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Page 21
VARIOUS UNPLEASANT HAPPENINGS IN MANHATTAN
I shall never forget the horror of that hoarse cry:
"The Germans are in the streets!"
What followed was still more terrifying. Somewhere at the back of the
Garden, a piercing whistle cut the air--evidently a signal--and suddenly
we found ourselves facing a ghastly tragedy, and were made to realise the
resistless superiority of a small body of disciplined troops over a
disorganised multitude.
"_Fertig! Los! Hup!_" shouted a loud voice (it was a man with a
megaphone) in the first gallery opposite the platform. Every face in that
tremendous throng turned at once in the direction of the stranger's
voice. And before the immense audience knew what was happening, five
hundred German soldiers, armed with pistols and repeating rifles, had
sprung to life, alert and formidable, at vantage-points all over the
Garden. Two hundred, with weapons ready, guarded the platform and the
Committee of Public Safety. And, in little groups of threes and fives,
back to back, around the iron columns that rose through the galleries,
stood three hundred more with flashing barrels levelled at the crowds.
I counted fifteen of these dominating groups of soldiers in the northern
half of the lower gallery, and it was the same in the southern half and
the same on both sides of the upper gallery, which made sixty armed
groups in sixty strategic positions. There was nothing for the crowd to
do but yield.
"Pass out, everybody!" screamed the megaphone man. "We fire at the first
disorder."
"Out, everybody!" roared the soldiers. "We fire at the first disorder."
As if to emphasise this, an automatic pistol crackled at the far end of
the Garden, and frantic crowds pushed for the doors in abject terror.
There was no thought of resistance.
"Use all the exits," yelled the megaphone man; and the order was passed
on by the soldiers from group to group. And presently there rolled out
into the streets and avenues through the thirty great doors and down the
six outside stairways that zigzag across the building such streams of
white-faced, staggering, fainting humanity as never had been seen on
Manhattan Island.
I was driven out with the others (except the Committee of Public Safety),
and was happy to find myself with a whole skin in Twenty-sixth Street
opposite the Manhattan Club. As I passed a group of German soldiers near
the door, I observed that they wore grey uniforms. I wondered at this
until I saw overcoats at their feet, and realised that they had entered
the Garden like spies with the audience of citizens, their uniforms and
weapons being concealed under ordinary outer garments, which they had
thrown off at the word of command.
We stumbled into the street, and were driven roughly by other German
soldiers toward the open space of Madison Square. We fled over red and
slippery pavements, strewn with the bodies of dead and wounded policemen
and civilians--the hideous harvest of the machine-guns. At the corner of
Madison Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street I saw an immense coal-carrying
motor-truck with plates of iron covering its four sides, and through
loopholes in the plates I saw murderous muzzles protruding.
It appears that shortly after midnight, at the height of the debate, four
of these armoured cars came lumbering toward the Garden from west and
east, north and south; and, as they neared the four corners of the
immense yellow building, without warning they opened fire upon the
police, which meant inevitably upon the crowd also. In each truck were a
dozen soldiers and six machine-guns, each one capable of firing six
hundred shots a minute. There was no chance for resistance, and within a
quarter of an hour the streets surrounding the Garden were a shambles. On
Madison Avenue, just in front of the main entrance, I saw bodies lying
three deep, many of them hideously mutilated by the explosive effects of
these bullets at short range. As I stepped across the curb in front of
the S.P.C.A. building, I cried out in horror; for there on the sidewalk
lay a young mother--But why describe the horror of that scene?
With difficulty I succeeded in hiring a taxicab and set out to find
General Wood or some officer of his staff from whom I might get an
understanding of these tragic events. Who were those German soldiers at
the Garden? Where did they come from? Were they German-Americans?
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