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Page 33
CHAPTER X
LORD KITCHENER VISITS AMERICA AND DISCUSSES OUR MILITARY PROBLEMS
I was standing with Count Zeppelin in the doorway of Mrs. John L.
Gardner's Fenway palace when the news of the great sea horror reached
Boston. The German submarine U-68, scouting off the coast of Maine,
had sunk the American liner _Manhattan_, the largest passenger vessel
in the world, as she raced toward Bar Harbor with her shipload of
non-combatants. Eighteen hundred and sixty-three men, women, and children
went down with the ship. No warning had been given. No chance had been
offered for women or children or neutral passengers to escape. The
disaster duplicated the wrecking of the _Lusitania_ in 1915, but it
exceeded it in loss of human life. The American captain and all his men
shared the fate of the passengers intrusted to their care.
In Boston the effect on the German officers and men was unbelievable.
Tremont and Boylston and Washington streets, echoing with cheers of the
exulting conquerors, resembled the night of a Harvard-Yale football game
when Brickley used to play for Cambridge University. The citizens of the
big town, their senses deadened by their own disaster, received the news,
and the ghastly celebration that followed it, without any real interest.
The fact that an ex-Mayor of Boston and the son of the present Governor
were among those that perished failed to rouse them. Boston, mentally as
well as physically, was in the grip of the enemy.
That this was just the effect the Germans planned to produce is shown by
General von Kluck's own words. In an interview that he gave me for the
London _Times_, after the occupation of Boston on July 2, 1921, General
von Kluck said:
"The way to end a war quickly is to make the burden of it oppressive upon
the people. It was on this principle that General Sherman acted in his
march from Atlanta to the sea. It was on this principle that General
Grant acted in his march from Washington to Richmond. Grant said he would
fight it out on those lines if it took all summer--meaning lines of
relentless oppression. In modern war a weak enemy like Belgium or like
New England, which is far weaker than Belgium was in 1914, must be
crushed immediately. Think of the bloodshed that would have stained the
soil of Connecticut and Massachusetts if we had not spread terror before
us. As it is, New England has suffered very little from the German
occupation, and in a very short time everything will be going on as
usual."
The veteran warrior paused, and added with a laugh: "Better than usual."
As a matter of fact, within a week Boston had resumed its ordinary life
and activities. Business was good, factories were busy, and the theatres
were crowded nightly, especially Keith's, where the latest military
photo-play by Thomas Dixon and Charles T. Dazey--with Mary Pickford as
the heroine and Charley Chaplin as the comedy relief--was enjoyed
immensely by German officers.
As to the commerce of Boston Harbor, it was speedily re-established, with
ships of all nations going and coming, undisturbed by the fact that it
was now the German flag on German warships that they saluted.
I received instructions from my paper about this time to leave New
England and join General Wood's forces, which had crossed the Delaware
into Pennsylvania, where they were battling desperately with von
Hindenburg's much stronger army. On the day following my arrival at the
American headquarters, I learned that Lord Kitchener had come over from
England to follow the fighting as an eye-witness; and I was fortunate
enough to obtain an interview with his lordship, who remembered me in
connection with his Egyptian campaigns.
"The United States is where England would have been in 1914 without her
fleet," said Lord Kitchener.
"Where is that?"
"If England had been invaded by a German army in 1914," replied the great
organiser gravely, "she would have been wiped off the map. It was
England's fleet that saved her. And, even so, we had a hard time of it.
Everything was lacking--officers, men, uniforms, ammunition, guns,
horses, saddles, horse blankets, everything except our fleet."
A sudden light burned in Lord Kitchener's strange eyes, and he added
earnestly: "There is something more than that. In 1914 Germany was
wonderfully prepared in material things, but her greatest advantage over
all other nations, except Japan, lay in her dogged devotion to her own
ideals. She may have been wrong, as we think, but she believed in
herself. There was nothing like it in England, and there is nothing like
it in America. The German masses, to the last man, woman, and child, were
inspired to give all that they had, their lives included, for the Empire.
In England there was more selfishness and self-indulgence. We had labour
troubles, strike troubles, drink troubles; and finally, as you know, in
1916 we were forced to adopt conscription. It will be the same story here
in America."
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