"Any one who knew telegraphy and German could read that message," I protested.
"It is not so simple as that. It is a cipher code, and is probably changed daily."
Nevertheless, the officers in the car watched the signalling closely, and turning, surveyed the country behind us. In so flat a region, with trees and shrubbery cut down and houses razed, even a pocket flash can send a signal to the lines of the enemy. And such signals are sent.
The German spy system is thorough and far-reaching.
I have gone through Flanders near the lines at various times at night.
It is a dead country apparently. There are destroyed houses, sodden fields, ditches lipful of water. But in the most amazing fashion lights spring up and disappear. Follow one of these lights and you find nothing but a deserted farm, or a ruined barn, or perhaps nothing but a field of sugar beets dying in the ground.
Who are these spies? Are they Belgians and French, driven by the ruin of everything they possess to selling out to the enemy? I think not.
It is much more probable that they are Germans who slip through the lines in some uncanny fashion, wading and swimming across the inundation, crawling flat where necessary, and working, an inch at a time, toward the openings between the trenches. Frightful work, of course. Impossible work, too, if the popular idea of the trenches were correct--that is, that they form one long, communicating ditch from the North Sea to Switzerland! They do not, of course. There are blank s.p.a.ces here and there, fully controlled by the trenches on either side, and reenforced by further trenches behind. But with a knowledge of where these openings lie it is possible to work through.
Possible, not easy. And there is no mercy for a captured spy.
The troops who had been relieved were moving out of the trenches. Our progress became extremely slow. The road was lined with men. They pressed their faces close to the gla.s.s of the car and laughed and talked a little among themselves. Some of them were bandaged. Their white bandages gleamed in the moonlight. Here and there, as they pa.s.sed, one blew on his fingers, for the wind was bitterly cold.
"In a few moments we must get out and walk," I was told. "Is madame a good walker?"
I said I was a good walker. I had a strong feeling that two or three people might walk along that road under those starlights much more safely and inconspicuously than an automobile could move. For automobiles at the front mean generals as a rule, and are always subject to attack.
Suddenly the car stopped and a voice called to us sharply. There were soldiers coming up a side road. I was convinced that we had surprised an attack, and were in the midst of the German advance. One of the officers flung the door open and looked out.
But we were only on the wrong road, and must get into reverse and turn the machine even closer to the front. I know now that there was no chance of a German attack at that point, that my fears were absurd.
Nevertheless, so keen was the tension that for quite ten minutes my heart raced madly.
On again. The officers in the car consulted the map and, having decided on the route, fell into conversation. The officer of the Third Division, whose mother had been English, had joined the party. He had been on the staff of General Leman at the time of the capture of Liege, and he told me of the sensational attempt made by the Germans to capture the General.
"I was upstairs with him at headquarters," he said, "when word came up that eight Englishmen had just entered the building with a request to see him. I was suspicious and we started down the staircase together.
The "Englishmen" were in the hallway below. As we appeared on the stairs the man in advance put his hand in his pocket and drew a revolver. They were dressed in civilians" clothes, but I saw at once that they were German.
"I was fortunate in getting my revolver out first, and shot down the man in advance. There was a struggle, in which the General made his escape and all of the eight were either killed or taken prisoners.
They were uhlans, two officers and six privates."
"It was very brave," I said. "A remarkable exploit."
"Very brave indeed," he agreed with me. "They are all very brave, the Germans."
Captain F---- had been again consulting his map. Now he put it away.
"Brave but brutal," he said briefly. "I am of the Third Division. I have watched the German advance protected by women and children. In the fighting the civilians fell first. They had no weapons. It was terrible. It is the German system," he went on, "which makes everything of the end, and nothing at all of the means. It is seen in the way they have sacrificed their own troops."
"They think you are equally brutal," I said. "The German soldiers believe that they will have their eyes torn out if they are captured."
I cited a case I knew of, where a wounded German had hidden in the inundation for five days rather than surrender to the horrors he thought were waiting for him. When he was found and taken to a hospital his long days in the water had brought on gangrene and he could not be saved.
"They have been told that to make them fight more savagely," was the comment. "What about the official German order for a campaign of "frightfulness" in Belgium?"
And here, even while the car is crawling along toward the trenches, perhaps it is allowable to explain the word "frightfulness," which now so permeates the literature of the war. Following the scenes of the German invasion into Belgium, where here and there some maddened civilian fired on the German troops and precipitated the deaths of his townsmen,[C] Berlin issued, on August twenty-seventh, a declaration, of which this paragraph is a part:
[Footnote C: The Belgians contend that, in almost every case, such firing by civilians was the result of attack on their women.]
"The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a warning to the whole country."
A Belgian officer once quoted it to me, with a comment.
"This is not an order to the army. It is an attempt at justification for the very acts which Berlin is now attempting to deny!"
That is how "frightfulness" came into the literature of the war.
Captain F---- stopped the car. Near the road was a ruin of an old church.
"In that church," he said, "our soldiers were sleeping when the Germans, evidently informed by a spy, began to sh.e.l.l it. The first shot smashed that house there, twenty-five yards away; the second shot came through the roof and struck one of the supporting pillars, bringing the roof down. Forty-six men were killed and one hundred and nine wounded."
He showed me the grave from a window of the car, a great grave in front of the church, with a wooden cross on it. It was too dark to read the inscription, but he told me what it said:
"Here lie forty-six _cha.s.seurs_." Beneath are the names, one below the other in two columns, and underneath all: "_Morts pour la Patrie_."
We continued to advance. Our lamps were out, but the _fusees_ made progress easy. And there was the moon. We had left behind us the lines of the silent men. The scene was empty, desolate. Suddenly we stopped by a low brick house, a one-story building with overhanging eaves.
Sentries with carbines stood under the eaves, flattened against the wall for shelter from the biting wind.
CHAPTER XI
AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER
A narrow path led up to the house. It was flanked on both sides by barbed wire, and progress through it was slow. The wind caught my rain cape and tore it against the barbs. I had to be disentangled. The sentries saluted, and the low door, through which the officers were obliged to stoop to enter, was opened by an orderly from within.
We entered The House of the Mill of Saint ----.
The House of the Mill of Saint ---- was less pretentious than its name. Even at its best it could not have been imposing. Now, partially destroyed and with its windows carefully screened inside by grain sacks nailed to the frames for fear of a betraying ray of light, it was not beautiful. But it was hospitable. A hanging lamp in its one livable room, a great iron stove, red and comforting, and a large round table under the lamp made it habitable and inviting. It was Belgian artillery headquarters, and I was to meet here Colonel Jacques, one of the military idols of Belgium, the hero of the Congo, and now in charge of Belgian batteries. In addition, since it was midnight, we were to sup here.
We were expected, and Colonel Jacques himself waited inside the living-room door. A tall man, as are almost all the Belgian officers--which is curious, considering that the troops seem to be rather under average size--he greeted us cordially. I fancied that behind his urbanity there was the glimmer of an amused smile. But his courtesy was beautiful. He put me near the fire and took the next chair himself.
I had a good chance to observe him. He is no longer a young man, and beyond a certain military erectness and precision in his movements there is nothing to mark him the great soldier he has shown himself to be.
"We are to have supper," he said smilingly in French. "Provided you have brought something to eat with you!"
"We have brought it," said Captain F----.
The officers of the staff came in and were formally presented. There was much clicking of heels, much deep and courteous bowing. Then Captain F---- produced his box of biscuits, and from a capacious pocket of his army overcoat a tin of bully beef. The House of the Mill of Saint ---- contributed a bottle of thin white native wine and, triumphantly, a gla.s.s. There are not many gla.s.ses along the front.
There was cheese too. And at the end of the meal Colonel Jacques, with great _empress.e.m.e.nt_, laid before me a cake of sweet chocolate.
I had to be shown the way to use the bully beef. One of the hard flat biscuits was split open, spread with b.u.t.ter and then with the beef in a deep layer. It was quite good, but what with excitement and fatigue I was not hungry. Everybody ate; everybody talked; and, after asking my permission, everybody smoked. I sat near the stove and dried my steaming boots.