Read Ebook: In the Claws of the German Eagle by Williams Albert Rhys

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Ebook has 782 lines and 48106 words, and 16 pages

"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:

"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.

Picture your country devastated, your towns burned, your flag prohibited, your farmers shot, your women and children terrified, your papers and public meetings suppressed, your streets patrolled by aliens with drawn swords as your enemies' bands triumphantly play their national airs. Picture, then, yourself lied about by hireling spies, thrown into prison, compelled to breathe foul air and sleep upon a floor, fed on black bread, and held day after day for sentence in nerve-racking suspense. Picture to yourself now the abject humiliation of being compelled to stand bare-headed in salute before these wreckers and spoilers of your land. Do you think you might keep back from your eyes sparks from that blazing rebellion in your soul? Then it was not imagination that made me see the murderous gleam in the eyes of those high-spirited Belgians. "Salute the Major!" the Germans shouted. What seeds of hate those words planted in those Belgian souls the future will show, when they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.

That is the unseen horror of war; pictures can reveal the damage wrought by shot and shell, fire and flood in the blasted cities and in the fields of the dead. But nothing can ever show the irreparable spiritual damage wrought to the human soul by hates, humiliations, fears and undying animosities.

Sweating Under The German Third Degree

I set to work hunting carefully through my pockets for everything that might furnish the slightest basis for any charge against me. Before coming to Brussels I had been warned not to carry anything that might be the least incriminating, and there was not much on me; but I did have a pass from the Belgian commander giving me access to the Antwerp fortifications. I had figured on framing it as a souvenir of my adventures, but my molars now reduced it to an unrecognizable pulp. Cards of introduction from French and English friends fared a similar fate. Their remains were disposed of in the shuffling that accompanied the arrival of new prisoners. This had to be done most craftily, for we never knew where were the spying eyes.

About six o'clock I was resting from my masticatory labors when Javert presented himself, accompanied by two soldiers. I was led away into the council room where first I had been taken in the morning. It was now turned into a trial chamber. Javert, as prosecutor, was seated on one side of the table, while around the farther end were ranged some officers and a few men in civilian clothes who proved to be secret service agents. I stood until the judge bade me take my seat at the vacant end of the table.

One by one my documents were disposed of--an American passport issued in London; a permit from the German Consul at Maastricht, Holland, to enter "the territory of Belgium-Germany," finally, this letter of introduction from the American Consulate at Ghent:

Consulat Americain.

Gand le 22 Septembre, 1914. Le Consul des Etats Unis d'Amerique a Gand, prie Messieurs les autorites de bien vouloir laisser passer le porteur de la presente Monsieur Albert Williams, citoyen Americain.

JULIUS VAN HEE, Consul Americain.

I pointed to the recent date on it, the 22nd of September, and to the signer of it, Julius van Hee.

Van Hee was a man who met the Germans on their own ground. He informed the German officer at his hotel: "If you send any spy prowling into my room, I'll take off my coat and proceed to throw him out of the window." Shirt-sleeves diplomat indeed! Another time he requested permission to take three Belgian women through the lines to their family in Bruges. The German commandant said "No." "All right," said Van Hee, taking out a package of letters from captured German officers who were now in the hands of the Belgians, and dangling the packet before the commandant, "If I don't get that permit, you don't get these letters." He got the permit.

After a few such clashes the invaders learned that when it came to this Schrecklichkeit business they had no monopoly on the article. Van Hee's name was not to be trifled with. But on the other hand there must necessarily have existed a certain resentment against him for his ruthless and effective diplomacy. It would no doubt afford Javert a pleasant sensation to take it out on any one appearing in any way as a prot?g? of Van Hee.

"Yes, it's Van Hee's signature all right," muttered Javert with a shrug of his shoulders, "only he is not the consul, but the vice- consul at Ghent and let us remember that he is of Belgian ancestry--that wouldn't incline him to deep friendship with us."

On a card of introduction from Ambassador Van Dyke there were the words "Writer for The Outlook." It's hard to understand how that escaped my very scrutinous search, but there it was.

"Another anti-German magazine," commented, sardonically. I was marveling at the uncanny display of knowledge of this man at the center of the European maelstrom, aware of the editorial policy of an American magazine.

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