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Title: World's War Events, Volume III
       Recorded by Statesmen, Commanders, Historians and by Men
       Who Fought or Saw the Great Campaigns

Author: Various

Editor: Francis J. Reynolds
          Allen L. Churchill

Release Date: August 12, 2005 [EBook #16513]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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[Illustration: IN FRONT IS GENERAL PETAIN ABOUT TO BE MADE A MARSHAL.
BEHIND HIM, FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, ARE MARSHAL JOFFRE AND MARSHAL FOCH
(FRENCH), FIELD MARSHAL HAIG (BRITISH), GENERAL PERSHING (AMERICAN),
GENERAL GILLAIN (BELGIAN), GENERAL ALBRICCI (ITALIAN), GENERAL HALLER
(POLISH)]





WORLD'S WAR
EVENTS

RECORDED BY STATESMEN -- COMMANDERS
HISTORIANS AND BY MEN WHO FOUGHT OR SAW
THE GREAT CAMPAIGNS

COMPILED AND EDITED BY

FRANCIS J. REYNOLDS

FORMER REFERENCE LIBRARIAN -- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

AND

ALLEN L. CHURCHILL

ASSOCIATE EDITOR "THE STORY OF THE GREAT WAR"
ASSOCIATE EDITOR "THE NEW INTERNATIONAL
ENCYCLOPEDIA"

VOLUME III

[Illustration]

PF COLLIER & SON COMPANY
NEW YORK

Copyright 1919

BY P.F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY




WORLD'S WAR EVENTS

VOLUME III

     BEGINNING WITH THE DEPARTURE OF THE FIRST
      AMERICAN DESTROYERS FOR SERVICE ABROAD
           IN APRIL, 1917, AND CLOSING
                 WITH THE TREATIES
                    OF PEACE IN
                        1919


CONTENTS

ARTICLE                                          PAGE

    I. A DESTROYER IN ACTIVE SERVICE               7
           _An American Officer_

   II. EAST AFRICA                                32
           _Jan Christiaan Smuts_

  III. GREECE'S ATONEMENT                         54
            _Lewis R. Freeman_

   IV. THE ITALIANS AT BAY                        69
           _G. Ward Price_

    V. BOTTLING UP ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND          101
          _Official Narrative_

   VI. WITH THE AMERICAN SUBMARINES              119
           _Henry B. Beston_

  VII. WOUNDED HEROES OF FRANCE                  138
            _Abbé Felix Klein_

 VIII. THE BATTLE OF PICARDY                     153
             _J.B.W. Gardiner_

   IX. BULGARIA QUITS                            170
           _Lothrop Stoddard_

    X. THE FIGHTING CZECHO-SLOVAKS               183
          _Maynard Owen Williams_

   XI. SIX DAYS ON THE AMERICAN FIRING LINE      200
           _Corporal H.J. Burbach_

  XII. AN AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD                   210
            _Raoul Blanchard_

 XIII. NIGHT RAIDS FROM THE AIR                  229
             _Mary Helen Fee_

  XIV. THE AMERICAN ARMY IN EUROPE               242
            _General John J. Pershing_

   XV. THE AMERICAN NAVY IN EUROPE               271
            _Admiral H.T. Mayo_

  XVI. ARMISTICE TERMS SIGNED BY GERMANY         297

 XVII. COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS         306

XVIII. TREATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY              318

  XIX. TREATY OF PEACE WITH AUSTRIA              365

 INDEX                                           375




A DESTROYER IN ACTIVE SERVICE

BY AN AMERICAN OFFICER



APRIL 7.

[Sidenote: War accepted with equanimity.]

[Sidenote: Life on a destroyer is simple.]

Well, I must confess that, even after war has been declared, the skies
haven't fallen and oysters taste just the same. I never would have
dreamed that so big a step would be accepted with so much equanimity. It
is due to two causes, I think. First, because we have trembled on the
verge so long and sort of dabbled our toes in the water, that our minds
have grown gradually accustomed to what under other circumstances would
be a violent shock. Second, because the individual units of the Navy are
so well prepared that there is little to do. We made a few minor changes
in the routine and slipped the war-heads on to the torpedoes, and
presto, we were ready for war. One beauty of a destroyer is that, life
on board being reduced to its simplest terms anyhow, there is little to
change. We may be ordered to "strip," that is, go to our Navy yard and
land all combustibles, paints, oils, surplus woodwork, etc.; but we have
not done so yet.

We were holding drill yesterday when the signal was made from the
flagship, "War is declared." I translated it to my crew, who received
the news with much gayety but hardly a trace of excitement.


APRIL 13.

[Sidenote: Anxiety to get into the big game.]

There is absolutely no news. We are standing by for what may betide,
with not the faintest idea of what it may be. Of course, we are
drilling all the time, and perfecting our readiness for action in every
way, but there is a total absence of that excitement and sense of
something impending that one usually associates with the beginning of
war. Indeed, I think that the only real anxiety is lest we may not get
into the big game at all. I do not think any of us are bloodthirsty or
desirous of either glory or advancement, but we have the wish to justify
our existence. With me it takes this form--by being in the service I
have sacrificed my chance to make good as husband, father, citizen, son,
in fact, in every human relationship, in order to be, as I trust, one of
the Nation's high-grade fighting instruments. Now, if fate never uses me
for the purpose to which I have been fashioned, then much time, labor,
and material have been wasted, and I had better have been made into a
good clerk, farmer, or business man.

[Sidenote: The desire to be put to the test.]

I do so want to be put to the test and not found wanting. Of course, I
know that the higher courage is to do your duty from day to day no
matter in how small a line, but all of us conceal a sneaking desire to
attempt the higher hurdles and sail over grandly.

You need not be proud of me, for there is no intrinsic virtue in being
in the Navy when war is declared; but I hope fate will give me the
chance to make you proud.


APRIL 21.

[Sidenote: A chance to command.]

[Sidenote: Bringing a ship to dock.]

I have been having lots of fun in command myself, and good experience. I
have taken her out on patrol up to Norfolk twice, where the channel is
as thin and crooked as a corkscrew, then into dry dock. Later, escorted
a submarine down, then docked the ship alongside of a collier, and have
established, to my own satisfaction at least, that I know how to handle
a ship. All this may not convey much, but you remember how you felt
when you first handled your father's car. Well, the car weighs about two
tons and the W---- a thousand, and she goes nearly as fast. You have to
bring your own mass up against another dock or oilship as gently as
dropping an egg in an egg-cup, and you can imagine what the battleship
skipper is up against, with 30,000 tons to handle. Only he generally has
tugs to help him, whereas we do it all by ourselves.

[Sidenote: Justifying one's existence as an officer.]

This war is far harder on you than on me. The drill, the work of
preparing for grim reality, all of it is what I am trained for. The very
thought of getting into the game gives me a sense of calmness and
contentment I have never before known. I suppose it is because
subconsciously I feel that I am justifying my existence now more than
ever before. And that feeling brings anybody peace.


MAY 1.

Back in harness again and thankful for the press of work that keeps me
from thinking about you all at home.

[Sidenote: Orders to sail.]

Well, we are going across all right, exactly where and for how long I do
not know. Our present orders are to sail to-morrow night, but there
seems to be wild uncertainty about whether we will go out then. In the
meantime, we are frantically taking on mountains of stores, ammunition,
provisions, etc., trying to fill our vacancies with new men from the
Reserve Ship, and hurrying everything up at high pressure.

Well, I am glad it has come. It is what I wanted and what I think you
wanted for me. It is useless to discuss all the possibilities of where
we are going and what we are going to do. From the look of things, I
think we are going to help the British. I hope so. Of course, we are a
mere drop in the bucket.


MAY 5.

[Sidenote: Happier always for having taken the chance.]

As I start off now, my only real big regret is that through
circumstances so much of my responsibility has been taken by
others--you, my brother, and your father. I don't know that I am really
to blame. At least, I am very sure that never in all my life did I
intentionally try to shift any load of mine onto another. But in any
case, it makes me all the more glad that I am where I am, going where I
am to go--to have my chance, in other words. I once said in jest that
all naval officers ought really to get killed, to justify their
existence. I don't exactly advocate that extreme. But I shall all my
life be happier for having at least taken my chance. It will increase my
self-respect, which in turn increases my usefulness in life. So can you
get my point of view, and be glad with me?

[Sidenote: The best things of life.]

Now I am to a great extent a fatalist, though I hope it really is
something higher than that. Call it what you will, I have always
believed that if we go ahead and do our duty, counting not the cost,
then the outcome will be in the hands of a power way beyond our own. But
if it be fated that I don't come back, let no one ever say, "Poor
_R----_." I have had all the best things of life given me in full
measure--the happiest childhood and boyhood, health, the love of family
and friends, the profession I love, marriage to the girl I wanted, and
my son. If I go now, it will be as one who quits the game while the blue
chips are all in his own pile.


     GENERAL POST OFFICE, LONDON

MAY 19.

[Sidenote: Rescuing a sailor.]

On the trip over, we were steaming behind the _R----_, when all at once
she steered out and backed, amid much running around on board. At first
we thought she saw a submarine and stood by our guns. Then we saw she
had a man overboard. We immediately dropped our lifeboat, and I went in
charge for the fun of it. Beat the _R----'s_ boat to him. He had no
life-preserver, but the wool-lined jacket he wore kept him high out of
water, and he was floating around as comfortably as you please, barring
the fact that his fall had knocked him unconscious. So we not only took
him back to his ship, but picked up the _R----'s_ boat-hook, which the
clumsy lubbers had dropped--and kept it as a reward for our trouble.

[Sidenote: Very little known about the U-boat situation.]

We are being somewhat overhauled, refitted, etc., in the British
dock-yard here. Navy yards are much the same the world over, I guess. I
will say, however, that they have dealt with us quickly and efficiently,
with the minimum of red tape and correspondence. We have become in fact
an integral part of the British Navy. Admiral Sims is in general
supervision of us, but we are directly in command of the British Admiral
commanding the station. Of the U-boat situation, I may say little. There
is nothing about which so much is imagined, rumored and reported, and so
little known for certain. Five times, when coming through the danger
zone, we manned all guns, thinking we saw something. Once in my watch I
put the helm hard over to dodge a torpedo--which proved to be a
porpoise! And I'll do the same thing again, too. We are in this war up
to the neck, there is no doubt about that--and thank Heaven for it!

Kiss our son for me and make up your mind that you would rather have his
father over here on the job than sitting in a swivel-chair at home doing
nothing.


MAY 26.

I never seem to get time to write a real letter. All hands, including
your husband, are so dead tired when off watch that there is nothing to
do but flop down on your bunk--or on the deck sometimes--and sleep. The
captain and I take watch on the bridge day and night, and outside of
this I do my own navigating and other duties, so time does not go
a-begging with me. However, we are still unsunk, for which we should be
properly grateful.

[Sidenote: War has become matter-of-fact.]

I have seen a little of Ireland and like New York State better than
ever. It is difficult to realize how matter-of-fact the war has become
with every one over here. You meet some mild mannered gentleman and talk
about the weather, and then find later that he is a survivor from some
desperate episode that makes your blood tingle. I would that we were
over on the North Sea side, where Providence might lay us alongside a
German destroyer some gray dawn. This submarine-chasing business is much
like the proverbial skinning of a skunk--useful, but not especially
pleasant or glorious.


JUNE 1.

[Sidenote: Glad to be in the big game.]

When I said good-bye to you at home, I don't think that either of us
realized that I was coming over here to stay. Perhaps it was just as
well. Human nature is such that we subconsciously refuse to accept an
idea, even when we know it to be a true one, because it is totally
new--beyond our experience. Pursuant to which, I could not believe that
my fondest hopes were to be realized, and that not only I, but the whole
of America, would really get into the big game. Oh, it is big all right,
and it grows on you the more you get into it.

Now, I realize that it is asking too much of you or of any woman to view
with perfect complacency having a husband suddenly injected into war.
But just consider--suppose I was a prosperous dentist or produce
merchant on shore, instead of in the Navy. By now you and I would be
undergoing all the agonies of indecision as to whether I should enlist
or no; it would darken our lives for weeks or months, and in the end I
should go anyhow, letting my means of livelihood and yours go hang, and
be away just as long and stand as good a chance of being blown up as I
do now. So I am very thankful that things have worked out as they have
for us.

[Sidenote: Little one is permitted to tell.]

There is very little to tell that I am allowed to tell you. The
technique of submarine-chasing and dodging would be dry reading to a
landsman. It is a very curious duty in that it would be positively
monotonous, were it not for the possibility of being hurled into
eternity the next minute. I am in very good health and wholly free from
nervous tension.

P.S. When despondent, pull some Nathan Hale "stuff," and regret that you
have but one husband to give to your country.


JUNE 8.

[Sidenote: Sleep, warmth and fresh food become ideals.]

Once more I get the chance to write. We are in port for three days, and
that three days looks as big as a month's leave would have a month ago.
Everything in life is comparative, I guess. When we live a comfortable,
civilized, highly complex life, our longings and desires are many and
far-reaching. Now and here such things as sleep, warmth, and fresh food
become almost the limit of one's imagination. Just like the sailor of
the old Navy, whose idea of perfect contentment was "Two watches below
and beans for dinner."

[Sidenote: Nothing causes excitement.]

You get awfully blasé on this duty--things which should excite you don't
at all. For instance, out of the air come messages like the following:
"Am being chased and delayed by submarine." "Torpedoed and sinking
fast." And you merely look at the chart and decide whether to go to the
rescue full speed, or let some boat nearer to the scene look after it.
Or, if the alarm is given on your own ship, you grab mechanically for
life-jacket, binoculars, pistol, and wool coat, and jump to your
station, not knowing whether it is really a periscope or a stick
floating along out of water.

JUNE 20.

Well, we got mail when we came into port this time, your letter of May
28 being the last one. I don't mind the frequent pot-shots the U-boats
take at us, but doggone their hides if they sink any of our mail! We
won't forgive them that.

[Sidenote: No joy-of-battle to be found.]

My health is excellent, better than my temper, in fact. I am beginning
to think that we are not getting our money's worth in this war. I want
to have my blood stirred and do something heroic--_à la_
moving-pictures. Instead of which it much resembles a campaign against
cholera-germs or anything else which is deadly but difficult to get any
joy-of-battle out of.

Do tell me everything you are doing, for it is up to you to make
conversation, since there is so little of affairs at this end that I can
talk about. It is a shame, for you always claimed that I never spoke
unless you said something first; and now I am doing the same thing under
cover of the letter.


JULY 2.

[Sidenote: Life so gray that shock of danger is beneficial.]

The other day, half-way out on the Atlantic, we sighted a periscope, and
some one at the gun sent a shell skimming over the _C----_, who was in
the way, and then the periscope turned out to be a ventilator sticking
up over some wreckage. However, the incident was welcome. You have no
conception of how gray life can get to be on this job, and the shock of
danger, real or imaginary, is really beneficial, I think. All hands seem
to be more cheerful under its influence.


JULY 4.

I was so glad to get your letters. A man who has a brave woman behind
him will do his duty far better and, incidentally, stand more chance of
coming back, than one who feels a drag instead of a push.

I am glad son had his first fight. You were perfectly right to make him
go on. Mother used to tell how, when brother was a wee boy, he came home
almost weeping, and said, "Mother, a boy hit me." Instead of comforting
him, she said, "Did you hit him back?" It almost killed her, he was so
utterly dumbfounded and hurt; but next time he hit back and licked.

[Sidenote: The life wears nerves and temper.]

I am well but get rather jumpy at times. Strangely enough, it is always
over more or less trivial matters. Every time we have a submarine scare,
I feel markedly better for a while--it seems to reëstablish my sense of
proportion.

It is a mighty nerve- and temper-wearing life--at sea nearly all the time
and with the boat rolling and bucking like a broncho, you can't
exercise. You can hardly do any work, but only hold on tight and wipe
the salt spray from your eyes. Sometimes I have started to shave and
found the salt so thick on my face that soap would not lather.


JULY 16.

[Sidenote: Time is passed navigating, standing watch, sleeping.]

Things are the same as before with us. Time passes quickly, with
navigating, standing watch and sleeping when you get a chance. One day
or two passes all too quickly. I wish there were more to do in the shape
of relaxation when we do get ashore. The people here are cordial enough,
according to their lights, but those that we meet are practically all
Army and Navy people, who have no abode here themselves and are almost
as much strangers as we are; and there is no resident population of
that caste that would ordinarily open its doors to foreign naval
officers.

[Sidenote: Little for diversion in Ireland.]

Ireland is a poor country comparatively. A town of 50,000 here shows
less in the way of facilities for diversion than the average town of
10,000 in the States.

[Sidenote: Mental privations hurt more than physical ones.]

Don't worry about my privations--"which mostly there ain't none." Such
as they are, they are necessary and unavoidable; and, above all, we are
fitted for them. You can't well sympathize with a man who is doing the
thing he has longed for and trained for all his life. Besides, physical
privations are nothing; it is the mental ones that hurt. A soldier in
the trenches, with little to eat and nothing but a hole to sleep in, can
feel happy all the same--particularly if life has something in prospect
for him if he lives. But a man out of work at home, sleeping in the park
and panhandling for food, is much more to be pitied, though his
immediate hardships may be no greater.

The weather over here is very passable at present, but they say it is
simply hell off the coast in winter. However, somebody said the war will
be over in November. I hope the Kaiser and Hindenburg know it, too!


JULY 26.

[Sidenote: Anxious to be in action.]

I haven't done anything heroic, which irks me. We would like to get in
on the ground floor, while all hands are in a receptive mood, and before
the Plattsburgers and other such death-defying supermen make it too
common.


JULY 22.

[Sidenote: A cheerful letter from home.]

Your two letters of July 7 and 8 came this afternoon, but I got the
latter first and expected from what you said in contrition that there
was hot stuff--gas-attack followed by bayonet-work--in the former;
therefore I was all the more ashamed to find you had dealt so leniently
and squarely with me. Why didn't you come back with a long invoice of
troubles of your own, as 99 per cent of women would? Evidently you are
the one-per-cent woman. I bitterly regretted my whines after having
written them, for their very untruth. Alas, how many people think the
world is drab-colored and life a failure, and so have done or said
something they regret all their lives, when a vegetable pill or a brisk
walk would have changed their vision completely! Why is it that people
sometimes deliberately hurt those they have loved most in the world? I
suppose it is because we are all really children at heart and want some
one else to cry too. The other day Smith shamefacedly abstracted from
the mail-box a letter to his wife, and tore it up, and I know--oh, I
know!

At a husbands' meeting on the ship the other day, we all agreed that the
heavy hand was the only way to deal with women; but it seemed on
investigation that no one had actually tried it the reason being
apparently a well-grounded fear that our wives wouldn't like it.

[Sidenote: Danger, but little action or variety.]

This war hasn't had as much action, variety, and stimulation for us as I
would like. Danger there always is, but being little in evidence, you
have to prod your nerves to realize it rather than soothe them down.
Lately, however, things have changed in a manner which, though involving
no more danger, furnishes a somewhat greater mental stimulation, and
thence is better for everybody. I regret to say that I am gaining in
weight. It was my hope to come back thin and gaunt and
interesting-looking. Instead of which, you will likely be mad as a
hornet to find me so sleek, while you at home have done all the thinning
down. Truth to tell, if you compare our relative peace and war status,
you are much more at war than I am.

[Sidenote: The highest form of courage.]

If you find son timid in some things, just remember that I was, too.
Lots of things he will change about automatically. At his age I had
small love for fire-crackers or explosives of any kind, but in two or
three years, and without any prompting, I became really expert in guns
and gunpowder. Try to get him to realize that the very highest form of
courage is to be afraid to do a thing--and do it!


AUGUST 3.

[Sidenote: U-boat score against destroyers is zero.]

Once in a while some one of us gets a torpedo fired at him, and only
luck or quick seamanship saves him from destruction. Some day the
torpedo will hit, and then the Navy Department will "regret to report."
But the laws of probability and chance cannot lie, and as the total
U-boat score against our destroyers so far is zero, you can figure for
yourself that they will have to improve somewhat before the Kaiser can
hand out many iron crosses at our expense.

[Sidenote: Picking up survivors.]

We had a new experience the other day when we picked up two boatloads of
survivors from the ----, torpedoed without warning. I will say they were
pretty glad to see us when we bore down on them. As we neared, they
began to paddle frantically, as though fearful we should be snatched
away from them at the last moment. The crew were mostly Arabs and
Lascars, and the first mate, a typical comic-magazine Irishman,
delivered himself of the following: "Sure, toward the last, some o' thim
haythen gits down on their knees and starts calling on Allah; but I sez,
sez I, 'Git up afore I swat ye wid the axe-handle, ye benighted haythen;
sure if this boat gits saved 't will be the Holy Virgin does it or none
at all, at all! Git up,' sez I."

[Sidenote: The deep sea breeds a certain fineness of character.]

The officers were taken care of in the ward-room--rough unlettered old
sailormen, who possessed a certain fineness of character which I
believe the deep sea tends to breed in those who follow it long enough.
I have known some old Tartars greatly hated by those under them, but to
whom a woman or child would take naturally.

What you say about my possibly being taken prisoner both amuses and
touches me. The former because it seems so highly unlikely a
contingency. Submarines do not take prisoners if they can help it, and
least of all from a man-of-war. But I have often thought of just what I
should do in such a case, and I have decided that it would be far better
to die than to submit to certain things. In which case, I should use my
utmost ingenuity to take along one or two adversaries with me.


AUGUST 11.

[Sidenote: The case for universal conscription.]

So the boys at home don't all take kindly to being conscripted, eh?
Well, I wish for a lot of reasons that the conscription might be as
complete and far-reaching as it is in, for instance, France. I think for
one thing that universal conscription is the final test of democracy.
Again, I think it would do every individual in the nation good to find
out that there was something a little bit bigger than he--something that
neither money, nor politics, nor obscurity, nor the Labor Union, nor any
one else could help him to wriggle out of. It would go far towards
disillusioning those many who seem to feel that they do not have to take
too seriously a government because they have helped to create it.

[Sidenote: Not a question of courage but of mental process.]

While I have precious little sympathy for slackers of any variety, one
must not judge them too harshly because their minds do not happen to
work the same as ours. In nine cases out of ten it is not a question of
courage, but one of mental process. Some people come of a caste to whom
war or the idea of fighting for their country is second nature. They
take it for granted, like death and taxes. If they ever permitted
themselves seriously to question the rightness of it; to submit
patriotism and courage to an acid analysis, they might suddenly turn
arrant cowards. How much harder is it, then, for people who have never
even faced the idea of it before to be suddenly placed up against the
actual fact!


AUGUST 18.

I have been having a little extra fun on my own hook recently. The poor
captain has had to have an operation, and will be on his back for some
weeks.

[Sidenote: Double duty on the bridge.]

Do I like going to war all on my own? Oh no, just like a cat hates
cream. It is a wee bit strenuous, as I have to do double duty; and one
night I was on the bridge steadily from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. But the funny
part is that I didn't feel especially all in afterward, and one good
sleep fixed me up completely.

[Sidenote: A submarine escapes.]

I had a big disappointment on my first run out. I nearly bagged a
submarine for you. We got her on the surface as nice as anything, but it
was very rough, and she was far away, and before I could plunk her, she
got under. If she had only--but, as the saying goes, if the dog hadn't
stopped to scratch himself, he would have got the rabbit (not, however,
that we stopped to scratch ourselves).


AUGUST 27.

[Sidenote: Responsibility for lives and ship.]

I am still in command of the ship and love it, but there is a difference
between being second in command and being It. It makes you introspective
to realize that a hundred lives and a $700,000 ship are absolutely
dependent upon you, without anybody but the Almighty to ask for advice
if you get into difficulty.

It is not so much the submarines, which are largely a matter of luck,
but the navigating. Say I am heading back for port after several days
out, the weather is thick as pea-soup, and I have not seen land or had
an observation for days. I know where I am--at least I think I do--but
what if I have miscalculated, or am carried off my course by the strong
and treacherous tides on this coast, and am heading right into the
breakers somewhere, or perchance a mine-field! Then the fog lifts a
little, and I see the cliffs or mountains that I recognize, and bring
her in with a slam-bang, much bravado, and a sigh of relief.

Don't you remember the days when you thought son was dying if he
cried--or if he didn't? Well, that's it!

[Sidenote: Recreations ashore.]

Don't get the idea that I have no recreations. We walk and play golf, go
to the movies on occasion, and there is always a jolly gang of mixed
services to play with.


SEPTEMBER 9.

Life here doesn't vary much. The captain is up and taking a few days'
leave, though I doubt if he will take command for two or three weeks
yet. But I am having a lovely time running her.

[Sidenote: A veteran New Zealander for dinner.]

The other night we had a very interesting chap for dinner--a New
Zealander he was, who has served in Egypt, Gallipoli, the trenches in
France, and is now in the Royal Naval Reserve. The tales he told were of
wonderful interest. He was modest and seemed to have been a decent sort,
but you could sense the brutalizing effect of war on him. Some of the
things he told were such jokes on the Germans that we laughed right
heartily.

[Sidenote: The beast in man is near the surface.]

The beast in man lies so close to the surface. We think we are human and
law-abiding of our own volition, whereas, as a matter of fact,
nine-tenths of it is from pure habit. It doesn't occur to us to be
anything else. But let all standards and customs be scrapped, let us see
the things done freely that never even entered our minds before, and a
lot of us are liable to develop ape and tiger proclivities. We nearly
all put unconscious limits to our humanity. The most chivalrous and
kindly Westerner or Southerner would admit that massacring Chinamen,
Mexicans, or Negroes is not such a great crime; and the most devoted
mother or father is prone to regard as unspanked brats children who to a
third party appear quite as well as the critic's own.


SEPTEMBER 20.

I am still in command and loving every minute of it. With any other
captain than ours it would be a come-down to resume my place as a
subordinate. But in his case I think that all mourn a little when he is
away.


SEPTEMBER 29.

[Sidenote: New knowledge of navigation and ship handling.]

Oh, it's great stuff, this being in command and handling the ship alone.
Particularly I enjoy swooping down on some giant freighter, like a hawk
on a turkey, running close alongside, where a wrong touch to helm or
engine may spell destruction, and then demanding through a megaphone why
she does or does not do so and so. I have learned more navigation and
ship-handling since being over here than in all my previous seagoing
experience. In the old ante-bellum days one hesitated to get too close
to another ship, even in daytime, far more so at night, even with the
required navigation lights on. Now, without so much light as a glowworm
could give, we run around, never quite certain when the darkness ahead
may turn into a ship close enough to throw a brick at.

However, I am back in the ranks again now, as the captain has come back
and resumed command.


OCTOBER 9.

[Sidenote: Job of an executive officer is thankless.]

You must not be resentful because of things you have gone through,
unappreciated by those perhaps for whom you have undergone them. It is
one of the laws of life, and a hard law too, but it comes to everybody,
either in a few big things or a multitude of little ones. Do the people
who keep the world turning around ever get due recognition? I was
thinking in much the same resentful vein myself to-day, in my own small
way, how thankless the job of an executive officer is; how you never
reach any big end, or even feel that you have made progress, but just
keep on the job, watching and inspecting and fussing to keep the whole
personnel-matériel machine running smoothly, and knowing that your
recognition is purely negative, in that, if all goes well, you don't get
called down. And then I calm down and realize that it is all in the
game, and that it is the best tribute so to handle your job in life that
nothing has to be said. If your car runs perfectly, you neither feel nor
hear it, and give it little credit on that account. But let it strip a
gear or something go!!

[Sidenote: Roller-skating for amusement ashore.]

I hate to tell you what I was doing this afternoon. You will think I am
not at war at all when I tell you that I have been roller-skating. I was
a bit rusty at first, but warmed up to it. It is about the only exercise
we can get on shore, for it rains all the time. Each shower puts an
added crimp in my temper, as I have been trying to get a new coat of
camouflage paint on the ship. I think, if some of the old
paint-and-polish captains and admirals could see her now, they would die
of apoplexy.

[Sidenote: No chance for wives to come over.]

I fear there is no chance for you to come over. Admiral Sims
disapproves--not of you personally--one cannot find a place to live
here, and there would be too many hardships. How would it be for you
when we had said good-bye, and you saw the ship start out into a howling
gale or go out right after several ships had been sunk outside? With you
at home among friends, I can keep my mind on my job, which I couldn't if
you were alone over here.

Let me say right now that the destroyer torpedoed was not ours. It was
hard on you all to have the news published that one had been and a man
killed, and not say what boat, as that leaves every one in suspense. I
suppose the relatives of the man were notified, but that doesn't help
other people who were anxious.

[Sidenote: A destroyer is torpedoed but does not sink.]

I don't suppose I can tell you which boat either, if the authorities
won't. You do not know any one on board of her, however. They saw it
coming, jammed on full speed, and nearly cleared it. It took them just
at the stern and blew off about 30 feet as neatly as son would bite the
end off a banana. The submarine heard the explosion, of course, from
below, and came to the surface to see the "damned Yankee" sink, only to
find the rudderless, sternless boat steaming full speed in a circle with
her one remaining propeller, and to be greeted by a salvo of four-inch
shells that made her duck promptly. The man killed saw the torpedo
coming and ran aft to throw overboard some high explosives stowed
there--but he didn't quite make it.

[Sidenote: Damaged destroyers somehow get back to port.]

Our destroyers are really wonderful boats--you can shoot off one end of
them, ram them, cut them in two, and still they float and get to port
somehow.

Some time ago, on a pitch-dark night, one of them was rammed by a
British boat and nearly cut in two. Was there a panic? Not at all. As
she settled in the water, they got out their boats and life-rafts, the
officers and a few selected men stayed on board, and the rest pulled off
in the darkness singing, "Are we downhearted? No!" and "Hail, hail, the
gang's all here." She floated, though with her deck awash; the boats
were recalled, and they brought her in. She is fixed up and back in the
game again now.


OCTOBER 25.

[Sidenote: British destroyers fight raiders.]

[Sidenote: The Admiral strict as a Prussian.]

Where did you hear that about two destroyers being sunk off the coast of
Ireland on September 3? False alarm. Of course, you have read in the
papers about the convoy destroyed in the North Sea by German raiders.
The two British destroyers with the convoy stood up to them and fought
as a bulldog would fight a tiger--and with the same result. Somebody was
arguing with the Admiral, our boss, to the effect that it would have
been better for them to have saved themselves, trailed the raiders, and
sent radio, so that the British cruisers could have intercepted and
destroyed them. Said the Admiral, "Yes, it would have been better, but I
would court-martial and shoot the man that did it." He's a wonder to
serve under, as grim and strict as a Prussian, but very just, and runs
things in a way that secures all our admiration--though we may fuss a
bit when, expecting two or three comfortable days in port, we get chased
out on short notice into a raving gale outside.


A BRITISH DOCK YARD, NOVEMBER 4.

[Sidenote: A friend on hospital duty.]

There are lots of our army people here. Some of them are just passing
through, while others are stationed at near-by training camps or
hospitals. I was wandering around the big hotel here, when I saw a
familiar face in army uniform, and who should it be but M----. Much joy!
He is near here, on temporary duty at a British hospital. I had him over
to the ship for lunch, and hope to see him again. I certainly respect
that boy. He has no military ambitions, and wishes the war were over, so
he could get back to his wife and children; but _he_ answered the call
while others were hiding behind volleys of language, and he is here to
see it through. I am afraid he is homesick and lonely, for it is harder
for a boy who does not know the English than for us hardened
mercenaries, who are accustomed to hobnob with everybody from Cubans to
Cossacks.

[Sidenote: The American uniform and the British.]

I will be glad when American Army and Navy uniforms are designed by a
tailor who really knows something about it. Alas, our people are
distinctly inferior to the British in the cut of their jib. I think it
is the high standing collar that queers us. It is only at its best when
one stands at Attention--head up, chest out, arms at side--being
distinctly a parade uniform. The British, with their rolling collar, and
coat tight where it may be, and loose where it needs to be, are, you
might say, less military and better dressed.

Tell the Enfant that I am very proud when he gets gold honor-marks on
his school-papers, and I think that it probably means about the same as
a star on a midshipman's collar. (That ought to get him.)

I must close and get a bit of sleep. It seems as if, when it is all
over, all the heaven I will want, is to be with you and son again,
perfectly quiet.


AT SEA, NOVEMBER 16.

[Sidenote: True democracy is in a way inefficient.]

I think a true democracy is necessarily inefficient in a way. The only
really efficient government in the world is the one which we intend to
pull down, or else go down ourselves, trying to!

Can't you imagine, in the dim Valhalla beyond, how the archer of
Pharaoh, the swordsman from the plains before Troy, and the Roman
legionary will greet the hurrying souls of the aviator, the
bomb-thrower, and the bayonet-man with, "Brother, what were you?"

I'd hate to have to explain to their uncomprehending ears what a
conscientious objector is!


DECEMBER 2.

[Sidenote: Assuming command.]

Well, to-day is one of the big days of my life, for I assumed command of
this little packet. I put on my sword and fixings and reported to
Captain Paine, who was most benevolent. Several of us went on shore to
celebrate with a little dinner. Some of the boys just over joined in,
and we became involved with some Highland officers of a fighting
regiment famous throughout Europe for the last three hundred years.
One's first ship, like the first baby is an event that cannot be
duplicated.


DECEMBER 21.

[Sidenote: A jammed rudder leaves the destroyer unmanageable.]

I needed your letter, being about twenty years older than I was a week
ago. No, no harm done. Just had my first experience of what it means
under certain circumstances to be in command. Went out with certain
others on a certain job. All went well, though we had a poor grade of
oil in our bunkers and were burning more than we should ordinarily.
Then, through certain chances, we had to go farther than expected.
Still, I figured to get back with a moderate margin, when the gale
struck us. You may have read of Biscay storms; well, believe me, they
are not over-rated. I have seen just as bad, perhaps, but not from the
deck of a destroyer. And while I am frantically calculating whether I
shall have enough fuel to make port or not, there is a wild yell from
the bridge that the rudder is jammed at hard-a-starboard and can't be
moved. She, of course, at once fell off into the trough of the sea, and
the big green combers swept clear over her at every roll, raising merry
hob. All the boats were smashed to kindling-wood; chests, and everything
on deck not riveted down, went over the side. In that sea you could no
more manoeuvre by your engines alone than you could dam Niagara with a
handful of sand. A man alongside of me aft, where we were working on the
steering-gear, was swept overboard, but, having a line around his waist,
was hauled back like a hooked fish.

All I could do was to steam in a big circle, and at one point would be
running before it, and could work for an instant or two with the seas
running up to our waists. When they get over your head, you probably
won't be there any longer. At that time I didn't really expect to stay
afloat, but was too busy with the matters in hand to care. Well, we
finally got it fixed, though we could only use about 15 degrees of
rudder instead of full.

[Sidenote: Lack of fuel causes worry.]

All this time we were drifting merrily to leeward at a rate that I hated
even to guess at, with the certainty, unless matters mended, of
eventually piling up on the Spanish coast, then not far away, though I
hadn't had sight of sun or stars in days, and didn't know within fifty
miles where I was. Well, when I finally headed up into it, I could just
about hold her, without making any headway to speak of. You cannot drive
a destroyer dead into a heavy sea at full speed without bursting her in
two. Still, the situation would have been nothing to worry about much if
I had had sufficient fuel. Now, you on shore may fancy that a ship just
keeps on steaming till she gets there, whether it takes a month or more;
but such is far from the case. Every mile you go consumes just so much
fuel, and, if your margin of safety is too small, you are liable to be
out of luck. And my calculations showed me that while I was using up oil
enough to be making ---- knots, in the teeth of the gale we were only
making ---- knots, and that at that rate I never would make port.

[Sidenote: Three courses are possible.]

[Sidenote: The destroyer makes France.]

[Sidenote: Steel the aristocrat among metals.]

There were three courses open to me: to let her drift, consuming my oil,
in the hope that it would blow over; to run into a Spanish port; or to
run for France, my destination, and, if I fell short of it, to yell for
help by radio, and trust to luck that they could send out and pick me
up. The first course was too risky. I would be making untold miles to
leeward all the time, would probably roll the masts and funnels out of
her, and maybe burst down anyhow, too far off for help. The second
choice was the safest. I could reach Ferrol or Vigo all right, but they
would probably try to intern me; and while I had heard that King Alfonso
was a regular guy and a good scout to run around with, the ensuing
diplomatic complications would make me about as popular in Allied
circles as the proverbial skunk at a bridge-party. So I took the final
alternative, and jammed her into the teeth of it for all I thought she
could stand without imitating an opera hat or an accordion. And, glory
be, she made it, the blessed little old cross between a porpoise and a
safety-razor blade! Whether the gale really moderated, or I got more
nerve, I don't know; but anyhow I gave her more and more, half a knot at
a time, until we were actually making appreciable headway against it. I
never thought any ship could stand the bludgeoning she got. It seemed as
if every rivet must shear, every frame and stanchion crush, under the
impact of the Juggernaut seas that hurtled into her. As a thoroughbred
horse starts and trembles under the touch of the whip, so she reared and
trembled, only to bury herself again in the roaring Niagara of water.
Oh, you thoroughbred high-tensile steel! blue-blooded aristocrat among
metals; Bethlehem or Midvale may claim you--you are none the less
worthy of the Milan casque, the Damascus blade, your forefathers!
Verily, I believe you hold on by sheer nerve, when by all physical laws
should buckle or bend to the shock!

[Sidenote: Torpedo detonators spilt on deck.]

And so we kept on. Don't you know, how in the stories it is always in a
terrific gale that the caged lion or gorilla or python breaks loose and
terrorizes the ship? We don't sport a menagerie on the ----, but I did
pick up the contents of the dry gun-cotton case, which had broken and
spilt the torpedo detonators around on deck contiguous to the hot
radiator! And, of course, the decks below were knee-deep in books,
clothes, dishes, etc., complicated in some compartments by a foot or two
of oil and water.

[Sidenote: Soundings and landmarks.]

Well, the next day we made a little more, and the seas were only
gigantic, not titanic. The oil was holding out better, too, as we struck
a better grade in some of our tanks, and I saw that we had a fighting
chance of making it. By night I felt almost confident we could, and I
really slept some. Next day I expected to make land, but, of course, had
little idea how far I might really be from my reckoning. Nevertheless,
we sighted ---- Light about where I expected to, and laid a course from
there into the harbor. It was a rather thick, foggy day, and pretty soon
I noted a cunning little rock or two, dead ahead, where they didn't by
any means belong. So I rather hurriedly arrested further progress, took
soundings, and bearings of different landmarks, and found that we were
some twenty-five miles from our reckoning--so far, in fact, as to have
picked up the next light-house instead of the one we thought.

After this 'twas plain sailing, though I had never been into that port
before. Made it about noon, took possession of a convenient mooring-buoy
inside the breakwater--which buoy I found out later was sacred to the
French flag-ship or somebody like that--called on our Admiral there, and
was among friends. Yes, by heck, I let 'em buy me a drink at the club--I
needed it! Had oil enough left for just about an hour more!


Copyright, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1918.

       *       *       *       *       *

While the great campaigns were being waged on the western fronts, there
was being carried on in a more remote part of the world a series of
operations which involved as hard fighting and as many difficulties as
were encountered in any other field of action. The campaigns in East
Africa which resulted in driving the Germans from their former colonies
are described in the following narrative.




EAST AFRICA

JAN CHRISTIAAN SMUTS


[Sidenote: Learned South Africa in The Boer War.]

In the strenuous days of the Boer War I learned to know my South Africa
from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean as one learns a country only under
the searching test of war. I came to know the unfrequented paths, the
trackless parts of the bush, the wastes where people do not often go. I
believe it is generally admitted that I covered more country than any
other commander in the field on either side--and my movement was not
always in the direction of the enemy!

[Sidenote: Obtaining water on the Kalahari Desert.]

When the present war broke out, I proceeded once more on my extensive
travels, and I became something of an expert in the waterless, sandy
wastes of the southern half of German Southwest Africa. As for the
Kalahari Desert, over which the movement of men and transport was
supposed to be quite impossible, we did not rest until we had sunk
bore-holes for water for hundreds of miles, and until we had moved a
large force of thousands of mounted men across an area in which it was
thought no human being could ever move. One of the reasons of our
success in that campaign was that, moving through the Kalahari Desert,
we struck the enemy country at its very heart. The travels of
Livingstone, of Selous, who was a comrade of mine in this war, and of
other illustrious men in those vast solitudes of southern Africa were as
joy-rides to what we had to undergo in conducting a big campaign against
the enemy, and still more against nature.

[Sidenote: A campaign in East Africa.]

[Sidenote: Careful study of topography necessary.]

[Sidenote: Books of travelers all wrong.]

When that campaign was over, and I thought my traveling days were past,
the call came to East Africa, and 1916 was spent in traveling over the
vast tropical expanses of that fascinating country. I need scarcely say
that a military commander has often very special opportunities of
learning geography. He has to study the country with the eyes not of the
scientist or the traveler or the hunter, but of the soldier responsible
for the lives and the movements and supplies of large masses of men. It
is one thing to follow the track of the elephant or to stalk the lion or
antelope or to collect butterflies or other gorgeous things; it is quite
a different and, from the point of view of learning geography, certainly
a far more enlightening, task to lead a large army over those virgin
solitudes, where your problem involves the careful study not only of
topographical features, but of all the numerous natural conditions which
affect your progress. To provide for the needs of a small _safari_ may
be a light or delightful task; but the difficulties and requirements of
a large force, moving forward against an alert, ubiquitous foe, compel
you to probe into everything: the nature of the country, with its
mountains and rivers, forests and deserts, for scores of miles around;
its animal and human diseases; its capacity for supplies and transport;
its climate and soil and rainfall. And one of your first discoveries is
that the books of the travelers are mostly wrong. What to them was
perhaps a paradise of plant or animal life is to you, moving with your
vast impedimenta, a veritable purgatory. You soon come to agree with
Scripture that all men are liars, and from this rule you do not even
except the missionaries who write with their heads in the clouds; nor do
you except the writers of intelligence books compiled in Whitehall from
the hunting tales of the travelers or the fairy-tales of the
missionaries, and marked "very secret." But these secrets are like most
secrets of the African continent, very disconcerting to the simple,
trustful soul.

[Sidenote: The silence of the forest is broken by the tramp of armed
men.]

[Sidenote: Horses virtually unknown.]

These campaigning experiences were unique. Probably never before in the
history of the world had such things been seen: the stillness, the
brooding silence of the vast primeval forest where no, or few, white men
have ever been before, and the only path is the track of the elephant;
the silence of the forest, stretching for hundreds of miles in all
directions, broken by the tramp of tens of thousands of armed men,
followed by the guns and heavy transport of a modern army, with its
hundreds of motor-lorries, its miles of wagons, its vast concourse of
black porters; while overhead the aëroplane, or, as the natives call it,
the "bird," more dreaded and more feared than even the crocodile in the
river, passes on swiftly with its bombs for the foe retreating ahead.
And what an effect this movement, continued for many months over many
thousands of miles, produced on the minds of the native population,
looking on in speechless awe and amazement at the mystery of the white
man's doings! I have often stopped to wonder at the natives' state of
mind. It must have been not unlike what is told of one of my simple
countrymen, on whose farm an aviator descended with an aëroplane, never
seen or heard of before, and who calmly walked forward to shake hands
with the heavenly visitant, whom he believed none other than the Lord!
And since horses, because of the fly, are virtually unknown in most
parts of the country, the natives were dumfounded by our mounted men,
strange centaur-like animals that they called "Kabure," after my mounted
Boer forces, of whom at first they were mortally afraid. Even bodies of
well-trained armed native soldiers have been seen to throw away their
rifles and run for dear life into the bush at the first sight of mounted
men.

[Sidenote: Parallel mountain ranges rise in tiers.]

[Sidenote: The second belt or veldt.]

[Sidenote: Changes in rainfall.]

The whole east of the African continent from the cape in the south up to
Abyssinia in the north, and, I believe, farther, is marked by one
persistent feature, the existence of several more or less parallel
mountain-ranges rising in tiers from the coast. At the top of the last
and highest mountain-range lies the great elevated inland plateau,
stretching like a broad back along the continent. The first line of
hills or low mountains runs at a distance of from ten to fifty miles
from the coast of the Indian Ocean, and all the country between it and
the sea forms a low coastal belt, which seldom rises more than a few
hundred feet above sea-level, with a distinct coastal climate and
vegetation. Between these coastal hills and the next range lies the
second belt, called in South Africa the low veldt, again with a climate
and rainfall and vegetation of its own. Next and last, at a distance of
from a hundred to one hundred and fifty miles from the Indian Ocean,
runs a mountain system, often rising to great altitudes, on which rests
the great elevated inland plateau from four thousand to six thousand
feet above the level of the sea. This plateau continues for hundreds of
miles westward, and then begins to slope toward the Atlantic Ocean in
the far distance. Sometimes, as in Central Africa, the slope to the west
is very sudden, and another range of mountains forms the western
buttress of the great central plateau. All the great rivers of Africa,
with the exception of the Niger, rise on this plateau or on its
mountain-flanks, which have a very high rainfall. The bush, or great
forest, which is almost impenetrable in the coastal belt, becomes
somewhat more open in patches in the middle belt, while on the plateau
open, park-like country alternates with treeless, grassy plains, and
the forest is confined to the deep valleys or the mountain-slopes. The
rainfall, which is fair on the coast, becomes very light in the middle
belt, which in consequence tends to have an arid character; on the
plateau it is high or very high. Because of these marked differences the
economic character of the three regions varies considerably.
Semi-tropical products, such as maize, coffee, cotton, and millet, can
be raised on an almost unlimited scale on the plateau; while rice,
rubber, sisal, and copra are raised in the two lower belts.

[Sidenote: The chain of large lakes.]

[Sidenote: Extinct and active volcanoes.]

All along the mountains which mark the western edge of the high plateau
one will notice a chain of lakes, from Nyasa in the south through
Tanganyika and Kivu to Lake Albert in the north. In prehistoric time
some convulsion of nature broke the African continent all along its
spine, and formed this system of lakes. Another break occurs on the high
plateau, from Portuguese East Africa in the south to British East Africa
in the north, along the Great Rift Valley, with its magnificent
escarpments and weird scenery, prolonged through Lake Rudolf to the Red
Sea and on to the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley. Great volcanoes, now
mostly extinct, though some to the north of Kivu are still active, are a
still later feature of the country.

[Sidenote: Lakes and mountains a frontier for defense.]

I have referred to these lakes and to the great mountain-chain along the
lakes because they formed the western boundary of German East Africa,
and from the point of view of defense made a magnificent frontier so
strong that the Belgian forces moving from the Congo found it impossible
to invade the enemy territory from the west, and had to be moved in
large part northeast before they could strike south. Once there, with
their usual dash they did their work remarkably well.

[Sidenote: Seaplanes attack German vessels in the lakes.]

As soon as this northern column had reached Kigali, the capital of the
lofty Ruanda Province, the German forces fell back from the neighborhood
of Lake Kivu, and the remainder of the Belgian army was able to advance
from the west across the mountain barrier. Simultaneously, and in
coördination with their advance, strong British columns were moving
southward to the west of Victoria Nyanza. As soon as we had reached the
southern shores of the lake, a new concerted forward movement by the
British and Belgian columns was begun both from Victoria Nyanza and from
Tanganyika, where in the meantime the German armed vessels on the lake
had been bombed and destroyed by seaplanes, and Ujiji on the eastern
shore had been occupied. This movement did not stop until Tabora, with
the central railway, was occupied early in September, 1916.

[Sidenote: General Northey's advance across the mountain.]

At the same time a great movement was made in the south by General
Northey, who advanced from the line between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa
across the mountains flanking the great plateau on the west. This is a
very mountainous region; but he got over the mountains, and moving
north, took Bismarckburg, Neu Langenburg, and afterward Iringa, where
our main forces joined hands with his. These advances, all carried out
with great skill and energy against very great physical difficulties,
were subsidiary to the principal attack, which was being executed from
the north-east, in the neighborhood of Kilimanjaro.

[Sidenote: The River Rovuma a strategic line.]

[Sidenote: Pursuit of enemy across Rovuma is difficult.]

The southern boundary between German East Africa and Portuguese East
Africa was formed by the River Rovuma, which, coming from the high
plateau and the mountains to the east of Nyasa, is one of the large
African rivers. Except in its highest reaches near Lake Nyasa it is not
fordable, and makes an admirable strategic line. However, as Portugal
came into the war after most of the German colony had already been
occupied by us, this river acquired strategic importance only toward the
end of the campaign, and then in a sense adverse to us, as General Van
Deventer has found to his cost. After the remnants of the German native
forces had been driven across the Rovuma at the beginning of December,
1917, our forces found the swift pursuit across the river a difficult
task. We are, however, now operating against the roving bands into which
the enemy force has split, and if ever they try to break back to their
occupied colony, they will find the line of the Rovuma a very serious
barrier.

[Sidenote: The search for the German raider _Königsberg_.]

[Sidenote: The _Königsberg's_ guns accompany the enemy on land.]

The eastern boundary of the colony is the coast-line of the Indian Ocean
for almost five hundred miles, with some very beautiful harbors, and it
was dominated by our navy from the day that war was declared. The Royal
Navy has played a very active part in our African campaigns, and one of
the most fascinating episodes of the war was the search for the
_Königsberg_, lost after she had destroyed the _Pegasus_ and done much
damage in the Indian Ocean. She was discovered in a most secluded branch
of the Rufiji River, and ultimately destroyed by seaplanes and monitors
in her impenetrable lair. Yet, though destroyed, she made her voice
heard over all that vast country, for her ten big naval guns, each
pulled by teams of four hundred stalwart natives, accompanied the enemy
armies in all directions, and, with other naval guns and howitzers
smuggled into the country, made the enemy in many a fight stronger in
heavy artillery than we were.

[Sidenote: Extensive enemy fortifications at the mountain gap.]

[Sidenote: The rainy season worse than imagined.]

From a strategic point of view, the northern frontier was the most
difficult of all. It passed north of Kilimanjaro, to the west of which
is a desert belt. East of this desert belt and Kilimanjaro the enemy
colony was protected by an almost impassable mountain system, with a
very narrow, swampy, dangerous gap between the Usambara and Pare
Mountains, and another gap of about four or five miles between the Pare
Mountains and Kilimanjaro. It was impossible to move an army through the
first gap; the second gap at the foot of Kilimanjaro was the place where
the enemy had located himself early in the war on British territory, and
with patience and skill had dug himself in, with very extensive
fortifications, surrounded by dense forests and impassable swamps. Here
he lay waiting for eighteen months, threatening British East Africa.
From here he was driven in March, 1916, and by the end of that month our
forces had conquered the whole Kilimanjaro-Meru areas. It was at this
stage, and after our initial success, that the rainy season set in; and
that is another great feature of German East Africa. I had read much
about it, and I had heard more; but the reality far surpassed the worst
I had read or heard. For weeks the rain came down ceaselessly,
pitilessly, sometimes three inches in twenty-four hours, until all the
hollows became rivers, all the low-lying valleys became lakes, the
bridges disappeared, and all roads dissolved in mud. All communications
came to an end, and even Moses himself in the desert had not such a
commissariat situation as faced me.

[Sidenote: The enemy's line of retreat.]

When in the latter part of May the rains subsided, the advance against
the enemy was once more resumed. In order to create the maximum
difficulties for our advance, the enemy chose as his line of retreat the
great block of mountains which I have referred to as forming the eastern
buttress of the great central plateau. For the next three and a half
months our forward movement continued with only one short pause until
by the middle of September we had reached the great valleys of the
Rufiji and the Great Rwaha in the far south, and across the Rwaha we
could link up with General Northey at Iringa in the southwest.

[Sidenote: Difficulties of transport and supply in advance.]

[Sidenote: Poisonous insects and tropical diseases.]

[Sidenote: The campaign a story of human endurance.]

It is impossible for those unacquainted with German East Africa to
realize the physical, transport, and supply difficulties of an advance
over this magnificent, but mountainous, country, with a great rainfall
and wide, unbridged rivers in the regions of the mountains, and
insufficient surface water on the plains for the needs of an army; with
magnificent primeval forest everywhere, pathless, trackless, except for
the spoor of the elephant or the narrow footpaths of the natives. The
malaria mosquito is everywhere except on the higher plateaus; everywhere
the belts are infested with the deadly tsetse fly, which makes an end of
all animal transport; and almost everywhere the ground is rich black or
red cotton soil, which any transport converts into mud in the rain or
dust in the drought. Everywhere the fierce heat of equatorial Africa,
accompanied by a wild luxuriance of parasitic life, breed tropical
diseases in the unacclimatized whites. These conditions make life for
the white man in that country sufficiently trying. If in addition he has
to perform hard work and make long marches on short rations, the trial
becomes very severe; if, above all, huge masses of men and material have
to be moved over hundreds of miles in a great military expedition
against a mobile and alert foe, then the strain becomes almost
unendurable. And the chapter of accidents in this region of the unknown!
Unseasonable rains cut off expeditions for weeks from their supply
bases. Animals died by the thousand--after passing through an unknown
fly-belt. Mechanical transport got bogged in the marshes, held up by
bridges washed away, or mountain passes obstructed by sudden floods. And
the gallant boys, marching far ahead under the pitiless African sun,
with the fever raging in their blood, pressed ever on after the
retreating enemy, often on reduced rations, and without any of the small
comforts which in this climate are real necessities. In the story of
human endurance this campaign deserves a very special place, and the
heroes who went through it uncomplainingly, doggedly, are entitled to
all recognition and reverence. Their commander-in-chief will remain
eternally proud of them.

When in January, 1917, I relinquished the command to my successor,
General Hoskins, we were across the Rufiji River in the southeast, and
in the great valley formed by the principal tributaries, the Ulanga and
Ruhuje rivers in the west; but the rainy season which set in shortly
afterward stopped all advance until the following June.

[Sidenote: Enemy's forces evacuate German East Africa.]

Five months later our advance was resumed, and by the beginning of
December, 1917, the last remnants of the enemy's forces had evacuated
German East Africa across the Rovuma, while our forces were operating
against the enemy bands far south in Portuguese territory, as I have
already stated.

[Sidenote: Development of tropical Africa retarded by diseases.]

In economic value this region ranks very high among the tropical
countries of the African continent, and probably no part of all Africa
has a climate or soil more suitable for the production on an immense
scale of copra, cocoanuts, coffee, sugar, sisal, rubber, cotton, and
other tropical products, or of such semi-tropical products as maize and
millet. In common with the rest of tropical Africa, its full development
is still retarded by the undefeated animal and human diseases,
especially malaria. But the time is not far distant when science will
have overcome these drawbacks, and when Central and East Africa will
have become one of the most productive and valuable parts of the
tropics. But until science solves the problems of tropical disease, East
and Central Africa must not be looked upon as an area for white
colonization. Perhaps they will never be a white man's country in any
real sense. In those huge territories the white man's task will probably
be largely confined to that of administrator, teacher, expert, manager,
or overseer of the large negro populations, whose progressive
civilization will be more suitably promoted in connection with the
industrial development of the land.

[Sidenote: The Germans discouraged white settlement.]

[Sidenote: Natives compelled to work for planters.]

[Sidenote: German system more profitable one.]

It is clear from their practice in East Africa that the Germans had
decided to develop the country not as an ordinary colony, but as a
tropical possession for the cultivation of tropical raw materials. They
systematically discouraged white settlement; the white colonists, with
their small farms, gradually building up a European system on a small
scale, who are a marked feature of British colonies, were conspicuously
absent. Instead, tracts of country were granted to companies,
syndicates, or men with large capital, on conditions that plantations of
tropical products would be cultivated. The planters were supplied with
native labor under a government system which compelled the natives to
work for the planters for a certain very small wage during part of every
year; and as labor was very plentiful, with seven and a half millions of
natives, the future for the capitalist syndicates seemed rosy enough. No
wonder that under this _corvée_ system East Africa and the Kamerun were
rapidly developing into very valuable tropical assets, from which in
time the German Empire would have derived much of the tropical raw
material for its industries. The Germans realized better than most
people that the value of tropical Africa lay not in any openings for
white colonization, such as are being developed next door to their
colonies in British East Africa, but in the plantation system, where
white capital and black labor collaborate to establish an entirely
different order of things. Harsh as the German system undoubtedly is, I
am not prepared to deny that it is perhaps the more scientific one, and
that in the long run it is the more profitable form of exploiting the
tremendous natural resources of the tropics.

With regard to tropical Africa, so vast in area, so great in resources,
the first desideratum for its development is the opening up of
communication. The lakes, the Nile, and the Congo form the principal
natural links in any chains of communication with the seaboard; and the
question is, how far railways have come in or will come in to complete
these chains.

[Sidenote: Railways built in the Congo territory and connective.]

Two railways built during the war in the Congo territory have largely
extended the communications from east to west, and from the center to
the south. These two railways have opened up many routes in Central and
East Africa, and it is now possible to travel from the Indian Ocean at
Dar-es-Salaam by the German Central Railway to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika;
by steamer across the lake to Albertville; thence by train to Kabalo; by
steamer on to Kongolo; train to Kindu, and on by steamer and rail down
the Congo to the Atlantic Ocean.

[Sidenote: Railways in South Africa.]

Now, as to the communications in the south, one can travel from Cape
Town by rail to Bukama, and thence by steamer and rail either to Boma on
the Atlantic coast, or by rail and steamer to Dar-es-Salaam on the
Indian Ocean. Besides these through lines, there is the Uganda Railway
from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to the Victoria Nyanza, and there are
in contemplation two other railways from the east coast to Nyasa, one
from Kilwa, and one from Porto Amelia, in Portuguese East Africa. A
railway is also under construction from Lobito Bay on the Atlantic to
the Katanga copper areas, already reached from the south and east by the
railways from Cape Town and Beira.

[Sidenote: Communications to the northward.]

The question remains as to communications northward to the
Mediterranean. One can travel to-day from Alexandria by rail and river
to Khartoum, and thence by steamer up the Nile to Rejaf, near the Uganda
border. From Rejaf to Nimule, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles,
the Nile is impracticable for river transport, and therefore over that
distance a railway will have to be built. But from Nimule the river is
again navigable up to Lake Albert. The problem is to connect Lake Albert
with the Central and South African systems.

[Sidenote: Possible Belgian and British routes.]

[Sidenote: Tropical Africa a great problem in world politics.]

Three routes are possible, one wholly Belgian, one partly British and
partly Belgian, and one wholly British. That is on the assumption that
German East Africa remains British after this war. The Belgian project
is to construct the railway from the Congo bend at Stanleyville over the
gold-fields at Kilo to Mahagi on Lake Albert. The British project would
be to construct a line from the south of Elizabethville to Bismarckburg,
at the south of Lake Tanganyika, to proceed thence by steamer to Ujiji,
thence by the existing railway to Tabora, to construct a line from
Tabora to Mwanza on Lake Victoria Nyanza, and a line from Entebbe on
that lake to Butiabwa, on Lake Albert. The third or mixed
Belgian-British line would proceed by way of Butiabwa, Entebbe, Mwanza,
Tabora, and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, but from there would make use of
the existing line to Kabalo on the Congo. It is probable that by one or
other of these three routes through communication from South Africa to
the Mediterranean may be established within the next ten years. With
this vital industrial aspect of tropical Africa there is wrapped up the
equally important political aspect, and these two problems are certain
to make of tropical Africa one of the great problems of future world
politics.

[Sidenote: Germans have no colonists to spare.]

Now, the Germans are not in search of colonies after the English model,
and those that they have in East and West Africa had no white population
to speak of before the war. Quite apart from the fact that tropical
Africa would be no suitable territory for white settlement, they have no
colonists to spare, since for the sake of their industrial and military
future in Germany they desire the largest concentration of population
possible in the fatherland. As Baron von Rechenberg, formerly governor
of German East Africa, has expressed it:

"Just as we lack suitable land for settling, so we lack suitable German
settlers.... For a number of years immigration into Germany has been
much greater than emigration from Germany.... Even in times of peace
German agriculture had not a surplus, but a shortage, of labor, and it
cannot possibly accord with our interests to increase the shortage by
encouraging emigration.... Regrettable though it is, there can be no
question at the conclusion of peace of acquiring territory for
settlement. There is no appropriate country, and there are no farmers to
settle on it."

[Sidenote: Germany desires not colonies but strategic positions.]

[Sidenote: Central Africa needed to supply raw materials.]

[Sidenote: Germany could use natives in war.]

German colonial aims are really not colonial, but are entirely dominated
by far-reaching conceptions of world politics. Not colonies, but
military power and strategic positions for exercising world power in
future, are her real aims. Her ultimate objective in Africa is the
establishment of a great Central African Empire, comprising not only her
colonies before the war, but also all the English, French, Belgian, and
Portuguese possessions south of the Sahara and Lake Chad and north of
the Zambezi River in South Africa. Toward this objective she was
steadily marching even before the war broke out, and she claims the
return of her lost African colonies at the end of the war as a
starting-point from which to resume the interrupted march. Or, rather,
as appears from Count Hertling's recent pronouncement, she claims a
reallocation of the world's colonies, so that she may have a share
commensurate with her world position. This Central African block, the
maps of which are now in course of preparation and printing at the
Colonial Office in Berlin, is intended in the first place to supply the
economic requirements and raw materials of German industry; in the
second and far more important place, to become the recruiting-ground for
vast native armies, the great value of which has been demonstrated in
the tropical campaigns of this war, and especially in East Africa; while
the natural harbors on the Atlantic and Indian oceans will supply the
naval and submarine bases from which both ocean routes will be
dominated, and British and American sea-power will be brought to naught.
The native armies will be useful in the next great war, to which the
German General Staff is already devoting serious attention, as appears
from the book of General von Freytag, the deputy chief of the German
General Staff, recently published here under the title "Deductions of
the World War."

[Sidenote: A great army on the flank of Asia.]

The untrained levies of the Union of South Africa would go down before
these German-trained hordes of Africans, who would also be able to deal
with North Africa and Egypt without the deflection of any white troops
from Germany; and they would in addition mean a great army planted on
the flank of Asia whose force could be felt throughout the middle East
as far as Persia, and who knows how much farther?

[Sidenote: African natives a part of Germany's plan of conquest.]

This is the grandiose scheme. It is no mere fanciful picture, but based
on the writings of great German publicists, professors, and high
colonial authorities, and chapter and verse could be quoted in full
detail for every feature of the scheme. The civilization of the African
natives and the economic development of the dark continent must be
subordinate to the most far-reaching schemes of German world power and
world conquest; the world must be brought into subjection to German
militarism. As in former centuries again the African native must play
his part in the new slavery. Dr. Solf, the present German Colonial
Secretary, in the "Colonial Calendar" for 1917, made the following
pronouncement as to the organic connection of German colonial aims with
her other aims of world power:

[Sidenote: Directions of German aims.]

"The history of our colonies in this world war has shown what was
hitherto wanting in the German colonial empire. It has shown that it was
not a proper 'empire' at all, but merely a number of possessions without
geographical and political connection, and without established
communications.... How greatly would the power of resistance of our
colonies have been increased if they had not been isolated!... These
experiences show what direction our aims must take. We shall achieve the
fulfillment of our desires if we remain conscious that the
colonial-political aim is not something which stands alone by itself,
but must be regarded in organic connection with all other aims which we
are determined to attain by the world war."

Prof. Delbrück, in a recent number of the "Preussische Jahrbücher," thus
sketches the new African Empire:

[Sidenote: Plan for a new African Empire.]

"If our victory is great enough, we can hope to unite under our hand the
whole of Central Africa with our old colony South-west Africa;
Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Dahomey, well-populated
Nigeria with the port of Lagos, Kamerun, the rich islands of San Thomé
and Principe with their splendid ports, the Katanga ore district,
Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Mozambique, and Delagoa Bay, Madagascar,
German East Africa, Zanzibar, and Uganda; and in addition the great port
of Ponta Delgado in the Azores--one of the most important and most
frequented coaling stations--and Horta, one of the most important
centers of the transatlantic cable system. At present the Azores belong
to Portugal, which is at war with Germany. Portugal also owns the Cape
Verde Islands, with the port of Porto Grande, one of the most frequented
coaling stations in the Eastern Atlantic.

[Sidenote: The riches of the African territories.]

"All these territories together have over 100,000,000 inhabitants.
United in a single ownership, and with their various characteristics
supplementing one another, they offer simply immeasurable prospects.
They are rich in natural treasures, rich in possibilities of settlement
and trade, and rich in men who can work and also be used in war. To
demand them is not unjust, and does not offend against the principle of
equilibrium, since Germany would thus only be obtaining a colonial
empire such as England and Russia, France and America, have long
possessed."

Franz Kolbe, in the "Deutsche Politik," a year ago thus described the
future rôle for raiders in the South Atlantic:

[Sidenote: Importance of German-West African Coast in combating Great
Britain.]

"The whole coast of West Africa from the mouth of the Cross River to the
mouth of the Orange River would be in German possession. When one only
remembers what immense achievements were performed by the _Emden_ in
the Indian Ocean and by the _Karlsruhe_ in the Atlantic, without any
naval base, without any possibility of replenishing in port their
supplies of munitions, food, etc., it will be realized what the
fortification of half the West Coast of Africa would signify for Germany
and for England! As soon as, in the new war, the Suez Canal is closed
against England by the Turks, all traffic between England and India,
Australia, and South Africa must go round the Cape of Good Hope. But
then all the shipping must pass the coast of German Central Africa. It
would be impossible for England any longer to concentrate her whole
fleet in the North Sea and to menace Germany. She would be compelled to
station a considerable fleet in South Africa for the protection of her
trade, and that would mean a not inconsiderable weakening of her forces
in European waters."

In the same review Emil Zimmermann explains the rôle of German East
Africa in the future scheme of world power:

[Sidenote: German Africa would have balance of power in the East.]

"German Africa, which will find allies at once in Abyssinia and in
Mohammedan freedom movements, will make the employment of black troops
against our European frontiers impossible. German Africa alone will give
us a balance of power in the East and in Africa. It will remove the
Egyptian pressure on Asia Minor. German Africa will make us a world
power by enabling us to exert decisive influence upon the world
political decisions of our enemies and of other powers, and to exercise
pressure on all shaping of policy in Africa, Asia Minor, and southern
Europe."

And in another article in the "Preussische Jahrbücher," he says: "Nearer
Asia cannot continue to exist without this covering of its flank. That
is the meaning of the German colonial question." In other words,
Berlin-Bagdad is not safe without a great German Central or East
African Empire.

[Sidenote: British ambitions are different.]

[Sidenote: German policies dangerous.]

The point of view of the British Empire is very different indeed. In the
first place, it has never had any military ambitions apart from the
measure of sea-power essential to its continued existence; in Africa it
has never militarized the natives, has always opposed any such policy
and has tended to study the natives' interests and regard their point of
view with special favor, often to the no small disappointment of
individual white settlers. Indeed, no impartial person can deny that, so
far from exploiting the natives either for military or industrial
purposes, British policy has on the whole, over a very long stretch of
years, had a tender regard for native interests, and on the whole its
results have been beneficial to the natives in their gradual
civilization. In shaping this wise policy British statesmen have had a
very long and wide African experience to guide them, and in consequence
they have avoided the very dangerous and dubious policies which the
German new-comers have set in motion. Among these not the least
dangerous is to regard the native primarily as raw material to be
manufactured into military power and world power.

[Sidenote: The British Empire asks peace and security.]

In the second place, the objects pursued by British policy on the
African continent are inherently pacific and defensive. It desires no
man's territory; it desires only to live in peace and develop the great
African territories and populations intrusted to its care. And looking
at the future from the broadest points of view, looking at the magnitude
of its material African interests and the future welfare of the vast
native populations, and its difficult task of civilizing the dark
continent; looking further upon Africa as the half-way house to India
and Australasia, the British Empire asks only for peace and
security--international peace and security of its external
communications. It cannot allow the return of conditions which mean the
militarization of the natives and their employment for schemes of world
power; it cannot allow naval and submarine bases to be organized on both
sides of the African coast, to the endangerment of the sea
communications of the empire and the peace of the world. And it must
insist on the maintenance of conditions which will guarantee through
land communications for its territories from one end of the continent to
the other.

[Sidenote: Dependence on communications by sea and land.]

The British Empire is not like Germany, Russia, or the United States, a
compact territorial entity; it is scattered over the globe, and entirely
dependent on the maintenance of communications for its continued
existence. In future these lines of communication should proceed not
only by sea, but also by land. One of the most impressive lessons of
this vast war is the vulnerability of sea-power and sea communications
through the development of underwater transport, and the immense
importance of railway communication. In fact, to be really effective the
two should go hand in hand. Nor are we at the end of the chapter in
discovering new means of transportation. It is not only conceivable, but
probable, that aërial navigation may revolutionize the present transport
situation.

[Sidenote: Prussian militarism cannot be tolerated.]

[Sidenote: The dominions desire a Monroe Doctrine for the South.]

As long as there is no real change of heart in Germany and no final and
irrevocable break with militarism, the law of self-preservation should
be considered paramount; no fresh extension of Prussian militarism to
other continents and seas should be tolerated; and the conquered German
colonies can be regarded only as guaranties for the security of the
future peace of the world. This opinion will be shared, I feel sure, by
the vast bulk of the young nations who form the Dominions of the
British Empire. They have no military aims or ambitions; their tasks are
solely the tasks of peace; their greatest interest and aim is peace.
Voluntarily they joined in this war, and to their efforts is largely due
the destruction of the German Colonial Empire, and the consequent
prevention of the German military system being spread to the ends of the
earth. They should not be asked to consent to the restoration to a
militant Germany of fresh footholds for militarism in the Southern
Hemisphere, and thus to endanger the future of their young and rising
communities who are developing the waste places of the earth. They want
a new Monroe Doctrine for the South as there has been a Monroe Doctrine
for the West, to protect it against European militarism. Behind the
sheltering wall of such a doctrine they promise to build up a great,
new, peaceful world not only for themselves, but for the many millions
of black folk intrusted to their care.

[Sidenote: Germany's stubborn defense of her African colonies.]

The enemy's stubborn defence of his last colony has not only been a
great feat in itself, but is also a proof of the supreme importance
attached by the German Government to this African colony both as an
economic asset and as a strategic point of departure for the
establishment of the future Central African Empire to which I have
referred. At the conclusion of peace our statesmen will be bound to bear
in mind these wider and obscurer issues, fraught with such consequences
to the world and to the British Empire in particular. Perhaps I may be
allowed to express the fervent hope that a land where so many of our
heroes lost their lives or their health; where, under the most terrible
and exacting conditions, human loyalty and human service were poured out
lavishly in a great cause, may never be allowed to become a menace to
the future peaceful development of the world. I am sure my gallant boys,
dead or living, would wish for no other or greater reward.

       *       *       *       *       *

Greece, as a result of the intrigues of the pro-German king and queen,
was a thorn in the flesh to the Allies for the first years of the war.
The deposition of King Constantine, and the resumption of power of
Premier Venizelos, brought Greece back to the place where her people
wished to be.




GREECE'S ATONEMENT

LEWIS R. FREEMAN


[Sidenote: A meeting with Venizelos.]

The Venizelists had been having a bad time of it from the first, but the
blackest hours of all were those toward the end of last April, when
Constantine was still strong in Athens, and before the Saloniki Allies
had found it practicable or expedient to welcome them to a full
brotherhood of arms. It was during this "dark before the dawn" period
that I had my first meeting with M. Venizelos, a conventional half
hour's interview in the suburban villa, midway along the curve of
Saloniki Bay where the Provisional Government had established its
headquarters.

[Sidenote: The attitude of Constantine.]

I had just come up from Athens, where I had found the Allied diplomats
still smarting under the memories of their ignominious experiences
following Constantine's spectacular coup of the previous December, and
it was by no means the least of these who had told me point-blank that
he could not conceive how it would be possible that Saloniki should be
returned to Greece after the war. Of course it was the Royalist
Government that my distinguished friend had had in mind when he spoke,
but there was not much to indicate at this time that the Greece of
Constantine and his minions was not also going to be the Greece of after
the war.

It was with this state of things in mind, and recalling his well known
ambitions to found a Greater Greece--by extending Epirus north along
the Adriatic, and bringing the millions of Greeks of Asia Minor at least
under the protection of the Government at Athens--that I mustered up my
courage and asked M. Venizelos offhand if he felt confident of being
able even to maintain the integrity of his country as it existed before
the war.

[Sidenote: What Greece must do for the Allies.]

"Not unless those of us Greeks who have remained faithful to the cause
of humanity and our honor are ultimately able to lend the Allies
material help in a measure sufficient to counterbalance the harm the
action of the Royalists has caused them," was the prompt reply; "and by
material help I mean military aid. We must fight, and fight, and keep on
fighting, for it is only with blood--with Greek blood--that the stain
upon Greek honor can be washed away. It is only our army that can save
us, and that is why we have been so impatient of the delay there has
been in equipping it and getting it to the front. The one division we
have in the trenches now, and the two others that are ready to go, are
not enough, but they are about all we have been able to raise so far.
Thessaly is for us (as you may have seen in traveling across it), and
would give us two more divisions at least; but our Allies have not yet
seen fit to allow us to go there after them."

[Sidenote: Venizelos determines to aid the Allies.]

M. Venizelos spoke of a number of other things before I left him
(notably of the extent to which the Russian revolution and the entry of
America had helped him in his fight to save Greece), but it was plain
that the problem uppermost in his mind was that of wiping out the score
of the Allies against his country by giving them a substantial measure
of assistance in the field.

"Do not fail to visit our force on the ---- sector before you leave the
Balkans," was his parting injunction. "There may be a chance of seeing
it in action before very long, and if you do, you will need no further
assurance of the way in which we shall make our honor white before our
Allies and all the world."

[Sidenote: Unenviable position of the Venizelists.]

[Sidenote: Elaborate precautions against treachery.]

The Serbian and two or three other Armies have been worse off in a
physical way, but no national force since the outbreak of the war has
been in so thoroughly an unenviable position on every other score as was
that of the Venizelists at this time. The Serbs and the Belgians had at
least the knowledge that the confidence and the sympathy of the Allies
were theirs. Also, they had chances to fight to their hearts' content.
The Venizelists had scant measure of sympathy, and still less of
confidence; and when their first chance to fight was at last given them,
they were allowed to face the foe only after elaborate precautions had
been taken against everything, from incompetence and cowardice on their
part to open treachery. That this was the fault neither of themselves
nor of their Allies, and had only come about through the perfidy of a
King to whom they no longer swore fealty, did not make the shame of it
much easier to bear for an army of spirited volunteers who had risked
their all for a chance to wipe out the dishonor of their country.

[Sidenote: Spies sent in the guise of deserters.]

The thing that for a while made it so difficult for the Allies to know
what to do with the Venizelist army was the almost ridiculous ease with
which, under the peculiar circumstances of its recruitment, it lent
itself to spying purposes. All the Royalists, or their German
paymasters, had to do to establish a spy in the Saloniki area was to
send over one of their Intelligence Officers in the guise of a deserter
from the Greek army to that of Venizelos, and there he was! To send back
information, or even to return in person, across the but partially
patrolled "Neutral Zone" was scarcely more difficult, and it was the
wholesale way in which this sort of thing went on that made it so hard
for the Allies to decide just who the bona fide Venizelists were, and
just how far it would be safe to trust a force to which the enemy still
had such ready means of access.

[Sidenote: Tact and common sense used.]

There was nothing else for the Allies to do but "go slow" and "play
safe" in dealing with the Venizelist army, and, under the circumstances,
there is no doubt that a difficult situation was handled with a good
deal of tact and common sense. Just how trying the situation of the
Venizelists was, however, I had a chance to see one day when I happened
to be at their Headquarters arranging for my visit to the Greek sector
of the Front. Their troops had acquitted themselves with great credit in
some gallantly carried out raiding operations, which must have made it
doubly hard for them to put up with a new restrictive order just
promulgated by the Supreme Command as a further precaution against the
leakage of information to the enemy.

Just as I was about to take my departure, a copy of the new order was
delivered to the Staff Officer with whom I had been conferring about my
visit to the Front. He read it through slowly, his swarthy face flushing
red with anger as he proceeded.

[Sidenote: A series of humiliations.]

"Have you heard of this?" he said, handing me the paper, and controlling
his voice with an effort, "No man or officer of our army is to cross the
---- bridge without a special permit from General Headquarters. It is
only the latest in the long series of humiliations we have had to put up
with. Just look at the way we stand. In Athens our names are posted as
traitors who can be shot on sight. Here it isn't quite like that,
but--well (he raised his hand above his head and let it fall limply in
a gesture of despair), all I can say is that the only officers of the
Venizelist army to be envied are those whose names are recorded here
(indicating a file at his elbow). It's the death-list from
day-before-yesterday's fighting."

[Sidenote: Venizelist troops succeed in big attacks.]

Owing to the delay in issuing my pass in Saloniki, I did not arrive at
Greek Headquarters until the evening of the day on which the big attack
had taken place, and it was day-break of the morning following before I
was able to make my way up to the advanced lines. The Venizelist troops
had taken all their objectives, and held them with great courage against
such counterattacks as the surprised Bulgars--who, not expecting an
attack from the Greeks, had made the mistake of massing too much of
their strength against the British and French attacks to east and
west--were able to organize against them. They had been busy all night
"reversing" the captured trenches in anticipation of a determined
attempt on the part of the reinforced enemy to retake them in the
morning.

[Sidenote: Movement carried out without confusion.]

The hilly but well-metaled cartroad, along which by the light of the
waning moon I cantered with an officer of the Greek staff, had been
thronged all night with the surging current of the battle traffic--an
up-flow of munition convoys and reinforcements, and back-flow of wounded
and prisoners--but I could not help remarking the comparative quiet and
absence of confusion with which the complex movement was carried on.

[Sidenote: The Greeks seem to understand the game of war.]

"Somehow this doesn't seem quite like the transport of a new army just
undergoing its baptism of fire," I said to my companion. "I've seen
things on the roads behind the western front in far worse messes than
any of these little jams we've passed to-night. These chaps are as
businesslike as though they'd been at the game for years."

[Sidenote: Veterans of the Balkan wars.]

"So they have," was the quiet reply. "Our army, as recruited so far, is
a new one only in name. The men who attacked yesterday were of the
famous S---- Division, which fought all through the last two Balkan wars
and gained no end of praise from all the foreign military attachés for
its great mountain work. It was this Division which scaled the steep
range beyond Doiran and drove the Bulgars out of Rupel Pass."

[Sidenote: The Battle of "Rupel Pass."]

"The S---- Division," "Rupel Pass." Instantly I recalled how a British
General, over on the Struma a few days previously, had pointed out to me
a steep range of serried snow-capped mountains towering against the
skyline to the northwest, and told me that the feat of the Greeks in
taking a division over it at a point where even the wary Bulgar had
deemed it impossible was one of the finest exploits in the annals of
mountain warfare.

"The Italians have fought the Austrians at a greater altitude in a
number of places in the Alps, and in our wars with the Himalayan
tribesmen we have sent our Gurkhas twice as high. But all of that was
after more or less preparation. Here, the Greeks simply started off and
went over that range with only their rifles and the packs on their
backs. I know of nothing to compare with it save the taking of
Kaymakchalan by the Serbs last November in the operations which freed
Monastir. Not many in Saloniki have had much good to say of the Greek as
a soldier of late, but you may be sure that we can do with more men of
the kind that crossed that mountain range, and there is no reason why
Venizelos should not be able to bring them to us."

[Sidenote: A favorable position for observation.]

The hill from which we were to follow the action jutted out of the
mountains into the plain like the bow of a battleship. So favorable was
its position for observation--from its brow a wide expanse of mountain
and valley was spread from twenty to sixty miles in three
directions--that the British and French as well as the Greeks maintained
posts there. We found the officers in both of the Allied "O. Pips"
[signal corps talk for O.P., meaning observation post] highly
enthusiastic over the work of the Greeks in their attack of the
preceding day.

[Sidenote: The evening bulletin.]

We found two officers in the British Observation Post chuckling over the
evening bulletin, which had just been delivered to them. "You have to
read between the lines of Sarrail's 'Evening Hope' if you want to get at
the real facts," said one of them. "It's what it fails to tell you, that
you really want to know. Now, you might be able to gather from this that
all the Balkan Allies have been doing quite a bit of attacking during
the last day or two at various parts of the Front from Doiran west to
Albania, but you have to go between the lines to find that our shifty
Bulgar friend over there gave most of them as good or better than they
gave him all the way. It's sad but true that in this, our 'Great Spring
Offensive,' as the papers at home have talked of it, the whole lot of
us--French, British, Russian, Italian, and even the Serb--have been
fought to a standstill by the Bulgar. Far as I can see, the only gain we
have to show for it is in the casualty lists."

I failed to see just what there was to chuckle about in such an
interpretation of the glowing lines of the evening bulletin, and said as
much.

[Sidenote: Successes of the little Venizelist army.]

"It isn't funny in the least," was the reply, "and it would seem still
less so if we could see at close range some of the things that are lying
out on a hundred miles of these accursed mountain sides as a
consequence of what has happened. But what _did_ strike us as a bit rich
was the fact that, of all the Allies, this little piece of the
Venizelist army, which we have held in leash all winter while we made up
our minds as to whether it would be safe to slip or not, is the only one
of the whole lot of us that has taken all the objectives set for it."

A sporting instinct and a grim sense of humor--the readiness to admire a
brave foe and the ability to extract amusement from discomfiture--are
the two things that have conspired to make the British soldier so
uniformly successful in treating those "twin impostors," Triumph and
Disaster, "just the same."

[Sidenote: The view across the Vardar.]

The sky was lightening and throwing into ghostly silhouette the line of
the mountain ridge across the Vardar by the time we had pushed on out
along the communication trench to the Greek Observation Post on the
extreme brow of the hill. Since midnight the enemy "heavies" had been
coughing gruffly under the mist-blanket that overlaid the plain,
dappling it with alternately flashing and fading blotches of light till
it glowed fantastically like a lamp-shade of Carrara marble;
star-shells, fired with a low trajectory, popped up and dove out of
sight again, throwing a fluttering green radiance over the white pall
which swathed the battlefield.

[Sidenote: The Bulgar preparing to go over the top.]

The mist-mask must have fended the day-break from the plain long after
it was light upon the hill from where we watched, for it was not until
the range of serrated peaks to the east of Doiran was all aglow with the
red and gold of sunrise that the higher-keyed crack of the enemy's
field-guns came welling up to tell us that the Bulgar was getting ready
to go over the top. The flame-spurts--paling from a hot red to faded
lemon as the light grew stronger--splashed up against the mist-pall as
the jet of an illuminated fountain rises and falls, and down where the
battered first-line trenches faced each other the dust-geysers of the
exploding shells rolled up in clouds to the surface of the thinning
vapors as the mud of the bottom boils up through the waters of an
agitated pool.

[Sidenote: The Allied artillery opens.]

For a minute or two the ragged line of the barrage wallowed forward
through the outraged mist alone. Then, as a sudden flight of rockets
spat forth from the Greek first line to warn that the enemy infantry was
on the way, all the Allied artillery that could be brought to bear
opened up and began dropping shells just behind where the murky
mist-clouds marked the swath of the Bulgar barrage.

For the space of perhaps two or three minutes the fog-bank swirled and
curled in swaying eddies as the shells came hurtling into it;
then--whether it was from a sudden awakening of the wind or through the
licking up of its vapors by the first rays of the now risen sun, I never
knew--almost in the wave of a hand, it was gone, revealing a broad
expanse of trench-creased plain with a long belt of gray figures moving
across it in a cloud of dust and smoke.

[Sidenote: Lively hand-to-hand fighting.]

"It isn't much of a barrage as barrages go on the western front," said
Captain X---- half apologetically. "Their artillery won't do much harm
to us, and, I'm afraid, ours not much to them. And we'll hardly be
having enough machine guns emplaced to sting them as they ought to be
stung for swarming up in masses like that. But if it's only a
second-class artillery show, I still think I can promise you--if only
the Bulgar has the stomach for it--a livelier bit of hand-to-hand
fighting than you might find in a whole summer of looking for it in
France. Do you see those little winking flashes all along where the
infantry are moving? Some of them are from bayonets, but most are from
knives. A great man with the knife is the Bulgar. Did you ever hear that
song about him they sang at a revue the British 'Tommies' had at
Saloniki? It was a parody on some other song that was being sung in the
halls in London, and went something like this:

[Sidenote: A Bulgar song.]

     I'm Boris the Bulgar,
       The Man With the Knife;
     The Pride of Sofia,
       The Taker of Life.
     Good gracious, how spacious
       And deep are the cuts,
     Of Boris the Bulgar,
       The Knifer--

"Now for it! Look at that!"

[Sidenote: The barrages lift and the Greeks advance to meet the
Bulgars.]

I never did hear just what it was that Boris was a knifer of, for at
that juncture the two barrages--having respectively protected and
harried to the best of their abilities the advancing wave of infantry
down to within a hundred yards or so of the Greek trenches--"lifted"
almost simultaneously on to "communications," and that lifting was the
signal for the opening of the climacteric stage of the action. Without
an instant's delay, a solid wave of Greeks in brown--lightly fringed in
front with the figures of a few of the more active or impetuous who had
outdistanced their comrades in the scramble over the top--rose up out of
the earth and swept forward to meet the line of gray. The gust of their
first great cheer rolled up to us above the thunder of the artillery.

"Now for it!" repeated X----, focussing down his telescope and steadying
himself with his elbows. "I think you'll find the show from now on worth
all the trouble of coming up to see."

[Sidenote: the Bulgars break and retreat.]

I do not attempt to account for what happened now; I only record it. It
may have been that the Allied artillery had wrought more havoc in that
advancing wave of men than had been apparent from a distance, or it may
have been that the enemy artillery had done less to the entrenched
defenders than it was expected to do; at any rate, the line of gray
began to break at almost the first impact of the line of brown, and the
great hand-to-hand fight that X---- had promised me was transformed into
a Marathon.

[Sidenote: Greeks have always beaten the Bulgars.]

"As I expected," muttered my companion. "'Boris' has no stomach for a
fight to-day with the man who licked him yesterday, and will lick him
to-morrow and go right on licking him to the end if they'll only give
him a show. The Bulgar never has stood up to the Greek, and he never
will."

[Sidenote: The Greek Staff is in a mountain valley.]

[Sidenote: Scarcity of nurses.]

The Greek Staff shared a round bowl of a mountain valley, a few miles
back from the front lines, with a clearing station. The equipment of the
little hospital had mostly been provided by the British Red Cross, but
the Venizelists had made a brave effort to furnish the staff themselves.
There were two French-trained Greek surgeons, a Greek matron, Greek
orderlies, and two Greek nurses. Since the attack began there had been
work for a dozen of the latter, but--as it had been impossible for the
women of most of the Venizelist families to get away from Old Greece--no
others were available. An English nurse, who had marched in the retreat
of the Serbians, and a French nurse from a Saloniki hospital had
volunteered to step into the breach, and these five women were
courageously trying to make up in zeal what they lacked in numbers.

[Sidenote: Working double hours.]

"We are not enough for a double shift since the fighting began," Madame
A----, the matron, had said to me the night of my arrival; "so we are
accomplishing the same end by working double hours. We are working to
atone for the dishonor our King has brought upon our country, just as
our men are fighting to atone for it; and the harder we all work and
fight the sooner it will come about."

The last thing to catch my eye as I looked back from the rim of the
valley when I rode away at midnight had been the flash of a bar of light
on a white uniform, as a tired figure had drooped against the flap of a
hospital tent for a breath of air.

[Sidenote: Women nurses go without sleep.]

"If any one of those women has had a wink of sleep in the last three
days," Captain X---- had said as we reined in to let a string of
ambulances go by, "it must have been taken standing. I have been up most
of the time myself, and never once have I looked across to the clearing
station but I saw some sign of a nurse on the move."

[Sidenote: Venizelos at the nurses' mess.]

Madame A---- had asked me to drop in at the nurses' mess for luncheon in
case I got back from the trenches in time, and this, by dint of hard
riding, I was just able to do. Three or four powerful military cars
drawn up at the hospital gate indicated new arrivals, but as to who they
were I had no hint until I had pushed in through the flap of the mess
tent and found M. Venizelos seated on a soap-box, _vis-à-vis_ Madame
A---- at a table improvised from a couple of condensed milk cases. At
the regular mess table, sitting on reversed water-buckets, were three
French flying officers and a civilian whom I recognized as the private
secretary of M. Venizelos. Two nurses were just rising from unfinished
plates of soup in response to word that a crucial abdominal operation
awaited their attendance at the theatre.

"Most of the Provisional Government has come out to pay us a visit this
morning," said Madame A----, showing me to a blanket-roll seat at one
end of the mess table, "and we are lunching early so that it can get
back to Saloniki to take up the reins of State again. The General has
carried off the Admiral and the Foreign Minister, but I have managed to
keep the President for _our_ banquet. He has made the round of the
hospital and spoken to every man here--that is," she added with a catch
in her voice, "to all that could hear him. We've--we've lost three men
this morning just because there wasn't staff to operate quickly enough."

[Sidenote: A strange banquet at which the guests contribute.]

That was, I think, one of the strangest little "banquets" I ever sat
down to. Every one travels more or less "self-contained" in the Saloniki
area, and whenever a party is thrown together the joint supplies are
commandeered for the common good. The mess menu was a simple one of
soup, tinned salmon, rice, and cheese, but by the time M. Venizelos's
hamper had yielded a box of fresh figs, a can of the honey of Hymettus,
and a couple of bottles of Cretan wine, and the French officers had
"anted up" cognac, some tins of _flageolet_ for salad, and a tumbler of
_confiture_, and the English nurse had brought out the last of her
Christmas plum-cake, and I had thrown in a loaf of Italian _pan-forte_
and a can of chocolates, the little crazy-legged camp-table had assumed
a passing festal air.

[Sidenote: No one speaks of war at the feast.]

A number of toasts were proposed and drunk, but no one spoke of the
nearer or remoter progress of the war. M. Venizelos adverted several
times to the wonder of the spring flowers as he had seen them from the
road, especially the great fields of blood-red poppies, and I overheard
him telling Madame A---- some apparently amusing incidents of his early
life in Crete. But it was not until, the banquet over, he had settled
himself in his car for the ride to Saloniki that he alluded to any of
the things with which his mind must have been so engrossed all the time.

"So you thought that our troops had all the best of the enemy this
morning?" he said with a grave smile as he shook my hand.

"Incomparably the best of it," I answered.

[Sidenote: Why Venizelos is confident in the power of Greece.]

"Then perhaps you will understand why I felt so confident that the
Bulgars would not have come into the war if they had known that Greece
would stand by Serbia. And you will also understand why I feel so
confident that our military help to the Allies will be a very real one,
perhaps enough of a one even to save Greece from herself."

This was, I believe, the latest occasion on which M. Venizelos visited
his troops at the front. Before another fortnight had gone by the forces
of the "Protecting Powers" were moving into Old Greece, and in a month
Constantine had abdicated and opened the way for the return of his
former Prime Minister to Athens.

[Sidenote: The maker and Savior of Modern Greece.]

From the time of the Balkan wars of 1912-13 to the outbreak of the
present one Venizelos was often referred to as "The Maker of Modern
Greece." After this war he may well be known as "The Savior of Modern
Greece"; and of the two achievements there can be no doubt that history
must record that the one of "saving" was incomparably greater than the
one of "making."

[Sidenote: What the influence of Venizelos may do.]

It is still too early to make it worth while to endeavor to forecast
what is on the knees of the capricious war-gods of the Balkans, and
there is no use in trying to deny that the Bulgar--just as long as
Germany has the power and will to back him up--will take a deal of
beating. But that Venizelos will be able to make the army of reunited
Greece a potently contributive factor in bringing about that
devoutly-to-be-wished consummation may now be taken as assured.


Copyright, World's Work, January, 1918.

       *       *       *       *       *

We have seen in a previous narrative the difficulties which the Italians
encountered in conducting their campaign against Austria. As a result of
German falsehood and propaganda, the Italian line was weakened and
penetrated by a great German army, and the Italian lines were swept
back. They finally held, however, and the strength of their resistance
is indicated in the following pages.




THE ITALIANS AT BAY

G. WARD PRICE


[Sidenote: Udine as it seemed before the war.]

Udine was a typically quaint and sleepy little Italian town galvanized
into unnatural life and prosperity. Every one who has spent a week in
Italy can put the picture of the place before his imagination in a
moment: streets of dark, restful, Gothic cloisters; a broad piazza
flanked by a graceful loggia; remains of medieval fortification of which
the towering gate-houses still narrowed each entrance to the town; a
general air of pleasant tranquillity and of a well-being that was a
legacy from the more spacious days of centuries gone by. The nature of
the place was that of mellow old wine, very gracious, rich with
associations that brought a glow to the palate of memory, but for all
that something of which one wanted only little at a time. A glimpse of
Udine as she had been for centuries was delightful, to dwell there would
seem like being buried alive.

[Sidenote: Bustle and congestion when Udine becomes Army Headquarters.]

To this forgotten township of the old Venetian province had come
suddenly in the spring of 1913 all the bustle and congestion of the
headquarters of the whole Italian Army. For the next two and a half
years you could hardly find a room in Udine to sleep in; the people of
the place opened large modern restaurants and cafés for the officers and
soldiers who crowded its streets; big shops filled the gloom of the old
arcades with an incongruous expanse of plate-glass windows; the good
burgesses of Udine made money and waxed fat.

[Sidenote: A tactical dead-lock on the western front.]

It seemed, indeed, as if the steady shower of war prosperity that had
fallen upon them for two years might last until that indefinite, but to
most minds far-off, day when peace should come. For it was the general
opinion that in the West, at least, the war had reached a condition of
tactical dead-lock. Trench warfare had petrified movement, except in
laborious shifting of a few hundred yards at a time, hardly perceptible
on a small-scale map. The day of sweeping advances, of sudden
retirements, was over. At a reasonable distance behind that unbudging
wall of trenches you were as secure from personal displacement by the
war as if you were at the other end of Italy; indeed, no earlier than
the beginning of this month of October some people had arrived with
their families at Udine from other parts of the country to carry on
trades connected with the life of the army.

[Sidenote: General Cadorna praises the British batteries.]

I myself set foot in Udine for the first time on October 20. I was going
back to the Macedonian front, where for two years I had been the
official correspondent of the British Army, and I had asked the War
Office to authorize me to visit on the way the British batteries which
since April had been cooperating with the Italian Army on the Isonzo.
General Cadorna had given them high praise in a message to the British
Government after the fighting in which they had taken part in May, and I
thought it would be interesting to see British and Italian troops side
by side in the field for the first time.

[Sidenote: Visits to the Italian front yield important information.]

Visitors to the Italian front used to find most convenient arrangements
made to give them a rapid idea of conditions there. Lying almost
entirely among mountains, the line presented unusual opportunities for
survey from dominating heights, and there were many places where, at
leisure and in virtual safety, one could watch the Austrian
intrenchments from close range. Fast cars took you up to these
vantage-points, and a number of staff-officers, speaking perfect English
and knowing every detail of the front and its history, raised these
visits from the level of sight-seeing excursions to opportunities for
learning a great deal that was important and technical.

[Sidenote: The Austro-German offensive begins.]

The very last of these journeys, which had been made by visitors of
every country, took place on October 24, the day that the great
Austro-German offensive began, and I remember how, as we drove along in
the rain, all our talk was of the bad news of that morning--that the
enemy, reinforced by a huge number of divisions brought secretly from
the Russian front, and profiting by a night of rain and fog, had thrust
down into the valley of the Isonzo between Plezzo and Tolmino, carried,
apparently by surprise, two Italian lines across the ravine after a
short and very violent bombardment, and then, pushing on, had captured
Caporetto, thus cutting off the Italian troops on Monte Nero and the
other mountains beyond the Isonzo, and opening a most serious gap in the
very center of the Italian line.

[Sidenote: Gorizia has suffered from the war.]

[Sidenote: A shell interrupts the sight-seers.]

The day was one of evil omen. We went to Gorizia, that pretty Austrian
spa that was taken by the Italians last year, and has suffered from the
war as much as Udine, its neighbor across the old frontier, has
prospered. In the heart of the town its old castle towers up from an
isolated crag, and from the battlements you can look across the valley
to the Italian and Austrian lines on the slopes of San Marco opposite.
Scores of parties like our own had made this visit to Gorizia Castle,
and to-day the driving rain and valley mists made observation so bad
that it seemed more than usually safe to show oneself above the ramparts
on the side toward the enemy. Yet we had not been there three
minutes--a group of two well-known American correspondents and one
Italian, with an Italian officer, and myself--when an Austrian six-inch
shell burst with a crash hardly ten feet from the right-hand man of our
line. A black wall of flying mud towered up and blotted out the sky;
three of us were thrown headlong by the force of the explosion. Only the
fact that the shell had fallen deeply into the rain-softened bank of
earth on top of the battlements saved the names of the last four
visitors to the Italian front from being recorded on graves in Gorizia
cemetery.

"I've brought people here seventy or eighty times," said the officer who
was with us, "and nothing like that has ever happened before."

"We've evidently brought bad luck," said some one, and so, little though
we guessed it, we had.

[Sidenote: The Italians expect an Austrian push.]

During the first fortnight of October it had been a remark frequently
made throughout Italy that an Austrian push was probable before the real
winter set in. I had heard this likelihood discussed by people at the
Chamber of Deputies on my way through Rome, but without serious
significance being given to it. The Austro-Swiss frontier had been
closed for five weeks, always a sign that important movements of troops
were going on in the enemy's country; something more unusual was that
even the postal mails from Austria to Holland and Scandinavia had been
suspended.

[Sidenote: Cadorna believes the enemy will use large reserves.]

According to the talk one heard in Italy, Cadorna had already had in
mind the chance of a strong autumn attack on his army when he arrested
his own offensive in September after capturing by a brilliant stroke the
greater part of the Bainsizza plateau beyond the Isonzo, taking thirty
thousand prisoners and one hundred and fifty guns. The French and
British general staffs, it was said, had asked Cadorna whether he meant
to go on with his offensive, for which they had contributed contingents
of guns. Cadorna's reply had been that he had strong Austrian forces
against him, of which he knew the total, but that he also believed large
reserves of unknown quantity were available for use against him, owing
to the collapse of the Russian Army. In these circumstances he preferred
to consolidate and prepare rather than to continue to challenge forces
that could not be exactly estimated.

Both the increase of enemy strength on the Italian front and the
paralyzing uncertainty under which the Allies labored, were directly due
to the debacle of the Russian Army during the summer. The means by which
commanders-in-chief arrive at the indispensable knowledge of what forces
they have against them is through a highly organized intelligence
department, working in close cooperation with the similar departments of
the other Allied armies.

[Sidenote: How the enemy's strength is ascertained.]

Each of these departments, by interrogating prisoners and reading papers
found on enemy dead, by collating the reports of the air service, by
minutely sifting the enemy press, arrives at a fairly accurate knowledge
of the enemy's order of battle on the front of its own army. So
essential is this system to the successful carrying-on of operations
that raids are often specially organized on the enemy trenches with the
sole object of capturing prisoners who may be able to give information
that will clear up some point about which there is uncertainty. All the
knowledge of the enemy's dispositions thus collected by each of the
Allied armies is open to all of them; it is exchanged and compared and
collated, so that they finally arrive at a fairly complete knowledge of
the distribution of the enemy's forces in each one of the theaters of
war.

[Sidenote: The Russian intelligence department collapses.]

Now, when the Russian Army went to pieces in the summer, its
intelligence department collapsed with the rest. The Russian Army has
taken virtually no prisoners for a long time, and consequently the facts
about what troops the Austrians and Germans have on that front have not
been ascertainable. It was known that the enemy used to have about one
hundred and thirty divisions there, but no one could tell whether they
still remained or whether they had been brought away to be held in
reserve for some sudden operation on another front.

[Sidenote: The attack by the Austro-Germans a surprise.]

In this way it came about that the sudden attack by an unexpectedly
large Austro-German force upon the Isonzo line took the Italians by
surprise, with the result that they lost in three days not only all they
had won in two and a half years of hard fighting, by sacrifices and
sufferings and labors beyond human estimation, but also the larger part
of that rich north-eastern department of their country which was for
centuries the metropolitan province of the great Venetian republic.

[Sidenote: Enemy has a great number of fresh guns.]

On October 22 we learned at Italian headquarters that ten German
divisions, about one hundred and twenty thousand men, had arrived behind
the enemy front on the Isonzo and were concentrated in reserve round
Laibach. This was the first time in the whole war that German troops had
met the Italians on this front. The number of new Austrian divisions was
reported to be even greater. Many new batteries of heavy caliber had
also arrived and were registering their ranges; indeed, when the attack
actually came, it was found that the number of fresh guns was even
greater than had been thought, for some of them did not reveal their
position by registering, but, taking their ranges from guns earlier in
position, fired not a round until they joined in that terrific first
bombardment with which the attack opened on the morning of October 24.

[Sidenote: Italians expect to hold west side of Isonzo.]

Most serious was the situation, but even yet no one grasped how bad the
reality was going to be. It was generally accepted that all ground
beyond the Isonzo would have to be abandoned, but it seemed beyond all
doubt that the Italians would be able to make good their defense along
the steep ridge that forms the western side of the Isonzo valley. As you
looked from those heights across the river, it was like looking from the
wall of a medieval castle; you dominated everything, and behind you were
great Italian guns ready to fill the gorge of the Isonzo and the slopes
beyond with a barrier of bursting steel.

But one of those combinations that have often helped the Germans in this
war helped them to the success that seemed impossible. It was made up of
the secrecy with which they had been able to complete their
preparations, of the luck of surprise and bad weather, and above all of
the fatal failure in their duty of certain detachments of the Italian
forces.

[Sidenote: German propaganda has created disaffection in every Allied
country.]

[Sidenote: Soldiers everywhere are weary of war.]

One of the successes of this year's German offensive was the creation in
the heart of an efficient and gallant army of this canker of
disaffection by propaganda that has been as energetic and as dangerous
to our cause as any of the enemy's operations in the field. In every
Allied country it has been active; among the English it is at work
corrupting labor, preying on the nerves of the overstrained worker, and
whispering any subtle lie that will sap his will and undermine his
spirit. In France one fractional part of the widespread organization
that carries on this treacherous work is being exposed by the
revelations in the Bolo case. In Italy the Germans cunningly twisted
fanatics, both socialist and clerical, into agents for forwarding their
work, and they had flooded the country with money to corrupt the army
which they had not been able to beat in the field. The individual
soldiers of every country, including above all the Central empires
themselves, are dead-weary of the war, but the enemy alone h