Antwerp to Gallipoli. Arthur Ruhl
your calm and dignity. These prisoners, wounded or not, I shall take under my protection, became I say that they are not really to blame for acts which they have been ordered to do under threat of cruel punishment.
Yes, I say I shall take them under my protection because my heart bleeds to think that they, too, have left behind those dear to them—an aged father, an old mother, a wife, children, sisters, or sweethearts whom separation has plunged into deepest anguish. Do not forget when you see these prisoners passing by, I beg of you, and permit yourself to shout at and insult them. Keep, on the contrary, the respectful silence appropriate to thinking men. Fellow citizens, if, in these grave and painful circumstances, you will listen to my advice, if you will recall that it is now thirty years that I have been your burgomaster and during all that time of hard work I have never asked a favor of you, I feel sure that you will obey my request and, on your side, you may be sure that my gratitude will not be wanting.
A. REYNAEKT, Burgomaster.
Although war had not touched Courtrai as yet, the rumor of it, more terrifying often than the thing itself, had swept through all Flanders. Along the level highways leading into Courtrai trooped whole families carrying babies and what few household things they could fling together in blankets. Covered wagons overflowed with men, women, and children. The speed with which rumor spread was incredible. In one village a group of half-drunken men, who insisted on jeering the Germans were put at the head of a column and compelled to march several miles before they were released. The word at once ran the length of dozens of highroads that the Germans "were taking with them every one between fifteen and fifty." I heard the same warning repeated on several of the roads about Courtrai by men and women, panting, red-faced, stumbling blindly on from they knew not what. Later, I met the same people, straggling back to their villages, good-naturedly accepting the jibes of those who had stayed behind.
A linen manufacturer who lived in the village of Deerlyck, not far from Courtrai, where German scouts had been reported, kindly asked me to come out and spend the night. For several miles we drove through the densely populated countryside, past rows of houses whose occupants all seemed to know him.
Women ran out to stop him and rattled away in Flemish; there were excited knots of people every few steps, and the heads kept turning this way and that, as if we were all likely to be shot any minute. We drove into the courtyard of the solid old Flemish house—a house in which he and his father before him had lived, with tiny rooms full of old paintings, garden, stable, and hothouse packed close in the saving Belgian fashion, and all as spick and span and shining as if built yesterday—and then into the street again. It was interesting to watch this square little man roll sturdily along, throwing out his stout arms impatiently and flinging at the nervous villagers—who treated him almost as a sort of feudal lord—guttural Flemish commands to keep cool and not make fools of themselves.
All at once, coming out of nowhere, a wave of panic swept down the street like a squall across a still pond.
"Bing—Bang!" went wooden shutters over windows, the stout housewives flinging the bars home and gathering up their children. Doors slammed, windows closed—it was like something in a play—and almost as soon as it takes to tell it there was not a head, not a sound; the low houses were one blank wall, and we stood in the street alone.
Just such scenes as this people must have known in the days when Europe was a general battle-ground—when the French or the Spanish came into Flanders; just such villages, just such housewives slamming shutters close—you can see them now in old Flemish pictures.
Slowly doors and windows opened, heads poked out. The little street filled, the knots of people gathered again. We walked up and down, the linen merchant flinging out his arms and his reassurances more and more vigorously. Half an hour passed, and then, all at once, it came again. And this time it was real. The Germans were coming!
Down the straight, paved highway, a mile or so away, at the farther end of an avenue of elms which framed them like a tunnel, was a band of horsemen. They were coming at an easy trot, half a dozen in single file on either side of the road. We could see their lances, held rakishly upstanding across the saddle, then the tail of the near horse whisking to and fro. One, crossing over, was outlined against the sky, and those who could see whispered: "One is standing sidewise!" as if this were somehow important. Tears rolled down the cheeks of the women huddled inside the door before which we stood.
Coming nearer and nearer up that long tunnel of trees, like one of those unescapable things seen in dreams, the little gray spot of moving figures grew to strange proportions—"the Germans!"—front of that frightful avalanche. A few hundred yards away they pulled down to a walk, and slowly, peering sharply out from under their helmets, entered the silent street. Another moment and the leader was alongside, and we found ourselves looking up at a boy, not more than twenty he seemed, with blue eyes and a clean-cut, gentle face. He passed without a look or word, but behind him a young officer, soldier-like and smart in the Prussian fashion, with a half-opened map in his hand, asked the way to a near-by village. He took the linen merchant's direction without pausing and the horses swung down the side street. "Do you speak English?" he called back, as if, in happier times, we might have been friends, and, without waiting for an answer, trotted on into the growing dusk.
They were but one of hundreds of such squads of light cavalry—uhlans for the most part—ranging all over western Belgium as far as Ostend, a dozen or so men in hostile country, prepared to be cut to pieces if they found the enemy they were looking for, or to be caught from ambush at any time by some squad of civic guards. But as one watched them disappear down their long road to France they grew into something more than that. And in the twilight of the quiet countryside these stern shapes that rode on without turning, lances upstanding from tired shoulders, became strange, grotesque, pathetic—again the Germans, legions of the War Lord, come too late into a world which must crush them at last, Knights of the Frightful Adventure, riding to their death.
Chapter II
Paris At Bay
The Calais and Boulogne routes were already closed. Dieppe and Havre might at any moment follow. You must go now, people said in London, if you want to get there at all.
And yet the boat was crowded as it left Folkstone. In bright afternoon sunshine we hurried over the Channel, empty of any sign of war, unless war showed in its very emptiness. Next to me sat a young Frenchman, different from those we had met before hurrying home to fight. Good-looking, tall, and rather languid in manner, he spoke English with an English accent, and you would have taken him for an Englishman. A big canvas bag full of golf-clubs leaned against the wall behind him, and he had been trying to play golf at one of the east-coast seaside places in England. But one couldn't play in a time like this, and the young man sighed and waved his hands rather desperately—one couldn't settle down to anything. So he was going home. To fight ?—I suggested. Possibly, he said—the army had refused him several years ago—maybe they would take him now. Very politely, in his quiet manner, he asked me down to tea. When he stood by the rail watching the tawny French cliffs draw nearer, one noticed a certain weary droop to his shoulders, in contrast to his well-tanned, rather athletic-looking, face—born a little tired, perhaps, like the young nobleman in Bernstein's "Whirlwind." His baggage was addressed to a Norman chateau.
On the other side was a pink-cheeked boy of seventeen, all French, though he spoke English and divided his time between writing post-cards to the boys he had been visiting in England and reading General von Bernhardi. "The first chapter, 'The Right to Make War,'" he said, "I understand that—yes! But the second chapter—'The Duty to Make War'"—he laughed and shook his head.
"No—no—no!" He was the son of an insurance agent who was already at the front, and, although under age, he hoped to enlist. We drew nearer Dieppe—tall French houses leaning inward with tricolors in the windows, a quay with the baggy red breeches of French soldiers showing here and there—just such a scene as they paint on theatre curtains at home. A smoky tug whistled uproariously, there was a patter of wooden shoes as children clattered