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Page 20
New York must surrender or perish!
Scarcely three blocks away, the Committee of Public Safety, numbering one
hundred, sat in agitated council at the Madison Square Garden, while
enormous crowds, shouting and murmuring, surged outside, where five
hundred armed policemen tried vainly to quell the spirit of riot that was
in the air. Far into the night the discussion lasted, while overhead in
the purple-black sky floated the two _Parsevals_, ominous visitors, their
search-lights playing over the helpless city that was to feel their wrath
on the morrow unless it yielded.
Meantime, on the square platform within the great Moorish building, a
hundred leading citizens of Manhattan, including the ablest and the
richest and a few of the most radical, spoke their minds, while thousands
of men and women, packed in the galleries and the aisles, listened
heart-sick for some gleam of comfort.
And there was none.
Among the Committee of Public Safety I recognised J. P. Morgan, Jacob H.
Sehiff, John D. Rockefeller, Charles F. Murphy, Andrew Carnegie, Vincent
Astor, Cardinal Farley, Colonel Jacob Ruppert, Nicholas Murray Butler, S.
Stanwood Menken, Paul M. Warburg, John Finley, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont,
James E. Gaffney, Ida Tarbell, Norman Hapgood, William Randolph Hearst,
Senator Whitman, Bernard Ridder, Frank A. Munsey, Henry Morgenthau, Elihu
Root, Henry L. Stimson, Franklin Q. Brown, John Mitchell, John Wanamaker,
Dr. Parkhurst, Thomas A. Edison, Colonel George Harvey, Douglas Robinson,
John Hays Hammond, Theodore Shonts, William Dean Howells, Alan R. Hawley,
Samuel Gompers, August Belmont, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the Rev. Percy
Stickney Grant, Judge E. H. Gary, Emerson McMillin, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
and ex-Mayor Mitchel.
Former President Wilson motored over from Princeton, accompanied by
Professor McClellan, and was greeted with cheers. Ex-President Taft was
speaking at the time, advocating a dignified appeal to the Hague Tribunal
for an adjudication of the matter according to international law. Nearly
all of the speakers favoured non-resistance, so far as New York City was
concerned. With scarcely a dissenting voice, the great financial and
business interests represented here demanded that New York City
capitulate immediately.
Whereupon Theodore Roosevelt, who had just entered the Garden with his
uniform still smeared with Long Island mud, sprang to his feet and cried
out that he would rather see Manhattan Island sunk in the Bay than
disgraced by so cowardly a surrender. There was still hope, he declared.
The East River was impassable for the enemy. All shipping had been
withdrawn from Brooklyn shores, and the German fleet dared not enter the
Ambrose Channel and the lower bay so long as the Sandy Hook guns held
out.
"We are a great nation," Roosevelt shouted, "full of courage and
resourcefulness. Let us stand together against these invaders, as our
forefathers stood at Lexington and Bunker Hill!"
During the cheers that followed this harangue, my attention was drawn to
an agitated group on the platform, the central figure being Bernard
Ridder, recognised leader of the large German-American population of New
York City that had remained staunchly loyal in the crisis. Presently a
clamour from the crowd outside, sharper and fiercer than any that had
preceded it, announced some new and unexpected danger close at hand.
White-faced, Mr. Ridder stepped to the edge of the platform and lifted
his hand impressively.
"Let me speak," he said. "I must speak in justice to myself and to half a
million German-Americans of this city, who are placed in a terrible
position by news that I have just received. I wish to say that we are
Americans first, not Germans! We are loyal to the city, loyal to this
country, and whatever happens here tonight--"
At this moment a tumult of shouts was heard at the Madison Avenue
entrance, and above it a shrill purring sound that seemed to strike
consternation into an army officer who sat beside me.
"My God!" he cried. "The machine-guns! The Germans are in the streets!"
CHAPTER VI
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