“Why?” He flashed a straightforward look out of his handsome eyes. “Because I’m sick of the whole rotten game. I’ve played my cards and lost. I’m sure to be found out–some navy man will recognise me, in spite of this moustache, and–you know what will happen then. I’ll be glad of it, but–before I quit the game I want to do one decent thing. I’m going to tell you where they’ve taken Edison.”
“You know where Edison is?”
“Yes. Don’t speak so loud.”
Ryerson leaned closer and whispered: “He’s in Richmond, Virginia.”
Silently I studied this unhappy man, wondering if he was telling the truth. He must have felt my doubts.
“Langston, you don’t believe me! Why should I lie to you? I tell you I want to make amends. These German officers trust me. I know their plans and–Oh, my God, aren’t you going to believe me?”
“Go on,” I said, impressed by the genuineness of his despair. “What plans do you know?”
“I know the Germans are disturbed by this patriotic spirit in America. They’re afraid of it. They don’t know where hell may break loose next–after Boston. They’re going to leave Boston alone, everything alone for the present–until they get their new army.”
“New army?”
“Yes–from Germany. They have sent for half a million more men. They’ll have ’em here in a month and–that’s why I want to do something–before it’s too late.”
As I watched him I began to believe in his sincerity. Handsome fellow! I can see him now with his flushed cheeks and pleading eyes. A spy! It would break his sister’s heart.
“What can you do?” I asked sceptically.
He looked about him cautiously and lowered his voice.
“I can get Edison away from the Germans, and Edison can destroy their fleet.”
“Perhaps,” said I.
“He says he can.”
“I know, but–you say Edison is in Richmond.”
“We can rescue him. If you’ll only help me, Langston, we can rescue Edison. I’ll go to Richmond with papers to the commanding German general that will get me anything.”
“Papers as a German spy?”
“Well–yes.”
“You can’t get to Richmond. You’re a prisoner yourself.”
“That’s where you’re going to help me. You must do it–for the country–for my sister.”
[Illustration: AND ON THE MORNING OF JULY 4, TWO OF VON KLUCK’S STAFF OFFICERS, ACCOMPANIED BY A MILITARY ESCORT, MARCHED DOWN STATE STREET TO ARRANGE FOR THE PAYMENT OF AN INDEMNITY FROM THE CITY OF BOSTON OF THREE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS.]
“Does your sister know–what you are?”
He looked away, and I saw his lips tighten and his hands clench.
“No!”
“Do you want me to tell her?”
He thought a moment.
“What’s the use of hiding it? She’s bound to know some day, and–she’ll be glad I’ve had this little flicker of–decency. Besides, she may have an idea. Mary’s got a good head on her. Poor kid!”
I told Ryerson that I would think the matter over and find some way to communicate with him later. Then I left him.
I telegraphed at once to Miss Ryerson, who hurried to Chicago, arriving the next morning, and we spent most of that day together, discussing the hard problem before us. The girl was wonderfully brave when I told her the truth about her brother. She said there were circumstances in his early life that lessened the heinousness of his wrong doing. And she rejoiced that he was going to make amends. She knew he was absolutely sincere.
I suggested that we go to General Wood, who was friendly to both of us, and tell him the whole truth, but Miss Ryerson would not hear to this. She would not place Randolph’s life in jeopardy by revealing the fact that he had been a German spy. Her brother must make good before he could hope to be trusted or forgiven.
“But he’s a prisoner; he can do nothing unless he has his liberty,” I objected.
“We will get him his liberty; we _must_ get it, but not that way.”
“Then how?”
For a long time we studied this question in all its phases. How could Lieutenant Ryerson gain his liberty? How could he get a chance to make amends for his treachery? And, finally, seeing no other way, we fell back upon the desperate expedient of an exchange. I would obtain permission for Miss Ryerson to visit her brother, and they would change clothes, she remaining as a prisoner in his place while he went forth to undo if possible the harm that he had done.
The details of this plan we arranged immediately. I saw Ryerson the next day, and when I told him what his sister was resolved to do in the hope of saving his honour, he cried like a child and I felt more than ever convinced of his honest repentance.
We decided upon December 28th for the attempt, and two days before this Randolph found a plausible excuse for cutting off his moustache. He told General Langhorne that he had become a convert to the American fashion of a clean shaven face.
As to the escape itself, I need only say that on December 28th, in the late afternoon, I escorted Miss Ryerson, carefully veiled, to the Hotel Blackstone; and an hour later I left the hotel with a person in women’s garments, also carefully veiled. And that night Randolph Ryerson and I started for Richmond. I may add that I should never have found the courage to leave that lovely girl in such perilous surroundings had she not literally commanded me to go.
“We may be saving the nation,” she begged. “Go! Go! And–I’ll be thinking of you–praying for you–for you both.”
My heart leaped before the wonder of her eyes as she looked at me and repeated these last words: _”For you both!”_
We left the express at Pittsburg, intending to proceed by automobile across Pennsylvania, then by night through the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia; for, of course, we had to use the utmost caution to avoid the sentries of both armies which were spread over this region.
In Pittsburg we lunched at the Hotel Duquesne, after which Ryerson left me for a few hours, saying that he wished to look over the ground and also to procure the services of a high-powered touring car.
“Don’t take any chances,” I said anxiously.
“I’ll be careful. I’ll be back inside of two hours,” he promised.
But two hours, four hours, six hours passed and he did not come. I dined alone, sick at heart, wondering if I had made a ghastly mistake.
It was nearly ten o’clock that night when Ryerson came back after seven hours’ absence. We went to our room immediately, and he told me what had happened, the gist of it being that he had discovered important news that might change our plans.
“These people trust me absolutely,” he said. “They tell me everything.”
“You mean–German spies?”
“Yes. Pittsburg is full of ’em. They’re plotting to wreck the big steel plants and factories here that are making war munitions. I’ll know more about that later, but the immediate thing is Niagara Falls.”
Then Ryerson gave me my first hint of a brilliant coup that had been preparing for months by the Committee of Twenty-one and the American high command, its purpose being to strike a deadly and spectacular blow at the German fleet.
“This is the closest kind of a secret, it’s the great American hope; but the Germans know all about it,” he declared.
“Go on.”
“It’s a big air-ship, the America, a super-Zeppelin, six hundred feet long, with apparatus for steering small submarines by radio control–no men aboard. Understand?”
“You mean no men aboard the submarine?”
“Of course. There will be a whole crew on the air-ship. Nicola Tesla and John Hays Hammond, Jr., worked out the idea, and Edison was to give the last touches; but as Edison is a German prisoner, they can’t wait for him. They are going to try the thing on New Year’s night against the German dreadnought _Wilhelm II_ in Boston Harbour.”
“Blow up the _Wilhelm II_?”
“Yes, but the Germans are warned in advance. You can’t beat their underground information bureau. They’re going to strike first.”
“Where is this air-ship?”
“On Grand Island, in the Niagara River, all inflated, ready to sail, but she never will sail unless we get busy. After tomorrow night there won’t be any _America_.”
In the face of this critical situation, I saw that we must postpone our trip to Richmond and, having obtained from Ryerson full details of the German plot to destroy the _America_, I took the first train for Niagara Falls–after arranging with my friend to rejoin him in Pittsburg a few days later–and was able to give warning to Colonel Charles D. Kilbourne of Fort Niagara in time to avert this catastrophe.
The Germans knew that Grand Island was guarded by United States troops and that the river surrounding it was patrolled by sentry launches; but the island was large, sixteen miles long and seven miles wide, and under cover of darkness it was a simple matter for swimmers to pass unobserved from shore to shore.
On the night of December 30th, 1921, in spite of the cold, five hundred German spies had volunteered to risk their lives in this adventure. They were to swim silently from the American and Canadian shores, each man pushing before him a powerful fire bomb protected in a water-proof case; then, having reached the island, these five hundred were to advance stealthily upon the hangar where the great air-ship, fully inflated, was straining at her moorings. When the rush came, at a pre-arranged signal, many would be killed by American soldiers surrounding the building, but some would get through and accomplish their mission. One successful fire bomb would do the work.
Against this danger Colonel Kilbourne provided in a simple way. Instead of sending more troops to guard the island, which might have aroused German suspicions, he arranged to have two hundred boys, members of the Athletic League of the Buffalo Public Schools, go to Grand Island apparently for skating and coasting parties. It was brisk vacation weather and no one thought it strange that the little ferry boat from Buffalo carried bands of lively youngsters across the river for these seasonable pleasures. It was not observed that the boat also carried rifles and ammunition which the boys had learned to use, in months of drill and strenuous target practice, with the skill of regulars.
There followed busy hours on Grand Island as we made ready for the crisis. About midnight, five hundred Germans, true to their vow, landed at various points, and crept forward through the darkness, carrying their bombs. As they reached a circle a thousand yards from the huge hangar shed they passed unwittingly two hundred youthful riflemen who had dug themselves in under snow and branches and were waiting, thrilling for the word that would show what American boys can do for their country. Two hundred American boys on the thousand yard circle! A hundred American soldiers with rifles and machine guns at the hangar! And the Germans between!
We had learned from Ryerson that the enemy would make their rush at two o’clock in the morning, the signal being a siren shriek from the Canadian shore, so at a quarter before two, knowing that the Germans were surely in the trap, Colonel Kilbourne gave the word, and, suddenly, a dozen search-lights swept the darkness with pitiless glare. American rifles spoke from behind log shelters, Maxims rattled their deadly blast, and the Germans, caught between two fires, fled in confusion, dropping their bombs. As they approached the thousand-yard line they found new enemies blocking their way, keen-eyed youths whose bullets went true to the mark. And the end of it was, leaving aside dead and wounded, that _two hundred Buffalo schoolboys made prisoners of the three hundred and fifty German veterans!_
And the great seven-million dollar air-ship _America_, with all her radio mysteries, was left unharmed, ready to sail forth the next night, New Year’s Eve, and make her attack upon the superdreadnought Wilhelm II, on January 1, 1922. I prayed that this would be a happier year for the United States than 1921 had been.
CHAPTER XXIV
NOVEL ATTACK OF AMERICAN AIRSHIP UPON GERMAN SUPER-DREADNOUGHT
I come now to the period of my great adventures beginning on New Year’s Day, 1922, when I sailed from Buffalo aboard the airship _America_ on her expedition against the German fleet. For the first time in my modest career I found myself a figure of nation-wide interest, not through any particular merit or bravery of my own, but by reason of a series of fortunate accidents. I may say that I became a hero in spite of myself.
In recognition of the service I had rendered in helping to save the great airship from German spies, I had been granted permission, at General Wood’s recommendation, to sail as a passenger aboard this dreadnought of the skies and to personally witness her novel attack with torpedoes lowered from the airship and steered from the height of a mile or two by radio control. Never before had a newspaper correspondent received such a privilege and I was greatly elated, not realising what extraordinary perils I was to face in this discharge of my duty.
I was furthermore privileged to be present at a meeting of the Committee of Twenty-one held on the morning of January 1st, 1922, at the Hotel Lenox in Buffalo. Various details of our airship expedition were discussed and there was revealed to me an important change in the _America’s_ strategy which I will come to presently.
Surveying the general military situation, John Wanamaker read reports showing extraordinary progress in military preparedness all over the country, especially in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the women, recently victorious in their suffrage fight, were able to make their patriotic zeal felt in aggressive legislation. Strange to say, American wives and mothers were the leaders in urging compulsory physical and military training, a year of it, on the Swiss plan, for all American young men of twenty and a month of it every five years afterwards for all men up to fifty.
The Committee were in the midst of a discussion of Charles M. Schwab’s plan providing that American soldiers carry armour, a helmet, breastplate and abdominal covering of light but highly tempered steel, when there came a dramatic interruption. A guard at the door of the Council Room entered to say that Mr. Henry A. Wise Wood, President of the Aero Club of America, was outside with an urgent communication for the Committee. Mr. Wise Wood was at once received and informed us that he had journeyed from Pittsburg bearing news that might have an important bearing upon the airship expedition.
“As you know, gentlemen,” he said, “we have a wireless station in the tower of our new Aero Club building in Pittsburg. Yesterday afternoon at three o’clock the operator received a message addressed to me. It was very faint, almost a whisper through the air, but he filially got it down and he is positive it is correct. This message, gentlemen, is from Thomas A. Edison.”
“Edison!” exclaimed Andrew Carnegie, “but he is a prisoner of the Germans.”
“Undoubtedly,” agreed Mr. Wise Wood, “but it has occurred to me that the Germans may have allowed Mr. Edison to fit up a laboratory for his experiments. They would treat such a man with every consideration.”
“They would not allow him to communicate with his friends,” objected Cornelius Vanderbilt.
“He may not have asked permission,” laughed George W. Perkins. “He may have rigged up some secret contrivance for sending wireless messages.”
“Why don’t you read what he says?” put in J.P. Morgan.
Mr. Wise Wood drew a folded yellow paper from his pocket and continued: “This message is unquestionably from Mr. Edison, in spite of the fact that it is signed _Thaled_. You will agree with me, gentlemen, that Thaled is a code word formed by putting together the first two letters of the three names, Thomas Alva Edison.”
“Very clever!” nodded Asa G. Candler.
“I don’t see that,” frowned John D. Rockefeller. “If Mr. Edison wished to send Mr. Wise Wood a message why should he use a misleading signature?”
“It’s perfectly clear,” explained James J. Hill. “Mr. Edison has disguised his signature sufficiently to throw off the track any German wireless operator who might catch the message, while leaving it understandable to us.”
“Read the message,” repeated J.P. Morgan. Whereupon Mr. Wise Wood opened the yellow sheet and read:
“Strongly disapprove attack against German fleet by airship _America_. Satisfied method radio control not sufficiently perfected and effort doomed to failure. Have worked out sure and simple way to destroy fleet. Details shortly or deliver personally. THALED”.
This message provoked fresh discussion and there were some, including Elihu Root, who thought that Mr. Edison had never sent this message. It was a shrewd trick of the Germans to prevent the _America_ from sailing. If Mr. Edison could tell us so much why did he not tell us more? Why did he not say where he was a prisoner? And explain on what he rested his hopes of communicating with us in person.
“Gentlemen,” concluded Mr. Root, “we know that Germany is actually embarking a new army of half a million men to continue her invasion of America. Already she holds our Atlantic seaboard, our proudest cities, and within a fortnight she will strike again. I say we must strike first. We have a chance in Boston Harbour and we must take it. This single coup may decide the war by showing the invader that at last we are ready. Gentlemen, I move that the airship _America_ sail to-night for Boston Harbour, as arranged.”
I longed to step forward to tell what I knew about Edison, how he was a prisoner in Richmond, Virginia, and how an effort was actually on foot to rescue him, but I had promised Miss Ryerson not to betray her brother’s shame and was forced to hold my tongue. Besides, I could not be sure whether this wireless message did or did not come from Edison.
The Committee finally decided that the _America_ should sail that evening, but should change her point of attack so as to take the enemy unprepared, if possible; in other words, we were to strike not at the German warships in Boston Harbour, but at the great super-dreadnought _Bismarck_, flagship of the hostile fleet, which was lying in the upper bay off New York City.
I pass over the incidents of our flight to Manhattan and come to the historic aerial struggle over New York harbour in which I nearly lost my life. The _America_ was convoyed by a fleet of a hundred swift and powerful battle aeroplanes and we felt sure that these would be more than able to cope with any aeroplane force that the Germans could send against us. And to avoid danger from anti-aircraft guns we made a wide detour to the south, crossing New Jersey on about the line of Asbury Park and then sailing to the north above the open sea, so that we approached New York harbour from the Atlantic side. At this time (it was a little after midnight) we were sailing at a height of two miles with our aeroplanes ten miles behind us so that their roaring propellers might not betray us and, for a time, as we drifted silently off Rockaway Beach it seemed that we would be successful in our purpose to strike without warning.
There, just outside the Narrows, lay the _Bismarck_, blazing with the lights of some New Year’s festivity and resounding with music. I remember a shrinking of unprofessional regret at the thought of suddenly destroying so fair and happy a thing.
I was presently drawn from these meditations by quick movements of the airship crew and a shrill voice of command.
“Ready to lower! Let her go!” shouted Captain Nicola Tesla, who had volunteered for this service.
“Bzzz!” sang the deck winches as they swiftly unrolled twin lengths of piano wire that supported a pendant torpedo with its radio appliances and its red, white and green control lights shining far below us in the void.
“Easy! Throw on your winch brakes,” ordered Tesla, studying his dials for depth.
A strong southeast wind set the wires twisting dangerously, but, by skillful manoeuvring, we launched the first torpedo safely from the height of half a mile and, with a thrill of joy, I followed her lights (masked from the enemy) as they moved swiftly over the bay straight towards the flagship. The torpedo was running under perfect wireless control. Tesla smiled at his keyboard.
Alas! Our joy was soon changed to disappointment. Our first torpedo missed the Bismarck by a few yards, went astern of her because at the last moment she got her engines going and moved ahead. Somehow the Germans had received warning of their danger.
Our second torpedo wandered vainly over the ocean because we could not follow her guide lights, the enemy blinding us with the concentrated glare of about twenty of their million-candle power searchlights.
And our third torpedo was cut off from radio control because we suddenly found ourselves surrounded y the two fleets of battling aeroplanes, caught between two fires, ours and the enemy’s, and were obliged to run for our lives with an electric generator shattered by shrapnel. I was so busy caring for two of our crew who were wounded that I had no time to observe this thrilling battle in the air.
It was over quickly, I remember, and our American aeroplanes, vastly superior to the opposing fleet, had gained a decisive victory, so that we were just beginning to breathe freely when an extraordinary thing happened, a rare act of heroism, though I say it for the Germans.
There came a signal, the dropping of a fire bomb with many colours, and instantly the remnant of the enemy’s air strength, four biplanes and a little yellow-striped monoplane, started at us, in a last desperate effort, with all the speed of their engines. Our aerial fleet saw the manouver and swept towards the biplanes, intercepting them, one by one, and tearing them to pieces with sweeping volleys of our machine guns, but the little monoplane, swifter than the rest, dodged and circled and finally found an opening towards the airship and came through it at two miles a minute, straight for us and for death, throwing fire bombs and yelling for the Kaiser.
“Save yourselves!” shouted Tesla as the enemy craft ripped into our great yellow gas bag.
Bombs were exploding all about us and in an instant the _America_ was in flames. We knew that our effort had failed.
As the stricken airship, burning fiercely, sank rapidly through the night, I realised that I must fight for my life in the ice cold waters of the bay. I hate cold water and, being but an indifferent swimmer, I hesitated whether to throw off my coat and shoes, and, having finally decided, I had only time to rid myself of one shoe and my coat when I saw the surging swells directly beneath me and leapt overside just in time to escape the crash of blazing wreckage.
Dazed by the blow of a heavy spar and the shock of immersion, I remember nothing more until I found myself on dry land, hours later, with kind friends ministering to me. It seems that a party of motor boat rescuers from Brooklyn worked over me for hours before I returned to consciousness and I lay for days afterward in a state of languid-weakness, indifferent to everything.
CHAPTER XXV
DESPERATE EFFORT TO RESCUE THOMAS A. EDISON FROM THE GERMANS
I wish I might detail my experiences during the next fortnight, how I was guarded from the Germans (they had put a price on my head) by kind friends in Brooklyn, notably Mrs. Anne P. L. Field, the Sing-Sing angel, who contrived my escape through the German lines of occupation with the help of a swift motor boat and two of her convict proteges.
We landed in Newark one dark night after taking desperate chances on the bay and running a gauntlet of German sentries who fired at us repeatedly. Then, thanks to my old friend, Francis J. Swayze of the United States Supreme Court, I was passed along across northern New Jersey, through Dover, where “Pop” Losee, the eloquent ice man evangelist, saved me from Prussians guarding the Picatinny arsenal, then through Allentown, Pa., where Editor Roth swore to a suspicious German colonel that I was one of his reporters, and, finally, by way of Harrisburg to Pittsburg, where at last I was safe.
To my delight I found Randolph Ryerson anxiously awaiting my arrival and eager to proceed with our plan to rescue Edison. We set forth for Richmond the next day, January 16th, 1922, in a racing automobile and proceeded with the utmost caution, crossing the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia by night to avoid the sentries of both armies. Twice, being challenged, we drove on unheeding at furious speed and escaped in the darkness, although shots were fired after us.
As morning broke on January 20th we had our first view of the seven-hilled city on the James, with its green islands and its tumbling muddy waters. We knew that Richmond was held by the Germans, and as we approached their lines I realised the difficulty of my position, for I was now obliged to trust Ryerson absolutely and let him make use of his credentials from the Crown Prince which presented him as an American spy in the German service. He introduced me as his friend and a person to be absolutely trusted, which practically made me out a spy also. It was evident that, unless we succeeded in our mission, I had compromised myself gravely. Ryerson was reassuring, however, and declared that everything would be all right.
We took a fine suite at the Hotel Jefferson, where we found German officers in brilliant uniforms strolling about the great rotunda or refreshing themselves with pipes and beer in the palm room nearthe white marble statue of Thomas Jefferson.
“If you’ll excuse me now for a few hours,” said Ryerson, who seemed rather nervous, “I will get the information we need from some of these fellows. Let us meet here at dinner.”
During the afternoon I drove about this peaceful old city with its gardens and charming homes and was allowed to approach the threatening siege guns which the Germans had set up on the broad esplanade of Monument Avenue between the equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee and the tall white shaft that bears the heroic figure of Jefferson Davis. These guns were trained upon the gothic tower of the city hall and upon the cherished grey pile of the Capitol, with its massive columns and its shaded park where grey squirrels play about the famous statue of George Washington.
My driver told me thrilling stories of the fighting here when Field Marshal von Mackensen marched his army into Richmond. Alas for this proud Southern city! What could she hope to do against 150,000 German soldiers? For the sake of her women and children she decided to do nothing officially, but the Richmond “Blues” had their own ideas and a crowd of Irish patriots from Murphy’s Hotel had theirs, and when the German army, with bands playing and eagles flying, came tramping down Broad Street, they were halted presently by four companies of eighty men each in blue uniforms and white plumed hats drawn up in front of the statues of Stonewall Jackson and Henry Clay ready to die here on this pleasant autumn morning rather than have this most sacred spot in the South desecrated by an invader. And die here they did or fell wounded, the whole body of Richmond “Blues,” under Colonel W. J. Kemp, while their band played “Dixie” and the old Confederate flags waved over them.
As for the Irishmen, it seems that they marched in a wild and cursing mob to the churchyard of old St. John’s where Patrick Henry hurled his famous defiance at the British and in the same spirit–“Give me liberty or give me death”–they fought until they could fight no longer.
As we drove through East Franklin Street I was startled to see a German flag flying over the honoured home of Robert E. Lee and a German sentry on guard before the door. I was told that prominent citizens of Richmond were held here as hostages, among these being Governor Richard Evelyn Byrd, John K. Branch, Oliver J. Sands, William H. White, Bishop R. A. Gibson, Bishop O’Connell, Samuel Cohen and Mayor Jacob Umlauf who, in spite of his German descent, had proved himself a loyal American.
I finished the afternoon at a Red Cross bazaar held in the large auditorium on Gary Street under the patronage of Mrs. Norman B. Randolph, Mrs. B. B. Valentine, Miss Jane Rutherford and other prominent Richmond ladies. I made several purchases, including a cane made from a plank of Libby prison and a stone paper weight from Edgar Allan Poe’s boyhood home on Fifth Street.
Leaving the bazaar, I turned aimlessly into a quiet shaded avenue and was wondering what progress Ryerson might be making with his investigations, when I suddenly saw the man himself on the other side of the way, talking earnestly with a young woman of striking beauty and of foreign appearance. She might have been a Russian or an Austrian.
There was something in this unexpected meeting that filled me with a vague alarm. Who was this woman? Why was Ryerson spending time with her that was needed for our urgent business? I felt indignant at this lack of seriousness on his part and, unobserved, I followed the couple as they climbed a hill leading to a little park overlooking the river, where they seated themselves on a bench and continued their conversation.
Presently I passed so close to them that Ryerson could not fail to see me and, pausing at a short distance, I looked back at him. He immediately excused himself to his fair companion and joined me. He was evidently annoyed.
“Wait here,” he whispered. “I’ll be back.”
With that he rejoined the lady and immediately escorted her down the hill. It was fully an hour before he returned and I saw he had regained his composure.
“I suppose you are wondering who that lady was?” he began lightly.
“Well, yes, just a little. Is she the woman you told me about–the countess?”
“No, no! But she’s a very remarkable person,” he explained. “She is known in every capital of Europe. They say the German government pays her fifty thousand dollars a year.”
“She’s quite a beauty,” said I.
He looked at me sharply. “I suppose she is, but that’s not the point. She’s at the head of the German secret service work in America. She knows all about Edison.”
“Oh!”
“She has told me where he is. That’s why we came up here. Do you see that building?”
I followed his gesture across the valley and on a hill opposite saw a massive brick structure with many small windows, and around it a high white painted wall.
“Well?”
“That’s the state penitentiary. Edison is there in the cell that was once occupied by Aaron Burr–you remember–when he was tried for treason?”
All this was said in so straightforward a manner that I felt ashamed of my doubts and congratulated my friend warmly on his zeal and success.
“Just the same, you didn’t like it when you saw me with that woman–did you?” he laughed.
I acknowledged my uneasiness and, as we walked back to the hotel, spoke earnestly with Ryerson about the grave responsibility that rested upon us, upon me equally with him. I begged him to justify his sister’s faith and love and to rise now with all his might to this supreme duty and opportunity.
He seemed moved by my words and assured me that he would do the right thing, but when I pressed him to outline our immediate course of action, he became evasive and irritable and declared that he was tired and needed a night’s rest before going into these details.
As I left him at the door of his bedroom I noticed a bulky and strongly corded package on the table and asked what it was, whereupon, in a flash of anger, he burst into a tirade of reproach, saying that I did not trust him and was prying into his personal affairs, all of which increased my suspicions.
“I must insist on knowing what is in that package,” I said quietly. “You needn’t tell me now, because you’re not yourself, but in the morning we will take up this whole affair. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” he answered sullenly.
Here was a bad situation, and for hours I did not sleep, asking myself if I had made a ghastly mistake in trusting Ryerson. Was his sister’s sacrifice to be in vain? Was the man a traitor still, in spite of everything?
Towards three o’clock I fell into fear-haunted dreams, but was presently awakened by a quick knocking at my door and, opening, I came face to face with my companion, who stood there fully dressed.
“For God’s sake let me come in.” He looked about the room nervously. “Have you anything to drink?”
I produced a flask of Scotch whiskey and he filled half a glass and gulped it down. Then he drew a massive iron key from his pocket and threw it on the bed.
“Whatever happens, keep that. Don’t let me have it.”
I picked up the key and looked at it curiously. It was about four inches long and very heavy.
“Why don’t you want me to let you have it?”
“Because it unlocks a door that would lead me to–hell,” he cried fiercely. Then he reached for the flask.
“No, no! You’ve had enough,” I said, and drew the bottle out of his reach. “Randolph, you know I’m your friend, don’t you? Look at me! Now what’s the matter? What door are you talking about?”
“The door to a wing of the prison where Edison is.”
“You said he was in Aaron Burr’s cell.”
“He’s been moved to another part of the building. That woman arranged it.”
“Why?”
He looked at me in a silence of shame, then he forced himself to speak.
“So I could carry out my orders”
“Orders? Not–not German orders?”
He nodded stolidly.
“I’m under her orders–it’s the same thing. I can’t help it. I can’t stand against her.”
“Then she _is_ the countess?”
He bowed his head slowly.
“Yes. I meant to play fair. I would have played fair, but–the Germans put this woman on our trail when we left Chicago–they mistrusted something and–” with a gesture of despair, “she found me in Pittsburg–she–she’s got me. I don’t care for anything in the world but that woman.”
“Randolph!”
“It’s true. I don’t want to live–without her. You needn’t cock up your eyes like that. I’d go back to her now–yes, by God, I’d do this thing now, if I could.”
He had worked himself into a frenzy of rage and pain, and I sat still until he grew calm again.
“What thing? What is it she wants you to do?”
“Get rid of you to begin with,” he snapped out. “It’s easy enough. We go to the prison–this key lets us in. I leave you in the cell with Edison and–you saw that package in my room? It’s a bomb. I explode it under the cell and–there you are!”
“You promised to do this?”
“Yes! I’m to get five thousand dollars.”
“But you didn’t do it, you stopped in time,” I said soothingly. “You’ve told me the truth now and–we’ll see what we can do about it.”
He scowled at me.
“You’re crazy. We can’t do anything about it. The Germans are in control of Richmond. They’re watching this hotel.”
Ryerson glanced at his watch.
“Half-past three. I have four hours to live.”
“What!”
“They’ll come for me at seven o’clock when they find I haven’t carried out my orders, and I’ll be taken to the prison yard and–shot or–hanged. It’s the best thing that can happen to me, but–I’m sorry for you.”
“See here, Ryerson,” I broke in. “If you’re such a rotten coward and liar and sneak as you say you are, what are you doing here? Why didn’t you go ahead with your bomb business?”
He sat rocking back and forth on the side of the bed, with his head bent forward, his eyes closed and his lips moving in a sort of thick mumbling.
“I’ve tried to, but–it’s my sister. God! She won’t leave me alone. She said she’d be praying for me and–all night I’ve seen her face. I’ve seen her when we were kids together, playing around in the old home–with Mother there and–oh, Christ!”
I pass over a desperate hour that followed. Ryerson tried to kill himself and, when I took the weapon from him, he begged me to put an end to his sufferings. Never until now had I realised how hard is the way of the transgressor.
I have often wondered how this terrible night would have ended had not Providence suddenly intervened. The city hall clock had just tolled five when there came a volley of shots from the direction of Monument Avenue.
“What’s that?” cried my poor friend, his haggard face lighting.
We rushed to the window, where the pink and purple lights of dawn were spreading over the spires and gardens of the sleeping city.
The shots grew in volume and presently we heard the dull boom of a siege gun, then another and another.
“It’s a battle! They’re bombarding the city. Look!” He pointed towards Capitol Square. “They’ve struck the tower of the city hall. And over there! The gas works!” He swept his arm towards an angry red glow that showed where another shell had found its target.
I shall not attempt to describe the burning of Richmond (for the third time in its history) on this fateful day, January 20th, 1922, nor to detail the horrors that attended the destruction of the enemy’s force of occupation. Historians are agreed that the Germans must be held blameless for firing on the city, since they naturally supposed this daybreak attack upon their own lines to be an effort of the American army and retaliated, as best they could, with their heavy guns.
It was days before the whole truth was known, although I cabled the London _Times_ that night, explaining that the American army had nothing to do with this attack, which was the work of an unorganised and irresponsible band of ten or twelve thousand mountaineers gathered from the wilds of Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky and Tennessee. They were moon-shiners, feudists, hilly-billies, small farmers and basket-makers, men of lean and saturnine appearance, some of them horse thieves, pirates of the forest who cared little for the laws of God or man and fought as naturally as they breathed.
These men came without flags, without officers, without uniforms. They crawled on their bellies and carried logs as shields. They knew and cared nothing for military tactics and their strategy was that of the wild Indian. They fought to kill and they took no prisoners. It seems that a Virginia mountain girl had been wronged by a German officer and that was enough.
For weeks the mountaineers had been advancing stealthily through the wilderness, pushing on by night, hiding in the hills and forests by day; and they had come the last fifty miles on foot, leaving their horses back in the hills. They were armed with Winchester rifles, with old-time squirrel rifles, with muzzle loaders having long octagonal barrels and fired by cups. Some carried shot guns and cartridges stuffed with buckshot and some poured in buckshot by the handful. They had no artillery and they needed none.
The skill in marksmanship of these men is beyond belief, there is nothing like it in the world. With a rifle they will shoot off a turkey’s head at a hundred yards (this is a common amusement) and as boys, when they go after squirrels, they are taught to hit the animals’ noses only so as not to spoil the skins. It was such natural fighters as these that George Washington led against the French and the Indians, when he saved the wreck of Braddock’s army.
The Germans were beaten before they began to fight. They were surrounded on two sides before they had the least idea that an enemy was near. Their sentries were shot down before they could give the alarm and the first warning of danger to the sleeping Teutons was the furious rush of ten thousand wild men who came on and came on and came on, never asking quarter and never giving it.
When the Germans tried to charge, the mountaineers threw themselves flat on the ground and fought with the craft of Indians, dodging from tree to tree, from rock to rock, but always advancing. When the Germans sent up two of their scouting aeroplanes to report the number of the enemy’s forces, the enemy picked off the German pilots before the machines were over the tree tops. Here was a mixture of native savagery and efficiency, plus the lynching spirit, plus the pre-revolutionary American spirit and against which, with unequal numbers and complete surprise, no mathematically trained European force had the slightest chance.
The attack began at five o’clock and at eight everything was over; the Germans had been driven into the slough of Chickahominy swamp to the northeast of Richmond (where McClellan lost an army) and slaughtered here to the last man; whereupon the mountaineers, having done what they came to do, started back to their mountains.
Meantime Richmond was burning, and my poor friend Ryerson and I were facing new dangers.
“Come on!” he cried with new hope in his eyes. “We’ve got a chance, half a chance.”
Our one thought now was to reach the prison before it was too late, and we ran as fast as we could through streets that were filled with terrified and scantily clad citizens who were as ignorant as we were of what was really happening. A German guard at the prison gates recognised Ryerson, and we passed inside just as a shell struck one of the tobacco factories along the river below us with a violent explosion. A moment later another shell struck the railway station and set fire to it.
Screams of terror arose from all parts of the prison, many of the inmates being negroes, and in the general confusion, we were able to reach the unused wing where Edison was confined.
“Give me that big key–quick,” whispered Ryerson. “Wait here.”
I obeyed and a few minutes later he beckoned to me excitedly from a passageway that led into a central court yard, and I saw a white-faced figure bundled in a long coat hurrying after him. It was Thomas A. Edison.
Just then there came a rush of footsteps behind us with German shouts and curses.
“They’re after us,” panted Randolph. “I’ve got two guns and I’ll hold ’em while you two make a break for it. Take this key. It opens a red door at the end of this passage after you turn to the right. Run and–tell my sister I–made good–at the last.”
I clasped his hand with a hurried “God bless you” and darted ahead. It was our only chance and, even as we turned the corner of the passage, Ryerson began to fire at our pursuers. I heard afterwards that he wounded five and killed two of them. I don’t know whether that was the count, but I know he held them until we made our escape out into the blazing city. And I know he gave his life there with a fierce joy, realising that the end of it, at least, was brave and useful.
CHAPTER XXVI
RIOTS IN CHICAGO AND GERMAN PLOT TO RESCUE THE CROWN PRINCE
The first weeks of January, 1922, brought increasing difficulties and perplexities for the German forces of occupation in America. With comparative ease the enemy had conquered our Atlantic seaboard, but now they faced the harder problem of holding it against a large and intelligent and totally unreconciled population. What was to be done with ten million people who, having been deprived of their arms, their cities and their liberties, had kept their hatred?
The Germans had suffered heavy losses. The disaster to von Hindenburg’s army in the battle of the Susquehanna had cost them over a hundred thousand men. The revolt of Boston, the massacre of Richmond, had weakened the Teuton prestige and had set American patriotism boiling, seething, from Maine to Texas, from Long Island to the Golden Gate. There were rumours of strange plots and counter-plots, also of a new great army of invasion that was about to set sail from Kiel. Evidently the Germans must have more men if they were to ride safely on this furious American avalanche that they had set in motion, if they were to tame the fiery American volcano that was smouldering beneath them.
In this connection I must speak of the famous woman’s plot that resulted in the death of several hundred German officers and soldiers and that would have caused the death of thousands but for unforeseen developments. This plot was originated by women leaders of the militant suffrage party in New York and Pennsylvania (the faction led by Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont not approving) and soon grew to nation-wide importance with an enrolled body of twenty thousand militant young women, each one of whom was pledged to accomplish the destruction of one of the enemy on a, certain Saturday night between the hours of sunset and sunrise.
By a miracle these women kept their vow of secrecy until the fatal evening, but at eight o’clock the plot was revealed to Germans in Philadelphia through the confession of a young Quakeress who, after playing her part for weeks, had fallen genuinely in love with a Prussian lieutenant and simply could not bring herself to kill him when the time came.
I come now to a sensational happening that I witnessed in Chicago, to which city I had journeyed after the Richmond affair for very personal reasons. If this were a romance and not a plain recital of facts I should dwell upon my meeting with Mary Ryerson and our mutual joy in each finding that the other had escaped unharmed from the perils of our recent adventures.
Miss Ryerson, it appeared, after the discovery of her daring disguise had been released on parole by order of General Langthorne, who believed her story that she had taken this desperate chance as the only means of saving Thomas A. Edison. Mary had heard the story of her brother’s heroic death and to still her grief, had thrown herself into work for the Red Cross fund under Miss Boardman and Mrs. C.C. Rumsey. She had hit upon a charming way of raising money by having little girls dressed in white with American flags for sashes, lead white lambs through the streets, the lambs bearing Red Cross contribution boxes on their backs. By this means thousands of dollars had been secured.
On the evening following my arrival in Chicago, I had arranged to take Miss Ryerson to a great recruiting rally in the huge lake-front auditorium building, but when I called at her boarding-house on Wabash Avenue, I found her much disturbed over a strange warning that she had just received.
“Something terrible is going to happen tonight,” she said. “There will be riots all over Chicago.”
I asked how she knew this and she explained that a deaf and dumb man named Stephen, who took care of the furnace, a man in whose rather pathetic case she had interested herself, had told her. It seems he also took care of the furnace in a neighbouring house which was occupied by a queer German club, really a gathering place of German spies.
“He overheard things there and told me,” she said seriously, whereupon I burst out laughing.
“What? A deaf and dumb man?”
“You know what I mean. He reads the lips and I know the sign language.”
The main point was that this furnace man had begged Miss Ryerson not to leave her boardinghouse until he returned. He had gone back to the German club, where he hoped to get definite information of an impending catastrophe.
“It’s some big coup they are planning for tonight,” she said. “We must wait here.”
So we waited and presently, along Wabash Avenue, with crashing bands and a roar of angry voices, came an anti-militarist socialist parade with floats and banners presenting fire-brand sentiments that called forth jeers and hisses from crowds along the sidewalks or again enthusiastic cheers from other crowds of contrary mind.
“You see, there’s going to be trouble,” trembled the girl, clutching my arm. “Read that!”
A huge float was rolling past bearing this pledge in great red letters:
“I refuse to kill your father. I refuse to slay your mother’s son. I refuse to plunge a bayonet into the breast of your sweetheart’s brother. I refuse to assassinate you and then hide my stained fists in the folds of any flag. I refuse to be flattered into hell’s nightmare by a class of well-fed snobs, crooks and cowards who despise our class socially, rob our class economically and betray our class politically.”
At this the hostile crowds roared their approval and disapproval. Also at another float that paraded these words:
“What is war? For working-class wives–heartache. For working-class mothers–loneliness. For working-class children–orphanage. For peace–defeat. For death–a harvest. For nations–debts. For bankers–bonds, interest. For preachers on both sides–ferocious prayers for victory. For big manufacturers–business profits. For ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’–boisterous laughter. For Christ–contempt.”
I saw that my companion was deeply moved.
“It’s all true, what they say, isn’t it?” she murmured.
“Yes, it’s true, but–we can’t change the world, we can’t give up our country, our independence. Hello!”
A white-faced man had rushed into the parlour, gesticulating violently and making distressing guttural sounds. It was Stephen.
Uncomprehending, I watched his swift signs.
“What is it? What is he trying to say?”
“Wait!”
Her hands flew in eager questions and the man answered her.
“Oh!” she cried. “The riots are a blind to draw away the police and the troops. They’re marching against the Blackstone Hotel now–a thousand German spies–with rifles.”
The Blackstone Hotel! I realised in a moment what that meant. The German Crown Prince was still a prisoner at the Blackstone, in charge of General Langhorne. It was a serious handicap to the enemy that we held in our power the heir to the German throne. They dared not resort to reprisals against America lest Frederick William suffer.
“They mean to rescue the Crown Prince?”
“Yes.”
I rushed to the telephone to call up police headquarters, but the wires were dead–German spies had seen to that.
“Come!” I said, seizing her arm. “We must hustle over to the auditorium.”
Fortunately the great recruiting hall was only a few blocks distant and as we hurried there Miss Ryerson explained that the furnace man, Stephen, before coming to us, had run to McCormick College, the Chicago home for deaf students, and given the alarm.
“What good will that do?”
“What good! These McCormick boys have military drill. They are splendid shots. Stephen says fifty of them will hold the Germans until our troops get there.”
“I hope so.”
I need not detail our experiences in the enormous and rather disorderly crowd that packed the auditorium building except to say that ten minutes later we left there followed by eighty members of the Camp Fire Club (they had organised this appeal for recruits), formidable hunters of big game who came on the run carrying the high power rifles that they had used against elephants and tigers in India and against moose and grizzlies in this country. Among them were Ernest Thompson Seton, Dan Beard, Edward Seymour, Belmore Brown, Edward H. Litchfield and his son, Herbert.
Under the command of their president, George D. Pratt, these splendid shots proceeded with all speed to the Blackstone Hotel, where they found a company of deaf riflemen, under the command of J. Frederick Meagher, about seventy in all, guarding the doors and windows. Not a moment too soon did they arrive for, as they entered the hotel, hoarse cries were heard outside and presently a bomb exploded at the main entrance, shattering the heavy doors and killing nine of the defenders, including Melvin Davidson, Jack Seipp and John Clarke, the Blackfoot Indian, famous for his wood carvings and his unerring marksmanship.
Meantime messengers had been sent in all directions, through the rioting city, calling for troops and police and in twenty minutes, with the arrival of strong reinforcements, the danger passed.
But those twenty minutes! Again and again the Germans came forward in furious assaults with rifles and machine guns. The Crown Prince must be rescued. At any cost he must be rescued.
No! The Crown Prince was not rescued. The defenders of the Hotel Blackstone had their way, a hundred and fifty against a thousand, but they paid the price. Before help came forty members of the Camp Fire Club and fifty of those brave deaf American students gave up their lives, as is recorded on a bronze tablet in the hotel corridor that bears witness to their heroism.
I must now make my last contribution to this chapter of our history, which has to do with motives that presently influenced the Crown Prince towards a startling decision. I came into possession of this knowledge as a consequence of the part I played in rescuing Thomas A. Edison after his abduction by the Germans.
One of the first questions Mr. Edison asked me as we escaped in a swift automobile from the burning and shell-wrecked Virginia capital, had a direct bearing on the ending of the war.
“Mr. Langston,” he asked, “did the Committee of Twenty-one receive my wireless about the airship expedition?”
“Yes, sir, they got it,” I replied, and then explained the line of reasoning that had led the Committee to, disregard Mr. Edison’s warning.
[Illustration: “MY FRIENDS, THEY SAY PATRIOTISM IS DEAD IN THIS LAND. THEY SAY WE ARE EATEN UP WITH LOVE OF HONEY, TAINTED WITH A YELLOW STREAK THAT MAKES US AFRAID TO FIGHT. IT’S A LIE! I AM SIXTY YEARS OLD, BUT I’LL FIGHT IN THE TRENCHES WITH MY FOUR SONS BESIDE ME. AND YOU MEN WILL DO THE SAME. AM I RIGHT?”]
He listened, frowning.
“Huh! That sounds like Elihu Root.”
“It was,” I admitted.
For hours as we rushed along, my distinguished companion sat silent and I did not venture to break in upon his meditations, although there were questions that I longed to ask him. I wondered if it was Widding’s sudden death in the Richmond prison that had saddened him.
It was not until late that afternoon, when we were far back in the Blue Ridge Mountains, that Mr. Edison’s face cleared and he spoke with some freedom of his plans for helping the military situation.
“There’s one thing that troubles me,” he reflected as we finished an excellent meal at the Allegheny Hotel in Staunton, Virginia. “I wonder if–let’s see! You have met the Crown Prince, you interviewed him, didn’t you?”
“Twice,” said I.
“Is he intelligent–_really _intelligent? A big open-minded man or–is he only a prince?”
“He’s more than a prince,” I said, “he’s brilliant, but–I don’t know how open-minded he is.”
Edison drummed nervously on the table.
“If we were only dealing with a Bismarck or a von Moltke! Anyhow, unless he’s absolutely narrow and obstinate–“
“Oh, no.”
“Good! Where are the Committee of Twenty-one? In Chicago?”
“Yes.”
“And the Crown Prince too?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll be there to-morrow and–listen! We can destroy the German fleet. Widding’s invention will do it. Poor Widding! It broke his heart to see America conquered when he knew that he could save the nation if somebody would only listen to him. But nobody would.” Edison’s deep eyes burned with anger. “Thank God, I listened.”
It seemed like presumption to question Mr. Edison’s statement, yet I ventured to remind him that several distinguished scientists had declared that the airship _America_ could not fail to destroy the German fleet.
“Pooh!” he answered. “I said the _America_ expedition would fail. The radio-control of torpedoes is uncertain at the best because of difficulties in following the guide lights. They may be miles away, shut off by fog or waves; but this thing of Widding’s is sure.”
“Has it been tried?”
“Heavens! No! If it had been tried the whole world would be using it. After we destroy the German fleet the whole world will use it.”
“Is it some new principle? Some unknown agency?”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing new about it. It’s just a sure way to make an ordinary Whitehead torpedo hit a battleship.”
Although I was consumed with curiosity I did not press for details at this time and my companion presently relapsed into one of his long silences.
We reached Chicago the next afternoon and, as the great inventor left me to lay his plans before the Committee of Twenty-one, he thanked me earnestly for what I had done and asked if he could serve me in any way.
“I suppose you know what I would like?” I laughed.
He smiled encouragingly.
“Still game? Well, Mr. Langston, if the Committee approves my plan, and I think they will, you can get ready for another big experience. Take a comfortable room at the University Club and wait.”
CHAPTER XXVII
DECISIVE BATTLE BETWEEN GERMAN FLEET AND AMERICAN SEAPLANES CARRYING TORPEDOES
I did as he bade me and was rewarded a week later for my faith and patience. I subsequently learned that this week (the time of my wonderful experience with Mary Ryerson) was spent by the Committee of Twenty-one in explaining to the Crown Prince exactly what the Widding-Edison invention was. Models and blue prints were shown and American and German experts were called in to explain and discuss all debatable points. And the conclusion, established beyond reasonable doubt, was that German warships could not hope to defend themselves against the Widding-Edison method of torpedo attack. This was admitted by Field Marshal von Hindenburg and by Professor Hugo Muensterberg, who were allowed to bring scientists of their own choosing for an absolutely impartial opinion. Unless terms were made the German fleet faced almost certain destruction.
The Crown Prince was torn by the hazards of this emergency. He could not disregard such a weight of evidence. He knew that, without the support of her fleet, Germany must abandon her whole campaign in the United States and withdraw her forces from the soil of America. This meant failure and humiliation, perhaps revolution at home. The fate of the Hohenzollern dynasty might hang upon his decision.
“Gentlemen,” he concluded haughtily, “I refuse to yield. If I cable the Imperial Government in Berlin it will be a strong expression of my wish that our new army of invasion, under convoy of the German fleet, sail from Kiel, as arranged, and join in the invasion of America at the earliest possible moment.”
And so it befell. On January 24th a first section of the new German expedition, numbering 150,000 men, sailed for America. On January 29th our advance fleet of swift scouting aeroplanes, equipped with wireless and provisioned for a three days’ cruise, flew forth from Grand Island in the Niagara River, and, following the St. Lawrence, swept out over the Atlantic in search of the advancing Teutons.
Two days later wireless messages received in Buffalo informed us that German transports, with accompanying battleships, had been located off the banks of Newfoundland and on February 1st our main fleet of aeroboats, a hundred huge seaplanes, equipped with Widding-Edison torpedoes, sailed away over Lake Erie in line of battle, flying towards the northeast at the height of half a mile, ready for the struggle that was to settle the fate of the United States. The prayers of a hundred million Americans went with them.
And now Mr. Edison kept his promise generously by securing for me the privilege of accompanying him in a great 900-horse-power seaplane from which, with General Wood, he proposed to witness our attack upon the enemy.
“We may have another passenger,” said the General mysteriously as we stamped about in our heavy coats on the departure field, for it was a cold morning.
“All aboard,” called out the pilot presently from his glass-sheltered seat and I had just taken my place in the right hand cabin when the sound of several swiftly arriving motors drew my attention and, looking out, I was surprised to see the Crown Prince alighting from a yellow car about which stood a formal military escort. General Wood stepped forward quickly to receive His Imperial Highness, who was clad in aviator costume.
“Our fourth passenger!” whispered Edison.
“You don’t mean that the Crown Prince is going with us?”
The inventor nodded.
I learned afterwards that only at the eleventh hour did the imperial prisoner decide to accept General Wood’s invitation to join this memorable expedition.
“I have come, General,” said the Prince, saluting gravely, “because I feel that my presence here with you may enable me to serve my country.”
“I am convinced Your Imperial Highness has decided wisely,” answered the commander-in-chief, returning the salute.
An hour later, at the head of one of the aerial squadrons that stretched behind us in a great V, we were flying over snow-covered fields at eighty miles an hour, headed for the Atlantic and the German fleet. Our seaplanes, the most powerful yet built of the Curtiss-Wright 1922 model, carried eight men, including three that I have not mentioned, a wireless operator, an assistant pilot and a general utility man who also served as cook. Two cabins offered surprisingly comfortable accommodations, considering the limited space, and we ate our first meal with keen relish.
“We have provisions for how many days?” asked the Crown Prince.
“For six days,” said General Wood.
“But, surely not oil for six days!”
“We have oil for only forty-eight hours of continuous flying, but Your Imperial Highness must understand that our seaplanes float perfectly on the ocean, so we can wait for the German fleet as long as is necessary and then rise again.”
The Prince frowned at this and twisted his sandy moustache into sharper upright points.
“When do you expect to sight the German fleet?”
“About noon the day after to-morrow. We shall go out to sea sometime in the night and most of to-morrow we will spend in ocean manoeuvres. Your Imperial Highness will be interested.”
In spite of roaring propellers and my cramped bunk I slept excellently that night and did not waken until a sudden stopping of the two engines and a new motion of the seaplane brought me to consciousness. The day was breaking over a waste of white-capped ocean and we learned that Commodore Tower, who was in command of our main air squadron, fearing a storm, had ordered manoeuvres to begin at once so as to anticipate the gale. We were planing down in great circles, preparing to rest on the water, and, as I looked to right and left, I saw the sea strangely covered with the great winged creatures of our fleet, mottle-coloured, that rose and fell as the green waves tossed them.
I should explain that these seaplanes were constructed like catamarans with twin bodies, enabling them to ride on any sea, and between these bodies the torpedoes were swung, one for each seaplane, with a simple lowering and releasing device that could be made to function by the touch of a lever. The torpedo could be fired from the seaplane either as it rested on the water or as it skimmed over the water, say at a height of ten feet, and the released projectile darted straight ahead in the line of the seaplane’s flight.
With great interest we watched the manoeuvres which consisted chiefly in the practice of signals, in rising from the ocean and alighting again and in flying in various formations.
“From how great a distance do you propose to fire your torpedoes?” the Crown Prince asked Mr. Edison, speaking through a head-piece to overcome the noise.
“We’ll run our seaplanes pretty close up,” answered the inventor, “so as to take no chance of missing. I guess we’ll begin discharging torpedoes at about 1,200 yards.”
“But your seaplanes will be shot to pieces by the fire of our battleships.”
“Some will be, but not many. Our attack will be too swift and sudden. It’s hard to hit an aeroplane going a mile in a minute and, before your gunners can get the ranges, the thing will be over.”
“Besides,” put in General Wood, “every man in our fleet is an American who has volunteered for duty involving extreme risk. Every man will give his life gladly.”
About ten o’clock in the morning on February 3rd our front line flyers, miles ahead of us, wirelessed back word that they had sighted the German fleet, and, a few minutes later, we saw smoke columns rising on the far eastern horizon. I shall never forget the air of quiet authority with which General Wood addressed his prisoner at this critical moment.
“I must inform Your Imperial Highness that I have sent a wireless message to the admiral of the German fleet informing him of your presence here as a voluntary passenger. This seaplane is identified by its signal flags and by the fact that it carries no torpedo. We shall do everything to protect Your Imperial Highness from danger.”
“I thank you, sir,” the prince answered stiffly.
General Wood withdrew to his place in the observation chamber beside Mr. Edison.
Swiftly we flew nearer to the enemy’s battleships, which were advancing in two columns, led by two super-dreadnoughts, the _Kaiser Friedrich_ and the _Moltke_, with the admiral’s flag at her forepeak and flanked by lines of destroyers that belched black smoke from their squat funnels. With our binoculars we saw that there was much confusion on the German decks as they hastily cleared for action. Our attack had evidently taken them completely by surprise and they had no flyers ready to dispute our mastery of the air.
Presently General Wood re-entered the cabin.
“I have a wireless from Commodore Tower saying that everything is ready. Before it is too late I appeal to Your Imperial Highness to prevent the destruction of these splendid ships and a horrible loss of life. Will Your Highness say the word?”
“No!” answered the Crown Prince harshly.
General Wood turned to the cabin window and nodded to the assistant pilot, who dropped overboard a signal smoke ball that left behind, as it fell, a greenish spiral trail. Straightway, the Commodore’s seaplane, a mile distant, broke out a line of flags whereupon six flyers from six different points leaped ahead like sky hounds on the scent, shooting forward and downward towards their mighty prey. The remainder of the sky fleet circled away at safe distances of three, four or five miles, waiting the result of this first blow, confident that the _Moltke_ was doomed.
Doomed she was. In vain the great battleship turned her guns, big and little, against these snarling, swooping creatures of the air that came at her like darting vultures all at once from many sides, but swerved at the twelve hundred yard line and took her broadside on with their torpedoes, fired them and were gone.
Six white paths streaked the ocean beneath us marking the course of six torpedoes and three of them found their target. Three of them missed, but that was because the gunners were excited. There is no more excuse for a torpedo missing a dreadnought at a thousand yards than there is for a pistol missing a barn door at twenty feet!
The _Moltke_ began to sink almost immediately. Through our glasses we watched her putting off life boats and we saw that scarcely half of them had been launched when she lurched violently to starboard and went down by the head. Her boats, led by one flying the admiral’s flag, made for the sister dreadnought, but had not covered a hundred yards when Commodore Tower signalled again and six other seaplanes darted into action and, by the same swift manosuvres, sank the _Kaiser Friedrich_.
In this action we lost two seaplanes.
Now General Wood, white-faced, re-entered the cabin.
“Has Your Imperial Highness anything to say?” asked the American commander.
Silent and rigid sat the heir to the German throne, his hands clenched, his nostrils dilating, his lips hard shut.
“If not,” continued General Wood, “I shall, with great regret, signal Commodore Tower to sink that transport, which means, I fear, the loss of many thousands of German lives.” He pointed to an immense dark grey vessel of about the tonnage of the _Vaterland_.
The Crown Prince neither answered nor stirred and again the American Commander nodded to the assistant pilot. Once more the smoke ball fell, the signal of attack was given and a third group of seaplanes sped forward on their deadly mission. The men aboard this enormous transport equalled in numbers the entire male population of fighting age in a city like New Haven and of these not twenty were saved. And we lost two more seaplanes.
We had now used eighteen of our hundred available torpedoes and had sunk three ships of the enemy.
At this moment the sun’s glory burst through a rift in the dull sky, whereupon our fleet, welcoming the omen, threw forth the stars and stripes from every flyer and sailed nearer the stricken fleet hungry for further victories. I counted twenty transports and half a dozen battleships. Proudly we circled over them, knowing that our power of destruction meant safety and honour for America.
In the observation chamber General Wood watched, frowning while the wireless crackled out another message from Commodore Tower. Where should we strike next?
In the cabin sat the Crown Prince, his face like marble and the anguish of death in his heart.
Suddenly, a little thing happened that turned Frederick William towards a decision which practically ended the war. The little thing was a burst of music from the _Koenig Albert_, steaming at the head of the nearer battleship column two miles distant. On she came, shouldering great waves from her bows while hundreds of blue-jackets lined her rails as if to salute or defy the tragic fate hanging over them.
As General Wood appeared once more before his tortured prisoner, there floated over the sea the strains of “Die Wacht Am Rhein,” whereupon up on his feet came the Crown Prince and, head bared, stood listening to this great hymn of the Fatherland, while tears streamed down his face.
“I yield,” he said in broken tones. “I cannot stand out any longer. I will do as you wish, sir.”
“My terms are unconditional surrender,” said the American commander, “to be followed by a truce for peace negotiations. Does Your Imperial Highness agree to unconditional surrender?”
“Those are harsh terms. In our talk at Chicago Your Excellency only asked that I prevent this expedition from sailing. I am ready to order the expedition back to Germany.”
General Wood shook his head.
“Conditions are different now. Your Imperial Highness refused my Chicago suggestion and chose the issue of battle which has turned in our favour. To the victors belong the spoils. These battleships are our prizes of war. These German soldiers in the troopships are our prisoners.”
“Impossible!” protested the Prince. “Do you think five hundred men in aeroplanes can make prisoners of a hundred and fifty thousand in battleships?”
“I do, sir,” declared General Wood with grim finality. “There’s a perfectly safe prison–down below.” He glanced into the green abyss above which we were soaring. “I must ask Your Imperial Highness to decide quickly. The Commodore is waiting.”
Every schoolboy knows what happened then, how the Prince, in this crisis, turned from grief to defiance, how he dared General Wood to do his worst, how the American commander sank the _Koenig Albert_ and two more transports in the next half hour with a loss of five seaplanes, and how, finally, Frederick William, seeing that the entire German expedition would be annihilated, surrendered absolutely and ran up the stars and stripes above German dreadnoughts, transports and destroyers. For the first time in history an insignificant air force had conquered a great fleet. The Widding-Edison invention had made good.
* * * * *
I need not dwell upon details of the German-American Peace Conference which occupied the month of February, 1922. These are matters of familiar record. The country went from one surprise to another as Germany yielded point after point of her original demands. Under no circumstances would she withdraw her armies from the soil of America unless she received a huge indemnity, but at the end of a week she agreed to withdraw without any indemnity. Firmly she insisted that the United States must abrogate the Monroe Doctrine, but she presently waived this demand and agreed that the Monroe Doctrine might stand. Above all she stood out for the neutralisation of the Panama Canal. Here she would not yield, but at the close of the conference she did yield and on February 22nd, 1922, Germany signed the treaty of Pittsburg which gave her only one advantage, namely, the repossession of her captured fleet.
It was not until a fortnight later, after the invading transports had sailed for home and the last German soldier had left America, that we understood why the enemy had dealt with us so graciously. On March 4th, 1922, the news burst upon the world that France and Russia, smarting under the inconclusive results of the Great War, had struck again at the Central Empires, and we saw that Germany had abandoned her invasion of America not because of our air victory, but because she found herself involved in another European war. She was glad to leave the United States on any terms.
A few weeks later in Washington (now happily restored as the national capital) I was privileged to hear General Wood’s great speech before a joint committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The discussion was on national preparedness and I thrilled as the general rose to answer various Western statesmen who opposed a defence plan calling for large appropriations on the ground that, in the present war with Germany and in her previous wars, America had always managed to get through creditably without a great military establishment and always would.
“Gentlemen,” replied General Wood, “let us be honest with ourselves in regard to these American wars that we speak of so complacently, these wars that are presented in our school books as great and glorious. How great were they? How glorious were they? Let us have the truth.
“Take our War of the Revolution. Does any one seriously maintain that this was a great war? It was not a war at all. It was a series of skirmishes. It was the blunder of a stupid English king, who never had the support of the English people. Our revolutionary armies decreased each year and, but for the interposition of the French, our cause, in all probability, would have been lost.
“And the war of 1812? Was that great and glorious? Why did we win? Because we were isolated by the Atlantic Ocean (which in these days of steam no longer isolates us) and because England was occupied in a death struggle with Napoleon.
“In our Civil War both North and South were totally unprepared. If either side at the start had had an efficient army of 100,000 men that side would have won overwhelmingly in the first six months.
“Our war with Spain in 1898 was a joke, a pitiful exhibition of incompetency and unreadiness in every department. We only won because Spain was more unprepared than we were. And as to our great naval victory, the truth is that the Spanish fleet destroyed itself.
“Gentlemen, we have never had a real war in America. This invasion by Germany was the beginning of a real war, but that has now been marvellously averted. Through extraordinary good fortune we have been delivered from this peril, just as, by extraordinary good fortune, we gained some successes over the Germans, like the battle of the Susquehanna and our recent seaplane victory, successes that were largely accidental and could never be repeated.
“I assure you, gentlemen, it is madness for us to count upon continued deliverance from the war peril because in the past we have been lucky, because in the past wide seas have guarded us, because in the past our enemies have quarrelled among themselves, or because American resourcefulness and ingenuity have been equal to sudden emergencies. To permanently base our hopes of national safety and integrity upon such grounds is to choose the course adopted by China and to invite for our descendants the humiliating fate that finally overwhelmed China, which nation has now had a practical suzerainty forced upon her by a much smaller power.
“There is only one way for America to be safe from invasion and that is for America to be ready for it. We are not ready today, we never have been ready, yet war may smite us at any time with all its hideous slaughter and devastation. Our vast possessions constitute the richest, the most tempting prize on earth, and no words can measure the envy and hatred that less rich and less favoured nations feel against us.”
“Gentlemen, our duty is plain and urgent. We must be prepared against aggression. We must save from danger this land that we love, this great nation built by our fathers. We must have, what we now notoriously lack, a sufficient army, a satisfactory system of military training, battleships, aeroplanes, submarines, munition plants, all that is necessary to uphold the national honour so that when an unscrupulous enemy strikes at us and our children he will find us ready. If we are strong we shall, in all probability, avoid war, since the choice between war and arbitration will then be ours.”
Scenes of wild enthusiasm followed this appeal of the veteran commander, not only at the Capitol, but all over the land when his words were made public. At last America had learned her bitter lesson touching the folly of unpreparedness, the iron had entered her soul and now, in 1922, the people’s representatives were quick to perform a sacred duty that had been vainly urged upon them in 1916. Almost unanimously (even Senators William Jennings Bryan and Henry Ford refused to vote against preparedness) both houses of Congress declared for the fullest measure of national defence. It was voted that we have a strong and fully manned navy with 48 dreadnoughts and battle cruisers in proportion. It was voted that we have scout destroyers and sea-going submarines in numbers sufficient to balance the capital fleet. It was voted that we have an aerial fleet second to none in the world. It was voted that we have a standing army of 200,000 men with 45,000 officers, backed by a national force of citizens trained in arms under a universal and obligatory one-year military system. It was voted, finally, that we have adequate munition plants in various parts of the country, all under government control and partly subsidised under conditions assuring ample munitions at any time, but absolutely preventing private monopolies or excessive profits in the munition manufacturing business.
This was declared to be–and God grant it prove to be–America’s insurance against future wars of invasion, against alien arrogance and injustice, against a foreign flag over this land.
FINIS