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Page 19
"Ah! So!" said von Hindenburg, and he glanced at a gun crew who were
loading a half-ton projectile into an 11.1-inch siege-gun that stood on
the pavement. "Which is the Woolworth Building?" he asked, pointing
across the river.
"The tallest one, Excellency--the one with the Gothic lines and gilded
cornices," replied one of his officers.
"Ah, yes, of course. I recognise it from the pictures. It's beautiful.
Gentlemen,"--he addressed the American officers,--"I am offering
twenty-dollar gold pieces to this gun crew if they bring down
that tower with a single shot. Now, then, careful!...
"Ready!"
We covered our ears as the shot crashed forth, and a moment later the
most costly and graceful tower in the world seemed to stagger on its
base. Then, as the thousand-pound shell, striking at the twenty-seventh
story, exploded deep inside, clouds of yellow smoke poured out through
the crumbling walls, and the huge length of twenty-four stories above the
jagged wound swayed slowly toward the east, and fell as one piece,
flinging its thousands of tons of stone and steel straight across the
width of Broadway, and down upon the grimy old Post Office Building
opposite.
_"Sehr gut!"_ nodded von Hindenburg. "It's amusing to see them fall.
Suppose we try another? What's that one to the left?"
"The Singer Building, Excellency," answered the officer.
"Good! Are you ready?"
Then the tragedy was repeated, and six hundred more were added to the
death toll, as the great tower crumbled to earth.
"Now, gentlemen,"--von Hindenburg turned again to the American officers
with a tiger gleam in his eyes,--"you see what we have done with
two shots to two of your tallest and finest buildings. At this time
to-morrow, with God's help, we shall have a dozen guns along this bank of
the river, ready for whatever may be necessary. And two of our
_Parsevals_, each carrying a ton of dynamite, will float over New York
City. I give you until twelve o'clock to-morrow to decide whether you
will resist or capitulate. At twelve o'clock we begin firing."
Our instructions were to return at once in the launch by the shortest
route to the Battery, where automobiles were waiting to take us to
General Wood's headquarters in the Metropolitan Tower. I can close my
eyes to-day and see once more those pictures of terror and despair that
were spread before us as we whirled through the crowded streets behind
the crashing hoofs of a cavalry escort. The people knew who we were,
where we had been, and they feared what our message might be.
Broadway, of course, was impassable where the mass of red brick from the
Singer Building filled the great canyon as if a glacier had spread over
the region, or as if the lava from a man-made Aetna had choked this great
thoroughfare.
Through the side streets we snatched hasty impressions of unforgetable
scenes. Into the densely populated regions around Grand and Houston
Streets the evicted people of Brooklyn had poured. And into the homes of
these miserably poor people, where you can walk for blocks without
hearing a word in the English tongue, Brooklyn's derelicts had been
absorbed by tens of thousands.
Here came men and women from all parts of Manhattan, the rich in their
automobiles, the poor on foot, bearing bundles of food and eager to help
in the work of humanity. And some, alas, were busy with the sinister
business of looting.
Above Fourteenth Street we had glimpses of similar scenes and I learned
later that almost every family in Manhattan received some Brooklyn
homeless ones into their care. New York--for once--was hospitable.
In Madison Square the people waited in silence as we approached the great
white tower from which the Commander of the Army of the East, unmindful
of the fate of the Woolworth and the Singer buildings, watched for
further moves from the fortified shores of Brooklyn. Not a shout greeted
our arrival at the marble entrance facing the square, not even that
murmur of expectancy which sweeps over a tense gathering. The people knew
the answer of von Hindenburg. They had read it, as had all the world for
miles around, in the cataclysm of the plunging towers.
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