for themselves the difference between the barbarous Russians and the generous Germans.

The reel buzzed on, but I did not see the succeeding pictures, for my thoughts were of far-off East Prussia, of Allenburg, and of the true story of the ruined church by the Alle River.

Tannenberg had been fought, Samsanow had been decisively smashed in the swamps and plashy streams, and Hindenburg turned north-east to cut off Rennenkampf's army, which had advanced to the gates of Konigsberg. The outside world had been horrified by stories of German crime in Belgium; whereupon Germany counter attacked with reports of terrible atrocities perpetrated by the Russians, of boys whose right hands had been cut off so that they could never serve in the army, of wanton murder, rapine and burnings. I read these stories in the Berlin papers, and they filled me with a deep feeling against Russia.

One of the most momentous battles of history was being fought in the West, and the Kaiser's armies were in full retreat from the Marne to the Aisne, but Berlin knew nothing of this. Refugees from East Prussia with white arm-bands filled the streets, Hindenburg and victory were on every tongue, Paris was forgotten, and all interest centred in the Eastern theatre of war.

That was in the good old days when the war was young, when armies were taking up positions, when the management of newspaper reporters was not developed to a fine art, when Europe was topsy-turvy, when it was quite the thing for war correspondents to outwit the authorities and see all they could.

I resolved to make an attempt to get into East Prussia, and as it was useless to wait for official permission--that is, if I was to see things while fresh--I determined to play the game and trust to luck.

Danzig seemed the end of my effort, for the railroad running east was choked with military trains, the transportation of troops and supplies in one direction and prisoners and wounded in the other.

By good fortune, however, I booked pa.s.sage on a boat for Konigsberg.

The little steamer nosed its way through a long lock ca.n.a.l amid scenery decidedly Dutch, with old grey windmills dotting broad fiat stretches, black and white cows looming large and distinct on the landscape, and fish nets along the waters edge. To the right the sh.o.r.e grew bolder after we entered the _Frishes Haff_, a broad lagoon separated from the Baltic by a narrow strip of pasture land.

Red sails glowed in the clear suns.h.i.+ne, adding an Adriatic touch.

c.u.mbersome junk-like boats flying the Red Cross pa.s.sed west under full sail. Germany was using every man at her disposal to transport wounded and prisoners from the battle region which we were drawing near.

A smoky haze ahead indicated Konigsberg. The mouth of the Pregel bustled with activity, new fortifications were being everywhere thrown up, while indistinct field-grey figures swarmed over the plain like ants. We glided through forests of masts and rigging and slid up to a pier opposite great sagging warehouses behind which the sun was setting.

As I picked up my bag to go ash.o.r.e, a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and I was asked to wait until we were boarded from the police boat which was puffing alongside. My detainer, a government inspector, a man of ma.s.sive frame with deep set eyes and a s.h.a.ggy black beard, refused to say more than that the police wished to see me. They had been signalled and were coming to the boat expressly for that purpose.

American ammunition had not begun to play its part in German public opinion at that time, and, moreover, America was being hailed everywhere in Germany as a possible ally against j.a.pan. Therefore, although only a few days previously Russian guns had been booming less than a dozen miles away, and Konigsburg was now the base against Rennenkampf, my presence was tolerated, and I finally managed to get lodgings for the night after I had found two hotels turned into hospitals,

I spent the following day trying to obtain permission to pa.s.s the cordon of sentries outside the city, but I received only the advice to go back to Berlin and apply at the _Auswartiges Amt_ (Foreign Office). I did not wish to wait in Berlin until this campaign was over; I wished to follow on the heels of the army through the ruined land and catch up to the fighting if possible. American correspondents had done this in Belgium. I myself had done it with the Austrians against the Serbs, and I succeeded in East Prussia, but not through Berlin.

I was well aware that Germany was making a tremendous bid for neutral favour. I had furthermore heard so much of Russian atrocities that I was convinced that the stories were true; consequently I decided to play the role of an investigator of Muscovite crime. I won Herr Meyer of the Wolff Telegraph Bureau, who sent me along with his card to Commandant von Rauch, who at first refused to let me proceed, but after I had hovered outside his door for three days, finally gave me a pa.s.s to go to Tapiau, the high-water mark of the Russian invasion.

That night, "by chance," in the _Deutscher Hof_, I met the black-bearded official who had arrested me on the boat, and I told him that I had permission to go to Tapiau next morning. When he became convinced, that I was a professional atrocity hunter who believed that the Russians had been brutal, his hospitality became boundless, and over copious steins of Munich beer he described the invaders in a manner which made Gladstone's expose of the Turks in Bulgaria, the stories of Captain Kidd, and the tales of the Spanish Inquisition seem like essays on brotherly love. He was particularly incensed at the Russians because they had destroyed Allenburg, for Allenburg was his home. One of the stories on which he laid great stress was that a band of Cossacks had pillaged the church just outside of Allenburg on the road to Friedland, after they had driven sixty innocent maidens into it and outraged them there.

A train of the _Militar-Personenzug_ variety bore me next morning through a country of barbed wire, gun emplacements and fields seamed with trenches to Tapiau, a town withered in the blast of war. Two ruined bridges in the Pregel bore silent testimony to the straits of the retreating Germans, for the remaining ends on the further sh.o.r.e were barricaded with sc.r.a.ps of iron and wood gathered from the wreckage.

Landsturm guards examined my pa.s.s, which was good only for Tapiau and return. I decided to miss the train back, however, and push on in the wake of the army to Wehlau. Outside of Tapiau I was challenged by a sentry, who, to my amazement, did not examine my now worthless pa.s.s when I pulled it from my pocket, but motioned me on.

The road ran through eye-tiring stretches of meadows pockmarked with great sh.e.l.l holes full of black water. I came upon the remains of an old brick farmhouse battered to dust in woods which were torn to splinters by sh.e.l.l, bullet and shrapnel. The Russians had bombarded Tapiau from here, and had in turn been sh.e.l.led in the trenches which they had dug and chopped in the labyrinth of roots.

Among the debris of tins, cases, knapsacks and cartridge clips were fragments of uniforms which had been blown off Russian bodies by German sh.e.l.ls, while on a branch above my head a shrivelled human arm dangled in the light breeze of September.

I left the sickening atmosphere of the woods behind and pushed on to Wehlau, a primitive little town situated on the meadows where the Alle flows into the Pregel. Here my troubles began. Soldiers stared at me as I walked through crooked, narrow streets unevenly paved with small stones in a manner that would bring joy to the heart of a shoe manufacturer. The sun sank in a cloudless blaze behind a line of trenches on a gentle slope above the western sh.o.r.e when I entered the _Gasthof Rabe_, where I hoped to get a room for the night.

I had no sooner crossed the threshold, however, than I was arrested and brought to the Etappen-Commandant in the Pregelstra.s.se. I fully expected to be placed under arrest or be deported, but I determined to put up the best bluff possible. A knowledge of Germans and their respect for any authority above that invested in their own individual selves led me to decide upon a bold course of action, so I resolved to play the game with a high hand and with an absolute exterior confidence of manner.

Instead of waiting to be questioned when I was brought into the presence of the stern old officer, I told him at once that I had been looking for him. I informed him that Herr von Meyer and Commandant Rauch in Konigsberg were in hearty sympathy with my search for Russian atrocities, but although I succeeded in quieting any suspicions which the Commandant may have entertained, I found winning permission to stay in Wehlau an exceedingly difficult matter.

Orders were orders! He explained that the battle was rolling eastward not far away and that I must go back. To add weight to what he said he read me a set of typewritten orders which had come from Berlin the day before. "Journalists are not allowed with the army or in the wake of the army in East Prussia... ." he read, in a tone which indicated that he considered the last word said.

But I had become so fascinated with this battle-scarred, uncanny, out-of-the-way land that I resolved to try every means to stay. I declared that on this particular mission I was more of an investigator than a journalist, that I had the special task (self-imposed, to be sure) of investigating Russian atrocities; that if Berlin reports were to be given credence abroad they must be substantiated by some impartial observer. If Germany would supply the atrocities, I would supply the copy. That she wished to do so was evidenced by the permissions granted me by Herr von Meyer of the Wolff Telegraph Bureau and Commandant Rauch of the capital of the devastated province. (I had pa.s.sed beyond the point where I was told that I could go, but at any rate their names carried weight.) Would it not seem strange if the Commandant at Wehlau had me sent back after these great men had set their seal of approval upon my investigations? After Germany had made such grave charges against the Russians, how would it impress American readers that the German Commandant at Wehlau could not make good and had sent me back?

Then, as a finis.h.i.+ng stroke, I pulled my pa.s.sport from my pocket and showed Berlin's approval of me stamped impressively in the right-hand corner. This vise was not at all unique with me. It had been affixed to the pa.s.sports of thousands of Americans of all grades, and was merely to ensure pa.s.sage from Germany into Holland.

As I did not wish to impose upon the time of the Commandant I did not burden him with these extraneous details while he feasted his eyes on the magic words: _Gesehen, Berlin_. Mount Olympus, Mecca, Imperial and Ecclesiastical Rome all rolled into one--that is authoritative Berlin to the German of the province.

"Gesehen, Berlin" he repeated with reverence, carefully folded the pa.s.sport and deferentially handed it back to me. I saw that I was winning, so I sought to rise to the occasion.

"And now, Herr Commandant," I began, "can you suggest where I may best begin my atrocity work tomorrow? Or first, would it not be well for me to get a more complete idea of the invasion by seeing on the map just what routes the Russians took coming in?"

He unfolded a large military map of peerless German accuracy and regaled me for more than half an hour with the military features of the campaign.

"Just tell me the worst things that the Russians have done," I began, "and I will start investigating them tomorrow."