The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 Part 22

I left Furnes on a French motor truck carrying bread and meat to the troops at Nieuport. For about three miles the truck followed the ca.n.a.l, pa.s.sing the village of Wulpen, and then came to a stop. We had arrived near the bridge over which we must pa.s.s to reach Nieuport. As we slowly approached the bridge I asked the chauffeur: "What is delaying us?" "It is a little too warm for the moment," he replied.

When a soldier admits that things are warm it is certain that there is serious fighting afoot. To the right and left over the fields we could see the inundations. On the roads our soldiers were moving and the guns of the Allies were filling the air with thunder. In the intervals one could hear the spitting of quick-firers and the lesser chorus of rifle fire. Just ahead on a little bridge were a few soldiers of the engineer corps busily at work under the direction of a Lieutenant.

Suddenly I saw them fall flat on the ground. At the same moment a sh.e.l.l whistled over their heads and buried itself in the ca.n.a.l bank only forty yards from us.

"Shelter your machine behind the house," shouted the Lieutenant, and the chauffeur did not want a second telling. He backed the truck a few yards to place it against a house opposite the bridge at the corner of the road from Ramscapelle.

I left the truck and stood with some soldiers close against the wall. In five minutes fifteen sh.e.l.ls fell within a radius of 100 yards of the bridge, but not one struck the bridge itself. We could hear them come shrieking toward us, and the only comment of the soldiers each time was "Here comes another."

We pa.s.sed over the bridge and advanced along the ca.n.a.l bank in the direction of the Germans. As we approached the trenches near the Dixmude railway bridge we were able to survey the plain of St. Georges, which is now completely under water. For a moment the firing between the trenches had ceased, and we were able to take a leisurely view of the scene from the height of the bridge over an area half a mile square. The water is three feet deep, and in the centre of the lake stands a farmhouse surrounded by trees. French and Belgian soldiers had crossed the water, advancing under the protection of artillery fire, and had captured the houses standing on the far side.

Returning to our motor, we quickly reached Nieuport. The aspect of the place was strange. The houses, as in all ancient fortified towns, press closely one against another. The streets, however, are wide and regular.

They were as empty as the streets of a dead city. In the roofs of the houses were large holes. Windows and doors had been destroyed, and blinds and curtains were floating out on the wind.

To my great surprise I learned that four or five houses were still occupied. About twenty inhabitants, I was told, were still living in their cellars after the two months' bombardment. The soldiers did what they could to feed these people, who said that rather than leave their homes they would perish in the ruins. The rest of the inhabitants, about 4,000, had fled, taking with them only what they could carry in their hands. In every house one could see broken furniture covered with dust.

In many of them gaping holes had been torn by sh.e.l.ls, while some of the front walls had been carried clean away. Bedsteads and wardrobes were seen standing awry on the upper floors, ready to fall into the street.

Of other houses, reduced, one may say, to powder, only heaps of rubbish remain, in which one can distinguish among pieces of tiles and bricks and plaster chests of drawers, pianos, sideboards, sewing machines, and so forth, broken and mixed with what is left of household linen and crockery. Family portraits, as if in mockery, remain hanging in places and contemplate the scene of ruin. The contents of the shops have been scattered over the floors, and whatever has not been destroyed by sh.e.l.ls, shrapnel, and bombs, has been left to rot under the rain which comes through the roofs and ceilings. All sorts of merchandise was lying about in confusion on the pavements.

The church, one of the oldest Gothic monuments in the country, has been completely demolished. The belfry tower is torn open, and one broken bell is lying on the ground at the edge of a pit some thirty feet in width, made by the explosion of an enormous German sh.e.l.l. A large wooden crucifix by the side of the church has been torn from the ground and lies in a ditch.

There is a layer three feet deep of pieces of wood covering the floor of the church. This was once the roof and furniture of the old Gothic temple.

The cemetery, furrowed by sh.e.l.ls, contains fresh graves covered with flowers. These are graves of officers and soldiers. On one of them are a soldier's coat and cap; on another a small Belgian flag. The second grave was dug only this morning, the young soldier, I was told by a Sergeant, having arrived at 8 o'clock and having been killed by a German sh.e.l.l at 10.

Only one structure in Nieuport remained intact, the Templars' Tower, a very solid piece of masonry, five centuries old.

Groups of officers and men were moving about among the ruins of the town. They were all young men, whose laughter and jokes contrasted grimly with the terrible howl of the guns and the crash of the projectiles which were still falling in the town. The French batteries added to the noise. Nothing can describe the terrible power of the heavy French artillery. The voice of the guns pierced my ear drums. Though they were posted at a considerable distance, one might almost think them close at hand. As a sh.e.l.l pa.s.ses over your head it reminds you of a hurricane blowing through the bare branches of a forest.

Accompanied by my chauffeur, I ran through streets which he pointed out as being more dangerous than others. They were being sh.e.l.led from the flank by the Germans, and sometimes, I was told, accidents would occur; that is, somebody would be killed by a sh.e.l.l flying along the street from one end to the other. One feels one's self much more at ease in the streets which intersect these thoroughfares at right angles.

In one spot I met a Red Cross motor ambulance laden with wounded, and going in the midst of the gravest danger, in the direction of Furnes. At another point we saw a French Captain, who, in a stern voice, ordered his soldiers to keep away from the middle of the street. These men were not on duty for the moment and were chatting as merrily as if they were in no danger.

Raid on Scarborough Seen from a Window

By Ruth Kauffmann.

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

CLOUGHTON, Scarborough, England, Dec. 17.--It's a very curious thing to watch a bombardment from your house.

Everybody knew the Kaiser would do it. But there was a little doubt about the date, and then somehow the spy-hunting sport took up general attention. When the Kaiser did send his card here yesterday morning it was quite as much of a surprise as most Christmas cards--from a friend forgotten.

Eighteen people were killed yesterday morning between 8 o'clock and 8:30 in the streets and houses of Scarborough by German shrapnel, 200 were wounded, and more than 200 houses were damaged or demolished.

A little before 8 o'clock three dreadnought cruisers were seen to cut through the light fog, which was just lifting, and, hugging the cliffs opposite our house, scuttle south to Scarborough. From our windows we could not at that hour quite make out the contours of the ruined castle, which is generally plainly visible. Our attention was called to the fact that there was "practicing" going on, and we could, at 8:07, see quick flashes. That these flashes pointed directly at Scarborough we did not for a few minutes comprehend. Then, the fog slowly lifting, we saw a fog that was partly smoke. The castle grew into its place in the six miles distance. It seemed for a moment that the eight-foot-thick Norman walls tottered; but no, whatever tottered was behind the keep. Curiously enough we could barely hear the cannonading, for the wind was keen in the opposite direction, yet we could, as the minutes crept by and the air cleared, see distinctly the flashes from the boats and the flashes in the city.

After about fifteen minutes there was a cessation, or perhaps a hesitation, that lasted two minutes; then the flashes continued. Ten minutes more and the boats began to move again. One cruiser disappeared completely from sight, sailing south by east. The other two rushed, like fast trains, north again, again close to our cliffs; and in another half hour we heard all too plainly the cannonading which had almost escaped our ears from Scarborough. We thought it was Robin Hood's Bay, as far north of us as Scarborough is south; but afterward we learned that the boats omitted this pretty red-roofed town and concentrated their remaining energy on Whithy, fifteen miles north; the wind blowing toward us brought us the vibrating boom.

We drove to Scarborough. We had not gone one mile of the distance when we began to meet people coming in the opposite direction. A small white-faced boy in a milk cart that early every morning makes its Scarborough rounds showed us a piece of sh.e.l.l he had picked up and said it had first struck a man a few yards from him and killed the man. A woman carrying a basket told us, with trembling lips, that men and women were lying about the streets dead. The postman a.s.sured us that Scarborough was in flames. A road worker told us we should be turned back, and another man warned us to beware of a big hole in the road further along, large enough to swallow our horse and trap; yet we could certainly see no flames issuing from Scarborough, which now lay directly before us.

We put up the horse at a stable on the very edge of the city and walked up the steep hill. The hotelkeeper and his wife, we were told, were already "refugees."

Scarborough is a sprawling town that stretches a length of about three miles from the extreme north end to the extreme south. Inland about a mile and a half is a wireless station, and on the cliff, 300 feet high, stands the ruined castle and its walled-in grounds, in the midst of which is--or was, for it was yesterday blown clean away--a signal station. Although there are barracks the town is unfortified. A seaside resort of considerable importance, its population varies by many thousands in Winter and Summer, with a stationary population of 45,000.

But to compensate for its Summer losses are the numerous fas.h.i.+onable schools for both boys and girls.

We did not meet a deserted city when we entered. The streets were thronging. There was a Sunday hush over everything without the accompanying Sunday clothes, but people moved about or stood at their doorways. Many of the shop fronts were boarded up and shop windows were empty of display. The main street, a narrow pa.s.sageway that clambers up from the sea and points due west, was filled with a procession that slowly marched down one side and up the other. People hardly spoke.

They made room automatically for a group of silent boy scouts, who carried an unconscious woman past us to the hospital. There was the insistent honk of a motor car as it pushed its way through; all that struck me about the car was the set face of an old man rising above improvised bandages about his neck, part of the price of the Kaiser's Christmas card.

The damage to property did not first reach our attention. But as we walked down the main street and then up it with the procession we saw that shops and houses all along had windows smashed next to windows unhurt. At first we thought the broken windows were from concussion, but apparently very few were so broken; there was not much concussion, but the sh.e.l.ls, splintering as they exploded, had flown red-hot in every direction. The smoke we had seen had come from fires quickly extinguished. Scarborough was not "in flames."

We left the main business street and picked our way toward the Foresh.o.r.e and the South Cliff, the more fas.h.i.+onable part of town as well as the school section. Here there was a great deal of havoc, and we had to climb over some of the debris. Roofs were half torn off and balancing in mid-air; sh.e.l.ls had shot through chimneys, and some chimneys tottered, while several had merely round roles through the brickwork; mortar, bricks, and gla.s.s lay about the streets; here a third-story room was bare to the view, the wall lifted out as for a child's dollhouse and disclosing a single bedroom with shaving materials on the bureau still secure; there a drug store lay fallen into the street, and the iron railing about it was torn and twisted out of shape. A man and a boy had just been carried away dead. All around small pieces of iron rail and ripped-up asphalt lay scattered. Iron bars were driven into the woodwork of houses; there were great gaps in walls and roofs; the attack had not spent itself on any one section of the city, but had scattered itself in different wards. The freaks of the sh.e.l.ls were as inexplicable as those of a great fire that destroys everything in a house except a piano and a mantelpiece with its bric-a-brac, or a flood that carries away a log cabin and leaves a rose bush unharmed and blooming.

Silent pedestrians walked along and searched the ground for souvenirs, of which there were aplenty. Sentries guarded houses and streets where it was dangerous to explore, and park benches were used as barriers to the public. All the cabs were requisitioned to take away luggage and frightened inhabitants. During the sh.e.l.ling hundreds of women and children, breakfastless, their hair hanging, hatless, and even penniless, except for their mere railway fares, had rushed to the station and taken tickets to the first safe town they could think of.

There was no panic, these hatless, penniless women all a.s.serted, when they arrived in York and Leeds. A wealthy woman whom I slightly know nearly rushed into my arms, her face very flushed, and told me that she had left the servants to pack her china and vases, and was now on her way to find a workman to dig a hole in the garden to receive them; as for herself, she would eat from kitchen dishes henceforth.

A friend of mine hurried into Scarborough by motor to rescue her sister, who was a pupil at one of the boarding schools. But it appeared that when the windows of the school began to crash the teachers hurried from prayers, ordered the pupils to gather hats and coats and sweet chocolate that happened to be on hand as a subst.i.tute for breakfast, and made them run for a mile and a half, with sh.e.l.ls exploding about them, through the streets to the nearest out-of-Scarborough railway station. My friend, after unbelievable difficulties, finally found her sister in a private house of a village near by, the girl in tears and pleading not to be sent to London; she had been told that her family's house was probably destroyed, as it was actually on the seacoast.

On the other hand, instances of self-possession were not lacking.

Another school hardby took all its children to the cellars, where the teachers made light of the matter, and the frightened father of one very nervous child was pleasantly amazed to find his child much calmer than himself--and quite delighted with the experience. In St. Martin's Church, the Archdeacon was celebrating communion. Sh.e.l.ls struck the roof of the church. The Archdeacon stopped the service for a brief moment to say:

"We are evidently being bombarded. But we are as safe here as we can be anywhere," and proceeded calmly with the service.

We left Scarborough at night. The exodus of inhabitants, school children, whose Christmas holidays began earlier by one day on account of the raid, and visitors continued steadily. The cabmen, so idle in Winter, were rejoiced to find that work for today would not be lacking.

"At this rate," said one of them to me as he lighted the carriage candles for our trap and handed me the reins, "if the Germans come again there'll be no one left for them to kill."

There is, the Admiralty tells us, no military significance in this event, and, from the British point of view, I doubt if a woman will ever be considered worthy of a hearing in anything military; but I presume there is some sort of significance from a real estate point of view in the holes made in the hotels and houses, and from the hospital point of view in the sad procession of stretchers. But however little significance the December bombardment of Scarborough has, it is certainly a surprise to be wakened by three hostile cruisers, and one must admit that the Kaiser has at least left his greetings of the season on the east coast.

How the Baroness Hid Her Husband on a Vessel

[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

LONDON, Dec. 7.--The story of how Baroness Hans Heinrich von Wolf, who was Miss Humphreys, well known in New York society, smuggled her husband into Germany after the beginning of the war past a British cruiser and two sets of British s.h.i.+pping inspectors so that he could fight for the Fatherland is revealed in news received here giving details as to the bestowal upon the Baron of the Iron Cross of the First Cla.s.s.

Baron von Wolf and his wife, who is the daughter of a wealthy patent medicine manufacturer and whose stepfather is Consul General St. John Gaffney, at Munich, were on their plantation in German Southwest Africa, when the Kaiser ordered the mobilization. Being a reserve officer, the Baron started homeward on board a German steams.h.i.+p on July 29, and, fortunately for him, the Baroness accompanied him.

On receipt of wireless information that war had been declared, their s.h.i.+p promptly put into Rio Janeiro toward the middle of August, and it was two weeks later before the Wolfs found a neutral vessel headed for Holland.

In South American waters they were halted by a British cruiser, but although there were many German reservists among the pa.s.sengers, the cruiser was so full of Germans already that she could not carry any more, so they were permitted to proceed.

Baron von Wolf left the s.h.i.+p "officially" at Vigo, Spain, his wife waving a tearful farewell to his imaginary figure on the tender. He was really secreted, through the connivance of a generously bribed steward, in a tiny closet, where he remained for twenty-four hours. Finally he was spirited into his wife's state-room, and during the rest of the voyage spent most of his time lying under her berth. All his meals, drinks, and cigarettes were brought in by the steward, who was in the plot, and, as the Baroness remarked laughingly to friends afterward, "I gained a frightful reputation as a heavy drinker and smoker, and one Mrs. Grundy even spread the scandalous report that I had a man in my room."