True Stories of the Great War, Volume 2 (of 6) Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses

REAL-LIFE ROMANCES OF THE WAR The Plot to Dynamite the Welland Canal Related by Horst Von Der Goltz, alias Bridgeman Taylor, Welland Canal Dynamite Plotter Horst Von Der Goltz claims to be a secret agent of the German Empire. He stated in court that his real name is Wachendorf. In the trial of the so-called Welland Canal conspiracy in the United States Court he was proved to have been the emissary of Capt. von Papen, German military attaché, who seems to have entrusted him with a mission to blow up the canal locks with dynamite. From Buffalo Von der Goltz returned to New York, and on Oct. 3 sailed for Genoa under a passport issued on behalf of Bridgeman Henry Taylor. His next appearance, according to the endorsements on his passports and other documents, was in Berlin. He entered England from Holland in November, 1914, and was imprisoned under suspicion as a German spy. Among the papers taken from Capt. von Papen in January, 1916, a check was found for $200 in favor of Bridgeman Henry Taylor, and confronted with this, Von der Goltz confessed complicity in the canal plot and was subsequently requisitioned by the United States Government to give evidence at the trial of Hans Tauscher, American representative of the Krupps, and others indicted for plotting against the peace of the United States. Further, confirmatory of Von der Goltz's relations with the German Government, are documents set forth in the British Government's official report of April, 1916—a letter from Capt. von Papen requesting Consuls in Baltimore and St. Paul to give Bridgeman Henry Taylor "all the assistance he may ask for," and a letter signed Dr. Kraske, German Vice-Consul in New York and addressed to Baron von der Goltz, mentioning having called on him at the Holland House and inviting him to call next day at the German Consulate to meet a gentleman "who is interested in you." At the trial of Tauscher, which involved international issues of the most serious nature, the defense bitterly attacked the character of Von der Goltz, who appeared as chief witness against the accused. Witnesses they brought from New Mexico and El Paso assailed his personal character and integrity and the proceedings ended in Tauscher's acquittal. In a series of articles published in the New York World , Von der Goltz tells what purport to be his adventures as a German secret agent. These confessions have further been preserved in a book published by Robert M. McBride and Co. I—CONFESSION OF THE TEUTON SECRET AGENT The 3d of August, 1914, Gen. Raul Madero, my commanding officer in the Constitutionalist army, granted me six months' leave, with the privilege of extension, and I left at once for El Paso, Tex., where I met Consul Kueck at the Del Norte Hotel. I was informed that Capt. von Papen would be in New York two weeks later. On the 8th of August I left El Paso for Washington, D. C., where I stopped only one day, having learned there that von Papen would see me in New York in about a fortnight. Aug. 10 I left Washington and went to Asbury Park, N. J., spending about a week there on a visit to relatives of Raul Madero's, and reaching New York about the middle of August. I put up at the Holland House. Although I surmised, to say the least, that I was again to be employed on service which must be secret, I had taken no steps to conceal my identity. All the way up from the border I had been a loose-tongued, hotly enthusiastic German, full of bombastic enthusiasm. I kept it up in New York. Interviews with me can be found in the papers of that period in which I predicted the speedy downfall of the Allies and Germany's sure triumph. My reason for wearing this cloak of simple obviousness should be apparent. It was my only sure disguise. Too many people knew me or knew of me as a former servant of the German Government to let me hope I could escape their scrutiny. The only way to hoodwink them was to make myself seem such a fool that I could not possibly be a spy. So I made myself very apparent. I spent a great deal of money in very foolish ways. I talked a great deal. Result: All those interested said to themselves: "This young idiot has picked up a bit of money in Mexico. It is burning his pockets, and among other things has caused him to imagine himself a person of importance. He a German agent! Germany's far too clever to choose such agents as he—who cannot even keep his mouth shut." So I got the results I wanted. I have never flattered myself on being exceptionally astute. My only claim to cleverness must lie in the fact that I have generally realized that the people I was dealing with were even greater simpletons than I. In the midst of all my strutting and gabbling, however, I found early opportunity to report at the Imperial German Consulate General, No. 11 Broadway. Two or three days later, Aug. 21, 1914, the Vice-Consul, Dr. Kraske, wrote me a letter, in his own hand, telling me that "a gentleman who is interested in you"—Capt. von Papen, to wit—would meet me next morning at the consulate. It may be worth remarking that Dr. Kraske, of his own volition, addressed the letter to "Baron von der Goltz." I had used merely my Mexican military title in registering at the Holland House. I met Von Papen next day at the consulate. The conversation at first touched on prevailing conditions in Mexico, to which country, as well as to the United States, you may remember, Capt. von Papen was jointly accredited as Military Attaché. Attention was next devoted to a scheme proposed to the German Embassy by a man who had a plan for raiding Canadian towns on the Great Lakes, using motor boats armed with machine guns. In consequence of unfavorable information concerning the writer this scheme was rejected, as were several other tentative ones for various reasons. Among them was a plan to invade Canada with armed forces composed of German reservists in the United States, aided by German warships then in the Pacific. Another, for a time considered rather more feasible, was to seize the Island of Jamaica, in the British West Indies, also with naval aid. This plan, indeed, went so far that my Mexican rank of captain received German ratification, in order to give me military status should I be captured on British soil with arms in my hands. But this, too, was given up. The activity finally decided on was a plan to blow up the locks of the canals connecting the Great Lakes, the main railway junctions of Canada and the largest grain elevators, with the double purpose of destroying one of England's chief sources of food supply and of throwing the Dominion into such a panic of suspicion that public opinion would demand the retention at home of the Canadian contingent of troops then mobilized for transportation to England. Our conferences led me to believe the plan was fairly feasible and Capt. von Papen thereupon put entire responsibility for the details of execution into my hands. So the Welland Canal plot—the obvious part of it, and the only part any outsider till now has heard a breath of—was hatched and began to grow up under my protection. Why it was permitted to be quite so obvious I must reserve the explanation for a few paragraphs. The one fact to note now is that it was almost transparent, and that I took no precautions to make it otherwise. Instead, I even talked and boasted of it and my important part in its execution. Two things were needed—men and explosives. The first I got by going to Baltimore and asking for volunteers from among the crews of the German merchant ships laid up there. There were plenty of them. I selected the ones I wanted, and their captain promised to pay them off at the Baltimore Consulate and send them to New York under charge of a ship's officer. In Baltimore I was also supplied with a revolver, my own being out of order, and with a passport for one Bridgeman Henry Taylor—a passport issued by your American State Department, supposedly to an American citizen. But he, it merely happened, did not exist. Back in New York, I reported to Capt. von Papen, and, as I needed money for the sailors who were coming, he gave me a check for two hundred dollars, drawn by himself and payable to Bridgeman Taylor. I got it cashed through the kindly offices of an acquaintance, Mr. Stallford, a member of the German Club on Central Park South. The sailors arrived in New York, were quartered in various places and were immediately put under the surveillance of detectives, just as I had expected and indeed hoped. The explanation of my cherishing such a seemingly absurd hope I must again momentarily defer. II—A TALE OF DIABOLICAL CUNNING Coming at the explosives was a more complicated matter. How it was done is best explained by the documents held by your secret service, which were part of the evidence at the trial of Hans Tauscher in the Federal Court here on a charge of plotting against the peace of the United States. Tauscher testified that he had no knowledge of the Welland Canal plot and that he sold the dynamite believing it was to be used for mining in Mexico. The jury believed him or gave him the benefit of a doubt, for they acquitted him. These documents, and others in the possession of The World Magazine, show: First, that Sept. 5, 1914, Mr. Tauscher, American representative of Krupp's, No. 320 Broadway, New York, asked the du Pont Powder Company to deliver to Bridgeman Taylor 300 pounds of 60 per cent. dynamite and send the bill to him. Second, that on Sept. 11 the du Pont Company sent to Tauscher a bill for 300 pounds of dynamite delivered to Bridgeman Taylor, New York City, on Sept. 5; and on Sept. 16 sent him a second bill for 45 feet of fuse delivered to Bridgeman Taylor on Sept. 12, the total of the two bills amounting to $31.13. Third, that on Dec. 29, 1914, Tauscher sent a bill to Capt. von Papen for a total of $503.24, the third item of which, dated Sept. 11, amounted to $31.13. Fourth, that on Jan. 5, 1915, von Papen requested some one to draw a check for $503.24 to the order of Tauscher. I went and got the dynamite myself from the du Pont Company's dynamite barges lying off the Jersey shore near the Statue of Liberty. I had hired a motor boat near the foot of West One Hundred and Forty-Sixth Street and I carried the stuff in suitcases. I took the whole 300 pounds in a taxicab to the German Club, and met von Papen there. He told me to call later and he would supply me with automatic pistols, batteries, detonators and wire for exploding the dynamite. He kept his promise. All these things I took, and part of them I stored in the rooms I had taken in an obscure street and house in Harlem. For by this time the boastful, talkative Major von der Goltz was slipping down in the world. He could no longer afford the amenities of the Holland House. It must have been quite obvious to all interested that the money he had brought from Mexico was almost spent. There are certain advantages in looking impecunious, if one knows how to use them. The furtive, secretive poor man who does no work yet has what money he needs is open to suspicion. But the broken spendthrift in his seedy clothes who cannot pay his bills and yet does nothing but talk of his own importance—he is manifestly a fool. So toward the middle of September the fool von der Goltz and four companions—Fritzen, Tucker, Busse and Covani—armed with automatic pistols and carrying suitcases crammed with high explosives, were permitted to leave New York, from the Grand Central Station, and to go to Buffalo, where they took rooms at No. 198 Delaware Avenue and were supplied with funds by wire from New York on Sept. 16, being identified by a Buffalo lawyer, John T. Ryan. After that we went on to Niagara Falls, where, within twelve miles, lay the locks of the Welland Canal, our first and most important objective. While waiting for further orders we fell victims to impatience. For sitting and waiting was all we ever did. While my superiors were hesitating to give the decisive word the first Canadian contingent had left for England, and it had been decided to postpone the attempt till another crucial moment for Canada. So the affair ended tamely, and the authorities of the United States never guessed how close they had come to being plunged into a complication which might have made the Trent affair or the Alabama affair of Civil War days seem small by comparison. I have told you I was obviously in New York with a purpose, and hoped to be unable to escape the attentions of detectives and Federal Secret Service agents. They could have stopped us at any moment, and they did not. Why? Because they thought me an impractical fool, a theatrical plotter, harmless, and wanted to let me thoroughly compromise myself before they stopped me. If the true circumstances had been like the seeming ones, that would have been thoroughly sound policy, in accordance with the best detective tradition. But—— The real circumstances were very different. My men and I were a blind. We had our explosives and meant to use them if we could. But the serious dynamiting was not assigned to us at all, but to men already in Canada, men thoroughly organized, men whose names in no way suggested German sympathies and who were not at all suspected, and never would be as long as we made-to-order German plotters were at hand. Imagine, then, what the effect would have been on public opinion if those orders had not been countermanded. The Welland Canal and others would have gone up, and we would have seemed to be the perpetrators—we, whom the United States Government might so easily have stopped if it had cared to. I have been concerned in various plots in my time, but never in one of a more devilish ingenuity than this one that failed, or failed in part. III—THE MACHINATIONS OF THE GERMAN WAR OFFICE I have tried, in writing here, not to speak with too much awe of myself and my doings. But now I crave your indulgence for a moment to call your attention to a very serious aspect of the affair. This plot of mine that seemed to fail, Werner Horn's attempt against the bridge at Vanceboro, the talk of German wireless stations in the woods of Maine, all the rumors of invasions of Canada planned by German reservists in the United States, were not so harmless and fruitless as they seemed. They served to stir up talk. They were meant to stir up talk and create the belief that some men of German descent, living in America, were less American in their loyalty than they were German. Who made that talk? The German press agencies, under Franz von Papen. And why? To set all German-Americans apart from their neighbors by rendering their loyalty suspicious; to band all German-Americans together for self-protection, and so to dyke Germany from the rising tide of world-wide disapproval. It was the most coolly calculated betrayal I have ever come in contact with. But it was not my part to register disapproval, as the film directors say. I came back to New York, reported to Capt. von Papen and received instructions to go to Germany, on the Bridgeman Taylor passport, and report in Berlin to Department III. B of the General Staff. Oct. 8, 1914, I sailed for Italy, carrying a letter of introduction from Capt. von Papen recommending me to the German Consul General at Genoa. He also gave me $200 to pay for my passage. After the abandonment, at the last moment, of the plot to blow up the locks of the Welland Canal with dynamite paid for by Capt. Franz von Papen, at the time German Military Attaché at Washington, I sailed from New York for Genoa, Italy, whence the German Consul General sent me on to the Prussian Consulate in Munich. From there I went to Berlin, arriving Oct. 17, 1914. By order, I reported to the General Staff, Department III., B, to the Foreign Office and to the Colonial Office, being questioned at each place regarding my impressions of affairs on the North American Continent. Then I was ordered to report in person to the Emperor, which I did at Coblentz, and was questioned in great detail about the state of affairs in Mexico. After being granted an opportunity to visit both the western and eastern fronts, I was sent back to Berlin and given the choice of going to Turkey or going back to Mexico. I chose Mexico, and accordingly was sent to England, via Holland, traveling on the American passport issued to Bridgeman Henry Taylor. I arrived in London Nov. 4, 1914. England was then in the first and most feverish stages of the German-spy-phobia which followed the outbreak of the war, and for four days I thoroughly enjoyed the sensation of tickling the Lion's whiskers, so to speak. Then the Lion suddenly clapped a paw down and I was caught under it. Nov. 8, 1914, I had gone down to the Horse Guards to watch guard mounting. A crowd had assembled for the spectacular ceremony. In the press a boy stepped heavily on my foot. I had a corn there, it happened, and promptly cursed him in round Mexican fashion, though in English. Recollecting where I was, I was feeling in my pocket for a penny to salve his feelings, when out of the crowd I saw a face turned steadily toward me. I knew the man at once. He was the friend of a very celebrated Russian dancer, and I had once been instrumental in exposing him, in Germany, as a Russian agent. And he assuredly knew my face as well as I knew his. I forgot the penny I was going to give the boy. What should I do? The man had recognized me and would undoubtedly report his discovery to the proper quarter. But they would have no further proof of anything against me. According to the papers in my pocket-book I was a Mexican officer returning from leave of absence. True, I was traveling on a false passport. But why not? Constitutionalist Mexico had no officials to issue passports just then, and German names on passports were not convenient. Such a deception might have been practised innocently enough, if I could only make the English believe that I was not in German pay and was not in England as a spy. In a parliamentary White Paper (Miscellaneous No. 13, Series of 1916), you can find this statement: "Horst von der Goltz arrived in England from Holland on the 4th of November, 1914. He offered information upon projected air raids, the source where the Emden derived her information as to British shipping and how the Leipzig was obtaining her coal supplies. He offered to go back to Germany to obtain the information, and all he asked for in the first instance was his traveling expenses." This is how it happened. In that brief moment of cogitation in front of the Horse Guards, I saw that my one safe method was audacity and directness, my only hope to tell some sort of a story before my accuser could tell his. So I went direct to Downing Street and the Foreign Office, which was walking into the Lion's jaws with a vengeance. I asked for Mr. Campbell of the Secret Intelligence Department and told him I wished to enter his service. What, he asked, did I claim to have information about? Zeppelin raids, I told him, that being the least harmful subject I could think of, in case my "traitorous" offer should ever come to German ears. No topic was more closely guarded, so I knew I could trust Berlin to realize I was bluffing when I claimed any knowledge of it. Also, it was a topic which vastly interested the English. The bluff went through to this extent: It left the British authorities thoroughly at sea. My apparent good intent, combined with my Mexican commission and American passport, provided them with a puzzle which would take a good long time solving. The only provable charge they could bring against me was that of being an alien enemy who had failed to register. IV—IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN A BRITISH PRISON So, on the 13th of November, I found myself arraigned in police court on that charge. You may be sure I did not complain. It would have been so very easy for me to be standing before a court-martial, on a charge that carried the penalty of death. On the 26th of November I was sentenced to six months at hard labor at Pentonville Prison, with a recommendation for deportation at its expiration. I served five months at Pentonville, and then my good conduct let me out. Home Secretary MacKenna signed the order for my deportation. But I was not deported. Instead, I was thrust into Brixton Prison. In Brixton, though I was not sentenced on any charge, I was kept in solitary confinement until January, 1916, when I was transferred to Reading Jail. At Reading—locale of Oscar Wilde's ballade—conditions were less disagreeable than they had been at Brixton. I was allowed to have newspapers and magazines and to talk and exercise with my fellow prisoners. All this time, you may be sure, attempts were made to secure further information from me, and especially to solve the enigma of my personal identity. But I stuck steadfastly to my story. By that time it had crystallized to this: I was Horst von der Goltz, born in Gautemala of German parents, but not a German citizen. I was an officer on leave from the Mexican army and had used the Bridgeman Taylor passport from necessity. From necessity, too, I had concocted the fable of wishing to sell information to the British Government, in the natural hope of avoiding the predicament in which I found myself. Try as they would, the authorities could find no evidence to knock holes in that story. And it was then I conceived a deep personal liking for British sportsmanship. They were deeply suspicious, but they compelled themselves to play fair and give me every chance. You recall that in December, 1915, on President Wilson's request, the German Government recalled Capts. Boy-Ed and von Papen, its Naval and Military Attachés. They traveled home on personal safe-conducts from the British and French Governments. You may remember also that Capt. von Papen took along with him a number of personal papers, and that when the ship which bore him touched at Falmouth, England, these documents were seized. Complaining, he was reminded that his safe-conduct covered only his body, and that he wore his clothing merely by the British Navy's courtesy. That seizure of his papers happened on Jan. 2, 1916. Being now permitted to read the daily papers, I heard of it, even in Reading, and at first was greatly alarmed. But nothing happened. The documents were published and made a great deal of sensation in England. But my name did not appear. It had been deleted by the censor, so it later appeared. Ten days of false hope that deletion gave me, and then, on the night of Jan. 30, 1916, the Governor of Reading told me I was to go up to London next day. Where to? Scotland Yard. Any moment more dramatic than that of my entrance, next morning, into the Commissioner's room at Scotland Yard I do not wish to live through. Some one else may have that excitement. V—THE TALE OF THE LITTLE PINK CHECK There were several men in the room—Capt. William Hall of the Admiralty's Intelligence Department, Mr. Nathan, Capt. Carter of the War Office and Mr. Basil Thompson, Assistant Commissioner of Police. They all looked very grave. There was one big table in the center of the room, and on it was one little oblong piece of paper—pink paper. One of them picked it up and held it where I could read it. A reproduction of it was printed in the preceding installment of this series. "Washington, D. C., Sept. 1, 1914. " The Riggs National Bank : "Pay to the order of Mr. Bridgeman Taylor two hundred dollars. F. von Papen. " When I had read that he turned it over for me to see the indorsement: "Mr. Bridgeman Taylor." "Sign your name, please—'B. H. Taylor.' Do you know that check?" "Yes," I admitted. "Why was it issued?" "Von Papen gave me the money to go to Europe and join the army." "Ah! Von Papen gave it you——" I was doing quick thinking. That little pink check might easily be my death warrant. In that trunkful of documents, it seemed more than likely, were reports and instructions with my name sprinkled through them, since that check had been there. My last chance was gone, after all those months of bluffing. I have sense enough to know a game is up. If people have positive proof that you have done a thing it's no use saying you have not. I saw one chance—and one chance only—of extricating myself. I must make a confession. But it must be a peculiar sort of confession. To carry conviction it must admit everything material contained in Capt. von Papen's seized papers where my name was implicated. And, not to be disloyal, it must admit nothing more—nothing, in other words, that England was not already cognizant of from other sources. How to do that—to bluff them once more, to a finish. I swung round on them. "Are you the executioners of the German Government?" I asked abruptly. "Are you so fond of von Papen that you want to do him a favor? You will be doing just that if you try and shoot me." "We are going to prosecute you on this evidence," was the only answer. "You English pride yourselves on not being taken in," I said. "Von Papen is a very clever man—are you going to let him take you in? Do you think he was fool enough not to realize that those papers would be seized? Do you think"—this part of it was a random shot, and lucky—"do you think it is an accident that the only papers among them referring to a live, free, unsentenced man in England refer to me? Just look! Von Papen has been recalled. The United States can investigate his doings now without embarrassment. And he, knowing me to be the connecting link of the chain of his activities, and knowing me to be a prisoner liable to extradition, would ask nothing better than to get permanently rid of me. And in the papers he carried he very obligingly furnished you all the proofs you need before you shoot me. You can choose for yourselves. Do him this favor if you want to. But I think I'm worth more to you alive than dead. Especially now that I see how very willing my own Government is to have me dead." They got the point and the veiled promise and were willing to give me immunity in return for a confession and revelation of the workings of German secret agencies. So much ground was gained. The hardest stretch still remained to gain—to get some inkling of what I must tell and what I must keep silent about. That knowledge was very hard to come at. But from one of them, who had known me all through my fifteen months' fight for life and liberty, and had sympathized, I managed to get, without arousing his suspicions, a sketchy notion of what ground the seized documents covered. It sufficed to put the bluff through. That night they lodged me in Brixton Prison, with a supply of stationery, and I wrote down my "voluntary statement," taking care to incorporate in its closing paragraphs the promise already made me verbally, "I have made these statements on the distinct understanding that the statements I have made, or should make in the future, will not be used against me; that I am not to be prosecuted for participation in any enterprise directed against the United Kingdom or her Allies I engaged in at the direction of Capt. von Papen or other representatives of the German Government, and that the promise made to me by Capt. William Hall, Chief of the Intelligence Department of the Admiralty, in the presence of Mr. Basil Thompson, former Governor of Tonga and Assistant Commissioner of Police, and in the presence of Supt. Quinn, political branch of Scotland Yard, that I am not to be extradited or sent to any country where I am liable to punishment for political offenses, is made on behalf of His Majesty's Government." On Feb. 2 I was asked whether I was willing to swear to the truth of my statements. They were true, as far as they went, and I swore so. So by sheer bluffing I got out from between the Lion's paws. They sent me to Lewes Prison then. With its baths and lawns for tennis, it hardly seemed a prison, and I was content there until last spring, the United States Department of Justice needed me as a witness in its Grand Jury proceedings. I came over, gave my testimony—and now here I am. One volume of my life's history apparently is written to a Finis . What will the next one be, I wonder? REAL-LIFE ROMANCES OF THE WAR Told by Malcolm Savage Treacher The author is a sergeant in a famous regiment, and has been invalided to England after an exciting time in the Near East. In these unusual articles he sets down a number of little stories—cameos of the Great War—told to him by soldiers during his seven months' sojourn in various hospitals. The incidents are authenticated by the names and regiments of the men concerned. "All the stories are related exactly as I heard them," he writes in the Wide World Magazine . I—TALE OF MYSTERY OF THE ABANDONED CHATEAU During the early months of the war, Corporal R. J. Mullins, of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, was among those who helped to stem the flood of Germans advancing on Paris. He is a slight, boyish figure, with merry, laughing eyes, and in spite of two serious wounds from shell-fire manages to-day to cram as much vitality into his life as any six ordinary men. I met him in hospital, where he related to me the following curious experiences. One evening his regiment was ordered to attack a château which the German General Staff was known to have occupied the previous night. No enemy soldier, however, was found there when the British arrived—nothing except signs of a hasty evacuation. On the table were the remains of an interrupted meal, some of the pictures had been removed, and everything of value in the mansion had been taken away. Mullins and his companions had been marching for several days in rough campaigning conditions, and almost the first thing the corporal did on entering the fine salle à manger was to fling himself into an arm-chair beside the gas fire of imitation logs. "Everything's been cleared out," exclaimed one of his comrades. "The Germans have left nothing." "And what if they had?" asked the corporal. "We've strict orders not to loot, and I'm going to see them carried out." "But there's orders and orders," responded the other. "Anyhow, it's all the same," returned Mullins. "There's going to be no looting if I can help it." Thereupon the rifleman sat down beside his companion, and for several minutes they smoked together. Then, all of a sudden, they heard the whistle sounding the fall-in outside, and both prepared to go. Mullins snatched his cap hastily from a Louis XV. sideboard that covered half the length of the room, and to his amazement several secret drawers opened. In some curious manner his cap had touched a knob, thereby releasing a concealed spring. The drawers were full of wondrous treasures of early French art—vases and cups of silver-gilt or gold, studded with precious stones and other valuables. Before him lay wealth and treasure enough, probably for a King's ransom. Very thoughtfully the corporal closed the drawers again, leaving everything exactly in order as he had found it. After all, orders were orders—but what a chance for the German Crown Prince! By this time his comrades had all fallen in, and already he could hear the steady tramp, tramp of their footsteps marching away in the distance. As he scrambled hastily out of the door of the château, Mullins realized that he was alone, and that in his hurry he had somehow taken the wrong road. There was no one to be seen anywhere, and he could no longer hear the regiment. A few minutes later he was stumbling along through the grounds of the house, groping his way in the darkness, trying to find the highway. Presently he discerned that he was in a field enclosed by a high wooden fence, and went hurrying across it. Right out in the open he collided with some heavy object, only to recoil in horror as the thing moved and snorted. Its back was wet—wet with what the corporal later discovered to be blood. The animal, wounded probably by malevolent design, rose to its feet, its long horns and huge bulk shaping through the darkness as the form of a bull. Conceiving Mullins to be one of its tormentors, the bull first lashed its tail angrily against its sides and then galloped full pelt after him. By this time Mullins had reached the side of the corral, and crouched there, hoping that the darkness would cover him. But he was mistaken. The bull charged down upon him with lowered head, and drove its horns deep into the fencing on each side of the horrified man's head. There it remained fixed just long enough to give Corporal Mullins time to crawl out and scramble over the corral, glad to find himself still alive and uninjured. An hour afterwards he rejoined his regiment. II—STORY OF WOMAN WHO WALKED IN THE NIGHT Yet another queer experience befell the corporal a short time later. It occurred when he was on "listening-post" between the trenches—one of the most arduous and dangerous jobs the war has to offer. Corporal Mullins, with a couple of comrades, was on duty in a listening-post hard by Armentières. On the previous day the Germans had attacked and been beaten off, and our troops were expecting a further assault that evening. Already the big guns were battering away at the entrenchments. The three men lay in front of a shallow stream, on the other side of which rose grimly the high banks of the German earthworks. Suddenly the noise of the cannonade ceased. Very intently the watchers listened, for the silence was ominous and foreshadowed an assault. After a few moments' suspense, Mullin's arm was touched by one of his companions. From across the stream the wind wafted to them the unmistakable sound of someone walking through the water. The three gripped their rifles in alarm. The Germans were coming! But nothing happened. They heard men breathing hard and straining at their work, and gradually the explanation dawned upon them. The disturbing noise was nothing worse than the enemy bailing water from their trenches into the stream! The three laughed silently, greatly relieved at the discovery. The bailing continued for some hours, when the sound was supplemented by another. This time there was no room for doubt; stealthy footsteps were approaching them, plash, plash through the water. Probably it was a spy. Right into their waiting arms the crouching figure walked. A hand promptly covered its mouth, and it was pulled down. Then the trio gasped, for they discovered from the soft cheeks and long, dishevelled hair that their captive was a— woman ! One of the men thrust her into a hole burrowed by an enemy howitzer, and they flashed an electric torch into her face. Despair, shame, horror—all the elements of a more terrible tragedy than ever Euripides made immortal were written in the poor girl's features. Disgraced she was for ever in the eyes of her kith and kin, one of the hapless victims of the Huns. She had escaped from her captors, it appeared, and had come to the British lines to seek refuge. The three men laughed again, as silently as before; but this time their mirth was full of terrible meaning, pregnant with thoughts of vengeance. III—THE VENDETTA—AN EYE-FOR-AN-EYE From Flanders we will turn to Gallipoli. A man had just been shot in the first line trench at Anzac by a sniper. Private Roy Scotton, the 5th Field Ambulance, A.I.F., had been hurried along with a stretcher to bear him away for burial. "Who is it?" asked one of the bearers as they picked up the soldier. The sergeant of the section, his head bent to avoid hostile bullets, came hastening along the trench. "Who's down this time?" he asked in turn. But there came no response from the bystanders. Some busied themselves with the breeches of their rifles; some, who had commenced a smoke, put aside their tobacco. The dead soldier's face had been covered with a blanket. "Who is it?" asked the sergeant once more, sick with apprehension. He was a brave man, a man inured to campaigning of all kinds, cunning in battle against the Turk, crafty in his fight against Nature in the Australian bush, wily in his dealings with political antagonists at his home in New South Wales. For this was "Paddy" Larkin, a popular Australian M.P. Pulling aside the blanket covering the dead man's face, he gave a cry of horror. It was his own brother! He bowed his head reverently for a moment over the cold, set features; then, snatching a rifle and bayonet from the man nearest him, he scrambled quickly across the trench. Before any man present suspected his intention, "Paddy" Larkin was leaping towards the enemy to avenge his brother's death. A storm of bullets opened on him. They lashed the sand around him: they tore into his clothes, into his body. Still he went on. Over the wire entanglements, over the parapet he leapt, his bayonet thrusting savagely at the Turks. Very short and fierce was the fight, but "Paddy" Larkin died happy. His brother's death was avenged. IV—"HE SHOT MY CHUM!" Of a somewhat similar nature is the following story, also related to me by Private Scotton. A Turkish prisoner had been caught. He was an officer, a brilliantly-educated man, accomplished in several modern tongues. After examining him the company captain resolved to dispatch the prisoner to Brigade Headquarters, where he would have proved very useful. A corporal was told off to escort the prisoner, and on arrival at "H.Q." handed to a staff captain the official document containing full particulars of his prisoner. Having read through the report, the officer ordered the prisoner to be brought to him. "It's not possible," responded the corporal. "How not possible?" demanded the other angrily. "Has he escaped?" News of the Turk had already been telephoned through to Headquarters, and the staff there had resolved to take full advantage of the man's knowledge. "No; he's not escaped exactly," commenced the corporal, slowly. "He spoke English, and on the way here we talked of different things. He spoke of his home in Syria, and then we got talking about prisoners——" "But what's all this to do with me?" asked the officer, sharply. "Why have you arrived here without the prisoner?" "We spoke of prisoners," repeated the man, stolidly, "and I asked him what had become of my 'cobber,' [13] who was captured in a sap-head a week ago. The officer remembered him. 'He was spying on us,' said he. 'My men brought him in to me.' "'And what became of him?' I asked. "'Oh, I had him shot,' he told me. "You see, sir," concluded the corporal, "he shot my chum. That's all, sir." "But I don't understand," exclaimed the staff captain. "He shot my chum," repeated the corporal, "so there was only one thing to do." "So you shot him ?" asked the officer, drumming his fingers on the table. The soldier nodded. Then he saluted smartly and marched out. V—THE STERN CALL OF DUTY No embroidery is required to elaborate the following episode: it is a bit of grim reality. The Prussian Guard had just delivered an attack around Ypres. For days they had been paving the road to Calais with their own corpses. At that time, you will remember, we had no high explosive to spare to beat off these assaults; only shrapnel, and none too much of that. In an advanced trench before the British lines were the Northumberland Fusiliers, firing with another regiment. Commanding a fraction of the latter regiment was a young lieutenant, whose greatest chum happened to be directing the fire of our batteries. In those days each shot had to tell, and it was resolved that when the enemy rallied again for another attack, fire was to be held until the Germans were immediately in front of our trenches. Among the "Fighting Fifth," as the Northumberland Fusiliers are affectionately called, was Corporal R. J. Glasgow, of the 2nd Battalion. Many of his comrades had fallen that morning, and as he crouched in the ill-sheltered trench, an old "pal," who as a boy had worked with him on the Elswick Shipbuilding Yard on the Tyne, talked with him of old times. He offered the corporal a cigarette, and, as Glasgow felt through his pockets for a match, said:— "I want to enjoy this smoke. It'll be our last together." "You think the Germans are getting through this time?" asked the other. "No, I don't think they'll get through. But, anyhow, I've a kind of presentiment that this is our last smoke together." During the day they lay together, smoking and yarning. Hard by the artillery major was preparing busily for the attack everyone knew was to be delivered that evening. At length the day waned, the red disc of the sun silhouetted in sharp relief against the battered tower of Ypres Cathedral. Night fell, and at last the German guns belched a furious cannonade against the poor earthworks held by our fellows. When they had done their work the Prussian Guard poured out of their holes and mounds and stormed towards the British. Until they were almost upon our lines the British guns were silent. Then, when the enemy were practically at hand-grips with those holding the advanced trenches, a terrible fusillade opened upon the Prussians. By some unfortunate mistake, however, the range had not been accurately calculated; our shrapnel was bursting too far behind the attacking enemy. There was but little time to think; immediate action was imperative. Desperate cases are cured only by desperate remedies. Either that little handful of men in the front trench must be sacrificed, or the enemy would burst through the British lines. The major directing the artillery fire was in a terrible quandary, for among the men who would be sacrificed was his dear friend. Yet he knew his duty as a soldier, and he did not hesitate. He directed the range of the batteries to be shortened until the shells were bursting over the trench, and his chum fell, pierced with bullets. That same evening the major himself was found—dead by his own hand, a revolver by his side. Corporal Glasgow was carried to a dressing-station with sixteen bullets from British shrapnel in his leg, and his friend of the cigarette episode had been shot through the brain. That terrible night furnished a long list of casualties for the British, but Ypres had been saved, and the road to Calais was still guarded by the thin khaki line. VI—THE BRITISH SERGEANT'S UNCONSCIOUS FIGHT FOR LOVE Lance-Corporal W. Bird, of the 1st Battalion Norfolk Regiment, who was also wounded at Ypres, recounted the following incident to me. Its central figure is a sergeant of his own regiment, and it commences in those first vivid days of the war, when the Germans were swarming over the border. A company of ragged Chasseurs d'Afrique had burst through a village. Some limped and were blood-stained; all breathed heavily in great gasps, and they were plastered with mud and haggard for want of food and sleep. "It's all up, Mother Vinot," shouted the corporal, a burly Alsatian, to a shivering old creature outside the village débit . "The Boches are upon us." Hobbling into the wine-shop, the old woman bade her grandson hasten the loading of the bullock wagon. He was a tall, weedy lad fresh from school. "They won't hurt us, petite gran'mère ," said he. He lifted his belt, displaying the thick butt of a revolver he had taken from a dead hussar lying under his horse on the roadside. "I will protect both you and the English milady, nom de pipe . These are great times for men." The English milady huddled closer to the fire. She had only left Brussels on the previous day; the wagon on which she had travelled had broken down in the mud. While his grandmother hid their last barrel of cognac under the flooring, Jean busied himself with the bullock wagon. It was soon loaded, for their household effects were not extensive. Clambering into the vehicle, they sat their bullocks ambling through the deserted street. Here and there lay groups of dead soldiers; over the bodies the bullocks picked their way carefully. The roar of the cannon and the ear-splitting crack of the rifles had now ceased. The Germans were advancing cautiously upon the village. The boy urged the unwilling beasts with his goad. Inside the wagon, the English milady shuddered in horror at the spectacle of the stark bodies around them, and at last she broke into sobs. The crone, who sat at the shafts of the vehicle telling her beads, looked curiously at her. The lady was speaking. "Last night I dreamed he was dead," she cried, in French. "I fear to look at these poor creatures; I fear I may find him among them." At that moment there was a rustle in the hedge bordering the road. The boy caught glimpse of rifles levelled at his companions. "They're spies!" shouted a voice in English. "Shoot the wretches down. It's another of the German dodges." "Let the poor devils go," cried another voice. "I've seen the old woman in the village before, and the boy ties a good trout fly. I know them both. Don't shoot." But one of the soldiers had levelled his rifle and fired. "There's one of their dirty officers huddling in the wagon behind the old woman," cried he. Already, however, Jean had the wagon turned, and the bullet missed its mark. Thrusting his goad deeply into the bullocks, Jean speedily made the maddened animals trot forward. There was no more firing. Very soon the little party had turned by the curé's house at the bend of the road, and were in the village again. "The Germans have us both ways," said Jean, entering the tiny courtyard of the curé . "We'd best leave our load here and hide. There is a famous place in Père Vincent's hayloft." Bidding them climb the ladder to the loft, Jean stood on guard behind the open gates. There was a clatter of hoofs along the road, the glint of lances, and a number of Uhlans dashed at a mad gallop through the village. At the bend of the road they halted. Something had aroused their suspicion. One of them dismounted and began to examine his horse's shoes. His three companions, meanwhile, trotted back to the wine-shop and proceeded to batter the door down. Jean glanced first at the men entering his home; then at the dismounted soldier. His mind was soon made up. There were only four of them, and of those he could give good account. Taking careful aim with his weapon, he pressed the trigger. Like a stone the Uhlan dropped beside his horse. Hearing the firing, his comrades rushed from the wine-shop, mounted their horses, and clattered down the street towards the boy. Jean stepped out from his hiding-place and stood full in front of them. His first shot struck the leading man's horse. The animal stumbled and flung its rider white and still on the road. Following hard at his heels, the second horseman came down with a crash, the legs of his steed tangled in the reins of the first. Jean pointed his weapon for the third time. But there was no report—he had fired his last cartridge! The remaining Uhlan, with a fierce curse, lowered his lance and charged towards the lad. Jean never knew exactly what happened after that. He remembered hearing men hard by cheering in a strange tongue; he remembered, too, the firing of rifles behind him; but after that he could recollect no more. Milady, who had been a governess in Brussels, crouched in the hay with the old woman and shuddered. They heard the galloping of the horses, the curses of the soldiers, and the firing, but they understood nothing of its significance. Then came the thunder of a shell bursting beneath the loft. The place took fire and the loose straw sent up clouds of smoke which helped make the terrified women and their position more terrible. They heard one sharp crackle of musketry; then dead silence. This was broken at length by footsteps advancing over the courtyard. They halted cautiously at the threshold of the barn, and then made a bold dash. Seeing nobody, the men halted again. "I heard voices here," the first man shouted to a comrade. "Somebody is hiding hereabouts—some of the Huns." Seizing the rungs of the ladder in one hand, he clambered like a cat towards the loft. "Let the pigs burn," growled his comrade after him. The women were hidden in the straw, but the soldier saw it move, and poised his bayonet over milady's breast. "Come out of that," he shouted. In astonishment at hearing the sound of her own tongue, the Englishwoman moved her hands from her eyes. "Save me!" she implored, and held her hands appealingly towards the soldier. And then Mme. Vinot was the witness of a strange scene. For the soldier, with a startled exclamation, flung down his rifle, seized the woman in his arms, kissed her, and spoke her name in endearing terms. It was her sweetheart, and twice that day, all unknowingly, he had saved her life! Lance-Corporal Bird was present at the sergeant's wedding some months afterwards, and vouches for the happy ending of the story. VII—TALE OF THE MOHAMMODAN WOMAN SNIPER When the war broke out, plain John Gallinshaw, a graduate of Harvard University, was earning the hardest of all livings as a journalist by the sweat of his pen. His home being in Newfoundland, he hurried back there, enlisted, came to England with the draft in the 1st Battalion N.R., and spent an arduous winter's training in Stevenson's favourite Edinburgh. Then selections for active service were made, and Corporal Gallinshaw's name was not among them. The men sailed from England late in the spring; and shortly after leaving port a stowaway was found. It was Gallinshaw. He wanted experience, and not even the fear of martial law prevented him from getting what he considered his share of the fun. The Megantic landed her troops, and for the first few weeks on Turkish soil, the preliminary baptism of fire once over, things went on in the old round of dullness, for life in the trenches at Gallipoli became very monotonous, as stereotyped as life at any popular seaside resort. Then snipers began to make themselves all agreeable. One of them, in particular, gave our fellows a good deal of trouble. This sniper, armed with an old German needle-gun, rarely missed his aim. One day Corporal Gallinshaw, on duty in the trench, had occasion in the early hours of dawn to repair some wire entanglements that had been badly wrecked by shell-fire. He had not been long at his work when the crack of the deadly needle-gun reminded him of the close proximity of the sniper. A bullet flung up a rain of stones in his face. Altering his position, he set to work again, this time more warily, but not warily enough for the sniper. Another report rang out, and this time a bullet penetrated his lungs. While he lay bleeding in front of the trench, some of the Newfoundlanders took it into their heads to go out and bring in the sniper. They returned before the sun was up with a gagged and bound figure. It was the sniper. Now, Newfoundlanders are notoriously democratic, and they wanted to take the law into their own hands and hang the captive. "It's the rule with snipers," said one. "They expect no mercy." "String him up," said another. "He's been caught red-handed." "Give the poor devil a chance," exclaimed Gallinshaw, whose wounds were being bound up. "As much chance as he gave you," responded one of his companions, ironically. Apparently, however, Gallinshaw's words were heeded, for nothing drastic was done until an officer came along and examined the prisoner. Then, to everyone's astonishment, the captive was found to be a woman. She was a young woman, too, and of prepossessing appearance. The officer decided she should be sent to Egypt. Learning this decision, the captive was full of gratitude towards the corporal for his intercession. But neither the man nor the woman could make themselves understood. And thus this romance of real life ended. But who knows what might have happened, had the affair been properly conducted—say by Seton Merriman, Stanley Weyman, or some other romantic novelist? At the 3rd London General Hospital recently I was shown two X-ray photographs, illustrating what may be considered a miracle of modern surgery. The first plate depicted Private Coleheart's leg, shattered by Turkish gunfire; the second picture, taken after the smashed bone had been welded to a silver plate, showed the leg practically as good as ever. When I saw Coleheart his thin, pinched face glowed with happiness over the skill of the surgeon, and for the first time during our hospital acquaintance of many months he was inclined to talk. VIII—THE TRAGEDY OF THE YOUNG BRIDE In Egypt, while the 8th Battalion A.I.F. was under training, the men worked very hard indeed. Marches over the desert for fourteen hours at a stretch were not uncommon. When the troops returned at night they were too tired for any other relaxation than sleep. One evening, however, it was rumored that the fiancée of a corporal in Private Coleheart's platoon had come into Mena Camp. She had landed at Suez from Melbourne the previous day and had journeyed direct to Cairo. She had been unable to endure the long separation from her lover. The corporal, obtaining three days' leave, married her. On the second day of the honeymoon, however, he was wired for to return immediately to Mena. The regiment was proceeding to Alexandria to embark for the Dardanelles. Husband and wife said good-bye, and the corporal sailed from Egypt with a heavy heart. During the voyage out he was sick, lying in his bunk the whole time until the ship arrived at Anzac. When his men fell in on deck he was too ill to make more than a perfunctory examination of their kits. From the sergeant, however, he learned that two men from a draft had been dispatched to the regiment at the last moment to complete its war establishment. One of them looked curiously familiar, but the corporal was too unwell to bother about trifles at that moment. They were all sent almost at once to the trenches, where—unlike the troops in France, who often spend no more than four days in their burrows—three weeks and even longer was the customary time for soldiers to be entrenched at a stretch. One of the two new hands, a slight little fellow named Whitening, found considerable difficulty in fetching up the supplies of water for his comrades. He seemed to have no grit in him, too, when the bullets were whizzing round, and appeared to have neither strength of frame nor strength of mind. Coleheart often saw him crying softly to himself at night. At last, in the early summer of last year, the Turks made their great onslaught on our trenches. They peppered the ground first with their great guns, and charged with fierce Oriental bravery, despising death as much as they seemed to despise our own preparations for driving them off. They came on in droves, and they were beaten down in herds, for our quick-firers and machine-guns never had a better target. At length, when they were almost over our trenches, their hearts failed them. They broke and turned tail in headlong flight. It was then that Coleheart and his companions were ordered out to disperse the flying enemy. But the Turkish guns had already opened on both friend and foe. Within a few yards of the trench Coleheart fell, his leg mangled horribly. Now it is well known that during a charge soldiers must leave their wounded comrades bleeding on the ground and await the final decision of arms before the injured may be tended. This latter duty is the care of the Red Cross men and the stretcher-bearers of a regiment. To Coleheart's surprise, however, he was picked up and helped along by one of his comrades to a first-line dressing-station. Coleheart saw that his companion was Whitening. "You'll get into trouble," he said, feebly. "You're not supposed to fall out. You'll be court-martialled." "I don't care!" responded the other, fiercely. "My husband's just been killed. He was Corporal——" And before the astonished Coleheart could respond, "Whitening" had snatched up the rifle, which had previously formed a rough splint around Coleheart's leg, and was dashing back to the trenches. The surgeon in the dressing-station decided to amputate the injured leg, but Coleheart was obdurate. He was born with that leg, he said, and he would die with it. Patched up, he was soon afterwards put on a hospital ship, and finally arrived in London. "But what became of 'Whitening'?" I asked, curious to learn the end of the history. "Killed the same day," responded Coleheart. "It never got into the papers. The whole business was hushed up." VIII—STORY OF THE HERMIT OF YPRES All readers of Sir Walter Scott's novels will recollect Old Mortality, the itinerant antiquary, whose craze it was to clean the moss from gravestones and keep their letters and effigies in good condition. Private R. Walker, of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, told me the following story concerning a very similar character. You have probably heard how the Canadians have brought the spirit of the trapper to the trenches; of their patience in marking down their prey. The enemy never know what the Canadians will be about next, and for a wealth of reasons one imagines that to be opposite the Canadian trenches in Flanders must be a nerve-racking experience. The boys from the land of the Maple Leaf are particularly patient in sapping and mining. They burrow vertical shafts far under the depths at which they estimate the Germans will counter-mine; they destroy the enemy's galleries and, creating a series of craters, occupy them and connect them up with the nearest Canadian trenches. In these mining operations the Canadians have obtained a good deal of information concerning the enemy's moves from an old fellow they call "Gravestones." His chief occupation is the preservation of the rows of wooden crosses denoting the last resting place of the fallen. The old man's history is passing strange. He is a Belgian. His daughter, prior to the war, had taken the veil, but when the country was invaded the cloisters of most of the convents and monasteries of Belgium were deserted. The men took up arms; the women helped in the hospitals. "Gravestones" lived at Genappe, in Brabant. When his daughter joined him, from her convent, he took flight to Gembroux, hoping to reach the French border, but the party was intercepted by the Germans. The old man, pretending to lose the power of articulate speech, was set free. Meanwhile the daughter, during the cross-examination of her father, had taken shelter in the old church of the village. Thither she was pursued by some of the German soldiers. When they entered the church the girl was hiding by the altar; but in alarm, as the soldiers advanced towards her, she seized the great gilt cross surmounting the altar itself and threatened to hurl it down upon the first man who approached her. Thereupon one of the sergeants ordered his men to open fire upon her, as an example to certain of the villagers who had also taken refuge in the building. Perhaps the men felt the influence of the sacred precincts they had violated; perhaps they respected the girl's bravery. Anyway, they fired low. The girl was not killed, but fell under the altar, both her legs riddled with bullets. To-day she is believed to be in hospital at Namur, though no accurate information is obtainable. Meanwhile, her father, once a prosperous fabricant of paper at Genappe, works out a slow and terrible scheme of revenge. Lovingly he plants flowers and shrubs on the graves of those who have helped to defeat the Huns, and incidentally he supplies the living with information of the utmost value. Living among some ruins outside Ypres, the bent old fellow is known to all but the Canadians as the "Hermit of Ypres." IX—TALE OF THE LOVERS' TREACHERY When the Germans first poured over France, trenches were dug at frequent intervals behind Paris and right down towards the great seaport of Havre. Later on these earthworks were strengthened and completed by the labour section of the Army Service Corps. A member of the Corps, Private Ronald Barrow, tells the following experience in connection with the work round Etretat. This village lies in a rock-bound valley, at the end of which is an old Gothic church named St. Vallery. The ruins of this church were at first ordered to be destroyed in order to give a clear sweep for the guns, but the colonel of Engineers in charge decided not to proceed with this demolition. Hard by the ruins was a tiny auberge , and it was here that Private Barrow encountered Chrysale Duigin. Barrow had been a school-teacher; and his knowledge of French gave him the opportunity of making the young woman's acquaintance. Witty, shrewd, spiteful, she was nevertheless a most interesting personage, for she was beautiful, possessed means, and was full of little touches of wisdom. Chrysale had two lovers; one a fisherman, a rough, strong fellow, the other a puny little conscript, who, in happier days, collected taxes. Hervé, the conscript, had been invalided home from Verdun, having lost his right arm. Galen, the fisherman, was exempt from military service. Between the two there was naturally a great rivalry. Hervé said much, and did nothing; Galen said nothing, and brooded.

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