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Page 31
With a battle-front fifty or seventy-five miles long, von Kluck's forces
strolled across this fertile and populous region, living off the land,
leaving small holding forces with artillery at every important point, a
few hundred or a few thousand, while the main army swept relentlessly and
resistlessly on. It was a delightful four weeks' picnic for von Kluck and
his men; and at the end of four weeks everything in New England had
fallen before them up to the city of Boston, which had been left for the
last. _And the total German losses in killed and wounded were less than
twenty!_
On July 2, General von Kluck's army, sweeping forward unopposed, reached
the western and southwestern suburbs of Boston, passing through Newton
and Brookline, and making a detour to avoid ruining the beautiful golf
links where Ouimet won his famous victory over Ray and Vardon. This
sportsmanlike consideration was due to the fact that several of the
German officers and the Crown Prince himself were enthusiastic golfers.
Meantime there was panic in the city. For days huge crowds had swarmed
through Boston's great railway stations, fleeing to Maine and Canada; and
across the Charles River bridge there had passed an endless stream of
automobiles bearing away rich families with their jewels and their
silver. Among them were automobile trucks from the banks, laden with tons
of gold. No boats left the harbour through fear of a grim German
battleship that lay outside, plainly visible from the millionaire homes
of Nahant and Manchester.
Even now there was talk of resistance, and German Taubes looked down upon
a mass meeting of ten thousand frantic citizens gathered in Mechanics
Hall on Huntington Avenue; but prudent counsels prevailed. How could
Boston resist without soldiers or ammunition or field artillery? Brooklyn
had resisted, and now lay in ruins. New Haven had tried to resist, and
what had come of it?
At three o'clock on this day of sorrow, with banners flying and bands
playing, the German forces--horse, foot, and artillery--entered the
Massachusetts capital in two great columns, the one marching down Beacon
Street, past the homes of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Julia Ward Howe, the
other advancing along Commonwealth Avenue, past the white-columned
Harvard Club, past the statues of Alexander Hamilton and William Lloyd
Garrison, on under the shade of four rows of elms that give this noble
thoroughfare a resemblance to the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e in Paris.
It was a perfect summer's day. The sun flashed from the golden dome of
the State House on the hill over Boston Common, and from the great white
Custom House tower that rose impressively in the distance above the green
of the Public Gardens. Boston looked on, dumb with shame and stifled
rage, as the invaders took possession of the city and ran up their flags,
red, white, and black, above the Old South Meeting House on Washington
Street, where Benjamin Franklin was baptised, and above the sacred, now
dishonoured, shaft of the Bunker Hill Monument.
Hostages were taken, as usual, these including Major Henry L. Higginson,
President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, Major James M.
Curley, Edward A. Filene, Margaret Deland, William A. Paine, Ellery
Sedgwick, Mrs. John L. Gardner, Charles W. Eliot, Louis D. Brandeis,
Bishop William Lawrence, Amy Lowell, T. Jefferson Coolidge, Thomas W.
Lawson, Guy Murchie, and Cardinal O'Connell.
A proclamation was made in the _Transcript_ (now forced to be the
official German organ and the only newspaper that was allowed to appear
in Boston) that these prominent persons would be held personally
responsible for any public disorder or for any failure of the city to
furnish the army of occupation with all necessary food and supplies.
On the night of occupation there were scenes of violence, with rioting
and looting in various parts of Boston, notably in Washington Street and
Tremont Street, where shops were wrecked by mobs from the South End,
several thousand of the unruly foreign element, crazed with drink and
carrying knives. Against this drunken rabble the American police, sullen
and disorganised, could do nothing or would do nothing; and the situation
was becoming desperate, when German troops advanced along Washington
Street, firing into the crowd and driving back the looters, who surged
through Winter Street, a frantic, terrified mass, and scattered over
Boston Common.
Here, in front of the Park Street Church, another huge mob of citizens
had gathered--five thousand wildly patriotic Irishmen. Armed with clubs,
rifles, and pistols, and madly waving the Stars and Stripes, they cursed,
cheered, and yelled out insults to the Germans. Suddenly a company of
German soldiers with machine-guns appeared on the high ground in front of
the State House. Three times a Prussian officer, standing near the St.
Gaudens Shaw Memorial, shouted orders to the crowd to disperse; but the
Irishmen only jeered at him.
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